Jane blinked for a moment, then swiftly stood up. "Wh-- Excuse me," he blurted out, hoisting his weapon onto his shoulder, "who the hell are you?"
It was, he thought, a perfectly legitimate question. But there was a certain tremor in his voice as he asked it. Maybe no one noticed that tremor, but he did. He remembered a time when the tremor was not there. He remembered soaring through the desert skies, a lifetime ago, and he faltered. But he tried, and he tried damn hard, not to anyone see it. Hopefully, the forcefullness of the question and the fact that he wielded a rocket launcher while he said it would have to carry him through. Granted, the rocket launcher was harmless, but if this person really wasn't Junko, then he didn't know that.
Jane panted heavily, glancing around at the again-lifeless mannequins, then shivered and lowered his weapon. "...Son of a bitch," he muttered, lowering his weapon slowly. "I hate magic so much."
And that was apparently all he had to say on the subject. He slowly trudged over the sidewalk, sat down and rested his forehead in the palms of his hands. He set his weapon down next to him, sighed heavily and just slumped down, with nothing more to contribute for the moment.
Gift: Jeremy has the ability to teleport his arms away from himself and move them independently of his body. This ability does not affect any other part of his body, and he can only teleport his arms within his line of sight.
Loyalty: Wanderer
Description: Jeremy is a fair-skinned, blonde-haired man. He's fairly muscular man from the waist up, and clearly tries very hard to keep himself in good shape. This isn't always easy, considering that he's confined to a wheelchair. The wheelchair is adorned with Overreach's chosen nickname, but that's hidden beneath a complex, removable gillysuit-esque stealth cover that Jeremy rigged up after the bright red fiery text that screamed his name drew some unnecessary attention.
Personality: Jeremy doesn't let things get to him -- or if he does, he doesn't let it show. He likes to think of himself as charming and clever, sort of a silver-tongued devil. Public opinion on this is mixed at best.
Skills: -Jeremy puts a lot of effort and pride into his upper-body strength (for obvious reasons) and he isn't bad at hand-to-hand combat, either. -He likes to think of himself as a tinkerer. He can fix things. Eventually. He probably couldn't build a car from scratch, but he might be able to restore one if he had enough time. Probably. -He can defuse any situation with the right combination of wit, charm, and clever wordplay, or so he likes to think.
Weaknesses: -Jeremy is about as durable as a normal, squishy, non-powered human from before the Fall. If he were to, for example, get shot, he'd feel it. -He has no idea how to use a gun, or any other weapon for that matter. He's a bit overconfident, and he doesn't really have a plan most of the time. -Oh yeah, and did I mention he's paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair?
Brief History: Jeremy's been drifting into and out of all manner of towns for several years now. He fancies himself a Man With No Name, except for the fact that he clearly has one and it's Overreach and he won't let you forget it. Anyway, he's settled into a steady rhythm by now of rolling in to solve problems, make friends and enemies, and get into trouble before rolling on or getting kicked out.
If he's asked, he'll say that he got put in the chair in "an accident," but he doesn't like to talk about the specifics.
Age: Nobody knows, but they seem to be fairly young and agile.
Gender: Opinions are split.
Gift: The Conductor is capable of reproducing any music they have heard, seemingly from nowhere. This music can have various effects that would seem to fly in the face of reality, and can be used to temporarily give them various secondary superpowers during the length of the song, such as flame manipulation or flight. However, this is very taxing and often leaves The Conductor out of commission for at least a day. The more common and less risky use of The Conductor's power is what they call The Rhythm: Any who hear The Conductor's music and are not consciously shielded from its effects by The Conductor themselves are compelled to dance.
Loyalty: Mercenary
Description: The Conductor is a slender, agile young person, never seen without their concealing clothing and signature mask. Apart from that, nobody really knows.
Personality: The Conductor rarely speaks, preferring to communicate through simple gestures and, when the situation calls for it, interpretive dance. They are reserved and quiet, but carry themselves with a certain grace and class. Perhaps predictably, they move as if they're dancing to music that only they can hear.
Skills: - The Conductor is a crack shot with close-to-mid-range firearms, not that they necessarily need to be. You don't necessarily need to be shotgun master to kill somebody who's too busy dancing to get to cover. - Unsurprisingly, The Conductor is a talented musician, capable of playing a variety of instruments. This appears to be unrelated to their powers, but not everyone knows that. - Also unsurprisingly, The Conductor is very fast and agile, capable of not only dancing like a maniac on the floor, but also performing various parkour shenanigans to escape pursuers.
Weaknesses: - The particularly strong-willed have been known to resist The Conductor's compulsions in the past. - It's theorized that The Conductor wears a bulletproof vest beneath their coat, but beneath it they seem to be pretty fragile. - The Conductor's abilities effectively affect the fabric of reality around them. This has made them reliant on these powers and perhaps a bit overconfident.
Brief History: No one's quite sure where The Conductor came from, and The Conductor certainly isn't talking. But at some point, they must have taken the midnight train going anywhere and ended up in the ruins of New York. While there, the Conductor was set upon by The Firebrands, a vicious, violent gang who had laid claim to those broken streets. They attacked The Conductor in an attempt to steal the valuable violin they carried, thinking they might be able to sell it to some wealthy collector. The Conductor mesmerized them, took their weapons, and shot and killed every last one.
