Edited KW Application

[walkingballpit]

( OOC INFORMATION )
name: Marie
age: I was born in the 80s. Good lord let's not nail it down more than that.
contact: seemarierun on plurk
other characters: No one

( IC INFORMATION )
name: Robbie Baldwin (Technically Robert Baldwin; however, his estranged father is the only one who ever calls him Robert, and I'd prefer the tag read Robbie).
canon point: New Warriors, volume 5 issue 5. Robbie has been working to re-form the New Warriors team, and they have finished mopping up Mount Wundagore after fighting with agents of the High Evolutionary. Formerly allies of mutants and superhumans, the High Evolutionary decided it was time to purify the earth by eliminating anyone that wasn't a baseline human. Mount Wundagore has been teleported to the middle of New York Harbor. It's a whole new New Warriors: mistakes will still be made.

setting:
The Marvel 616 universe is meant to be much like the world that we know, and it is nearly always set in the present day. There is nothing that exists in our world that does not exist in 616. However, there are numerous additions to it. The primary one is that super-humans, superheroes, and super-villains exist. Others are less noticeable, such as the fictional mutant homeland Genosha or the American government's spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and its Canadian counterpart Department K, both of which tend to be the government's way of working with or against super-humans.

These super-humans have supernatural abilities, ranging from the expected flight and super strength combination to the absurd, like having a digestive tract comprised of two sentient maggots. They have come about these abilities in various ways.

First, there are the aliens. The Skrull and Kree are two of the more famous; these races are constantly at war with each other. Skrulls, at one point, took a fancy to impersonating super-humans of Earth in an attempt to take over the world. It didn't work. There was a Kree Captain Marvel though, and there have been good Skrulls too. In the overall 616 universe, there are more alien species, but these are the ones that Robbie has some familiarity with.

Until several years ago, the most common way to find oneself with a superpower was to have been born a mutant, a human with an "X-gene." While some physical mutations caused by this gene appear at birth, most mutants first realize their status during puberty while under great stress.

As for the rest of the super-humans, some were experimented on, like Captain America. Many were created by scientific accidents in which they were drenched in radioactive rays/materials/weird energy/bug bites, and others are magically attuned or demigods. Still more can't claim the abilities as their own, having instead used their technological genius to create gadgets that let them fly or shoot missiles or ray beams.

Most heroes don't operate completely solo. There are a lot of teams running around the universe. Mutants tend to run with the X-Men (or any of the umpteen teams that start with X-) who fight on behalf of mutants - or fight against ones that sought to use their powers for evil. The do-gooding of the rest of the super-humans tend to gravitate to the more legally recognized, government-chartered Avengers. The Avengers exists to fight off huge, world-threatening Bad Guys that none of them could take on their own. There are always several independent groups floating around the 616-verse. Robbie has always been affiliated with one of the more infamous ones: the New Warriors.

The New Warriors have been formed and reformed several times in canon, but there are a few constants: they have no idea what they're doing. Mistakes are made. The biggest 'mistake' lead to a supervillian blowing up with enough force to knock down several hundred square yards of buildings in Stamford, CT, killing 612 civilians in the process. The New Warriors went from being that vaguely clueless New York teenager team to notorious.

The fallout from that day had lasting consequences. The U.S. government hurriedly pushed through the Superhero Registration Act, a piece of legislation that forced all superhumans who wanted to fight crime to register their real names and addresses with the government or else deemed them unregistered combatants (effectively, terrorists with no rights). The public blamed the New Warriors for the tragedy as much as they did the villains, because they hadn't protected the people and because it looked terrible that they had been doing it for a reality TV show. The law has since been repealed.

A side effect of the SRA was that a number of supervillains who registered were granted pardons in exchange for becoming government controlled heroes. Some of them staffed the Camp H.A.M.M.O.N.D. training facility for registered heroes that were deemed insufficiently trained; others were placed on teams as a part of the related 50 State Initiative, which was meant to place a superhero team in every state.

The squad in Colorado, the Thunderbolts, is a prime example of how this was a very bad idea. The Thunderbolts were a team comprised mainly of 'reformed' supervillains who were controlled in various ways (electric shocks, drugs, microscopic controlling robots in their blood stream) and took down unregistered superheroes in brutal ways. The T-bolts were under the leadership of a similarly controlled Norman Osborn while Robbie was with the team.



personality:

Note: This version of the personality is incomplete, in order for it to be read by everyone comfortably.

