Open Source: TomBat

TomBat
Real Name: Martha Benjamin
Powers: Peak Human Condition, Enhanced Investigation, Flowmotion, Photographic Deduction, Stealth Tactics, Enhanced Inventing, Weapon Proficiency, Path to Victory/Unlosability?
First Appearance: Deviantart (9/27/2018)
Equipment:
-An electronic mask that has a built-in radio scanner, Telescopic, Scanner & X-Ray Vision.
-A cape that can function as a glider and can be used to stun enemies to open them up for attacks.
-A grapnel gun attached to her forearm.
-And a single pouch on her belt that contains a few smoke bombs, a pocket knife and a pack of blueberry-flavored minty gum.

Origin
(---"There are a couple of detriments in becoming good at absolutely everything.

For one thing, impossible challenges becomes easy, way too easy to the point of soul-crushing boredom.

This is the kind of thing that happened with billionaire Martha Benjamin, aka TomBat in her universe. After the death of her loved ones due to a criminal breaking in her mansion and killing them before escaping without the police able to find them. At that point, Martha swore to avenge them and the people in her city of Miskatonic that have been wronged by law breakers. So she trained herself, using her money to travel all over the world, attaining skills that would make her an apex crime fighter. Also spending her money on paying for the best gadgets and armor that she could get.

And after 18 months, she succeeded. Coming back to find the man that killed her family and bring him to justice. And it was easy, way too easy for her tastes. It was an anti-climax and curbstomp if she ever saw one. And while she did continue to fight crime, fighting an array of supervillains, they too fell rather easily with a few select movements and actions.

This streak of victories also applies to her civilian identity as she was able to fix much of her city's and the rest of the world's problems with relative ease. Both Martha and TomBat became beloved by not only the citizens of Miskatonic, but the rest of the superhero community and the world.

These victories started to feel soul-crushingly hollow after the first three times she stopped an alien invasion while trying to handicap herself by wearing a t-shirt and jeans, a simplified version of her helmet, a single pouch utility belt and a grapnel gun.

These actions made her considered the Greatest Superhero in the Universe. And she flat out despised that title since she felt absolutely no pleasure in it and she didn't like having the spotlight constantly on her.

She was on the brink of performing surgery on herself if she could have any chance of having the thrill of an actual challenge. And she was about to do so in a remote part of the Canadian wilderness, in a cave where she hopes that she will not be found and stopped, with a small power drill at the ready to lobotomize herself. A voice in her head screaming at her not to do the deed.

That was until she felt the cave started to quake, becoming more and more violent until she felt the ground beneath her collapse, into a rainbow-colored portal where she fainted during the trip.

She awoke some time later, with what little equipment she had with her, on the roof of an apartment building and hearing the sounds of city life from down below. She saw that the sky above her was a rainbow of nebulae and the sun up overhead, meaning that she ended up in what is very likely an alternate dimension of some sorts.

She then heard the sounds of a car speeding near her position, a rather old model by the sound of it's engine. So she looked over the side and seeing what looked like a purple, 1920s Roadster being chased by a pair of what she could surmise as speedsters. She used the telescopic function of her mask to see the driver, the passenger and a couple sacks of what she assumes is paper money peeking out of the trunk.

The driver was a blue-skinned woman wearing a violet coat, a white scarf and a pair of green goggles. And the passenger was a flame-patterned luchador that was actually blasting huge streams of flames from his mouth to drive the speedsters away.

Martha decided to follow the chase, wanting to also do recon on her new surroundings as she followed. So using both her grapnel gun and her skills, she easily managed to track the chase. During the chase however, the car hit a pothole, causing the trunk to fly open, spilling the bags of money onto the tarmac. The woman driver noticed this and stomped on the brakes.

It became apparent to Martha that the woman was a speedster herself, since the woman actually moved rather quickly out of her car to grab an armful of three bags of money. Though this distraction allowed her chasers to catch up. The two Speedsters were a pair of teenage boys, one being a green-eyed caucasian wearing a white hoodie and baseball cap, with the jacket having a yellow chest and green stripes (link). And the other was a Heterochromatic-eyed, black teen wearing a red cap and jacket, said jacket having both sleeves torn and his right arm wrapped in bandages that had a couple bloodstains on it (link).

The four stayed where they were, waiting for either side to make the first move in this stand-off. That's when a random thought came into Martha's head.

'Ya know, you clearly didn't like doing the whole Hero buisness, so why not do something... naughty for a change.'

'I mean, It can't be that easy being the bad guy for once.'

As ludicrously asinine that thought was, it was right about one thing. She was getting tired of being the perfect hero all the damn time. That and this is a new universe, meaning no one knows her (hopefully); 99% of her equipment was back home so she can't just pull some random gadget out of her pants to fix everything immediately; and she won't be constantly hounded by her colleagues and fanbase to do said fixing.

So Tom Bat pulled out a smokebomb and chucked them down onto the street below, causing an explosion of grey smoke that engulfed the area before she leaped down towards the action with her scanner vision on to to get a clear view in the obscuring cloud. The two heroes were startled by the sudden eruption of smoke, giving Tom Bat enough time to give the white hooded one a couple of punches to the torso before a solid kick to the head to knock him down. And before the red-clad one could react, Martha immediately leaped over to deliver a flying kick to the black teen's face to knock him over as well.

With those two out of the way, Tom Bat ran towards the blue woman, telling her to take the money and get back to her car. Not wanting to argue with her savior, the woman just nodded before running back to the car, tossing the cash in the open trunk, slammed it shut and got back in the driver's seat. Tom Bat then managed to leap out of the smoke and onto the back of the Roadster with one hand holding the seats.

