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[pyrogue]

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Mick Rory aka Heat Wave
CHARACTER AGE: 40
SERIES: DC Comics (preboot) usually the Flash
CHRONOLOGY: Pre-Rogues War, just before Flash v2 #218
CLASS: Currently reformed former super criminal/Flash Rogue and pyromaniac, teetering on the edge of not being reformed.
HOUSING: If Piper and/or Cold get in, and they're down with it, a Rogueshaus in Heropa would be great! If not, somewhere else in Heropa would be excellent, thank you.

BACKGROUND:
The DC Universe, home to fictional cities galore (and some countries, and aliens and planets and Literal Hell), most with superheroes and supervillains around trying to solve mischief and make mischief respectively. There’s also teams of superheroes, the Justice Leagues, Justice Societies, Teen Titans, etc, where superheroes team up to fight stuff. Sometimes villains team up too. For the twin cities of Keystone and Central City, that's the go-to for a group of super-criminals called the Rogues. The Twin Cities usually host the Rogue's superheroic rival, the fastest man alive: the Flash (and sometimes multiple Flashes, Kid Flashes and other speedsters).

Mick Rory was one of those Rogues. Before he quit. Twice. But let's backtrack a bit.

(Head’s up that there’s gonna be some heavy fire-related death subject matter mentioned right off the bat.)

When Mick was a child living with his family near-ish Central City, he started to get an obsession with fire and heat. One night he lit a fire and watched as his house and family burned, unable to take his eyes off the flames and go get help. Shortly after, a fellow boy shut him in a meat freezer for over an hour, jump-starting a phobia of cold. Mick set that boy’s house on fire too.

Realizing that he was a danger to others, he quit school and hit the road. Mick ended up joining the circus, growing up and becoming a fire eater. He was fine for years, until one night he started a fire that enveloped the circus. That ended that.

Consumed with guilt, he changed tack: instead of suppressing his pyromania, he’d use it as a gimmick, like the various costumed criminals of Central City he’d heard about. He became one of them, making a suit and heat gun and setting off to be a crook. During his very first attempt, he saved Captain Cold (aka Len Snart, wielder of a cold gun) from the Flash and jump-started his criminal career.

He had team-ups and rivalries with Captain Cold, fought the Flash solo a few times, and joined the Rogues. The roster would shift over the years but the regulars were Cold, Mirror Master, Trickster, Pied Piper, Captain Boomerang, Weather Wizard, the Top and Golden Glider. Crimes were committed, Flash was their enemy and times seemed good. At one point Mick even managed to have the Flash on the ropes enough to unmask him, though he didn’t recognize him until much later.

Eventually, though, Heat Wave was one of the first Rogues to go straight. After one of his stints in jail, he reformed and got a job. It went pretty well, minus a couple of snags along the way. Around that time he finally spots a picture of Barry Allen in the newspaper and recognizes him as the Flash. Knowledge of the Flash’s identity makes him a target of gold-plated crime lord Goldface, so he ends up hiding at none other than Barry Allen’s apartment for a while. They become friends, up until Barry’s death.

With the Flash they fought gone and replaced by his sidekick, Wally West, the remaining Rogues were rather lost, and soon Heat Wave wasn’t the only one switching sides. Mick stayed reformed for a long while, though he still sometimes donned his costume, attended Flash Rogues conventions and the occasional non-crime team-up with his former fellows. He stayed on friendly terms with the new Flash too, even helping Wally’s friends try to find him when he goes missing.

Mick did slip up sometimes, like when him and Captain Cold got drunk and decided to rob a jewelry store for old time’s sake, before being caught by superheroines Fire and Ice (get it). But maybe falling off the wagon at all was a bad idea, considering the next bit. A non-Rogue but Flash enemy, Abra Kadabra, approached five of them, including Mick, and offered them a trade on behalf of his boss: blow up five places and be remembered forever. That boss turned out to be Neron aka I Can’t Believe It’s Not Lucifer, and they all died resurrecting him in the name of company wide crossovers.

