Name:
Jonathan Walker

Age:
17

Gender:
Male

Personality:
Jonathan is polite, friendly, and helpful. He is, however, not easily taken advantage of, as he always pushes for his relationships to be a healthy give and take. He demands that in exchange for favors and gifts, he be allowed to work off his perceived debts, and to him, carrying a healthy balance is everything.

Jonathan is a deep thinker despite not being particularly bright. He always eventually comes around to the same conclusions other, smarter people come to - though it may take hours, or even weeks and months. He is painfully aware of his lack of brains and prefers to let others do the thinking for him in the short term, only questioning things if they go against his values of respect and balance.

Jonathan always pushes himself, and will gladly step up to any challenge presented to him, including those that are far beyond his abilities. As far as he's concerned, getting himself beaten to a pulp is a learning experience. He is an ambivert, and is just as happy alone as in a crowd. He tries to understand what loneliness is and pushes for those who seem alone to join him, but it just sorta comes off as being annoying to some.

In battle, he is enthusiastic, even when being torn to pieces. Good sportsmanship is a part of his soul to a fault, and he doesn't seem to recognize the concepts of "good" and "evil" or "right" and "wrong", beyond showing respect to one's opponent and treating everyone fairly.

Backstory:
Jonathan comes from a relatively wealthy family living in rural New York. While his childhood home was no mansion, it was fairly large, with more than enough space for him and his four siblings to explore the world safely. He took mixed martial arts lessons with his two brothers for years, which developed his sense of respect, and with his family's encouragement, he became the model of good citizenship. A number of 'awards' were granted to him for his 'leadership skills' - which basically amounted to trying to stop arguments between classmates in school, and nothing else, so his ability to lead is questionable at best.

In his earlier teens, Jonathan found and lost love on a regular basis. Relationship after relationship failed because he gave too much and was taken advantage of. Instead of hardening beyond reason, though, his experiences pushed him gently towards confidence and self respect. At one point there was a rivalry with the boy he considered to be his best friend - Carson McDougall, who had a bad habit of trying to take advantage of Jonathan's kindness. The friendship ended in a fistfight after Jonathan's girlfriend at the time was discovered behind the school stadium bleachers with Carson.

His constant sparring with his friends led to the discovery of his strange manifestation of Wavecaster powers, and he transferred to the Institute after his discovery by local police. It was a peaceful conversation, only prompted by a neighbor being worried by Jonathan suplexing his brother.

Appearance:
Jonathan stands at 6'4", and weighs nearly two hundred and eighty pounds in nearly pure muscle. He has a clean-cut square jawline and shallow cheekbones standing beneath a short Roman style nose and hazel eyes. Bushy black eyebrows sit low on his face, with wavy and curly black hair slicked back with an almost comical volume of hair gel. His arms and chest are comically oversized compared to the rest of his body.

Jonathan generally dresses nicely, as he took his fashion stylings from his father, who took his style from his father before him. As such, he wears old-style sporting gear - a tweed sporting jacket over a button-down shirt, with brown slacks supported by suspenders. He wears a differently colored English flat cap upon his head every day.

Equipment:
A fine ballpoint pen.
Numerous hats and tweed jackets.
A briefcase with all of his study supplies and copies of important paperwork, including a passport and birth certificate.
Coins. Lots of them.

Abilities:
Jonathan can bench press up to 400lbs., and can deadlift up to 600. He is physically monstrous.
He is a disciplined student and almost never misses a day of class or an assignment.
Overwhelming optimism.
Agility. Jonathan can turn and move his own body surprisingly quickly for a man of his size, though running isn't an option due to sheer mass -- it would wreak havoc on his knees.

Channeller category:
Alternative

Description of power:
Kinetic energy modification. Jonathan can expend energy to change the momentum of any object he comes into direct contact with. His current lack of understanding of his power means that he can only propel entire objects, however, rather than propelling individual parts. If he were to try to propel, say, someone's arm, the entire person would be launched, though this may change in the distant future.

