Post by Jason Turk on Sept 5, 2009 4:32:37 GMT -5
Player name: Ehh, just call me Tex. Or Zin.
Contact Info: sightfortheblind@gmail.com for email. sightfortheblind@hotmail.com for MSN messenger. Theamazingzin is my AIM name.
Basic Character Information
Type: Original
Full name: Jason Turk
Goes by: JT, Turk
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Frequency
Gender: Male
Age/Birth date: 16/November 28
Place of birth: Buffalo, NY
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 168 lbs
Hair: None, formerly brown.
Eyes: Green.
Education: Enrolled at Bayville High as a Junior.
Occupation: Student.
Family: Christoper and Jeanine Turk (Parents, alive but hospitalized)
Nancy Velway (Aunt on mother’s side, divorced, Jason’s legal guardian.)
Criminal record/citizenship: None/American citizen.
Affiliation: Neutral
General Appearance:
Jason sports a slightly athletic build for his age, not necessarily sporting the toning and musculature of a student athlete, but rather owning a body that suggests a boy that, while not interested in pursuing an athletic track in high school, still bothers to participate in gym class. As such, while a steady diet of junk food has put a bit of flab on the boy, right underneath it is a layer of firm, if not well-built, muscles. Also, Jason is completely bald, and sports no tattoos or piercings on his body. He claims to shave his hair, but the baldness is actually a side-effect of his powers.
Generally, aside from his shaven head and generally gruff look on his face, Jason doesn’t necessarily look quite like your typical bully. His facial features, however, are sharp and almost always wearing a sour look. He has somewhat darkened skin, since he gets more UV rays than most, his tan is more pronounced than most others with comparable amounts of time out in the sun.
As far as clothing goes, Jason is a young man of simple tastes. Due to the cold nature of New York, he tends to wear layers, but also due to his somewhat raised body temperature, he doesn’t need to wear as many as others may. Generally a light jacket over and over-shirt, over a t-shirt or tank top is enough to keep Jason warm. As can be expected, the boy dresses more for practicality than style, though he does keep a wardrobe of varying colors and even a few more dressy-looking shirts, just in case.
Personality: Jason, at his core, probably isn’t a bad guy. However, he most definitely is a guy who feels like he has a score to settle. Jason feels like he’s been wronged, by his genes, by God, by his fellow man, by his parents, by everyone. However, while some would just mope about it, Jason feels the needs to get even. What this results in is a relatively unfriendly attitude, to put it mildly. The boy is short-tempered and very quick to anger; in fact, when he’s itching for a fight, it can be incredibly difficult to talk him out of it. On the flip-side, he has a fairly firm set of morals and personal ethics; however, considering, as previously stated, he holds a grudge against almost the entire rest of humanity, and thus isn’t like to consider too many people ‘innocent’ or out of his line of sight.
Despite all this, though, Jason is a curiously charismatic individual. This comes not from his charm or wit or friendliness, for he possesses little, if any, of those. What truly sets Jason apart from his peers would be his drive. Ambitious and single-minded to whatever short-term goal he puts before himself, it can be very easy for others to get caught up in his zeal, since his generally closed-off nature means that, if he ever does open up to anyone, it would very much seem like some kind of special treatment. However, whether or not it truly means anything to Jason, and if he opened up out of a genuine desire for help or company, or rather simply as a tool in whatever scheme he has, is another matter entirely, and generally, is completely dependent on the person.
Beyond all that, though, going even deeper, past the gruff exterior and the anger that seems to drive him, one will find a lonely and perhaps even a sad child. When he’s done blaming the world for everything, and when he’s alone in the deepest depths of his mind, he blames no one but himself for his parents’ fate, and it is when he is in these states that he’s at his most vulnerable, and can be seen that, despite his focus, his anger, and his powers, he is still, at heart, a sixteen-year-old boy who is much too close to being an orphan for his own tastes.
Powers: Jason’s X-gene manifested within him an increased amount of electroreception and magnetoception, working in conjunction to bestow upon him unique bioelectromagnetic abilities, which, put simply, allow him to perceive, absorb, and release electromagnetic waves across their entire spectrum. With its least complicated (and easiest to perform) use, Jason becomes a living electronic node, being able to send and receive electronic radio signals as effortlessly with his body and mind as normal people would use a computer or a cell phone. E-mails, text messages, phone calls, and the like are able to be received and/or created as necessary, without the confines of an actual electronic device.
When around wireless access networks, Jason can even intercept and manipulate those signals, allowing him to, essentially, surf the web in his mind. This ability requires slightly more than a passive amount of focus, which makes him potentially an ultimate hacker. Since Jason needs only a thought, not a complex program or command, to emit the signals he needs, cracking an encrypted wireless network is simple for him, as is entering any computer connected to a wireless network, making him, essentially, a skilled bio-hacker.
Of course, the powers can go far beyond that, to achieve much more powerful (and dangerous) heights. While radio waves, on which almost all wireless information is carried, are simple enough to receive and produce, the entire electromagnetic spectrum is available for Jason’s manipulation, from radio waves all the way to Gamma Rays. Naturally, though, as the frequencies increase, so, too, do the health risks and dangers, all of which are discussed in the next section. Through the use of microwaves, Jason can locate objects via radar, as well as heat objects (and people) to uncomfortable, though usually not lethal, levels, and could also easily cook up a mean TV dinner. Visible light also falls within the EM spectrum; however, seeing as Jason cannot manipulate the light around him, so much as he can receive and send light just as any other human being does, but on a grander scale, the most Jason can really affect the visible spectrum is by causing himself to become bright, or by turning on his absorption and dimming the world around him a bit. No, what Jason found he can do with visible light is focus it into a tight beam, stimulating the beam with higher frequencies of EM to form lasers that can range in intensity from a laser-pointer to a high-grade laser cutting tool.
