The Virtue of Villainy

Jays

Olives and Fear
Original poster
FOLKLORE MEMBER
Invitation Status
Posting Speed
  1. 1-3 posts per week
Writing Levels
  1. Prestige
Preferred Character Gender
  1. Male
  2. Primarily Prefer Male

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Sacramento, California, January 1st 2021

The force of the blast tore the city apart. Skyscrapers crumbled like towers of sand, city blocks vaporized in minutes. Millions died in a single breath. Millions more were distorted, stretched thin, broken down and reconstructed into things that were not wholly human.

The first Rift shattered the world in more ways than one. Its origin is unknown, as is every other Rift that followed. Some claimed the phenomenon to be natural, others man-made. Secret government experiment, terrorist attack, alien invasion, a thousand and one theories floated on the wind mattering not at all while the only important truth remained.

A new era of infinite, beautiful, terrible possibilities had arrived.
  • On New Year's Eve of 2021, the First Rift opened in Sacramento, California, United States. Reality cracked like glass, the force of it destroying most of the city and killing millions. The Rift hung in the sky for 2 hours, black as obsidian, black as a moonless night, then closed without any apparent cause or warning sign.

    The country, the entire world went into crisis at the face of what appeared to be the largest and most devastating terrorist attack in history. The state of emergency was quickly enacted. All were looking for someone to blame, all saved their outrage, horror and enmity just waiting for an enemy to finally be pointed out.

    It wasn't until the survivors started exhibiting unnatural reactions and abilities that the all knew there was more to the phenomenon than any terrorist attack could account for.

    We human, our psyche is full of wonderful things, beautiful things, terrible things. What would happen if they are unleashed, every dream, every ambition, every nightmare?

    The second Rift appeared in a small town in Romania. The third Manchester, England. And the fourth, and the fifth. These were smaller, sometimes even miniscule, barely detectable. The size and effect varies without predictable pattern. Reality itself seemed to be falling apart.

    The United States of America was devastated by the disaster. Social and economical stability vanished seemingly overnight, cultural and technological development stagnated as the country tried to recover. Trust in the institution was at an all time low, sparking riots, opposition and discontent in most major cities.

    Now, 5 years later, the spark of rebellion and anarchy had disappeared from the surface, but lingered in the bones and muscles of the country like cancer, devouring it from the inside. Perhaps if you close your eyes and pretend very hard, peace would appear at the tip of your fingers, like a tangible dream one can taste but never hold.
  • The exposure to the Rifts changes people in ways that even now can barely be understood.

    They are called Distortions, those altered. D.T.

    The tear in reality somehow blurs the boundary between the mental and the physical, manifesting distorted impressions, memories and desire in the real world, binding one's soul with the thing that was created.

    An orphan yearning for a family gained the ability to summon creatures that fulfil their every whim, making him feel wanted, making him feel loved. Killing those he disliked. Eventually the child is spoiled into an inhuman monster through no fault of their own, because who can blame a lonely child for wanting to be loved?

    A woman who survived a fire and scarred by it gained the ability to suck heat out of things with a touch, a furnace, a river, a human body. The horror in her face when she froze her husband's blood in his veins was of no consequence to the Rift who granted her wish to never be burned by fire again.

    A girl who was raped became something irresistible to men, exhaling temptation and sweating sex. One could argue that it was only self-defence when a fanged maw hidden beneath her dress ripped opened the men's guts and devoured their organs moments after they fell into bed. After all, she had been hurt before, so never again.

    D.T.s are not monsters by choice, not always. They make do with the cards they are dealt and the temptations that followed. One can blame the dealer, but never the players, for they are neither in control of the game nor the hand they held.

    But a smart man, a reasonable man always knew to fear the players for the things they had no choice but to become.
  • Sacramento, California
    January 2nd, 2021

    The scene of death and destruction stunned the world into silence. Search and rescue gathered thousands of survivors, spreading them through medical facilities in a hundred miles radius. For several weeks the hospitals were overworked, overpopulated and filled to the brim with trauma and injured patients. Within a week patients showed signs of Distortion, though in only limited and contained capacities. The first major accident happened on January 14th. The details are scarce as first account had since been removed and official records either altered or redacted. All survivor areas are quarantined by January 16th.

    January 19th, 2021

    There are reported sightings of Government agents and officials around hospital facilities containing survivors, many of which are questioned repeatedly and their files locked. A large number of survivors were seen escorted away, officially to more advanced facilities for fear of potential infectivity of suspected biochemical agent present at the Rift site. All records and accounts were, again, altered or removed.

    Minneapolis, Minnesota
    March 24th, 2021

    The Jackson Detention and Research Center was founded outside of Minneapolis. Few official records existed regarding the purpose of working of the Center, which was popularly believed to be the facility for detaining and studying Distortion.

    September 2nd, 2022

    The Jackson Detention and Research Center was burned to the ground. Reports of explosion, strange lights, unnatural phenomenon and a large number of individuals fleeing from the scene made it into several local newspaper but disappeared entirely after a single mention. No further detail could be found.

