Airwave
NAME: Hugo Simms
AGE: 32
SPECIES: Human
HAIR: Black (braided)
EYES: Brown
BIRTHPLACE: Atlanta, Georgia
OCCUPATION(S):
- Black Market Information Trader
AFFILIATION(S): None
SKILLS & ABILITIES:
- COMMUNICATIONS MASTERY
Nobody knows the airwaves better than Hugo, who has pretty much dedicated his life to illegally tapping into signals and communications of all types. He's got a way to reach anyone in a pinch, even if he's got to piece together broadcasting equipment from scraps. - LIVE FEED
Hugo has a life feed being transmitted into the receivers on his ears that constantly switches between broadcast frequencies to let him monitor the airwaves in real time. While it's one of the biggest ways he gets intel before anyone else, it can be distracting at times in the field. - SONIC EMITTERS
The gauntlets he wears can fire powerful sonic blasts using high-tech speakers built into the palms that channel audio from his live feed. They can also record audio locally and replay it if necessary. - GADGETRY
Hugo's always coming up with new devices to do various things, most notably provide defense and security for his RV. He likes to set traps and use tools to give him advantages in fights. - THIEVERY
If he doesn't have what he needs, he'll find a way to get it. Most of his equipment is scrapped together from stuff he's stolen from wherever his RV stops down.
Towards the end of his high school career, Hugo Simms’ family was at the center of a media frenzy involving the mysterious disappearance Hugo’s younger sister, who was never found. Everyone was a suspect, but nobody got heat worse than Hugo, whose bizarre statement about the events leading up to her disappearance locked him in as the target of the general public’s ire. According to young Hugo, he and his sister were abducted by aliens and experimented on, and for some reason they decided to release him, but keep his sister. At first, people assumed he was in shock or in denial; as time went on, however, he adamantly stuck to his story, and people began to question his mental state. The more he spoke out about the alien abduction, the less people believed him, and the more suspicious he looked. Regardless, a lack of evidence ensured that he was never charged with any wrongdoing. As far as anyone was able to prove, he did not have anything to do with his sister’s disappearance, despite his unbelievable alien alibi.
The entire ordeal shattered his family. For a while, they tried to keep up appearances. They even pretended to support Hugo’s new obsession with extraterrestrial life, a hobby that his parents inevitably would come to perceive as a mockery of their failures. Eventually his parents divorced, and when Hugo turned eighteen, they abandoned him out of a need to start over. Rather than do the same, Hugo latched onto his obsession with aliens, moving into an RV and taking up residence in Nevada near Area 51 to study extraterrestrial phenomenon firsthand. He spent over a decade building custom equipment to hijack signal transmissions coming from and going into outer space, as well as discreetly siphoning classified information from the military. His ability to acquire highly-secured data built him a reputation on the dark web among conspiracy enthusiasts as the notorious Airwave, the mysterious master of information.
One unusual evening, a series of inexplicable solar flares started causing communications technology all over the planet to malfunction. While most people believed it to be a naturally occurring event, Hugo was confident that level of electromagnetic interference could only be caused by one thing: aliens. With a bit of effort and ingenuity, he was able to discern some kind of encrypted message in the pattern of the solar flares, and then decrypt that message to reveal a set of coordinates across the country in Paragon City. Without thinking twice about it, he packed up his RV and hauled his entire life over towards those coordinates, desperate to experience the magnificence of an alien life form up close. When he arrived, he got exactly what he wanted.
The arrival of the Schism happened right before Hugo’s eyes. He gazed upon them with awe from a safe vantage point as the bio-cybernetic hive mind species absorbed organic life and technology and assimilate it into itself, growing stronger. Hugo spent his entire adult life imagining seeing aliens up close, yet it was unlike anything he could have ever anticipated. Unfortunately, before he was able to initiate direct contact with the creatures, they were annihilated by Signal and the rest of the Vanquishers. They destroyed what would have been the culmination of his life’s work while he watched in dismay, and then they left to go hunt down more of the Schism elsewhere.
Though distraught, and infuriated by the Vanquishers’ interference, Hugo wasn’t ready to give up on meeting the Schism for himself. He took to his RV control station, which had been analyzing information transmitted by the Schism when they arrived, and unearthed a possible secondary invasion location nearby. He arrived to find no trace of the Schism, but instead a partially-assimilated human man now known as Fuse. Eager to learn more about the Schism, Hugo welcomed Fuse into his RV home and has been working with him to bring the Schism back to Earth ever since.
Hugo's RV was tricked out with all kinds of tech, but the kind of power that was needed to contact the Schism was well beyond his capabilities at the time. With Fuse's help, he came up with a plan to kidnap a tech billionaire or two at a conference they were meeting at and force them to use their incredible resources to help them build new communications equipment. Airwave was able to break through the event's security to get them in, but unfortunately Signal was there as the special guest to give a speech, preventing them from seeing their kidnapping plan through. At least the RV was able to stealth itself enough to let them slip away in the chaos they were causing while trying to escape.
News of their attack hit major circuits for obvious reasons, which is presumably why Airwave and Fuse were soon after contacted by an anonymous benefactor granting them the locations of tech that would help them accomplish their goals. All they'd have to do is steal it. It would require them to pour through massive storage facilities containing abandoned tech from a now-defunct company called Nyxia, Inc., which Airwave recognized immediately from their connection to a number of different space-related conspiracy theories floating around the dark web. The lead turned out to be legitimate, and Hugo integrated the strange, alien tech that was acquired into his RV with relative ease. It was allowing him to pick up and receive signals from all across the universe, just like Fuse needed to do to contact the Schism and bring them back to Earth.
With Fuse's help interpreting transmissions received from the Schism, Airwave deciphers that the Schism is particularly interested in Signal, whom they call the 'Disruptor', presumably because she caused them problems in the past somewhere out in space. Wanting to get in the Schism's favor, Airwave sent them a signal promising to deliver Signal to them as a sign of good will and loyalty, encouraging them to finally make their return to humanity. Knowing they weren't the only ones willing to welcome aliens to Earth with open arms, Airwave leaked information about the Schism to the public to foster a community of fellow true believers who could help them make all their dreams come true.
At an event called SchismCon which gathered all of their supporters together in a cornfield in Idaho for a celebration of alien life, Airwave dropped the announcement that he was offering a $1.5 million bounty to capture Signal alive plus an additional bonus for any Vanquishers killed in the process. It was a huge cut out of his crypto wallet at the time, but Hugo was willing to sacrifice it all to see the Schism return. Understandably, the announcement set the global criminal underworld ablaze in chaos as every would-be bounty hunter on Blackbook scrambled for a piece of the prize.
Proving to be stronger than anyone thought possible, the Vanquishers fought off nearly constant attacks while tracking down Airwave and Fuse for massive showdown. The two put up a solid fight; Fuse was strong enough to hold his own until Signal started ripping the armor from his body, and Airwave's explosive traps were even helping him keep ahead for a good while. Things would have turned out worse for them if the Schism didn't send a few scouting pods to assist them just as they were being caught, taking the attention of the Vanquishers away long enough for Airwave and Fuse to slip into the RV and wait patiently for the Schism's next orders. They'd learn fairly quickly that the Schism was unable to get Signal under their control. The Vanquishers fought the Schism off for a second time, cementing their places as Hugo's adversaries in his mind.
