[OOC] App to a_facility
OOC Information:
Name: Kathrine
Age: 24
AIM: n/a
MSN: n/a
Y!M: n/a
E-MAIL: spkathrine[@]gmail.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Galatea / tragetea
IC Information:
Name: Thomas “Toro” Raymond
Fandom: Marvel Comics
Timeline:Mid-The Torch #6.
Age: about 84, looks to be in his late 20s/early 30s
Appearance: Toro is about 5’11” with black hair and blue eyes. He’s physically fit and wears a suit under his clothes that adapts to extreme temperatures.
Abilities:
Toro is immune to the affects of extreme heat himself and thus never burns, but this does leave him some weakness to extreme colds. Toro has the ability to control “ambient heat energy,” raising the heat in the air, controlling fires, putting them out, absorbing heat into himself, and the ability to raise his body heat to the point of combustion-thus turning himself into a living “torch.” Using this ability he is capable of flying on the hydrogen atoms created, heating air until it bursts into flames and even “sky-writing” where the flames become words or weapons that he can control with enough concentration (like fireballs).
Personality:
At first look, Tom is generally what people would call a “good guy.” He’s normally polite, if a bit cocky, helpful, cares about people, knows right from wrong, and all that good stuff. He grew up with sickly parents who were both exposed to dangerous chemicals due to their work as scientists and researchers and he cared about them, greatly. Even though they weren’t the richest family, living off of a very modest income, he didn’t lack for all of the important things. Still, because of the hardships that his family went through financially and, especially, with his mother’s rapidly declining health, Toro came to understand early on that life isn’t always the kindest to good people, like his parents.
But even a good guy can have rough edges. Living through the train wreck that killed his parents left Toro with survivor’s guilt and believing that he was the cause of the crash. His parents and everyone else on the train were dead, but he wasn’t, so it had to be his fault and the fault of the powers he had that his parents were so afraid of, because those powers meant that he was some kind of monster (they didn't know about mutants back in his time). Even after meeting Jim Hammond and later on learning the truth about his parents’ deaths, Toro would never stop believing that who he is-what he is-cursed them somehow.
As he aged, Tom came into full control of his powers and it helped him to fear himself less. Instead, he focused on using his powers to help people, just as his mentor, Jim Hammond, did. His relationship with Jim was one of the strongest bonds he had after he had lost everything else and it shaped the way he looked at the world. Jim didn’t understand everything about human beings, because as an android he learned human emotions through observation and mimicry. Toro became one of the biggest models he followed because of their constant companionship, while in turn, Toro tried to be more understanding and open to the world because that was how Jim approached things. He wanted to make Jim proud of him, tried to live up to the legacy Jim had set before him even years after his death. It doesn’t always work, as Toro is more cynical and less optimistic than Jim, but he tries anyway.
Toro may not be the smartest guy around, but he is intuitive and learns on his feet. He doesn’t like to jump into situations without thinking things through or to go against orders-as a teenager, it was usually Bucky who did that and Toro who followed after him, arguing that they shouldn’t do it the entire time-but he does have a temper. It clouds his judgment if he lets it get the best of him, such as when he decides that the best way to regain control of his life after being brought back from the dead is to go after the man that had killed him, the Mad Thinker. Even when he was being warned against it by a friend, he went ahead with it because Toro was at the point that he needed something, anything to have a purpose in his life. For a second time he had lost everything and so he chose to avenge himself because he didn’t think he would be able to move on otherwise.
This negative side of him isn’t something he had only after being brought back. When finding out how he had died after being sent to the future, Toro became upset and bitter, believing that he had died alone and abandoned by his friends. It’s something that eats at him. Of course, his reaction is what pushes Bucky Barnes to wish for him to return to life in the future. It could be said that Tom is his own cause for being displaced in a world decades away from what he knows, a wife who is remarried and moved on, and a political climate that’s heavy on the anti-mutant and anti-superhuman sentiment. “Be careful what your best friend wishes for” could be his motto.
