Marvel 2099: Street Rats Interest check and Discussion

[Rater202]

The Age of Heroes ended with a calamity, as did much of human civilization. The Earth is a toxic, polluted Hellhole. The Great Space Empires see no reason to come here anymore, and the Old Gods have abandoned us.

Nearly a century later, human society has been rebuilt, but... Not well. The World is ruled collectively by several Megacorps but above all of them is Alchemax, which is also the worst.

Life persists in Megacities, such as Nova York, built over the ruins of the old world. Biotechnological and cybernetic augmentations are common, but few enhancements can match the heights of the champions of good and evil from the Age of Heroes. In the shady underbellies of the new world, beneath the notice of our corporate masters, the streets are ruled by assorted Gangs. Some are the same as those of the Old World, peddling drugs, weapons, or pleasurable company for profit. Others are akin to cults, worshiping the Old Heroes, acting in their name, and hoping one day for a return. What isn't run by the gangs or the Corps is controlled by the corrupt Public Eye, an over-bloated privatized Police Force.

In the Wastelands outside the cities, nomads and mutants found their own civilizations to... Mixed success, but they can't escape the reach of the Wealthy Elite of the Mega Cities. Most mutant powers in this age tend to be... Dark and visceral, less clean if you will than their predecessors, and the legendary Omega Class hasn't been documented in decades. Most mutants have a tell.

Magic still exists, but it's rarer now than it was in the Age of Heroes, and those who practice it are almost always black magicians with visceral or vulgar magics who live in the world as they influence it.

But, things are changing: In Distant Latveria an ancient Tyrant has returned, in New Hollywood, the Knights of Banner have succeeded in tapping the power of Gamma, and here in Nova York, we've seen the second coming of the legendary Spider-Man... And Alchemax is performing twisted experiments to try and recreate the heroes of old for PR clout.

But that's distant. That doesn't affect us. Orphans, outcastes, runaways. Some of us grew up in poverty, some fled abusive homes, and some of us are escaped lab rats. We're poor, tired, and hungry, but since coming together about a year ago and carving out a home built in the tunnels of Old New York we've gotten cozy. Stealing, scrapping, under the table jobs, and bartering isn't a glamorous life, but it's a living.

Besides, we've got an edge that other street rats don't: We've got powers...

...But we also have our secrets. Even from each other.

---

So basically, Street Level Cyberpunk Superheroes. Well, starting at Street Level, I don't mind scaling up a little bit as things go on.

90s Anti-Hero Tropes abounded in the original run, but were subverted or played for satirical humor just as often as they were played straight and the ultimate theme of the original continuity was "finding a reason to have hope in a cynical world."

Characters should be, physically and mentally, in the 16-22 age range, have skills, power, or equipment that put them at "street level super" (Think Spider-Man or the Netflix version of The Defenders,) and a backstory that explains why they're more or less alone at life and willing to live in a lair scavenged together from the New York subway system and other underground tunnels with people they only met a year ago...

Mutants, experiments, Lab Accidents, and Cybernetics are all acceptable power origins, if you want to be a magician or an Atlantean that's gonna take some talk to work out. And something they're keeping secret from the others. Long Term Goals are appreciated but optional.

Also, note that mixed heritage and multi-ethnic names seem to be reasonably common in 2099.

Don't worry about not having full knowledge of the setting, I'm gonna be drawing for a couple of different Marvel 2099 timelines and also winging it in a few cases.

Here's a Character Sheet Template

Spoiler: (Character's Name or Main Alias)

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Repeat Full Name and Aliases
Age
Summary of Character Type

Spoiler: Appearance

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Spoiler: Backstory

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Spoiler: Personality

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Spoiler: Abilities

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Spoiler: Secret

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And an example character, who will also be my "PC" if this takes off.

Spoiler: Arsenal

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Aelita Smith-Wu AKA Arsenal.
Age: 18
Escaped Lab Rat

Spoiler: Appearance

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Arsenal is seemingly biracial, being half East Asian and half Caucasian. Her hair is straight, black, and back length. Her eyes are blue, and her complexion seems rather average, though she does have some light freckling. A combination of genetic predisposition and malnutrition early in life has left her short and thin: At 5 feet on the dot her height and slender build sometimes get her mistaken for a child, which she's ambivalent about. However, better nutrition in the last few years combined with increased exercise have left her with well-toned and surprisingly well-defined musculature compared to her overall build.

In public, she wears concealing clothing, open jackets and belts, and the like, nothing you won't see most people in this day and age wearing, as well as large reflective sunglasses, but in casual situations, or when she's on the job, she wears only the Living Abyss: An inky black substance from the depths of space. Typically held tight against her body, but her game face is something else.

Spoiler: Backstory

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Aelita grew up in poverty. Her mother died in childbirth. When she was five, her father remarried but her stepmother resented her, seeing her as competition for her husband's affections. Looking back, Aelita doesn't know what it was that her father saw in the woman. All she did was nag, and she didn't contribute. Aelita doesn't know what her father did for a living, but it apparently angered a Public Eye agent who came to their hovel one night when she was 12 and started ranting to her father about 'debt' and asking where his money was. The argument grew heated and the crooked cop executed her father on the spot, right in front of her and her stepmother. The agent then turned to Aelita'ss stepmother and told her that she'd have to assume the debt, and the woman callously told him to "take the bitch."

Aelita was carried screaming and crying from her home and was sold to a trafficker that night.

Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, within a few days, she was purchased by a corpo and taken to an Alchemax laboratory where she was used as a test subject for their experiments in re-crating the figures of the Age of Heroes, using resources scavenged from the companies Pre-War genetics and astrobiological departments. She spent the next five years being repeatedly subjected to harsh physcal tests and training and invasive medical examinations to gauge the results of ongoing experimentation in genetic manipulation. Results were mixed until, one day, Aelita was grafted with a sample of tissue cloned from spliced-together scraps of genetic material from several specimens of a race of alien symbiotes that Pre-Catyclism Alchemex had tried to weaponize.

This was a resounding success, so Aelita says, but when she realized that, going forward, her best case scenario would be that she would be brainwashed into a corporate assassin/PR tool and at worse she'd be vivisected to see how it worked and replicate the results, she knew that she had to get out. On her seventeenth birthday, she managed to escape, killing several Alchemax guardsmen in the process, and fled into the city, eventually finding her way to as a rag-tag bunch of misfits living in the abandoned subway system of Old New York.

Spoiler: Personality

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Arsenal is dry and sarcastic with a penchant for dark humor. On the job, she's a strict professional and likes to make sure everyone knows th plan though once a fight breaks out she can get a little hot-blooded. On downtime, she prefers to lounge about aimlessly

Also, she has no qualms with eating people. She admits that she probably shouldn't be okay with it, but she is.

Spoiler: Abilities

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Peak Human condition: Alchemax are a bunch of shocking bastards, but they had enough regard for their test subjects to make sure they were healthy if only to make sure results weren't compromised. Regular meals of bland but nutritious gruel, medical care comparable to what might be received by a racehorse or an upper-class woman's favorite cat, and regular physical exercise have left Aelita about as fit and healthy as could be expected of someone in this day and age.

Athletics: The sort of physical tests and exercises Aelita was made to due have made her incredibly skilled at various forms of running, lifting, jumping, and gymnastic activities.

Hand-to-Hand Combat: Arsenal practices a form of combat akin to a feral predator. She's quick, she's brutal, and she tears you apart with her bare hands.