Heat Wave, along with Captain Cold, Weather Wizard, Captain Boomerang and Mirror Master II were all dead for a while. Until they turned up later as indestructible zombie-demon-things, causing massive destruction in Keystone City. All part of Neron’s plan to get Wally West and Linda Park to trade their love for one another for Keystone’s safety. But their love was too much for Neron so he returned it, restoring all the damage to the city in the process and reviving the Rogues. And that’s how the Rogues were literally saved by the Power of Love. You’re welcome.

Anyway, the Rogues were back but their souls still technically belonged to Neron, so they went looking for a way to get them back. They travelled to the Temple of Meshta (a DCU religion) to use the titular god’s Sun Disk to protect them. Mick himself goes along with it with reservations. The whole thing turned out to be Trickster’s idea anyway, who turned up with Piper in tow for a good ol’ Rogues Reunion Tour. A dark lizard god thing appears after hijinks, and Mick convinced the other Rogues to fight it rather than scarper. The thing turned out to be Neron, and after a scuffle, Trickster ended up securing both the safety of the temple and the Rogues from Neron. Saved again! The other Rogues all go home except for Mick, who stayed at the temple to study with the monks.

He ended up in Metropolis when Cadmus Labs decided to hold tryouts to find a replacement for Superman-clone and hero, Superboy, who worked with them but had gone missing. Heat Wave secured the job of back-up superhero just as Superboy returned. This was important later when Superboy lost his powers and Heat Wave stepped up - to the dismay of fellow Cadmus employee and superhero, Guardian, who didn't trust the ex-con. But when Cadmus was attacked by a failed clone of Jack the Ripper, Heat Wave and Guardian ended up fighting it together and reach an understanding of sorts. Kind of. Heat Wave helped Cadmus out with some other incidents, too, all the while having suspicion cast on him for being a former criminal. Between a lot of weird stuff that went down and Cadmus Labs ending, Heat Wave ended up leaving.

Mick moved to Illinois, which lasted about five seconds before Piper (who had his own drama going on) turned up to talk to him. Unbeknownst to either of them, Piper was being tracked by Trickster who recruited them both to work with him and the FBI in Chicago.

A whole ton of heavy stuff goes down for Wally West in the meantime, and he asked his friend Hal "The Spectre" Jordan to give him back his secret identity with Hal's spooky magic spirit powers. Consequently, everybody forgot Wally West and his predecessor, Barry Allen, were ever the Flash. (Remember how Mick and Barry had been buds? I DO.)

Also happening: Captain Cold had put the Rogues back together and they worked to gain influence, assure favours and generally be Rogues. Criminal activities, and all that.

Working with Trickster and Piper at the FBI, Mick trained, got new weaponry, pushed himself. The goal: to bring down the Rogues. He also took to finding fires and watching them burn. Not a good sign. Anyway. So Trickster asked him to go to Keystone and catch Murmur, an edgy grimdark villain who’s otherwise unimportant.

This is where I’ll be pulling him from! From before he goes after Murmur, before the Rogues current and former get into a big fight, and consequently before the Top “fixes” him, so he’s still reformed, if slipping a little.


PERSONALITY:
Mick Rory doesn’t want to be a bad person, but he prefers being a bad person to being a monster. He wants to be able to control himself, his urges, and his pyromania, even if he sometimes falls off the wagon. Being Heat Wave is a way to control himself; when he was a Rogue, it was (ironically) a safer outlet. The Flash could almost always take it, and even when he had the Flash on the ropes he didn’t want to kill him. Even in other situations, he was using fire for a purpose, rather than to just burn things. Having companionship with the Rogues was a bonus. Like many of the others, he doesn't have anyone else.

But being a Rogue never quite sits right with him, and he’s tried to reform multiple times. Between getting a factory job, finding spirituality with the monks, and working with Cadmus, it was a mix of trying to refocus control of himself and his fire in a way he felt was better. It's all an attempt at redemption for the things he's done. He feels guilty. Plus, nothing is a better wake-up call than going to Hell.

