V1RU5 N1NJ4

 aka Alex Henderson First Appearance - Minor League #1 Member of - The Minors

Prowess 3 Coordination 5 Strength 3 Intellect 8 Awareness 4 Willpower 4

Stamina 7 Determination 2

Powers Flight Device 4 - Hoverboard Interface Device 1 - Cyberlink Blast Device 4 - Incapacit-X

Specialities Computers Expert Electronics Expert Pilot Expert Science (Chemistry) Science (Physics) Mechanics

Qualities Identity : 12-year-old meta-prodigy Catchphrase : Don't treat me like a kid! Catchphrase : ...and a pack of AA batteries Connections : Hacker network

Challenges Stigma: Trailer-park trash Weakness : Peanut allergy

Background
Alex is an average looking 12 year old boy. He is 1.54m (5’0”) in height and weighs 44 kilos (97 pounds). His medium-length blond hair often falls in front of his face. There are freckles just under his blue eyes.

Alex lived a fairly normal life in a trailer park on the outskirts of Liberty City, California. Two years ago that all changed when a large chunk of flaming piece debris crashed into his elementary school. The International Space Station had just exploded in orbit following a catastrophic failure of an experiment into radical new power source. The explosion showered the North American continent was radioactive debris, most of it crashing down onto the West Coast. It was a small miracle that the impact had happened during lunchtime when the children weren’t in lessons as the classroom block was hit and utterly obliterated. Although a number of people were seriously injured, no one was killed. Despite being close to the impact, Alex was very lucky to escape without any injuries.

That night, Alex couldn’t sleep and he lay awake into the early hours of the morning; listening to the sounds of sirens outside and the news reports filtering through the floor from the TV in the next room. As he stood at his bedroom window, looking out at the night sky, he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his head. Crying out, he fell to the floor, unconscious. He awoke several hours later in hospital, his parents having heard his cry and called 911. Lying in the hospital bed, his anxious parents by his side talking to the doctor, Alex realised something strange. He understood every word the doctor was saying. After several tests, during which Alex understood all the complex medical jargon, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. They eventually put his episode down to a delayed reaction to shock of the incident at the school.

Over the next few months, Alex’s performance at school slowly improved; he went from a poor student, to a good student, to an exceptional student.

Six months ago, he suffered another series of headaches after which he found he understood science and engineering principals on an intuitive level. Very soon, he began to experiment with principals and theories that were well beyond a normal twelve-year-old. By this time, stories of people with strange abilities had become common place in the news and it didn’t take an IQ of 300 to work out where his new mental abilities had come from.

Alex has kept his abilities secret from everyone, including his own family.

Personality
Alex can be mischievous, impulsive and reckless, and he loves practical jokes. He often doesn’t think of the consequences of his actions. In most ways, he is a normal twelve-year-old.

Powers and Gadgets
Alex has no actual superpowers of his own except for an exceptionally high intelligence that makes him a metaprodigy when it comes to science and engineering. As far as Alex can determine, when he passed out something happened to his brain. If the human brain is like a computer, then during those few hours his memory was defragmented, the transfer rate of his neural pathways increased, new dedicated processors installed in various regions and an entirely new operating system was installed. His brain was running faster and processed information more efficiently than before.

His first invention was made for self defence. After getting mugged and beaten up on the way home for school, and seeing how ineffective the police were, he decided to deal with the thugs in his own way. Researching how pepper spray and mace worked, he created his own super strength, fast acting formula. Guaranteed to incapacitate anyone with zero chance of allergic reaction. Alex playfully called his new invention “Incapacit-X”. He loaded it into an old aerosol canister and went to confront the thugs with his hood up and wearing a mask. Using himself as bait, he lured the thugs to a secluded location, and as they moved in to attack he struck by spraying them all in the face. It worked, the thugs were incapacitated. Some of them were unconscious, some writhing around on the floor in pain. Kicking their still conscious leader in the groin, he took their wallets and ran off.

Resembling the bastard love child of a Sega Saturn and a Nintendo Gamecube, his “Cyberlink” allows him to wirelessly hack into and take control of computer systems, even if they are not wireless-enabled. As well as being a powerful portable computer it has a holographic display, voice activated controls, mobile phone and GPS functions, a VR interface (through Alex’s goggles) and accepts Gameboy and PSP cartridges. Naturally, the Cyberlink runs a customised version of Linux that Alex coded himself. One of its most distinguishing characteristics is its onboard artificial intelligence. Modelled on an upper class British butler, Link was constructed from code taken from a number of sources, cobbled together with a voice recognition and voice synthesis module slapped on that was “borrowed” from AT&T. Link has more common sense than Alex, often acting as a voice of reason and helping the hyperactive boy concentrate on his homework although Link consistently refuses to do it for him despite repeated attempts at reprogramming.

Alex’s board isn't a traditional skateboard either. The wheels have been replaced by a pair of anti-grav generators, each powered by four AA batteries and controlled through a wireless link via Alex’s Cyberlink. It is capable of flying at 100mph up to an altitude of two miles. Theoretically it could go higher, but that would require special clothing and an oxygen supply.

The first time Alex experimented with the board, he almost broke his neck after getting thrown off. At high speed, it was almost impossible to stay on the board due to wind resistance and the g-forces involved in high-speed manoeuvres. Alex solved this by turning the top of the board into a pseudo-magnet. Unlike a normal magnet which only attracts ferrous metals, a pseudo-magnet attracts whatever material it’s designed to. In this case, the strips of duct tape on the inside soles of Alex’s shoes.

Adventure Ideas

 * When the ISS exploded in orbit, much of the debris burned up on re-entry. However, there was something strange about the debris that hit the ground, there was too much of it. In fact, when the authorities gathered together what debris they were able to recover, they realised there was enough to make a station three times the size of the ISS, and that's just what made it to the ground. Some of the debris was made of incredibly advanced alloys whose manufacture was not yet perfected, others seemed designed to fit a station of completely alien design. Furthermore, since the explosion, there has been an increase in unusual climatic, environmental and seismic activity in Liberty City and its surrounding areas. This may be linked to the detection of an unusual region of dense electromagnetic energy in a fixed geosynchronous orbit above LC. Unusual in that it is orbiting at 350km above the city, well below the usual geostationary orbit of 35'000 km, and disturbingly coinciding with the orbital height and position of the ISS at the moment of the explosion.

Notes: 45 point build, build by blaster219, art by blaster219 (original can be found on DeviantArt)