Symbiote Physiology: Arsenal has access to the biological trait of a symbiote. This grants her several abilities including but not limited to:
Superhuman Strength sufficient to lift ten tons overhead with comparable levels of superhuman toughness
Superhuman Flexibility and Agility: Arsenal has a range of movement comparable to the finest gymnasts of the heroic age and rough four times the speed and agility of the greatest athletes
Wall Crawling: Arsenal can manipulate molecular bonds in order to adhere her hands and feet to cheer surfaces. Her equilibrium and sense of balance are perfect, allowing her to remain in any orientation relative to the nearest gravity well indefinitely without becoming disoriented.
Constitution Matter Manipulation: Arsenal can manipulate the living abyss that comprises her body into a variety of specialized weapons including but not limited to fangs, claws, chains, tendrils, blades, bludgeons, and spikes. She can also use the living abyss to manipulate her hair, rendering it prehensile, and produce sticky "weblines" though they dissolve into dust after an hour.
Extra Sensory Perception: Enhanced hearing, vision, smell, taste, and touch combined with mild psionic abilities allow Arsenal to effectively have a total 360-degree awareness of her surroundings.
Tracking: When Arsenal catches a scent, she never forgets it and can track individuals by scent for miles.
Metabolic Acid: Arsenal can projectile vomit up to three liters of potent acid that eats through most organic and inorganic materials, though has to rest between discharges.
Regenerative Healing Factor: Arsenal's most potent ability, she can quickly recover from catastrophic injuries up to and including decapitation and dismemberment. She speculates that she may be immortal but isn't willing to stress-test it.
Divine Slaying: While it's utterly irrelevant in this day and age, given that the gods have abandoned the world, if Arsenal were to encounter one she could bypass their immortality and, if she killed them, take their power for her own.
Self-Sustenance: When Arsenal is healthy, she doesn't, strictly speaking, need to eat though she still has a drive to. Nor does she need to breathe, though she still does, or sleep, though she still can.

Genetic Augments: Aelita received a handful of augmentations based on archived superhuman DNA DNA which, while minor or latent initially, reacted to her symbiote graft which granted her additional abilities.
Liquification: One graft, using the genes of a man who could transform into living water vastly increased the fluidity of her Living Abyss. Not only does this allow more fluid shifting, but Arsenal can completely dissolve herself into the living Abyss and then reform her body, allowing her to slither down drains or slide through grates with ease as long as the opening isn't water-tight.
Metamorphism: A gene graft from a mutant best described as a living biotech platform has given Arsenal limited ability to alter her appearance as well as the ability to relocate her internal organs within her body and tweak her internal chemistry to a degree, though nothing particularly impressive.

Weaknesses: While physically very powerful, Arsenal has five main weaknesses.
1: Extreme heat causes her disproportionate damage.
2: Loud Noises, particularly high frequencies over 180 decibels or repetitive noises with lots of base, are disorienting and incredibly painful. Sonic weapons or weapons that imply high-frequency vibration do disproportionately great damage.
3: Much like heat, electrical attacks cause her severe pain.
4: While she does not need to eat when healthy, if she falls ill she make becomes violent or erratic if deprived of certain bio-chemcials, such as adrenaline or the neurotransmitter phenethylamine. Feral hunger may ensue if she's deprived for too long while in this state.
5: Arsenal's cells are constantly attacking each other only for the damage to regenerate. While in this state she typically exists in perfect equilibrium, in fact, this is something of a benefit as it contributes to her overall healing factor and purges weak or unhealthy cells from her body, if something were to either disrupt or overclock her healing factor the results could be debilitating.

Spoiler: Secret

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Arsenal's entire backstory up until her escape from Alchemax Custody is a lie.

Sure, most of that happened to Aelita Smith-Wu... But Aelita died over a year ago. She had a bad reaction to a serum reverse-engineered from the corpse of a chemically altered human recovered from a pre-cataclysm cemetery and suffered a massive heart attack. After an autopsy revealed no usual information, her cadaver was stitched back together and 'recycled,' that is to say their attempt at cloning a symbiote was injected into it to use as both a scaffold to grow on and a source of nutrients.

The nascent symbiote who would become Arsenal had conflicting shards of shattered memory and personality from her forbearers, but consuming Aelita's nervous system and assimilating what remained of her memories gave a foundation and context that allowed a proper, functional consciousness to form.

While Arsenal uses Aelita's name and history to be more accepted among humans, she does not identify as the girl whose body she's based on. She is her own person, and if Aelita were to somehow miraculously return to life their personalities would be rather different.

In addition to the powers listed above, Arsenal's enhanced fluidity and metamorphic abilities scavenged from Aelita's genetic modifications, are what allows her to create such a convincing replica of Aelita's body and go indefinitely without a host. In theory, she could assume a much wider variety of human forms but she'd honestly rather not.

Arsenal's only real long-term goal is survival, but she admits that she feels somewhat... Incomplete. Like some vital piece of her being is missing, though she's not sure what it is, and she's already decided that if she ever encounters Aelita's stepmother or the public Eye agent who murdered her father that she will kill them most brutally. Granting her a touch of posthumous revenge is the least that Arsenal can do for the girl who died so that she might live.

[Lord Raziere]

interesting, might make something for this. to help with that some questions that are relevant to ideas of a character I might have...

-are there any unions in this world?
-what is the status of safety regulations in this world?
-are the biotech augmentations capable of changing sex and is this readily available in this dystopia? do they cost a lot if they are?
-how much would you say is known about the before calamity world?

I know some of these might sound obvious, but I just want to make sure.

[Feathersnow]

Tempted to play as a distant descendent of Taskmaster, given his powers are canonly both genetic and heritable.

[Rater202]

-are there any unions in this world?

No.

-what is the status of safety regulations in this world?

Spider-Man 2099's original origin story involves him having to rewrite his DNA from a backup after his boss drugged him with a performance enhancer that alters your DNA to make you chemically dependent on it in order to ensure his loyalty due to the company in question being the only one that can manufacture it, which to me says "non-existant."

-are the biotech augmentations capable of changing sex and is this readily available in this dystopia? do they cost a lot if they are?

Realistically they should be and if not things like gene mods to permanently alter your hormone production or better versions of the surgeries are definitely on the table... But, given the cyberpunk dystopia setting there are probably strings attached and there may be bit of exploitation or fetishization of it. Not sure how close I'm gonna cleave towards "realism" on that one. I want to be authentic to the themes of the setting but I also don't want to make anyone uncomfortable.

-how much would you say is known about the before calamity world?

Varies: In one videogame adaption, Miquel doesn't know what a toaster is, and his knowledge of history seems spotty. In particular information about superheroes is all over the place: The Thorite religion, which worships Thor, believes that Spider-Man was Thor's herald.

However, the Hollywood Movie industry still exists(Los Angeles is Still Los Angeles) and at least some of the corporations are Pre-Catyclysm. (Alchemex was the merger of Oscorp and Allen Chemical and we see it happen in the main comics, and at least one of them is a merger of Stark Tech and a Japanese company.)

[Lord Raziere]

okay, well the ideas I'm currently thinking of are either:
-a low super-speedster
-a technopath/cyber-jock/hacker
-a hulk-like person
-invisibility/low level intangibility
-electricity manipulation

of course if I discard the technopath power, I can just hacker is their skill since I managed to find out that Marvel 2099 has this cyberspace you go into and the power is what they do when they aren't hacking. on the other hand even low-level technopathy or something like it would be powerful in a setting like this.......but then again, probably good to make sure she'd have something to do without any tech, but normal hacking seems like it'd might have the decker problem where it just be the cyber-jock going through cyberspace without anything happening for anyone else if we're not careful. either way, a hacker or technopath could have all kinds of secrets from what they dug up and such.

[Rater202]

Yeah, any of that works.

@Feathersnow: Thanks to the sliding scale timeline, it doesn't even have to be that distant. It's less than 80 years from the 'present' to 2099 as the most recent time they explicitly called it a possible future.

His probably daughter is an adult of as her most recent appearance, you could easily be her grandchild.

