[CHAR] Superheroics 101

[Hellis]

Notable Villains

Sabrina Slaughter

John Doe

Hack

Matriach

WRAITH

Delta Lord

Bloody Beatrice

Notable Heroes

The Protectress

The Great Vengence

The Mechnanic

Jazabelle

The White Wisp

Silver Phantom

Kaden Merlovich

....
Hellis Charachters:

Angstbomb

Name: Anduyel "Andy" Kald'Uwein
Persona: Angstbomb
Appearance:

Standing a respectable 5'11, the young looking man is pale as snow and with eyes that are blacker then tar but for two, glowing rings where his irises are. His posture is that of a prideful twat truth to be told. He believes himself better then he is and it shows in the way he carries himself. He favors black and borderline goth looks, because old habits die hard.

Age: 57 (As a Shadow Fae, his aging is about half that of a human)
Archetype: Magic
Power set: Shadow Fae
Illusion Magic, Drifting Shadows.(I)
This trick is the bread and butter of his sort. As a shadow fae, he can seemingly make shadows deepen and spread in a room, dimming light and making it harder to see. He mainly use it to spook people and make them nervous.
Destruction Magic, Sphere of Vengeance.
Despite its ominous name and cool appearance, the Sphere of Vengeance is a low level spell taught all grunts of the Matriachs army. Its a ball of arcane energy, infused with the ill will and pain of its thrower. In his case, that is pretty much him having to angst extra hard when he throws it.

Origin Story:
Every evil sorceress need her goons to back her up. Enter Andy, born and grown in the churning pits of despair. A Dark Fae brought up specifically to serve as fodder when the Matriach Mallana invaded the mortal realm of Neuithir (Earth). Trained from the tender age of 30 (they are in the pit for ten years, and age at one half a humans rate). He was shown how the darkness was supreme, how his pain and anger was the only way to triumph and that Humanity was weak. He believed it. He believed it so damn much.

Then came the day of the invasion, and the evil fae stormed out of the portal to face the weakling humans. Only the humans had tanks, they had cold iron, they had men in strange suits, spandex and magical trinkets. They had outworlders who could toss said tanks at him! Andy did not like pain. He did not like the anger. He did not like dying like a fly. He surrendered on the spot.

Working with "Miss Noir", a A-list magician and detective, he gave her all he knew about the portal he came through. He was spared, shown mercy and let go. Due to his ever conflicted nature, he took this as being given the purpose to protect his new, shiny and sunlit home. And so he did. He tried to emulate the heroes that squashed his Mistress invasion. He took a persona, the nickname his ex-girlfriend had affectionately called him back home. He became "Angstbomb"

After the recruiter of Slight Heroics Inc had stopped snickering at his persona, he was offered a place on the team

Brick

Name: Brodsee'feath Brogram Breauughhh, "Broseph" for short.
Persona: Brick
Appearance:


Age: 26 Earth Years
Archetype: Alien
Power set: Bartonian Physiology
Super Dense Exoskeleton; Partial.(I)
Brosephs vital areas and soft spots have superdense bones working like armor. These will stop alot of damage that otherwise would be lethal, but the pain is still there, and should them break? Welp, he better have a xenology trained doctor at hand!
Super Dense Exoskeleton; Thick Headed.(I)
You could argue it is a terrible super power. You are likely right. With a head tougher then a samoans, he has been known to crack stone with headbutts.

Origin Story: Don't drink and Drive Spaceships. This was something Broseph learned first hand. Born on a planet known for its drinking; Bar-Ton, Broseph is a professional alcoholic. He spent his days drinking and getting more messed up then the grunge-scene post Curt Cobain. In fact, he was so loaded the day he sat his ass in the seat of the "Babe Magnet" aka is his starship, that he forgot to punch in jump cordinates. Another thing you learn quickly, is to not Drink and Blind Warp. Off he went, and wham, he was suddenly entering earth atmosphere

To drunk to pull of even a half assed entry, he was doing things to his poor ship that intergalactic mechanics would get PTSD from. He was plummeting hard and banked just in time to fry every electronic on board and smash into the forested area outside of Dodgeville. Of course, the only reason he was alive was his hardy body, the crashfoam that encased him upon impact and a healthy dose of luck. He wandered around after that, mooching drinks off people and trying to get a job as a bouncer.

It was around this time the Slight Heroics Inc found him.

[Drifting Pollen]

Name: Cassandra Queen (Cass for short)
Persona: Calculus

Appearance:
Cass is about average height, and very pale and gangly. Her posture is not terribly good, and her movements are downright clumsy at times. Her eyes are rarely focused, with her attention generally drifting unless there's a crisis going on.


Her current superhero uniform consists of a pair of dark-tinted chemistry goggles, and a simple white jumpsuit. She sometimes wears a black-dyed lab coat over this, for reasons completely unknown.

Age: 21
Archetype: Genius

Power set:

- Mathematician (2 points): Cass has an insane grasp of mathematics in all its forms. She's a human calculator, capable of juggling thousands of numbers in her head at once, and solving just about any function in an instant. She can also apply this to the real world, using geometry and her knowledge of physics to analyze her situation. For example, when she sees someone pointing a gun, she can predict the exact trajectory of the bullet (though probably wouldn't be fast enough to dodge it), and when she tries to kick someone, she can calculate the precise angle of impact that would result in the greatest amount of force delivered (which helps compensate for her lack of muscle).

