Pull me out of the wake
Player Information
Name: Jill
Age: 25
AIM SN: ComeHereHand
email: SephyGirl [@] Gmail [.] com
Have you played in an LJ based game before? Yes.
Currrently Played Characters: --
Conditional: Activity Check Link: --
Conditional: Official Reserve Link: Right here!
Character Information
General
Canon Source: Ex Machina
Canon Format: Comics
Character's Name: Mitchell Hundred
Character's Age: 40
Conditional: If your character is 13 years of age or under, please clarify how they will be played. N/A
What form will your character's NV take? A Blackberry
Abilities
Character's Canon Abilities: Mitchell, in short, can talk to machines. This isn’t simply technopathy, but instead he can speak to anything that has mechanical parts. A composite bow has been shown as too simple for him to speak to, but anything more complex is within his range of power. Of course, not only does he speak to them, but machines also speak to him. This power manifests itself in the form of “THE VOICE” for all parties involved. However, one of the things to note is that while he can speak to machines, and they speak back, this isn’t something he can turn on and off. Mitchell is constantly being spoken to by every machine in his vicinity. That digital clock on the bedside isn’t silent, it announces (loudly) every second that passes. The toilet is bound and determined to let him know whether or not the tank is full, and elevators sing at night. Mitchell has had some years to come to terms with his abilities, but he does still have to filter that which comes from humans, and the voices of the devices around him. Mitchell can order and run machines through his voice, although the limits are generally more vast than he uses them for, and when pushing himself, he does begin to lose blood and start bleeding from any orifice available. He can also shut down machines when under severe stress or when experiencing severe sensory overload, such as when he first gained his powers.
History/Personality/Plans/etc.
Character History: Mitchell was born in 1968 to Thomas and Martha Hundred. His mother was a civil-rights activist, and deeply involved in the Civil rights movement, while his father was a miner. When Mitchell was around a year old, his father, who came home drunk one night, was killed by his mother after strangling her. Mitchell grew up believing that his father was killed in a mining accident, due to the fact that his mother had enlisted his father’s friends to stage the accident to ensure that Mitchell would grow up comfortable, as the pension his mother received from his death wouldn’t have come her way if he was killed in self-defense. Mitchell’s life from then on was relatively normal. While his mom was an activist and civics teacher, he grew up wanting to draw comic books, inspired by a man who helped raised him who he affectionately called “Kremlin”. Eventually, however, Mitchell grew to be a Civil Engineer, but that all changed on October 18th, 1999. He was called out to investigate the Brooklyn Bridge by a fellow named Rick Bradbury, when there was a large explosion from a piece of debris that pulled away from what they were investigating. The resulting explosion blew off half of Mitchell’s face, and in the event, he found he began hearing the machines around him, and in the shock, he shut off all the power in New York City.
Mitchell spends a good few months recovering from the explosion, and he dealt with a bit of depression regarding the loss of his job and livelihood. By February, however, his old friend Kremlin helped convince him that his abilities would be used for good, and he begins building both a suit and an array of gadgets to help him save the citizens of New York. In this New York, there is no Superman, no Iron Man, no Justice League or Avengers, there are literally no heroes, and Mitchell was the first, known as the Great Machine. Unfortunately, he also wasn’t very good at what he was doing. Mitchell was reckless, and somewhat obsessed with the idea of being a superhero that he didn’t do a very good job of being one. Unfortunately, even though the Great Machine wasn’t a stellar hero, he did attract the attention of a sound technician, who wanted to duplicate his powers for profit. Jack Pherson’s replaying of Mitchell’s voice allowed his parrot to pick up the specific frequency of Mitchell's voice, and when the Parrot replayed Mitchell’s ability, Pherson was imbued with the ability to control wildlife like Mitchell does machinery, and Pherson seemed to also have a greater understanding of what their powers were meant to be for. After several altercations, eventually Pherson was believed to be killed by a pack of his own animals when Mitchell replayed his own voice back in a fight, using his power against him. The building was burned, although Pherson’s body was never found.
