application: gargleblasted
OOC:Name: bluemoon
Are you over 16?: Yes! Actually I am 22 :|d
Personal LJ: emeralddarkness
Email: blue.crystalwings AT gmail DOT com
Timezone: -7/Mountain
Other contact: ceruleangarnet at aim
Characters already in the game: n/a!
How did you find us?: LINKED. ALSO DEAR MUN. ALSO PEOPLE NEED TO STOP ENABLING ME WITH AWESOME.
IC:CHARACTER NAME: Terrence "Terry" McGinnis/Batman [mark II]
FANDOM: Batman Beyond
TIMELINE: Mid season 1; specifically Shriek: s1e7
AGE: 16
ABILITIES AND STRENGTHS:Well um. They're not exactly magical. But Terry can do a lot and comes in fully equipped with the Batsuit of Plot Device which probably bears mention. So first off, the Batsuit. And, to save space, a link to a lovely ordered list, because it can do everything. Of course, one thing that probably bears mention is that Terry is from so early that the suit can't do quite so much everything as it can by the end of the series - for example, he does not yet have the electro defensive/offensive system installed, does not have titanium batarangs (or arguably even electrobatarangs yet) etc.
In addition, Terry can parkour, which means even out of the batsuit few people can touch him if he's motivated to get away. He can fight, though he's got the bad habit of leaving his left side open and hasn't had nearly the amount of training that he would have in a few years; he knows some wrestling, some mixed martial arts, and a lot of how to fight to win that came from starting out as a general scrapper of the streets and in a gang. He can take a beating and keep getting back up. Since Bruce got his mitts on him he's been training him and training him some more; he's probably not up to the usual Olympic-levels-or-higher in gymnastics martial arts etc, but his level is still pretty darn high for just another 16 year old kid off the street. He's got great reflexes, great senses, and an ability to clear his mind and aim his punches no matter the environment, if given a bit of time to do so. He also possesses an at times uncanny ability to dodge. These last two abilities are still being honed to their final forms, but they are there.
He's not the detective that Bruce is, but he has been trained in such and is improving. He disguises his voice as Batman, taking on a deeper, harsher tone in the fine Batman tradition. He can also do a nice Brooklyn accent when he wants to, and may be able to do other accents as well.
ALSO, APPARENTLY HE'S HALF-CLONED FROM BRUCE WAYNE. yeah, idek. Don't make me explain it, it's confusing and kinda stupid. But because the canon reasoning for this anomaly is that the world just cannot exist without Batman and Batman cannot be Batman without Bruce's magicgenes Terry... has Bruce's magicgenes?
In addition, I'd like to have him bring in the future!Batmobile, which flies and can go somewhere around 2500 mph.
HOW WOULD THEY USE THEIR ABILITIES?:lol okay HE'S BATMAN.
APPEARANCE:Terry is 16 years old. He's roughly 6 feet and 180 lbs, and due to the whole lolbatman thing, he is in EXTREMELY good shape. Olympic type shape. His frame supports this - physically, he's a triangle. Wide shoulders, tiny waist, muscle EVERYWHERE and not a spare ounce of fat. Surprisingly, despite the Batman gig, he's managed to avoid any major scars thus far. This is mostly due to the Batsuit apparently being mostly indestructible, so usually the worst he gets are bruises, concussions and broken bones. He does have some minor scars, but nothing that out of the ordinary. He does not have any tattoos, does not like jewelry or nail polish, and in general keeps up a fairly clean cut appearance. He has a brown leather jacket that he wears everywhere, that he usually combines with a skin-tight black t-shirt and future!jeans (marked as being different by their special pockets).
His eyes vary in color from ice blue to stone gray but usually hover in between. His hair is jet black and is kept in a cut that's long enough to look good and to look good somewhat messy but that's short enough that he doesn't have to mess with it beyond that. He's not big on appearance, and likes being able to get up and go. This is for the best; usually he doesn't have time for anything else. His skin is fair, but lightly tan.
BACKGROUND:It should come as no surprise that Batman Beyond takes place in Gotham - after all, Batman. However, this is a different Gotham than the Dark Knight patrolled some 40 years earlier. One of the obvious differences is that Asia appears to have taken over the world (sort of) - there are Chinese-looking characters everywhere on the buildings. Technology has obviously advanced, the web has replaced television, teenagers have developed new slang. But some things never change, and in the 20 years since Batman has retired, Gotham has sunk back into the darkness it was known for. Gangs and criminals roam the streets - the current D.A., Sam Young, and his wife, Commissioner Barbara Gordon try to hold the city together, but there's only so much they can do.
