David Charleston

David Charleston is a teenage member of the Reckoners on Earth. He spends his childhood in Newcago, where his father is killed by Steelheart when he is eight. After joining the Reckoners, he helps conduct operations in both Newcago and Babilar. His determination to save Jonathan Phaedrus takes him to Ildithia, and he ultimately drives Calamity away after discovering the source of Epic powers.
== Appearance and Personality ==
David is a tall young man with tan skin. He is a reckless person who often changes plans midstream and pursues what he sees as the Reckoners' goals without seeking or waiting for approval. He thinks quickly and is a good problem-solver, but comes across as bold and aggressive. However, he is persuasive, his enthusiasm is infectious, and most people end up liking him even when they are determined not to. David loves guns, regarding his rifle to be a friend and referring to it as a female; when his original rifle is broken, he dislikes replacing it and thinks nostalgically about it even with an improved one in his hands. He thinks he is very bad at metaphors, though he most often actually attempts to use similes. Despite having read an encyclopedia set several times while growing up, he does not like to be called a nerd. However, he does acknowledge his single-minded obsession with Epics and their powers and weaknesses; even when in the height of confrontations with Prof, he is analyzing the man's incredible strength and abilities and mentally adding to his portfolio.
Growing up in Newcago has affected David to the extent that he feels very uncomfortable around people with a carefree and relaxed attitude. After so many years of keeping his head down and learning to live with what was sufficient, places like Babilar put him on edge. On one hand he realizes that his perspective is skewed, but he isn't able to stop himself from looking down on people who just want to enjoy as much of life as they can instead of fighting back. He has instincts ingrained in him to watch for threats at all times.
David's motivations shift over time from simple revenge on the Epic who kills his father to a true desire to help humanity. This change begins when he achieves his goal of killing Steelheart only with the help of another Epic; in the course of his experiences as a Reckoner, he gains a deep realization of the humanity even of Epics and changes course from trying to kill them to trying to understand why they go evil and how to stop that process. Though initially he also believes that regular people are enough to stand up to the Epics, eventually he comes to the conclusion that they need Epic powers to fight effectively. 
== Attributes and Abilities ==
Before having powers, David fights with a variety of guns and with Prof's gifted tensor and shielding abilities. He generally uses rifles, preferring them over handguns for their greater accuracy. He is good at thinking on his feet during an operation, has excellent instincts, and typically runs point once he gains the experience to do so.
After capturing David, Regalia convinces Calamity to give David Epic powers. However, because David faces his fear of water, he prevents Calamity's influence from sending him on a destructive rampage. Once Calamity leaves their realm, David can use his powers freely without becoming evil. David's power set is identical to that of Steelheart's.
=== Epic Powers ===
* Wind Manipulation: David can move anything in the wind, including himself.
* Flight: David can propel himself through the air under his own power. When used by Steelheart, it was mentioned separately from his wind manipulation.
* Steel Transversion: Assumedly like Steelheart, David can spontaneously transform non-living matter around him to solid steel, spreading out from him in a sphere. Steel and iron have the ability to "insulate" against the transfersion, but other metals are transformed to steel. As this ability is tied to his emotions, he sometimes uses it without intent.
* Invulnerability: Assumedly like Steelheart, David is impervious to harm from all known sources, including bullets, edged weapons, blunt force, suffocation, radiation, electricity and fire.
* Super Strength: Like Steelheart, David possesses great strength. While an upper limit hasn't been found, he's shown strong enough to carry a steel-converted ISS from orbit back to earth.
* Energy Beams: Like Steelheart, David can project energy beams from his hands that can vaporize people and melt steel with ease.
=== Unconfirmed Epic Weakness ===
* The Ocean: David used to fear the depths, but he has brought his fear under control; in practical terms, what David describes as an uneasy truce. It was revealed that this fear was exaggerated by Calamity when he gave David the powers of Steelheart, but after confronting it, his fear returned to normal. It is unclear if this would affect David anymore, with Calamity gone.
