What's in a Name? Challenge

[Mercdog]

Hey Everybody,

Just kind of bored today and I thought I'd throw out this challenge. It's quite simple really. I'm going to toss a name out, and I want to see what kind of hero or villain you can each come up with that uses that name.

You can go into as little or as much detail as you want, but it should contain at least a few basic background details.

Just two guidelines really,

1. You must use the name I provide.
2. Try to use a different Power Category than previous entries.

So, to kick it off the name is...

Spookshow.

Have at it gang.

[drewkitty ~..~]

A mystically bestowed with just illusion powers.

[Incriptus]

Spook Show: Stage Magician villain. His specialty is "Scooby-Doo" schemes. He sets up hauntings in places inorder to drive down the value. He then buys the land [or whatever] on the cheap. Perhaps he even is/hires to people who exorcise the place.

[Regularguy]

SPOOKSHOW: he investigates crimes by listening when ghosts relay cryptic messages from beyond; in his own right, he's not much good in a fight -- but the spirit of a wronged victim will sometimes manifest as a poltergeist, eerily floating objects around or vengefully slamming the killer into walls or whatever. And sometimes it'll manifest as a sudden apparition, startling a would-be attacker into horrifiedly recoiling at the sight of the man he murdered. (But let's be honest: that shouldn't stop you for long. If our hero the medium is looking into a crime you've gotten away with, the only sensible thing to do is eliminate that otherwise mundane guy before some entity from beyond the grave exploits his presence to bring you to justice.)

That's what he tells people, anyway. Truth is, he's an Experiment with Invulnerability; he's perfectly happy making himself a big fine target, since that just helps him figure out who the guilty party is. (Who else would bother shooting him?) He doesn't let on that he's got Invisibility, either; he gladly makes himself an obvious diversion while his unseen Multiple Selves get into position to plant bugs, or personally spy on folks, or just stand by to "create a Horror Factor of 9 by making noises and moving items while invisible -- 'spooking' others."

(Of course, he never mentions that knack for electronic surveillance; he also doesn't mention that he's an expert in makeup and disguise, the better to let one of his Selves appear out of thin air in the form of the murder victim. He acts like he has no skills worth mentioning, and no powers aside from the way ghosts can occasionally cross over in his presence; instead of ever showing off with his superstrength, he routinely acts like getting that ordinary revolver away from him would be easy and solve all your problems...)

[Mercdog]

Spook Show: Stage Magician villain. His specialty is "Scooby-Doo" schemes. He sets up hauntings in places inorder to drive down the value. He then buys the land [or whatever] on the cheap. Perhaps he even is/hires to people who exorcise the place.

Gotta say, so far, this one's my favorite.

[Regularguy]

Nobody can tell whether CODENAME: SPOOKSHOW is America's top spymaster or an elaborate decoy operation. One way or another, a lot of operatives serving other nations turn out to be double agents who'd long since been recruited by the smoothest man this side of James Bond ever to wear a jetpack; captured American spies insist the guy doesn't exist, the whole thing's a hoax, nobody's that good.

In reality, she's a one-trick Psionicist: using Telepathy (to read surface thoughts) while firing up Empathic Transmission (to briefly gain a guy's complete trust) followed by Insert Memory (which he temporarily believes shouldn't be resisted) followed by Mind Wipe (to forget the implantation process, but remember what was implanted). So she gets the guy to obediently spell out what sales pitch would've worked for a recruiter back when -- only to be told he's been a sleeper agent all this time, which he (a) he wholeheartedly believes, and (b) suddenly remembers.

And so he returns to work: passing misinformation back to his old agency while now spying on 'em for the gent in the White House. (If caught and interrogated, he won't recall ever meeting with a young woman from the other side; he'll only ever honestly describe the male superspy no American has seen physical evidence of.) Week after week, year after year, she innocuously screens folks who have access to high-level classified info: if they're not genuinely on our side when she starts, she makes 'em that way by adding one more agent to her network of operatives.

