Difference between revisions of "Macroman"

Macro may have had one of those hero childhoods that are less than pleasant to think about but nonetheless make them into great heroes in the future. His pain filled story starts when he was only four, when Millennium City was still called Detroit, in what is now Westside. His mother was an EMT working long hours that week, being sent out into the crime underbelly of Detroit to pick up some gunshot victims, but someone didn't like someone trying to save the punks that they tried to exterminate. Not one bit. So when the unsuspecting EMT arrived to help the poor kids, a gang of men struck, attacking the ambulance and its personnel with guns. Just showering the sides of the vehicle with bullets. Two of the medics didn't survive the onslaught at all, but one did before a hero arrived to stop the gang from finishing the job. That hero was the original Macroman.

The hero rushed the woman to the emergency room to be treated for her wounds, but it would be in vain. But unknown to her, her husband and four year old child had come to pick her up from work when she got off her shift, they wished to surprise her, not the other way around. They rushed after the gurney, only to be stopped by the hospital workers and forced to wait in the little room with all those germ filled magazines. Six hours had passed, and they heard nothing from the doctors who were trying to save her. That is-- Until a surgeon came out to deliver news. Just not good news. He reported to them that she had sustained three gunshot wounds to her chest. They couldn't get to them in time, her body lost too much blood to replace and she died on the operating table. The child didn't understand what was happening, but the father knew all too well that his wife died in the line of duty.

The father and child were sent home, one deeply confused, the other sobbing uncontrollably. The father walked them both to the roof of their five story apartment building, ripped a poster off the wall by the door and began to write on the back of it. He sat the child by the door to the roof and gave him the note, telling him to give that note to their next door neighbors. The child obviously couldn't read at the time, so had no clue what was written on it, but did as he was told anyways. If he had just gone right then and there, he wouldn't have seen what came next. The father patted the boy on the head, and walked over to the edge, looking back again for a brief moment before falling backwards off the edge of the building, plunging to his death on the street below. The boy quickly turned around and ran into the building, knocking on the door of their next door neighbor, not knowing they weren't home at the time. The boy sat at their door for four hours, legs brought up to his chest and crying into his arms the entire time until they showed up. They picked him up and carried him into their home, only to see the note the boy had clutched into his hands for the whole time. The note read "Take care of him for me. -Sincerely, Jack."

With his family gone, Dan only had one choice, and even then there wasn't much else. He had to live with people he hardly knew and he had to deal with it or be sent away to an orphanage or something. That would have been just worse. Gloria and Sam Sanz weren't even close to being bad people, and really wanted to try and make things work with Dan since they couldn't have children themselves, due to Sam's blank rounds. Sam even started calling Dan 'son' long before he called Sam 'dad'. Sam took Dan to the park on a regular basis, took him to get ice cream, took him to movies. Actually treated him like a son, which was a nice change of pace for Dan, as it was cheering him up, and let me tell you, it's kind of hard to cheer up a kid who watched his father just walk off the side of a building. That was, until Dan read the note that his dad left him, sending him back down the pole a little bit and made him all depressed. He still wasn't very old at this point, so a little kid going from happy to straight-up depressed was pretty serious. Sam had a lot of work to do.

Shame that he wouldn't get a lot of time to go through with it all, as when Dan was around the age of ten, something would happen to not only him, but to the city of Detroit that he would never forget. Dr. Destroyer started to drop monsters on Detroit, eliminating heroes, and even destroyed the city in a large battle, which ended in a bang. All of this happened while Dan was across the river, being hidden away from all of the fighting, but Gloria and Sam weren't so lucky. They never came to get him. He thought they abandoned him, like his father did, it wasn't until later he found out that Destroyer blew up the city when they were trying to come and get him. Pretty effectively vaporizing them off the face of the Earth while still in their home. Destiny -really- didn't want Dan to have a family, apparently. I mean, come on. A supervillain blowing up an entire city? That's kind of overkill there, Destiny. Dan felt then entire weight of it all. Making that depression of his worse, now that he's lost a second family and everything he's held most dear. What followed wasn't very pleasant, either as he was sent through a string of foster homes in the now named Millennium City. He was made to be a good student and an obedience as a child. Family after the next, just picked up and discarded like a dog that did chores. Until one man found him and adopted him as his own. Hope this one works out for him.

Garret Weisfelt. The man that became Dan's father. A great man and one that Dan would never forget. He adopted Dan straight out of a previous home that didn't want them when they started to see that he was kind of damaged from losing not one, but two families that he truly cared about. Being tossed around from family to family who should have just gotten a puppy or something instead of a son can kind of do that to someone, don't you think? But that's besides the point. Garret found him and took him in. Treated Dan much like how Sam did. With respect, and actually treated him like a loving father should. Playing with him, helping him with his homework, even giving him junk food from time to time. All he asked was that Dan be himself and respect those around him, even if they didn't deserve it. Garret was starting to imprint on Dan of what it meant to be a hero. Treat others the way you want to be treated. Protect those who can't protect themselves. As well as respecting power, not abusing it. Many great qualities for a hero, and would be a staple of why Macroman is a respectable hero later in life. It doesn't end here though, because there's still a long way to go for young Dan, and it gets worse before it gets better. Around Dan's fourteenth birthday, maybe a few months out from there, he finally hit puberty as a late bloomer. Good thing it came late too, didn't want that happening while he was in school. His ability manifested on him in some strange ways. Garret and his teachers always told him that puberty would do some wonky things to a growing boy, such as growth spurts, voice changing and hair in very weird places. Who would have thought that he would grow -this- much. Because one night, while walking home from a party, he was attacked by a small group of gang members. Shit kind of hit the fan right about now. Dan was beaten, bruised, and even stabbed. All of this stress on his changing body triggered something inside him which caused him to grow about five times his normal size. The boy became a giant right before their eyes. Needless to say, they kind of ran away at that point, leaving Dan just super confused and asking himself why this was happening to him. So he ran home, basically destroying the roof of Garret's home, since he couldn't get through the front door, and curling up into a giant ball in the living room. Just crying his eyes out because he was still very much in pain at this point. From being stabbed and all that.