On July 24th, 2001, Mitchell officially hung up his jetpack, and outed himself as the Great Machine. Instead, he decided that using his abilities to save people wasn’t changing the world in the way he wanted, and he announced his candidacy for Mayor as an independent ticket on the same day. Unfortunately, this wasn’t without consequences, as although Mitchell promised to stop being a superhero, he collaborated with the NSA about his abilities once they discovered his identity, which would lead to further ramifications as people who drew closer to his powers would develop side effects.
Then there was September 11th. The twin towers were attacked, just as in our world, as well as the Pentagon, but on this day, Mitchell was able to stop Flight 175 from crashing into the second tower, stretching his powers to the limits, Mitchell very well could have killed himself on that day in an attempt to save one of the towers, although the fact that he was able to save one wasn’t enough to him, and it became a burden on him for the rest of his life. Because of this, and what may have been cheating on Mitchell’s part when he constructed something called the “White Box”, Mitchell was elected the Mayor of New York City on January 9th, 2002.
Within months of his election, he’d experienced the BMA purchasing one of the most racist pieces of art possible, and a killer on the street destroying the snow plows of the city. They managed to handle both, one through the assistance of his new intern, Journal Moore to resolve the issue with the painting, and his old friend Kremlin helped breakthrough on the case of the killer, who ended up being a high schooler who wanted to see school canceled. After this, a series of strange incidents began happening through New York. Strange symbols began appearing on the subway, and NSA agents found a dead, mutilated dog in the subway. The dog was identified as the dog of Mitch’s old NSA handler, Jackson Georges, and he was the lead suspect in the case, until he was also found mutilated in New York’s sewers as well. The entire time this transpires, Mitch is battling his own political issue as well, legalizing gay marriage in New York, while dodging any bullets regarding any questions regarding his own private life. He was finally confronted by the real killer from the sewers, the wife of Jackson Georges, Connie. She’d been driven mad by a fragment of the device that gave Mitchell his powers. She’d not only mutilated her husband and dog, but killed her child, and ambushed Mitchell in Gracie Mansion, telling him that he wasn’t doing what he was supposed to be doing, and made a reference to the string theory, alluding to the true nature of Mitchell’s power. Mitchell is forced to kill her to save his own life, destroying an old jetpack he kept in the mansion, but left only with more questions than answers, and forced to pretend like nothing happened when he presided over the first gay marriage ceremony in New York City.
In the fall of 2002, he was called to jury duty, and although it was suspected he’d be kicked in the voir dire process, Mitchell is called to preside over a civil suit, but in the meanwhile, a masked vigilante going only as “Automoton” begins “saving” New Yorkers. While Mitchell is forced to deal with yet another driven insane by something relating to his powers, his old friend Kremlin and his bodyguard Bradbury hunt down who, or whatever, is posing as something that claims he was built by Mitchell himself. The other man, Easy Benson, claims he can talk to machines, and that he was stationed in a place during the early stages of the Afghanistan altercations known only as “Satan’s Asshole”. He asks Mitchell to use his powers to “cure” him, and Mitchell agrees, only to actually kill the guy using a sniper rifle a few blocks away with his voice. In the meantime, Kremlin and Bradbury finally hunt down Automoton, only to find out that it’s Mitch’s old comic book dealer, Leto, who’d decided to play the Azrael to Mitchell’s Batman, but he was forced to relinquish the suit by good old fashioned “sci-fi weapons”, aka Mitchell's old taser gun.
