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havenrpg (ACCEPTED)
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chocolateisbrainfood
Other Characters Played: Miranda Lotto |![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
allthetimekept
Requested apartment: N/A
Character Name: Maxwell Carson (Max, Voltage)
Background/History:
World/Setting
The year is 2015. This Earth is one many may recognize as our own, for it is very similar to the world we know today, from the historic events, the wars, popular culture references, discrepancies in poverty versus the wealthy, and even the advancements of technology (that the public are allowed to know about). It is not completely identical, but you wouldn’t notice some of the bigger changes at first glance. Sexual exploration and discovery is not as restricted or as obsessed over by the media, discrimination over race and sexual orientation is also not as prominent in first world countries like the United States as they are in our own world today. There is a strong push for cooperation and acceptance that the government encourages regularly and has been for the last fifty odd years (the civil rights movements and sexual revolution were even more successful), although it wasn’t until the Supers came out of the woodwork that this growing tolerance and acceptance was put to the test. Over the last twenty-some years people designated as “Superhuman” due to enhanced physical and psychic abilities have become more and more common.
Supers have existed in secrecy and small numbers for centuries (some claim there is proof of them even going as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia), but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the media and publicity really started to take off and their presence in society could not be denied due to the boom in the Super population across the globe. It is estimated now since the “Superdemic” (term coined by the media) began, with more and more Supers declaring themselves, that there are over 2 million Superhumans worldwide, with a majority of them under the age of 50. They are still a small number in comparison to the rest of the population (almost 3% of the world population as a whole, with the US demographic being only 1% of the country’s full population), but it’s not unusual for the average American to have a Super neighbor or for their children to go to school with young Supers or the children of Supers.
Some people don’t agree with them being integrated into society, but the official stance of the United States’ government was that these people were equal citizens and should be treated as such. They have just as much to offer and could be productive citizens just like everyone else. They are merely “gifted” just like someone who is good at math or has a talent for engineering. This doesn’t stop discrimination against them on personal or local levels (some states even have craftily worded laws that give non-enhanced humans preferences in jobs and salary because Supers can do the work “easier” and through that logic shouldn’t be paid as much since they have more “opportunities” to find other jobs), but there are stricter punishments and fines for those who are found guilty of breaking civil rights laws protecting minorities. It is a thinly veiled stance to maintain a semblance of harmony as while there are plenty of average humans who are resentful or even cautious about what Supers can do or might attempt given their special abilities, the US government would like to keep those people on the side of the Americans and not have them use their abilities against them.
That is where D.E.L.T.A. comes in. The Department of Enhanced Logistics and Technological Advancements is an organization that studies advanced sciences and technology and one of its main priorities is Superhumans. DELTA was the department created to study, work with, and provide support to Superhumans and maintaining coexistence between Supers and non-enhanced humans. This is not all that they do, though. DELTA is also in charge of tracking down, monitoring and containing Supers that are at a high threat level, even removing the threat entirely if necessary. For the most part it works in teams called “Squads” that mobilize out of regional offices around the country, primarily employing Supers to keep these other “Unregistered” or “Renegade” Superhumans in line by recruiting from the very people they are monitoring.
As a Super whose abilities cannot be controlled consciously on every level, Max is a textbook case for someone who ends up working for D.E.L.T.A. He’s a Level B, someone whose powers could pose a threat and are not fully controlled by the person. His team, the Omega Squad is one of the nine squads created for Super location, observation, and possible extraction, but also at times is used offensively if necessary for larger threats (majority of the members are combat trained because of this). It’s often considered a transitional squad by D.E.L.T.A. agents—one you go to if you have more ambitious goals or don’t plan to be a field officer for very long—because of its higher turnover rate for members versus the other 8 squads of its kind.
