Moniker: Friendly

Real Name: Ralph Bowers

Affiliation: The New Leaves (TNL), The Support

Gender: Male

Height: 5’7” (171cm)

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Auburn

Ethnicity: White/British

Identity: Public

Origin: Powered from birth

Citizenship: UK

Occupation: Runs a rehab clinic for villains, Leader of TNL

Base of operations: Bristol, London

Ralph Bowers, also known as Friendly, is a superhero with the power to befriend anybody and anything.

His body secretes a powerful energy or ‘virus’ that predisposes those exposed to it to like Friendly to an extreme degree. He can potentially stop any threat from any form of life with any form of sentience, it is not limited to biological life.

His powers boil down to an extreme case of the power of persuasion, yet in Friendly’s case it comes from a genuine place and leaves a (usually) permanent change on those he encounters. However, this is a power that Friendly cannot turn off so it affects everybody he interacts with.

A byproduct of the effect caused by Friendly’s power is increasing the empathy of those around him, since they like Friendly so much - they’re open to liking others more, allowing him to effectively rehabilitate and even recruit the villains he faces depending on how far-gone they are morally.

Ralph was born in Bristol to a large but loving family living on the poverty line, his powers manifested at birth but weren’t detected until the age of 14 when Ralph managed to quell a powerful rampaging experiment that had broken free from it’s creator, befriending the large and highly intelligent troll-like creature and naming him Simon, who would from then on become Ralph’s eternally loyal best friend and sidekick.

Most would think that the kind of power Ralph has could completely corrupt a person, and they’d be right, but Ralph was a natural optimist and had only ever seen the best in everyone he ever encountered and so was raised in the perfect environment to never harbour any animosity towards anything, even the very villains he would go on to oppose.

By the age of 26, Ralph had become a famous superhero known across the UK as Friendly; renowned for deescalating potential cataclysmic threats wielding only words. He founded a superhero team called The New Leaves comprised mostly of ex-villains that Friendly had recruited after facing them.

The permanent roster being: Friendly, Simon, Meteor Bug, Kevin7, The Eel and Friendly’s girlfriend Mirror, who has the power to store and reflect any power, thus being the only one to ever truly get to know Friendly as a person since his powers can never reach her.

The team’s use of ex-villains invited much criticism and doubt from other hero teams and the public, but was never actioned upon because of the team’s undeniable capabilities and results, as well as Friendly’s inescapable power.

The team also has a record of getting caught up in scandals due to the nature of certain members, namely Meteor Bug and The Eel, who can’t seem to shake certain habits formed in their time as villains. Friendly’s unwavering belief in rehabilitation usually keeps them out of trouble.

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TNL had saved countless lives and stopped unstoppable threats for many years before the team imploded in a tragic event that shook the world.

Mirror had faked her rehabilitation and had been secretly plotting against Friendly since she first joined, she saw how much power could be gained by using Friendly’s powers for herself so she stood by and feigned her love for him to be as close as possible so she could use her power to absorb huge amounts of concentrated energy from him and store it over time.

Waiting years for the right amount of power to enact her plan, she covertly hires the powerful Kate8 (a newer iteration of Kevin7 designed by their vengeful creator turned mercenary) to deplete the team before revealing her true nature to Friendly and explaining that she will use the power she absorbed from him to take over the planet.

Friendly is paralysed by the shock of being betrayed for the first time in his life and cannot fathom what’s happening, Mirror finally releases all of the absorbed energy and in a huge oversight her body begins to rupture because of the sheer volume of pent up power being released and she is vaporised on the spot.

The following enormous cloud of concentrated energy goes into the atmosphere and scatters across the planet, infecting the world with Friendly’s virus causing everybody on the planet to fall under the spell.

Friendly is still deep in shock and cannot react to what’s happening, he can only sit motionless and stare.

The team immediately celebrates as Simon points out that this will give everyone in the world more empathy towards each other, inadvertently causing world peace.

After a few days the effects are immediately apparent- conflicts are ending worldwide and countries begin major efforts to help one another, all while revering Friendly as some kind of unifying messiah.

It is not long after this that Friendly’s grief catches up to him, the emotional damage caused by Mirror’s betrayal had left a significant and permanent scar on Friendly’s heart and, now he was processing it, he fell into a deep despair that resulted in him becoming comatose.

Soon after falling into a coma, Friendly’s power began losing its effect on not only the world but those he had helped rehabilitate. Just as the world was in the delicate stages of unifying, it all came crashing down as wars ignited once more only to be 100x bloodier, countries promised aid were left without and a myriad of powerful rehabilitated enemies were all running amok in unison causing untold massacres worldwide.

The only people who remained loyal to Friendly were Kevin7, whose programming had been irreversibly altered by exposure to friendly and his ever faithful friend Simon, whose bond with Friendly far surpassed the effects of his power.

Together they protected Friendly from threats as they tirelessly attempted to find a way to wake him up.

Meteor Bug & The Eel quickly returned to villainy and rose up together and began leading the ex-villains to gain control of the planet as well as find Friendly and kill him to prevent his powers reactivating.

Simon and Kevin7 spend 2 years protecting Friendly in hiding while the planet burns and they are hunted by Bug & Eel who want to kill Friendly and ensure their victory.

After a confrontation with The Eel, Kevin7 is presumed dead after self destructing to save both Simon and comatose Friendly, killing The Eel and his henchman in the process.

Luckily, Simon is able to salvage Kevin7’s consciousness and store it on a device he had finally completed that would allow Kevin7 to access Friendly’s unconscious mind.

After entering Friendly’s unconscious, Kevin7 find a scared child version of Friendly  crying alone, initially scaring the child with his robotic demeanour, Kevin7 eventually helps child Friendly open up about Mirror’s betrayal and subsequent death, helping him work through his grief and allowing Friendly to find hope that he can heal this wound and he awakens from the coma.

Now sharing a consciousness with Kevin7, Friendly awakens to discover Simon gravely injured but successfully defending his body from Meteor Bug who is attacking their hideout.

As he gets his bearings, Friendly’s powers kick in and his body began secreting energy once more, immediately striking Meteor Bug and his team of villains who begin to throw down their weapons and weep at Friendly’s feet, begging forgiveness. Meteor Bug’s actions weigh especially heavily on them and they attempts to use their power to self immolate, only to be stopped by Friendly hugging them.

Being the staunch believer in rehabilitation that he is, Friendly holds his hand out to his old friend and says he’ll gladly forgive them, provided they’ll help him fix the damage they have done.

Friendly starts a new superhero team named The Support, leading a fully healed Simon, a repentant Meteor Bug and a newly upgraded Kevin7 to help guide the planet through the dark.