After this, Mitchell approves an anti-war protest against the Iraq war, only to have his own intern, Journal, attacked in the middle of the protest with Ricin gas. Mitchell and the commissioner who’d pursued him while he was a superhero took their own vigilante steps to track down the maker of the ricin bomb, but once they found him, the commissioner managed to drum up enough evidence for a conviction, and Mitchell is left questioning why the man had done it, because as the man said, it hadn’t been about religion. It had been something he’d seen as necessary, and with the questions, Mitch had to bury Journal Moore. It was something of a philosophical problem for the mayor, as he had been convinced that most terrorists were religious fanatics, but this man had done it to "finish" what the Great Machine had started, but Mitch couldn't figure out what he'd meant, as he'd never tried to hurt people as a superhero.
In the summer of 2003, a man in what looks like an old-fashioned diver suit comes out of one of the rivers, and in an accident shuts down all power in New York City. Surprisingly, with the power outage, Mitchell’s own powers go out, and he’s forced to head back to City Hall to deal with the aftermath, only to be called to Kremlin’s when the mystery man, discovered to be Augustyn Zeller, holds Mitchell’s mother and Kremlin captive. He arrives with very little time left, according to the traveler, who reveals that he’s not someone from the future, but instead someone from sideways, and that there is a war coming, immigrants from another universe were the ones who gave Mitchell his powers, and that they will soon come for what they’ve been aiming for. Zeller is sucked back to his own universe, and Mitchell investigates the name, only to find that there’s an Augustyn Zeller in this world, but that he’s a special effects guy in New Zealand, and there had been no way that he could have traveled to New York from his home.
After this, Mitchell is asked personally by the pope himself to visit the Vatican City. Only with special permission is he allowed to leave the country, and he and Bradbury travel to the Vatican, only to find out that one of the priests in the city had asked the Pope to arrange the meeting, because he believes Mitchell to be the antichrist. When Mitchell meets the Pope, who claims he's going to exorcise him, and meanwhile Mitchell becomes overloaded with signals as someone tries to hack his brain, forcing him to try and murder the Pope. Mitchell only barely resists, and sends Bradbury after the mystery person after figuring out where he came from. After Mitchell has been patched up after attempting to rip off his own flesh, the Pope asks him if he’s had a vision during his "exorcism", and Mitchell answers that he’ll be the President of the United Stares someday. It’s about seven months later that something major happens, and a femme fatale Mitch dubs as Trouble begins performing ostentatious stunts around NYC right before the Republican National Convention. Mitchell, in an effort to put an end to “Bush = Osama” graffiti, puts the city on high alert, but on the night he’s supposed to give the keynote speech, Trouble comes to him, professing that she’s been in love with him since he was the Great Machine. She says she’ll stop if he just kisses her, and he refuses until she threatens to kill herself. With that in mind, he kisses her, before knocking her out. Afterward, a delegate from President Bush asks him if he'd consider being an ambassador for the UN someday, and Mitchell doesn't exactly say no, but that he'll consider it.
With this in mind, near New Years of 2004, Mitchell announces that he will not run for reelection for Mayor, and will instead be focusing his last year on actively making NYC a better place, of course, he states he’s going to do this by actively raising taxes, and if he doesn’t improve the schools, New York can expect to never see him step foot into the city again. However, while this happens, a series of rat attacks break out over the City, and Mitchell becomes more and more distraught, paranoia seeping in as they continue to attack people across New York City. Fearing the worst, Mitchell straps into a new version of his Great Machine outfit, prepared to face off against his old enemy Pherson in the sewers, when he begins to believe his old nemesis isn’t as dead as he believed. Down underneath, in the bowels of the city, he doesn’t find his nemesis, but instead another odd outfit like Zeller’s. He shoots it with his gun, only to find a violet box not unlike the white box he’d build some time ago. He questions it, and the box tells him it’s here to make sure that the “immigration” happens, and that Mitchell’s creators are not pleased that he hasn’t followed the parameters they wish him to. Meanwhile, outside of the City, Mitchell’s bodyguard Bradbury is attempting to destroy the white box, only to be cornered by a reporter acquaintance of Mitch’s, Suzanne Padilla. She’d been put on the track by Kremlin as he attempts to destroy Mitch’s political career to force him to return to his life as a superhero. Bradbury attempts to hit Suzanne with it, only to have the white box break against her, imbuing her with a power similar, but quite different from Mitchell’s. She speaks with the color of white, to control the populace. Beneath the sewers, the box informs Mitchell of the “spectrum”, green to disable weaponry, red to kill crops, purple to destroy beasts of burden, and lastly the white to subdue the people. It notes that the white has become active, and destroys itself. Bradbury, meanwhile, is told to completely forget Suzanne’s appearance, and Mitchell is none the wiser of anything happening to her.
