Tracer

Real Name: John Upshaw
Hero Name: Tracer
Title: The Ultimate
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Age: 38
Gender: Male
Race: Metahuman
Hair: Brown
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 220 lbs.
Blood Type: O+






On the surface, John is a charismatic man with simple tastes. An air of chivalry resides about him, materializing through simple acts. One can easily perceive him as a textbook gentleman. One might also learn soon enough that John is a master in the art of deceit, easily being able to pull lies from thin air and roll with them on the spot, as if they were rehearsed.


John is a reserved leader, as charismatic as he may be. He finds he can handle most situations solo, and doesn't necessarily need another person tagging along. He can be very happy alone, enjoying his own thoughts and ideas. As such, this classifies him as an introvert. In his experience, other people aren't always completely dependable, so he generally relies on himself and a few close others. Despite this sense of independence, though, he isn't a close-minded person who makes hasty judgements about others. He knows it isn't easy to walk in other people's shoes.


John's vision of the world is complex - his values aren't set in stone. Instead, he's able to change his beliefs based on new information. At times other people's feelings are puzzling to him, and he wishes that people were more rational. He finds it difficult to understand why some people get so emotional and tell everyone else their problems. His solid grounding in the practicalities of life, along with his self-assuredness and willingness to appreciate new things makes him a leader. He's in touch with what is going on around him and adept at remaining down-to-earth and logical.


Although he's detail-oriented, this doesn't mean that he loses the big picture. He tends to find beauty in form and efficiency, as opposed to finding it in broad-based, abstract concepts. Never one to pass on an adventure, he's consistently seeking and finding new things, even in his immediate surroundings. Because of this eagerness to pursue new experiences, he's learned a lot; his attention to detail means that he gains a great deal from his adventures.


The intellectual curiosity that drives him leads him to seek out causes of and reasons behind things. John's confidence gives him the potential to take his general awareness and channel it into leadership. He's not set on one way of doing things, and he often has the skills and persistence to find innovative ways of facing challenges. He is well-attuned to his talents, and can deal with most problems that he faces. He's not afraid to let his emotions guide him, and he's generally considerate of others' feelings as well.


John was born in San Diego, California to Nathaniel and Jane Upshaw. His father was a mid-level narcotics distributor and, as such, was in and out of prison often, making it difficult for his mother to do little more than stay home and look after her son. At age six, John's parents divorced, though his mother kept his father’s surname up until his death when he was eleven, returning to her maiden surname of Lawrence. John was, naturally, torn up by this series of rather unfortunate events - as well as strongly turned off to narcotics - and went into a mild, bottled-up depression for a few years until high school when his hormones started to level out and he became more sociable.


On August 27th, 1999 (John's seventeenth birthday) he enlisted in the Marine Corps MOS of 0231 Intel Specialist. Three years through his contract with 1st Marine Division, 1st Intel, Counterintelligence/Human Intelligence Company (where he quickly excelled in his job), he picked up the rank of Corporal. He later on went through a screening in order to become a Marine Corps Raider based on high marks from a Chief Warrant Officer Hauberk. He excelled in the two years of training and later on became a top operator with 1st MSOB running multiple missions around the world that still remain highly classified to this day. He went on to be enlisted for a total of thirteen years when he decided to retire as a Gunnery Sergeant and took up work with the Defense Intelligence Agency.


In 2016, after four years worth of operations in the DIA, John led the security convoy for the American ambassador to China. Upon heading back to the embassy, his convoy was ambushed by a group of mercenaries. There were no casualties; however, upon further inspection, the head of their security detail was missing in-action. The mercenary in question had kidnapped John and returned him to their base of operations - a remote cell operating in Tibet. It was broadcast that terrorists had an American operative in captivity and planned to execute him on live television. He was there for four months, held for ransom and interrogated - to no avail. When they grew tired of a futile ransom attempt, they finally attempted to execute him. When the cameras went on and the gun pointed to his head, latent metahuman abilities came forth, allowing John to eliminate his captors. Fashioning a makeshift rescue beacon using their broadcasting technology, he was eventually rescued by SFF (Special Frontier Force) commandos, eventually transferred back into American hands.

Officially overqualified, John traded his career with the DIA for unemploymen before receiving an opportunity to work with a team of DOD-sanctioned prior-military heroes known as Alpha Group. Alpha was on call for the next World War and would be one of the several American superteams to be deployed first. As such, John spent his tenure with Alpha Group training, attending ceremonies, and shows of force. He worked with them for three years until early 2019, he hit his twenty years of service to the nation and opted to retire from military service, officially.

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



Regokinesis: John's abilities are a combination of kinetic and spatial manipulation. This essentially allows him to tweak the kinetic energy of an object in motion, allowing him to redirect it so long as the object itself already has some kinetic energy behind it. Likewise, if the object is at rest, he must impart some kinetic energy from his own body into the object to get it moving.


John's abilities work on both a micro and macro scale, allowing him to operate more surgically (i.e. curve a bullet, give himself tactile telekinesis, force choke, etc.) or a little larger (i.e. lift a bus, redirect wind currents, etc.)


