Richard Joseph Blume

Rich. His FAMA agent handlers used to call him "Gold Rush" sometimes.

Male

16

5’7” with a precariously skinny build. Rich is innately unathletic and weak-looking. He’s very bony, with knobby elbows and knees. He has long arms and legs, a kind of gangly build. His skin is fairly pale and plain, with acne occasionally but no real distinguishing scars or tattoos. His hands are thin with long fingers and well-kept short nails. He has narrow shoulders and a long neck. He has a prominent nose that gives him a birdlike persona and a strong jawline. His whole face is thin. Framing his hazel eyes are dark eyebrows that make him always look concerned. His ears are of about average size and lay flat against his head, and he has two stud earrings in the left ear. Rich’s hair is naturally brown, but he dyes it a platinum blond color. He typically keeps up on the color well, but occasionally it can be seen peeking through from the roots. He sweeps his hair to the left and generally keeps it short. His voice is fairly high for a boy, and he has a slightly southern drawl.

Urban teenager. Rich wears a lot of dark clothing, greys and blacks mostly. His clothing is generally v-necks, hoodies, and dark skinny jeans. As of late, Rich has been trying to get more bright-colored clothes, and he’s begun to mix light purples and pinks into his wardrobe. On his feet he wears a pair of black vans.

Reserved ♦ Quiet ♦ Polite ♦ Loner-type ♦ Low self-esteem

He’s pretty good at skateboarding. Got good at photography a year or so ago and since he’s turned it into a real hobby. Rich is also a fairly good actor and singer. He knows a lot about musical theater.

TW: Domestic abuse, homophobic violence, depression

In southern Maryland, near the tip of the Delmarva peninsula, there lies the town of Sundew. It’s a small, fairly unassuming town just off of Maryland Route 13, a collection of mismatched plaster-sided buildings in yellows and beiges separated by stretches of forest and the occasional farm. There’s a gas station with a dingy convenience store, a few greasy fast food joints along the main drag, a brick-sided doctor’s office by the grocery store, an Applebee’s across from that in a strip mall with a pet shop and a quarter laundromat. A white-sided traditional church sits farther down the road, with a small, well-kept garden and a school jutting off of the side in an L-shape. A graveyard huddles off in the distance. To anyone who doesn’t know this place, Sundew appears as a normal, albeit slightly run-down, southern town, and in a lot of ways they’re right. Yet, beneath the surface, there lies a darkness that most don’t come across. Richard found this out oh-so-sadly.

Richard was born in the gargantuan white-sided black-shingled manor that looms across the street from God’s Echoes Evangelical Church. His father, Rev. Daniel Blume, was the pastor, a gargantuan figure well over six feet tall with a chin that looked cut out of diamond and hair that glowed with gel. He spoke with a southern drawl and had a voice that boomed and echoed. He was a pillar of the community, a self-appointed town leader, the kind who everyone knew and who was invited to every event. Daniel hosted a Christian radio show every Sunday after church where he’d tell people about the rewards of keeping to God’s path and the dangers of modern society. It was a dynastic role, pastor of God’s Echoes, passed down from Daniel’s father to him, and hopefully one day down to Richard’s older brother Mark.

Daniel was a terrible father. While he held up a kind and gracious persona out of the house, inside he was a strict, terrifying presence. It wasn’t that he struggled with alcoholism or depression- no, it was something deeper than that. Daniel looked at the world outside of Sundew and saw nothing but sin. The acceptance of what was once held in contempt disgusted him. More than anything else, more than the acceptance of abortion or homosexuality or Islam, Daniel Blume hated metahumans. He saw them as sins against God, as literal trials by Satan descended unto humanity by the powers of Hell. Every sunday, he would tie his sermon message back to them, how they defied God by accepting power beyond what He gave them. When Richard was seven, he came home with a comic book a friend at school had given him. His father beat him with a belt, then forced a lighter into Richard’s hand and made him set the book ablaze.

“You will learn eventually, my son, to avoid sin,” Richard remembers his father saying. “But you must learn first what to hate.”

