Post by Deleted on May 4, 2014 19:10:53 GMT -5
---
Full Name: Elizabeth Ann Braddock
Codename Psylocke
Nicknames: Betsy, Beth, Betts
Gender: Female
Age: 28
D.O.B. 9th June
Species: Homo Superior
---
Occupation: Superhero/Psychologist/Combat Instructor
Canon or Original: Canon
Mutations:
Telepathy
Psylocke is one of the world’s strongest telepaths by other peoples’ admissions. Her mental capacities are highly developed, and she is learned in all forms of telepathy.
Thanks to years of training and a year as a blind woman, her psionic senses are extremely potent. She can differentiate people by their psionic echoes, which allows her to track and read people from a distance. She can also scan large areas, giving her a vague sense of the condition of the population of that area. In times of danger, her senses will warn her, meaning that it is difficult (though not impossible) to ambush her.
In conjunction with this power, she is able to mask herself and others from almost any other telepath in existence, making them essentially invisible.
She can read, wipe and control minds, and it is extremely hard for others to avoid this. She rarely controls or wipes peoples’ minds without their permission, as the invasiveness of the process is abhorrent to her sense of morality.
She is also a capable illusionist, able to alter others’ perceptions so that she looks like someone else, or so that they can’t see her at all. She is also able to project illusions directly into a person’s mind, making them believe that something is happening when it isn’t.
She has two offensive telepathic abilities; she is able to project psionic bolts of various strengths into a person’s mind. Depending on the power behind them, they can cause dizziness, nausea, blackouts, catatonia and even death. However, anything stronger than a blackout is extremely wearing on Betsy’s own psyche, and she has only ever killed one person with a psionic bolt (Kaptain Briton) when she was under a huge amount of stress.
Her second offensive tactic is less deadly – she is able to induce mental and physical paralysis by delivering a shock to the brains’ neurons, disrupting the natural flow of activity. This is always temporary, and strong telepaths are impervious to it.
Her final telepathic ability is that of astral projection. She can send a version of herself to the astral plane where she can manipulate and control her surroundings completely.
It is this that allows her to draw upon the energy of the astral plane to create a psionic katana – a katana she can summon at any time and any place. It can cut through armour and leave the flesh beneath unharmed if she focuses entirely on the manifestation, and can also disrupt neural pathways to give an opponent pause. In addition, it can provide a light source.
When communicating telepathically, Betsy appears as a small purple butterfly with eyes on the wings.
Telekinesis
Triggered in her by Jean Grey, Betsy has already shown enormous telekinetic potential, though she has yet to master all of the techniques.
Most often, Betsy uses her telekinesis as tactile telekinesis to enhance her physical attributes for the duration of a fight. She temporarily has her strength, agility, durability and other elements heightened to superhuman standard.
Her other telekinetic abilities include flight, levitation and moving heavy objects from a distance. She has proven herself able to lift objects weighing above one hundred tonnes with little effort, and it is not unlikely that she could push herself to even heavier objects if given the opportunity. Like many psionics, Betsy finds it harder to manipulate smaller items with accuracy, though it is not impossible.
Her telekinesis is mostly offensive based, and she often uses it to fire mental blasts strong enough to shatter brick walls. She can create telekinetic shields of varying sizes, and is able to control splash damage and explosions from things like bombs by keeping the blast tightly contained.
Precognition
Worth noting is that Psylocke occasionally has dreams that prove themselves to be visions of the future. She has no control over this ability, and no way to tell which of her dreams are precognitions and which are merely the products of REM sleep.
Classification: Alpha
Equipment: A pair of steel katanas.
Uniform:
Betsy’s uniform consists of a swimsuit-like costume, fashioned out of a flexible, comfortable metal weave. It is bulletproof and fireproof, granting her some defence from most standard physical attacks. It is coloured glossy black, and is matched with a pair of elbow length gloves of the same material and knee length boots. There are also two circular strips of the same material on her upper arms and thighs. She has a thin silver utility belt around her waist with the X-Men symbol as a red buckle with a black X. The entire uniform is skintight.
Skills:
Betsy is an extremely proficient combatant, skilled in both armed and unarmed melee combat. She has mastered several martial arts disciplines, though most of her talents lie in and around the ways of ninjutsu – she is equivalent to a 10th Dan Black Belt in Taijutsu and Kenpo. She is a master at wielding a katana, both one handed and dual wielding.
