because clearly what chapel needed in his life was a healthy dose of space

[tarheel]

PLAYER INFORMATION

NAME Siri
JOURNAL mynabird
AGE Still over 18.
CONTACT hopeforrent[at]gmail | coolercouleur (AIM + Plurk)
CHARACTERS everyone Gibson and Caleb St. Clair

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME Gabriel Sinclair | Chapel Hill
CANON Original
OU OR AU n/a
CANON POINT ... let's call it late 2011.
NUMBER RNG.

SETTING

For the past four hundred years the governments of the world—the parliaments, the senates, the kings, queen, emperors, the fascists and the communists, the proletariats and the bourgeoisie—have never really been the ones in control of their countries. Orders—clandestine societies of superpowered operatives—have worked tirelessly to ensure the smooth running of hundreds of governments throughout the world. Selecting their operatives according to their own agendas the Orders continue to regulate themselves independently of any governmental involvement whilst maximising their involvement in national affairs at the very topmost political levels. Each Order assigns its operatives codenames according to various cities within its country and in the UK it's no different: each seat in the Order of Great Britain comes with its own city-related codename and a particular power. The operative assigned the codename St. David's has the role of gifting each new city their superpower and removing it when their time comes to leave. As befits their city, the operative codenamed London is the presiding leader of the Order. With St. David's as their right-hand advisor and the precog Westminster as their left, London has the last word in any decision that the Order makes. Things have not always run smoothly for the Order. In times past events have escaped their control and come to light to the British public—from the English Civil War to Jack the Ripper, there have been times when disagreements within the Order have threatened to destroy them. Orders members have always been political creatures—not only at large and on a national scale but within their own ranks. None of them are strangers to drama—but when you gift some of the brightest men and women of the country inconceivable powers, who could blame them for meddling with each other as much as they meddle with their government? Verse overview written by fizzy and found here @ nationalities.

Now take the above, and substitute in the names of the appropriate American cities, national emergencies, and civil wars. The American Order has a slightly different alignment of power than the UK's Order; the US Order is led by Washington, DC (despite being an administrative district and not an actual city; really, are you going to call him on it?), and just below him in the power structure are New York City (subconscious coercion), Langley (telepathy), and Boston (power distribution). The American Order obviously has a different history from the UK Order, and its organizational structure is slightly different as a result—the Americans tend to organize into smaller, mostly-autonomous cells based on geographical location (and personal relationships)—but the purpose of the American Order is the same as its British cousin's. On a slightly more Chapel-related note, there have been Chapel Hill operatives since the early 1800s, thanks to the presence of the actual first public university in the country and Chapel Hill's relatively strategic location in the South. Suck it, gill sans. Chapel Hills have traditionally been field agents, although the definition of "field" has shifted slightly over the years due to the presence of the Research Triangle and the sudden abundance of nationally-prominent research universities in the area. Beyond the presence of the Order and the whole concept of temporary superpowers, Chapel is from your standard 21st-century America.