So Richard learned to hate. He attended church multiple times a week. He listened to his father’s sermons, learned about the evil that lay in the heart of the Metahuman Revolution. When Richard was nine, there was a boy in class named Felipe who came to school on crutches after breaking his foot. Richard carried his books around all day. He liked how Felipe’s hair curled around the nape of his neck and he loved his smile, small flashes of sweetness. The boys would sit together during recess and talk about everything while the other kids played. When word got back to Daniel that Richard had a boyfriend, he beat his son again, told him that it was evil to like boys. Richard came to school the next day and wouldn’t talk to Felipe. Felipe followed him through the halls. A crowd gathered. Richard pushed him to the ground and threw his crutches down the hallway. That’s how Richard came to hate gay people.

Things recovered quickly after that incident. Richard got a new friend group, one that more fit his family’s economic status (Rev. Blume was very wealthy). They were all the kids of rich folk; one’s father owned a country club. Another’s was the head of a successful cardiology practice, another was a contract lawyer who worked for Perdue. The kids were wealthy, white, popular, and utter dickheads. In middle school, they would hide out in basements drinking their parents’ alcohol and talking about what girls they wanted to fuck. They bullied the misfits at school, the gays like Felipe, the children of migrant workers. Once, the leader of the group, a tall kid with a buzzcut and enormous braces named Frank, asked a girl in class for a blowjob. She said no, so they told the whole school to call her a whore. Richard would hang in the back. He couldn’t stop them, but he couldn’t bring himself to join in. Once, Frank shoved Felipe into a locker (it was a small town, everyone went to the same elementary and middle school) and told Richard to call him a faggot. Richard refused. Frank called him a pussy. Richard broke Felipe’s nose. Richard went home that night and lay in bed and felt nothing at all. He thought about Felipe’s beautiful face and how he’d broken it. Then he sat motionless for a long time and thought about his belt in his closet and if it was strong enough to suffocate him. He wondered what God would say if he did.

During late summer, when Richard was thirteen, his friends and him went hiking in the woods outside of Sundew. They followed along a small creek that wove through the woods between the trees and under the highway bridges. Around dusk, they came to a spot in the woods where the trees had fallen into piles of splinters around a crater in the ground. It was cold and dusty— it had been there a long time. Carefully, the boys crept through the hazardous environment, stepping over the remains of the trees and between the enormous splinters, to the crater itself. It was about the width across of a minivan and jagged at the edges. In the center, a rock the size of a softball sat firmly in the ground. Soft light emanated from its depths, casting shadows around the crater’s perimeter. Somehow, Richard felt drawn to it. The light seemed to call out to him specifically, like mystical hands reaching out to grab him. Before he could stop himself, Richard was standing over it, his other friends in tow. He knelt down before the meteorite. Here, he could feel its warm glow reach up to him. He could see two colors in it, one red and one yellow, occasionally mixing into a soft sunset orange. Gently, he touched the meteorite. The glow moved towards his hands like the tendrils of a plasma ball. It floated past him like sparks or fireflies. Soon, he was surrounded in light, enveloped in it. Richard felt something course through him, a power unlike any he’d ever felt. Every muscle twitched, every neuron fired at full force. He felt nothing but warmth and happiness and...and power, oh power like nothing else. The glow began to fade into his skin, and with it went the ecstacy of power. The other boys gathered around. They too tried to touch the meteorite. Some of them got a reaction, but nothing like what hit Richard. They promised never to tell anyone what had happened, and went home before it grew dark.

Things proceeded as normal from that moment on. Richard went to school the next day and his friends gathered around to see if he had any super powers. He disappointed them; nothing had changed, at least nothing significant. He noticed that he got really cold when he sat by the air conditioner in math class. Later that day, he plugged in a fan in his English class and the outlet shocked him. Instead of a small spark, it felt like his entire body lit up in pain. Things stayed like this for months. That November, Richard got his first girlfriend, a cute girl named Riley who lived in a literal mansion on a hill outside of town. She had strawberry blonde hair and large breasts. She rode horses competitively and loved equestrian sport. He guessed she was hot. Felipe changed schools over the summer, and Richard never saw him again. Richard would still think about him sometimes, and when he did he’d go into the chapel and pray for a long time.

Nothing ever felt enough. Richard hated his friends. They made him do things that he couldn’t stomach. He didn’t love his girlfriend, though she tried so hard to make him. Drugs didn’t help; sure, smoking would clear his mind for a bit but then he’d wake up exhausted and angry and smelling like death. Richard couldn’t stand alcohol either; he despised how it burned his nostrils and throat and made him want to vomit. He lived in the jaws of a trap, one that he couldn’t escape.

