CLEA DATA FILE
Team Identities:
- Slingshot – Taisho Fujiwara
- Torque – Xun Wong
- Cascade – Jodie Madden
CLEA Classification:
- Alpha Superior (Taisho and Jodie)
- Tech Enhanced (Xun)
Special Skills and/or Abilities:
- Magic Totem – When Jodie wears her Totem she become protected in a magical forcefield of energy. This has the advantage of giving her zero air resistance which means she is capable of travelling at speeds far greater than normal people.
- Alpha ability. – Toshie has the ability to project his body to another location in line of sight. For a brief second he exists in two place at the same time before being snapped back to his original body like an elastic band.
- Tech Enhancement – Xun has been injected with Raider nanobots. She has increased strength in her arms and legs as a result of this
Limitation(s)/Weakness(s):
- If Jodie removes her totem she is as vulnerable as ordinary people
- Magic defeats Magic
- Xun only has Raider nanobots in her body. Whilst that gives her greater capabilities since she has no other cybernetic improvements she burns through energy at an incredible rate giving her less endurance.
- Taisho has to be careful of objects/people in between his astral and real form when he snaps back or else unforseen problems arise. Also has the other negative problems associated with Alphas such as not exerting his abilities etc.
Rap Sheet/Criminal Traits:
- Robbery/theft – Taisho
Notes/History
Xun
Whilst growing up Xun was a child that embraced outdoor sports and pursuits. Always getting into scrapes for pushing herself to the limits, in her early teens there was not a week that went by without her coming home with some injury. Her parents had tried to encourage her to take up less “dangerous” hobbies but they did not give her a buzz. Whilst she tried many different types of sport the only one she stuck with was riding BMX freestyle. In fact she did so well that she became a junior champion.
Following school she made use of her “fame” to get a job for a sports company. To her it was a dream job but others wondered why she had never gone pro. Xun though accepted that the life of a professional sports person was not for her. Her job paid reasonably, she did not need to permanently train and when time permitted she could still ride for fun. Her favourite spots for riding were a forest and wasteland area on the outskirts of New Tokyo and it was riding her one day that she had a life changing event.
On that day CLEA’s Menagerie team was hunting an alien fugitive. Where possible CLEA did not dispatch the team in public areas since it was viewed that the appearances of most of the team might cause panic. The general public at large were not ready to deal with aliens and hybrids. As the last sighting was in a remote area of wasteland CLEA top brass felt it was okay to send in the team.to capture the dangerous fugitive. What the did not know was in the area with them was a lone woman riding a BMX.
The fugitive was not prepared to do down without a fight and when Menagerie and the alien began engaging fire the exchange was not quiet. Energy weapons sounded far different than ordinary firearms so when Xun heard the commotion the adventurous side of her made her want to investigate when most other people would exercise caution.
Before she found out exactly what was going on she became collateral damage and received an energy blast to her legs. Rho, saw Xun enter the area too late and saw the shot which took her out. Though they were still dealing with an alien threat, Rho opted to deal with the civilian. Xun was unconscious and the damage to her legs was severe. She estimated that the civilian would not survive if medical help was called so Rho opted to inject some of her Raider nanobots in the casualty. The procedure worked and the nanobots started repairing the damage.
Since Xun was now part Raider, after capturing the target, Menagerie opted to take Xun back with them so she could be monitored. To say she was surprised to find herself in a CLEA medical facility when she awoke was an understatement. In any other circumstances if CLEA “rescued” a civilian they would be given some sort of cover story and sent on their way, but doctors had already ascertained that the nanobots were active in her system.
Whilst Rho had tried to limit their capabilities to just healing the damage the nanobots had found “deficiencies” in Xun and fixed them. She was far above an “average” human now. This meant that CLEA had no choice but to tell her the truth. As she was stronger and faster than normal they suggested that she join them as a White Guardian. That would have been ideal for the agency since they could cover up what had happened to Xun.
She though wanted her old life back. She even demanded they remove the nanobots but that was not possible. Though they did consider holding on to her, locking up people who were not considered a threat in order to cover up a mistake would have set a dangerous precedent. In the end a compromise was reached whereby before Xun was released from CLEA custody she had to sign papers stating she would keep her abilities and encounter with the Menagerie a secret.