    A list of 47 names and pictures were passed down to law enforcement as top priority. Lethal force authorized. Until 2025, 24 names on the list had been confirmed deceased.

    Washington D.C.
    October 4th, 2026

    Election day drew near. Republicans candidate Harry Powell with an aggressive approach against D.T. attained great support from victims and sympathizers from across the country. Powell's Vice President, Daniel Mayhew had been the most vocal advocate for extreme policies against D.T. since his venture into politics in 2023.

    A disturbance near West Riverdale was reported to be a minor assault between two homeless men, nothing more. At 11:24 PM of the same day, an hour before said disturbance, a file was uploaded to a popular leak website regarding Daniel Mayhew. The file included a brief position as Executive Manager of one Jackson Detention and Research Center in Minnesota. The file stayed online for exactly 2 minutes before disappearing, gaining next to no attention. The next day marked the tragic passing of famous journalist and information activist Jim Davidson who was found ODed in his home.

    A few weeks later, a strange report of the sighting of one of the names on the 2022 list came into the 32nd Precinct. The sighting was said to be of James Morrison, a notorious D.T.. The report was dismissed out of hand.
  • Your character is a D.T., someone distorted by the Rift in reality. Your character is one of the first D.T.s, present at the First Rift in Sacramento, and was subsequently captured, tortured and experimented on in the Jackson Detention and Research Facility. Together with 47 others, your character broke out after a year and scattered to the wind, hiding from the government D.T. - hunting Special Force called the Vigil.

    Now, catching wind that the running Republican Vice President candidate was the Head of your prison, you have come to Washington D.C. under the call of James Morrison, a past acquaintance from Jackson.

    You are not a good person. Cruel, perhaps. A monster, even. Either of your own choice or twisted by your abilities it matters not, because you have come for only one thing that is, in every aspect of the concept, true justice. Vengeance.

    CHARACTER SHEET (no code this time either, I can't be bothered)

    Name/Nickname (every good villain has one)
    Age
    Gender
    Description and (optionally) character image - realistic art if you could. I will murder any anime image I see. For real. Fucking stop your thought right there Shiz. Yes you. Don't fucking do it. Just don't. I know you're thinking about it right now. Stop. Unless you're not even interested in this then good riddance I don't need u go away.

    Personality

    History - including the event, or at least sufficient reasoning for the manifestation of your ability. Also how you have avoided detection for the last 4 years, how you earn money, fake identity, that kind of thing. A single mention is enough.

    Distortion: Your ability. Must be tied to your backstory somehow, or even personality trait. Weave it tightly so that it is a distorted reflection of your character's psyche. That is the entire point. Ask me if you're not sure.

    There is no defining category or system for your ability, it can be anything.

    Limitation: However, your ability will need to have some sort of limitation to balance it out. What's good storytelling without flaws and weakness to make characters vulnerable and ultimately, relatable?




Tags: @Nemopedia @DayDreamer @SkittlesAndSpike
 
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Jaden Babic
Ghost
20~25 y/o
d.o.b. n/a
Female




DESCRIPTION
A long thin frame with essentially no curves and black clothes layered over each other to hide away any features that could give away her gender. The only thing that subtly tells the world Jaden is a female are her sharp, but rounded facial features, but only so for the careful onlooker. Her skin is extremely pale because of the lack of sun with a slight grayish tint in it, sharp and straight eyebrows and with eyes so dark the iris is barely visible makes her face rather plain to look at, compared to her shaved head and long mohawk.
PERSONALITY
Just like her distortion Jaden doesn't like to be known, preferring to keep to herself. Despite her reserved character she is rather easy to get along with, however, as she does crave for connection and relationships. She just prefers not to talk about herself, or share information about herself. It is one of the reasons why she dresses androgynous, liking the mystery of her gender being put to question. It is why she likes black, as the colour doesn't reveal anything about her as a character and as a person. The more she shrouds herself in mystery, the more effective her distortion becomes, she believes.

However, despite her reluctance to talk about herself she does have an interest in others. Observant as she is she is constantly people watching, enjoying exploring quirks and other little details that often go missing daily.
History
Jaden comes from a world of abuse. A life filled with addiction, violence and danger. Her parents were young, too young and conflicted to have a child, but they still had her. And while they tried to shield her from the rotten world she was born into they couldn't hide their own faults and their own abuses. Jaden didn't know better than that the world was filled with fumes and drinks that poisoned the body, but dulled the mind. She did know that she wanted to disappear from the world, however. The string of men her mother saw, the hard hands of her father, the strong smell that always seemed to make them worse as people. Jaden wished to escape them all.

So, when the first rift opened a power awakened within Jaden. A power that truly had her and the world disappear for a while, contained to an area. Though not exactly what she had wished for it helped her in a way. It was also what turned against her when her parents realised what this could mean for her.