[Batcathat]

As noted elsewhere, I would be interested in this.

Playing a character related (whether biologically or just thematically) to some present day character seems fun. Right now I'm thinking I might combine that with my love of somewhat obscure characters, weird powers and shapeshifting to create some sort of descendant of Dirtnap, though I'm not sure he'd reproduce in the regular fashion so I might have to figure out some other way.

[tonberryking]

..Is Spider-Man really street level? I mean, he fights crime on the streets but both Spider-men and Daredevil have quite the array of powers and Pete's defeated multiple X-men and outfought the F4. He can even lift up cars. Or would you say the Spider-Verse adaptations amp up their capacities?

Regardless, I have two ideas, though one is a bit more...out there...and references a legacy Japanese Super hero.

Though oddly enough that franchise has had run ins with *a* Spiderman before...

But yeah... I guess what I'm asking is if a Kamen Rider (more in line with the classic Showa-era ones where the power scaled closer to Spiderman) type of hero could count as street level. And if so... didn't 2099 have flying motorcycles or can a special bike be a goal or a starting 'power' in and of itself?

[TeChameleon]

Flying vehicles are common enough in 2099 that there are traffic cops for them.

This could be interesting, although I'd have to think a bit about what sort of character I'm leaning towards... my first impulse is a mutant of some kind, although I'm more familiar with Doom and Spiderman 2099 than most of the others. Will have to poke about and see what I can find, although a walking arsenal like Punisher 2099 could be entertaining as well...

[Rater202]

..Is Spider-Man really street level? I mean, he fights crime on the streets but both Spider-men and Daredevil have quite the array of powers and Pete's defeated multiple X-men and outfought the F4. He can even lift up cars. Or would you say the Spider-Verse adaptations amp up their capacities?

Regardless, I have two ideas, though one is a bit more...out there...and references a legacy Japanese Super hero.

Though oddly enough that franchise has had run ins with *a* Spiderman before...

But yeah... I guess what I'm asking is if a Kamen Rider (more in line with the classic Showa-era ones where the power scaled closer to Spiderman) type of hero could count as street level. And if so... didn't 2099 have flying motorcycles or can a special bike be a goal or a starting 'power' in and of itself?

A genetically/cybernetically modified soldier who escaped being brainwashed and has a summonable armor should be valid but I'm not sure that classic Tokusatstu types are thematically appropriate.

[tonberryking]

A genetically/cybernetically modified soldier who escaped being brainwashed and has a summonable armor should be valid

I can focus on this part, but would still sticking to an animal theme veer too much into 'classic' toku? I don't want to go all Black Sun here (which...that it was dark wasn't the issue but it was a bit too cynical even though its 'heart' was kind of in the right place) but I am still picturing her having her own take on the Rider Kick as a 'finisher' and she has enemies in her backstory called something over the top like "The Animoids" or something like that. Maybe reference a descendant/successor to the High Evolutionary as a villain/had a hand in her creation since...I am fairly sure he didn't show up in 2099. Huh. Wiki says he DID show up in some capacity.

EDIT: Something closer to Shin Kamen Rider (the newer one) would be what I'd aim for.

[Lord Raziere]

Okay I got a sheet:

Spoiler: Key

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Full Name: Venus Miyahara (Fake Name?)
Aliases: Key (Street alias), J1NX (Hacker alias)
Age: 22
Summary of Character Type: Electrokinetic Hacker Girl

Spoiler: Appearance

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Her civilian appearance is a pink-haired girl with orange eyes wearing blue-and-pink hooded jacket with cat ears on the hood, shirt and baggy pants and boots. Her actual hair color is red-headed and her actual eyes are green, but has dye and hair colors to keep her true identity secret.

Her superhero or disguise outfit is a black tron-like jumpsuit with glowing lines and helmet to hide her identity, with symbol that is a combination of lightning and key on her chest.

Spoiler: Backstory

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How Venus's parents died is relatively mundane. In a cyberpunk future where corporations have control of everything with no unions or safety regulations, her father bought a shoddily made car and died in a car crash, then her mother died from taking poorly made anti-depressants that poisoned her. The Public Eye investigating both incidents found nothing illegal taking place. As she was a child of two employees of Alchemax, she was of course then forcefully hired to be a testing child of the megacorp now that she was an orphan, putting into a testing product orphanage for various more shoddy products of theirs, was basically a clean looking prison.

Venus however soon discovered she could hear and feel the electricity with the devices they made and manipulate them so she could survive when they went wrong or sabotage them before anyone could test them, that she had electrokinesis. She used this power to escape this corporate orphanage and become apart of a hacker gang, learning becoming a Cyber-Jock and figuring how to survive by stealing what they can and doing what jobs they're hired for. She got pretty good at using her powers and hacking skills to survive, but then one day her gang leader sold her out to Alchemax, giving them her and her powers in exchange for a big payout that made them rich for life.

So she was imprisoned by Alchemax again, this time in a facility goal of expanding and strengthening her powers where they tried numerous unethical methods and possibilities so they could use her to control the world's technology as their tool, but didn't achieve any success. The CEO in response pushed them to try harder while cutting their budget, wanting them to get results.

The engineers on the project decided to focus their cut funding on achieving what the CEO wanted rather than keeping her secure, opting for a low budget solution to keep her contained. She soon escape, using electricity to blast through her cheap restrains, then wipe her presence from all electronics and unlocking every door on her way then in the parking lot she found a motorcycle bypassing its electronic lock and stealing it to take it for a ride despite not having any experience driving and crashed somewhere, luckily not dying but it made sure Alchemax thought she was dead so they'd never come after her.

Distrusting most gangs and wanting to keep herself hidden, Venus gave herself the name Key and made an effort to wipe any history of who she was to protect herself, she put on a costume and herself an alias known as “Key” for how she unlocks things, going into the old subway system and find allies with powers as well- but given how things went the last time she was on a team, she is careful not to trust them entirely.

Spoiler: Personality

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Key is introverted and secretive, but at times likes playing up a playful hacker persona Key likes being artistic, she draws sketches of things in an age where AI art generation has taken over, she listens to lofi, synthwave, jazz, things like that. She keeps people at some distance to make sure she keeps her identity a secret so that people don't find out about her powers and how they could be used to take over the world. She cares a lot about the social issues of this world, desiring for a change for the better but doesn't say so openly often. She is implied to be post-transition transfem, but won't be stated outright unless asked.

Her motto is “Capitalism is a prison, time for a jailbreak”

Spoiler: Abilities

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Skills:
Cyber-Jock:
Is an expert Cyber-Jock with a port to link up into Cyberspace and can navigate and manipulate it to get information when her Electrokinesis isn't enough to get information. Has a cybernetic implant in the back of her neck so she can jack into cyberspace.

I Can Fix it:
To some extent she is good at technology in general from scavenging and fixing up devices she can use and improvising tools from scraps, but has room to grow.

I Can Drive:
Key has skill in driving various vehicles, such as cars, motorcycles, boats or futuristic versions of them from stealing them for her crimes.

I Can Fight:
Key has spent some time as a hacker-gang member, and thus can fight using a knife or various guns, knowing a wider variety than most due to the security measures she can bypass with her electrokinesis.

Nueva York Streetwise:
Knows the various street gangs and how things are done in the streets and criminal underworld of Nueva York, where to fence goods, who to contact for this or that, etc, and is a well-rounded heist-runner and criminal of various other skills which are good for surviving in the year 2099.

