application ♦ capeandcowl ♦ complete
[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Annwyd
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: annwyd
IM: Annwyd Hates You
E-MAIL: annwyd [AT] gmail [DOT] com
RETURNING: Yes. Keith Anyan (motherloaded).
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Ti'julk Mr'asz (closest Interlac approximation); goes by the superhero name of Gates.
FANDOM: DC's post-Zero Hour reboot of the Legion of Super-Heroes (primarily centered around the series of Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires).
CHRONOLOGY: Shortly after returning from the twentieth century, around issue #.
CLASS: Hero. He'll attempt to throw out his dog tags to stick it to the man, but will eventually sheepishly return to pick them up again when he realizes they're his keys.
SUPERHERO NAME: Gates
ALTER EGO: Ti'julk Mr'asz, ACTIVIST.
BACKGROUND:
It's the last decade of the thirtieth century. All that awesome stuff the future was supposed to hold? It's finally here. Space travel, aliens, flying cars, superpowers, an interstellar government called the United Planets, you name it. This is the world in which the Legion of Super-Heroes, a group of superpowered teenagers fighting for the sake of all that is good and right in the many worlds of their universe, came to be. But we don't start with them. We start with a far-away alien.
For Ti'julk of the Mr'asz clutch (Interlac approximation, of course), the first year of his life was actually pretty swell. As a larva, all he really had to do was feed and sleep and listen to his elders. They explained society and his role in it, all in the expectation that when he entered the adult stage of life, he would put this into action and become a good Vyrgan. This took up about a year, and for that time Ti'julk was happy and accepted. He didn't have a family, but Vyrgans don't need family. They've got society.
Then he metamorphosed into his adult form, and the trouble started.
See, he didn't want to be a good little facet of society. He wanted to reevaluate their entire way of life, make it better. He was always asking questions: "Why is the sky pink?" "Why are females in charge?" "Why do we merely use the workers as drones instead of structuring our society to harmoniously employ their valuable talents while improving both their lot and the lifestyle of our entire planet?" He wanted to do things differently. He thought differently. And there was the problem: Vyrgans are socially and genetically inclined to think like each other. That's how their whole civilization works, how it's always functioned just fine. Except that every once in a blue moon, something goes awry--whether in the egg or in the larval stage following hatching, or maybe even before both of those, Vyrgan scientists have never figured out. But very, very rarely--so rarely, in fact, that this was the first time in centuries--the sameness doesn't take, and someone who can think for himself is born. Someone like Ti'julk.
A matter of weeks after he began displaying this alarming independence of thought, some of the higher-ups in the matriarchy took him aside and explained this to him. He had two options: find a way to integrate, or leave. No, he couldn't lead a revolution, overthrow the matriarchy, and rebuild society from the ground up to better the lives of the workers. That would be bad.
And so began a rather unpleasant year for little (okay, not so little anymore; Vyrgans grow fast) Ti'julk Mr'asz. At first, he really wanted to be a part of society. After all, since Vyrgans have no family, he didn't really have anywhere else to turn. And certainly, he couldn't make friends with people who all thought alike--unlike him. But a frantic desire to belong wasn't enough to quell his revolutionary ideas. Every time he tried to fit himself back in, soon enough he was asking, "Why? And why can't we change it?" So out he went again.
Of course, he was never in any real danger of deprivation--efficient Vyrgan society produced enough surplus that they could afford to support Ti'julk even when he wasn't participating in their little insectoid games. But the months on the edges of society, able to work and belong only in fits and starts, took their toll on him. He became bitter and cranky, inclined to reject what few offers of reconciliation were made to him. To alleviate his burgeoning loneliness and insecurity, he took to developing his political ideas. And so, on an odd planet full of giant bugs in the thirtieth century, a strangely familiar philosophy was born--a fusion of anarchy, Marxism, and enlightened rationalism.
But that didn't mean anything to the Vyrgan elders. What did mean something to them was that somewhere along the way, Ti'julk developed the ability to teleport. And then everything changed. Suddenly, the same society that had only awkwardly tolerated him before was clamoring for his help. After all, Vyrga was nothing if not utilitarian, and even the high matriarch saw how useful teleportation could be. He embraced the opportunity--for the first time since he became an adult, he could finally belong again! Besides, now they were more willing to tolerate his strange ideas, so long as he was providing them with something in return. They still didn't change anything about their society--but they treated him with more respect and listened to his ideas. He became something of a reluctant planetary hero--he wasn't particularly well-liked, on account of having not given up the prickly, obnoxious attitude he'd developed, but his newly-discovered power meant that he was useful. His independent thought was no longer regarded as a nuisance, but rather as something that could potentially help society. News of his abilities even filtered to the non-Vyrgans of the rest of the United Planets--and for them, he took on the Interlac name "Gates." It stuck even at home, and he soon found himself using it more than his given name.
But after a few months of this, Gates found himself once again discontented. He felt more and more like his people were only using him for his teleportation ability, and that was getting old. He wanted to use his newfound powers to protect the weak from their oppressors, not haul random travelers from place to place. He was tired of playing taxi for a planet, even if it was his own. Especially since it was becoming increasingly clear to him that while they'd listen to him, they'd never help him put his ideas for the bettering of society into action.
So he withdrew. He hung out in the more wild parts of Vyrga, pondering his philosophy, perfecting his politics. The strange thing was, he still didn't leave the planet. It was his home--he was determined to stick it out and eventually fix things. Besides, the rest of the galaxy was full of no-good imperialists anyway, at least by his reckoning.
Which was why he was so dismayed to find that he'd been drafted to serve as his planet's representative in the Legion of Super-Heroes. In retrospect, of course, he should have expected that they'd try to get rid of him now that he wasn't cooperating anymore. But in many ways, he was quite naive.
He resisted joining the Legion for as long as he could--to his view of the world, they were a paramilitary squad that valued nothing save for expanding the imperialist influence of the United Planets. But eventually, he couldn't escape any longer, and he was shipped off to Earth. He arrived at a less than ideal time: the Legion was fractured from political stress and what seemed to be mismanagement by their leader, Cosmic Boy. Their headquarters had just been nearly destroyed by a battle with a time traveling menace. In short, it was a mess, and Gates was happy to gloat about it.
As much as he would have liked to stay on the sidelines and snark, though, Gates didn't get that option. He soon found himself dragged into a fight against a mysterious, implacable foe--who turned out to be a brainwashed Element Lad. Soon enough, the whole Legion was dragged into a whirlwind of panicky politics, and not the kind that Gates loved. No, the terrible Sun-Eater was supposedly coming, and by order of the president, they had to release five of the worst criminals in the galaxy to combat it: the Fatal Five. Gates protested (and called President Chu names), but the rest of the Legion would have none of it. They were off to get the Fatal Five out of prison and save the world from the Sun-Eater.
Except that it was a trap. There was no Sun-Eater, and the Legion was stuck trying to fend off the Fatal Five. For the first time, Gates had his ideology challenged: Empress of Venegar seemed to be just the sort of politically conscious individual he'd love to sit down and talk to, but she was more interested in killing the entire Legion. And...for all that Gates didn't care for the Legion, he knew that was wrong. So he found himself fighting against political miscreants, with pawns of the oppressors--or so he saw them, anyway.