Additional Information about the Setting
Character History
Max was born in a simple town called Breaker Falls, Pennsylvania, which ironically was named more for the amount of power outages which were common in the area before the mid-20th Century, rather than it being near any actual waterfalls or large rivers. His parents moved there when his older sister was a young girl because his father’s construction business had really taken off and they could afford to buy a larger house with more property to it. His powers manifested after his fifth birthday, with him siphoning energy from those around him or crashing due to lack of energy in ways that caused his behavior and moods to swing wildly enough for his parents to worry.
Because of the way his mood swings around due to his energy levels, his parents at first believed that he was suffering from a personality or behavioral disorder. They took him to a therapist and then a psychiatrist, who thought he may be suffering from ADHD, or bipolar disorder, but couldn’t be sure of it due to his young age. There was no official diagnosis but Max spent years on different medications to manage the symptoms, which had the side effect of suppressing his powers, but also left him with a suppressed personality. The medication prevented him from leaking energy or collecting any, and thus his level stayed low because if he used it (unconsciously), he had no way of recharging except through natural energy intake (eating, sleeping, etc). This would have been fine for a normal person but was not enough energy for his body’s natural limits.
By the age of thirteen the medications were doing more harm than good to his mental and emotional stability, but his parents weren’t willing to give up on him and wondered if maybe stress from school or something else could be causing it. So they decided to get away. They thought a three to four week road trip visiting important landmarks across the United States would be a great way to relax and learn some American history while they were at it. Max left his meds on his bedside table--on purpose, because he knew they wouldn’t be able to get a refill that easily while out of state.
Within a week he was feeling better, his energy levels were up and he was more active, happier, but then it continued from feeling better to feeling overstimulated while his mother and younger brother were both feeling more exhausted. He was taking in too much energy and with powers still undiscovered, no one knew about it. The family was on its way to the visit Tombstone, Arizona, when they were caught out during an electrical storm and Max's powers were activated on accident. He siphoned all of the energy out of the RV's battery and engine. They were trapped on the road in the middle of the desert and Max was becoming increasingly more active and wired as the lightning struck out in the area around them.
He became jittery and couldn't stay still, to the point that he ran out into the storm to get away from the walls of the RV and his family. His father ran after him, but Max tried to keep him away, as soon as he touched Max lightning struck them both, but the amount of power it had was enough to overload Max's body. He expelled it all in a huge burst, leveling everything within a mile of him--including his father and the RV his family was in. Max lost consciousness and woke up to find that he had been taken in by D.E.L.T.A. and had been quarantined as his powers had been active even while he was sleeping.
The Head of the Superhuman Supervision Subdivision (commonly called "S-Cube"…by Max anyway), Darron Moore (Chronos) came to speak with Maxwell and informed him that his family had been killed when he released all of the excess energy, except for his older sister who was now paralyzed from the waist down. He explained that the medication that Max had been taking had managed to suppress his abilities but once he stopped taking it and it has been flushed from his system, his body tried to forcibly balance itself out, which led to it consuming far more energy than it had before or could handle. His powers had increased as he had aged, hence why Max had to take stronger doses of the meds as he had gotten older.
This hit Max hard and he spent weeks living in a containment cell in the S.S.S., allowing himself to undergo testing and different experiments on how to manage his energy consumption. He periodically received updates on his sister Joanne's recovery and even later on began communication with her through emails and text messages, but refuses so far to see her in person. They tried to train him in how to control his abilities but found it was too subconscious of a reaction to allow it to be left to conscious will alone, so they designed a wristband that monitors his biometrics. It controls how much energy he intakes and prevents him from siphoning energy from organic matters (primarily he can’t take energy from skin-to-skin contact and he doesn’t have to worry about killing plants by walking by them), but it cannot control how much he releases at once.
Director Moore forced him to go through six months of extensive physical training before allowing him to even shadow one of the reconnaissance teams, but it wasn’t long before he was placed on Omega Squad, where he’s been for almost three years now.
