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Gibson, Dallas; Specter
Topic Started: Mar 28 2010, 03:36 PM (1,841 Views)
Specter
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[align=center]PLAYER INFORMATION[/align]

NAME: Gordon
CONTACT: PM or email (tenebrae78 at gmail dot com) are best. AIM is HerculesPorridge but I’m never on there, ask if you need me to log on.
HOW YOU FOUND US: Returning player, I played this character here in 2010.
OTHER CHARACTERS ON THE SITE None
RULES CODE: Blackbird

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE: Wikipedia, Comicvine, Marvel Database, comics.

[align=center]CHARACTER INFORMATION[/align]

[align=center]Posted Image
Manuel Traxler[/align]

BASIC INFORMATION

CANON OR ORIGINAL: Canon
AFFILIATION: Faculty / School Staff (kitchen staff)

FULL NAME: Dallas Bradley Gibson
CODENAME: Specter
NICKNAMES: Dal occasionally but generally just Dallas

CURRENT AGE: 21
DATE OF BIRTH: June 25th, 1992
MARITAL STATUS: Single
SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
BASE OF OPERATIONS: Xavier Institute
TIME AT INSTITUTE: Attended the Institute for a few months in 2010, has been away since then and is returning now
REGISTERED WITH SHIELD?: No
HOMETOWN: Eugene, Oregon
KNOWN RELATIVES:
Gregory Gibson (father, deceased)
Tamsin Gibson (mother, deceased)
Ernest Gibson (grandfather)
Celia Medbury (great aunt)

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 5'10"
BUILD: Toned
EYES: Blue
HAIR: Blonde
DISTINGUISHING MARKS: None
CLOTHING STYLE: Generally, Dallas can be seen in the kind of casual clothes you'd expect a guy of his age to wear. Jeans, t-shirts sporting slogans which aren't terribly funny, brand names which aren't too expensive but won't humiliate him either, that sort of thing. He appreciates opportunities to dress up more smartly when they arise but doesn't tend to make a particular effort day-to-day. Still, he mostly looks fine, if a little unremarkable. Sometimes, usually when he's in a particularly cheery mood, he wears a hat. It never matches anything else he wears but seems to make him happy. Who knows why.
UNIFORM: While in Oregon for the past few years, Dallas has been using a simple all-black bodysuit whenever he ventured out as a superhero. He’s unlikely to keep using that at the Institute, however, since he’s looking to be part of a team rather than a solo act, and will just use the standard issue Xavier’s uniform in the Danger Room and in the field.

POWERS

GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
Dallas possesses the mutant ability to merge with his own shadow, enhancing several of his physical attributes in the process, including his strength, speed and durability.

Technically, Dallas casts no shadow, light warping around his body just enough for him to remain visible but illuminating the space a shadow should fall. Instead of casting a real shadow (an absence of light), he manifests a form of dark energy to take its place. This energy is as flat and intangible as a normal shadow, and is visually indistinguishable from the real thing. He's able to manipulate this shadow at will, though it must always remain attached to his body and to surfaces. For example, he can move his shadow around the walls of a room, but not through the air of that room. This is the only form of dark energy or shadow which Dallas can generate or control. However, his shadow can potentially be controlled by others who manipulate general darkness or Darkforce, though his connection to the shadow is so fundamental that ripping control away from him would be no easy task.

By coating his whole body with this shadow, he 'merges' with it, his physical form becoming a living shadow. The shadow must fully coat his body before he can merge with it, the merging process taking no more than a second or two to complete and lasting as long as he wishes it to. As you might expect, his skin and clothes appear to be coated in shadows while he's in this form, not quite Sunspot-style solid black, but heavily shaded and darkened. The broader strokes of his features (eyes, lips, nose, hairline etc) remain distinguishable, though identifying him definitively as Dallas Gibson is problematic. The dark energy supercharges the cells of his body, making him faster and stronger for as long as he remains in the shadow form. This effect is a more powerful one under daylight or artificial light because his shadow is most distinct and therefore 'strongest' in these conditions. At night or away from a significant light source, the boost he receives from merging with his shadow is a weaker one, though still enough to shift his strength and speed levels into superhuman territory.

At optimum levels, Dallas's strength is boosted to the point where he can lift or press around 15 tons. He's able to exert himself at these levels for roughly 45 minutes to an hour before doing damage to his body or needing to recharge his batteries. As the levels of light around him decrease, so does his strength until, with no light source at all, he's only able to lift or press approximately a ton for a minute or so before needing to rest. His strength level hasn’t really increased since he first manifested his powers, despite Dallas becoming more physically fit in the years since, so while it is conceivable that he could grow stronger with sustained power training, it seems unlikely at this point.

While boosting his strength, the energy of his shadow also enhances his durability, hardening and toughening his body to withstand the kind of pressure caused by lifting heavy weights and moving at high speeds. This also protects him from a certain amount of harm, making him harder to pierce and cushioning blunt impacts. At his shadow form's strongest level, he's able to withstand being hit by a bullet that hasn't been fired at point blank range, though only just. At his weakest, he can at least tolerate human punches without experiencing any real pain.

The last of the major physical attributes which is increased while he's merged with his shadow is his speed. At his best, he can run at approximately 100mph for up to an hour before needing to replenish his energy levels. In his weakest shadow form, he can maintain around 50mph for ten or so minutes. Since his reaction time isn't enhanced to the same extent as his speed, Dallas can only use this superspeed in its broader applications, such as running. He can't, for instance, take apart a computer and put it back together at 100mph because his brain wouldn't be able to keep up with his hands. He's no Quicksilver and never will be but he sprints faster than Usain Bolt and that's good enough for him.

Whenever he's a living shadow, Dallas benefits from a couple of other minor abilities. The first of these is nightvision, enabling him to see just as well in darkness as he does in broad daylight. Secondly, he's virtually invisible when hiding in shadows, for obvious reasons.

