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〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: David Alleyne
CHARACTER AGE: 20
SERIES: Marvel-616
CHRONOLOGY: After Young Avengers #15
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Random!
BACKGROUND: a summary is available on the marvel wikia
David was born in Chicago, IL. For most of his life, he seemed like a normal, if bookish, kid. He lived with his parents and little sister, and despite being a high school sophomore, was taking as many classes as he could at the University of Chicago. Everyone he knew just considered him an overachiever. His powers to mimic skills and knowledge of those around him had helped him excel academically, but he would spend twice as much time studying to ensure he actually understood the answers he provided, as the knowledge would leave him the moment he was out of range. That he was a mutant was mostly a secret, until Dani Moonstar came to recruit him to the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, having been introduced by her friend Xi'an Coy Manh, who worked at the university library that David frequented. He was reluctant at first, until the mutant hate group Purity outed him, and left with the blessing of his family.
Shortly after enrolling, he was at an outing in New York City with Dani's other students, Sofia Mantegna, Laurie Collins, and Kevin Ford, when they were attacked by a group of Reavers led by Donald Pierce, an anti-mutant cyborg. Among this group was Josh Foley, an emerging mutant Dani and Xi'an had come to the city to recruit. As Josh was only discovering his powers, he was unaware of being a mutant during the confrontation, but had healed Laurie from a stab wound she suffered at the hands of Pierce. Having been thrown out by his parents, he eventually took Dani's offer to join and was assigned to be David's roommate. The two had a cold relationship at first, as David had no patience for Josh's bigotry against mutants, but they slowly became friends over time, to the point that David regarded him as a brother. The team also took in Noriko Ashida, a homeless mutant who David took an instant interest in.
When the students were given the choice of which teacher would be their advisor, Dani's students all selected her, David included. They formed a squad called the New Mutants, and David was given the codename Prodigy, and customized his costume with a visor that connected to the Institute's computer database, as well as a really unfortunate white duster. Seriously, it was awful. While he was recommended to be team leader, he declined the position, not being comfortable with the idea of being groomed for the X-Men, as he felt he could improve the world in much better ways than being a superhero would allow him. Instead, he suggested Sofia take the role as she was more personable, but she didn't have the focus to guide the team on the field. Ultimately, they compromised and decided to be co-leaders, David supplying the tactics during exercises while Sofia was the guidance that held them together off of it. Around this time, Jay Guthrie joined their squad, swapping with Kevin, who went to their rivals, the Hellions.
Some time after, David went to Emma Frost to inquire on the temporary nature of his powers, and she found that he had mental blocks present that prevented him from retaining any of the knowledge his powers granted him. Combining her own telepathy with Dani's abilities to project illusions based on the target's fear, they created a vision for David of what would happen if those blocks were lifted. In his vision, after growing more emotionally distant from his friends as his intellect expanded, he left the school, starting his own business to create cures for every known disease using Josh's DNA, an experiment that resulted in Josh's death. Years later, after he had been elected president, the squad has to come together again to stop him from launching nuclear missiles on China to achieve world peace. After he killed Dani and the X-Men, his wife Nori took matters into her own hands by overloading her electric powers, blowing up the White House and killing them both. Basically the epitome of "that escalated quickly."
Obviously, David decided to leave the mental blocks in place, but the whole vision left him a little shaken and weird with the rest of the squad, Nori especially. Adding to a lot of other drama the rest of the team was going through, things between them all got a bit strained, even after still showing they were capable of teamwork by taking down the Blob during an attack on the school's prizewinning ceremony. When David and Nori both requested to be reassigned, Sofia made a last ditch effort to get them all back together with a team camping trip. It didn't go well at first, with everyone arguing and Josh giving David a well-deserved punch in the face, but they eventually all kissed and made up. More literally with David and Nori, as she told him to get over himself, that aside from his vision not being real, his reaction wasn't a decision he should have made for her. They started dating.
And then M-Day happened. The Scarlet Witch wished "mutants no more" and all but 198 were depowered, among them David and Sofia. The school, of course, was thrown into chaos, with most of the student body suddenly losing their mutations, and many of them were sent away for their own safety. Sofia returned to Venezuela. The Purifiers, another anti-mutant group (there are really a lot of those in the Marvel universe), took advantage of the school's vulnerability by attacking the outgoing buses, killing 42 former students. Jay was manipulated into having his wings cut off by the leader of the Purifiers, Reverend William Stryker, before getting shot dead. Laurie got hit by a sniper's bullet so she wouldn't interfere with Stryker's plans. It wasn't a pretty time. David had declined his chance to get out and attend Harvard University, deciding that the best place for him was the school, even without powers. He built a Danger Cave to mirror the Danger Room the X-Men use, though it wasn't really much of a contribution, as it never got mentioned again after two issues.
