Post by Francesca Oto on Jun 23, 2014 16:48:20 GMT -5
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DESCRIPTION AND PERSONALITY
Appearance:
The first thing you notice about Francesca is her star. It's kind of a distinguishing feature when you live inside a ball of fire, a sun. Once you see past the plasma-filled star engulfing her, you'll notice a chubby girl with light brown hair, usually put up in a pony tail, and big green eyes. And maybe, if you are willing to look even deeper, you'll catch a glimpse of Francesca.
But to most people, she's just Tank. The chubby X-student who rarely leaves the basement and with the unpredictable personality.
The star is always spherical, unless obstacles are in the way. Fran is always at the center of the sphere. The sphere can contract from a few feet around her and expand to the size of a mansion. The latter is extremely taxing and Tank's comfort zone lies in a bedroom-sized star. The color and density of the star can vary and is described in detail below. Tank usually dresses in casual clothes, given that she isn't allowed outside and lives in a protective cocoon. This means sweatpants and a T-shirt, regardless of the temperature outside.
Personality:
Tank is stubborn, emotional and somewhat easy to manipulate. She is very moody, and this reflects in her star's behavior strongly. It moves around, increases or decreases in volume or mass, heats up, cools down, becomes more agitated or pulsates depending on her emotions. She cannot really suppress those automatic responses, as her sun's internal chemistry is complex and hard to fathom. In general, she seems very hard to read for people who don't know her well, mostly because the plasma surrounding her occasionally camouflages her facial expression. This makes her mood swings appear even more unpredictable.
People who know her well, however, have an extremely easy time reading at least her overall mood. Indeed, Fran tends to expand her sun when she wants to get noticed, or feels comfortable, and shrinks it when she tries to be meek. The color of her sun also reflects her feelings, although in a counter-intuitive way. Indeed, “cold” colors, such as blue, happen to coincide with a hot sun. In contrast, “warm” colors, such as orange or red, correspond to a cool sun. Hence, Tank will usually be bathed in orange or red when she is in a good mood, yellow in her regular mood, and purple or blue when she is upset or angry. Her sun's density reflects her depression or rejection level. The higher the density, the less she wants to see anyone. In a convenient fashion, higher density also makes Francesca's star more opaque.
Vice versa, effects on her star greatly affect Fran's mood, which might explain her frequent emotional swings. Indeed, her sun's natural volume is that of a small classroom or a big bedroom, meaning that she has to nearly constantly shrink it to move around the institute and to avoid accidents. While this turns her somewhat meek most of the time, it also builds up frustration, and her sun can brutally expand and the girl's mood explode.
Tank thinks of herself as “Fran”, but dislikes it when anybody calls her by her 'human' name. Only a handful of X-men and very old X-students know about it anyway. Her codename started as a taunt from a fellow X-student: a play on her weight, both with and without her sun. Despite weight still being a touchy subject to the ton-heavy star and 180 pound girl, Tank is at this point her preferred and pretty much only name.
Tank sometimes day-dreams of visiting her big sister, the real sun. It is a dream that fills her mind with unexplainable joy. Somehow, she knows that if she were to be... hurt in a significant way, this would be a safe place for her. A place to heal.
POWERS AND ABILITIES
In short, Tank's powers are that she lives in a miniature star the size of a small classroom. Next come lots of technical details that make the powers work.
High energy: First and foremost, Tank is a being of extremely high energy. She does not need to eat, sleep or sustain herself in any way. Fran has access to an enormous, but finite, reservoir of energy that she uses to maintain herself and her sun alive. Because of that, her sun regenerates despite not getting any fuel from outside. Her human body, however, does not seem to heal at all without access to fresh plasma. The main downside of Tank's high output is that her star constantly emits a very powerful energy signature. These electromagnetic bursts are camouflaged by the sun's own energy during the day, as well as by strong human electrical activity. It is very noticeable at night however, making Tank easy to detect unless she is underground. These spectral bursts are so powerful that no one has yet managed to find a device able to camouflage her.