Batman Beyond 'starts' in the year 2019, where an aging Bruce decides to hang up the cape permanently. A mission went seriously wrong when his heart decided that both it and he were getting too old for this, and as a result he ended up threatening a kidnapper with a gun, so that both he and the kidnap victim could escape with their own lives. Batman, forced to touch a gun. So, so much for that idea. Never again. The Dark Knight was leaving the streets - and, unlike in other versions of the multiverse when one of his ever-loyal sidekicks might have taken up the slack or taken over the role of Gotham's dark protector when or before this sort of thing happened, here there was no one else who could do so. Years back things had gone very, very wrong - first with one of the Robins (Tim, the second and last to wear the costume) and then possibly with Batgirl. Tim was twisted and driven insane by the Joker; Barbara's costume apparently had bullet holes in it when she left the team. Dick was already Nightwing, and had left the city because he and Bruce clashed. This left Batman alone, very emphatically alone - he wouldn't risk anyone like that again, whether they wanted to come out with him or not. Which meant that, when he retired, the days of Gotham's superheros were past....
Well, that was the idea anyway....
The plot of the show starts proper 20 years later, in 2039, when a boy named Terry McGinnis is 16 years old.
Terry was born Aug 19, 2023 to Warren (a research scientist at Wayne-Powers, the former Wayne Enterprises) and Mary McGinnis. The two of them had him and his little brother, Matt, and some time after decided that the marriage wasn't working out. They separated when Terry was 14 years old, and he reacted in a fairly typical teenage manner. He was an angry kid, and wanted to take it out on the world, and as a result he got involved with a gang run by a friend of his, Charlie Bigelow. Mostly they apparently stuck with small stuff - busting windows, shoplifting, etc, though this account is somewhat questionable, as according to Terry at a different time he 'broke a lot of laws' in his younger days. Still, regardless, they were apparently never caught in anything serious, until one day Charlie decided that he wanted to do something bigger. He took Terry along on the heist, and Terry went along with him even after he realized what was going on.
Next thing you know there's cops there, and off he goes for 90 days in Juvenile Hall.
Luckily for Terry, the 3 months in juvie appear to have been a wake-up call. He straightened out when he was released. He still had a temper on him, and was still prone to getting into fights, but he shed most of his bad habits when he entered High School, and generally went from the kind of angry kid who will break windows to the kind who will beat up bullies. He also got a girlfriend, Dana Tan, who was a good influence. All in all things were working out pretty well.
Until his father was murdered by his boss, Derek Powers, because he found out too much about a new biological weapon that Powers was using Wayne-Powers to manufacture.
Powers tried to cover his tracks, but Terry found out the truth pretty quickly - and if he hadn't just accidentally discovered that Bruce Wayne had once been Batman, things might have gone very differently.
Terry went to Bruce for help, as he had been Batman and was Bruce Wayne, surely he could do something about rotten stuff at Wayne-Powers. But Bruce refused him, merely telling him to take the evidence to the police, so Terry decided to take matters into his own hands. He stole the high-tech Batsuit that Bruce had been using shortly before his retirement and headed off to seek revenge and justice himself.
After a few speedbumps involving this incident and Bruce expressing his extreme displeasure with the fact that Terry had helped himself to the Batsuit were overcome (mostly by Terry explaining his reasons for wanting to wear the suit), Bruce decided to give him a chance. He offered Terry the role of Batman, provided he could live up to his exacting standards, and Terry lept at the opportunity. So these days he's Terry McGinnis: ordinary High School student by day, Batman by night. And Mr. Wayne's PA in the evenings.
Life is pretty busy, especially now that he has to balance his two lives, try to keep his girlfriend happy, and try to help his mom take care of the family - she can't do everything, and now that his dad is gone....
Well. Things can get a little hectic.
PERSONALITY:Terry is very much a bad boy gone good. He's got a rough background and is very aware of that fact - how else could he use it to his advantage? Though he sometimes acts more the anti-hero than a straight-up hero (hi, Batman), he's still got a heart of gold. He's in this business and deals with the crappy hours and constant cuts and bruises and fights with his girlfriend and the occasional broken bone because he wants to help others who can't help themselves. Gotham can be a bad place to live - he knows that better than most, as for a while he was one of the ones who made it so. And, even though according to the state his 3 months in juvie wiped him clean of all that, his soul tells him different. When he puts on the suit, he's trying to make up for past sins, so he'll fight hard for justice.