Unfortunately, past the Visible Spectrum, the electromagnetic frequencies are too high and too dangerous to casually absorb. However, Jason can physically absorb these types of electromagnetic frequencies via touch, giving him access to even more heavy-duty firepower. Ultraviolet rays, the power of the sun itself, give him incredibly heightened, even lethal heating power if focused, and gamma rays are so high in frequency, so powerful that they are, quite often, used to kill living beings, and as such, Jason knows what to do when he has to bring out the heavy artillery, so to speak.
Opposed to the more direct application of the release of EM waves, certain frequencies, such as Infrared and X-Rays, are used in a more defensive/subtle approach. As could be imagined, Jason can emit infrared rays to help himself see in the dark, or X-rays in order to see through most forms of matter.
Secondary to his absorption and release of the EM spectrum, Jason has also proven capable of ‘stretching’ or ‘compressing’ the energy currently stored, essentially transforming the EM’s frequency and, thus, its classification and range of abilities. However, it must be noted, and will be further explained in the weaknesses paragraph, that by compressing a low-frequency wave into a high-frequency one, Jason will be left with much less of a wave to work with, and as such much compress extremely high amounts of low-frequency energy just to achieve a moderate amount of high-frequency energy.
Weaknesses: With great power often comes great drawbacks, and Jason’s abilities bode no differently. For starters, we can discuss the basic limitations of Jason’s power. Simply put, Jason can absorb, transmit, compress or stretch electromagnetic frequencies within his own body. He cannot amplify the power of any particular frequency, nor can he manipulate the energies independently of his body. Furthermore, his range of being able to absorb EM radiation freely not only becomes impossible when the frequencies become higher than visible light, but even with light and lower, Jason cannot pull in energy any farther than 30 feet from him. In other words, in areas with very little constant EM radiation (sparsely populated areas, especially at night), Jason’s abilities have little use, leaving him only as capable as an average human.
In order to emit the higher-frequency waves, Jason must either absorb these types of energy directly via touching a conductor of said energy, or, as he more commonly must, absorb great amounts of lower-frequency EM waves and compress them into the higher types. However, at his current age and skill level, such a feat is far too taxing for the boy to perform with any sort of ease, leaving it an undeveloped skill.
Speaking of experience limits, Jason, in general, at this point in his life, can only fully work with the visible light and lower frequencies, as messing with higher frequencies only serves to cause him severe migraines. If Jason absorbs those higher frequencies, or compresses some within his body, he will start suffering vicious migraine headaches, his mind’s way of releasing his focus, which causes those absorbed waves to leak out of him. The reason this happens is because Jason’s body realizes the health risks to the boy, even if he consciously does not. At his level of control, if Jason were to fight his headaches and contain the power despite himself, the rays would continue to release heat energy and threaten to cook him to death from the inside. Conversely, if Jason emits too much electromagnetic energy at once and drains his inner reserves too much, too quickly, he’s left feeling drained and tired, until he can absorb enough energy freely or ‘recharge’ somehow.
This, then, brings us to discuss his resistances. Jason, to some degree, is resistant to the effects of EM energy. It is, unfortunately, only at the surface level. Extended exposure to passing EM energy is much less likely to bestow any harmful effects on him than it would most other humans. However, when Jason absorbs and contains the energy, it is a whole different matter. His slight resistance still applies, but even so, such concentrated amounts of energy being held directly within the body seems to have the effects of extremely prolonged exposure to the same types of waves in passing. As such, Jason has already felt the ill effects of the exposure, and is, in fact, riddled with benign, formerly-cancerous tumors all within his body. Jason’s body actually contains traces of having almost every form of internal cancer known to man. Also, on a much less lethal, but more pressing note, the radio waves passing through Jason’s body are, more often than not, radio stations, so a small amount of his focus must constantly be set aside to filter out all the chatter and music constantly going off in his mind.
Speaking of which, it’s not just Jason that’s at risk of cancer just by having his powers. Jason passively absorbs and contains a small amount of all EM waves that pass through him, which he also passively emits, mostly unchanged from their original form. This makes him, as a rule, increase the amount of EM waves passing through an area than normal, increasing the amount of EM radiation those around him are subject to, but not quite enough to that it becomes a noticeable phenomenon. Thus, even though the ultraviolet light is just out of Jason’s realm of physical control, being close to him for constant periods of time may result in a quicker tan, followed thereafter by skin cancer. Also, microwaves are usually floating through the air at any given time, and those have been theorized as being carcinogenic as well.
As if any weakness could be worse than being a walking, talking, living, breathing Cancer Machine, Jason’s next weakness/limitation could definitely prove more unsettling in the short term. Since he constantly emits radio waves, as that particular spectrum is almost constantly being thrown around, between cellular networks, TV and radio stations, and wireless access points, just being near almost any electronic device is enough to cause odd feedback loops and strange noises (think the sound computer speakers often make when a nearby phone rings.) When he attempts to draw or use his powers near machinery, it is not unlikely at all for computers, phones and the like to start to short out or break. Finally, as mentioned before, Jason can (and often must) absorb EM waves via contact with electronic devices, or any object that is powered via electricity (Electrically-powered machines use a mixture of magnetism and electricity to keep charges going, and Jason simply absorbs both into a low-frequency radio wave). This, if course, will shut down whatever device or object being juiced from, if the sudden discharge of electricity doesn’t cause physical damage as well (a phenomenon mostly associated with smaller devices such as mp3 players and cell-phones). Jason, apparently, can combine magnetic and electric charges into electromagnetic charges, but he cannot undo what he has done, which means he can only drain objects of their electricity, and not recharge as well. Furthermore, as of this point in his life, Jason cannot seem to even turn off the feedback, much less touch an object without zapping the power out of it. What this entails, then, is that not only can no one use any kind of electronic equipment effectively when near the boy (a distance of maybe 15 feet), he cannot use any electronic equipment at all (the energy gets pulled directly off the circuit-boards and fries them) or any kind of electrically-powered equipment that requires direct contact with the metal. Cars are feasible, but only newer cars, with their carbon fiber and leather, which act as good reducers. However, if he for any reason was to touch the chassis or any other metallic part of the car, the battery would quickly be drained.
