Chesterfield Act Registry of the Expressive Database
File #03 Jun 2019 15:03
|
 Elyse Levesque |
Summary: She has two dads. She never really knew her mom; her bio-dad and mother got divorced before Erin could create memories, and mom didn’t really want to be in the picture. It was always a bit of a headache trying to get in touch with her, if necessary. But she didn’t care. Her parents are all Canadian, having moved to the USA before she was even born. She is also Jew-ish. Her mom was Russian Jewish, her dad isn’t. She was encouraged to explore it, even if her mom wasn’t really around. It wasn’t a religious thing so much as it was a cultural one. She grew to love it immensely, often in her youth ambling down to the neighborhoods in Ocean Parkway and Brighton Beach. And because it’s New York, she literally never thought anything of her two dads. What she did worry about, though, was becoming a stereotype — both of being raised by gay folks, as well as being a soft butch cop herself. She’s out and happy, but sometimes she rolled her eyes at her dads when they responded to bringing her girlfriends home. And regarding mummy, Erin had some angst about this as an adolescent/teenager, wondering why her mom just didn’t want to be around and the abandonment that follows, but eventually during college she grew to understand and accept that it didn’t mean she was not worthy, but she does, as a result, struggle with abandonment triggers sometimes.
NYPD Timeline: She was a cop starting shortly before - like a few weeks before - the Evo event. She was surprised to find that she, too, evolved powers. She kept them hidden for fear of retaliation or, like being the friend with a pickup truck, being asked for favors. It wasn’t until 2008 that she went public (being a cop, she didn’t feel she could risk not registering after the Act was passed), and shortly afterwards, a fortuitous opening for the rank of Detective appeared and, with no studying whatsoever, she sat the exam and passed. This struck her by surprise. It felt fishy - did I actually pass, or was this just given to me as a token? - but she went with it. The pay was better, and she was tired of being the beat. She wanted to wear her own clothes again. She, as a government employee, was barred from taking a position in the Second Civil War, but she did what she could to provide the support of a private citizen to her friends fighting for the rights of Expressives. She tries to keep her work and personal lives separate.
Forced Evolution (2006-2008): Erin entered the force on traffic patrol a few short weeks before the Forced Evolution event. When her powers awakened, it felt like a shoddy metaphor that should have been in another person’s life, not her own. Nobody else in her family had had powers, that she knew of — maybe there was something her dads weren’t telling her. She wasn’t anywhere near midtown on November 8, 2006. She was off duty that day — a rare Saturday to herself, but not for long.
The Past is Prologue (2008-2012): She didn’t know Alexander at the time that the Act was passed. He was run off, and she was promoted. She was a poster-child, and it was uncomfortable. She just wanted to do her job, but they picked her to promote for what she felt was no reason at all. On the worst days during this time, Erin was going through the motions. She hated having to arrest people like her, for seemingly no reason sometimes. She was an ally of the state which considered people like her to be enemies; she was a pawn, and she was powerless to stop it. Not infrequently would fellow Evolved people criticize her on the job, jeering and, on one memorable occasion, spitting. (She had to arrest that person, too, but she didn’t feel remotely bad about it.) The NYPD, the state, everyone in power was super corrupt. On the one hand, she had a responsibility to protect and serve that she needed to uphold. On the other hand, one person who is in a relatively menial post with what feels like figurehead recognition can do very, very little actual change. And what change is she truly affecting when she’s basically being asked to be the Gestapo? She started having a real crisis of faith, so to speak, right before the second war broke out.
The Second Civil War (2012-2014): She drinks herself into oblivion with helplessness. As with most NYPD cops at the time — who want to try to keep a state lawful when it is lawless — she continues trying to protect and serve, but it’s absolutely pointless. One day, some citizens accost her for it. She stops pretending the force still exists and, instead, basically joins a vigilante underground railroad kind of group, while continuing to “don the uniform” and “go through the motions” (i.e. make a show of roughing up people she’s “arresting” until she gets them out of sight and then sends them somewhere they can actually get help). This does not last very long; maybe a few months at most are cops “protecting” and “serving.” It’s the military police who run the show now, so Erin is a cop no longer. She feels directionless. She has never not had a directive, a duty. She wanders, taking odd jobs and trying to stop little bubbles of eruptions of chaos in the street but thinking more and more about the corruption she lived through from 2006 on. It’s a trauma and she does some soul searching.
