Background
Martin DuQuense is the only child of Brittain and Suzanne DuQuense, a stockbroker and a professional wife respectively. He was born and raised in San Francisco, living with his parents until he was six. At that time, his father admitted that he was not living the lifestyle his heart dictated to him, and divorced Martin's mother. Following his father's revelation that he was gay, and the subsequent divorce of his parents, Martin was raised by his father's parents, Bryce and Jessica DuQuense. Moderately wealthy, Bryce having invested in real estate during the Depression, and done very well once the recovery began on the West Coast, they provided a good, solid home for Martin to develop in. They instilled a strong sense of service to others into him at an early age, and Martin has never forgotten those lessons.

He remained close to his father until his (father's) death in 1981, a victim of the AIDS virus before it achieved national recognition. Martin took his father's death hard, and the realization that thousands of other individuals were currently, and had been for some time, dying from the same unrecognized illness was another blow to him. After wrestling with his conscience, he liquidated the portions of his father's estate left to him (with one exception) and donated the money to the early research programs for AIDS being established in the San Francisco area. That exception was his father's car, a '65 Corvette "Black Rat" Street Machine, the source of too many fond memories of long coastal drives spent talking with him as a youth.

His mother, somewhat distant during his youth because of her difficulty in accepting Brittain's life choices, affected a reconciliation and became closer after her ex-husband's death. Having since gotten her degree in History, she teaches part-time at Berkeley University, choosing to reside in the academically-oriented community outside the actual campus. Martin has grown somewhat closer to her since the troubles of the last six months, and the two, usually accompanied by Dorothy, often have dinner together when their respective schedules permit.

Martin's grandparents were killed in an automobile accident in 1990, victims of poor road conditions on a vacation to the Rocky Mountains for their anniversary. In their will, they left Martin their house, but left the majority of their estate to Dorothy in the form of an administered trust fund to ensure that she received the best education and medical assistance possible. Dorothy will not be able to draw upon the interest until she is twenty-one, and the principle remains untouchable until she is thirty. Until that time, the trust fund is administered by a law firm specializing in such cases. The fund currently pays for both her specialized schooling, and the technological items that Dorothy utilizes to offset her handicap.

Joining the San Francisco Police Department as he finished high school, Martin worked as a patrol officer for six years, while attending San Francisco State University part-time. During that time, he moved out of his grandparent's home and into an apartment shared with several other fellow officers who were in his graduating class from the Academy. He had little in the way of a social life, choosing to spend most of his limited free time studying and taking correspondence classes at the same time as his regular ones in order to speed up his graduation.

In 1987 he graduated with a Master's in Criminal Justice, and a fiancee - Lorraine Alvis, a Psych major he had met in one of his classes, who had managed to persuade him that there was room in is life for more than his job and classes. That same year, he passed the internal department exams near the top of the list and transferred to the SFPD's Detective Division. He was partnered with Charles Valekis, an older detective who had lost his previous partner to an interdepartmental transfer, and the two soon became close friends, Charles' experience balancing Martin's enthusiasm and energy.

Martin and Lorraine were married in July of 1987, seven weeks before their daughter, Dorothy Camille, was born on August 22nd. Tragically, Dorothy was born deaf, a victim of a random genetic flaw. Her handicap placed a strain on the couple's marriage and finances for a time, but with the assistance of Martin's grandparents, Dorothy was able to receive the special care she needed, and has attended local schools for the hearing-impaired since she was of age. Their assistance relieved the financial burden on the couple, and allowed them the time to see that the emotional burden slowly worked itself out.

In July of 1996, Martin and Charles arrested a man for a drug-related murder, only to discover that the weapon he had used was a handgun with a singularly distinctive series of parallel scratches along the upper receiver - scratches created when Martin had struggled with another criminal four years before for possession of the same weapon and been forced to rake it, and the criminal's hand, across a wrought-iron grating several times to force a release of the weapon. Subsequent checks revealed that the weapon had been released to the Evidence Warehouse after the criminal's trial and conviction, and had been earmarked for destruction after the criminal died in a prison riot, abrogating the need for further use of the pistol as evidence. The Weapon Destruction Log showed that the automatic had been processed and destroyed nine months before the day Charles took it away from the second man to kill with it.

Starting their own investigation, Charles and Martin managed to uncover and track a systemic abuse of the Evidence Warehouse's system for destroying evidence deemed unneeded by the courts. Weapons, drugs, even unclaimed property seized from fences, were being listed as destroyed, but were turning up back on the streets - sold there by a cabal of SFPD officers who were stealing them from the Evidence Warehouse, and substituting worthless junk and substances that were then destroyed in place of the stolen material.