With physical absorption, however, brings one final drawback: Since he cannot control when he absorbs the energy or not, he can also only barely control the amount of energy taken in when he does. As such, while using things like an electrical socket to recharge might seem to make sense, if he couldn’t control the intake he would end up absorbing way too much energy, upon which point Jason would be left with one of two messy options: Either attempt to compress the energy into a higher frequency so it occupies a smaller amount of his body, which would most likely leave him with his insides completely killed by the dangerous radiation, or allow the energy to fill him to the brim, which would have consequences that Jason neither knows, nor is ready to face.
Power Potential: The potential for electromagnetic control in Jason’s vein is fairly vast, and has been vaguely covered in the earlier sections, but will be outlined here. The most obvious and apparent potential upgrades to Jason’s power would be his active range of absorption and transmission, and, more importantly, the ease of which he can absorb and transmit higher-frequency waves. At this point, anything above the visible spectrum is too difficult to use regularly; but with training, focus, and experience, Jason may one day be able to handle the entire EM spectrum with ease. Other potential places for perfection would include the controlled absorption of EM energy via electronic equipment, including, but not limited to, absorption without the necessity of touch, or even more useful, controlled amounts of absorption, as well as reduced range of electronic equipment interference, making him less of a hazard around others.
History: Jason Turk couldn’t say that he was born into an abusive childhood; his parents both loved him very much and treated him with as much care as possible. On the contrary, Jason was born into something that, in many cases, could be worse: He was the child of a loveless marriage.
A classic case of ‘staying together for the kids’, Chris and Jeanine Turk were simply not happy with each other, and hadn’t been for some time. While they both loved their only son, they would fight constantly between themselves, and while it would never rise to physical violence, Jason was subjected to many, many heated arguments throughout his younger years, and on more than one occasion drifted off to sleep to the shrieks and screams of his parents at the climax of their arguments, over money, over love, over their future and the future of their kid. All too often did Jason hear the words “The second that boy graduates from high school, I am SO out of here,” and from both parents equally.
It wouldn’t take them quite so long to make good on that promise, although it was certainly not in the way either of them had expected.
Jason’s mutant gene had awakened very early in his life, charted back somewhere around his 6th birthday. However, he barely even knew what was happening. Suddenly, strange colors and patterns began to show up before his eyes, he would hear music or see images in his head, movies or newscasts and other strange things, and electronic equipment would stop working or break whenever he was around. His parents went through more computers, VCRs, and televisions in those early years, simply because young Jason could not put together that it was him that was destroying the equipment, but, as the years went on, began to understand. As he reached his teenage years, after long years of chastising for ‘breaking the TV’ or his parents worried that he was going crazy, or worse, somehow on drugs, because of his constant complaints of ‘seeing strange colors’ and ‘hearing music’, not to mention the months and months it took to convince his parents he was ‘just kidding’ when the ‘man in his head’ told him about the traffic accident on the freeway that day, he could feel something within himself beginning to grow and evolve. As he started to understand himself and his body a little more, he began experimenting, and found that those strange colors not only usually moved toward him a little, shifting to move in his direction as he walked, but if he reached out to them, either physically or mentally, he could pull in those patterns much more actively, and could feel them filling his body. Curious, he began to research things at the Buffalo Library, and, after reading a short excerpt on Electromagnetic Waves, began to realize, if only in part, what may have been going on.
It suddenly all became clear. The music, it was the radio. The images and movies? It was television signals. These things, widely broadcast over a simple frequency, these came to him almost naturally. He began, however, to try to ‘tune’ his mind to a different frequency, and before long, found himself picking up police scanners and telephone calls. As his teen years continued, Jason continued to perfect and come to terms with the strange things he could do, more or less in secret considering the unseen nature of almost all forms of electromagnetic waves save one. Even if they hadn’t been mostly invisible, Jason still wouldn’t have told anyone. He remembered his younger years, and how his parents, who had loved him so up until that point, had suddenly begun rebuking him for his outbursts, and worrying with dire seriousness that he had stumbled upon some stash of drugs. Jason simply couldn’t believe that they would, in his eyes, turn on him like that, and while he had not exactly reached the level of resenting them, he knew that, it was better for them to think he may be some kind of drug-addled crazy than to know the truth of the matter. Regardless of it all, though, they were his parents, and he couldn’t blame them for worrying about him, not in all good conscience, at least. They loved him, and he loved them.
Not long after his sixteenth birthday, disaster struck.
Within weeks of each other both Chris and Jeanine started feeling sick, and were both diagnosed with cancer. They were rushed to the hospital, but the cancer was rapidly accelerated, faster and harder than anything any doctor had seen previously. They allowed Jason to come in to observe during the surgery, and Jason, as worried as he was about his parents, rushed in, and his presence caused the various monitors and other electronics to go berserk, complicating the procedure and resulting in a few nearly-fatal misguided incisions. As a result, the doctors were unsure of the outcome, and decreed that the Turks would have to stay in intensive care for a good while, first to recover from any additional injuries caused during the electronic mishap, and then, hopefully, to have healed them enough to get back at the cancer before it spread any further. At this point, however, everyone knew the outlook was grim. When Jason, then, was checked for cancer, similarly, he broke down two different types of X-ray and CAT-scan machines before they set him loose, completely befuddled to why this would have happened. Not long after this, Jason’s hair began to fall out. Too mortified by this sudden change to delve too deeply into the reasoning, Jason quickly took a hair-clipper to his head and shaved the remaining hair off, too proud to let anyone other than his own hand be the cause of his baldness.