Within the Jackson Detention and Research Facility Jaden found that there was even more pain found there. This time pain that was actually aimed at her. Still young, just a mere teen, Jaden was devastated to find the world so cruel. However, she managed to escape quickly enough with 47 others. The tests run on Jaden had made the female understand how far her power could reach and this helped her to employ her distortion in other useful ways. Once out of the Facility she jumped into the underground world, deciding that she wasn't to fight fate and would become the criminal the world had apparently wanted to be.

Stealing her way to survival, evading authority by escaping through darkness, forcing herself to not rely on sight alone, Jaden learnt all that and more in the span of four years before she heard the news of the former governor of the Facility. Fueled by hatred the female thus responded to the summoning of James Morrison.
DISTORTION
Wishing to disappear Jaden has received the power to make darkness, or to take away the light, depending on how the ability is explained and perceived. In any case, Jaden can cast a room, or a limited area into complete darkness, making it unable for any light to be able to penetrate through and thus rendering sources of light completely useless. It has earned Jaden the name of 'Ghost' as she can disappear on the spot, along with the rest.

The Distortion is often passively used, as a means to escape, to hide, or to level the grounds for her allies. However, it can also be actively used as prolonged exposure to darkness can actually affect the mental health of those affected.
LIMITATION
Casting darkness isn't limited to certain individuals. Everyone in the affected area is swallowed by the darkness projected by Jaden, making them experience what a blind world is like. This is a disadvantage for allies and Jaden herself, as even night vision goggles can't come through the darkness she casts.

The duration in which she can hold up the darkness also depends on Jaden's own mental health, for absolute darkness does something to the mind of the affected individual. There are days where Jaden can hold up the darkness for ages, driving her victims crazy, but there are also days where Jaden can't even summon a shadow.

Despite the lack of light and thus disabling sight, the other senses are left alone. In the cast area Jaden can't take away someones hearing, touch, smell, or taste. Being able to rely on other senses thus gives an advantage when the darkness is cast.
 
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CHARACTER SHEET
Name/Nickname: Alexandra (Alex) Wilde / The Game Master (GM)
Age: 20
Gender: Female, but gets altered by her avatars
Appearance: Alex's appearance has been significantly altered by her exposure to the rift. Her long brown hair turned bubblegum pink, her light brown eyes sifted into a wheel of reddish brown, green and blue color that glistens everytime her D.T. acts up. Her figure also got altered, though it was mostly a result of experimentation and spending several years on the run. Pre-Rift Alexandra was a rather average teenaged girl, leaning towards the lazy and unathletic side of the spectrum, The GM turned into an athletic, curvy lady mostly clad in graphic Tees and tanktops, jeans and combat boots, a pair of black headphones hanging loosely around her neck. However her appearance can change to that of her choice gaming avatar whenever her D.T. is activated. THE GM

Personality:
Alex was a gaming nerd. She enjoyed emersing herself into the various fantasy worlds of video games. She loved exploring new characters and do things she couldn't do or bring herself to do in real life. Mostly into RPG games of epic fantasy, whether that was sci-fi, high fantasy or just your plain old Pokemon, Alex found it easier to open up and make friends through a screen than face to face. She was just too shy to be the first one to approach a stranger and make friends, but was actually pretty outgoing and excited whenever someone did accept her in their group. But she was also easy to discourage if she felt not wanted anymore and so she always returned to her video games and her gaming buddies from through the screen.

The GM is an upgraded version of Alex, a higher level if you wish. Tho still an outgoing and excited young woman, Alex was shown a lot of pain and cruelty at Jackson 'prison' and was forced to grow up and out of her shy shell. She learned to be more confident, perhaps even risking, and look out for herself, though it was partially due to her being able to slip into her gaming avatars and look at life as if it was just another game. As a result of all this, Alex no longer has anything to keep her back. If provoked she will show no mercy, but she is no sadist. She won't go out of her way to hurt you, unless your name was in Jackson's list of employees. She doesn't usually hold grudges, but when she does they last long and hard.

History: Alex was always a shy kid, a quiet and cautious girl that liked to live adventures through the safety of reading a book or playing a game. Video games were an instant love for her and her first friends, persons she felt she could be outgoing and truly say what she felt and be geeky self were from MMORPGs. At school, friends were scarce mostly because of how shy she was. The other kids were picking up on that and they either tried to bully her or just didn't bother. Those who did make an effort to bring Alex into their group eventually moved on without her or just didn't invite her as often, which discouraged Alex and made her seep back into her gaming habbits. Habbits that eventually brought her a desire to be a pro-player and possibly design her own game, make a start-up and create her own world for adventures for people like her.

With a mother who fell victim to ilness too soon after her birth and a very busy lawyer of a father, Alex found herself in Sacramento during one of her father's business trips for his firm. Alex had never been to America before, having grown up in Dublin, so this was an opportunity for her to explore and take advantage of no school to look up any gaming companies or locations she could find. Then the Rift appeared and everything changed. Having to deal with trauma from finding herself in a survival situation alone, her father eventually tracking her down in one of the hospitals, Alex was soon arrested and brought to Jackson without being able to contact her father.