Electrokinesis:
Her mutant power is control over electricity, this has many potential applications but Key's actual tricks she does often with it are listed here, but there is room for her to discover other tricks.
-Combat:
Lightning Blast:
fires lightning at one person to attack them
Shock Touch:
shocks somebody she touches to either hurt or stun
Electromagnetic Shield:
projects a personal shield to protect her from attacks, it can be overwhelmed however- a powerful enough explosive will shatter it and render her defenseless at least and its also shorted out if doused with a splash of water, while powerful magnets will pull her in because it magnetizes her.
Lightning Storm:
Fires a bunch of light bolts to take a group of foes or one big foe, but tires her out making her have to absorb electricity to recharge

-Utility:
Unlock:
unlocks any door, vehicle or other device that uses an electronic lock with electrokinesis, allowing her to bypass most security measures
Hiding Field:
emits a field that hides herself from all electronics around her, such as cameras, motion detection, cyborg eyes and so on, wiping her information from their sensors no matter what they're actually searching for
Bio-Electric Mind Trick:
Manipulates the electricity in her victim's brain like a jedi mind trick to help smooth over social situations through suggestion
Shutdown:
Turns off electronics, even robots and makes organic beings go to sleep, requires too much focus and time to do in combat.
Hear the Machines:
Can hear and understand electronic waves such as radio waves, digital and so on, as well as touch one to interface and get information from technology
I'm The Battery:
can power something she touches with her own electricity, useful when there are no other sources of power.
Change Targets:
Can electrokinetically hack a turret or other simple robot of animal intelligence or lower to change their targets so they attack her enemies instead.

Weaknesses:
-Loses power temporarily when doused or submerged in water, when exposed to strong magnetic fields, sunspots or solar flares
-powers don't work against insulated materials
-her powers currently only extend out to the range of the average pistol's firing range and would need some form of enhancement to extend them further
-her mutant tell that she is using her powers is that her eyes glow blue with crackling electricity, she normally wear sunglasses to hide this in her civilian identity.
-sometimes has to recharge her electricity by draining it from nearby electronics when tired.

Gear:
Stolen Vehicle:
Key can easily acquire any nearby vehicle she needs by simply using her Electrokinesis to unlock them for herself, but in a cyberpunk future all such vehicles are tracked she often ditches them to keep ahead of authorities. The vehicle she most often steals is a flying motorcycle, but will steal a flying car to transport her fellow gang or other people if need be.
Stolen Weapons:
Key can easily acquire and use any weapon that is DNA or electronic locked for herself, but she most often has a pistol and knife to hide her Electrokinesis while fighting in her civilian guise
Stolen Gear:
Often acquires the gear the group needs for any job through her connections and hacker skills, she owns a phone for normal activities and no end of burner phones and/or disposable hand radios for illegal activities. She generally has normal lockpicks in case she encounters a physical lock, crowbar in case she needs to force a door open, tools to fix up scavenged tech,

Spoiler: Secret

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Possible Secrets:
-she abandoned the clones they were making to replicate her and thinks of them as sisters
-she is keeping the fact that she could potentially be used to control the entire world's technology a secret and is constantly erasing any evidence of her past or full potential of her abilities as a result
-she is connected with various online underground activist and anti-establishment groups in cyberpsace who send her directives anonymously such as environmentalists, socialists/communists, civil rights, safety regulations, unions, that she doesn't share with the others in her group
-she has a helpful cyberspace friend that she trusts but doesn't know much about
-she wants revenge on the gang leader who betrayed her works to take them down secretly
-”Venus Miyahara” isn't her real name
-she wants to find and resurrect social media to help keep corporations and the government in check
-she made a deal with the devil to get free the second time and needs to pay it back

its a bit rough to me and I think it might need more refining on the details in the backstory and secret, and I can't be sure if "Spiderman" street level means I should make her be able to turn into an elemental lightning form or not, she's feeling a bit ramshackle and patchwork and is more a heroic cyberpunk hacker given superpowers than superhero in a cyberpunk world. I'd say its nearly complete, a second set of eyes would probably help but if no one cares I'll probably work something out sooner or later.

[Rater202]

I can focus on this part, but would still sticking to an animal theme veer too much into 'classic' toku? I don't want to go all Black Sun here (which...that it was dark wasn't the issue but it was a bit too cynical even though its 'heart' was kind of in the right place) but I am still picturing her having her own take on the Rider Kick as a 'finisher' and she has enemies in her backstory called something over the top like "The Animoids" or something like that. Maybe reference a descendant/successor to the High Evolutionary as a villain/had a hand in her creation since...I am fairly sure he didn't show up in 2099. Huh. Wiki says he DID show up in some capacity.

EDIT: Something closer to Shin Kamen Rider (the newer one) would be what I'd aim for.

That should be fine then

Okay I got a sheet:

Spoiler: Key (WIP?)

Show

Full Name: Venus Miyahara (Fake Name?)
Aliases: Key (Street alias), J1NX (Hacker alias)
Age: 22
Summary of Character Type: Electrokinetic Hacker Girl

Spoiler: Appearance

Show

Her civilian appearance is a pink-haired girl with orange eyes wearing blue-and-pink hooded jacket with cat ears on the hood, shirt and baggy pants and boots. Her actual hair color is red-headed and her actual eyes are green, but has dye and hair colors to keep her true identity secret.

Her superhero or disguise outfit is a black tron-like jumpsuit with glowing lines and helmet to hide her identity, with symbol that is a combination of lightning and key on her chest.

Spoiler: Backstory

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How Venus's parents died is relatively mundane. In a cyberpunk future where corporations have control of everything with no unions or safety regulations, her father bought a shoddily made car and died in a car crash, then her mother died from taking poorly made anti-depressants that poisoned her. The Public Eye investigating both incidents found nothing illegal taking place. As she was a child of two employees of Alchemax, she was of course then forcefully hired to be a testing child of the megacorp now that she was an orphan, putting into a testing product orphanage for various more shoddy products of theirs, was basically a clean looking prison.

Venus however soon discovered she could hear and feel the electricity with the devices they made and manipulate them so she could survive when they went wrong or sabotage them before anyone could test them, that she had electrokinesis. She used this power to escape this corporate orphanage and become apart of a hacker gang, learning becoming a Cyber-Jock and figuring how to survive by stealing what they can and doing what jobs they're hired for. She got pretty good at using her powers and hacking skills to survive, but then one day her gang leader sold her out to Alchemax, giving them her and her powers in exchange for a big payout that made them rich for life.

So she was imprisoned by Alchemax again, this time in a facility goal of expanding and strengthening her powers where they tried numerous unethical methods and possibilities so they could use her to control the world's technology as their tool, but didn't achieve any success. The CEO in response pushed them to try harder while cutting their budget, wanting them to get results.

The engineers on the project decided to focus their cut funding on achieving what the CEO wanted rather than keeping her secure, opting for a low budget solution to keep her contained. She soon escape, using electricity to blast through her cheap restrains, then wipe her presence from all electronics and unlocking every door on her way then in the parking lot she found a motorcycle bypassing its electronic lock and stealing it to take it for a ride despite not having any experience driving and crashed somewhere, luckily not dying but it made sure Alchemax thought she was dead so they'd never come after her.

Distrusting most gangs and wanting to keep herself hidden, Venus gave herself the name Key and made an effort to wipe any history of who she was to protect herself, she put on a costume and herself an alias known as “Key” for how she unlocks things, going into the old subway system and find allies with powers as well- but given how things went the last time she was on a team, she is careful not to trust them entirely.

Spoiler: Personality

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Key is introverted and secretive, but at times likes playing up a playful hacker persona Key likes being artistic, she draws sketches of things in an age where AI art generation has taken over, she listens to lofi, synthwave, jazz, things like that. She keeps people at some distance to make sure she keeps her identity a secret so that people don't find out about her powers and how they could be used to take over the world. She cares a lot about the social issues of this world, desiring for a change for the better but doesn't say so openly often. She is implied to be post-transition transfem, but won't be stated outright unless asked.