Richard got out of the trap by luck. Freshman year of high school, a horrendous hurricane hit the Delmarva peninsula and devastated Sundew. Building flooded all across the town, and the parish school Richard had attended for so long was completely destroyed. This came in early August, mere weeks from the start of classes, and none of the children of the town had a place to go to school. As a response to the emergency, the children were enrolled in South Bend High School, a public school a few miles north of Sundew in Pocomoke City. The hundred student class of God’s Echoes Parish School was thrown into a high school with over 1500 students. At first, this scared Richard, being thrown into this brand new environment where he knew almost no one, but he quickly found it incredibly liberating. Here, Richard could avoid Frank and his gang of thugs without disturbing the peace at home. Bullies were fewer with such a large school size (while they still existed certainly, Richard could avoid them).

It wasn’t perfect, though; try as he might, Richard struggled to make new friends. Being around other people make him anxious— he expected them not to like him. Eventually, he did make friends with a girl one year ahead of him named Alex. She was unlike anyone he knew back home; she listened to Green Day and Rage Against the Machine. She wore camo pants and backwards baseball caps and talked about redistributing the wealth. Something about her drew him in, she had a unique charisma that he couldn’t shake. They started to hang out after school (Alex lived right down the street). He’d stay over at her house sometimes on weekends- they became nearly inseparable fairly quickly. The spring of his freshman year, the two both auditioned for the school musical (Richard at Alex’s pressuring). Though at first Richard found it hard to push through his usual shyness, musical theater opened him up to a side of himself he hadn’t experienced before. Something about pretending to be someone else freed his headspace in a unique and powerful way. She made him feel comfortable with himself, though they differed significantly ideologically.

With her influence in his life, Richard started acting differently. He entered a rebellious phase, started dressing more urban and got his ear pierced. On his fifteenth birthday, Richard used the money his aunt gave him to get his hair dyed. People around Sundew started treating Richard differently. The townsfolk were more suspicious of him after this strange transformation. Generally people would be nicer to Richard because of his father’s status, but now they treated him like any other teenager. His old friends in town avoided him, called him a weirdo when they saw him. Not long after he auditioned for the play, Riley broke up with him. His father started acting more hostile than he ever had before. Often, the two would get into arguments over the dinner table over Richard’s embrace of modern society. His mother Laura, while mostly accepting of Richard’s change (“It’s just a phase, hun”) didn’t stand in Rev. Daniel’s way. Richard lived his life reserved from the rest of his family, staying out of the house or hiding in his room to avoid them.



One day, Alex and Richard were talking on their way back from school. It was raining and they were ducking under branches to keep dry. They were talking about the football team (which was hilariously bad). One of the safeties on the team was this tall, muscular guy named Devin Heller—Rich thought he was cute, but he said “good-looking”.

“Oh yeah?” Alex said through laughter.

“I mean, you know, as good-looking as a guy can get.” Rich replied. They kept walking until they reached the crosswalk at the end of the block. Then Rich stopped in his tracks. He stared down at the puddle at his feet, imagining he could see its reflection. His face felt cold and numb. Alex said:

“You okay, b-”

“Alex,” Rich said. “I’m gay.” Alex stopped too.

“Yeah?” she said after a second.

“Yeah,” Rich said, his eyes still downcast. He nodded vigorously, his face still white. “Yeah, I’m gay. Yeah.” The words came out like splinters.

“Okay,” Alex said.

“Is that, like, is that okay? Is that cool? I...haven’t done this before and I don’t know what to do and I’m afraid it’s wrong and that I’m wrong and that, uh-.”

“Yeah, its okay,” Alex said. She put a hand on Rich and smiled. He started crying into her shoulder.

