[ooc] tushanshu app

[traumatizing]

Player Information:
Name: Frank
Age: 24
Contact: aim: bluepeterladyboy || email: simmichan [at] gmail [dot] com || firmansam
Game Cast: N/A

Character Information:
Name: Terrance Ward (or his codename is Trauma)
Canon: Marvel 616
Canon Point: After issue 30 of Avengers: The Initiative; when he's found out the nature of his origins and decides he needs to leave and ~find himself~.
Age: He's not really given a canon age, though he is supposed to be unreasonably young for his job and not long out of high school when Initiative starts, so I put him at about 21.
Reference: Avengers: The Initiative || a wee bit about Trauma

Setting:

Trauma comes from Marvel's 616 universe which, put simply, is basically just modern Earth with superheroes. By and large their politics, celebrities, general level of technology and so on are the same of ours. Of course, with a buttload of super geniuses around, a lot of defence technology is far more advanced than anything we'll see in the real world. (Like that time Reed Richards and Tony Stark made a prison in another dimension, for instance.)

Superhumans have been around for a hell of a long time, though over the last 70 years or so they've either been popping up more frequently, or have just been getting a hell of a lot more publicity. They come from all over the place, the most well known being mutants, who gain powers via activation of their X-gene. Beyond that there's super soldiers (like Captain America) who got their powers intentionally, or people who get powered up through all manner of accidents. (Cosmic rays, lab accidents, getting bitten by some kind of scienced up animal, to name but a few.) Not to mention magic, aliens (like the Skrulls and the Kree,) and sometimes Gods like Ares and Thor show up too, because why not. Hell, Trauma's own dad happens to be a demon.

Thanks to the varying gradient of morality, people can't always be relied on to be responsible with their powers, and because of this there's a whole lot of bad guys running around with all sorts of powers. From less threatening types who just like to rob banks and kill people, to World Domination with a Side of Vengeance types like Doctor Doom and Norman Osborn. They exist in a sort of recursive chicken and egg situation with superheroes, who have taken the safety of Earth upon their shoulders with varying amounts of success. There's as many heroes as you can shake a stick at, teams and people working solo like Spider-Man, or the X-Men, or the Fantastic Four. Not to mention the occasional alien invasion. It's kind of become par for the course to expect some kind of alien threat every few years or so at this point.

The most well known, and probably respected team is The Avengers. A team that's existed in varying forms since the 60s (probably. it's hard to be sure with the way Marvel retcons and rewrites things.) They operate out of and are mostly concerned with things that happen in the US, because for some reason most things seem to happen in or near New York.

Now, as I mentioned, heroes operate with varying degrees of success, and for this reason I must introduce you to the New Warriors. The New Warriors were a team of young heroes who were offered a contract for a reality show. The idea was that they could inspire hope with visual evidence of the fact that there were heroes out there doing whatever, and you didn't have to rely on the big names for help. The truth of the matter was, however, that the team was young, largely untrained and appropriate risk management went sort of out the window when the cameras started rolling. This combined with the fact that they hadn't been informed of the power boost that a particular villain had recently had lead to an explosion in a school that killed 612 civilians (including 60 children,) and all of the New Warriors who were involved, except for Speedball.

This is the final straw in growing tensions towards superhumans, as they cause large amounts of property damage, cost lives, and it's impossible to hold them accountable for their actions owing to the fact that the nature of superheroes means the vast majority of their identities aren't known to anyone except a few other heroes. Because of this, the Superhuman Registration Act is brought in, asking anyone with superhuman abilities to register with the government and be trained in the use of their powers. This in turn leads to division within the community; the two sides being lead by Iron Man who wholly endorses registration and Captain America, who strongly opposes it. The two sides war with eachother until Cap turns himself in, feeling that they've lost sight of their goals.

Once the act is able to go ahead, the Initiative is built. They start with an initial facility in Stamford, at the site of the aforementioned incident with the New Warriors, where registered superhumans are brought in to be trained into heroes. The Initiative is, of course, fraught with problems. Such as the death of a student who had no place being there in the first place and the fact that a large number of the students who were drafted in have no desire to be heroes and are being made into things they aren't. (Cloud 9, for instance, who effectively becomes a killer when all she wanted was to be able to fly. Or Trauma, who is put on the Shadow Initiative and expected to be a weapon, when he wants nothing to do with his powers.) But ultimately it keeps on churning out teams and opens up the 50 State Initiative, which puts Initiative teams and facilities in every state.

Later on, it kind of turns out that this was a bit of a bad idea, as the Initiative was teaming with Skrull sleeper agents in both the faculty and students. Not to mention in government and in superhero teams that were given legitimacy by the registration act. (Spider-Woman and Mockingbird turn out to be Skrulls for instance, which is a huge blow to the Avengers.) This all comes to a head in a war which is ultimately won by the Thunderbolts, and allows Norman Osborn to displace Tony Stark as the head of SHIELD and take over the Initiative.