While the applications are extensive, his power is limited by his own endurance and reaction time, and it takes a degree concentration to pull anything off. Calculating the appropriate path for his energy to impart a force takes roughly one second, including his base reaction time, though years of practice are slowly improving this. Annoyingly, he has discovered that imparting a force to another living creature takes significant extra effort if they aren't mentally willing to be moved (which they generally aren't).

Names/descriptions of moves:

Catapult: Jonathan touches a large object - a person, a car, whatever - and sends them flying in whichever direction he pleases. The more massive the object is and the greater the difference between current and intended momentum is, the greater the energy required to throw it.

Coin Toss: A penny, held between his thumb and forefinger, is flung at a variable velocity, dependent on how much energy he puts into it. He's getting surprisingly good with his aim, though wind and air friction throw his shots wildly off course and limit effective range.

NOPE: He catches an object hurtling towards him and either slows or completely halts it. So far, he's discovered that this applies to anything physical, as well as any solid blasts hurled at him such as fireballs, so long as he can wrap his head around it as being one coherent object - and can actually react to it quickly enough. Mass and momentum influence energy requirements.

Future Techniques:

Collapse: Jonathan, having learned to think of objects as the sum of their parts rather than entire objects, grabs an object with both hands and propels the two parts towards one another in a crushing motion.

Rip: Similar to Collapse, Jonathan instead propels parts away from one another.

Bombing Run: Jonathan has finally figured out that, yes, he himself is an object that he can throw. He does so and bombards a target from above with whatever he can get his hands on.

ABSOLUTELY NOPE: Instead of merely slowing down or stopping an energy blast, Jonathan focuses his efforts on flinging it back at its owner against their will. This takes an enormous amount of concentration to do, and as such, he only does it with truly massive attacks.

Dustbowl: Jonathan stomps on the ground, flinging a section of the ground upwards to distract his opponents.

Character theme song:
youtube.com/watch?v=_F5459jCtuM

Other:
Jonathan is a would-be artist. He's too clumsy with his hands to make anything particularly pretty, but that creativity comes out in other outlets, such as in combat.

Name:
Brock Van de Vate

Age:
19

Gender:
Male

Personality:
Brock is not kind-hearted, and gets a genuine rush out of kicking people while they're down. He actively goes out of his way to prove that he is the best at everything and is not above using cheap, dirty tricks to do so - up to and including turning a simple sparring match into a near-lethal fight simply to gain an edge. Brock feels the intense urge to lead and stands up to take control of any group activities he is involved in in order to feed his own ego.

He is a malignant narcissist of the worst type - specifically, a competent malignant narcissist. He plots, he schemes, and he genuinely believes himself to be better and smarter than anybody else. The concept that he may merely be an equal is offensive to him, and suggesting anything of the sort turns him towards relentless bullying. He is, however, not hot-tempered. His hatred runs deeper and colder than that. Failure is his greatest fear, followed shortly by public humiliation. Everything is a competition, even when it very clearly shouldn't be.

That said, he isn't evil, per se. His worldview is merely twisted, and redemption is definitely possible, provided he can be convinced that not being a massive asshat is somehow good for him.

He has a soft spot for small, furry animals. Animals can't shit-talk him, after all.

Backstory:
Brock's biological parents were decidedly not good people. They were drug addicts and thugs with a penchant for petty squabbling and ruining one anothers' lives over perceived injuries. Brock was saved from growing up as an even worse person by their arrest in Chicago, prompted by an anonymous tip and drug dogs revealing the presence of a meth lab. They were declared unfit and Brock was sent into the foster care system.

His personality problems made it difficult to fit him into a family for more than a year or two, and his headstrong nature often resulted in foster parents sending him back to the State. There was no stability, and oftentimes, no love in his childhood, as he was constantly thrown from one group to the next. Without the support of a stable family, Brock's academics in school suffered horribly, and he was held back in the third grade and sixth grade respectively. At 14, he ran away from what were arguably the best foster parents he had ever had, in search of something that worked - and he joined a gang of local hooligans.