Richard had done it. He rang the bell, and it could not be unrung. Alex was gentle about it; she pushed on the boundaries of his comfort bits at a time. At first, she changed nothing, but then she’d slide in a comment about a boy he’d been staring at and they’d whisper together for some time. Richard wasn’t ready to tell anyone else, and she respected that. Yet now, Richard was more afraid than ever to be around his family. He feared that a text would be intercepted or his parents would overhear them after school. Alex came over for dinner every once in a while and those filled Richard with unbridled horror. Daniel hated Alex, hated everything she stood for. His mother assumed they were dating and didn’t want to tell anyone yet. Daniel became more strict than he ever had before. At dinnertime, Richard’s phone was taken (as was his brother’s who was eighteen and a senior). His computer was child-blocked to academic sites (he knew how to get out of that). His father would come earlier and earlier to pick him up from school.

Then one day, it happened. Richard had gotten back from church (which included a particularly long sermon about the dangers of accepting homosexuals) and his family was sitting down for lunch. Daniel had been in a peculiar mood lately, more nervous and paranoid than usual. He was sitting at the head of the table, reading a newspaper. In it was a story about a kid who went to a different high school in Pocomoke City and had committed suicide after being outed as gay. Daniel was reading the paper aloud. Richard stared hard into his baked beans.

“Serves them right,” Daniel said, folding the newspaper. Richard froze. “That’s what happens when you stray from God’s love. It’s a quick path to depression and death.

“Well that’s a little extreme, dear,” Richard’s mom said.

“No, it isn’t,” Daniel replied with his mouth full. “You cannot live without the light of God in your life. It is like grass living without water, or fire burning without oxygen. They should know that. They go to church and they should listen to the preachers there. They chose to screw each other instead of listening to God’s word and now they will suffer for-”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Richard said. He stood up from the table and the chair hit the drywall hard. Daniel looked up peculiarly.

“Sit down,” Daniel said calmly.

“No, you’re gonna apologize for what you just said,” Richard snapped. Daniel grimaced.

“Do you know who you’re talking to, boy?” Daniel replied.

“Do you realize what you’re saying? You’re condoning suicide. That was a person no matter what you think about their sexual preference.”

“They had chances to stray away from sin and they didn’t! You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink!”

“Maybe if you didn’t spend so much time hating in the name of God they’d come to church!” Richard shook with rage. He felt an energy flowing through him unlike any other.

“Richard Joseph Blume!” Laura said.

“No mom, I’m tired of it! Every sunday you get up on that podium and you tell people who to hate! God doesn’t hate anyone!”

“You think that because you’re friends with that dyke you can say these things about me in my house.”

“What did you call her?!” Richard stepped forward, shoving the table out of his way with inhuman strength. His plate teetered on the table’s edge and fell to the floor, breaking. The room felt hot.

“Enough of this!” Daniel stood up and punched Rich in the left cheek. A sickening smack filled the room. Daniel withdrew his fist. His whole arm ached. It was like he’d punched a brick wall. Quickly Daniel’s hands flew to his belt. He grabbed Richard by the collar and shoved him down to the table. Laura ran to hold him back. Mark watched on in horror.

As Daniel held the belt into the air, Richard felt that power again, coursing through all of his body, just beneath the skin. Something dripped off his nose and hit the table in a little bead. From his odd angle, it looked like gold. He began to sweat, but it wasn’t quite sweat; it felt like it was clinging to his skin and it was oddly heavy. Apparently, everyone else had noticed it too. Daniel stood with one hand in the air and the other spread wide between himself and Richard. Laura stepped back and made the sign of the cross. Suddenly, Richard felt his whole body lurch. He pushed himself up off of the table, but his limbs didn’t move. Dozens of gold wires had exploded out from Richard’s body, grabbing at the table and ceiling and walls and pulling him upright until he floated a few inches off of the ground. All of the gold glowed a cool orange. Richard’s skin was all covered in a thin metallic layer. He held out his hand, and a blob the size of a grapefruit materialized from his skin. Daniel stepped back, shaking his head with sheer horror on his face. Richard launched the grapefruit, and it smashed into the wall next to Daniel’s head, leaving a hole in the drywall.

“Satan has taken hold of you, my son,” Daniel said. Then he ran off towards the church.

There wasn’t much time. Richard was terrified. His family was terrified of him. Quickly, he ran up to his room, pulled out a gym bag, and began to throw things in haphazardly. Occasionally, he’d notice a gold fingerprint on his clothing. He was crying; the tears were also golden. He came back down to the first floor with his things packed. Both Daniel and Laura were nowhere to be seen. Mark was standing in the hallway.