== History ==
=== Newcago ===
==== Childhood ====
David grew up in inner-city Chicago. He was six years old and living with his widowed father when Calamity arrived. Two years later, he visited the First Union Bank with his father, where he witnessed him being murdered by the High Epic Steelheart on the Day of Annexation. After a year of living homeless and alone in the city of Newcago, David was taken in by Havendark Factory, where he, along with many other children, worked in exchange for food and board. During this time, David became obsessed with researching Epics and finding their weaknesses, particularly that of Steelheart. He attended school half of each day and worked the other half in the factory. He knew he needed the education that the school offered him, but he was wary of appearing too smart and being recruited by Steelheart's administration; because of this, he hid his research into Epics and learned to be very mediocre at lessons.
After graduating from the Factory, David took on a job as a cab driver. However, he proved to be such a terrible driver that the job only lasted one day. At some point he moved in to an apartment at 1532 Ditko Place.
==== Joining the Reckoners ====
David managed to track down the Reckoners, a rebel group fighting against the Epics, by anticipating where and against whom they would strike next. He found Megan Tarash, a member of the Reckoners, at the Reeve Playhouse seducing Fortuity. When another Epic named Curveball appeared, David assumed that the plan was going awry and intervened. He drew Curveball away from Megan and Fortuity by pretending to be one of Spritzer's employees, but he accidentally gave himself away when he mentioned a man Curveball knew to be dead. Curveball pulled his gun on David, and the commotion caused Fortuity to flee. Megan killed Curveball, then briefly confronted David before giving chase. She initially left David behind by convincing him that a sniper on her team would kill him if he moved, but he realized there was no sniper when no one acted to save her from some of Spritzer's men who arrived on the scene. After Megan and David took down Fortuity, the rest of the Reckoner team picked them up in a garbage truck and took them back to their base in the steel catacombs below the city.
David eventually convinced them, against their usual protocol, to let him join. He told them that he had seen Steelheart bleed and got them to entertain the idea of targeting Steelheart next. The Reckoners were alarmed to discover that he had handwritten notes on various Epics and on themselves back at his apartment. Though they originally wanted to blow up his entire apartment building, David talked them into letting him go retrieve the notes. Cody and Megan accompanied him, and David was able to warn them of the presence of Refractionary as they surveyed the area around his apartment. They agreed to let him enter his apartment and serve as bait, with the ultimate goal of taking out Refractionary. As David gathered up a backpack of his possessions and notebooks, a Core arrived to arrest him. One of the members, Roy, tried to intervene, but as the team was discussing his acquaintance with David, Cody and Megan sniped the two men with Roy. After shooting Roy in the thigh, David took the boy's mobile and called Refractionary to help Cody and Megan locate her. Megan was able to take her down, and David burned his source materials that he had to leave behind. He lied to Roy about working for a new Epic called Limelight before leaving. They went back to the Reckoner base, where everyone looked through David's notebooks. Impressed by his information, the Reckoners allowed David to outline his plan against Steelheart and agreed to try it.
==== Drawing out Steelheart ====
David began learning how to use the tensors, and then Prof sent him along with Abraham and Megan to buy some arms from Diamond. Just as they wrapped up their deal with Diamond to buy the gauss gun, Nightwielder arrived. While Abraham and Megan worked on digging their way out of the back of Diamond's shop using a tensor, Nightwielder heard them. David came out of hiding, pretending to be an employee who had made the noise while working on a gun, and gave Diamond Abraham's gun to sell to Nightwielder to allay the Epic's suspicion at the blank stretch of wall that had just held the gauss gun. He managed to get video evidence of Nightwielder becoming corporeal in UV light but then quickly had to flee with the others. When the group got back to the base, David and Prof discussed further alterations to their plan and decided to hit the power plant next.
Cody watched over David and Megan during their infiltration of the plant, during which Megan used her powers to hide the two of them from some guards. They found themselves in a room not on the blueprints, where they grabbed some data chips, and then moved on to acquire some power cells for the gauss gun. They fled with the workers while the rest of the team blew the building and used the explosion to distribute leaflets about Limelight. David was troubled when he realized that Megan had a point when she called Steelheart a decent ruler whose death would lead to more problems, discussing the dilemma with the others. He slowly began to fit in more with the team, even convincing them of his suspicions regarding Firefight.