Though sworn to secrecy it was not long before Xun became tempted to make use of her gifts. Since competing in sports again would be cheating, after interfering in a mugging one day she discovered she got a real buzz out of performing social justice. Xun therefore became the amateur crime fighter known as Torque. Though the nanobots enabled her to run faster than normal people criminals often used getaway vehicles which she could not keep up with so she decided to employ her own transport and made use of her bike in fighting criminals.
Jodie
Unlike Xun who always had a passion for sport, Jodie only discovered it later on. Since her father was a teacher and her mother a professor they tended to be quite strict and made her concentrate on her studies. Whilst other children might rebel, she chose to conform to their guidance. Unfortunately for her, the fact she studied and had no time for boys made her a target for bullies.
With few friends to support her, school life was quite lonely for her. Rather than let her parents know what was going on she chose to keep it all inside her which by the time she graduated she had adopted a shy and retiring character. Jodie had always been led to believe that good grades were the key to getting on in the world so it came as something of a shock when the only job she could get was that of a waitress. Her parents though still continued to control her life and this was why at the age of nineteen she left home. Though she loved them dearly she felt it was the only way she was ever going to experience anything.
Her introduction life in general came when a friend, Michelle, introduced her to roller skating. At first the basics of staying on her feet were a challenge. She expected after many pratfalls that everyone in the rink would be laughing and staring but they weren’t and that gave her just a little bit of confidence. From those initial seeds, Jodie started to learn quickly. Michelle kept saying she was a natural but Jodie just thought it was a friend that was being nice. She knew Michelle was excellent on skates as she was on the local Roller Derby team so to be considered an equal did not seem logical.
Jodie was therefore in for a huge shock when Michelle brought her along to a match warm up and suggested having a go. For an introvert the brutal full contact sport was something she would never have imagined doing but having built up her confidence she gave it a go. Though she did not know a huge amount about the sport, the other team members were impressed by Jodie’s natural talent.
They said that with the right training and practise she was good enough for the team. Jodie was somewhat confused over this and thought they were joking. She was not aware that previous to that evening Michelle had mentioned Jodie’s talents and had suggested they give her a try out. For a rookie to be “that good” was unusual so they asked Michelle to bring her to a training session and let them see what she could do. Since no promises were being made, Michelle chose not to tell her friend the real reason they were there that evening.
Though throughout her life everyone had made decisions for her and she should have been angry at Michelle for trying to do the same, in this instance, getting her to learn to skate and then trying to get her onto a team had opened up a whole new world for her. It was a world she really wanted to be part of for she was no longer alone. She was part of something bigger.
Using every moment of her spare time to get in practice secured her a position on the team. From then on things just got better and better. The team moved up the ranks and even got to the local semi-finals. Though they did not win the championship there was always next year. In fact it took them three years to become champions.
Then her life took another unexpected change.One night she was walking home and she saw two thugs beating on an elderly woman. Without hesitating Jodie flew into action and attacked them. As she forced them of her they “vanished” leaving Jodie somewhat confused.
The old women then explained that she “special abilities” and had been testing the same scenario for months and everyone so far had ignored her plight. Jodie thought “special abilities” meant she was an Alpha. The old woman continued saying that her life was nearly at an end and without any relatives she wanted to give her pendant to someone “worthy”.
Jodie by now was really confused, so the old woman explained she was a witch. This might have seemed an odd statement to make ten minutes ago, However despite not believing in magic the disappearing thugs was something the Jodie could not explain. The lady continued to say that her greatest possession was her pendant, a magic Totem, that could protect her from any danger. In the wrong hands it could do great harm but in the right hands it could do great good. Whilst she would have liked to hand it over to another magic wielder such as herself, her time was running out so instead she had chosen to find someone who “had a good heart” and “would do the right thing”. She had chosen Jodie.