Under his leadership, the superhero world becomes a darker place. He forms his own Avengers, which is secretly full of villains masquerading as loved heroes (Bullseye playing the part of Hawkeye, Venom as Spider-Man, etc.) He also fills the Initiative with criminals, more interested in building an army than teaching people to use their powers responsibly, and places The Hood (a well known gang leader) and Taskmaster (a mercenary) in charge. Over the course of his leadership, several heroes defect in order to form a resistance, uninterested in serving under a man who takes violent criminals and puts them out as heroes, and puts people who have no place fighting in their mental state on the front line. (Such as Penance - formerly Speedball - who has at this point been drugged and brainwashed to the point that he can't remember anything about who he is. Trauma is tasked with keeping him under control and able to fight even though he's in desperate need of actual therapy. Or the Sentry, who is mentally unstable as they come, and Osborn mistakenly believes he can control him enough to keep him on his Avengers.)

As Trauma leaves towards the end of Dark Reign, the world to him is largely still one where supes can either choose to defect and fight in a resistance, go into hiding, or be part of a system that has no interest in helping anyone who isn't Norman Osborn.

Personality:

You want to heal. To do what's right. They can try to suppress who you are... But in the end...

... It has to come out.

Trauma is a pretty standoffish customer. (No word of a lie, I counted - he smiles for a grand total of three panels throughout his run in the comic and spends most of the rest of it scowling or looking impassive.) He can be perfectly amiable and even downright friendly, but he does tend to put out the good ol' fashioned "don't talk to me" signals. Even when he does somehow end up in a conversation, he tends to stay a bit tight-lipped, preferring to absorb what the other person has to say and offer his opinion if/when he feels it's necessary rather than making inane - and probably stupid - comments all over the place.

Even though he looks like your average, run-of-the-mill emo kid, he does tend towards being a fair bit more mature and intelligent than one might guess. Being shoved into the Shadow Initiative and becoming a counsellor a good few years before he should reasonably have been able to will have that effect. He carries a lot of anger and resentment around- for all sorts of things. The world, his dad, that girl who turned him down in high school, his old friends, etc. But mostly it's all aimed at himself, for not keeping better control of his powers and/or not realising he couldn't control them and decide to seek help sooner. Or even really unreasonable stuff like not managing to pre-empt their manifestation somehow.

But he has come to learn that a lot of this is either an unreasonable amount of beating himself up or that he just can't carry it all around with him all the time every day for the rest of his life (which could end up being really fucking long, canon hasn't really explained anything about his whole "not dying for realsies" thing.)

Terry wants to help people. Thanks in no small amount to the influence of people like Justice, who was the first person to look at him and realise that he was scared and hurt and just as much of a danger to himself as to anyone else if he couldn't get his powers under control, and Dani Moonstar, who taught him how to control his powers and steered him away from the idea that his powers can only ever be used to hurt people. His nature as a deeply caring individual comes to light quickly as he immediately begins to reach out to the people around him, offering them help with their own anxieties and fears. He's compassionate and empathetic, almost to a fault - something that consistently puts him at risk of getting into some serious shit with the Hood and Taskmaster because the things they've asked him to do in exchange for his family's safety and an empty promise of undoing his mothers insanity go directly against everything he believes in.

All his anger, guilt and self-loathing has kind of come full-circle during his time in the Initiative. Though he's never really gotten over what happened with his family and friends, he did learn to accept that it happened and get on with things and even wilfully uses his powers as a therapy aid rather than just trying to suppress them and hoping that they'd go away or there'd be a 'cure' like he did before. Of course, agreeing to help Osborn and Hood keep all manner of people who shouldn't have been working Initiative recruits for any number of reasons (PTSD, being criminally insane, being the Hood's cronies, to name a few reasons) able to fight in exchange for his mother's health had a pretty detrimental effect on his mental health, as evidenced by the fact that it kind of, y'know, made him a conduit for Nightmare to pass through and try to fuck shit up.

So, yeah. There's definitely a pretty heavy dose of guilt there about going against his better judgement and messing with people's heads and probably getting a good few people killed or crippled as a result.

Generally speaking, he's quite easy-going. Save for a few special people, it doesn't seem to be particularly easy to get under his skin. And even though he generally looks pretty cranky, he also seems pretty mellow most of the time. That said, his temper has proven pretty short. Trauma probably likes to think of himself as someone who'll be smart about things, but when push comes to shove he tends to go running in, fists swinging. And he won't hesitate to go all fear-Hulk on people who push the right buttons. (Threatening his family was more'n likely the core reason for the animosity between him and Hood.)

