#6 Speedway

Names: Speedway, Amy Bedoya, Amy Asner

Place of origin: Albuquerque , New Mexico, USA

Occupation: Chief designer for a for a racing team

Legal status: Citizen of good standing of the USA

Identity: Publicly known

Marital status: Married

Known relatives: Sister Emily Asner, Uncle Roger Asner, Husband Ernesto Bedoya, Son Loredo Bedoya, Son Michael Bedoya

Group affiliation: Seven Stars

Base of operations: Alburquerque, New Mexico, USA while working. New York City, New York, USA when home or with Seven Stars

History: Amy Asner was born as the youngest daughter of a racing family. For four generations, the Asners of Albuquerque had designed, built, and driven race cars. She grew up in garages and racetracks, sometimes driving, but more often helping work on her older sister Emily’s vehicles.

After she graduated from college, she joined the family racing business as a mechanic. Amy’s contributions helped make Emily a rising star on the racing field. Their success focused the attention of a less scrupulous racing team that took steps to sabotage the sisters’ experiments to enhance the design of their car. The sabotage was supposed to cause a fatal accident for Emily when she took out the car for a test drive. Instead, Amy was behind the wheel.

In addition to testing their latest setup, Amy was wearing a prototype for new protective gear derived from the technology invented by the superhero Sledge. When the car tumbled over, the protective gear interacted with a nearby soft spot between dimensions, and Amy and the vehicle crash landed in another universe. Left behind were only a few scraps from the wreck, and two confused and worried witnesses, Emily and their Uncle Roger.

In that other dimension, aliens trapped the unexpected crash in a bubble of slow time so they could examine the intrusion. The aliens could not entirely understand what happened, but they did recognize Amy as sentient and the crash as an accident. They took upon themselves for fix her and improve her situation. If she was trying to go fast, the vehicle she was in was far from the most efficient solution. If she was trying to be durable, the protection she was wearing had not kept her from getting mangled by the crash. The aliens built those features into her body when they rebuilt her, and then they returned Amy and the wreckage more or less to the same spot in their home universe.

More or less the same was enough to fool those at the track who had not seen the accident happen. Emily and Uncle Roger were surprised to Amy suddenly reappear and sit up on the ground, several feet from a wrecked car so twisted that Amy would be dead if she were still inside of it.

Amy discovered her new superpowers soon enough, and enlisted her sister and her skeptical uncle in uncovering who caused the sabotage that she knew lead to her accident. This kicked off a period of several years of Amy traveling the country on the race circuit with her family while fighting crime wherever they went as disguised as the superhero Speedway. The United States prefers its superheroes to be duly deputized by the local authorities, but maintains a strong tolerance and even affection for masked vigilantes who are capable of not racking up a body count. It did not take long for the public to piece together that Speedway was someone in the racing world, although most of the attention was focused on Emily rather than Amy, even after Emily was tested for superpowers that would bar her from racing.

Eventually, Amy was outed and she transitioned from vigilante to a certified Officer, but she still never took up superheroing full time. She became lead designer for the family racing team, effectively co-creating the family cars with the head mechanic, Uncle Roger.

As a part time superhero, she became a more regular contributor to the crime fighting world after she became an officer. She even joined a superhero team, the Seven Stars, an American team made of seven heroes scattered across the United States so they had allies they could call on to defeat opponents tougher than they could fight on their own.

She took on the superhero Deluge as an apprentice while visiting New York City for a meeting for the Seven Stars. Despite the mismatch between their powers, she taught him the proper way to break down a fight to minimize casualties and hamstring an opponent. She also nudged him through his own Officer training. While only having only briefly took him on as a fulltime sidekick, she is quite pleased with how he turned out. They remain in touch and sometime call on each other when they need help with a particularly bad situation.

While working with the Seven Stars, she met her husband Ernesto Bedoya, a New York City cop. They live with New York with their sons Loredo and Michael. Amy uses her powers to commute to her job in Albuquerque during the day.

Story role: Speedway is a protagonist. In particular, her vigilante period works nicely for a “problem of the week solved by someone outside the law” format, like the Bionic Woman, Charlie’s Angels, Knight Rider, Pretender, etc. As it is currently built, her later period lacks a hook for an ongoing story, although she works as a secondary character in Deluge’s story or as part of an ensemble for the Seven Stars.

Height: Tall

Body type: Runner

Known superpowers: Superspeed. Nigh-invulnerable. Comfortable with high-tech and superscience, but does not maintain a large selection of superhero tech to use to fight crime.

Limitations: Like any specialist, Speedway is vulnerable when having to deal with a power mismatch.

Category: 2012, Superhero