Three months ago D.E.L.T.A. had been on the verge of disbanding and rebuilding the entire team from the ground up after a mission to observe and then extract a Super from Harvard University went very wrong. They didn’t realize he was a telepath who could use hypnosis and it ended up with one of his team members dead, the field leader in a coma and temporarily paralyzed, and another leaving the team to join a different squad. Since then they added two new members (including a new field leader) and they’ve been working on rebuilding their reputation within the organization.
Recently he was approved to finish his last two years of high school at a D.E.L.T.A. approved public school in a suburb of New York City where his team is stationed. The last three years he’s been educated in a DELTA headquarters and so the chance to interact with more people his own age who aren’t other DELTA agents is a huge thing for him.
Personality:
Max is a happy guy for the most part. He hates focusing on the negative aspects of events and instead tries to put a positive spin on everything—to an annoying degree when it’s a serious situation. He also enjoys using sarcasm, bad puns, and horrible jokes to try and relieve the tension in stressful situations, such as when he had been shot in the leg while they were facing off against the gun-happy superhuman Merc and made his teammate Victoria cut open his leg to dig the bullet out. He chit-chatted and joked the entire time, no matter how much pain he was in and she punched him in the face (lightly) for joking about it, but in the end it had been just the distraction she had needed to keep her grounded while she did it.
Max is always in a better mood when he's almost "topped up" meaning he has energy in his body to spare. His powers react much like a TV that is plugged in, but turned off. He leaks energy in minute amounts throughout his day and without extra boosting of his energy, he will be sleepy and irritable (and rude, even angry, to the point of putting people off or scaring them) by bedtime--even sooner if he expels more energy throughout the day.
Because of his normal chatty and friendly personality and the tenuous control he has of his volatile abilities, people often to assume that Max came into the Omega Squad recently or that he’s led a fairly trouble free life. In most ways he did, in his opinion. No, he didn’t enjoy the medications he was on to control his behavior and mood swings, and he still feels a lot of guilt about what happened with his family, but again, he prefers to focus on how he’s turned his life around for the good. He will reminisce about his family with anyone who asks and brings up random anecdotes about his siblings. He loves remembering them. It doesn’t change the fact that he harbors a lot of guilt for what he did to them. Instead, he uses it as a reminder of why he’s on the Squad.
Sometimes Max’s optimism does get in the way of the team’s missions, but not intentionally. Whereas some members of the team believe that some Superhumans do need to be put down because their powers are too dangerous, Max believes that anyone can learn to control their powers—or at least find a way to manage them. If DELTA had not given him that opportunity he could be dead himself already and possibly hundreds or thousands of people with him. At the same time, if the order is given that the person is too dangerous and has every intention of using their powers to hurt people, Max will be the first one ready to put them down and protect others from them (this is also a sign of how he believes his team and DELTA should deal with him if it comes down to it, but it’s a topic he avoids discussing).
His optimism doesn’t mean he’s only happy all the time either. Max’s powers can cause major mood swings. When his energy is low, he’s cranky, irritable, fatigued, and can be more biting and less caring about what comes out of his mouth. He loses a lot of his normal motivation, too. He knows he’s not a pleasant person to be around when he’s like that so he tries to avoid other people as much as possible. There is a temptation to just take off the wristband and borrow a bit of energy from others to set himself to rights, because he hates how being low makes him feel, but there is also a reflexive revulsion and fear about what could happen if he started down that road.
Max is a natural extrovert. He loves being around people, talking to them, making friends, cheering up people who seem to be having a bad day, or even giving out less-than-savvy romantic advice. Being around people rejuvenates him in an emotional way even when his powers are blocked from siphoning energy. He’s not really a love guru likes he thinks (his last boyfriend was over four years ago when he was thirteen), but he considers his love of movies and television and popular culture to mean he has enough “experience” to help anyone looking for love. It’s just another side of how much he wants to help people with finding their happy ending in life, even though his help can come across as him just being nosy and intrusive.