Tia located the old First Union Bank vault, so the whole team went to look at its contents. David uncovered his father, who had been turned to steel, and Abraham recovered the handgun Blain had used to injure Steelheart and gave it to David. Having decided it was necessary to attempt a hit on Conflux next, the team went after a convoy typical of Conflux's transport. Nightwielder was waiting for them in the van, but David drove him off with a UV flashlight. He rode with Megan as the group split up on motorcycles, and the two of them drew the pressure off of the others. David ended up using the gauss gun to facilitate his and Megan's escape from Enforcement, but their motorcycle died on them, injuring both of them. David dragged Megan away down a tunnel, but he got cornered by soldiers and ended up having to be rescued by Prof. David was devastated by Megan's death after the team failed to be able to treat her injuries. He and the team moved to a new hideout, where they had Conflux captive. David was convinced of Conflux's identity by the answers he provided, and he quickly realized that the Epic had been a captive all along. They told Conflux to quit powering everything, which shut down the city.
==== Confronting Steelheart ====
After Steelheart sent out an invitation for Limelight to meet him in combat, David suggested Soldier Field as a good location. The team discussed their theories on Steelheart's weakness, David positing that he could be wounded by crossfire. He began to feel anxious and excited that the confrontation would finally happen. Per their plan, David and Cody dug extra tunnels under the stadium with tensors and created various rooms and pockets. David finished rigging up his sniper's nest with an escape route fifteen minutes prior to the Reckoners summoning Steelheart.
When Steelheart and his soldiers arrived, it quickly became clear to the team that their preparations had been compromised. Nightwielder went after David, who ran into the stadium and was distracted by an image of Megan appearing in a hallway. He fought Nightwielder off, reporting his sighting of Megan to the team, but the Epic kept ambushing him as he attempted to get to the field to try shooting Steelheart with his father's gun. David ran into another "illusion" of Megan, but this one spoke to him, mentioning the word knees. Deciding not to shoot her, he instead grabbed onto her and discovered that she was real right as an explosion knocked him down. Realizing both that Megan had disappeared again and that Steelheart's team must be listening in on their conversation, David lured Nightwielder and Megan to him again and managed to kill Nightwielder. He understood suddenly that Megan had been Firefight all along. Megan appeared to just be coming back to full awareness, with memories of the past still trickling in, but in the end she let David go, and he went to join Prof. David helped cover Abraham and Cody's retreat to the copter, but then he ran out to the confrontation between Prof and Steelheart and shot the latter with his father's gun.
The bullets failed to harm Steelheart, and Prof was forced to jump in and save David. Steelheart savagely attacked Prof, leading David to think that he was dead. As Steelheart advanced on him, David finally put together the Epic's weakness: someone who was not afraid of him. He quickly rigged the handgun to explode, pointing it at Steelheart so that the Epic would grab it and try to kill him with it. Steelheart did so and fired, killing himself in the explosion. Prof kept the explosion from harming himself and David, revealing to David that he was really an Epic. They discussed his powers and Megan's identity as Firefight, and then Prof handed David Steelheart's steel skull. As Prof waited on the field for Tia to bring the helicopter, David ran into the stadium again and sought out Megan. He tried to convince her to come with him, but she refused; failing that, he warned her not to use her powers for a while so her mind could clear. The copter arrived, and Prof called David out to the team. They flew away from Soldier Field as the citizens of Newcago gathered outside to look up at the sky in daylight.
==== Mitosis ====
The Reckoners assisted with the change of government in Newcago following Steelheart's death, including dealing with riots and organizing jobs and law enforcement. As part of their new role in helping run the city, David and Abraham went downtown one day to check in on those entering the city. After stopping by to get a hot dog from Sam, David saw a suspicious man and tailed him. He realized the man was an Epic when he saw him creating clones. Tia quickly identified the Epic as Mitosis, and she and Abraham discussed what to do with David as he continued following one version of the Epic. Suddenly, every copy of Mitosis began calling out a challenge to David himself, promising to kill one citizen of Newcago every five minutes that it took for David to show up. After three minutes, David stepped out of hiding and shot the copy nearest him. All of the clones immediately ran for David, who took off in a random direction and began shooting each one he came across.
