Player Nickname: Jeem
Name: Gregory Delfino
Codename: Helios
Age: 32
Date of Birth: February 21
Height: 5'11
Weight: 160 lbs
Hair Color: Dirty blonde (natural black)
Eye Color: Brown
Place of Origin: Greece (born), Salem (raised)
Nationality/Race: Greek American
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutation
Status: Fugitive
Occupation: Engineer
Personality Profile: Gregory is socially awkward, not to a crippling degree, but often has a tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time, typically despite a well-meaning intention. While a brilliant engineer, Gregory is typically self-deprecating and has inferiority issues. Greg is violently possessive of the HELIOS MkIV armor he has absconded with (likely due to his growing biological attachment to the armor). He has been described as 'twitchy' by his peers on occasion.
Physical Description:
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Power: Battery Charge
Gregory generates near-immeasurable amounts of energy, most akin to a 100% clean form of fusion. When Gregory touches - with any part of his body - an electronic device that is unplugged, lacking batteries, using dead batteries, etcetera, it will have sufficient charge to work for the duration of his contact with the device. When he releases his hold, the device will cease to operate again within minutes, or less, but there is always a period of lag before this occurs.
If he touches another human being, there is no real noticeable effect, aside from when he is swamped with energy (see Drawbacks below)
Gregory is incapable of overcharging/overloading electronics. His mutant ability can only power them enough to function.
Gregory is, to a degree, resistant to light electrical and energy based attacks - while he would feel pain from being struck by an electrokinetic's powers (there is no true 'resistance' in this case, it would hurt as bad as anyone else being struck) he would not be outwardly injured, as his body would absorb a degree of the power. Again, this is only minor levels of these powers. Higher strength levels of lightning, energy beams, etcetera would still inflict significant damage to his body properly.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
Gregory's use over the past few years of the HELIOS armor, which has a specially designed interface that allows a cleaner transfer of power between him and the suit's systems, has acclimated his body to this transfer. In very raw terms, the constant use of his mutant powers have been like training a muscle, and Gregory can manifest larger and larger amounts of energy. The downside to this is that Gregory is still unable to 'discharge' said energy like some mutants can - he is completely reliant on powering machinery to bleed off the excess energy.
As time goes on without powering some of sort electronic device that doesn't require vast amounts of energy to function, Gregory's 'charge' increases to greater and greater levels, resulting in sickness. It begins with a headache, and grows to dull aches in his joints, with insomnia, lack of appetite, and other such symptoms of malaise. Gregory himself has theorized that if he were to let himself 'reach critical mass' he would explode, though he has never allowed the overload to progress past the point of sickness as of yet.
When he is becoming overloaded, he generates an ever increasing level of static electricity - touching someone could result in a slightly painful shock, akin to shuffling around on carpet and then touching a metal door knob. This has never done significant damage to anybody, but could simply be unpleasant. Electronics with audio output gain a bit of static/interference as the charge continues building.
As stated above, the only way to reverse these symptoms is to power electronics and discharge the energy, but as time goes on, he needs to power more and more electronics at once, or larger devices that require a greater input of energy. The safest and easiest way for Gregory to bleed off his excess charge is to power the HELIOS armor... unfortunately, this exacerbates the underlying cause of the overload in the first place. It may reach a point where HELIOS will not be enough to contain his abilities, but for the time being, as long as he uses the armor regularly, he and the people around him are safe.
Projected Power Growth & Development:
Gregory may learn to discharge his power build up on his own, relieving himself of the physical need of using the HELIOS armor. Similarly, his resistance to electrical and purer forms of energy may increase, possibly with a higher absorption rate (to be used in tandem with an evolved ability to drain himself of his energy buildup).
Skills:
Gregory is a multi-talented engineer and mechanic, previously working on aeronautic systems for the Air Force before being hired by Orion Industries. He is similarly skilled with computer systems.
Background:
Gregory was born in Greece, but his parents moved to Salem during the city's big boom in the 1980s, his father starting a restaurant and his mother opening a cleaning service with his two sisters. From birth, Greg had a propensity towards things of a mechanical nature, building complex designs out of Erector sets and the like, winning school science fairs multiple years in a row, and so forth. When he was 14 his father got him a job working with a neighborhood mechanic, and within a year the gangly teen had gained a reputation for being almost as good as the older mechanic who ran the business.
Greg was never particularly satisfied with automotive work, as a profession. It always felt like more of a hobby, like he wasn't working to his full potential. Since he was little, he'd been enthralled with the idea of piloting an air plane, joining the likes of the Blue Angels and other prestigious flight groups. The day he turned 18, he signed up for the United States Air Force. He thought he'd be piloting F-15s within a year, flying the friendly (or unfriendly) skies as a fighter ace, his childhood dream.
He was a touch off the mark.
