The Application!
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Franky
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: battlefranky37
IM: AIM: ikarifuru
E-MAIL: glcfuru@gmail.com
RETURNING: Ssssorta. I'm not in the game at the moment but I used to play this guy!
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Santo Vaccarro AKA Rockslide
FANDOM: Marvel 616
CHRONOLOGY: He's coming in from the end of the Wolverine & Jubilee mini, after his conversation with Jubes on Utopia while watching the sunset..
SUPERHERO NAME: Rockslide
ALTER EGO: Santo Vaccarro, mutant jerkass. Not that he can really have a secret identity what with being a six foot tall four hundred pound rock man.
BACKGROUND:
On Earth-616, a portion of the population is stuck with the x-gene, a wonderful little genetic evolution that gives them both superpower-y mutations and the hatred of every bigot afraid of normal humanity losing its position as the dominant species. The Xavier Institute exists to teach young mutants that their powers are gifts, so it seems only natural that Santo, as a teenager made of rock, ended up moving from Boston to the school once it expanded and began taking on more students. Once there he became fast friends with his future squad leader Julian Keller, and together the two made up about 90% of the jerk content at the Institute. Santo mainly performed as Julian’s right-hand bully, helping him pick on other kids and switching advisers from Iceman to Emma Frost at his insistence. It’s after this ship-jumping that Santo picks out his codename, the incredibly imaginative Rockslide.
The semester ended with the school blown up for the millionth time and subsequently rebuilt with Emma Frost as headmistress. As one of the many changes at the reorganized Institute, the students were separated into squads. Surprising no one, Rockslide ended up on the Hellions squad, comprised of himself, Julian (using the codename Hellion) as leader, and other students Brian Cruz AKA Tag, Cessily Kincaid AKA Mercury, and Sooraya Qadir AKA Dust. Jay Gutherie/Icarus was also originally on the team, but requested for a reassignment to rival squad the New Mutants after the Hellions attempted a raid on the FBI to rescue the arrested student Kevin Ford. The empty spot is filled by a grateful (and pissed at his ex-squadmates) Kevin and the school year goes on, amidst a lot of soap opera drama (and a ghost kid out of nowhere) that Santo manages to completely avoid by virtue of being the resident thick-headed doofus. At the end of it the Hellions are awarded a trophy for performing best in the field exercises, and then everyone fights the Blob. Santo does not perform too hot in this fight, forming a trend that will stick with him for some time to come.
For summer vacation Julian takes the team to stay at his parent’s mansion in California, and after causing a scene in the airport due to Santo and Cessily’s obvious inhuman appearance, arrive just as Julian's parents are leaving. With free run of the place the team prepares to relax until a scroll is hidden scroll. The parchment contains instructions for contacting a wish-granting businessman called the Kingmaker, and Santo is all too ready to get in on that hot dream-fulfillment action.
It turns out his wish was to be a professional wrestler. Santo freely admits later on that this was pretty dumb.
Once Kingmaker tricks the Hellions into stealing a biological weapon in return for his favors, the team immediately tries to beat the crap out of him. It’s during this engagement that Rockslide is shattered into a million pieces for the first time, thanks to the Kingmaker’s fashionable laser-firing sunglasses. Julian uses his telekinesis to put his BFF back together again, and Santo pins the evil suit-wearing jerk until the police arrive.
After this little adventure and the next school year comes M-Day (where Santo enjoys a career in the House of M universe as…a professional wrestler.) and the ensuing Decimation. Santo actually manages to sleep through the ensuing panic, only awakening later to find that many of the kids have completely lost their mutations.vAfter a quick battle royale, the best group of best students - essentially a merging of the remaining New Mutants and Hellions plus X-23 - become legitimate X-Men trainees. Unfortunately, one of the depowered students is Brian, who is forced to leave the Institute along with the other ex-mutant students by Headmistress Frost. They never get a chance, as a rocket fired by Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers destroys the bus, killing all aboard. Santo freaks out at the incident, and experiences his first bit of real reflection and angst in the entire series. He is soon seemingly over it and back to training and goofing off.