Toro is still, despite his at times cynical outlook, protective of humans in general (this does not include Nazis or supervillains). He was willing to give up his life to bring back a whole village of people that he had been forced to kill during the war because of the guilt he felt over it. But even though the world as a whole is his concern, his priority is usually those he considers his friends and loved ones, because Toro has already lost enough people that he cares about. He could argue with a friend more times than they get along, but Toro will still consider them important. When he and his friends in the Young Allies were making an appearance for a war bonds drive, the program director refused to remove a blown up cover of one of the propaganda comics that were being published about them-despite the fact it included a disparaging caricature of one of the members, Washington Jones. Toro’s solution? Burn the poster down. He doesn’t stand for discrimination or racism in general, but having it happen to one of his friends really gets to him. He knows the world isn’t a perfect place, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to just let it go and think he can’t make a difference. Making a difference is what being a superhero is about and even if he’s retired from being one, he hasn’t forgotten all the reasons he was one.
History:
In the early 1930s, both Toro's mother and father were assistants to Phineas T. Horton while he worked on creating man-made cells that would act like human cells, although they did so at different times. Because of her exposure to Horton’s cells and radiation during these experiments, Tom’s mother, Nora, became sickly. Eventually, she met Fred Raymond and they married. Toro grew up with immunity to flames and heat, unable to be hurt by them in any way, but it was sometime between 1939 1940 when Jim Hammond, the android that Horton creating using those cells came to their door that Toro first burst into flames himself. Fred and Nora were terrified and Fred made Jim leave immediately. Toro wouldn’t meet him face-to-face for a year.
A couple years before 1941, Toro’s parents were killed in a train crash, but Toro, because of his powers managed to break his way free of the wreckage. He was found by a traveling circus train afterward and remained with them as a fire breather for sometime, before Jim Hammond found him and again Toro burst into flames at his mere presence. They couldn’t understand why Toro’s powers were reacting to Jim, but Mad Thinker and Reed Richards concurred years later than Toro had been exposed to the Horton’s Cells that make up Jim’s entire body and his mutant x-gene reacted by attaching the cells to his own and then mimicking Jim’s powers, thus making him a human torch himself. Jim takes Toro as his partner, The Flaming Kid.
It is also in 1941 that they become a part of the Invaders, a special ops group support by the U.S. government to deal with major threats at home and abroad. Toro and Jim were sent Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, after they were warned of an impending attack. They found themselves in the middle of a large fleet of Japanese fighter planes and attempted to save as many lives as they could, but they arrived too late to do more than curb how much damage was done by the kamikaze pilots.
While being a member of the Invaders during World War II, Toro was also a member of the Young Allies, a group of teenage boys who were already being trained by the military to handle acts of terrorism and unrest in the U.S. and abroad during the war. He was also a member of the Kid Commandos, who were young superheroes allied with the Invaders that handled superhuman-based terrorism on American soil. Bucky and he were both members of these teams together and worked with them on cases when they were left behind while the older members of The Invaders went on other missions overseas. The Invaders were crucial to the success of the Allies side of the war, and when the War in Europe came to a close, Toro was there when Jim Hammond killed Adolf Hitler.
Even after the war, Jim and Toro remained partners and fought crime as part of the “All Winners Squad,” but in 1949, they were hit with chemical solution called “X-R” and were paralyzed. The villains buried Jim in the desert and Toro was taken by the criminals and given to the Soviet Union, where he was brainwashed into a weapon that they used for North Korea against the American soldiers in South Korea. It wasn’t until four years later when bomb testing in that area helped Jim escape from his prison and that he rescued Toro and returned to his real memories. He became a superhero again and partnered with Jim as usual, but unfortunately, this wouldn’t last because Jim realized that the radiation he had been exposed to when he escaped was causing him to malfunction and he could be a danger to people around him. He forced himself to combust and release every bit of energy he had inside him, causing him to be deactivated again (and thus “dead”) and this time Toro gave up being a superhero altogether. He met a woman named Ann, married her, and went on to have a happy life with her for over ten years.