Origin Story:

Cassandra's father left her family when she was very young, leaving her living alone with her mentally unstable mother. Though not abusive, her single parent was eccentric, insisting on home-schooling Cass and generally being overprotective, preventing her from getting much experience out in the real world. To Cass, this seemed only natural, and she learned to manage by herself, in the company of only books and dust and empty rooms.

Eventually, her mother's condition worsened, and the woman was locked up in a mental institute, while Cass was passed on to a more ordinary pair of legal guardians. They began sending her to an ordinary high school, and it was there that her talents were revealed.

Nobody knew how long Cass had been a mathematical genius, or where she had gotten such a talent from, since while she was home-schooled there had never been a chance to compare her with her peers. Now, however, it became evident that she was something beyond the ordinary. She shot through the education system, skipping multiple years while earning dozens of scholarships, and was sent to a prestigious university, where she graduated early with perfect marks and a degree in physics. Already, several companies were interested in recruiting her, and Cass's future was looking bright.

She should have done brilliantly in the business world, and become wealthy and powerful as a result. However, she'd been isolated for most of her youth, and had remained a recluse throughout her years of schooling. Her mathematical talents might have been off the charts, but she was socially inept, extremely timid, and completely unable to perform well under pressure. After bouncing from internship to internship for months, she was left abandoned and jobless, with too little money to return to college and too bad a reputation to try and claw her way back into the corporate world.

With few options left, she went job hunting- and somehow managed to pick up a sidekick position, alongside a third-rate hero known as Spearstrike. The pay was decent, and she didn't actually have to do much crimefighting. Her job was mostly managing her hero's accounts, occasionally doing a bit of hacking for him, analyzing feeds from security cameras to determine where criminals might attack, and so on.

Fairly boring work, but it was satisfying enough for Cass, until she got arrested.

She'd only been doing her job, but it turned out she'd been duped. Spearstrike had been posing as a hero for some time, while in fact engaging in some highly illegal activities, and even participating in an armed robbery or two under a false identity. When he was caught, it was revealed that his 'sidekick' had been inadvertently helping him by managing stolen money, hacking into security systems, and analyzing feeds to determine the best angles of attack for him. Cass was taken into custody, and sent to jail for a month as the trials dragged on.

It was a close thing, but the court found her innocent on most of the more severe charges, and Cass was set free. Unfortunately, she now had something of a criminal record, which made job-hunting even harder for the already rather inept young woman.

With few options left and little to lose, she picked up an offer to be part of a team of heroes... hoping, perhaps, that this time she wouldn't fuck it up.

[Turnaround Amy]

Phai Collins

Name:
Phaidra “Phai” Colllins
Persona:
Variant
Appearance:

Goth Girl Hero

Age:
19

Archetype:
Gifted
Power set:
(1)Self-Gravity Manipulation:
Phai can manipulate her own gravitation in one of three ways at a time; reduced, increased, or directionally altered. When she alters her own gravitation it remains in that state for roughly 20 minutes, with an additional five minutes tacked onto the end where she slowly readjusts to normal gravity.

(1)Spheres of Altered Gravity:
Phai can create a small sphere of about 5 cubic feet wherein gravity is altered in one of three ways; directionally altered, reduced, or increased. If she choses not to manipulate her own gravitational field she can create two spheres or create one sphere of about 10 cubic feet. Once created the spheres remain in place for about an hour, after which Phai cannot create another new sphere for about 30 minutes.

Power weaknesses:

Conscious thought: Phai’s hold on gravity disappears when she is no longer fully conscious.

Flipping & Locking: When Phai is tired from overusing her powers if she loses focus- usually due to fear or mind altering substances, her gravitational powers do what she refers to as a flip and lock. When this occurs any sphere she has created disappears and her own gravity field goes out of whack, flipping to the opposite of whatever state it was in before and increasing in magnitude. If she was reducing to gain buoyancy it increases and she gets stuck to the floor, if she was increasing to hold her ground she starts to float away. To make matters worse, when this happens the affect locks and she remains in the new gravitational state until she passes out.

Origin Story:
Phai is the most recent in a long line of gravitational manipulation supers. Super villains. Her dad went bad when her mom was killed in the crossfire of a hero vs. villain brawl, her grandmother went bad when funds got too tight and nobody wanted to hire her, and her great-grandfather was by all accounts just naturally a dick. Death, destruction, and hilarious failures is the legacy of her family. Great grandpa sucked a small town into a black hole and then forgot to turn it off before gloating over it to the superhero he was fighting and sucked himself into it as well; ending the destruction with his death. Grandma Amoret had stolen a valuable good from a city in each state and was going strong till she mixed up her marks, tried to rob a super genius, and was rocketed into outer space. Phai’s dad did what every gravity manipulator dreams of and managed to find a way to maintain his alterations when unconscious. From there he went onto terrorize the countryside, finding supers and trapping them in permanent inescapable spheres of altered gravity. For about a day. Then, overjoyed with his success, he got drunk, got attacked, flipped and locked. Now he’s locked up in a top notch prison in Mercury City stuck floating in a constant state of reduced gravity.

Honestly, Phai couldn’t be happier that her dad’s in jail. For one thing, it keeps him out of trouble and it means that she can see him regularly- During visitation hours once a month when she has the cash to catch a bus to Mercury. Plus she’s not on board with the whole villain thing, because to her it doesn’t make sense. Not only has it never ended well, it just doesn’t feel good. For the sake of continuation of the species humans evolved to be altruistic towards one another, so doing good feels good. Which is what Phai tells people who want to know what the goth girl from a family of super villains is doing trying to be a hero.

