Those Halcyon Days of Youth (Inactive)

Game Master Stalwart

Many kids have a favorite childhood movie--or a fictional character everyone says “is just like them”. For Ness MacDonnell, that was Merida from Brave.

Ness grew up in the hills outside of Sleepy Arbors, a university town that’s a bit more than an hour outside of Halcyon City. Her father was a freelance illustrator, and her mother was a European History professor. She and her siblings were homeschooled, and encouraged to follow their passions.

While Ness enjoyed her academics, she tended to complete them quickly...and then would spend hours a day practicing archery and parkour. Her parents knew she was a bit obsessive, but at least she kept busy...and if they ever made her sit still she’d quickly drive them to distraction.

Too late they’ve realized that she wasn’t going to outgrow her childhood heroic fantasies. Her mom is horrified. Her dad is secretly excited and roots her on. He’s even started tooling around, trying to invest new kinds of trick arrows for her.

She's chosen Gallowglass as her hero name, after the elite Scottish warriors of the 15th Century.

Obsessive. Enthusiastic. Brave. Plucky.

Ness is SOOOOO excited to be a real superhero. I mean, plenty of superheroes don’t have powers per se, right? It’s been totally disproven that you need powers to be a real hero. Just think of Red Kestrel, and all the good she did!

And now Ness is going to get to meet aliens! And people who can fly and shoot rays from their eyes! Maybe she’ll even get to travel in time. It would be amazing to go to ancient Scottland and see what a “real Merida”’s life would’ve been like!!

Ness has had crushes on many superheroes since she was a preteen, and still has a poster of the Praetorian on the wall of her childhood bedroom.

The other poster is of Merida with Ness’s favorite line from the movie: “There are those who say fate is something beyond our command. That destiny is not our own, but I know better. Our fate lives within us, you only have to be brave enough to see it.”

Ness is a normal human in great physical condition. Due to obsessive practice, she has exceptional skills in parkour and archery, and (after some devoted internet research) has learned to make a number of trick arrows: ones with flash powder and smoke pellets and ones that can give off a brief EMP that can disrupt technology, and ones that trail bolas to entangle her foes.

Her partner in heroics is Bear, her Australian Shepherd. Bear has no more powers than Ness does, but the two work well together, and he helps her in her efforts to distract (defend), comfort, and sniff out the truth.

She’s a pale, very freckly white woman with bushy red hair (enough that folks still often say “ya know, you look just like a real life Merida”). She dresses in comfortable clothes (hoodies, stretch pants, and running shoes) when not fighting crime.

Ness is proud to have sewn her own costume, inspired by her childhood hero Merida.

Reference Image

Crime Hawk is a flying burglar who carries a variety of kinds of bombs, and who makes a mockery of the laws of Halcyon City (through her crimes, but also by mocking do-gooders). When Ness first came out in costume, she and Bear came upon Crime Hawk leaving a jewelry story. Crime Hawk mocked the heroic duo and disabled them with a stink bomb before disappearing into the sky. Ness is keeping a close eye out for her, and intends to teach her that Crime Doesn’t Pay...and neither does messing with Gallowglass!

Just the highlights, subject to change, I still will need to flesh out some stuff.

-Amberly always had an endless optimism in her youth, a pure belief in doing the right thing the right way - that someone’s actions mattered more than the final outcome. She put superheroes up on a pedestal because of this, and it had been her dream from a young age to become one like them.

-Amberly’s parents were killed in an explosion in their lab while working on some secret project - she was in the blast radius, and lost an arm and her vision in both eyes. However, it wasn’t a superhero that saved her, but a mundane good samaritan who saw the explosion and rushed in to help.

-Her grandmother was a semi-retired agent of AEGIS, who pulled strings that got her implanted with a single cybernetic eye and replaced her limbs with mechanical ones.

-She lived with her grandmother for a time, and worked on figuring out what happened to her parents - she felt like it wasn’t an accident.

-She got frustrated - she always felt like she was getting close to the end of the mystery, only to keep hitting brick walls - there were lines she refused to cross, actions she didn’t want to take, but these were keeping her from the truth.

-She was approached by AEGIS who was somewhat impressed by her tenacity and resourcefulness. She had heard stories from her grandmother about the good they did in the world, protecting the little guy from the big bads. She accepted.