In addition, she is skilled in other areas of ninjutsu – espionage, infiltration, covert operations, stealth and acrobatics amongst them. Having once been a pilot, she also has a great deal of knowledge about aeroplanes and flying them. She is an exceptional listener, leader and diplomat. Since she has been riding horses since she was very young, she is also a good rider in the English discipline.
Weaknesses:
Betsy finds it difficult to trust people, and seems to always be on her guard for someone to betray her or prove that they aren't what they seem. She is aloof and confident, and this confidence can often be misconceived as arrogance. She is proud, which leads her to being easily goaded, and she is her own worst critic. She hates to be anything other than perfect, to fail in any way at all.
She is still fairly broken up about her own death, and hasn't come to terms with it yet. It hasn't actually hit her properly that she died and that it is okay for her to grieve for herself. She is currently a ticking time bomb waiting to go off, and will be until she realises that she's most likely suffering from some sort of PTSD.
Her telekinesis is currently not as strong as it could be, and her precognitive powers have a long way to go before they will be any sort of useful.
---
Motivation, and Why: Because why not? Being a superhero runs in the family.
Loyalty: X-Men
Physical Appearance:
Betsy stands at five feet and eight inches and weighs one hundred and thirty five pounds. She is fit, lean and muscular, her body hard and sinewy from years of combat training. Despite this, there is no doubt that she is a woman in her prime; she is curvy and beautiful, and takes great pains to keep her appearance pleasing. Her hair is dyed purple and long, down to her mid back. Her eyes are indigo and her skin is fairly pale, though she is fortunate enough to tan rather than burn.
She has a smattering of scars on her body, notably the one on her abdomen from being impaled by Vargas. She has a tattoo in the dead center of her back - the kanji symbol for wisdom. It was done long before Betsy inhabited the body and serves as a constant reminder that it doesn't belong to her.
When not wearing her combat uniform, she dresses smart casual, favouring fitted jeans or slacks with blouses and tees. She rarely wears dresses or skirts in case a situation arises, though she does make an effort to look pretty as well as professional.
History:
Elizabeth Braddock was born to scientists Sir James Braddock and Lady Elizabeth Braddock in Somerset, England. She was one half of a set of twins, being a few minutes older than her brother, Brian. They had one elder brother, James Jr – better known as Jamie.
Elizabeth’s early life was good. Her parents were well known and wealthy, and her upbringing was privileged (though she was not spoiled). She spent her childhood riding horses and playing on the estate her father owned as a part of his manor. Despite being almost ten years younger than Jamie, she was close to both of her brothers.
Just after Brian and Elizabeth turned twenty, their mother and father were killed in a lab explosion caused by a malfunctioning V.I. Sir James had designed named Mastermind. Following this, Betsy trained to be a charter pilot, as her twin studied Physics at Thames University and later became Captain Britain, a superhero of great prestige.
Just months later, Betsy received word that her elder brother had been injured in what appeared to be an accident involving one of his racing cars. Afraid that she would lose another family member so soon after her parents, she contacted Brian and they flew back to the manor.
As they reached the Braddock estate, a psychic mutant named Dr. Synne brought their plane down, though they fortunately survived the crash. However, Synne mind controlled Betsy into believing that both of her brothers were monsters, and, terrified, she attacked them. They managed to subdue her without hurting her, and delivered her to a facility for treatment – and straight into the hands of one of Synne’s dogsbodies.
Brian, fortunately, realised what had happened and struck Synne down. Things escalated into an even worse situation; the dogsbody happened to be a doctor named Ramsey, whose real allegiance was to the Nazi, Red Skull. Fortunately, both Brian and his new ally, Captain America, were able to save the day.
It is believed that Synne’s mind control inadvertently caused Betsy’s psychic abilities to reveal themselves and develop faster than they should have, for while there had been incidents where she had used her powers prior to this point, they were insignificant – more party tricks than anything else.
Betsy quit the charter profession, and began a modelling career. Through this time, her psychic powers continued to develop, and she contacted an agent from S.T.R.I.K.E., and was later recruited by an agent codenamed Gabriel, with whom she had a brief romance.
She was placed in a specialist division known as Psi, and formed a close bond with fellow Psi agent, Tom Lennox. In her time with the agency, she succeeded in infiltrating the English Hellfire Club’s inner circle before being cautioned away by Tessa.