Phai’s dad got locked up when she was twelve, back when she hadn’t yet developed the family talent. She went to live with her non-powered aunt and uncle and her fourteen year old twin cousins Mark and Peter. Her Cousins developed their powers when they were seventeen and promptly ran away, with the full approval of their parents, to pursue super villainy. Phai developed hers the next year, when she was sixteen, on an unfortunately bad day. Full of stress and lacking any understanding of how her powers worked she flipped and locked into reduction on her first day while she was outside. Coming from a long line of evil murderers and thieves doesn’t really give anyone the inclination to help you out and Phai was left to drift towards space for hours as she tried desperately, and unsuccessfully, to knock herself out before she got too high. Luckily for Phai, after she conked out due to lack of Oxegyn and started to plummet back to earth a B-list super who was trying to get the hang of flight came by and rescued her from the fall. She went by the super name Phantasma and Phai was absolutely enamored with her.

Phantasma agreed to take Phai on as sidekick, much to the disappointment of her Aunt and Uncle. The year she spent with Phantasma was the best of Phai’s life. Sure she wasn’t the best sidekick, but she always did the right thing and she tried hard. Then she got distracted, made the wrong sphere when trying to stop a bullet and got Phantasma killed. What followed was an onerous couple of months of trials, which ended when her cousins, now going by the names Condense & Augment, showed up in town, and all charges and accusations of murder were mysteriously dropped. Her cousins expected her to give up the hero thing after that and join them, but she disagreed. That said, she could no more hurt her cousins, for moral reasons as well as the simple fact that they are far better at controlling their powers than her, than they could hurt her, their baby cousin/ adopted sister who they’d always looked out for. They agreed on a solution to the predicament, they split cities. Phai got Dodgeville and her Cousins got Mercury. Phai could visit Mercury to see her dad once a month, provided she didn’t go out of her way to try and do well while she was there, and her cousins could visit Dodgeville to see their parents once a month provided they didn’t go out of their way to commit crimes while they were there.

These days Phai is kind of a neighborhood hero, trying to do the best she can to help out locally despite the fact that no one on either side of the law wants anything to do with her. The Slight Heroics team is a dream come true for Phai, who is happy to have been recruited for a legitimate organization even if it was because of just how unlikely it is that she’ll be a successful hero.

[Shorticus]

Raptora

Name: Jessica
Persona: Raptora AKA Clever Girl
Appearance:

Raptor Form

Jessica is a genetically enhanced clone that can turn into a motherfriggin' raptor. Thanks to being imbued with supersoldier DNA, she stands about four feet tall in her dinosaur form and has similar proportions to a real life velociraptor.

Human Form

In her human form, some reptilian traits are definitely still noticeable. Her eyes are slit-shaped and golden - clearly not human - and she has some bright scales scattered about parts of her body, including her face. She also has feathers sprouting from her back in a few places, but she wears shirts so that's not very visible. She stands about 6'2 and has an athletic build.

Age: 22 (physically), 3 (since coming out of a tube)
Archetype: Construct (Clone)
Power set:
Raptor Form (2 points) - Raptora can turn into an oversized, majestic, man-eating velociraptor! While in in raptor form she is faster, stronger, has better senses, and is less capable of doing things that require thumbs. (Not that she doesn't try. Actually, she prefers being in her raptor form to her human form. She's petitioned several cell phone companies for raptor-friendly smart phones.)

Origin Story: A cunning B-List supervillain in Brazil, Capitão Caos (Captain Chaos), managed to get his hands on some supersoldier DNA. His instinct, of course, was to merge it with raptor DNA (which he had to go out of his way to steal). This resulted in him creating an army of super smart, super big, super dangerous clones. Clones that turned into superpowered raptors. Jessica was one of these, and was Captain Chaos's personal favorite - but, like all the other clones, was treated like an animal by her creator.

Captain Chaos controlled his shapeshifting army with mind-controlling collars and used them to ravage the countryside. It took superheroic intervention to put them down, and they had no qualms with killing the raptors they found. It wasn't until one of them accidentally knocked off Jessica's mind controlling collar that it became evident the creatures they were killing were sentient and actually pretty much humans. After a stunned, mortified pause and a lot of explanation, the superheroes then set about freeing the few remaining clones there were, and Captain Chaos was taken into Brazilian custody.

The clones were introduced to human society, and most of them decided to stay in Brazil. A few moved to the United States to take up peaceful existences, and others chose to go live in the rainforests in raptor form (it just "felt natural" to them). Jessica, however, relished both the excitement of the hunt and all the cool modern stuff those superheroes had, so she snuck onto the superheroes' boat back to the United States and decided to try doing this "Hero" thing herself.

Well, it's difficult to be a superhero when you fight in front of hapless bystanders in the form of a man-eating dinosaur. Especially when you bite a bad guy and rip off meaty bits. Let's leave it at that.

Jessica found herself secreted away to a government laboratory for study and might have remained there all her life if not for the timely intervention of Mr. Merlovich. He had her released and then offered her a place on his team of superheroes. Emboldened by his generosity, Jessica accepted his offer, and she's ready to fight tooth and claw for justice.

When she's not playing video games, that is. Or checking her Facebook page. Yeah. She's gotten really comfortable in the modern world. She likes techno, jazz, hip-hop, and everything in between. She's also trilingual, speaking English, Portuguese, and Raptor.