Robbie had a decent start to his life, growing up in Springdale, CT. It wasn't idyllic, but it was far from traumatic. His parents, Justin and Madeline, were a district attorney and a soap opera actress, and Robbie had friends, decent grades, an after-school job, and a sunny personality. The only thing that was amiss is that his parents argued nearly constantly, sometimes about him, and Robbie played up the role of rebellious teenager with his ripped jeans and hard rock to get their attention. In spite of this, he was, all in all, a good kid. He made quips, was always there to lend a hand, and was fun to be around. He managed to be carefree without being flippant. Things like his parents' divorce and a friend's arrest for murder didn't leave him unscathed, but they didn't sink him into depression.

He was only 15 when there was a lab accident at his afterschool job that granted him superpowers. Everyone always has their own reasons for wanting to be a superhero. Robbie is, at his core, a very good person with decent enough morals. He might help steal a Quinjet from the Avengers, but they're stealing it for a rescue mission, so it all works out. Part of this is due to the influence of his district attorney father, who was constantly pushing him to be a lawyer. However, even Robbie will admit that his real reason for being a superhero was because he was looking for the positive attention that he never got at home.

The reality tv show fed into this, as well. People outside of New York City and Springdale knew who he was. He was famous. He got fanmail and free hugs from grateful citizens, and Robbie was making a difference in the world. He loved it.

The Stamford incident and what followed it took a tremendous toll on him. At first, he did not believe that what happened was in any way his fault. Yes, they'd rushed into a fight, and he'd said that this episode would be their biggest yet. However, it was still a house full of supervillains. Someone had to capture them before someone got hurt. It was an ironic, but unfunny, tragedy that attempting to bring them in was what caused people to get hurt, and, while sorry that it happened, he dug in his heels stubbornly and refused to accept a plea bargain when he felt he had nothing to plea for.

However, it was beaten into him, both metaphorically and literally, that it was his fault. His lawyer, Jen Walters (She-Hulk), who he knew, told him it was. The guards at the prison pummeled him for it, as did other inmates. Baby-killer became his new nickname. He was sent to prison in the Negative Zone, a dimension that saps the will to live. He was shot. He saw the protests against him with his own eyes. He was the most hated man in America.

The one contact he had with his parents since the Stamford massacre was soul-crushing. His mother visited him in prison, where she berated him for refusing to own up to what he did and swore that she was never coming back. It hit him hard, as she had always been the more sympathetic parent to his goals in life and more accepting of his being a superhero. His father refused to visit him and frequently disparaged Robbie to the press. He hasn't seen either of them since.

In the end, he did more than accept culpability. He succumbed to the guilt and let it completely overwhelm the rest of his personality. He was miserable, and he didn't even think that he deserved to be that that much. Robbie took on a new superhero persona, Penance, and had a armored costume made for himself. The only thing that he cared about was atoning for his sins, and his life revolved around making amends. No one can handle the amount of stress he put on himself, and, during his nearly yearlong (in canon) stint with the T-bolts, Robbie descended into mental illness.

The initial shock of Stamford faded, but he was diagnosed with PTSD and had a complete mental breakdown in public. He grew obsessed with numbers that surrounded the incident - multiples of 612, the atomic weight of nitrogen, etc.

He went AWOL from the program temporarily to hunt down Nitro, who had survived, and tortured the man for several hours. That he could justify it in his mind spoke volumes about how damaged he had become (although, in his favor, he did not kill Nitro).

The release of seeing the actual perpetrator finally suffer for his crimes and some time spent talking with superhero psychiatrist Doc Samson, lead to a short-lived period of improvement in his mental state. It didn't last long. Angry that he had attacked her while she was under a telepath's control, Thunderbolt team leader Moonstone drugged Robbie with power-suppressing medications and "enough tranqs to put down a rhino." He was removed from the Thunderbolts program for mental instability and taken to the headquarters of the Initiative for "treatment". When he came to, he remembered only that his name was Penance and he'd murdered hundreds. Norman Osborn, by now the head of the Initiative, ordered the therapist there to keep him in this barely functional state, in hopes of having a malleable, living weapon to point and shoot.

He's been on the road to mental recovery since he left the Initiative. After he regained his memory and was no longer in a detrimental atmosphere, he began to heal. During his stint as a teacher at the Avengers Academy, he was still showing cracks. The Avengers were concerned that he was too rough in training sessions with the students, and Robbie would sometimes react harshly when things went badly. For example, when a student (Hazmat) used a radiation blast in the training room, Robbie started yelling at her, asking if she wanted to wake up shaking from nightmares full of screaming and the smell of burnt pork.

He still wants to atone for what happened, even though his life no longer revolves around it. Robbie spent considerable amounts of time volunteering with a charity started by one of the survivors. He tormented himself by going on the internet and reading what people had to say about him recently online.