When the spring of 2005 rolls around, things become interesting. Mitchell’s berated on all sides, his Deputy Mayor pushing for him to legalize the morning after pill, while Mitch attempts to move toward the center for his plans in the future (IE: President) and resists legalizing it. During this time, Suzanne Padilla begins a series of attacks, first targeting Mitchell’s new intern January, Journal's sister, and roping the girl into her plan. She approaches Mitchell at Gracie Mansion, and presents him with a choice, join her, or be tossed in the East River. Mitchell refuses, only to be saved by Bradbury. While Bradbury begins an investigation into Suzanne, Mitchell is left dealing with a leak regarding his plans for the morning after pill. While Mitchell deals with that, Suzanne looks for a gun called the “opener”, but finds it only when Kremlin accidentally tells her that he’s with Mitchell’s mom, and that she has a gun. She speeds there, and kills Mitchell’s mother, and takes the opener. Mitchell only finds out later, and wrecked with grief, he isolates himself while Suzanne tells the entire city of New York to RAISE HELL. It’s only when he’s forced to deal with the crazed New Yorkers does Mitchell force himself to focus on the matter at hand, and heads to the only place he can think of, the Island that is not, or Coney Island to confront Suzanne. In a fight with her, Suzanne reveals that she also stole a power nullifier from Kremlin, one he’d built and given to him. With that “active”, she opens the portal to the other side, but Mitchell reveals that he’d lied to Kremlin, that he'd never built a power nullifier, and he commands a dump truck to hit her, before tossing her across the divide to the alternate Earth. Mitchell is stopped by the police armed with bows and arrows, ready to take him down. Mitchell says nothing, and flies off, switching places with Bradbury, who takes the fall for Mitchell taking another go at being a superhero.
With that, Mitchell finishes off his career as Mayor, and moves to working as the UN ambassador in 2006, revealing his plans for the World Trade Center memorial, to rebuild it exactly as it was before, sending the message that New York would come right back from whatever anyone threw at it. Later, close to when he's about to announce his candidacy for President, he dreamed a message from his supposed makers from the other side, telling him that he hadn’t been as successful in turning the tide as he’d thought, and that they will still come back. Shocked awake, he’s approached by Bradbury in his own apartment, drunken and falling apart. He tells Mitchell that he loves him, and Mitchell tells him that he loves him too, but that he can’t be that person, and that Bradbury is drunk, and needs to go. Bradbury in a fury hits him, and leaves, while Mitch goes on to run for president. Stopped in the middle of his campaigning by Kremlin, Mitchell goes to visit him one last time. Kremlin has in his hands the information that could lead to Mitchell’s downfall, the information about the white box. Mitchell tells him that he has to run for President, and that he absolutely cannot go back to being The Great Machines. Distraught, Kremlin holds the gun to his head, and Mitchell asks him if he’s told anyone else about the information. When Kremlin replies that he hadn’t, Mitch told the gun to shoot him, and he stole the information from Kremlin’s dead body, ensuring that the issue wouldn’t come up again, and he left.
And Mitchell’s tale comes full circle. He is left speaking to his own jetpack of his time in office, planning to meet with President Sarkozy, before receiving a call from the President who talks about a few things, health care reform, how things in Iraq went when Mitchell visited, a Spider-Man issue that they were both in, and we’re left with Vice President Mitchell Hundred of the McCain administration saying goodnight to his boss.
