DocTachyon

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

If @Enarr is down for it, these clowns could be fun. They'd probably be mooks or some distraction from one of The Light's grander plans, but it could still be a fit for an early scrap.

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

Tried some tense switching shenanigans in Hayden's first post, let me know if it's too janky or anything and I'll adjust accordingly.

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

Hayden is a hunter, ravenous and deadly. Her haunches crash against the sheet metal as she runs, sending reverberations and the hefty clack of her claws with each footfall. It is dark in the cave, a metal straight shot defined only by pockets of off-pink foliage that she knows she mustn’t eat. Her body slams against the steel wall as she barrels around a corner, braving the blow with nary a whimper. Her prey is close; there is a hint of its succulent aroma in the air.

She finds the cave’s exit, a narrow portway leading to the under canopy below. She takes it, claws skittering as she forces her scaled body through the opening. She drops to the forest floor and stumbles across its slick surface before regaining her footing. She senses other hunters in the dark, their distant footfalls and the tittering of hungry animals. She hears the mice that live in the darkest, quietest corners of the jungle where they gnaw out their existence. She considers refocusing her hunt to dine on the delicacy. She imagines their plump little bodies still holding the weight of their greasy autumnal fat. But she knows her real prize is far more valuable.

She ascends to the canopy. Her mouth fills with saliva that pours out in rivulets beyond her fangs. Her feast is close. There is another cave, one she must pry her way into with the hook-claws on her feet. The cave opens to her, and she is finally upon her prey.

She rends its soft skin apart with her hind claws and gulps mouthfuls of the sweet and cold flesh inside. She is dimly aware of the cave sealing behind her and the cold closing around her, but all that exists now is the bountiful meat disappearing down her gullet and filling her belly.

By the time she has devoured her prize she detects the unnatural hum echoing through the forest walls, seeping into the cave around her with a wash of bitter cold air. She snarls and reels backward, dragging her prey’s corpse along as she moves for the mouth of the cave.

She pushes the cave’s face aside to see that the jungle is now alive with light, a dozen miniature suns shining brilliantly to the brush below. The others have arrived, betrayed by their clumsy footfalls and the high squeals of their voices.

The taste for the hunt began to ebb in the dinosaur as her claws clicked against the tile. Her snout folded backwards and the dimples of her nose retreated beneath the cartilage of an appendage that had not been there moments ago. Names and feelings bubbled into her heart as her bones lengthened and her skin softened. She reached her full height as her scalp populated itself with hair follicles, running down loose to her shoulders.

She made a count of the others as she took her first full breath on human lungs, outside the bitter cold of the freezer. Six had already turned up; she’d need to attack the rest of the fridge quickly if she wanted to sate her diet… But the others had to eat, too. Hayden’s stomach growled.

Hayden tucked the vivisected remains of the box of Big Belly Brand Dinosaur Chicken Tenders under her arm and her hands came back to pull her brown hair into a ponytail. Something rolled in the box -- she had missed one! She popped the cold nugget in her mouth and looked to Cee.

“Movie time?” She asked around a mouthful of frozen chicken.

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

Can we have our first mission dictated over a munchie filled showing of Big Trouble in Little China?

@Deja

Well, if movie night's on the table...

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

Really urgently important question!!

What is your characters favourite meal?

@Stormflyx

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

@DocTachyon Hayden is probably the youngest human Dandelion has ever met, and they're still wrapping their head around the idea of "maturity" so they treat him about the same as anyone else: new best friend!

@Dead Cruiser

Cool! I was actually thinking that Hayden and Dandy would probably be particularly good friends. They're both non-binary and both outsiders to a degree. I think Hayden has something of a fascination with space (second only to dinosaurs) and likely bombards Dandy with questions about what its like out there, and what its like on their homeworld. Also, since Dandy is also a shapeshifter type, Hayden is ecstatic to teach them as much as he can about dinosaurs. Presumably Dandy would be able to assume most dino forms that they've seen Hayden use?

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

Hayden is another one of those that I think reasonably could have joined at any time. @Hillan what do you think Julian's thought process was for letting someone so young onto the team?

One angle that I thought of was that Hayden's been around since the early days, but was never technically considered for formal membership. Just kind of turned up on the doorstep and has stuck around since, always finding a way to break back into the compound/base/whatever any time they're kicked out or encouraged to leave.

But I'm totally open to suggestions, don't really have any hard and fast plans.

Here's a question for everyone: how does your character feel about someone so comparatively young being on/adjacent to the team?

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

The Holy...