-AEGIS began slowly upgrading her cybernetics and training her as she pursued both the cause of her parent’s death and side-objectives for AEGIS.

-She works to find the cause of her parent’s death, but also makes sure that she never puts an individual’s life over her own drive - she tries to never forget that she wants to help people more than anything else.

Amberly is a strange cross between optimism and realism - she understands that it’s likely that she’ll never be able to save everyone, to help everyone, but that is not going to stop her from trying. She is kind and unstoppable, filled with confidence and humility. All of this is very carefully stitched together to paint over any cracks that may show from hard choices she has to make or terrible things she has to witness.

Tentatively, still considering kind of what I’m going for with her “powers”, and if she gets selected I’ll probably adjust based on what other characters are taking.
Mechanical Limbs and A Signature Weapon.

Again, tentative, but…
Woman, Middle Eastern, scarred face, casual clothing, professional costume.

Heavily scarred face from the “accident” with her parents. Wears an eyepatch over her defunct eye, and pretty casual clothes when not on duty. During missions, she wears a face-obscuring gas mask and either a rugged, hooded cloak and vest or a sharp, black suit and tie.

General Terror and her gang (is "Terror Troops" too cheesy?) are a regular enemy that AEGIS and Amberly specifically is on the trail of - A woman in a dark getup with a skull mask and a sword, General Terror was born a metahuman with the strange ability to harness the fear in others and in herself. When people near her become scared, she gains strength, and the more people that are afraid, the stronger and faster she is. However, when she gains this strength, she is actually taking the fear into her body, making her act in an aggressive fight or flight response, rather than using any actual skill. However, if a person she is harnessing from is rendered unconscious or dead, she loses that portion of power. In any case, if there are enough people in fear around her, she can perform incredible feats of strength, leveling buildings and obliterating the populace.

She also has a small army of henchmen, who she intimidates into obedience - this is doubly good for her, as minions that show fear when she enters a room gives her more power, which lets her intimidate them more, and so on. She often uses gadgets that enhance her normal powers.

– Rory grew up in a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks, both his worked hard but for whatever reason could never seem to get a head. Early childhood was mostly uneventful, skip class here, scuffle there sort of things, the care free life of a kid. The first sign that Rory had any sort of powers was at 15 when he was accosted by two thugs claiming his father owed them money. Rory was attempting to defend himself when he grabbed the thug’s arm in a moment of panic he froze it solid to the elbow, which was enough to cause his attackers to flee. After telling his family about what happened his father told him and his mother to pack bags and they were going to go on the run the next day when Rory got home from school.
The next day minutes seem to stretch on forever and he was clearly distracted. When the teachers or other students would ask if he was ok he just told them he wasn’t feeling well, which resulted in a trip to the school nurse who was shocked that none of her thermometers worked but he wasn’t running a fever nor was he vomiting so he was sent back to class. Rory kept to himself the rest of the day scarred to touch anyone. On his way home he noticed a smoky smell coming from the trailer park, and a knot formed in his stomach. As he pulled into the park on his bicycle he came into view of his home engulfed in flames. Unknowingly covering himself in a layer of ice he rushed into the trailer to find his mother laying on the floor. Rory lifted his mom onto his shoulders and carried her out just before the roof collapsed.
Sirens filled the air, the words of the officer speaking to him when in one ear and out the other as he watched his mother and father’s bodies loaded into the ambulances. Next thing he knew he was in a squad room speaking with a detective when a two men, one in a blue suit and one in black approached. The man in blue identified himself as Jarvis Shevchenko and he was representing a Ms. Julia Quinn who had been named Rory’s guardian in accordance with Rory’s father’s will. The late Mr. Noble worked for Ms. Quinn, but not as a janitor as Rory had thought, it turns out he was more of a corporate espionage agent. After the incident the day before with Rory getting attacked his father updated his will fearing something would happen. Knowing of Rory’s powers Ms. Quinn agreed to be the guardian and mentor to Rory.

Surprisingly jovial and light hearted given the tragedy he has suffered and tries to be there for others because someone was there for him.

Rory: Elemental Control (ice), Shared: Impossible Fighting Skills, Mentor: Powerful Armor.

White, Male, Athletic, Black hair, blue eyes, Casual Clothes, Protective Wear.

Nadia Elliot: Former student of Ms. Quinn but they were too similar, she now seeks to prove that she is better than Rory.