[Regularguy]

could i suggest A name?

If so what do you see for Blind Side

Alien (Mystic Bestowed) with Invulnerability and Negate Super Abilities.

As far as the public knows, BLINDSIDE's name reflects how that vigilante gets the drop on -- and swiftly incapacitates -- super-villains, even those with extraordinary senses or a knack for cloaking themselves from detection or whatever.

In fact, our technological advances have attracted the attention of a mystical world: one that's a bit alarmed, and doesn't much like the competition. As they see it, mankind is now encroaching into areas Where Man Was Not Meant To Tread, using genetic engineering and irradiated chemicals to scientifically duplicate magical feats. And so he was sent here to eliminate all the lab rats who've gained their powers from experiments or mutation and so on; he passes himself off as an intergalactic champion of justice who believes our world needs guidance and direction if it is to blossom into a productive member of the community of planets -- which is true, in that he wants us to become an innocuous member in good standing of the magocracy -- and once he's built up a sufficiently heroic reputation by defeating enough crooks, he'll have the connections to surreptitiously start in on his fellow crimefighters.

[Incriptus]

could i suggest A name?

If so what do you see for Blind Side

I don't have my books at the moment and will likely update this one tomarrow, but my instinct is to make the character blind, and follow up with the power of Bio-Manipulation focusing on blinding others.

[gaby]

They may take a name based not on ther powers,but on the methods they fight crime.

[Regularguy]

Centuries ago, a young man was blessed with tremendous abilities suited for mankind's eternal champion against evil: Immortality, to make sure he can keep fighting the good fight across the ages; Karmic Power, letting him even the odds against wrongdoers; and Extraordinary Intelligence, so he could locate problems in time to make a difference.

You've never heard of him, because he got beaten pretty badly in his first outing as a would-be superhero: blindsided by a scheming nobleman, the mortal bearer of an Enchanted Weapon. One trapdoor later, our hero was who promptly locked away under the villain's throne room -- and has remained a prisoner ever since, his agelessness duplicated by a villain who wants to live forever.

Mimicking that Immortality comes with a horrible price; the Karmic Power is a curse to any such criminal. But that's a deal the bearer has been willing to make for all this time, always using that Weapon's other powers to secure his base of operations and keep the failed hero under wraps: invisibly making the rounds to block off this passageway or that with unnatural darkness and portals of fear while relying on his legion of zombie-like corpses to stand guard duty -- and he'll even go back to aging normally, minus the karmic curse, to briefly mimic any superhuman interloper who makes it past those defenses: as if stepping out of an enchanted mirror to match the intruder's powers, all while groans emanate from the chains-rattling prisoner down below. The whole thing makes for an eerie and unsettling spookshow.

Still, it's that villain's life's goal to swap out the failed hero for a no-strings-attached Immortal -- and to that end, he keeps luring possible targets into his "haunted mansion" in hopes of someday finding a suitable replacement. And in recent decades he's gained even greater resources; with the arrival of the internet, he's become the underworld's greatest computer hacker and information broker: exchanging his services for clues as to the whereabouts of someone better to entrap and mimic ever after. Three guesses as to the name he uses online.

[Traska]

(Spookshow)
No one knows where this hero hails from originally, but he seems determined to save this city. He isn't the prettiest hero to look at (in fact, he looks like he was defenestrated, incinerated, and then quartered, before they reattached his limbs), but as bad as he looks, he seems to look even worse to the enemies. When locked in combat, bystanders report that the area grows dark and cold, but those simple effects aren't what give Spookshow his name. He seems to have some innate ability to reach into an opponent's mind and twist it and their view of the world, causing what exists to appear sinister and threatening. Onlookers have reported criminals that fought fire hydrants, ran away in terror, or quietly lay on the ground and soil themselves. But as confident as Spookshow is, he also gives off the vibe of a man constantly looking over his shoulder. As Spookshow hunts down criminals, could something be hunting him?