Until Stryker's men actually come calling at the mansion proper with the help of a future pink robot gauntlet, sending the trainees back into real action once more. Santo punches out a few Purifiers and helps with the cleanup until the whole ordeal ends with one very dead reverend. Before there's any real time for recovery though, the group learns that the source of Stryker's bright neon fist of doom is the future Sentinel Nimrod, who is presently blackmailing Forge into repairing his still-damaged body. The New X-men hijack a Blackbird and fly it into battle with the time-traveling robot, and in the process Santo gets blown up. Again. This time it looks like he is well and truly dead until after the battle, where he manages to pull himself back together partially on his own with a new much more jagged and craggy look.
Coming after all of that in the rollercoaster of bullshit that is being a New X-Men was a trip to the Facility to rescue Mercury. Santo got to punch a evil robot grizzly bear, so it was all good. Much less good was the surprise school trip into Limbo provided by the demon Belasco, looking for his apprentice Illyana Rasputin and smelling her (or at least an alternate version from House of M) on some of the students. Luckily, Santo and some of the others had so such Magik Stink on them and weren't captured like the rest until an pack of demons happened upon them. In the ensuing battle Rockslide attempted to use his good ol' flying rock fists, but instead of projectile punches he...exploded. Yet again. Luckily for the others he managed to reform himself fully on his own this time, rescuing Pixie from the demonic Illyana Rasputin. His new Limbo-rock body was resistant to her magic, thus allowing him to the messed-up goat-legged girl around until she snapped back to a more normal state.
Following a brief blowout battle with the devil, the students were all sent back to their school and finally got a breather from all the horrible horrible life-threatening incidents. During this downtime Rockslide learned the full extent of his powers from Dr. Henry McCoy, an experiment that sadly cost him his awesome lava-y Limbo body but at least confirmed that exploding and reforming was not a one-time deal.
Of course, collective mutant luck being what it is, things immediately went south from there. The first new mutant since M-Day was born in Alaska and all of mutantkind's enemies went for the baby and everyone else. The New X-Men made an ill-fated attack on the Purifier HQ, and after a quick retreat back to the mansion, Santo found himself defending his fellow students against one of those aforementioned evil robot grizzly bear. This got worse when Pixie..teleported the bear and all the students into the big X-Men VS Everyone brawl in the Alaskan wilderness. After the baby incident, the X-Men were disbanded, leaving Santo aimless until a new, covert ops team was put together by Cyclops...who turned out to not be Cyclops but the racist cyborg Donald Pierce. Pierce killed Wolfcub, another of Santo's friends, almost driving Rockslide to kill him. Which would happen again later when it seemed Pierce was responsible for Dust's death (a matter quickly resolved when she was revived via a ridiculous deus ex machina that has nothing to do with any of this. Ugh Young X-Men.)
Now living in San Francisco on the mutant island sanctuary Utopia, Santo is part of the the full X-Men team along with, well, everyone else. He's been through a lot lately - an invasion of the shapeshifting alien Skrulls, a battle against Norman Osborn's Avengers team, fighting genocidal future robots commanded by Bastion, and most recently, vampires. A feeling of uselessness has spurred Rockslide on to being a full blown superhero rather than staying on Utopia and doing nothing. And to Santo that means patrolling in a ridiculous costume, making dramatic speeches, and punching muggers in the face. It helps him feel like he's making a real difference.
And also its fun as Hell.
Other than that fun diversion, Santo's most recent life experience was being sent on a bizarre adventure to a pocket dimension to try and rescue his teammate/crush/newbie vampire Jubilee from a giant dragon, which he punched really hard in the face just like how he punches everything he's faced with really hard in the face.