Life in the facilities was harsh and Alex was desperately trying to find someone she could lean on, a safety point to anchor herself in all the madness and experimentation. Yet everybody had their own problems and had no patience for a scared, clingy kid. That's eventually where her powers came into play. One day Alex was pushed harder than ever before, brought to her limits and awakening her Sith avatar in order to defend herself. She was in pain and she wanted it to end, so the Sith turned against the source of her pain, the scientists working with on her. When Alex came to, she discovered she had just performed her first kills and she wasn't even sure how. She later discovered when footage was shown to her after she was severely disciplined. Her testing intensified after that.

She was lucky when she was able to escape with 46 more individuals, at that point being in moderate control of slipping in and out of her Sith avatar and using it to help in the escape. After that she was forced to go off the grid for a while. Out of sheer need to survive and through active training, Alex discovered that she could slip into more than just one gaming avatar and that she was able to access and materialize inventory items in real life, which allowed her to always have a weapon handy, her sith lightsaber being her primary weapon.

In the four years following her escape, Alex looked for her father, only to find out he was reported dead due to the Rift. She wasn't convinced though. Her father was there when she woke up at the hospital. He was alive and well before she got arrested, so there must've been foul play at work. However she didn't have any names as to whom might've hurt her father and thus she didn't pursue her thirst for vengeance. Using a fake identity and her gaming skills, Alex was always on the move. Thief avatars helped provide her with day to day needs, a Sims avatar could help her change gender to avoid being arrested and slip away from the grip of the enemy, participating in game tournaments under a different alias each time helped her get money and seek a way to get a steady job in the gaming industry while the enemy was beginning to call her the Game Master from her love for DnD.

When the news from James Morisson reached her, there was no time wasted in Alex responding to it. She was finally going to get revenge for all the pain she was caused and the unjust death of her father.

Distortion: The ability to bring her gaming avatars to life, but not as some minion or summoning, but as a 'suit' she wears herself. She becomes her avatar, acquiring their powers, weaknesses and personality traits. She can also choose to materialize items from her inventory at any given time and potentially keep it as such for an unlimited amount of time.

Limitation: Besides the obvious risk of losing her identity if she stays in her chosen avatar for too long, which is higher as the days go by or if she experiences very strong emotions that make her relate very much with the chosen avatar, her control over the Avatar's powers and her fluency in the execution of the 'game' depends heavily on how much time she has put into the actual game and how much she remembers the character and gameplay at that given point in time. She has played so many games with so many different characters that it's hard to remember everyone perfectly.

When it comes to the actual power of the Avatar, it goes without saying that the higher the level and stats, the more powerful the avatar is. As for the items she materializes in the real world, unless she actively wields them back into their digital origin, they are forever lost to her in-game avatar as she discovered when she kept her Sith lightsaber with her. Unless she plays the game to replenish her inventory or to buy new items, repair them or upgrade them, there is no other way to acquire them in the real world or in the game. So in order to keep her powers sharp and ever strengthening them, she needs to actively play the respective video game with the respective character, which poses a risk of being exposed to the goverment through her accounts.
 

Name: Victoria Swain
Villain Moniker: Scourge
Age: 31
Gender: Female

Appearance: Victoria is a tall woman, standing about five feet and ten inches tall, and nowadays she has a fairly fit body thanks to the necessities of life on the run. She tends to wear a lot of layers of clothing that make that detail hard to see, and always some kind of hood or hat when out in public. This is because her silver-grey hair and pale blue eyes are very distinctive, so combined with her height she can be rather easily recognized if she doesn't take precautions. Art by Andy Kallela.

Personality: Some days Victoria thinks she died in the Jackson Detention and Research Center and that Scourge took over the shell that was left behind. She was once a very shy and non-confrontational person who was taken advantage of in horrible ways, but that person was broken by some combination of capacity and the corrupting influence of her supernatural abilities. These days she vacillates between broodiness and aggression that makes her prone to angry outbursts, and in general she prefers to use her distortion and violence to solve problems as a first option rather than trying to flee or talk things out. Guilt and fear, Victoria's constant companions before that fateful day the First Rift opened up, have been burnt away to leave a monster behind.

History: Victoria Swain was a pitiful and unimportant person for most of her life. She lacked control over her own life, and the forces that pushed her through life proved to be very cruel. Her father was horribly abusive to her (but her favored older brother and sister were treated well), her mother was a drunk who knew about the terrible things being done to her youngest child and did nothing, and her siblings were callously distant and believed it when their father said Victoria had earned everything she got by being an awful and ill-behaved child. She finally broke free of that environment the day she turned 18 by moving into her boyfriend's apartment. It took her a few weeks to realize she'd traded one prison for another, and day by day the boyfriend grew to remind her more and more of her father. Victoria suffered through that for a few years before she finally mustered the courage to flee, but she had nowhere else to go and eventually tumbled into a life of homelessness that came with its own fresh horrors atop many of the old familiar ones. Her only real claim to any kind of strength of victory before the First Rift claimed a chunk of Sacramento was the fact that she had managed to avoid becoming addicted to any of the many numbing substances that made life on the street more tolerable.