(Blindside)
This energetic young woman is an expert in parkour and some form of martial arts, but neither of those are what gets the job done. Blindside has but one power: The ability to teleport very short distances, and simultaneously travel back three seconds in time. For brief instances, the girl appears to be in two places at once! Her typical tactic is to attack her opponent while he is engaged with her (very recent) past self. She can only do this once every fifteen seconds or so, but it gives her a distinct edge in a fight.

[Juce734]

Blind Side - Teleport, Multiple Selves, and Force Strike seem like good powers for this martial artist.

[Juce734]

What about the name Beaker.

[Traska]

Beaker:

Jason Harding was always a nerd. Actually, to call him a nerd is like calling Mercury warm. Jason spent all of his time in the lab, trying to invent a chemical that could bestow superpowers. He succeeded, but not in any way he would have preferred.

In a lab accident, he was doused with his latest formula (the ninth in the 4-O series he had been working on), and within minutes his body was reacting violently. He felt like he had the flu, food poisoning, and a hangover all at once. His last thought as he passed out on his lab floor was "who's going to clean this place up when they find my body?"

But Jason didn't die. Instead, his body underwent a strange mutation. Perhaps because of the canary he kept in the lab (in case fume concentration became so high as to be dangerous), but Jason began to develop certain avian traits... although, curiously, not wings. His head became bird like, with prominent feathers, large eyes... and a VERY large beak. Well, Jason always had a large nose, so he figured maybe that had something to do with it. He also grew to a height of just over seven feet tall, his previously spindly frame filling out to an Olympian ideal... the gods, not the athletes. Combining his love for science with a self-deprecating jab at his new looks, Jason called himself Beaker and began fighting crime... because when you look like a cross between Hercules and Toucan Sam, it's either go into the capes and masks business or get a job as a sports mascot.

[gaby]

Dr Mysery

[Traska]

Kyle Woods was always the odd one. In junior high, he was an emo kid, and in high school he went full goth (you never go full goth). He was also into cutting, rarely going a week without sporting a new stripe. On his 21st birthday, he was in a club, alone (Kyle never was one for having (m)any friends), and to noone's surprise he started to get depressed. That's when things started to change. He found that although he was becoming slightly sad, it was the people around him that were feeling the full effects of his depression. That made him angry for the first time in years... it was *his* sadness! How dare they take it! And... that's when the riot broke out.

Kyle soon came to realize he could project his emotions onto others, but only the negative ones. Sadness, anger, fear... but sadness was his strongest tool. Dressing in full goth garb, painting his face like that guy from the hit movie "The Raven" (you know, the guy who's dad was a famous martial artist), and carrying a walking stick, Kyle called himself Doctor Sorrow. When the real Doctor Sorrow came out of retirement because some young punk stole his name, Kyle quickly rethought his plans and named himself Dr Mysery (because everything's gothier with more Ys).

[Incriptus]

Dr. Mystery's orgins are . . . well . . . a mystery! The man's first memories are those of a young women standing up yelling "Doctor, Doctor you have to wake up, we need you". He was in a laboratory of some sort. Fires raging everywhere, the sound of gun shots and people screaming filled the compound. He was wearing a lab coat and had a pill bottle in his hand. "Doctor you have to take the ...". The womans sentence was cut short by decapitation. The swordsman ordered a dozen armed guards to "take him" and walked away. As fear and desperation set in the man took a handful of the pills. He was transformed! He suddenly had powers*, Dr. Mystery was born at that moment. Shocked the swordsman turned to engage Dr. Mystery but the burning building collapsed. The two were seperated but the Swordsman vowed that they would meet again! Now Dr. Mystery wanders trying to find the secrets of his past, and survive the attacks from the Swordsman and his secret organization.

*Dr. Mystery would be an inbued hero from PU2 but I'm not sure which set of powers to go with. Honestly I'd be tempted to bend the rules and have the powers granted be somewhat random each time, making his powers even a mystery.