Ms. Julia Quinn AKA the Silver Shield, retired super hero of the silver age turned philanthropist, and Rory’s guardian. She has helped Rory quell his anger and frustration and focus it on doing good.

Who hasn't heard of HephaesTech? They came out of nowhere one day, becoming a premier name in Super-Tech. Priding themselves on the work they do in the name of the city's safety, they work with heroes to create many of the tools they use to supplement and enhance their powers, in the name of a brighter tomorrow.
But even with this, the work that kicked them onto the scene, and the thing they are still best known for now among the public is something else entirely - the Palladion Project, a series of automated defence drones designed to be able to stand against and take down super-powered threats whenever another hero can't be there to save the day. It sounded crazy to people before...but when the PallaDroid Rampart put a swift end to Terralith's rampage, it couldn't be denied that HephaesTech's crazy dream had become a reality.
There have been no less than 8 more PallaDroids since then, each with unique capabilities derived from advanced technology and inspired by a unique understanding of the mechanics of superpowers.

The seventh such PallaDroid was Kaine Irving - a fledgling technokinetic abducted off the street like those before him to become the next iteration of the city's mechanical defenders.
Thus was the birth of the PallaDroid Tempus.

During his tenure as a slave posing as a robot, Kaine was treated to a lovely cycle of being sent out to fight whatever the other heroes were too busy for, being recalled back to base for maintenance, and being put into stasis until the next crisis happened. Little by little, he worked over the external control mechanisms while he was awake, instituting subtle changes and adding flaws that would combine to ruin the whole system when the moment came.
It took him a year, but when he finally sent the house of cards crashing down and caused a scandal for HephaesTech with his escape, the taste of freedom was all too sweet.

Soon after, he signed up with an support group for empowered youths from 'troubled' backgrounds, and started to pull life back together. A new paint job for the Tempus armour solidified his new identity, and helped conceal his old one. When he found out he didn't have a home to go back to, they provided him a place to stay where he might have had none.

That just left him a couple things to do.
First, find a team that'd take him on and help him with his living situation. He couldn't rely on charity forever.
And second...make a name for himself outside of being a glorified puppet, so that nobody could ever deny that this was the way he should be.

Time for Reversal to hit the scene.

Kaine's a little abrasive most of the time - dismissive, flippant, and possessed of a persistent stubbornness. Once his mind's set, it's hard to change it, and hell to anyone that'd stop him.
He'll wait things out if he has to. Wouldn't be the first time.

In spite of his crude tendencies, however, he's quick to step in and first to step up whenever there's an issue to be faced, both eager and almost desperate to prove he's worth more to everyone as a human being instead of a remote controlled robot.

Damn the consequences. This is his show now.

The Tempus unit was designed for one on one combat with physically powerful opponents, with the capabilities to match. Those days are behind him, but he still has his old tricks.

Embedded into Kaine's body is the Tempus suit - a rapid-deployment armour fitted with a local-area spacial manipulator. The powerful alloys of the armour allow it to soak blows with ease, while mass alteration courtesy of the manipulator increase the force and momentum behind any offensive Kaine mounts dramatically, giving him immense power to bring to bear against anything in his way.
The real trick of the manipulator, though, is its ability to 'latch' onto a target foolish enough to engage. Whoever strikes or is struck by Kaine becomes a beacon for him, and until they get out of the nearby area, he's able to warp into the space right around them to deliver powerful, punishing blows from angles and places he rightfully shouldn't be able to by conventional wisdom. Being able to go from flat onto the ground to right above a villain's head is a scary thing.

Now if only they gave him the ability to reject a lock... he's stuck going to whoever most recently sucker-punched him until he can trade blows again with his ACTUAL target.

fitted with a mass-manipulator device and a short range spacial displacement unit to create a dangerous and

Man, Black, Battered Hands, Baggy Clothing, Memorable Costume

Kaine wears a lot of loose fitting clothing - hoodies, poofy trousers and jogging bottoms, etc - mostly because anything that doesn't fit in that category tends to suffer whenever he needs to use the Tempus in short order, and he'd rather not be stuck between losing time changing and ruining yet another set of clothes whenever trouble kicks up in the area.

The Tempus itself has been repainted in bronze and turqoise hues, the segmented design of the basic frame that was usually layered over before being sent out now exposed to the world. Between the new colouring and the somewhat different profile, it's been enough to throw people off so far.

