Theodore "Teddy/Hulkling" Altman

Theodore "Teddy" Altman
Portrayed By	Ondra Hak
Gender	Male
Date of Birth	11/5/90
Age	19
Zodiac Sign	Scorpio
Aliases	Hulkling, Dorrek VIII — sometimes aka Johnny Storm, The Hulk, Reed Richards, Super Skrull, Tony Stark
Place of Birth	Tarnax IV, Skrull Throneworld
Current Location	New York City, NY
Occupation	Hero in Training
Known Relatives	Captain Mar-Vell (Father, Deceased), Genis-Vell (Half-Brother, Deceased), Phyla-Vell (Half-Sister), Empress Annelle of the Skrulls (Mother, Deceased), Sarah Altman (FosterMother, Deceased)
Significant Other	Billy Kaplan(Boyfriend)
Identity	Secret
Known Abilities	Shapeshifting, Superstrength, Fly/Leap, Regeneration, Combat Training
First Appearance	Young Avengers #1

QUOTE

History

Teddy's story in his own words:

Some people have good lives, where nothing bad ever happened. I had an OK life, I mean, not horrible but not really great. Then it turned awesome and a little insane.

My dad died before I was born. My Mom always said he was a great guy but it was sometimes like he was someone she didn't really know that well. Like they got married too suddenly. So I spent a lot of time alone when I was growing up. My Mom worked, I had a sitter, or I was in day care sometimes. And I had a secret, and I was afraid of telling anyone. I had powers. I could change myself — change my shape, I found out when I was a little kid. I learned that I wasn't normal … and everyone wanted to be normal, it was BETTER to be normal, even if I could tell that normal was a lie. Everyone was different. You can't BE normal. You can be typical.

I kept my secret for a long time, didn't try to fit in or stand out, just blend in. But then we moved, and I was starting in a new highschool, and I decided, why not be one of the popular kids for a change. They had their own "normal" after all. Besides, I had just found another power. I was strong, like pick up cars and throw them strong. Definitely not normal. And I wasn't normal for another reason that I'll get to.

There was this guy I admired. Greg Norris. He was everything that defined cool. He was a jock, he was built, he was good looking, he had that natural charisma. Yeah, I had a crush on him. The guy was perfect. I decided to get into his clique. So I changed myself … got taller, grew muscles, sharpened up my jaw. Over the course of a month, so it looked like a growth spurt. They accepted me as one of them … I cheated a little. Used my super-strength to make up for lack of skill, but it didn't take me long at all until I had the real skills. I went into Wrestling, Basketball, Football. He became my best friend. And after one game I showed Greg what I could do … I turned into his twin. He didn't hate me. He thought it was great. I could do so much cool stuff… for him. Like pretending to be the Hulk, or Johnny Storm, or even get us into places by turning into Tony Stark. It was fine until the Avengers disbanded - and then he wanted to go to the mansion.

So we went there, and I realized that this guy who I really admired, the first guy I admitted to myself that I had a crush on… was an ass. He started trying to steal things. I made him stop. Drove him away. And then, as I was trying to figure out what that meant, Iron Lad showed up. You may have heard how that turned out. I met Billy — he went by Asgardian because of the lightning powers he had, and he wore this shreddy red cloak and silver wing headgear that he totally managed to pull off — and Eli, aka Patriot. Grandson of the first, black, Captain America. We all had some kind of Avengers connection, Iron Lad told us, and we had to be a team. I was Hulkling, the large, sort of teen-Hulk guy. Over the next few weeks I discovered something.

Billy was … wow. Not a jock, not a "popular kid" … just pure amazing. So I decided to go slow. Allowed my interest to show, but didn't push, but when he returned my attention, we clicked.

So here was me, mutant shapeshifter kid, and Billy, the kid with magical lightning, and we were learning to be superheroes together. And Eli and Iron Lad. We eventually got noticed and got in the papers, they called us the Young Avengers. We joined up with Cassie Lang — Stature, she could get large and get small — and Kate Bishop, whose main power was being filthy rich, totally bossy and a pretty good fighter with just about any weapon. She saved US from saving HER. Anyway. The papers started calling us the Young Avengers. We were the real thing. Superheroes. Until we found out that Iron Lad was really teenage Kang the Conqueror, escaped from his future self who had gone back to help his younger self lay the smackdown on some bullies, but then Nathaniel (Iron Lad) decided to escape so he wouldn't become the Time Hitler and found the Vision's wreckage and uploaded him into the battle suit.