[MachineSoul]

RED

Name: Akira McCollough

Persona: RED

Appearance:

Suited up

Under the mask

Portions of Akria's organic frame had been replaced by artificial implants, the only "original" portions that remain are his torso and head. Even with the added material to his body, his short stature had only been modified with one inch (5'6" now); since they weigh as much as a natural limb, they didn't ruin his posture or any skin tissue near the implantation areas. His mixed heritage is evidenced by his visage, having jet black hair and a pair of black eyes bearing the trademark epicanthic fold; his thin, square jaw and thin nose help balancing his facial features in a not-hard-to-look-at young male.

Age: 25

Archetype:
Enhanced: His arms (starting from the glenohumeral joints) and his legs (from the tibiofemoral joints) have been replaced by low-grade implants that improved his mobility and force. Akira's capabilities increased with a remarkable margin compared to his physical prowess prior to reconstruction, even though the implants themselves are rather "bare bones" in composition. The bones are made of medical-grade titanium, the joints are rather crude in design and require lubrication to prevent eventual friction, but what really makes the new limbs special is the artificial musculature that not only make up for the lost tissue, they also prove to pack quite some strength in their anatomically-correct morphology. Carbon nanotubes take place for muscle fibers, which contract instantaneously to neurological input.

Another important advantage Akira has that all basic prosthetic limbs lack is the presence of synthetic proprioceptors lined through the nanotube fibers and crude tactile sensors in the tips of his fingers. He can "feel" where his limbs are, so he can coordinate them properly around his body, the sensors in the very tips of his fingers allow him to control his artificial fingers with more accuracy. The limbs require significant amounts of improvement, but it is a lot better than being completely crippled.

Power set:

• Strength - I - The aforementioned synthetic musculature's combination of structure, materials and layout allow for more laborious physical efforts. He definitely possesses uncommon strength, but it's nothing to write home about. His extensive training works in an uncanny synergy with the enhancements, as he is able to use them to their maximum capacity and achieve impressive stunts, his melee strikes can throw people off their feet (he can't really send them flying, though).
• Speed - I - With strength comes speed too, Akira always preferred flexibility and agility over bulk and brawn. His current enhancements don't really allow the same amount of flexibility an organic construct can, but they do not weigh him down at all.

Origin Story:
Born to a rather poor family, Akira had to grow through a rather tough childhood in which he spent most of his times to help his parents gain the very little amount of money on which they were forced to survive from day to day. Having no chance to achieve higher education, the child's only hope was to find himself a very easy, high-risk high-reward job when he would grow up; for that reason, his grandfather made sure to toughen up the runt with rigorous training drills once he had reached seven years of age.Through his adolescence, his teachings continued as the old man would relentlessly beat vicious self-defense reflexes and techniques into his grandson. Since it is custom for traditional martial arts to be built around a philosophy, Akira was also indoctrinated with a rather peculiar form of conduit which summed up to a simple ideal: to be invisible to the eyes of the world, strike in the most opportune moment and defend only when "revealed" to the opponent. Like any true youngling, he couldn't possibly wrap his head around how one could live such a life, but he found utility in this teaching in adulthood.

Given very little options, the eighteen-year-old chose to sign a contract with a private military company, the infamous Artemis Security Agency. It was quick, easy money, even though he had to endure a world of pain throughout boot camp and gain mental scars from the combat-intensive operations he conducted in warring third-world countries. But the blood-stained money he earned allowed for his family to move in a decent apartment and afford a normal lifestyle. Knowing that his family still suffered due to his choice of work, he wanted to resign as soon as he possibly could, to his contractor's disapproval; Akira was an obviously talented field agent, proving that his intuitive intelligence could tackle tasks through rather unorthodox, but highly effective methods of approach. For that reason, the head of ASA found it obligatory to rid Akira of his familial connections so that he could properly focus on his operations; once he found out about the atrocity done against him, Akira was left with no purpose, no cause to fight for. Therefore, he chose to end his life and deny his contractor's valuable asset by allowing himself to get blasted by an IED. To Akira's dismay, he was still alive.

The contractor made sure his most valuable human asset would keep working under his orders and immediately had his damaged limbs amputated and replaced, while finishing the paperwork that would include the agent in a special branch of operators fitted with cybernetic enhancements. Before his new limbs could receive some upgrades to better shield the artificial musculature, and hell knows what else ASA had in mind to insert into his remaining biological body, the bionic man swiftly escaped the poorly guarded facility. With nothing left to lose, he found a new purpose to his existence in his second chance to life: fight corruption, fight evil, fight against those who destroy lives for their own benefit. That is, at least, what he tells himself, to justify his raging need for revenge and closure.

[Foxxie]

Cody Guilford, AKA Skillshot

Name: Cody Guilford

Persona: Skillshot

Appearance: Tall, slim, and built like a modern day cowboy, complete with a light dusting of tan over his skin and an enviably rugged five o'clock shadow. His blonde hair tends towards the greasy side, his clothes border on disheveled, and he isn't much a fan of tight shirt collars or ties. Cody likes to be free to pursue his ambitions and his devil may care outward appearance really conveys it to a tee.

Age: 28

Archetype: Gifted

Power Set: Sphere Manipulation

1. Projectiles: Cody can create small balls of energy and scatter them, in a process similar to casting marbles. He can so far not produce a ball much larger than his fist, and even that takes more time than he'd like. He sticks to pinball-sized ones and relies on his accuracy and wits when using them, rather than attempting a brute force approach. He imagines they hurt when they hit, but the force at which he flings them means they don't get near close to bullet speed.