Basically: he's a punk and he's a brat, but he's got a strong taste for doing the right thing and can turn right around and be surprisingly sweet with little to no provocation.
Terry learns much better by doing than by being taught, which usually means that one way or another he's gonna end up going off and making a whole bunch of his own mistakes no matter what he's told. As a result, either he'll succeed brilliantly or if not, he'll at least have screwed up in truly spectacular ways. But as should be expected, after he gets the hang of something, he starts picking things up really, really quickly. He makes the same mistakes twice occasionally, but not often - he's learned not to, as doing that gets painful really fast. And there's obviously a pretty sharp learning curve for someone aspiring to be Batman - he has to learn fast or he'd be dead equally quickly.
Terry is very much a protector at heart. You show him someone smaller and weaker, or just less able than he is, and he'll generally watch out for them. As a result he's ended up picking a lot of fights with random gang members who try tormenting innocent citizens, or with bullies who try to pick on kids at school. He maybe doesn't always plan this as well as he might, but he's good at thinking on his feet, so when combined with his ability to fight he generally ends up okay. He also has a very short fuse, especially if you push the right buttons - which... aren't that difficult to push. Luckily these flares of temper are quick and sharp - punch first think later, get over it and move on. It's easy to get Terry mad, but substantially more difficult to make him actually angry. Honestly, this is really a good thing. Terry goes as cold as ice when angry, and is far more prone to viciousness rather than simply getting the job done.
He's a nice kid (usually), but Terry is far from a saint. Push him too hard, and you will get serious consequences - a few times Bruce has had to rein him in, and Terry seems less concerned with the fates of the various villains than Bruce normally was. His childhood was rougher than Bruce's, and he will sometimes show it in how he behaves.
Like his mentor, he adjusts pretty quickly and easily to new situations, which is good, it quickens his response to anything new and unexpected. Unlike Bruce, Terry likes the sound of his own voice. He likes being sarcastic or witty for the sake of being sarcastic or witty - an audience is preferable, but doesn't appear to be strictly necessary. Knowing that he's being clever is apparently enough. As a result of this, Terry really enjoys jibing his opponents, and sometimes just making remarks to himself on the situation in general, in volatile situations. At times this isn't a good thing - he can distract himself, especially if he underestimates his opponent, which he can still sometimes do. He's a cocky teenager, after all. Other times this trait actually helps him - it throws his opponents off balance, distracts or enrages them, and makes them unable to concentrate. What happens sort of depends on who he's facing - the most notable example of how his love of words can be really, really useful is in the movie, Return of the Joker. Near the end, in an amazing three minute speech, Terry is able to completely destabilize the Joker by openly mocking him - something that Bruce never would have done.
Of course, this is also roughly 3 years into the future for this particular Terry, but he does the same thing all throughout the show.
He's opportunistic, to a degree - he'll tell the truth or lie, but appears to prefer sticking to the truth whenever possible, even when he's using it to lie - for one, it makes keeping your stories straight easier. And I mean Bruce trained him. He's opportunistic in his fighting style as well. Terry is frequently very pragmatic, in life and in combat both. He's the guy who would bring a gun to a swordfight because hey, it would win you the fight, wouldn't it? Street fighting taught him that there aren't pretty, polished rules when you fight, and he doesn't act like there are. He is willing to take cheap shots that the original Batman or Robin wouldn't have - apparently as far as Terry is concerned, in the end tends to justify the means. However, he never sinks as low as he could in this regard, and he does specifically say that he would never kill an opponent. Of course, being a direct cause of their death doesn't seem to be quite the same thing, nor is it quite the same thing if the thing he's fighting isn't human, or was once human but no longer is. He is brash, which still can land him in trouble pretty regularly, though already less so than before he put on the Batman suit.
Terry is a good big brother but doesn't appear to know how to handle small children. He's generally a poor student as far as his academic life goes, despite knowing some impressive things about math and being very interested in things like biology and chemistry. There's a reason for this, once again: Batman. It's hard to stay awake all day in class when you've already been awake fighting crime all night. He's generally seen as something of a flake by friends and family because he's never home (Batman) but he is a sweetheart, and will try to make things up to the people he keeps on letting down. He tries to help take care of his family, as he's now effectively the man of the house.
Finally, he thinks very, very highly of Bruce Wayne, and looks up to him. He'll sometimes get into fights with him, mostly because he's a teenager and this is something that teenagers frequently do, especially as Bruce pushes him really, really hard. But he loves Bruce, who has become something of a father figure, and if there's something he can do to keep the old man (or his secret) safe, he'll usually go for it, no matter the cost to himself. Terry can be something of a martyr, but then that's probably a requirement for someone in a position like him.