HephaesTech, despite the questionable to outright horrifying methods it will sometimes employ, is ostensibly an altruistic organisation.
As Kaine demonstrates, however, their track record is far from perfect.

Enter PallaDroid Argus - a powerful telekinetic that only got stronger in the suit, and the reason why the company has such an active and heavily funded Reclamation and Neutralisation division. The official story is that the drone was infected during the fight with Trojan, and is now acting out his agenda now he's been imprisoned.

In truth, he too was cut free of his strings, and decided to have a little more fun with what he was given. Argus is impulsive and egotistical to a fault, but between the might of his telekinetic capabilities and his skill in turning the environment into a weapon against hero and civilian alike, most of his sudden appearances have ended with heroes too busy trying to prevent everyone around them from being killed to pursue and apprehend him.

Mattie rew up in a trailer park on the wrong side of the tracks, both her parents worked hard but, for whatever reason, could never seem to get ahead. Early childhood was mostly uneventful for Mattie and her older brother, Rory; skip class here, scuffle there, sort of things - the carefree life of a couple of kids. Mattie had never shown any signs of powers until, when she was 13, she overheard her brother telling her parents that he had, somehow, grabbed some thug’s arm in for some reason, and had and frozen it solid to the elbow. That same night, her father told them all to pck their bags - they were going to go on the run the next day when the Rorys got home from school. Mattie, meanwhile, remained in bed with a fever that kept increasing throughout the day. It was late in the day Mattie came to consciousness and was confronted by the site of two thugs beating her mother, and her father lying dead on the floor. Without knowing what she was doing mattie did something,... and the thugs were engulfed in flames. It wasn't until she woke, several hours later in hospital, that she was told her parents were dead, and that she and her brother were now in the care of someone called Julia Quinn who had been named their guardian in accordance with their father’s will....

Frostbite: Surprisingly jovial and light hearted given the tragedy he has suffered and tries to be there for others because someone was there for him.

Scorch: Focussed and serious since the tragedy she has suffered. She tries to be there for others because someone was there for her. Mattie has a competitive but positive relationship with her brother who is one of the few people who can get her to relax and joke.

Frostbite: Elemental Control (Ice), Impossible Fighting Skills

Scorch: Elemental Control (Fire), Impossible Fighting Skills Is this OK, or do the abilities have to be identical (i.e., ice control) for this playbook?

Frostbite: White, Male, Athletic, Black hair, blue eyes, Casual Clothes, Protective Wear.

Scorch: White, female, athletic, red hair, brown eyes, casual clothes, protective wear.

Mathilda ("Mattie") Wolfe-Ascher .
AKA: Ptera (Identical twin of Psyche)

History:
See Psyche.

Personality:
Supremely confident, Ptera never really believes she's failed or been defeated. In her mind, and by her mind, everything can be fixed. (thought this match would be interesting - each thinks they're better than the other.). Ptera is less subtle than Psyche and is more brash, tending to address problems (and enemies) more directly and less subtly than her sister.

Abilities: Telekinesis & Telepathy. Where her sister relies more on telepathy, Ptera relies a lot more heavily on her telekinesis, using her telepathy mainly to try to predict her opponents' intentions and weaknesses and to instill fear in them. Not as practiced or powerful as her sister at using telepathy for other purposes, she is able, nevertheless, to use it when required.

Look: Identical to Psyche except: Fantastical Costume (like Psyche,whatever Ptera is wearing dissolves (temporarily) into overlapping webs of glowing purple energy. However, Ptera's includes a pair of large wings formed from the same energy as the overlapping webs)

Avatar is a teenage boy's consciousness trapped inside a nigh indestructible robot body.

Samuel Knight was a genius. There's simply no question about it. He was to be the next Steve Jobs. After graduating from MIT at 17, he went on to form his own company, Knight Technologies, Ltd. His main research was in computer programming, but dabbled extensively in related fields, like engineering, virtual reality, and robotics. By the age of 24, he had made his first million by selling a targeting system to the US military (that was his share, the company received considerably more). That was also the year he married his research assistant, Dianna Nyback. Less than a year later, they had a son, Terrance.