In 1966, he found out that Jim had been revived again and was being used by The Mad Thinker to attack the Fantastic Four, but they had stopped him-killing Jim for the second time. Toro insisted on going to his funeral, but he met a man there that said he needed to tell him something about Jim. The man turned out to be the Mad Thinker, who kidnapped Toro and drugged him, but the drug had an adverse reaction which left Toro with partial amnesia. Mad Thinker (and his accomplice, The Puppet Master) used this to his advantage, putting a control collar on him and brainwashing him into believing than he was Jim Hammond, the Human Torch.
When the Mad Thinker thought him ready some time later, he sent him out to attack Namor, the Sub-mariner, who also believed him to be the Original Human Torch. In the end, Namor damaged the control collar, and they turned to stop the Mad Thinker’s plot of using satellites to triangulate lasers to scorch locations around the world. During the fight, Toro was struck and regained his memory, realizing what the Mad Thinker had done to him. He refused to let him escape, blowing up the jet that the Mad Thinker was fleeing on, but the Mad Thinker used teleportation to escape while the explosion killed Toro instead.
It wasn’t until decades later, years into the 21st Century that Toro would find himself alive again, because a fluke mist during the 1940s had sent the Invaders into the future where they had found out most of the team was dead and dark times were upon superheroes. Tom found out during this that he died alone, but couldn’t understand why none of his friends had been there for him. It left him confused and bitter, but the Invaders managed to return to their time and had to take back the cosmic cube from the Red Skull and return history to its rightful order. Bucky held onto the cube and wished that Toro would be returned to life, but to make sure that history wouldn’t be altered, his wished that Toro would be brought back from death instead of preventing him from dying. This left Toro digging out of his own grave over some forty years after he’d been buried.
He came back to find that his wife had remarried, majority of his friends were dead, and Toro didn’t know what to do with his life in a world he didn’t belong in. The Vision tried to guide him, but Toro knew that he needed to find a purpose, so he chose instead to bring the man who had killed him, the Mad Thinker, to justice. This didn’t go very well as the Mad Thinker captured him and cut him open to take samples. He used the Horton’s Cells he removed from Toro to heal Jim Hammond’s body and then brought him back to life, but stripped him of all of the emotions and personality he had before. He used Jim to attack people, but Toro escaped his restraints and destroyed the control remote the Mad Thinker’s minions were using to force Jim to obey them. They destroyed the ship they were on, but this causes the large amount of “Compound D” which was a modified version of Horton’s Cells that the Mad Thinker created to be released into the ocean. It started as a neuron inhibiter, but advanced into an artificial intelligence that spreads itself to others while still considering itself a single mind. When the chemical leeks into the sea, affecting all of the life in it, including Namor and his Atlantean subjects, it takes over their minds, subduing their original personalities and leaving only the single mind of D in control.
Toro takes Jim to the Baxter Building, hoping to get some help from Reed Richards. They end up fighting against Namor and others who are infected by Compound D as it spreads by the infected breathing it out as smoke and being inhaled by anyone nearby. They had to force The Mad Thinker to provide the antidote, but in the end it also causes adverse affects in Jim Hammond, as his body is made of cells that are a direct cousin to Compound D. He found out that he had days left before it body will completely breakdown on him and he would die again. Unsure what to do, Jim remains in the Baxter Building. Toro goes on to pursue any leads he can find to his mother’s connection to Phineas T. Horton and how he had Horton’s Cells existing inside of him. He finds out that his mother worked for Horton and that she was also a spy meant to steal Horton’s formula who had been turned by the U.S. because she had been spying against her will. It may have even been a contributor to the train wreck that caused his parents’ deaths. Tom isn’t sure how to accept all of this information, but then Jim arrives, offering to help Toro on his search in the little time he has left.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
Someone might have thought that growing up as a boy that could burst into flame at will, having been thrown into alternate worlds and alternate futures, having been a military operative before he’d even learned how to shave, having been brainwashed, blown up, and even been married, would have made him prepared for anything. When a fella’s lived through a word war and others, seen so many friends die or never return home, had his past taken away from him… There wasn’t much more he could go through, is there?