He is smart, and is learning to look hard at the details - he's very serious about being Batman, and has put a lot of extra hours into looking through Bruce's database. This pays off for him, and he can prove he's serious. Still, of course, not so serious that he can't have fun. Sometimes nights off are very good things.
READ UP ON HOW THE GAME WORKS?:Yes; Ferret fanciers fond of fiery furnaces shall find the forums fantastic fun (while more formidable fans may further fortify the flight of fancy with flamboyantly fluffy flan, found fresh in fields of flimsy, filmy flowers along with frolicking fawns), and they can work or steal or be SHAMELESS LAYABOUTS because the rooms are free and stuff.
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:[video]
[There's a teenage prettyboy with a sour expression and a dorky hat looking glaring at the camera. He is most decidedly DISPLEASED with something.]
All right. Ha ha, whoever this is, real funny. You're a reaaaaal comedian. Now how about you let me go? My boss's gonna slag me if I don't get to work on time, and I prefer to avoid that sort of thing whenever I can.
And look, if this has got anything to do with that whack-job Shreiv, I didn't have anything to do with it, all right? The guy just went nuts. I swear that's all I got, I don't know why and I've got no idea how he knocked those walls down. Some kinda sound wave thingiemabobber - I dunno. He's the sound engineer, you'll have to catch him and ask him yourselves.
[As Terry's talking, an exotic alien who more closely resembles a tree than most things you see moving so purposefully comes up behind him to politely ask for directions. Terry half turns casually, in that way that people do when they're idly looking over their shoulder, then starts and almost violently doubletakes, swinging back around and jumping away, kinda yelping his words in surprise.]
What the-!
[The feed cuts]
3RD PERSON SAMPLE:Just about all that Terry could think was that this had to be somebody's sick idea of a joke. Jokerz, maybe, even if it seemed a little too well planned for them. Little too involved too, they usually stuck with rubber chickens filled with lead shot and chatter teeth, sharpened and attached to a more powerful micro-motor. Still, the entire thing had to be a joke. Somebody had grabbed him, knocked him out, stuffed him in some VR sim, and was trying to make him think that the world had been blown up. Why him, him specifically, was something else to worry about, because it all seemed a bit much to just be cooincidence, but that was still the easiest answer. The best answer.
The problem was that VR never felt this real.
There was a certain feel that reality had about it, and maybe it was connected to your inner ear or depth perception or just that sixth sense tingle that you get sometimes, and maybe it was just that yeah, after watching everything that technology was able to do he was a bit jaded. But even Bruce's sims (and you can't tell him that they weren't state of the art and then a little beyond) never felt like this. Things felt warped, closed in, not this real.
And yet here he was.
There was a large, pretty nice towel (a towel? Had to be a joke) draped over his shoulder, and he was holding a book that had DON'T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters, which he was pretty sure was something he'd seen in a movie somewhere, back years ago. There was the other thing - a book. A slagging book, you never saw those any more. But it felt real. Maybe he should play along, maybe he should-
He didn't know.
Weird to think about your planet being blown up, even in the abstract. Not really something he knew how to deal with. Not really something he could grasp - and, as he began to think a little more about what that would entail (mommattdanabrucehomechelsea-) he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Which was okay, because it had to be a trick. But if it was, how was he supposed to proceed from here? What, play along? Sit still and not move until they let him go? More than anything, Terry found that he wanted to hit something. Make it hurt, make it bleed, find whatever fragging thing had done this to him and punch it until it let him go, put things back the way they should be. Cause this, whatever this was, wasn't how things worked.
DON'T PANIC, the book cheerfully advised him, and Terry only just managed to keep from doing something stupid, like tear out all the pages or throw it at a wall. Instead he took the towel, wrapped the book so that he couldn't see the slagging cover or the DON'T PANIC and didn't have to think about it, not any of it, and set off to start talking to people. After all, the thing about AI was that it was only so smart. Talking, getting the people to slip up, had to be the fastest way to figure out the program he was trapped in. After he found that he'd figure out what to do.
QUESTIONS?:What's the stance on vigilantism? Will Thor's police force welcome any help that Terry might be able to provide and look the other way or are they more likely to beat him up and throw him in jail if he's caught? Also what are the crime rates like? Normal big city?
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject:Yup!