After she realized she could somehow control objects by touching them, Victoria used that power to make her way out of the hospital she'd been sequestered in. She tried to go back to her normal life, but in an act of fearful self-defense she used a man's ragged scarf to strangle him to death. That proved to be an inflection point for her, the event that made her realize she didn't have to be a victim anymore because she finally had control over her surroundings. A spree of murders, basically everyone Victoria could remember ever having hurt her, lead a team of heavily armed agents of the government to find her sleeping in her childhood bed with the gory remains of her family strewn about the first floor of the house. She didn't resist when she was taken away, but she regretted that deeply when she was not immediately killed for her monstrous actions and instead found herself imprisoned more literally than ever before.

The Jackson Detention and Research Center was damnably well-equipped to contain Victoria's power, though it took some trial and error to settle on a foolproof plan. The staff there were the ones who first called her Scourge, because she was indeed a cause of great trouble and suffering. After many failed containment measures were tried, they settled on a set of five powerful shocking devices attached to her neck and wrists and ankles combined with 24/7 observation so that a button could be pressed to zap her into unconsciousness if she tried to tamper with any of the devices. The testing she was forced to undergo helped her learn a lot of the limitations of her power, particularly the inability to control living things, but the learning was of course overshadowed by the isolation and abuses visited upon her by irate staff and guards. When explosions rocked the facility, she quickly pounced on the distraction and destroyed her restraints, then joined her fellows in fleeing the prison.

Due to the drawbacks of overuse of her power, Victoria's hair had gone prematurely grey while she was held captive and that turned out to be a painfully obvious identifying factor. She elected not to dye her hair because some part of her wanted law enforcement to stay on her trail, just so she would have chances to turn on them and massacre them, so she instead opted to use simple disguises and the mask of being a regular homeless person to encourage people to ignore her presence. It didn't take long for her to find that she could use her power to make ATMs spew cash, so her life on the run turned out to be more comfortable than anything she'd experienced before her escape. Her name, or rather her moniker of Scourge, has made headlines in cities all over the country in the four years since then thanks to her fairly frequent fatal brushes with the law and murders of various government officials who were known to have anti-D.T. views. This personal crusade made her eager to answer James Morrison's call to Washington D.C. to see what the man had in mind for striking a larger blow against those who saw their kind as enemies to be eradicated.

Distortion: Cellular Infusion. By touching an object, Victoria can insert a network of her own cells into it and take total control of the thing. It allows her to make the object do anything it is physically capable of doing, though the strength and resilience of controlled objects are greatly enhanced while infused with her cells. Practical uses of her power include but are not limited to infusing a piece of wood or other soft material to be stronger than steel, making items of clothing crush their wearers, and forcing digital devices to perform simple actions or malfunction in reasonable ways. Once she ceases using this power on an object, the cells left disconnected inside of it go haywire and do their best to destroy the object, usually by way of tearing it to pieces; while this can be a downside, it also allows for useful applications like making sections of walls crumble by taking control of them and quickly letting them go.

Limitations: The cells shoved into objects have to come from somewhere. This usually means layers of skin, but using the power on something very large (meaning anything significantly larger than her own body) or more than a few times a day can cause more lasting damage due to less easily replaced cells being used. While layers of skin seem to always be the first cells used, Victoria doesn't have control over where the other cells come from: sometimes overuse of the ability just causes a large patch of sore and tender skin or open wounds in her flesh, but some notable lasting damage includes her hair being prematurely and permanently grey and numbness in her left hand that make it unsuitable for any dexterous activity. There is also a toll on the body in the form of plain old exhaustion, though she's never uses the power enough to pass out from this side effect; generally using her power enough to cause lasting physical damage will require her to take about a day to rest and recover her strength else she will start taking permanent damage with every use of her power.

Living material cannot be manipulated with this power. This means Victoria cannot control people or animals or living plants at all. However, dead organic material can be affected, thus pieces of wood or strands of hair can be used with her power.

The controlled objects being destroyed when done being used means that Victoria can't easily carry around things to be used as weapons on demand, but that is balanced by the fact that anything large enough to hit someone with can be weaponized. Very large objects tend to just end up full of cracks, but articles of clothing and sticks and similar crumble to dust and electronic devices are always completely fried beyond repair. This destructive breakdown begins about a second after she intentionally or forcefully loses contact with an object and takes only a few seconds to work its way through even massive objects. The tiny cellular connection made with objects is not particularly strong, so she has only the power of her own physical strength to resist having objects taken away from her or being pushed away from them if it's something too large to hold.

Electronic devices can only be forced to perform simple actions, and trying to do more than one simple thing will make the thing break immediately rather than breaking when contact is broken. Electronic keypads can be forced to open the door they are meant to secure, an ATM can be forced to eject its cash, a cell phone can be forced to unlock, a single password on a computer can be bypassed, and so on. Victoria cannot affect a whole network of connected devices by touching one, meaning she can't grab one security camera and fry all the cameras in a building, so her power tends to be a poor solution to technological problems that require a careful touch.
 