The Vision had a plan, make new Avengers if there was a need for it, and he knew about us. I mean… *I* didn't know about us before, but he did. So after a while Nathaniel's future caught up with our present and things got ugly. Nathaniel killed his future self. Everything came back WRONG. All the Avengers were long dead. I remember Billy being … vanished. I remember the world fading away. And then I was back, and Billy and the ones that Kang had killed, everything was back … and Iron Lad was gone. The time-armor, that was still here, and it was the Vision.

Cap told us to stop playing hero. You know how well that worked.
Kate got us all new outfits using her superpower of Rich Parents, and I am not ashamed to say that mine was awesome. Billy's was too, except he lost the wings on his headband, which I kinda liked. Billy changed his name to Wiccan. For obvious reasons. We started again, small, careful. And Billy and I decided we should tell our parents about the whole "superhero" thing but they thought we were coming out as boyfriends. Instant in-laws, but still not out of the supercloset. We kept going. Did an interview with a bugle reporter.

So Eli had been on this anti-MGH crusade, taking down the dealers. Real War-On-Drugs American Hero stuff. It went south. Seems Eli was using MGH to fake it. He wasn't bullet-proof, wasn't super-strong, actually didn't have powers. We found out, he left, and we figured out fast that we needed him with or without powers. But while we were trying to get him to come back I learned that everything I ever knew about myself was a lie. The Super-Skrull attacked us and tried to take me. He got me to stop by using some freaky hypnotic power on Billy so I surrendered, long enough to catch him off-guard and punch him two blocks away into the upper floors of an office building. Oops. Sorry, office building.

We got away, headed for Billy's parents' place to regroup, and I found my Mom was there. She started to try to tell me something when Super-Skrull blew the wall open. He was carrying Eli for threat value. Said he'd prove I was really a Skrull, and used some weird machine, zapped me…and the Kaplans and my Mom. I stayed me. The Kaplans stayed themselves. Mom, turned green and got chin-wrinkles. She and Super-Skrull were yelling and she said she would protect me even from him, and she shot him with a raygun from her purse. He's the Super-Skrull - he has all the powers of the Fantastic Four, especially Johnny Storm, and he BURNED her … she was on fire and screaming and Billy tried to heal her but, I didn't see what happened next … the Skrull did something that knocked me out.
I came to in some kind of spaceship. He had me in a weird shackle that kept me from changing or using my strength to escape while he called for other Skrulls. In between calls he explained how I was rightfully Emperor Dorrekk VIII of the Skrull Empire … can you believe there were seven other people before me that got stuck with that name?

And my mother was about to be Empress when Galactus ate the Throneworld. And her.

My friends got there about that time — Wiccan can find me anywhere — and they had a white-haired snarky super-fast thug version of Billy with them, I guess his twin brother by another mother, and they pretty much beat down Super-Skrull but just as he was about to tell me who my father was, the Kree broke in and shot him and THEY told me who my father was.

Captain Mar-Vell. No. Way. And ohyeah, I would be going off to Kree military school now because they DRAFT all their kids at age nine. Or just the boys, only I've heard of female Kree warriors too, so it isn't all Sparta in Space.
I was still thinking they were all delusional. I grabbed Kl'rt (That's Super-Skrull's name. Worse than Dorrek.) and my friends beat down a small party of Kree (the greatest soldiers in the universe, just ask them.) He explained what happened, and that he didn't mean to burn down my Mom — they were related I guess — but it was a reflex. About then the Kree ship we were in got shot, the Skrulls were here, yay. There was fighting.

The Avengers got involved. I didn't want to go, they didn't want me to go, but the Kree and Skrull were acting like bad parents at a divorce. Somewhere in the mess I got Kl'rt away from the affray, and I told him my idea - and we swapped places. He turned into me and I turned into him. We got back, "I" (that is, HE) surrendered, while "HE" (that is, I) stood around and looked terribly impassive. Injured, y'know. So the Avengers brokered a deal where I got to spend six months with each side before I made up my mind which I wanted to be. And Kl'rt went off with the Kree to be a spy for a half a year, and then to the Skrulls for the same thing. For me. Or, maybe he'll decide to be Emperor himself. I wouldn't mind it a bit.

