Karate Kid/Val Armorr/Reboot
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Contents
Biography
Origins
Most of Val Armorr's history prior to joining the Workforce is shrouded in mystery, and, although one account suggests that he was an orphan in the Omega Colony raised by a martial arts sensei, this may not be trustworthy.
What is known is that, once he reached the age of majority, he became an inveterate traveller, soaking himself in the combat skills of many cultures, and it was his need for money to travel which led him to join Leland McCauley's team.
Workforce
Dubbed "Karate Kid", he chose to associate little with his teammates, and thought less of McCauley, but nonetheless served him loyally for some time even as other members departed for various reasons.
What changed this was the discovery of a space Anomaly, which McCauley determined to exploit, but which Karate Kid felt an almost religious devotion to. Destroying Evolvo's Anomaly-tapping machine, he stole a shuttle and pointed it at Legion Plaza in an attempt to get asylum. While his shuttle was badly damaged, Sensor "convinced" the pursuers to back off by imitating McCauley, while Ultra Boy caught his out-of-control shuttle.
With McCauley forced to negotiate over the incident, Karate Kid chose to forfeit his accrued earnings from his time as a Workforce member - his room and board allowance had covered all his expenses, and he had simply banked the actual pay!
Legion
As a Legionnaire, he often remained quiet and aloof. Assigned to the Outpost group after Saturn Girl decided that a group should be permanently stationed there, his one shining moment came when he was forced to battle a possessed M'Onel single-handed - and succeeded in redirecting him into space, where the weakness from a red star expelled the entity, and M'Onel managed to recover to the planet's surface.
He was later one of the many Legionnaires to be "Blighted" after the Blight captured Earth.
Steeple
After the team's forced disbandment in the wake of the Great Rift Disaster, he chose to go to the remote world of Steeple for meditation and study, bringing Ferro along with him. There, he was torn between the peaceful way of life of the colony, and his desire for action - while knowing that he had only a limited time to choose whether to stay or not, as the unstable Black Hole nearby would trap him there for ten years if he remained on the planet.
An escaped convict, Nadir, would both settle his mind as to what he should choose - and stop him going through with it. He savagely beat Ferro, leaving him comatose and trapping him in his iron form, and while the chase to stop him from slaughtering the people on the last shuttle made him realise he did not want to stay, after he stopped Nadir by damaging his weapon so that he took the brunt of his own blast, he felt obliged to remain rather than abandon Ferro.
Rescue
While Ferro came out of his coma eventually, he was still trapped in iron form, and it seemed they were both doomed to remain on the planet for the full ten years - until Brainiac 5 was able to use the Threshold technology he had learned of during his time Lost to open a path to Steeple. However, before it was decided it was safe for sentients to use the link, he, along with all of the Legion bar Sensor and Shikari and several whole planets were entranced by Universo. Sensor and Shikari were forced to use the unstable link to Steeple to escape, and the four of them were able to free Saturn Girl who, with aid from Apparition and Ultra Boy's child, Cub, was able to defeat Universo, while Ferro and Karate Kid rejoined the team.
Powers and abilities
Karate Kid, while possessing no greater-than-human physical attributes, was a master of an unheard of number of unarmed/unpowered combat styles, and was also trained in the use of several forms of weaponry, and as such was potentially one of the deadliest combatants in the galaxy.
