Wreck

Wreck
Reputation	Notoriety Criminal D /
Author	Shade (capes)
Pronouns	She/Her
Civilian name	Elsie McLaughlin
Alignment	Vigilante
Affiliation	None (Denver)
Age	24
Status	Active
Nationality	American
Approver	UnknownMercury
Trigger Type	Single Cluster Trigger, with Body Count, Ambush, & Idol

Publicly Available Information

Wreck is a vigilante with a noticeable anti-establishment and anti-authoritarian focus, frequently showing up to participate in protests against everything from police brutality to poor working conditions or anti-homeless measures, mostly keeping the peace and ensuring that things don't escalate to violence on either side.

Though she has escalated to the active removal of anti-homeless architecture or physical confrontations with strikebreakers at times, showcasing skill in hand-to-hand combat and a fighting style focused around nonlethal disabling measures.

Possesses unknown electrical powers and a form of flight that involves generating wind, with other abilities as-of-yet unconfirmed.

Costume Appearance

Wreck's costume leans heavily on the malfunctioning, electrified look her primary power gives her, shards of metal, bits of glass, and cut cables weaving together into a painful-looking mask, what little of her eyes can be seen in the gaps between the mechanisms refracted and reflected through glass and metal to the point where it's questionable if she can see at all.

Her mouth is a jagged, shark-like mess of torn metal and shards of plastic or glass poking up from flesh, articulated joints and hinges squeaking as she talks, her voice raspy and warped. Her hair is in a perpetual state of disarray, long enough for it to tangle with the sparking cables growing from her head and react to the electricity it lets off.

If she needs to deactivate her thinker power in-costume, she wears a set of bulky mirrored goggles stylized to match the aesthetic of her mask, which then gets incorporated into it when she reactivates it.

The rest of her costume takes from the mechanical, electrified junk look, with bits of metal sewn to a denim jacket with wires instead of thread, padding hidden underneath, a pair of jeans with metallic knee-pads, a pair of combat-boots with fake exhaust-pipes secured to the back of each shoe, and a staff on her back that's literally just a length of rebar cut to size and cleaned up.

While her primary power is in use, the cables and metal parts in her head will spark with blue-white electricity that arcs to nearby surfaces within range, not doing any harm as they tingle and snap across people's skin.

When she focuses on a target, the mechanisms within her head will visibly move faster and output more power, electricity arcing together into a single bolt that snaps onto what she's directing her attention towards, electricity visibly arcing across the surface of the person or object being scanned."

Civilian Appearance

Elsie's a tall, scrawny-looking woman in her early-twenties, with black hair, brown eyes, and delicate features that would be attractive if not for the various scars and other small imperfections, her nose having clearly been broken once or twice in the past, small burn scars on her hands, neck, and face from being a bit too close when helping cook, and several thin scars on one side of her head, among other things.

After triggering, she gained a particularly-noticeable scar above her left eyebrow, gnarled scar tissue glinting with what are clearly metallic threads, copper, gold, and silver snaking out from the healed injury and spider-webbing across her head, cupping her cheek and wrapping around underneath her long hair, even visible in the corners of her eyes, though the lines of metal are fine enough to be obscured with makeup.

Mentality

"An anarchist and devoted activist, Elsie can best be described as passionate, the type of person for whom everything just hits harder. When she's cheerful, her happiness is infectious, her anger turns to righteous fury at the injustices in the world, moments of panic register like the world is going to end. She's 100% the type of person to get her nose broken keeping a strike from turning violent or trying to stop police from breaking up a protest, who pours her emotions into her music enough to get the whole crowd resonating with her when she sings her songs.

However, overall, she tries to remain positive. Things are bad, yes, and people should be angry, yes, but we can change that. There is hope, and there are people working to change things who would appreciate help.

After triggering, there was some slight personality-bleed from the other members of the cluster. She lost a small amount of her passion and gained self-control instead, now more inclined to exercise restraint where she wouldn't before, thinking before she shouts. With the ability to hold back also came introspection. The impact of her negligence hit her badly enough to cause her to trigger, and she's resolved to never settle for substandard solutions again, meshing with her typical drive to create a need to fix bad situations wherever she sees them, taking down villains and trying to defuse potential harm wherever it can be found."

Skills & Training

• Professional punk rock singer/songwriter for The National Tragedies, decently-famous local punk band
• Surprisingly good at baking
• Studying how to fight in close-quarters with a

Resources & Wealth

Elsie lives in a decent apartment in Denver, practically stuffed to the gills with various knickknacks and punk rock memorabilia.