And during the fighting with the Avengers? Eli took a bullet for Captain America. His grandfather, the first, black Captain America, gave blood. It gave Eli real superpowers.
When he was better we scattered my Mom's ashes — not the Princess, but the one who raised me. And we had another chat with Captain America. This time? He didn't say no more heroes.

So I'm here. Billy's here. Billy's not-as-cute, straight maybe-magic-twin brother Tommy, somewhere else at the moment. Vision - the armor, with the program of the original Vision and the mind, memories, and brainwaves of Nathaniel Richards, Iron Lad - he's here going by Jonas. Cassie, Kate, Eli, all off again, but they'll be back. And the new guys - Wave, Rebound, Silent Image (and Kate would be all over changing that name) - they're here too. And we're not going away.

But first Billy and I will be going to college. A special one. I've got to learn how to say "no" and "go away" in Skrull and Kree.

Quotes

Hulkling: "At the risk of sounding dangerously unhip, what's MGH?"

[Growing man has split into several smaller robots]
Asgardian: Okay, this completely violates Growing Man continuity.
Iron Lad: What do we do?
Hulkling: We're fanboys, aren't we? So, we collect them all.

Trivia

• Hulkling and Wiccan are both 'out' to the public, their relationship written about in a Daily Bugle by Kat Farrel and the subject of a lot of internet discussion.
• Teddy likes to paint.
• He may like to play them with his teammates but Teddy is terrible at video games First Person Shooters. He's amazing at RPGs though.

Game Stats

Shape Shifting

Half-Skrull and moreover the son of a Skrull Empress — Teddy possesses the ability to shape shift and is quite skilled at it. His body is made of unstable molecules under his mental control. He can increase and decrease his volume and mass in the same way that all Skrulls do, with somewhat greater than normal volume variation than the average. Like most of the Skrull Nobles, he can shift to half his normal volume (about the size of a four-year-old child) or to nearly three times that, though he seldom does anything larger than his seven-foot-tall "teen hulk" form. He may not realize he can go that large until and unless forced to.

+ Impersonation

Teddy can accurately imitate and impersonate anyone he has spent sufficient time observing. He can take on nearly any humanoid form, even those of the rich and famous. As he hasn't practiced them at all, animals and inanimate objects give him trouble and (until and unless he gets training) he won't replicate them with any guarantee of authenticity. However, if he does get training, he'll be able to do them, nor will he be likely to partial-shift into non-organic forms unless part of a disguise.

+ Partial Shift, and Weapons While Shapeshifted

Teddy is able to perform partial shape shifting such as creating claws, stretching, and growing flight capable "dragon" wings.
With training he will eventually be able to create and adapt more subtle biological weapons and powers: Shark electric sense, electric eel discharge, poisonous spines causing paralysis, sleep, or pain.

+ Impersonating powers

While he is able to shape shift into other heroes, it's an illusion created by his powers. He could look like Iron Man but (without a concealed blaster) would not be firing repulsor blasts. Most Skrulls who impersonate powers either have them as a result of Skrull science, or use a concealed device to simulate the power.

+ Armor While Shapeshifted

He’s also got some ability to increase the density of his body, making him more resistant to damage and injury while in Hulkling form. Further, he creates a form of "scale armor" that provides him additional protection against normal-strength weapons wielded by normal-strength humans, having been injured once when a regular thug stabbed him with a bowie knife. (It healed fast, but it hurt.) This armor is about as good as military grade Kevlar with ceramic plate under-armor, able to stop most small and medium calibre bullets. This armor is not innately more resistant to energy attacks, and some physical attacks could still ignore it. Fire can hurt it. He's not immune to psionic attack, though he may be slightly more resistant than usual to psionic mind control.

+ Detection While Shapeshifted

Due to his unique heritage, Hulkling is immune to detection by the standard ‘skrull scanners’. A special one would need to be created to detect him in another form thanks to his being partially Kree. Wolverine was able to tell him from the Super-Skrull when he and K'Lrt were impersonating one another by smell. However, that might not be true a second time, if he works at it, because Wolverine couldn't always detect a Skrull by scent.
It's also possible for him to learn to so completely immerse himself in a role that a telepath couldn't find any evidence that he was anything but what he is portraying.
This will require training to perfect.

Super Strength

Teddy possesses natural superhuman strength. He’s currently capable of a maximum unaided lift of 75 tons. With this strength, he can effortlessly lift a battle tank above his head with one hand. If he begins explicitly training for strength and coordination in his normal form, that will increase slightly over the course of a year, but not more than +5 tons per year.