PERSONALITY:
The words "bully", "jerk", and "insensitive" get thrown around alot around Santo. This is because they are for the most part true. He doesn't really go out of his way to be some kind of terrible asshole to people; it's just how he relates to others, admist a cloud of tough guy attitude and the mocking, harmless-in-intent ribbing that goes along with it. The only real difference is he doesn't have the little voice telling him "Dude, not cool" when he decides he wants to make a joke about someone he barely knows or that might be a bit offensive. This is the first rule of dealing with Santo Vaccarro: if you can deal with someone making fun of you because he likes you, then you can stand being around him.
The second rule is to be prepared to be referred to by your last name only forever, unless he deems it too lame to use.
He can take just as good as he gives - actually much better than he gives, as many more complex zings will go completely over his rocky head - and despite his rough nature rarely gets upset at any of it. This also makes it quite easy to tell when Santo considers you a buddy; if you're someone he likes, then he'll step off when it's clear you're offended. Except when it might be funnier not to. He does have a pretty big mouth and might tell a group of your mutual friends you're a homosexual for the hell of it! The guy does really mean well, though. Deep down. Way deep down.
Beyond his habits of picking on people, the rest of Santo's outward personality confirms to what you would expect from a teenager with a bit more muscle than brawn. He loves being strong, showing no real concern over his mutation because dude he is a superstrong rock man that is awesome. He is likewise enamored with feats of strength, harboring dreams of going into a pro-wrestling league that'll actually accept mutants and more than willing to fistfight a sentinel at his squad leader's command. Even if he hasn't done something that awesome lately, he's more than happy to make something up or brag a bit more about a previous accomplishment.
Perhaps with all this focus on macho stuff it shouldn't be too surprising that Santo doesn't do so well with his non-physical schooling. While not exactly stupid he's more than a little unobservant, missing out on things like his friends having fights or the existence of the Young Avengers until well after they're publically known. This again feeds back into his teasing. The jokes and cracks might seem harsh, but sometimes it's only because he's honestly not aware he's doing anything wrong at all. The rare few times he can actually pay attention to details, like freaking out over seeing Sooraya in her underwear, show that he does have some sensitivity and does indeed care about his friends and fellow students. He's just not that great at showing it.
While Santo is one of the more laid-back and worry free students at Xavier's, he does have a little bit of hidden depth. He's fiercely loyal and protective, primarily to Julian but in at least some way to everyone at the Institute. He'll occasionally show he really cares in a grand gesture, such as threatening to leave the team unless Anole and Pixie were allowed to join. On top of all of this, thanks to a schoolyear with a ridiculously high mortality rate Santo is quite likely to go totally apeshit on anyone trying to harm another student. Through sheer force of stubbornness he'll fling himself at threats with very little provocation - especially now that he knows he can pull himself back together again - and keep punching until either he or the punchee go down
Lately, this has expanded into Santo trying to be a real superhero, even though his costume consists of his X-Men uniform plus a hockey mask. He patrols nightly, beats up criminals, and seems to just be waiting for his gig to make him San Francisco's own personal Daredevil analogue. He seems to be unaware that this is probably not happening any time ever.
It's very likely this need to protect others was spurred on by Brian's death - not that Santo would readily admit something that emotional in public.
POWER:
Formerly, Rockslide was a rock-skinned mutant who could fire his fists off as projectile weapons. After a bad run in with Nimrod, he has evolved much further. There's really no actual form to Santo anymore, at least not a normal permenant one. Instead the young X-man exists as a sort of floating psionic entity, pulling together materials from the Earth to form a body to inhabit. The quality of these materials seem to matter - pulling himself together from Limbo rock gave him a high resistence to magic - and if necessary he can self-destruct the "golem" form with a substantial amount of explosive force, spreading bits and pieces of rock shrapnel in all directions.