His powers developed shortly after he joined the group, and Skinny, Fat Vinny, Bart, and Trey began to look up to him as a sort of leader. The group moved into extorting local families and drug dealing for money in inner Chicago. At 16, his group encroached on the territory of the Gangster Disciples, leading to a low-grade turf war in which his powers came to a head, pushing his group to the forefront of criminal activity in the area. At 18, he was finally apprehended by police, and the group was disbanded. Given his power, he was sent immediately to the Institute, as rehabilitation was vastly preferable to having a Channeller organizing others in prison.

He is older than the majority of students due to his academic failures in the past and his relative lack of power development.

Appearance:
Brock is tall, slender, athletic. Not particularly handsome, though, due to the scars covering his body from years of crime. Cuts from broken glass and knives and some gunshot scars cover his torso, with a slight indented line running across his forehead from having taken a baseball bat to the head without medical attention years back.

He is blonde, with wavy, long hair pulled back in a ponytail, and wide ice blue eyes. High and sharp cheekbones sit on either side of a wide nose, and he wears a rough blonde beard at all times - shaven down to a few millimeters.

His dress style is inspired by his 'hood' activities - a blood red hoodie over black skinny jeans, and heavy leather boots. On occasion, he's seen wearing a baseball cap and Douchebag™ aviator sunglasses.

Equipment:
A broad sheet newspaper, a full water bottle, and a bag of pennies.
A switchblade.
Deep pockets.
Expensive running shoes.

Abilities:
Brock is very athletic. He runs fast, jumps high, and climbs well, due to his experience as a Chicago gangster - though not nearly to the degree of an Augmenter.
Moderate strength - Brock hits the gym sometimes, so while he isn't a total meathead, he isn't exactly unhealthy.
Emotional manipulation - less socially aware people seem to be somewhat enamored by his flashy style and charisma. He twists this to his advantage.

Channeller category:
Wavecaster

Description of power:
Brock drains thermal energy from the environment to fuel his attacks, and he has turned that drain of energy into a technique of its own. Temperatures drop sharply in an area when he 'charges' up, and he unleashes a torrent of pure heat at will. He can only pull directly heat out of the air, at the moment, though he may learn to drain heat some other way.

The more heat he sucks from the area, the brighter his veins glow.

Names/descriptions of moves:
One: The space surrounding Brock frosts over as the temperature drops well below zero degrees, and his body begins to glow. The longer he performs this technique, the larger the space grows, and he can theoretically completely freeze an entire room if given enough time.

Two: Brock's heat has built up sufficiently for the air nearby to shimmer. Touching him without insulated clothing is extremely inadvisable at this point, and he's starting to lose heat rapidly. This is often a setup for a third stage, though he can and often has chosen to simply tackle people to expose them to the burn.

Granny's Oven: Brock's heat is released as a narrow, directed stream, heating air up. Nearby air along the stream ignites in a beamlike burst of light, but convection carries the remaining heat much further at roughly ten to twenty meters per second, dependent upon the strength of the heat. Focusing the field is difficult without concentration, so if distracted or in severe pain, it may balloon out to a wider and less intense cone.

Given the nature of the attack, anything that disrupts the air along the stream's path will bleed heat away from it, potentially rendering it harmless (if uncomfortable).

Conflagrate: Brock releases his built up heat and pressure in a large, unfocused blast wave. It flashes out from his body in all directions, potentially charring nearby objects out to ten meters, and dropping in intensity to nothingness over twenty further meters. The more energy he puts into it, the more intense the heat is, but no matter what he does, he can't seem to increase its effective range.

Piggy Snack: Brock spins his heat into a tiny, self-sustaining, shimmering toroid of blazing plasma and throws it at a target. The size of the burning donut is dependent upon how much energy he puts into it. On impact with anything, the donut is disrupted and splashes into an intense burst of non-concussive flame, capable of causing severe burns at the point of impact. More energy leads to a larger donut and a bigger blast at the cost of being easier to disrupt or blow off course.

Future Techniques:
Freezerburn: Brock narrows his field of cold to a single line, extending from himself to his intended target. Temperature sharply drops and freezes the point of impact, followed by Brock reversing this drain into a flash of fire. With sustained concentration, Brock can change the direction of this beam and continually pulse between freezing and burning in rapid succession. Do not watch Brock during this technique if you have epilepsy - the constant flashing isn't very good for the eyes.

