Re: [Char. Dev.] The Cast: Backgrounds and Themes
Themes:
Hubris
Imp believes that he is one of the only individuals that can head of the coming apocalypse, and he will do anything it takes to do so, mostly because:
Fatherhood
Imp has two children, that he knows of, one definitely a nova, one currently a baseline. Both are currently external to his life (one doesn't know who her father is, one is in chrysalis). He will save the world for both of them, and through them novas and baselines alike.
Fascism
Closely tied with A, and B, he believes that the greater must shepherd the lesser, for the lesser's own good of course. His particular brand of fascism is world wide, not just national, but does include things like increased militarism, will to power, and devotion to a strong leader (himself).
</b>Backstory/Eruption</b>:
Jason was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. He was a profoundly geeky boy, had a high pitched voice, bad acne, and the physique of a famine victim. Still, he was smart and inquisitive, he got good grades, excellent in fact, and got enough scholarships to attend MIT, no small feat for the son of a washing machine repair man. While studying for his undergrad degree in inertia based aircraft propulsion the engine malfunctioned. Jason, trapped inside, was launched skyward at something well over 30gs of acceleration. Just before he turned into red jam a terrible explosive pop behind his forehead filled his mind with... well, he has never been able to adequately describe the sensation. He suddenly understood the energy crushing him, was able to manipulate it. At the top of his arc he saw the curvature of the earth.
That night he dreamed strange, terrifying, uplifting dreams. He walked across the sun, held the moon in the palm of his hand and could see the movements of atoms. When he awoke his body told him that something was horribly wrong. Everything ached, screamed with pain. Jason groaned as he opened his eyes. The white fluorescent lights above him may as well have been magnesium flares, the light burned into the backs of his eyes and sent fresh new waves of pain into his head. How that was possible, he had no idea, but he was in even more pain. He moaned, and tried to move his hands up to his head. He couldn't. He could move his shoulder, but couldn't bend his elbows. He also couldn't turn his head and his body felt like it was being crushed. He opened his eyes a fraction and looked around. A hospital. Hunh. Where were the drugs that should be pumping through his veins right now.
"Nurse!" he croaked. His voice broke in the middle of the word. that hadn't happened since puberty. well, not even at puberty really, his voice had always been a raspy squeak.
He tried again. "Nurse!" he called, loudly enough to make his head feel like it was imploding. even through this fresh new hell of sound he was surprised and worried. His voice sounded deeper. what the hell??? And what had been that cracking sound when he drew breath to call out.
the nurse came over. "I'm here Mr. Tybolt. What's wrong?"
"Please God give me some drugs." he whispered softly. Her breath hissed in, surprise or anger he wasn't sure, he never was around women. Probably both.
"Your cast is all cracked. How did this happen? Who did this?" He heard her push the emergency call button beside his bed. How had he heard that?
"Please stay still, sir. You've broken nearly every bone in your body and suffered massive damage internally, please don't move or speak. You shouldn't even be awake. Why aren't the drugs working?" He heard her fiddling with the I.V. drip beside his bed. A gentle feeling of euphoria came over him, and the pain eased slightly, but other than that, nothing.
the sound of running feet announced three people, one of whom was female, who was overweight and smelled vaguely of weed, cheese doodles, and juicy fruit.
They were talking rapidly in medicalese, sounded worried, and seemed to think that he was going to die.
"Umm, other than being in incredible pain, I don't feel that bad. I'm probably not dying. Oh, and these drugs aren't working worth a shit." his voice was deeper--deep, manly, and almost oozed sex appeal. It was like he was a white Barry White. He laughed. that hurt. Fuck did that hurt.
"Seriously, I can move my arms and legs, sorta, and nothing seems to be moving around inside that shouldn't." he experimentally flexed an arm and felt the plaster give.
Eventually they cut the cast off him--he was a massive bruise. Not only that but he was a good foot taller, his hair had changed from tightly curled puke orange to a lustrous sandy blond, and his once weak muddy brown eyes were now a striking grey. He heard them whispering, but he knew before they did. Nova. he was a fucking nova. Homo sapiens nova. Fucking awesome.