Abilities/Powers:
Max’s body is capable of absorbing various forms of energy and altering it into other forms of energy that can be released by him at will (and sometimes accidentally). He can shape it into a form of electricity, lasers, heat, or pure energy blasts. He also can use it to boost the energy/abilities of others by adapting his powers into a sort of "battery" and transferring his energy into them. He is only capable of doing this if he can borrow some of their energy first in order for his body to learn how to mimic it. Currently, he's also training to adapt his energy to speed up cellular formation and thus healing of major injuries in the field, but all the science and biology required takes time. There is also the potential for him to create blackout zones by drawing in all of the energy around him, but he’s incapable of maintaining that kind of store and it would lead to him needing to release it almost immediately.
The more energy he expels through the day the bigger "boost" he needs, or he'll fall into a sleep more like an induced coma than normal sleeping until his energy levels are at a normal level--for him. It’s rare that he’s ever been that low. Consuming large amounts of calories can help stave off this replenishing sleep, but he metabolizes food quickly and thus it's only a temporary fix. He's capable of also stealing energy from living things, but to protect others from himself he keeps an inhibitor band on his wrist that prevents his body from unconsciously taking energy from anything organic, such as humans or plants.
Items/Weapons: His clothes, book bag (full of nice new textbooks), and inhibitor wristband that looks like a high tech watch.
Sample Entry: Sample Thread
Sample Entry Two:
After a week of planning, preparing, and half the team on board with his idea (or at least willing to not step in), Max was ready. It’s not like it’s every day you get to prank Vicksa of all people. She’s too smart for it and will usually catch on before he can get anything off the ground. But this time, with Sean and Amaru on his side, he really plans to get her. Tried and true is the best policy. He’s not going to try the baby oil slip-n-slide, the TV remote shocker, or the mayonnaise in the lotion bottle tricks, hilarious as the videos on Youtube were. No, no, when you want simple you go for water and flour. The classics.
The biggest part of the planning was making sure that everything was timed to exactly when Victoria would come into the room on this day. It had taken a bit of his weekly stipend to get Gavin out of the way and not tell him what was going on. Chill bro but dude can’t keep a secret to save his life. Thalia wasn’t supposed to be around to day and the new captain didn’t spend much time around the team to begin with, so it’s not like he had to worry about him. And now Sean was making sure that Vicksa was subtly diverted right on this route after her afternoon technology briefing with the HQ tech squad and he just needed her to step through that door.
He hears the footsteps coming and shoots a little glance Amaru’s way and she is giving him a subtle but very encouraging grin of her own. Any minute. Any minute now…
He hears voices, one of them is definitely Vicksa’s and the other is—
“—so you head right to the mission control and I’ll collect the others.”
Oh shit that is--
“You know I could just poke my head in and tell them—”
“It’s my team, I can assemble them for a mission. Go.”
There is the sound of the door’s electronic catch being triggered, the light cheery beep of someone approved to enter. He’s going to--
It’s like he’s frozen, eyes wide and watching everything in slow motion. Amaru’s face is also one of disbelief and that door is opening wider, wider, the tall almost foreboding figure shadowing the doorframe.
“Omega, we have a mission debrief in fifteen—”
The bucket above the door drops and the thread attached pulls right on the swivel fan normally facing the lounge area, pulling it around in front of the open bowl of flour and turning the full blast of it right into the victim’s face. There is the sound of splashing echoing through the room and flour going everywhere, floating through the air like flecks of snow indoors as suddenly the couch he’s sitting on is tipped over and he’s thrown back to the floor in a rush of energy.
Amaru—who’d been sitting away from him in the large arm chair--remains untouched except a few bits of white in her hair. Max pushes himself up to a sitting position, coughing and trying to blind the flour from his eyes. Standing in the door way is the captain, a look that could kill on his face, but not a drop of water or a speck of flour anywhere on him because a guy who controls gravity doesn’t have to worry about pranks.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes. This better be spotless and you better be in that control center.”
Max doesn’t even try to argue. He just brings up his hand in a dejected salute, knowing he’s going to be hearing about this for days to come. “Mission clear, sir.”