Flash Storm: Brock extends the concept of Freezerburn and rapidly alternates the temperature of a large field. This is by far the most intense technique that he has, and the rubberbanding between freezing and burning takes a massive toll on his own health.

Character theme song:
youtube.com/watch?v=vkOJ9uNj9EY

Other:
Brock is one of the top sources of illicit substances in the school, yet somehow he's never where the evidence is.

Name:
Daler Ghumman

Age:
88

Gender:
Male

Personality:
Daler Ghumman is a cranky old man in the real world. All he wants to do is have his three meals a day, meditate, and sleep. Politics and cataclysms aren't his problem and he'd much rather simply turn over and go back to sleep than interfere in worldly problems.

When he's not being a grump, he's rather kindly and both listens and grants advice to those who come to see him. This is usually during his meals. Even when he's upset, though, he listens to others and mulls over their words in his head until he can come up with a suitable answer - and an apology for any misbehavior on his part.

His youth is long behind him, but he still remembers it well, along with all of the drama, love, and pain that came with it. Despite decades of meditation, he hasn't reached enlightenment and as far as he's concerned, the day he reaches that point is the day he dies. He's completely okay with that and as such does not fear death.

Backstory:
Daler Ghumman was born to a poor farming family in the Doaba district of Punjab, India. He had twelve siblings, all of whom assisted with labor around the farm. An abusive father drove them to work as hard as possible at all times at the cost of their feelings of self worth, and by the time Daler was twelve years old, he was completely broken. In his depression, Daler regularly found himself sleeping rather than playing with other children, and over time, his dreams came to feel more real than the outer world.

At fourteen, he fell asleep and never completely woke up. In his endless dream, he carried on his daily activities, but found that if he listened carefully, he could hear the thoughts of his friends, his family, his family's livestock. Two more years of his waking dream passed and one day, while he was listening, he found that he could speak back to the voices of those around him. Rumors of Daler's witchcraft spread around his home village quickly and he was thrown out by his family to preserve their image. Those same rumors made their way back to the Institute, who sent a single representative to investigate. The search took months, during which time Daler had converted from his family's Sikhism to Mahayana Buddhism.

The conversation when they finally met was a short one. Daler was offered a place to stay, food to eat, and a new family - and he accepted with no strings attached.

Years passed at the Institute in which his telepathic abilities were honed to a razor sharp edge, and he became an instructor. Twenty years of teaching students went by uneventfully, and he retired from that position in good standing to return to his meditation and dreaming.

The Institute permitted him to stay. Eventually he discovered that he enjoyed conversing with troubled students and returned to a staff role at the Institute as the head of discipline.

Appearance:


The most striking things about Daler are his thinness, his beard, and his turban, in that order. The man is nearly skeletal but otherwise appears to be in good health. A long grey beard sweeps downwards from his old, weathered face. The purple turban sitting atop his head is slightly large, indicating that he hasn't cut his hair in a very, very long time. This is more of a personal choice, as he is no longer bound to Sikh beliefs but never bothered changing his style. He is and always has been too set in his ways to even consider changing his fashion sense.

Equipment:
A very old hardwood stick which he uses as a cane.

Abilities:
Shaking his cane at bothersome youngsters.
Intense meditation.
Sleeping.
Listening.

Daler makes the best curry on campus when he can be bothered with getting up and cooking.

Channeller category:
Alternative - Telepath

Description of power:
Daler is an immensely powerful telepath. While he prefers not to speak physically, he is perfectly willing to speak through others' minds. Provided another willingly enters Daler's mind, he has total control over his 'headspace', including all powers present in that world.

In the real world, he is only capable of projecting an image of a doorway, which another must walk through to enter his world.

Names/descriptions of moves:
Headspace: Daler creates a psychic projection of a doorway in the real world, and anybody who intentionally touches that doorway momentarily lapses into a deep sleep where they stand as they enter his world. Perception of time in Daler's headspace is accelerated dramatically as with any dream and 'classes' within this world are typically over within five minutes of real time.

