Lightspeed Lad
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Lightspeed Lad | |
| Player: @Twoflower | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | 23 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Unknown |
| Known Aliases: | Foxtrot Gamma |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 16 |
| Height: | 5'5" |
| Weight: | 100lb |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Sidekick |
| Place of Birth: | The Future |
| Base of Operations: | Unknown |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Unknown |
| Known Powers | |
| Vibration Control, Super Speed | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Bible Study, Military Tactics, Counterespionage | |
| Equipment | |
| Small Toolkit | |
| No additional information available. | |
The young hero (although he thinks of himself as a professional sidekick) known as Lightspeed Lad has had a troubled history since starting his tenure in Paragon City. Although his origins are dark and unpleasant, he's made a conscious decision to defend the innocent and fight evil, no matter the cost.
Contents |
Character History
Typically in discussing a hero, background comes later, but here it's key to understanding who Lightspeed Lad is and why he's become the hero (or, in his eyes, professional sidekick) he's become.
When the Do-Gooders first found him, he had recently suffered the loss of his adoptive father, the hero Super Patriot, who took him in off the streets and taught him how to use his vibrational powers. Super Patriot, a notable conservative hero with a strong religious background, had unfortunately died in the collapse of his multi-acre mansion.
Shortly after, however, the truth was revealed -- Lightspeed Lad himself killed Super Patriot. In fact, Lightspeed Lad did not technically exist... the boy's personality was a fiction written by Foxtrot Gamma, his TRUE personality, in order to appeal to Super Patriot's right-side leanings and gain access to the hero's secret lair... and destroy it along with the hero he hated so much.
Gamma, one of the child mercenary zealots of Foxtrot Company, had come to our era from a future where Super Patriot had aligned with the Malta Organization in an effort to enslave young metas by training them from an early age to be weapons for their cause. Gamma, being a particularly violent and impulsive sort, felt the best course of action was to stop the Foxtrot/Malta war before it even started, by murdering Super Patriot before he even "went bad".
As Lightspeed Lad, he manipulated the heroes into taking down Cradle Black Omega, the Malta agent who had only just started pondering his young-meta-slaves project -- and was shocked to find a group of heroes arresting him for something he'd just dreamed up a few days ago. Using future knowledge, "Lightspeed Lad" managed to shut down the entire operation before it existed... pre-judging the individuals involved as guilty and dealing with them harshly.
But that wasn't enough for Gamma. He also had dire warnings about Foxtrot Company itself, that Foxtrot Charly would somehow, via alignment with Arachnos, spell their doom. (A prophecy that almost came true... see her entry for more details.) Being the sort he was, his immediate plan was to murder Charly and take over the Company to run as he saw fit, as he was clearly more devoted to the cause.
Unfortunately, Gamma, not being a very plan-ahead sort, failed to realize Foxtrot Romeo would not "go" for this plan. During Operation Cheerleeder Seduction Madness, Foxtrot Company uncovered the truth behind the boy's schemes, and in the end Romeo used his mind powers to suppress Gamma once more, and reinstall Lightspeed Lad as the dominant mind in the young boy's body... with no memory of the events that had transpired. Lightspeed Lad was a cheerful and optimistic hero again.
Soon after, however, in an act of casual cruelty, Romeo's mother decided to restore Gamma's memories while Lightspeed Lad's personality was in control. Immediately, upon realizing all that he had done and all that he was... the Lad requested to be arrested for the murder of Super Patriot. His friends in the Do-Gooders refused, and thus began Lightspeed Lad's self reflection on who he was and, more importantly, who he wanted to be.
After a few periods of running away and having some alone time, Lightspeed Lad decided that rather than go to pieces with all the conflicting ideals and memories in his head, he'd unite them. He returned to the Do-Gooders, wearing a slightly more militaristic but still heroic version of his costume, and reaffirmed his status as a hero.
Now he mixes his ethics and moral idealism with sound military tactics, acting as an espionage and counter-espionage expert for the group... and when he has free time, he moves to act on Foxtrot Company ideals with a heroic twist, by using super speed to near-instantly (but non-fatally) disable and detain child exploiters around the world so that the proper authorities can arrest them. This is a mission, a project he continually works on in isolation, not wanting to worry his friends about the dangerous side work he's doing... or to bring them into his own repentance for past sins.
And that, in more than one nutshell, is Lightspeed Lad.
Affiliations
His history / future history is that of working with Foxtrot Company, as a short-tempered zealot for child causes. He had a brief role as sidekick to the hero Super Patriot, sharing in the Patriot's somewhat extreme right wing idealism, and although he maintains many of those beliefs today as Lightspeed Lad he has softened his outlook somewhat. At the moment the Lad has fully thrown his hat in with the Do-Gooders, although he undertakes side missions of his own devising to fight against child exploitation.
