Barnaby Becker Jr is Jason's bully and nemesis in hover car racing, and the driver of the Devil's Chariot.
History[]
Early History[]
Barnaby Becker Jr was born as the son of a wealthy businessman, Barnaby Sr, in in Halls Creek, Australia. Over the course of his life growing up, Barnaby constantly mocked the Chaser brothers Jason and the Bug for being adopted, being poorer than him, and that their adoptive father had once worked for his dad.
When he reached driving age, Barnaby took an interest in hover car racing, and his father gifted him with an expensive Lockheed-Martin ProRacer-5, the best production hover car money could buy, and named it the Devil's Chariot. Recruiting his friend Guido Moralez to be his navigator, Barnaby proceeded to participate in local races, quickly proving his skills as a racer.
At age 18, Barnaby managed to come in the top three of his local division, allowing him to enter the Indo-Pacific Regional Championships.
Hover Car Racer[]
Barnaby won the gate race of the Regional Championship, and his talent and efforts in the race drew the attention of Jean-Pierre LeClerq, the Principal of the International Race School. As Barnaby received his trophy, LeClerq announced that he had earned him an invitation to study at the Race School the following year.
As their cruise liner made their way Hobart, Barnaby and Guido noticed Jason and the Bug - who had also been invited to the Race School - and repeatedly taunted the brothers during the journey. When they docked, Barnaby and Guido blocked their exit, with Barnaby sneering to his navigator to question how the last-placed racer from the Regionals had ben accepted into the School, making sure to throw in an insult about them being motherless. When the mute Bug moved to whisper into Jason's ear, Barnaby questioned why he didn't talk like a real man, and moved to grab ahold of the boy when he didn't answer. Jason slapped Barnaby's hand away and ordered him not to touch his brother, and told the older boy that the Bug had said that they were not motherless before they disembarked.
At the end of the entrance assembly, Barnaby was informed that he and his team would be undertaking classes under Zoroastro, a former world racing champion. After the first day's lessons, Barnaby and his team joined Zoroastro for dinner, alongside his other students, Zoroastro's nephew, the Prince of Monsei, Xavier Xonora, and his team.
After coming in second place for the first race of the School's race season, Barnaby largely dominated the field, only coming in behind his stablemate in most races. Even so, Barnaby was the first to claim a victory after Xavier's initial winning streak, allowing him to qualify for the Sponsors' Tournament that year, and by the end of Race 15, he was placed second on the school championship ladder.
After Team Argonaut only narrowly lost Race 22 to Xavier by a single point, the Bug's superior race plan for the gate race's course led Zoroastro to consider the Chaser brothers a threat to his students. While Xavier and Jason were up on the podium, Zoroastro made note of this to Barnaby, and suggested that he and his other students take measures to shatter the Bug's confidence. That night, Barnaby and Guido, along with Xavier and Oliver Koch trapped the Chaser brothers on a staircase in the dormitory. Barnaby let Guido take point in beating up the Bug, though Jason ended baiting Guido and taking the blows instead. Xavier ordered Guido to stop, and so Barnaby and other boys left.
Barnaby took part in Race 25, but on the second lap, he couldn't stop the Devil's Chariot from sliding over the demagnetising ripple strips. As he lost power and drifted back over the track, Barnaby ended up collecting Ariel Piper and another racer in his wake, taking them all out of the race.
When the Sponsors' Tournament began, since only 14 racers had qualified, the top two racers in the School tournament - Xavier and Barnaby - were given byes for Round 1, allowing them to move straight on to Round 2. Thus, Barnaby's first opponent of the day was Schumacher; while Barnaby's opponent led the race for nearly 50 laps, Schumacher's pit machine crashed during the Lap 50 pit stop, allowing Barnaby to race ahead and lapped the German racer, winning the race. Some spectators thought that Barnaby hadn't deserved the win given Schumacher's effort, but acknowledged that such luck was a part of match racing.
Barnaby was thus set to face off against Jason in the semi-finals, though he evidently took advice from Zoroastro to tip the odds in his favour, having Guido sabotage his opponent's magneto drives. Before the race, Barnaby sneered to Jason that it was time for him to die, with Jason retorting for him to "shut up and race". Shortly after Lap 75, the mags that Guido had sabotaged abruptly lost their charge and forced the Argonaut to pit again, giving Barnaby the opportunity to race ahead and claim the victory. However, as soon as the race was over, Jason's mech chief Sally McDuff showed the race officials footage from the Argonaut's pit bay which showed Guido sabotaging their magneto drives, resulting in an emergency hearing. Barnaby thus quickly disqualified from the tournament, and although Stanislaus Calder wanted him and Guido expelled, Zoroastro convinced them that such behaviour was out of character for them and had been a foolish act of desperation, allowing them to continue attending Race School.