But despite being taken off any active squad, David was still around with the other students, and used what skills he had learned on his own to help them. He protected the psychic Stepford Cuckoos from Stryker's men when they attacked the school, he was with the team when they confronted Nimrod, an invincible killer robot from the future, and when they were dragged by the demon Belasco into hell, he recognized his weakness to telepathy. Of course, this was after Belasco tore his heart out of his chest and Josh had to grow him a new one before he suffered brain damage. Nori wasn't happy with that one after it was all settled. The two were really all the other had left with how tumultuous everything had gotten, and she resolved that she'd rather have him hate her than see him hurt. So, she tried to scare David off by pretending to be in love with their teammate, Julian Keller, instead. Julian also wasn't happy with it.
Afterwards, David packed up to leave when the Cuckoos made him an offer. The mental blocks Emma mentioned before didn't simply prevent him from retaining any skills and knowledge he might absorb with his powers, they also locked away any that he already had. They didn't make his memory a sieve so much as a dam. He was hesitant at first, even though the vision had been a long time ago, but he still wanted to stay without being a liability, and agreed. Surprisingly, he did not immediately or eventually becoming an evil mastermind. After getting in a fight with Julian and taking him down with some Krav Maga moves he remembered off of Wolverine and Shadowcat, he broke up with Nori, all the while assuring her that he wasn't going anywhere, that it wasn't her decision to make for him.
Afterwards, he was made a substitute teacher at the Institute, and spent much of his time providing backup to Beast in the lab or the medical bay. After Cerebra, the X-Men mutant tracking device, was destroyed after the first mutant baby since M-Day was born, David was the one who repaired it to assist the Cuckoos in coordinating the various X-teams. Soon after, when the X-Men moved to San Francisco, he assisted Beast with installing it at Graymalkin Center. Though he was never really involved with X-Club, he was on-call for operational assistance and any other areas his skills might require throughout the period, extending through their move offshore to Utopia. Which means he didn't really appear much onpage but in background scenes like that.
When The Mutant History Museum opened in San Francisco, the X-Men were invited to participate. At the exhibit on William Stryker, David shared his feelings with teammate Idie Okonkwo on the events following M-Day and the impact they had on mutant history. When Utopia was attacked by the Hellfire Club, he joined in the fighting, and decided to stay on Utopia while many of the other students left with Wolverine to rebuild the school, but not before getting into an argument with Julian, telling him that they can't pretend to be children anymore. He was made head of Utopia's Youth Division and participated in Dazzler's streat team.
But all the while, Utopia's reputation only grew more tenuous due to the directives of its leader, Cyclops, until finally the Phoenix returned to Earth and the X-Men and Avengers fought over who would claim or contain it. David and the other students were sent to Avengers Academy in Los Angeles during the fighting. The X-Men did ultimately claim the Phoenix Force, split between five of their members, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus, and Magik, and used its unfathomable power to reshape the world as they saw fit, but it only lasted so long, between the efforts of the Avengers to stop them and their own infighting, and the Phoenix was expelled from them as they were taken into custody. Utopia collapsed, and David found himself without a home or job, and with a record of association with terrorists.
He opted not to return to the Jean Grey School, built in Westchester in the place of the Xavier Institute, feeling lied to and manipulated by the X-Men. Even if the school wasn't Cyclops' army, he still didn't trust them in the aftermath of the Phoenix. Instead, he ended up at an agency that employed superhumans for menial work, as he couldn't get work anywhere else. His boundless knowledge was put to use consulting for various superhuman situations...as a call center agent, super tech support. Ninjas were particularly annoying to give advice to. After working there for some time, he met Tommy Shepherd, formerly Speed from the Young Avengers, using his superspeed to work production at the same agency. They had noodles and coffee and became friends, or at least friends enough that when a thief showed up in the warehouse wearing the uniform of Tommy's former teammate, Patriot, he dragged David along to help investigate. Friends enough that when the Patri-Not turned out to be some kind of cosmic horror thing that sucked Tommy into another dimension, David went to track down his brother Billy to get him back.
After joining up with the Young Avengers, the group chased the Patri-Not through various "mayfly" dimensions, doomed timelines never meant to be that could never last, many like nightmares given their own reality. Others were okay. They did this for over five weeks without ever catching him, until he led them to the home dimension of the Mother parasite. A few months before David joined them, Mother was an enemy they'd encountered when Billy tried to resurrect his boyfriend's mother in the aftermath of a disagreement, pulling her from a timeline just before she died. Because that's how you resolve your relationship problems when you're an irresponsible young reality warper. Unfortunately, the woman he brought back wasn't Mrs. Altman at all, but the Mother in disguise, and she used her influence to turn all adults in New York against them, leading the Young Avengers to go out on the lam. It was all Loki's fault, of course, but that's what happens when you let a trickster god bring your team together. Either way, showing up on her doorstep wasn't an especially auspicious turn of events, so they tried to make a quick exit, but the portal closed before David or Teddy could get through.
