Compound
| Compound | |
|---|---|
| Author | /u/PurpleDurplePlatypus |
| Civilian name | Emilio Hernandéz |
| Alignment | Hero |
| Affiliation | Noncanon (Devilfish) |
| PRT Classification | Thinker |
| Born |
January 14, 2005 Puebla Mexico |
| Status | Noncanon |
Character Sheet
Appearance
Em is a scrawny Hispanic boy with naturally tan skin and a mop of curly brown hair only a few shades darker than his skin. He doesn't dress particularly fashionably, tending towards simple shirts, tank tops and jeans, looking very much like the street kid he grew up as, though his ears are pierced and usually decorated with studs. He has a large birthmark on his neck. He has a slight drawl when he speaks.
His most obvious feature is the mutation his trigger left him with. His eyes are completely black, with an iridescent oily sheen that shifts slowly as if still on open wetness. These are easily covered with some dark glasses when he's in his civilian guise but he still has to be careful.
His costume is fairly simple. It's a body suit with boots and a belt to carry his supplies, ala power rangers, but made in a bronze fabric. He has white body armor elements, wearing a white bullet proof vest, armored boots and wrist guards. He wears a white motorcycle helmet, with a few abstract lines inlaid into it and large domed decorations designed to evoke an insect's compound eyes. A normal person wouldn't be able to see out of it, which isn't an issue since he's blind anyways and relies on his power. It helps sell the 360 degree vision power feint.
Equipment and Resources
Wealth Level: 4, Standard Ward
For his civilian guise he has a seeing eye dog that has normal training but also trained to look where he points so he can use its eyes. Equipment
Out in the field carries a cell phone, coms link to team/prt, a taser, a couple of bandages and simple first aid supplies, and a pistol with rubber bullets.
Skills and Specializations
- Fluent in Spanish and English, but dyslexic so a slow reader
- Basic first aid training.
- Strong swimmer.
- Scrappy, can throw a punch
- Decent cook, authentic mexican!
Mentality
Nearly cripplingly socially anxious and high strung, Em tends to be pessimistic. It lets him be a great problem solver and good at predicting problems, but a bit of a downer to be with. However, he's also fairly excitable, and when he gets swept up in something he enjoys he is enthusiastic. Generally empathetic and kind, but lashes out fairly harshly when made to feel stupid or ignorant due to the huge emphasis on intelligence in the Ministry of Truth instilled in him. He also often gets down about his power, feeling useless in fights and that he has to rely on other people to use his power to its fullest.
Power
- Compound is a noctis cape.
- Compound is naturally blind, but his power allows him to passively see through the senses of people and animals within a 60 yard radius (football field end to end with him in the center.) He uses this to fake having 360º vision and awareness
- In an area with enough living creatures from multiple angles, he gets an enhanced sense of depth perception and his environment (triangulation on steroids.) Gives him slightly better aim and penetration through cover. Generally there’s enough bugs at least so he can vaguely navigate even without any people or significant other animals around, but it’s navigation without precision.
- Emilio’s brain has been given the ability to manage the massive amount info he absorbs from multiple perspectives. He doesn’t lose concentration and is as aware and capable of noticing small details from his multitude of sensory feeds.
- The people within his network do not get the ability to crunch so much info at once (unless assisted by their own thinker power.) Most people are capable of splitting their attention a little between what they’re actually experiencing and maybe one feed, with having to stop and pay attention and cycle their area of focus
- While his short range perception ability is passive, he can bring willing participants into a mental long range communication web with himself as the hub. This has a range closer to 3 miles.
- People only enter the web willingly. Compound can sever his connections at any time, and participants can similarly opt out at any time. Compound must be within speaking distance to initiate a connection offer, though he doesn’t have to actually speak.
- Participants in the network can send mental messages (not quite words but impressions and images enough to make coherent thoughts) to other multiple or single participants. Compound “hears” all messages sent this way, and if he chose to can stop the message if he wants.
- Participants can also send “live feeds” to other members of the network or one or multiple of their own senses. Compound always has access and is always watching/listening to all members similar to his passive power, but he can similarly stop feeds from being sent.