Contact Info: spkathrine[@]gmail.com,
Other Characters Played: Miranda Lotto |
allthetimekeptRequested apartment: N/A
Character Name: Maxwell Carson (Max, Voltage)
Background/History:
World/Setting
The year is 2015. This Earth is one many may recognize as our own, for it is very similar to the world we know today, from the historic events, the wars, popular culture references, discrepancies in poverty versus the wealthy, and even the advancements of technology (that the public are allowed to know about). It is not completely identical, but you wouldn’t notice some of the bigger changes at first glance. Sexual exploration and discovery is not as restricted or as obsessed over by the media, discrimination over race and sexual orientation is also not as prominent in first world countries like the United States as they are in our own world today. There is a strong push for cooperation and acceptance that the government encourages regularly and has been for the last fifty odd years (the civil rights movements and sexual revolution were even more successful), although it wasn’t until the Supers came out of the woodwork that this growing tolerance and acceptance was put to the test. Over the last twenty-some years people designated as “Superhuman” due to enhanced physical and psychic abilities have become more and more common.
Supers have existed in secrecy and small numbers for centuries (some claim there is proof of them even going as far back as Ancient Mesopotamia), but it wasn’t until the 1980s that the media and publicity really started to take off and their presence in society could not be denied due to the boom in the Super population across the globe. It is estimated now since the “Superdemic” (term coined by the media) began, with more and more Supers declaring themselves, that there are over 2 million Superhumans worldwide, with a majority of them under the age of 50. They are still a small number in comparison to the rest of the population (almost 3% of the world population as a whole, with the US demographic being only 1% of the country’s full population), but it’s not unusual for the average American to have a Super neighbor or for their children to go to school with young Supers or the children of Supers.
Some people don’t agree with them being integrated into society, but the official stance of the United States’ government was that these people were equal citizens and should be treated as such. They have just as much to offer and could be productive citizens just like everyone else. They are merely “gifted” just like someone who is good at math or has a talent for engineering. This doesn’t stop discrimination against them on personal or local levels (some states even have craftily worded laws that give non-enhanced humans preferences in jobs and salary because Supers can do the work “easier” and through that logic shouldn’t be paid as much since they have more “opportunities” to find other jobs), but there are stricter punishments and fines for those who are found guilty of breaking civil rights laws protecting minorities. It is a thinly veiled stance to maintain a semblance of harmony as while there are plenty of average humans who are resentful or even cautious about what Supers can do or might attempt given their special abilities, the US government would like to keep those people on the side of the Americans and not have them use their abilities against them.
That is where D.E.L.T.A. comes in. The Department of Enhanced Logistics and Technological Advancements is an organization that studies advanced sciences and technology and one of its main priorities is Superhumans. DELTA was the department created to study, work with, and provide support to Superhumans and maintaining coexistence between Supers and non-enhanced humans. This is not all that they do, though. DELTA is also in charge of tracking down, monitoring and containing Supers that are at a high threat level, even removing the threat entirely if necessary. For the most part it works in teams called “Squads” that mobilize out of regional offices around the country, primarily employing Supers to keep these other “Unregistered” or “Renegade” Superhumans in line by recruiting from the very people they are monitoring.
As a Super whose abilities cannot be controlled consciously on every level, Max is a textbook case for someone who ends up working for D.E.L.T.A. He’s a Level B, someone whose powers could pose a threat and are not fully controlled by the person. His team, the Omega Squad is one of the nine squads created for Super location, observation, and possible extraction, but also at times is used offensively if necessary for larger threats (majority of the members are combat trained because of this). It’s often considered a transitional squad by D.E.L.T.A. agents—one you go to if you have more ambitious goals or don’t plan to be a field officer for very long—because of its higher turnover rate for members versus the other 8 squads of its kind.