While Mother was holding Teddy in her tentacles, still looking like his mom, David faked her out by pretending to know magic, a bluff that got her to panic just enough that they could make a run for it. Hiding out in Mother's dimension, with the very real possibility that they wouldn't escape, Teddy resolved that if they were going to die, they'd die fighting, no regrets. David couldn't say the same, so...he kissed him. Whoops. Teddy, aside from being very taken, was confused, and David embarrassed. He explained that after the Cuckoos opened up his head, he had a lot of facets to him that weren't really clear to him before, that left a lot of room for self-reflection. He realized he was bisexual, but never really got the chance to practice it since he was busy being stuck in one of the harshest periods in X-Men history. He'd been nursing a bit of a crush over his time with the Young Avengers. It obviously won't go anywhere between them, but Teddy and Billy's relationship is in a bit of a rough patch, so David recommended he got some space to clear his head. After the rest of the team made it back to save them by dragging a load of enemies from the mayfly dimensions behind them to distract Mother, that's exactly what Teddy did, and took a leave from the team.
Unfortunately, Teddy's therapist, Leah of Hel, turned out to be a member of a League of Evil Exes, made up of spurned lovers (mostly Noh-Varr's) from various members of the Young Avengers. When she tried to recruit Teddy and he declined, she told his Mother, who kidnapped him and made him into a chair (which is just as horrifying as it sounds). They used him as bait to lure in the Young Avengers because Mother really wanted to eat Billy and absorb his boundless magical power. Of course, there were enough smart people around to know it was a trap, so while Loki and Billy prepared to face Mother directly (which involved using magic to make Loki a hot young man instead of a little boy), David called some friends. Mother was going to send the mayfly alternates on an attack against New York, and because her spell prevented them from recognizing her influence, they'd just think it was teenagers acting up. So, through the power of social networking, David put together a force of every young hero to defend the breach. That freed the Young Avengers to attack.
David went right for Patri-Not, who taunted him through the fight about denial while not attacking so much as effortlessly evading every hit David threw at him. The fight changed when it turned out the Evil Exes were all unconsciously created constructs of Loki's missing magic, but they dissolved after he confessed to it. That only left Mother and Patri-Not, and the latter was content to watching in amusement. Billy wasn't enough to overwhelm her on his own, so David told Teddy he'd need his support, giving him a pep talk to put their problems in perspective. When Teddy asked why he hadn't told him before, well, it came down to jealousy and hoping he might have still had a chance. It was a very not good move on David's part.
Anyway, so, the power of love saved the day and everything got resolved, which obviously meant it was time for a big party on New Year's Eve. David apologized to Billy, since he'd already spoken to his other half, but Billy was understandably a bit sore. The two resolved to at least act like friends, though there was still a bit of tension. David then caught Loki outside, and Loki admitted to having foot the bill for the whole shindig. The two talked a bit about their mutual guilt, but Loki resolved not to return to the group. Then he made a pass, but David declined. David wasn't done with his ghostly visits for the evening, though. As soon as Loki departed, Patri-Not materialized.
Through the being's terse taunts, David had his theory of where the Patri-Not came from. In the future, when Billy's magic comes into its fullness, it would echo back throughout time. As a result, the Patri-Not would be create to ensure the necessary events unfolded, like a twisted guardian angel preserving the existence of a future. But more than that, he believed the Patri-Not to be himself, having surrendered his humanity for the rest of existence. The being neither confirmed nor denied, just said "You'll see." It then prompts David to kiss it, and, after telling it he isn't afraid, he did. To his surprise, he found Tommy at the end of his mouth, who chided him for moving too fast before enthusiastically joining the party.
After the party was over, the group came together to take one of America's portals home. But David ended up in Heropa instead.
PERSONALITY:
David is the kind of person who most of his time in his own head. His powers had a very cerebral nature that only got more so after he lost them, parts that used to be instinct now requires more thought. He always had a tendency to overthink, which made him not only a tactical genius and exemplary at improvising instructions on the field, but also a bit of a wet blanket in his group. He's very grounded, which meant he tended to play by the rules and advocate the rules, especially when his friends were inclined to break them, which was often. His feelings toward the rules have evolved, mostly as he lost faith in the authority figures in his life, but he still fully believes that there are right and wrong ways to approach things, and continues to be an overly serious enemy of fun.