In the end, his quick thinking helped the team deal with the Fatal Five...but it wasn't enough. He was left alone, the last one standing with the remainder of the Fatal Five closing in. And that's when something really surprising happened: a rescue squad composed of the rest of the Legion showed up. He and the others were saved--by the same Legion he'd despised at first sight.
Naturally, his opinion of the Legion wasn't changed. If anything, this latest disaster only confirmed that they were blundering pawns of imperialist oppressors. And yet...he'd been able to help them, and in turn they'd rescued him. It was almost as if he belonged.
After that, things really started getting interesting. Political tensions in the United Planets were rising to a head, and it looked like Titan and Braal would go to war again. Gates figured that the Legion would just obediently assist the UP in whatever side it chose--but instead, they did something that he could almost admire. They organized a sting operation to reveal the real culprit behind the war, and indeed behind Element Lad's brainwashing, the Sun-Eater hoax, and the release of the Fatal Five: President Chu. Gates was so surprised by the Legion's competence that he almost forgot to gloat about how he wasn't surprised that the leader of the UP turned out to be a conniving, powerhungry maniac.
But the best part, or so he thought, came afterwards, when R. J. Brande replaced Chu as the leader of the United Planets--and promptly allowed the Legion to abolish the draft that had landed Gates in it in the first place. He happily contacted Vyrga to ask them to arrange to transport him home...only to find out that they had no intention of doing so. They were far too pleased with the status they got from having a member of their species in the Legion of Superheroes. So even though the draft was ended, Gates had to stay with this teenage death squad (as he dubbed it), away from the planet where he thought he belonged. Needless to say, he was not at all pleased.
Still, he had no choice but to keep going on missions with the Legion--and he was particularly cranky when the next one was chock full of politics, and he had to spend all his time taking orders from the deputy leader, Leviathan. All the same, when the time came to act to prevent an assassination, he did so promptly--even if it turned out to be more complicated than he'd thought. After all that, the mission ended with a planet changing its mind about joining the UP. Gates should have been happy to see a society avoid falling into the imperialist trap of the United Planets. For some reason, though, instead he was bothered by thoughts that had come up during the mission. Was his abrasive attitude really so bad that it interfered with the rest of the Legion? Should he care if it was? It seemed strange to worry about these things, but they started to nag at him.
He didn't have much time to ponder his attitude and his relationship with the Legion, though, because it was then that things got weird. The last dose of anything resembling normalcy Gates would have for a while was his trip to Xanthu--and that involved meeting the Amazers, so it wasn't exactly Normal Central. Afterwards, he returned to Legion headquarters to complain some more about how he was forced to stay there--only to see much of the Legion get called away to deal with the escape of a criminal they'd dealt with before, Dr. Regulus. Now he didn't even have many people to whom he could complain.
So he settled down with the handful of Legionnaires that were left and began telling them about his political beliefs. Much to his shock and amazement, for the first time, they actually listened. He didn't even have to force the ideas on them--they listened, and then they asked him to tell them more. For so long, what he'd really wanted, more than anything in the world, was people who'd simply listen to him. And all of a sudden, here he had them.
He should have known it was too good to be true.
In fact, it was the doing of Violet, the Legion's new leader. Under the influence of the powerful talisman the Emerald Eye, she was granting all the Legionnaires their hearts' desires. As nice as this seemed, it backfired when it turned out that Leviathan's heart's desire was a heroic death. He got it--and Violet, who'd been in love with him, went crazy. She unleashed the Eye's power openly in an attempt to bring him back, assimilating the entire Legion into a group consciousness under her command for this purpose.
It was, to say the least, a strange experience for Gates. He was powerless to stop it--until the Eye ordered him to help take over Earth. Then something in him rebelled. That was imperialism, and he'd fought against it ever since he put his beliefs together. Other Legionnaires followed him in finding something deep in themselves that would help them break free of the control, aided by Saturn Girl, who had broken free early on with the help of Apparition.
But it wasn't enough, and what was left of the Eye's group mind--Zoe and Violet--fell to fighting each other over the power of the Eye. Finally, it escalated to the point that Vi was horrified by what she had done. Frantic to undo the damage, she ordered the Eye to turn back time. Too bad she wasn't more specific--because what wound up happening wasn't a nice, convenient erasure of all the havoc the Eye had wrought. Instead, several Legionnaires were flung back a thousand years in time--Gates among them.
The twentieth century was, to say the least, weird.
For one thing, the Legionnaires and hangers-on there met Superman practically first thing. That was interesting enough, but nothing compared to what they rapidly found themselves in the middle of: an attack by the real Sun-Eater. Earth was shrouded in cold and dark, and in the middle of this all was a fragment of the Legion.
Here's where it began to get interesting for Gates. You see, in the cold and the dark, he ran into a group of homeless people huddled under a bridge, with nowhere else to go for shelter. For all his theoretical work on the notion of Poor Helpless Workers Being Horribly Oppressed, Gates had never before encountered the truly destitute. It shocked him to tears--but soon enough, he was fiercely clamoring for something to be done. And that's where he learned the next shocker: there really wasn't anything he could do. Forcing them into shelters wouldn't help. Gates's revolutionary ideas would not be welcomed here and now. Even if the Legion and the twentieth century's superheroes could stop the Sun-Eater, what kind of world would they be left with? And worst of all: according to Ultra Boy, even in their future, there were still places where people lived like this.
It was something of a humbling experience for Gates. One thing he was sure of: as soon as the initial crisis was over, for as long as they remained in the twentieth century, he'd do what he could to help the less fortunate. And he stuck to that promise--once the Sun-Eater was defeated, he began helping out in soup kitchens with Ultra Boy. Of course, considering how much he freaked out the people who went there, maybe this wasn't all good--but at least he was doing something.
The change from philosophy to application wasn't the only change he experienced, though. No: somewhere along the line, he saw what the Legion was really capable of. Who they really were. And he saw that they weren't just a teenage death squad or a bunch of imperialist dupes. They actually cared about the world and, most importantly, about each other. And Gates? He was one of them now.
With his perceptions thusly changed, Gates actually found himself not only tolerating the twentieth century, but enjoying it, even if he'd never admit it. Perhaps more than any other member of the time-lost Legion, it was a positive experience for him. More and more he found himself more at home in the Legion than he'd ever been anywhere else. Perhaps he even got a glimpse of what family was like.
On top of that, the twentieth century had a certain charm to it in his eyes. It was full of people willing to debate politics with passion, sometimes even once they found out they were debating with a giant alien bug. There was quaint music and literature and film here that fit his developing tastes to a T--and he'd never seen anything like it in the time he came from. There were things to be done and people to be helped. Even though he actually fit in less than ever, and there were places he couldn't even risk going lest he upset the timeline by getting people all worked up about, well, a giant alien bug, he found plenty of ways to enjoy himself. And he got quite fond of the whole era.
But he was still determined to get home, just like the rest of the Legionnaires, and overall, he found most of his attention focused on them. With the kind of chaos that was going down, it was hard not to focus on them. There was Brainiac 5 releasing his supervillainous ancestor, Brainiac; there was Brainy and Impulse wrecking S.T.A.R. Labs; there was nearly destroying the world with Superman; there was Imra's telepathy going haywire and messing with everyone's head, especially Cosmic Boy's; there was the induction of Ferro into the Legion despite his being from the twentieth century; there was the whole Genesis mess, where Gates was proud to actually be quite helpful to the Legion. Oh, and then there was the monkey. It was really a lot to keep track of.