If that person were right, Toro should have been able to handle staring down at the flames licking at the grass and dirt of his own grave and knowing he just burned his way out of it. Vision stood as he always did, imposing and unreadable, waiting for Toro to be ready to move. Toro wasn’t sure he was ready for anything.
The flames called to him, reaching up as if to cradle him back into their flickering arms and Toro wanted to let them swallow him whole. It would be comforting and he would be able to forget everything. Let the world drift away with the heat. But that would be the coward’s way out. And Toro wasn’t a coward.
“Who? I just… Who would do this?” Since ‘why am I not dead?’ didn’t get him much of an answer maybe this one was more direct.
Vision was as distant as ever when he responded, “James Barnes used the seconds in which he held the cosmic cube to instill this wish for you, Toro.”
What did you do, Bucky? What did you do?
That didn’t make it any easier to step back away from the upturned earth and the gravestone with his name-it was just as imposing as it was the last time he saw it-to walk over to the waiting green smoke. Vision didn’t comment on his hesitation, but he wouldn’t, would he? He’s not the type, from what Toro remembered. Vision didn’t spirit him away either, but instead walked with him through the gravestones. It’s all so familiar, like the ghost of a memory in his mind and he wonders how he could have ever forgotten the rows and rows of stones and engraved names-a few of them he even knew.
Many of them were still alive back-before. Like him.
Why me, Bucky? What do you want me to see?
There wasn’t a Bucky there to show him. He had let that go years ago, but the fresh thought in his mind left a weight in the pit of his stomach. Bucky wasn’t there, Cap was gone, Jim was-
-Would Ann even be waiting for him all these years later? What could there be here all these decades later that would even look the same to him? The memories he had of being here before-would they still be valid? Would the world still be like that? So different and new and filled with chaos that wasn’t anything like the chaos he knew back in 1943 himself?
Suddenly the world felt far too big and imposing, but Toro didn’t stop walking. He followed Vision through the grass, eyes trailing along the graves as they passed, reading the names, the dates, some old and some forty years new. He thought of the faded memories of the world he had not thought he would ever experience for himself and the friend that wouldn’t either.
Wasn’t it just like Bucky to expect Toro to do it for him. The thought almost made him smile while also making him want to slug him. And if Toro could come back to life, who knew what else could happen in this crazy future. Maybe Bucky would pop up from behind a tree still looking all of eighteen and cocky and Toro would have to remind himself that he shouldn’t hit a kid. He could handle that.
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
You here, Jim? [Yes, he has priorities and he still isn’t sure about all the weird things around here, but Jim was just right there. Him being taken when the Original Human Torch was right will never make sense.] I know nothing’s for certain with things like this, but usually when I wake up in weird places at least someone I recognize is around.
[Just a little bit of sarcasm right there, but also just a bit of weariness hidden in it.] You’d think I’d start getting used to this…but I really don’t want to be that guy that gets used to things like this. [a sigh, he runs a hand through his hair] Anybody else around here who can give a fella a quick rundown?
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Toro has been through a lot of things in his life. He handles physical torture rather well, in the way that he doesn’t break under it. Mental on the other hand is his weakness, because Toro has hidden insecurities about himself and is susceptible to mind tricks because of it. He still can hold up against it, but if the stress gets to be too much he might lash out without intending to.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here.
None!