Are you over 16?: Yes! Actually I am 22 :|d
Personal LJ: emeralddarkness
Email: blue.crystalwings AT gmail DOT com
Timezone: -7/Mountain
Other contact: ceruleangarnet at aim
Characters already in the game: n/a!
How did you find us?: LINKED. ALSO DEAR MUN. ALSO PEOPLE NEED TO STOP ENABLING ME WITH AWESOME.
IC:CHARACTER NAME: Terrence "Terry" McGinnis/Batman [mark II]
FANDOM: Batman Beyond
TIMELINE: Mid season 1; specifically Shriek: s1e7
AGE: 16
ABILITIES AND STRENGTHS:Well um. They're not exactly magical. But Terry can do a lot and comes in fully equipped with the Batsuit of Plot Device which probably bears mention. So first off, the Batsuit. And, to save space, a link to a lovely ordered list, because it can do everything. Of course, one thing that probably bears mention is that Terry is from so early that the suit can't do quite so much everything as it can by the end of the series - for example, he does not yet have the electro defensive/offensive system installed, does not have titanium batarangs (or arguably even electrobatarangs yet) etc.
In addition, Terry can parkour, which means even out of the batsuit few people can touch him if he's motivated to get away. He can fight, though he's got the bad habit of leaving his left side open and hasn't had nearly the amount of training that he would have in a few years; he knows some wrestling, some mixed martial arts, and a lot of how to fight to win that came from starting out as a general scrapper of the streets and in a gang. He can take a beating and keep getting back up. Since Bruce got his mitts on him he's been training him and training him some more; he's probably not up to the usual Olympic-levels-or-higher in gymnastics martial arts etc, but his level is still pretty darn high for just another 16 year old kid off the street. He's got great reflexes, great senses, and an ability to clear his mind and aim his punches no matter the environment, if given a bit of time to do so. He also possesses an at times uncanny ability to dodge. These last two abilities are still being honed to their final forms, but they are there.
He's not the detective that Bruce is, but he has been trained in such and is improving. He disguises his voice as Batman, taking on a deeper, harsher tone in the fine Batman tradition. He can also do a nice Brooklyn accent when he wants to, and may be able to do other accents as well.
ALSO, APPARENTLY HE'S HALF-CLONED FROM BRUCE WAYNE. yeah, idek. Don't make me explain it, it's confusing and kinda stupid. But because the canon reasoning for this anomaly is that the world just cannot exist without Batman and Batman cannot be Batman without Bruce's magicgenes Terry... has Bruce's magicgenes?
In addition, I'd like to have him bring in the future!Batmobile, which flies and can go somewhere around 2500 mph.
HOW WOULD THEY USE THEIR ABILITIES?:lol okay HE'S BATMAN.
APPEARANCE:Terry is 16 years old. He's roughly 6 feet and 180 lbs, and due to the whole lolbatman thing, he is in EXTREMELY good shape. Olympic type shape. His frame supports this - physically, he's a triangle. Wide shoulders, tiny waist, muscle EVERYWHERE and not a spare ounce of fat. Surprisingly, despite the Batman gig, he's managed to avoid any major scars thus far. This is mostly due to the Batsuit apparently being mostly indestructible, so usually the worst he gets are bruises, concussions and broken bones. He does have some minor scars, but nothing that out of the ordinary. He does not have any tattoos, does not like jewelry or nail polish, and in general keeps up a fairly clean cut appearance. He has a brown leather jacket that he wears everywhere, that he usually combines with a skin-tight black t-shirt and future!jeans (marked as being different by their special pockets).
His eyes vary in color from ice blue to stone gray but usually hover in between. His hair is jet black and is kept in a cut that's long enough to look good and to look good somewhat messy but that's short enough that he doesn't have to mess with it beyond that. He's not big on appearance, and likes being able to get up and go. This is for the best; usually he doesn't have time for anything else. His skin is fair, but lightly tan.
BACKGROUND:It should come as no surprise that Batman Beyond takes place in Gotham - after all, Batman. However, this is a different Gotham than the Dark Knight patrolled some 40 years earlier. One of the obvious differences is that Asia appears to have taken over the world (sort of) - there are Chinese-looking characters everywhere on the buildings. Technology has obviously advanced, the web has replaced television, teenagers have developed new slang. But some things never change, and in the 20 years since Batman has retired, Gotham has sunk back into the darkness it was known for. Gangs and criminals roam the streets - the current D.A., Sam Young, and his wife, Commissioner Barbara Gordon try to hold the city together, but there's only so much they can do.