Barnaby continued on racing in the school championship following the Tournament, and by the time Jason returned from Italy, Barnaby had reached fourth place on the championship ladder following Race 40. Since Jason was becoming a bigger threat, Zoroastro began organising a number of alliances to secure Barnaby and Xavier's standings by the end of the year, so that they would be granted two of the four invitations to the Challenger Race in New York, which would grant its own winner an opportunity to participate in the New York Masters. Since Xavier's cousin, Dido Emanuele, was spying on Jason to uncover his insecurities, she and Barnaby orchestrated a staged confrontation so that she could further gain Jason's trust. Both arriving at the coffee shop at the same time, Barnaby and Dido made sure Jason was in earshot as Barnaby hit on Dido before she turned down the older boy with the claim that she preferred cultured and courageous men like Jason, leaving Barnaby feigning speechlessness to sell the act.
Some races later, at the end of Race 49, Barnaby was still in fourth place overall on the school championship ladder, but in addition to being tied for points with Jason, Barnaby and five other racers were in contention for the final two places to New York (Xavier and Varishna Krishna's first and second-place positions being unassailable). In order to secure one of the final invitations, Barnaby realised that he needed the best victory possible against Jason and the other racers in Race 50; since he didn't need to earn any more points, Xavier agreed to race shotgun for Barnaby, and Barnaby also bought off Joaquin Cortez - who was not in contention for the top four - to try to take out Jason during the race.
On the morning of Race 50, Dido reported to Barnaby that Jason had come up with a strategy to beat him, having noticed that Barnaby had a tendency to get sloppy with tight, right-hand hairpins. As soon as Race 50 began, Xavier intentionally maneuvered in behind his stablemate, giving Barnaby the lead as he prepared to keep Jason from getting to go to New York. Barnaby managed to maintain his lead for most of the race, though Cortez crashed his car trying to take out Jason, who later managed to overtake Xavier and avoid elimination, though Barnaby was confident that he was too far ahead for his young rival to catch up. As the racers pitted one final time on Lap 48, however, the school's power grid completely cut out mid-stop. Though Ariel and Krishna followed Jason and the Bug's example and aided their mech chiefs in finishing the pit stop, Barnaby spent the whole time verbally abusing his mech chief until he was done, though now Barnaby was in third with Jason right behind him.
Needing to stay ahead of Jason to ensure he got the last invitation to New York, and thanks to Dido's intel, Barnaby managed to fix his bad habit of taking right-hand hairpins slightly-too-wide, keeping Jason from passing. Barnaby narrowly maintained his lead until they neared the finish line, with Jason taking the final tighter than the Devil's Chariot, emerging onto the home straight slightly ahead. Desperate, Barnaby abruptly rammed the Argonaut hard, causing both cars to slip over the demag strips and crash into the freeway's pylons. Owing to the pro rule of driver over-the-line for Race 50, the Bug dashed to the finish line to claim third place, but as the Bug was running, Barnaby managed to get the Devil's Chariot started again. As his car slowly began to gain speed, Barnaby nearly managed to catch up to the Bug, but a photo finish was used to determine who had made it over the line first, showing the Bug with his steering wheel over the line mere centimeters ahead of the Devil's Chariot's nose.
Owing to Ariel and Jason earning more points from their finishes in the race, Barnaby fell into fifth place on the school's championship ladder, meaning he wouldn't be participating in the New York Challenger. Furthermore, Jason had realised Dido was a spy due to Barnaby's abrupt change in taking right-hand hairpins; when he confronted her about it, Jason told Dido to relay to Barnaby and Xavier that he was back at full strength and would take them down the next time they were on the track together.
Personality[]
Due to his talent as a hover car racer, Barnaby possesses much of the same narcissistic confidence and arrogance as most other talented drivers, such as his stablemate Xavier, however, he is not as calm and collected, indeed he has the attitude of a typical rich-boy brat. Barnaby often lords his sense of entitlement over those he thinks inferior to him, as seen in the instances where he verbally bullies Jason with mocking remarks about the financial struggles of the poorer boy's family. Though usually confident in his skills, Barnaby is not above resorting to dirty tactics and outright cheating in order to win.
Skills[]
- Expert Driver / Pilot: As seems to be standard practice for anyone wishing to learn how to drive a hover car, Barnaby is capable of piloting the aviation-type hover car. Barnaby is a talented driver, easily capable of performing aerial feats and maneuvers that in the present day are only known to pilots of fighter jets. His driving skills were enough to get himself positioned under Zoroastro's tutelage, and allowed him to maintain a top ranking throughout most of his time at the IRS, though he tended to rely on his talent alone rather than put int the work to improve.
Equipment[]
- Devil's Chariot: Barnaby's personal hover car, a highly expensive and efficient all maroon painted Lockheed-Martin ProRacer-5, which he drove up until the end of his time attending the International Race School.
- Team Becker Racing Uniform: Like all racers, Barnaby has a racing uniform, comprised of a crash helmet, leather gloves and boots, and racing overalls, all coloured and patterned in Barnaby's colours of choice, maroon.
- Pit Tarantula: A standard piece of equipment for hover car racers, this machine aids in pit bay maintenance during races, which Barnaby's mech chief managed during pit stops to keep their team's car in top working order by replacing worn or damaged parts, as well as refilling coolant.
Trivia[]
- Barnaby has red hair and freckles.