Alright, this one didn’t exist in CoH or any other game, but I had the idea of a ‘psychic’-powered Tanker. A being of pure mental force, like a Ghost carrying its physical body inside itself. This idea hooked up with something I was reading at the time about ‘Brain and Brawn’ teams, where the ‘Brain’ was a ‘shell-person’ a tragically handicapped individual in a life-support capsule cybernetically attached to machinery which they operated. This connected, in my head, to the title of a popular fiction ‘Ghost in the Shell’. So I imagined a ‘shell-person’ able to project a ‘ghost’ of mental force to interact with the world while carrying their life-support ‘shell’ around. Not a cybernetic robotic body or transport device, like a ship or a tank, but a psychic force-projection in the form of a Body able to move and interact with the world.

So I started writing, trying to explain the character, had a Bunch of different memes and ideas trying to be expressed and came up with something I really liked. In the end, I made him my favorite archetype, a ‘Tanker’, or in Wearing the Cape RPG terms, an ‘Atlas’, which translates to your basic ‘Superduperman’ type, or a ‘FISS’, ‘Flight, Invulnerability, Super Strength’, but with a body composed of pure ‘psionic’ strength, pure ‘ghost force’.

[h2]Name: Michael Kingsley[/h2]
[h3]Identity: ‘Ghost in a Shell’ or ‘Headstrong’[/h3]
[b]Archetype:[/b] ‘Stawart’
[b]Primary:[/b] ‘Invulnerability’
[b] Secondary:[/b] ‘Super Strength’
[b] Tertiary:[/b] Utility Support to help others.
[b]Movement:[/b] Flight

[h3] The Story [/h3]

When Michael Kingsley was a young teen, he watched in awe and delight, as a local Atlas-type hero (a 'flying Brick') fought a high-rise fire, leading and assisting firefighters to rescue trapped citizens. He knew right then, that This was what he wanted to do, This was who he wanted to be. Not unlike a lot of young people who are exposed to heroics.

However, being young and lacking superpowers, and frankly not foolish enough to become an ‘origin-chaser’, he decided to approach this logically. Heroes needed a lot of specialized and general knowledge and training, so if He wanted to become a superhero, it would be smart to have all of that already. He dove into high-school with the goal of learning ‘everything’, he joined the Scouts, and went to both ‘Fire Camp’ and ‘Police Camp’.

In college, he studied law and security, mechanical and structural engineering, fire science, police science, and trained to be a paramedic. He qualified for several degrees but took his Associate’s in ‘Superhuman Studies’, with certificates of achievement in the rest. He also trained in martial arts and marksmanship. Expecting to be an Atlas, he continued to train in martial arts daily.

Of course, he was a ‘Cape Chaser’, but he wasn’t directly interested in their celebrity, rather he studied them. He wanted to learn what they did and how they did it, what they knew and what they Should have known. He tried to learn who the heroes could depend on, what contacts they had, and he tried to make his own contacts with those people, or ones like them.

Next, he went looking for work with the various Emergency Services groups, Fire and Police Departments, hospitals and Paramedic companies. He got temporary positions with all of them, earning Certified Auxiliary badges, but never settled in permanently. He was even scouted by the Department of Superhuman Affairs, but decided he wasn’t ready to work directly for the government. Finally, he landed his dream job, civilian support for the local hero team.

He didn’t have any Hero Powers, yet, but here was the next best thing.

So it went for years, he got involved in all the local incidents, doing whatever a normal person could do. He often assisted the group’s Scientists in the labs and shops, and became a valued, if non-powered, associate.

It was almost inevitable that, while shopping downtown, on his day off, Michael should answer the call to heroism. There were alarms, there were explosions, and people running and screaming. So, of course, he grabbed his equipment harness and hero team vest and ran Towards the disaster.

It was an area of run-down buildings, apartments, and industrial/office structures mixed together. Also, it was not well-populated but plenty of people were fleeing in terror. Michael put on his com-helmet and immediately plugged into the net, calling his dispatcher and hooking his camera feed into the stream. Unfortunately, there didn’t seem to be any information available, other than that there Was a hero team involved in some sort of investigation gone wrong.

Michael announced he was going to see what he could do and jogged in the direction everyone was running from. Down alleys and backstreets he went, following his nose for trouble, until he found it, sure enough. He could barely believe it, though.

‘Trouble’ looked like some impossible Thing, an eight-foot-tall pile of uncooked sausage, pool-noodles, rubber hose, and other nameless tubular excrescences. It was... mostly green, where it wasn’t pinkish, black, or raspberry, and coated with dark purple ooze. It looked like it had to be some improbable accident, yet something told him it was real, alive, hungry, and malevolent.