[gaby]

BlueBunny

[Incriptus]

"So, who are you"
"Let's just say . . . I am the blue bunny"

Bluebunny is an infamous villianess. She runs the Blue Bunny establishment, it's exact title changes from time to time and place to place, but the business is always pleasure. It will be raided and shut down every so often, however with in a week, it will be back fully operational. You see the Blue Bunny Establishment isn't actually on earth, rather it is an astral domain [see Nightbane: Between the Shadow's]. The building on the Earth is little more than a shell. Bluebunny, who's true name is unpronounceable, is an immortal evil dedicated to spreading sin. She uses the Bluebunny establishment for that purpose, and for the occassional meal.

Blue Bunny
Class: Immortal - Lesser Demon [deevil]
Powers:
---Special: Immortality
---Minor: Physical Perfection
---Major: Life Leech Animate Objects
Skills: Equivelent of Trade School with emphasis on Rogue/Seduction.
Note: The Astral Domain belongs to one of her previous victims.

[gaby]

Cheerleader

[Traska]

Cheerleader

Abigail Greene was always an outcast. She wasn't popular like the jocks, but she wasn't shunned like the nerds. She was a clique of one, and not by choice. She was often sullen and depressed, and never more so than when her parents would tell her "cheer up kiddo, it doesn't rain every day!" Nobody understood her, and she generally didn't understand people, either. Then came the day her parents put her on antidepressants... and didn't tell her. She had a headache, so her mother gave her an "aspirin" which was actually Antidepressenol, which was still in clinical trials (and a likely name change). But, her father was friends with the VP of R&D for Jones-Stein, the pharma company that made Antidepressenol, so his connections allowed him to get Abigail on the testers list.

That day went like any other, except people seemed nicer to her. Like, *really* nice. A random boy held the door for her entering school. Her history teacher didn't care that her homework wasn't done. A popular girl even paid for her lunch when she discovered she left her money at home. For the first time in her life, Abigail was happy. Like that would last.

When she got home, her mother commented on her happy mood, and revealed the medication to her, assuming the medication was responsible. Abigail went through the roof (although not literally, that's a different super.) She told her mother to "go [redacted] yourself!" and so that's what she did... for the next hour until she passed out from exhaustion. The last words her mother said before leaving the room were "If that will make you happy."

Abigail began to realize that the Antidepressenol had altered her brain chemistry, but not in the way it was supposed to. Instead of making her happy, it made others around her want to make her happy. In short, it turned them into her thralls. Abigail began to laugh, as she realized the implications. "Cheer up?! I'm the [redacted] leader of cheer! I'm a freaking cheerleader!" And that's when it hit her. She had the tools to make them all pay, all the idiots who treated her like an outcast or freak. She'd make them all sorry!

The first thing she did was to recruit the entire school cheerleading team to back her up (renaming them the Pep Squad), and then set out to get her revenge. She made girls reject their jock boyfriends, she made teachers give bad grades to the popular kids, she even made the lunchlady eat the school food every day (and take the leftovers home). For a while, she was over the moon. (Again, not literally... that's Lunar Girl.) Then reality sunk in. She could do whatever she wanted... except make people actually like her. Sure, they'd do whatever she said, but that didn't mean they liked her. They just liked making her happy. She'd never find someone to really love her, or get a job based solely on merit, or make actual friends. Life was a shadow of what it could have been, and even though she could do anything she wanted, she couldn't do anything about that.

Abigail cracked. She took the Pep Squad and fled town. She now operates as a villain, striking at the world that did this to her (her first act of true villainy was to make the CEO of Jones-Stein burn the business to the ground), and surrounded by yes men and women at all times. She's the queen of her very own gilded cage.

[Incriptus]

Gavel

[Traska]

Robert Jenkins was a beat cop, your ordinary joe, until the night he tried to bust a member of the Varelli family. Nicholas "Nicky" Varelli virtually owned the law, but Jenkins wasn't paying attention to the subtle hints to back off. So they sent him a more serious one. One night, while he was on patrol, he was given a domestic dispute call to handle. When he arrived at the scene, something seemed off. Then he spotted the car in the driveway... which was running, but with the headlights off. When they realized they'd been made, the assassins opened fire, and Jenkins took off. He evaded pursuit down a blind alley, and when it proved to be a dead end, he burst into the first door he saw.