Leaping/Flying

Teddy can do the "super jump" thing, jumping a distance of over a block at a time, but he hasn't trained at Hulk Leaping because it's easier for him to shape shift to add wings. He can fly up to 35 miles per hour with the wings, or hover in place (but not completely stationary.) Jumping, if he trains, he'll be able to leap 5-10 mile distances taking perhaps 20-30 seconds per leap, and going for a half hour or so before fatigue makes him stop. Flight could be faster if he learns to modify the wings or takes a better shape for flight than the not-so-aerodynamic Hulkling shape.

Regeneration

Like most Skrulls, Teddy’s got extraordinary healing capabilities for regenerating damaged tissues, nerves and even brain tissues at an incredible rate. He can recover in under a minute from wounds it would take a normal person a week to recover from. His body is also capable of shifting around internally to keep vital organs from harm, even unconsciously.

Skills and Talents

• Combat: Teddy put a bit more time into learning hand to hand combat than some of his other teammates. He’s not (yet) a martial artist but his time on the wrestling team and time watching news footage of other heroes fighting combined with some self defense courses have made Teddy a competent fighter. At Barnes he will be training in martial arts with two goals: learning how NOT to hurt people when using his full strength, and learning how to fully and effectively apply his full strength to maximum effect.
• Sports: Teddy played a lot of team sports before starting superheroics. Basketball, Football, and Wrestling were his specialties. Using his shape shifting abilities to help him, he became very good at all three sports for a high school student. In a short time he learned them well enough that he could compete at a high level without using his super-strength to cover for his initial lack of skill.
• Hero Knowledge: Teddy’s always been a supers fanboy. He loves and looks up to the heroes and follows everything he can about his favorites. He makes a point to find out what all the websites, papers and magazines say and can sometimes even say whether or not it’s true. As he gets to know them better in person he generally learns to tell when a source is "out-doing Mr. Fantastic with the truth" but he has been fooled once or twice. This is one of the things that he shares with Billy, and they'll sometimes spend an hour or so geeking out about it.
• Observation: Part and parcel of being a shapeshifter who impersonates people: Teddy is observant. He truly looks and sees people, and could tell you what color tie you were wearing last time you saw him, what side of center your belt buckle rested, and which finger you were wearing a ring on at the time.
• Student: Teddy could have been valedictorian material but he chose instead to focus on becoming an athlete and 'popular kid' instead. Nevertheless he’s a great student. He’s got excellent study techniques and can often help others improve their study methods. He also makes sure to pay attention in classes.
• Acting: It goes with being a Skrull - Teddy has a natural talent for acting. He can take on a role so well that anyone who doesn't know better would be fooled. He's learning to be a quick study as well, so that he can pick up someone's voice, mannerisms, behaviors and traits within a short time. This could become MUCH better with practice.

Stories

+ previous player history

These are links to the previous character history as portrayed by the earlier Teddy player.
2009-02-22: The Vision Returns
2009-02-23: We Don't Need The Adults
2009-03-03: Rest Stop
2009-03-05: Dimension Watch
2009-03-06: What Door?
2009-03-18: Opening Doors
2009-03-28: Welcome Home
2009-03-31: Freedom
2009-04-03: The Sword And The Paper
2009-04-08: Red, Blue, and Green?
2009-04-11: Owning Mistakes
2009-04-12: Holiday Foods
2009-04-13: Coffee And A Favor
2009-04-15: Homework
2009-04-22: Family Matters
2009-04-22: Working Out
2009-04-27: Game Time
2009-05-03: Smashing Green
2009-05-14: Burnt
2009-05-18: Marshmallow Man
2009-06-15: Everyday Life
2009-06-20: Shamboom
2009-12-29: Happily Ever After
2010-02-02: Bibbidy
2010-02-06: Misfired Spell

Videos

These are a very few of the least embarrassing links that Teddy and Billy have collected off YouTube. Seems they have FANS. (Of course they look up their names online! Any teenaged hero would!)
They commented about them too.
And Teddy at least would love to know how they got some of those shots.

[Over Night] … Cute!

[Say It's Possible] … Uh, no, not Yaoi. Shonen-ai maybe. Still trying to figure that out.

[Can't Fight the Moonlight] … Why did they put cartoon characters in there with us?

[I'll Be Your Crying Shoulder] … Wow. That's mushy. :)

Photo Album