Outside of reforming and exploding, Santo has a couple of other powers that should be obvious for a guy made entirely of stone. His rock body is highly durable, able to withstand bullets and most blunt forces with ease. Things like laser blasts or signifcantly sharp objects are a problem, but nothing that can't be recovered from with enough earth present. Super strength is Rockslide's other major power, his average body being able to lift 75 tons of weight at maximum. Finally, the golem form's biology is signifcantly different from a normal human's. While Santo feels heat and seems to able to fully use all five senses and even eat, extreme temperatures have little effect on him. He also does not get tired as easily, though you wouldn't expect that from how he sleeps like goddamn forever.
tl;dr version for "how many powers does this guy really have?!": Rockslide's a psionic entity with geokinetic powers allowing him to form/explode a durable rock body. Not that this is a sentence he could really follow if someone told him it.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: [There's the sound of someone fumbling with the communicator and low grumbling accompanying each little movement of failure.]
What the hell is this supposed to be anyway? Feels like I'm gonna break this piece of-
[After a bit more of this, the video function clicks on revealing...a view of some lovely grey rock. Yeah, this is real exciti-oh hey wait the communicator is being turned around and nooow you can see what appears to be a head made out of the the same stone material, beady white eyes peeking out between a heavy, jagged brow and a very large and equally craggy mouth.]
Hey, this thing on? Whatever. Look, unless this is Vic's idea of a revenge prank - in which case this is not funny at all and you are so dead, Borkowski - I am having one really weird dream about waking up in strange places with computers giving me stuff.
Except the guys are looking at me weird instead of body slamming each other.
Aaand the women are looking at me weird too instead of throwing themselves at my feet.
So all in all one of the lamest dreams I've ever had! Thanks for nothing, brain.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: If there was one thing in the world Santo Vaccarro had problems wrapping his mind around, it was-
Well, okay.
If there was one thing in the world Santo Vaccarro had problems wrapping his mind around other than algebra, it was people who complained about being a mutant. Particularly those who just go on and on and on about how much of a terrible curse it was. About how they were freaks and hated and needed to hide themselves away from the rest of the world. Nothing quite reminded him of those losers like a stroll through the bustling streets of New Yor -the City, he had to mentally edit it every freaking time before he confused someone again - on the way to a real live pay-per-view wrestling match. He plucked the tickets out of the pocket of his custom-made jacket, looking them over for about the millionth time that day. There was no way he'd lose something so important. The teenager's stone face broke out into a grin. He could barely hear a passing-by women give out a little gasp of shock and disgust.
Not that it mattered what she thought, of course. Santo just brushed it off. Maybe on a less wonderful day he'd stop and throw a comment at her dead poodle-like hairdo or something just as obnoxious - or maybe not. X-Men aren't supposed to do stuff like that, after all. - but not now. Nothing could ruin this mood, especially not a bunch of lookie-loo humans who couldn't deal with someone that looked as damn awesome as himself. This is why the whiners were in the wrong. Having cool powers, mutation or not, trumped being a normal joe. Every time.
After all, what could even compare to being completely indestructible?
Then they turned him away at the entrance. The tickets weren't valid, except they were. There wasn't any seats left, though there clearly was, even for someone with less than perfect observational skills . There was yelling, threats were exchanged, and finally the arena manager himself had to come down. Santo had not expected his perfect day to be topped off with a complete recital of every bit of anti-mutant slang in the universe, but that's what happened.
And he took it, of course. No matter how much growling he did and how much he thought about tearing the gates apart with his bare hands - because really, who could even stop him? - Santo knew better than to push it. Even if he wanted to shove back so very badly. X-Men aren't supposed to do stuff like that.
It was dark by the time he started making his way back home. Fewer people on the streets, something he was thankful the first time in recent memory. The memory of what happened at the arena played over in his head, again and again. Santo honestly wasn't sure what to make of it, of anything that had happened that day. Feeling down wasn't like him, not since...
Santo caught himself before he went down that road any further, before he could recall the explosion and the flames and the helplessness. He needed a new game plan. Find a mugger or something, rough him up, drop him off at a police station. That was superheroy enough stuff, right? No one could blame him for wanting to do the right thing. It was a distraction he needed, a healthy one.
It didn't take him long to find one, preying on a familiar woman with a deceased dog 'do.
Being indestructible means protecting those who aren't. They really are all lucky to have him around.
