Tommy Shepherd [Speed] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crotcharrow) wrote2012-01-10 09:32 pm
crotcharrow) wrote2012-01-10 09:32 pm
Entry tags:
APPLICATION;
Player Information
Your Nickname: Pura
OOC Journal: purapea@DW and LJ
Under 18? Nope, 22
Email/IM: puratiger AT gmail DOT com // AIM: PuraTigerz
Characters Played at Singularity: None!
Character Information
Name: Tommy Shepherd
Name of Canon: Young Avengers (Marvel 616)
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: http://marvel.wikia.com/Thomas_Shepherd_%28Earth-616%29
Canon Point: Issue eight of Avengers: Children's Crusade, where Tommy stands up to the X-Man Cyclops, and Cassie, his teammate, gets seriously injured.
Setting: Tommy’s world is very similar to modern day Earth as we know it. They share the same cities and countries, with a few new ones peppered around here and there, and they both are set in present day circumstances, complete with cellphones, the internet and the marvels of Chinese take out. The major differences however, are the people. Humans exist, and have done as per our own history. But so do a plethora of alien races (who have a tendency to turn up and try and take over the world). You thought Norse mythology was mythology? Think again; those Gods are real and they are very willing to slam a hammer into your face if you piss them off enough. Magic, sorcery and even reality bending is real too, but Hogwarts is still reserved to works of fiction, rather than being a place for little wizards to learn their craft (that’s usually left for them to figure out on their own). Science experiments gone wrong and radioactive spider bites don’t do what they would in this world (ie kill you) but give you spider senses and sometimes a really bad temper. Even the legend of Hercules has its own real counterpart in this world.
Above everything else, there are mutants. Mutants were once humans, or were never humans, depending on which way you want to think about it. Humans who have the X-Gene, which mutates their DNA and gives them special abilities, are classified as mutants. Being made of mercury, being able to read minds, having wings, being able to run faster than the sound barrier, control over dairy products, you name it, there’s probably a mutant with that power. The idea of someone coming up to you and turning that yoghurt you had for lunch into murder weapon is frightening to a lot of non-mutants, and mutants themselves just want to be accepted into society. So unsurprisingly there’s a lot of hostility between the two groups. There have been plenty of terrorist attacks on both sides; there’s a huge segment of humanity that thinks mutants are dirty, low and dangerous and only worth alive if you can exploit them.
A prime example of this is in the case of Genosha and the way it treated its mutant inhabitants before outside involvement from other mutants. Genosha, one of those aforementioned tiny new countries of the coast of Africa, had a stance on mutant kind similar to the slave trade — in fact, almost exactly like the slave trade. Genosha’s government scanned all its children for the X-gene, and children found with it were sent into slavery, in some cases being sent to another section of the government who specialized in modifing their powers to better suit labor needs. This clearly enraged a lot of mutants, and it wasn’t long before outsiders began to meddle in the countries’ affairs — the most prolific involvement being from Magneto, a mutant trying to rise up and extinguish humanity through claiming mutant kind to be the next step in human evolution. He changed Genosha from being somewhere mutants were persecuted to being a haven for all mutant kind as long as they were under his rule.
Of course, that is from the extremists. There are a lot of people who fight for mutant and humans to live together, and for both to have equal rights and respect and protection. But on the other hand, when you have thousands of super-powered beings of all races, creed and beliefs, you’re going to have some using their powers for nefarious deeds. And where you have Super Villains, you have Superheroes.
Superheroes rose up to fight the mutants using their powers for bad; vigilante teams like the X-Men and the Avengers were formed to keep the peace and to save humanity from the perils wrought by other mutants or the aforementioned aliens who decide that Earth needs a bit of destroying. It wasn’t long before many vigilante teams started popping up all over the place on all levels against a myriad of supervillains, and soon even kids were taking after their older counterparts and calling themselves things like the ‘Young Avengers’. Schools were also set up, such as The Xavier Institute, to help young mutants figure out their powers and to control them, as well as offer a home to those who sought it.
Sometimes, though, that’s just not enough. M-Day was an event where a Reality Altering magic user, The Scarlet Witch, used her powers in a moment of great anguish and alleged insanity to try and eradicate the mutant race. Reality twisted and almost all of the mutants lost their powers, leaving their entire race in the low hundreds. The fact that there were very few mutants left after M-Day didn’t stop some of the relentless terrorism from some of the extremists—Reverend Stryker being one of the figureheads. In one horrible incident, a busload of young ex-mutants, having all lost their powers to M-Day and on their way home from the Xavier Institute, was destroyed, killing almost all of the teens on board. Their only crime to the eyes of the terrorists was that they used to be mutants, and that was good enough for them.
