[OOC] Justice League Unlimited

[Afro Samurai]

@Member 00492 I think everyone in episode two just stated walking outside and nothing else lool; we all missed the whole 'he was literally hovering above the masses' part. We are special snowflakes. Gonna have el capitan put the smackdown on Brainwave in the next post.

[Archmage MC]

@Member 00492 I think everyone in episode two just stated walking outside and nothing else lool; we all missed the whole 'he was literally hovering above the masses' part. We are special snowflakes. Gonna have el capitan put the smackdown on Brainwave in the next post.

@Afro Samurai

This. I don't remember reading that bit either. But that gives me something to do in my next post so yeah xD.

[Roman]

Whiplash

W H I P L A S H

---

^{CHESTER ARGYLE // JULY, 1997 (20) // GADGETEER}

^{_{COLLECTED // FRIENDLY // LEVEL // RESERVED // GOOD-HEARTED}}

▼ B I O G R A P H Y:

---

Born and raised in Texas, his mother left his father for reasons Chester never came to understand, and his father provided for them both with a small cattle business. Chester spent his childhood and adolescent years as his father's ranch-hand, learning how to rear cattle, ride horses, crack whips, and sling lassos. His time with the herds taught him to be aware of what surrounded him, lest he caught in a sudden stampede under panicked bovine; his time breaking in young horses taught him sharp reflexes, lest he misjudge a particularly irkful stallion and find himself on the wrong end of a back-hoof. His father taught him how to fight those that would steal from their land, but also how to reason with the desperate and thirsty. Chester grew up strong and noble, with compassion for man and animal alike - but he always missed his mother.

When Chester turned 18, his father revealed to him an ongoing correspondence with his absent mother; several states away, in the city of Gotham. Chester was on a plane a week later.

He found his mother, and she was just as surprised to see him as he was to see her; she was run-down, under-the-thumb, a country-gal who'd come to the big city with stars in her eyes and been quickly taken advantage of. She suffered addiction, depression, panic disorder, trapped in a spiral of self-abuse and emotional turmoil. A week after she had met with Chester, learning of the son and father she had left behind, her mind broke under the weight of everything she had thrown away in youthful, arrogant naivety, and she took her own life, her body discovered by the son that could have been her redemption. Chester drowned in his sorrow and rage, turning to the streets to find those that had mulched a young, hopeful girl into more gray meat for their corruption.

They found him first, and had it not been for Gotham's own dark saviour, Chester would have reunited with his mother the same night she had left him. Batman rescued Chester, and saw in him a familiar anger. With nowhere or no one else to go to, Chester was put under the training of Batman - and the rest, as they say, is history.

▼ A T T R I B U T E S:

---

//ABILITIES & SKILLS

◼ TEXTAKINESIS | Due to his background and the skills taught to him in his young life, Chester has been supplied with large pieces and strips of an advanced, current-rigged fabric by Bruce Wayne, AKA The Batman, that are wired up to transmitters and receivers along extended gauntlets. These gauntlets respond to Chester's muscle movements and twitches, activating electrical signals along the fabric that allows him to use them as extended whips, snares, and semi-prehensile limbs.

◼ PHYSICAL TRAINING | Due to his childhood and adolescence on his father's ranch, rolling straight into intensive training with Batman and the Justice League, Chester has a respectable set of physical capabilities - nothing enhanced or super-human, but certainly above the average 19 year old when it comes to stamina, strength, and agility.

//WEAKNESSES

◼ HOMO SAPIEN | While Chester is trained well - with and without his equipment - without his gauntlets he has no abilities, and instead has to rely on fight or flight. Given most of the Justice League's foes, flight is usually the only realistic option.

◼ LIMITED DEFENSE | Chester's gauntlets also don't offer him in the way of defensive capabilities, as fabric - supplied by Batman or not - is not often bulletproof, and the League's enemies are usually hitting harder than bullets. Instead, Chester must rely on his well-trained reflexes and spatial awareness to evade and debilitate his enemies before they have the chance to put him down for good.

▼ E V O L U T I O N:

---

Chester comes to the League under the tutelage and sponsorship of Batman, a man who has seen in him a well-intentioned desire to do good despite lacking the extraordinary qualities of many of his teammates. As a result, Chester can be intimidated by the relative power-skew of the Justice League, and how, on the lower-end of the scale, his contributions and membership may not be as important or necessary as others. He's also very new to the League, and as a naturally reserved person anyway, finds himself rather taken aback among a large team of supernaturals and meta-humans. As he trains with the League, I'd like Chester to form some real bonds with other team members and open himself up, and learn more about what he and his gauntlets are capable of, as well as developing supporting secondary abilities, training, or tech, that will widen his move-set and what he's capable of out in the field.

▼ C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

---

◼ HORSE-RIDING | Chester enjoys open-plain horse-riding as his ultimate method of centering himself, however difficult such an activity may be in the thriving hub of Metropolis.