Name: Kathrine
Age: 24
AIM: n/a
MSN: n/a
Y!M: n/a
E-MAIL: spkathrine[@]gmail.com
Are you new? If not, list your current characters: Galatea / tragetea
IC Information:
Name: Thomas “Toro” Raymond
Fandom: Marvel Comics
Timeline:Mid-The Torch #6.
Age: about 84, looks to be in his late 20s/early 30s
Appearance: Toro is about 5’11” with black hair and blue eyes. He’s physically fit and wears a suit under his clothes that adapts to extreme temperatures.
Abilities:
Toro is immune to the affects of extreme heat himself and thus never burns, but this does leave him some weakness to extreme colds. Toro has the ability to control “ambient heat energy,” raising the heat in the air, controlling fires, putting them out, absorbing heat into himself, and the ability to raise his body heat to the point of combustion-thus turning himself into a living “torch.” Using this ability he is capable of flying on the hydrogen atoms created, heating air until it bursts into flames and even “sky-writing” where the flames become words or weapons that he can control with enough concentration (like fireballs).
Personality:
At first look, Tom is generally what people would call a “good guy.” He’s normally polite, if a bit cocky, helpful, cares about people, knows right from wrong, and all that good stuff. He grew up with sickly parents who were both exposed to dangerous chemicals due to their work as scientists and researchers and he cared about them, greatly. Even though they weren’t the richest family, living off of a very modest income, he didn’t lack for all of the important things. Still, because of the hardships that his family went through financially and, especially, with his mother’s rapidly declining health, Toro came to understand early on that life isn’t always the kindest to good people, like his parents.
But even a good guy can have rough edges. Living through the train wreck that killed his parents left Toro with survivor’s guilt and believing that he was the cause of the crash. His parents and everyone else on the train were dead, but he wasn’t, so it had to be his fault and the fault of the powers he had that his parents were so afraid of, because those powers meant that he was some kind of monster (they didn't know about mutants back in his time). Even after meeting Jim Hammond and later on learning the truth about his parents’ deaths, Toro would never stop believing that who he is-what he is-cursed them somehow.
As he aged, Tom came into full control of his powers and it helped him to fear himself less. Instead, he focused on using his powers to help people, just as his mentor, Jim Hammond, did. His relationship with Jim was one of the strongest bonds he had after he had lost everything else and it shaped the way he looked at the world. Jim didn’t understand everything about human beings, because as an android he learned human emotions through observation and mimicry. Toro became one of the biggest models he followed because of their constant companionship, while in turn, Toro tried to be more understanding and open to the world because that was how Jim approached things. He wanted to make Jim proud of him, tried to live up to the legacy Jim had set before him even years after his death. It doesn’t always work, as Toro is more cynical and less optimistic than Jim, but he tries anyway.
Toro may not be the smartest guy around, but he is intuitive and learns on his feet. He doesn’t like to jump into situations without thinking things through or to go against orders-as a teenager, it was usually Bucky who did that and Toro who followed after him, arguing that they shouldn’t do it the entire time-but he does have a temper. It clouds his judgment if he lets it get the best of him, such as when he decides that the best way to regain control of his life after being brought back from the dead is to go after the man that had killed him, the Mad Thinker. Even when he was being warned against it by a friend, he went ahead with it because Toro was at the point that he needed something, anything to have a purpose in his life. For a second time he had lost everything and so he chose to avenge himself because he didn’t think he would be able to move on otherwise.
This negative side of him isn’t something he had only after being brought back. When finding out how he had died after being sent to the future, Toro became upset and bitter, believing that he had died alone and abandoned by his friends. It’s something that eats at him. Of course, his reaction is what pushes Bucky Barnes to wish for him to return to life in the future. It could be said that Tom is his own cause for being displaced in a world decades away from what he knows, a wife who is remarried and moved on, and a political climate that’s heavy on the anti-mutant and anti-superhuman sentiment. “Be careful what your best friend wishes for” could be his motto.
