Artwork by Kerry Connell
El Portador's Character Sheet (6th Edition) in PDF
Name: Ramon Acosta
Occupation: Electronics Technician
Birth Date: April 2, 1988
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 189 lbs
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Place of Birth: San Juan, Puerto Rico
You were born in San Juan, Puerto Rico in 1988 to Maria and Alfredo Acosta. You were always a bright kid and you really began to excel at school when your family moved to the Bronx in 1995. Unfortunately, your father was killed in a car accident three years later, when you were just 10 years old.
It was all your mother could do to support herself along with you and your little brother Hector. At times she worked as many as three different jobs to make sure that you were well taken care of. You continued to do well in school, earning admittance to the Bronx High School of Science. While many of the teenagers in your neighborhood turned to gangs, in particular, Los Buitres (the Vultures), you were busy studying physics, electronics, and other sciences with hopes of one day being an engineer.
However, the night of your high school graduation, tragedy struck. As she was walking home from your graduation ceremony, your mother suffered a heart attack and passed away a few hours later. With no close relatives in the area, you knew it was up to you to take care of your little brother, Hector. But with no insurance money to pay for your mother's funeral, you would have to put off university for now and get a job.
Fortunately, you were able to find a job working for electronics designer Joey Diabello who had designed the battlesuit used by the second Challenger (David Kennedy) and the power staff used by his SuperSquad America teammate Impact. Working with Joey was a pleasure and you were learning a lot.
One project in particular interested you: a battlesuit with teleportation powers. It was based on the designs for Challenger's battlesuit enhanced by teleportation technology from the powered armor of the late supervillain DeathGrip. However, Joey had never quite gotten it to work until David Kennedy returned from an adventure with a future version of his battlesuit that he had acquired from his counterpart in 2507's SuperSquad Galactica. The technology from the future battlesuit proved to be just what you and Joey needed to complete the teleportation battlesuit in October 2007.
While you were busy with Joey, working long hours, to finish that project, you ended up not paying as much attention as you should have to your now 13 year old kid brother. Left to his own devices, Hector had become involved with the Los Buitres street gang. It was this involvement that led to the fateful events of November 2, 2007.
That was the night that Los Buitres were to take on a rival gang known as the Skulls. Or so you would find out after arriving home and not finding Hector there. Taking to the street to locate your brother, you soon discovered his involvement with Los Buitres and the planned fight with the Skulls. You also discovered that the Skulls had recently recruited superpowered help that Los Buitres did not have. You had to get Hector out of this mess, but you could not take on superbeings. Or could you? Racing to Joey's laboratory, you put on the teleportation battlesuit and after using the teleport globes to find the fight, you teleported yourself into the middle of it.
But things did not go as you planned, when you tried to use the battlesuit again, it failed to activate and you found yourself collapsing to your knees in pain from what seemed to be the suit's neural interface. As bullets began to fly, the suit's armor kept you safe, but suddenly you heard Hector scream out in pain as one of the bullets that ricocheted off your armor struck him in the back. But you had other things to worry about, as a superpowered youth that you would later learn was named Slice advanced on you and manifested what could only be called energy claws. You had no way of really knowing, but it sure looked like those claws could rip right through your armor.
But then out of nowhere, a crimson wall appeared between you and Slice as he fell to the ground with an arrow in his back. It was SuperSquad America, or at least part of it. It was Silver Bow, Crimson Fist, and Diva. You threw your hands in the air in a signal that you did not want to fight them. While Crimson Fist scooped up the wounded (including Hector) and took them to hospital, Silver Bow and Diva collected the combatants.
You explained the situation to Silver Bow and Diva and they helped you get out of the armor, relieving the pain. The two of them accompanied you to the hospital to find out how Hector was doing and Silver Bow told you that while she admired what you tried to do, you really should've gotten help, but she also told you that if you and Joey ever got the suit working properly, to contact SuperSquad America as they were currently looking for a new member to replace the retired Challenger and she could not think of a better replacement than someone who used a battlesuit based on his. They also apologized that Nightingale, the team's healer was currently in Russia visiting relatives and they did not thing they could get her back here in time to help Hector. As it turned out, Hector was paralyzed from the waist down. And it was all your fault.
You returned the suit to Joey and while he was disappointed in you for stealing it, he understood your motivation. A full diagnosis on the battlesuit showed that the problems had been caused because the neural interface had not been configured for your brain. Once you and Joey performed that configuration, you were able to wield the suit's powers with ease. When you told Joey of Silver Bow's offer, he agreed that it was a not a bad way to pay homage to Challenger. Of course, if you were going to be a superhero, you'd need a name. After considering various possibilities, you settled on the name El Portador. It more or lesser meant porter or bearer – you appreciated the pun on porter, but more appropriately, it would remind of the burden you bore: your brother's paralysis. And on the less serious side, it reminded you of the romanticism of the matador.
Note: This background is written in a second person style as it is the background provided to the player playing the character in the SuperSquad America event.