But despite all this, Gates found himself focusing most of all on just one Legionnaire: Brainiac 5. He found himself hurt by the way Brainy was ignoring him, especially since he considered him the most rational humanoid he knew. As it turned out, Brainy was ignoring him because he didn't care for political zealots. Gates brushed that off with a bit of snark, but inside, he was more determined than ever to someday get through to Brainy. Not that he would admit it, of course. That would mean admitting he wanted a friend.
Finally, though, the Legion found a way home to the thirtieth century--although not without nearly destroying the Earth in the process, seeing as Brainiac 5's way of getting them home involved creating a malevolent supercomputer. They were all reunited with each other, and after everything that had happened, Gates actually found it a touching scene. He couldn't bring himself to admit it, and he still made sure to voice his complaints about vertebrates and capitalists and imperialists whenever possible--but he'd found a home with the Legion, and he no longer really wanted to leave.
PERSONALITY:
The cornerstone of Gates's personality is actually pretty simple: he's an outcast wherever he goes, and he's dealt with this by learning to like it.
On his own world, he's outside of society because he's one of the very few Vyrgans capable of thinking independently and going against mainstream opinion. Pretty much anywhere else in his home universe, he's a weirdo because he's distinctly non-humanoid. In the few places that wouldn't shun him for this (and soon enough, here in the City where he is humanoid), he makes himself an outcast by going on and on about his beliefs and, just to top it off, being abrasive and insulting. Well, he is an adolescent, if not technically a teenager. He's taken the tactic of many a teenager shoved into a locker. He can't play society's games? Well, he'll go and make his own game. And it will be better.
This isn't to say that he doesn't sometimes feel a little lonely on the edges like this. Occasionally he'll break down and admit that he enjoys being part of the Legion--and then deny it all the more afterwards.
So, what do you do when you're that kind of proud outcast? What do you do when you're one of barely a handful of independent thinkers on your entire planet? For Ti'julk Mr'asz of Vyrga, the answer was simple. You invent communism. And then you never shut up about it. Ever.
Gates's philosophy is not precisely communism, although it's easy to mistake for it given his frequent ranting about the oppressed working class. He's less interested in the evils of capitalism in particular (although that's certainly a part of it) and more interested in the evils of oppressive government and society in general. His beliefs are really a combination of communism, anarchy, and enlightened rationalism. Mind you, this does not stop him from idolizing Karl Marx and wearing a Che t-shirt when off duty. Communist memorabilia: the one good thing about the twentieth century, according to Gates.
For most people a description of their philosophy would simply be a matter of private beliefs rather than an aspect of personality. But Gates makes it otherwise. Nearly everything he does is filtered through a political point of view. Complaining about the Legion? It's because they're imperialist pawns (even if he secretly loves them). Fighting a bad guy? He'd better snark about how they're oppressing the working classes. Trying to help the downtrodden? Got to remind them that they should rise up against their imperialist oppressors. And pretty much any time he's given a chance, he'll happily go on about his philosophy for no reason at all.
So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that Gates is kind of a jerk. That's how he likes it. He's abrasive and rude. He rejects gestures of friendship and makes a point of alienating others. Ideally, he has an obnoxiously snarky comment ready at all times--sometimes to mock an enemy, sometimes to rebuff a friendly greeting.
The key lies in understanding that this is rarely genuine aggression. It's more a front than anything else. Gates is usually just trying to be the rebel outcast, pushing people away to better set himself up as the cool loner. In a pinch, he's perfectly capable of working as part of a team, or he'd have been booted out of the Legion long ago. But that doesn't make him any easier to deal with on a regular basis for most people.
Sometimes, though, he honestly doesn't know that his blunt and derogatory comments are the wrong thing to say, or that his attitude is needlessly arrogant and hostile. This could be blamed on him being from a very alien world--but that's not the truth. The truth is just that he's kind of a geeky reject. He never integrated well with his own society, and he doesn't do much better in humanoid social circles. It's just not his forte. So what is his forte?
Well...for all his grumpy, world-weary cynicism, Gates actually has more than a touch of naivete about him. Until joining the Legion, he had a fairly sheltered life. He believes in Ideals and Politics with an almost absurd earnestness; he expresses shock and disbelief at seeing people forced into horrible circumstances. Time in the Legion has tempered the latter quite a bit, but it's not gone entirely. Worse yet, he tends to cast people and issues in black and white. There are good guys, and there are bad guys, and he's sticking to that--even if his perception of who's who may be a little different than most.
This can be a bad thing, but it isn't always. When it comes to his personal code of ethics, it serves him just fine. And in the end, Gates is actually shockingly compassionate. He doesn't just mindlessly babble about the oppressed workers and the wrongs done by the imperialist merchant class. Confronted with real people in a bad situation, his heart goes out to them, whether they're friends (insofar as he has friends, grumble grumble) or total strangers, and given half a chance, he'll leap to do something to help them. And doing so might even make him happy enough to drop his obnoxious front. For a little while, anyway.
It's too bad he can't drop it for longer. See, Gates has a little problem. Actually, he has a fair amount of problems, but this one causes him the most personal frustration. He puts all this effort into being a cool outcast...and then even though he's proud of it, he feels kind of bad about it in the end, because it's lonely. And really, he never wanted to be lonely.
As a matter of fact, what he wants more than anything else is for people to care about him. To listen to him. It unnerves and upsets him when he's ignored, and he'd give near anything for people to actually sit down and discuss his ideas with him for once instead of tuning them out. Unfortunately for him, one of the few things he wouldn't give is his pride in being a rebel and a loner--so he continues to be kind of a jerk and put people off him, and he continues to annoy people by going on about his beliefs in the most obnoxious way possible. So he maintains his awkward place on the emotional fence: secretly soothed by being part of something, but not as loved and accepted as he'd really like to be, as he might be if he could just give it a rest once in a while. Maybe he just needs to grow up a little--but who knows what it would take for him to do that?
POWER:
Teleportation
This is the power that got Gates drafted into the Legion: he can teleport. He can also teleport other people and things. This is quite a versatile power--he can teleport short distances in battle to surprise enemies or escape blows, for instance, but he can also teleport across half a world. He can teleport just himself, or he can teleport himself and a small group of other people, or he can teleport a fighter jet. Details follow.
Distance and Location: Gates can essentially pick and choose what distance to teleport. He's never fully quantified what his upper limit is, because if he tried, he'd wind up teleporting himself into the middle of space, and that would be awkward. He knows that he can't teleport between planets (although he could probably teleport to the moon, and might do so in a huff sometime, only to realize that he can't breathe and come back in a panic), but he can teleport pretty much anywhere around one planet. The main limitation is not distance, but whether he's familiar with a location. The more familiar he is with his destination, the more comfortable he'll be teleporting there. He can teleport based simply on a description, but he prefers to avoid it; images are much better. He technically can teleport regardless of what he knows about his destination, but as distance increases, so too does the danger of him winding up somewhere dangerous or even deadly--so given any choice, he avoids it. When he has no choice, he'll teleport short distances (several meters rather than kilometers or more) blind, but this runs the risk of him materializing in the middle of something, at which point, depending on the material, it could either get sliced apart by his teleportation disk (dealing who knows how much damage to the structure) or it could trap him there, injuring or killing him. An example from canon: if he doesn't have the schematics to a building, he'll only teleport through it if it's an emergency, and even then he won't go more than a few storeys at a time.