Alone and a giant in the living room, Dan had no idea what to do. He couldn't use the home phone because his fingers were too large. He had no way to call Garret to come home to help him. So he stayed there until Garret returned from patrol. He did kind of have the secret identity thing, so Dan didn't even know where he went off to during days and nights. But when he did finally get home, he was kind of surprised, as many would be to see a hole in their roof and a naked giant laying in the living room crying. This was pretty surprising, that's for sure. Garret had a pretty good idea of what to do as Dan -somehow- developed a similar mutation to his own. Garret Weisfelt was the original Macroman. He had no idea that Dan was the child of the woman he saved all those years ago, let alone be one that became a sizeshifter like himself. Garret talked him through it, telling him how to control this gift. Turning him back to his small and unassuming himself. This was kind of the last straw for Garret, now he had no other choice but to tell Dan the truth. That he was a hero. Dan knew about the hero who saved his mother, but he didn't know his was his new father. Another surprise! Today is just full of surprises. Garret showed Dan his tights, which are similar to what Macroman wears today in style. Telling Dan of his powers, his identity, the whole shebang. Why must so many things change Dan's life? Come on, he just wants a normal life at some point, this is just getting ridiculous. Now he's the son of a superhero, and would soon have the name of the hero who rescued his mother all those years ago.

Years pass and Dan was becoming quite the young superhero. Now the age of eighteen, he was given the mantle of Macroman, basically becoming the hero. The costume called for a mask and anonymity so no one would know that he wasn't the original Macro until much later when he reveals himself to his future wife American Spirit. That's a long way off though. For now, Garret would train him to use his abilities. To show him his limits and to push them as often as he could. This got Dan to continue to grow taller and taller over the years, and even shrink, which was an ability he didn't even know he had. It was when he remember his old families and he wanted to just disappear. Thinking that everyone who's ever loved him dies because he was their son. That depression and wanting to disappear caused him to shrink, a metaphor for vanishing in his eyes. Kind of shocking that it happened. Growing made him impossible to miss, shrinking made him hard to see. Perfect for wanting to be alone. Years and years pass and Dan's skills as a hero grow more and more. He was just a low street hero while he trained and honed his skills. The tights being riddled with bullet holes that he just couldn't fix, so he had to wear the same torn tights while on patrol and in training. Until his twenty-first birthday. Garret, being the super nice guy he was, got Dan a present that he still wears to this day. Tights of his own. Specially made for him to grow, shrink and resist damage as he does. Practically invulnerable to tearing or shredding due to the materials and how it was made, as it was made for someone to stretch the hell out of it. Perhaps the best gift anyone could have given him. Dan was given a new life. The life of a hero.

The life wasn't everything he had hoped for, but it was significantly better than what he's known until now. Losing loved one after loved one can leave a couple scars on a guy's mind. But what's just another scar to him? This one might sting. A few years more passed down the line and Dan made a bit of a life and name for himself as a hero, even though it was following the coattails of Garret. He didn't really care, he loved his new life and what he had here. He respected Garret for giving everything he did. His time, patience, love and respect. It would crush Dan to know that one day, Garret was admitted to Mercy Hospital. The reason that Garret gave Dan the mantle of Macroman was pretty simple. Garret knew he was going to die. Cancer was taking away a hero. He was given a limited amount of time until it would ultimately beat him, so he had that time to find a replacement, someone to pass on his knowledge to. So he found Dan. Dan even skimped on his patrols to stay by Garret's bedside while he was in the hospital. Probably not the best thing to do, but he did it because he loved his father. Three days of nonstop watching over his father in the hospital, Garret's life started to fade. But what sticks with Dan from then on, were his last words. "Your mother would have been so proud of you.. She wanted you to have a better life. Make the best of it. We love you."

Well. Shit. Turns out that Garret was his birth father the entire time. Really explains why his original father never actually wanted him, doesn't it. It was weeks until Dan actually figured out what he really meant by all of that. Then he kind of just disappeared for awhile, not wanting to be seen in his current state. He shrank down in the empty home Garret left. Not feeling up to anything as this kind of hit him the hardest. But he knew that Garret would have wanted him to be strong during all of this. It was the hardest thing Dan has ever had to do, which was be strong. He didn't stay in the home for long. Everything that Garret taught him was to be strong. To be ready for this. So Dan picked himself up and went right back out on patrol. Protecting the lives of the people of Millennium City from then out. Bringing honor to Garret's mantle and always showing respect to his fellow man. He would never be rid of Garret, because his legacy was himself.