David hid briefly in a hotel, but the clones detected him and came after him. Tia finally found an album by Mitosis's old band, which they hypothesized was Mitosis's weakness, and David was able to play it from his mobile to kill the clones attacking him. He got shot by another copy of Mitosis, however, and was forced to flee out the window without his mobile. He ran down to the river and climbed into an air vent, where he could force the clones to come at him one at a time. As each copy of Mitosis neared, David sang part of a song and melted the copy. Finally David was growing weaker, the shock of being shot wearing off, but as he was about to be overrun, the people of Newcago responded to Tia's emergency message and began singing in unison; this finally undid Mitosis. Abraham retrieved David from the tunnel and took him to a hospital, where several doctors attended him until Prof could arrive and heal him. Afterward, David and Prof discussed the nature of an Epic's weakness and the fact that Mitosis had deliberately come while Prof was away.
=== Babilar ===
==== Journey to Babilar ====
David and the Reckoners continued to defend Newcago against Epics who would like to take over, many of whom targeted the team rather than Prof himself. David began to develop a reputation among the citizens of the city, and they largely regarded him with awe. The mayor came to talk to David after he successfully took down Sourcefield, and she expressed concern over how long it had taken the Reckoners to deal with the Epic. In order to soothe her fears, David told her that the Reckoners had a final solution for dealing with all the Epics. Back at the base, Prof planned for David and Tia to accompany him to Babilar to investigate why Regalia was sending Epics to Newcago to target them. David was eager to go when he heard that Megan was in Babilar, and he refused to believe in her culpability when Prof told him that she had killed Sam, one of the Reckoner team out there. Prof got angry with David for pushing the team so far when he insisted that recruiting Megan and other Epics was the way forward. After packing, replacing his rifle, and receiving a pendant from Abraham, David left with Tia and Prof.
During the three days' drive to Babilar, David read notes on various Epics and theorized about a pattern to their weaknesses. He met Val, Exel, and Mizzy in New Jersey, where they took a boat across into Babilar. On their way into the city, the group went to administer aid after a set of explosions. Regalia appeared by David and Prof, admitting that she had brought Obliteration to town in order to lure Prof there; after she left, David convinced Prof to go after Obliteration. He and Mizzy took point, distracting Obliteration and causing him to teleport over and over again. They all discussed a possible weakness and in the end decided to try to stick a bomb to him, then get him to teleport away with it before it blew. Mizzy prepared the bomb, which David then retrieved. Obliteration soon appeared beside David, granting him the opportunity to stick the bomb to the Epic. However, he overpowered David and stripped him of weapons and electronics before taking the bomb off of himself. Obliteration strapped a weight to David's leg and pushed him into the water. Someone jumped in and saved him from drowning by ridding him of the weight, and he managed to haul himself up onto the building; only when he was leaving with the rest of the team did he see someone in wet clothes nearby and realize that Megan was the one to save him.
==== A Familiar Face ====
David and the Reckoners, minus Prof, faced Regalia on their way to the base. Seeming confused not to find Prof there, Regalia explained that she meant to destroy the city and exhibited her powers by picking each of them up in tendrils of water. After she let them go, the group took a submarine down to the base, where David got a tour and then crashed. When he woke up, Prof called a meeting to discuss their plan to kill Regalia. David disagreed with Prof that they needed to kill her, and the two argued about it both before and after the meeting. Two days later, Exel and Mizzy asked David to come with them into the city to talk to people, so he went with them to a party. There, he felt very out of place until he spotted Newton and began tailing her. Mizzy tried to talk David into relaxing, but he ended up following Newton and overhearing her conversation with Obliteration. Inadvertently making a noise while listening in, he realized Megan was there with him when the two Epics looked his way and failed to see him.
Megan told David that his cause was hopeless and walked away from him. He called her back with a terrible simile and a promise of friendship. He almost convinced her that things would work out between them, but she gave him a motivator for the spyril and left. David told the Reckoners that Newton had dropped the motivator while he followed her, and after a week of tests on it and swimming lessons with Mizzy, David began learning to use the spyril with Exel's help. During the training, Regalia appeared to David and mentioned, among other topics, the claim that she could make people Epics and augment existing Epics' powers. Still operating under the assumption that she could only manifest herself so far from her base, he forced her to move with him to two new buildings in order to collect more data points for Tia.
