Valentine Barrett

Title: None yet.
Alignment: Fluctuating between Neutral Good and Chaotic Neutral
Hero Moniker: None yet.
Race: Fae-Touched Human

Name: Valentine Barrett
Age: Early 20's (Appearance-wise); 43 (Chronologically)
Gender: Male
Height: 6' 1”
Weight: Light
Appearance:
While relatively unassuming before, Val is now one who stands out in the crowd. Although his lanky, wiry frame is nothing special, most everything else is. If one looks closely enough at his pale skin, they would find it completely unblemished. Given the rich, oft-sparkling dark green eyes that are set in his angular face which has more than a little bit of a fey bent to its features--especially the eyebrows--he looks like he was born for mischief. Crowning him is a head of loosely-curling locks of bleached, almost platinum blond hair.

His Outfit is...cheap...by superhero/villain standards. Mostly. The mundane stuff consists of a grey-ish European-style jacket, simple pants, leather gloves, flexible boots, and a featureless white mask. It's...really nothing special. The two parts that are less than mundane consist of the helmet and the stabilization rig. The helmet is featureless and matte-white and covers his entire head without limiting his field of view. The stabilization rig is more overtly interesting, as it's a bulky device attacked to his upper torso with three sections on the front and back that glow a soft seafoam green color. It looks haphazard and somewhat unfinished in places, but it's functional nonetheless. For now, he can only convincingly conceal the rig beneath a thick overcoat.


Personality:
Stoic, dutiful, boring. Once upon a time, those words applied to the man known as Valentine Barrett. But no longer. Formerly a man only interested in his research and science, he could hardly be called an interesting person. He wasn't afflicted by anger issues, depression, an overinflated ego, or too much ambition. Val was just a quiet, hardworking guy whom no one would look at twice.

Nowadays, however, his demeanor has changed drastically, making him practically unrecognizable to anyone who once knew him. No longer the boring, stoic assistant, Valentine is...odd, now. Zany, quirky, and thrillseeker definitely apply to him, but there's more to it than that. The most notable and visible quirk he possesses is a form of attention deficit disorder, but he also suffers from forms of kleptomania and claustrophobia.

Additionally, he's akin to a trickster in that he has a mischievous streak a mile wide and is fond of using vague and ambiguous wording to mess with people when he can. Despite that, he's otherwise become a fairly decent, moral guy who's interested in helping people when possible. And despite his best efforts to apply himself and his new abilities for good, constructive purposes, his own tendencies continue to make it one hell of an uphill struggle.



Priorities:
1. Reaction
2. Agility
3. Endurance
4. Strength



History:
There's not much to say about Valentine Barrett's early life; it wasn't terribly exciting or special. He was born and grew up in the city, had a normal childhood, got good grades, did well in the occasional athletic pursuit... One of the only two things of note was the fact that he never really had any friends. Rather, he had friends, but he was never very close to any of them. The second was that he never had any true passions, just an interest in “science”.

Eventually, college rolled around, and Val applied himself to the sciences. Naturally. In time, he started dabbling in the weirder realm of science surrounding theoretical physics, metahumans, other dimensions, and everything in between. His papers, theories, and general thoughts on various subjects attracted the attention of Doctor Olai Novak, who worked for a small think-tank of sorts called ROOK in Baltimore.

There they studied other dimensions in particular, and chief among their goals was to develop a way to draw energy from extradimensional sources. That way they could provide near-limitless power for the United States and the rest of Earth (but mostly the US) to utilize. With the promise of becoming a full-fledged member in time, Valentine accepted Doctor Novak's offer to join ROOK as his assistant.

Val worked night and day for the next year and a half before ROOK made a breakthrough. They developed a system, a machine, to bridge dimensions. It seemed reliable at first, and they succeeded in pulling extradimensional energy across the bridge. Things were going well for a while.

But as everyone knows, situations like this never end well.

Something went wrong. Exactly what happened is unknown, whether it was a fault of the machine, the bridge itself, or the dimensions they were tapping into, but the bridging process suffered a catastrophic failure. And it really was catastrophic. Almost every single member of ROOK was there when the tear in space expanded and...well, that's where things get fuzzy. The accident happened so fast, so suddenly, so violently, there wasn't really any time to think.

The only thing Valentine knew for certain was that he was fearing for his life in the facility one moment, then fearing for his life in a completely alien environment. And it didn't stop. He didn't stop moving, shifting, sliding through strange, beautiful, and horrific places. He saw things that made him weep in joy, scream in terror, and convulse from sheer oddness. It was awesome, in the truest sense of the word.