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T P R O P O S A L

D I N O - M A N

---

^{_{H A Y D E N H A Y E S ♦ G E N D E R - F L U I D ♦ 1 3 ♦ F A W C E T T
C I T Y}}

C H A R A C T E R C O N C E P T:

^{"All it takes for evil to prosper is for a good dinosaur to sit by and do nothing!"}

Hayden is unsure of his origins. She suspects that her birth parents are missing, or dead, or both. Though he acknowledges the outside possibility that she doesn't have proper parents at all...

Let's back up. Hayden's earliest memory is being in the 'care' (or lack thereof) of one Doctor Thaddeus Sivana. Hayden has thus far been unsuccessful in determining how he got there in the first place, but she suspects he may have even been a test-tube baby of Sivana's personal design (though, the more Hayden thinks on this possibility, the less the timelines of it all make sense...) . This time in Hayden's life is a haze, being subjected to experiments both scientific and magical as Sivana used his new ward to search for some means to defeat his nemesis, Captain Marvel.

These experiments caused Hayden's abilities to distort over the years, blurring the lines between magic, science, and the metagene. Originally Hayden's powers were closer to that of Beast Boy, but Sivana's endless tinkering rendered the youth's abilities into the dinosaur focused form they take today.

But Sivana's labs were no place for a growing dinosaur. By age 11, Hayden had mustered enough power and control to transform herself into a T-Rex and escape while Sivana tangled with Captain Marvel in another portion of the facility. Following his time in Sivana's labs, Hayden would develop something of a friendship with Captain Marvel, after the hero stopped him from using her abilities to almost level Fawcett City High.

For a time, Hayden adventured alongside the Captain, using his abilities to thwart small time Fawcett crooks with hordes of ankle-biting micro-raptors to help save the day. To the people of Fawcett City, Dino-Man was Captain Marvel's boyish ward, a reputation that would chafe as Hayden grew into a teenager. For this reason, Hayden has set off to pursue her own path of paleontological justice -- too young to be considered for Titans membership, it is a path that has lead him into direct contact with the Renegades.

A B I L I T I E S:

Dinosaur Transmogrification: Thanks to Doctor Sivana's experiments, in a process that is one part science and one part magic, Dino-Man can transform objects and even himself into dinosaurs of all shapes and sizes. These transformations seem to be based more on Hayden's perception than any scientific interpretation of dinosaurs -- for instance, velociraptors generated by her ability more closely resemble those from Jurassic Park than the actual dinosaur.

The dinosaurs Hayden creates are unrestricted in species, but are capped in their abilities and size by the material being used. While Hayden could create a T-Rex from a paperclip, the resultant dino would have the size and rough durability of said paperclip. As well, the larger the object being transformed, the more of a toll it takes on Hayden. A paperclip T-Rex is no problem, but transmogrifying an SUV into a Triceratops would leave her more than winded.

Hayden seems to be able to surpass these material restrictions for his personal transformations, able to warp her own body into whatever shape and size is needed for his desired dinosaur. However, stretching too far beyond her original size is one of the most taxing ways his power can be used, with single transformations into large dinosaurs typically wiping her out.

To maintain her abilities Hayden has to consume a prodigious amount of calories, with this intake scaling dependent on the extent to which Hayden has used his abilities. Hayden has been recorded to eat as much as 40,000 calories in a single day, rivaling the intake of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

C H A R A C T E R M O T I V A T I O N S & G O A L S:

Hayden is motivated by a sense of individualism. After his experiences in Sivana's lab, Hayden wants to live her own life as he sees fit, without the tight controls and cages of her former life. As well, despite his admiration of Captain Marvel, more and more Hayden finds herself wanting to stand out as his own superhero, and feels the Renegades can give her the space to do just that.

A lot of this motivation comes from the fact that Hayden doesn't feel like he's "earned" her powers. Captain Marvel had to be pure of heart and an exemplary hero to achieve his abilities, but by comparison, Hayden had to... Get poked by needles a bunch. While Hayden is far from feeling that his powers are a curse or anything, but he feels that by wielding them, its her duty to use them for the greater good.

In terms of my motivations as a writer here, I'm not as available as many of the other creators in this thread, so I'm trying to create Hayden as something of a compromise. Here's a character that's probably too young to be in hero business in the first place, and thus can be written out as needed without it feeling too narratively dissonant. I see Hayden as much more of a support or secondary character than the other members of the team. Were this the Young Justice show, he'd be left with relatively little screen time. Ideally, Hayden will be best used to support other player characters in their arcs and GMs in their plot machinations.

C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:

-Despite her gender fluidity, Hayden's superhero name is always Dino-Man, regardless of his gender at a given moment.

-In actual RP Hayden likely won't be switching pronouns as often as in this sheet. Here I just tried to intentionally vary them as much as possible to get used to switching in the first place.

