Zed Hudson (Universe Gemini)
The Universe Gemini version of Zed Hudson was the son of legendary superhero Hardcore, and inherited superpowers from him, but preferred a quiet life with his friends, who included Ophelia the Barista and the local incarnation of Jenny Everywhere.
Description
Physical appearances
Zed was a young, fit black man with a relatively slim build. He was clean-shaven, his short hair trimmed in an undercut, and had pierced ears, wearing small, round, dark-purple earrings. Since he was emphatically not a conventional costumed superhero, his outfits varied, but usually included a T-shirt with a large “Z” insignia, for example in white on a dark blue background (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Backstory) black on a red background, (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Usual) red on a blue background, (COMIC: Zed Vs. Iniquity) or dark blue on blue. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Singularity) On another occasion he wore a yellow hoodie with a black Z on it over a blue shirt. (COMIC: Zed Vs. Mother Nature)
Personality
In contrast to most of his half-siblings, Zed was uninterested in being a superhero, though he did like helping people. As a result, he didn't get along too well with the half-siblings in question, stressing that they were not his full siblings.
He loved coffee (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Backstory) to an extent which he intentionally played up to an eccentric extent. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Usual)
He was mistrustful of artificial intelligence due to a long history of supervillainous robots in his universe. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Singularity)
Powers & abilities
Zed inherited a panoply of superpowers from his father, (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Backstory) including “the basic ‘flying brick’ started package” including the power of flight, superhuman strength, speed and toughness, and “eyebeams”. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Superpowers) He also had a degree of Fourth Wall Awareness, able to interrupt and correct the narrator of his life (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Backstory) and to address his readers. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Superpowers)
Biography
Zed was the son of superhero Hardcore, who “fell in the line of duty”. One of a number of superpowered half-siblings, he was unique in not sharing their motivation to carry on their father's legacy of superheroics. This drew the disdain of Kid Hardcore, Hardcore's one legitimate son, who referred to Zed as a “little punk”, even though Kid Hardcore also resented his other half-siblings' attempts to claim his father's legacy instead of leaving him as the only rightful heir. As a young man, Zed preferred quiet life whose greatest concern was getting his daily coffee from Ophelia the Barista to high-flying adventure. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Backstory)
One day, Zed stumbled into the coffee shop, barely standing, and claiming that his superpowers were fading and quickly ingesting some caffeine was his last chance. Unimpressed, Ophelia quietly served him his cup and asked him why he couldn't just ask for “the usual” like everyone else, with Zed cheerfully dropping the act to tell her that “the coffee deserve[d] better” than “normality”. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Usual)
As she started to get a handle on her shifting powers, this universe's Jenny Everywhere began hanging out with Zed, who had more experience with living as a superpowered being. She started by asking him to describe his powers to her. After listing very standard ones, he added, and demonstrated, Fourth Wall Awareness by addressing his readers, to Jenny's confusion. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Superpowers)
Irritated by rapidly-changing weather, Zed once called out to “Mother Nature”, only to be surprised when she actually materialised in front of him to chide him for blaming her unfairly. (COMIC: Zed Vs. Mother Nature)
On a later occasion, supervillainess Iniquity tried to goad Zed into a superpowered fight out of the blue, having randomly picked him as a superhero on whom to work off some built-up anger. He refused to fight her, however, because he found her impractically revealing outfit embarrassing. (COMIC: Zed Vs. Iniquity)
Later, correctly suspecting that artificially-intelligent robot Otto Maton 3.47 was up to no good, Zed engaged him in conversation about what life was like for a robot and casually mentioned “prepping for next year's A.I. uprising” as one of the things which Otto didn't have to worry about scheduling thanks to his programming doing it for him. Not spotting the trap, Otto corrected him by giving the correct date of the planned takeover instead, and Zed used his eyebeams to disintegrate him. (COMIC: Zed Vs. The Singularity)