Since fear is such a massive part of his life, it's probably important to note his biggest fear - that no one will ever care about him because of what he is. He's terrified by the idea of rejection or abandonment. Feeding into this is also a horrible fear of hurting the people closest to him. I mean, he doesn't want to unintentionally fear out on anyone, but given that all the people he's was closest to when his powers kicked in got the worst of it and he hasn't seen them since. Well, it makes sense he'd be worried about it all happening again, even if his control is infinitely better than it was back then. Being able to reconcile things with Abby (and parting amiably with Penance too, if you want to think about it that way) has given him a degree of hope for the future, but these things linger.

Waking up (as much as one can really "wake up" in the In Between of life, dreaming, and death) on the turtleback will be a bit of a mixed bag for Terry. He's dying for time away from everything where he can figure out who he is, what he is and what that means for him. But he's also hella pissed off with nowhere to direct that anger, after all, he's just found out that he's half-demon and had his biological dad try to steal his body. Not to mention what working for Norman Osborn and The Hood does to a person's temperament. Plus there's the fact that he has no idea what the full extent of Nightmare's powers are and he's aware that he's just made himself a fugitive, this could all be some kind of elaborate trick - it's not like anything villains do makes any kind of real sense.

So basically, it'll be met with a nice mix of relief, suspicion, and anger that will successfully be turned inwards by the time he reaches Keeliai. But it's cool. He'll take some time to figure out how he feels about the whole thing - he won't come to a conclusion, but at least he'll be able to put on a calm exterior.

Since this'll be Terry's second rodeo in Keeliai, he'll have a better idea of what to expect and how to adjust. He'll likely spend some time adjusting - he's been gone almost half a year even though it's like he was never away for him, and the overall climate of the place has changed enough in that time to warrant a bit of time to get his head screwed on. Once that's done though, he'll probably turn his attention to this Malicant business since that seems like a better outlet than being annoyed at the whole "hey what's up we brought you back in time for the fight happy birthday," situation.

Appearance: Trauma stands at about 5'10 with pale skin, blue eyes and black hair that is in a fixed state of bedhead. He's visibly in fairly good shape thanks to training with the Initiative and also appears to exist only within the confines of suits.

Abilities:

Long story short: Trauma's a boggart.

He can sense the fears of people around him and transform into them. The more intense a given fear is being felt at a given time, the easier it is for him to pick up on - to the extent that he can sense people's fears from quite a distance if they start freaking out enough. When he transforms he is pretty much exactly as the person's perception of their fear is. Like with Armory's arachnaphobia, he became a giant, grotesque spider (in a t-shirt?) The potential with a power like this is, clearly, quite big and quite dangerous, leading to Trauma having been branded an Omega Level Threat and shoved into the Shadow Initiative. (Though that said, almost every time he's tried to use his powers offensively in canon it lead to an epic beatdown-- He even died once!) It does fall short a bit, seeing as it doesn't work on anything with an inorganic conciousness and anyone who's able to face their fears can fight back effectively enough.

He has, thanks to Dani's tutelage, pretty much got a handle on his powers now - which is good for everyone - though they can fly out of control seeing as they don't really have an "off" switch or anything. People projecting their fears onto him can force him to transform - like in Secret Invasion, his team being worried that he was a Skrull kind of made him turn into one. And then get beaten up. That was a bad day.

Dear Mr. Ward is also immortal, thanks to his lineage. There isn't really a guideline for this, seeing as he's only died the once and he's not really keen to give it a second go. (For all he knows it may have only been a one time deal!) So there's not like... An average time between dying and waking up or anything - the first time might be the longest. Or the shortest. Though he did come back after embalming and all that, so it's a pretty darn resilient system he's got in there.

Trauma's major weaknesses come interlinked with eachother. A) he's not much of a combatant, and B) he's really not afraid to throw himself into a fight at the drop of a hat. If he feels personally threatened, or as though the safety of someone he cares about is at stake, he'll just jump right in with his fists flying. Of course, if someone happens to be fearless (such as the time he tried to fight the Hulk like an idiot,) or is able to face their worst fears head on (like Moonstar,) then his powers are pretty much useless.

Also the fact that his power can be triggered if other people are projecting strongly enough makes it easy to be manipulated under the right circumstances. (i.e. when the Skrull Queen subtly suggests that since Trauma is a shapeshifter he could well be a skrull himself, everyone around him becomes scared enough that he's a skrull that he can't help shifting into one.)

Given he hasn't appeared in any comic since he left the Initiative, it's impossible to say for sure whether the powers he used during his whole Nightmare ordeal were his to keep or entirely Nightmares', so I'm going to go ahead and say his skillset is exactly the same as it was before that time he got possessed by his dad.