With so few mutants left, and with the risk getting greater because of extremist mutants being more visible than the whole picture, the government decided after a few superpowered battles that resulted in a high number of civilian deaths that a registration act should be brought forward, in which all superhuman beings gave their information voluntarily so that humanity would be at less risk. Opinions of superheroes were at an all time low, some even getting mugged and hospitalized up by the people they were trying to protect. The act would give access to Superheroes’—as well as the remaining mutants--personal information, like place of residence and weaknesses, and would cause a lot of mutants to be targeted and picked off if the information was ever leaked. Superheroes were divided on the act between themselves, some thinking it was important for superheroes to have proper training and proper policing in their communities, whilst others thinking it downright racist and dangerous if the information ever leaked. The divide caused a huge split down the superhuman community, and eventually sparked a civil war between the two sides—pro-registration being led by Iron Man, Anti-registration being led by Captain America. The Young Avengers sided with Captain America and after a rather scary tussle with someone called the Warden, two of their members switched over to the side of Pro-registration. Civil war waged not only between the main two sides but within other close knit groups of superheroes and friends, and lots of lives were lost for the cause. Eventually Captain America surrendered and the registration was passed, but most of the heroes against the registration began to operate as undercover, which made things all the more difficult between the few mutants left.
The way Tommy fits into this world is a little confusing, even for comic book standards. Technically, he’s a mutant, but he also has connections with magic, time-travel, reality shifting, and demons. Tommy is the magical son of the Scarlet Witch, and along with his identical twin brother Billy, was born out of the Scarlet Witch’s desire to have children. She had used her reality altering powers to take souls from a demon, Mephisto, and warp them into two baby boys. Mephisto was not all too pleased about this, and came after the souls some time later, resulting in the twins’ deaths. Driven by grief, their mother was manipulated into and driven insane to utter the words ‘no more mutants’, and M-Day happened. But the souls weren’t lost. Nope. The souls were reincarnated back in time and Tommy was born to a human couple in New Jersey and was raised as a human child, before he’d even been born to the Scarlet Witch.
By the time he hit puberty, his X-Gene activated, causing his hair to turn white as well as giving him the powers of superspeed, much like the Scarlet Witch’s brother, Quicksilver. His parents became more and more distant because he was a mutant, and after Tommy ended up losing control of his newfound powers and blowing up his school as a result, pretty much disowned him outright. Tommy was put on trial for his crimes and found guilty, and was sent to juvenile hall for mutants, where he quickly learned was different as normal juvie. All the inmates were openly experimented on, apparently this being some sort of organization that took unstable teenage mutants to turn them into living weapons for their personal gain, and Tommy was not exempted from the rule. The fact that he was actually a person meant little to the people experimenting on him, because, after all, he was only a mutant.
The Young Avengers, who needed his help, broke Tommy out of juvie, having found him using something called the ‘Avengers Failsafe Program’, a tool that had assembled their team in the first place. The first four members all had direct links to the Avengers in some way—Patriot, being the grandson of the first Black Captain America; Hulking, being the son of Captain Marvel and not knowing it; Iron Lad, sent back from the future to stop himself from turning into the supervillain Kang the Conqueror; and Wiccan, the son of the Scarlet Witch. Tommy’s link was no less surprising, especially for Wiccan.
Tommy was called upon to help one of their other team-mates out of a Skrull-Kree debacle—both of which a type of alien who lay claim to the half-breed Teddy Altman, wanting him to take the throne of their respective lands--and after helping out, Tommy decided to stay. With no home to return to and currently on the lam, Tommy became Speed, and a Young Avenger.
Personality: Above all things, Tommy is an asshole. He enjoys messing around and irritating people and takes great pleasure in hitting the right buttons that make people squirm in annoyance. Because he is a speedster, no matter what he says he can always have a fast getaway. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions and thinks he can get away with a lot more than he really can because hey, if that person you just called a douche turns and tries to punch you in the mouth it’s handy to have speedster powers on your side. Because of this, he is extremely cocky. Tommy is also rather blunt and will say what he thinks; for example, if Tommy doesn’t like you he will make it as clear as day, he’s not afraid to call you an idiot, and you better hope he doesn’t think you’re an idiot because he’s one to hold a grudge. He also rushes into things without thinking them through, tending not to think about the consequences of his actions and seizing what’s a good idea at the time rather than meticulously planning out his every move. Tommy acts on a spur of the moment attitude, which doesn’t always work out.
He’s also incredibly flirtatious and will hit on anything with breasts and a pretty face, mostly because he’s a teenage boy with speedster hormones. His flirting never really gets him anywhere, (see: Tommy is an asshole), but he still does it mostly because it’s fun.
However, his cockiness, his flirtatious behavior, and even how much of a jerk he is are all fronts, covering up how emotionally damaged he truly feels. He can’t handle talking about his feelings, preferring to brush anything serious off and act aloof like he doesn’t care, since it’s easier than actually opening up to someone. He’s spent his whole life striving for attention from parents who didn’t want to give it to him—it’s part of the reason he’s the way he is; acting out in the hope that at least one of his parents would react or do something--and came to the conclusion some time after his sentence that they never cared about him. Tommy tends to bottle everything up, and gets incredibly sarcastic when he’s upset, often leaving without warning so he can go deal with his problems out of sight from the rest of the team. He’s never connected with anyone who stuck around for more than a month or two, and he has a lot of problems letting people in; his trust is extremely hard to gain. But once you’ve gained it, you’ve got it for life. His adoptive family—the Young Avengers—means the world to him, despite seeming to take him for granted a lot of the time. They’re pretty much all he’s got, and when one of them goes missing, he has a hard time dealing until they’re back safely (He spent pretty much all of Siege trying to find Kate and Eli, and was beating himself up because he couldn’t save them, and wasn’t a superhero if he couldn’t even save the people close to him).