Additional Information about the Setting
Character History
Max was born in a simple town called Breaker Falls, Pennsylvania, which ironically was named more for the amount of power outages which were common in the area before the mid-20th Century, rather than it being near any actual waterfalls or large rivers. His parents moved there when his older sister was a young girl because his father’s construction business had really taken off and they could afford to buy a larger house with more property to it. His powers manifested after his fifth birthday, with him siphoning energy from those around him or crashing due to lack of energy in ways that caused his behavior and moods to swing wildly enough for his parents to worry.
Because of the way his mood swings around due to his energy levels, his parents at first believed that he was suffering from a personality or behavioral disorder. They took him to a therapist and then a psychiatrist, who thought he may be suffering from ADHD, or bipolar disorder, but couldn’t be sure of it due to his young age. There was no official diagnosis but Max spent years on different medications to manage the symptoms, which had the side effect of suppressing his powers, but also left him with a suppressed personality. The medication prevented him from leaking energy or collecting any, and thus his level stayed low because if he used it (unconsciously), he had no way of recharging except through natural energy intake (eating, sleeping, etc). This would have been fine for a normal person but was not enough energy for his body’s natural limits.
By the age of thirteen the medications were doing more harm than good to his mental and emotional stability, but his parents weren’t willing to give up on him and wondered if maybe stress from school or something else could be causing it. So they decided to get away. They thought a three to four week road trip visiting important landmarks across the United States would be a great way to relax and learn some American history while they were at it. Max left his meds on his bedside table--on purpose, because he knew they wouldn’t be able to get a refill that easily while out of state.
Within a week he was feeling better, his energy levels were up and he was more active, happier, but then it continued from feeling better to feeling overstimulated while his mother and younger brother were both feeling more exhausted. He was taking in too much energy and with powers still undiscovered, no one knew about it. The family was on its way to the visit Tombstone, Arizona, when they were caught out during an electrical storm and Max's powers were activated on accident. He siphoned all of the energy out of the RV's battery and engine. They were trapped on the road in the middle of the desert and Max was becoming increasingly more active and wired as the lightning struck out in the area around them.
He became jittery and couldn't stay still, to the point that he ran out into the storm to get away from the walls of the RV and his family. His father ran after him, but Max tried to keep him away, as soon as he touched Max lightning struck them both, but the amount of power it had was enough to overload Max's body. He expelled it all in a huge burst, leveling everything within a mile of him--including his father and the RV his family was in. Max lost consciousness and woke up to find that he had been taken in by D.E.L.T.A. and had been quarantined as his powers had been active even while he was sleeping.
The Head of the Superhuman Supervision Subdivision (commonly called "S-Cube"…by Max anyway), Darron Moore (Chronos) came to speak with Maxwell and informed him that his family had been killed when he released all of the excess energy, except for his older sister who was now paralyzed from the waist down. He explained that the medication that Max had been taking had managed to suppress his abilities but once he stopped taking it and it has been flushed from his system, his body tried to forcibly balance itself out, which led to it consuming far more energy than it had before or could handle. His powers had increased as he had aged, hence why Max had to take stronger doses of the meds as he had gotten older.
This hit Max hard and he spent weeks living in a containment cell in the S.S.S., allowing himself to undergo testing and different experiments on how to manage his energy consumption. He periodically received updates on his sister Joanne's recovery and even later on began communication with her through emails and text messages, but refuses so far to see her in person. They tried to train him in how to control his abilities but found it was too subconscious of a reaction to allow it to be left to conscious will alone, so they designed a wristband that monitors his biometrics. It controls how much energy he intakes and prevents him from siphoning energy from organic matters (primarily he can’t take energy from skin-to-skin contact and he doesn’t have to worry about killing plants by walking by them), but it cannot control how much he releases at once.
Director Moore forced him to go through six months of extensive physical training before allowing him to even shadow one of the reconnaissance teams, but it wasn’t long before he was placed on Omega Squad, where he’s been for almost three years now.