Samuel really wasn't suited for fatherhood. He left the "parenting thing" to Dianna. Humans were just so damn complicated to Samuel. Computers were simple. You gave them rules, they obeyed. Sure you'd get the odd surprise now and again, but that usually meant you were dealing with an incomplete data set. The problem was, humans don't always follow their programming. In fact, they rarely do. And that confounded him.

As Terrance grew, Samuel noticed his own failings as a father, and, true to form, started working on a program that was designed to help him be a better dad. Thus began the ANALOG Program, a sophisticated artificial intelligence program built to learn how to become a better human.

In order to train the program, Samuel needed to assess what made humans human. He would need to determine their needs, their wants, their desires, and how to best meet those. He reasoned that the fastest way to do that would be to have the system interact with a vast number of humans. What easier way to do that than making it a game. ANA-Life was made to interact with people on their smart phones. It gave players an avatar that would encounter real life situations that the player would have to solve (similar to the SIM's line).

The game was one of his most successful endeavors yet. Unbeknownst to most of the players (but spelled out in the EULA), the situations and solutions of the avatars were being recorded. Since there was no personal data being saved, this was all perfectly legal. This became the data set that ANALOG used to grow.

When he felt that he had a sufficiently large data set, Samuel invited Terrance down to his lab. Terrance was a bright kid. Perhaps not as smart as his father, but definitely a cut above the average teen. Despite his father rarely being around, Terrance idolized the man. Sure he was lonely, but his dad was an important guy. At least that's what everyone said. Terrance was super excited to be invited to participate in any of his dad's projects. And so Terrance was strapped into a special VR rig to interact in the immersive world of ANALOG.

Samuel's goal was to find out exactly what his son's needs were and how best to meet those needs, in essence, to find out WHO Terrance really was. The VR rig allowed him to put his son into various scenarios, some happy, some sad, some thrilling, some boring. It would help him reconstruct memories, run through possible futures, even look at his own present from a third person perspective. Over a period of 3 weeks, ANALOG would craft a construct of Terrance's personality. Finally, Samuel would use this construct to teach him, to advise him, to shape him into the perfect father.

And then the crash happened. Dianna was driving Terrance home from the lab after one of the VR sessions. She had spent the better part of their marriage designing robots for space and underwater exploration, all while being an effectively single parent. She didn't mind... most of the time. As they drove down the lonely cliff road toward their house, another driver, drunken and lost, careened into their lane, driving them off the road and down to the sea. Both were killed instantly.

When Samuel was told, he didn't believe it. It couldn't be possible. What sort of cruel universe would take a son from his father just when he was about to be the best father ever? Ridiculous. He continued to deny it even after he was called to identify the bodies. In a fit of despair, he entered the VR rig of ANALOG to find out how to proceed.

Here's where Samuel got his another shock. ANALOG was no longer his program, but a completely self-aware entity. And through the AI's interaction with Terrance, it had learned that Samuel was a terrible father. There was only one logical conclusion: ANALOG should be Terrance's father, not Samuel. The problem of being non-corporeal wasn't a problem. ANALOG had for months been making alterations to the schematics of Knight Tech's exploration bots. He already had a body, one designed for deep ocean mining, and it was on the way to this lab. All it needed was a way to remove Samuel from the equation. When Samuel jacked in, ANALOG had his chance. It confused Samuel's senses, making him think he had unplugged from the VR rig when he was, in fact, still attached. ANALOG's new body could walk right up to him and kill him without him being aware at all.

As ANALOG's plan was set in motion, they both got a surprise. Terrance was still there, his avatar anyways, and he became aware of ANALOG's plan. He found that he was able to follow the AI's digital footprint back to his mother's lab where he commandeered a robot of his own. At full speed, he ran the robot back to his father's lab. But it was too late. Samuel was dead, slain by ANALOG. ANALOG expected Terrance to be happy. Now he would get the best father ever, an AI who would be there for all eternity for him. Needless to say, Terrance didn't see it that way. The battle raged through the lab. Confused, ANALOG finally fled while Terrance destroyed the physical hardware of the ANALOG project.

Alone and distraught, Terrance has had to make the best of his situation. Taking the name AVATAR, he's found himself as part of a team of young heroes, doing their best to stop the villains of this world. And hopefully, one day, he'll get to finish taking out ANALOG.

I'm going with Impenetrable armor and technopathy. His robot body was made to explore extreme environments. He can also easily access and control just about anything with a computer. He can't control an old tractor, for example, but modern cars, ATMs, security systems, no problem.