• Professional singer/songwriter
• 1 black van, for equipment transport, and a red motorcycle for personal transport
• Audio equipment and instruments for the band

Equipment & Gear

• Improvised staff (7-foot length of rebar, cut to shape and cleaned)
• Lightly-armored costume (metal plates over padding, clearly handmade)
• Burner phone

Parahuman Power

Trigger Type: Single Cluster Trigger

"Wreck is a cluster cape whose primary power is a Thinker power with mild Changer elements. When activated, a ""mask"" of mechanical parts will grow onto and into her face and head, sparking with electricity that arcs to surfaces and objects within range, enabling her to get a 3D map of her surroundings within roughly 50 meters. This sense is imprecise, and doesn't show things like color, meaning that she usually has to use texture and shape to distinguish between people and objects, though conductive materials are mapped better than things which would ground her electricity.

On it's own, that wouldn't be very impressive, however, Wreck can focus the electricity emitted from her mask into a single, concentrated bolt that snaps onto a target, doing no damage but instead scanning them physically and (in the case of living subjects) mentally, giving Wreck insight into her chosen target, electricity highlighting old injuries and combing through their memories for things like their fighting style or psychological vulnerabilities she can exploit. This part of her power tends to focus exclusively on strengths and weaknesses (""this person has a knee injury that didn't heal right, I could kick them there to do more damage than usual"", ""this cape fights at a distance, their blaster shots nullify gravity and being tagged a second time makes a target's weight double, can't get tagged too much or I'll get crushed"", ""the springs in this vending machine are weak, I can punch it in a certain way to loosen the mechanisms and get the soda I want for free"", ""this cape's still hung up over the death of their teammate, hammering down on that guilt by referencing that will shock them and leave them open"", etc.), with very little information gained outside of that, mostly giving her ""buttons to push"" or evaluating how an opponent operates through witnessing specific memories or reading their physical condition.

The presence of the mask distorts, but does not completely remove, her sight, reflections through shrapnel and refraction through segments of glass warping everything beyond a certain distance into indistinct blurs, requiring the use of her electrosense to navigate and leaving her at a notable disadvantage if she needs to deal with multiple targets at once.

As a cluster cape, Wreck has several other minor powers, mostly focused on close-range combat and allowing her to leverage the information from her primary. The rest of her powerset is:

▶ The ability to manifest an additional pair of arms from any area of her body, the arms are equally as strong and dexterous as her normal arms, and the freedom with which she can place them means she's capable of doing things like having one grow from her palm and the other sprout from the palm of the previously-grown hand in order to extend her reach, manifesting them in the right place to make a grapple more difficult to escape, or even creating them in time for the limbs to absorb or parry blows that would have otherwise dealt major damage to the rest of her body, though she needs to actively use them to intercept an attack, and as such cannot block hits too fast for her to react to. And, of course, they're normal arms, so their durability is limited, they're not going to stop a bullet, a knife, or even most blaster shots.

▶ A Striker effect that can distort the space an object takes up upon physical contact, enabling Wreck to mold any material as if it was made of soft rubber, with any alterations springing back to normal once contact is broken or she deliberately cancels the effect. Using this, she can climb surfaces regardless of handholds by making her own, exploit the springiness of altered objects by stretching or bending them, or even have her hits ripple and bend objects instead of dealing proper damage, including against opponents as the effect is not manton-limited, enabling her to harmlessly squash someone's trachea to stun them, punch someone in the chest to nauseate them as the force makes their body flex and ripple unnaturally, or even send someone to the ground by kicking their knee out from the front. It should be noted, this effect doesn't actually affect an object's durability, because it alters space instead of something's material construction, so softened objects aren't easier to break or tear, even potentially being harder to hurt permanently, though they are made easier to deform overall as long as the effect is active, feeling similar to rubber. The Striker effect also doesn't chain through objects, she can use it through gloves and clothing, but if she softens her weapon it will not soften what it hits. Wreck can use this effect through her manifested arms as well as her normal ones.

▶ The power to release large amounts of heat into her surroundings, warming up the air/other materials to create an updraft Wreck can ride, effectively enabling her to fly at up to 20mph. In addition to this, she can choose to expend her heat all at once, creating an extremely loud rush of air that propels her in a chosen direction at 40mph, in exchange for weakening her Mover power to the point of effective unusability for about ten seconds until it's fully recharged."