◼ KEEPSAKE | Owns and often wears an authentic Stetson passed down to him by his father, which keeps him reminded of his roots. It fits him well, but does make him stick out as a Ranch-boy in the big-city somewhat.

▼ S A M P L E P O S T:

---

Floorboards groaned underfoot as the stairwell took Chester's weight one step at a time. Four stories of cramped, cheap apartments marketed as 'charactered and cozy' when they really meant 'falling apart and too small for comfort'. These were the faux-slums, the pseudo-ghetto; bulk-bought nearly-rooms not much better than hovels, rented on at 300% profit to those whose income was 'taxed' by the same people they used it to pay rent to. Such was Gotham; double-traps and snared funnels. Chester thought of this kind of housing as the urban equivalent of the bogs that lay on the outskirts of the city, a sickening, muddy sinkhole that pulled you in faster the more you tried to claw out. His mother was one of those lost travellers, drowned in the stench of the quagmire. Such was Gotham City, and the viscous tar that clung to its underbelly.

He reached the top of the stairs and paused, weight poised on one leg as he rolled his wrists, warming up the electrical receptors in his gauntlets and the great lengths of fabric wrapped around his arms, like he got caught short halfway through a modern-day embalming. There was no noise save the sound of the house settling back into itself and the muffled hum of an engine passing by in the street outside; headlights flashed through a window at the end of the communal hallway and Chester ducked low, lest his shadow be cast where it needn't. He creeped forward, pushing himself against the wall as he kept his ears pricked - and then, as he approached the third apartment along, he heard what he had been waiting to hear: low, hushed whispers, and the fumbling of large objects. Something was set down, and to Chester it sounded like a lid was cracked open - and then there was the distinct metallic clinking of guns being assembled and racked. Okay, thought Chester, we're skipping introductions, obviously.

The door gave out an almighty wrenching sound as the old, brittle hinges and wood panels splintered and gave way beneath Chester's boot, slamming inwards and shocking the men inside into panicked shouts as they sprung up from their various, but all seated, positions. Rookie error, was the only thought that rushed into Chester's mind, though it came in Bruce's gruff, unimpressed monotone rather than his own internal dialogue; Chester could only amusedly imagine what thoughts came into his opponents mind as he lashed his arms ferociously, the fabric unraveling perfectly as a length of each arm whipped through the air to snare the wrists on the gun-hands of two of the three men - a sharp pull and they both tumbled, weapons clattering uselessly to the ground as Chester loosed their arms and lashed again to whip the cheek of the third man, who shouted in pain and dropped his weapon to clutch his now-split face in pain. Chester rushed forward and brought up his leg into the nose of the closest man, hearing and feeling the crunch of the shattered cartilage and cracked forehead through his kneecap, and then swivelling and snaring the leg of the other who had begun to scramble for his fallen gun; a yank and he tipped forward, landing badly on his shoulder, which only made Chester's foot hurt all the more when he brought it down on the same shoulder, another sickening crack filling the room.

There was a snap and the smell of gunpowder and hot metal, and Chester felt his torso explode in electrical spasms as the third man, still clutching his bleeding cheek in one hand, had found his pistol and unloaded in the direction of their assailant; four bullets fired, three missed, but one had met its mark and Chester hit the ground hard, winded by the fall and his back in agony as lightning bursts ran up and down, his arms spasming out of control as the room and the men within it froze and slowly blinked away, pixel-by-pixel. Chester groaned, part frustration, part disappointment, mostly pain, and rolled himself over as the electrical pain simulator in his outfit ceased its punishment. He lay on his back, panting and aching, and prepared himself for his own lashing as he heard heavy boots walk across the now-empty room, an imposing shadow being cast over his prone form as his back still tingled.

"Rookie error," came Batman's gruff, harsh voice as he leveled his most common point of criticism against Chester once again. "Three opponents. Three points of initiation. Three marks to take down. Forget one, and that's the one that kills you."

Chester sat up, his arms shaky. "I thought he was out of commission long enough to take care of the other tw-" he was cut off without even a gesture from Bruce. Bruce didn't need to tell you when you needed to shut up; you just knew. The man had a presence that way.

"You were wrong, and that got you killed. Run it again. Scenario 8-C." Batman marched away, and Chester pulled himself to his feet. He had to do better.

[Simple Unicycle]

@Roman Finally, someone else on the team who doesn't have any powers. I mean, Whiplash has tech, but still.

[Roman]

@Roman Finally, someone else on the team who doesn't have any powers. I mean, Whiplash has tech, but still.

@Simple Unicycle

Well, Wraith and KL hinted that we needed more gadgets and less alien/metahuman. The original concept was metahuman with a lot more functionality from his fabric, but that can wait for development, and no-powers can be fun in its own way.