Most of his team doesn’t even know the issues that Tommy is covering up because he thinks it’s better they think he’s a jerk than someone who can’t handle stuff. His extended incarceration at the juvenile detention centre gave him hella issues. For starters, the experiments they did gave him an unease around doctors and scientists, and he’d rather avoid them then go in for a checkup. Being in a small cell for a huge amount of time and being in a place where he can’t escape or run freaks him out. His morality was injured in juvie as well; he came very close to exploding the heads off of all the scientists that ever laid a finger on him, and could’ve become a supervillian easily if it hadn’t been for the Young Avengers’ influence. He still struggles with his morality at times, earning him the title of the ‘Team Sociopath’, but he’s doing a lot better now that he’s been with the team for a long time. He had the opportunity to leave and join the Young Masters—a darker version of the Young Avengers—as he had been involved with Coat Of Arms, one of the girls on the team who had been at juvie with him. He had declined, even though the team would’ve suited him better and would’ve probably appreciated him far more, because the Young Avengers were his family, and he wasn’t going to bail on his family.
Being a speedster with boundless energy and a crazy metabolism, Tommy finds it really hard to sit still for long periods of time. He gets bored really easily, and has to be constantly moving—be it twitching or walking around while he talks—otherwise he gets too uncomfortable. He has a tendency to pace like a caged animal when he’s upset or can’t get away. He sees the world almost in slow motion, and gets incredibly impatient extremely fast. It’s like standing in a line for the ATM, being already late for something, and the person in front of you is a little old lady who can’t see very well, and getting really agitated because the elderly lady keeps missing keys and making errors and starting all over again. Think about that, and how angry you’d get, and then multiply that by about 50, then apply it to everyone Tommy knows who isn’t a speedster -- you’ve pretty much got the reason why Tommy is irritable most of the time.
Under all this crap, Tommy is still just a teenager. He loves playing video games like Call Of Duty and Rockband, mostly because he uses his superpowers to cheat, loves pranks and jokes and will often convince Billy’s two young brothers to aide him in tormenting their older brother. He loves being around kids but would never admit it since he was an only child and never got to act like a big brother before. Molly from the Runaways is one of the kids he’s really connected with, and he treats her like a little sister, looking out for her, and just trying to make her smile. He’s found himself spending a lot of time with Billy’s two brothers as well and although he’d never admit it, he loves being a brother to all three Kaplan boys.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: As his name suggests, Speed can run really fast. And I mean seriously fast. He can run faster than the speed of sound and he can run across the surface tension of water. He once ran from the eastern seaboard of the USA to Genosha in almost the same amount of time it took Wiccan to teleport there. Because of his speed, he can easily dodge punches, catch high-speed objects (for example a knife being thrown at him) and almost be in two places at once. He can also generate hyper-kinetic vibrations, which causes the molecules of whatever he’s directing them at to vibrate and then explode. He can also accelerate his own, and other people’s molecules, and shake them to the point where they phase through solid walls.
Deep down, Tommy is actually a good person when it comes to the people he cares about. It’s hidden under all that cockiness and the fact that he’s the ‘team sociopath’ but it’s there, even though it might not be obvious. He’s incredibly loyal to the people who have gained his trust, and considers his team to be his family—the only family he has left now. His time with them has turned him from someone who was nothing more than a delinquent teen, to someone who is a superhero, and actually cares about the people around him. This is especially prominent with Kate and Billy, but though he never would admit it, he does actually appreciate all of them, and gets uncomfortably twitchy if one is missing.
Tommy might not be concerned about doing the right thing all the time, but when it involves the people he cares about he will go out of his way to help them, and if that means fighting the good fight then he’ll be by their side. He doesn’t necessarily feel like he should be doing the right thing and he doesn’t really give a damn about it either, but if it makes his family happy, he’s going to do it.
Because of his extended incarceration in a juvenile detention centre, which turned out to be an experimentation facility, Tommy is a closet claustrophobic. He would deny it if anyone mentioned it, but he dislikes being in places that he cannot run away from. If he doesn’t have the option of control – i.e. he only stays and fights because he chooses to and can run away if things get bad, thus giving him the delusion that he’s in control of his life – he will get very uncomfortable and twitchy. If he is contained, he shows similar behaviour to a caged animal, pacing and being generally restless. Another branch of this is that he doesn’t like anything that limits his movement. Things like constricting physical contact such as extended hugs fall into this category, as well as some types of clothing. Another result that has come from being inside juvie is that he has a strong distrust and hatred toward doctors and scientists.
Another weakness of his is that Tommy tends to rush into battle without thinking. He tends not to think about the consequences of his actions and seizes what’s a good idea at the time rather than meticulously planning out his every move. He acts on a spur of the moment attitude, which doesn’t always work out, and can cause him to do stuff like run into forcefields or walls because he was too impatient to check if whoever they were fighting had any defenses up.