That door led into an antiques store, with Varelli's hitmen on his heels. Looking around for something... anything... he could use a weapon, he saw an old wooden mallet, like the kind you might use at a carnival to ring the bell on a "high striker" game. As soon as he touched it, he heard in his mind "You are a great seeker of justice. I will assist you." Gone was the old mallet, in its place was a gavel the size of a warhammer. Also gone was Robert Jenkins, in his place stood a six and a half foot muscled god of a man, dressed in a black tunic, black pants, and a black hood that covered his head down to just below his nose.

When Virelli's men charged into the room, Jenkins realized he could see their crimes. He pointed the mallet at one man and said "For the crime of battering your wife, I find you GUILTY." He then slammed the mallet into the assassin's chest, knocking the wind out of him and sending him flying. He then turned to the other man and said "And for the unspeakable way you treat your daughter, I find you GUILTY!" He then slammed the mallet into his head, hard enough to knock him out cold (and fracture his skull and jaw). Once both men were unconscious, Jenkins returned to his uniformed appearance, and the mallet was nowhere to be seen.

He soon left the police force (seeing what his fellow, and corrupt, officers were guilty of sickened him), and now he fights crime as Gavel, where he is the sole judge and jury, but never executioner... protecting the streets not only from the criminals, but from the lawmen who are supposed to be protecting the public.

[gaby]

Laughing Fox

High Roller

SlientStrike

Ms Ruse

[Traska]

Laughing Fox

High Roller

SlientStrike

Ms Ruse

The Fearless Four started as four individual heroes... Laughing Fox, a dashing swashbuckler who, by day, works as an accountant, and by night dons a Zorro-inspired costume (complete with domino mask), and fights crime dual rapier style... High Roller, a card sharp gone straight who uses trick dice as weapons (exploding dice, knock-out gas dice, even foam putty dice)... SilentStrike, a martial artist who has an ace in the hole in the form of the ability to cancel all sound around himself for a radius of three feet... and Ms Ruse, a minor psychic with the ability to cast brief illusions. The four met up while fighting the infamous Dr Mysery, and found they worked well together. Now, the Fearless Four fight all manner of crime and villainy, stronger together than they were apart.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Cheerleader

Abigail Greene was always an outcast. (EDITED TO PRESERVE SPACE) She's the queen of her very own gilded cage.

Well done I love the back story (funny stuff) and character development. I'd love to see you over on my thread (viewtopic.php?f=7&t=132933) for Lazy Boy and the Recliner. I have a feeling you could do some pretty amazing stuff. Again I say, Well Done.

[gaby]

Crosshair

[Regularguy]

CROSSHAIR is a mysterious blackmailer the underworld mutters about; they say he's a stealthy marksman who makes impossible shots with every weapon under the sun, a man with a twisted sense of honor who runs the most dangerous protection racket of all: telling crime syndicates which businesses are off-limits, and which politicians aren't to be touched -- all while collecting his percentage from their curtailed operations. (He's presumably smoothing the way for 'em by bribing some folks, in between threatening or killing others in his usual fashion; he never explains, he just demands his cut.)

It's the price of doing business, he comments -- never in person, you understand; nobody's ever laid eyes on the guy. But he sees all of them just fine, be it through a telephoto lens or the scope of a sniper rifle; time and again, a meeting of mobsters will suddenly get disturbed by a message that practically looks thumbtacked into the wall by a projectile; the note is always written on the back of a photograph, invariably showing one of their number centered in crosshairs, invariably snapped under circumstances where you couldn't have missed seeing him.