Name: Omar Sussi
Moniker: Pinnacle
Age: 35
Gender: Male
Description: With his prosthetic left leg, Omar Sussi is a man of average height, standing at about 5’9” but possessed of impeccable form and comportment. He is lean and powerful all at once, the culmination of years of extreme disciplined regiment, and four years of life on the run. His noble features and facial hair are almost religiously maintained, and he portrays a man of considerable facility. Art by stonelions.

Personality: With or without purpose, Omar is a man of discipline, obsessed with routine and self-improvement. His own demands for himself often color his perceptions of others, rendering him a demanding and judgmental person to interact with. He expects the best, and therefore is quick to anger when others fail to live up to his considerably high standards. An athlete who missed the most of his prime, he has become rather opportunistic and obsessed with the concept of time, preferring that matters to handled to in an efficient and timely nature.

Having been removed from competition for so long has also made Omar yearn for benchmarks to measure himself against. While generally a level, if somewhat leaning towards high-strung, individual, he finds himself gravitating towards conflict and challenge.

History: Omar Sussi would describe himself as well-raised although he was, more aptly, well-groomed in the same way a prize horse may have been. His family, for generations having been concerned with fitting the mold of the ‘model minority’, preached discipline and excellence as a method of survival. As such, Omar Sussi took it upon himself, from a young age, to thrive in the upper-middle class, suburban environment his parents had diligently, if not lovingly, curated for him.

He was so disciplined in his studies, almost to the point of excess, that one might have thought him fit to burst from it all. Athletics, however, proved to be a tremendous boon for the boy, an outlet that - although he approached with the same feverish intensity - inspired passion in him, an inexorable drive to succeed. His drive culminated in a basketball scholarship to Cornell University, an avenue to become both an athletic and academic paragon at an Ivy League and Division I institution.

A tremendous athlete, whose considerable talents and discipline overshadowed his introverted, somewhat off-putting nature, Omar’s rise to prominence was nonetheless curtailed by one of the most gruesome injuries in the history of college athletics. A freak mishap, a once-in-a-million occurrence; he landed awkwardly after a heavily contested, and admittedly spectacular, lay-up, injuring almost every part of his left knee -- torn ACL, PCL and lateral meniscus, sprained MCL, dislocated patella and tibiofibular joint.

The injury required amputation of the leg, knee and downwards.

Cast into utter despair, Omar remained a strong-willed individual, and focused -- to the detriment of his academic performance -- on regaining his athletic prowess. Devoting what some may have deemed to be an unfathomable amount of time and resource into his recovery, Omar found himself given academic removal from Dartmouth as well as cut off from his family’s monetary support. His efforts had proven worthwhile year laters: he was scouted for the Paralympic games to compete in track-and-field athletics.

His first showing at the Paralympics was a stunning success by any metric; a Bronze medal in the men’s 100 meter T44 event. By now, however, his devotion to excellence and being the zenith of athleticism had rendered his achievement nothing more than a failure in his eye. He was crushed, and immediately taken by the idea of redeeming himself at the next event. Such thoughts were, however, ruined by the doping allegations that surfaced a month later, resulting in the forfeiture of his medal, the smearing of his achievement and his ban from future events.

Nonetheless, he pressed on, sinking the last of his funds into hiring a lawyer to fight the ban, while still single-mindedly focused on the next chance to reach the pinnacle.

He was training in Sacramento when the First Rift opened.

And yet, for some reason, surviving the calamity came secondary to the news he had received in about the same span of time; that his ban had been overturned. That was all that mattered to him, not the brush with near-death, not the destruction and loss of friends and family, not even that -- sometimes -- steel crept from his prostheses and enveloped him entirely like a coat of armor. He would have his chance.

Or so he thought, before being apprehended and forced to the Jackson Detention and Research Center.

A year passed, tests and pain and whatnot, all of which paled in comparison to the one thing its passing meant to him: he had missed his window. He wouldn’t get another chance at Gold, at the realization of the only thing he had come to care for. Upon escaping the facility, he would spend four years gleaming vague satisfaction from proving his physical superiority in underground fighting rings, escaping capture through constant relocation and his unyielding discipline and due diligence. Still, that was merely survival.

James Morrison’s call, however, provided a chance for something other than survival. Something that was a mere shade of the true joy he wanted, but that he felt he needed nonetheless. Daniel Mayhew had taken something from him.

So he would take something back.

Distortion: Rigid. Unyielding. A better body. Omar Sussi is able to draw upon a disproportionate amount of matter from his metal prosthesis to cover his body, flowing over him like quicksilver before hardening. In this form, he retains his mobility yet gains the added endurance and constitution from being a veritable man of metal.