It took a few days for the bruising to fade, during that time he ate more food than he had eaten in the last month. Anything even remotely digestible was fair game. He tasted more too, flavours were subtler, richer, more striking. He was putting on weight at a terrifying speed. 50lbs in 3 days. How the hell had that happened when he had only eaten 45 lbs of food? He quit school after writing a dissertation the night after he woke up. His brain was overclocked, his metabolism was overclocked, he looked like a human blueberry. time to go home.
He arrived in Seattle and walked right up to his old man without the old boy even recognizing him. No reason for him to, his son, Jason, looked nothing like he did before. His bruising was starting to fade, along with much of the pain and his face was as different as the rest of him. For starters he had a chin. And a jaw line, a manly tough looking jawline. His nose, once stubby and bulbous, had straightened and evened out. He was fucking hot. Even his teeth, long since dyed a permanent shade of gray from years of binging on coke and pizza and weed while playing dnd in his parent's basement, were dead even and dazzlingly white.
Two weeks after his accident his appetite subsided to roughly double human norms. Roughly. He was 6'2, 210lbs, and ripped. Well, not ripped, chiseled. Carved out of granite, muscles big, symmetrical, perfectly formed. 8 pack abs. It was the first time in his life he ever wanted to wear something that wasn't big and baggy.
He went shopping with what little money he had saved. he walked into the mall and people were looking at him. girls were looking at him. Not with the dismissing boredom he was used to. Staring at him. Grabbing their friends and turning them around so they could look too. Jason blushed crimson. this was fucking weird. And awesome. Fucking awesome.
He went into a small boutique shop and approached the girl behind the counter. "Hi, can you help me find some clothes?" he said. She stared at him. Didn't say anything for a long minute, then shook herself. "Umm, yeah, clothes. We have those." She helped him find clothes that fit and that looked good together, things he had never worried about before. She really liked checking the waist of his new jeans to see if they fit snugly. Really liked it. He was in Heaven. He left the store with two new outfits, and the first girl's phone number that he wouldn't have to give his credit card number to use. Amber. Amber Jones.
He had sex for the first time that week. Well, not the first time, but he didn't want to think about the other time. Couldn't think about it without a ball of shame and guilt welling up inside of him. he'd never do that again. Ever.
His old man was a plumber, hardworking, honest, salt of the Earth. He had no idea how to talk to his son anymore. Not that he had talked to Jason much before.
His old lady was sweet, quiet, and slightly absent. she was shocked by her son's appearance, but then quickly got over it saying that he could get a nice girl now and get married.
Married. Hah. A nice girl. hah. He was going out to clubs and picking up different nice girls every night. Sometimes there was competition to see who could take him home. Not that it was difficult to convince Jason to go back to their place. Far from difficult.
During the day he figured out how to slow things down and speed them up using just his mind. He still had headaches, but they were getting easier to manage.
He saw advertisements for Project Utopia on the news. He decide to join, but not right away. he became a fashion model, made big bucks, way more than he could have before. He moved out of home. got his own place. Life was good.
One day he decided to head to a daycare that he knew about. There was somebody he had to see. He walked up to one of the ladies working there and gave her his best smile, quelling the butterflies in his stomach. "Hi, I'm Tabitha Campbell's uncle, can I see her?" She is so going to think I'm a pedo he thought to himself. I'm her uncle, fucking lame. Oddly enough she did bring him to the little girl playing on the swing set.
"Hi Tabitha, what are you doing?"
"I'm flying."
"Flying, hunh, that's cool."
"yeah, it is. Can you fly?"
"Not yet, but I will real soon, I promise."
"Really, you can do that? Are you a nova? Do you work for Team Tomorrow?"
"Yes, I am. My name is Impetus. And I will never let anybody hurt you. I promise."
the next day Impetus went to the Mazrim Rashoud office in Los Angeles to sign up.