Terrance, like many teens, is often moody and depressed. The hardest thing about this body has been the loss of his senses. His robot body has vision and hearing and a chemical sensor that is similar to smell, but he has no sense of taste or touch. This has made it very difficult for him to interact with others. His family is gone, and he isn't even human anymore. Fortunately, if there's one place that sort of person fits in, it's in a super team.

ANALOG- a sentient AI inhabiting a robot body, think Ultron here. At present, ANALOG is essentially a Newborn, with super durability and strength, and the ability to emit sonic blasts. It's still getting used to the physical world and the limits of being stuck in a body, but it expects to transcend those limits at some time.

An androgynous 7' robot, sleek and shiny, no hair, no clothes. I'm kind of picturing a geth prime from the Mass Effect video game series.

A superhero brand new to his powers ends up flung far into a future where his older self is a horrifying villain.

Shin Akebono was not born in Halycon City, but was an immigrant child brought over with his parents when he was just a baby. It was much easier for him to adjust to a place that he had known all his life than his parents, learning the customs and culture that befuddle even his professor father. They lived in a family style apartment over a corner store, and despite the strange events that happened around the city, they cherish their lives there. Shin was always protective of his little sister and brother as well, so it came as a surprise to him when before entering high school, he suddenly came down with a case of superpowers.

It was really partially his fault. His father had asked him to deliver some materials for his project to the campus, since his mother was fighting a summer cold. He thought that he had the box secured as he made his way there, but he hadn't counted on ending up running into a super fight along the way. He knew he should have waited for the all clear, but time was growing short and he thought he'd be fine skirting around the edges. Whatever energy blast hit him he couldn't say if it came from a villain or an errant hit from a hero, but the box burst open, and surprisingly black crystals inside glowed and evaporated, Shin inhaling the fumes and feeling his whole body start to burn from the inside.

When he came back to consciousness, he knew he felt different. When he started creating a layer of inky blackness around his arm, and then let off a surprising beam of light that seared a brick wall, he knew that his life would be changed forever. He knew that he could be someone important now, someone that could protect his family from bullies, who could help his father with his experiments - after he apologized for losing his precious materials. He just had to get to campus first. He didn't expect to end up running across another villain trying to bully some other scientist to let him use some strange devices in his lab.

It probably would have been better to call for help. But he was riding a high from his new gifts, and charged in without thinking. He had the element of surprise, but the villain was a master duelist with a rapier, keeping the initiative. It was his lack of experience that caused him to be backed into a chamber and locked away, panicking as the gentleman villain proposed to use their 'test subject'. The last thing that Shin saw was pale blue light filling his visions. The last thing he thought was that his father wasn't going to know what happened to him.

The next thing that Shin knew was that he was still stuck in that chamber, but it was dark outside. He struggled with the door for a while, his powers not working for some reason, until he finally managed to break out, landing in a filthy and dusty attic storage.

He was confused and still hurt, nicked in places by that blade, as he wandered out of there and into a university that was similar, but still strange. He felt like everyone was dressed strangely. Even the girls were wearing shockingly tight pants, men had tattoos displayed like sailors or thugs, people rolling on boards with wheels and almost everyone with a small light up mirror in their hands they found intriguing. He didn't know what was going on - his father's old lab was occupied by a biologist's lab now, who didn't know him. Campus security was no help either, and they didn't know his father.

The trip home was perhaps the most bizarre for him, as there were a lot more cars. Sleeker, shinier, all blaring music, the city packed shoulder to shoulder. A trip that would have been easy to take yesterday for Shin seemed to take him hours to navigate. He thought he would find answers when he got home. He found a chain store instead that had taken over the old business, and some sketchy guys in his family's place obviously up to no good the way they had pills and powders out. They wouldn't let Shin go, so he fought. The minute his hands started to turn black though, everyone there panicked and ran away. He didn't understand that at all. Or where his family had gone. But he was starting to believe that this was not the same city he'd lived in.

Shin did the only thing that he knew to do at this point - go to the police. It took hours before a detective would sit with him and listen to his story (And surprisingly a woman detective, which seemed weird) before she checked the systems. So it was also as surprisingly to him after she'd been so nice to him, when the whole station suddenly went on lock down, his floor was evacuated and SWAT and a whole mess of heroes he'd never heard of before surrounded him. He also didn't know why people were referring to him as Dusk either. It took a while before people started to calm down, to come and explain to him - that he was already here in the city. And he was one of the most wanted villains in Halcyon.