His only notable skill outside his powers is as a counsellor. Trauma is qualified as an MFCC, which leads one to believe that either Marvel wants us to think that he is incredibly talented (given that you generally need at least an MA to get certified, which he simply hasn't had the time to achieve,) or that the writers actually have no idea what they're doing. Working with what the comic gives us, we'll assume it's the former - they must be at least a little aware that he's unreasonably young for his job, given that time the Hood calls him Doogie Howser.

Skirting myself back on track, it's probably safe to assume he is a gifted and competent counsellor. He's unfailingly compassionate and looks out for his patients' best interests wherever he can - urging Johnny Guitar to talk to him when he gets the feeling he may be depressed, or tracking down Robbie's cat as the only means of real therapy he can get away with - which is, you know, an asset in that field. Not much of an asset where self-preservation is concerned though.

Suitability:

Terry's suitability comes from two things. Coming from the Marvel universe, he has a degree of familiarity with the idea of world-changing cataclysm - from skrull invasions to having a demon dad who would happily take over and enslave the world. Though rarely out in the frontline, he's not bad under pressure and is impossibly dedicated to ~helping~ and has a good head for how to hang back and help best where he is.

Also, this'd be his second rodeo in Tu Vishan. He's been away for a lot of the big happenings over the last six months, but he's aware of the nature of why everyone is here and what the threat is. Which should help him adjust quickly and get on with things.

Inventory: Just the clothes on his back, his wallet (which comes with his handy-dandy Registered Superhero ID,) and a now useless cell phone.

Suite: Earth! Even though I feel like he'd really enjoy the calming influence of the water sector, earth fits his temperament much more nicely. I have no preference as to which floor.

In-Character Samples:
Third Person:

Breathe in. Out. One step at a time. He'd get there soon enough.

... Wherever there was, anyway.

He had contemplated going back to Pittsfield, the idea of finding where Nightmare's cult was hiding out and bringing it down was, initially, incredibly tempting. More than contemplated it, in fact. For a good while he'd been dead set on finding this Karl guy to show him what he'd brought into this world. It'd be a lie if he said he hadn't thought about a dramatic monologue for the occasion and everything. He'd stand there and ask something that would be pointedly ridiculous in any other situation - if he was proud. If this was the glory of Nightmare he'd been praying for.

Thankfully for his dignity, he decided against it. He'd never been one for speeches anyway and everything he could think of was hammy and lacked genre appropriateness in a way that rivalled The Room. Revenge was hardly the best thing for a Journey of Self Discovery anyhow, and he was a little doubtful that it would be as fulfilling as he liked to think (which was really fucking fulfilling.)

Trauma frowned as he worked his way through his drink - a chocolate-peanut butter milkshake, which was hardly the manly or dramatic drink people would have on this kind of journey, but it did manage to satisfy all sorts of cravings he didn't even know he had. It was totally worth it, even if it made him look like a fifteen year-old and made one well-meaning-but-annoying old lady ask if his parents had left him here alone. - he really had no idea what to do with himself.

What he really wanted to do was find Doctor Strange - he'd clashed with Nightmare before, right? - but finding out where he was was proving to be more than a little difficult. The accepted method seemed to be that Doctor Strange found you instead. Maybe right now wasn't even the best time with all this Osborne business going on.

He sighed - a nice, big, laborious sigh as if to let everyone in earshot know that he was not having a Good Time - and got up to pay his bill. Maybe he'd figure out what to do between here and the next stop.

Network:

[fun fact: Terrance Ward is massively uncomfortable with any kind of video chat type thing]

[another fun fact: he's having real issues trying to determine what exactly he believes about where he is and why. so for now he's going with 'this is probably Norman Osborn's fault somehow']

[SIGH] So if this was some kind of elaborate ruse to make me learn my place, I'd probably know it was happening right? It's not like Osborn's exactly great at subtlety.

[he pulls a face at the camera and leans back in his seat] I don't even know who I'm talking to here. It's kind of hard to gauge what to say when I don't know who's listening. Do I introduce myself?

[ :\ ]

I'm Trauma. It's- [...] There's a good chance it won't be terrible to meet you.

Probably.

[Today's discovery is that Terry's still deeply uncomfortable with making video posts to the network at large, but it seems like the fastest and easiest way to flag down anyone he knows. Or who knows him for... Whatever reason. He doesn't look directly at the camera, spending most of his time on-screen looking just slightly to the side of the console.]

I think I've been gone about five months, if I'm right.

[He pauses and looks down at his hands, frowning while he works through what he wants to say in his head.] I'm not sure if there's anyone here still who knows me - I didn't know many people when I was here before - but, uh. [ahem] I'm Terry.

I've... A lot's changed. [wow great job pointing out the obvious, idiot.] I'm still wrapping my head around it all, but if there's a, I don't know. A handbook? [...] "A Summarised History of Tu Vishan: A Foreigner's Perspective." That would be really helpful.

[Beat.] Thanks.