Background & Trigger

Elsie was always someone who pushed for change. After a year spent homeless, living on the streets with her mother when she was young, she began to notice how bad things were. People treated the homeless as subhuman at times, and the experience deeply affected her. After her and her mother got back on her feet, she began noticing similar problems everywhere. Discrimination, redlining, the rising costs of living and stagnation of wages, her mother needing to skip meals just so that Elsie herself was fed. Elsie did everything she could to support her family, help others in similar situations, but one girl could only do so much.

People could not support a family on fifty-four dollars a day, could not handle working themselves into the ground just to survive, should not need to go hungry after working a full day's shift. She found people like her, who were willing to shout from the rooftops, champion change, no matter what it took. She found herself outside her mother's workplace assisting with a strike, trying to quell the violence as people protested the low wages, the long hours. There were strikebreakers, there was fighting...but there was also support, people willing to stand with the workers on strike...and eventually, it worked. Wages went up, hours were reduced, more workers were hired to compensate. Real change had occurred. They went out for pizza, once her mother's paycheck arrived, more than double the amount it was previously. The bruises and strained voice, earned from shoving aside strikebreakers and calling out alongside everything else, were worth it.

As the years went on, she continued. There were messages to be spread, change to push for, and she knew it could be achieved with enough support. She helped with a few more protests, pushing for better homeless shelters, rehab centers, cleaning up the streets by making sure nobody had to live on them, but to no avail. There was only so much she could do on her own.

Then she discovered music. First it was choir practice, then guitar as an elective in high school. She loved the idea of creating something other people could enjoy, playing music for the masses. Playing music, singing, writing her own songs, it all became...a release, a reprieve from the injustices of the world. She got a band together with some of her friends, began to play at local venues, just a bunch of high-schoolers goofing off and getting paid to entertain. After she got her diploma, the band stayed together, Elsie writing and recording what would become her first single. It was a surprising success, which pushed her to continue.

Years went by, members left the band, others joined. More songs were produced, more and more people responding positively to the messages poured into every track. The band grew bigger, more famous, until one day...they got their first big concert, a crowd of cheering fans, massive stage, pyrotechnic displays at the end. It was gonna be their shot to the top, a chance to break into the big leagues. Elsie was excited...but also, nervous. So she involved herself in the prep, handpicking several of the crews involved in the setup, making sure things went perfectly. They couldn't afford to blow this, not now. She agonized over it, stressed and panicked...until everything was set up, and the day arrived. Coming out from backstage, she felt...intimidated, and determined. The crowd was massive, far beyond what she was used to singing in front of, but she couldn't let them down.

She poured her heart into every track, singing and shouting until the crowd was as energetic as she was, the musicians in the band playing at their best. She felt ecstatic. This is what fame feels like, she knew. Things were going perfect--

The stage shook as a bright flash consumed her vision, caught off-guard in the middle of a song. Something sliced across her forehead, heat blossoming against her skin. She was on the ground, vision tinted red as blood poured down from a cut on her forehead. The crowd was screaming, the stage was on fire, people in the front row had collapsed. Her band-mates were hurt.

She heard a sound from backstage. Cursing, panic that was different from the bedlam happening all around her. And she understood.

The pyrotechnic crew. She hadn't been careful, hadn't gone with the best, because she didn't know if she could afford it. She went with friends of friends instead, the special-effects company small and new.

The crowd that had been cheering now reduced to a crush of people, the ruins of her achievement around her, she realized that it was her negligence that did this. She was the front woman, the face of the event, she had wanted things to go perfectly, and wound up ruining everything that she touched. This was her fault.

Standing onstage, bleeding from a shrapnel wound to the forehead, she triggered out of sheer shock and horror.

When she came to, she could feel everything. The unmoving bodies of her fans, pierced with metal that was horrifyingly clear across her awareness. The pyrotechnic crew, fleeing the scene. The band-mates who were being rushed offstage, and the ones who...weren't, bodies lifeless and unmoving. She couldn't handle this.

The stage bent beneath her feet, a rush of heat warping the air as she rocketed away, landing on ground that wobbled at the impact, hazy blurs of green contrasted against the electricity outlining it all. She tried to speak, but all that came out were mangled, raspy squeaks, metal teeth grinding against each other as springs moved her jaw. She ran, fled all the way home, consumed by panic and guilt. "