The metal is capable of shifting, and when fully enveloped, Omar Sussi is able to take on forms that would seem impossible if the bending and twisting of his human components were a consideration: a hollow carriage, for example, capable of holding passengers, a quadruped, whose bodily physiology and movements differ entirely from a humans, or an avian form, proportions sculpted so as to be capable of flight, weapon-like appendages, etc.

Limitation: Omar’s power stems entirely from his prosthetic limb -- deprived of his limb, Omar is furthermore deprived of his power.

The usage and shifting of the power occurs slowly, with full encompassing of his body requiring an unmolested thirty seconds, give or take. By necessity, the encasing begins from the left leg.

Other notes, which are less limitations than pertinent details, include that -- while the metal’s shifting and bending seems to disregard the natural boundaries of Omar’s body, injuries to the metal form impact Omar. Each bit of metal seems to correspond to some part of Omar’s body, and when suitably damaged or removed, will reflect on him as such.
 
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"I will give you death. I will let you feel my pain. I will take everything you have, and I will give it to the least deserving."

Name: Yoru Kyougi
Villain Nickname: The Doctor
Age: 17
Gender: Male
Description: A lanky Japanese boy, Yoru has the typical round face, round nose, thick black hair, and dark eyes. He is rather unexceptional in looks, otherwise, standing at an average 5'6" and getting to be somewhat well-muscled. His skin is of the naturally darker variety. He keeps a pair of headphones around his neck, though no one's ever seen him use them, and has a number of tattoos on his body, the main one being a large dragon on his back, but most of the rest being more abstract, tribal design. They are mostly on his torso and back and therefore hidden, but some can be seen on his arms when he wears T-shirts.

Personality: Yoru is selfish, paranoid, and lazy. Although he appears reckless and careless, he needs to have a sense of control over every situation he finds himself in. He appears to heavily dislike people, and can do horrific things to people without batting an eye, but at other times shows strong empathy with others. His ability to dissociate from his strong empathy, combined with a rigid, black-and-white sense of morality form the basic recipe for a nearly sadistic vigilante, and he only respects the law insofar as he needs to to avoid drawing attention. He rarely makes the first move in bad situations, but will hold grudges long-term and express his resentment through violence.

His favorite hobbies are brooding angstily and watching and rewatching anime. He tends to get lost in his own thoughts and has rather morbid views on humanity as a whole, but finds some enjoyment in the ridiculous and idealized qualities of anime and manga, which he also particularly likes because hearing his native language reminds him of a better time in his life, when he was a kid. He is always serious, rarely smiles, avoids physical contact or displays of affection violently, and tends to respond with as few words as possible.

History: Yoru Kyougi was born the second of two sons. His father, was a renowned researcher, who had received his doctorate in Abstract Physics from Harvard. His mother, on the other hand, was not only a stay-at-home mom but also the daughter and successor of a school of Iaido - a martial arts focusing on the use of the sword. Hikaru Kyougi, Yoru's older brother by eight years, inherited both traits from his parents. The swordsmanship came naturally to him, and his performance in school earned him recognition from his teachers. Despite his accomplishments, he was well-liked and known for being humble, well-spoken, and friendly. By the time he was six, quiet, solitary, average little Yoru had heard the phrase "when your brother was your age" more times than he could count. His brother was sixteen, and he eight, when it all began to go wrong.

It started small. His brother began to withdraw from his friends and the rest of the family, and his grades began dropping. He started talking to people who weren't there, and his sentences would sometimes come out oddly, ideas not quite following one another logically. And then there were the episodes. He'd grow terrified of things that didn't make any sense, and cower in his room, scribbling frantically on the wall. Or he'd leave the house when no one was paying attention and show up miles away, butt naked in the middle of nowhere.

His parents became distraught and argued constantly about what to do with him, which only seemed to make things worse. Finally, unable to take the constant fighting anymore and growing more and more afraid of her own son, Yoru's mother left the house. Though she returned after a couple of weeks, it sparked a trend of her running away and returning that continued for almost two years, until they two eventually settled on a divorce.

On the day they signed the divorce papers, Hikaru went missing. Yoru wasn't sure whether to hate his brother for that or be grateful. Throughout the years of his brother's illness, he had been forced to be the good boy. His parents had ignored him even more then before, he had had to watch over his brother when his parents argued in the living room, as if the two of them couldn't hear it, as if his brother's condition wasn't aggravated by it. He was forced to play nursemaid and orphan while going through the stresses of school. If only the rest of them knew what it was like to be devalued his whole life while holding the rest of the family together by a thread. Even after his mother took him after the divorce, she spent all of her time worrying about Hikaru. Where was Hikaru? Was Hikaru okay? What had happened to their perfect, promising, model son?