Three months ago D.E.L.T.A. had been on the verge of disbanding and rebuilding the entire team from the ground up after a mission to observe and then extract a Super from Harvard University went very wrong. They didn’t realize he was a telepath who could use hypnosis and it ended up with one of his team members dead, the field leader in a coma and temporarily paralyzed, and another leaving the team to join a different squad. Since then they added two new members (including a new field leader) and they’ve been working on rebuilding their reputation within the organization.
Recently he was approved to finish his last two years of high school at a D.E.L.T.A. approved public school in a suburb of New York City where his team is stationed. The last three years he’s been educated in a DELTA headquarters and so the chance to interact with more people his own age who aren’t other DELTA agents is a huge thing for him.
Personality:
Max is a happy guy for the most part. He hates focusing on the negative aspects of events and instead tries to put a positive spin on everything—to an annoying degree when it’s a serious situation. He also enjoys using sarcasm, bad puns, and horrible jokes to try and relieve the tension in stressful situations, such as when he had been shot in the leg while they were facing off against the gun-happy superhuman Merc and made his teammate Victoria cut open his leg to dig the bullet out. He chit-chatted and joked the entire time, no matter how much pain he was in and she punched him in the face (lightly) for joking about it, but in the end it had been just the distraction she had needed to keep her grounded while she did it.
Max is always in a better mood when he's almost "topped up" meaning he has energy in his body to spare. His powers react much like a TV that is plugged in, but turned off. He leaks energy in minute amounts throughout his day and without extra boosting of his energy, he will be sleepy and irritable (and rude, even angry, to the point of putting people off or scaring them) by bedtime--even sooner if he expels more energy throughout the day.
Because of his normal chatty and friendly personality and the tenuous control he has of his volatile abilities, people often to assume that Max came into the Omega Squad recently or that he’s led a fairly trouble free life. In most ways he did, in his opinion. No, he didn’t enjoy the medications he was on to control his behavior and mood swings, and he still feels a lot of guilt about what happened with his family, but again, he prefers to focus on how he’s turned his life around for the good. He will reminisce about his family with anyone who asks and brings up random anecdotes about his siblings. He loves remembering them. It doesn’t change the fact that he harbors a lot of guilt for what he did to them. Instead, he uses it as a reminder of why he’s on the Squad.
Sometimes Max’s optimism does get in the way of the team’s missions, but not intentionally. Whereas some members of the team believe that some Superhumans do need to be put down because their powers are too dangerous, Max believes that anyone can learn to control their powers—or at least find a way to manage them. If DELTA had not given him that opportunity he could be dead himself already and possibly hundreds or thousands of people with him. At the same time, if the order is given that the person is too dangerous and has every intention of using their powers to hurt people, Max will be the first one ready to put them down and protect others from them (this is also a sign of how he believes his team and DELTA should deal with him if it comes down to it, but it’s a topic he avoids discussing).
His optimism doesn’t mean he’s only happy all the time either. Max’s powers can cause major mood swings. When his energy is low, he’s cranky, irritable, fatigued, and can be more biting and less caring about what comes out of his mouth. He loses a lot of his normal motivation, too. He knows he’s not a pleasant person to be around when he’s like that so he tries to avoid other people as much as possible. There is a temptation to just take off the wristband and borrow a bit of energy from others to set himself to rights, because he hates how being low makes him feel, but there is also a reflexive revulsion and fear about what could happen if he started down that road.
Max is a natural extrovert. He loves being around people, talking to them, making friends, cheering up people who seem to be having a bad day, or even giving out less-than-savvy romantic advice. Being around people rejuvenates him in an emotional way even when his powers are blocked from siphoning energy. He’s not really a love guru likes he thinks (his last boyfriend was over four years ago when he was thirteen), but he considers his love of movies and television and popular culture to mean he has enough “experience” to help anyone looking for love. It’s just another side of how much he wants to help people with finding their happy ending in life, even though his help can come across as him just being nosy and intrusive.