2. Force Fields: The biggest sphere Cody can make is what he likes to call a force field. For now, it's a rather thin shield and it wouldn't stand up against an explosion, more than likely, but it takes the brunt of physical attacks well and is big enough for one person. He usually uses it for himself, but it can be projected to nearby (very nearby) allies and objects. It's not instantaneous, so it's not much use for defending against surprise attacks. Cody has often wondered if the round, solid field could be propelled like one of his own weaponized spheres. He imagines that'd be fun.

Origin Story: Cody has always been in the business of disappointment. He was a kid who wasted all of his quarters at the pinball machines in every single arcade and pizza joint in town. His name was all over the city, in the form of initials: COG. Yeah, his initials spelled cog. Cody Owen Guilford. Nobody really seemed to care. Pinball was a dead art as far as most were concerned. People didn't understand the fascination he had with it. He played marbles, too, to better understand the physics of a collision. Marble hits a marble, the force changes direction, same principle applied to those trick banana bumpers on that one machine he hadn't mastered. He spent his teenage years practicing what he was best at.

He chose not to go to college. Not because he didn't want to, but because he really couldn't afford it and his grades weren't good enough to get him a scholarship. His parents were dirt broke at that time in his life, and he'd never been one for saving. Truth be told, he wasn't that heartbroken. Being told to fit into a mold like the universities wanted you to would be quite a drag.

Funnily enough, he decided to take some time and enlist in the army. It'd get him paid, it was steady work that provided a change of scenery, and he'd always been a pretty athletic guy, so he thought he'd be cut out perfectly for the work. Turns out, the structure was good for him. Basic training hadn't shown him to particularly strong in any one area, and he seemed more interested in how the weapons and humvees were made rather than using them. So, he was shipped off to mechanical training and became a weapons mechanic, hanging around the various bases he was shipped to, making repairs to guns and double checking the explosives. He shuffled across the US, served a few months abroad to quell a civil war (which the army quickly withdrew from), finally ending up in Germany and England for two years a piece. It was during his combat tour that he discovered he could erect an odd, spherical shield around himself. It was also then that the army decided they no longer needed him out there. He elected to stay on in England for a few years more, having become quite enamored of the weather and having grown fond of his coworkers. They never accidentally discharged bullets at him. It was a welcome change.

He returned to American soil at the age of twenty-six, settling back into Dodgeville after several years of feeling productive and having a job. He'd seen enough of combat to know that he could never risk going back, potentially having to be a real soldier. Cody was back to being aimless. He fixed cars now. It was there that he met Jamie, and he eventually moved in with him and revealed to the fellow young man that he had some sort of power. With Jamie's guidance, Cody began to test out various aspects of the power. He riddled the wall of their bedroom with pockmarks and Jamie didn't even seem to mind. Or he never said. Cody couldn't be sure. Even the mornings after they had sex, he still could never really read what his roommate had on his mind.

The two lived comfortably for a little over a year, with Cody picking up the spare quarters around the garage to brush up his skills at his old hobby at the only pinball machine left in the city. Unfortunately, it was in the seediest part of the already dismal city, and it always took him forever to get home. Jamie offered to pick him up one night, and when Cody got in the car with him, he was struck by a feeling. He couldn't pinpoint it. Sirens wailed in front of them and a van, one, he later found out, that was being driven by some bankrobbers, appeared seemingly out of nowhere and rammed into them. Cody tried to put up a force field for them, but it only managed to cover himself. Jamie died almost instantly in the head-on collision, and Cody stopped showing up for work. Stopped being seen almost entirely.

He was afraid of his powers. Frankly, he was kinda afraid of everything. But now, he thinks the city might have a use for someone like him. Someone who shoots energy marbles and is only really good at playing pinball, killing his lovers, and using a wrench. He feels like he owes it to Jamie, and, honestly, he was running out of places to find pocket change. Cody doesn't want to be a vigilante, one who broods and sulks and monologues. The death of Jamie still weighs on him, sure, but he is constantly reminded that it's his memories of the city and his desire for freedom to follow his own path that truly spurred him down this road.

[BCTheEntity]

The Grunt

Name: Steve. Nobody knows his last name, as he only ever responds to any name-related question with "I'm Steve!" and a dopey grin.

Persona: The Grunt. Not a persona picked by himself, for the above mentioned reasons.

Appearance:

Pale skin, accompanying a tall and somewhat muscular build, with black stringy hair and eyes left a cloudy blue through surgical scarring. Severe surgical alteration and staples left in his face and body after the fact have both left Steve looking like a real mess, a seemingly deliberate attempt to leave him incapable of finding proper employment. His clothing tends to be "whatever is given to him to wear", since his sense of fashion is adroitly lacking, and he rarely takes the initiative in finding his own clothes. However, he will almost always put on his favourite leather jacket with a blue-and-green "HC" symbol on the back over whatever he's wearing, the only piece of clothing he was left with after he was thrown out into the streets.

Age: 28

Archetype: Gifted

Power set:

Resistance I - Steve is far more durable than the average human being, capable of taking a lot of damage without falling. Whilst a bullet or strong enough laser blast will put him down nearly as readily as anyone else, the fists of the average human being can be weathered for an extended period of time, and even melee weapons won't do too much damage to him without sufficient force behind them.

Escalating Strength I - Steve normally only possesses a relatively average degree of strength, being able to exert about as much force as the average human. However, when provoked sufficiently, he enters a state of rage that greatly increases his strength on the spot [roughly halfway between average human strength and a standard Strength empowered being of the same level], and further increases it as he continues to get more angry even beyond similarly-empowered individuals [up to double the force exerted by a standard Strength empowered being], the state typically only dissipating once the object or individual who has drawn his ire is beaten into the ground.