Daler is unable to directly harm another's real body, but within his headspace, all things very much feel real, and he actively pursues gifting new understandings of the world to others. Those who are knocked unconscious or given a mortal wound in his world wake up in the real world with no lasting consequences beyond the memory. Daler himself is not exempt from this, though in this world he appears as a much younger and more athletic man and is more than capable of defending himself.

In this world, those who enter are presented as their image of themselves, rather than as their physical bodies - for instance, a large, bulky, yet cowardly man may appear as a small child, or one who feels a need to escape may appear as an eagle or wolf or any other form. Powers and physical strength are dependent entirely on mental fortitude, and emotional weaknesses are clearly visible as flaws in their self-image. Egotistical or narcissistic people are bloated, bulky, and enormously powerful - though failures and weaknesses in their sense of strength are visible to the naked eye.

It's Time to Stop: All powers within Daler's world cease to function, including those of Daler's conjured images and characters. Movement is still possible, and should one wish to continue fighting, they are still able to use their own bodies as normal - but special abilities are completely cut off until Daler chooses to resume normal activities.

Headache: Daler, using his telepathy to an extreme extent, provides the target within his headspace an understanding of his experiences and emotions. It is overwhelming to most and a sensory overload disrupts their ability to focus.

Understand One Another: Daler forces the dream to deepen and become more bizarre. Targets of his choice are forced into one anothers' bodies and minds, granting one another some insight into their motivations at the time. Upon release of this technique, all targets swap back to their own minds and bodies, waking them up from the deeper dream with new insight into their swap partner. This requires active consent as minds are extremely difficult to reposition, even in Daler's world.

Conjure: Daler imagines a person, a creature, an object, whatever - and in doing so it pops into existence within his headspace. It isn't fully conscious no matter the form, and can only react in ways that Daler instructs it to. These conjured images can vary wildly and carry their own powers as Daler understands them from years of observation of students and teachers at the Institute. They are not an adequate substitute for a real person in the fields of Channelling that they can take (predominantly Wavecasting), but they are potentially numerous.

Class is Over: All people within his headspace are ejected back into their bodies in the real world with no lasting negative consequences beyond memories. The door is always present, though, and if a student can reach it, they are permitted to leave early.

Character Theme Song:
youtube.com/watch?v=lUDT6EuGSqM

Other:
His arthritis prevents him from taking part in strenuous physical activities.

Institute role:
Detention Counselor

Why they were chosen for the Institute:
As a teenager, Daler came to the Institute to learn. He never bothered leaving, and when he reached the age of twenty-four, he was selected as an instructor due to his expertise in the ways of the mind.

Name:
Alexis Cartwright, M.D.

Age:
47

Gender:
Female

Personality:
Doctor Alexis Cartwright is a tweaker. While she doesn't resort to stealing to feed her addiction, she does dedicate an unusual amount of her annual income to feeding her Adderall prescriptions, which she continually refreshes at a 'doctor's office' (in reality a pill mill) out of town.

Dr. Cartwright is not a very pleasant person to be around, if only because she's constantly bugging out and roping people into her experiments when she's not sleeping or attending to patients. 'Hand me that scalpel', 'Screwdriver, please. Small Philips-head,', 'Bottle of stump remover, please,' and other phrases of the like make up the bulk of her conversations. Talking to people is a means to an end, not a pleasantry she usually takes part in.

Frankly, it's amazing that she's still alive given the amount of failed experiments, the volume of smoke continually pouring out of her personal laboratory, the adderall addiction, and the constant exposure to diseases she experiences on a day to day basis. It's been suggested that she's managed to pick up every bloodborne disorder known to man over the past couple decades, and that she's merely using her powers to keep herself from keeling over.

Interestingly, her weight fluctuates wildly. At the beginning of a school year, she's generally packed on an extra hundred pounds, which steadily falls over the year while treating injured students and rises again whenever nothing bad happens.