During one visit to Stamford, he was recognized after defending the city against super villains and subsequently attacked by civilians still wanting revenge. Notably, he didn't put up much of a fight and thought about how he deserved this as he was slipping into unconsciousness.

He was the sole hero present at another disaster in St. John's, Newfoundland. Robbie went toe-to-toe Attuma, an Atlantean heavy weight who would be a tough fight even when he WASN'T wielding a power-enhancing Mjolnir-esque weapon. He was unable to prevent the tidal wave that destroyed the city, but, being in the smartphone era, every step of the way was posted online by the citizens. He learned a lot that day, about the resilience of humanity and how ordinary people could become heroes when they faced the worst that the world could throw at them. Robbie, too, posted videos to Youtube explaining this. While it didn't completely erase the animosity, polls after that day showed that 70% of Americans had, in fact, forgiven him for his role in Stamford. It alleviated some of his burden.

Nowadays, he's a mix of the before and after of Stamford. On the surface, Robbie is back to his old self, but he's trying too hard. He's too much of a chatterbug now and he seems to be "on" almost all the time. For example, he's auditioning catchphrase battle cries again, something that he hasn't done since the reality show was in production, and strings several of them together in the same fight until he's ordered to shut up.

In public, he can be over-the-top with his cheery enthusiasm, but it's so breezy and flippant that it doesn't hold up to close inspection. For example, when confronted with the knowledge that the man he attacked (because he looked like a demon) was actually a superhero, he said "Look, mistakes were made." It's hardly something that makes sense, given that he's been dragging around the weight of his last mistake for years, but it is the sort of joking remark he would have made when he was young.

As a result of this, people tend to treat him with bewildered amusement or outright exasperation, and he doesn't care whether it's because they think he's funny or they think he's an idiot. Anything is better than being treated like you're about to break or already broken. The role of the class clown is safe and familiar, and he would rather command attention than simply have it thrust on him.

His sudden onsets of seriousness that he first showed while teaching are still present. When one teammate hits another with an energy blast to demonstrate the latter's ability to eat energy, he yells at her, asking her if she was insane. These serious moments seem few and far between, and they always have similar triggers (Stamford, heroes using too much power, heroes walking away from their duty).

In the last issue, when demigod teammate Hummingbird (Aracely Penalba) was able to read his mind, his mental image of himself was that of Penance. He hasn't forgiven himself, no matter what he says. He smooths it over aloud, explaining to the group that he was in a bad place after Stamford, but that he's okay now. When Aracely presses the subject, Robbie makes it sound like she's the one with problems ("You kinda live in your own world, don't you?"). However, the entire time this conversation is happening, mentally he is warning her to stay out of his head, to never speak of this to anyone, and that this is the only time that he will ask her nicely.

Final note: Generally speaking, the writer of New Warriors volume 5 seems to be trying to construct a better balance of the comics clusterfuck that has been made of Robbie's character, incorporating the original personality with the damages done by plots of recent years. I've included everything here, along with some personal history to help explain the why behind the changes, because all of it will effect how he's being played. In a nutshell, I will play him as generally the lighter, happy-go-lucky personality, with the Speedball routine only being dropped in specific circumstances (as detailed above, what brings about the more serious/shouty moments) or with close CR that won't let him escape the darker topics.

powers and abilities:
Robbie has access to other dimension of kinetic energy, which he is able to channel. He can manifest this in several, one with a predominantly orange energy signature (his traditional Speedball powers) and the other blue (his powers developed later as Penance).

Historically as Speedball, he is capable of generating a kinetic energy shield and, in fact, instinctively does so whenever he is hit above a certain force level. It used to be so uncontrolled that a touch, even snapping his fingers, could set it off. The downside to this field is that whatever hit him is ricocheted back to where it came from with the same force, and Robbie is sent flinging off in the other direction, making him the equivalent of a human rubber/wrecking ball. He refers to this as bouncing. He is very good at controlling his rebounds and ... not terrible at controlling where the things that were hitting him go, provided he knows they're coming.

The upside to the field is that he is incredibly hard to injure, bulletproof, etc. Robbie has survived being thrown at a wall at 400 mph, headfirst. The field is generally orange, as are the bubbles of energy that he can generate (although they can be multi-colored like Skittles). These energy bubbles can be used for attacks, to cushion someone's fall, or to turn a dance floor into a ball pit.