Point in Canon: Circa the end of Ex Machina #50.
Conditional: Brief summary of previous RP history: N/A
Character Personality: Mitchell is a character of contradictions, like most politicians, but much of what he does is out of self-sacrifice. Everything Mitch does is because he wants to make the world a better place, so much so that he has shirked almost any personal life and happiness in the pursuit of doing what he personally thinks will yield the best results. He spent much of his time in office in City Hall spouting honesty, and following policies that most politicans wouldn’t, simply because they were the right thing to do. However as the years went by, Mitchell moved further and further toward the center. He was tough on security, as any mayor of New York in a post 9/11 world would be, but remained liberal on the social issues, the balance actually an asset, and even now as the Vice President, we see this interplay still at work. Mitchell convinces McCain to promote Health Care reform, in a Republican presidency, something that's almost unheard of. However, Mitchell is only willing to go so far, as long as it aids him in the pursuit of power.
And that is the core of what Mitchell Hundred is, he hates himself, and what he’s become. It didn’t start with his slow fall into politics and the need to acquire more political power, but over the years since he gained his superpowers. More than that, he fears what he can become, and what he’s destined to become. So much so, that he feigns total disinterest in the people that gave him his powers, or what he’s meant to do with them. Mitchell’s will is indomitable, he is driven and so focused on his path that he refuses to waiver, and will compromise everything to ensure that his goals are met. He was willing to step away from his own personal morals and personal happiness simply because of these goals, because he felt he has to do something absolutely necessary to save the entire human race.
Mitchell simply does not go halfway on anything. Everything he does, he is fully committed to, no matter how big or small. Everything from his attempt at being a superhero, to his life as mayor, and even his budding life as the Vice President, it is all something he is wholly devoted to. Absolutely nothing else matters. A personal life is completely discarded, although he surrounds himself with humans only to seem human, because while there are people everywhere, machines are more numerous, and Mitchell could so easily fall into the trap of becoming more machine than human, if he were only to let go, and he hangs on by barely a thread. It’s only his sheer devotion to what he knows he must do that he manages to not fall into the trap of what he may become. Mitchell is, in short, walking the line between savior and destroyer, and just barely managing to stay afloat. The only thing that has kept him going this long is his knowledge of right and wrong, and the softer part of his heart. Mitchell does not want to destroy his world, he likes it, and fights in little, subtle ways to make sure that it remains as it is.
However, Mitchell also keeps everything close to his chest. He lies and cheats because he doesn’t trust anyone, and in fact is the kind of person more apt to use another instead of trust them. This is one of the reasons why most of his personal relationships do fall apart, because he doesn’t inform anyone of what he feels like he must do. He has no true confidant, and this can be one of the reasons that Mitchell seems to be under so much stress, and why he sacrifices so much. The world of politics is a dog-eat-dog world, and most politicians are not apt to trust, but most have some confidants such as significant others and close friends. Unfortunately, Mitchell was wholly abandoned or pushed away anyone he could trust, because of his ambitions and need to finally achieve the highest spot possible. What he’s become is a broken man with little scruples, interested in only saving the world, and to hopefully do what he can in the meantime.
Conditional: Personality development in previous game: N/A
Character Plans: What I’d love to do is explore the political side of the game. Mitchell is a person deeply mired and motivated by the politics of an area, and that’s where he flourishes. Also, Siren's Port would be a very interesting place for him to interact in, with not only people he knows of, but idolizes, and interacting with some of the people in game may help him develop as a person into something better than what he became in canon.
Appearance/PB: Mitch looks a little something like this
Writing Samples
First Person Sample
You know what people are supposed to say when they wake up in some ass-backwards location with no fucking clue where they are? I’m sure it has something to do with asking if this is a kidnapping, but it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one here, does it?