[Omega Man]

@Afro Samurai@Archmage MC Just posted. Moving things along. You want a straight forward enemy... now Brainwave is controlling the Lantern... not just the people.

-00492

[Afro Samurai]

Welp. @FiroIV @Archmage MC @Experiment 249 Anyone wanna collab?

[Archmage MC]

@Afro Samurai I'm up for it. How do you wanna do it? that pirate pad thing?

[Afro Samurai]

@Archmage MC Yeah.

[Omega Man]

@Roman Make him in his early 20's and he's good to go. Since he's still a noob he can be in on Ep. 3 - Training Day along with the Rookie and @Hillan's guy if he ever edits his sheet and gets back to us.

Beyond Ep. 5 I can tell you there's gonna be one more Episode called Training Day(s). One Ep alone wasn't enough to graduate some heroes and give them suits and aliases and such. Plus there's at least one more recruit that's gonna be in on the follow up Ep.

-00492

[Sir Lurksalot]

@Roman

Make him 20, so we can have a wee skit at some point where we get him shitfaced on his birthday when Bats isn't looking. XD

[Roman]

Done and in the character tab. I'll catch up on the IC and get a post up this weekend before I go back to work on Monday.

[Force and Fury]

Room for one more?

The Mimic

Name:

n/a

Alias:

The Mimic, Marjorie Dawes

Age:

Unknown, but young, or at least seems to be. When taking the form of Marjorie, late twenties.

Personality:

Quiet, childlike, innocent, unsettling, inquisitive, subtly humorous, evanescent

Archetype:

Alien, most likely

Powers:

The Mimic has only one power: it can become something or someone else. It is not sure how it does this or what its limitations are. It only knows that it cannot become anything exceptionally large or small. Perhaps it cannot become another thing for too long. In any event, it has never tried.

Weaknesses:

The Mimic itself possesses a type of sentience (if indeed, it can be called sentient) that is profoundly different from that of humans and most alien races so far encountered. In its base form, it either cannot or will not verbalize. It takes on not only the abilities of things that it transforms into, but also their weaknesses and, if those things are sentient, some semblance of their characters. It’s believed that The Mimic grows more sentient by living as others. From them, it learns all of the constructs and values that govern human society, such as right and wrong, strong and weak, and male and female. It is learning that these things are not as easy to define as they would initially seem to be.

The longer that The Mimic spends imitating something else, the more that it desires to be that thing and the more impact that thing will have on its character. Obviously, this can be a double edged sword.

Appearance:

In what most people consider its basic form, though nobody truly knows, The Mimic is a roughly watermelon-sized and shaped blob in a pale greyish-blue that usually hovers two to six feet above the ground. It seems to have a fixed shape, though this will change in colour and texture depending on its impression of the people around it. Sometimes, when faced with unusual or unexpected stimuli, and particularly when someone’s behaviour does not match his or her words, it forms exaggerated faces, almost as if it’s lampooning its surroundings. It seems to be able to turn itself into a flat, disc-like object with a hole in the center. In terms of human forms, it favours that of a young woman with red hair, freckles, and mousy features. Her hair is often pulled back into a messy ponytail, she’s wearing jeans, a sleeveless t-shirt, and a light button-up sweater. Nobody knows why The Mimic chooses this form so often. Perhaps even it doesn’t know.

Character Evolution:

The Mimic isn’t sure what its purpose is. Perhaps it has no inherent purpose and must find one. It doesn’t know, and so it will learn so that it can know.

Bio:

The Mimic does not know what it is. It does not know if it is a living thing or a piece of technology, or if it can be both at the same time. It does not know where it is from. In fact, it does not know when it is from either. Time is a concept that it is attempting to understand. Really, The Mimic does not know what it can do. It has noticed that it takes the form and the qualities of other things around it, so long as they are not excessively large or infinitesimally small. It is not sure how it does this or even why. It just does. If there is any mechanism governing what it decides to mimic, it doesn’t understand how that mechanism works. It just chooses things and becomes them unless there is a direct threat. Then it responds by becoming something more powerful and neutralizing the threat. It is not sure why it does this. The Mimic is not much of anything, after all. The Mimic does not know much of anything either, but one thing is certain: it is learning.

Notes:

The Mimic does not need to take notes. When it sees something, it understands all of its physical details immediately and is incapable of not understanding them after that.

Sample Post:

On the first day of the new Justice League, there are throngs of well-wishers outside, hoping to catch a glimpse of the new superheroes. Among them is a small, red-haired young woman with mousy features, freckles, and dimples. She stands beside a streetlight on an uncluttered part of the sidewalk and whoops and cheers with the others. Nearby, there is a teenaged boy with shaggy blonde hair and a pair of beat up skateboarding shoes. She studies him carefully, closely, for just long enough not to unsettle him. She wouldn’t want to make the subject uncomfortable. It would be rude and unprofessional.