Back at the base, David spoke with Tia about the research she was doing into Epics' weaknesses and then hung out with Exel, discussing the man's past while he listened to a radio and took notes on the conversations. They overheard someone talking about Obliteration beginning to charge himself with solar power, so David alerted the team. As Prof and David headed into the city to check out the situation, Megan began messaging David. Prof then asked David to tell him what he had been holding back, so to deflect attention away from his contact with Megan, he confessed his plot to kidnap one of Regalia's Epics. David observed Obliteration through his rifle's scope and reported to Tia and Prof. Soon, he saw Newton approach and remove all the escape routes from a nearby building before setting it afire. David tried to go to the residents' rescue with the spyril, but it broke on him. Prof used his powers instead to save the people, after which David picked them up in the submarine and dropped them off in a safe location. David and Val then took the submarine to the supply dump, where they grabbed boxes to supply the new refugees as well as their own base. Hidden underneath the supply dump was a secret room where Prof was waiting out the effects of using his powers; David spoke with him and took a message back to Tia that Prof would return to the base that night. He went to the base's storage room and was shocked to hear Megan speak to him.
David and Megan went to his room, where Megan told him that abstaining from using her powers had helped recover her empathy. She described the feeling that urged her to use her powers, and David explained his theory about Epic weaknesses. They started kissing right when Tia walked in to ask David to plant a camera on Obliteration, so Megan hid under the bed. David distracted Val long enough for Megan to sneak onto the submarine, and then the three of them headed into the city. When they surfaced from the sub, David invited Megan to go with him on his mission. On the way, she explained to him the true nature of her powers, and he told her about his plan to kidnap an Epic. Megan stayed behind to spot with David's rifle while he planted the camera. Over their phone connection, she told David that her weakness was fire. David spoke with Dawnslight via his fortune cookies, reassuring the Epic that he wasn't dreaming. After accidentally attracting Knoxx's attention, David hatched a plan to kidnap him. He managed to subdue Knoxx in the end, but Val arrived and confronted David betraying them with Megan, shooting him in the thigh. She killed Knoxx and then tried to kill David, but Prof arrived and intervened. Prof forced David to tell Megan everything was alright, and then they took him back to the base.
==== Revelations ====
The rest of the Reckoners distrusted David, so he kept to his room the next day while the others planned their hit against Newton. Before the mission, David and Prof argued again about Megan and whether Epics could ever be good. Prof locked him in the conference room and left. David looked through the drawers of the desk in the room and found a handgun and a data pad, on which he watched Sam's final moments and learned that Megan had indeed killed him. Realizing that Regalia must have seen the video as well, David grew desperately worried about the other Reckoners and their mission. He attempted to shoot the window out so he could swim to the surface, but he only managed to crack it. Instead, he collected a pool of water, called Regalia there, and agreed to serve her. She took him to the surface. As they moved through the city, she told him that Calamity was an Epic and that he had agreed to give David powers. David found himself facing Calamity, and he felt himself obtain Epic powers. He refused to take the powers, astonishing both himself and Regalia when it appeared that the plan had failed. Regalia fled, and David went to intercept the Reckoners.
Mizzy, who was running point, attacked David when she saw him. He did convince her that their plan was in danger, so she gave him the spyril and told him where to find Prof and Megan. Regalia attempted to stop David from reaching them, but he evaded her attacks and enlisted the help of Dawnslight. Newton joined Regalia in hindering David, but he used her weakness to negate her powers and killed her. David found Prof in the burning building, and he told David about his trap and how he had killed Megan. Seeming defeated and admitting that David was probably right about Megan, he gave David some of his powers and left to stop Obliteration's blast. David dragged Megan's body out of the burning building, and he realized that she had used a remote control to shoot herself before she could die in the fire.
David ran into Obliteration on his way to find Regalia, and he grabbed onto him before triggering his teleportation. David found himself in Obliteration's room in Regalia's base, and he found Dawnslight and Regalia upstairs in beds, being treated by a doctor. He and Regalia watched on a screen as Prof stopped the blast from a bomb made with Obliteration's DNA. Regalia confessed that she had lured Prof to Babilar just for the purpose of corrupting him by causing him to use his powers, and David was horrified to see Prof kill Val and Exel. David killed Regalia, but then Prof discovered a row of screens in his room, saw David, and immediately set off to confront him. David sat on the roof of the house to wait for Prof, thinking about Calamity's role in everything. Prof appeared, but Megan arrived in time to David. Later, the two of them ate soup with some of the citizens of Babilar and discussed David's theory that an Epic facing their fears will be able to keep from turning evil. Mizzy found them and delivered a message to David from one of Dawnslight's fortune cookies.