“Mark, I don’t know what’s going on,” Richard said. “I swear I don’t know how I did that or what I’m doing or-”

“Get out of here before dad gets back,” Mark said.

So Richard ran out of the front door of his family house in broad daylight with his skin leaking gold and a bag around his shoulder. He sprinted past everyone he saw, trying to hide his face in his jacket. Some saw still and recoiled. He ran to the forest at the edge of town and hid deep within the brush. Within an hour, sirens echoed down the street. Richard didn’t know what else to do. He called Alex and said he needed help now. She left with her mom’s car and sped off towards Sundew. For forty-five minutes Richard ran through the forests, getting as far as he could away from the rest of the town. In the distance, he could hear shouts through a megaphone and sirens whirring. Alex met him on a road a mile outside of town and they drove back.

“Dude, what the fuck do you have on your face?” Alex asked when he sat down.

“This is my face,” Richard replied. Alex drove the rest of the way in silence as Richard had a panic attack in the passenger’s seat.

They couldn’t go to Alex’s house; Daniel knew Alex’s dad and knew where they lived. So Alex drove them to an abandoned Arby’s on the outskirts of Pocomoke City and parked the car in a shady spot beneath some trees. The musical theater kids had come there one day under the guise of doing some “underground shit” and instead spent the time complaining about classes and smoking. Once Alex had parked, Richard explained everything: the argument, his dad’s punch, the orange glow and the meteor and the gold all over his skin.

“No way dude,” Alex said at some point. “You’re a...you’re a meta! That’s awesome!”

“Are you fucking joking? This is not awesome!” Richard replied.

“You have superpowers! That’s fucking rad man!”

They got dinner at a local Taco Bell and hid out overnight in the dirty and infested Arby’s. Richard was beside himself— he couldn’t help but panic. His father had only told him terrible things about metahumans; Richard had been indoctrinated into hating them. He felt a deep sort of sickness in the pit of his stomach. Self-loathing that was familiar to him, but this was something deeper, something more sinister.

The kids didn’t fool anyone. Both of them left their phones on during their hideout and police were quick to track them down through GPS. By the next afternoon, Rich found himself sitting in the Pocomoke City police department in an office surrounded by frosted glass windows. A very stern-looking police officer was snapping at him across the table about appreciating those who raise you. Through the glass, Richard could see the silhouette of his father, tall and imposing, standing by the door. He assumed that any minute he would be sent home and endure hellish punishment. Just as the police officer was ending his speech, however, Richard heard a gasp from outside. Off in the distance, he could hear a low, rumbling voice echo through the police office, like if a mountain could talk. Enormous footfalls followed it, and soon a truly terrifying figure appeared in the silhouette, standing several feet over Daniel Blume.

“Reverend Blume, I presume?” the creature said in its mountainous voice.

“My lord...uh, yes, this is him,” Daniel replied. His voice shook.

“May I speak with you a moment?” The two lumbered off. The police officer looked at the glass with utter confusion, then back towards Richard, then towards the door.

“What on Earth…” the officer mumbled.

A few minutes later, the figure reappeared and there was a polite knock at the door. Hesitantly, the police officer opened the door a crack and gasped.

“...may I come in, officer?” the monstrous voice said once more. Something was pulled out of a pocket. The officer stood in stunned silence, then nodded and opened the door wide. Standing there was an enormous lizard in a black suit. He had deep green scales like a crocodile, a short snout, and a tail that dragged the floor behind him. As he stepped into the room, his head nearly scraped the ceiling.

“The furniture in here is a little small,” the lizard-man said, confused. “I’ll just stand I suppose.” He looked over at Richard, whose face had gone white.

“Who...who are you?” Richard asked.

“My name is Henry Olin. I am an agent for the Federal Agency of Metahuman Affairs, or FAMA. It’s nice to meet you.” The lizard-man extended an enormous clawed hand, and Richard shook it hesitantly. “Now, I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

They talked for a long time. Henry explained metahumans to Richard and how FAMA worked. Richard told him about the meteor in the forest and the orange glow. He told Richard about the academy programs, a system of schools designed to train metahumans to better use their powers. One in particular could be found in South Carolina, the famous Academy 003.

