ravenDivinity

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

@ayzrules: Maybe while this gets settled out, our characters could perhaps meet?

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

Everyone's posted at least once now, right?

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

Finally got to post... it's not terribly long, but I tried to leave it open-ended for anyone else to join me.

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

14 March 2200.
Luther's ears were met with the soft whirr of the maglev monorail as it glided over the tracks. A distant-sounding, routine voice announced the ETA to the next station before fading into the sounds of news on the monorail radio: another protest in the neighboring district, a steady Martian wind, and incoming supplies from Earth. That day in March was as regular as all the others even if on some days the situation only seemed to grow worse. Luther's fingers scrolled through social media on his holotablet, and his eyes squinted past the morning sun's glare on the glass. Luther had contemplated driving his motorcycle to school instead, but he figured that he didn't require that level of privacy. He was just going to school anyway, and such an ordinary trip didn't warrant use of his bike.

'Would've been really badass though.'

And the air was full
Of various storms and saints
Parading in the streets
As the banks began to break...

The day dragged ever slowly on at school. Luther got through each class by stealing glances at boys in his classes, barely managing to stay awake, and idly doodling on his holotablet notes with a stylus pen. His eyes peeled the equations from the board at the front of the classroom, and in his eyes Luther saw the numbers resolved. The variables danced in his head, the equation balanced on his shoulders, and the graph drew itself. Luther observed the illusion as the product of his thoughts, swimming around his brain like a weird soup. His intellect had been like this for a little over a month now; Luther learned everything at a much quicker pace than he used to. If his teachers knew, the fact of it would really explain the sudden boost in performance. Luckily the boy didn't hog the airwaves with his voice, else they would have taken a shock and sent him to the genius school, or something stupid like that.

Mr. Salter, Luther's calculus teacher who was a short-haired blond in his 40s with crow's feet and a few wrinkles in his forehead, called on Luther just as the student was drifting to sleep. "Luther, can you solve this integral?"

Luther jolted awake suddenly and blinked to the typical chuckle of the class. He would've laughed too, if he wasn't the one who had fallen asleep. 'Shit.' He squinted at the problem scribbled on the screen: the definite integral of x squared times the natural logarithm of x from 0 to 1. Like lightspeed, Luther walked through the steps himself as if it were a cakewalk, and he arrived at the answer much faster than he would have before. When he had it figured, every eye in the classroom fixed itself on Luther and pointed at him like the sight of a rifle. "Uh... negative one-ninth."

Mr. Salter stared back at the calculator on his holotablet and tapped a few keys on the screen. "Mhm. That's right," the teacher confirmed by writing the answer on the board before flipping to the next slide.

Luther nearly breathed a sigh of relief.

The rest of the day went without a hitch. At lunch, Luther scanned over his friend Jacob from afar with a little blush; in physics, Luther breezed through the test over the law of conservation of momentum; and in English, he skimmed through the reading and the essay over it. The hours passed listlessly by as he made his way through the day, up to the moment he stepped on the monorail. The ride back home mirrored the ride to school, with the same idle activity on the monorail to the tune of its low hum, and he took his seat next to a friend of his, whom he chatted casually with. His friend left him too, and she hopped off the monorail car at the station just before his with a wave and a goodbye. It wasn't long before he also had to get off and walk home, and damn did he have a long walk ahead of him. It was maybe a block or so down the road from the station before Luther came upon a protest in front of a bank across the street.

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

@ayzrules: I was wondering the same thing. Luther is driving age, and his parents pitched in a good buck or two to buy him a motorcycle, but I'm wondering if they have mass transportation and if their public transportation is better than personal transportation.

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

@Sep: I'm going to make a post tonight, wasn't feeling it for the past week because I was sick with strep throat and busy with school, haha.

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

Luther Ulfsson

Name: Luther Ulfsson
Alias: N/A
Age: 17
Gender: Male

Appearance:

Image

Abilities:

An increase in the connections between neurons and the promotion of hippocampal neurogenesis in Luther's brain has caused Luther to develop hypercognition and enhanced intelligence. A heightened level of brain functioning has allowed him to accelerate cognitive processes like learning and understanding; thus, with effort, information, and motivation, Luther could effectively learn a new language or a new field in science over the period of a few days rather than over the course of a few years. On the other hand, Luther has become more susceptible to the symptoms of depression, anxiety, and headaches.