HISTORY

Once upon a time, there was a kid from the boonies who was too fucking smart for his own good. Gabriel Sinclair was born to Ellie and Michael Sinclair in Wadesboro, North Carolina, who then promptly decided that one child was quite enough. He was raised, however, by six auto mechanics and a 1957 Cadillac Eldorado. Frankly, this explains a lot about him. Gabe's mother was a waitress and his father an auto mechanic, and neither of their schedules left much time for childcare—no matter how much they wanted to spend time with their son. As a result, Gabe ended up hanging around his dad's garage after school most days, since it was faster than going home on the bus and he preferred not to be at home alone anyway. Instead of doing homework (like he should have) or commandeering the old TV in the waiting area (like normal kids would have), Gabe essentially pestered one or two of the mechanics into letting him help them in the shop, and eventually he ended up adopted as a sort of cross between a minion and a mascot. As a result of this slightly unconventional upbringing, Gabe learned how to strip an engine and swear like a sailor during his formative years, but he didn't pick up a hell of a lot in terms of actual academic learning. Although Gabe was more than bright enough to succeed in school (and he ended up skipping the second grade as a result) he was a decidedly lackluster student before he made it to college. Through a combination of bad timing—he had a summer birthday, which meant he was young for his grade even before he skipped—and sheer stubbornness— no ma'am, he didn't want to fill out the bubble sheet—Gabe fell through the cracks of the gifted-and-talented testing in his school district. He went essentially unchallenged during his entire K-12 academic career, and frankly, he didn't really feel the need to fix that. He wasn't quite the class clown, but he was definitely part of what could be described as the burnout crowd—and he picked up more than his fair share of "Gabriel is not living up to his full potential" notes on his report cards. Until his senior year of high school, Gabe didn't plan on going to college at all; instead of a college degree, he decided to pursue his ASE certification so he could start working at the garage in earnest. (Although Gabe had been helping out at the garage during most of his free time, it was on an untrained, unofficial, and decidedly uncertified basis.) Unfortunately, Gabe's mom got wind of this plan, which... pretty much ruined everything. Ellie Sinclair sat him down and read him the riot act, starting with "Gabriel Mackay Sinclair, you are gonna get your ass to college if it is the last goddamn thing I do, do you understand me?" Frankly, it is entirely pointless to stand in Ellie Sinclair's way when she wants something to happen, and Gabe ended up shoved into the college track at the very last second. In what can only be described as a miracle, Gabe got into the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill—almost entirely thanks to truly outstanding standardized test scores and the fact that he would be the first person in his family to go to college. After arriving at college, it was pretty much universally assumed that Gabe would burn out and slink back home in under a year. Fortunately, Gabe had a talent for proving people wrong, and the challenge ended up kicking his brain into high gear instead. Being surrounded by people who were actually interested in learning pushed him to do his work, and as a result he pretty much kicked ass and took names in undergrad. He managed to graduate with a BSc in Physics—summa cum laude, thanks very much—in just under three years, thanks to a lot of summer work and a very well-hidden core of stubbornness. There's not a whole lot one can do at twenty after graduating from college, and Gabe's options were pretty much limited to a: going to grad school or b: waiting around for a couple of years so he could, essentially, not be twenty and competing for a job with people who were years, occasionally decades older than he was. Rather unsurprisingly, Gabe chose grad school. Loan deferral is nice. The potential to earn six figures doing R&D for a tech company is nicer. (No one ever said his goals were entirely altruistic.) Gabe's work ethic carried him through grad school at MIT (relatively) unscathed, earning him two PhDs in solid-state physics and materials engineering by the time he turned 24. He then immediately headed into commercial research, landing himself a position in the RDU Research Triangle working with graphene to create a more efficient form of ultracapacitor. (Ultracapacitors are, essentially, superbatteries. Not terribly sexy research, but incredibly useful... and and pretty lucrative, if that sort of thing matters to you.) Gabe's parents, proud but slightly baffled by their son's life choices, were nonetheless grateful that he took a job relatively close by, and life proceeded roughly as normal for the next year. The Order has eyes everywhere, however, and Gabe's role in the ultracapacitor project—which was still technically in development at the time—brought him to the attention of the Order. The Order is, to make a long and complicated story significantly shorter, a group of clandestine organizations designed to secretly run the world. They give their operatives temporary superpowers, to be removed at the end of their tenure as agents (along with their memories), and codenames based on large metropolitan areas. In short, they're the superpower Illuminati—and they were in need of someone to keep an eye on various Very Important Laboratories from the inside, ensuring that science! was progressing as necessary, and Gabe fit the bill. After a couple of interviews—during which Gabe decided that there wasn't much point in seeming too desperate for the job and chose to be scrupulously honest (and less than tactful) instead—he got the job, receiving the codename Chapel Hill. He wasn't exactly thrilled at the idea of heading back into academia, but most of his complaints were canceled out by the fact that, oh yeah, he has superpowers now. After a year at Rice University working with graphene some more—during which time nothing much of note happened, save for proving himself as a competent scientist-mole to the Order—Chapel ended up inside Harvard's Center for Nanoscale Systems, monitoring a scientist who was on-track to win the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018 and putting his expertise in nanotechnology to work. (Gabe still maintains that he could get it done by mid-2015, but he's not being paid to be a research lead.) Coincidentally, this placement also put him within easy visiting distance of Boston (the operative, not the city itself). There generally isn't more than one Order operative in a given city at one time, due to the relatively small number of operatives and the Order's naming scheme—and when it does happen, the agents in question generally keep interactions to a plausible minimum unless there's some sort of national emergency. Chapel, being Chapel, decided that if the Order wanted him to work in a scientific area that did not specifically involve his branches of physics or materials science, then they'd damn well better give him a place to study that wasn't the Harvard library. Boston, being Boston, was mildly affronted and supremely annoyed at being interrupted from his very important lawyerly business by a scruffy hipster scientist... and handed over the key to a disused conference room, essentially just to get Chapel out of his office. One thing led to another, Chapel ended up hanging around Boston's firm more often than anyone had really anticipated, and eventually Boston and Chapel went from "tentative work acquaintances," to "sort of friends, maybe," to "it's complicated and let's not talk about it." And then Chapel woke up on a spaceship! THE END.