Jason, however, was no fool. He had long since figured out that he and electronics do not mix, and knew that, because of whatever strange ability he had, he had most likely cost his parents their lives, even if it only seemed to have cost him his hair somehow. Suddenly, all that hidden anger that Jason had been keeping held in his entire life began to seep through, unable to be held back. All the times Jason was forced to listen to his parents argue, all the times they would chastise him for something he could not help, that they weren’t smart enough to understand him, and more and more. Hate is infectious, and it was easy to turn the love he once had for his parents quickly became anger and disgust, and from there, it was even easier to turn that displeasure towards anything else in his life. The only thing that Jason could find that had never abandoned him where his powers. As everything else devolved, Jason found that his powers had only escalated, becoming the one constant that he felt like he could count on to always come to his aid. As was stated before, even when they took his parents’ lives, it only had taken his hair, which was, in his opinion, a small price to pay.
Jason, with both parents in hospital care, was sent to live with his aunt in distant Bayville, where he could hopefully be kept far enough away so as to dull the pain of his parents’ almost inevitable passing. He was recently enrolled at the high school there, and so, in between various counseling and therapy visits to ensure that his poor young psyche wasn’t damaged by his parents freak bouts of cancer, Jason will attend classes and hope to find his way through this strange new environment.
Other: One thing of note is that Jason constantly carries around a few packs of batteries with him if at all possible. If he ever finds himself running low on juice, so to speak, he can reach for the batteries and drain one or two, giving an admittedly small but sometimes important recharge, in order to keep him from falling into a hard fatigue.
Sample RP: Nancy smiled brightly at the airport, holding a big sign that read “Jason T.”
A few people emerged from the baggage claim, the young, surly teen amongst them. When his eyes lit upon his aunt, his normal sour look became an even deeper frown. “Aunt Nance, please. I see you every holiday, we know what we look like.”
Nancy laughed excitedly, “Oh, I know, Jason,” she said good-naturedly, “I just… well, I just always wanted to hold up a sign at an airport.”
Jason groaned, and shook his head. When the feeling of his hair didn’t seem to shake with him, Jason’s hand shot up to his head uncertainly, until the feeling of prickly, barely-grown-in hair reminded him of the change he, himself, had endured lately, and his frown managed to deepen further. “I noticed your new ‘do,” Nancy said, giving him a pat on his jacketed shoulder. “Looks good on you, sport.”
“Aunt Nance, please, you’re gonna give me a headache,” Jason said, without a smile or any other indication he was joking. Nancy just shook her head and smiled blankly.
Underneath it all, the woman was about to blow. She loved her sister dearly, and would do anything for her, but the rest of the family had been talking. They all knew how Jason may have been a little ‘touched’ from the get-go, and now, with his parents the way they are, he had been nothing but trouble. Unbeknownst to the boy, he wasn’t getting carted over to Bayville just because he needed a legal guardian, but Nancy was also chosen specifically because her location, Bayville, was the closest place they could find that was almost guaranteed to be a calm, safe environment for the boy to graduate and grow up in. In the few short days that Jason had attempted to go back to school, he had already gotten in four fights and was a hair’s breadth from being expelled, until the principal had caught wind of his family issues. And so, due to her decision to live in a peaceful suburb instead of a bustling city, Nancy Velway had been the one so ‘lucky’ as to take care of the family tree’s newest black sheep.
The two climbed into Nancy’s suburban, with Jason taking great care not to touch any part of the frame with any uncovered skin, knowing from some bad experiences back home that, occasionally, touching the frame of a car with his hand was enough contact to conduct the electromagnetic energy of the battery and engine through the frame, and leave the car’s owner with a dead battery with no chance of jump-starting. They drove, in awkward silence, the short distance to Nancy’s home. She opened the door for Jason, and showed him to his room: an almost-empty joke of a guest bedroom, with nothing but a mattress, covered with a fitted sheet and some blankets, laying in the corner.
“I’m so sorry, Jason,” began the Aunt, beginning her sob story. “I just, we just had this guest room, but after Danny and I separated, and since we never had any kids, we just... never felt the need to furnish it. This is your room now, though, just feel free to do whatever you want with it. I’ll even pitch in to help get you a computer or a stereo or something if you-“
“No, no Aunt Nance, that’s more than fine,” Jason cut her off quickly, trying to sound polite but unwilling to hear any more of her words, especially if she wanted to try and give him things that he’d just break within the day. “This should be all I need right here. Just tell me this: you have wireless internet here?”
“Well, um... yes, I do,” Nancy said after a moment, having to think about whether or not she did. “Why?” She finally asked, curiosity overtaking her.
“Eh, just wondering, I guess,” Jason said, and turned to face the mattress. “I think I want to get some sleep.”
“Oh.” Nancy said, surprised at the sudden cold shoulder. “Well, you certainly need it, I’m sure. Get some rest, and I’ll talk to you in the morning?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Jason said, and laid down upon the mattress and blankets, not bothering to cover himself, as Nancy closed the door to his room. In only a few days, he’d have to go back to school, and in a world full of suburbanite punk kids. Jason grimaced before his eyes fluttered closed. This just wouldn’t end well, he knew it.
Activity: Um, my activity zones in and out, though generally if I have threads going, I’ll be replying to them. Regardless, you’ll always see me on Messenger of whichever sort and I’ll always be checking the site, but between work and school, I can get fairly hectic occasionally. I’ll try to mark any foreseen periods of busy-ness ahead of time so all are aware, however.
