IndividualCharacter's full name: Kaitlyn Faust. Her legal last name is "McCarthy," but she took
Lori's last name after her illegal adoption
Aliases: Started calling herself "Firecracker" in early 2014. "Dr. Catherine Lewis" was her fake identity during a
stint as one of the Order's spies; she may still use the fake I.D. that she got for that, complete with documentation “proving” that she’s a shapeshifter.
Age: 13
Birthday: August 22, 2000
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: New York City, NY.
Nationality/ Ethnicity: White American
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: Mixed European, mostly Scotch-Irish
AppearanceHair color and style: Reddish brown. Not quite straight, but not curly either, and usually long enough to reach her shoulders.
Skin Tone: Pale with freckles
Eye Color: Hazel (but see tattoos)
Height: 4 feet, 11 inches
Build: Tiny and scrawny, but still tougher and more dangerous than you and
don’t you forget itVisible mutation: She tries to play off her eyespots as part of her mutation. They're actually tattoos.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings:In early 2014, she
got another mutant to tattoo her eyeballs. The whites of her eyes have been
replaced with 'eyespots.'
Other features: Everyday clothing style: Tends towards t-shirts with something mutant-related or subversive on them, usually paired with skirts or pants.
Uniform: n/a
Sleepwear: Pajamas
Miscellaneous clothing: CharacterPersonality: Kaitlyn can be unusually mature, calm, and clear-headed for her age. She also gets angry fairly easily, but it's a cold anger: her expression will not change at all while she says terrible things about you or blows up in your face (literally). She normally doesn't act on her anger unless she feels somebody deserves it, and woe upon them! Because Kaitlyn has a lot of bottled-up rage, fear, and despair, but she doesn't have many healthy ways to let it all out.
She also thinks she has something to prove. Mostly, that she got toughened up by living on the streets, then in a dangerous neighborhood.
Her identity as a mutant is very important to her. She actually coerced someone into changing the way her eyes looked so she couldn't be mistaken for a human. She has very much bought into the idea that mutants are directly better than humans and that they can't comfortably coexist. Her ability to understand the social issues surrounding all this is honestly somewhat lacking, but she has read a book or two about the subject by very biased authors and speaks with what her peers could mistake as an air of authority.
Hobbies/ Interests: Kaitlyn is a pool shark, a plotter, and a schemer. She also enjoys reading
nonfiction books, a taste she acquired thanks to her
adoptive father, Mars. She enjoys reading anything related to spies or mutant issues, even if the latter just ticks her off most of the time.
Job or part time job and description: Student.
Fears/phobias/concerns:-Mutation control issues. She's terrified that she might accidentally kill somebody she loves with her power.
-Sleep. Sleep is full of nightmares and best avoided.
-Her old family. There's an abusive father, and an extended family which, she's convinced, knew all about it and didn't care. Anything that reminds her too much of her old family makes her agitated and uncomfortable.
-The authorities, who know (or knew at one time) that she's a runaway and probably want to take her back to her old family. Her adoption by the Sanctuary wasn't exactly legal.
Special talents: Moving silently, lying with a straight face.
MoralityNeutral/other: Kaitlyn has a solid sense of right and wrong. The Order is right; the rest of society tends to be wrong. As a true believer in the Order’s cause, Kaitlyn understands that dishonesty, thievery, and even murder can be justifiable. However, ‘justifiable’ isn’t always the same thing as ‘fun.’ Although she has killed people, it still makes her feel awful, though she hates to admit that. Lying, stealing and assault, on the other hand, are fine by her, as long as it doesn’t end up hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it.
“People who deserve it” includes, but is not limited to, people who oppose the Order directly or indirectly. It also includes people who just tick her off.
Finally, Kaitlyn is an unshakeable believer in the idea that all of mutantkind should stick together and help their own. She can be incredibly kind to people with active X-genes. Technical differences aside, she also has a soft spot for adapteds: they're just as misunderstood and hated, after all, so they need a supportive community too.
MutationsMutation description: Kaitlyn has the ability to make things fly. Away from her, propelled by the dangerous, explosive shockwaves she can generate by making the air around her expand rapidly. People caught in such blasts are usually knocked off of their feet, with particularly strong blasts capable of causing concussions or even fracturing bones at a close range. At their strongest, one of these can send a bus full of people airborne.
