Art by "darkh3art."
NAME: MoonhunterALLEGIANCE: Maximal
FUNCTION: Security Chief
ALTERNATE MODE: Werewolf
HEIGHT: Beast mode: 7 ft./2.13 m
Robot mode: 6 ft./1.82 m
QUOTE: “Don’t trust anyone… unless you trust yourself to be able to.”
STRENGTH: 6
INTELLIGENCE: 7
SPEED: 5
ENDURANCE: 5
RANK: 8
COURAGE: 8
FIREPOWER: 7
SKILL: 7
BIO:Former Autobot veteran of the Great War and experienced bounty hunter, Moonhunter has dedicated his life to fighting injustice. He was a strong sense of right and wrong and lets that guide his life. He is an expert fighter on the battlefield, though in personal life he tends to be a bit reclusive. Nevertheless he can be extremely loyal and protective of those he calls his friends, especially after they’ve gotten close enough to be trusted with his secret: he was once a human.
Born Kerry Vasquez in the year 1978, he was six years old when he first heard about the Autobot-Decepticon conflict that had reignited on Earth. At first he was terrified that the robots would start a battle in his small-town home. When that never happened, he eventually grew complacent and accepted the Transformers’ existence as a fact of life. He never even saw one until he was a young adult, a trainee in the Phoenix firefighting department. In a tactic to stretch the Autobot forces thin, the Decepticons began attacking power plants world-wide, and Phoenix was targeted by the trio of Seekers known as Thrust, Ramjet and Dirge. Though a trainee, he and every available person was called in to deal with the crisis, and he was assigned to battle the blaze at the plant. Just when all hope seemed lost, the Protectobots arrived and merged to form Defensor, using their combined form’s force field to snuff out the flames. He was absolutely awed by the sight, but that awe swiftly turned into horror when the Seekers returned and attacked Defensor. Seeing their guardian brought to the defensive, he enacted a desperate ploy: commandeering a hook and ladder, to sent it on a collision course into the Decepticons, jumping out just before it was too late. The distraction gave Defensor time enough to rally and drive the Seekers off.
From that day on, his fate was intertwined into the Autobot-Decepticon war. Hailed as a hero in the papers, the Autobots also chose to honor him for good P.R. He didn’t mind, however, and eventually developed a friendship with the Protectobots and a few other Autobots that lasted even after the media blitz died down. A few years later he was hired by the government to act as a liaison between the government and the Autobots, a position he quickly grew to hate and resigned from. During this time, he also married and had a daughter. Though his spouse was also a supporter of the Autobot presence on Earth, their daughter slowly grew to resent their existence as she matured.
By the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, he wanted to make a difference again. After the initial attack of the Neo-Decepticon empire, the Autobots became hard up for manpower. Under the encouragement of his spouse, he volunteered to undergo the binary-bonding process to become a Targetmaster. Now an honorary Autobot, he chose the code-name Gunslinger, just in time to defend Earth from an attack by the Neo-Decepticons and then the Swarm, during which his wife was slain along with San Diego.
By his mid-forties and with his only child grown up and married, he spent more and more time defending Earth (and sometimes even other worlds) from Decepticons. During one battle, he was mortally injured by an exploding shell and his Autobot partner slain. With the team’s medic also injured, Optimus Prime resorted to a desperate tactic: he attempted to use the Matrix of Leadership to sustain him. But when he accidentally touched the casing, he was not healed--he was transformed, the biological matter of his body was transmuted into the biological energy of a spark.
As soon as possible, his spark was placed into an Autobot vessel back on Earth. When all attempts to revert him failed, he resigned himself to life as an Autobot and kept the name Gunslinger. Sadly, his daughter disowned him as soon as he revealed himself to her, the culmination of many years of resentment finally catalyzed. He left Earth for Cybertron soon after—not expecting to ever return. After the Great War ended, he spent the next three centuries fighting Decepticon and Predacon pirates. He still occasionally longed for a life back on Earth, but by now there was no going back. When offered a Maximal upgrade, he jumped at the opportunity.
Originally outgoing and daring, he grew introverted as the younger generations of Maximals began to ostracize him for being an anomaly, a freak. As he slowly drifted away from even his adoptive race, he took up residence in a slummy area of Cybertron where he could be left alone and began constructing a protoform “offspring”—thinking he could try to have a family again. During a raid by Predacon pirates, his home was destroyed, along with the young Maximal he had built. Devastated, he left another life behind, taking pains to erase the existence of the “human-turned-Transformer” Gunslinger and bury him in urban legend. He only kept in touch with his few remaining Autobot friends from the Earth-force. Taking the new name Moonhunter, he began a brutal campaign to wipe out any and all remaining pockets of Predacon insurgence throughout Cybertronian space and beyond.
Eventually Moonhunter realized that his quest for vengeance was consuming his very being, and he was losing what few scraps of humanity he had left. Not wanting to become like the heartless criminals that he fought, Moonhunter retired from bounty hunting to find himself again. He thought he saw that opportunity when a contact on Earth asked him to care for a human girl who had been experimented on as a child and genetically reengineered into a living weapon. He agreed to protect her and take her somewhere that her captors would never find her. Thinking a distant colony would be the best place to raise her, Moonhunter signed up for Colony Zeta and was surprised to learn he was best qualified to be the head of security for the colonists. Thinking it would be an easy job (and never one to enjoy taking orders from those stuck-up by-the-books types who didn’t know what they were doing anyway,) he accepted.
Boy, was he wrong about that.
ABILITIES:In addition to being experienced with Diffusion fighting, Moonhunter is armed with a laser-saber shamelessly copying the style from long-forgotten science fiction movies, along with a pair of high-powered disruptor pistols. His beast form tail converts into an ion rifle with greater range than the pistols. Jump-thrusters in robot mode allow him to leap up to ten feet upwards or several feet forward, and also can be used to slow his decent if falling. Mounted within his right forearm is a dual grapnel-launcher, mounted on opposite ends of each other. After launching one, the launcher must swivel 180 degrees to launch the other. His 30-foot cables can support up to a ton of weight and are retractable. Mounted within his left forearm is a launcher that can fire up to 6 “capture pikes”: before being fired, each pike can be calibrated to form energy bonds with each other. He can fire them in any number, and all six at once can work in tandem to leave a sophisticated energy net. The pikes can maintain their bonds for up to 2 hours and 45 minutes before running out of energy. The back of his right hand also stores a small laser useful for welding or precision cutting. In werewolf mode Moonhunter can alternate between two legs for fighting and instrumentality and four legs for jaunting. He is also armed with a sonic gun for immobilizing foes, stored in the roof of his mouth. He has extremely acute smell and hearing.
WEAKNESSES:Moonhunter is unaccustomed to his heightened senses and is occasionally overwhelmed by them. His suspicious mind can often inhibit social interaction. Due to the perceived "freedom" and "durability" of being a robot, he is prone to abusing his body and straining it to its limits.
SOUNDTRACKFire with Fire -Kansas (main theme)
Man in the Wilderness -Styx
Land of Confusion -Genesis
Musicatto -Kansas
I'm a Man -Chicago
Do It Again -Steely Dan
And When I Die -Blood, Sweat & Tears
On the Other Side -Kansas
Art by
Andrew Griffith