Batman Beyond 'starts' in the year 2019, where an aging Bruce decides to hang up the cape permanently. A mission went seriously wrong when his heart decided that both it and he were getting too old for this, and as a result he ended up threatening a kidnapper with a gun, so that both he and the kidnap victim could escape with their own lives. Batman, forced to touch a gun. So, so much for that idea. Never again. The Dark Knight was leaving the streets - and, unlike in other versions of the multiverse when one of his ever-loyal sidekicks might have taken up the slack or taken over the role of Gotham's dark protector when or before this sort of thing happened, here there was no one else who could do so. Years back things had gone very, very wrong - first with one of the Robins (Tim, the second and last to wear the costume) and then possibly with Batgirl. Tim was twisted and driven insane by the Joker; Barbara's costume apparently had bullet holes in it when she left the team. Dick was already Nightwing, and had left the city because he and Bruce clashed. This left Batman alone, very emphatically alone - he wouldn't risk anyone like that again, whether they wanted to come out with him or not. Which meant that, when he retired, the days of Gotham's superheros were past....
Well, that was the idea anyway....
The plot of the show starts proper 20 years later, in 2039, when a boy named Terry McGinnis is 16 years old.
Terry was born Aug 19, 2023 to Warren (a research scientist at Wayne-Powers, the former Wayne Enterprises) and Mary McGinnis. The two of them had him and his little brother, Matt, and some time after decided that the marriage wasn't working out. They separated when Terry was 14 years old, and he reacted in a fairly typical teenage manner. He was an angry kid, and wanted to take it out on the world, and as a result he got involved with a gang run by a friend of his, Charlie Bigelow. Mostly they apparently stuck with small stuff - busting windows, shoplifting, etc, though this account is somewhat questionable, as according to Terry at a different time he 'broke a lot of laws' in his younger days. Still, regardless, they were apparently never caught in anything serious, until one day Charlie decided that he wanted to do something bigger. He took Terry along on the heist, and Terry went along with him even after he realized what was going on.
Next thing you know there's cops there, and off he goes for 90 days in Juvenile Hall.
Luckily for Terry, the 3 months in juvie appear to have been a wake-up call. He straightened out when he was released. He still had a temper on him, and was still prone to getting into fights, but he shed most of his bad habits when he entered High School, and generally went from the kind of angry kid who will break windows to the kind who will beat up bullies. He also got a girlfriend, Dana Tan, who was a good influence. All in all things were working out pretty well.
Until his father was murdered by his boss, Derek Powers, because he found out too much about a new biological weapon that Powers was using Wayne-Powers to manufacture.
Powers tried to cover his tracks, but Terry found out the truth pretty quickly - and if he hadn't just accidentally discovered that Bruce Wayne had once been Batman, things might have gone very differently.
Terry went to Bruce for help, as he had been Batman and was Bruce Wayne, surely he could do something about rotten stuff at Wayne-Powers. But Bruce refused him, merely telling him to take the evidence to the police, so Terry decided to take matters into his own hands. He stole the high-tech Batsuit that Bruce had been using shortly before his retirement and headed off to seek revenge and justice himself.
After a few speedbumps involving this incident and Bruce expressing his extreme displeasure with the fact that Terry had helped himself to the Batsuit were overcome (mostly by Terry explaining his reasons for wanting to wear the suit), Bruce decided to give him a chance. He offered Terry the role of Batman, provided he could live up to his exacting standards, and Terry lept at the opportunity. So these days he's Terry McGinnis: ordinary High School student by day, Batman by night. And Mr. Wayne's PA in the evenings.
Life is pretty busy, especially now that he has to balance his two lives, try to keep his girlfriend happy, and try to help his mom take care of the family - she can't do everything, and now that his dad is gone....
Well. Things can get a little hectic.
PERSONALITY:Terry is very much a bad boy gone good. He's got a rough background and is very aware of that fact - how else could he use it to his advantage? Though he sometimes acts more the anti-hero than a straight-up hero (hi, Batman), he's still got a heart of gold. He's in this business and deals with the crappy hours and constant cuts and bruises and fights with his girlfriend and the occasional broken bone because he wants to help others who can't help themselves. Gotham can be a bad place to live - he knows that better than most, as for a while he was one of the ones who made it so. And, even though according to the state his 3 months in juvie wiped him clean of all that, his soul tells him different. When he puts on the suit, he's trying to make up for past sins, so he'll fight hard for justice.