As one final thing, teleporting makes Tommy feel really queasy, since he's not in control of his own actions and he finds it hard to keep his lunch down when Billy teleports the team somewhere. He much prefers to run on his own.
As far as limitations go, in Singularity Tommy will be slightly slower than usual, and will seriously need to increase the amount of calories he eats in one day as running will be far more taxing on him than before. Phasing will be extremely difficult for him to maintain for short periods of time and it would be safer for him to not do it at all, since he doesn't want to get stuck bonded so something else's atoms. He will not be able to phase through the zones at all and his vibration explosions will be impossible.
Inventory: Tommy doesn’t have a lot on him when he comes into Sacrosanct. He’ll be dressed in his super suit, which green, white and orange and skintight, and will also have his goggles on him, but that’s about it. He’ll be pretty dishevelled too when he comes in, with whole chunks missing from his suit.
Appearance: Tommy is a pretty toned teenage boy, probably getting a lot of his muscles from the fact that he is almost constantly running (though with superheroes its really hard to tell on this sort of thing if it’s not shown in canon). By superhero standards, he’s actually not that buff, but when you have people like The Hulk and Wolverine to compare against it’s entirely understandable. Speed is 5ft8, and has a head full of white, messy hair and a pair of green eyes. Apart from these differences, and for the fact that he has a smirk on his face most of the time, Tommy is identical to his brother, Billy Kaplan, and at first a lot of people get them confused (even with the hair differences). When he’s in crime fighting mode, he a green and white bodysuit that has a yellow arrow pointing to his crotch (no. I’m not kidding. And no, he did not design the suit himself) and a pair of orange goggles. When he’s not wearing his suit he usually wears tight fitting clothes – as long as they don’t restrict his movement in any way – and jeans. Tommy also has medical scars scattered across his body, but mostly covering his legs and feet, from his time in ‘juvie’, but are never seen due to him hiding them with his clothing.
Age: 16
OC/AU Justification
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test?
And What Did You Score?
Samples
Log Sample:
The first thing Tommy remembered about being in this world, was hitting the floor. That memory was short and for some reason painful, and he couldn’t really make sense of it until he actually came to, face bleeding out on a weird piece of rusting, gnarled metal. He took a few seconds to stop his head from swimming (which it didn’t but his eyesight was getting better) and attempted to push himself up into a sitting position, but found he couldn’t move one of his arms without it shooting bolts of pain up his spine. He could also feel his head bleeding, and he was pretty sure one of his goggle lenses was broken.
Well, this what exactly what he needed to wake up to. –Hang on, wake up? He’d been awake last he checked, and everything had been happening at once and Cassie--oh fuck. Cassie. Tommy tugged his, quite obviously broken arm close to his body, and somehow managed to push himself up into a sitting position. A voice—well it was more mechanical sounding than anything—boomed overhead and told him to watch his step, which got a wry scoff out of the teen.
Okay, Thomas. Alternate dimensions, or spaceships or something. You can do this. You’re probably just hallucinating or something—Emma Frost probably did something to your brain again and you’re actually still out there with everyone and your family, and. Crap, why did this feel so real though? He put his good hand up on his head to feel his forehead—which was oozing blood from a deep cut. Great. Just what he needed. Not that he hadn’t gotten severe head injuries before with all the running into stuff he did, but it made things more difficult. As if the arm already hadn’t.
Tommy couldn’t just stay here, bleeding out on the floor. Carefully, he pushed himself up, still a little shaky from the landing and concussion, and it didn’t take him long to figure out from the standing position that he probably didn’t want to be standing here, with all the—was that a satellite? Where the hell was he? Other than somewhere called Sacrosanct.
“This has gotta be the highlight of my day.” He snorted sarcastically to no one, and ducked as something large and metallic flew passed him and crashed into the ground. “Okay, yeah, let’s get out of here, like yesterday,” he sputtered, staring at the squeaking metal as it settled for all of three seconds before running to find the nearest exit.
Network Sample:
[the video is shaky at first, someone isn’t used to having a holographic screen on their wrist, and with everything that just happened to him, he’s going to be a little shaky anyway. When the video manages to actually focus, the face of a teenager fills the screen, looking significantly ruffled. He’s wearing a pair of goggles, which looked like they smashed recently, pushed up onto his forehead and he looks out of breath. He’s also wearing a green super-suit, which is littered with holes, dirt smudges and he basically looks like he’s been having a really rough day. And that was before being teleported to this stupid place.]
Okay. So. I get that this place is called something like Sacrosanct, or something—actually, I don’t care what it’s called. All I need from this stupid network—if there’s anyone actually listening--is to find out what the hell is going on, because I’m really not in the mood for any space-time-teleporty crap right now! So. Not in the mood.
So if someone could tell me where the nearest ride home is that would be great. That or this is all just my concussion giving me some crazy wall induced dream that I can’t break out of because I’m in a coma or something, then I’m freaking screwed.
[he huffs loudly, and bites his lip, frowning at his surroundings, quite obviously worried, and maybe a little bit frightened, and then scowls back at the device.] Billy I swear to god if you don’t come get me I’m going to… do something to you.
