Escapade
| Escapade | |
|---|---|
| Author | /u/TragicTrajectory |
| Civilian name | Castor Accard |
| Alignment | Hero |
| Affiliation | Noncanon ({{{location}}})[[Category:{{{location}}} characters]] |
| PRT Classification | Mover 3, Thinker 2, |
| Born | March 28, 1992 |
| Died |
September 18, 2018 (aged 26) New York City |
| Status | Noncanon |
Escapade had fought in several Endbringer encounters, and for some reason never established himself at any one Protectorate location.
Character Sheet
Appearance
Castor sports a slightly overgrown crew cut with the naught but the bare minimum of maintenance and no concern for hiding his brown hair's receding hairline. Beneath a faded scar on his left temple his hard face frames his deep light brown eyes, some not so noticeable tan lines accentuating this, his skin otherwise healthy if a bit pale. His cheeks littered with the kind of stubble you get from only shave twice a week, punctuated by stress grays and freckles. His fashion choices can be described utilitarian at best, but nigh indiscriminate bargain bin hunting by most standards, with a tendency for long sleeves. Underneath the clothes he conceals his lithe athletic body, his chest and shoulders embellished with tattoos of remembrance, his leg hair patchy scars ravage this once fuzzy domain. Over his heart a beachfront with a caricature of an old lady relaxing under an umbrella, a banner makes its way through the design "Miami in our hearts." A chalice overflowing with liquid in front of a rising sun claims hold of his right shoulder. Down a small span of his left shoulder, a list of dates and numbers: Jan 4 2010: 1, Oct 25 2011: 12, Aug 21 2012: 0, Dec 11 2013: 31, Sept 23 2015: 2. Despite looking like a man who probably has never owned a suit, he stands poised and walks with purpose, each movement seeming practiced and deliberate.
When he dawns the mantle of Escapade, he sports a light blue body suit with white highlights that resembles a racing suit with pronounced areas of extra padding. His emblem is a red comet its tail crossing over his right shoulder into a thin cape that flutters three feet in his wake. The collar from the suit connects to a blue helmet with white highlights on the aerodynamic grooves, a glare reducing visor across his eyes. Under the helmet he wears a ski mask turtle neck hybrid and aviator goggles. He wears a utility harness, prominently housing a combat knife, various colored paracord bundles, and manacles. Aside from the a fore mention padding the suit has built in tonfa like protrusions along the forearms. The suit is rounded out with color coordinated gloves and toe shoes, and PRT in black on the back of the suit.
Equipment and Resources
A plot and tombstone in Florida.
Skills and Specializations
Fluent in English and Spanish, Literate in Chinese, speaks conversational Japanese and French, knows enough Italian and Portuguese to get by, Can play the piano, versed in PRT protocols, practiced in hand to hand combat, a bit of first aid, General suit of survivalist skills with a focus on tying knots, an almost complete high school education, former magician, thrown weapon specialist.
Mentality
Castor is a man who believes in second chances and redemption. He has a soft spot for children and the elderly and puts a higher priority on keeping them safe, he also has no qualms with admitting to this when confronted, be it by friend or foe. As a product of the wards he puts some stock in how they operate, viewing the program as a better solution to teenage villains and vigilantes than corrections programs. If a kid gets sent to Tartarus he would think the system has failed them. He prefers to open a dialog rather than resort to direct violence, even if it puts him at a disadvantage. Of course, as with all parahumans, sometimes he is just having one of those days and needs to just get them in cuffs, regardless of the method. Views being a hero as a duty, romanticizing the actions of his predecessors. As such he is overly self conscious of his past as a villain. Steadfast in his beliefs, he has few insubordination black marks on his records from putting his ideals before his orders. Operates in a somewhat fatalistic manner, not explicitly saving for retirement opting to live in the now. Core to his world view is the idea that, while you don't need to strive for it, a person can always improve themselves, the second you think you have no more room for improvement you start regressing. He thinks his power is the will of his past life and attempts to live symbiotically with it, also views himself as just another part of the cycle. He thinks of his power as endless, limited only by his aptitude as a vessel rather than his understanding of it. He also thinks that he is a person who once had enlightenment, and that he can use the knowledge that he gained from it to help people, as the enlightened should assist the ignorant.