Contact Info: sightfortheblind@gmail.com for email. sightfortheblind@hotmail.com for MSN messenger. Theamazingzin is my AIM name.
Basic Character Information
Type: Original
Full name: Jason Turk
Goes by: JT, Turk
Code name(s)/Alias(es): Frequency
Gender: Male
Age/Birth date: 16/November 28
Place of birth: Buffalo, NY
Hometown: Buffalo, NY
Height: 5’10”
Weight: 168 lbs
Hair: None, formerly brown.
Eyes: Green.
Education: Enrolled at Bayville High as a Junior.
Occupation: Student.
Family: Christoper and Jeanine Turk (Parents, alive but hospitalized)
Nancy Velway (Aunt on mother’s side, divorced, Jason’s legal guardian.)
Criminal record/citizenship: None/American citizen.
Affiliation: Neutral
General Appearance:
Jason sports a slightly athletic build for his age, not necessarily sporting the toning and musculature of a student athlete, but rather owning a body that suggests a boy that, while not interested in pursuing an athletic track in high school, still bothers to participate in gym class. As such, while a steady diet of junk food has put a bit of flab on the boy, right underneath it is a layer of firm, if not well-built, muscles. Also, Jason is completely bald, and sports no tattoos or piercings on his body. He claims to shave his hair, but the baldness is actually a side-effect of his powers.
Generally, aside from his shaven head and generally gruff look on his face, Jason doesn’t necessarily look quite like your typical bully. His facial features, however, are sharp and almost always wearing a sour look. He has somewhat darkened skin, since he gets more UV rays than most, his tan is more pronounced than most others with comparable amounts of time out in the sun.
As far as clothing goes, Jason is a young man of simple tastes. Due to the cold nature of New York, he tends to wear layers, but also due to his somewhat raised body temperature, he doesn’t need to wear as many as others may. Generally a light jacket over and over-shirt, over a t-shirt or tank top is enough to keep Jason warm. As can be expected, the boy dresses more for practicality than style, though he does keep a wardrobe of varying colors and even a few more dressy-looking shirts, just in case.
Personality: Jason, at his core, probably isn’t a bad guy. However, he most definitely is a guy who feels like he has a score to settle. Jason feels like he’s been wronged, by his genes, by God, by his fellow man, by his parents, by everyone. However, while some would just mope about it, Jason feels the needs to get even. What this results in is a relatively unfriendly attitude, to put it mildly. The boy is short-tempered and very quick to anger; in fact, when he’s itching for a fight, it can be incredibly difficult to talk him out of it. On the flip-side, he has a fairly firm set of morals and personal ethics; however, considering, as previously stated, he holds a grudge against almost the entire rest of humanity, and thus isn’t like to consider too many people ‘innocent’ or out of his line of sight.
Despite all this, though, Jason is a curiously charismatic individual. This comes not from his charm or wit or friendliness, for he possesses little, if any, of those. What truly sets Jason apart from his peers would be his drive. Ambitious and single-minded to whatever short-term goal he puts before himself, it can be very easy for others to get caught up in his zeal, since his generally closed-off nature means that, if he ever does open up to anyone, it would very much seem like some kind of special treatment. However, whether or not it truly means anything to Jason, and if he opened up out of a genuine desire for help or company, or rather simply as a tool in whatever scheme he has, is another matter entirely, and generally, is completely dependent on the person.
Beyond all that, though, going even deeper, past the gruff exterior and the anger that seems to drive him, one will find a lonely and perhaps even a sad child. When he’s done blaming the world for everything, and when he’s alone in the deepest depths of his mind, he blames no one but himself for his parents’ fate, and it is when he is in these states that he’s at his most vulnerable, and can be seen that, despite his focus, his anger, and his powers, he is still, at heart, a sixteen-year-old boy who is much too close to being an orphan for his own tastes.
Powers: Jason’s X-gene manifested within him an increased amount of electroreception and magnetoception, working in conjunction to bestow upon him unique bioelectromagnetic abilities, which, put simply, allow him to perceive, absorb, and release electromagnetic waves across their entire spectrum. With its least complicated (and easiest to perform) use, Jason becomes a living electronic node, being able to send and receive electronic radio signals as effortlessly with his body and mind as normal people would use a computer or a cell phone. E-mails, text messages, phone calls, and the like are able to be received and/or created as necessary, without the confines of an actual electronic device.
When around wireless access networks, Jason can even intercept and manipulate those signals, allowing him to, essentially, surf the web in his mind. This ability requires slightly more than a passive amount of focus, which makes him potentially an ultimate hacker. Since Jason needs only a thought, not a complex program or command, to emit the signals he needs, cracking an encrypted wireless network is simple for him, as is entering any computer connected to a wireless network, making him, essentially, a skilled bio-hacker.
Of course, the powers can go far beyond that, to achieve much more powerful (and dangerous) heights. While radio waves, on which almost all wireless information is carried, are simple enough to receive and produce, the entire electromagnetic spectrum is available for Jason’s manipulation, from radio waves all the way to Gamma Rays. Naturally, though, as the frequencies increase, so, too, do the health risks and dangers, all of which are discussed in the next section. Through the use of microwaves, Jason can locate objects via radar, as well as heat objects (and people) to uncomfortable, though usually not lethal, levels, and could also easily cook up a mean TV dinner. Visible light also falls within the EM spectrum; however, seeing as Jason cannot manipulate the light around him, so much as he can receive and send light just as any other human being does, but on a grander scale, the most Jason can really affect the visible spectrum is by causing himself to become bright, or by turning on his absorption and dimming the world around him a bit. No, what Jason found he can do with visible light is focus it into a tight beam, stimulating the beam with higher frequencies of EM to form lasers that can range in intensity from a laser-pointer to a high-grade laser cutting tool.