He does genuinely believe that he knows better than most people, and has a low tolerance for being contradicted or ignored. It can make him a little judgemental when someone a friend goes against what he thinks they should have done, and more so when their actions lead to others getting hurt, like when Josh cheated on Laurie, he actually broke off their friendship for a while, despite still sharing a room with him. And that was after how long it took him to warm up to the guy, given the whole Reaver thing. Because he does genuinely care about the people around him, and wants to be like a wise big brother figure to them, but for all his knowledge and the fact that he does have a working social awareness, he is still a young man, and that makes him very susceptible to stupid mistakes and terrible selfish motivations, like the ones toward Teddy. He didn't help him patch up his relationship because he wanted the chance to start one of his own, and it was an incredibly scummy thing to do. But he did realize it and made attempts to patch things up, because he is smart enough to recognize his mistakes, though not always immediately.
One thing worth mentioning is that he is very diligent. When his powers first manifested, he would do double the work to make sure he legitimately learned anything he absorbed, working backwards to find the questions the lead to all the answers he gained, especially since the knowledge always left him when the source was out of his range. He felt it kept him honest by not leaning too hard on his powers, not letting himself use them as a shortcut. Those efforts only increased after the vision Emma and Dani gave him. In the Xavier Institute yearbook, while also named Most Likely To Succeed, it was also mentioned that he dislikes cheaters.
As mentioned earlier, he has had a lot of fluctuations between his feelings toward authority in general and the X-Men in particular. At the start, he had no intention of being an X-Man and only attended the school to learn how to manage his powers. He felt the X-Men were thinking too small, and he could do a lot more good in the world out in it than as part of a paramilitary force. He felt the X-Men should have been preparing them for the world in general, not just giving them a sanctuary to protect them from it. It was when that feeling of safety collapsed that he ended up becoming an X-Man, because even if he was depowered, it had become increasingly clear to him that there was no safe place for mutants in the world, and while he felt that was a failure on the part of the authorities above him, it also meant he would have to fight to create some semblance of safety.
Those goals carried him through the destruction of the school, brought him to San Francisco during the relocation, and sustained him throughout the reign of Utopia. He had the opportunity to go to the Jean Grey School, but by then the school felt like a naive dream that would never be reality again. He'd put away childish things when he saw his friends die at the old school, when he'd been pushed through hell, sometimes literally, to survive just because he had been a mutant. There wasn't any going back to it. But after the Phoenix Five were overthrown, he still felt betrayed and used. These same people had failed so many times to keep their world safe, and ultimately just became the greatest threats to it. It came back to how he originally thought of the whole thing, they weren't making citizens so much as soldiers, and a soldier is just what he became. There was a lot of bitterness and unaddressed trauma that went into his desertion, a lot of faith lost in a banner he used to fly, and while he dropped the flag and went his own way, a lot of those feelings aren't even close to being dealt with. It took a while before he could even separate them with superheroism. But he does know that sometimes being a hero means saving the world from yourself, and that's something he felt was missing in the X-Men.
There's a lot there he's still working through, and while he's made progress on some aspects, he still has a lot of bitterness left.
POWER: David was originally a low-level telepath, with the ability to mimic any skills or knowledge by those within a certain proximity of him, though due to mental blocks he would lose that knowledge as soon as they left his area of effect. After being depowered, the Stepford Cuckoos removed his mental blocks, unlocking everything he had absorbed while his powers were still active, though he is unable to absorb anything new outside of regular means of learning. Still, he is as knowledgeable in science, martial arts, and many other subjects as most X-Men, and even some others, including knowledge he has no practical application for. (He is mentioned in canon as being a black belt in psychic warfare, and knowing every spell Dr. Strange does despite being unable to cast them.)
I also want to add Total Recall, the ability to remember at will any information he's ever encountered in any form. It isn't exactly canonical, but it does fit pretty well with the way the Cuckoos unlocked his brain. The major difference is that while they gave him perfect recall of everything he learned with his powers, I just want to extend it to everything else.
He'll also be coming with his goggles, which he made to connect to available networks and provide him information on command. They're a bit like the superhero equivalent to Google Glasses, and include similar features.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
"Hero" can be a funny word. A loaded one. Sure, they tell you they're the good guys, but who really believes they aren't?
The thing about heroes is there are at least two kinds. You have the ones given the chance that are going to jump at it, they've already got a suit all planned and a few possible names. You can see the magic in their eyes, and it is a magic. Point them to the bad guys, they're ready! Then you have the others, you might call them the skeptics. They lead more with their head than their heart, and something about this doesn't quite add up. But, when the time comes and someone needs to be saved, they're there and willing. We either thrust ourselves into heroism or are thrust into it.
Involving the government and the barely voluntary recruitment, though, that never works out. It was a bad idea when Tony Stark tried it and it's a worse idea now. I've seen it firsthand, someone always slips through the cracks. You may think you're preventing these people from becoming future villains, but you're making them just as much as their opposite numbers. It's never as simple as they make it out to be.
My name is David Alleyne and I've been a hero, I know heroes. This? This just isn't how heroes are done.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: test-drive meme thread!