R E L A T I O N S H I P S:

Relationships

Julian Luthor: Jules, as Hayden insists on calling him, is a stick in the mud. Hayden respects the man's desire to stand out, but is more than a little wary of his heritage. He's heard enough from Captain Marvel about the Luthor 'family' to suspect that there may be something sinister beneath the surface of the Renegades. Still, Hayden finds himself wanting to believe in the good in Jules, but is so regularly upset with how Jules tries to 'parent' and 'be there' for him that it feels like wasted effort. Hayden would rather stand on his own as a full fledged member of the team than be hand-held by Julian.

Charity Charleston: Cee, as Hayden calls her, is something of a role model for the young hero -- sometimes, anyways. On her particularly femme days Hayden finds herself looking up to Cee, and how the charisma she conducts herself with seems so effortless. Often Hayden feels like Cee is her big sister, someone she can joke with and tease by temporarily turning her precious phone into a dinosaur. On some days, though, Cee seems off to Hayden for a reason she can't quite place. Like all the bombast and energy Hayden associates with the older girl has taken a vacation. Hayden prefers those times when Cee is playing the fool and asking for more dino pics for her Instagram.

Dandelion: Space Dandy

Conor O'Brien: Hayden is interested in Conor, if only fleetingly. He finds interest in the older boy's magic and bugs him on occasion about the possibility of turning one of his runes into a dinosaur. Ultimately, though, Conor's patience and careful demeanor frustrate Hayden. Where Conor would like to think his way around a problem, Hayden would rather throw a dinosaur at it and be done with it.

Johnny Dash:

Redmond Morrow: Red is the big brother Hayden never had. He's quiet sort, but Hayden doesn't mind filling the silence with all manner of wacky stories about his time with Captain Marvel or his antics at school, and Red always seems willing to listen. Hayden has taken to calling Red "Clifford" after the big red dog; something about Red causes Hayden to read "puppy" into him: he's sweet, tough, and loyal to a fault. He even escaped TO Morrow's lab with most of his innocence in tact -- which sometimes leaves Hayden feeling like he's the real big brother.

Vincent Gideon Jacobs:

Kevin Vanhagen:

Selene Windle:

Johnny Renault:

Roy Bivolo:

Eilidh Vass: Hayden has yet to pronounce Eilidh's name correctly, defaulting to "Eyelid". She feels awful about it because Eilidh deserves better from her, but try as she might, her mouth just refuses to form the syllables. At the very least Hayden can get it right in their telepathic communications, passing an understanding of the name if an inability to speak it. Eilidh is there for her in the ways that Julian wants to be but often isn't, and Hayden wants to give her the world for it. Eilidh also often serves as Hayden's lifeline during training exercises, without her telepathy, it'd be hard to check into Team Comms with a velociraptor's voicebox. Eilidh's relative lack of combat ability on top makes Hayden feel like she needs to be protected, and Hayden is more than ready to dino-out and do the job.

Varo Yelkian:

Hana Hazard:

Gabriella Rivero: Gabi is another team member that Hayden feels babied by. Deep down, Hayden knows she doesn't mean it, but Gabi has a tendency to patronizingly old-splain the basics of heroism, even after Hayden's years of experience alongside Captain Marvel. Gabi's not-so-private complaints to Luthor about Hayden's combat readiness also don't do her any favors; between this and her often pronoun flubs (which Hayden would take on the chin for anyone else) and Hayden is often inches away from exploding at her. Still, Gabi does have her good moments. Hayden feels closest to her when she uses her weather abilities to help Hayden practice difficult Pteranodon flights. In the air, wordlessly, they feel in sync with Gabi.

P O S T C A T A L O G U E:

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Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

So... Who wants a pet dinosaur?

Young Justice Renegades: A Team Worth Dying For

So who's everyones favourite characters (other than their own, bonus points on why)?

@Sep

@Bork Lazer 's Platypus steals the show. Somehow Bork can make me laugh like no one else on this site, like he did with this drunken masterpiece (also, for funny sheets, I have to mention this from @rocketrobie2). Playtpus is so cool because it takes a genuinely funny joke concept and then goes on to elevate it into a real character that's got a lot of heart to him. This is the sheet that inspired me to join the game. The idea of taking a shitpost idea like that and weaving it into something cool is really appealing to me. If Bork can maintain that mix of comedy and genuine character development in the game (as I'm sure he can), we'll be in for a helluva time.

If I had to pick a character that cannot lay eggs, I'm going with @ML 's Boxbender. The stranger the power the more I tend to like a concept, and this guy's power is certainly out of the box. Add to that the fact that he's more or less a normal joe in a world of cyborgs, aliens, and alien-cyborgs, does a lot to sell the concept for me, he's positioned to be a wonderful straight man.