Power
Trigger type: single natural trigger
Escapade's power is to muck with electromagnetic force during the transfer of kinetic energy. He can store and release this energy. He uses this power to achieve super human feats movement and agility, along with a few other perks I will cover.
TL;DR
It's super parkour.
Movement
I like to break Escapade's movement into three categories basic, vertical, and free, and call the inter usage of these together as dynamic movement.
Basic movement is the walking. running, and sliding of the every man. I'll get to walking later as I don't think it's relevant in this section. He can run faster because his power stores the force from air resistance as energy to exert later and uses some of his stored energy to propel him faster, this allows him to achieve faster speeds for less effort, he can run a 100m dash in under four and a half seconds sprinting. Escapade can slide friction free for around 60 feet, baring an obstacles, during this time he does not gain or lose speed.
Vertical movement defines his ability to move on vertical surfaces as long as there is friction opposing the strongest gravitational pull, that's earth by default. He does not have to wall crawl, while he can do that his passenger has a preference for faster movement so he tends to run on walls with the occasional hand touch for support. He does not stand stock straight on walls, aiming more often to be closer to the opposite of gravity. With enough contact to a wall he can stick to it, the passenger lets him do this for as long as he can hold his breath. Using the 100m dash for speed comparisons, using exclusively wall running it would take him a bit more than 10 seconds to scale that distance.
Free movement will reference his jumping and aerial movement, I'll break this down into four categories jumping, launching, gliding, and flight. Escapade is capable of jumping six feet straight up. He also is capable of using some of the energy stored to launch himself into the air, about 60 feet straight up, this is his fastest form of movement. While airborne he can increase the friction of the air, similar to how he clings to walls, to slow his decent, this too is restricted by the passenger and limited by the time he holds his breath, also worth noting is this friction will slow forward momentum too. Finally Escapade cannot fly naturally, given some device he could likely achieve flight with moderate ease but that is not the direction he wants to take his ability, but he can use the same trick he uses to glide to either launch or jump while in the air, however his passenger doesn't allow him to launch if he launched to get into the air and he cannot repeat this process with out touching a solid object.
Once again dynamic movement is the combination of his full toolbox of movement abilities and is faster than anyone mode alone, mostly through chaining launches together into slides. Due to the variance in the speeds of each movement type dynamic movement is measured in average travel speeds. The two numbers for dynamic movement are moving at an average speed of 40 mph being about as exhausting as jogging and 86 mph being a full tilt sprint.
Storage and the passenger
Escapade's passenger stores energy that is absorbed from friction and impacts, so it can release them to do cool things like launching and gliding. He cannot turn off his power and it is always storing energy from air friction and the impacts of his footsteps, it especially likes when he lands from high heights. This energy is later released when he glides, wall runs, clings to walls, double jumps, or launches himself. The limits to all of those are imposed by the passenger, otherwise the energy reserves would be completely used up.
The storage of energy is not omnipotent, the effect is Manton limited. The limit can be described as direct influence, that is to say if a person is directly influencing the energy it cannot be absorbed. An exception is Escapade himself is unaffected by this, so if he fires a gun he absorbs some of the recoil, if he swings a bat he absorbs the feedback. Things that fall under direct influence are just about every hand held weapon, knives, bats, whips, etc, and people themselves. Direct influence parallels intent in the less obvious circumstances, for example if a car with a distracted driver hits him, he'll come out better than if some one is explicitly running him down. There cannot be more than 6 degrees of separation (finger, trigger, hammer, powder, bullet, impact = 4 degrees) between the human action and the impact for it to be effective, no Rube Goldberg machines. Some things that are outside of direct influence would be Cars, various debris, hail and rain, Bullets that he has shot, things that have been dropped, however he can still be crushed. The storage cannot absorb from things such as electricity, lasers, sonic attacks and fire, this can usually be extended to parahuman abilities with no obvious physical delivery method. To clarify Escapade is incredibly vulnerable to striker powers, should they get close.