Passengers and Cargo: Both before and during his time with the Legion, Gates has grown used to teleporting other people and things. He can teleport himself as well as other people and things, or he can just teleport his passengers and cargo. Either way works. This takes little more effort than usual for him so long as he's not teleporting too many people or too much material. If he has to teleport a particularly large group or a huge item, it can take him several minutes to generate the teleportation disk required. It's possible that there are upper limits to this capacity, but he has not yet discovered them. Still, he'd almost certainly have trouble teleporting more than a couple dozen people, or more than several tons. It also depends on a combination of factors--if he only has to teleport between rooms or storeys, for instance, he could transport large masses or several people; if he has to teleport halfway across a planet, he's down to relatively small objects and one to three people. Some more realistic scenarios: if he is transporting small crowds a few miles for evacuation, he will tire after a few jumps and need to rest. He could not teleport an approaching vehicle in time to stop it from hitting someone--he would need a few minutes to make a teleportation disk that large, and it would drain him--but he could teleport the person in danger out of it.
Time: When used by Gates alone, the teleportation disks act almost instantaneously. The actual travel time is in fact instantaneous, but there is a period of less than a second between the disk coming into being and the ability taking effect. An opponent acting swiftly enough could knock him away during this time, but it wouldn't be easy. The more he's teleporting, though, the more time it takes to prepare the teleportation disk--from a handful of seconds to teleport a small group of people to several minutes to teleport a huge object (which would be something such as a large vehicle; a building would be beyond him).
Multiple Instances: Gates can open several teleportation disks at any given time. He vastly prefers to stick with just one--it allows him much finer control, makes it easier to concentrate, and drains him far less. If necessary, though, he can create as many teleportation disks as he can concentrate on--which means that for practical purposes, he can do about six safely and twice that if he's desperate and willing to take more of a risk.
Combat Potential: While the obvious and primary use of the teleportation disks is for, well, teleportation, they do have a curious property that might lend itself to other uses. Specifically, their edges are wickedly sharp, capable of cutting into material (other than magically/technologically super-hard materials such as his home universe's inertron or the Marvel equivalent of adamantium) or severing limbs. They could be used as weapons, or to damage structures or objects. Ethics prevents Gates from the first use; he would be horrified and disgusted at even the suggestion. The difficulty of properly aiming them and the potential for collateral damage prevents him from the second use, but it's conceivable that if the situation called for it, he might resort to such tactics. As a general rule, though, while there are many possible offensive uses for his teleportation power, Gates shuns them all and sticks to defense. His code of ethics is really strong that way. In addition, the potential danger of the disks can hamper their use at times when it would otherwise be beneficial, such as in teleporting away debris that people might be trapped under.
Other Limitations: Areas that are somehow magically or technologically shielded against invasion can prove impenetrable to Gates. He requires focus to teleport, and if he's sufficiently dazed or worked up he can wind up in the wrong place entirely if he tries it. Overusing the power on other people and objects will exhaust him in his unfamiliar new body.
Flight Ring
The 'Porter has allowed Gates to keep his flight ring, which identifies him as a member of the Legion and allows him to fly indefinitely at a moderate speed. It doesn't allow fancy aerial stunts or zooming around, just steadily powering through the air. This is particularly useful for him considering his weak legs and (to begin with) lack of familiarity with the area.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[ voice ]
[As the communicator switches on, there's a brief moment of coughing and sputtering, as if the speaker still weren't quite used to talking this way.]
To those sentients who helped me find my footing when I first arrived, you have my gratitude. Perhaps not all humanoid senses of social justice are as stunted as any rational being would think! As for the rest of you...
I've rendered my verdict on the twenty-first century! Against all reason, it's even more backwards than the twentieth century. There's a speciesist electronic tyrant oppressing an entire city, and what do you humanoids do? Do you rebel against her imperialist designs like free-minded sentients should? Do you fight the rampant prejudice that has taken hold of the vulnerable minds of the natives? Oh, no, that would take effort and conviction! You people wouldn't dream of using any of that. It might be dangerous. It might upset your capitalist society. Grife, some of you have even started or taken over companies! Never has the human adage "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" been more bitterly true!
Well, I'll have you know that I will not be participating in this mindless assimilation! Gates of the Legion of Super-Heroes is now at work in your citizenry, going "stealth" in the humanoid body that has been forced upon me!
[And the voice fades to muttering.]
As soon as I've mastered walking on two legs...I think I've discovered why humanoids are so dense! Most of their brainpower must go to maintain--
[There's a crash and a thud, and the transmission ends.]
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
The back door of the soup kitchen slammed shut in Gates's face, leaving him staring mournfully at it. It shouldn't have stung so much, but he'd really been hoping that he could do something this time. There was so much that needed to be done, and he wanted so badly to be a part of the effort to help! With an effort, he pushed away his disappointment and plucked up his ire instead. That always helped. "Those nassheads!" he said. "This is the seventh time I've been kicked out of a so-called charitable organization I was willing to help!"
He promptly regretted saying that, even though no one was around to hear him. He could hear, and he knew what he'd just done. "Kicked out"--he'd used a humanoid idiom! He was letting the twentieth century get to him. For that matter, he was letting all the time he'd spent around humanoids since joining the Legion get to him! "Ejected," he muttered. "I've been ejected from a so-called charitable organization I was willing to help."
He spoke that last just in time for Ultra Boy to arrive from inside the soup kitchen. "You were scaring the people you were trying to help," he pointed out. Then he relented. "Cheer up, Gates. We'll find somewhere you can volunteer."
Gates looked up hopefully. For a moment, he didn't mind that he was letting the front down. He didn't mind that he was being earnest and sincere when he tried his best to be aloof and sarcastic. It wasn't so bad anymore, somehow. "Do you really think so...?"
"This place needs all the help it can get," Ultra Boy said with a grimace.
"Sprock it all, you're right," Gates declared. He could see a new opportunity to insult the humanoids for their narrow-minded ways lying ahead, and he sprang upon it. "This century practically invented activism on Earth, but that's because they needed it!" He was starting to feel animated again. Even while stuck in this backwards century, there was always something new he could try. The sentient spirit would not be defeated! Especially now that he had the Legion at his back--
And there he went with the humanoid figures of speech again! He scowled into the alley, grateful that Ultra Boy couldn't make out the expression, at least not under the hood. And since when had he thought of the Legion as his supporters, anyway? They were still an imperialist organization, forcing their values and beliefs on those who hadn't asked for them! And yet...
"Oh, grife," he muttered. "You're my imperialist organization. I've become one of them!"
Ultra Boy pretended not to hear as they headed back to rejoin the others. Gates was grateful for that. Just because he was a little more inclined to accept the Legion now didn't mean it was any easier for him to admit it to them. Besides, if he went too soft on them, who would call them out on their oppressive, humanoid-centric ways?
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
Gates's teleportation power is indeed potentially very dangerous, and its plot-breaking nature in the comics earned him more than his fair share of hate from fans. I don't want to do that to the game. I'm currently applying for Gates with essentially the power level he has in canon with a few limitations for the sake of sanity, but if necessary I can reduce it.