Most days, he could pretend it didn't bother him. It was, after all, his responsibility to cater to the needs of his family. So, when he caught sight of his brother while leaving school one day, he only hesitated for a moment before chasing him. That was where he was when the first Rift opened, chasing his crazy brother through the streets on the edge of Sacramento. His parents were deeper into the city when it happened and he assumed they were both killed during the blast. He and his brother, however, weren't so lucky. After the earth-shattering crack in reality, a disoriented Yoru found himself clinging to consciousness with ringing ears and a searing pain in his chest. Trying to take a breath caused the pain in his chest to flare, and he realized something was wrong with his ribs. The longer he managed to stay awake, the more he realized was wrong with him. His left arm was twisted at an odd angle and a trickle of blood tickled the back of his neck. The surroundings were destroyed, and the only fact he could latch onto was that his brother was lying next to him, passed out, but clearly breathing normally.

And that was when all of Yoru's old bitterness spilled into full-fledged rage. This was all his brother's fault. Yoru was going to die because his brother had led him to an explosion, and the stupid, hopeless madman was going to get away with some bruises. He didn't deserve his good fortune. He didn't deserve to live. With his one good arm, Yoru grabbed his brother by the lapel weakly. He wasn't sure why he did it, but that was when it happened. A flash of light darted from his hand, and he found himself breathing normally, the pain instantly subsiding to the dull throbs of bruises and cuts. His brother, on the other hand, began to cough, blood suddenly spreading across his shirt.

Waiting for the paramedics with his newly healed lungs, Yoru began to process what had happened. By the time people came to rescue them, he had worked it out. As they carted him through the hospital with the other survivors, he took advantage of every bit of his power. He exchanged his broken arm with a good one, transferred his head wound to a dying patient who had been speared through the gut. By the time the doctors checked him out, he was one of the healthiest people there.

His brother died that day from badly broken lungs, but hearing that news only brought twelve-year-old Yoru satisfaction. He may as well have killed his brother, and he had gotten away with it. But he was only able to revel in his new power for a short while, before he was shipped off to the Jackson Detention and Research Center. Those running tests on him found him difficult to handle at first, because he would simply give whatever torture they enacted on him straight back to his testers, but they quickly found that removing the human element was enough to prevent him using his powers. Pain became a daily routine, but though they administered new tests all the time, that consistent element of pain became a comforting constant. Even when there was nothing and no one else, there would always be pain, of one sort or another. And that pain could be turned into anger, and that anger could one day - oh yes, one day - be turned into vengeance.

He was right, too.

The day they escaped from the facility, Yoru took his chance, transferring the injuries of one warden being eaten alive to an uninjured man. Transferring the burns of one onto another just before the first one was stabbed with a cattle prod. He took his time to spread around the misery, and enjoyed every second of it. After the escape, Yoru found it difficult at first, but he discovered that his powers had certain... interesting set of applications. A joking nickname he had gotten in the detention center - the Doctor - turned into a quiet rumor he found useful to spread around. The poor of the streets went to him believing he could heal any illness, any wound, and for the right sum of money, he did. Or rather, he transferred whatever condition it was to a more unfortunate soul. His services weren't always cheap, but far cheaper and far quicker than the hospital. He supplemented that with the occasional robbery, but kept his thefts small.

Constantly on the move, living off of the money the bottom of society could provide him, Yoru got by for four years with his main possessions being the clothes on his back, a duffel bag of anime DVDs and toiletries, and an ancient computer he had stolen. When the news of James Morrison and Daniel Mayhew came about, well, Yoru was bored, and he still remembered what he'd endured, and how it had felt to destroy those who had done it to him. Not to mention, he was already in the area.

Distortion: Transfer State. Yoru has the ability to transfer physical states between people. This is almost always physical wounds, but can extend to illnesses and strong feelings of pain. Transfer of wounds, which is the easiest, needs to be specific. That is to say, he cannot just transfer someone's entire physical state to another person. And when, for instance, he gave his broken ribs to his brother, he received in return the bruises and scrapes this brother's chest had endured. It is easiest to transfer wounds between himself and other people in either direction (more difficult to transfer wounds between two other people), and deep wounds or older ones (for instance very old scars) are more difficult to transfer. If, for instance, a bullet or shrapnel is embedded in the flash, he cannot move it, because it is only the wound itself that he can transfer, and in this case, attempting to do so would likely be very painful for the person with the bullet in them, as a fresh wound would be made anew from it. Fatal wounds can be transferred, but are almost always very deep and therefore more difficult unless it's from himself to someone else.

He cannot transfer states to and from dead people, and illnesses are difficult unless they are benign, localized cancer or bacterial aggregates, or physical damage such as burns, including sunburns, or radiation poisoning. What he can do easily with illnesses is transfer them incompletely, reducing symptoms at least for a while, which is a disclaimer he makes. The easiest and most natural ability is to transfer wounds from himself to others, which he can do regardless of depth or location on the body. There are some indications he may be able to tap into people's sensations in general as well, but he hasn't managed that yet, if so.

Limitation: In addition to the staggered difficulty of things to transfer, Yoru's power depends on proximity and line of sight, and does not translate well to gun fights or any other situation where he is far from the target. It is always instantaneous, but not terribly versatile, and overexerting himself with his power can result in fatigue, nausea, vertigo, memory loss, and/or loss of consciousness.
 
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