The Story Continues:
Imp's first appearance at the training camp:
Jason, or Impetus, as he was trying to think of himself, deplaned and walked with his security detatchment into the complex. He made some small talk, cracked some jokes, and flirted briefly with the female soldier on point. Instinctively he began talking about the importance of the Project, and the good it would do for people around the world. He could see she was warming to him, and flashed her a grin and a wink when they got to his room. "I guess this is where I'm staying?" He said, noticing a faint blush in her face. The soldiers turned and walked down the hall, she shot him a glance as they turned the corner. She'd be back.
He tossed his suitcase onto the top shelf of the closet, slowed its momentum too early and let it drop to the floor with a thud. He sighed and lifted it into place. "Control and practice, control and practice" he thought to himself. Imp then left his room and followed the signs on the walls to the lounge. He noticed a couple other men were there before him, nodded in a friendly greeting, then went over to the concession. The women working there, all a bit too old and cafeteria-lady looking for his tastes, complied with his request for 3 double cheesburgers, half a pound of fries and three chocolate milkshakes without even batting an eye. "There you go dearie, don't spill any of that on yourself now, you hear?" Said the senior matron with a twinkle in her eye. Imp grinned, "Yes ma'am!" and threw her a salute. They laughed as he walked towards the other guys, balancing his overloaded tray.
"Afternoon gents, My name's Jason..er Impetus. Pleased to meet you."
When Imp decided that he should be able to fly:
He gave Solitaire a smile, somewhat frantic, and then fell away from her. "Don't think, just fly"... He thought. "Hard to turn off the brain when it's all I've had going for me so far." Still...
He closed his eyes, ignored the scream of the wind and the flapping noise his lips were making, turned inward to that pulsing dynamo of power that was his node. He could feel it almost boiling with energy. He looked outwards, not with his eyes but his mind, felt the quantum signature of Solitaire glowing like the sun beside him. "She's smokin hot." he thought idly, then turned his attention back to not Wiley Coyoteing.
He also felt the presence of others nearby, probably Prodigal and Zero.
He also felt that same energy in the very air around him, atoms and molecules each with a furnace in their tiny hearts. If he could just tap that..
He shot skyward, the momentum of his fall instantly reversed, but it was just the energy from falling, not from the air around him. He then shot 90 degrees left, still not what he wanted. He channeled the energy of his fall into thrust, feeling himself accelerating. This was better, but still not perfect. He stopped himself dead in the air, held himself aloft by channeling the movement of the air into physical force, he hung motionless, bleeding the energy imparted to him from Sol until he was sure that anything from here on in would be him. Then he started to fly, not gracefully, at first, but under his own power. He got the hang of it with the breathtaking rapidity that he was getting used to: the voices in his head sounding suspiciously like Amelia Earhart and Howard Hughes. Soon he was hurtling over the desert at a couple hundred Kph. He saw Solitaire, gave her a huge grin and a thumbs up, then watched her rocket away. He felt the quantum in her wake and pushed himself faster and faster. He felt something go pop in his head and he suddenly doubled his speed. Sol was faster than he, twice as fast, but still, not bad for a rookie. She buzzed him a couple times, once when she got too close he took her momentum and added it to himself, pushing through the sound barrier like a human missile.
He then experimented with running like a maniac across the desert, zipping through gullies and around rocks like the Tasmanian Devil after he'd snorted an 8 ball of coke.
After a gigantic dinner he hit the strip, won a stack of cash, and got as much culture as he could before heading back to the base for classes Monday morning. He came down for breakfast singing happily in Quenya, and better looking than ever. It was good to be alive.
Imp's first private conversation with Caroline:
Imp walked into the glittering marble lobby of the Grand Hyatt in Cairo, he had just finished working in Central Africa and was looking forward to a little pampering and some much needed re-creation time. He checked in, using some of the money that he had from royalties of his last fashion gig, then sauntered into the Revolving restaurant to meet Caroline Fong.
She was, as he'd expected, already there, sitting by the window, enjoying the view of the Nile and the downtown core of the city, glimmering red and rust in the sunset and dust.
"Caroline, a pleasure," Imp took her hand and kissed it before taking a seat across from her. She smiled back, it didn't have the same kind of intensity that she had had the last time they met in Vegas, but it was perhaps more than friendly. "Impetus, how have you been? Doing a lot of work helping out the victims of the wars, yes? Cleaning up the messes made by people who think they can feed our still human obsessions for fame and money and feed our egos so that we do what they want, not what we should?"