Toro is still, despite his at times cynical outlook, protective of humans in general (this does not include Nazis or supervillains). He was willing to give up his life to bring back a whole village of people that he had been forced to kill during the war because of the guilt he felt over it. But even though the world as a whole is his concern, his priority is usually those he considers his friends and loved ones, because Toro has already lost enough people that he cares about. He could argue with a friend more times than they get along, but Toro will still consider them important. When he and his friends in the Young Allies were making an appearance for a war bonds drive, the program director refused to remove a blown up cover of one of the propaganda comics that were being published about them-despite the fact it included a disparaging caricature of one of the members, Washington Jones. Toro’s solution? Burn the poster down. He doesn’t stand for discrimination or racism in general, but having it happen to one of his friends really gets to him. He knows the world isn’t a perfect place, but that doesn’t mean he’s going to just let it go and think he can’t make a difference. Making a difference is what being a superhero is about and even if he’s retired from being one, he hasn’t forgotten all the reasons he was one.
History:
In the early 1930s, both Toro's mother and father were assistants to Phineas T. Horton while he worked on creating man-made cells that would act like human cells, although they did so at different times. Because of her exposure to Horton’s cells and radiation during these experiments, Tom’s mother, Nora, became sickly. Eventually, she met Fred Raymond and they married. Toro grew up with immunity to flames and heat, unable to be hurt by them in any way, but it was sometime between 1939 1940 when Jim Hammond, the android that Horton creating using those cells came to their door that Toro first burst into flames himself. Fred and Nora were terrified and Fred made Jim leave immediately. Toro wouldn’t meet him face-to-face for a year.
A couple years before 1941, Toro’s parents were killed in a train crash, but Toro, because of his powers managed to break his way free of the wreckage. He was found by a traveling circus train afterward and remained with them as a fire breather for sometime, before Jim Hammond found him and again Toro burst into flames at his mere presence. They couldn’t understand why Toro’s powers were reacting to Jim, but Mad Thinker and Reed Richards concurred years later than Toro had been exposed to the Horton’s Cells that make up Jim’s entire body and his mutant x-gene reacted by attaching the cells to his own and then mimicking Jim’s powers, thus making him a human torch himself. Jim takes Toro as his partner, The Flaming Kid.
It is also in 1941 that they become a part of the Invaders, a special ops group support by the U.S. government to deal with major threats at home and abroad. Toro and Jim were sent Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, after they were warned of an impending attack. They found themselves in the middle of a large fleet of Japanese fighter planes and attempted to save as many lives as they could, but they arrived too late to do more than curb how much damage was done by the kamikaze pilots.
While being a member of the Invaders during World War II, Toro was also a member of the Young Allies, a group of teenage boys who were already being trained by the military to handle acts of terrorism and unrest in the U.S. and abroad during the war. He was also a member of the Kid Commandos, who were young superheroes allied with the Invaders that handled superhuman-based terrorism on American soil. Bucky and he were both members of these teams together and worked with them on cases when they were left behind while the older members of The Invaders went on other missions overseas. The Invaders were crucial to the success of the Allies side of the war, and when the War in Europe came to a close, Toro was there when Jim Hammond killed Adolf Hitler.
Even after the war, Jim and Toro remained partners and fought crime as part of the “All Winners Squad,” but in 1949, they were hit with chemical solution called “X-R” and were paralyzed. The villains buried Jim in the desert and Toro was taken by the criminals and given to the Soviet Union, where he was brainwashed into a weapon that they used for North Korea against the American soldiers in South Korea. It wasn’t until four years later when bomb testing in that area helped Jim escape from his prison and that he rescued Toro and returned to his real memories. He became a superhero again and partnered with Jim as usual, but unfortunately, this wouldn’t last because Jim realized that the radiation he had been exposed to when he escaped was causing him to malfunction and he could be a danger to people around him. He forced himself to combust and release every bit of energy he had inside him, causing him to be deactivated again (and thus “dead”) and this time Toro gave up being a superhero altogether. He met a woman named Ann, married her, and went on to have a happy life with her for over ten years.