The old woman then took off the pendant from around her neck and put it over Jodie. Still somewhat confused Jodie tried to resist the stranger’s attempts to put the pendant over her head but found herself unable to move. Once the pendant was hanging from her neck the old woman put her hand on Jodie’s chest and then stalking talking in a strange language. The pendant then glowed as did the woman’s hand. Jodie was told that was to ensure only she could use it. Before she had the chance to ask any more questions the old woman vanished in a cloud of mist, the same as her “attackers” and Jodie was left alone.
Not sure of what had just happened, Jodie went to take the pendant off. She considered throwing it away but then shoved it in her pocket instead. The next morning she was not sure if she imagined the whole incident but the pendant was still in her trousers. In daylight it looked quite a pretty thing and though she did not know why she felt inclined to wear it.
For a few weeks apart from wearing it she thought nothing more about it or about the old woman’s claim that it would protect her from danger. Then one night she failed to spot an approaching car when crossing the road. The screech of brakes and flash of headlights certainly was a shock.
Instinct kicked in and she tried to jumped backwards but the car still clipped her and to make matters worse she ended up bouncing of a lamppost for good measure. As she sat on the pavement trying to collect her thoughts the driver stopped, wound the window down and shouted a few expletives before driving off. Just before it moved out of view she noticed the fender was bend where it had hit her but she had no cuts. That she felt was strange until she stood up and noticed that the lamppost had been distorted and actually was bent in the shape she had hit it. Looking down she saw the pendant was glowing and then she remembered that night she had “saved” the old woman.
Most people who discovered they had strange “abilities” like Alphas normally try to hide their gift whilst experimenting but Jodie felt the need to tell someone so she told Michelle, who unfortunately couldn’t keep a secret so within days the rest of the team knew. The sisterhood bond they had stopped the secret going any further and along with Michelle the other team members helped Jodie work out how exactly her pendant “worked”.
Eventually they determined that the pendant created a protective shell around her whenever she was “threatened” or in potential danger. The problem for Jodie was the pendant only triggered when the threat was real and not “perceived”. Therefore when her friends tried to strike her, she got hit because she knew there was no malice. She could not understand why the pendant did not seem to work until one night after practice she went to leave the gym and someone inadvertently shut the door in her face. Jodie couldn’t stop in time and literally crashed through a door but was left unharmed.
Having finally figured out how the pendant worked, Jodie would wear it all the time, apart from when playing with the team. She figured that an opposing team would create a viable “threat” and she did not want to hurt anyone. Being true friends the rest of the team decided to keep the pendant a secret. One of them jokingly suggested she ought to be “one of those superheroes” that were always on the news. Jodie laughed it off at the time, not realising that fate would have other ideas.
Taisho
Unlike Xun or Jodie, Taisho was something of a rebel growing up. His mother, a single parent, tried her best to curb his bad boy behaviour but he simply ignored her. Having to work three jobs in order just to pay the bills meant she did not have much time to “be a mother” for him. This meant that Taisho had a lot of “spare time” on his hands which was how he fell in with the wrong people.
As a member of a street gang, Taisho had acquired a string of misdemeanours under his belt before he was even sixteen. None of them were more serious than shop lifting. Some of the other members of the gang took to offences such a mugging and breaking and entering but Taisho did have some sort of moral code. Shops could replace lost goods but people often could not replace possessions as where he lived in New Tokyo it was not a wealthy part of the city.
Average at school, when he showed up, about the only thing he had passion for other than petty crime was skateboarding. Whilst riding a board with the wind rushing through his hair, for brief moments he could forget about everything and it was only in those moments that he was genuinely happy.
At the age of eighteen he had left school but with next to no qualifications that was nigh on impossible so he had to be like his mother and take part time work, of the variety that nobody wanted to do. He subsidised this with money acquired through continuing his petty crimes. The older he got though the harder it was for him to get away with such activities. On more than one occasion, police officers warned him that he was destined for a life in prison. As with his mother though, he ignored their attempts to help him avoid a dark fate.
This came particularly so when he began experiencing the onset of his Alpha abilities. He tried to tell his mother that he was experiencing some “problems” but she had grown tired of his schemes and did not really take much interest. Taisho therefore looked up the symptoms on the computer and surmised he was an Alpha Inferior. That explained why he never got ill as a youngster.