So many eternities passed before something snagged him out of the ether and kept him firmly in place. Val was grateful at first, but he quickly came to realize just how bad of a situation he was in. The entity that had caught him was inhumanly beautiful, so much so that it hit the uncanny valley hard. The creature of the Fae Realm kept him there as a...pet. A possession. An interesting thing.

Valentine's memories of that time, the ones that remained at least, are unpleasant to say the least. Alien minds breed alien moralities and thought processes, and for so long the lost human tried to find a way to escape, to leave and return to his own home.

But this was his new home, now. He ought not leave. It was dangerous out there. He should just...stay here. Forever. Wouldn't that be lovely?

Yet, somehow, miraculously, Valentine managed to tear himself free and start the journey back to Earth, albeit not without some...lingering aftereffects of his time spent in the realm of the Fae. But that didn't matter, he was free!

Struggling as hard as he could against the fact that he'd become unstuck in dimensions, Val concentrated and prayed and concentrated some more until he happened upon the material world again, in the same facility that ROOK had been experimenting in. But something was still wrong. His body, his entire self, was still unstable and prone to sliding to nearby dimensions at the slightest provocation. Val managed to keep himself more or less in the same vicinity as the material world.

In the now-abandoned facility, Valentine began the agonizing process of cobbling together something that could stabilize himself. It was a tricky process, as a tool or part could suddenly slip through his now-intangible hand at the worst time, but soon his efforts paid off. Pieces from the bridging machine had been used to make a trio of small-ish pylons that, when active, stabilized his presence in the material plane.

From the stabilization triangle, Val started to miniaturize the machinery so he could be properly mobile. That didn't take too long, and after the rig had been attached, he took a short jaunt around the facility to grab some discarded clothes and check up on current events. Although it didn't really surprise him, Valentine was nonetheless frustrated to learn that seventeen years had passed since the bridging experiment had gone awry. Truth be told, it felt much longer to him--and may have actually been longer, what with time in other dimensions--but to think that he'd lost almost two decades...?

...And then he realized that he was really hungry. Without further ado, Valentine sped off to snag some snacks and drink for himself.

That was two weeks ago. Since then, Valentine has been figuring what exactly he can do after the Fae Realm left its mark on him, and the little experimental escapades have simply been a blast. Who knew having superpowers would be so cool?

Still, he's had to balance his newfound Fae-like urges and whims with his more...human morality and desires. It hasn't been easy, and it is only likely to get harder.

In that case, he might as well enjoy the ride while he could.



Powers

Power 1: Unstuck in Dimensions. As a result of an experiment in bridging dimensions gone wrong, Val was ripped from the material plane and set adrift in a wider universe. Normally, the effects would make him shift and phase in and out of various dimensions, never staying on one for very long. If he concentrates, he can remain on a certain plane (or overlapping series of planes) for a length of time, but even that is just temporary. However, with the help of the stabilization rig, he can anchor himself on a single plane for an indefinite period of time as long as the rig functions. That being said, Val has figured out how to change the anchor point to one of the dimensions that overlays the material world, akin to an Ethereal Plane. When he shifts to that state, movement and location is more governed by will and thought. To put it simply, he can become intangible and pass through solid objects, and can turn invisible in the process if he wishes. While in the overlapping dimension(s), the laws of physics aren't quite as...concrete, and so he can jump far distances, levitate, and occasionally glide; that being said, even if it's faster than what a mundane person could normally accomplish, he can move a hell of a lot faster in the material world. Although it's a very rudimentary process at the moment, with time and more advanced tools, Val will be able to more fully explore what he is capable of. During the shift, Val is capable of bringing everything he's wearing plus a couple hundred pounds of extra nonliving materials with him, but he's unable to do the same with another person. [One post duration max, one post cooldown.]

Power 2: Inhuman Swiftness. The first of a few different boons granted by his stay in the Fae Realm, Valentine possesses super speed. While he doesn't know the upper limits to his speed, he has thus far clocked in at a range of a few hundred miles per hour, which feels like a light jog for him. In actuality, right now Val is capable of going much, much faster--somewhere in the realm of Mach 4, or maybe even Mach 5. Naturally, he possesses a reaction speed to match and some sort of supernatural effect that somehow takes care of the more negative aspects of friction, wind resistance, potential sonic booms, and the like; he wouldn't reduce his hand to a fine paste if he punched something at superspeed, for instance, though it would sting a bit more than an average punch.