Kaitlyn can channel the same force that generates these blasts into a rigid object by placing both of her hands on it when she activates her power. Anything affected by Kaitlyn's power in this way usually gets destroyed, reduced to tiny bits sent flying in all directions, but it has to be a
rigid object. While a glass bottle would be reduced to tiny glass chunks, a piece of fabric or rubber would just absorb some of the mutation's energy, sustaining no damage, then sending the rest of the energy into the air as a regular shock wave. If Kaitlyn tried to do this to somebody's arm or leg, the victim's skin would absorb most of the force, resulting in lots of bruising and maybe a few fractures.
Finally, instead of blasting everything near her or sending a blast directly into something, Kaitlyn can hold out her arms out in one direction and shoot a concentrated shockwave in that direction. When doing this, the shockwave hits everything in a 45 degree cone, affecting little else. Such a blast is more concentrated, more powerful, and more dangerous for Kaitlyn to attempt than a normal one; doing this hurts her arms and knocks her off her feet in the opposite direction.
While Kaitlyn's mutation makes her comparable to walking bomb, her 'explosions' make very little heat, if any at all.
Strengths: KABOOM. That's the sound that everything makes as it ceases to be a problem all at once.
Weaknesses/Limitations: -First and foremost, a serious lack of control. Kaitlyn has difficulty triggering her mutation when she wants it to trigger, and often cannot stop it from triggering when she's scared or surprised. This gets worse as she uses it more in a short amount of time.
-Triggering her mutation might impair her senses. This might blur her vision, make her ears ring, or make her inner ear think that up is left and that her face should really get better acquainted with the floor.
-Explosions exert less force on things that are farther away. One blast could send somebody 5 meters away flying through a window, while somebody at 25 meters might just get thrown off balance by the same blast. Directed blasts are affected far less by distance than her normal ones.
Power Growth 02JAN2013: Bomb CreationKaitlyn now has the ability to store explosive energy in something just by touching it with her bare skin, turning it into a kind of bomb. After a set amount of time, her newly-created "bomb" will act as though she had channeled explosive energy into it while grasping it. This usually means that it blows up, but that depends on the material it's made of and how big it is. A small, object would explode, sending shards of itself everywhere. Something made of cloth would not break or tear, but produce a heatless shockwave. Rubber or similar materials would either give off a very small shockwave, or vibrate anticlimactically for half a second instead of detonating. Also, the larger the 'bomb,' the more energy would likely be spent breaking that bomb apart when it goes off, leaving less of it to send shockwaves or bits of shrapnel around. Therefore Kaitlyn can only make large explosions with small 'bombs.'
If Kaitlyn used this ability on anything larger than a meter across, only a meter-wide portion of that object, centered on the part she was touching, could become 'explosive.' If that object is made of multiple, non-continuous pieces, only the part that she touched would become explosive (eg. if she was touching a doorknob, only that doorknob would become the bomb, not the entire door.) She can only turn one thing into a bomb at a time.
A bomb that Kaitlyn creates will go off immediately if dented, bent, broken, or shaken up. Bombs with less energy stored in them would require more violent shaking to detonate prematurely, and bombs made of flimsy material like paper or fabric would be especially volatile.
Strengths: She could turn floors into pit traps, any small rocks or wooden planks into landmines, and most throwable objects into makeshift grenades.
Weaknesses/Limitations:- Bombs are dangerous. If she's not careful, she could easily hurt herself or somebody she cares about, or destroy something she'd much rather not.
- Kaitlyn has absolutely no way of knowing for sure that she's created a 'bomb' until it detonates, much less how much power she stored in it or how long it has until it blows. While she may be able to intuit these things with time and practice, the best she'll ever be able to do is guess.
- The amount of time Kaitlyn spends in contact with something is directly related to how powerful of a bomb it can become. Three seconds is enough for a bomb that can knock a grown man off his feet, assuming he's less than a foot away from it. Ten seconds is about enough to disable a car from below.
- Kaitlyn cannot turn a living thing into a bomb.