Abilities/Powers:
Max’s body is capable of absorbing various forms of energy and altering it into other forms of energy that can be released by him at will (and sometimes accidentally). He can shape it into a form of electricity, lasers, heat, or pure energy blasts. He also can use it to boost the energy/abilities of others by adapting his powers into a sort of "battery" and transferring his energy into them. He is only capable of doing this if he can borrow some of their energy first in order for his body to learn how to mimic it. Currently, he's also training to adapt his energy to speed up cellular formation and thus healing of major injuries in the field, but all the science and biology required takes time. There is also the potential for him to create blackout zones by drawing in all of the energy around him, but he’s incapable of maintaining that kind of store and it would lead to him needing to release it almost immediately.
The more energy he expels through the day the bigger "boost" he needs, or he'll fall into a sleep more like an induced coma than normal sleeping until his energy levels are at a normal level--for him. It’s rare that he’s ever been that low. Consuming large amounts of calories can help stave off this replenishing sleep, but he metabolizes food quickly and thus it's only a temporary fix. He's capable of also stealing energy from living things, but to protect others from himself he keeps an inhibitor band on his wrist that prevents his body from unconsciously taking energy from anything organic, such as humans or plants.
Items/Weapons: His clothes, book bag (full of nice new textbooks), and inhibitor wristband that looks like a high tech watch.
Sample Entry: Sample Thread
Sample Entry Two:
After a week of planning, preparing, and half the team on board with his idea (or at least willing to not step in), Max was ready. It’s not like it’s every day you get to prank Vicksa of all people. She’s too smart for it and will usually catch on before he can get anything off the ground. But this time, with Sean and Amaru on his side, he really plans to get her. Tried and true is the best policy. He’s not going to try the baby oil slip-n-slide, the TV remote shocker, or the mayonnaise in the lotion bottle tricks, hilarious as the videos on Youtube were. No, no, when you want simple you go for water and flour. The classics.
The biggest part of the planning was making sure that everything was timed to exactly when Victoria would come into the room on this day. It had taken a bit of his weekly stipend to get Gavin out of the way and not tell him what was going on. Chill bro but dude can’t keep a secret to save his life. Thalia wasn’t supposed to be around to day and the new captain didn’t spend much time around the team to begin with, so it’s not like he had to worry about him. And now Sean was making sure that Vicksa was subtly diverted right on this route after her afternoon technology briefing with the HQ tech squad and he just needed her to step through that door.
He hears the footsteps coming and shoots a little glance Amaru’s way and she is giving him a subtle but very encouraging grin of her own. Any minute. Any minute now…
He hears voices, one of them is definitely Vicksa’s and the other is—
“—so you head right to the mission control and I’ll collect the others.”
Oh shit that is--
“You know I could just poke my head in and tell them—”
“It’s my team, I can assemble them for a mission. Go.”
There is the sound of the door’s electronic catch being triggered, the light cheery beep of someone approved to enter. He’s going to--
It’s like he’s frozen, eyes wide and watching everything in slow motion. Amaru’s face is also one of disbelief and that door is opening wider, wider, the tall almost foreboding figure shadowing the doorframe.
“Omega, we have a mission debrief in fifteen—”
The bucket above the door drops and the thread attached pulls right on the swivel fan normally facing the lounge area, pulling it around in front of the open bowl of flour and turning the full blast of it right into the victim’s face. There is the sound of splashing echoing through the room and flour going everywhere, floating through the air like flecks of snow indoors as suddenly the couch he’s sitting on is tipped over and he’s thrown back to the floor in a rush of energy.
Amaru—who’d been sitting away from him in the large arm chair--remains untouched except a few bits of white in her hair. Max pushes himself up to a sitting position, coughing and trying to blind the flour from his eyes. Standing in the door way is the captain, a look that could kill on his face, but not a drop of water or a speck of flour anywhere on him because a guy who controls gravity doesn’t have to worry about pranks.
“You’ve got fifteen minutes. This better be spotless and you better be in that control center.”
Max doesn’t even try to argue. He just brings up his hand in a dejected salute, knowing he’s going to be hearing about this for days to come. “Mission clear, sir.”