Dallas considers his shadow to be an individual sentient being with whom he shares an empathic link, and he will often refer to it as 'he' rather than 'it'. He'll have mental and sometimes verbal conversations with it and derives comfort from its presence. However, the shadow is not truly sentient, he simply perceives it that way, his mind recognising the shadow as a shred of his consciousness so distinct that it feels separate to him. While Dallas is aware, rationally, that his shadow is not 'alive', accepting that on an emotional level is another matter.

WEAKNESS:
Dallas's ability to become one with his shadow has several benefits for him, but it also has a significant downside too. As stated, he perceives the shadow as being imbued with a personality of its own, a personality derived from a piece of his own psyche. That part of him has become stronger, more developed and more distinct since the manifestation of his powers, so much so that it influences and, over time, threatens to overwhelm Dallas's normal personality whenever he merges with his shadow. That's a problem because that piece of his psyche is Dallas's dark side. Everybody has a dark side and under normal circumstances, Dallas's wouldn't have been particularly pronounced, but now all his resentments, all his bitterness, all his malice and jealousy and mischief and anger have been concentrated into his shadow. As a result, whenever he merges with it, those emotions and impulses impact on his mind and exert an influence over him. He immediately becomes more serious and pessimistic when he initiates the merge and, as time passes in shadow form, he becomes increasingly devious, aggressive and sadistic. If he remains merged for long enough, he'll essentially become an evil version of himself and would likely lose the will to shed the shadow at all. Physically, there's nothing stopping him from staying in shadow form forever if he chose to, but he's forced to limit the amount of time he spends in this form to protect his psyche. He tries not to stay merged for longer than a few minutes at a time, and never longer than an hour at most, at which point he can be considered potentially dangerous even to his loved ones.

Despite the disturbing nature of his shadow, it is still a part of him and as such, Dallas feels entirely comfortable with his link to it, to the point that he's become somewhat psychologically dependent on it. He's always linked to his shadow so he never feels alone, and that's an addictive feeling. It's easy and too tempting for him to lose himself in his shadow's company and neglect others, and the thought of being separated from his shadow is genuinely frightening to him. If ever his powers were to be nulled, Dallas would not only be defenseless but he would also find it extremely difficult to cope at all. He also permanently has an urge to merge with his shadow because doing so feels natural and makes him feel whole. Given the potential damage this can cause his psyche, feeling that way isn't ideal.

As detailed above, the intensity of the shadow's effects on his body varies depending on the light levels around him. Real shadows are deeper, darker, sharper and more distinct when the sun is at its brightest or when cast by a powerful light bulb, and Dallas's shadow is no different. For this reason, his shadow is at its strongest under bright light, allowing his body to attain its highest levels of strength and speed when he merges with it. In full darkness, his shadow becomes considerably less powerful and will only grant him a minimal boost. Since his shadow is a manifestation of dark energy generated by Dallas himself rather than a real shadow, it's unclear why the presence of light makes any difference at all. It may be nothing more than a psychological restriction - Dallas thinks of his shadow as a real shadow and so it behaves like one. If this limitation really is all in his head then it doesn't seem to be something he has any control over. It isn't always ideal but this is how his power works and it seems set to stay that way for the foreseeable future.

When he isn't merged with his shadow, Dallas is just a regular guy. His enhanced strength and speed only applies in shadow form so when he's just going about his day-to-day routine, he isn't any stronger, faster or hardier than anybody else and is therefore vulnerable to surprise attacks.

Though it’s only come up twice in his life, Dallas has found he’s unusually susceptible to some forms of psychic attack. Standard mental blasts and scans will have the same effects on him that they do on most people, but more invasive and intense psychic attacks are a problem for him. Deep telepathic probes carried out against his will, mental possession and, especially, dream-based assaults leave his mind damaged in a way which is hard for him to shake off. This is because the unusual split structure of his psyche has left his mind vulnerable, a condition made worse by the damage wrought in his mind during the WwX incident. With the assistance of a reasonably high level telepath, Dallas’s mind can be healed after such experiences, leaving him needing just a few days of rest before he’s back to normal. Without telepathic help, Dallas suffers from increasingly intense nightmares as his brain tries to mend itself. These nightmares can last for weeks, leaving him physically and emotionally exhausted. Though he’s capable of recovering without treatment, it can take a couple of months, during which time he’s almost incapable of functioning until the nightmares fade, and even then several more weeks of rest are necessary.

PERSONALITY

It isn't the most thrilling or intriguing description but Dallas can be summed up succinctly as a nice guy. Friendly and accepting of the quirks and differences in others, he works on the assumption that everybody has their good points and always approaches new people with a smile, an attitude he maintains until they give him solid reason to believe they aren't the kind of person he'd want to spend time with. He's a good listener, generous, reliable, and has a decent sense of humour. He likes going to the movies, likes watching sports, likes eating pizza, and spends more of his time thinking about girls than he'd readily admit to. If he didn't have his mutation to distinguish him, Dallas would just be Mr. Average. He's a nice, regular guy, and you'd be forgiven for thinking you could scratch the surface and find nothing of interest underneath. Everyone in the world is complex and flawed though, however unremarkable they may appear to be, and Dallas is no exception.

It's difficult to get to the bottom of who Dallas really is because of the nature of his fragmented psyche. It isn't clear to him if he's a good person or if the real, 'whole' Dallas would be a much less pleasant individual. However, it's important to note that while his darker impulses are tied up in his shadow and have a more profound influence on his personality whenever he's merged with it, he's still able to experience them and act upon them the rest of the time. He tends to think he spends most of his time free of the dark side most people have, but that isn't quite true. His shadow, and the emotions focused within it, are still part of him even if he perceives them as being separate. Feelings like malice, resentment, jealousy etc still have an effect on him, just as they do everyone else, though it would be fair to say he suffers from them less often than many. When such emotions do come along, though, they tend to have a greater impact on him, simply because he doesn't expect them to enter his head and therefore always has his guard down. As a result, every now and then he'll seem to have a sudden mood swing or an attack of brattiness or spite that seems out of step with his usual disposition.