Power 3: Enhanced Durability. While his skin, muscles, and bones aren't indestructible, Valentine is superhumanly tough and resilient. He can easily take a punch or several, or even tank strikes from a bat, but something like an armor-piercing bullet would definitely injure him if it hit, even if it wouldn't inflict quite as much damage to him as it would to a normal human.

Power 4: Enhanced Fortitude. Although he doesn't have boundless vigor, Val's stamina and energy levels are practically overflowing, allowing him to keep going for a few days at a time provided he has a brief rest every now and then. He heals faster than a normal human, but not at a rate that would be useful in combat. He can go without sustenance far less often than normal humans, on average able to go about a week bereft of water before the negative effects start to kick in; obviously, if he has a very strenuous week, he would need sustenance more often. Additionally, his body's physiology allows him to resist and eliminate most mundane diseases and toxins relatively easily, though something made or enhanced via advanced tech or magic would affect him more normally.

Power 4: Enhanced Strength. It won't win him any strength contests in the metahuman world, but Valentine possesses enough strength to overpower even the strongest unaugmented human. At his max, he estimates that he is able to lift a ton, or maybe even two, at full exertion.

Power 5: Bizarre Mind. The things Valentine has seen, the events he has experienced, the otherworldly places and beings he has encountered... That plus some changes wrought by his time in the Fae Realm have turned his mind into an alien thing relative to the average human. He's still recognizable as human, make no mistake--he's just...different, now. Changed in some ways. Psychics and mind-altering powers/effects are a lot less effective against him. Of course, if someone skilled, very powerful, and/or experienced with the Fae attempts to affect his mind, or an effect has been tailored to him, he won't be able to resist it nearly as well.

Power 6: Minor Fae Magic. Regardless of whether or not it's something he was given, stole, or learned in the Fae Realm, he possesses some minor magic of his own originating from that place. For the most part, he can only use rudimentary glamours and illusions, but maybe in time he can figure out how to do more. As of right now, he can change his appearance (but not his height or weight to any large degree), make a small item invisible, create a dazzling sequence of flashing lights to partially blind someone, create small images, throw his voice, and assist any sleight-of-hand tricks he might wish to do with some minor illusions. He can only focus on one or two spells at a time, and the illusions/glamours are fairly easy to see past to someone with keen senses, good deductive abilities, or something similar that would allow them to pierce illusions in some way.



Weaknesses

Weakness 1: Cold Iron. The Fae boons he possesses hardly come without a price. Normal iron irritates his skin and prolonged contact causes a rash, but the real killer is true, legitimate Cold Iron. While he's not a true Fae, and thus not as vulnerable to true Cold Iron as at least some of them are, it cuts right through his superhuman durability as if it were tissue paper. Even mere proximity is enough to agitate and pain him; not even wearing mundane gloves helps if he were to try holding an item forged from it.

Weakness 2: Other Anti-Fae Countermeasures. Any item, spell, or weapon made/enchanted to harm, repel, or do whatever to a Fae has a marked effect on Valentine as well. Certainly not to the same degree as if he were a true Fae, but it affects him all the same.

Weakness 3: Stabilization Rig. The rig allows him to anchor to a specific dimension as long as it's active, and fortunately it has power cells that last a long while. However, if it ceases to function for whatever reason, Valentine will start to flicker and shift between dimensions again until he or someone else is able to find a new way to stabilize him.

Weakness 4: Slower when intangible. Although he has prodigious super speed on Earth, the same cannot be said for the overlaying dimension(s) he moves through while “phasing/intangible”. Yes, given the unusual physics, he can pass through objects, jump long distances, glide, and rarely fly, but all of those are far inferior to his super speed.

Weakness 5: Susceptible to multidimensional effects. Even while “phasing/intangible”, if an attack or effect is able to alter or affect the overlaying dimension(s) that Val is moving through, he can still be affected and possibly harmed by it.

Weakness 6: Vulnerable in the overlayed dimension. Being in the dimension(s) that overlay the material world allows him to turn intangible and essentially negate most attacks and blows, but if someone or something is able to follow or is waiting for him in the overlapping dimension, he's even more vulnerable there than he is on the material world, thanks in part to the fact that his superspeed doesn't exactly function in there.