“I am aware that you come from a background which is rather...non-conducive to having metahuman abilities,” Henry said. “Academy 003 is a very good school, both academically and supernaturally. There, you will have a safe place to practice and refine your abilities, away from those who could hurt you. The application process can be difficult, but considering your situation, you will have an advantage to getting in. What do you say?”

Richard stared at the floor for a long time.

“...I don’t have much of a choice, do I?” he said.

The next few months passed in awkward tension. Richard stayed at Alex’s house, avoiding his family completely. Henry would visit a few times a week to check up on him and have him fill out paperwork. Some FAMA agents began to help him figure out how to use his power, though progress was slow and he's still quite a novice at it. He was able to get into Academy 003 without much trouble, as his grades were fairly good and his background necessitated protection. By the end of the summer, he left for South Carolina. He came to his family house with a car full of FAMA agents. He and Henry went in and collected his things. Daniel stood at the back of the kitchen, looking at the floor. Richard’s mother begged him to stay. Mark was nowhere to be seen.

Now Richard is here, in a new place full of strange people he’s never met. He’s nervous about being at this new place, and he’s still getting used to accepting meta-humanity both from others and from himself.

Type-Chromatic (Yellow-Red)

Gold Rush: Beneath Richard’s skin lies a layer of molten gold. This layer is supernaturally-compact, defying the laws of physics by doing so (ie there’s more metal in there than would appear and it doesn’t impact his weight as much as it should). Despite being a liquid, the gold is naturally at room temperature, preventing it from burning Richard or anyone else. At a base level, this gives Richard some superhuman durability, as the layer of metal acts as a suit of armor. Anything which attempts to penetrate beneath Richard’s skin is stopped by the metal, causing minor bleeding but no severe internal damage beyond that. This has a limit, of course, as gold isn’t very strong as far as metals go and a strong enough projectile or thrusting instrument will still push through it.

What really gets interesting is what Richard can do with this gold. By channeling it out of his pores, Richard can produce gold constructs which he can freely manipulate. In total, Richard can produce an amount of gold equal to his total surface area and one-inch thick. There’s a lot Richard can do with this, from increasing his own mobility to producing complex shapes. The gold is of superhuman strength, capable of lifting things much heavier than Richard could on his own, though its strength is relative to the amount of it being used (ie, a single wire will be very weak, while a large clump will be incredibly strong).

The name “Gold Rush” comes from Richard’s favorite way to use this ability. By creating a mat of gold beneath his feet, Richard can create a layer of semi-liquid gold which is slippery, allowing Richard to slide very quickly along the ground. He’s gotten quite good at this, and can move at about 20 mph when at max speed, using gold wires to maneuver himself by pulling on surrounding objects. This works much better in urban environments than rural ones, as without things to pull on he can’t maneuver very much.

The other primary way the power manifests is as wires, which Richard can weave together and individually manipulate. Richard can do a ton of things with this, from restricting opponents to swinging through urban environments Spider-Man-style. Enough of these wires can overwhelm even a strong opponent, tangling them up or throwing them around.

Richard can only produce a limited amount of gold at a time, equivalent roughly to his body’s surface area with a one-inch thickness. While his powers afford him a good deal of range, they will run out if pushed to their limits. Most of his mobility options are lost in flat environments where there isn’t anything for him to grab onto, and his gold mat becomes harder to control on wet or grassy surfaces. Additionally, Richard’s gold constructs must always stay attached to him by a thread no matter what. Any amount of it that is cut off from him loses its shape and becomes a puddle of gold (it also quickly solidifies). Richard can regenerate gold, but it takes an extremely long time (I’m talking months to years) so for all intents and purposes he loses any gold that is cut off of him.

Gold isn’t something that you want to have under your skin. Gold is extremely conductive, and because of this Richard has to deal with a host of weaknesses due to having it permanently inside of his body. He suffers the effects of heat and cold much more severely than other people, as the gold will quickly become the same temperature as his environment without insulation. Even mild weather can quickly make Richard hypothermic if he’s not careful, and summer heat can give him severe burns if he doesn’t shield himself from the sun or otherwise keep the gold off his body. Another of Richard’s vulnerabilities is electricity. Gold conducts electricity like it’s nobody’s business, making any shock Richard receives exponentially worse. His metal must always stay attached to his body, so shocking any part of it will eventually travel back to him. An electricity manipulator would hard-counter Richard in almost every situation.