Dallas's relationship with his shadow is a complex one, only growing more so as he becomes more accustomed to his mutant nature. Though it represents an ever-present looming danger to him because of the powerful influence and dark emotions it can confer upon him whenever he merges with it, it's also the source of his greatest comfort. His shadow is his best friend, the one 'person' who is always at his side and can never leave him. He's been rejected enough times in his life to know how much it hurts so to have a living shadow is a welcome gift. For him, being a mutant has been a blessing rather than a curse. Loneliness is a feeling he hardly ever experiences anymore, certainly not in any meaningful way, because he's never alone. The presence of his shadow, and the emotional bond he shares with it, is as fulfilling as any relationship he's ever experienced. This isn't necessarily a healthy thing. When he's feeling down or vulnerable, he retreats, preferring to be alone with his shadow and finding reassurance that way rather than relying on a real person to help him. As time goes by, this dependency is getting slowly but steadily stronger. If he doesn't become more aware of this and start tempering this tendency, he'll eventually start to become emotionally distant from those around him until he's entirely wrapped up in himself. As things stand, he's only vaguely aware that this may be a problem for him and doesn't truly see it as something he needs to worry about.

His saving grace is the fact that he is, and always has been, naturally sociable. Dallas is a people person and is genuinely interested in getting to know as many other people as he can and maintaining a wide social circle. This fundamental urge to mix with others is the flipside to his tendency to rely on his shadow, and the two impulses are often quietly at war within him, tugging him in two different directions. Most of the time, it's his friendly nature which wins out. Having lots of friends is important to him, probably a little more than it should be. He doesn't need or want to be the king of the school or top dog at work, or even the big man in his own group of friends, but he does want to be that guy that everyone likes, even if he isn't number one on anyone's list. The thought of people having a bad word to say about him behind his back, or actively disliking him, is one that really bothers him. He isn't the kind of person who can remind himself that not everybody's going to think he's cool and just shrug it off. If someone makes it clear they don't care for him, he'll make an extra effort to be nice to them until eventually giving up and fretting over it. Standing up for himself isn't something he's great at, and his need to be liked can make him easy to manipulate. He's not a complete loser though. Dallas is pretty skilled socially and so attaining and sustaining friendships isn't something he's ever really struggled with (aside from the period when rumours of his mutant nature derailed his life). He honestly cares about the people around him, is very open-minded and accepting of different lifestyles, and is even okay with women, although it can take him a while to clue in when flirting shifts from harmless to meaningful.

Now that he’s finally returning to the life he’s yearned for ever since he left the Institute, Dallas's optimistic nature has returned in full force. Life should have taught him otherwise but he still instinctively assumes all will be well in the end. He thinks that one day he'll be a great husband, a great father, a great friend, a great chef and a great X-Man, that he'll be happy, taking care of those around him and making a difference in the world. Realistically, life isn't likely to allow him to have all those things but he possesses a bright-eyed faith in people, the world and himself. In the meantime, his primary focus is on his return to the school and becoming the man he wants to be. His time away has strengthened his resolve to do something to ease the plight of so many of his fellow mutants, and to protect the world from those who would do it harm. That was always something he liked the idea of, but he’s far more driven and focused now. The Xavier philosophy of peaceful coexistence is one which chimes perfectly with his world view, while the Brotherhood mindset is alien to him. Everybody deserves to be happy and safe, he believes, mutant and human alike, and he's cheerfully willing to work towards creating a world in which that's possible. A second chance at the school is something he takes very seriously, and Dallas is committed to being both professional and effective there, happy to put in the hours to make himself an asset. He’s finally in the place he feels he should have been all along and he’s determined to get it right.

HISTORY: PRE-APOCALYPSE

Manning the phone at a kayak rental company wasn't the most demanding or well-paid of jobs but it kept Gregory Gibson in gainful employment. Gregory wasn't a brainiac but he was a nice guy with a big heart who was far more interested in his family than anything that resembled a career, so his humble job was satisfying to him. The real breadwinner of the family was his wife, Tamsin, a dedicated and some might say workaholic computer programmer. In truth, she didn't bring in oodles of cash either but between them, they were able to live a comfortable and secure existence at their home in Eugene, Oregon, comfortable enough that they felt the time was right to bring children of their own into the world. They started (and, as it turned out, finished) with Dallas.

Though he was born a little underweight, Dallas soon grew to become the healthy baby boy his parents had wished for and all was well in the Gibson household. Dallas was a cheery soul, as babies often are, and for Gregory and Tamsin, life seemed wonderful. Practically perfect. They were able to enjoy this happiness for three years before it would come to an end. One Christmas, when Dallas was three years old, Gregory went to town on the decorations, bringing home a huge tree and draping it in a new set of fancy glittering lights. These special lights were faulty, however, and that night, as the family slept, they started a fire. By the time Tamsin woke up, flames were engulfing the house. Acting on a mother's instinct, she raced to Dallas's bedroom, swaddled him in blankets, and charged through the fire without any protection of her own. Somehow, she made it to the front door, collapsing in the garden, where she and her son were dragged to safety by the gathered neighbours. Dallas was suffering from smoke inhalation and a couple of minor burns but was otherwise unharmed and made a swift and full recovery. Tamsin died four hours after arriving at the hospital, having received extensive burns and lung damage. Gregory was dead before he even reached the ground floor.

With his parents gone, the bewildered Dallas needed a new carer and, though he was grieving for his son and daughter-in-law, Ernest Gibson, Dallas's grandfather, immediately stepped in. Having spent his youth as a ferocious social campaigner for racial and sexual equality, and his adulthood in charge of a refuge for victims of domestic violence, Ernest had devoted his life to helping strangers in need so he wasn't about to flinch at the idea of doing the same for his own grandson. He took on full guardianship of Dallas, taking him into the home Ernest had lived in alone ever since losing his wife to cancer several years before, where the two of them helped each other through the grieving process. In truth, Dallas was too young to fully understand that his parents were really dead and what exactly that meant, and Ernest did what he could do to cushion the blow as time passed and the boy's understanding increased. Thanks to the love and care of his grandfather, Dallas emerged from the experience a pretty well-adjusted boy. He'd always be sad about the loss of his parents, of course, but he wasn't psychologically scarred or damaged by the incident, though he'd never be fond of Christmas. In turn, Dallas's presence was a source of comfort for Ernest, a reminder that life had to go on despite their loss, and that helped him to cope with the pain of outliving his son.

