Downtime

David Andersen graduated from small-time petty thief to professional burglar. He had a few brushes with the law, but nothing stuck. David was convinced he could get away with pretty much anything, but for how long? He wanted to make the big score, something to set him up for life. That’s when The Foundry hired him to steal a new invention from the Bayview home of Dr. Julius Wells. Andersen cased the house and then broke in to take the device, a prototype based on Dr. Wells’ temporal research, along with the doctor’s notes and files. He slipped up, and the doctor surprised him. Andersen panicked, leaving Dr. Wells lying unconscious on the floor, and fled.
Looking to escape from police, Andersen looked over Wells’ notes and tried using the time device. What he didn’t know was the device “imprinted” on his bio-molecular pattern, since it needed adjustment for each user. All David Andersen knew was he got some serious “downtime.” From his perspective, it was like the rest of the world froze, allowing him to move about unseen, in between moments. It was power and freedom like he never knew.
Unfortunately, his use of the device made it useless for anyone else, including the Foundry. When his erstwhile employers tried to kill him, Andersen took the device and fled. He began committing a series of inexplicable robberies, getting in and out of places too fast to be seen or stopped by anyone. Even heroes like the Raven and Dr. Metropolis were just motionless obstacles, frozen in time.
Downtime met his match when Johnny Rocket entered his “downtime” field. Johnny’s own super-speed allowed him to counteract Downtime’s temporal manipulation, effectively canceling each other out. While other people were greatly slowed down, Johnny moved at the same apparent speed as Downtime. The Freedom League speedster captured Andersen and, this time, the charges stuck.
Downtime later escaped from prison using a residue of power from his stolen time device (which was confiscated by the authorities). He recovered his costume and sought revenge on Johnny Rocket; Johnny managed to put him away again.
After spending far more time than he wanted in prison, Downtime got innovative. He figured out how to use his time belt to pull off the one-time trick of creating a temporal duplicate, leaving him in prison, while he went free. By the time the duplicate faded out, Downtime was long gone.
Jail has become a revolving door for Downtime as he moves in and out of the system, always looking for the big score that will let him get out of the business. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, the more ambitious Downtime gets, the more he experiments with his time belt and its capabilities, and the more likely he is to find a way to set off a disaster that will shake the space-time continuum.

Physical Description

Apparel & Accessories

The belt he wears can surround Downtime in a time dilation field, speeding him up in relation to the flow of time around him (or slowing down the world around him, depending on how you look at it), allowing him to effectively move at super-speed, faster than the eye can follow.
Downtime’s tactics are quite simple: get in, grab the goods, and get out, all without being seen or caught. Generally, the super-speed and invisibility bestowed by his time-belt allow him to do so easily, unless there’s someone with the senses and speed to keep up. With his Speed, Downtime can easily be miles away before anyone even realizes what happened.
The temporal effect also allows Downtime the opportunity to play all kinds of tricks on opponents, essentially “rearranging” things in the environment to trip them up, drop things on top of them, and so forth, or twisting things around so one foe is in the path of another’s attack. He’s especially dangerous in crowded urban areas and buildings, with countless people to endanger to distract heroes.
Downtime’s control over his time-belt is largely instinctual. He’s been known on occasion to stumble across a particularly novel or innovative use for it.
There are also occasional side-effects from the time-belt, such as occasions when Downtime retains enough residual energy from it to use his powers with unreliably for a short while after it is removed, or the odd fact that Downtime does not appear to have experienced accelerated aging while using it, something that might be of interest to Doubletime.

Mental characteristics

Intellectual Characteristics

Downtime has proven he’s willing to do what it takes to meet his goals: enough wealth to live on easy street and revenge against the people who helped put him away. When he’s dealing with heroes, Downtime’s primary goal is escape. He relies on being unseen and his ability to evade attacks coming his way, since everything moves in slow motion to him. He generally flees the scene as soon as he’s achieved his goal, although he may linger to taunt or toy with heroes, so long as he’s confident they can’t touch him. He’s not above leaving dangerous situations behind him to further delay any pursuit, such as causing traffic accidents or leaving oil slicks or downed power cables across roadways.
As much as he tries to be cautious, Downtime is an egotist who cannot resist the opportunity to taunt a helpless foe or take advantage of a situation. Downtime can rarely resist the opportunity to play practical jokes or leave taunting messages for the authorities. He’s known for speaking directly into surveillance cameras, for example, knowing someone can later slow down the playback enough for him to be seen and heard as anything other than a faint blur and a high-pitched bleep. He thinks that he’s a good deal smarter than he actually is.
Downtime is a criminal and a thief, but he’s not a killer, generally speaking and, although he’s vindictive, he’s not vicious. He’ll run rings around his foes, and torment them with whatever is at hand, but he’s more likely to run from a fight, and he doesn’t try to kill anyone, although his disregard endangers plenty of people.