NAME: Franky
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: battlefranky37
IM: AIM: ikarifuru
E-MAIL: glcfuru@gmail.com
RETURNING: Ssssorta. I'm not in the game at the moment but I used to play this guy!
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Santo Vaccarro AKA Rockslide
FANDOM: Marvel 616
CHRONOLOGY: He's coming in from the end of the Wolverine & Jubilee mini, after his conversation with Jubes on Utopia while watching the sunset..
SUPERHERO NAME: Rockslide
ALTER EGO: Santo Vaccarro, mutant jerkass. Not that he can really have a secret identity what with being a six foot tall four hundred pound rock man.
BACKGROUND:
On Earth-616, a portion of the population is stuck with the x-gene, a wonderful little genetic evolution that gives them both superpower-y mutations and the hatred of every bigot afraid of normal humanity losing its position as the dominant species. The Xavier Institute exists to teach young mutants that their powers are gifts, so it seems only natural that Santo, as a teenager made of rock, ended up moving from Boston to the school once it expanded and began taking on more students. Once there he became fast friends with his future squad leader Julian Keller, and together the two made up about 90% of the jerk content at the Institute. Santo mainly performed as Julian’s right-hand bully, helping him pick on other kids and switching advisers from Iceman to Emma Frost at his insistence. It’s after this ship-jumping that Santo picks out his codename, the incredibly imaginative Rockslide.
The semester ended with the school blown up for the millionth time and subsequently rebuilt with Emma Frost as headmistress. As one of the many changes at the reorganized Institute, the students were separated into squads. Surprising no one, Rockslide ended up on the Hellions squad, comprised of himself, Julian (using the codename Hellion) as leader, and other students Brian Cruz AKA Tag, Cessily Kincaid AKA Mercury, and Sooraya Qadir AKA Dust. Jay Gutherie/Icarus was also originally on the team, but requested for a reassignment to rival squad the New Mutants after the Hellions attempted a raid on the FBI to rescue the arrested student Kevin Ford. The empty spot is filled by a grateful (and pissed at his ex-squadmates) Kevin and the school year goes on, amidst a lot of soap opera drama (and a ghost kid out of nowhere) that Santo manages to completely avoid by virtue of being the resident thick-headed doofus. At the end of it the Hellions are awarded a trophy for performing best in the field exercises, and then everyone fights the Blob. Santo does not perform too hot in this fight, forming a trend that will stick with him for some time to come.
For summer vacation Julian takes the team to stay at his parent’s mansion in California, and after causing a scene in the airport due to Santo and Cessily’s obvious inhuman appearance, arrive just as Julian's parents are leaving. With free run of the place the team prepares to relax until a scroll is hidden scroll. The parchment contains instructions for contacting a wish-granting businessman called the Kingmaker, and Santo is all too ready to get in on that hot dream-fulfillment action.
It turns out his wish was to be a professional wrestler. Santo freely admits later on that this was pretty dumb.
Once Kingmaker tricks the Hellions into stealing a biological weapon in return for his favors, the team immediately tries to beat the crap out of him. It’s during this engagement that Rockslide is shattered into a million pieces for the first time, thanks to the Kingmaker’s fashionable laser-firing sunglasses. Julian uses his telekinesis to put his BFF back together again, and Santo pins the evil suit-wearing jerk until the police arrive.
After this little adventure and the next school year comes M-Day (where Santo enjoys a career in the House of M universe as…a professional wrestler.) and the ensuing Decimation. Santo actually manages to sleep through the ensuing panic, only awakening later to find that many of the kids have completely lost their mutations.vAfter a quick battle royale, the best group of best students - essentially a merging of the remaining New Mutants and Hellions plus X-23 - become legitimate X-Men trainees. Unfortunately, one of the depowered students is Brian, who is forced to leave the Institute along with the other ex-mutant students by Headmistress Frost. They never get a chance, as a rocket fired by Reverend William Stryker’s Purifiers destroys the bus, killing all aboard. Santo freaks out at the incident, and experiences his first bit of real reflection and angst in the entire series. He is soon seemingly over it and back to training and goofing off.