At school, Dallas performed solidly. He may not have been top of the class but he was never at the bottom either, though there was always the sense that he could have been achieving a little more than he actually was. He was capable enough but his attention was never fully focused on studying. As he moved through childhood and into his teens, his social life was what became truly important to Dallas. Not that he was a party animal hitting the town every night, he just liked having lots of friends. He became a people person and was a little more interested in what his friends were doing than what his schoolbooks said. Still, he managed to maintain a balance between school and friends, a slightly lopsided and wobbly balance, but a balance all the same. One thing he did develop a passion for was cooking, deciding at an early age that he wanted to be a chef when he left school. He loved to try out and perfect new recipes and was especially fond of seeing the pleasure in people's faces when they ate a meal he'd prepared. Dallas had grown into an average and unremarkable guy but he was healthy, not bad looking, not too dim, pretty popular, and getting by in life without too many hiccups, so he was happy.

Until he was 16. Over the course of a few weeks, he began to feel increasingly unwell. At first he experienced only mild problems, a little dizziness, a slight temperature, blurred vision, all of which would come and go so he didn't worry about it, figuring he was just under the weather. As time passed, however, his issues grew more persistent and more severe, leaving him suffering from a constant migraine, a fever, no energy and difficulty concentrating on anything for longer than a few minutes. Convinced that something serious was wrong, Ernest ignored his doctor's casual diagnosis of flu, and took Dallas to the emergency room, intending to create a stink until somebody took them seriously and ran some proper tests on his grandson. Possibly simply to placate him, the staff provided them with a private room but before any tests could take place, the reason for Dallas's ailments became clear. He began to convulse in the hospital bed, Ernest yelling for help. A doctor and a nurse arrived just in time to see Dallas jolt up from his bed, body suddenly almost black, and they watched dumbstruck as his shadow slowly peeled off his skin. It was crystal clear to Ernest and the two medics that Dallas Gibson was a mutant. Ernest promptly had a heart attack.

To their credit, both the doctor and the nurse reacted quickly, despite the bizarre situation, rushing to Ernest's aid as a disoriented and frightened Dallas watched on in horror. Ernest's condition was serious but, at least, he'd been stricken by it in the best possible place. The doctors were able to save him and set him on the road to recovery. Meanwhile, the sickness which had been plaguing Dallas evaporated. He soon set about researching mutants, a subject he'd never really given much thought to in the past, and discovered that it wasn't unheard of for them to become sick before their powers manifested. Otherwise, having made this self-discovery, he didn't spend much time figuring out the implications of his new status. Ernest was his focus. Wracked with guilt, he was terrified that his grandfather would wake up and disown him.

Of course, that didn't happen. As soon as he was well enough to see Dallas, Ernest made sure he knew that it was just the shock that had caused his heart attack, not disgust or anger or contempt or anything of the sort. Ernest had been an open-minded kind of guy ever since his student days and he made it clear to Dallas that he didn't care if he was a mutant or an alien or a purple elephant, he loved him just the same. To say this came as a relief to Dallas would be an understatement, but he was still anxious. Ernest hadn't been magically cured. He would need a lot of looking after. Dallas set about doing just that once they went back home and his grandfather made good progress. Meanwhile, he also practiced using his newfound shadow powers, getting a better idea of what he was capable of and finding that controlling his shadow came naturally to him. Adjusting to his new life as a mutant didn't seem too difficult to him so he accepted it quickly.

Things weren't as simple as he thought, though. When he returned to school, having told people he really had just been suffering from flu, life went back to normal at first but, as weeks went by, he noticed that he was receiving some strange looks from the occasional classmate. Soon, a couple of his friends suddenly and inexplicably distanced themselves from him. He was baffled at first, until he overheard a conversation in the school lavatory between two boys he knew, speculating about whether or not Dallas was a mutant. He couldn't understand how word could've gotten out and never did find out. Either the doctor or the nurse at the hospital had breached his confidentiality or someone had spotted him shifting his shadow around. Either way, he didn't know what to do and retreated at school, spending most of his time alone whenever he was out of class. Weeks later, he received an anonymous email with information on a school in New York which helped mutants. Whether the email was a discrete message from a representative of the school or simply from a fellow mutant trying to help him out, he didn't know, but he rejected the idea immediately. Ernest argued with him over it, certain that he'd be safer at this school, but Dallas wouldn't consider it. He had to take care of his grandfather. That was more important than anything else, as far as he was concerned.

For a time, it seemed he might have made the right decision. Ernest got a lot better as the weeks went by, and the rumours about Dallas seemed to die down, slowly but surely. He could sense that people were still vaguely suspicious but, by and large, most people had moved on to fresher scandals and no longer thought about their resident possible-mutant so much. Life became a lot easier for Dallas. While he was grateful for that, he was quietly aware that things weren't the same and the relative stability he'd achieved wouldn't last.

DURING APOCALYPSE

Dallas was expecting chaos to descend upon his own life sooner or later and, while he was proven to be correct about that, he hadn't predicted that the entire world would descend into madness with him. As the Horsemen of Apocalypse swept across the world, leaving death and horror in their wake, Dallas and Ernest did what lots of people did - they hid indoors and prayed that the Horsemen wouldn't appear on their doorstep. For Dallas, though, it wasn't so simple. He felt conflicted. Staying safe seemed like the wise, smart thing to do and it was his responsibility to protect his grandfather, but still he couldn't help feeling that he should be out there, helping the heroes who were sacrificing themselves in a desperate attempt to stop the Horsemen. He was a mutant, he had the power to do something and even if he knew that he almost certainly wouldn't be able to make a difference, he felt he should at least try. But he didn't. He stayed home and hated himself for it.

