Marvel Character Base: Magma (Amara Aquilla)
Name: Avery McKay (Wildfire)
Identity: Secret
Gender: F
Age: 19
Team: Magneto’s X-Men
Physical Description: Avery’s hooded green eyes sit under low, thick, arched eyebrows, in an oval face, with a slight cleft in her squared chin. Her snarky attitude often finds her forehead graced by her raised right eyebrow, usually accompanying the last word in a conversation. She has full lips, a peaked cupid’s bow, and her bottom lip is unproportionately too big, curving down towards her chin. Avery has high cheek bones that are softened by her face’s roundness, but are shown when she genuinely smiles.
Her ears are quite small, prompting comments when others take notice; her nose pleasantly placed and shaped, rounded with a straight bridge, and the slightest upturn at the end. She prefers to keep her chocolate brown hair cropped short, just above her shoulders, in an angular lob style, right-side parted, often trying to work with her hair’s natural waviness to give it a ‘chic’ look. However with training, fighting, and her hair’s cowlick stubbornness, it tends to be tied up, just long enough for a short, low, ponytail.
She stands 5 feet, 7 inches, at 140lbs, and has a curvy but visibly athletic figure - think MMA fighter. Since joining the X-Men she has been able to sculpt and tone her figure. Avery has inherited pale skin that would normally be prone to sunburn, but her powers negate this, and has a whisper of freckles under her eyes.
As it was her birthplace, Avery speaks in an Australian accent. She is of Scottish decent on her mother’s side (McKay), and is possibly Irish on her father’s side, as told by her mother.
Despite needing to always have perfectly liquid-lined eyes, and an ‘ocd thing’ with her unruly hair, Avery isn’t very girly and tends to be very casual and athletic with her style. A t-shirt or tank, tight jeans, sneakers or boots, and a hoodie or leather jacket tend to be her staple pieces - preferably in blue or black - when she’s not wearing her ‘super-suit’. Her costume is a similar style to many of the other X-Men’s, although it is mostly black, with some bright blue (she adamantly requested) and yellow colour blocks down her chest and back in a V-shape. She also wears boots, an ‘X’ belt, and tends to tie her hair up. In her Magma Form, her costume is specially made to withstand the heat, and she looks like one big walking flame.
Items/Weapons: I mean, she’s got nice arms. . . .Those guns, though.
Powers:Geokinesis: Avery can psionically control the movement of the tectonic plates within the Earth's crust within limited areas, around the radius of a few city blocks. Within this area she can create small or large earthquakes, and gaps for lava to emerge.
Pyrokinesis: She can create flames and project blasts of heat that do not contain any molten rock. She can also combined these flames with molten rock to create magma blasts which have a solid impact that can knock down a target. The highest level of heat that Avery can generate is believed to be at least 850° Fahrenheit or higher.
Geo-thermokinesis: Can psionically cause magma, or molten rock, from far beneath Earth's surface to rise up, forming miniature volcanoes. She can then telekinetically project this magma at targets.
Magma Form: When using her powers Avery’s body shines with intense light and gives off tremendous heat. Her hair seems ablaze and her eyes glow. Neither her own heat nor heat from any other known source can burn or otherwise harm her. Although Avery has triggered small earth tremors while not in her Magma Form, she has not yet mastered her full powers while in her ordinary human form. Her Magma Form, and contact with heat, as well as contact with the earth can heal her.
Skills:Avery is very street smart and resourceful from her childhood in multiple foster homes and on the streets. She is scrappy and good with her fists, her fighting style haphazard and rough, using whatever she can get her hands on. She has a good memory, and tends to remember or get the hang of something after learning it once.
Weaknesses:Avery's power is linked to her emotions - by losing her temper she can temporarily lose control of her powers. Which tends to be often.
Her power depends on her maintaining contact with the Earth. Prolonged distance from the Earth makes her feel ill, and she isn’t a fan of flying.
She is very stubborn and hot headed, which at best tends to get her into trouble with polite company, and at worst with her ass handed to her by a stronger opponent.
Personality:On the surface Avery seems detached, rude, angry and sarcastic. While her life experiences have made her somewhat jaded, when she’s finally open with someone she is goofy, witty, and enjoys in depth conversations. However, it takes a while to get to this point with her, as she is very wary with others.
Has a
‘fuck you, I’ll do it myself’ sort of take when it comes to things. Quite neat and tidy, and methodical. Stubborn as hell, is driven to finish things, and can get a bit ‘tunnel visioned’. Is introverted but can’t seem to stop herself from being outspoken, blunt, and opinionated on certain matters, which gets her into trouble. Known to back talk and swear often. Her brother Peter usually has to jump in to smooth things over.
Avery is smart and resourceful, often doing whatever needed to be done for her and Peter to survive. Avery and he are very close, being the only family she has. They share a strong bond not only in family and friendship, but in their powers too - as they are able to emotionally strengthen or negate each others powers. If you’re ‘in’ with her, she will be loyal to a fault. She is used to hard work and has had many odd jobs to get by, racking up snippets of odd knowledge and skills.