So I suppose there are a couple of questions a rational, sane person is going to ask, right? I’m sure you’ve all heard them before, so I’m not going to bore whoever’s on the other end of this thing with all of the questions at once. There are multiple people who can hear this, so one of you can give me an answer.
The only question I’m going to actively ask is how the fuck did this happen? It's not something you can return from, or else I'd have come in one end, only to be led to the other, right? If somebody is trying to play a game with me, I'm the wrong asshole to pick. So someone just tell me what the likelihood of me getting back home is eventually. I have a lot of shit that'll be piling up on my desk right about now, and I'm overworked as it is.
Third Person Sample
There were things that he knew, and things that he didn’t want to know. He knew there was an infinite number of Earths, enough time reading comic books had left him with the possibility, and he’d seen others with his own eyes. He knew they existed, and he knew to prepare for the inevitability of immigration. He’d never been prepared to be the immigrant himself.
Nor had he prepared himself for the shock, worse than having the side of his head blown off, only maybe, and he wanted to move, he tried to, but the sickness, nausea and dizziness running through him. Was this what Suzanne felt? The futile cries of “I’m Press!” echoed, a memory he’d tried all too hard to forget, but every time he closed his eyes, her shocked, terrified face would always look back at him. Hers, Pherson’s, Kremlin’s. It was enough to force him to open his own, fight to force his eyes open.
The sting was just a drop in the bucket, but it seared behind his eyes, the bright lights on unadjusted pupils. His lips parted, drier and more cracked than they should have been, breathing heavy, hands gripping into...sand? Bright light forced him to close his eyes, opening one, and then another to alleviate the throbbing, drumming headache jamming each beat into his temples, and to quicken adjustment to the world around him. A baseball diamond. The all-American fucking sport. He was in a fucking baseball diamond, and he didn’t remember how he’d gotten there. The fuzz slowly clears from his head, and the lights begin to speak. The world around him comes into focus, not visually, but he can hear it. All of it.
It had been too long since the shock of hearing a new city had passed through his ears. Too long since the campaign trail, where he’d sampled everything the country had been able to give him. He’d been in the Nation’s Capital too long, and it hadn’t been like New York, but the machines inside had given him enough of a picture of the relationship between them all. The way things interconnected in each individual city was unique, each one a tale of what cars had driven on the roads, what plumbing had slowly been implemented, some having been built around it, constantly reliant on sewers and tunnels, other knowing what it had been like to have shit and piss tossed onto their streets. This city was younger than New York, a bit fresher. The machines didn't have the same histories with each other. That narrowed certain cities in the country out of the running for where he could be.
Shaking it off, he struggled to move to his feet, thighs and calves buckling under the sensation, jelly. He felt something, not another voice amongst all the rest, but different. Distinct. Something that he couldn’t pinpoint, couldn’t identify, and he struggled to place it, figure it out, but the knowledge wouldn’t come. He couldn’t, and the longer he stood in the middle of a baseball diamond looking like an idiot staring into the sky, the more he realized that he needed to move. He needed to figure this out, and he wouldn’t do any good by standing here listening to machines.
Shit, maybe if he got out of the baseball diamond, he’d find that it had been an elaborate goddamn prank, and he’d see the media on the other side, cameras prepared to go, asking him why he was in the middle of nowhere. That would be just his luck, wouldn’t it? Looking like the idiot who lost himself in a fucking baseball diamond.
The more he walked, though, the more the sensation bothered him, because he couldn’t place it. He’d lived with the voices of machines for long enough, and knew more than he wanted to about where they came from. This was different, new, and with the price that had come with the first gift he’d been given, he wasn’t sure he would like the price of the second. If it was a gift. It could be a curse, couldn’t it? Or maybe this was the price? This feeling, whatever it may be, but what was the gift?
He made another step, and another. He kept moving, because that’s the only solution he could come up with right now.