Selective heat: Tank can control the effect of the heat generated by her star, but it requires a conscious effort on her part. This means she can avoid burning things she interacts with, and can even “allow” people inside her star (to shake their hand, for instance). The effort involved in not affecting something is proportional to the number of things she has to focus on. This means in particular that she has to avoid crowds, lest someone bumping into her be severely burned. Tank selection power only affects heat, and none of the other effects of her star.
Plasmokinesis: The ability to move the plasma her sun generates. In addition to allowing Tank to move her star around as if it weighted as much as a human body, plasmokinesis also allows her to contract and expand the star. Note that Tank is always at the center of her spherical star, unless an obstacle blocks off a section of said star. The standard example is when Fran walks on the ground: her star forms a half-sphere -a dome- around her. Tank can also lift herself from the ground, but she does not have enough kinetic strength to lift her star from the ground. This means that, at best, her star forms a full sphere of plasma resting on the ground, with her at the center of it.
Electromagnetism: Tank is a sun. Her star is made out of plasma, a charged particle and emits electro-magnetic waves, which includes light and other radiations. Fran has no direct control over her electromagnetic field, which is one of her biggest weaknesses. Thankfully, her electro-magnetic signal is very peculiar, and is concentrated on parts of the spectrum entirely harmless to life forms. She basically only can create light on the extended visible spectrum and in an extremely deep and specialized spectral band which is her 'personal signature'. While she has some control over the former, and in particular can change the color of her light or attempt to blind people with it, Tank cannot turn off her electromagnetic signature.
Living sun: Francesca's star is far from being inert. It constantly burns fuel that her energy reservoir generates, and her sun has a complex and ever changing internal chemistry. The inside of it is filled with plasma, a fluid of varying density that flows around her. Her sun can have strong currents, can pulsate to filter out excess energy and can create small arms of fire, behaving like a very large and complex living being. In particular, it can use the enormous amount of energy Tank can tap into to change its form and properties significantly. This means that Fran can (sometimes unwillingly) “morph” her star from one type to another. The most important attributes when she does so are the following: Density, Volume, Heat and Brightness.
Density: Mass is what is hardest for Fran to increase. It requires the most energy, and therefore time, usually on the scale of minutes to hours. Her sun's density can range anywhere from a somewhat heavy air to a very viscous and heavy liquid. In her most comfortable state, her density is a bit higher than water. Tank moves around in her star with ease, regardless of its density. The same is not true of “visitors”. Density is also what affects her sun's opaqueness the most. Most of them time, Fran's star is transparent enough to see her quite clearly, although usually with a little chromatic shift (red, yellow or blue depending on her heat).
Volume: Volume is the easiest thing to change, if Tank is willing to lose in density or heat. Fran has an unconscious telekinetic control over her sun's plasma particles, which is what allows her to control its form. In particular, it's what prevents her sun from collapsing. Francesca can expand her star anywhere from it's minimal size (a few feet around her) to its maximal size (mansion-sized) within minutes. It is creating extra mass and heating up the sun that takes her time.
Heat: Changes in heat are the fastest, taking mere seconds to turn from cool red to vaporizing blue. In her coolest form, Tank's star is a dark, very transparent red, which she usually refers to negatively as “brown”. It is essentially as dangerous as your regular household fire. Her normal state is yellow/white while her most extreme state is a very bright purplish blue, which vaporizes most things at touch.
Brightness: Brightness is essentially a combination of heat and volume, although Tank can somewhat play around with her star's brightness even at constant heat and volume. She usually tries to be at the minimal level of brightness, which is mildly uncomfortable for prolonged periods of time. At her peak, she can reach levels of brightness nearly equal to our sun. Her natural state is mildly blinding, like when you go skying on a mountain without sunglasses: you can do it, but you need to squint your eyes a fair bit.
