Shard Superhero Fan Art

Shard
Richard Pratt was involved in a horrific car accident as a toddler, losing his right arm in the process. This did little to slow him down. He still became a star track athlete in high school and gained a scholarship to the state college. He graduated with honors with a geology degree. On a solo dig, Richard exposed a crystal that defied description. Despite extreme care in attempting to extract the crystal vein, it exploded for no apparent reason. Richard was covered in an extremely fine dust and briefly lost consciousness. He awoke with apparently no life-altering side-effects, other than minor facial scarring and major disappointment that his mystery crystal had disappeared to nothing right before his eyes. Weeks later he began to feel ill and lapsed into a coma. The coma broke after a moth and all seemed well. Shortly after leaving the hospital he began to have dreams that he once again had the arm that was lost in childhood. This persisted for several days, along with mysterious grains of crystal that would appear in his bed. Finally he awoke one night to find a mass of crystal extruding from his right shoulder. With-in seconds of the rude awakening surprise, the crystal appendage disappeared. He quickly realized that with extreme concentration he could generate a crystal structure from his long dormant right shoulder area. Richard retreated to the family cabin and began to try and master his new gift. In the weeks that followed Richard gained improved control of his crystal abilities and was able to form nearly any shape he wished and at lengths of over 10 feet. The crystal began to weaken and crumble much past this length. Despite the nearly limitless shapes he could now produce, he generally opted for a semblance of a human arm. The crystal arm provided for incredible strength, but it was limited to only that arm. By the end of his first year of transformation, his overall strength spread to his entire body. Super strength now coursed through him, though the crystal arm still was noticeably the strongest. His skin hardened some providing limited invulnerability. He discovered that most knives could not penetrate him, though after becoming a costumed adventure he learned that bullets, while not life-threatening, were none the less very painful. Richard realized that though being a super strong geologist was a nice occupation, he could do more. Admiring the exploits of other costumed heroes, he decided that was the true calling for his powers. Originally calling himself Richshar, take-off of his own name, he finally settled on Shard as it better identified his crystal based powers. He slowly worked his ranks up the super hero ladder and became regionally famous and popular. Eventually teaming with the Comet, the duo gained world-wide fame for heroic actions.