Physical AbilitiesGeneral Physical Capabilities: With Lenna's help, and thanks to some of her illegal extracurricular activities, Kaitlyn has become a little bit more physically fit than the average girl her age. This doesn't change the fact that she's an unusually small 13-year-old girl, and many people can pick her up and carry her around without much trouble. Lenna also taught her a little bit of Krav Maga, and her other honorary big sister, Rhythm, taught her some Muay Thai.
Fighting Style: KA-POW.
Pros for fighting style: THWOOOOOOM.
Cons for fighting style: lack of adequate explosive onomatopoeia. Also, she might accidentally harm herself or her friends, or destroy something that she'd rather not destroy. If she runs into somebody who she can't hurt with her mutation, she's usually reduced to groin-punching, shin-kicking, and running away.
History Of Your Character:Erin McCarthy had an unusual pregnancy. She felt like her baby girl would "kick" a little bit too hard. Painfully hard. The doctors never figured out what was going on, even after it was too late. Erin died from unexplained trauma and internal bleeding; the baby, young Kaitlyn, was salvaged with an emergency C-section a few weeks before her due date.
Brendan was able to take care of Kaitlyn during her early years while maintaining his job as a construction worker, thanks to help from the extended family, but by the time that she was five years old and able to go to elementary school, much of the family assistance came to an end.
Though he hid it well from the outside world, Brendan was profoundly depressed, and possibly turning psychotic. He began to drink a lot after work, leaving himself in a drunk stupor and Kaitlyn to either grab a few things from the refrigerator or go to bed hungry every night.
This evolved over time into her making dinner for both of them, then all of their meals, then doing everything around the house. Neglect then turned into outright abuse: when she did something incorrectly, or when he came home in a particularly bad mood, he would beat her and say all sorts of terrible things to her. He would blame her for Erin's death, he would call her useless and stupid, etc. He also told her never to mention these beatings, and she kept this promise. When asked, Brendan would say that Kaitlyn was merely "accident prone," and Kaitlyn was forced to come up with all sorts of explanations for her bruises.
For most children, school was torture. For Kaitlyn, it was an outlet. Though her father would never show her kindness no matter how hard she tried, her teachers thought she was a perfect little angel. She worked very hard to gain their approval. She had less luck with kids her age: she resented them for having families who cared about them, and often lashed out at them. Most of them thought she was just weird and unlikeable.
Kaitlyn became withdrawn and depressed. She believed some of the things that her father said to her: she felt worthless, blamed herself for not having a mother.
Recently, during a particularly nasty beating, Kaitlyn's until-then latent powers became activated. The apartment was destroyed, and her father was thrown into a wall headfirst, killing him. Around that point, everything became a blur.
Though her home is in Queens, she would later only remember waking up in an alley in Manhattan with only her own clothes, her father's coat, and a wallet.
(It took a few months for her to piece together what had happened. She realized that she could deal with her father being dead.)
Summary of IC HistorySeveral prominent Order members, Lori Faust and Mars, found her after she blew up a busy Manhattan intersection. They promptly took her to the Sanctuary. As time went on and it became apparent that Kaitlyn had no desire to return to her real home, Lori adopted her in an semi-legal manner. Technically, Kaitlyn was kidnapped, though this isn't the way either of them felt about it.
To make sure Kaitlyn was getting educated, Lori hired Mrs. Boyd, a personal tutor, eliminating the need for her little girl to attend a public school with all its humans, or some place as backwards at the Mansion. For two years, through the combined efforts of Mars and Mrs. Boyd, Kaitlyn became unusually intelligent for her age. On top of this, she has learned a number of things from the other Sanctuary residents that have significantly influenced her worldview, particularly on the relationship between mundane humans, the police, and mutants like her. She knows a lot about registration from the stories they tell, and their resentment and feelings of being oppressed have rubbed off on her.
Her lack of mutation control has lead to countless dollars spent on repairs for the Sanctuary. A certain secretary keeps an excel spreadsheet on her computer entitled "The Property Damage Leaderboards.xls", the top of which contains Kaitlyn's name, right next to a number with several more digits than any other. It didn't start out as a joke about her boss's quasi-daughter, but it quickly became that way.
Through an odd turn of events involving the adapted Lenna, Kaitlyn became the youngest member of the Order. She has proven herself surprisingly useful to them, all the while gaining confidence and learning valuable life skills. Skills like breaking people's stuff, taking money from them, fighting X-Men, and being a spy.