[and he angrily jabs at the screen, and the transmission ends.]
Your Nickname: Pura
OOC Journal: purapea@DW and LJ
Under 18? Nope, 22
Email/IM: puratiger AT gmail DOT com // AIM: PuraTigerz
Characters Played at Singularity: None!
Character Information
Name: Tommy Shepherd
Name of Canon: Young Avengers (Marvel 616)
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: http://marvel.wikia.com/Thomas_Shepherd_%28Earth-616%29
Canon Point: Issue eight of Avengers: Children's Crusade, where Tommy stands up to the X-Man Cyclops, and Cassie, his teammate, gets seriously injured.
Setting: Tommy’s world is very similar to modern day Earth as we know it. They share the same cities and countries, with a few new ones peppered around here and there, and they both are set in present day circumstances, complete with cellphones, the internet and the marvels of Chinese take out. The major differences however, are the people. Humans exist, and have done as per our own history. But so do a plethora of alien races (who have a tendency to turn up and try and take over the world). You thought Norse mythology was mythology? Think again; those Gods are real and they are very willing to slam a hammer into your face if you piss them off enough. Magic, sorcery and even reality bending is real too, but Hogwarts is still reserved to works of fiction, rather than being a place for little wizards to learn their craft (that’s usually left for them to figure out on their own). Science experiments gone wrong and radioactive spider bites don’t do what they would in this world (ie kill you) but give you spider senses and sometimes a really bad temper. Even the legend of Hercules has its own real counterpart in this world.
Above everything else, there are mutants. Mutants were once humans, or were never humans, depending on which way you want to think about it. Humans who have the X-Gene, which mutates their DNA and gives them special abilities, are classified as mutants. Being made of mercury, being able to read minds, having wings, being able to run faster than the sound barrier, control over dairy products, you name it, there’s probably a mutant with that power. The idea of someone coming up to you and turning that yoghurt you had for lunch into murder weapon is frightening to a lot of non-mutants, and mutants themselves just want to be accepted into society. So unsurprisingly there’s a lot of hostility between the two groups. There have been plenty of terrorist attacks on both sides; there’s a huge segment of humanity that thinks mutants are dirty, low and dangerous and only worth alive if you can exploit them.
A prime example of this is in the case of Genosha and the way it treated its mutant inhabitants before outside involvement from other mutants. Genosha, one of those aforementioned tiny new countries of the coast of Africa, had a stance on mutant kind similar to the slave trade — in fact, almost exactly like the slave trade. Genosha’s government scanned all its children for the X-gene, and children found with it were sent into slavery, in some cases being sent to another section of the government who specialized in modifing their powers to better suit labor needs. This clearly enraged a lot of mutants, and it wasn’t long before outsiders began to meddle in the countries’ affairs — the most prolific involvement being from Magneto, a mutant trying to rise up and extinguish humanity through claiming mutant kind to be the next step in human evolution. He changed Genosha from being somewhere mutants were persecuted to being a haven for all mutant kind as long as they were under his rule.
Of course, that is from the extremists. There are a lot of people who fight for mutant and humans to live together, and for both to have equal rights and respect and protection. But on the other hand, when you have thousands of super-powered beings of all races, creed and beliefs, you’re going to have some using their powers for nefarious deeds. And where you have Super Villains, you have Superheroes.
Superheroes rose up to fight the mutants using their powers for bad; vigilante teams like the X-Men and the Avengers were formed to keep the peace and to save humanity from the perils wrought by other mutants or the aforementioned aliens who decide that Earth needs a bit of destroying. It wasn’t long before many vigilante teams started popping up all over the place on all levels against a myriad of supervillains, and soon even kids were taking after their older counterparts and calling themselves things like the ‘Young Avengers’. Schools were also set up, such as The Xavier Institute, to help young mutants figure out their powers and to control them, as well as offer a home to those who sought it.
Sometimes, though, that’s just not enough. M-Day was an event where a Reality Altering magic user, The Scarlet Witch, used her powers in a moment of great anguish and alleged insanity to try and eradicate the mutant race. Reality twisted and almost all of the mutants lost their powers, leaving their entire race in the low hundreds. The fact that there were very few mutants left after M-Day didn’t stop some of the relentless terrorism from some of the extremists—Reverend Stryker being one of the figureheads. In one horrible incident, a busload of young ex-mutants, having all lost their powers to M-Day and on their way home from the Xavier Institute, was destroyed, killing almost all of the teens on board. Their only crime to the eyes of the terrorists was that they used to be mutants, and that was good enough for them.