NAME: Annwyd
AGE: 24
JOURNAL: annwyd
IM: Annwyd Hates You
E-MAIL: annwyd [AT] gmail [DOT] com
RETURNING: Yes. Keith Anyan (motherloaded).
[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Ti'julk Mr'asz (closest Interlac approximation); goes by the superhero name of Gates.
FANDOM: DC's post-Zero Hour reboot of the Legion of Super-Heroes (primarily centered around the series of Legion of Super-Heroes and Legionnaires).
CHRONOLOGY: Shortly after returning from the twentieth century, around issue #.
CLASS: Hero. He'll attempt to throw out his dog tags to stick it to the man, but will eventually sheepishly return to pick them up again when he realizes they're his keys.
SUPERHERO NAME: Gates
ALTER EGO: Ti'julk Mr'asz, ACTIVIST.
BACKGROUND:
It's the last decade of the thirtieth century. All that awesome stuff the future was supposed to hold? It's finally here. Space travel, aliens, flying cars, superpowers, an interstellar government called the United Planets, you name it. This is the world in which the Legion of Super-Heroes, a group of superpowered teenagers fighting for the sake of all that is good and right in the many worlds of their universe, came to be. But we don't start with them. We start with a far-away alien.
For Ti'julk of the Mr'asz clutch (Interlac approximation, of course), the first year of his life was actually pretty swell. As a larva, all he really had to do was feed and sleep and listen to his elders. They explained society and his role in it, all in the expectation that when he entered the adult stage of life, he would put this into action and become a good Vyrgan. This took up about a year, and for that time Ti'julk was happy and accepted. He didn't have a family, but Vyrgans don't need family. They've got society.
Then he metamorphosed into his adult form, and the trouble started.
See, he didn't want to be a good little facet of society. He wanted to reevaluate their entire way of life, make it better. He was always asking questions: "Why is the sky pink?" "Why are females in charge?" "Why do we merely use the workers as drones instead of structuring our society to harmoniously employ their valuable talents while improving both their lot and the lifestyle of our entire planet?" He wanted to do things differently. He thought differently. And there was the problem: Vyrgans are socially and genetically inclined to think like each other. That's how their whole civilization works, how it's always functioned just fine. Except that every once in a blue moon, something goes awry--whether in the egg or in the larval stage following hatching, or maybe even before both of those, Vyrgan scientists have never figured out. But very, very rarely--so rarely, in fact, that this was the first time in centuries--the sameness doesn't take, and someone who can think for himself is born. Someone like Ti'julk.
A matter of weeks after he began displaying this alarming independence of thought, some of the higher-ups in the matriarchy took him aside and explained this to him. He had two options: find a way to integrate, or leave. No, he couldn't lead a revolution, overthrow the matriarchy, and rebuild society from the ground up to better the lives of the workers. That would be bad.
And so began a rather unpleasant year for little (okay, not so little anymore; Vyrgans grow fast) Ti'julk Mr'asz. At first, he really wanted to be a part of society. After all, since Vyrgans have no family, he didn't really have anywhere else to turn. And certainly, he couldn't make friends with people who all thought alike--unlike him. But a frantic desire to belong wasn't enough to quell his revolutionary ideas. Every time he tried to fit himself back in, soon enough he was asking, "Why? And why can't we change it?" So out he went again.
Of course, he was never in any real danger of deprivation--efficient Vyrgan society produced enough surplus that they could afford to support Ti'julk even when he wasn't participating in their little insectoid games. But the months on the edges of society, able to work and belong only in fits and starts, took their toll on him. He became bitter and cranky, inclined to reject what few offers of reconciliation were made to him. To alleviate his burgeoning loneliness and insecurity, he took to developing his political ideas. And so, on an odd planet full of giant bugs in the thirtieth century, a strangely familiar philosophy was born--a fusion of anarchy, Marxism, and enlightened rationalism.
But that didn't mean anything to the Vyrgan elders. What did mean something to them was that somewhere along the way, Ti'julk developed the ability to teleport. And then everything changed. Suddenly, the same society that had only awkwardly tolerated him before was clamoring for his help. After all, Vyrga was nothing if not utilitarian, and even the high matriarch saw how useful teleportation could be. He embraced the opportunity--for the first time since he became an adult, he could finally belong again! Besides, now they were more willing to tolerate his strange ideas, so long as he was providing them with something in return. They still didn't change anything about their society--but they treated him with more respect and listened to his ideas. He became something of a reluctant planetary hero--he wasn't particularly well-liked, on account of having not given up the prickly, obnoxious attitude he'd developed, but his newly-discovered power meant that he was useful. His independent thought was no longer regarded as a nuisance, but rather as something that could potentially help society. News of his abilities even filtered to the non-Vyrgans of the rest of the United Planets--and for them, he took on the Interlac name "Gates." It stuck even at home, and he soon found himself using it more than his given name.
But after a few months of this, Gates found himself once again discontented. He felt more and more like his people were only using him for his teleportation ability, and that was getting old. He wanted to use his newfound powers to protect the weak from their oppressors, not haul random travelers from place to place. He was tired of playing taxi for a planet, even if it was his own. Especially since it was becoming increasingly clear to him that while they'd listen to him, they'd never help him put his ideas for the bettering of society into action.
So he withdrew. He hung out in the more wild parts of Vyrga, pondering his philosophy, perfecting his politics. The strange thing was, he still didn't leave the planet. It was his home--he was determined to stick it out and eventually fix things. Besides, the rest of the galaxy was full of no-good imperialists anyway, at least by his reckoning.
Which was why he was so dismayed to find that he'd been drafted to serve as his planet's representative in the Legion of Super-Heroes. In retrospect, of course, he should have expected that they'd try to get rid of him now that he wasn't cooperating anymore. But in many ways, he was quite naive.
He resisted joining the Legion for as long as he could--to his view of the world, they were a paramilitary squad that valued nothing save for expanding the imperialist influence of the United Planets. But eventually, he couldn't escape any longer, and he was shipped off to Earth. He arrived at a less than ideal time: the Legion was fractured from political stress and what seemed to be mismanagement by their leader, Cosmic Boy. Their headquarters had just been nearly destroyed by a battle with a time traveling menace. In short, it was a mess, and Gates was happy to gloat about it.
As much as he would have liked to stay on the sidelines and snark, though, Gates didn't get that option. He soon found himself dragged into a fight against a mysterious, implacable foe--who turned out to be a brainwashed Element Lad. Soon enough, the whole Legion was dragged into a whirlwind of panicky politics, and not the kind that Gates loved. No, the terrible Sun-Eater was supposedly coming, and by order of the president, they had to release five of the worst criminals in the galaxy to combat it: the Fatal Five. Gates protested (and called President Chu names), but the rest of the Legion would have none of it. They were off to get the Fatal Five out of prison and save the world from the Sun-Eater.
Except that it was a trap. There was no Sun-Eater, and the Legion was stuck trying to fend off the Fatal Five. For the first time, Gates had his ideology challenged: Empress of Venegar seemed to be just the sort of politically conscious individual he'd love to sit down and talk to, but she was more interested in killing the entire Legion. And...for all that Gates didn't care for the Legion, he knew that was wrong. So he found himself fighting against political miscreants, with pawns of the oppressors--or so he saw them, anyway.