So, when natural disasters began occurring around the world, Dallas couldn't stay home. The earthquake in Los Angeles was comparatively mild by the time it rippled out to Oregon but there was still some damage. When a building nearby began to collapse, he headed out into the blacked out streets and did everything he could to save the lives of those trapped inside. He was successful, the rescuees injured but alive, and he stayed on the streets, helping wherever he could. As it turned out, most people were fine in his area and there wasn't much he needed to do but still, by the time he got back to his house, he knew he'd crossed a line. People had seen him in full shadow form in broad daylight. They'd looked more afraid of him than they were of the planet ripping itself apart. Any talk of him being a mutant would no longer be rumour, it would be fact. Dallas was now openly a mutant at exactly the worst moment in history to be one.

POST-APOCALYPSE

After Apocalypse had been stopped and the world began to pick up the pieces, Ernest kept Dallas home from school for a while, fearing for his safety and informing his teachers that he was sick even though they surely knew the real reason. In the weeks that followed, graffiti was scrawled on their walls and their windows were smashed three times. Eventually, an increasingly anxious Dallas decided that he couldn't hide forever and went back to school. This was a mistake. Almost nobody would talk to him and those that did were deeply uncomfortable. He could see the fear in their eyes, the hatred in the eyes of others. He lasted two days before being attacked. Still, the next day, he went back to school again. Just as he refused to use his powers to defend himself against normal humans, he also refused to run away. He had a right to live his life and, truth be told, he didn't know what else to do. As time went by, the harassment and beatings he experienced grew more frequent and the school seemed powerless (and, perhaps, not entirely willing) to stop them. Eventually, this aggression towards him culminated in an arson attack on his house.

Unlike the house fire he lived through in his childhood, this one claimed no lives, with Dallas and Ernest both escaping the blaze relatively unharmed, though the majority of their belongings were destroyed. It was now clear to Dallas that he'd made a mistake in thinking he could put on a brave face and that everything would be okay in the end if he just toughed it out. Something would have to change. Ernest, however, was a step ahead of him. A couple of days after they'd been placed in temporary accommodation, he told Dallas that he'd made arrangements to move in with his sister, Celia, in Portland. He was mostly back to normal now and no longer needed to be looked after so much but if anything came up, she would be there to handle it. As for Dallas, Ernest revealed that he had kept the details of the mutant school in New York. He'd contacted them and they'd agreed to take Dallas. Ernest loved him and knew that if he stayed, eventually his grandson would be dead. Dallas didn't argue this time. He knew that things had gone too far, and he was no longer helping his grandfather by staying. If anything, he was putting him in danger, and he was certainly bringing a lot of stress into his life. Besides, the truth was that he'd always secretly wanted to go to the school. The idea of the place excited him and seemed to be the only option available to him which made the future seem bright. And he couldn't stay in Eugene anymore, that much was clear. After a few weeks spent helping Ernest settle into his sister's house, followed by an emotional goodbye, Dallas set off for a new life in New York.

If he’d been hoping for a bizarre new world, he certainly got his wish. The Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters was quite something. Being surrounded by mutants, most more powerful than him and many looking decidedly non-human, was a culture shock but Dallas had been trained well by his grandfather to keep an open mind and an open heart whenever he could, and so he adjusted pretty fast, becoming quickly fond of several of his classmates. This pleasant period wasn’t to last, however, and he soon discovered that danger had touched the school before he’d even arrived, when people began to ‘flicker’. He heard rumours that seemingly random people were somehow changing, becoming entirely different versions of themselves. It seemed that they were literally switching minds with their counterparts from some other version of the world, something which Dallas struggled to believe or understand until he witnessed other students flickering on three separate occasions, two of whom became violent, forcing Dallas to act to contain them until more qualified help could arrive. After that, it was hard to deny it was truly happening.

As the situation began to escalate, Dallas found himself suffering in a different way. Plagued by relentless and disturbing nightmares, he was unable to sleep properly for days, his dreams worsening every night, leaving him exhausted and distressed. In desperation, he turned to his teachers for help, and discovered that he’d flickered in his sleep but the process hadn’t completed itself, seemingly because the unusual split composition of his psyche didn’t adequately match that of his counterpart, a twisted version of Dallas who had permanently merged with his shadow and reunified his psyche as a result. The failed flicker had damaged Dallas’s mind, the nightmares a result of his psyche trying to repair itself. The school provided him with psychic surgery which fixed the damage, but he still required a period of recovery, which prevented him from doing anything else to help with the increasingly bleak crisis of merging worlds. While heroes from both realities bravely risked everything to save their worlds, all Dallas could do was sleep.

By the time he had recovered from his own malaise, the crisis was over and everyone seemed to be where they were supposed to be, but Dallas had no opportunity to celebrate with his new friends. A phone call from his great aunt Celia brought the news he’d feared since leaving home. His grandfather had suffered a second heart attack and would require major surgery, with a long and difficult recovery ahead. Without hesitation, Dallas packed his bags and headed straight back home. Though he wouldn’t have even considered staying away while Ernest’s situation was so grave, Dallas was quietly heartbroken to be leaving the school behind. His time there had been troubled but he’d known in his heart that he’d found his place in the world. To leave it behind so soon was painful. However, his main concern was for Ernest and by the time he stepped off the plane, he could think of nothing but getting his grandfather better.

Arriving at the hospital in Portland, he learned that Ernest needed an urgent heart bypass operation and it became clear to Dallas that he really wouldn’t be returning to the school any time soon. His grandfather needed him, that was that, despite Ernest’s protestations that Dallas really didn’t need to interrupt his life for him. The operation was successful and, once Ernest was home, Dallas devoted himself to caring for him. That drove his grandfather crazy though, especially since Celia was also fussing around him, and he soon demanded that Dallas return to school, even if that wasn’t in New York. Doing so was at least safe now that his family lived in Portland where nobody knew he was a mutant, and he could pass himself off as a human easily enough. He did as he was told and enrolled at a local school, caring for his grandfather in the evenings while Celia worked. His schoolwork was less than impressive though. Over the last couple of years, his schooling and focus had been so disrupted that he was sure he had no hope of catching up. He managed to graduate but only by the skin of his teeth, and knew a place at catering college was off the table.