FINAL NOTES:
CHARACTER NAME: David Alleyne
CHARACTER AGE: 20
SERIES: Marvel-616
CHRONOLOGY: After Young Avengers #15
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: Random!
BACKGROUND: a summary is available on the marvel wikia
David was born in Chicago, IL. For most of his life, he seemed like a normal, if bookish, kid. He lived with his parents and little sister, and despite being a high school sophomore, was taking as many classes as he could at the University of Chicago. Everyone he knew just considered him an overachiever. His powers to mimic skills and knowledge of those around him had helped him excel academically, but he would spend twice as much time studying to ensure he actually understood the answers he provided, as the knowledge would leave him the moment he was out of range. That he was a mutant was mostly a secret, until Dani Moonstar came to recruit him to the Xavier Institute for Higher Learning, having been introduced by her friend Xi'an Coy Manh, who worked at the university library that David frequented. He was reluctant at first, until the mutant hate group Purity outed him, and left with the blessing of his family.
Shortly after enrolling, he was at an outing in New York City with Dani's other students, Sofia Mantegna, Laurie Collins, and Kevin Ford, when they were attacked by a group of Reavers led by Donald Pierce, an anti-mutant cyborg. Among this group was Josh Foley, an emerging mutant Dani and Xi'an had come to the city to recruit. As Josh was only discovering his powers, he was unaware of being a mutant during the confrontation, but had healed Laurie from a stab wound she suffered at the hands of Pierce. Having been thrown out by his parents, he eventually took Dani's offer to join and was assigned to be David's roommate. The two had a cold relationship at first, as David had no patience for Josh's bigotry against mutants, but they slowly became friends over time, to the point that David regarded him as a brother. The team also took in Noriko Ashida, a homeless mutant who David took an instant interest in.
When the students were given the choice of which teacher would be their advisor, Dani's students all selected her, David included. They formed a squad called the New Mutants, and David was given the codename Prodigy, and customized his costume with a visor that connected to the Institute's computer database, as well as a really unfortunate white duster. Seriously, it was awful. While he was recommended to be team leader, he declined the position, not being comfortable with the idea of being groomed for the X-Men, as he felt he could improve the world in much better ways than being a superhero would allow him. Instead, he suggested Sofia take the role as she was more personable, but she didn't have the focus to guide the team on the field. Ultimately, they compromised and decided to be co-leaders, David supplying the tactics during exercises while Sofia was the guidance that held them together off of it. Around this time, Jay Guthrie joined their squad, swapping with Kevin, who went to their rivals, the Hellions.
Some time after, David went to Emma Frost to inquire on the temporary nature of his powers, and she found that he had mental blocks present that prevented him from retaining any of the knowledge his powers granted him. Combining her own telepathy with Dani's abilities to project illusions based on the target's fear, they created a vision for David of what would happen if those blocks were lifted. In his vision, after growing more emotionally distant from his friends as his intellect expanded, he left the school, starting his own business to create cures for every known disease using Josh's DNA, an experiment that resulted in Josh's death. Years later, after he had been elected president, the squad has to come together again to stop him from launching nuclear missiles on China to achieve world peace. After he killed Dani and the X-Men, his wife Nori took matters into her own hands by overloading her electric powers, blowing up the White House and killing them both. Basically the epitome of "that escalated quickly."
Obviously, David decided to leave the mental blocks in place, but the whole vision left him a little shaken and weird with the rest of the squad, Nori especially. Adding to a lot of other drama the rest of the team was going through, things between them all got a bit strained, even after still showing they were capable of teamwork by taking down the Blob during an attack on the school's prizewinning ceremony. When David and Nori both requested to be reassigned, Sofia made a last ditch effort to get them all back together with a team camping trip. It didn't go well at first, with everyone arguing and Josh giving David a well-deserved punch in the face, but they eventually all kissed and made up. More literally with David and Nori, as she told him to get over himself, that aside from his vision not being real, his reaction wasn't a decision he should have made for her. They started dating.
And then M-Day happened. The Scarlet Witch wished "mutants no more" and all but 198 were depowered, among them David and Sofia. The school, of course, was thrown into chaos, with most of the student body suddenly losing their mutations, and many of them were sent away for their own safety. Sofia returned to Venezuela. The Purifiers, another anti-mutant group (there are really a lot of those in the Marvel universe), took advantage of the school's vulnerability by attacking the outgoing buses, killing 42 former students. Jay was manipulated into having his wings cut off by the leader of the Purifiers, Reverend William Stryker, before getting shot dead. Laurie got hit by a sniper's bullet so she wouldn't interfere with Stryker's plans. It wasn't a pretty time. David had declined his chance to get out and attend Harvard University, deciding that the best place for him was the school, even without powers. He built a Danger Cave to mirror the Danger Room the X-Men use, though it wasn't really much of a contribution, as it never got mentioned again after two issues.