Weakness 7: Low attention span. Or a sort of attention deficit disorder. While he can usually focus on something if it interests him, even if he's sitting or standing still at the time, doing nothing or something he considers boring is just...painfully exasperating. He always has to be doing something interesting and worthy of his time, and if he goes a few minutes in a boring situation, he starts going stir-crazy. It begins with fiddling and fidgeting, but given enough time, he could explode into a frenzied mess of action, even if it's just for a run or fifty around the block.

Weakness 8: Kleptomania. Ooh, shiny. Granted, Val isn't the worst in this regard, but he does have a compulsion to steal things every now and then. He can hold himself back for a time, but that just makes him antsy and agitated. Plus, there's always the times where he just absentmindedly takes something and only later realizes it.

Weakness 9: Claustrophobia. A normal room wouldn't cause a problem, and he can stand a roomy car for a short time if he wants, but Val hates being confined, either in a small space, in cuffs, in a straightjacket, you name it. Freedom and range of movement is crucial to his very existence, or so it feels.

Weakness 10: Mischievousness. Similar to a trickster, Valentine has a love for amusing himself. Whether it's wasting time messing with the bad guys, teasing the good guys, or just generally being a gadfly, he's usually an irritation to someone.

Weakness 11: Inability to lie. Pretty much what it says on the box. For some reason, Val is unable to outright lie for whatever reason. Lies of omission or clever wording are perfectly fair game and can allow him to circumvent this problem, however.

Weakness 12: Tricky Phrasing. As a fan of doublespeak, innuendo, vague and ambiguous wording, and the like, Val enjoys dancing around the subject, often to his conversation partner's chagrin. It comes in handy if he's in a situation where he needs to deceive but is unable to outright lie. That being said, if the situation is dire, he's able and willing to be more direct and forthcoming.

Weakness 13: His Word is his Bond. Whenever Val makes a promise, he's obligated to follow through, even if it turns out to be a mistake for him later on.

Weakness 14: Hunted. Who, what, or why is unknown thus far, but there is someone or something hunting Valentine. He doesn't know it yet, but he will soon. Very soon.



RP Fluff

Mechanic 1: Dimensional Retreat. Val built a failsafe into the stabilization rig that, when activated, shifts him to a distant demiplane. He can reach it normally without the rig, but that takes more time. Once there, the demiplane-- filled to the brim with more...positive, life-giving energy-- heals his wounds, even if he's on the brink of death. However, time is...sort of fuzzy here, so a few minutes or hours could end up being days or weeks on Earth. Hopefully he won't come across the day where he actually goes back in time because of it. [This is a method to remove Val from a given thread. He can then return in a later thread.]



Items

The two items of note are his helmet and the stabilization rig.

Item 1: The helmet was developed by ROOK to be used while testing possibly-volatile extradimensional energy. It's intended purpose is for protection and shielding the eyes from harmful light while still providing an unobstructed field of view. Overall, it's fairly comfy.

Item 2: The stabilization rig was jury-rigged by Valentine as a solution to his “unstuck in dimensions” problem. Its current iteration is a bulky breastplate-like device that attaches to his upper torso. It has a haphazard, incomplete appearance, but it keeps him anchored in a given dimension fairly reliably. That being said, if someone is able to damage or disrupt its effects, Valentine would be forced back into an unstuck state.



RP Sample:

“Hmmm...” Valentine's foot tapped a mile a minute (almost literally) as he perused the sweets section of the convenience store.

Snickers?

Or cinnamon rolls?

Snickers...or cinnamon rolls...

“...Why not both?” He grinned and reached for one of each.

Bang! “I said on the floor, asshole!”

Valentine stuffed the candy bar and pack of rolls into his overcoat's pockets, only absentmindedly turning his head to look at the robbery in progress. A guy wearing a skewed ski mask and holding a pistol of some kind stood in front of the cash register and had the gun pointed at Val. A dufflebag, already holding several drinks, food items, and magazines had been set on the counter, apparently for the cashier to fill with cash.

Unfortunate for the gunman that the register only held a couple hundred at a time.

“Alright, alright.” Val rolled his eyes and laid face-first on the ground.

Still aiming the gun at him, the gunman looked at the cashier. “Everything! All you have!”

“Th-that is all I have,” said the cashier in a quavering voice. “I-”

Val sighed and glanced around at the security cameras. Those first.

The world slowed to a crawl as he stood, stretched, and yawned. Val leisurely strode over to the nearest camera and disconnected it. The others quickly followed, and he went into the restroom to stash his overcoat. The matte grey stabilization rig on his torso was still very much active, and he intended to make the most of it.