Backstory:
Doctor Cartwright was born to a middle class family in Miami, Florida, where she lived a hectic childhood with an otherwise normal family. At 7, she was diagnosed with severe ADHD-C and Bipolar-1, which prompted routine trips to therapists' offices and at least two separate instances of psychiatric hospitalization. During her teens, she was very much a danger to herself (though not to others), and would frequently take incredible risks just to push forth her knowledge of the world. Rodents routinely disappeared around her, and rumors circulated that she was somehow abusing them, which were of course completely true. Even with all of the chaos in her life, she was somehow able to graduate from high school with honors and a 4.0 GPA.

At twenty, her powers began to manifest while working on working her way through medical school, and with intense experimentation, she discovered that she was able to facilitate structured cellular growth by producing empty lattices. She never revealed the source of her unusual resources for research, though, and the Institute never heard so much as a whisper about her tricks. By twenty-four, she had graduated from the Florida Atlantic University College of Medicine with her M.D. in internal medicine, followed by a further five years of medical residency.

Eventually, she got out as a fully qualified surgeon. Rumors of the Institute made their way back to her through the grapevine and she decided to investigate the source of her powers as a fully qualified adult. Periodically a person would disappear from detention centers or psychiatric hospitals never to be seen again, with the explanation that they were going to a secure facility for greater care.

At thirty, she walked across a grass field on the Institute's opening day and handed her resume and a job application to the head instructor at the time. She's been there ever since.

Appearance:

Alexis Cartwright is short, at only 5'1", with warm-toned skin and reddish brown hair of variable length. Her face is very wide and round, slightly snaggletoothed, and gaunt. Nobody has ever seen her without the signature bags under her eyes, and her hair is usually unkempt and messy, though never beyond shoulder length. She is the closest thing to an 'old' hikikomori that anybody has ever seen. Were she to take care of herself, she would easily look as though she were in her mid thirties, but between her stimulant abuse and her tendencies to forego personal hygiene in favor of constantly working on her failed experiments, she appears closer to 60.

Thankfully, whenever she is called upon to save a life, she cleans herself up perfectly and dons scrubs of variable color (blue, red, or black). She never wears gloves as those simply get in the way of her delicate work. Keeping unnecessary bacteria and viruses away from students is rather important, after all.

Her weight fluctuates wildly over the course of the year due to the addiction and the nature of her power.

Equipment:
A comprehensive set of surgical tools - predominantly scalpels. Catgut and other suturing equipment are notably absent.
Copious quantities of caffeine and adderall.
Life support equipment of all sorts, including a modernized iron lung and an artificial heart.
CT scan and MRI machine.
An axe and a circular saw?!

Abilities:
Surgeon. Expert surgeon.
Insomnia.
Getting angry over seemingly nothing.

Channeller category:
Architect

Description of power:
Wholeness of Body: Alexis, at one point in the past, was only able to form completely inanimate lattices for healing purposes - rebinding damaged tissues and bones. More recently, though, she has picked up the skills and detailed knowledge necessary to replicate and lightly modify individual cells. Doctor Cartwright must come into direct contact with the tissues that they are attempting to replicate, and healing takes quite a lot of time (to the tune of several hours to completely reconstruct a single organ disrupted by a gunshot). As such, she must cut into the body to perform her 'miracles', then heal the wounds inflicted to create an access pathway on the way out.

She cannot fully reverse brain damage, as the blueprint for one's brain is based on both genetics and life experiences. However, she can bring people back from the brink of death, so long as the body is still warm and the majority of tissues are still alive. She is incapable of removing microscopic foreign contaminants from the body such as poisons and bacteria, though she can and will refer students to any staff members capable of prescribing medications. Doctor Cartwright requires large volumes of food and drink to perform her healing arts because her materials cannot be created from nothing.

Names/descriptions of moves:
N/A. Doctor Cartwright is neither a teacher nor a combatant, and speaking the name of her powers only distracts from the extremely precise nature of their work.

Other:
Do not bother her with meaningless questions.

Institute role:
Resident Surgeon.

Why they were chosen for the Institute:
Students can't learn if they're dead or dying. Doctor Cartwright facilitates education by ensuring that students can return to class as quickly as possible.

Also, she unpacked her things before her application was even accepted, and it was more trouble than it was worth to tell her to go away.