But despite being taken off any active squad, David was still around with the other students, and used what skills he had learned on his own to help them. He protected the psychic Stepford Cuckoos from Stryker's men when they attacked the school, he was with the team when they confronted Nimrod, an invincible killer robot from the future, and when they were dragged by the demon Belasco into hell, he recognized his weakness to telepathy. Of course, this was after Belasco tore his heart out of his chest and Josh had to grow him a new one before he suffered brain damage. Nori wasn't happy with that one after it was all settled. The two were really all the other had left with how tumultuous everything had gotten, and she resolved that she'd rather have him hate her than see him hurt. So, she tried to scare David off by pretending to be in love with their teammate, Julian Keller, instead. Julian also wasn't happy with it.
Afterwards, David packed up to leave when the Cuckoos made him an offer. The mental blocks Emma mentioned before didn't simply prevent him from retaining any skills and knowledge he might absorb with his powers, they also locked away any that he already had. They didn't make his memory a sieve so much as a dam. He was hesitant at first, even though the vision had been a long time ago, but he still wanted to stay without being a liability, and agreed. Surprisingly, he did not immediately or eventually becoming an evil mastermind. After getting in a fight with Julian and taking him down with some Krav Maga moves he remembered off of Wolverine and Shadowcat, he broke up with Nori, all the while assuring her that he wasn't going anywhere, that it wasn't her decision to make for him.
Afterwards, he was made a substitute teacher at the Institute, and spent much of his time providing backup to Beast in the lab or the medical bay. After Cerebra, the X-Men mutant tracking device, was destroyed after the first mutant baby since M-Day was born, David was the one who repaired it to assist the Cuckoos in coordinating the various X-teams. Soon after, when the X-Men moved to San Francisco, he assisted Beast with installing it at Graymalkin Center. Though he was never really involved with X-Club, he was on-call for operational assistance and any other areas his skills might require throughout the period, extending through their move offshore to Utopia. Which means he didn't really appear much onpage but in background scenes like that.
When The Mutant History Museum opened in San Francisco, the X-Men were invited to participate. At the exhibit on William Stryker, David shared his feelings with teammate Idie Okonkwo on the events following M-Day and the impact they had on mutant history. When Utopia was attacked by the Hellfire Club, he joined in the fighting, and decided to stay on Utopia while many of the other students left with Wolverine to rebuild the school, but not before getting into an argument with Julian, telling him that they can't pretend to be children anymore. He was made head of Utopia's Youth Division and participated in Dazzler's streat team.
But all the while, Utopia's reputation only grew more tenuous due to the directives of its leader, Cyclops, until finally the Phoenix returned to Earth and the X-Men and Avengers fought over who would claim or contain it. David and the other students were sent to Avengers Academy in Los Angeles during the fighting. The X-Men did ultimately claim the Phoenix Force, split between five of their members, Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus, and Magik, and used its unfathomable power to reshape the world as they saw fit, but it only lasted so long, between the efforts of the Avengers to stop them and their own infighting, and the Phoenix was expelled from them as they were taken into custody. Utopia collapsed, and David found himself without a home or job, and with a record of association with terrorists.
He opted not to return to the Jean Grey School, built in Westchester in the place of the Xavier Institute, feeling lied to and manipulated by the X-Men. Even if the school wasn't Cyclops' army, he still didn't trust them in the aftermath of the Phoenix. Instead, he ended up at an agency that employed superhumans for menial work, as he couldn't get work anywhere else. His boundless knowledge was put to use consulting for various superhuman situations...as a call center agent, super tech support. Ninjas were particularly annoying to give advice to. After working there for some time, he met Tommy Shepherd, formerly Speed from the Young Avengers, using his superspeed to work production at the same agency. They had noodles and coffee and became friends, or at least friends enough that when a thief showed up in the warehouse wearing the uniform of Tommy's former teammate, Patriot, he dragged David along to help investigate. Friends enough that when the Patri-Not turned out to be some kind of cosmic horror thing that sucked Tommy into another dimension, David went to track down his brother Billy to get him back.
After joining up with the Young Avengers, the group chased the Patri-Not through various "mayfly" dimensions, doomed timelines never meant to be that could never last, many like nightmares given their own reality. Others were okay. They did this for over five weeks without ever catching him, until he led them to the home dimension of the Mother parasite. A few months before David joined them, Mother was an enemy they'd encountered when Billy tried to resurrect his boyfriend's mother in the aftermath of a disagreement, pulling her from a timeline just before she died. Because that's how you resolve your relationship problems when you're an irresponsible young reality warper. Unfortunately, the woman he brought back wasn't Mrs. Altman at all, but the Mother in disguise, and she used her influence to turn all adults in New York against them, leading the Young Avengers to go out on the lam. It was all Loki's fault, of course, but that's what happens when you let a trickster god bring your team together. Either way, showing up on her doorstep wasn't an especially auspicious turn of events, so they tried to make a quick exit, but the portal closed before David or Teddy could get through.
