Matter Lad

David Fry, who self-identifies as "Matter Lad", is a 26 year old loner. He plays well enough with others, but doesn't particularly feel any strong need to be in either community and believes that the best way to live in this new world is on your own.

Origins
David was an English university student who was studying for a Doctorate in particle physics. He was also an avid martial artist, and regularly practiced in Tae Kwon Do at his local dojo. Before the Virus hit, he always felt that the world that he lived in was not a world that he wanted to live in, but felt forced to by his own inability to survive on his own without the comforts offered to him by the modern world. He had a dream to live on his own one day in some wilderness, with the only company being the trees and the birds who lived in them.

Pre-Dynasty/Unified Society
After the Virus hit, David, like many others, wandered the new world without purpose or drive. Initially unaware of his new abilities, he barely survived from day to day. One fateful day, he got into a fist fight over a can of beans with a fellow survivor, who found to his own and David's surprise that his punches and kicks were having no effect. David himself noticed that every blow that landed upon him only served to make him feel more and more energised. With the survivor effectively scared off and leaving the beans for David, David noticed that he no longer felt hungry, his energy levels having been replenished during his fight with the survivor. This was when he first realised that he could activate at will a shield that absorbed kinetic energy and transferred it to David, who could metabolise it and forgo the need to eat or drink provided he built up enough kinetic energy. For a long time, he was of firm belief that this was his only ability. David eventually met and formed up with a group of survivors who travelled the wilderness and for a time, he was truly happy in his newfound nomadic lifestyle. In the chaos before the Unified Society and the Dynasty, David's group came to occasionally clash with other survivors and survivor groups for one reason or another, usually out of some kind of claim to territory but most often out of the sheer madness of other survivors who had lost everything and everyone they once held dear. It was through one of these encounters that David's group happened to clash with a loner who possessed extreme energy manipulation, throwing arcs of lightning and blazing paths of fire like a child might toss a toy. It was during this clash that David first discovered he could absorb energy of any description as long as he willed it, without ill effect. The survivor however, was unabashed, and continued to recklessly endanger David's group. Exasperated by constantly having to protect his friends, he shouted at the survivor to stop what he was doing, unintentionally unleashing a massive wave of sound that killed the unlucky survivor. Unable to control his energy expenditure, David passed out and was subsequently taken care of by his group. When he eventually came to, he learned his sudden burst of sound also had the unfortunate after-effect of inducing a short lasting deafness on the group members who happened to be close enough. He also noticed that he felt hungry for the first time in months. Ashamed of the harm he had unintentionally caused his group, he decided to leave them until he felt that he could control his apparent ability to absorb and transmutate energy. He wandered the world alone for months, perfecting his ability to emit the energy he absorbs without endangering his own life by expending too much energy at once. It was during this time he discovered there was no limit to the types of energy he could produce or absorb, including potentially lethal forms of radiation. During his self-imposed exile, he happened to find himself in what was once Manchester. Realising he hadn't been in a city since the virus had hit and he decided to have a "tourist day" frequenting old points of interest and landmarks around the city. During his exploration of a shopping centre, he noticed that it was particularly run down and even outright devastated in places, having probably been the stage to a battle between survivors. As he explored further, a stone structure collapsed and in his haste to absorb the kinetic energy of the impact he accidentally discovered his ability to absorb matter. This sparked a few more months of training and he discovered that he had a god-like potential for creation (or destruction) provided he had absorbed enough energy or matter to reshape and create as he saw fit. In his training, he found he could also manipulate and reshape things so long as he had physical contact with them without needing to absorb it. After the establishment of the Unified Society and the Dynasty, the majority of the survivors flocked towards the civilised order and things seemed to grow a lot calmer, but David still never felt like the life of a civilised society was his calling and instead remained in his nomadic lifestyle, constructing a hut in the wastelands of an old National Park in England and opting to live the rest of his life in solitude.

Personality
David is an easy-going individual, but does not make friends easily. He can be stoic at times and perhaps overly thoughtful, but he generally attempts to be as friendly as possible to everyone he meets. In combat, he often feels a reluctance to fight and typically seeks to avoid it unless he sees no other option.

Normal human attributes
David possesses a black belt in Tae Kwon Do and prior to the outbreak kept himself in good physical shape, making him more than capable of self defense without his powers and physically capable of surviving the harshness of the new world. He also possesses a limited knowledge of particle physics, and this has largely assisted him in understanding and controlling his own powers.

Matter Transmutation
David possesses the power to transmutate all forms of matter and energy. He can absorb, reshape and create matter or energy, but he is limited by how much matter or energy he has absorbed into himself. If his energy reserves are low enough, he will tap into his own life force, with potentially fatal consequences. Provided he has physical contact with something, David can also reshape and rebuild the matter in it and even increase its mass if he possesses the energy to do so. At his full potential, David's ability to transmutate matter and energy is god-like. If he absorbs and stores a large amount of energy, his skin can give off a faint glow until he expels it.

Kinetic Shielding
David also possesses the ability to throw up a shield around himself and others that can absorb kinetic impact up to the force equal to that of an artillery shell. David is also able to absorb the kinetic energy absorbed by the shield.

Weaknesses
While David's power effectively negates most forms of attack, this is largely due to his own will. If caught by surprise while powered down, he is quite vulnerable. Similarly, he cannot fight off internal attacks and is still vulnerable to disease or other forms of attack that don't rely on causing external harm to someone. Magical attacks are also impossible for him to defend against unless the attack is comprised of a form of energy like fire.