The luchador wanted to ask who the hell this person was, before the woman slammed onto the accelerator and the three went off, leaving the two heroes in their dust."---)


For those who aren't familiar with the anime and manga One Punch Man, it's a story about a superhero, Saitama, who is so powerful that he can easily defeat ANYTHING with a single punch, not even putting much muscle into it but what could be considered a brief tap for a normal person that could reduce a giant monster to pieces. And what's funny about that is, he doesn't like being so powerful as it makes fighting villains way too easy. In fact he could be the only Shounen Jump character that wishes to be Weaker instead of stronger.

Now what if I take the bare minimum of the initial concept and transplant that onto a Batman-like character. Someone who is so proficient and prepared for everything that anything that should be impossible, she can do effortlessly. Though unlike Saitama, who is actually looked down upon by everyone since nobody in his world believes that he is the strongest hero in the universe; TomBat here is the exact opposite, constantly given praise and accolades for achieving feats that no human should be able to achieve even with years of training, such as using the very minimum of equipment to deal with threats that should've killed her right at the start.

Kinda like how some Batman writers make The Dark Knight so perfect as to have a plan for Every eventuality to the point that we as the audience don't care what happens to him, as he is no longer a flawed human being with actual limits, but a god greater then a universe full of god-like beings. Someone who you know will get out of his situations with whatever anti-thing device he has on his person or in his Batcave, with relative ease.

And with TomBat being So perfect at everything, she get's to a similar point that Saitama did after becoming so powerful. Everything became easy, almost insultingly easy, to the point that she herself wishes to become weaker, though while Saitama wants to still use his strength to help people; Martha tries to handicap herself to the point of self-harm, every chance she gets.

So when she ends up in The Ever-Changing City, she decided to become a villain for a change, having joined The Aberrant Men*, since they were pretty much like the small-time crooks back home, 'cept Martha found them kinda charming in how just earnest and simple most of them were in committing crimes.

These guys didn't want to commit crimes because of some kind of trauma, revenge or anything like that. It was A. They want to prove to the rest of the major Crime Bosses** of the city that they are just as good as they are. And B. They just like doing crimes for the thrill of it.

And to Martha, that's remarkably refreshing.

In the group, she lends her expertise as the team tactician. Someone who can make a few necessary tweaks to Za Foot's frequently insane plans for new and inventive ways to commit crimes. And she does limit herself of the amount of input she adds, as to not make the team solely rely on her. And when she does go out into the field, if the team is in a jam, she just needs to make a quick adjustment to better help them out. All without the others knowing and Za Foot or Dana trying to get the credit for themselves.

And she actually does get what she wants, as even with her adjustments and tweaks, she actually has a chance of failing.

*: Current Members being Za Naked Foot, Pimple Puss, Dana Backslide, Hot Rock and Slorg, The Swiper
**: Those being The Mummy Crystal, Baron Boudreax, HexBone, The Matriarch, Zakomeister, Methlab & Father Vroom



Edit (3/11/2020): Here's a list of 8 Facts about Tombat.

(---8 Facts about Tom Bat---)
1. Martha has been taught over 180 styles of martial arts. Even fighting styles from alien races. The techniques that she learned from these disciplines resulted in her having great control over her body like being able to temporarily put herself in a death-like state and making her heart beat hardly noticable as well as being able to survive in the vacuum of space for around a full minute.

2. Is fluent in over 150 languages including alien and dead languages. Though there are languages in The Super-Sargasso Sea that she is not that fluent with so she has to learn about these new dialects before she can properly understand them. Though that hasn't stopped her from trying to teach her teammates a new language so that they can better encrypt their messages so that most people wouldn't understand them if they are ever intercepted.

3. Has access to artifacts* such as The Masterwork Bracelet of the Crow, The Zippo Boots & Twister's Cyclone Gun. The former being one of her favorite tools as it can not only allow messages to be sent from her to her teammates but also create a distraction with summoning a massive murder of crows that fly everywhere and attack Martha's enemies. The Zippo Boots are Martha's method of getting around quickly when the Aberrant Men do not have a vehicle that has room for her to sit in as well as being an effective cutting tool when needed. The Cyclone Gun is Martha's secret weapon that she pulls out to blast potential enemies away in a massive cyclone blast.

4. During their off time, Tom Bat has training sessions to help the other Aberrant Men with improving their fighting prowess. Though the one teammate she spends the most time with is Pimple Puss due to him needing the most work in actually making him an effective villain as to her, he is rather useless during a heist without the proper training.

5. A couple of Tom Bat's hobbies outside of committing crimes are playing chess, solving crossword puzzles, and reading paranormal romance novels. Her favorite novel being one about a young woman falling in love with a blue, female, tentacled creature from another dimension.

6. Ever since Slug Boy assisted Martha in taking down The Signalizer, Tom Bat has developed a friendship with him so that she invites Rowen to play chess on their days off.

7. Tom Bat once had a sparring match with The Universal Challenger that lasted around 7 hours and only stopped due to night had fallen at the time.

8. In The Aberrant Men's hideout, Tom Bat has a dedicated workshop where she helps put together and repair the gangs' supervillain gadgets along with repairing their artifacts if they ended up getting damaged. Tom Bat also has a couple of blueprints for possible get-away vehicles that she made from memory of the vehicles that she had back home, vehicles like The Aberrant Bird, a plane / helicopter hybrid, and The Aberrant Fish, a submarine for when the gang decides to do some off-shore villainy.

*: All of these artifacts can be found in these lists right here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 & Part 4.


This character was made using Hero Machine 3.

TomBat is an open source character created specifically for use by anyone. Feel free to use it any way you wish. You must also give creator credit.

The image is copyright AFD Studios/heromachine.com and is posted here as a fair use reference.