While Mother was holding Teddy in her tentacles, still looking like his mom, David faked her out by pretending to know magic, a bluff that got her to panic just enough that they could make a run for it. Hiding out in Mother's dimension, with the very real possibility that they wouldn't escape, Teddy resolved that if they were going to die, they'd die fighting, no regrets. David couldn't say the same, so...he kissed him. Whoops. Teddy, aside from being very taken, was confused, and David embarrassed. He explained that after the Cuckoos opened up his head, he had a lot of facets to him that weren't really clear to him before, that left a lot of room for self-reflection. He realized he was bisexual, but never really got the chance to practice it since he was busy being stuck in one of the harshest periods in X-Men history. He'd been nursing a bit of a crush over his time with the Young Avengers. It obviously won't go anywhere between them, but Teddy and Billy's relationship is in a bit of a rough patch, so David recommended he got some space to clear his head. After the rest of the team made it back to save them by dragging a load of enemies from the mayfly dimensions behind them to distract Mother, that's exactly what Teddy did, and took a leave from the team.
Unfortunately, Teddy's therapist, Leah of Hel, turned out to be a member of a League of Evil Exes, made up of spurned lovers (mostly Noh-Varr's) from various members of the Young Avengers. When she tried to recruit Teddy and he declined, she told his Mother, who kidnapped him and made him into a chair (which is just as horrifying as it sounds). They used him as bait to lure in the Young Avengers because Mother really wanted to eat Billy and absorb his boundless magical power. Of course, there were enough smart people around to know it was a trap, so while Loki and Billy prepared to face Mother directly (which involved using magic to make Loki a hot young man instead of a little boy), David called some friends. Mother was going to send the mayfly alternates on an attack against New York, and because her spell prevented them from recognizing her influence, they'd just think it was teenagers acting up. So, through the power of social networking, David put together a force of every young hero to defend the breach. That freed the Young Avengers to attack.
David went right for Patri-Not, who taunted him through the fight about denial while not attacking so much as effortlessly evading every hit David threw at him. The fight changed when it turned out the Evil Exes were all unconsciously created constructs of Loki's missing magic, but they dissolved after he confessed to it. That only left Mother and Patri-Not, and the latter was content to watching in amusement. Billy wasn't enough to overwhelm her on his own, so David told Teddy he'd need his support, giving him a pep talk to put their problems in perspective. When Teddy asked why he hadn't told him before, well, it came down to jealousy and hoping he might have still had a chance. It was a very not good move on David's part.
Anyway, so, the power of love saved the day and everything got resolved, which obviously meant it was time for a big party on New Year's Eve. David apologized to Billy, since he'd already spoken to his other half, but Billy was understandably a bit sore. The two resolved to at least act like friends, though there was still a bit of tension. David then caught Loki outside, and Loki admitted to having foot the bill for the whole shindig. The two talked a bit about their mutual guilt, but Loki resolved not to return to the group. Then he made a pass, but David declined. David wasn't done with his ghostly visits for the evening, though. As soon as Loki departed, Patri-Not materialized.
Through the being's terse taunts, David had his theory of where the Patri-Not came from. In the future, when Billy's magic comes into its fullness, it would echo back throughout time. As a result, the Patri-Not would be create to ensure the necessary events unfolded, like a twisted guardian angel preserving the existence of a future. But more than that, he believed the Patri-Not to be himself, having surrendered his humanity for the rest of existence. The being neither confirmed nor denied, just said "You'll see." It then prompts David to kiss it, and, after telling it he isn't afraid, he did. To his surprise, he found Tommy at the end of his mouth, who chided him for moving too fast before enthusiastically joining the party.
After the party was over, the group came together to take one of America's portals home. But David ended up in Heropa instead.
PERSONALITY:
David is the kind of person who most of his time in his own head. His powers had a very cerebral nature that only got more so after he lost them, parts that used to be instinct now requires more thought. He always had a tendency to overthink, which made him not only a tactical genius and exemplary at improvising instructions on the field, but also a bit of a wet blanket in his group. He's very grounded, which meant he tended to play by the rules and advocate the rules, especially when his friends were inclined to break them, which was often. His feelings toward the rules have evolved, mostly as he lost faith in the authority figures in his life, but he still fully believes that there are right and wrong ways to approach things, and continues to be an overly serious enemy of fun.
