Tommy Shepherd [Speed]

PLAYER STUFF
Name: Pura
Pronoun: She/Her
Email address: puratiger@googlemail.com
Preferred contact: plurk; purapea OR AIM@ PuraTigerz
Other characters: Nessa Llewellyn


CHARACTER STUFF
Name: Tommy Shepherd
Aliases: Speed
Canon: Young Avengers; Marvel 616
Role: Unregistered sort of Superhero
Species: Superpowered Human
Gender: Male
Age: 17
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. He tends to wear tight fitting clothing as long as they don't restrict his movement. He doesn't have a super suit as of yet, but does wear a green jersey and orange goggles when he's out running.

Origin story: Tommy is the only son of Frank and Mary Shepherd and was born and raised in Springfield, New Jersey. Fairly early on into his life, his parents relationship broke down--his father accusing his mother of cheating because of Tommy's shocking white hair colour and powers, and his mother denying it--and then divorced. Tommy was ignored in favor of settlements and lawsuits and responded by lashing out, trying to get any kind of attention, albeit negative attention. As a result, Tommy became an extremely difficult child and it was then when his powers started to show and fluctuate more often. After it was all said and done his mother placed a lot of the blame onto her son for everything that had happened. She became an alcoholic and Tommy had to learn to fend for himself from a very young age.

Having a bit of a rocky upbringing hadn't really set him up well for his school years. Tommy continued to be incredibly difficult in school, his attention span far too short to be able to concentrate in lessons. He tried to hide his powers as best they could--they were the reason for all the bad things that had happened to him and his family--but still managed to use them to screw with some of the more infuriating teachers. Detention was common-place and worn almost like a badge of honor, but Tommy surprisingly still got decent grades even though he didn't pay attention in lessons. He would get into fights often and win without seemingly throwing any punches, which gave him his cocky and fearless attitude. If things started to go sour, he would just run.

After a particularly bad night at home--his mother having polished off a whiskey bottle and then deciding to throw it at him in slurred screaming--some of the kids that had been trying to beat him up managed to corner and hold him in place before they started to lay into him. His powers blipped as they had done before, but on a massive scale. Everything he had bottled up exploded forth, and Tommy became a kinetic bomb, destroying half the school by accident. Some of the students died, trapped under the rubble and Tommy himself had sustained head injuries. It was only because he was injured that Captain Victory and his sidekick actually caught up to him and took him to the authorities.

Tommy was quickly put into the system and sent to a specialist juvenile hall designed for people with powers. He was prodded and poked to ensure he wasn't a threat or a potential super-villain and Tommy responded in the way you would expect a teenager to--with reluctance and anger. About three months into his rehabilitation, Tommy discovered that he could vibrate his molecules through solid objects and staged an escape. He made one final trip to his house in New Jersey, collecting a few merge belongings before he headed to the big city, New York.

He was in New York for about six months, living off what he could when he found it. Having a speedster's metabolism didn't help for when he was hungry, and Tommy spent a lot of time on the streets using his powers for less than heroic things. He resorted to stealing a lot of his food from big high street chains and living in squats with other runaways. He worked when he could, getting temp jobs that needed things done very quickly but never held anything down for too long. He did work for the other workforce too, which is where he bumped into a spider-esque teenager a few times, who would become important later on in his life.

It had been going good--he'd almost had enough money saved for somewhere that wasn't a squat and had an actual bed with a matress on it--when he was approached by someone from TRIDENT. Tommy thought it was another job, them offering him money to run a few tests on him. It wasn't. TRIDENT plucked Tommy off of the streets and submerged him into a world of being a human guinea pig. The testing wasn't as innocent as he had originally thought and was far more invasive. His legs were of exceptional interest, and after the first few tests on a running machine were taken, Tommy was drugged and his legs were studied under the knife. He unfortunately metabolised the anaesthetic far quicker than they had anticipated and woke up halfway through the operation. As a result, Tommy was pumped with enough meds to drop a horse, and spent a lot of the time in a drug induced haze. When he wasn't off his face he was locked up in a cell, with power limiters strapped around his wrist, all escape near impossible.

He doesn't know how long he was there. But he does know that he only escaped thanks to a grey skinned alien woman who didn't speak very good English. She slaughtered a lot of the scientists working there and once his power limiters were off Tommy ignored everything rehab had ever tried to teach him and joined in too, not caring if he was exhausting.They had to pay for what they did to him.

They washed up on a beach in Los Angeles, and parted ways. With no family, no where to go and no idea what to do, Tommy struggled to get back on his feet until that same spider-esque girl, revealed to be named Arana, from New York discovered him slumped against a dumpster and took him back to her squat. She nursed him back to health, and the pair became friends very quickly, and thats where Tommy finds himself now, with Arana, stealing and scamming people out of their money so he and Arana can eat.


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 a nice ass 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 behaviour, 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. 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. 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.

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. 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 defences up.

His extended incarceration at TRIDENT 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 TRIDENT as well; he came very close to exploding the heads off of all the scientists that ever laid a finger on him, and can probably easily slide off the moral compass he's trying to keep straight on. Because of his time in TRIDENT 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.


Differences from canon: There are a fair number of differences between canon and this AU. Namely, without the influence of the Young Avengers, Tommy has become susceptible to questionable activities. Stealing and killing are not Young Avengers A-OK, but Tommy does them anyway. He hasn't formed close enough bonds to want to be a superhero yet, even though the potential is there. By missing that key family group, Tommy misses out on a lot of the stuff that toned his 'sociopathic' behaviour down, and is sort of a loose canon at the moment. The key elements of his backstory remain the same though, albeit expanded upon. TRIDENT takes the place of Juvie but he was mistreated in juvie too, so it balances out.

Power level: C Level

Powers: Tommy is a speedster, and as such his thing is running really fast. He can get to one seaboard of the USA to the other in a manner of minutes. 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, but this is entirely reliant on his energy levels. He can also accelerate his own, and other people’s molecules, and shake them to the point where they phase through solid walls, but he's less practised at this.

Team affiliation: At the moment, he is not affiliated with any team.

First person sample: here
Prose sample: here