With that in mind, he set about finding a job. He wasn’t prepared to give up on his catering dreams though. If he couldn’t be an X-Man, he was damn well going to be a chef. Secretly, he was glad it took him a few months to find work since it gave him a chance to spend more time taking care of Ernest, who wasn’t remotely as well as he claimed to be. Eventually, Dallas managed to get a job in a local Chinese restaurant. The place was a dive and he was just washing dishes all night, but it paid and he was occasionally allowed to prep vegetables. Starting at the bottom was fine by him. After a few months, the job presented quite a perk when a new waitress named Keisha Walker started flirting with him. It took him weeks to figure out she wasn’t just playing around but they eventually started dating. When Dallas told her he was a mutant, Keisha was uncomfortable, but slowly got used to the idea.

PURIFIERS

Almost a year after leaving the Institute, Dallas found himself worrying about mutant issues more and more. Though he was now living an entirely normal life, a more normal life than he’d dreamt possible, his brief time at the school had left an imprint on him and he couldn’t help feeling like a fraud, like he was play-acting at being a regular guy. Terrorist attacks by the likes of the Brotherhood and Gene Nation left him troubled, as did the chilling words of the new mayor of New York. Something bad was coming for mutants, he could feel it in his gut, though he was way off base about what that bad thing was. Like everybody else, he didn’t see the Purifiers coming. Dallas watched the coverage of the attack on Mutant Town in horror. Though he was on the other side of the country, he knew he couldn’t go on living the way he had been. He had to act to make the world better than this.

With that in mind, he bought himself a black bodysuit and began going out at night now and then, using the cover of darkness and his own face-concealing shadow to mask his identity, adopting the codename he’d chosen at the Institute, Specter. He wasn’t quite sure what he intended to do at first, but after saving a woman from being attacked in an alley and stopping a mugging, he realised he was being a superhero. Not a proper superhero like the X-Men, but he was doing his bit and it felt good. Of course, Portland was not New York. There were far fewer superpowered incidents there and the media weren’t really on the look-out for heroes so Dallas was able to keep his activities quiet for some time. His feelgood factor crashed when the Purifiers attacked the X-Corporation Complex. He could fight petty crime in Portland all day long but he knew the really serious stuff was going down in New York and, again, felt like a fraud. What good was a superhero who wasn’t in the place people really needed him?

And then the school was blown up by a suicide bomber. In shock, he wanted to help but couldn’t. He was in Portland and useless to them all. He spent the next 24 hours hitting redial on his phone, desperately trying to get in touch with one of the handful of people he’d kept in sporadic contact with. When he finally reached someone, he learned that the students and most of the X-Men had evacuated to the Savage Land, but that people had died. Kids had died. A couple he knew personally. Instead of dealing with his horror and grief with the love and support of his family, Dallas shrugged off Ernest’s comfort and charged out onto the streets in his uniform. Usually so careful, this time he was reckless, allowing himself to be photographed as Specter and tackling criminals without taking adequate care of himself. Portland wasn’t remotely as troubled as New York that week but Dallas was still just one guy with minimal training. He was lucky to walk away from that dark night with just a broken arm and fractured collarbone.

When Dallas woke up in hospital, his grandfather had some harsh words for him and, now that the first rush of adrenalised distress had calmed in his chest, Dallas was able to hear him. He promised to be more careful in future, and meant it. He wouldn’t stop being Specter but he wouldn’t deliberately put himself in harm’s way either. Kept in for observation, Dallas watched live coverage of events as they transpired in New York, stomach twisting as he watched the trial of Alex Summers being interrupted by madness descending on New York City in the form of an army of Sentinels, culminating in a shocking and inspiring act of heroism by Havok. He was home from the hospital in time to see Scott Summers facing the press and the nation with a loaded speech which left Dallas quiet and contemplative for days.

SKRULLS

This seemed like a good time for Dallas to re-evaluate his life. Though Ernest was doing much better, he still needed some care. His concern was his job. Clocking up so many hours in a professional kitchen had been valuable to him but it was ultimately a dead end job, so he began applying elsewhere and bagged himself a position as a trainee commis chef in another, classier, Chinese restaurant. Though he was essentially a dogsbody in this new establishment, he got to do a little actual cooking so he was happy with it.

As the months passed, Dallas settled into what he liked to think of as a comfortable routine but what deep down he knew was a rut. He was happy though. His job was going well, his relationship was growing more serious all the time, Ernest was becoming increasingly active, and he’d managed to avoid anything more severe than a few cuts and bruises in his occasional outings as Specter. The only thing troubling him, the one thing his shadow would quietly remind him of in quiet moments, was his old life. Things had been quieter in New York since the Purifiers had caused chaos but Dallas strongly suspected there were plenty of disturbing things going on under the radar. He could feel himself being pulled back there. Yet, when life is comfortable, it’s hard to turn it on its head, and he found himself coasting. It wasn’t until April of 2012 that his next big life-changing event came along, when he casually-but-not-at-all asked Keisha if she’d be interested in moving in with him and his family. She took longer to decide than he was entirely comfortable with, but soon enough Dallas was lugging her suitcases over the threshold, all the time quietly aware that this wasn’t the kind of life most mutants would ever get to lead, and feeling guilty for… feeling guilty.

Just a few weeks after Keisha moved in, the skies above Portland suddenly darkened and a green-skinned woman appeared on their television, asserting dominance over mankind in the name of Skrullos. It was chillingly clear that something terrible was happening on a global scale, and Dallas refused to sit around and quake in fear while events transpired. He headed out onto the streets to deal with any unrest in the city, so that he’d be there if the Skrulls made any further moves. He’d been active in the city for nearly 18 months by this point and was by now a minor but recognised local superhero. He felt a responsibility to the city’s residents to be visible at such a frightening time, however scared he was himself. And then he awoke one day to find he felt differently about the whole thing. Unaware he’d been affected by the complacency wave along with everybody else, he actually laughed with his family at how much he’d over-reacted. It’d all be fine. Instead of putting on his uniform, Dallas just went to work and chopped carrots for the day. He did nothing more than that over the next few days until, suddenly, the complacency wave ceased and the Skrulls were defeated.