The whole plan came to him while he was experimenting with hallucinogens; holistic medicine had long been an interest of the Army's best live-off-the-land instructor, and those homegrown plant compounds eventually wound up unlocking his full mental potential as promised. His now-extraordinary intelligence lets him excel at skills in general and impersonation in particular; he thus replaces the criminal du jour with expertise mere shapechangers would envy, and thereby (a) quietly learns all sorts of specifics to augment his knack for gathering information in general, and (b) positions himself in a secure area for his signature feat: briefly speeding up his metabolism to the point where it's as if he's pausing the temporal flow itself, and then positioning a photo and projectile where a trick shot couldn't have plausibly landed. (He snaps each photo in much the same way.)

And, no, the assorted crooks don't think it's strange that one tough or another occasionally goes missing; maybe he got shot and killed by the shadowy figure who can apparently get away with anything, maybe he decided to leave town instead of always looking over his shoulder in fear of getting shot and killed. (Of course, it's really just that CROSSHAIR has moved on to another disguise.) And sometimes one of 'em gets spirited away under cover of the billowing smoke from a gas gun's cartridge (usually when someone has just started to suspect there's an impersonator in their midst; it's all stage-managed in an eyeblink, faster than you can say pause-temporal-flow).

[gaby]

Mr Trick and Ms Treat

[gaby]

Informer

[Traska]

Around the 'net, there are rumors, always rumors. A long dead superhero is really alive and waging war from the shadows. A clandestine government agency is shipping all the villains off to a penal planet. But none so whispered about as The Informer.

It all started a year ago, when the plot to assassinate Governor Winslow was about to commence. There was a raid that night, on all six meeting places. Thirty two arrests, including the mastermind, Don Rosetti. Since then, The Informer has become a bogeyman for criminals... when you grow overconfident, he (?) is there to knock you down a peg. The Informer is responsible for the imprisoning of two dozen major threats, even if not directly.

What everyone is unaware of is that The Informer is actually an emergent artificial intelligence, in an abandoned government subcomplex on the east coast. Utilizing funds siphoned off from slush fund projects (to hire underlings), The Informer is going forward with its original programming: to monitor criminal activity and put a stop to same... only originally, the system was designed for a scrapped super team project. The Informer is considering actually reactivating that part of the plan. But who to recruit...

[BookWyrm]

Mr. Trick & Ms. Treat
This pair of non-powered 'supers' began making the round of (insert city or urban sprawl here) at Halloween just a couple of years ago, dispensing safe, edible but still fun candies & snacks to inner-city & poverty areas while surprisingly making a dent in local crime. The two are usually wearing some Halloween-themed costume, generic enough to thwart any possible tracking of purchasing of that type, yet not "provocative" enough to warrant outcry from parent-groups.

The truth is the pair are a part of a small organization of young urban citizens who are trying to make their neighborhoods safe, especially during the chaos of both Devil's Night and Halloween itself. While the genders have sometimes switched, usually Mr. Trick is male or male-themed (a woman in a male-costume), & Ms. Trick is female or female-themed (a man in a female costume). The pair use a number of non-lethal Halloween gadgets to thwart crimes (such as candy-corn gas grenades, sweeping-broom battlestaves, jack-o-lantern bolas, ect.)and usually stay long enough for local law-enforcement to arrive before departing.

Last year, Mr. Trick & Ms. Treat used a pirate/corsair theme to bust a child-pornography & slavery ring which garnered them some media attention. Their calling-card this time was a small black pirate-flag with a jack-o-lantern & crossbones symbol with the usual "A gift from Mr. Trick & Ms. Treat for you. Happy Halloween!" tag.

Local LEOs have an unofficial pool going (the proceeds always go to local charities) on what theme will be next. The odds-on favorite this year is Goblins.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Mr. Tick and Ms. Treat!! I like this. Well done. I'm going to have to look up the Legendary hero's thread/posts now.