In 1966, he found out that Jim had been revived again and was being used by The Mad Thinker to attack the Fantastic Four, but they had stopped him-killing Jim for the second time. Toro insisted on going to his funeral, but he met a man there that said he needed to tell him something about Jim. The man turned out to be the Mad Thinker, who kidnapped Toro and drugged him, but the drug had an adverse reaction which left Toro with partial amnesia. Mad Thinker (and his accomplice, The Puppet Master) used this to his advantage, putting a control collar on him and brainwashing him into believing than he was Jim Hammond, the Human Torch.
When the Mad Thinker thought him ready some time later, he sent him out to attack Namor, the Sub-mariner, who also believed him to be the Original Human Torch. In the end, Namor damaged the control collar, and they turned to stop the Mad Thinker’s plot of using satellites to triangulate lasers to scorch locations around the world. During the fight, Toro was struck and regained his memory, realizing what the Mad Thinker had done to him. He refused to let him escape, blowing up the jet that the Mad Thinker was fleeing on, but the Mad Thinker used teleportation to escape while the explosion killed Toro instead.
It wasn’t until decades later, years into the 21st Century that Toro would find himself alive again, because a fluke mist during the 1940s had sent the Invaders into the future where they had found out most of the team was dead and dark times were upon superheroes. Tom found out during this that he died alone, but couldn’t understand why none of his friends had been there for him. It left him confused and bitter, but the Invaders managed to return to their time and had to take back the cosmic cube from the Red Skull and return history to its rightful order. Bucky held onto the cube and wished that Toro would be returned to life, but to make sure that history wouldn’t be altered, his wished that Toro would be brought back from death instead of preventing him from dying. This left Toro digging out of his own grave over some forty years after he’d been buried.
He came back to find that his wife had remarried, majority of his friends were dead, and Toro didn’t know what to do with his life in a world he didn’t belong in. The Vision tried to guide him, but Toro knew that he needed to find a purpose, so he chose instead to bring the man who had killed him, the Mad Thinker, to justice. This didn’t go very well as the Mad Thinker captured him and cut him open to take samples. He used the Horton’s Cells he removed from Toro to heal Jim Hammond’s body and then brought him back to life, but stripped him of all of the emotions and personality he had before. He used Jim to attack people, but Toro escaped his restraints and destroyed the control remote the Mad Thinker’s minions were using to force Jim to obey them. They destroyed the ship they were on, but this causes the large amount of “Compound D” which was a modified version of Horton’s Cells that the Mad Thinker created to be released into the ocean. It started as a neuron inhibiter, but advanced into an artificial intelligence that spreads itself to others while still considering itself a single mind. When the chemical leeks into the sea, affecting all of the life in it, including Namor and his Atlantean subjects, it takes over their minds, subduing their original personalities and leaving only the single mind of D in control.
Toro takes Jim to the Baxter Building, hoping to get some help from Reed Richards. They end up fighting against Namor and others who are infected by Compound D as it spreads by the infected breathing it out as smoke and being inhaled by anyone nearby. They had to force The Mad Thinker to provide the antidote, but in the end it also causes adverse affects in Jim Hammond, as his body is made of cells that are a direct cousin to Compound D. He found out that he had days left before it body will completely breakdown on him and he would die again. Unsure what to do, Jim remains in the Baxter Building. Toro goes on to pursue any leads he can find to his mother’s connection to Phineas T. Horton and how he had Horton’s Cells existing inside of him. He finds out that his mother worked for Horton and that she was also a spy meant to steal Horton’s formula who had been turned by the U.S. because she had been spying against her will. It may have even been a contributor to the train wreck that caused his parents’ deaths. Tom isn’t sure how to accept all of this information, but then Jim arrives, offering to help Toro on his search in the little time he has left.
