Character's real name: Matthew Thorne
Codename/Alias: Tracer
Gender: Male
Age: 21
Nationality/Ethnicity: American/Caucasian
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Personality: Matthew tends to be a very friendly person even around people he doesn't know, almost always with a relaxed smile on his face. In truth this is just a method of keeping everyone at a distance, something he's always done. He tries to maintain a certain detachment from everyone around him, thinking that it's easier to be hurt by someone close to you, but he doesn't always succeed at this.
Notes: Matthew enjoys and regularly practices parkour, which is greatly helped by his abilities. He is also a bit of a tech geek, having a relatively impressive knowledge of electrical systems. His biggest fear is being permanently blinded because of his sensitive vision, particularly that his eyes will grow too sensitive for any light level even with his goggles.
Allegiance: Neutral
Everyday clothing: A pale brown t-shirt, simple blue jeans, dark grey running shoes and most importantly a pair of black goggles to shield his eyes.
Uniform: A tight-fitting long-sleeved black shirt, tight-fitting black trousers, black fingerless gloves, slimline black laceless running shoes, a white full-body tactical harness and, of course, his black goggles.
Pajamas: T-shirt and boxers
Hair colour and style: Very light brown (nearly blonde) and cut very short.
Eye colour: Black (Matthew's eyes are solid black, lacking any iris or sclera)
Height: 6' 0"
Build: Athletic; quite slim with reasonable muscle tone.
Scars: One long ragged scar running from just above the elbow to just below his shoulder of his right arm.
Tattoos: None
Piercings: None
Description of abilities:Superhuman Vision Matthew's eyes are several times more sensitive than a normal human's in every respect. He can see in perfect clarity over several miles, seeing everything in detail only a watchmaker could appreciate. Also his eyes are sensitive to even the smallest amounts of light, allowing him to see perfectly in near total darkness.
Superhuman Agility Matthew's leaping distance, flexibility, balance, coordination and reflexes are dramatically greater than even an olympic athlete's. He is easily capable of jumping over a wall more than twice his height and, with a run-up, can leap from rooftop to rooftop clean across a street. His sense of balance is so fine that he is capable of walking a tightrope with his hands behind his back, and his reflexes are fast enough to allow him to dodge out of the way of a gun before its user has finished pulling the trigger (however, he cannot dodge the bullets themselves). Because of the impact forces his legs are subject to, they have developed unique shock-absorbing properties, allowing Matthew to survive a fall at terminal velocity so long as he lands on his feet.
Cons of abilities: Because of his eyes' sensitivity to light Matthew is forced to wear highly darkened goggles during the day and can only remove them when the sun has set completely. If his eyes are exposed to normal light levels it causes extreme pain and blinds him for a time dependent of the intensity of exposure as a sclera forms across his eyes, turning them white and completely blocking off his vision. Matthew has become hard of hearing due to the sheer amount of information coming from his eyes, he simply cannot focus enough on sounds, however he compensates for this with uncanny lip-reading abilities.
Fighting style: Street-style knife-fighting, he uses two push-knives which he usually keeps sheathed behind his back. One of which is shown below.
History of your character:As a child growing up in Pittsburgh Matthew was entirely normal, fairly bright and quite energetic but otherwise normal. At the age of 14 he became involved in the parkour scene is Pittsburgh, he started out shakily but quickly improved. After a few weeks he managed to injure himself; in a narrow alleyway he jumped over a high wall by making a few jumps between the two building walls either side to gain height and then flinging himself over the wall, the problem was he threw himself too far over to the right and as he dropped down the ragged edge of a bent fire-escape rail tore his arm open down to the bone. He hit the floor and collapsed in a heap, managing to get up he walked to a hospital and had to stay overnight because of blood loss. However, this did not put him off doing parkour.
Shortly after his 16th birthday Matthew noticed that his eyes were becoming more sensitive to light, to the point where walking around at noon he had to squint. One of his teachers accuse him of taking drugs because she'd noticed his eyes were constantly over-dilated, later that day, checking his eyes in the mirror he found that his irises had completely disappeared and his sclera was beginning to fray at the edges. Around the same time he noticed significant improvements in his agility. He soon started wearing sunglasses constantly, which only perpetuated the rumours of drug abuse. By his 17th birthday he had accepted the fact that he was a mutant and was constantly wearing darkened goggles because his eyes had completely changed to their current state.
All of his parkour-friends knew Matthew was a mutant and even celebrated his incredible agility, rumours at school drug use had now turned to rumours of mutantcy and the only people who were completely unaware of him being a mutant was his family. His parents had by now heard the rumour their son being a junkie and his two older sisters (twins, both students at university) refused to believe them. Before long his parents confronted him about the supposed drug use, Matthew not wanting to be outed as a mutant simply denied everything, the situation quickly degenerated and Matthew's father angrily tried to remove his son's goggles, at which point Matthew instinctively dodged by flipping backward and landing on the kitchen table in a crouch, 10 feet away from where he'd been standing.
His parents quickly figured out he was a mutant and his mother broke down in tears because of "the shame of having a freak for a son" and his father just told him to leave. Now alone Matthew began to travel across the country, finding work where he could and taking part in various parkour events simply out of habit, effortlessly putting everyone else to shame whereever he went.
Sample RP:It was about noon and Matthew walked down a street, hands in his pockets, surrounded by a mass of people in suits hurrying to wherever they needed to be. He was luckier than alot of mutants, for the most part he looked entirely human, at least with his goggles on and no one had ever asked why he wore them, with everything that had happened in recent years they probably knew that they wouldn't like the answer.
He'd come to New York for 'Jump NYC' but he was having second thoughts; did he really want to expose himself like that with all the registration act in full swing? So far he'd had relatively little difficulty avoiding it, people in parkour circles were surprisingly accepting and apparently had really bad memories for names, and places.
Matthew was very aware of the two push-knives sheathed behind his back in the waistband of his jeans. He kept getting the occasional curious glance from people walking past, but that was entirely normal, it's not everyday you see someone wearing black goggles. What Matthew was mostly concerned about was the guy on the other side of the road, Matthew could see out of the corner of his eye that this guy was obviously following him.
He took a turn into an alley, making sure he lacked any subtlety, and hopped up onto the fire-escape. Crouching on the railing he waited, sure enough after about thirty seconds the guy who'd been following him walked into the alley. He was a couple inches shorter than Matthew, black buzzcut hair and wearing a fake leather jacket with both his hands in the pockets. He looked up and spotted Matthew on the fire-escape.
"What's with the goggles?" he said coldly.
Matthew paused a moment, the guy obviously had something in his right hand and was trying to hide it.
"Doctor's orders, Conjunctivitis. Why're you following me?"
At this point the guy pulled out a revolver and swung his arm round to take aim. Before the guy's arm had fully extended Matthew pushed off from the fire-escape, reacting to the movement the guy pulled the trigger but the bullet just hit the wall because Matthew's feet had already made contact with the opposite wall. He pushed off, moving his right hand behind his back he closed his fist round the handle of his knife and drew it. Matthew landed in front of the gunman, pressing the point of his blade against the guy's throat he twisted the gun out of the guy's grip with his left hand.
"Mutie freak." he growled.
Matthew nearly laughed.
"You're not in a position to insult me."
Matthew swiftly brought his knee up into the guy's crotch and he folded in on himself and dropped to the ground, quivering and groaning. Matthew looked down at him, dropped the gun, resheathed his knife behind his back and walked out of the alley.
Where did you learn about this site?: Hunter
Other accounts on MRO: None
liking this ability much.