PERSONALITY

Although energy absorption is the legacy of the Chapel Hill operatives—and the Order swears they select new operatives by accomplishment and usefulness, not temperament—Chapel's personality suits his power much more than anyone really intended. Even before joining the ranks of the superpower Illuminati, Chapel was pretty much one of the most laid-back people on the planet, and that hasn't changed at all since he started to help run the world. Very little seems to rattle him, and it's incredibly difficult to rouse his temper. (The one notable exception to this rule is ACC men's basketball, which is incredibly serious business and should not be messed with.) He has a tendency to respond to most situations—emergency or not—with the same cheerful equanimity, and the word "panic" doesn't actually seem to be part of his vocabulary. This is fairly notable, if only because Chapel spends 95% of his time surrounded by Ivy League faculty hell-bent on getting published (and therefore getting their all-important tenure), various highly-strung Order operatives... and Boston, who is a category unto himself. Basically, Chapel is one of the most cheerfully Zen people you will ever meet... and as a result, he can come off as kind of a space case, to put it charitably. (Or, less nicely, "stoned".) He deliberately cultivates an air of absentminded professorship at work, since it's a: actually kind of true and b: a pretty useful disguise, all things considered. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition the hipster research monkey-slash-teaching assistant to be working for the Illuminati. He drops it around friends and fellow Order members, however—and he'll probably drop it fairly quickly in space—but it's worth mentioning all the same. Although Chapel actually is as friendly and laid-back as he comes across 99% of the time... he's not entirely honest with people, either, mostly as a side effect of his position in the Order. He doesn't consider it outright deception, but Chapel is more than all right with letting people assume he's pretty much harmless. He never quite bothered to ditch his accent after moving up North, and even after toning it down for Yankee consumption, he's still obviously from the backwoods of North Carolina. People tend to make the redneck = stupid leap far too easily, and Chapel's more than fine with exploiting that for his own benefit. He also tends to keep his sciencey talents on the down-low, which is an old habit from high school that he never quite managed to shake. He's upfront about his academic achievements if you ask him directly—unless you're from Boston's office, in which case he's a grad student in the social sciences and you probably don't want to hear about his thesis, but he'll tell you anyway—but it's not the sort of thing he voluntarily brings up. He's also a better liar than people expect him to be, simply because he is open and friendly most of the time, although he still prefers to lie by omission rather than flat-out not telling the truth. Once Chapel decides something is worth his loyalty, he absolutely, positively will not change his mind; thanks to not being a teenager any more, he's realized that he has this tendency, however, and as a result he's considerably more cautious about trusting people than he has been in the past. Once burnt, twice shy, and Chapel's entire adolescence was fraught with Bad Friend Decisions (and Bad Life Decisions). His wariness was then promptly compounded by the fact that Chapel now works for the superpowered Illuminati, and letting anyone know that the Order exists is probably going to get him either put on trial for sedition, killed, or both. Chapel's still more than capable of maintaining friendly working relationships with the rest of the Order, as well as basically 99.9% of humanity... but it's worth mentioning that although he likes most people, he doesn't exactly trust them. Chapel's also significantly more tenacious than he initially appears; he essentially worked his way through college and grad school on sheer stick-to-it-iveness, since it's not like he got a lot of help in the past. (The phrase bootstraps comes to mind.) Although this tenacity has served Chapel well in the past, it also has an unfortunate tendency to shift into flat-out stubbornness, which is significantly less productive, if pushed too hard. He's fairly easygoing about his stubbornness, however—which might sound like an oxymoron, but that's really the best phrase for it. He's not going to turn his opinion into a big deal, and he's not going to try and sway you to his side of the argument if you don't want to listen to him, but it is nearly impossible to change Chapel's mind once he makes it up. Combine that with his tendency to be almost stupidly loyal, and you've got someone who will pretty much back you up until the world ends. Chapel considers himself a fairly relaxed person, but he's not quite a Zen master yet; contrary to popular belief, he does has a temper, even if it doesn't seem that way at first. When he does get angry—which is an incredibly infrequent occurrence—he runs cold, rather than hot. He doesn't explode or start yelling, despite what people may assume about people bottling up their emotions. Not only is that entirely counterproductive, but the rest of the Order does more than enough yelling to make up for his relative silence anyway. He prefers to make his anger known very quietly and very, very coldly; he's more the type to plan an "accident" than punch people in the face when he loses his temper. (To put it bluntly.) Chapel's most significant blind spot, however, is his unconscious belief that he won't ever really get hurt by what he's doing. It's not that he doesn't take his job seriously—either of his jobs—but he's also, quite literally, bulletproof, and his entire powerset essentially fed into that annoying sense of adolescent invincibility people tend to have. He's never exactly had to face an op gone bad—or had much of anything not go his way after some hard work—and he half-believes that he never really will. (Statistically speaking, he's entirely wrong and it's only a matter of time, but he's doing the cognitive equivalent of covering his ears and going LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU at that inconvenient little fact.) In conclusion:

ABILITIES

I'M RUBBER, YOU'RE GLUE The Chapel Hill operatives are, as a rule, gifted with the ability to absorb, store, and redirect kinetic energy. This particular Chapel generally uses his gift to just absorb and store energy that's thrown his way, although he's still perfectly capable of throwing it back in peoples' faces with extreme prejudice if he has to. This can only be done via physical contact, however. SCIENCE Chapel has two PhDs (one in experimental condensed-matter physics and another in materials engineering) and a smattering of graduate-level knowledge in biochemistry, nanotechnology, and applied mechanics as a result of working for the Order. Dude knows his way around a laboratory. CARS Chapel grew up around cars and working in his dad's garage, and as a result he's still pretty familiar with the ins and outs of car engines. Downside: he's also highly opinionated about cars (anyone who can't drive stick is deprived) and drives like he's engaged in a high-speed chase 95% of the time. POP CULTURE … is this an ability? NON-KINETIC ENERGY Chapel's powers, unfortunately, only extend to absorbing kinetic energy. Tasers? Problem. Flamethrowers? Bigger problem. He's also much better at absorbing blunt-force trauma and gunshots than he is at dealing with perforation trauma. (In other words, he's bulletproof but not stabproof.) NOT A FIELD AGENT Chapel is a field agent for the Order—but not the kind you're thinking of. His job is to monitor a bunch of Very Important Scientists and ensure that their research goes as planned; basically, he's the helper dog for a rotating series of bleeding-edge researchers and Boston, with the occasional TA stint on the side. He's had the same field training that every Order operative undergoes, but he's very, very rarely had to put it into practice. INVINCIBILITY More importantly, Chapel also has a very adolescent sense of invincibility buoyed by a powerset that makes him, quite literally, bulletproof. He's never exactly had to face an operation gone bad—or had much of anything not go his way after some hard work—and he half-believes that he never really will. LIMITATIONS I realize that Chapel is irritatingly pseudo-hax, which is why he'll be nerfed slightly on the Tranquility. He'd still be able to absorb kinetic energy normally, but using stored kinetic energy against other people will require twice as much effort as it did before arriving on the ship. If he wants to push something five feet while on the ship, it'll take the same amount of energy that pushing something ten feet "normally" would.

INVENTORY

one (1) black cardigan one (1) gray cardigan two (2) plaid shirts ( one, two ). one (1) gray-on-black raglan undershirt. two (2) gray t-shirts one (1) pair of faded gray they-might-as-well-be-jeans. one (1) pair of black jeans. one (1) pair of beat-to-hell dark brown chukka boots. one (1) Samsung Galaxy Nexus, dead. one (1) set of keys (car, apartment, mailbox, and office). one (1) battered brown leather wallet.       one (1) North Carolina driver's license, issued to Gabriel Mackay Sinclair       one (1) Harvard faculty ID, ditto       one (1) Harvard University parking card       a bunch of random receipts       $13.86 in small bills and change one (1) Walther PPK/S       three (3) spare magazines (.380 ACP).