Until Stryker's men actually come calling at the mansion proper with the help of a future pink robot gauntlet, sending the trainees back into real action once more. Santo punches out a few Purifiers and helps with the cleanup until the whole ordeal ends with one very dead reverend. Before there's any real time for recovery though, the group learns that the source of Stryker's bright neon fist of doom is the future Sentinel Nimrod, who is presently blackmailing Forge into repairing his still-damaged body. The New X-men hijack a Blackbird and fly it into battle with the time-traveling robot, and in the process Santo gets blown up. Again. This time it looks like he is well and truly dead until after the battle, where he manages to pull himself back together partially on his own with a new much more jagged and craggy look.
Coming after all of that in the rollercoaster of bullshit that is being a New X-Men was a trip to the Facility to rescue Mercury. Santo got to punch a evil robot grizzly bear, so it was all good. Much less good was the surprise school trip into Limbo provided by the demon Belasco, looking for his apprentice Illyana Rasputin and smelling her (or at least an alternate version from House of M) on some of the students. Luckily, Santo and some of the others had so such Magik Stink on them and weren't captured like the rest until an pack of demons happened upon them. In the ensuing battle Rockslide attempted to use his good ol' flying rock fists, but instead of projectile punches he...exploded. Yet again. Luckily for the others he managed to reform himself fully on his own this time, rescuing Pixie from the demonic Illyana Rasputin. His new Limbo-rock body was resistant to her magic, thus allowing him to the messed-up goat-legged girl around until she snapped back to a more normal state.
Following a brief blowout battle with the devil, the students were all sent back to their school and finally got a breather from all the horrible horrible life-threatening incidents. During this downtime Rockslide learned the full extent of his powers from Dr. Henry McCoy, an experiment that sadly cost him his awesome lava-y Limbo body but at least confirmed that exploding and reforming was not a one-time deal.
Of course, collective mutant luck being what it is, things immediately went south from there. The first new mutant since M-Day was born in Alaska and all of mutantkind's enemies went for the baby and everyone else. The New X-Men made an ill-fated attack on the Purifier HQ, and after a quick retreat back to the mansion, Santo found himself defending his fellow students against one of those aforementioned evil robot grizzly bear. This got worse when Pixie..teleported the bear and all the students into the big X-Men VS Everyone brawl in the Alaskan wilderness. After the baby incident, the X-Men were disbanded, leaving Santo aimless until a new, covert ops team was put together by Cyclops...who turned out to not be Cyclops but the racist cyborg Donald Pierce. Pierce killed Wolfcub, another of Santo's friends, almost driving Rockslide to kill him. Which would happen again later when it seemed Pierce was responsible for Dust's death (a matter quickly resolved when she was revived via a ridiculous deus ex machina that has nothing to do with any of this. Ugh Young X-Men.)
Now living in San Francisco on the mutant island sanctuary Utopia, Santo is part of the the full X-Men team along with, well, everyone else. He's been through a lot lately - an invasion of the shapeshifting alien Skrulls, a battle against Norman Osborn's Avengers team, fighting genocidal future robots commanded by Bastion, and most recently, vampires. A feeling of uselessness has spurred Rockslide on to being a full blown superhero rather than staying on Utopia and doing nothing. And to Santo that means patrolling in a ridiculous costume, making dramatic speeches, and punching muggers in the face. It helps him feel like he's making a real difference.
And also its fun as Hell.
Other than that fun diversion, Santo's most recent life experience was being sent on a bizarre adventure to a pocket dimension to try and rescue his teammate/crush/newbie vampire Jubilee from a giant dragon, which he punched really hard in the face just like how he punches everything he's faced with really hard in the face.