When his abilities eventually activated, Taisho discovered he could momentarily leave his physical body for a brief moment and be in two places at once before being pulled back. He had heard of people having out of body experiences and likened it to that only his astral projection actually had some sort of physical presence. When using this ability time seemed to slow down so whilst few people could perceive what was happening Taisho seemed to experience it all very normally. With a bit of practise he found his astral form could actually steal stuff and bring it back to his physical form when he snapped back. He also realised that his astral form could create injuries in his actual body if it was hurt. Being in two places at once therefore had the penalty of being able to get hurt in two places at once.
Despite this downside Taisho decided to use his gift to help him in his shop lifting. Riding the board through shopping malls he could enter a shop, steal something and return before his physical form had even cleared the door way. Once his one man crime spree was well underway he soon learned another “problem” with his powers and that was if something got in the way of his astral and physical form when he snapped back then upon entering his body the momentum would transfer across.
That meant if his astral form “tripped” over something after returning, his phyiscal body would react as if it had tripped over. The consequencies of someone shutting a door or a wall getting in the way were far more serious as the injuries would be recreated. Therefore Taisho chose to only use line of sight and avoid crowded areas to minimise the risks. Over time he learned that if his astral form grabbed hold of something, when the snap back occured his physical form would be pulled to him. This though was not a lot of use since he would pull himself into a shop he was stealing from. Letting go before that happened would see both astral and physical forms meet halfway albeit that was not a lot of use to his criminal exploits either.
The seemingly downside of his abilities would, ironically, lead him to turning his life around and start being responsible after a disastrous encounter with both Xun and Jodie.
The beginnings of the team
Some heroes group together deliberately whilst others find that fate has a part to play and in Team Extreme it was purely down to the latter.
Taisho was out one day doing his usual “grocery run”, stealing what he could whilst riding his board. On this particular day, Xun was on her bike. She was specifically looking for criminals under her “Torque” guise. Even she though was not expecting to meet one head on for she got in the way of him snapping back to his body. Striking her, she was sent flying and so was his physical body. As they both hit the ground a cloud of stolen merchandise was ejected into the air.
The pair looked at each other. Xun assumed that he must have just ran out of the shop and she had not been paying attention as all she witnessed was a blur. All Taisho knew was that his leg hurt after his astral form had made contact with her bike. Rather than have some explaining to do to the police having been seen surrounded by items which clearly he had not obtained legally, Taisho jumped on his board and raced off.
Xun shouted for him to stop but the man kept on going. The chase was one and though Taisho had made quite some distance she soon caught him up. With her nanobots having improved her physical form she could pedal at the same speed as a motorbike. Taisho was surprised when she came up alongside him. He needed to get away and though he was loathe to hurt someone he was desperate and so used his Alpha abilities it strike her. Though he got a hit in, she did not fall as her superfast reactions allowed her to correct the imbalance. She did lose a bit of ground but having been punched in the jaw she was pretty angry.
Closing in from behind she kicked her legs down and bounced the bike in high arc over the fleeing skateboarder and landed in front of him, broadside. Taisho responded by sending out his astral form to grab a lampost which pulled his physical form sideways taking with it the board. He let go before his physical form arrived and this enabled him to apparently skew out of her path.
For the next five minutes Xun chased Taisho getting slowly aggravated. Though she had nanobots enhancing her system her body still required energy like any other human and she was burning through it rapidly. Had the chase continued for a lot longer then she would have been forced to quit. But the pair happened to run into Jodie, literally.
She had been rollerblading home from training. Jodie liked to keep in practice and since the roads and pavements were not ideal for roller skates, blades were the next best option. Since she was not “playing” she was wearing the pendant.
Ahead of her there seemed some sort of commotion and then out of it all a woman on a BMX and a guy on a skateboard came hurtling at her. The woman was yelling thief and Jodie was sure they were going to hit her but at the last moment they parted and went around her on either side. Though she did not know why, Jodie felt the urge to give chase and then dismissed it until she looked down and the pendant was glowing like it was urging her to act on her instinct.