- The energy stored is technically always increasing as the passenger absorbs more energy than it uses in most cases, resulting in a net gain. The energy released increases as the pool of stored energy does, but always in such an amount the stored energy can keep increasing. However the speed and level of improvement is not enough to make a difference within any short period of time, as the power also requires a level of physical prowess to use, Escapade's peak is likely to happen in his late thirties or early forties with dynamic movement speed close to if not in slight excess of 100 mph.
Releasing energy
I briefly mentioned this in the previous two sections but there are some noteworthy aspects to this. First whenever he uses just about any kind of movement he draws upon his pool of energy for the initial investment and digests the dividends. The other way is related to his Manton limit, he cannot release energy to cause direct harm, so no enhanced kicks or punches. However were he to say launch himself into a person, you would think he could use the momentum to land quite the blow, but he can't. His passenger views such collisions as potentially dangerous to its host and thus will use energy to dampen that collision significantly. This coincidentally is part of what lets him carry a person while using his power, and keeps him from death by bird strike.
about those perks
The power has two smaller perks to it. The first is that due to the fact that it constantly siphons off friction and softens impacts, Escapade does not make sound normally, it's part of why he has the cape, to flick and make noise to announce his presence. He can wrap the cape around his face to eliminate the noise it makes. However, when wall climbing an noise akin to sneakers squeaks is audible, and both gliding and launching make an abrupt gust of wind.
The other perk ties hand and hand with one of the other qualities of his power, it's always on. Escapade's control mechanism comes in the form of a sort of enhanced dexterity via hyper kinesthesia, knowing how each piece of his body is moving, figuring out how to control each specific one. This also opened up various kinesthetic learning options, making him adept at picking up new skills that involved physical activity, martial arts, how to move your tongue and mouth to make sounds for languages, how to play the piano, and how to walk so that your passenger doesn't throw you into the ceiling. Additionally the hyper kinesthesia grants an enhanced sense of pain.
Usage and Exhaustion
Escapade's endurance is not endless, and while the actual use of his power is not draining the physical actions to keep up can be quite draining. For example I equated his top speeds to all out sprints, that means that he will be visibly out of breath after 10 seconds of keeping that pace and his speed will drop back down to a resting pace, sharply. If he tries to power through and keep that pace, not only will his speed drop but his condition after the sprint will get worse, results ranging from on his back gasping for air, 18-25 seconds, to ending up collapsing in an adrenaline fueled fugue, up to a hard cap of 40 seconds moving barely above his jogging pace. The other paces follow a similar endurance time frame ratio(4x is the hard limit). So with that the ratios are as follows:
PACE: SPEED:BASE TIME
Sprint: 86mph:10s
Hustle: 70mph:10min
Marathon: 60mph:1hr
Jog: 40mph:3hr
Brisk: 22mph:5hr
Resting: 6mph:1day[he still needs water to survive]
Endurance at speeds of marathon or lower can be enhanced by keeping hydrated and gearing down his pace to conserve energy. He can hit the speeds in between the listed paces but for simplicity sake just round up for exploring his limits.
Versatility
A lack of control goes hand in hand with a lack of versatility. Escapade is aware of more or less everything that his power can do. He is far more likely to play with his equipment load out than to dig deeper into his power tool box when making plans. If his powers are a set of wrenches then they aren't exactly the adjustable kind. A tactical retreat is a mainstay of his play book, and his power lends itself to that, he can scope out and tail a target from a distance and wait for backup.