- If a participant leaves the 3 mile range, the connection goes dead, but will go live again when they reenter.
- Thinker senses don’t translate over the live feeds unless they’re just enhanced versions of normal human senses (enhanced hearing so you can hear a mouse: yes, enhanced hearing that acts as sound-based danger sense: no)
- Excessive simultaneous communication over the long range network causes thinker headaches. 15+ people in constant casual communication for an hour means migraines, 30+ means he’s probably going to be either lying in bed in pain to maintain the network or going to start severing connections.
- Emilio can turn his short range sense off (it’s on by default) but cannot turn off his long-range network other than severing everyone connected to it.
- Compound can get "seasick" if a portion of the network he's looking through experiences unnatural sensory input like illusions or dimensional stuff disrupting perceptions while the other part isn't.
- If Compound goes unconscious, or is somehow forced to sleep, it instantly severs all of his connections and he has to reestablish them once he's awake.
Backstory
Emilio's mother emigrated to Texas from Mexico when Emilio was only one year old. They were joining family already there, and their life was stable but not particularly auspicious. Emilio was cripplingly shy, and the neighborhood was rough, so he rarely socialized and avoided school at all costs, hanging out and helping at his Uncle's restaurant rather than regularly attending school. There was trouble at home too, mostly his mother's poor choice of boyfriends and things to put in her body, but he picked up drawing as a hobby, and was quite talented even at his young age and it was his island of happiness outside the restaurant.
That was until a fire in the city took out the restaurant their extended family had worked so hard to build. The central pillar that supported the family crumbled, and Emilio's Mom was the more troublesome and more distant relative that ended up being cut loose. Struggling to survive, they were lured out to a Ministry of Truth compound under the guise of free and abundant work at their outpost. They needed manual labor and poached the unfortunate to get it.
Emilio was nine when they were enveloped in the Ministry of Truth, and it made his quiet shy life into a living hell. He was far behind where he should be in schooling. In a place where mundane humans were far below parahumans, and intelligence valued above all else, he was the lowest of the low. He was the "acceptable target" for all his classmates bullying and frustrations. He was quickly assessed as being dyslexic on top of it, and labeled a lost cause, a life doomed to failure repeatedly shoved in his face. It didn't help his shyness, and he developed a near paralyzing fear of school and making mistakes. He still attempted to skip school, and only received more punishment from the adults.
The only thing he got a single scrap of praise for was his art. His drawing skill was one of the only things he was ranked a notable amount above average in by the Ministry, and the compound's leader, a striker/thinker with the ability to sever other people's senses to boost his own, had a soft-spot for the arts and luxury. When Emilio was fourteen he was given an opportunity to give a small art show to their leader. He drew and painted his heart out, and had to sit outside while the big-wigs looked at his art in another room. He was so stressed and overwhelmed he was crying by himself by the time they walked out. They hadn't liked it at all. Emilio had painted pictures of landscapes and people farming and cooking... the leader had not so subtly been dropping hints about depicting capes and Emilio's usefulness as a propagandist... the teenager had missed all of them. Emilio was shattered at the disdainful dismissal of his work and his dismissal. He was confused at his failure when he thought his work had been so good, that he'd communicated something beautiful and expert and finally be seen as worth something, and in the panic attack that ensued he triggered.
His power gave him the ability to see from others' perspectives... and took away the ability to see from his own, rendering him blind and with a mild mutation of his eyes. He was finally worth something, he was a cape. After a discussion within the Ministry's network he was determined to be most useful at another location, with capes who would synergize better with his expanded network. He was given some mild training to get ahold of his new power and new disability, and then Emilio was separated from his mother and trucked north. He was intended for their Washington outpost, however, as they passed nearby Ashton, Emilio managed to escape and made a break for it. Knowing he could never outsmart the Ministry of Truth, he instead snuck into Ashton, managing to navigate his way around patrols and find some hidden gaps in the defenses thanks to his power. He hoped the quarantine would keep him in and the plague would keep any pursuers away. He was quickly noticed and picked up for questioning.