Dexter Torque

"Y'know what I need? I need a good death ray. It's been forever since I've played a good first person shooter... Plus, if I had one, it would be like playing a shooter in real life. Golly, now wouldn't that be something..."

-Dexter, on video games and death rays

Dexter Torque, often known as 'Console', his preferred nickname, is the son of that amusement park-obsessed assassin, Arcade.

Personality
The one thing you need to know about Dexter is that, supervillain or not, he's a total geek. He absolutely adores video games of all kinds. Platformer, first person shooter, RPG, anything! If it involves game and computers, he's definitely into it and knows everything about the game: in fact, he's probably hacked the database a couple of them.

Dexter considers himself very smart. He hasn't had his intellect augmented by gamma rays, nor is he a celestial being with infinite knowledge, but he is a normal human with an IQ of over 120. He's very proud of this and will point it out at every available opportunity. He gets good marks in many subjects (uh, Gym to the contrary) and believes that his future will be secured as the world's next evil genius.

He likes to build things, gadgets or robots or what-nots of that sort. He enjoys making his inventions based on things from games, amusement parks and toys, but with a mildly sadistic twist. In fact, he's building his own Murderworld somewhere under Manhattan. It's still in progress, but he knows it will be an absolute blast.

He often uses that big brain of his to pull of some pretty awesome pranks, as he's a naturally cheeky and mischievous person. He has a weird sense of humour and likes to laugh. At others, with others, it doesn't matter as long as it's funny.

Something else, on a comedy related note, that Dexter loves is corny puns. He, as games are his chosen theme, makes lots of jokes, many of them terrible, involving or centering around computers and video games. Many of them are met with groans, but they make Dexter pretty happy, so it's okay, we suppose.

He also has a thing for black comedy, as killing isn't a foreign thing to him, growing up with a hitman for a father. It's a bit off-putting to more light-hearted villain kids.

That said, he's a pretty friendly guy for someone of his heritage. He has about as much of a class clown reputation as he does a star student one. He's outgoing, sociable and tries to appeal to others as much as he can. Though he likes the company of others, he'd prefer to work by himself. Other people just aren't smart enough to understand his plans.

He, like his dad, is good at keeping secrets and telling lies. He's better at it than many people who have been trying to learn the art of deceit for years, and will point this out whenever he's going on another one of his 'I'm-so-smart' speeches. It's a useful skill for an antagonist, but this skill loses him some credibility. When he keeps things to himself, or says something untruthful, people stop trusting him. As he put it, he's a little like the boy who cried wolf in that respect.

In short, we have a friendly know-it-all-ish geek with some... odd pastimes and a habit of not telling the truth. He's a cool guy, you just need to see if you can handle his quirkiness.

Physical Description
Dexter is tall and gangly with a mop of messy red hair and a mouth full of crooked teeth, being corrected by braces. His eyes are light blue and you'll notice that he has calluses on his fingers from a life-time of button-mashing. His skin is covered in freckles.

He wears a comically large green bowtie with black pixel-shaped designs on it and a green vest with a black long-sleeved shirt underneath. His pants look much like his tie, only with the reverse colour scheme: green pixels and black background. He wears faded once-white tennis shoes featuring designs on the side that look suspiciously like Pac-Man. He's almost never seen without a headset, earbuds or a controller in his hand.

Family
Knowing Arcade and his vagueness when it comes to motives or identity, Torque probably isn't Dexter's real last name, which begs the question about his first. Known to most as simply 'Arcade' and to Dexter as 'Pops', the supervillain has a bit of a strained relationship with his son. This is kind of because Arcade, who murdered his father to get where he is today, is worried his son may follow the same path. Nothing wrong with death, mind you, he just doesn't want to be the one doing the dying. Dexter shows no such intentions, but Arcade isn't so sure. When they aren't being overly suspicious of one another, the two realize their shared interest in corny game puns, Rube Goldberg devices and odd clothing and use that to attempt closeness.

If you ask, Dexter will mention that he has a mom somewhere. Not much is known about 'Mama', only that she exists and is around sometimes. However, no one can prove or deny any of this, as no one really knows where the Torques reside (underground in Murderworld? A penthouse in Beverly Hills? A ranch in Texas? Perhaps across the street?) and can never say whether she's home or not. Still, Dex says she's nice, as mom's go, and won't pass up a game, ever.

Friends
Dexter has plenty of online friends, from all around the world. He's been told, however, that these 'don't count' and that he should meet people in real life.

At school, he met a little group of people he now calls buddies, consisting of his roommate, Sebastian Sterns, Aria C. Sharpe, Johnathan Craddock and Paulette Batroc. Sure, they aren't all as smart as he claims he is and he sometimes fights with them, but they get him for the most part. They appreciate his offbeat humour and enjoy his company.

Sebastian and Dexter have a bit of a friendly rivalry going, always trying to prove that each is more intelligent than the other with arbitrary contests of smartness, like reciting all the digits of pi as fast as they can. It can sometimes devolve into petty name-calling and they often end up storming off and ignoring each other for days. They'll become friends again after that, though, but then the cycle soon repeats itself.

Pet
In his spare time, Dexter cobbled together a little... robot spider? Let's just call it that, as it's a borderline menacing metal contraption with lots of legs. He says that it's better than a regular pet, requires less maintenance and is just as loyal. The creature has been dubbed 'Sparky', due to the sparks it shot off when first activated.

Romance
Dexter's tried a couple of dating sims when he has nothing else to play, but all are met with the same reaction: boring. Yes, it can be said that those are AIs and thus don't capture the real life dating experience, but Dexter just isn't interested in the idea. He knows a few girls in real life, too, but they aren't really his types. Honestly, he could do without a band geek like Aria who could easily push him around with those powers of hers, and an even pushy chick in the form of bossy tomboy Paulette. In any case, dating isn't his scene.

Trivia

 * The version of Arcade that Dexter is related to combines many different versions of the character, to fill in some of the blanks created by Arcade's lies and spotty past. The name, Torque, came from the version of Arcade in X-Men: Evolution, named Webber Torque. Otherwise, he's mostly based on the comic version of Arcade, with some of Ultimate Spiderman's version scattered throughout.


 * Dexter was named after another redheaded boy genius, Dexter of the cartoon Dexter's Lab. Other than that, the two Dexters aren't much like one another.


 * 'Madland' was the name of Arcade's amusement park in the Ultimate Spiderman continuity, as it's a kids' show and the word 'murder' probably didn't fly with the network, hence the remark about "too violent for the kiddies".


 * Arcade, in one of the stories he appears in, gains godlike powers when he enters Murderworld, becoming a theoretical god. This was adapted, in a way, for Dexter. If Dexter uses a computer or enters a virtual reality (because 'going-into-a-video-game' plots are so common for cartoons these days), he can use his exceptional hacking skills and technical know-how to make himself virtually invincible.


 * Dexter is inclined to dislike the British. Nothing personal, really, he just doesn't like them because of a family conflict with one Captain Britain, who defeated his father alongside Spiderman in his comics debut. Because of this, his relationship with Johnathan is a bit... odd.


 * Dexter plays the role of 'The Smart Guy' in Missy's Five Man Band.


 * Okay, arcades are a dying art, and people only ever play video games on systems like the Wii or the Xbox these days. Those systems are called 'consoles', hence his alias.


 * The possible locations of the Torque household are different possible homes of Arcade, mentioned in the comics. Every time he appears, he has a different origin story, and Beverly Hills and somewhere in Texas were mentioned as possible hometowns in two different versions.