Weaknesses - There's no getting around it: Steve is mentally disabled. Originally only mildly inconvenient for him, it has since been exarcerbated to a rather notable degree; whilst he can still function to some extent, he is very unlikely to ever achieve the full cognitive ability that a normal human adult possesses, and it means that his strategies rarely extend beyond "lumber over to the person hitting you, and hit them until they stop hitting you", never mind the day-to-day difficulties of life in general. Additionally, whilst his rage state can generally put him at a greater level of strength than a super of similar power to him, he starts off significantly weaker than the set strength levels of other strong supers, so he can be subdued before then if he hasn't yet gotten too mad; and even if he has gotten angry enough to boost his strength, said anger only further reduces his strategic abilities. Lastly, of course, while capable of shrugging off low-level magical or telekinetic assaults the same way he resists physical hits, he has no particular resistance to attacks against his mind, and is arguably less capable in that regard than a normal human given his disability, so supernatural persuasion such as mind control can quite handily turn him against his allies without much effort.

Origin Story: Steve was born with a somewhat special mind. Which is to say, he was possessed of very mild mental disability, though admittedly nothing too restrictive. He's not sure what the exact diagnosis was, because his parents never told him, but he was always told that he could get through it and become a better man for it, and so he always kept a positive outlook on life even when things got difficult. He'd always been quite thick-skinned, as his teachers said, though he only figured out that this was also meant literally when he got into a fight with a school bully at the age of nine. His ability to gradually increase his strength only arose in his teenage years, first showing when another bully tried to insult him, and he accidentally broke the bully's ribs with a single punch to the chest; a good thing this was, for he had only recently gotten better at controlling his emotions, a trait which would continue to plague him for a while yet. Against all odds, however, his grades throughout schooling were quite decent indeed, and he even succeeded in entering a fairly good job for his condition, which he retained up until the age of 27, having decided that superheroing wasn't for him.

This is when catastrophe shattered Steve's life. He found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, and was captured by the goons of a B-class villain named Headcase, a man who had separated his overlarge brain from his body, and yet continued to live in spite of this. Obsessed with the brains of other supers, he decided that Steve would be the perfect base for a loyal henchman, to produce clone soldiers smarter than Steve yet possessed of similar emotional traits and enhanced powers by comparison, all modified in favour of Headcase himself. And of course, to acquire the necessary gene sequences and thought patterns, Headcase took out pieces of Steve's brain whilst he was still conscious, scarring him for life and worsening his retardation ever more significantly. The scientist even went to the trouble of surgically altering Steve's face multiple times and leaving in a great many staples to the point of irremovability even as infection set in, seemingly just because he wanted him to suffer.

Eventually, Headcase's experiments came to a conclusion, and Steve was thrown out into the streets with nothing more than a spare leather jacket, the reason cited as "the cretin's useless to me now". Indeed, what remained of the man who had once been present in Steve's body was traumatised by the whole process, remaining hospitalised for several months before the doctors even considered letting him leave, and even after the fact of his healing, he was left unable to perform tasks that had once been simple, and found that nobody really wanted to talk to people with ruined faces full of medical staples. Trying to remain upbeat even as depression began to set in, it was Steve's new social helper who suggested that he take up the business of heroism, and in turn who belittled the suggestion that the only reason to put Steve into heroism was to stop him becoming a villain when asked by a more astute-minded individual. With no other realistic options, and perhaps somewhat convinced that the prospect was enthralling by the social worker in question, Steve decided to put his powers to good use, and signed up to join a new group of small-time heroes called the Slight Heroics, with the idea to help reform the city of Dodgeville one crook at a time.

[FantasyChic]

Mirage

Name:

Tiffany Rivers

Persona:

Mirage

Appearance:

Tiffany stands at 5'10''. She has a slender frame. Her long red hair is usually unerneath her white headband. Her superhero outfit is much like her stage outfit, which is a white shirt, black jacket on top. Black bottoms and fishnet stockings, black high heels, and her traditional white scarf around her neck. She carries a standard magic wand, but that's mainly for show.

Age:

26

Archetype:

Magic

Power Set:

Illusion Magic
(1)Illusion Manipulation: Tiffany can generate illusions that can be seen/heard/touched/etc. These range from stuff for her magic acts, such as rabbits and scarves, to various other things she can will. The illusions can be physically held and used. The illusions can't cause harm.

(1)Decoy Creation: Tiffany can create duplicates of herself that can move on their own. If a decoy were to be hit, they would dissapear. The illusion decoys themselves can hold created illusions, but can't pick up physical objects.

Origin Story:

All the worlds a stage. At least that's what Tiffany sees it as. Having been on many stages in her life, she knows what it takes to make it in the world of showbiz. The journey hasn't been easy. She has been called a hack, a fake, as well as a few other choice words a lady shouldn't hear. Her magic has been called flashy and fantastic, but she has been continuously boo'd off stage for doing simple acts.

If only they knew.

Tiffany looked up to her father, a magician much like her, but more powerful. Magic ran in their family and her father was a famous magician who toured the world. She had stars in her eyes from a very young age, hoping to be just like her father when she got older. Though she admired her father, her father didn't value his daughter much and didn't support her efforts to be a magician. He was hardly ever home, and most of the time the only way she heard from him was a letter from some city he visited.

Tiffany didn't care. She practiced her craft. She performed in talent shows, in community theater performances, even in the park to pick up some change. Her audiences thought her magic was amazing, especially from someone so young. Constantly asked how she managed to create all the things she made, she would give the time old phrase: "A magician never reveals her secrets."