APPEARANCE

Chapel stands about 6'1", with dark curly hair, greenish-gray eyes, and fair skin that tends to burn and freckle rather than actually tan. His build could politely be described as "lean"... or, less charitably, as "skinny as fuck". His dress sense trends towards some kind of bizarre hybrid of absent-minded grad student and filthy hipster, and he seems to be in perpetual need of a haircut and a better razor. (He's been called a Chia Pet in the past. It's... not an inaccurate description.) When he's not making a deliberate effort to modulate his accent—which he does for work... and when living surrounded by damn Yankees most of the time—Chapel has a very noticeable Piedmont accent. It tends to come out more strongly when he's tired, drunk, or otherwise distracted, but he's pretty much never not going to sound Southern. His PB is Brendan Hines in Lie to Me. AGE 27

AU CLARIFICATION

SAMPLES

LOG This was quite possibly the most nerve-wracking interview process of Gabriel Sinclair's entire life. Job interview? Those'll happen over and over again during your lifetime. Interview to get superpowers? Much bigger deal. Still, he made sure to show up on time at the address he'd been given, trying valiantly not to panic too much. The secretary by the door hadn't helped much—she'd immediately waved him away with a curt "I'll tell Mr. Pierce you're here," then turned right back to her computer. After that, Gabe just wandered over to the nearest sitting area, picking up the only magazine in sight (a sad, lonely copy of Architectural Digest from six months ago) and settling down in one of the angular, incredibly uncomfortable chairs to wait. And wait. And wait. After thirty-five minutes of sitting, Gabe decided that maybe he'd better ask about the wait time, just to be safe. "Sorry, do you have any idea how much longer this is going to be?" he asked, trying not to seem irritated... but mostly coming off as confused instead. "Mr. Pierce is at a meeting," the secretary—her name was Beth, according to her nameplate, but calling her anything other than Ms. Fielding (or possibly ma'am) seemed like a Mistake—said, not looking up from her keyboard. Gabe briefly wondered if the ability to make people feel like they were completely insignificant was part of the job requirements here, or if it was just a coincidence. "He's… in his office. I can see him," Gabe pointed out after a brief pause, trying not to raise his eyebrows too high. The walls of all the offices Gabe had seen so far were glass, and there was clearly someone—presumably Nathan Pierce, Attorney at Law, judging by his suit—sitting at the desk in that office. Well, that certainly got her attention. Ms. Fielding just glanced irritably up at Gabe, then back down at her computer screen. "You can head on through," she said after a moment's pause, somehow managing to turn those five words into the most patronizing sentence Gabe had ever heard. (On second thought, the condescension had to be a job qualification. There was no other explanation.) "Thank you," Gabe said, purely out of reflex—and only barely managing not to make it a question. He might as well not have bothered; the only response he got from Ms. Fielding was an exhale of breath that had just enough plausible deniability not to be an outright sigh. This was shaping up to be an oddly passive-aggressive interview, but hey. Superpowers. COMMS [video] [ gooooood morning, tranquility! have a fairly chipper—despite all the trauma of being spat out of a tube of neon blue Astroglide with a tube stuck down your throat, thanks very much—dude's face on your video screen. (he has also got a very nice southern drawl going on and a hairstyle that could politely be described as "an explosion".) ] Just out of curiosity: does space travel always mean you wake up with a hangover? Because the idea of being in space is a lot less exciting when you realize that you're also going to want, y'know, light and noise to stop existing in your general vicinity after you actually get to space. [ oops that was a tangent. moving on! ] Anyway, uh. One more question: anybody know where they keep the toothbrushes around here? The inside of my mouth kinda tastes like carbon polymer, and I would really appreciate it… not doing that any more. [ it's... probably best if you don't ask how he knows that. ]

Comments

[bunnyboiler]

if i was inviiiiiiiiiiisible

then i would just watch you in your room