Deadweight
| Deadweight | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author | /u/dessysalta |
| Pronouns | She/her, they/them |
| Civilian name | Emma Julienne Lackery |
| Alignment | Unknown |
| Affiliation | None (Devilfish) |
| PRT Classification | Trump/Shaker 5 |
| Born |
December 22, 2004 Birmingham, UK |
| Status | Active |
Public Information
Emma hasn’t done anything that would put her on the radar of any parahuman teams or similar, yet. She hasn’t even reported her power.
Character Sheet
Appearance
(See image above)
Emma has a thin body, skin colored bronze in most places but with more than a few patches of white (due to a condition called vitiligo). The patches are a pale white in color, and are localized in a few places: in a patch that covers her entire right eye (and that same upper-half of her face), several softball-sized patches on her right arm (with two smaller ones on her left), and pigment beginning to “recede” from her fingers and fingertips. Barely noticeable, she also has freckles.
For her other features, she has dark blue-green eyes and black hair that flows to just beyond her kidneys, the last six or so inches of which is dyed a light hazel color. Her face and jaw aren’t particularly round, but aren’t particularly sharp either. She has a few assorted scars, the most notable of which are on the tops of her thighs.
For her clothes, she almost always wears a black hoodie and wide blue jeans. She also sports white socks, blue-black sneakers, and a pair of small rectangular glasses. If she gets a strike of impulse, she’ll also bring along a blue-red beanie and/or white gloves.
As Deadweight, she wears a black leather jacket and thick, blue jeans. The jacket itself has multiple textbooks under it to act as makeshift armor.
Equipment and Resources
- A small switchblade, 3” long when closed and 5.5” long when open. Made of normal metals and materials.
Skills and Specializations
Emma lacks “useful” skills besides being mildly adept at playing the guitar, and is exceedingly good at algebra. She’s a professional walker, if anything.
Mentality
Emma isn’t a particularly “interested” kid in nearly anything you could name. She doesn’t really care for things like art or writing (though music is an exception), and is even less into activities like skating or riding bikes. She especially hates large social-gatherings, but appreciates smaller quiet ones. She tries not to show it, but it happens regardless.
One of the things she does have a passion for is work of any kind, most notably math and science. She’s on an accelerated schedule, meaning she has skipped a couple classes in favor of harder, much more stressful ones. Currently, she is taking high school level Pre-Calculus and AP Physics.
She is very distrustful of people who openly support the Protectorate, slightly less so for those who support the PRT.
As a final unrelated note, she enjoys learning/practicing the guitar from time to time.
Power
Her mistrust of the protectorate, and the bad luck of being in the wrong place and wrong time, has let her dampen powers to around half of their effectiveness within an eighty foot (~24m) range, or localize this effect to one person she can (reasonably) see. Some examples of her power may be:
- The ability to spew fire and smoke in a four-foot cone is cut to a one-and-a-half-foot cone and the range is reduced drastically
- Flight is occasionally cut off or prone to “malfunctions” (if they are flying left, they might go straight up or down; the controls might be called “sticky”)
- Telekinesis will have much more sluggish motions; bringing an object to or from the user may be slower or faster than usual, and dropping a given group of things will be easier
- Invisibility will only work half as well, or not at all
- Object replication/creation will be far more susceptible to imperfect copies or making different objects entirely
- Super-speed would have unexpected acceleration/deceleration
However, tinkertech would remain mostly (if not entirely) unaffected. Mutated capes, such as case 53s or biologically altered individuals, would suffer from an increasingly worse set of symptoms (mostly localized as headaches and joint pain) the longer they are exposed to her power.
As a final note, the longer a cape is within her range and exposed to her power, the more dreadful and hopeless they will feel. Around ten minutes is where they will show symptoms of heavy set depression and demotivation. This effect is lost when outside of her range, eyesight, or when she decides to cut her power.
Backstory
Emma has a long line of bad luck, having gone through three separate parahuman attacks now. The first of these attacks was when she was very young–it was a minor case where a drugstore was robbed, and she just happened to be with her mother at the time.
The second was a threat to her school, one where a small response unit was sent to quell the issue. This was mostly done without muss or fuss, but the third…
In an attack by an unnamed cape, she found herself stranded between a member of the Protectorate and the cape in question. Unable to behave rationally, she rushed away to find cover, the closest of which being a shuddering building, and was forced to lay under the rubble as it soon fell down. Claustrophobia and fight-or-flight kicked in, and some time later (a few minutes? an hour? she can’t remember) she was cleared from the wreckage.
She told her parents what happened that day, but didn’t say anything about the tingling in her head, or how she felt…different. She knew what she had, and was determined to keep anyone else from knowing she was a cape. Otherwise, those capes, that damned, unreliable Protectorate…they might just want her on their side.
Since then, she’s been a soft-spoken, jittery girl. Her power’s effect on others has the same effect on her mind, leaving her uninterested and demoralized.