Basically: he's a punk and he's a brat, but he's got a strong taste for doing the right thing and can turn right around and be surprisingly sweet with little to no provocation.
Terry learns much better by doing than by being taught, which usually means that one way or another he's gonna end up going off and making a whole bunch of his own mistakes no matter what he's told. As a result, either he'll succeed brilliantly or if not, he'll at least have screwed up in truly spectacular ways. But as should be expected, after he gets the hang of something, he starts picking things up really, really quickly. He makes the same mistakes twice occasionally, but not often - he's learned not to, as doing that gets painful really fast. And there's obviously a pretty sharp learning curve for someone aspiring to be Batman - he has to learn fast or he'd be dead equally quickly.
Terry is very much a protector at heart. You show him someone smaller and weaker, or just less able than he is, and he'll generally watch out for them. As a result he's ended up picking a lot of fights with random gang members who try tormenting innocent citizens, or with bullies who try to pick on kids at school. He maybe doesn't always plan this as well as he might, but he's good at thinking on his feet, so when combined with his ability to fight he generally ends up okay. He also has a very short fuse, especially if you push the right buttons - which... aren't that difficult to push. Luckily these flares of temper are quick and sharp - punch first think later, get over it and move on. It's easy to get Terry mad, but substantially more difficult to make him actually angry. Honestly, this is really a good thing. Terry goes as cold as ice when angry, and is far more prone to viciousness rather than simply getting the job done.
He's a nice kid (usually), but Terry is far from a saint. Push him too hard, and you will get serious consequences - a few times Bruce has had to rein him in, and Terry seems less concerned with the fates of the various villains than Bruce normally was. His childhood was rougher than Bruce's, and he will sometimes show it in how he behaves.
Like his mentor, he adjusts pretty quickly and easily to new situations, which is good, it quickens his response to anything new and unexpected. Unlike Bruce, Terry likes the sound of his own voice. He likes being sarcastic or witty for the sake of being sarcastic or witty - an audience is preferable, but doesn't appear to be strictly necessary. Knowing that he's being clever is apparently enough. As a result of this, Terry really enjoys jibing his opponents, and sometimes just making remarks to himself on the situation in general, in volatile situations. At times this isn't a good thing - he can distract himself, especially if he underestimates his opponent, which he can still sometimes do. He's a cocky teenager, after all. Other times this trait actually helps him - it throws his opponents off balance, distracts or enrages them, and makes them unable to concentrate. What happens sort of depends on who he's facing - the most notable example of how his love of words can be really, really useful is in the movie, Return of the Joker. Near the end, in an amazing three minute speech, Terry is able to completely destabilize the Joker by openly mocking him - something that Bruce never would have done.
Of course, this is also roughly 3 years into the future for this particular Terry, but he does the same thing all throughout the show.
He's opportunistic, to a degree - he'll tell the truth or lie, but appears to prefer sticking to the truth whenever possible, even when he's using it to lie - for one, it makes keeping your stories straight easier. And I mean Bruce trained him. He's opportunistic in his fighting style as well. Terry is frequently very pragmatic, in life and in combat both. He's the guy who would bring a gun to a swordfight because hey, it would win you the fight, wouldn't it? Street fighting taught him that there aren't pretty, polished rules when you fight, and he doesn't act like there are. He is willing to take cheap shots that the original Batman or Robin wouldn't have - apparently as far as Terry is concerned, in the end tends to justify the means. However, he never sinks as low as he could in this regard, and he does specifically say that he would never kill an opponent. Of course, being a direct cause of their death doesn't seem to be quite the same thing, nor is it quite the same thing if the thing he's fighting isn't human, or was once human but no longer is. He is brash, which still can land him in trouble pretty regularly, though already less so than before he put on the Batman suit.
Terry is a good big brother but doesn't appear to know how to handle small children. He's generally a poor student as far as his academic life goes, despite knowing some impressive things about math and being very interested in things like biology and chemistry. There's a reason for this, once again: Batman. It's hard to stay awake all day in class when you've already been awake fighting crime all night. He's generally seen as something of a flake by friends and family because he's never home (Batman) but he is a sweetheart, and will try to make things up to the people he keeps on letting down. He tries to help take care of his family, as he's now effectively the man of the house.
Finally, he thinks very, very highly of Bruce Wayne, and looks up to him. He'll sometimes get into fights with him, mostly because he's a teenager and this is something that teenagers frequently do, especially as Bruce pushes him really, really hard. But he loves Bruce, who has become something of a father figure, and if there's something he can do to keep the old man (or his secret) safe, he'll usually go for it, no matter the cost to himself. Terry can be something of a martyr, but then that's probably a requirement for someone in a position like him.