Since then, The Conductor has been wandering, taking on various contracts to kill or capture evasive or powerful people, and they've proved highly effective at it. After all, no matter how much flame you can channel or how many lasers you can shoot from your eyes, we are all slaves to The Rhythm.
Other: The Conductor's violin is of great personal significance to them. They will and have killed to protect it.
Okay, I'm throwing my hat into the ring. I originally came up with this character in a setting that was... a little heavier on the comic relief, but I want to use him anyway so screw it, here he is:
Full Name: Jeremy Jonah Jackson
Nicknames/Aliases: Overreach
Age: 24
Gender: Male
Gift: Jeremy has the ability to teleport his arms away from himself and move them independently of his body. This ability does not affect any other part of his body, and he can only teleport his arms within his line of sight.
Loyalty: Wanderer
Description: Jeremy is a fair-skinned, blonde-haired man. He's fairly muscular man from the waist up, and clearly tries very hard to keep himself in good shape. This isn't always easy, considering that he's confined to a wheelchair. The wheelchair is adorned with Overreach's chosen nickname, but that's hidden beneath a complex, removable gillysuit-esque stealth cover that Jeremy rigged up after the bright red fiery text that screamed his name drew some unnecessary attention.
Personality: Jeremy doesn't let things get to him -- or if he does, he doesn't let it show. He likes to think of himself as charming and clever, sort of a silver-tongued devil. Public opinion on this is mixed at best.
Skills: -Jeremy puts a lot of effort and pride into his upper-body strength (for obvious reasons) and he isn't bad at hand-to-hand combat, either. -He likes to think of himself as a tinkerer. He can fix things. Eventually. He probably couldn't build a car from scratch, but he might be able to restore one if he had enough time. Probably. -He can defuse any situation with the right combination of wit, charm, and clever wordplay, or so he likes to think.
Weaknesses: -Jeremy is about as durable as a normal, squishy, non-powered human from before the Fall. If he were to, for example, get shot, he'd feel it. -He has no idea how to use a gun, or any other weapon for that matter. He's a bit overconfident, and he doesn't really have a plan most of the time. -Oh yeah, and did I mention he's paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair?
Brief History: Jeremy's been drifting into and out of all manner of towns for several years now. He fancies himself a Man With No Name, except for the fact that he clearly has one and it's Overreach and he won't let you forget it. Anyway, he's settled into a steady rhythm by now of rolling in to solve problems, make friends and enemies, and get into trouble before rolling on or getting kicked out.
If he's asked, he'll say that he got put in the chair in "an accident," but he doesn't like to talk about the specifics.
I might be interested in this setting, but it seems... pretty grim. So, I have a relevant question: Which one of these factions would be least likely to straight-up kill the disabled?
Jane trudged through the jungle, silently staring at his feet, rocket launcher dangling from his shoulder. Eventually, he stumbled forwards into a long-dead city, looked around him and sighed again and slumped down, staring at his feet. He didn't know what he'd been expecting, but this only seemed fitting somehow.
As he was looking down at his feet and at the cracked asphalt beneath him, he didn't see the formless mass of color swirl overhead. He only became aware of what was happening when he heard the sounds of marching footsteps. He looked up, only to see a small squadron of mannequins marching towards them. He gasped, stumbled backwards, and raised his weapon, such as it was. "Oh God, you've got to be kidding me. INCOMING!"
Jane suddenly looked up and fixed the Harbinger with an annoyed stare. "What, did I imagine I would get bailed out of danger in the middle of a jungle by a hyperactive schoolgirl with questionably-colored hair and a rapid-fire smallarm and a talking animal? No. No, I did not."
That done, Jane hesitated for a moment, then sighed heavily and looked down at his feet. He reached behind him and pressed a hitherto-unseen button on his backpack, and the parachute suddenly zipped back inside with a soft thwump. That done, he absently kicked a dead branch lying on the forest floor, then began to trudge along slowly, slowly fishing rockets out of a pouch around his waist and loading them into his launcher. "...L-Let's just keep going. The kid's gonna need all the help she can get."
@BrokenPromise (OOC: Yeah, fair enough. To be honest, I didn't read the post too thoroughly and by the time I realized she hadn't actually shot him I was fully committed to the joke.)
Jane screamed a meaty, primal scream, throwing one arm in front of his face and randomly kicking his feet. In panic, he randomly fired his rocket launcher all around the jungle. One of them sailed off into the canopy, never to be seen again, another slammed harmlessly into the forest floor, and the third hit Junko square in the chest, which had about the same effect as getting hit by a baseball thrown underhand. Once the ammunition -- his and Junko's -- ran out, and with that, Jane blinked, slowly looked around for a moment, and then the branch holding him snapped. He yelped in shock and dropped his weapon, only to land harmlessly on top of the Harbinger.
"...oh," he eventually muttered. After a moment of heavy, exhausted breathing, he let out a long, low moan and flopped down onto the creature's back. "I'm getting too old for this."