PERSONALITY:
The words "bully", "jerk", and "insensitive" get thrown around alot around Santo. This is because they are for the most part true. He doesn't really go out of his way to be some kind of terrible asshole to people; it's just how he relates to others, admist a cloud of tough guy attitude and the mocking, harmless-in-intent ribbing that goes along with it. The only real difference is he doesn't have the little voice telling him "Dude, not cool" when he decides he wants to make a joke about someone he barely knows or that might be a bit offensive. This is the first rule of dealing with Santo Vaccarro: if you can deal with someone making fun of you because he likes you, then you can stand being around him.
The second rule is to be prepared to be referred to by your last name only forever, unless he deems it too lame to use.
He can take just as good as he gives - actually much better than he gives, as many more complex zings will go completely over his rocky head - and despite his rough nature rarely gets upset at any of it. This also makes it quite easy to tell when Santo considers you a buddy; if you're someone he likes, then he'll step off when it's clear you're offended. Except when it might be funnier not to. He does have a pretty big mouth and might tell a group of your mutual friends you're a homosexual for the hell of it! The guy does really mean well, though. Deep down. Way deep down.
Beyond his habits of picking on people, the rest of Santo's outward personality confirms to what you would expect from a teenager with a bit more muscle than brawn. He loves being strong, showing no real concern over his mutation because dude he is a superstrong rock man that is awesome. He is likewise enamored with feats of strength, harboring dreams of going into a pro-wrestling league that'll actually accept mutants and more than willing to fistfight a sentinel at his squad leader's command. Even if he hasn't done something that awesome lately, he's more than happy to make something up or brag a bit more about a previous accomplishment.
Perhaps with all this focus on macho stuff it shouldn't be too surprising that Santo doesn't do so well with his non-physical schooling. While not exactly stupid he's more than a little unobservant, missing out on things like his friends having fights or the existence of the Young Avengers until well after they're publically known. This again feeds back into his teasing. The jokes and cracks might seem harsh, but sometimes it's only because he's honestly not aware he's doing anything wrong at all. The rare few times he can actually pay attention to details, like freaking out over seeing Sooraya in her underwear, show that he does have some sensitivity and does indeed care about his friends and fellow students. He's just not that great at showing it.
While Santo is one of the more laid-back and worry free students at Xavier's, he does have a little bit of hidden depth. He's fiercely loyal and protective, primarily to Julian but in at least some way to everyone at the Institute. He'll occasionally show he really cares in a grand gesture, such as threatening to leave the team unless Anole and Pixie were allowed to join. On top of all of this, thanks to a schoolyear with a ridiculously high mortality rate Santo is quite likely to go totally apeshit on anyone trying to harm another student. Through sheer force of stubbornness he'll fling himself at threats with very little provocation - especially now that he knows he can pull himself back together again - and keep punching until either he or the punchee go down
Lately, this has expanded into Santo trying to be a real superhero, even though his costume consists of his X-Men uniform plus a hockey mask. He patrols nightly, beats up criminals, and seems to just be waiting for his gig to make him San Francisco's own personal Daredevil analogue. He seems to be unaware that this is probably not happening any time ever.
It's very likely this need to protect others was spurred on by Brian's death - not that Santo would readily admit something that emotional in public.
POWER:
Formerly, Rockslide was a rock-skinned mutant who could fire his fists off as projectile weapons. After a bad run in with Nimrod, he has evolved much further. There's really no actual form to Santo anymore, at least not a normal permenant one. Instead the young X-man exists as a sort of floating psionic entity, pulling together materials from the Earth to form a body to inhabit. The quality of these materials seem to matter - pulling himself together from Limbo rock gave him a high resistence to magic - and if necessary he can self-destruct the "golem" form with a substantial amount of explosive force, spreading bits and pieces of rock shrapnel in all directions.
