An only child, Tyson Harris was born to Sarah Keller and Alexander Harris in 1991 in Detroit, Michigan only a year after they had managed to set themselves up in the community by Alexander opening up a store, Harris' Jewelery, which diamonds that Tyson was never fully certain how he managed to obtain. Aside from that, normal lives were led. His father was a strong man that held fast to rules and ideals about being a good person that offered himself to those in need, while his mother was openly loving and nurturing making sure her boy stayed out of trouble… somehow always managing to show up when he was about to do something… bad…
It was short live and when he was two, his parents went out of town on diamond business and his father returned alone, quite distraught saying that Sarah had left them, that she wasn't the person they thought they were. A further explanation was never given, but even if one were… it wouldn't have changed the fact that with his mother gone, Tyson had a void to fill; a void that his father tried to fill, but failed to ascertain and in the end resulted in the son going down a rather violent path of Junior Fight Clubbing at the age of sixteen.
For whatever reason, Tyson had a good eye for dodging attacks and was able to bring in a lot of money. Money that was kept secreted from Alexander so he wouldn't know what his son was doing, but money nonetheless. In fact, the money was so good, Tyson began to see little reason to keep on going to school, he thusly stopped going. This proved to be a mistake in keeping things a secret because when a student misses school, the school calls, and Alexander was there to pick up the phone.
One can imagine, having an overprotective and mobile father would be difficult to evade, especially when that same father has business all over the city. Such was Tyson's situation and on the day of his biggest fight with an estimated two-thousand dollar payout, he kept running into his father. Thankfully, he was able to lose him and get down to the warehouse where the fight was being held. Upon stepping into the ring, however, he saw that he was clearly outmatched and he knew it… Not because the guy was bigger than him, though he was, or more intimidating, though he was, but because he had fought the guy before, and in that time before, he had still gotten his butt kicked.
Despite that fact, Tyson didn't falter and did his best to beat his opponent. His exceptional skill at dodging was well used, but you can only dodge so long before you get tired, and his only hope was to pummel the guy standing in his way… this plan, however, wouldn't work because his opponent just wouldn't go down… Cutting through his defenses were easy, but still, nothing worked… and he was still getting his butt handed to him.
Not backing down, Tyson only served to get even more battered and bloodied; fortunately Alexander had been following and after having watched the entire fight… decided to step in at time and rescue his son. In most instances having a third party step into the ring instantly means disqualification, but not here who just wanted the man out of the ring. He refused and even offered to take the boy's place. Even this was refused, but Alexander still refused to leave, without his boy, taking him into his arms he began to leave.
Now, when a crowd isn't satisfied, the ring master gets angry too and in this case, that master just happened to be a man that possessed the ability of Umbrakinesis, to manipulate darkness. So now it was Alexander against this man who wasn't about to let Tyson go when he had fights scheduled for him. So Alexander had little choice to fight. Little did he know that his father had an ace up his sleeve and when he revealed the fact that he could manifest an armor of diamond to protect himself and cause even more damage to the shadow master, if he could ever get his hand on him, something proving quite difficult amidst all the shadows.
What happened next wasn't anything out of the ordinary per se; Tyson noticed that the windows were mostly covered by large drop sheets and while watching his father's fight with the 'Shadowman', he realized why, they were helping him keep him in power. Knowing this, Tyson got the idea to remove the cloths, the only thing being that the windows were way out of his reach and the only way to get to them… was… as Tyson saw, to climb up a stack of boxes that barely led to he would need to be in order do what he needed to be. He couldn't explain it and somehow it was exactly as he figured it would be, but only barely, and only barely meant that if Tyson hadn't been the kind of person to try dangerous things like leaping out seven feet in order to grab the cloth, he would have been screwed.
Happily, that was the case, and as Tyson flew through the air towards a lower bunch of boxes simultaneously holding onto the cloth, the sun that had timely enough positioned itself let its light shoot into the warehouse doing something… quite spectacular in that it refracted off Alexander's Diamond coating like a laser that upon hitting the 'Shadowman' made him wither, defeated and powerless. That being the case, Alexander led his son away from the scene, away from that environment, and after packing things up, away from Detroit where Tyson had lived all his life.
Now living in the Bronx of New York, Tyson has been enrolled in JFK High School as a Junior in an attempt by his father to have him live a normal life. This is completely contradictory to what Tyson actually wants, having grown accustomed to fights as long as they were fair, only barely including school.