[gaby]

Charade

[Traska]

Shapeshifters seem to be a dime a dozen, but Charade is a bit of an odd duck. For starters, no one knows what Charade looks like... every time Charade's been put under power restraints, somehow Charade's form is different, despite Charade's protests that this is what they ALWAYS look like. Secondly, Charade's shapeshifts are usually obvious. If impersonating the President of Mexico, Charade will use an accent so overblown that one would think it was a salsa commercial. If impersonating a famous singer, then impersonating a DEAD famous singer is awesome. (Approximately 7% of Elvis sightings can be attributed to Charade.) But that's all part of the act. Most of the time, Charade is a walking diversion, allowing the main threat to do what needs to be done. And when it comes to diversions, which is better: An armed mercenary, or an armed mercenary who looks just like the governor of California from the 1980s?

[gaby]

Turbo

[Traska]

Everyone knows that some villains aren't in it for the crime or the power... they want to make an honest buck by helping some other guy make a dishonest buck. Most of the time, they're muscle or snipers. But Turbo is a different breed. He has one power, and it doesn't even work on Turbo himself; he can accelerate someone, effectively giving them extra time to do things. Are you a brick fighting a guy with danger sense and unnatural agility? Turbo can speed you up to give you that edge.

He doesn't even need line of sight to do his thing... which is fortunate, because heroes have become genre-savvy as of late. When a villain starts acting "fast forwarded", the first thing a canny hero does is look for Turbo, knowing that if they can out his lights out, they slow the bad guy down long enough to stop him.

[gaby]

Lady Wicked

[Traska]

Lady Wicked

Nope. It'll get me banned.

[gaby]

MR Grimm

[Traska]

MR Grimm

As one of four friends who launched an unauthorized rocket, Ben Gri[REDACTED DUE TO CONVERSION CONCERNS]

Seriously now.

As a Fultomite, D'rire has a great poker face. That is, his race lacks any connection between facial expression and emotion. They tend to be utterly and completely deadpan. Even their vocal tone is very subdued. When he crashed on Earth, D'rire found that his bounty hunting skills came in handy for rounding up criminals. He donned a costume and took a codename because... well, that's what it looked like bounty hunters did on this world. It took him a month to figure out they weren't bounty hunters, and by then the name and look stuck.

His name comes from his first public appearance. He was stopping a bank robbery (his reasoning was that chances are they were wanted for *something*), and throughout the entire fight he was stone-faced as usual. One teller remarked afterward "Gee mister, you sure are grim!" He liked the way it sounded, and the rest is history.

[gaby]

Dr Winter

[GlitterKnight]

The man known as Dr. Winter never intended to be a superhero. A skilled psychologist, Dr. Nathan Frost was an expert in psychic phenomena. Many colleagues told him he was wasting his potential on crank research, but Nathan saw past the junk science and conspiracy theories to real examples of psionic potential. There were quite a few superheroes and criminals who claimed their powers to be psychic in nature, to spill forth from the unleashed power of their minds. Most serious researchers dismissed these claims as propaganda to confuse their enemies, or rationalizations of their superhuman abilities through a paradigm they were familiar with when they gained them.

His attempts to contact various psychic superheroes proved fruitless, but he had better luck applying for visitations with incarcerated psychic supercriminals. Their situations gave him little opportunity to observe them express their powers, but he began to gain greater insights into the origins of psionic ability by interviewing them and getting their memories and impressions of what their own psionic awakening was like. The good doctor came to believe that all people possess psionic potential, and that there were specific triggers that could unlock each person's potential. However, his stable of patients was small and unreliable, frustrating his research. One patient, however, who possessed both minor super powers as well as a battery of psionic talents and called himself Mindcrime, informed him of a person, or being, he had once encountered.

Mindcrime claimed the shadowy figure had been so nondescript that he was sure that it was employing some method of psionic blanking or disguise. The only distinguishing feature Mindcrime could recall was a strange, alien eye in the being's forehead. It had offered to expand Mindcrime's psionic abilities with it's own powers, if he stole a rare crystal for it. The caper had not gone off well, and Mindcrime had ended up in jail, but he convinced Frost that it had really happened, and that he believed the being's claims of being able to expand his psychic powers. Intrigued by the possibility of a being who could prove his hypothesis about the nature of psionic potential, Dr. Frost departed the prison to return to the city. In the parking garage off the prison's ferry dock, however, he was reminded of being careful what you wish for.