At this point in his life, he’s fighting fires, saving people and working towards bringing in former friends. He even agrees to help Trickster with Murmur for the sake of a burn victims fund in his family's name. Redemption is still a goal, though sometimes he does miss the old days -- robbing stuff and fighting superheroes.

On his bad days, he struggles hard with his desire to make things burn again. He tends to try to deal with this by working harder, hours of therapy, or by finding and watching building fires and staring at flames. He can never quite get away from his pyromania, nor does he every try to go cold-turkey. Instead, he often shifts his coping mechanisms. The desire is there, but he is keeping it under a semblance of control so far.

Mick doesn't have as hot a temper as you'd think someone with his theme would, but his anger definitely has a slow burn that can sometimes burst out. And, of course, this tends to manifest in wanting to make things burn. One major source of frustration for him is how often people don’t believe in or trust his reformation; from his perspective, he’s been working very hard to improve himself and all he gets is people still assuming he’s still one of the bad guys. This keeps happening, and over time he gets less and less patient with it. In a good mood this manifests as snark. In a bad mood, he gets mean. Certain people (like Captain Cold) can also get under his skin and get him to fist-fight levels.

That all being said, despite his problems and faults, he’s fundamentally friendly and warm-hearted. He wants to believe he can be better, that things can be better, and not just for himself. He generally likes people and talking to them. Except sometimes with Cold, he was mostly on good terms with the other Rogues in the old days, he eventually made friends with the Flashes, and when he worked for Cadmus he tried to get along, despite the suspicion surrounding his ex-con status. He lends people money if they ask, and values love and friendship. While he isn't always nice, he usually doesn’t want to be a jerk. And if people treat him well, he tends to respond in turn.

He can genuinely be heroic as well: he’s saved people, including people who didn’t like or trust him (like Guardian), and while he’s not the most active of former-rogues-turned-heroes, he’s helped people out on a fair number of occasions. He was also willing to give Piper the benefit of the doubt when his former team-mate broke out of prison. He can be fairly non-judgmental – his life has certainly been enough of a mess to be able to sympathize, at least. All in all, he tries a nice guy. An Attempt Is Made.

POWER:

1: Fire suit/heat gun: (Canon)
Heat Wave’s gear has very Comic Book Science-y abilities and mostly interconnected, so I’m counting it as a power umbrella!

The suit is thick, sturdy, and can withstand a lot fire and heat, letting Mick enter burning buildings with ease. It comes with a detachable mask for smoke, a wrist-bound powerful fire extinguisher, and fuel for his gun. The gun is a highly sophisticated flamethrower, with more control over spread and aim, and the heat can be adjusted, to a maximum of "ridiculously high". (Shortly after his pull, his fire is hot enough to damage Tar Pit, who's made of molten asphalt, for example.)

2: Burn Healing: (Non-Canon)
He can heal people with a touch of his skin, but only if the injury he’s healing is a burn. The worse the burn, the slower the healing and more Mick has to concentrate. Additionally, his own burns heal automatically. The burn has to be relatively recent in both cases - he can't heal old scars.

3: Human Thermometer: (Non-Canon)
Mick will be able to sense what temperature places, people and things are within a loosely 10 metre/yard diameter, and know instinctively the degree in whichever system of measurement he thinks of (Kelvin, Celsius, Fahrenheit, etc). He can use this as something like an infrared detector, telling if someone has a fever, if the turkey is at the right temperature, stuff like that.


FINAL NOTES:

There's a bit where he calls himself Rory Calhoun, which is never explained and he goes back to his old name so I ignored that, but making a note.

Also, Mick Rory’s Resume:
- Fire-eater at the circus
- Flash Rogue
- Glassworks factory worker
- Denizen of hell
- Part-time monk
- Superboy understudy at Cadmus Labs
- FBI agent