While density is what takes the biggest time to set up, it requires no effort to maintain. On the other hand, Tank's overall energy output (heat x volume x brightness) per second is limited, and dictates how long she can maintain a given state. Francesca can have a sub-natural energy output for prolonged periods of time, although it will frustrate her and her star, making it more unstable and dangerous. Above average levels of energy output can be maintained up to a certain limit, after which Tank's star collapses to a brown dwarf until she recuperates.
Next I list Tank's most usual stellar forms
Arguably, Francesca is the most powerful pyrokinetic on earth. This had earned her the nickname Pyro-Queen. But with her special brand of pyrokinetics come a hand full of unusual weaknesses:
[*] Just as important is the fact that Tank has a hard time staying hidden. During daytime, specialized equipment can detect her energy signature unless she stays indoors. During the night, she must stay under ground or under water to remain safe. It's also pretty easy to see a giant ball of plasma coming.
[*] Magnetic attacks can manipulate her plasma and contain Tank's star. A magnetokinetic can therefore capture Fran with relative ease.
[*] Electric attacks are very effective on the plasma-powered mutant. Unlike magnetic attacks however, they do not contain her star, but make it unstable. This means Fran will lose control over her powers and will revert back to her normal form. Her selective heat may also be thrown off balance.
[*]Finally, while a formidable adversary for conventional physical means, Tank is very weak to mental attacks. Because of the psychosomatic link between Fran's star and psyche, you can manipulate one by attacking the other.
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HISTORY
Francesca was born into a heavily anti-mutant family. She lived in Phillie's little Italy, and her parents were devout catholics. Religion was the main drive behind the family's rejection of mutants, despite the teachings really preaching the opposite. Most of the girl's early childhood was very normal and uneventful. She got bored very quickly. That is, until she met the girl who could speak into her mind. Fran was eight years old at that point, and her new best friend, Alice, ten. They had lots of fun, having silent conversations, sharing secrets, spying on those of others, and so on.
Until Fran made the mistake of telling her parents about her friend. They of course ordered her to avoid the mutant girl. Francesca refused, and became more and more firmly entrenched in that position as her parents tried to distance her from Alice. Feeling that they had no other choice to protect their daughter from this bad influence, they started creating a petition to get Alice thrown out of the “normal” school.
When this eventually happened, and Francesca learned about it, she became very angry. Angry enough to engulf her family's house in a giant sun, although her selective heat powers managed to spare her parents. These were simply so shocked at what their daughter had just done that they ran away from her, and called the police. The X-men came pretty quickly and tried to sort things out. Francesca's parents just wanted to get rid of her, and were glad when the little freak went away. Fran was eight years old when she left her family.
This is why Tank dislikes her old identity, and avoids her old name as much as possible. Only a handful of old X-students and staff know Tank's real name. Having lived eight years at the institute, Tank's loyalty to the X-men is unwavering, and while she has few friends, this is where she feels at home. That being said, it sometimes feels like a prison. This is even more the case after the Mutant Registration(MRA) came into place. Before that, Fran was subject to the same curfew rules as everybody else. While these affected her more than others (because she doesn't sleep and because she prefers open spaces), it was still something reasonable, a mild annoyance she could cope with. Classes were not too hard for someone who pulls of all nighters all the time although the classroom would always feel cramped for her little sun.
After the MRA got voted into law, things got trickier. It became very clear that Tank's powers were a real danger to the institute, her star emitting such a strong energy signal that they she could not remain in her old room at night. Despite thinking about the problem for a long time, the X-men found no better solution than to impose much harder curfew rules on Tank, both for her and for the institute's security. Fran was not allowed outside anymore during the day, and had to remain underground at night.