With so few mutants left, and with the risk getting greater because of extremist mutants being more visible than the whole picture, the government decided after a few superpowered battles that resulted in a high number of civilian deaths that a registration act should be brought forward, in which all superhuman beings gave their information voluntarily so that humanity would be at less risk. Opinions of superheroes were at an all time low, some even getting mugged and hospitalized up by the people they were trying to protect. The act would give access to Superheroes’—as well as the remaining mutants--personal information, like place of residence and weaknesses, and would cause a lot of mutants to be targeted and picked off if the information was ever leaked. Superheroes were divided on the act between themselves, some thinking it was important for superheroes to have proper training and proper policing in their communities, whilst others thinking it downright racist and dangerous if the information ever leaked. The divide caused a huge split down the superhuman community, and eventually sparked a civil war between the two sides—pro-registration being led by Iron Man, Anti-registration being led by Captain America. The Young Avengers sided with Captain America and after a rather scary tussle with someone called the Warden, two of their members switched over to the side of Pro-registration. Civil war waged not only between the main two sides but within other close knit groups of superheroes and friends, and lots of lives were lost for the cause. Eventually Captain America surrendered and the registration was passed, but most of the heroes against the registration began to operate as undercover, which made things all the more difficult between the few mutants left.
The way Tommy fits into this world is a little confusing, even for comic book standards. Technically, he’s a mutant, but he also has connections with magic, time-travel, reality shifting, and demons. Tommy is the magical son of the Scarlet Witch, and along with his identical twin brother Billy, was born out of the Scarlet Witch’s desire to have children. She had used her reality altering powers to take souls from a demon, Mephisto, and warp them into two baby boys. Mephisto was not all too pleased about this, and came after the souls some time later, resulting in the twins’ deaths. Driven by grief, their mother was manipulated into and driven insane to utter the words ‘no more mutants’, and M-Day happened. But the souls weren’t lost. Nope. The souls were reincarnated back in time and Tommy was born to a human couple in New Jersey and was raised as a human child, before he’d even been born to the Scarlet Witch.
By the time he hit puberty, his X-Gene activated, causing his hair to turn white as well as giving him the powers of superspeed, much like the Scarlet Witch’s brother, Quicksilver. His parents became more and more distant because he was a mutant, and after Tommy ended up losing control of his newfound powers and blowing up his school as a result, pretty much disowned him outright. Tommy was put on trial for his crimes and found guilty, and was sent to juvenile hall for mutants, where he quickly learned was different as normal juvie. All the inmates were openly experimented on, apparently this being some sort of organization that took unstable teenage mutants to turn them into living weapons for their personal gain, and Tommy was not exempted from the rule. The fact that he was actually a person meant little to the people experimenting on him, because, after all, he was only a mutant.
The Young Avengers, who needed his help, broke Tommy out of juvie, having found him using something called the ‘Avengers Failsafe Program’, a tool that had assembled their team in the first place. The first four members all had direct links to the Avengers in some way—Patriot, being the grandson of the first Black Captain America; Hulking, being the son of Captain Marvel and not knowing it; Iron Lad, sent back from the future to stop himself from turning into the supervillain Kang the Conqueror; and Wiccan, the son of the Scarlet Witch. Tommy’s link was no less surprising, especially for Wiccan.
Tommy was called upon to help one of their other team-mates out of a Skrull-Kree debacle—both of which a type of alien who lay claim to the half-breed Teddy Altman, wanting him to take the throne of their respective lands--and after helping out, Tommy decided to stay. With no home to return to and currently on the lam, Tommy became Speed, and a Young Avenger.
Personality: Above all things, Tommy is an asshole. He enjoys messing around and irritating people and takes great pleasure in hitting the right buttons that make people squirm in annoyance. Because he is a speedster, no matter what he says he can always have a fast getaway. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions and thinks he can get away with a lot more than he really can because hey, if that person you just called a douche turns and tries to punch you in the mouth it’s handy to have speedster powers on your side. Because of this, he is extremely cocky. Tommy is also rather blunt and will say what he thinks; for example, if Tommy doesn’t like you he will make it as clear as day, he’s not afraid to call you an idiot, and you better hope he doesn’t think you’re an idiot because he’s one to hold a grudge. He also rushes into things without thinking them through, tending not to think about the consequences of his actions and seizing what’s a good idea at the time rather than meticulously planning out his every move. Tommy acts on a spur of the moment attitude, which doesn’t always work out.
He’s also incredibly flirtatious and will hit on anything with breasts and a pretty face, mostly because he’s a teenage boy with speedster hormones. His flirting never really gets him anywhere, (see: Tommy is an asshole), but he still does it mostly because it’s fun.
However, his cockiness, his flirtatious behavior, and even how much of a jerk he is are all fronts, covering up how emotionally damaged he truly feels. He can’t handle talking about his feelings, preferring to brush anything serious off and act aloof like he doesn’t care, since it’s easier than actually opening up to someone. He’s spent his whole life striving for attention from parents who didn’t want to give it to him—it’s part of the reason he’s the way he is; acting out in the hope that at least one of his parents would react or do something--and came to the conclusion some time after his sentence that they never cared about him. Tommy tends to bottle everything up, and gets incredibly sarcastic when he’s upset, often leaving without warning so he can go deal with his problems out of sight from the rest of the team. He’s never connected with anyone who stuck around for more than a month or two, and he has a lot of problems letting people in; his trust is extremely hard to gain. But once you’ve gained it, you’ve got it for life. His adoptive family—the Young Avengers—means the world to him, despite seeming to take him for granted a lot of the time. They’re pretty much all he’s got, and when one of them goes missing, he has a hard time dealing until they’re back safely (He spent pretty much all of Siege trying to find Kate and Eli, and was beating himself up because he couldn’t save them, and wasn’t a superhero if he couldn’t even save the people close to him).