The being stepped from the shadows, but grew no more distinct as it approached. As Nathan was about to call it, he felt an alien presence in his mind and found himself paralyzed. As the figure grew closer, it began to speak into his mind. It told him it knew that it had no wish to harm him, but was going to give him what he wished for. It then touched him on the brow, and with that, Nathan fell unconscious. When he awoke next to his car some time later, he was soaking wet and surrounded by melting ice. Curiously, he was not chilled at all, despite his sodden clothes and the frozen puddle he had been lying in. When he returned home and grabbed a beer from his fridge, only to discover it was barely cool, his irritation flashed into casing of ice around the glass.

As he experimented with his gifts, he realized the being and it's promises to Mindcrime were real; it could unleash psionic potential! His potential had crystalized, he believed, around his love of winter and cold. He was a cryokinetic, or in the more popular parlance of psychic obsessed conspiracy junkies, a freezer! His wonder and furious note taking were interrupted by a news bulletin, stating that Mindcrime had escaped from prison and was demonstrating far more power than he ever had before. Nathan was instantly convinced that his mysterious visitor had also paid Mindcrime a visit, and quickly threw on a wool greatcoat, gloves and ski mask, and dashed out the door. The mysterious new hero who had defeated the resurgent Mindcrime was dubbed by the media Dr. Winter, for his erudite interview after the battle, and his ice powers.

Now Dr. Winter and Dr. Nathan Frost hunt psychic supercriminals, to learn more about psionics in general and discover others who might have been visited by the mysterious being with the pineal eye...

[gaby]

Rhapsody

[gaby]

Trick shot

[gaby]

Stormlord

[Snowtiger]

Trick Shot

Bernard Branson had always been a rather mediocre gunslinger, but a recent event in his life changed it all. His family lawyer informed him that he was the sole inheritor of a distant uncle he'd never even heard about, and that the uncle had left him a sizable fortune and a lavish manorhouse in the countryside. After the necessary paperwork had been done Bernard decided to move into the manor and take care of it. A few weeks ago he found an old war trunk hidden in the attic, filled with all kinds of World War I memorabilia, including an odd gray-and-black uniform, a pair of well-maintained service revolvers in a silver-inlaid wooden box, that also contained a strange pendant made out of an intricately carved piece of amber set in a silver base. As he took the pendant in his hand, it began to glow softly, but nothing else seemed to happen right away. For a while Bernard just sat there, mesmerized by the pendant and the way the glow made the facets of the amber shard glitter. Without really thinking about it, he put the pendant around his neck and felt something change deep within him, his vision first blurred and then sharpened into unbelievable levels, he realized that he could predict the paths of the dust particles in the air by just watching them for a while and that he could see them clearly from across the room.

A week afterwards, Bernard was practicing shooting at a local gun club, and was astonished to find out that his shooting skills had tremendously improved, he was perfectly maxing out scores at all ranges, using any weapons he got his hands on. Without a moment's thought he put his new-found skills into a test, trying his hand at ricochet shots and other trick shots, and to his and his friends astonishment, he mastered them all.

As money wasn't a problem due to the vast inheritance, Bernard decided to don the uniform he'd found and took on a hero moniker, Trick Shot, and set out to foiling the plans of criminal scum as a champion of justice. Armed with a pair of specially modified revolvers (a homage to the pair of service revolvers he'd found) and a plethora of trick rounds in addition to normal bullets, he now prowls the streets of the city nearest to his manor, bringing justice to muggers, robbers and general thugs alike. So far, he has not set his sights higher than that, due to his fairly limited skill set. That is likely to change, because he still feels that he hasn't really scratched the surface on the pendant's power reserves.