Eventually, the Psi team ran into some trouble when a man named Slaymaster was tasked with assassinating them to cover up an operation by another agent named Vixen, who was attempting to take over S.T.R.I.K.E.
It was a harrowing few months – Betsy and Tom fled with the only other surviving Psi member, Alison Double. They attempted to hide in Braddock Manor under Brian’s protection, but were forced to leave again when Brian was caught up in a huge fight with two of his allies. They went to London, but they could not find safety there either; Vixen’s former ally, ‘Mad’ Jim Jaspers, was busy taking over the country.
At the culmination of their fleeing from S.T.R.I.K.E. and Slaymaster, the corrupt government captured them. Tom was brutally killed and Alison and Betsy were thrown into a concentration camp. They were released after Jaspers’ short reign was ended by Captain Britain and his companions, but Betsy was still extremely traumatised; she had been in mental contact with Tom at the time of his death, and it had left deep scars on her psyche.
After she had been given time to grieve, she began to use her anger and vengefulness to her own advantage, focusing it into her psychic powers to make them stronger.
Returning to her family home once more, Betsy became involved in an insane body switch of sorts. Her brother had an alternate reality version named Kaptain Briton, who was a sick, sadistic man, and who had managed to jump through to their own reality.
The two of them duked it out, and Briton won – he had been followed by a group of dimension hopping mercenaries named the Technet, and Brian was taken back to Briton’s fascist reality instead of the impostor. Briton attempted to assault Betsy, but she was able to overpower him with her psionic abilities, overloading his brain and killing him.
Brian returned shortly afterwards, and the twins were approached by R.C.X., the new S.T.R.I.K.E., who were seeking Brian’s help. He refused, and they managed to trick him into leaving the country somehow. Gabriel got down on his knees and asked Betsy to become the new Captain Britain in her brother’s stead, and she agreed.
She worked for a little while with a man named Captain UK, who was an old hand at this superhero lark. Once she had learned all she could from him, she decided to go solo, and was almost immediately lured into a trap by her old foe, Vixen. She was ambushed by Slaymaster, who beat her almost to death and blinded her.
Sensing his twin’s pain through their mental link, Brian returned and killed Slaymaster, but the damage was done; Betsy was completely blind. R.C.X. offered to give her cybernetic eye implants, but she refused – she would rely on her telepathy from now on. Gabriel proposed to her, she said ‘yes’, and the two of them travelled to Switzerland for her to recover. The two of them separated, but Betsy stayed in the Alps.
Woe and betide, for Betsy could not catch a break. She was kidnapped by the villain Mojo in her downtime, and given artificial eyes. He mind controlled her into kidnapping children for him, until she came across a couple of X-Men. They wrestled her from Mojo’s mojo and dragged her back home. Learning that she was a mutant (she hadn’t known for all that time) she decided to stay at the institute.
A lot of stuff happened after that; the X-Men were turned into the X-Babies by Mojo, who had been watching them through magic cameras in Betsy’s eyes, the Morlocks were massacred, and Betsy had a huge brawl with Sabretooth all the way through the school.
Following this last event, she was asked to join the X-Men and she agreed. She took on the codename Psylocke.
With the X-Men, she had many adventures, including faking her own death with her allies (and getting found out), being abducted by a mutant named Horde who had some sort of crystal obsession, and holding Kitty Pryde’s mind together after she was almost killed. She was also a part of the quest surrounding Madelyne Pryor.
One of the most significant encounters of Betsy’s initial X-Men years consisted of her being captured by a crime boss, Mats’uo Tsurabaya, and him switching her mind into his lover, Kwannon’s body and vice versa. He brainwashed her into becoming a villain known as Lady Mandarin, but she was able to break his hold and rejoined the X-Men.
Kwannon, in Betsy’s original body, later returned though she now had the codename Revanche. She had been infected by the Legacy virus and was dying. She called herself an ally of the X-Men, but upon reuniting with Tsurabaya, she asked him to kill her, which he acquiesced to. Betsy was now forever trapped in the ‘wrong’ body.
Sabretooth returned to take his revenge on Betsy, and almost killed her thanks to his increased resistance to telepathy. To save her, Wolverine and Angel (her new lover), used a powerful force from a dimension known as the Crimson Dawn. The leader of the Crimson Dawn dimension, Kuragari, realised what was happening and attempted to control Betsy and make her his queen.