Most of his team doesn’t even know the issues that Tommy is covering up because he thinks it’s better they think he’s a jerk than someone who can’t handle stuff. His extended incarceration at the juvenile detention centre gave him hella issues. For starters, the experiments they did gave him an unease around doctors and scientists, and he’d rather avoid them then go in for a checkup. Being in a small cell for a huge amount of time and being in a place where he can’t escape or run freaks him out. His morality was injured in juvie as well; he came very close to exploding the heads off of all the scientists that ever laid a finger on him, and could’ve become a supervillian easily if it hadn’t been for the Young Avengers’ influence. He still struggles with his morality at times, earning him the title of the ‘Team Sociopath’, but he’s doing a lot better now that he’s been with the team for a long time. He had the opportunity to leave and join the Young Masters—a darker version of the Young Avengers—as he had been involved with Coat Of Arms, one of the girls on the team who had been at juvie with him. He had declined, even though the team would’ve suited him better and would’ve probably appreciated him far more, because the Young Avengers were his family, and he wasn’t going to bail on his family.
Being a speedster with boundless energy and a crazy metabolism, Tommy finds it really hard to sit still for long periods of time. He gets bored really easily, and has to be constantly moving—be it twitching or walking around while he talks—otherwise he gets too uncomfortable. He has a tendency to pace like a caged animal when he’s upset or can’t get away. He sees the world almost in slow motion, and gets incredibly impatient extremely fast. It’s like standing in a line for the ATM, being already late for something, and the person in front of you is a little old lady who can’t see very well, and getting really agitated because the elderly lady keeps missing keys and making errors and starting all over again. Think about that, and how angry you’d get, and then multiply that by about 50, then apply it to everyone Tommy knows who isn’t a speedster -- you’ve pretty much got the reason why Tommy is irritable most of the time.
Under all this crap, Tommy is still just a teenager. He loves playing video games like Call Of Duty and Rockband, mostly because he uses his superpowers to cheat, loves pranks and jokes and will often convince Billy’s two young brothers to aide him in tormenting their older brother. He loves being around kids but would never admit it since he was an only child and never got to act like a big brother before. Molly from the Runaways is one of the kids he’s really connected with, and he treats her like a little sister, looking out for her, and just trying to make her smile. He’s found himself spending a lot of time with Billy’s two brothers as well and although he’d never admit it, he loves being a brother to all three Kaplan boys.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: As his name suggests, Speed can run really fast. And I mean seriously fast. He can run faster than the speed of sound and he can run across the surface tension of water. He once ran from the eastern seaboard of the USA to Genosha in almost the same amount of time it took Wiccan to teleport there. Because of his speed, he can easily dodge punches, catch high-speed objects (for example a knife being thrown at him) and almost be in two places at once. He can also generate hyper-kinetic vibrations, which causes the molecules of whatever he’s directing them at to vibrate and then explode. He can also accelerate his own, and other people’s molecules, and shake them to the point where they phase through solid walls.
Deep down, Tommy is actually a good person when it comes to the people he cares about. It’s hidden under all that cockiness and the fact that he’s the ‘team sociopath’ but it’s there, even though it might not be obvious. He’s incredibly loyal to the people who have gained his trust, and considers his team to be his family—the only family he has left now. His time with them has turned him from someone who was nothing more than a delinquent teen, to someone who is a superhero, and actually cares about the people around him. This is especially prominent with Kate and Billy, but though he never would admit it, he does actually appreciate all of them, and gets uncomfortably twitchy if one is missing.
Tommy might not be concerned about doing the right thing all the time, but when it involves the people he cares about he will go out of his way to help them, and if that means fighting the good fight then he’ll be by their side. He doesn’t necessarily feel like he should be doing the right thing and he doesn’t really give a damn about it either, but if it makes his family happy, he’s going to do it.
Because of his extended incarceration in a juvenile detention centre, which turned out to be an experimentation facility, Tommy is a closet claustrophobic. He would deny it if anyone mentioned it, but he dislikes being in places that he cannot run away from. If he doesn’t have the option of control – i.e. he only stays and fights because he chooses to and can run away if things get bad, thus giving him the delusion that he’s in control of his life – he will get very uncomfortable and twitchy. If he is contained, he shows similar behaviour to a caged animal, pacing and being generally restless. Another branch of this is that he doesn’t like anything that limits his movement. Things like constricting physical contact such as extended hugs fall into this category, as well as some types of clothing. Another result that has come from being inside juvie is that he has a strong distrust and hatred toward doctors and scientists.
Another weakness of his is that Tommy tends to rush into battle without thinking. He tends not to think about the consequences of his actions and seizes what’s a good idea at the time rather than meticulously planning out his every move. He acts on a spur of the moment attitude, which doesn’t always work out, and can cause him to do stuff like run into forcefields or walls because he was too impatient to check if whoever they were fighting had any defenses up.