Her motto is “Capitalism is a prison, time for a jailbreak”

Spoiler: Abilities

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Skills:
Cyber-Jock:
Is an expert Cyber-Jock with a port to link up into Cyberspace and can navigate and manipulate it to get information when her Electrokinesis isn't enough to get information. To some extent she is good at technology in general, but has room to grow.

I Can Drive:
Key has skill in driving various vehicles, such as cars, motorcycles, boats or futuristic versions of them from stealing them for her crimes.

I Can Fight:
Key has spent some time as a hacker-gang member, and thus can fight using a knife or various guns, knowing a wider variety than most due to the security measures she can bypass with her electrokinesis.

Nueva York Streetwise:
Knows the various street gangs and how things are done in the streets and criminal underworld of Nueva York, where to fence goods, who to contact for this or that, etc, and is a well-rounded heist-runner and criminal of various other skills which are good for surviving in the year 2099.

Electrokinesis:
Her mutant power is control over electricity, this has many potential applications but Key's actual tricks she does often with it are listed here, but there is room for her to discover other tricks.
-Combat:
Lightning Blast:
fires lightning at one person to attack them
Shock Touch:
shocks somebody she touches
Electromagnetic Shield:
projects a personal shield to protect her from attacks, it can be overwhelmed however- a powerful enough explosive will shatter it and render her defenseless at least and its also shorted out if doused with a splash of water, while powerful magnets will pull her in because it magnetizes her.

-Utility:
Unlock:
unlocks any door, vehicle or other device that uses an electronic lock with electrokinesis, allowing her to bypass most security measures
Hiding Field:
emits a field that hides herself from all electronics around her, such as cameras, motion detection, cyborg eyes and so on, wiping her information from their sensors no matter what they're actually searching for
Bio-Electric Mind Trick:
Manipulates the electricity in her victim's brain like a jedi mind trick to help smooth over social situations through suggestion
Shutdown:
Turns off electronics, even robots and makes organic beings go to sleep, requires too much focus and time to do in combat.
Hear the Machines:
Can hear and understand electronic waves such as radio waves, digital and so on, as well as touch one to interface and get information from technology

Weaknesses:
-Loses power temporarily when doused or submerged in water, when exposed to strong magnetic fields, sunspots or solar flares
-powers don't work against insulated materials
-her powers currently only extend out to the range of the average pistol's firing range and would need some form of enhancement to extend them further
-her mutant tell that she is using her powers is that her eyes glow blue with crackling electricity, she normally wear sunglasses to hide this in her civilian identity.
-sometimes has to recharge her electricity by draining it from nearby electronics when tired.

Gear:
Stolen Vehicle:
Key can easily acquire any nearby vehicle she needs by simply using her Electrokinesis to unlock them for herself, but in a cyberpunk future all such vehicles are tracked she often ditches them to keep ahead of authorities. The vehicle she most often steals is a flying motorcycle, but will steal a flying car to transport her fellow gang or other people if need be.
Stolen Weapons:
Key can easily acquire and use any weapon that is DNA or electronic locked for herself, but she most often has a pistol and knife to hide her Electrokinesis while fighting in her civilian guise
Stolen Gear:
Often acquires the gear the group needs for any job through her connections and hacker skills, she owns a phone for normal activities and no end of burner phones and/or disposable hand radios for illegal activities. She generally has normal lockpicks in case she encounters a physical lock, crowbar in case she needs to force a door open,

Spoiler: Secret

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Possible Secrets:
-she abandoned the clones they were making to replicate her and thinks of them as sisters
-she is keeping the fact that she could potentially be used to control the entire world's technology a secret and is constantly erasing any evidence of her past or full potential of her abilities as a result
-she is connected with various online underground activist and anti-establishment groups in cyberpsace who send her directives anonymously such as environmentalists, socialists/communists, civil rights, safety regulations, unions, that she doesn't share with the others in her group
-she has a helpful cyberspace friend that she trusts but doesn't know much about
-she wants revenge on the gang leader who betrayed her works to take them down secretly
-”Venus Miyahara” isn't her real name
-she wants to find and resurrect social media to help keep corporations and the government in check

its a bit rough to me and I think it might need more refining on the details in the backstory and secret, and I can't be sure if "Spiderman" street level means I should make her be able to turn into an elemental lightning form or not, she's feeling a bit ramshackle and patchwork and is more a heroic cyberpunk hacker given superpowers than superhero in a cyberpunk world. I'd say its nearly complete, a second set of eyes would probably help but if no one cares I'll probably work something out sooner or later.

Looks good so far.

[tonberryking]

Spoiler: Clover Fields, AKA Kamen Rabbit

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Clover Fields: Kamen Rabbit
Age: ? (presumably 16-17)
Summary of Character Type: Naïve Henshin Hero/Armored, Speedy Cyborg

Spoiler: Appearance

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Often presumed to be an 'ordinary' mutant with simple rabbit-based powers, Clover is an anthropomorphic bunny girl with cream colored fur and a darker honey head of hair that is clean if scruffy. She wears scavenged clothes, often changing them out apart form a hover-biker's jacket whose fauther material over time has become a dingy gray. Clover has become rather attached to it, as well as a long red scarf. Her age seems somewhat nebulous as her rabbit features give her a youthful countenance.

As Kamen Rabbit, her armored cyborg form, Clover's body is covered in metal and ceramic plates of unknown material, mostly a dark, almost black iron color with silver trim and piping. Her 'helmet' has bulbous red eyes and her middle is covered with a noticeable belt like band with a flat disc stone dead center. Only her scarf remains on her body after she changes.

Spoiler: Backstory

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Dr. Hoan is considered unethical even by the Megacorp standards of 2099. Claiming to be the true and only successor to the mysterious High Evolutionary from the legends of the past, he has successfully recreated and repurposed his own genetic strains of New-Men that he has dubbed the Animoids. Anthropomorphic creatures far stronger than humans, albeit modified further with heavy cybernetic enhancements, their loyalties and capacities can be programmed right in, ready to serve as paramilitary grunts, assassins, security, enforcers or any other number of expendable (and easily replaceable) roles. He sells to the highest bidder when he doesn't make use of his own creations himself and sees (almost) every animoid as a replaceable pile of parts. He has also helped make certain individuals 'disappear' without a genetic trace and is often hired to supply corps with battalions of monsters who also can't be traced, often playing multiple sides of conflicts. Though his services are still sought after, the corps have become more and more discrete about hiring out large numbers of the animoids. Hoan is happy with this arrangement...

Though he wishes that clients would stop asking about that infiltrator unit model he was working on...

Clover started life as Subject R0112-X. Her original purpose was to serve as an infiltrator with an alterable human form. New genetic codes could be given to her in case she needed to bypass genetic based securities. Hoan had hoped upon her success he could develop more complex infiltrators and less...messy assassin animoids. There was only one problem. R0112-X's Power core was, in a then-effort to save resources, a composite remade from the retrieved and recycled cores of previous animoids. Hoan blames "her" failure entirely on this; it's not like it was directly HIS fault. As a result of using a seemingly faulty core, R0112X was, ironically, a bit too human, too sapient. She refused to change out of her rabbit mode, was too terrified to follow even the simplest of orders no matter how much she was threatened, and much to his frustration the composite core prevented him from simply re-wiring her brain. She was set to be dissected and recycled when Hoan's then-lab was carpet bombed by a Megacorp he'd swindled, forcing him to flee. Clover was abandoned.


The bombs didn't kill her of course. Clover stumbled her way into the slums of Nova York and was discovered hiding in a dumpster by a missionary known as Sister Anya Wagner. She worked for the St. Patrick's Cathedral and neither knowing nor caring what brought Clover to such a state, took her to a woman's shelter. Not only was she given a name (after Clover spent an inordinate amount of time staring at a painting of a four leaf clover with a field in the background) she was given what she would later call a "crash course in humanity."