He does genuinely believe that he knows better than most people, and has a low tolerance for being contradicted or ignored. It can make him a little judgemental when someone a friend goes against what he thinks they should have done, and more so when their actions lead to others getting hurt, like when Josh cheated on Laurie, he actually broke off their friendship for a while, despite still sharing a room with him. And that was after how long it took him to warm up to the guy, given the whole Reaver thing. Because he does genuinely care about the people around him, and wants to be like a wise big brother figure to them, but for all his knowledge and the fact that he does have a working social awareness, he is still a young man, and that makes him very susceptible to stupid mistakes and terrible selfish motivations, like the ones toward Teddy. He didn't help him patch up his relationship because he wanted the chance to start one of his own, and it was an incredibly scummy thing to do. But he did realize it and made attempts to patch things up, because he is smart enough to recognize his mistakes, though not always immediately.
One thing worth mentioning is that he is very diligent. When his powers first manifested, he would do double the work to make sure he legitimately learned anything he absorbed, working backwards to find the questions the lead to all the answers he gained, especially since the knowledge always left him when the source was out of his range. He felt it kept him honest by not leaning too hard on his powers, not letting himself use them as a shortcut. Those efforts only increased after the vision Emma and Dani gave him. In the Xavier Institute yearbook, while also named Most Likely To Succeed, it was also mentioned that he dislikes cheaters.
As mentioned earlier, he has had a lot of fluctuations between his feelings toward authority in general and the X-Men in particular. At the start, he had no intention of being an X-Man and only attended the school to learn how to manage his powers. He felt the X-Men were thinking too small, and he could do a lot more good in the world out in it than as part of a paramilitary force. He felt the X-Men should have been preparing them for the world in general, not just giving them a sanctuary to protect them from it. It was when that feeling of safety collapsed that he ended up becoming an X-Man, because even if he was depowered, it had become increasingly clear to him that there was no safe place for mutants in the world, and while he felt that was a failure on the part of the authorities above him, it also meant he would have to fight to create some semblance of safety.
Those goals carried him through the destruction of the school, brought him to San Francisco during the relocation, and sustained him throughout the reign of Utopia. He had the opportunity to go to the Jean Grey School, but by then the school felt like a naive dream that would never be reality again. He'd put away childish things when he saw his friends die at the old school, when he'd been pushed through hell, sometimes literally, to survive just because he had been a mutant. There wasn't any going back to it. But after the Phoenix Five were overthrown, he still felt betrayed and used. These same people had failed so many times to keep their world safe, and ultimately just became the greatest threats to it. It came back to how he originally thought of the whole thing, they weren't making citizens so much as soldiers, and a soldier is just what he became. There was a lot of bitterness and unaddressed trauma that went into his desertion, a lot of faith lost in a banner he used to fly, and while he dropped the flag and went his own way, a lot of those feelings aren't even close to being dealt with. It took a while before he could even separate them with superheroism. But he does know that sometimes being a hero means saving the world from yourself, and that's something he felt was missing in the X-Men.
There's a lot there he's still working through, and while he's made progress on some aspects, he still has a lot of bitterness left.
POWER: David was originally a low-level telepath, with the ability to mimic any skills or knowledge by those within a certain proximity of him, though due to mental blocks he would lose that knowledge as soon as they left his area of effect. After being depowered, the Stepford Cuckoos removed his mental blocks, unlocking everything he had absorbed while his powers were still active, though he is unable to absorb anything new outside of regular means of learning. Still, he is as knowledgeable in science, martial arts, and many other subjects as most X-Men, and even some others, including knowledge he has no practical application for. (He is mentioned in canon as being a black belt in psychic warfare, and knowing every spell Dr. Strange does despite being unable to cast them.)
I also want to add Total Recall, the ability to remember at will any information he's ever encountered in any form. It isn't exactly canonical, but it does fit pretty well with the way the Cuckoos unlocked his brain. The major difference is that while they gave him perfect recall of everything he learned with his powers, I just want to extend it to everything else.
He'll also be coming with his goggles, which he made to connect to available networks and provide him information on command. They're a bit like the superhero equivalent to Google Glasses, and include similar features.
〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:
"Hero" can be a funny word. A loaded one. Sure, they tell you they're the good guys, but who really believes they aren't?
The thing about heroes is there are at least two kinds. You have the ones given the chance that are going to jump at it, they've already got a suit all planned and a few possible names. You can see the magic in their eyes, and it is a magic. Point them to the bad guys, they're ready! Then you have the others, you might call them the skeptics. They lead more with their head than their heart, and something about this doesn't quite add up. But, when the time comes and someone needs to be saved, they're there and willing. We either thrust ourselves into heroism or are thrust into it.
Involving the government and the barely voluntary recruitment, though, that never works out. It was a bad idea when Tony Stark tried it and it's a worse idea now. I've seen it firsthand, someone always slips through the cracks. You may think you're preventing these people from becoming future villains, but you're making them just as much as their opposite numbers. It's never as simple as they make it out to be.
My name is David Alleyne and I've been a hero, I know heroes. This? This just isn't how heroes are done.
LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE: test-drive meme thread!
FINAL NOTES: