Moki Jackson

[Moki Jackson]

Moki Jackson
FACE CLAIM: Rick Mora
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AGE: 21
GENDER: Male
ORIENTATION: Fraysexual/closet bisexual (Experiences short-term sexual attraction that fades after getting to know someone. Essentially reverse demisexuality.)
POSITION: College student

POWER: Pressure Redistribution
A layer of powerful subdermal muscles all over Moki's body will absorb and redistribute any and all pressure on his skin, so long as he can react to the pressure in time. Since the same amount of force is applied to his entire skin's surface instead of one (presumably) small area, the damage inflicted is usually smaller. This network of muscles is a very strong, complex lattice and can be used to stop very high levels of force.

Applications include surviving falls from great heights, minimising damage from impacts and drunken jackassery. He's also mildly but permanently ripped, which he is totally okay with.

LIMITATIONS:
Moki's subdermal muscles don't let him resist any more pressure than he otherwise could - if someone swings a lead pipe at him, and he blocks it with a redistribution, the pressure will still make him feel like he's trapped at the bottom of a diving pool for a moment. Associated disorientation and pain usually follows.

In extreme cases, for example trying to stop a flying car, the muscles in his skin trying to redistribute pressure would just crush him. In general, he can't stop anything bigger than himself that's travelling at speed. It would just crush him in a trash compactor of his own making. Since the pressure is equally distributed, there are certain high-risk areas of his body, such as his crotch or his eyes, where the pressure would first risk serious damage.

When using this power, Moki's core muscles, limbs and extremities lock in place while his subdermal muscles redistribute pressure. Most impacts he deals with daily only take a split second to redistribute, but larger impacts can lock him in place for long enough for another blow to come in, and then another, and while he can effectively survive the same attack over and over, he can be 'stunlocked' in this fashion until a force big enough to kill him could be produced, or something else like electricity or poisons could be used to kill him. The aforementioned lead pipe would be a good example of a force that could stunlock him.

His power only protects against blunt-force trauma - at its most extreme, he could maybe deflect a bullet travelling at an angle to his skin, but anything sharp enough will just cut through.

SIDE-EFFECTS:
Moki's muscles require excessive protein to maintain, and need to be toned with basic strength training daily. They will still work if he doesn't maintain them, but as with all muscles they will weaken to uselessness with no usage. Missing out on even one of his daily two-mile runs can noticeably weaken his ability to deal with impacts. He works closely with Bellefonte physical power trainers to keep up his physical condition, for his own advancement and safety.

Moki also builds up latent tension, which needs to be relieved with massages. Because his muscles are unusual and not subject to the skillset of a standard masseur, the best way to relieve tension in himself has been a subject of his own personal study. He works closely with a Bellefonte-funded massage therapist who gives him a fortnightly checkup and therapy to relieve tension. If left unchecked, this tension can develop into dangerous and unpredictable conditions such as Intracranial Hypertension.


HEIGHT: 5' 9"
HAIR COLOR: Black
EYE COLOR: Brown

MISC: Moki looks a little older than he actually is, because despite having a dark skin tone he actually does terribly with sunbathing. His skin has aged prematurely, though not too noticeably. He keeps his hair long out of personal preference and will put it up in a bun when doing anything requiring short hair. He has a tendancy to wear plaid and denim, and likes wooden and ivory jewellery.


PERSONALITY: Moki is a superficially interesting person, in that he comes from a facet of life that by definition a minority of people come from. Half Native-American of the Hopi tribe, he has cultivated a passing interest in his own tribe's culture and endorses it to others in simplistic ways that they can understand. To him, the Hopi way of life means respect of women, especially maternal figures, a love of art, especially whittling, and an avoidance of politics, both personal and societal. In this way, he can be seen as one of the most dependable people you'll ever meet, because he's fairly friendly and likeable and once you've earned his friendship he won't easily abandon you.

Moki is very aware that even before his power is taken into account, he is a very strong and capable person, and though he likes using his power recklessly (read: jumping front-first off buildings), he is very aware that he has a responsibility to others not to use it dangerously. He has both a literal and a metaphorical look-before-you-leap outlook. He ironically has slight vertigo, which also ironically is why he likes climbing and jumping off things so much. He's spent a while training himself to not really fear heights, since most heights that would kill him will nowadays just jar him instead.

He has a bunch of average interests too, mainly drinking, science fiction, recreational drugs and the occasional bout of all-afternoon gaming.

SECRET(S): He has a little wooden doll figure that he keeps on a leather thong around his neck. This is actually a traditional Putsqatihu Kachina figure, intended for infants, and was meant for his stillborn sister.

He himself doesn't realize (or hasn't admitted to himself) that he is anything other than garden-variety heterosexual.


FATHER: Dalip Jackson (himself half-sikh on his mother's side)
MOTHER: Manci Jackson
SIBLINGS: None
WORTHY MENTIONS: Once had a female hamster, but alas, Hamlette is no more.

CHILDHOOD: Moki was born in Phoenix, Arizona, to Dalip and Manci Jackson, a sikh and native-american father and mother respectively. He was brought up in a loving family, not really needing much - though his mother had difficulty getting a job, his father was a successful illustrator, and made them enough money to get by, though the career didn't exactly offer rockstar paychecks. Moki was raised by his mother and father equally, and though it wasn't exactly traditional for him to learn the male arts of his native-american heritage from his mother, she thought it important enough to his personal history to teach him anyway. She didn't know much, but she knew enough to teach him a few key, basic things.

School was average, though he dealt with his fair share of racism. A loud and confident child, he often faced with challenges by teachers who pegged him as a youthful troublemaker, a reputation that he picked up in a fair few classes despite actually being fairly scholarly. Nonetheless, he made it through the lesser ranks of academics and had a regular social life in pretty much every regard. He took up a long series of temporary track sports at a junior level, ultimately deciding that they basically weren't for him.

ADOLESCENCE: Moki's power started developing when he was fifteen, a year after puberty kicked in. Everyone told him he would be broader, a little musclier, but what they reckoned without was his naturally-occuring muscles being ridiculous. Nothing approaching mutant-tier, but he seemed to be a natural mesomorph, which attracted a good couple of appreciative eyes of all kinds of appropriate and inappropriate ages. When he first got into a fight in the boys' locker room, he came handily out on top, though rumors travelled here and there about his strange, jerky way of moving when taking blows.

This happenstance attracted the attention of Bellefonte. He was pressed into the self-defense club of his school, and then just as quickly brought out to Bellefonte by a series of very nice but very creepy social workers who explained to him that he had a superpower. He found this patently ridiculous, since all he knew about himself was that he had muscles. One of his first questions was if the school was just an academy for naturally muscley people - and he refused to believe that he belonged among the ranks of the mutants he was shown, either, for months. Still, he began to develop a kind of stockholm-syndrome liking for the strange and exciting people in the academy.

He was seventeen before the staff finally judged that his subdermal muscles had developed enough for his power to be demonstrated to him. He was brought to a school power-testing facility, where a trainer gave him his pick of various weapons. Not knowing how to use any of them, he picked up a metal stick and was appropriately beaten into the floor by the staffer - except he wasn't. What instead happened was that he was locked into place, feeling nothing but a slight squeezing sensation all over his body while the staff member hit him again and again.

After that, he accepted that he had some kind of power.

ADULTHOOD: Moki went into high school as a normal kid and came out as a mutant in a totally different state. Bellefonte offered him all kinds of opportunities his parents couldn't, and after mutants became globally recognised he was even able to travel abroad and live a more or less normal life - though he also became, like most mutants, a globally-recognised figure of ambiguity and some level of sinister reputation. He stayed on at college with Bellefonte, joining a few clubs and societies, and came into his own in terms of his powers, though he is told and believes that he still has a distance to go.

Right now, he's studying graphic design and illustration, and tutors some of the high-school level art courses where digital design is involved, though mostly informally. He's part of the art club and the self-defense club, but the gaming club is a little dedicated for his tastes. He also works a job as a librarian in Kalispell proper, as well as taking part in the school Lacrosse league, though he's never been that great. He's much better at track and boxing.


SAMPLE:

"This is a pretty dumb idea, man."

"Nah, I think I can make it. Like, I've been benchpressing casually for about a year now, I figure it's gotta do something."

"Benchpressing doesn't up the muscles, man. You're supposed to be going for runs."

"That too."

Moki looked out over the rooftop of Bellefonte, where nobody had noticed his presence yet. He was considering something that would probably be seen broadly as suicide, but he wasn't suicidal. The hapless bystander smoking against the railing, however, must have thought him as much, because he was about to jump off the roof.

He looked over the railing, then hopped deftly onto the low wall it was set on, placing him over it. A step would take him into empty air, and he'd find out if he was really as tough as he thought he was. Of course, that was the point. Didn't stop him being scared shitless, though. "So, just some housekeeping," he said, conversationally. "If you see me down there, pavement pancake 'n all, and you don't call an ambulance, I'm gonna haunt you so fucking hard."

"That's a bit of a weird thing to say to a stranger, man."

"Yep." He turned, winked, and fell off the roof backwards.

In that brief calm spent between jumping off the roof and hitting the ground, Moki had a moment to reflect on how dumb an idea this was. He said a short prayer, started screaming, and tensed up all of the subdermal muscles on his back, feeling his eyes screw shut reflexively. He hit the ground completely rigid, and the feeling was like breathing water for a moment, but then he got up, and dusted himself off. Raising a thumb to the guy on the roof, he walked away, resolving to throw out the shirt he'd just ruined in the winter mud.

USERNAME: (cowpoke)bebop

AGE GROUP: 20

EXPERIENCE: Since the age of about fourteen.

WHERE DID YOU FIND US? Google.

[Deleted]