Unfortunately, past the Visible Spectrum, the electromagnetic frequencies are too high and too dangerous to casually absorb. However, Jason can physically absorb these types of electromagnetic frequencies via touch, giving him access to even more heavy-duty firepower. Ultraviolet rays, the power of the sun itself, give him incredibly heightened, even lethal heating power if focused, and gamma rays are so high in frequency, so powerful that they are, quite often, used to kill living beings, and as such, Jason knows what to do when he has to bring out the heavy artillery, so to speak.
Opposed to the more direct application of the release of EM waves, certain frequencies, such as Infrared and X-Rays, are used in a more defensive/subtle approach. As could be imagined, Jason can emit infrared rays to help himself see in the dark, or X-rays in order to see through most forms of matter.
Secondary to his absorption and release of the EM spectrum, Jason has also proven capable of ‘stretching’ or ‘compressing’ the energy currently stored, essentially transforming the EM’s frequency and, thus, its classification and range of abilities. However, it must be noted, and will be further explained in the weaknesses paragraph, that by compressing a low-frequency wave into a high-frequency one, Jason will be left with much less of a wave to work with, and as such much compress extremely high amounts of low-frequency energy just to achieve a moderate amount of high-frequency energy.
Weaknesses: With great power often comes great drawbacks, and Jason’s abilities bode no differently. For starters, we can discuss the basic limitations of Jason’s power. Simply put, Jason can absorb, transmit, compress or stretch electromagnetic frequencies within his own body. He cannot amplify the power of any particular frequency, nor can he manipulate the energies independently of his body. Furthermore, his range of being able to absorb EM radiation freely not only becomes impossible when the frequencies become higher than visible light, but even with light and lower, Jason cannot pull in energy any farther than 30 feet from him. In other words, in areas with very little constant EM radiation (sparsely populated areas, especially at night), Jason’s abilities have little use, leaving him only as capable as an average human.
In order to emit the higher-frequency waves, Jason must either absorb these types of energy directly via touching a conductor of said energy, or, as he more commonly must, absorb great amounts of lower-frequency EM waves and compress them into the higher types. However, at his current age and skill level, such a feat is far too taxing for the boy to perform with any sort of ease, leaving it an undeveloped skill.
Speaking of experience limits, Jason, in general, at this point in his life, can only fully work with the visible light and lower frequencies, as messing with higher frequencies only serves to cause him severe migraines. If Jason absorbs those higher frequencies, or compresses some within his body, he will start suffering vicious migraine headaches, his mind’s way of releasing his focus, which causes those absorbed waves to leak out of him. The reason this happens is because Jason’s body realizes the health risks to the boy, even if he consciously does not. At his level of control, if Jason were to fight his headaches and contain the power despite himself, the rays would continue to release heat energy and threaten to cook him to death from the inside. Conversely, if Jason emits too much electromagnetic energy at once and drains his inner reserves too much, too quickly, he’s left feeling drained and tired, until he can absorb enough energy freely or ‘recharge’ somehow.
This, then, brings us to discuss his resistances. Jason, to some degree, is resistant to the effects of EM energy. It is, unfortunately, only at the surface level. Extended exposure to passing EM energy is much less likely to bestow any harmful effects on him than it would most other humans. However, when Jason absorbs and contains the energy, it is a whole different matter. His slight resistance still applies, but even so, such concentrated amounts of energy being held directly within the body seems to have the effects of extremely prolonged exposure to the same types of waves in passing. As such, Jason has already felt the ill effects of the exposure, and is, in fact, riddled with benign, formerly-cancerous tumors all within his body. Jason’s body actually contains traces of having almost every form of internal cancer known to man. Also, on a much less lethal, but more pressing note, the radio waves passing through Jason’s body are, more often than not, radio stations, so a small amount of his focus must constantly be set aside to filter out all the chatter and music constantly going off in his mind.
Speaking of which, it’s not just Jason that’s at risk of cancer just by having his powers. Jason passively absorbs and contains a small amount of all EM waves that pass through him, which he also passively emits, mostly unchanged from their original form. This makes him, as a rule, increase the amount of EM waves passing through an area than normal, increasing the amount of EM radiation those around him are subject to, but not quite enough to that it becomes a noticeable phenomenon. Thus, even though the ultraviolet light is just out of Jason’s realm of physical control, being close to him for constant periods of time may result in a quicker tan, followed thereafter by skin cancer. Also, microwaves are usually floating through the air at any given time, and those have been theorized as being carcinogenic as well.
As if any weakness could be worse than being a walking, talking, living, breathing Cancer Machine, Jason’s next weakness/limitation could definitely prove more unsettling in the short term. Since he constantly emits radio waves, as that particular spectrum is almost constantly being thrown around, between cellular networks, TV and radio stations, and wireless access points, just being near almost any electronic device is enough to cause odd feedback loops and strange noises (think the sound computer speakers often make when a nearby phone rings.) When he attempts to draw or use his powers near machinery, it is not unlikely at all for computers, phones and the like to start to short out or break. Finally, as mentioned before, Jason can (and often must) absorb EM waves via contact with electronic devices, or any object that is powered via electricity (Electrically-powered machines use a mixture of magnetism and electricity to keep charges going, and Jason simply absorbs both into a low-frequency radio wave). This, if course, will shut down whatever device or object being juiced from, if the sudden discharge of electricity doesn’t cause physical damage as well (a phenomenon mostly associated with smaller devices such as mp3 players and cell-phones). Jason, apparently, can combine magnetic and electric charges into electromagnetic charges, but he cannot undo what he has done, which means he can only drain objects of their electricity, and not recharge as well. Furthermore, as of this point in his life, Jason cannot seem to even turn off the feedback, much less touch an object without zapping the power out of it. What this entails, then, is that not only can no one use any kind of electronic equipment effectively when near the boy (a distance of maybe 15 feet), he cannot use any electronic equipment at all (the energy gets pulled directly off the circuit-boards and fries them) or any kind of electrically-powered equipment that requires direct contact with the metal. Cars are feasible, but only newer cars, with their carbon fiber and leather, which act as good reducers. However, if he for any reason was to touch the chassis or any other metallic part of the car, the battery would quickly be drained.