Outside of reforming and exploding, Santo has a couple of other powers that should be obvious for a guy made entirely of stone. His rock body is highly durable, able to withstand bullets and most blunt forces with ease. Things like laser blasts or signifcantly sharp objects are a problem, but nothing that can't be recovered from with enough earth present. Super strength is Rockslide's other major power, his average body being able to lift 75 tons of weight at maximum. Finally, the golem form's biology is signifcantly different from a normal human's. While Santo feels heat and seems to able to fully use all five senses and even eat, extreme temperatures have little effect on him. He also does not get tired as easily, though you wouldn't expect that from how he sleeps like goddamn forever.
tl;dr version for "how many powers does this guy really have?!": Rockslide's a psionic entity with geokinetic powers allowing him to form/explode a durable rock body. Not that this is a sentence he could really follow if someone told him it.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE: [There's the sound of someone fumbling with the communicator and low grumbling accompanying each little movement of failure.]
What the hell is this supposed to be anyway? Feels like I'm gonna break this piece of-
[After a bit more of this, the video function clicks on revealing...a view of some lovely grey rock. Yeah, this is real exciti-oh hey wait the communicator is being turned around and nooow you can see what appears to be a head made out of the the same stone material, beady white eyes peeking out between a heavy, jagged brow and a very large and equally craggy mouth.]
Hey, this thing on? Whatever. Look, unless this is Vic's idea of a revenge prank - in which case this is not funny at all and you are so dead, Borkowski - I am having one really weird dream about waking up in strange places with computers giving me stuff.
Except the guys are looking at me weird instead of body slamming each other.
Aaand the women are looking at me weird too instead of throwing themselves at my feet.
So all in all one of the lamest dreams I've ever had! Thanks for nothing, brain.
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE: If there was one thing in the world Santo Vaccarro had problems wrapping his mind around, it was-
Well, okay.
If there was one thing in the world Santo Vaccarro had problems wrapping his mind around other than algebra, it was people who complained about being a mutant. Particularly those who just go on and on and on about how much of a terrible curse it was. About how they were freaks and hated and needed to hide themselves away from the rest of the world. Nothing quite reminded him of those losers like a stroll through the bustling streets of New Yor -the City, he had to mentally edit it every freaking time before he confused someone again - on the way to a real live pay-per-view wrestling match. He plucked the tickets out of the pocket of his custom-made jacket, looking them over for about the millionth time that day. There was no way he'd lose something so important. The teenager's stone face broke out into a grin. He could barely hear a passing-by women give out a little gasp of shock and disgust.
Not that it mattered what she thought, of course. Santo just brushed it off. Maybe on a less wonderful day he'd stop and throw a comment at her dead poodle-like hairdo or something just as obnoxious - or maybe not. X-Men aren't supposed to do stuff like that, after all. - but not now. Nothing could ruin this mood, especially not a bunch of lookie-loo humans who couldn't deal with someone that looked as damn awesome as himself. This is why the whiners were in the wrong. Having cool powers, mutation or not, trumped being a normal joe. Every time.
After all, what could even compare to being completely indestructible?
Then they turned him away at the entrance. The tickets weren't valid, except they were. There wasn't any seats left, though there clearly was, even for someone with less than perfect observational skills . There was yelling, threats were exchanged, and finally the arena manager himself had to come down. Santo had not expected his perfect day to be topped off with a complete recital of every bit of anti-mutant slang in the universe, but that's what happened.
And he took it, of course. No matter how much growling he did and how much he thought about tearing the gates apart with his bare hands - because really, who could even stop him? - Santo knew better than to push it. Even if he wanted to shove back so very badly. X-Men aren't supposed to do stuff like that.
It was dark by the time he started making his way back home. Fewer people on the streets, something he was thankful the first time in recent memory. The memory of what happened at the arena played over in his head, again and again. Santo honestly wasn't sure what to make of it, of anything that had happened that day. Feeling down wasn't like him, not since...
Santo caught himself before he went down that road any further, before he could recall the explosion and the flames and the helplessness. He needed a new game plan. Find a mugger or something, rough him up, drop him off at a police station. That was superheroy enough stuff, right? No one could blame him for wanting to do the right thing. It was a distraction he needed, a healthy one.
It didn't take him long to find one, preying on a familiar woman with a deceased dog 'do.
Being indestructible means protecting those who aren't. They really are all lucky to have him around.