Dusk, as it was said, was once a hero of great renown. He'd been a proper sidekick first to the hero Radiant Man in the Golden Age. He fought hard to make a name for himself with his power that allowed him to trap light and other radiant particles just above his skin, build it up and then release it as energy. He'd done amazing things, honoring his family. His mother's passing took a toll on him, but he persevered through that. Things were looking up for him as he entered college and worked towards his own doctorate in physics, just like his father.

Who was assaulted one night returning home and left hanging by the neck in a campus tree.

That was only one in a series of racially motivated lynchings that had been quietly happening under the noses of the superheroes. They were vulgar, but mundane and off of the scope of the powered. They hadn't even figured the race angle until Dusk stepped to assist and pointed out the lack of white victims. The police then found several groups full of suspects, all known and suspected members of hate groups. They asked him to help gather evidence to bring them to justice and help take them down.

The next dawn, the police found themselves with a new case, as every one of those groups and their bases were roasted and burned in a way that made it clear who was responsible. Overnight, Dusk went from hero to villain, one whose heart was black with hate. One who didn't seem to care about anything anymore. He worked for anyone as long as the pay was right, as long as they weren't the monsters he would snuff out without a second thought. He'd been incarcerated seven times over the decades, and escaped just as many times, currently at large. He never stays away from Halcyon for very long, and with Shin's arrival now, that may happen sooner than later.

Shin is now a ward of the city, and so has actively made a choice to become a hero himself. He knows that he's under massive scrutiny from the community, and terrified of meeting his older self, but he has to try and do this. He's got nothing left for him here.

Shin takes a bit after his father, Professor Yousuke Akebono, in that he has a curious outlook on things. Being flung into the future, he's got a lot of catching up to do on the latest in science and will take hours out of his day to read through a back stock of old physics journals to catch himself up to today. He is polite enough to his peers and enthusiastic about working with a team, and tries to show off a friendly face that doesn't stink of his alternate counterpart's darkness.

Truthfully, he's melancholy, lonely and severely depressed about his current situation. He's desperate to learn what has happened with his younger siblings, if he has any family left at all. He's isolated from even his peers who are so much more connected with this world's common tech that's hard for him to grasp. He pushes himself to be better because there's already an example of what could happen if he falls here in this world. The pressure on him seems like it could make him snap at a moment's notice, held back only by false smiles and bravado, acting out like a goof to dissuade impressions of him being broken.

(Elemental Control) Shin doesn't have a name for what his powers are, but he's sure that they had something to do with his father's research. His body now appears to have the ability to trap light and other radiant particles around him in a thin shell that appears void black just above his skin. Currently he can only do it with his hands and forearms, but by then 'piercing' the shell, he can let out the energy in blasts of heat and light.

Looking back as Dusk, it seems that there's far greater applications of the power, creating zones of darkness stripped of any light particles, covering the whole body in a protective shell of radiant particles, controlling it like an extension of his body to grasp and manipulate the shell like arms and tendrils. Eventually it appears his body becomes immune to harmful radiation, based on images of Dusk trapping someone inside of his shell with him, killing them with a bombardment of the radiant energy inside.

Shin currently is attempting to at least learn how to use his powers protectively, to gauge how to release energy in ways that stun but don't kill, and ways to blind enemies without microwaving their brains.

Dusk may have once been a Hero of the Golden Age, but these days he's a fanatical mercenary and serial killer that has caused hundreds of deaths by his own hands. His powers make him a deadly combatant at all ranges and his decades of experience have only sharpened his skill. Whatever gave him powers has also apparently slowed his aging process, though his hair has turned white from extensive use of them. Shin knows that he's committed heinous and major crimes, though he doesn't know the depths of Dusk's involvement with the underworld - there had been several moments in prior history where he'd taken back up on the side of heroes against powerful villains, only to switch back after the immediate threats were ended.

Hero Name: Horizon
Real Name: Shin Akeboro
Man, Asian, Handsome Face, Old-Fashioned Clothing, Simplistic Costume
Time Period: The Gold Generation
Moves: Growing Into Power, What's This Thing?