Upon exiting the restroom, he headed over to grab a plastic bag. After making a couple holes in it, the thing would serve as a makeshift mask. Finally, he ended his little jaunt right next to the gunman. Oh, the possibilities...~

First, the gunman's ski mask vanished. “What the-?!” The bewildered robber brandished his gun wildly as he looked around, and the poor cashier backed up all the way against the wall with his hands held high in the air. “What the fuck did you do?! A-and where's that other-”

Second, the coat and shirt. This time their removal stung, making the robber hiss in pain. “Son of a bitch!” A sly, mischievous giggle caught his attention, and he looked up at the source.

Valentine came to a stop in the direction opposite the cashier and activated the stabilization rig, shifting him into an overlapping dimension. The world took on a familiar blurry, fuzzy edge to it, and overall the colors were duller than on the material plane.

The gunman paused and stared at the admittedly bizarre sight of a man standing a few meters away, wearing a weird thing on his torso and a plastic bag of all things on his head. His hesitation only lasted a second, and he opened fire on Valentine. Even when he emptied the entire mag into the Incredible Bagman, all the bullets passed right through his body and broke the glass doors in the freezer section behind him.

Val looked down at his chest, looked back up at the gunman, and lifted both hands and shrugged in a 'What can you do?' gesture.

Frantically, the gunman began to reload his pistol, but by then Val had vanished again.

The robber yelped when his shoes vanished beneath his feet, causing him to stumble--for some reason, he'd kept his socks. And last, but finally not least, his pants vanished entirely, revealing his white briefs.

Val had to pause to cackle behind one of the shelves where the gunman couldn't see him. “Tighty whities? How very vanilla.”

The gunman got off two wild shots before Valentine walked out from behind cover at high speeds and skipped over to him. He disassembled the gun before the third shot could be fire and popped all the bullets out of the magazine. One was stuffed up each of the robber's nostrils, one went in each of his ears, and the rest were stuffed into one of his cheeks like a squirrel or chipmunk.

He crossed his arms and tilted his head as he appraised his handiwork. And then an idea struck him. Quickly, he opened the man's mouth, pulled one of the bullets out of it, shut his mouth, and fiddled a little with the man's hair. Val licked his hand, curled a lock of the robber's hair around the bullet and made sure it was set nicely atop his head.

Valentine tilted his head. “Mm.” He smirked beneath the bag mask. It looked stupid, which meant it worked.

Now...the setup. He grabbed one of the drinks, cracked it open, took a sip, then spilled it all on the floor in front of the robber. Two more of the man's drinks suffered the same fate.

And then, it was showtime.

“Gahk!” The gunman watched his gun fall apart in his hand, and he desperately spat the bullets out of his mouth. Suddenly, he spun around in a full 180 to face the cashier, who'd frozen in place and was just staring at the scene. The robber's arms pinwheeled as he tried to regain his balance.

That was when Val reappeared between the gunman and the cashier. He snickered, lifted, a hand, and poked at gunman's chest.

The results were even more spectacular than he'd hoped for.

The robber staggered back, one foot stepping on the section of the floor that the drinks had been spilled on. The smooth floor made slick by the liquid combined with the robber's soft, slippery sock resulted in a slide, which sent the gunman tumbling to the floor and crashing into a shelf. The impact knocked several items off it, and the boxes and packs showered onto the groaning gunman.

Now, for the aftermath.

Val took the gunman's belt and tied his hands behind his back with it, even making sure to punch a hole through the leather where there wasn't one. The ski mask he retrieved and pulled on backwards so the gunman couldn't see, and the shirt he made into a makeshift rope to tie the man's ankles together.

With that, he rose to his feet, dusted his hands off, and turned to give the cashier a lazy two-fingered salute and parting giggle.

And then he was gone.

A few more drinks and food items, as well as a little bit of cash, had been spirited away from inside the dufflebag. And a couple other choice items here and there from other parts of the store. Plus the cash from inside the robber's wallet.

It had been a fun outing, all in all.

The only issue I have with this is the Fae magic and how loosely you've listed it. If you agree to use it as a plot device only, or even put it into an RP mechanic, considering he doesn't use it for anything outside of glamour and illusions, I can approve this.

Okay. So long as he can only do what is listed, he's good.

I like the limitations on his physical strength and speed.

approved n moved.