As if waking from a long sleep, Dallas found himself disoriented for a few days, only drawing comfort from whispered conversations with his shadow. The rest of the world started getting back to normal and most people Dallas knew were trying to put the whole bizarre incident behind them as if it had never happened. Dallas couldn’t do that. He knew the world had been teetering on the brink and, yet again, had to face up to the knowledge that he could have helped protect it if he’d been in New York. Though he tried not to, Dallas found himself bickering with Keisha and heading out as Specter more often, her protests becoming increasingly vocal. His life was good. It was just the wrong one.

CURRENT HISTORY

Yet Dallas went on living it. For months, he went through the motions and increasingly felt he was achieving nothing. Reports of an attack on Mutant Town by a sea monster, followed by a bout of madness in the same blighted place as well as others, only served to sour his mood further. He was heartened, though, when Scott Summers gave another press conference, this time to mark the reopening of the school. It was nice to hear some good news coming out of New York. The next news to come his way, little more than six weeks later, was a phone call from someone he knew at the school informing him that Scott had been killed. He’d never met the real Cyclops, his counterpart Ruby being at the school throughout Dallas’s tenure there, but he was well aware of what the man symbolised to the Institute and how much the students there looked up to him. And now he was gone. Dallas couldn’t help feeling dread for the future after the murder of such a key mutant figure.

Soon after, while out in his uniform one evening, Dallas was attacked by a rowdy crowd in the street, looking panicked and filming him on their phones. Bewildered and roughed up, he managed to escape pretty quickly thanks to the speed his shadow provided him with, running from the crowd. It wasn’t until he got home and Keisha showed him a Youtube video with the hashtag #killyourheroes that he understood what had just happened to him. A mad woman named Spiral murdered Daredevil in the video, while encouraging the public to slay superheroes in exchange for safety from a bomb. The angry mob must have spotted him and decided to take their chance. Keisha was panicked but Dallas reassured her everything would be fine. He was certain the X-Men would find Spiral and deal with her soon enough.

Things got worse for Dallas when he was contacted by a local newspaper who informed him they intended to reveal his identity in their next edition. They’d been sitting on the information for months but Spiral’s video had changed the game and made it a matter of public interest to print his true identity. Unable to talk them out of revealing his secret, Dallas knew he had to get his family to safety, and they quickly began packing bags. Except Keisha. She’d had enough. Things between her and Dallas hadn’t been great for months and she’d never been entirely sold on having a mutant superhero for a boyfriend. Now his status as a mutant was actively derailing her life. She was checking out and this time she wouldn’t be back. As the newspaper went to print, an upset Dallas left a message at the restaurant resigning from his job, and drove Ernest and Celia to a motel outside the city, booking the two of them in under false names. Then he went back home. His life had shattered around him but he wasn’t going down without a fight. Spiral wasn’t going to win.

As Specter, Dallas became a stronger presence than he had been before the video, determined to both prove that he wasn’t afraid (though he was) and to be visible to the people of Portland. For all those willing to go along with Spiral’s demands, he knew there would be plenty who would need to see their heroes hadn’t vanished on them. Though he had some tough times on the streets, he was surprised to find that, aside from some vandalism, his house was largely untouched. Soon, he came to understand the local population was largely happy to bury their heads in the sand and let somebody else kill the handful of Portland heroes, and many thought the bomb would be in New York anyway. He was careful though, avoiding situations where he could be cornered. Unrest spiked twice more, first when a TV anchorman sowed the seeds of doubt in heroes, then again when Spiral delivered another ultimatum. Dallas was about to unexpectedly be taken out of Portland’s spotlight, however.

A couple of weeks into July, he began suffering from nightmares. Nothing unusual in that, he thought, he was under a lot of stress and it seemed like everybody else was in the same boat, oddly. Unknown to him, he was just another victim of Exodus’s assault on the world’s dreams. However, the unusual structure of his psyche became his enemy again, just as it had when he was at the Institute, the unnatural nightmares triggering the same problem his mind had suffered from before. The nightmares wouldn’t go away, increasing in intensity, and within a few days Dallas found he couldn’t function anymore. His recent losses, like his girlfriend and his job and his privacy, overwhelmed him and he retreated into his room, physically and emotionally exhausted. By now, he’d deemed it safe for Ernest and Celia to come home and they cared for him, unaware that his suffering was psychic and he’d be fine if they got him to a telepath. Instead, they, and Dallas himself, believed he was having a breakdown. His mind slowly repaired itself over the next few weeks, during which time the husk of Dallas watched TV in bed all day, his brain only dimly aware of the Illuminati and their attacks on the world, the forced mutations, the volcanoes, and finally the darkness. His shadow weaker in darkness, Dallas’s recovery was set back by the anguish he felt his shadow was experiencing during those black days.

As the Illuminati ripped their way across the world, and heroes fought back to bring the criminals down, Dallas did nothing, his own uselessness starkly clear to him. By this point, he’d come to understand that he’d been felled by some kind of psychic assault during this year of madness and hadn’t actually had a breakdown, but still he was disgusted with himself for not finding a way to do more. Again, the world had faced horror and he’d failed to lift a finger to help. Never again. Dallas decided to wait until he was fit again, then make arrangements to return to the school. His grandfather, as always, fully understood and offered his complete support. Ernest was well again, fit as a fiddle in fact, and Dallas had no job and no Keisha to keep him in Portland now, nor did he want his public identity as a mutant to bring trouble to the family’s doorstep again. He didn’t just want to be in New York anymore. He needed to be.

Once Christmas was out of the way and Dallas felt himself again, he got in touch with the Institute. He’d heard from a friend at the school that there was now a Legacy Squad but he didn’t feel qualified for it. Though he had a few years of experience under his belt now, he’d mostly dealt with petty crime and had hardly ever fought superhumans. The Legacy Squad operated on another level so he knew he’d require further combat training before earning himself a place. He decided to utilise another area of expertise he’d acquired, applying for a job on the school’s catering staff. As luck would have it, a position was available. So, early in 2014, Dallas said farewell to Ernest and Celia for a second time and finally set off for the place his heart had been all along.