In the end, his quick thinking helped the team deal with the Fatal Five...but it wasn't enough. He was left alone, the last one standing with the remainder of the Fatal Five closing in. And that's when something really surprising happened: a rescue squad composed of the rest of the Legion showed up. He and the others were saved--by the same Legion he'd despised at first sight.
Naturally, his opinion of the Legion wasn't changed. If anything, this latest disaster only confirmed that they were blundering pawns of imperialist oppressors. And yet...he'd been able to help them, and in turn they'd rescued him. It was almost as if he belonged.
After that, things really started getting interesting. Political tensions in the United Planets were rising to a head, and it looked like Titan and Braal would go to war again. Gates figured that the Legion would just obediently assist the UP in whatever side it chose--but instead, they did something that he could almost admire. They organized a sting operation to reveal the real culprit behind the war, and indeed behind Element Lad's brainwashing, the Sun-Eater hoax, and the release of the Fatal Five: President Chu. Gates was so surprised by the Legion's competence that he almost forgot to gloat about how he wasn't surprised that the leader of the UP turned out to be a conniving, powerhungry maniac.
But the best part, or so he thought, came afterwards, when R. J. Brande replaced Chu as the leader of the United Planets--and promptly allowed the Legion to abolish the draft that had landed Gates in it in the first place. He happily contacted Vyrga to ask them to arrange to transport him home...only to find out that they had no intention of doing so. They were far too pleased with the status they got from having a member of their species in the Legion of Superheroes. So even though the draft was ended, Gates had to stay with this teenage death squad (as he dubbed it), away from the planet where he thought he belonged. Needless to say, he was not at all pleased.
Still, he had no choice but to keep going on missions with the Legion--and he was particularly cranky when the next one was chock full of politics, and he had to spend all his time taking orders from the deputy leader, Leviathan. All the same, when the time came to act to prevent an assassination, he did so promptly--even if it turned out to be more complicated than he'd thought. After all that, the mission ended with a planet changing its mind about joining the UP. Gates should have been happy to see a society avoid falling into the imperialist trap of the United Planets. For some reason, though, instead he was bothered by thoughts that had come up during the mission. Was his abrasive attitude really so bad that it interfered with the rest of the Legion? Should he care if it was? It seemed strange to worry about these things, but they started to nag at him.
He didn't have much time to ponder his attitude and his relationship with the Legion, though, because it was then that things got weird. The last dose of anything resembling normalcy Gates would have for a while was his trip to Xanthu--and that involved meeting the Amazers, so it wasn't exactly Normal Central. Afterwards, he returned to Legion headquarters to complain some more about how he was forced to stay there--only to see much of the Legion get called away to deal with the escape of a criminal they'd dealt with before, Dr. Regulus. Now he didn't even have many people to whom he could complain.
So he settled down with the handful of Legionnaires that were left and began telling them about his political beliefs. Much to his shock and amazement, for the first time, they actually listened. He didn't even have to force the ideas on them--they listened, and then they asked him to tell them more. For so long, what he'd really wanted, more than anything in the world, was people who'd simply listen to him. And all of a sudden, here he had them.
He should have known it was too good to be true.
In fact, it was the doing of Violet, the Legion's new leader. Under the influence of the powerful talisman the Emerald Eye, she was granting all the Legionnaires their hearts' desires. As nice as this seemed, it backfired when it turned out that Leviathan's heart's desire was a heroic death. He got it--and Violet, who'd been in love with him, went crazy. She unleashed the Eye's power openly in an attempt to bring him back, assimilating the entire Legion into a group consciousness under her command for this purpose.
It was, to say the least, a strange experience for Gates. He was powerless to stop it--until the Eye ordered him to help take over Earth. Then something in him rebelled. That was imperialism, and he'd fought against it ever since he put his beliefs together. Other Legionnaires followed him in finding something deep in themselves that would help them break free of the control, aided by Saturn Girl, who had broken free early on with the help of Apparition.
But it wasn't enough, and what was left of the Eye's group mind--Zoe and Violet--fell to fighting each other over the power of the Eye. Finally, it escalated to the point that Vi was horrified by what she had done. Frantic to undo the damage, she ordered the Eye to turn back time. Too bad she wasn't more specific--because what wound up happening wasn't a nice, convenient erasure of all the havoc the Eye had wrought. Instead, several Legionnaires were flung back a thousand years in time--Gates among them.
The twentieth century was, to say the least, weird.
For one thing, the Legionnaires and hangers-on there met Superman practically first thing. That was interesting enough, but nothing compared to what they rapidly found themselves in the middle of: an attack by the real Sun-Eater. Earth was shrouded in cold and dark, and in the middle of this all was a fragment of the Legion.
Here's where it began to get interesting for Gates. You see, in the cold and the dark, he ran into a group of homeless people huddled under a bridge, with nowhere else to go for shelter. For all his theoretical work on the notion of Poor Helpless Workers Being Horribly Oppressed, Gates had never before encountered the truly destitute. It shocked him to tears--but soon enough, he was fiercely clamoring for something to be done. And that's where he learned the next shocker: there really wasn't anything he could do. Forcing them into shelters wouldn't help. Gates's revolutionary ideas would not be welcomed here and now. Even if the Legion and the twentieth century's superheroes could stop the Sun-Eater, what kind of world would they be left with? And worst of all: according to Ultra Boy, even in their future, there were still places where people lived like this.
It was something of a humbling experience for Gates. One thing he was sure of: as soon as the initial crisis was over, for as long as they remained in the twentieth century, he'd do what he could to help the less fortunate. And he stuck to that promise--once the Sun-Eater was defeated, he began helping out in soup kitchens with Ultra Boy. Of course, considering how much he freaked out the people who went there, maybe this wasn't all good--but at least he was doing something.
The change from philosophy to application wasn't the only change he experienced, though. No: somewhere along the line, he saw what the Legion was really capable of. Who they really were. And he saw that they weren't just a teenage death squad or a bunch of imperialist dupes. They actually cared about the world and, most importantly, about each other. And Gates? He was one of them now.
With his perceptions thusly changed, Gates actually found himself not only tolerating the twentieth century, but enjoying it, even if he'd never admit it. Perhaps more than any other member of the time-lost Legion, it was a positive experience for him. More and more he found himself more at home in the Legion than he'd ever been anywhere else. Perhaps he even got a glimpse of what family was like.
On top of that, the twentieth century had a certain charm to it in his eyes. It was full of people willing to debate politics with passion, sometimes even once they found out they were debating with a giant alien bug. There was quaint music and literature and film here that fit his developing tastes to a T--and he'd never seen anything like it in the time he came from. There were things to be done and people to be helped. Even though he actually fit in less than ever, and there were places he couldn't even risk going lest he upset the timeline by getting people all worked up about, well, a giant alien bug, he found plenty of ways to enjoy himself. And he got quite fond of the whole era.
But he was still determined to get home, just like the rest of the Legionnaires, and overall, he found most of his attention focused on them. With the kind of chaos that was going down, it was hard not to focus on them. There was Brainiac 5 releasing his supervillainous ancestor, Brainiac; there was Brainy and Impulse wrecking S.T.A.R. Labs; there was nearly destroying the world with Superman; there was Imra's telepathy going haywire and messing with everyone's head, especially Cosmic Boy's; there was the induction of Ferro into the Legion despite his being from the twentieth century; there was the whole Genesis mess, where Gates was proud to actually be quite helpful to the Legion. Oh, and then there was the monkey. It was really a lot to keep track of.