Origin: Being born a mutant, it was only a matter of time before her powers surfaced. It is suspected both her parents were elemental mutants as well. Her powers began showing soon after puberty, but were emotionally charged, sporadic, and uncontrollable. Because of her powers somewhat weak and erratic nature, she suspected but wasn’t fully aware of her mutant status until she was 16. Coming to her brothers defense in a fit of rage her powers fully emerged, burning and completely leveling the foster home they stayed in. If not stopped by her brothers own emerging hydrokinesis powers, she might have tried to level the whole neighborhood block.
Background History:Avery was born Aug 20, in Sydney, Australia, in a rather run-down suburb on the outskirts of the city. Born 13 minutes prior to her, was her twin brother
Peter, whom she is very close with.
Their father left before they were even born, and it’s hard to say whether he even knew they existed. Their mother, when not strung out on whatever blow she could get her hands on, would regale them with musings of their departed father. Although he was loved desperately by their poor mother, the information she was able to provide them was minimal at best: he enjoyed writing and traveling - which was
of course why he had to leave, but would
surely come back - and was a mutant like her, however somewhat more powerful then her own ability to make slushy water.
Later on in life, the twins heard rumors of a man in the Brotherhood, a man who was now dead, a man who could have possibly been their father. But, by then their time of wondering had passed.
Avery’s mother died of a broken heart and an overdose when she and her brother were 6. Wanting to finally connect with her grandchildren, and make amends with her daughter, their grandmother came forward to care for them. Avery would site the time with her grandmother as the best of her childhood. While taking care of 2 children financially was a struggle for their already burdened grandmother, she managed the best she could to provide a loving home with life’s basic essentials.
Tragedy struck however, when Avery and Peter were 12, in the form of brain cancer. Viciously attacking their once vibrant grandmother, she passed away quickly, unable to afford anything more than basic ‘comfort’ care, to possibly extend her time. The twins were now completely out of relatives, and a home.
Avery and her brother were then placed into foster care. Avery in turn sites this time in her life as her worst. Carted from foster home, to girls/boys homes, to shelters, Avery and her brother had been to them all. Often the twins were separated when placed in foster homes, leading them to constantly run away, so as to be together. But, even when they were able to be placed in a home together, their stay generally didn't last long.
While already jaded at a young age and puberty surfacing were tough enough, Avery and Peter were coming into their mutant powers, little did they know. Avery’s manifested earlier, being the hothead of the two - literally - and odd occurrences would follow them around. Lights blowing, houses shaking, other foster kids being burned, house fires, the list got longer and worse as the years went on. She wasn’t able to explain it, control it, or definitively say it was even her, but soon the twins had a reputation in the foster system that was hard to shake.
It wasn’t that she was inherently a bad child, in fact Avery had started out as a goofy, happy, insightful, and bright child - it was only now after years of life beating her down that she had become angry. Really angry. While Peter tried to be the most optimistic of the two, Avery’s anger and pessimism often got the best of her - the best of both of them in fact. Her emotions and surfacing powers cost them many fosters homes, and they were often placed in a different one every few months. That’s not to say Peter had no hand in their constant changing homes, as he too was struggling with his anger and the odd occurrences his powers created, and later his sexuality.
However, it wasn’t until their last home, that her slow build of power would become a full blown explosion. At the age of 16, Avery and her brother were placed in a home that was known for ‘getting kids into shape’, but little did the system know, or care, was that their methods were less than desirable. Furious and abusive, the Husband’s techniques to control Avery’s smart mouth and Peter’s defense of her, were more akin to Fight Club, and less to Mary Poppins’ means of parenting. The Wife, always an avid on looker to her husbands methods, was indulgent of him, while cold, distance, and an emotional terrorist to the twins.
This constant physical and mental attack was short lived however, with Avery finally having enough, her powers fully emerging in a terrifying display, after witnessing Peter being beaten for speaking out. Furious, her powers erupted the house in flames, lava bursting from the floor, a localized earthquake shaking everything around them - the constant barrage left the small home leveled by the end of it. If not stopped by her brothers own emerging hydrokinesis powers, she might have tried to level the whole neighborhood block. By sheer miracle, and her brother’s aid, their foster parents made it out of the wreckage alive.
However, the twins knew they could no longer stay there, or anywhere, and hit the streets, fending on their own for nearly a year. Approached by both the Brotherhood and the X-Men their path could have gone 2 completely different ways. Ultimately, knowing of the Brotherhoods reputation, Avery and Peter choose to accompany the X-Men to New York, thinking if nothing else they would be able to get back on their feet and start a new life. Never one to trust anyone, Avery figures if the team disappoints them like many others in their past, at least they’ll have a place to crash for a while. Her stubborn attitude is finally broken, when she finds there are real feelings of family and camaraderie between the members of the X-Men. She and Peter are able to build friendships and relationships, and decide to stay. Deep down, Avery wants to redeem herself for the things her uncontrollable powers have done, and knows helping the X-Men might be the way to do it.
Taking on the names of natural disasters, Avery and Peter (Wildfire and Tidal Wave respectively), hope they will be able to get a hold of their destructive powers, using them towards those who deserve it, to help the X-Men in the fight for good. They have stayed with the team ever since.
( Peter McKay aka Tidal Wave's powers are based on Morris Bench (Hydro-Man) >
marvel.wikia.com/wiki/Morris_Bench_%28.. )