He was foiled by the combined efforts of Betsy and Angel, though this encounter had a side effect of giving her telepathy and fighting prowess a boost, and she was now able to teleport through shadow. She was also marked with the tattoo of the Crimson Dawn on her face.
She temporarily left the X-Men to figure her life out, and was contacted by a man known only by the pretentious title of Shadow King. He tricked her into releasing a psionic wave that would eliminate all telepathy and allow him to control everyone on Earth. The sheer toll this took on her body should have killed her, but her Crimson Dawn powers kept her alive.
Shadow King expanded his powers in a stupid mistake, allowing his ‘personal nexus’ to be exposed. Betsy took action, trapping him in her astral shadow form, at the cost of her telepathy. He was defeated. Jean Grey then attempted to give Betsy her powers back – she lost her Crimson Dawn abilities, and instead gained telekinesis; she had previously been exclusively a telepath.
Angel and Betsy’s relationship came to a mutually agreed end when he witnessed her flirting with Thunderbird in a post-mission adrenaline burst. They admitted that their relationship had reached its natural conclusion, and separated amicably. She joined up with Storm’s X-Treme X-Men squad on their hunt for Destiny’s thirteen precognitive diaries – journals that supposedly held information about the future.
They headed out to Spain and were captured in Valencia by the police, who forced them to display their fighting and powers in several tests. Psylocke was separated from most of the others, standing alongside only Beast and Rogue.
Of course things got worse – Vargas, self proclaimed ‘homo sapiens superior’ arrived on the scene and quickly overpowered Betsy’s team mates. For a few seconds, it looked like she might have been able to take him down… until he ran her through, skewering her on his sword.
Game over.
Betsy never saw the outcome of that fight. She died that day, as is the standard response to being impaled. Her team mourned her and then life went on without her – the world didn’t stop turning because one girl got slaughtered by one guy.
Only, she didn’t. Well, she did, but it wasn’t the end.
It is unknown exactly what happened, but Betsy reappeared in the exact same spot she died in just a few months later. Her brother, Jamie, off the scene for many years, claimed that he resurrected her, but whether this is true or not is up in the air.
Whatever happened, Betsy was back, and it was she. The X-Men were suspicious at first, as they should be, but after performing tests on her they discovered that it was, indeed, Elizabeth Braddock. Back from the dead and good as new. And they accepted that – well, why not? It wasn’t like they hadn’t seen a squad mate resurrected before.
Betsy has been back from the dead for several months, and has rejoined the X-Men. She is still a little cautious after Vargas, but she is almost back to how she was before.
RP Sample:
The sun had risen high in the sky this morning, and there had not yet been any sign of the April showers which had graced them all recently. No, the sky was clear, hovering between grey and a dull blue, which was about as good as one could expect from the pre-summer months.
The dawn found Elizabeth Braddock wandering the memorial gardens without purpose, as it had many mornings since her return. Like the previous day, and every day before it, her eyes scanned each plaque and statue for the names there, before she came to a stop in front of the Phoenix Memorial.
She still could not get over how much had changed in her absence. There was a Mutant Registration Act, Colossus was back from the dead as well, and now Cyclops and Emma ran the school. Rogue and Beast had somehow - somehow - survived the fight against Vargas that had proven to be her last. She did not know if she fit in here anymore.
Frowning at this, she stared up at the garden's centrepiece.
Did I come back wrong? How did I even come back at all?
Despite how much she resented being killed, she admitted to herself that it had been a good death. An honourable death, protecting her allies from harm. Jamie claimed that it has been his meddling which had brought her back, and though Betsy loved her brother dearly, she wondered if this were true.
What if it were something else?
This line of thought was getting her nowhere, and she was frustrating herself by even continuing to debate the issue. Maybe she just needed to get out more.
She made a mental note to remind herself to leave the mansion some time this week, and then sat down by the memorial, her back against the solid stone.
Assuming a position of meditation, she closed her eyes slowly, allowing her telepathy to ebb outwards from her mind in a steady pulse. All of her troubles and anger seeped from her body as she relaxed into a different state of being; she was connected to everything. The warmth of life and the world calmed the tempest inside her, and her lips turned upwards in a satisfied smile.
She was at peace.
---
Your Handle: Starbuck/Starstriker
Other Characters: None