Tommy Shepherd [Speed] (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
crotcharrow) wrote2012-08-18 12:09 am
crotcharrow) wrote2012-08-18 12:09 am
Entry tags:
tushanshu; application
Player Information:
Name: Pura
Age: 23
Contact:![[plurk.com profile]](https://plurk.com/favicon.ico)
purapea
Game Cast: None
Character Information:
Name: Thomas "Tommy" Shepherd / Speed
Canon: Young Avengers, Marvel 616
Canon Point: The end of Avengers: Children's Crusade issue 9, right after the statues of the Avengers have been unveiled and the small team has been made Avengers.
Age: 17
Reference: one two, three
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 specialised in modifying 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, which he quickly learned was different from 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 on his own 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, thinking it perfectly fine to go and break into the Avengers mansion to impress a girl when he was supposed to be a hero, which has earned 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.
Reaction: Tommy's reaction to finding out he's in an inbetween world? Probably that this is some sort of messed up intitiation ritual for the Avengers. As if the mansion robot garden wasn't bad enough, now he had to go through some sort of mumbo otherworldly crap. He will probably blame Doctor Strange for a while, and then get into the rhythm of things when people tell him UH NO the kedan aren't making this stuff up and Cap isn't hiding around a corner giggling with Spidey and Ms. Marvel. He'll start crime fighting, because that's what he does and he's going to be wholly unsurprised that he got sent to another alternate dimension, because really, Superheroes should get a alternate dimension stamp book and exchange them at meet ups I MEAN COME ON GUYS. (This will be the second alternate dimension that he's been swept into, a lovely Hell Dimension being his first which he didn't like all that much. Too much brimstone and fire for his liking.)
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 wears a green and silver 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.
Abilities: 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.
Inventory: Tommy won't have a lot of things on him when he arrives. He’ll be dressed in his super suit, which green, silver and orange and skintight, and will also have his goggles on him, but that’s about it since the point at which he's being pulled he's ready to go fight some crime.
Suite: Wood ;D I mean. Wood district, one floor? Because adorable YA tree house but I would not mind if you randomised him <3
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Okay, well, waking up wet and being manhandled by a group of vaguely blueish dudes hadn't exactly been on the agenda today, but it's not exactly something you'd write in your diary either. Unless it was a thing that Avengers did all the time--didn't they all have like frequent flyer miles with alternate dimensions or something?--which he now was, technically, so maybe this was normal?
All he was sure of at the time was that he was sopping wet, exhausted and couldn't really move, and someone was talking to him about a thing called a Tu Vishan and that he might be sleeping or dead. One of the two.
All Tommy can manage for the first few hours is to blink blearily at what was going on around him, his body aching from something that he's not entirely sure he remembers doing to warrant it. Wow. This was totally a test or something wasn't it? The Young Avengers got an upgrade and now they had to prove themselves worthy or some bullshit? I bet they got Strange in on it too. Wasn't putting people into magical adventure comas his thing or something? It had to be something like that, nobody wears a cape that stupid without good reason. He asked a few questions to his magical mystery guide and they give him vague answers, spouting something about it not being their business.
It's all well and good right up until the point he feels his powers suddenly snap back, and his restlessness takes hold. He wants to get out and at least walk alongside the cart, and even asks the kedan to tell him where they're going so he can just meet them there and continue his ~magical journey~ and they look at him strangely and make him sit in the cart.
The hours creep by like days and Tommy found himself fidgeting to the point that he practically hangs off the back of the cart upside down, having almost puts a leg through the cart floor because he's bashing it against the wood so hard not ten minutes before. His whining was probably getting unbearable to his travel companions. He had eventually thrown his head over the side rather dramatically to stare at the ground as it edged past them, his fingers drumming against the side of the cart so fast and agitatedly that it only sounded like a low hum.
"Are you kidding me with this? Seriously? How the hell are we still not there yet ohmygod?! Clouds are moving faster than we are! Centuries are moving faster than we are! Can you not get that thing to go anyfaster??"
Network:
[Video Post]
[Someone looks really exhausted and ticked off for only just having arrived in the city. He's also still in his super-gear, his goggles pushed up onto his forehead, white hair looking like it's had a frustrated hand shoved through it a few times.]
Wow, okay, this place seriously needs to invent something faster than that stupid cart I just had to sit eternity in, because wow that was the worst three days of my life. And look, I get it. You guys don't even have to pretend to play along. This is some dumb initiation thing for the Avengers ain't it? You got Doc Strange all up in this to test our superhero strength or something. I mean I thought we kinda did a good job already, but whatever, I guess that's why you're a Captain and I'm a... what do they call the ones under Captains? Cadet sounds way too gay...
[he thinks for a few milliseconds, before scrunching his nose up and giving up, looking back at the camera.]
But no, seriously, the cart ride was totally enough initiating can you just get to the point so I can go get a pizza? Or do I really have to play your stupid game? Because I'm seriously not in the mood after you made me sit forever on a stupid cart.