But despite all this, Gates found himself focusing most of all on just one Legionnaire: Brainiac 5. He found himself hurt by the way Brainy was ignoring him, especially since he considered him the most rational humanoid he knew. As it turned out, Brainy was ignoring him because he didn't care for political zealots. Gates brushed that off with a bit of snark, but inside, he was more determined than ever to someday get through to Brainy. Not that he would admit it, of course. That would mean admitting he wanted a friend.
Finally, though, the Legion found a way home to the thirtieth century--although not without nearly destroying the Earth in the process, seeing as Brainiac 5's way of getting them home involved creating a malevolent supercomputer. They were all reunited with each other, and after everything that had happened, Gates actually found it a touching scene. He couldn't bring himself to admit it, and he still made sure to voice his complaints about vertebrates and capitalists and imperialists whenever possible--but he'd found a home with the Legion, and he no longer really wanted to leave.
PERSONALITY:
The cornerstone of Gates's personality is actually pretty simple: he's an outcast wherever he goes, and he's dealt with this by learning to like it.
On his own world, he's outside of society because he's one of the very few Vyrgans capable of thinking independently and going against mainstream opinion. Pretty much anywhere else in his home universe, he's a weirdo because he's distinctly non-humanoid. In the few places that wouldn't shun him for this (and soon enough, here in the City where he is humanoid), he makes himself an outcast by going on and on about his beliefs and, just to top it off, being abrasive and insulting. Well, he is an adolescent, if not technically a teenager. He's taken the tactic of many a teenager shoved into a locker. He can't play society's games? Well, he'll go and make his own game. And it will be better.
This isn't to say that he doesn't sometimes feel a little lonely on the edges like this. Occasionally he'll break down and admit that he enjoys being part of the Legion--and then deny it all the more afterwards.
So, what do you do when you're that kind of proud outcast? What do you do when you're one of barely a handful of independent thinkers on your entire planet? For Ti'julk Mr'asz of Vyrga, the answer was simple. You invent communism. And then you never shut up about it. Ever.
Gates's philosophy is not precisely communism, although it's easy to mistake for it given his frequent ranting about the oppressed working class. He's less interested in the evils of capitalism in particular (although that's certainly a part of it) and more interested in the evils of oppressive government and society in general. His beliefs are really a combination of communism, anarchy, and enlightened rationalism. Mind you, this does not stop him from idolizing Karl Marx and wearing a Che t-shirt when off duty. Communist memorabilia: the one good thing about the twentieth century, according to Gates.
For most people a description of their philosophy would simply be a matter of private beliefs rather than an aspect of personality. But Gates makes it otherwise. Nearly everything he does is filtered through a political point of view. Complaining about the Legion? It's because they're imperialist pawns (even if he secretly loves them). Fighting a bad guy? He'd better snark about how they're oppressing the working classes. Trying to help the downtrodden? Got to remind them that they should rise up against their imperialist oppressors. And pretty much any time he's given a chance, he'll happily go on about his philosophy for no reason at all.
So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that Gates is kind of a jerk. That's how he likes it. He's abrasive and rude. He rejects gestures of friendship and makes a point of alienating others. Ideally, he has an obnoxiously snarky comment ready at all times--sometimes to mock an enemy, sometimes to rebuff a friendly greeting.
The key lies in understanding that this is rarely genuine aggression. It's more a front than anything else. Gates is usually just trying to be the rebel outcast, pushing people away to better set himself up as the cool loner. In a pinch, he's perfectly capable of working as part of a team, or he'd have been booted out of the Legion long ago. But that doesn't make him any easier to deal with on a regular basis for most people.
Sometimes, though, he honestly doesn't know that his blunt and derogatory comments are the wrong thing to say, or that his attitude is needlessly arrogant and hostile. This could be blamed on him being from a very alien world--but that's not the truth. The truth is just that he's kind of a geeky reject. He never integrated well with his own society, and he doesn't do much better in humanoid social circles. It's just not his forte. So what is his forte?
Well...for all his grumpy, world-weary cynicism, Gates actually has more than a touch of naivete about him. Until joining the Legion, he had a fairly sheltered life. He believes in Ideals and Politics with an almost absurd earnestness; he expresses shock and disbelief at seeing people forced into horrible circumstances. Time in the Legion has tempered the latter quite a bit, but it's not gone entirely. Worse yet, he tends to cast people and issues in black and white. There are good guys, and there are bad guys, and he's sticking to that--even if his perception of who's who may be a little different than most.
This can be a bad thing, but it isn't always. When it comes to his personal code of ethics, it serves him just fine. And in the end, Gates is actually shockingly compassionate. He doesn't just mindlessly babble about the oppressed workers and the wrongs done by the imperialist merchant class. Confronted with real people in a bad situation, his heart goes out to them, whether they're friends (insofar as he has friends, grumble grumble) or total strangers, and given half a chance, he'll leap to do something to help them. And doing so might even make him happy enough to drop his obnoxious front. For a little while, anyway.
It's too bad he can't drop it for longer. See, Gates has a little problem. Actually, he has a fair amount of problems, but this one causes him the most personal frustration. He puts all this effort into being a cool outcast...and then even though he's proud of it, he feels kind of bad about it in the end, because it's lonely. And really, he never wanted to be lonely.
As a matter of fact, what he wants more than anything else is for people to care about him. To listen to him. It unnerves and upsets him when he's ignored, and he'd give near anything for people to actually sit down and discuss his ideas with him for once instead of tuning them out. Unfortunately for him, one of the few things he wouldn't give is his pride in being a rebel and a loner--so he continues to be kind of a jerk and put people off him, and he continues to annoy people by going on about his beliefs in the most obnoxious way possible. So he maintains his awkward place on the emotional fence: secretly soothed by being part of something, but not as loved and accepted as he'd really like to be, as he might be if he could just give it a rest once in a while. Maybe he just needs to grow up a little--but who knows what it would take for him to do that?
POWER:
Teleportation
This is the power that got Gates drafted into the Legion: he can teleport. He can also teleport other people and things. This is quite a versatile power--he can teleport short distances in battle to surprise enemies or escape blows, for instance, but he can also teleport across half a world. He can teleport just himself, or he can teleport himself and a small group of other people, or he can teleport a fighter jet. Details follow.
Distance and Location: Gates can essentially pick and choose what distance to teleport. He's never fully quantified what his upper limit is, because if he tried, he'd wind up teleporting himself into the middle of space, and that would be awkward. He knows that he can't teleport between planets (although he could probably teleport to the moon, and might do so in a huff sometime, only to realize that he can't breathe and come back in a panic), but he can teleport pretty much anywhere around one planet. The main limitation is not distance, but whether he's familiar with a location. The more familiar he is with his destination, the more comfortable he'll be teleporting there. He can teleport based simply on a description, but he prefers to avoid it; images are much better. He technically can teleport regardless of what he knows about his destination, but as distance increases, so too does the danger of him winding up somewhere dangerous or even deadly--so given any choice, he avoids it. When he has no choice, he'll teleport short distances (several meters rather than kilometers or more) blind, but this runs the risk of him materializing in the middle of something, at which point, depending on the material, it could either get sliced apart by his teleportation disk (dealing who knows how much damage to the structure) or it could trap him there, injuring or killing him. An example from canon: if he doesn't have the schematics to a building, he'll only teleport through it if it's an emergency, and even then he won't go more than a few storeys at a time.