Over the next few months, working on their own time, the two identified several officers who had to be in on the operation, and managed to assemble enough evidence to lead them to believe that a total of perhaps a dozen officers were involved, including at least one lieutenant in Internal Affairs, and someone further up in the department hierarchy, perhaps a Captain or even one of the Deputy Chiefs were the ringleaders. In early November of 1996, they approached a mutual friend in the District Attorney's Office with their suspicions, having been unable to identify the precise individual in Internal Affairs or the higher-placed ringleader, and being subsequently unwilling to trust the department with their findings because of that. Their acquaintance agreed to go over their evidence, and they turned it over to him the next day.

That same day, they received a tip from one of their regular informants that promised a solid lead on an unrelated case they'd been struggling with for several days. When they arrived at the location he had given them, they walked into an ambush set up by the dirty cops they had been investigating. The small drug lab in the building was wired with explosives, and the ensuing detonation killed Charles almost instantly - and would have killed Martin if not for the systemic shock of his injuries activating his healing factor for the first time.

The emergency services paramedics decided that he had been thrown clear through a window, thus explaining his survival and relative lack of injuries. In shock from Charles' death, and unable to reach his wife by phone, Martin leaped to the (correct) conclusion that the tip had been a trap set by the cops they had been investigating , and then leaped to the (incorrect) one that they had caught his wife at home and killed her to be sure he hadn't told her anything. When a fellow officer warned him that "something was wrong" at his house as he was being released from the hospital, Martin sped home immediately, dreading what he would find.

Instead of a murdered wife and a ransacked home, he found Lorraine at home in bed - very much alive, and busily engaged in making their marriage a lie with one of his friends, a quick-tempered fellow officer named Anthony Schiavelli. There were a number of screams and accusations were made, and somewhere in the middle of them a fight broke out between Anthony and Martin - a fight that ended with Anthony losing his temper and shooting Martin in front of Lorraine. Seconds later, when Martin got back up off of the floor after an obviously fatal injury, Lorraine started to scream again. She kept on screaming when Anthony's gun vanished out of his hand and appeared in Martin's, going off accidentally as he jerked in surprise, the bullet striking Anthony in the heart, killing him instantly.

Two days later, Martin received a call from his friend in the DA's Office, explaining that the video and audio tapes he had been given were all blank, and that all of the written records were nothing more than blank sheets of paper, devoid of even a single word.

Two days after that, knowing that the cabal of officers he had tried to expose had a member in Internal Affairs, Martin resigned his commission in return for no charges being filed, rather than endure an investigation that would undoubtedly destroy what was left of his life.

On November 27th, Lorraine and Martin signed the papers dissolving their marriage after a series of bitter and acrimonious fights. She waived custody of Dorothy during the proceedings, and is currently living with her parents in San Diego.

Powers and Tactics

Martin has two metahuman powers, both of which activated for the first time in November of 1996:

1)He heals at a nearly instantaneous rate, his body replacing and repairing damaged cells so quickly that he often does not notice minor injuries. His healing factor, while not preventing him from contracting illnesses, burns them out of his system so quickly that he is effectively immune to their symptomatic and long-term effects. It also purges his system of fatigue poisons at a rate fast enough that it makes him nearly tireless. As a side-effect of his heightened cellular regeneration, he eats somewhat more than would be expected for a man of his size and physical condition, though his now enhanced digestive processes offset this somewhat. Additionally, he maintains a slightly higher than normal body temperature, usually about 100 Fahrenheit, as a consequence of his constant cellular activity. He has also discovered that his hair and nails grow at an enhanced rate, potentially three to four times faster than a normal person's would. What he has not, to date, discovered, is the fact that his cell replacement process does not seem to be obeying the normal rules for cellular "planned obsolescence." At the rate his cells replace themselves, they should have already reached the point where they were no longer replicating themselves without the flaws that create the effects of aging - and they have not shown any signs of doing so.

2)He may teleport objects of up to twenty pounds or so in weight within line-of-sight, out to a distance of ten meters or so. He has not attempted to move any object larger than this, and may not be able to do so as much because of a psychological block, as a physical one. He cannot teleport himself, despite having tried on several occasion while testing his powers, and has begun to suspect that he will never be able to do so. His control is fine enough after a month or so of practice in private that he can teleport objects held in vises and other clamps without damaging the retaining objects, and believes that he could move objects out of other people's hands if they are not actively attempting to retain the object in question. He has, however, been reluctant to actually test this on another person since his first manifestation of the power for fear of accidentally causing the test subject an injury.

Tactically, Martin has sixteen years of police experience, first as a patrolman, and later, as a detective. He is a competent shot, and regularly carries a handgun for self-defense purposes even though he is no longer on the force. His time on the street, as well as workouts later on after he became a detective, have given him a fair repertoire of hand-to-hand skills. They are, however, more of a rough-and-tumble nature than any recognized style or discipline.