[he pauses, and then adds, as an afterthought:]
Spidey, I thought you were better than this.
Name: Pura
Age: 23
Contact:
Game Cast: None
Character Information:
Name: Thomas "Tommy" Shepherd / Speed
Canon: Young Avengers, Marvel 616
Canon Point: The end of Avengers: Children's Crusade issue 9, right after the statues of the Avengers have been unveiled and the small team has been made Avengers.
Age: 17
Reference: one two, three
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 specialised in modifying 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, which he quickly learned was different from 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 on his own 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, thinking it perfectly fine to go and break into the Avengers mansion to impress a girl when he was supposed to be a hero, which has earned 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.
Reaction: Tommy's reaction to finding out he's in an inbetween world? Probably that this is some sort of messed up intitiation ritual for the Avengers. As if the mansion robot garden wasn't bad enough, now he had to go through some sort of mumbo otherworldly crap. He will probably blame Doctor Strange for a while, and then get into the rhythm of things when people tell him UH NO the kedan aren't making this stuff up and Cap isn't hiding around a corner giggling with Spidey and Ms. Marvel. He'll start crime fighting, because that's what he does and he's going to be wholly unsurprised that he got sent to another alternate dimension, because really, Superheroes should get a alternate dimension stamp book and exchange them at meet ups I MEAN COME ON GUYS. (This will be the second alternate dimension that he's been swept into, a lovely Hell Dimension being his first which he didn't like all that much. Too much brimstone and fire for his liking.)
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 wears a green and silver 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.
Abilities: 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.
Inventory: Tommy won't have a lot of things on him when he arrives. He’ll be dressed in his super suit, which green, silver and orange and skintight, and will also have his goggles on him, but that’s about it since the point at which he's being pulled he's ready to go fight some crime.
Suite: Wood ;D I mean. Wood district, one floor? Because adorable YA tree house but I would not mind if you randomised him <3
In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
Okay, well, waking up wet and being manhandled by a group of vaguely blueish dudes hadn't exactly been on the agenda today, but it's not exactly something you'd write in your diary either. Unless it was a thing that Avengers did all the time--didn't they all have like frequent flyer miles with alternate dimensions or something?--which he now was, technically, so maybe this was normal?
All he was sure of at the time was that he was sopping wet, exhausted and couldn't really move, and someone was talking to him about a thing called a Tu Vishan and that he might be sleeping or dead. One of the two.
All Tommy can manage for the first few hours is to blink blearily at what was going on around him, his body aching from something that he's not entirely sure he remembers doing to warrant it. Wow. This was totally a test or something wasn't it? The Young Avengers got an upgrade and now they had to prove themselves worthy or some bullshit? I bet they got Strange in on it too. Wasn't putting people into magical adventure comas his thing or something? It had to be something like that, nobody wears a cape that stupid without good reason. He asked a few questions to his magical mystery guide and they give him vague answers, spouting something about it not being their business.
It's all well and good right up until the point he feels his powers suddenly snap back, and his restlessness takes hold. He wants to get out and at least walk alongside the cart, and even asks the kedan to tell him where they're going so he can just meet them there and continue his ~magical journey~ and they look at him strangely and make him sit in the cart.
The hours creep by like days and Tommy found himself fidgeting to the point that he practically hangs off the back of the cart upside down, having almost puts a leg through the cart floor because he's bashing it against the wood so hard not ten minutes before. His whining was probably getting unbearable to his travel companions. He had eventually thrown his head over the side rather dramatically to stare at the ground as it edged past them, his fingers drumming against the side of the cart so fast and agitatedly that it only sounded like a low hum.
"Are you kidding me with this? Seriously? How the hell are we still not there yet ohmygod?! Clouds are moving faster than we are! Centuries are moving faster than we are! Can you not get that thing to go anyfaster??"
Network:
[Video Post]
[Someone looks really exhausted and ticked off for only just having arrived in the city. He's also still in his super-gear, his goggles pushed up onto his forehead, white hair looking like it's had a frustrated hand shoved through it a few times.]
Wow, okay, this place seriously needs to invent something faster than that stupid cart I just had to sit eternity in, because wow that was the worst three days of my life. And look, I get it. You guys don't even have to pretend to play along. This is some dumb initiation thing for the Avengers ain't it? You got Doc Strange all up in this to test our superhero strength or something. I mean I thought we kinda did a good job already, but whatever, I guess that's why you're a Captain and I'm a... what do they call the ones under Captains? Cadet sounds way too gay...
[he thinks for a few milliseconds, before scrunching his nose up and giving up, looking back at the camera.]
But no, seriously, the cart ride was totally enough initiating can you just get to the point so I can go get a pizza? Or do I really have to play your stupid game? Because I'm seriously not in the mood after you made me sit forever on a stupid cart.
[he pauses, and then adds, as an afterthought:]
Spidey, I thought you were better than this.