As she got older, Tiffany left to make a name for herself. She auditioned for various venues that housed her father, as well as other acts, and was subsequently denied. She was told that magic was a dying act, no one wanted to see it anymore. They especially didn't want to see a woman magician, as most men did magic acts. Stick to being the beautiful assistant, she was told.

She came to Dodgeville with nothing and landed a gig performing on stage in a rundown venue that barely had anyone attend. It wasn't pretty and glamorous, but it was a start.

Tiffany never considered herself a hero. She didn't think her powers were anything of value. It wasn't until she was asked to join a specially designed team of "heroes" that she decided that this might be the only way to show what she can do.

[Bright_Ops]

Gutter

Name: Gutter (Formally Jacob Brown)

Persona: Gutter

Appearance:

(Note, instead of a pair of blades he wields a pair of tonfa's instead.) Gutter is neither cute nor cuddly due to the mutations that he has undergone. In fact, his appearance is damn right scary and it isn't strange for him to have to run away because someone called the cops or a super on the 'monster' they saw stalking down the street.

Age: 20

Archetype: Mutant (Gifted)

Power set:
Speedy Rat (1 Point): In a world were the normal citizens are prone to calling local authorities just because your walking down the street, being fast on your feet is a must; The alternative is to be arrested, shot or forced into becoming the villian that the world believes you to be to survive.

Sneaky Rat (1 Point): The light is not a friend to those that the world fears; Only in shadows does the outcast find acceptance and peace.

Origin Story:
Jacob Brown was once an ordinary if somewhat blessed person; He grew up in a loving family that could provide him with the basics required to live a happy life and become just about anything that he wanted to be if he had put his mind to it. He decided that he wished to follow in his father's footsteps and serve in the military from a very young age and when he was eighteen he enlisted as a chemical engineer (Basically a demo-man as he liked to tell people who asked him what he did).

When he was nineteen however, a villain by the name of Professor Manhattan (Named after the Manhattan Project) decided to test out his latest invention; A device that triggered the genetic potential of an entire town at once to unlock any 'gifts' in their genes. The idea was to use the device to create a large amount of gifted individuals at once and let the chaos of the sudden influx of supers cover his activities.

Jacob was one of the 'winners' of the Professor's lottery; Several painful hours of having his body twist and turn and change itself, he had gone from being a solder by the name of Jacob Brown to a rat like creature that barely stood at half the height that he had before. Horrified at what he had become, Jacob fled into the night and hid in the chaos.

The transformation shattered his mind somewhat, repressing much of his memories as a normal human. Abandoning the name Jacob in favor of the name Gutter, the newly born Gutter was trying to work out what he wanted to do with himself when he overheard a woman screaming nearby; A woman who was currently being suspended in the air by one of the new 'gifted' running around, a very unfriendly, hungry look in his eyes.

Unwilling to let what was about to happen take place, Gutter jumped on the man's back and choked him out, freeing the woman and allowing her to flee untouched. Gutter didn't exactly know why, but saving that woman made him feel good; Real good. While that woman was the first person he saved that night, she wasn't the last.

Gutter knew what he wanted to do with his life now. Such a shame that normal people made it so hard...

[unpronounceable]

TonyCrea

Name: Tony Crea, 'Wiseguy'
Persona: The Suit
Appearance:

Age: 54
Archetype: Specialist
Power set:
- (1) Eyes for Detail:
Whether you're playing poker, or cleaning a house, or trying to stop a maniac who can throw cars, the details matter. Tony learned that early on in his career, and he's been honing his eyes since then, just to make sure the slightest glimpses don't get past him. It lets him do parlor tricks like spot cards as they're dealt, or find the bulge of a gun in a fat mans' coat. Small things, or things that appear for a fraction of a second don't elude him as much as they would any other person.

- (1) Surgeons Hand for Shooting:
The other thing he's practiced from the beginning of his career, was shooting things. It's a remarkably useful skill when you are in the business of 'Enforcing'. To set himself apart from the other mooks in his syndicate, (who couldn't hit the broad side of a barn), he practiced shooting until he was absolutely sure he could put a bullet where he wanted it. It's the sort of thing that comes in handy when you're trying to shoot people at the slightly-less-than-dead amounts demanded by his boss.

Origin Story:
Tony joined a crime syndicate when he was just another teen in Dodgeville, and eventually became a 'muscle'.
An uncle of his was kind of a big deal in The Family, and Tony's school life was going south really quickly, as he got in one fight after another. This uncle wasn't going to let Tony's energy go to waste getting roughed up for no good reason, so said uncle put him to work as an errand boy to keep him out of trouble. In a way, it worked. The Family was a crime syndicate that dealt in every vice imaginable on it's little piece of turf, but it also had a fair sense of work ethic drilled into it's members. After a bit of time and discipline, Tony went from being a testy little brat to the most meticulous enforcer for The Family. Even after dropping from school.

With a lot of hard work, and a good amount of luck, Tony rose in the ranks over the next few decades of his life. Superheros went and came to challenge The Family, which was par for the course in Dodgeville. None of them ever managed to stamp out The Family completely, though a few came close. Tony got used to fighting them, even the really nasty ones who didn't really care much for the life of a mook like him.
Thankfully, none of them managed to kill him before he reached retirement age. None of them managed to catch him, either. It was all about him being cautious, paying attention to what the Supers could do, and what they couldn't.

It was what he called 'The Easy Life'. Booze, Cigarettes, and gambling, with a bit of harmless killing and extortion on the side.
He never figured there was anything wrong with it. It was just the way things were, right?