As one final thing, teleporting makes Tommy feel really queasy, since he's not in control of his own actions and he finds it hard to keep his lunch down when Billy teleports the team somewhere. He much prefers to run on his own.
As far as limitations go, in Singularity Tommy will be slightly slower than usual, and will seriously need to increase the amount of calories he eats in one day as running will be far more taxing on him than before. Phasing will be extremely difficult for him to maintain for short periods of time and it would be safer for him to not do it at all, since he doesn't want to get stuck bonded so something else's atoms. He will not be able to phase through the zones at all and his vibration explosions will be impossible.
Inventory: Tommy doesn’t have a lot on him when he comes into Sacrosanct. He’ll be dressed in his super suit, which green, white and orange and skintight, and will also have his goggles on him, but that’s about it. He’ll be pretty dishevelled too when he comes in, with whole chunks missing from his suit.
Appearance: Tommy is a pretty toned teenage boy, probably getting a lot of his muscles from the fact that he is almost constantly running (though with superheroes its really hard to tell on this sort of thing if it’s not shown in canon). By superhero standards, he’s actually not that buff, but when you have people like The Hulk and Wolverine to compare against it’s entirely understandable. Speed is 5ft8, and has a head full of white, messy hair and a pair of green eyes. Apart from these differences, and for the fact that he has a smirk on his face most of the time, Tommy is identical to his brother, Billy Kaplan, and at first a lot of people get them confused (even with the hair differences). When he’s in crime fighting mode, he a green and white bodysuit that has a yellow arrow pointing to his crotch (no. I’m not kidding. And no, he did not design the suit himself) and a pair of orange goggles. When he’s not wearing his suit he usually wears tight fitting clothes – as long as they don’t restrict his movement in any way – and jeans. Tommy also has medical scars scattered across his body, but mostly covering his legs and feet, from his time in ‘juvie’, but are never seen due to him hiding them with his clothing.
Age: 16
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test?
And What Did You Score?
Samples
Log Sample:
The first thing Tommy remembered about being in this world, was hitting the floor. That memory was short and for some reason painful, and he couldn’t really make sense of it until he actually came to, face bleeding out on a weird piece of rusting, gnarled metal. He took a few seconds to stop his head from swimming (which it didn’t but his eyesight was getting better) and attempted to push himself up into a sitting position, but found he couldn’t move one of his arms without it shooting bolts of pain up his spine. He could also feel his head bleeding, and he was pretty sure one of his goggle lenses was broken.
Well, this what exactly what he needed to wake up to. –Hang on, wake up? He’d been awake last he checked, and everything had been happening at once and Cassie--oh fuck. Cassie. Tommy tugged his, quite obviously broken arm close to his body, and somehow managed to push himself up into a sitting position. A voice—well it was more mechanical sounding than anything—boomed overhead and told him to watch his step, which got a wry scoff out of the teen.
Okay, Thomas. Alternate dimensions, or spaceships or something. You can do this. You’re probably just hallucinating or something—Emma Frost probably did something to your brain again and you’re actually still out there with everyone and your family, and. Crap, why did this feel so real though? He put his good hand up on his head to feel his forehead—which was oozing blood from a deep cut. Great. Just what he needed. Not that he hadn’t gotten severe head injuries before with all the running into stuff he did, but it made things more difficult. As if the arm already hadn’t.
Tommy couldn’t just stay here, bleeding out on the floor. Carefully, he pushed himself up, still a little shaky from the landing and concussion, and it didn’t take him long to figure out from the standing position that he probably didn’t want to be standing here, with all the—was that a satellite? Where the hell was he? Other than somewhere called Sacrosanct.
“This has gotta be the highlight of my day.” He snorted sarcastically to no one, and ducked as something large and metallic flew passed him and crashed into the ground. “Okay, yeah, let’s get out of here, like yesterday,” he sputtered, staring at the squeaking metal as it settled for all of three seconds before running to find the nearest exit.
Network Sample:
[the video is shaky at first, someone isn’t used to having a holographic screen on their wrist, and with everything that just happened to him, he’s going to be a little shaky anyway. When the video manages to actually focus, the face of a teenager fills the screen, looking significantly ruffled. He’s wearing a pair of goggles, which looked like they smashed recently, pushed up onto his forehead and he looks out of breath. He’s also wearing a green super-suit, which is littered with holes, dirt smudges and he basically looks like he’s been having a really rough day. And that was before being teleported to this stupid place.]
Okay. So. I get that this place is called something like Sacrosanct, or something—actually, I don’t care what it’s called. All I need from this stupid network—if there’s anyone actually listening--is to find out what the hell is going on, because I’m really not in the mood for any space-time-teleporty crap right now! So. Not in the mood.
So if someone could tell me where the nearest ride home is that would be great. That or this is all just my concussion giving me some crazy wall induced dream that I can’t break out of because I’m in a coma or something, then I’m freaking screwed.
[he huffs loudly, and bites his lip, frowning at his surroundings, quite obviously worried, and maybe a little bit frightened, and then scowls back at the device.] Billy I swear to god if you don’t come get me I’m going to… do something to you.
[and he angrily jabs at the screen, and the transmission ends.]