Beacon (WIP)

Real Name: Marcus McLinn
Hero Name: Beacon
Title: The Smiling Light
Alignment: Chaotic Good
Age: 21
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian, Human
Hair: White, Wavy, Medium
Eyes: Blue/Sparkling
Height: 5'8
Weight: 160
Blood type: A+


That Marcus kid is on the shorter side of average. Softer, boyish features. Nothing too gruff, nothing too heroic. The boy next door. Athletic, the "maybe he played soccer in high school" kinda-looks, but he's no meathead--probably doesn't even lift. The white hair is weird though. Doesn't look dyed. Maybe it's just the light--probably a blond. His eyes are too blue to be albino.

But have you seen that hero Beacon? Man, I swear he takes some time to really get fired up sometimes, but when he does... Wow. It's something special. All that light just rolling off him, but it doesn't hurt the eyes at all; it's so calm and soothing, beautiful really. White and yellow all over him when he's flying and it just makes you feel safe somehow. I've seen the guy take some knocks and he bleeds, sure, but he never stops looking like he was made to stand between us and the bad guys, you know?




Marcus is the cheerful every-day guy. A nurse by night, hero by day, notorious napper by necessity. When's he not knocking out, cheek flush with a hospital cafeteria table, he can be seen flirting, laughing, and having a generally good time with anyone he can wrangle into a conversation.

His real passion is helping people.




Hope Manifestation: Marcus is a conduit for all positive feelings. Love, hope, charity, self-sacrifice, etc. To his great dismay, he can't feed off of his own desire to protect the world. He needs others to believe in him to get the job done. It only works when people can see him, but anyone who's looking at and believing in him/feeling positive emotions can charge him up.

This absorbed emotional energy manifests itself as a calming, beautiful electron field all about the young hero. It's cool and refreshing to gaze upon and grants him flight, durability, and strength proportional to the number of people he's pulling from.


It Hurts: Meta-genes aren't perfect. Sure, he gets stronger and stronger the more emotional energy he taps into, but it's not always pleasant being turned into a miniature sun. Actually, it never is. Marcus generally has to constantly keep up a happy, calm, and reassuring façade to ensure that the people around him feel hopeful and protected enough to give him the juice he needs to keep them safe. However, the whole time he's doing this his body is under constant strain as he's literally torn apart by the pressure of his own accumulated power

This can be somewhat mitigated by releasing more and greater blasts of energy/displays of strength/flying faster. However... eventually he will, in theory, reach critical mass... and Marcus fears this more than anything else, because he has no idea what will happen when he's corporeal form can no longer survive under the burden of the people's belief.

Visual Limitation:
People have to be looking at him, or at least within earshot, for him to absorb their positive energy.

Depleted:
He retains whatever energy he hasn't used. But not only is it painful to constantly keep power stored up, eventually he'll run out... and if there's no one around to watch him... he's done for. A little inconvenient at night, or when you need to get people far from the scene and well out of eyesight just to keep them safe.








Marcus was done for. His hand strained against his battered arm, the untouched spandex of his uniform barely hummed with the faintest glow. The radiation clogged air swirled with contaminated dust particulates; he was hard pressed to remember ever getting himself into a tighter spot.

At least they'd gotten the last citizen outside the city limits with the help of the cavalry.

Many of the people they'd rescued had broken down crying, sobbing, clinging to their loved ones, once they were on the other side of the bay. A nuclear bomb was something unreal. A nightmare unused since a past humanity wanted to forget. Seeing the reality of it... it broke people.

A disgusting weapon, Marcus thought. Disgusting and cruel and wrong. Few things riled his hatred. But even he couldn't hide his horror at the day's events.

He grunted and coughed. Pooled and partially coagulated blood escaped from his mouth. Not the best look, but, oh well, there was no one to watch him now. He'd already pulled in the relief and the love of the survivors. The sheer overwhelming relief at surviving certain death of those they'd managed to save, those who had escaped the first two blasts, had been enough to give him back to the city's center in time. Back before even the fastest of the heroes. The sobbing love of mothers, the sheer selflessness of fathers, themselves beyond horrified, cradling their families in their arms, and the stark determination of the remaining assembled heroes, not all of which had made it through the long morning... it was potent stuff. Strong enough that he'd have closed it all out if Nexus hadn't warned the group that her cybernetic sweep of the city had finally completed... and that it wasn't good.

The other bombs were distractions. Someone had calculated everything. The fastest speedsters were out of the city on various missions. The bomb had been hidden just well enough to obscure itself from Nexus and the others just long enough for their to be no time left. And its kill radius was just far enough, its timer just precise enough, that no one was going to escape the blast. Not the heroes, not the rescued citizens, no one. Whoever had planned this had been a genius. Evil beyond measure, but a genius nonetheless.

But they'd miscalculated. No one had known Marcus was fast enough to reach the bomb. Not even Marcus. He'd likely never move that fast again.

He shuddered forward. So much pain. His skin and clothing were untouched. His legs, arms, hands. and ribs were all shattered, of course. He couldn't even walk. In the same way he flew, his remaining energy field was walking for him--what little there was left of it. Just because he could do something, didn't mean he should. Moving that fast had nearly killed him.

He telepathically willed his force field to elevate his arm. His hand pulsed a beam of light and a fallen chunk of concrete was burned through, forming a perfect Marcus-sized hole through its center. He could see the bomb now, just barely through the toxic fog and the archway he'd created; now that it was approaching critical mass, whatever powered the weapon glowed violently with all  known hues of red.

His energy began to fade. Just a few more steps.

He didn't need his arms anymore. He allowed the glow to dissipate from them. Immediately he felt the stuffiness in the air and the sheer heat produced by the super-nuke and its seemingly alien power source. Nexus had said she didn't know of any human tech capable of creating a bomb that strong.

It would kill everyone.

Once the reaction completed, seconds from now, it'd be all over.

Marcus relented and allowed the glow to fade from his face. The radiation wouldn't kill him right away. He had almost nothing left. He allowed for just enough of his aura to remain to hold his spine straight up and to keep his legs moving.

The bomb was so hot. His skin was burning. He'd never felt a real burn before. He could feel his skin flaking away. So much pain.

Tears began to stream down his flash-dried face. It hurt so much, the kind of pain that couldn't be fought away with bravado or self belief. He wanted to go home, just like everyone else. Angeline was waiting for him. How could he keep her waiting? It would break her.

In the end, though, there was no better reason for his actions than that. What he did, he did for love.

In those final seconds the black silhouette of a man approached a weapon designed to kill millions, as its hell-formed lights flashed and screamed like the sun-forged heart of an angry god. Everything that the man had left was not but a small beacon of glowing, calm light against the storm of hate. But the lone man's beacon was enough and soon it consumed the man, the bomb, and the fiery rage altogether.

It was the hope of the city that saved its people. But it was the will of one hero to see their hopes realized that saved everything.


Application created by Chellizard | This code is open-source and available for free use.