Generally, he is prepared to walk away from a fight if he can - providing that he is the only involved individual. He is not, however, prepared to surrender his life, or the safety and lives of his friends or family. He is, like most current and former police officers, extremely reluctant to surrender his weapon to an opponent for any reason short of an implicit belief that more people will die if he does not do so than will if he refuses.

Lifestyle:

Martin lives less well than might be expected given the home he lives in, since most of his accrued savings went to pay off his ex-wife and be free of her without a lengthy court battle. His salary from Armitage pays what bills he has, especially considering Dorothy's trust fund covers her special needs, and leaves him an adequate amount of money left over for normal things like dinners out and the like - he just has no one outside his daughter or mother to spend it on. His main extravagances, outside of Dorothy, are the maintenance on the Corvette Street Machine his father left him, and regular trips to one of the city's indoor firing ranges where he holds a membership.

Appearance

Martin is handsome, although more in a rugged, athletic sense than a model-like prettiness. He's 5'11" tall, weighs 189 lbs. and has reddish-brown hair. He still wears his hair in the simple, medium-length cut he wore as a detective for so many years, although he has been considering trying out a longer style now that he has discovered how quickly it appears to be growing since his powers activated. His eyes are dark blue, almost black in dim light, and usually moving to watch his surroundings carefully. He dresses in clothing suitable for the occasion, but has a tendency to wear a jacket or loose shirt to help conceal his sidearm. After ten years, he has even learned how to look comfortable while wearing a tie - he doesn't like it, but he can look comfortable in it.

Personality/Motivation

Beyond anything else, except wanting to see his daughter hear, Martin wants to make a difference. That desire led him to the join SFPD, and later sustained him as he slaved away taking extra classes and studying so he could make detective - both so he could help the greatest number on people with the time allotted to him. He simply wants to help people, to have made a difference in someone's life for the better. That desire has dampened somewhat since his disillusionment and departure from the SFPD, and he masks it behind a veneer of cynicism and occasional bitterness, but he cannot stop it from leaking out once and a while when someone smiles and thanks him for his help. He does his best to cover these moments up though, not wanting to admit to them, even to himself.

A good deal of that bitterness and cynicism is real, a defense against the pain he felt as he was completely and systematically betrayed by nearly everything he held dear: his wife, his friends on the department, and by the department itself. He threw up the walls to keep people away, because the hurt was still a bit too fresh in his mind, the scars a bit too raw for him to run the risk of re-opening them - and months later found he didn't know how to find his way out from inside them again. He tells himself every now and then that he'll do something about it, try and meet some people who don't know about his past problems and won't judge him by them, but he never quite manages to do it.

Martin resents his powers to a surprising degree. He feels, perhaps a bit unrealistically, that they have denied him a chance for anything approximating a normal life. In truth, what he has done is focus a fair amount of the unresolved guilt and frustration from the collapse of his life on them because of their coincidental appearance at the same time. Rationally, he realizes that he would be dead if they had not manifested, but emotionally he needs to find a reason why his friends and wife would have betrayed him, feels that something that he did to caused them to do so - and his powers making him into something less than human was the reason he's chosen. That resentment helps fuel the bitterness that he hides behind in a circle that he hasn't figure out how to break yet, a circle that won't be broken until he can learn to forgive himself.

He dotes on his daughter, and spends as much time with her as possible given his work schedule. He realizes that she is missing out on an enormous part of life by not being able to hear, and he feels like he needs to try and make up for that loss by giving her as much love as he can, and as many opportunities to experience as much as possible as he can. The two of them can often be found playing with R.G. at a nearby park, or simply walking and looking at the sights of the world around her.

His feelings towards his ex-wife are only slightly mixed. On the one hand, he loved her enough to marry, to have a child with her, and to stand by her for ten years. On the other, he cannot forget the icy knife of pain and betrayal that cut into his soul when he found her in their bed with another man. The words of frustration and hate that she screamed at him then, as well as the more deliberately cruel ones she voiced later, hurt him on a level that he fears may never heal. The division of property was bitter, the arguments over money even more so - the only good thing he feels came from the divorce was her agreement to waive all rights to Dorothy in return for the monetary demands she was making. At the end, he was so numb that her attempts to hurt him simply had no effect any more. He rarely speaks of her, except to Dorothy, and then he tries very hard to say as little as possible to avoid scarring his daughter any further.

He is generally soft-spoken, preferring to observe and gather information before speaking his mind. If he perceives violence as the only option to end a confrontation then he'll use it - as swiftly and forcefully as necessary to end any perceived threat. He doesn't like hurting people, but he's grown just callused enough after years on the street to realize that sometimes it's the only way to resolve a situation. His focused, almost disinterested attitude while fighting is a touch unnerving, but he's learned that becoming emotionally involved in a fight is a step away from being angry - and that's just a step away from losing control and getting hurt.

Quote
"No one can hurt you like friends and loved ones, because you've made the mistake of letting them inside your defenses already."