Reconstruction (2014-2017): Erin did not like what she saw during the Civil War; it was, like, absolutely the worst bits of humanity coming out. She had never considered herself a pessimist. She had generally been a hopeless optimist (hence joining up with the NYPD despite it being a horrible, awful, corrupt organization since, er, its inception). So once the violence passed, and it was safe to come out and exist again, Erin entered more of a general advocate kind of role, working freelance in hospitals to be on call for when people with powers came in and needed special assistance. Not translation, per se, but they were special needs, after all; some folks have standard powers, like flying, but others have powers that only act up in extreme distress, and those were the people who needed a safe eye kept on them.
Present: Erin has been on NYPD-SCOUT in more of an advocate role than a law-enforcement one since the NYPD was reinstated. Erin was deeply impacted, and deeply depressed, by what she was forced to do in the name of “duty” from 2006-2012. Of course, being a cop, she tells this to nobody. She is glad to be back, and glad to be in a role that is actually arresting the bad guys, instead of arresting the people who need help. She’s come a little bit full circle, doing what she actually joined the force to do but something still feels fishy about it. It’s a little hard to articulate.
A wisecracking cop who spent years trying to figure out her purpose after the NYPD collapsed and, now that it has returned, wants to advocate for Evolved folks for the greater good (which is, after all, why she became a cop in the first place).
She is grappling with what this whole “superpowers” thing means for her identity. The other intersections, she had acknowledged and accepted as herself — gay, Jewish, etc — but this new one, this Expressive one (oh! How ironic! Considering she bottles so much up!), was thrust upon her suddenly with no warning. She didn’t have time to stop and think about what it meant until 2014, when the war was over. And only recently, in 2019, that she finally has some stability in her life, is she able to stop and absorb what the reality of her own identity might mean.
Erin has the ability to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels. The amount of effort that this requires, and percentage of her own energy that is consumed in the process, is dependent on density and molar mass - put literally and simply, if there are more particles in a substance, it is more difficult to mess with. She has not experimented with the manipulation of organic matter within sentients (external to herself), being a pacifist who resorts only to violence when necessary, but has experimented with the knitting together of small wounds on her own person such as cat scratches or knee scrapes, and found that, while possible, it expends more energy than is currently worthwhile. However, her body seems to have a “reset” state that it can default to in very small parts.
As such, Erin’s ability is most accurately described as external manipulative phasing. Rather than phasing herself through an object, she phases an object through herself and adds the motion of her own body to create an effect that is something of a hackneyed pass-through illusion. While the phasing of her full body is theoretically possible, it is much more complex to keep track of different densities and volumes within a human body than it is a wall and has thus seemed, in her own words, too risky to attempt. Impurities within objects may cause unpleasant surprises. Additionally, Erin can strengthen or weaken small patches of a solid space by creating greater or fewer spaces between the molecules themselves, which is a handy assist for those who, say, may have super strength, or those who want to pick locks.
Regarding liquids and gases, things become somewhat more tricky. This, too, depends on density. If there is a liquid within a solid, it is possible to phase completely through it if the liquid is less dense than the solid (for example, phasing through a concrete swimming pool with glued-on tile walls and filled with chlorine-treated water). If the liquid is more dense (a plastic phial containing mercury), it then depends on the total mass and volume of the object - generally speaking, Erin can only affect that which she is touching, but if the phial containing mercury can fit into her hand, she can first affect the phial and then the mercury (not recommended). This power is not affected by most standard clothing, but is affected by treated police wear (e.g., kevlar-coated gloves, bulletproof vests, etc).1
Regarding the reset state, it functions similarly to the Transporter in the Star Trek universe, but with some crucial differences. While the Transporter disassembles and reassembles a person from the atomic level as though hitting a save state button with the person and their consciousness existing in a liminal state between, and Erin can also do this, her ability can also reset any changes in the object’s template, but not without consequences. The reset span is within 24 hours, and as such, any gains are lost. Muscle memory is lost. Muscle aches are lost. The reset is permanent, and so the potential precedents for memory tampering or resetting a person’s revival are also troublingly present. The regen time is also 24 hours. The reset does not have a set volume space but depends, as everything else, on molar mass, and the limitation renders the ability to do this much, much more sparing and sparse. If one were to regenerate an arm that has been cut off, well, it would likely be impossible; conversely, healing a fractured finger bone may be much more plausible; both would be extremely exhausting and should only be done under dire circumstances.