In addition to his hypercognition and enhanced intelligence, Luther now possesses localized control over water, including its solid and gaseous forms and phase changes to either state. He is limited solely to bodies of water which are within view and within 50 meters, approximately the length of an Olympic pool. This ability requires more focus as the distance increases to the furthest limit, and overexertion may affect areas outside of 50 meters with the immediate effect of losing consciousness for anywhere from 30 minutes to 1 hour. Luther can manipulate the closest and smallest bodies of water with little to no effort, but higher volumes of water in excess of 1 cubic meter become increasingly difficult to manage and also require higher levels of focus. The maximum volume of water which Luther may manipulate is 10 cubic meters. When Luther relinquishes control of a body of water, the water is no longer an isolated system. Bigger bodies of water take longer to change states, so it is more efficient to focus on a small surface area than it is to affect a large expanse.

Skills:

• Natural (but below genius) intellect
• Energetic, friendly personality
• Decent singer, high vocal range
• Skilled speaker and writer and adequate artist
• English and German speaker
• Highly emotional
• Witty, comedic

Flaws:

• Bad (but improving) temper
• Nearsighted
• Not very creative
• Not incredibly strong
• Low self-esteem
• Highly emotional
• Snarky, sarcastic

Background:

2182: Luther Ulfsson is born in New London on 7 July to working-class parents, William Ulfsson and Sonica Ulfsson (née Thomson).

2190: Luther is accepted into a program for gifted students.

2196: Luther starts secondary education with the goal of eventually doing scientific research and mathematics.

2197: Luther's mother starts work as a junior staffer for the Lunar Colony. That same year, Luther's father is diagnosed with cancer.

2198: Luther writes two opinion articles for the school newspaper on the unrest in New London.

2199: William Ulfsson's cancer goes into remission. A final operation removes the cancer entirely.

2200: Sonica Ulfsson returns to Mars from the Lunar Colony. The Quake occurs, and Luther begins exhibiting higher performance in school.

Sample Post:

14 February 2200.
The holotablet on the desk displayed integral calculus, complete with a graph, some variables, and an equation. A gentle, deft touch dragged information across the surface of the device, and an index finger wrote the calculations in a bright sky blue as an occupied mind worked further and further ahead. The graph slanted on the screen as Luther penned more work on the problem, and the graph eventually morphed to show a three-dimensional representation of his work so far. Variables changed at Luther's command, and terms of equations shifted past each other like tectonic plates. The tall, youthful brunet, who stooped over the desk, mumbled his computations, and wrote his answers with elegance and speed, swiped his finger in a circle around the last number and tapped into the next page of work. In a few more months, his time in secondary education would terminate, and Luther could proceed to university.

Hallowed halls, packed seminars, scientific license, and individual freedom awaited Luther Ulfsson, and he held the duty of carrying the family into the future. Perhaps he was beyond the transient period of gradeschool education, where everyone was forgettable including oneself and where social needs were not so easily met as they were deprived by both strict codes of conduct and illusory climates of condescension. Luther could feel his hand forced at any given moment, either by the prevailing authorities or by any imagined worry. But not so, at the university. Luther bided his time until then.

Luther took a peek at the new problem before him, and he wrinkled his nose. "Disgusting."

Grabbing his glass of water, possibly Mars' scarcest commodity, Luther stepped towards his room's window which faced north, and in the sky, he could discern the star Deneb and the moon Phobos. It was very obviously night out, but New London kept moving and shining. That fact reminded Luther of something he had read online once, a 200-year-old quote, but maybe it was irrelevant.

The people were not content with the way things were, and USF presence on Mars only increased in the past few months. Just that day, 4 people went missing without explanation, but time and time again, the people in charge maintained their story that they would 'look into it.' Luther swirled the water around in his glass, and shooting an armed glare at the liquid, it tensed into ice as if he had threatened to murder it. He let it change into a liquid again and repeated his little parlor trick. The first time he had done this, Luther was crying in his room just a week before, and his tears evaporated harmlessly the moment they dripped from his face. Neurotically, Luther continued the cycle over and over again as with every habit and trial in his life, but somehow, he felt something larger ahead.

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

@Sep: You post twice, I laugh twice. ;)

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

My man is done.
http://www.roleplayerguild.com/posts/3449457

Crisis Mars: Evolution [Super humans on Mars]

@Sep: That's exactly what I wanted feedback on. I already set limits on range and targeting, I'm thinking I might nerf it further by limiting it to simple hydro/cryokinesis, minus any scalding hot water. Thoughts?