Though they had about twenty seconds head start once she started moving, it did not take her long to join the warring parties. Slipping between them she told them to stop. Xun moved wide, surprised at the new arrival. Taisho though was even more panicked and tried to take out Jodie the same way he had attempted to wipe out Xun. This time though he met Jodie’s protective “field” and it was like him slamming into a wall. His astral form snapped back very quickly and sent him to the ground once more. Jodie now skated in a circle and corralled Taisho whilst Xun joined in. With no way out, Taisho was forced to admit defeat.
It was only now that Xun could explain to Jodie what was happening and thanked her for the assist. Since it was obvious that they were different Xun queried how Jodie had brought down the skateboarder. She told Xun of her pendant. Strangely she felt she could trust the woman on a bike even though they had just met. That led to Jodie asking Xun how she was faster on a pedal bike than some people were in a car. Under the circumstances the conversation was quite surreal.
Meanwhile Taisho was still lying on the floor. He contemplated sneaking away whilst the two women were distracted but his ego was getting annoyed at being ignored and he found himself querying why nobody had asked him about his ability. Xun harshly replied that he had not been asked as he was nothing more than a worthless thief, worthless because he obviously had a “special gift” but had chosen to use it for his own benefit.
Those words stung him and for the first time he actually experience guilt. Before the conversation went any further in the distance there were police sirens. Having been seen with stolen goods, Taisho knew he would end up in prison this time. He begged the two women to let him go and promised to make amends. Xun did not really care but Jodie persuaded her to give him one chance. Xun therefore took his picture on her phone and threatened to give it to the police if she ever saw him commit a single crime. With that done all three parted company.
Taisho was as good as his word and having escaped the fate the police officers had predicted he was destined for, he chose to turn his life around. He abandoned his criminal activities and found a couple of jobs and worked hard. On occasion he even found a way to use his gift to help others and it actually felt rewarding.
In the meantime Jodie went searching for Xun. Having remembered one of her roller derby team mates suggest she become a “super hero” and watching Xun in action she felt strangely drawn to the idea. Though she still had her team commitments she felt she had a responsibility to the witch that had given her the pendant. Jodie felt this is what she had wanted her to do.
After about a month of aimlessly travelling around the same shopping centre Jodie found Xun and asked for her help in showing her how to be a “hero”. Xun admitted that she had found her alternative work quite lonely and proposed that if she taught Jodie what she knew then perhaps they should become partners. Jodie liked that idea.
In working together the pair would one day run into Taisho again. When they saw him chase down someone they assumed he was up to his old tricks but when the intercepted him he instead claimed he was trying to catch a purse snatcher. They let him on his way but then followed behind at a distance and were pleasantly surprised to find that he had been telling the truth for he used his abilities to take back the purse.
They crossed paths again when he was on the way back to repatriate the item with its proper owner. Afterwards he admitted that after their previous encounter he had managed to change. He noted they were together and Xun mentioned they had chosen to team up since it was hard work being a lone hero and they were far stronger together. Taisho said that with little free time to spare in between his two jobs, he had not much opportunity to become even a part time crime fighter but when the opportunity presented itself then he would do some good.
As Taisho talked about turning a new leaf and abandoning his past, Jodie and Xun got the inkling that he was very much alone in the world. Most of his friends had been criminals and they were now gone. He seemed too proud to admit that. Previously Jodie had felt sorry for him and had asked Xun to give him a chance. Now it was Xun that actually felt sorry for him and suggested that they should perhaps all meet up more often, preferably without criminals around.
This led to the trio meeting socially on a semi-regular basis and eventually Xun and Jodie could not see a reason why Taisho, as a reformed individual could not turn their partnership into a trio. They then became known as Team Extreme due to their sports related “theme”.
Xun and Taisho have even been to see Jodie play. The irony is whilst her team knows about the pendant they have never made the link between her and the hero known as “Cascade” and they also do not realise her two biggest fans are members have also got special gifts.
Unlike other groups that are generally quite serious, CLEA has noted that the trio are quite unorthodox and regularly seem to be having “fun” when fighting crime.