Military Training: John is a seventeen year veteran of the military, both with the United States Marine Corps' MARSOC/Raiders program as well as the Defense Intelligence Agency. As such, he has extended experience with weapons manipulation, as well as hand-to-hand combat. His mindset paired with new-found metahuman abilities also make him an expert with improvising weaponry.


Crafty: On top of his military training, John received advanced training in both tradecraft and fieldcraft, as well as some fairly advanced training in linguistics. John is fluent with English, Spanish, and French, conversational with Albanian, Serbian, Korean, and Mandarin, and recall remnants of Italian and Russian. One 'language' he also has a knack for is body language or 'the art of reading people'. Experience negotiating and interrogating has made him relatively efficient in detecting lies, though he would hardly call himself an expert.

Durability: John is the textbook definition of a glass cannon. He's got all the strength in the world, but none of the durability to back it up. He'd have to sacrifice a portion of the applied strength to make him more durable.


Metaphysical Damage: Any attack not considered physical, John has no real defense against. He has a pretty high level of willpower given his time in the military, and his time in captivity, but anything else will blow right through him.


Magic: As with metaphysical damage, John can't effect any magical attacks as they typically deal with another plane.


Electricity: Having been treated with shock impulses during his time in captivity, John has a somewhat irrational fear of electrocution. He'll jump with static shocks, but a tazer will bring back flashbacks and effect him worse than normal. One could argue it's PTSD, but he'd deny it.


Fame: Having spent seventeen years in the shadows, John values his privacy tremendously. He'd have enemies from his past, old ghosts who'd know him by another name, but once his face was revealed in January of 2016, he lost all virtues of privacy when he was outed to the world as an American intelligence agent. He'd reluctantly embrace fame, but his past will come to haunt him, and he has nowhere to hide.

CRISIS: CRISIS (Composite Reinforced Integrated Skin-layer Isolation System) - Tracer's base suit; a set of Graphene and Regor Plastic-Composite Polymer full body tights with internal Titanium and Carbide Alloy Mesh plates. The suit itself is rated for Level IIIA ballistics (.357, .44 Magnum) while the joints downgrade to Level II ballistics(9x19mm, .357) for increased mobility. The internal plates are rated at Level IV ballistics (.30-06 Armor-Piercing). The KRISIS suit also has internal atmosphere-regulation - allowing it to be worn in multiple environments without discomfort - regulated by an external Central Data Processor Unit on his chest.


Flying Vs (x2): Located on either side of the Central Data Processor Unit, these luminescent boomerangs detach from the unit, allowing them to be used as an extra projectile.

• John has been present in the media since 2016, including news headlines, talk shows interviews, magazine covers, advertisements, even an action figure line.
  
• John has several bounties on his head in the international criminal underground, including one of the few individuals to actually have a bounty in North Korea.
  
  

Seemingly unbreakable concrete walls did little to hold out that harsh, Tibetan cold. His eyes were open, but he couldn't see. Did they have him in some chamber somehow darker than the room he had just been yanked from? John's only relief was that he no longer lay on the ground but, instead, was quickly lifted up and cuffed to a frail wooden chair. He half-wondered if that chair would even hold his weight, but before he could finish the thought, his eyes were opened to a harsh white light by the yanking of a hood. He squinted at the light, but once his eyes focused, his heart sank. He was staring a video camera right in the face. As if on queue, an M9 came up to level at the left side of his head.


"America is out of time, and so are it's soldiers." Four men. One on his left, one behind him, two behind the camera. Only one gun. "After four months of torture, you do not show this man mercy. I will show him mercy, and put him out of his misery." He clicked the hammer back and opened his mouth to continue his mantra, but the words never left.

---

Something John could only describe as sheer will allowed him to break his cuffs and with a grunt of effort, his left hand came up to grip the M9, twisting the barrel away from him. It fired, striking one of the men behind the camera through his shoulder, causing him to scream in pain and fall to the ground. Because his hand hadn't left the slide, it never went back, and another round was never chambered -- dead gun.


The sharp jerking motion shattered the man's wrist to his left, prompting him to scream out, but as he staggered back to grip his hand, the man from behind came up to get John in a chokehold, the second man from behind the camera rushing to assist, shouting something inaudible through the sounds of John bringing his foot back through one of the legs of his chair to effectively force him to bring his weight down on the man behind him, who lost his grip and allowed John to get free.


As he rose, that second man still pressed on, prompting him to bring his left arm up to block a right hook, before sending a jaw-breaking right hook his way, followed by a swift kick to the inside of the man's right knee, fracturing his leg and neutralizing him.


By that time the man had gotten off the ground, but John racked the slide back, allowing the gun's function to return to normal, before firing several shots into the man's torso, bringing him down as well. Two more shots for the man still reeling from his broken wrist, and he was done. Gasping, he immediately rushed over to the camera - still broadcasting - to cut the feed and attempt a makeshift radio beacon. He was getting out of there -- today.