With physical absorption, however, brings one final drawback: Since he cannot control when he absorbs the energy or not, he can also only barely control the amount of energy taken in when he does. As such, while using things like an electrical socket to recharge might seem to make sense, if he couldn’t control the intake he would end up absorbing way too much energy, upon which point Jason would be left with one of two messy options: Either attempt to compress the energy into a higher frequency so it occupies a smaller amount of his body, which would most likely leave him with his insides completely killed by the dangerous radiation, or allow the energy to fill him to the brim, which would have consequences that Jason neither knows, nor is ready to face.
Power Potential: The potential for electromagnetic control in Jason’s vein is fairly vast, and has been vaguely covered in the earlier sections, but will be outlined here. The most obvious and apparent potential upgrades to Jason’s power would be his active range of absorption and transmission, and, more importantly, the ease of which he can absorb and transmit higher-frequency waves. At this point, anything above the visible spectrum is too difficult to use regularly; but with training, focus, and experience, Jason may one day be able to handle the entire EM spectrum with ease. Other potential places for perfection would include the controlled absorption of EM energy via electronic equipment, including, but not limited to, absorption without the necessity of touch, or even more useful, controlled amounts of absorption, as well as reduced range of electronic equipment interference, making him less of a hazard around others.
History: Jason Turk couldn’t say that he was born into an abusive childhood; his parents both loved him very much and treated him with as much care as possible. On the contrary, Jason was born into something that, in many cases, could be worse: He was the child of a loveless marriage.
A classic case of ‘staying together for the kids’, Chris and Jeanine Turk were simply not happy with each other, and hadn’t been for some time. While they both loved their only son, they would fight constantly between themselves, and while it would never rise to physical violence, Jason was subjected to many, many heated arguments throughout his younger years, and on more than one occasion drifted off to sleep to the shrieks and screams of his parents at the climax of their arguments, over money, over love, over their future and the future of their kid. All too often did Jason hear the words “The second that boy graduates from high school, I am SO out of here,” and from both parents equally.
It wouldn’t take them quite so long to make good on that promise, although it was certainly not in the way either of them had expected.
Jason’s mutant gene had awakened very early in his life, charted back somewhere around his 6th birthday. However, he barely even knew what was happening. Suddenly, strange colors and patterns began to show up before his eyes, he would hear music or see images in his head, movies or newscasts and other strange things, and electronic equipment would stop working or break whenever he was around. His parents went through more computers, VCRs, and televisions in those early years, simply because young Jason could not put together that it was him that was destroying the equipment, but, as the years went on, began to understand. As he reached his teenage years, after long years of chastising for ‘breaking the TV’ or his parents worried that he was going crazy, or worse, somehow on drugs, because of his constant complaints of ‘seeing strange colors’ and ‘hearing music’, not to mention the months and months it took to convince his parents he was ‘just kidding’ when the ‘man in his head’ told him about the traffic accident on the freeway that day, he could feel something within himself beginning to grow and evolve. As he started to understand himself and his body a little more, he began experimenting, and found that those strange colors not only usually moved toward him a little, shifting to move in his direction as he walked, but if he reached out to them, either physically or mentally, he could pull in those patterns much more actively, and could feel them filling his body. Curious, he began to research things at the Buffalo Library, and, after reading a short excerpt on Electromagnetic Waves, began to realize, if only in part, what may have been going on.
It suddenly all became clear. The music, it was the radio. The images and movies? It was television signals. These things, widely broadcast over a simple frequency, these came to him almost naturally. He began, however, to try to ‘tune’ his mind to a different frequency, and before long, found himself picking up police scanners and telephone calls. As his teen years continued, Jason continued to perfect and come to terms with the strange things he could do, more or less in secret considering the unseen nature of almost all forms of electromagnetic waves save one. Even if they hadn’t been mostly invisible, Jason still wouldn’t have told anyone. He remembered his younger years, and how his parents, who had loved him so up until that point, had suddenly begun rebuking him for his outbursts, and worrying with dire seriousness that he had stumbled upon some stash of drugs. Jason simply couldn’t believe that they would, in his eyes, turn on him like that, and while he had not exactly reached the level of resenting them, he knew that, it was better for them to think he may be some kind of drug-addled crazy than to know the truth of the matter. Regardless of it all, though, they were his parents, and he couldn’t blame them for worrying about him, not in all good conscience, at least. They loved him, and he loved them.
Not long after his sixteenth birthday, disaster struck.
Within weeks of each other both Chris and Jeanine started feeling sick, and were both diagnosed with cancer. They were rushed to the hospital, but the cancer was rapidly accelerated, faster and harder than anything any doctor had seen previously. They allowed Jason to come in to observe during the surgery, and Jason, as worried as he was about his parents, rushed in, and his presence caused the various monitors and other electronics to go berserk, complicating the procedure and resulting in a few nearly-fatal misguided incisions. As a result, the doctors were unsure of the outcome, and decreed that the Turks would have to stay in intensive care for a good while, first to recover from any additional injuries caused during the electronic mishap, and then, hopefully, to have healed them enough to get back at the cancer before it spread any further. At this point, however, everyone knew the outlook was grim. When Jason, then, was checked for cancer, similarly, he broke down two different types of X-ray and CAT-scan machines before they set him loose, completely befuddled to why this would have happened. Not long after this, Jason’s hair began to fall out. Too mortified by this sudden change to delve too deeply into the reasoning, Jason quickly took a hair-clipper to his head and shaved the remaining hair off, too proud to let anyone other than his own hand be the cause of his baldness.