Lately he's started the usual quasi-hidden teenage romantic fumblings boys his age engage in, directed to Sweet Song of the Do-Gooders. He's quite protective of her, willing to travel thousands of miles just to get her some tea from China, and took a keen interest in the operation to prevent Malta from kidnapping her -- letting more of his Gamma skills surface in order to ensure the young girl's safety. Unfortunately due to his "vibration powers" and over-eagerness to help he often ends up in horribly embarrassing situations.
Personality
His personality has, understandably, fluctuated quite a bit over time.
Initially, Foxtrot Gamma was a hot headed and violent young man, growing up in an era where Malta had the upper hand and was abducting and brainwashing Foxtrot members every day. Gamma had killed many in his efforts to stay free, and taken a hardened "death is the first and best solution to any problem" stance. Even when it came to Foxtrotters who had "strayed from the path," as he intended to take over the company on returning. Gamma however has very poor planning skills and his follow through on his intentions rarely works out the way he wants.
The initial Lightspeed Lad personality was a decoy designed to attract the Super Patriot, a young religious fellow with few original ideas in his head and a complete obediance to moral authority. However, his heart was in the right place, without any hatred whatsoever, and he felt the genuine compassion for his fellow man that most heroes hold true to.
After 'merging', Lightspeed Lad has CHOSEN to be the "fake" personality, the good-hearted idealist who helps his friends and wants to make the world a better place -- and make it better the RIGHT way, not through murder and chaos. Because he's focused his efforts on Gamma's causes using Lightspeed's methods, the two personalities have merged to exhibit the best of both worlds... there have been few slips into a more Gamma-focused mindset, save for the occasional visit to Croatoa's spirit world, where your true nature is more pronounced.
Powers
Lightspeed's powers are entirely based on the ability to vibrate things.
As this is a rather embarrassing term, his friends have encouraged him to refer to his powers as 'resonance'. It didn't look particularly good for the boy to point dramatically, and say "We will vibrate you for JUSTICE!", after all. Still, the word has stuck in his long term memory and he frequently forgets he's not supposed to be using it.
Through vib-- through RESONANCE control, Lightspeed Lad can travel at superspeed. Under combat conditions, this speed isn't quite super, merely more than ten times the running speed of an adult... but he can focus and achieve bursts of traveling speed that let him even cross the Atlantic Ocean in a matter of seconds, as proven when one of his friends wanted coffee and he got it in Paris for her. These speed bursts are useless for fine control but perfect for Point A to Point B long distance movement.
By vibr-- err, sorry, RESONATING the air in front of him, he an attack from distance using compressed waves of sound through the air. These blasts aren't as strong as other ranged damage experts, but they get the job done, and more importantly they set up a resonance cascade in the enemy that lowers their ability to resist damage.
Finally, and most importantly, he's able to adjust the kinetic movement of any situation through correctly applied resonance waves -- speeding up friends, slowing down enemies, and siphoning various life energies in a process he doesn't quite fully grasp.
The origin of these powers is unknown, even to him, but his suspicion is that he was a science experiment gone wrong, given Malta's future tendency to home-grow metas.
Abilities
Lightspeed Lad himself brings little to the table from his Super Patriot days; by and large, the hero did all the work, while the Lad cheered him on from the sidelines (and set up a healing resonance now and then, which Super Patriot rarely registered as being critical to battle). He can quote the bible with high accuracy, though, due to the sunday school lessons the Patriot sent him to.
Gamma brings more practical abilities to the table, even if he used them for darker purposes. Lightspeed Lad uses these memorized skills for assessing tactical situations, such as by scouting areas near-invisibly as he phases his molecules against visible light and the refresh rate of security cameras. He carries a small toolkit in his utility belt suitable for disabling and dismantling security systems and hidden audio/video bugs -- his Foxtrot training has given him a working knowledge of must forms of spy gear.
Trivia
Lightspeed Lad was my first attempt at making a male character AND a spandex wearing character. Although he is technically a walking parody of the "young ward" sidekick.
Some of the plotting leading up to his final emergence as the hero he is today was a bit sketchy, particularly why Future Foxtrot Romeo would help in this crazy plan to plant a fake personality in Gamma and send him into the past. The best explanation given is that Romeo didn't specify why he did it and seemed a touch playful about it all, so perhaps Future Romeo has gone a little crazy after years of war with Malta (who no doubt tried to find kinks in his mental armor and cracked it a few times along the way).
Generally I only play Lightspeed Lad for RP related play rather than trying to powerlevel him; a kineticist is always welcome, but I have other characters to focus on and little time to get them where they need to be. I may work with him more once Charly hits 50.