Roleplay Sample - Log:
Someone might have thought that growing up as a boy that could burst into flame at will, having been thrown into alternate worlds and alternate futures, having been a military operative before he’d even learned how to shave, having been brainwashed, blown up, and even been married, would have made him prepared for anything. When a fella’s lived through a word war and others, seen so many friends die or never return home, had his past taken away from him… There wasn’t much more he could go through, is there?
If that person were right, Toro should have been able to handle staring down at the flames licking at the grass and dirt of his own grave and knowing he just burned his way out of it. Vision stood as he always did, imposing and unreadable, waiting for Toro to be ready to move. Toro wasn’t sure he was ready for anything.
The flames called to him, reaching up as if to cradle him back into their flickering arms and Toro wanted to let them swallow him whole. It would be comforting and he would be able to forget everything. Let the world drift away with the heat. But that would be the coward’s way out. And Toro wasn’t a coward.
“Who? I just… Who would do this?” Since ‘why am I not dead?’ didn’t get him much of an answer maybe this one was more direct.
Vision was as distant as ever when he responded, “James Barnes used the seconds in which he held the cosmic cube to instill this wish for you, Toro.”
What did you do, Bucky? What did you do?
That didn’t make it any easier to step back away from the upturned earth and the gravestone with his name-it was just as imposing as it was the last time he saw it-to walk over to the waiting green smoke. Vision didn’t comment on his hesitation, but he wouldn’t, would he? He’s not the type, from what Toro remembered. Vision didn’t spirit him away either, but instead walked with him through the gravestones. It’s all so familiar, like the ghost of a memory in his mind and he wonders how he could have ever forgotten the rows and rows of stones and engraved names-a few of them he even knew.
Many of them were still alive back-before. Like him.
Why me, Bucky? What do you want me to see?
There wasn’t a Bucky there to show him. He had let that go years ago, but the fresh thought in his mind left a weight in the pit of his stomach. Bucky wasn’t there, Cap was gone, Jim was-
-Would Ann even be waiting for him all these years later? What could there be here all these decades later that would even look the same to him? The memories he had of being here before-would they still be valid? Would the world still be like that? So different and new and filled with chaos that wasn’t anything like the chaos he knew back in 1943 himself?
Suddenly the world felt far too big and imposing, but Toro didn’t stop walking. He followed Vision through the grass, eyes trailing along the graves as they passed, reading the names, the dates, some old and some forty years new. He thought of the faded memories of the world he had not thought he would ever experience for himself and the friend that wouldn’t either.
Wasn’t it just like Bucky to expect Toro to do it for him. The thought almost made him smile while also making him want to slug him. And if Toro could come back to life, who knew what else could happen in this crazy future. Maybe Bucky would pop up from behind a tree still looking all of eighteen and cocky and Toro would have to remind himself that he shouldn’t hit a kid. He could handle that.
Roleplay Sample - Journal:
You here, Jim? [Yes, he has priorities and he still isn’t sure about all the weird things around here, but Jim was just right there. Him being taken when the Original Human Torch was right will never make sense.] I know nothing’s for certain with things like this, but usually when I wake up in weird places at least someone I recognize is around.
[Just a little bit of sarcasm right there, but also just a bit of weariness hidden in it.] You’d think I’d start getting used to this…but I really don’t want to be that guy that gets used to things like this. [a sigh, he runs a hand through his hair] Anybody else around here who can give a fella a quick rundown?
This game includes horrible mental and physical torture of your character. After reading the rules/faq for clarification, how do you expect your character to handle this and continue to function?
Toro has been through a lot of things in his life. He handles physical torture rather well, in the way that he doesn’t break under it. Mental on the other hand is his weakness, because Toro has hidden insecurities about himself and is susceptible to mind tricks because of it. He still can hold up against it, but if the stress gets to be too much he might lash out without intending to.
Questions? Comments? Crazed and creative statements? Those go here.
None!