She could go to classes during the day, the sun and general human activity camouflaging her star's energy signature sufficiently. At night however, several layers of concrete were all that could prevent the outside world from detecting her presence. The X-men tried to make the unfortunate experience as pleasant as possible: Tank's basement room is spacious and next to the institute's lab, which she is allowed to visit at night. But she is not allowed out of the underground level at night, and her room, as well as the lab room, have no windows.
Fran accepted the conditions, because she knew she owed the institute a lot, and that it would be selfish of her to put the other students at risk. But it did not mean she liked her new condition. In some ways, she rebelled against it by being particularly stubborn or annoying, to the point where the X-men just plain ignore her at times, even if she does not turn up to class for days or weeks at a time.
ROLE-PLAYING SAMPLE
The single bedroom in the basement was a queer one. A sign adorned the door, saying Stay away. Black hole being formed!. The rest of the door was a painful white, with a big black sun right under the warning. Inside the room, the ceiling was all black, with stars replicating the outside sky. A half moon was also painted on the fresque-like sky with details worthy of a high resolution photograph. Fran was very good at keeping herself occupied. Four months of self-imposed isolation had given her plenty of time to perfect her drawing skills, as well as completely redecorate her room. The brunette looked around. The room perfectly lit, the ambient plasma providing plenty of natural light. She still had one bare wall left to paint onto.
The sun-girl sat at her working area, in the very center of her room, a pencil in her mouth. The sun pulsated gently as the artist tried to let go of her imagination. Her fingers tapped idly against an A2 sheet of paper covering her entire desk. She would spend a week or so sketching on it, before switching to her tablet to do the more detailed drawing. Then came the colors and finally the life version of the fresque.
I've got the Japanese gardens on my south wall, the woods on my west one and night time Philadelphia on the east. Only remains the north. As usual, Fran's mind drifted to places she wished to visit, at night. Her star acquired a slight hue of blue. Never mind the fact that these places would never look the way she drew them when she was present. Not that she was allowed outside at night anyway. The room started heating up dangerously as Fran's sun became fully blue. Oops. The mutant tried to calm down. She had enough willpower to not carbonize anything in he room, but didn't want to take chances anyhow. You never know when someone tries to enter the room..
Of course, exactly at that moment, a knock resonated in the room. Instinctively, Tank's star contracted and solidified somewhat. She waited few seconds for her star to be less opaque before answering with an annoyed tone, ”Come in.” Fran couldn't change much about her color, however. She hoped her visitor would not noticed her annoyed turquoise sun.
No answer. The pyro-queen waited thirty seconds before getting up. There was no bed in the room, or any furniture to speak of except for Fran's work and draw station. Despite that, the large room felt cramped, filled with buzzing blue plasma. "If this is a prank, I can already tell you it's not funny." The door was plasma-proof, making Fran's star oddly unbalanced as her body got closer to the knob. The blue sun fizzled loudly as it readjusted its chemistry accordingly. "I'm opening the door!" Fran always had her selective heat on, so the person across the door was not in any form of danger. But the plasma rushing towards you could always come as a nasty shock, so she gave her or him a fair warning.
Opening the door, Tank did not expect to be greeted by darkness.
Not true, darkness -that was impossible with a flaming star around her. But Fran was not inside the basement of the X-mansion anymore. "What the?" A tunnel? Her light was strong, but didn't reach all the way into the dark hole that was the tunnel. With a curious tilt of her head, Tank made her star pulsate some extra light. It could go a lot further that way. The light pulses indicated that the tunnels went on forever. Wait. This didn't make sense. Was this some new holograms? Tank decided to close her door and open it again. No change.
Then Fran stepped outside, closing her door behind. She realized her dire mistake as soon as the door shut close. By the time she turned around, it had all but disappeared. "Great. Just fabulous." The tunnel colored an extremely annoyed blue.
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
USER NAME: EmpathyYEARS RPING: 5REFERRED TO BY: the amazing Silv.OTHER: Kamala Khan, aka Ms Marvel.
created by House of M for Marvel Universe: Scattered Dimensions
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