Imp smiled, this was exactly why he had come to her, she was smart, insightful, opinionated and more than a little gorgeous. "Of course, but I still maintain that we can best define ourselves by how we treat those who have so much less than we do, it's not a bad thing to enjoy helping others, yes? AS to governments buying us to fight their wars for territory," Imp's face tightened, "They should be dropped in the middle of the carnage they have wrought and left to the tender mercies of their victims."
They bantered back and forth for a while, enjoying each other's company and the view, and of course the food. After a while, feeling relaxed for the first time in a long time, Imp finally broached what was troubling him the most. "Caroline, I'm curious, I have had some success changing my body and mind, becoming stronger, faster, better, but it's not enough, I am still a slave to my base passions, things that I know demean me, things that I must control, but wish to master. Is it possible to change our very brain chemistry? To make our urges things that we have chosen, not that we have had thrust upon us?"
She smiled warmly, "You see, Imp, that's why I enjoy you so much, you ask the same questions that I do, seek to remake yourself not by the whim of the power that flows through us, but by bending it to your will and allowing it to shape you as you will it to."
They talked until dawn, then retired to Imp's room for both more discussion as well as other, physical, intimacies. Two days later, when it was time for Impetus to go back to work he felt both more at peace with who he was and in far more control than he had since before he could remember.
The first time Imp meets Raoul:
"Hi Raoul, my name's Impetus, or Imp if you prefer." Imp proffers a hand, then takes a long pull on the drink. Holy mother of god it was strong. Imp didn't have the amazing endurance of some of his compatriots so he knew he was going to start feeling it soon enough. "Y'know, i really, really get a kick out the attention that we get showered with, the celebrity status, the hero worship, but the people downstairs. they paid how much money to have the opportunity to rub themselves on someone they didn't even talk to. I thought i could never have enough free tail, and god knows it's easy enough to get, but they're so fucking animalistic about it that it makes me feel...sullied." He takes another long pull.
The (first) death of Harley:
Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck Fuck!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Imp blasted through the tin roof of the long low building buried under the sand and desperately tried to gain altitude Harley, limp weight on his shoulder didn't complain as the jagged edges of the hole cut wounds in his back and legs. "Impetus to all teams, fall back, fall back..." His words were drowned out by the wind roaring past him and the sudden aweful pregnant thump from a mile below him. The bunker that he and Harley had been investigating had indeed held a weapons lab, but not a small one like Harley's informant had said. It had been massive, with huge tanks of poison and what looked like a massive nuclear bomb. One of the novas Harley took down had managed to press a button on his uniform and the chemicals had started mixing, which had distraced Imp long enough for the nova he had been fighing to fire off a weird transluscent black bolt at his head which would have killed him if Harley hadn't jumped in front of him and took the blast in the chest. Imp fired off a bolt at the nova then grabbed Harley and flew as fast as he could back up and out before the bomb exploded sending a gigantic cloud of radioactive dust and poison vapours that had somehow survived the explosion into the atmosphere. Imp went straight up, just on the leading edge of the cloud, the light burning his vision, the blast of energy just seconds behind him. he hit the top of the atmosphere, felt Harley rapidly hardening in the supercooled super thin air, then plummeted back to Earth towards Bunia and the Utpoia docs, his eyes blurred with tears, "C'mon Harley, make it, make it, make it." As fast as he flew he know Harley would be gone before he arrived.
more to come....
Motivations:
Save the World: If it's a nova/baseline war or the machinations of alien mind rape angels, if it threatens his world, he's its enemy.
Transcendence: Imp still has the soul of a philosopher, somewhere in there, and of the romantic, and he wants to transcend his current state both to realize what he ultimately can be, and to reunite with Caroline.
Nature: Visionary
Chrysalis 1, Marvel, 2nd stage.
Notable Merits/Flaws:
Secret: 1pt, child
Antagonistic Backgrounds:
Fan Club: 5pts
Suitors: 5 pts