SAMPLE RP POST:

The lights were off. Dallas didn’t really like that because it made his shadow feel too shallow, too indistinct, but he didn’t say anything. His grandfather liked to turn the lights off whenever they were watching a film. Usually, sitting in the dark with only the flickering images on the television screen to brighten the room didn’t bother him that much but today it made him itch. He needed the company of his shadow right now. He needed the comfort.

Really, he shouldn’t have been complaining, even if he was only whining in his head. It had been weeks since he and his grandfather had been able to do something normal like this together. Until the last few days, the furthest Dallas had been from his bed was the bathroom, and even then he’d needed help a lot of the time. It all would have been so humiliating if he’d had the energy to care. Now that the weeks of nightmares had subsided and he was starting to feel like an actual person again, he could see the irony. He’d dropped everything at the school and rushed back to Portland, bound and determined to take care of his grandfather, but in the end their roles had reversed, it was Ernest helping him to get dressed and holding his hand while he screamed in the night and persuading him to take just one more sip of water.

Absently, he shifted his gaze down to his foot. He’d curled his legs up into an uncomfortable position and while brooding over the conversation he needed to have with Ernest, he’d been picking at the threads of the appropriately black sock he was wearing and had now successfully managed to poke an ever-widening hole into it. As if he could make the hole disappear, he tugged at its frayed edge to close the gap, only to be distracted when the room suddenly fell into complete darkness.

Head springing up, sock forgotten, Dallas realised his grandfather had switched the TV off. Surely the movie hadn’t finished yet?

“Did you just… I was watching that,” Dallas protested, frowning at the now dark television.

He could feel the older man’s quiet smile even as Ernest leaned over to pull the cord on the lamp positioned beside him. “No, you weren’t.”

Dallas blinked rapidly as the room filled with light. Somewhere in the back of his mind, his shadow felt firmer, blacker, and he liked it. But it was his grandfather who had his attention now. “I, uh…” He couldn’t pretend he’d been paying attention given that his sock had been more appealing. “Yeah, but you were watching it. You like this movie, don’t you? Sorry, I’m just… put it back on. Really.”

In response, Ernest simply plucked the remote control out of his lap and placed it very deliberately down on the coffee table. A symbolic gesture. It meant ‘nope, start talking’.

The young mutant stared at the TV. Now that it was switched off, he couldn’t stop looking at it. “There’s nothing wrong,” he mumbled after pausing too long.

Ernest’s smile widened, just a touch. “Is that why your shadow’s been wringing his hands and pacing up and down the wall for the last hour?”

Dallas’s eyes flicked up to catch sight of his shadow, cast along the wall just as Ernest said. His shoulders were hunched, movements jittery. Everything about his silent body language screamed disquiet. The shadow stopped and peered over at the two men, and Dallas shot him a betrayed look in exchange. Admonished, the shadow’s shoulders slumped and he slithered down onto the carpet.

Breathing slowly, Dallas pressed his lips together, rubbing his thumb back and forth along the curve of his jawline until his skin felt hot. Seconds of quiet ticked into minutes as they both waited for the younger man to say something. Finally, he did.

“I’m going back, Grandpa.”

Dallas risked a glance up at Ernest’s features and saw that his grandfather’s kindly smile hadn’t changed.

“Ah, Dal.” The older man reached out and took Dallas’s hand, clasping it between both of his. “I’ve been waiting for you to say that to me for years.”

He’d been so nervous about telling his grandfather this, but really, he should have known that Ernest would make him feel better in an instant. A shaky laugh of relief escaped from his throat. “Can’t wait to get rid of me, huh?”

“Damn right. I can put a pool table in your room now.”

Dallas grinned at his grandfather’s wry response, shaking his head at him. The smile faded from his lips though, and he looked up at his grandfather, feeling suddenly emotional, eyes wide. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to leave you. I just… I need this.” His words became more rapid, the young man eager to get his message across. “But if anything happens, if your heart… I’ll come straight back. I mean it.”

“No, you won’t,” Ernest replied gently. “Not this time. I refuse to be the reason you put your life on hold, not again. You’re going to do this. And you’re going to make me proud.”

His grandfather tugged him closer for a hug, squeezing him tightly. In his chest, all those nerves started to subside, a new emotion taking their place, something he hadn’t felt for a while. Excitement. He was really doing this. He’d said it out loud and that made it real. He was going back to the school. “You’re pretty awesome, y’know,” he mumbled, before pulling back. “I need tissues,” he admitted, laughing at himself, feeling like he hadn’t laughed in weeks. Probably because he hadn’t. Pushing his creaking body up from the couch, Dallas kept grinning and waved a hand at the screen as he made for the door in search of something to wipe his eyes with. “Now put your lame movie back on.”
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Wiccan
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Thanks for applying- this is a really great bio.

There's just one thing I need clarifying:

Quote:
 
Google revealed to him that his name was listed on a website detailing rumoured mutants across the country.

This is nitpicky, but I don't know how some random website would have gotten the information on some high school kid who might possibly be a mutant. Can you elaborate?
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Specter
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Hi, thanks for taking a look at this so fast! I really appreciate that.

Honestly, I meant to take that line out and, er, forgot. I can't remember why I put it in originally now but I agree that it seems a random and weird detail. I've deleted that line now but if you want me to put it back and add in some extra details relating to it, just let me know.
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Wiccan
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No, that's great thanks. Alright, you've got my stamp; you just need one more app mod to look this over and you'll be good to go.
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Specter
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That's awesome, thank you! :)
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Storm
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I really like this. Welcome aboard.

[align=center]Posted Image[/align]
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Cyclops
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Punches from the Punch Dimension
I'm good on this, really good updates in the history.

You have my stamp. You need one more.

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Siryn
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Sonokinesis/Flight/Vocal Hypnotism
I'm good on this too. Please post in the list updater to make sure we can add you to the lists and welcome back, its great to see you again :)

If you need any help getting restarted, let us know.

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