The 2011-2012 school year was turbulent for Kaitlyn. During that year, Kaitlyn spent a large amount of her time away from her Sanctuary home, often putting herself in stressful situations that called for a level of responsibility and maturity far beyond what she had. She became a proper spy to help her mother keep tabs on a unicorn-man, eventually learning that, according to Alister, a boy who could tell the future, this unicorn mutant was destined to end the world. When the unicorn man started his own cult, the Church of Everlasting Life, Kaitlyn became a member to better spy on him. She later even one of its gods, complete with a unicorn blood transfusion that left her incapable of aging or dying for the next six months.
A mass shared dream revealed to her that Alister was wrong. Sebastian was never going to end the world, but by going along with Alister's plans, Kaitlyn very nearly started a nuclear war.
Around the same time as this mass dream, Lori disappeared without a trace, leaving Kaitlyn heartbroken, angry, and confused. Ms. Boyd discovered the extent to which the Order was exploiting Kaitlyn, and they had to arrange for the tutor to have her memory wiped. Worried about his little girl's safety in the increasingly dangerous area around the Sanctuary, Mars sent Kaitlyn to continue her schooling at Xavier's Sister School.
Where she started spying on the X-Men, more because she wanted the Order to think she was still useful than any kind of coercion or even suggestion from her Order friends.
In 2014 SOME HECKING STUFF HAPPENED, HOW DO I BRING HER FROM 2014 TO 2017 I HAVENT DECIDED YET REEEE
RoleplayWhere did you learn about this site?: From a pretty bad dude who's made more than one new character here but has repeatedly faded away and started over. He's not a bad enough dude to stay for a prolonged period of time, and I periodically tease him for it. One of them was Dragomir. THAT WAS TEN THOUSAND YEARS AGO BTW
What is your Player Alias?: Kait or Kaitles or some variation thereof because my internet persona solidifies here in 2010.
Do you have any other characters on MRO: Dorian, who is RIP
Sample RP:The concrete was cold and hard. It was also right next to Kaitlyn's face. It took her several minutes to realize that she was not, in fact, in her bed. Nor was this a dream.
Kaitlyn was lying on the concrete. It seemed like she had spent the night there. Now that it was morning, nine o'clock by the looks of it, Manhattan was almost bristling with activity. Like so many working ants, millions of people of all backgrounds, from the wall street executive to the comparatively honorable drug dealer, traveled the streets and the sidewalks to begin their respective working days. A sort of organized chaos surrounded her.
Overstimulated and confused, Kaitlyn decided to set out in a random direction along the sidewalk, weaving between thousands of other people who hardly noticed her. She was still in New York City, but she didn't know this. Manhattan and Queens were very different places. For all Kaitlyn knew, she was in an entirely different world. Many children her age would be scared and upset about this sudden change of scenery, but Kaitlyn was almost excited. Her father was nowhere to be found, and though on some level this made her uncomfortable, for the most part she was relieved
What if she actually was in an entirely new world? Had some spirit learned of her plight and whisked her away? Maybe she could find a new life with a happy family here. Maybe she had been sent for by some sort of knight, the kind with shiny armor and a big ornate sword and shield and whose first name was always "sir." The knights must have really uncreative parents if they all choose the same first name for their kids, but Kaitlyn wouldn't have minded it, because Sir would be coming to take her back to the castle where her real parents lived and then... she jolted her thoughts back to the real world. That was kind of silly, she thought to herself. and then...
...Why didn't she remember getting here? Kaitlyn tried her best to remember, but it was all in vain. Why was she wearing her father's jacket? She checked one of her pockets and found her father's wallet, which had in it a driver's license with his picture on it. She flashed back to all of the things that he would do to her. Just looking at that picture gave her such a sense of guilt and unworthiness of life that she felt the need to throw it away from herself.
She was aiming for the wall, but a homeless man's face was in the way. He jolted awake, "What the--" Kaitlyn just stood there and stared at him for a second. He gave her a confused look, and then looked at the wallet in his hands.
"Sorry!" she managed to say, then "You can keep it. I didn't mean to... sorry!" She ran away.
"Thank you!" the man shouted later, though Kaitlyn never heard it.
Now she was beginning to get a little cold and was increasingly aware that she had not had breakfast.
What am I gonna do now?