One day, they changed his boss rather forcibly. The Boss had a brother with ambition and ricin, and said boss promptly found himself staring at the inside of a pine box. The brother kept the part about ricin a secret, and took over business, whereupon things went very badly very quickly. The rules the old boss laid down were broken. Lines were crossed. The Family went after people who had been off-limits before.

Superheroes, for one, were not people The Family was ever supposed to actually kill. Neither was their family, if you could find them.
It was escalation to a great deal more violence than The Family would ever prefer to deal with.
The Old Boss knew it was a bad idea to hold a grudge with people who could punch holes in concrete and whatnot.
It was better to be diplomatic, stay under the radar, and find bigger fish for them to fry. And scare them off if they kept trying to interfere with business.

So, Tony, finding the new boss rather disagreeable, and the circumstances of his promotion questionable, took matters into his own hands.
He traced the source of the ricin back to said new boss, and did something he thought was fairly reasonable at the time; Shoot him to death.

Having violently lost any sort of leadership, The Family splintered off soon after into several different groups, while Tony himself decided to find a new identity and retire quietly. He was 38 at the time. He moved out of town, and found himself a job as a prop for a small casino. He kept his gun, and practiced with it just enough to avoid getting rusty.

Quietly fading into obscurity, he once or twice tried going back to Dodgeville to make amends for what he did. Not the shooting of his boss, he thought that was pretty righteous all things considered, but rather all of the stuff before that. None of that was very nice either. The killing, the threatening, the supplying of narcotics to people who couldn't say no if you held a gun their head, and so on.

Heroes had it right, he realized, but he was just a guy. He alone couldn't hope to make a dent in Dodgeville. Every time he tried, he found himself reeling and feeling just how past his prime he was.

Then he got word of a billionaire building a team of odd talent, trying to make a difference. This got Tony interested. This was his chance, he figured, to make something happen. So he picked up the offer, and there was simply simply no way he would refuse.

[Muffinator]

Junkyard Joe

Name: Joseph Johnson
Persona: Junkyard Joe
Appearance:

Age: Twenty Eight
Archetype: Genius
Power set:

• Intelligeniosity (2) - Joe's intelligence progressively expands with no real effort. The influx of knowledge and ingenuity within his mind knows no bounds. To put it in Joe's own words, "I'm black McGuyver. Totally too smart for ma own pants."

Origin Story:

Joseph Johnson was an individual with an unfortunate past. Cliche as it may sound, he was born in an impoverished family who lived in the slums of New York where drugs, domestic violence, alchohol, and debt were overflowing; inevitably, Joe eventually succumbed to such a lifestyle. For sometime, the responsibity to provide for their family fell upon Joe and his siblings. With no educational background or credentials whatsoever, they were left with no choice but to turn to a life of crime. Petty thievery was the name of their game. Aside from the practical advantages it brought Joe and his siblings, robbery and theft introduced to them a sensation they had never felt before. Deprived of any form of excitement, they quickly got addicted to the high given to them by illegal activities, but this was all temporary. Within the span of five years, tragedy after tragedy had struck Joe's life. His father had suddenly vanished, but they were aware that this was probably related to his debt to the mafia. This drove his mother to depression and overuse of various drugs; she had died a month after due to an overdose. His younger siblings were taken into custody by social services and he never saw them again. Joe was left with Jeff, his elder brother. The two had fled to the streets, where they continued their life of felonies and unlawfulness. Although considered to be low-class thugs, they eventually attracted the attention of the authorities; they were pursued as the jobs they had taken part of had become more henious and severe. Armed robbery, battery, assault, arson, and even murder to name a few. It was a bit too late, but Jeff had realized the error in their way of living and felt solely responsible for the kind of man Joe turned out to be. Wanting to atone for his sins and prevent Joe's life from spiraling deeper into depravity, he had turned himself in. Taking the blame for all of their crimes and pleading guilty, Jeff was immediately sent to prison, to live out the rest of his life. Joe didn't want to put his brother's sacrifice to waste and decided to turn over a new leaf. However, after being informed of his brother's death by the hands of several inmates, Joe's world had collapsed.

Losing the last thing he held dear to him, Joe decided that apathy was the only thing he had left to share to the world. Homeless and unemployed, he simply wandered the streets of New York for years, living off whatever he could find. At this point, he was useless to society and was simply a burden. He was insignificant, dispensable, and had no value to those around him. For all these reasons, he was one of many who were abducted by an unknown organization who had needed human subjects to test on. An immeasurable amount of drugs along with a battery of torture-like procedures had left Joe a husk of his former self. Aphasic and immobile, he was basically a vegetable and was no longer a viable guinea pig to his captors. His crippled body was disposed off at a junkyard in Dodgeville. Being buried by mounds of scrap was how Joe's life was about to end. Or so most thought. Through some twist of fate, a miracle had happened. Beneath the pile of trash and debris, emerged Joe, who was full of vigor and definitely not dead. He had no clue on how he survived, but in reality, the pseudocoma-like state he was in was a mere cummulative side-effect of the various tests conducted on him and substances jammed into his body. Along with this, another adverse reaction was the hyperstimulation of select segments of his brain. Basically, concepts and ideas were randomly filling his mind and new information was easily and readily absorbed. His eccentric personality and inventions - that were built with nothing but his hands and anything that he could find - led the Slightly Heroic Incorporation to him. He was subsequently recruited into their ranks; the only thing he asked for return was a chimp that he later named Jimbo.