Erin cannot, of yet, change an object’s state linearly (solid to liquid, liquid to gas, etc) nor sublimate.
Last, these abilities require concentration to be able to Feel what she is doing; if she is in any way distracted or emotionally volatile, it may be reflected in the result.
Talent Table
| Talent | Effort2 | Description | Regen and/or Limitations |
|---|---|---|---|
| Manipulative Phasing - Pass-Through | Medium-High | Erin can manipulate solid matter to render it, for all intents and purposes, insubstantial. Ability range is touch. She does not manipulate her body; she does manipulate other surfaces. The solid matter retains its appearance but loses its substantial properties while ability is active. Directionality: pass object through body, body in motion, object stationary |
1 minute regen if fully depleted Hindered by density Impurities in composition may lead to barriers or remainders |
| Manipulative Phasing - Strengthen | Low-Medium | Inverse of weaken. Erin can use her phasing ability to strengthen a given area by drawing molecules closer together. On a large scale, this may cause the item in question to appear smaller due to the contracting of matter. Ability range is touch; area dependent on amount of energy available as well as substance density. The solid matter becomes extra-substantial until touch is withdrawn, at which point it returns, or attempts to return, to its original state. Directionality: body aura to object Directionality: object molecules towards touched surface Directionality: object molecules away from touched surface on reset (towards original positions over very short period of time, as the tension of a rubber band) |
30s regen if fully depleted; 10s for every third of energy used. If used on large scale or to drastically strengthen, substantive reset may lead to weakened object constitution; must be used with caution |
| Manipulative Phasing - Weaken | Low-Medium | Inverse of strengthen. Erin can use her phasing ability to weaken a given area by forcing molecules apart. This does not cause the item in question to appear larger, but does appear less opaque (if opaque to begin with). Ability range is touch; area dependent on amount of energy available as well as substance density. Solid matter becomes less substantial until touch is withdrawn, at which point it returns, or attempts to return, to its original state. Directionality: body aura to object Directionality: object molecules away from touched surface Directionality: object molecules towards touched surface on reset (towards original positions over a very short period of time, as the tension of a rubber band) |
30s regen if fully depleted; 10s for every third of energy used. If used on large scale or to dramatically weaken, substantive reset may lead to weakened object constitution; must be used with caution |
| Manipulative Phasing - Reconstitution | High | Every object knows where it wants to go and what it wants to be. Erin has the ability to tap into that self-awareness and reset it to its default. This is an extremely limited ability and can only be a 24-hour limit in its “memory” - no more, no less. If, for eg, one gets a tattoo and regrets it, one can only erase it up to one day later. Area range is touch, self or external non-organic object only. This is a very volatile ability and not generally worth the effort. |
Reaction time of <1 minute 24-hour regen once used, cannot be used with partial regen. If attempted without full regen, splicing can occur (splicing here being incomplete reset, nastiness resulting) |
Appendices
Skills
Standard NYPD weapons training is 15 days of:
- Tasers
- Pepper spray
- Handgun (must be recertified every six months; Erin has not yet failed a recert)
- Tactical training (whatever that means)
These are things that Erin has learned both through NYPD training as well as her own hobbies and interests.
- Grapple
- Restrain
- Throwing a sick right hook (but no other punches, she only took a single week of boxing at a local gym)
Miscellany that Erin might call "skills" but we might call "just being alive."
- Driving: cars, no class D license, terrible at parking and has something of a lead foot
- Hopping the subway turnstiles and other narrow, waist-height obstacles
- Being good with dogs? (She's not.)
- Running a nine-minute mile, which is exactly adequate
- Navigation: both above ground and the subway, as a lifelong New Yorker