He is smart, and is learning to look hard at the details - he's very serious about being Batman, and has put a lot of extra hours into looking through Bruce's database. This pays off for him, and he can prove he's serious. Still, of course, not so serious that he can't have fun. Sometimes nights off are very good things.
READ UP ON HOW THE GAME WORKS?:Yes; Ferret fanciers fond of fiery furnaces shall find the forums fantastic fun (while more formidable fans may further fortify the flight of fancy with flamboyantly fluffy flan, found fresh in fields of flimsy, filmy flowers along with frolicking fawns), and they can work or steal or be SHAMELESS LAYABOUTS because the rooms are free and stuff.
1ST PERSON SAMPLE:[video]
[There's a teenage prettyboy with a sour expression and a dorky hat looking glaring at the camera. He is most decidedly DISPLEASED with something.]
All right. Ha ha, whoever this is, real funny. You're a reaaaaal comedian. Now how about you let me go? My boss's gonna slag me if I don't get to work on time, and I prefer to avoid that sort of thing whenever I can.
And look, if this has got anything to do with that whack-job Shreiv, I didn't have anything to do with it, all right? The guy just went nuts. I swear that's all I got, I don't know why and I've got no idea how he knocked those walls down. Some kinda sound wave thingiemabobber - I dunno. He's the sound engineer, you'll have to catch him and ask him yourselves.
[As Terry's talking, an exotic alien who more closely resembles a tree than most things you see moving so purposefully comes up behind him to politely ask for directions. Terry half turns casually, in that way that people do when they're idly looking over their shoulder, then starts and almost violently doubletakes, swinging back around and jumping away, kinda yelping his words in surprise.]
What the-!
[The feed cuts]
3RD PERSON SAMPLE:Just about all that Terry could think was that this had to be somebody's sick idea of a joke. Jokerz, maybe, even if it seemed a little too well planned for them. Little too involved too, they usually stuck with rubber chickens filled with lead shot and chatter teeth, sharpened and attached to a more powerful micro-motor. Still, the entire thing had to be a joke. Somebody had grabbed him, knocked him out, stuffed him in some VR sim, and was trying to make him think that the world had been blown up. Why him, him specifically, was something else to worry about, because it all seemed a bit much to just be cooincidence, but that was still the easiest answer. The best answer.
The problem was that VR never felt this real.
There was a certain feel that reality had about it, and maybe it was connected to your inner ear or depth perception or just that sixth sense tingle that you get sometimes, and maybe it was just that yeah, after watching everything that technology was able to do he was a bit jaded. But even Bruce's sims (and you can't tell him that they weren't state of the art and then a little beyond) never felt like this. Things felt warped, closed in, not this real.
And yet here he was.
There was a large, pretty nice towel (a towel? Had to be a joke) draped over his shoulder, and he was holding a book that had DON'T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters, which he was pretty sure was something he'd seen in a movie somewhere, back years ago. There was the other thing - a book. A slagging book, you never saw those any more. But it felt real. Maybe he should play along, maybe he should-
He didn't know.
Weird to think about your planet being blown up, even in the abstract. Not really something he knew how to deal with. Not really something he could grasp - and, as he began to think a little more about what that would entail (mommattdanabrucehomechelsea-) he wasn't sure he wanted to.
Which was okay, because it had to be a trick. But if it was, how was he supposed to proceed from here? What, play along? Sit still and not move until they let him go? More than anything, Terry found that he wanted to hit something. Make it hurt, make it bleed, find whatever fragging thing had done this to him and punch it until it let him go, put things back the way they should be. Cause this, whatever this was, wasn't how things worked.
DON'T PANIC, the book cheerfully advised him, and Terry only just managed to keep from doing something stupid, like tear out all the pages or throw it at a wall. Instead he took the towel, wrapped the book so that he couldn't see the slagging cover or the DON'T PANIC and didn't have to think about it, not any of it, and set off to start talking to people. After all, the thing about AI was that it was only so smart. Talking, getting the people to slip up, had to be the fastest way to figure out the program he was trapped in. After he found that he'd figure out what to do.
QUESTIONS?:What's the stance on vigilantism? Will Thor's police force welcome any help that Terry might be able to provide and look the other way or are they more likely to beat him up and throw him in jail if he's caught? Also what are the crime rates like? Normal big city?
Did you put your characters name and fandom in the subject:Yup!