Passengers and Cargo: Both before and during his time with the Legion, Gates has grown used to teleporting other people and things. He can teleport himself as well as other people and things, or he can just teleport his passengers and cargo. Either way works. This takes little more effort than usual for him so long as he's not teleporting too many people or too much material. If he has to teleport a particularly large group or a huge item, it can take him several minutes to generate the teleportation disk required. It's possible that there are upper limits to this capacity, but he has not yet discovered them. Still, he'd almost certainly have trouble teleporting more than a couple dozen people, or more than several tons. It also depends on a combination of factors--if he only has to teleport between rooms or storeys, for instance, he could transport large masses or several people; if he has to teleport halfway across a planet, he's down to relatively small objects and one to three people. Some more realistic scenarios: if he is transporting small crowds a few miles for evacuation, he will tire after a few jumps and need to rest. He could not teleport an approaching vehicle in time to stop it from hitting someone--he would need a few minutes to make a teleportation disk that large, and it would drain him--but he could teleport the person in danger out of it.
Time: When used by Gates alone, the teleportation disks act almost instantaneously. The actual travel time is in fact instantaneous, but there is a period of less than a second between the disk coming into being and the ability taking effect. An opponent acting swiftly enough could knock him away during this time, but it wouldn't be easy. The more he's teleporting, though, the more time it takes to prepare the teleportation disk--from a handful of seconds to teleport a small group of people to several minutes to teleport a huge object (which would be something such as a large vehicle; a building would be beyond him).
Multiple Instances: Gates can open several teleportation disks at any given time. He vastly prefers to stick with just one--it allows him much finer control, makes it easier to concentrate, and drains him far less. If necessary, though, he can create as many teleportation disks as he can concentrate on--which means that for practical purposes, he can do about six safely and twice that if he's desperate and willing to take more of a risk.
Combat Potential: While the obvious and primary use of the teleportation disks is for, well, teleportation, they do have a curious property that might lend itself to other uses. Specifically, their edges are wickedly sharp, capable of cutting into material (other than magically/technologically super-hard materials such as his home universe's inertron or the Marvel equivalent of adamantium) or severing limbs. They could be used as weapons, or to damage structures or objects. Ethics prevents Gates from the first use; he would be horrified and disgusted at even the suggestion. The difficulty of properly aiming them and the potential for collateral damage prevents him from the second use, but it's conceivable that if the situation called for it, he might resort to such tactics. As a general rule, though, while there are many possible offensive uses for his teleportation power, Gates shuns them all and sticks to defense. His code of ethics is really strong that way. In addition, the potential danger of the disks can hamper their use at times when it would otherwise be beneficial, such as in teleporting away debris that people might be trapped under.
Other Limitations: Areas that are somehow magically or technologically shielded against invasion can prove impenetrable to Gates. He requires focus to teleport, and if he's sufficiently dazed or worked up he can wind up in the wrong place entirely if he tries it. Overusing the power on other people and objects will exhaust him in his unfamiliar new body.
Flight Ring
The 'Porter has allowed Gates to keep his flight ring, which identifies him as a member of the Legion and allows him to fly indefinitely at a moderate speed. It doesn't allow fancy aerial stunts or zooming around, just steadily powering through the air. This is particularly useful for him considering his weak legs and (to begin with) lack of familiarity with the area.
[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:
[ voice ]
[As the communicator switches on, there's a brief moment of coughing and sputtering, as if the speaker still weren't quite used to talking this way.]
To those sentients who helped me find my footing when I first arrived, you have my gratitude. Perhaps not all humanoid senses of social justice are as stunted as any rational being would think! As for the rest of you...
I've rendered my verdict on the twenty-first century! Against all reason, it's even more backwards than the twentieth century. There's a speciesist electronic tyrant oppressing an entire city, and what do you humanoids do? Do you rebel against her imperialist designs like free-minded sentients should? Do you fight the rampant prejudice that has taken hold of the vulnerable minds of the natives? Oh, no, that would take effort and conviction! You people wouldn't dream of using any of that. It might be dangerous. It might upset your capitalist society. Grife, some of you have even started or taken over companies! Never has the human adage "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" been more bitterly true!
Well, I'll have you know that I will not be participating in this mindless assimilation! Gates of the Legion of Super-Heroes is now at work in your citizenry, going "stealth" in the humanoid body that has been forced upon me!
[And the voice fades to muttering.]
As soon as I've mastered walking on two legs...I think I've discovered why humanoids are so dense! Most of their brainpower must go to maintain--
[There's a crash and a thud, and the transmission ends.]
LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:
The back door of the soup kitchen slammed shut in Gates's face, leaving him staring mournfully at it. It shouldn't have stung so much, but he'd really been hoping that he could do something this time. There was so much that needed to be done, and he wanted so badly to be a part of the effort to help! With an effort, he pushed away his disappointment and plucked up his ire instead. That always helped. "Those nassheads!" he said. "This is the seventh time I've been kicked out of a so-called charitable organization I was willing to help!"
He promptly regretted saying that, even though no one was around to hear him. He could hear, and he knew what he'd just done. "Kicked out"--he'd used a humanoid idiom! He was letting the twentieth century get to him. For that matter, he was letting all the time he'd spent around humanoids since joining the Legion get to him! "Ejected," he muttered. "I've been ejected from a so-called charitable organization I was willing to help."
He spoke that last just in time for Ultra Boy to arrive from inside the soup kitchen. "You were scaring the people you were trying to help," he pointed out. Then he relented. "Cheer up, Gates. We'll find somewhere you can volunteer."
Gates looked up hopefully. For a moment, he didn't mind that he was letting the front down. He didn't mind that he was being earnest and sincere when he tried his best to be aloof and sarcastic. It wasn't so bad anymore, somehow. "Do you really think so...?"
"This place needs all the help it can get," Ultra Boy said with a grimace.
"Sprock it all, you're right," Gates declared. He could see a new opportunity to insult the humanoids for their narrow-minded ways lying ahead, and he sprang upon it. "This century practically invented activism on Earth, but that's because they needed it!" He was starting to feel animated again. Even while stuck in this backwards century, there was always something new he could try. The sentient spirit would not be defeated! Especially now that he had the Legion at his back--
And there he went with the humanoid figures of speech again! He scowled into the alley, grateful that Ultra Boy couldn't make out the expression, at least not under the hood. And since when had he thought of the Legion as his supporters, anyway? They were still an imperialist organization, forcing their values and beliefs on those who hadn't asked for them! And yet...
"Oh, grife," he muttered. "You're my imperialist organization. I've become one of them!"
Ultra Boy pretended not to hear as they headed back to rejoin the others. Gates was grateful for that. Just because he was a little more inclined to accept the Legion now didn't mean it was any easier for him to admit it to them. Besides, if he went too soft on them, who would call them out on their oppressive, humanoid-centric ways?
FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:
Gates's teleportation power is indeed potentially very dangerous, and its plot-breaking nature in the comics earned him more than his fair share of hate from fans. I don't want to do that to the game. I'm currently applying for Gates with essentially the power level he has in canon with a few limitations for the sake of sanity, but if necessary I can reduce it.