Boot camp was brutal on the unathletic young man, Greg nearly washing out any number of times. Often sick, nervous, and generally unwell, the first months spent in basic training were some of the worst of Greg's life. Not being the best people person, he had trouble bonding with many (or any) Of his fellow bunkmates, and lived a lonely life for his first months as an airman. Things became a bit better for Greg when he hit the Academy, showing a near savant-like propensity towards the mechanics and the physics of aeronautical engineering. Gregory could lecture you on the dynamics of flying a jet... but when it came down to doing the actual piloting, Gregory fell short. His first landing nearly resulted in his death, and the destruction of a billion dollar piece of equipment.
It wasn't entirely his fault, however. His mutant ability activated for the first time (Greg actually suspects his ability to power electronics activated at that moment, but his gradual power build up had been generating for years prior, explaining his general illness leading up to that moment, given the symptoms he would show later on) and overloaded and cut out various systems on the fighter. As he was careening wildly for the air field, his ability to power electronics must have kicked in, and he was able to wrestle the vehicle into a crude, nearly deadly landing.
Greg wouldn't fly again, but he went on to graduate at the top of his class with a great understanding of engineering and physics, and was hired to work on experimental flight systems at the Arnold Engineering Development Center at Arnold AFB in Tullahoma, Tennessee.
With the MTF in full-swing at the time, Gregory was of course identified as a mutant, but due to his valuability as an engineer, his superiors felt it was worthwhile to keep this under wraps, and allow him to stay on at Arnold. He spent a few years working for the Air Force, greatly beneficial in helping to design various systems now used in unmanned drones, along with general advancements in fighter jet technology. Hardly an intellectual superstar, while he was brilliant in his field, so were the hundreds of others working in USAF R&D. Gregory lived life quietly, and mostly contently.
During a chance meeting between his research group and a group from Orion Industries (at the time a major ally of the MTF and private contractor for the DoD), he exhibited interest in their HELIOS (Hazardous Environment and Labor Intensive Operations System) Program. When Tony Stark outted himself as Iron Man, and the powered armor craze struck the world, Gregory was bitten by the bug. HELIOS, a program inspired by the Iron Man suit, was intended to become a mass-marketable construction/heavy lifting armor, with the intent of it running on a highly green energy source. It was the opportunity of a lifetime, and his pestering and constant inquiries of the development team visiting from Orion proved worthwhile. A month before he was to decide whether he would be reupping with the USAF, Orion Industries offered him a job - a position in the HELIOS Program. Needless to say, he took it, and moved (with ease, having no personal life outside of work) to Orion's New York Research Center.
Gregory was important to Orion, but not in the manner he believed. During his first year or two with Orion, higher ups in the organization became keenly aware of his mutant abilities. While he did help make breakthroughs with the HELIOS armor, Orion was intent on studying the clean, nearly limitless power that the young mutant produced, resulting in almost as much testing and monitoring of Gregory as the HELIOS armor itself.
When the MTF became META once more, META broke its ties with Orion, resulting in the company withdrawing into itself, beginning to practice shadier forms of business, research, and science. Gregory and the HELIOS team had designed the Mark IV armor, and it was an important step for the mutant - he was to be the sole power source of the armor, as it was believed his unique form of energy would be the key to the success of the armor. It gave off a particular residual 'clean' photonic radiation that was key in the creation of the experimental Hard Light system of th HELIOS. If they were able to make the armor function perfectly with his internal energy, all they would need to do would be to reproduce it, which would, of course, require more extensive research on Gregory's abilities... and it was implied this would happen with or without Gregory's cooperation.
Gregory began to be shut out from design and research on the suit, quickly being relegated to little more than a test pilot and a living battery. He wasn't the only one - as time went on, more and more of the original group Greg had joined to work on HELIOS were being replaced by more 'faithful' Orion employees. Around the time he realized that his joinings with the suit's power systems were increasing his power output to (personally) dangerous degrees, he discovered Orion planned to weaponize HELIOS. This went against Gregory's entire reason for joining the project, but he'd come to learn Orion was not the paragon of progress paving the way for the future of mankind he'd originally believed, so to speak. If he spoke out about such an important project for the company, he had no means of knowing what they would do to him.
Tragically, Gregory was killed some time later, when a freak accident during a test maneuver of the HELIOS armor resulted in a massive explosion over the Atlantic... or so Orion thought, after Gregory (impulsively and obsessively trying to save himself and HELIOS) engineered an explosive blast that he felt would look and act similar to what would happen if the HELIOS armor were to self-detonate.
Gregory, injured in his escape but flung free of the blast, deactivated the tracking subsystem of HELIOS - Orion will eventually discover there is no wreckage of their prototype to recover, and come after him. He plans to be as far away as he can by then, because, where could he go that he would be safe?
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
- Gregory watches vast amounts of television, and despite his intellect he doesn't very much like to read.
- Greg has joined various gym-membership sponsored martial arts, boxing, mixed martial arts, etcetera classes... typically only making a few sessions before deciding it was too much work (he was sort of bad at all of them).
- Loves spicy foods
- Allergic to strawberries