Confronting it was a man, a little girl, and a scrappy little terrier, the humans were hiding behind a trash dumpster. However, the dog was out front, at the end of its leash, furiously barking at the Thing From Beyond.

Michael had to admire the little dog’s courage, but not for long, as the Thing From Beyond lashed out with a long, lumpy pseudopod. It engulfed the scrappy little terrier in mid-bark and snatched the furry morsel back into its body. The little girl screamed in terrified denial, but the man held her close, trying to comfort her and muffle her cries.

Michael shouted, himself, saying, “Hey! Hey! Hey! Get ready to Run!” then he pulled two pepper-bomb crowd-control grenades from his harness. He primed and hurled the first one at the horrid monster, making a perfect pitch, and the grenade showered the Thing with powder. Immediately, he repeated the process with his second grenade, but the irritant powder seemed to have no more effect than if he’d sprinkled the thing with glitter.

“Right! Cover your Eyes!” shouted Michael, then pulled, primed and hurled two more bombs, before ducking his head, closing his eyes, and covering his ears. These were flash-bangs, better suited for use indoors, rather than in a back-alley trash court, but the young hero’s pitching-arm was perfectly timed. BAM! BAM! The bombs went off at almost touching distance from the Thing and they certainly had an effect.

The terrible monstrosity made a hissing, bubbling shriek, like an angry geyser, and somehow, the featureless thing was now focussed on Michael. “Go, Go, Go, NOW!” he yelled, and reached to his vest again, but the Thing didn’t wait to see what he would fling next, it charged right at him. A horrible disgusting pseudopod reached out and slammed him to the ground, then drew him in and the Thing engulfed him.

Screaming in burning agony, he could feel the Thing’s ‘juices’ dissolving his limbs. In a final, desperate reflex, he managed to yank the pins from his last grenades. Firefighting foam, essentially CO2 and baking soda with a binder, exploded around his body. Amazingly, the basic foam protected him, neutralizing the worst of the acidic digestive juices. It also Hurt the Thing From Beyond, which shrieked like a steam-whistle, heaved violently, and spat him out.

His body armor and helmet had protected his core, somewhat, but it was not really enough. Even the foam coating his body was not enough, he was still being slowly dissolved. He was all but blind, dying by degrees, in terrible pain, but he could not give up. He MUST NOT give up! He was a HERO and heroes protect people from Things! He Had To GET UP and Fight!

So he did. The fires of Breakthrough scorched through his mind and body and suddenly he could see, though not perfectly. He had pain, but not bad enough to stop him. He had hands and feet, arms and legs, of a sort, but that was not important, because he was STRONG. He was an Atlas, just like he always wanted to be, and he was going to BEAT that Beast From Beyond back to whatever Hell had spawned it!

Afterwards, he collapsed. Medical teams managed to stabilize his vital signs, but even the hospital couldn’t stop the slow deterioration of his body. The best they could do was to get him into a suspension-fluid tank and keep him alive. While he could still talk, he insisted that they do everything possible. He was finally a Hero and he wanted to keep being a Hero, which he couldn’t do if he died.

In the end, the healers did manage to halt the creeping doom, but at terrible cost. All that was left of him was his spine, ribs, skull and brain, and his magnificent, heroic heart. All of the rest was life-support devices.

They built him a compact capsule, packed everything inside, and that was his physical body, from then on. But his Mental body was a Hero and he went forth to prove it, every day. They call him the ‘Ghost in a Shell’ or sometimes they call him ‘Headstrong’ to reflect the way his sheer willpower overcame all of the obstacles to becoming the hero he wanted to be.

[h3]Appearance and Personality[/h3]
Michael was medium tall, medium built, and medium handsome, in the way that healthy and active young men tend to be. He was tanned, with dark hair and blue eyes, with dimples and a killer smile that made him popular, if not dramatically so.

Now, his capsule is a matte titanium egg, about 2 feet across and 3 feet tall. He can manifest a ‘merely human’ version of his body-field for social situations. His capsule can project a holographic image of his original body onto his body-field, or just about any other image that fits the shape of his field.

Michael thinks of himself as an ‘ordinary person’ and ignores the ugly details of his existence when he can. As an ‘ordinary person’ he learned how to be a hero, so he sees the ‘hero’ in everybody unless they’re a villain. Even then, it’s possible they might redeem themselves and become a ‘hero’, just like him.

He is fiercely ‘positive’ in his outlook because if he gave in to the ‘negative’ it would wreck him. At the same time, he’s experienced enough to recognize the reality of the world around him.

What do you think? I’m open to suggestions for ways to make this story work better.

Be Well!
Fireheart