Staying at the shelter, however, was also not to last. Over a month after she moved in, remaining Freakers (following the initial fight of 2099 Spiderman and the Vulture) wanted to take their frustrations out on any organization tied to St. Patricks, and they attempted to raze the place. Backed into a literal corner, terrified not just for herself but the other women in the shelter, Clover underwent a sudden transformation, accessing an 'armored' form that came about from her repressed powers and the composite core in her body finally synching in a moment of desperation. New instincts took over and she defeated all the Freakers with her bare hands, and saving most, if not all of the women too. But Clover, not understanding what had happened, or how, fled, terrified of herself.

Weeks later she has slowly reemerged in public eye. She has gradually wandered through the slums of Nova York, meeting both scary and downtrodden people. Those who hurt, and those who help. But she hasn't gone back to St. Patricks (because she doesn't know how Sister Wagner or the others would react to her) and since then, rumors of an 'armored rabbit' have spread. She's inadvertently crossed paths with muggers, arsonists, psycho killers and even other animoids. Her acts of self defense lead to her gradually coming to the conclusion that if she can't suppress her powers, then Clover has to do SOMETHING with them. She continues to find that higher purpose, trusting that its path will reveal itself sooner or later.

Spoiler: Personality

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Clover is a mess of dualities.

While she is painfully shy and timid, and barely knows how to act as a human, there is an overreaching sense of naïve altruism and kindness that motivates her. If she can get past any initial instinct of RUN or HIDE, she finds herself wanting to help people, even if this comes from a desire to stop being afraid and/or to not be feared herself. Her time at St. Patricks has also led to her believing in God at face value, despite the awful, ugly world that surrounds her.

Some unknown spark rests inside of her, ready to go off under duress, or if confronted with something so overwhelmingly wrong or simply Unforgivable. When she's armored up, and only when she's armored up, Clover's fears are overridden. She becomes far more violent, willing to risk herself without thinking of any consequences, wholly focused on ending the "threat." Outside of her armor she is terrified of her own strength, constantly working towards resolving or putting herself out of potential conflicts.

Spoiler: Abilities

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Most animoids: Cyborgs who appear to be animal based mutants, only their enhancements allow them to transform into larger/stronger forms with robotic arms, or laser blades, drone detachments, shoulder cannons, jet packs, etc. All of them have a "Power core" somewhere inside their bodies (Never in the head) which allows them to transform. Destroying the core does irreparable damage to an animoid if it doesn't violently kill them outright.

Kamen Rabbit:
-Clover has mildly improved physical attributes as a rabbit "mutant" as well as enhanced hearing.

-Power Form: Clover gains true super speed, enhanced superhuman agility and strength, armored durability.

-Is a cyborg; while it has yet to be seen if she can age, she has demonstrated invulnerability to electrical shocks that could kill a fully grown human, held her breath for far longer than humanly possible, and has survived on very little food or water since coming to Nova York. She's not sure if she even needs to eat.

-A ocular search mode that can locate Power cores in other Animoids. It is unknown if she can use this to locate weak points in other enemies, but it in theory can work on robots.

-The ability to briefly generate energy "pulses" through her extremities, IE her hands and feet. Her 'Rabbit Kick' attack has thus far been shown to be the most powerful of these when she throws her armored weight behind jumping strikes, the impact is nearly quadruple the force of normal strikes, if not more.

-Undiscovered power core location (it's not her belt; the belt is just a foci)

-She can also use her 'belt' to generate painful flashes of light in a pinch, though this "counts" as a use of her punch and kick.

-Unknown Potential: While she's not anything close to an omega, Clover has wiped the floor with a number of foes, including other animoids whom she was NEVER intended to be able to overpower. Her maximum jumping heights, strike power and speeds are inching higher, if very, very slowly.

Weaknesses: Loud, Hypersonic, Noises. She has finite amount of energy to charge the Rabbit Kick; she can't keep indefinitely using it. Her core is effectively a black box to most scientists if she's ever grievously damaged. Clover also isn't a martial artist nor has she had real combat training. No real weapons in cyborg form.

Spoiler: Secret

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Clover's Power core is...appropriately enough, her heart. However her heart is on the right side of her body, not left.

Despite being a lab grown organism, cloned and genetically modified, Clover would be determined to (somehow) have a human soul by any mystic or supernatural capable of detecting such things. This is not the case for most animoids...

Spoiler: TOP SECRET

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A possible explanation for Clover's latent 'heroic' qualities perhaps lies in the fact her core was refurbished from animoids Hoan had sold who were used as "Search and Rescue" operatives. Specifically they were all destroyed rescuing Corp VIPs/family members from a kidnapping. Hoan discretely recovered their remains, unwittingly using their repaired core in an animoid specifically designed to replicate human behavior. Through sheer, one in a million luck this combined all together to form who Clover can potentially become.

Spoiler: List of Animoid Types

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Canine Base/Iron Hounds
Basic "model" with enhanced physical abilities, senses, and 1-2 firearms. Dogs or Wolves; work great in packs

Big Cat Base/ Bronze Lions
Comes singular or as prides. Lion is a catchall term for tigers, lions, and leopards. Even stronger than the canines, their metal forms are heavily armored, and given enhanced strength and or speed

Bird Base 1/ Steel Crows
Flying units that while are more fragile compared to other animoids, they can keep pace with most vehicles; come equipped with weapon systems or, rarely, physical power enhancements

Bird Base 2/ Diamond Eagle
Hoan has only made one of these, who serves him as his right hand man/assassin/pride and joy. Armor, can fly at super sonic speeds, fire arm weapon systems. He refuses to clone it/sell copies of this one.

Rhino Base/ Onyx Rhino
Hoan only made one of these too, but for whatever reason he scrapped the entire line of Animoids and has put the single one he made into cold storage. Is terrified of this one for some reason.

Sea Life Base/ Ruby Shark
Hoan is currently working on this one; the prototypes have either been too violent, too stupid, or unable to survive the polluted sea environment

Insect Base/ Copper Stag Beetle
Abilities unknown, current prototypes showing immense promise.

Ursine Base/ Silver Bear
Abilities unknown, upcoming prototype

Rabbit Base/ Ceramic Rabbit
Clover.

H'okay. This is a risky gamble, I admit, and I hope it's not too much info.

One idea I haven't put into this, but was considering since it feels more setting apropos, is that Clover *might* need to absorb/drain power cores from other animoids as sustenance, but that may be TOO dark to impliment.

EDIT: Added a third secret to "comic book plot" explain some discrepancies.

[Rater202]

Clover looks good and the Animoid details look interesting/useful.

whether or not she has to cannibalize the cores of others is up to you really.

[tonberryking]

I'm going to say that all the animoids can heal themselves if they canabalize each other, but it's not necessary to their survival; Clover only knows she can because she punched through a core and absorbed its energy previously.

That was not a good day for her.

[Feathersnow]

Here's what I have. It's kinda bare-bones, but I'm a minimalist calling on established tropes and characters.

Spoiler: Dex

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Dex (Dax Foucault) NB, age 19
Adoptive Muscle Memory

Spoiler: Appearance

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A person of middling height and uncertain gender and ethnicity. They have dark hair and eyes, and light tan skin. Typically they dress in a white tracksuit with a popped collar and vantablack trim.

Spoiler: Backstory

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Taskmaster was a "small-m mutant" an individual with a previously unique neurological condition that caused his brain to augment his spinal ganglia in the formation and use of muscle memory, while his ability to form other long-term memories was limited. This syndrome was inherited by his biological daughter, the Avengers/Shield operative Jeanne "Finesse" Foucault, who worked as a bodyguard and enforcer for the organization before retiring late in life. Over the course of her life, she had a son, Raphael, who inherited the syndrome in turn. After an acrimonious split, the son was hired on by Roxxon, and has worked for various megacorps since, in the family business.