After Stamford, it was theorized that Robbie had "burnt out" his kinetic powers with the effort that it took to survive the blast. In reality, it was more like his mind was suppressing them. His powers manifested again in another way; now with a blue energy signature, he was capable of generating hyperkinetic shockwaves, blasts and shields. He had never been much of a high-damage dealer as Speedball, but, as Penance, his attack power was devastating and near Hulk-levels. When he is using his new powers, he does not bounce. Instead, his energy field allows him to levitate.

As he healed, his original powers returned, and he is able to access both of them, often using them in tandem. He learned how to store up the blue energy before a fight. Due to his conversation with Aracely in New Warriors, it appears that he is still in the habit of stockpiling this power.

Finally, there are a few side effects of his Speedball powers. When he's using his original power set, his hair wiggles around like Jell-O, and his voice sounds "hollow". Also, his Speedball costume isn't one that he actually takes off. It's either made from kinetic energy or stored in the other-dimensional energy field. Either way, he can summon it without changing and return to the clothes that he was wearing.

( GAME INFORMATION )
infinity gem:

The time gem is the most appropriate by far. Robbie's entire character arc since 2006 has stemmed from the events in Stamford, CT, the day that 612 people were killed. He has spent months/years (comic book timelines are compressed) dealing with the guilt and shame he carries with him to this day. It has driven everything he has done - developing PTSD and depression, torturing a villain, teaching at a school, volunteering at a Stamford charity started by one of the mothers of the Stamford dead, reforming the New Warriors. It has all been in an attempt to apologize, and it is still not enough. To say that Robbie has regrets is a colossal understatement. There is no other gem choice.

power:
Precognition would allow him to torment himself by trying to make everything end well.

housing:
6 and 8. Robbie was obsessed with numbers for sometime - 6 is the first digit of the number of people who died and 8 is nearest to the cube root of the number who died. If neither of these numbers work, I'm really not concerned where he goes.

inventory:
1. His normal clothes.
2. a smartphone
3. His uniform (see above: weird power costume thing)
4. His wallet
5. A receipt for the tab at a bar in Transia, including the cost of a new door.

thread sample:
A muse box post - written with this pullpoint in mind.
A Dear Mun post - again, a similar pullpoint.

log sample:

There were some thoughts that everyone had at some point in their lives. At this moment, Robbie Baldwin was thinking on of those thoughts: why am I involved?

He had never signed up for this cosmic gig, and being pressed into service without his free consent, again, didn't sit will with him. It didn't matter how the natives wanted to explain it - they were housing him in a barracks. That told Robbie more than he'd wanted to hear.

But that was only a portion of the answer to the current question. It didn't fully explain why he was ricocheting around in a bar. He had only wanted to find something to do that didn't involve sulking in his quarters. He thought he'd get to know some of the locals. He could have gone shopping, he mused in hindsight, or maybe found out if they had some sort of space library. Caught up on intergalactic affairs, since he was apparently going to be a part of them.

Heh. There was definitely an intergalactic affair going on below him. There had to be three different species in the thick of it.

Instead of a more useful opportunity, he had gotten a recommendation for a place called Starlin's and headed there. For ten minutes, he had amused and bemused by it all. The music, the people, and the drinks had all been so different that he hadn't paid any attention to what was going on at any of the other tables. He could see why Rich liked it out here; it made him feel instantly more cultured and worldly. That is, it did until a heavy piece of furniture had whacked him on the back and sent him flying. A brawl had erupted, destroying the slick, extraterrestrial ambiance.

One rebound off a wall had sent him up to the ceiling, and he bounced around awhile, out of the melee's reach, until he sorted out who was on what side. It wasn't an easy task, as everyone seemed to be fighting on the side of 'myself,' and twenty-some fighters couldn't all be in the right. He's never understood the appeal of getting into a slugfest to let off steam. If he's going to be involved in this, it's going to be to help end it quickly and with the least amount of injuries.

For his part, Robbie decided that he was on the 'side' of the bars' employees, and he dive bombed a group of alien thugs that had done the most damage. They were accosting the bartender.

"Come on, guys," he cajoled them as they laid on the floor. It wasn't an excuse to get attacked, he told himself. Someone was going to be their target, and he didn't know if the bartender could take a hit the way he could. "The drinks packed more of a punch than me."

He grinned as they started to get up, all four of them glaring at him now. They had forgotten all about the barkeep, and that had been the real goal. Now, he just had to convince them that all this fighting was silly, which... didn't look very likely, the way they were stalking towards him. "You guys wouldn't hit a Terran in goggles, would you?"

Evidently, the short, stocky one didn't like Earth people, because he growled as he slammed his fist into Robbie's gut. Robbie was flung back against the bar and rebounded into the alien, knocking him back over. "Guess you would. Who's next?"