On the second day, hanging around that same streetlight, the teenaged boy whoops and cheers with thousands of others. Not far away is a portly middle-aged woman with dark skin and hair pulled neatly back in a bun. He looks at her for a second, fidgeting as he gets all of her details down. He’s trying not to sketch her out. That’d be a bit fucked up.

On day three, the middle-aged woman stands beside that same light and adds her voice to the crowd. It’s a bit smaller than it was the past few days, but she remains enthusiastic. Not far away, an old Asian man seems just as energized. He’s wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses and socks under his sandals. The woman gets a read on him, notes what she needs to note, and looks away. She’s not trying to make anyone uncomfortable. That’s not how you make the world a better place.

On the fourth and final day, an old Asian man stands in that same spot amid the crowd, beaming and waving as the final group of superheroes walk past. Nearby is chubby young man in his thirties, with a batman shirt and a bag of takeout. The old man decides to take a gander in that direction, but then he reaches up and clutches at his chest. A look of shock and dismay crosses his features. It’s what one would expect and it isn’t. It’s unsettling. A couple of people look in his direction. He slumps to the ground, but when the crowd parts enough to allow others to help him, he is gone without a trace. There is only a fire hydrant close to where he was standing.

Hours later, once the hubbub has died down, a man walks his dog along the sidewalk. The dog stops beside the hydrant, lifts its leg, and lets loose with a foul yellow stream. The Mimic is disgusted. It nearly turns itself into a larger angry dog in response. In the event, it does not, but it feels satisfaction at this reaction nonetheless. It believes, to a certainty of over eighty percent, that it interpreted the construct of ‘disgusting’ accurately while not being in the form of something that would have an innate understanding of such.About ten minutes later, a bus stops in front of the hydrant. When it drives off, there is only an empty sidewalk and a stray cat walking away.

The cat walks into a nearby park. It trots into a public restroom. There is a long period of silence. Washrooms are convenient, The Mimic has learned. They are places of secrecy because of ‘disgusting’. About twenty minutes later, a young woman with red hair, freckles, and mousy features walks out of the washroom, hands tucked into her pockets. She is not the real her. She is The Mimic. She is attempting to understand superheroes. She is reviewing right and wrong. Insofar as she can determine, it seems that the latter is more prevalent but the former is received more positively. Is it due to a scarcity effect? Why do these beings consider a more difficult, less common, and statistically less materially rewarding behaviour to be more desirable? The Mimic does not understand, and it wants to understand. Perhaps it can learn about ‘good’ by doing ‘good’. Perhaps it can do so as a superhero.

The young woman is so wrapped up in her thoughts that she doesn’t see the man come up behind her until he is almost upon her. She takes a few steps back and he pulls out a knife. “I want your money, not your life,” he demands, “But if you try to make a move, I won’t think twice.” The Mimic bolts. This is a bad man, it determines. This man is threatening it with physical harm. The Mimic runs behind a tree. From the other side emerges Batman. Batman kicks the bad man so hard that there’s a sound from his abdomen that indicates bodily injury. He crawls away, coughing up blood, eyes wide with fear. The Mimic wonders if it just did a bad thing. Then it decides that it’s safer as a cat.

[Sir Lurksalot]

@Force and Fury

Did... did you just sneak a Cage the Elephant reference in there?

[Force and Fury]

@Sir Lurksalot

The Mimic does not know what Cage the Elephant is. Therefore it does not know if it sneaked a Cage the Elephant reference in. I, however, do.

It was difficult to resist.

[FiroIV]

@Archmage MCyeah

[Omega Man]

@Force and Fury I'd be down with an alien shapeshifter, but not exactly something that doesn't speak or even remotely resemble a superhero unless it shifts into them. Right now we're down in the standard human heroes department though.

I'm looking for more traditional superheroes. A sentient shifting alien sounds like Gloop or Gleep from the Herculoids. Or a Pixar character...



-00492

[Sir Lurksalot]

@Member 00492@Force and Fury

Maybe there's a middle-ground?

A (usually) vaguely humanoid shape-shifting alien that's either picked up on speech or can be taught to do so?

[Force and Fury]

@Sir Lurksalot

The Mimic can most definitely speak when in a form capable of speech, and it often has quite a bit to say, mostly in an annoyingly earnest, curious, pestering manner reminiscent of your typical five year old brother.

@Member 00492

Ah, Okay. No worries. I thought it was kind of philosophically interesting and would make for some cool dynamics and evolution. It could always enter pretending to simply be a human that could shapeshift before being 'outed' because it's pretty shit at being a human lol. If that's not your cup of tea, then it's not the end of the world. I'll just wait for the right RPG.

[Afro Samurai]

@FiroIV Archmage and I are in the PP right now doing the collab. Hop in whenever (or if) you feel so inclined.