Jason, however, was no fool. He had long since figured out that he and electronics do not mix, and knew that, because of whatever strange ability he had, he had most likely cost his parents their lives, even if it only seemed to have cost him his hair somehow. Suddenly, all that hidden anger that Jason had been keeping held in his entire life began to seep through, unable to be held back. All the times Jason was forced to listen to his parents argue, all the times they would chastise him for something he could not help, that they weren’t smart enough to understand him, and more and more. Hate is infectious, and it was easy to turn the love he once had for his parents quickly became anger and disgust, and from there, it was even easier to turn that displeasure towards anything else in his life. The only thing that Jason could find that had never abandoned him where his powers. As everything else devolved, Jason found that his powers had only escalated, becoming the one constant that he felt like he could count on to always come to his aid. As was stated before, even when they took his parents’ lives, it only had taken his hair, which was, in his opinion, a small price to pay.
Jason, with both parents in hospital care, was sent to live with his aunt in distant Bayville, where he could hopefully be kept far enough away so as to dull the pain of his parents’ almost inevitable passing. He was recently enrolled at the high school there, and so, in between various counseling and therapy visits to ensure that his poor young psyche wasn’t damaged by his parents freak bouts of cancer, Jason will attend classes and hope to find his way through this strange new environment.
Other: One thing of note is that Jason constantly carries around a few packs of batteries with him if at all possible. If he ever finds himself running low on juice, so to speak, he can reach for the batteries and drain one or two, giving an admittedly small but sometimes important recharge, in order to keep him from falling into a hard fatigue.
Sample RP: Nancy smiled brightly at the airport, holding a big sign that read “Jason T.”
A few people emerged from the baggage claim, the young, surly teen amongst them. When his eyes lit upon his aunt, his normal sour look became an even deeper frown. “Aunt Nance, please. I see you every holiday, we know what we look like.”
Nancy laughed excitedly, “Oh, I know, Jason,” she said good-naturedly, “I just… well, I just always wanted to hold up a sign at an airport.”
Jason groaned, and shook his head. When the feeling of his hair didn’t seem to shake with him, Jason’s hand shot up to his head uncertainly, until the feeling of prickly, barely-grown-in hair reminded him of the change he, himself, had endured lately, and his frown managed to deepen further. “I noticed your new ‘do,” Nancy said, giving him a pat on his jacketed shoulder. “Looks good on you, sport.”
“Aunt Nance, please, you’re gonna give me a headache,” Jason said, without a smile or any other indication he was joking. Nancy just shook her head and smiled blankly.
Underneath it all, the woman was about to blow. She loved her sister dearly, and would do anything for her, but the rest of the family had been talking. They all knew how Jason may have been a little ‘touched’ from the get-go, and now, with his parents the way they are, he had been nothing but trouble. Unbeknownst to the boy, he wasn’t getting carted over to Bayville just because he needed a legal guardian, but Nancy was also chosen specifically because her location, Bayville, was the closest place they could find that was almost guaranteed to be a calm, safe environment for the boy to graduate and grow up in. In the few short days that Jason had attempted to go back to school, he had already gotten in four fights and was a hair’s breadth from being expelled, until the principal had caught wind of his family issues. And so, due to her decision to live in a peaceful suburb instead of a bustling city, Nancy Velway had been the one so ‘lucky’ as to take care of the family tree’s newest black sheep.
The two climbed into Nancy’s suburban, with Jason taking great care not to touch any part of the frame with any uncovered skin, knowing from some bad experiences back home that, occasionally, touching the frame of a car with his hand was enough contact to conduct the electromagnetic energy of the battery and engine through the frame, and leave the car’s owner with a dead battery with no chance of jump-starting. They drove, in awkward silence, the short distance to Nancy’s home. She opened the door for Jason, and showed him to his room: an almost-empty joke of a guest bedroom, with nothing but a mattress, covered with a fitted sheet and some blankets, laying in the corner.
“I’m so sorry, Jason,” began the Aunt, beginning her sob story. “I just, we just had this guest room, but after Danny and I separated, and since we never had any kids, we just... never felt the need to furnish it. This is your room now, though, just feel free to do whatever you want with it. I’ll even pitch in to help get you a computer or a stereo or something if you-“
“No, no Aunt Nance, that’s more than fine,” Jason cut her off quickly, trying to sound polite but unwilling to hear any more of her words, especially if she wanted to try and give him things that he’d just break within the day. “This should be all I need right here. Just tell me this: you have wireless internet here?”
“Well, um... yes, I do,” Nancy said after a moment, having to think about whether or not she did. “Why?” She finally asked, curiosity overtaking her.
“Eh, just wondering, I guess,” Jason said, and turned to face the mattress. “I think I want to get some sleep.”
“Oh.” Nancy said, surprised at the sudden cold shoulder. “Well, you certainly need it, I’m sure. Get some rest, and I’ll talk to you in the morning?”
“Yeah, whatever,” Jason said, and laid down upon the mattress and blankets, not bothering to cover himself, as Nancy closed the door to his room. In only a few days, he’d have to go back to school, and in a world full of suburbanite punk kids. Jason grimaced before his eyes fluttered closed. This just wouldn’t end well, he knew it.
Activity: Um, my activity zones in and out, though generally if I have threads going, I’ll be replying to them. Regardless, you’ll always see me on Messenger of whichever sort and I’ll always be checking the site, but between work and school, I can get fairly hectic occasionally. I’ll try to mark any foreseen periods of busy-ness ahead of time so all are aware, however.