Raphael Foucault fathered many children by his many mistresses, most of whom were forcibly recruited by their father after showing signs of his abilities. This group he calls "The Bloodguard."

Dax, whose mother was poor, voluntarily joined their father in exchange for free access to gender confirmation therapy and general support. However, they dropped out of his "Bloodguard" over ethical qualms. Raphael Foucault has so far chosen to respect his child's choice, believing they will come back willingly to to the glamorous life he can promise.

Spoiler: Personality

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Dax is taciturn and secretive, but loyal and hard-working.

They also have a strong sarcastic streak and enjoy meta-humor, such as answering this part of the questionnaire in this manner.

Spoiler: Abilities

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Dex has the ability to perfectly imitate any mundane physical move they witness. Their Bloodguard gave them free access to training in Krav Maga, Capoeira, olympic wrestling, Coup de Vitesse, lightsaber forms I, IV, and VI, and the use of the Bat'leth.
Their gloves can heat up like an old-timey cigarette lighter and their tracksuit is made of an advanced meta-polymer that serves as armor.
They also have a bat'leth and helmet that can be created out of hard light by an emitter device in their fannypack.

Spoiler: Secret

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Dex is still in contact with their father, half-siblings, and grandmother and reports that any of these relationships are actually particularly strained are exaggerated.

[TeChameleon]

Wellp, here's my contribution.

Spoiler: (Detcord)

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Name: Jack "Detcord" Nord
Age: 30-something- he himself isn't entirely certain, thanks to growing up on the streets or on a battlefield.
Summary of Character Type:
Detcord plays the 'grizzled mercenary' trope to the hilt, with contacts in every dive bar and guns stashed in odd places everywhere he visits regularly. Never sits with his back to the door, cases every building he enters, all that fun stuff.

Spoiler: Appearance

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Jack Nord has short brown hair, green eyes, and stubble you could light a match on, with white streaks in his hair and not-quite-beard over old scars. He's just enough shorter than the average for it to be noticeable (5'8"-5'9" or thereabouts), with heavily corded muscle and the faintest beginnings of a gut.

When in action as Detcord, he typically wears fatigue trousers, a black spandex shirt, and the usual metal doodads that decorate many 2099 characters, most of them acting as pockets or pouches. Out of 'uniform', a button-down shirt, simple slacks, and comfortable shoes are the order of the day. Nothing that would look too out-of-place almost anywhere, although in the upper corpo levels he'd look a little scruffy, and in the undertown he'd look a bit posh, but not enough so that anyone would be likely to look too closely.

Spoiler: Backstory

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Jack Nord was born in the Vancouver Arcology, not far from where Alpha Flight had their West Coast headquarters a century before. Unfortunately, the lawless upheaval of the era didn't spare many, and he was orphaned early enough that he has little memory of his parents. Fortunately(?) he was taken in by a gunrunner that did the Vancouver-Seattle crossing, used as a lookout and a mule. As he grew older, his most frequent company were his boss' merc customers, who tolerated the little boy as a mild amusement. One, though, took a bit more of an interest; an ancient albino merc who only went by Random. When Jack's mutant abilities manifested when he was 11, it became obvious why; Random tried to recruit him with the usual 'mutant brotherhood' speech.

In a move that Jack came to regret later in life, he sold Random out as a 'genejoke' to his 'boss', hoping for some parental approval, or at least a payout. He got neither, getting kicked out and Random being sold to an Alchemax subsidiary.

Jack survived for the next five years as a sneak thief, his mutant ability to create lengths of explosive 'cord' being useful for shattering locks, blowing safes, and even rappelling. When he turned 16, he joined up with a mercenary group that was unbigoted enough to at least consider mutant abilities useful. He spent the next dozen years on battlefields all over the world, honing his powers and combat abilities. During one run to the undercity of Old New York, he found a strange old quasi-flightpack in a wrecked pre-cataclysm Stark-Fujikawa lab.

After one particularly bad tour in the wilds of Siberia, Detcord decided to settle down in Nova York, intrigued by the bright lights of the big city... and the chance to mess with the corpos. He'd never been particularly fond of authority, and the corporate drones that made up the elite of the East Coast annoyed him on a level that he wouldn't have thought possible.

Spoiler: Personality

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Detcord is one of those that many would say is wound a little too tight. And others would say he's wound so tight that his mainspring came loose. He's polite, military-adjacent, and professional... with an utterly wild side that lives for thrills and danger. He doesn't let that side show much, unless you happen to be with him on a job, but the careful observer will note that as thrill-seeking as that aspect of him seems, the risks tend to be expertly calculated to deliver surprisingly effective results.

Spoiler: Abilities

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Detcord has the ability to create psionically-manifested cords that explode at his will, apparently limited only by his patience- he can manifest about 100 feet/second, although he can 'store' that as well, stockpiling it in his own aura (creating a stealth-defeating glow) and then manifesting his stockpile nigh-instantaneously.

The explosions are roughly on par with conventional explosives, with his psionic 'detcord' producing similar destructive force to an analogous volume of C7 plastic explosive. Unless he actively wills it, the cords are completely inert, and will not explode under any level of force.

The cords themselves are about 5-tonne-test for a single strand, and highly resistant to cutting, and can become highly adhesive at specific points for anchoring.

Outside of his detcords, Jack has above-peak-human reflexes and agility and the mildly enhanced physiology of a mutant (immunity to motion sickness, enhanced resistance to disease, slightly above peak human physical maximums, etc.).

His prize possession is a Stark-Fujikawa A/G Repulsorpak, a null-gravity jump pack that never saw commercial release because of its wild, barely controlled 'pinball' type flight, achieved by nullifying both gravity and inertia, then firing a mild repulsion ray on the opposite vector of the desired direction of travel. As he does not suffer from any type of motion sickness, Detcord considers the high-speed, impossible-to-predict ricocheting an asset, as it's hard to shoot something that bounces as wildly as a superball in a cyclotron.

Outside of all that, he has extensive experience in both the maintenance and use of firearms, a good understanding of demolitions, respectable CQC skills, infiltration/exfiltration knowledge... basically all the skills you'd expect from a long-time career mercenary (and ex-thief). He also brews a surprisingly good craft beer, given the time and equipment.

Spoiler: Secret

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Detcord has two major secrets; the first being that his 'eyes' are actually lenses, and his biological eyes behind them have black sclera and the iris is a glowing green- his mutant 'tell', basically.

The second is that his real reason for settling in Nova York is that he discovered that Random was alive, somehow surviving more than twenty years in an Alchemax biolab. He considers his selling out of the old mutant one of the gravest sins of his life, and is determined to either save him, or give him a dignified end if the elder mutant is too far gone from the Alchemax 'testing'.

[Batcathat]

Since Dirtnap having "regular" kids seems unlikely (since even if he impregnated someone, that would likely just make his currently borrowed body the father), I'm leaning towards making my character another member of the escaped lab kid club. Alchemax seems like the most obvious choice, but seeing as there are already several character with ties to Alchemax I'm not sure whether another one is good (could tie the group together) or bad (less diversity in regards to plot-hooks), what do the rest of you think?

[Rater202]

Honestly, if most of the group has a reason to hate Alchemax then it helps establish why this group in particular out of all the misfits and street rats banded together.

[tonberryking]

I mean, Alchemax effed up and screws over a lot of people, daily, so I wouldn't think it overcrowding things if a third PC with ties to them showed up. If anything, Clover's (currently) the odd one out for having an independent contractor mad scientist create her instead of having direct ties to Alchemax. (Unless they are retroactively made to be Hoan's best customers, IDK, but even then...)