=== Ildithia === 
David came to the conclusion that not all Epics were evil and adopted a philosophy similar to the Faithful. Now the leader of the Reckoners, David led them through a mission to steal equipment from Knighthawk to fight Prof. There, David revealed that he intended not to kill his former leader but to free him from the corruption and use him to fight Calamity. He eventually attempted to save Tia from Prof in Ildithia, but this led to Prof accidentally killing her. This broke Prof and the Reckoners. In his final face off with Prof, David and Megan found out that Prof's weakness is failure and managed to defeat him. Obliteration teleported David to Calamity's glass base in space. David later found out that he himself was actually an Epic with Steelheart's powers but he subconsciously blocked his ability to use them. After failing to kill Calamity with a bomb and being rescued by Prof, who was finally confronting his fear of failure, David forced Calamity to leave by making Calamity face his own fears. He used his powers to save Prof, Megan, and himself from crashing to Earth after defeating Calamity. After Calamity left, Epics no longer went dark, and David showed his acceptance of the powers gifted to him.
== Relationships ==
=== Blain Charleston ===
Blain Charleston, David's father, dies when David is only eight. His death greatly affects David, whose primary motivation in the subsequent ten years is revenge. Though during those years David thinks his father's belief in good Epics who would come to help humanity is foolish, he realizes that his father was right as he uncovers the truth about first Megan and then Prof. The two meet again in Firefight's alternate dimension, where Blain has been grieving David's death. They express their forgiveness toward each other and begin building a new relationship founded on their shared power set.
=== Megan Tarash ===
David is attracted to Megan from their first encounter. During the incident, she convinces him that there is a sniper watching him and leaves him kneeling in an alleyway; this is the origin of her nickname for him, Knees, that endures even their confrontation with Calamity. At first Megan resents David for upending the team dynamic and convincing them to target Steelheart, but David is incredibly attracted to her for her competence and lack of fear. He believes in her goodness before anyone else is prepared to, a strong conviction which becomes a point of contention between Prof and himself. During his time in Babilar, David realizes that he really does prefer Megan over any other girl. Megan realizes that it is easier to resist using her Epic powers when she is near David. When Megan needs a friend to talk to one day, she sneaks into the Reckoner base and ends up kissing David. When Prof finally admits he knew all along about the two of them meeting and leaves David locked in the Reckoner base before going to kill Megan, David is motivated to face his fear of water out of his love for Megan. Megan, in turn, faces her fear of fire by entering a burning building in order to rescue David, whom she believes to be inside.
=== Jonathan Phaedrus ===
David idolizes Jonathan Phaedrus at first, and he is very eager to earn the man's respect. Over time, however, not only does he begin to see some of Prof's faults, but their differing beliefs about the goodness of Epics and whether they should recruit more Epics to their side begins to divide them. From the beginning of their time in Babilar, Prof has suspicions that David is secretly meeting with Megan, and he thinks more and more that David is too reckless. This contention culminates when David realizes that Prof has bugged his phone and has been using his secret meetings with Megan to locate her in order to lure her in and kill her. Prof tells him that if they were ever to restore their relationship they would need to regain trust on both sides, but he immediately sets out to kill Megan. Seeing Megan face her fears and head into the trap that he set for her in order to save David changes Prof's mind, and when David shows up to the scene, he admits that David is probably right about finding a way to keep Epics from turning evil. However, Prof is corrupted by his powers right after their conversation, and in his madness he tries to kill David. David pities Prof and turns his anger at the situation on Calamity.
== Trivia ==
* In the parallel universe from which Megan pulls Firefight, David was killed by his father, potentially on the Day of Annexation.
* David has killed many Epics, including Nightwielder, Steelheart, Mitosis, Instabam, Sourcefield, Newton, Regalia, Wiper, Loophole, and maybe Calamity.
== Notes ==
category: viewpoint characters