There's certainly enough room in 2099 for another Megacrop. Alchemax literally isn't the only one, and having a PC tied to a competitor can create interesting complications to the story, whether it's a matter of "one damn thing after another" (to quote a writing teacher I once had) or even a situation where we're forced to decide who's the lesser evil in a conflict. And even if you want to help tie the group together with an Alchemax related background, they have a TON of inner company politics and backstabbery, so rival factions aren't unheard of.


I guess that's a long winded way of my saying: you have a lot of freedom to work with here; don't sweat the details and make the character with the story you want.

[Feathersnow]

Dex's dad is a merc for the mega corps. That could be tied in a few ways to Alchemax.

[Batcathat]

I guess that's a long winded way of my saying: you have a lot of freedom to work with here; don't sweat the details and make the character with the story you want.

Well yeah, but the story will be basically the same whether it's Alchemax or some competitor that's pulling the strings in this particular case (though it might be kinda fun to come up with some megacorp that's the Aperture Science to Alchemax's Black Mesa). That said, a common enemy for at least parts of the group does seem pretty useful, so unless I get some sudden burst of inspiration to make my own megacorp (with blackjack and hookers?) I'll probably go with Alchemax.

In any case, I'm a little short on time but I'll try to have something finished within the next few days or so.

[Lord Raziere]

I mean the original idea for Key was to instead make the mega-corp that tried to experiment on her Stark-Fujikawa, but I changed it to Alchemax for some reason, I could've gone for making up a mega-corp but I couldn't come up with a good name for it that wouldn't just sound like a clear parody (such as CheapoCorp). technically she is still WIP so I guess I could change it but them all having reasons to hate Alchemax in particular is a uniting factor....

on the other hand, it doesn't really matter to Key what mega-corp tried it, she's a hacker with ties to low-life gang and online hacker communities of various causes, she is of the belief that All Corporations Are Bad. and her particular deal, it doesn't really matter who finds out since one corp trying to using her is just as bad as another.

[Batcathat]

In case anyone's curious, I'm only like half finished with my sheet (it's not particularly long, I've just been short on time) but I should be able to finish it by Friday at the latest.

[Batcathat]

Well, I don't think it's still Friday in any part of the world, but at least I'm finished.

Spoiler: Catnap

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Name: Jonah (no last name) A.K.A. Catnap
Age: 16
Cannibalistic Shapeshifter and Surprisingly Sweet Kid

Spoiler: Appearance

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As someone who changes bodies the way other people change clothes, very little about Jonah's appearance is actually his own in any real sense. The exception – his own version of his predecessor's iconic smiley face – is a QR-code that's imprinted in his DNA to be clearly visible on whatever form he takes (on a human form, usually the chest). It served dual reasons to his creators – to make him identifiable regardless of who he's wearing and to make him clearly identifiable as their intellectual property.

Spoiler: OCC

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I don't know what the odds are of QR-codes still being in use by 2099, but let's just say that any more high-tech equivalents were too complex to imprint into his DNA, not to mention display on his body.

When entirely without a body to replicate, Jonah doesn't even have the distorted body of his predecessor but is reduced to a sort of grey goo (QR-code still clearly visible, of course) that can do little but crawl around and eat whoever gets close.

Since he doesn't have the heart to keep a human body indefinitely – not yet, anyway – the closest thing to a default form Jonah has is that of a black cat, which aside from QR-code seemingly part of the fur on its back looks like a regular, if somewhat ruffled, cat.

Spoiler: Backstory

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Depending on who you ask, Jonah's story began 16, 34 or over a 100 years ago. In any event, it began with the infamous (or possibly unfamous) cannibalistic shapeshifter known only as Dirtnap. While the details of Dirtnap's life – and even his real name – are mostly unknown, a preserved sample of his DNA was eventually found. Over the course of several decades, it changed hands numerous times (allegedly being used in an aborted supersoldier program at one point) until it eventually ended up, as most things eventually does, in the possession of Alchemax, who sent it to their division for Experimental Genetics.

After a few tries – not only was the sample degraded with time, it also had some odd quirks assumed to be related to Dirtnap's power or possibly all the other DNA he had replicated over the years – Jonah was "born". He spent his first few years mostly as a scientific experiment, given various people and animals to eat while being studied. After two scientists died from the consequences of putting a toddler in control of an adult super-powered body, it was decided that it was in everyone's best interest to raise Jonah – as he eventually came to be named – into something resembling a civilized human.

After that, his childhood was about as normal as a childhood can be while still including cannibalistic lab experiments and he formed familial bonds with several of his handlers. Over the years, the tests grew further and further apart as the scientists seemed to have learned what they could. There were murmurs of instead training him to become what was referred to as one of Alchemax's special operatives, the polite term for their in-house spies and assassins.

But before they could happen, one of the scientists (Jonah only ever knew him as "Bobby") decided that his overworked conscience had finally had enough and more or less forced Jonah to escape by having him swallow a cat and smuggling it out of the facility. Whatever the next step of the plan was, it ended when Bobby was shot by the guards on his way out the door, while a terrified Jonah ran to a freedom he didn't understand nor particularly wanted.

Although quite well schooled (all his teachers had at least one doctorate), Jonah had basically no experience with real life so he settled into the tunnels of Old New York, alternating between living as a talking cat and borrowing someone else's body for brief periods. He has considered going back to the lab, but always having been taught to trust the judgement of his scientific handlers, Jonah assumes Bobby probably had a good reason for wanting him out of there.

Spoiler: Personality

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Despite his rather horrifying childhood and depressing present, Jonah comes off as surprisingly well-adjusted and happy most of the time, approaching life with a sort of slightly confused optimism. Until his escape, he had only ever met a dozen people in total and none his own age, making him somewhat awkward in social situations, alternating between silence and occasional inappropriateness. Still being rather new to the world outside a lab (even if his first-rate education means he probably knows more about the world than many people who grew up in it), Jonah can also be somewhat naive and sometimes act younger than he is.

In regards to his powers, he grew up thinking of them as completely normal and using them as just another activity, but over time Jonah has started to understand that it's not a very pleasant experience for his victims and that wearing someone else's body is rarely accepted. Because of that, he uses his cat-form most of the time, only occasionally borrowing someone's body when necessary.

Spoiler: Abilities

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At a moment's notice, Jonah can open up most of his body into something that could generously be described as a mouth (or more accurately as a disgusting flesh-opening) and swallow almost any creature within (his admittedly rather limited) reach. The eating is more or less instantaneous, after which the victim is stored with Jonah's body (his creators could never figure out quite how it worked, as he's able to simultaneously store several people his own size or larger).

The victims are in some form of stasis, not aware of what is happening and seemingly unharmed by the process (though more studies are needed on the long-term effects of being in someone's possibly extra-dimensional stomach) while Jonah is able to assume their physical form, including any superhuman abilities they may possess. He can quickly switch between forms, but only as long as the originals remain within him. Anyone who's been eaten can be expelled more or less unharmed, though usually covered in a rather unpleasant goo.

Based on the experiences of his predecessor, it's likely that Jonah would have trouble keeping down victims with healing factors and swallowing someone channeling too much energy could have explosive results.

Spoiler: Secret

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There are two things that Jonah tries to keep secret from everyone, preferring to suppress the thoughts as much as he can. The first is that using his power is starting to feel better and better, to the point that he's sometimes almost overwhelmed by the impulse to swallow someone. The second is the desire for a human form to call his own, which would of course mean taking over someone else's body permanently.

[Rater202]

Looks good

[Rater202]

Okay, I don't think we're getting much more interest so I'm going to try and start the Ic thread later today with a rudimentary "Job" for a first adventure.

Everyone pick a speech color: Arsenal will be using Indigo.

[Feathersnow]

Dex will use red.

[Rater202]

And an IC thread