| C. Michael Drakos | |
 |
|
| Portrayed By | CGI mostly. Also Taylor Lautner |
|---|---|
| Gender | Male |
| Date of Birth | 1/1/1995 |
| Age | 19 |
| Zodiac Sign | Sagittarius |
| Aliases | Meck, MEKK |
| Place of Birth | Taos, NM |
| Current Location | Barnes Academy |
| Occupation | Student, part-time mechanical prototype(s) |
| Known Relatives | Mother, the Rev. Ana Drakos. Father, Kyrios Drakos. Sister: Evangelina Drakos (stillborn) |
| Significant Other | None |
| Supranym | MEKK |
| Known Abilities | Robotic body, Vehicular merge and upgrade, Driver/Pilot Rapport |
| First Appearance | Hello! My Name is "MIKE" |
My name is Mike Drakos. Appearances to the contrary I am not the latest Japanese robot.
I'm a mutant. I'm also a car. Or a motorcycle. Or whatever.
You can consider me to be a self-inflicted full-body prosthetic, as long as you don't mistake me for a toy.
In the event that the author of this page should leave the Marvel Revolutions game, the following variation from the Creative Commons will apply.
Until and unless such an occasion, the more relaxed rule allows and encourages other players and game staff to engage in appropriate logging, RP, and occasional depictions under the usual in-game consent provision.
This character was created under Creative Commons rules. Pursuant to those rules, permission is granted in perpetuity to Marvel Revolutions to use or maintain the character page(s) under the following restrictions: No further gaming, roleplay, or specific depiction involving this character may be done without written permission of the author. No further modifications of the pages may be done except within the global requirement of similar changes to all pages. The character is not public property and may not be used elsewhere without written permission of the author. Contact the author via the user account attached to this page.
Theme Songs
Do not stop me do not try
'Cause I'm a motorcycle man
I get my kicks just when I can
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle man
I can beat your street machine
We're taking risks, that's what we mean
'Cause I'm a motorcycle man
We get our kicks just when we can
When we can
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle…
If you see me riding by
Do not stop me do not try
'Cause I'm a motorcycle man
I get my kicks just when I can
When I can
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle, motorcycle
Motorcycle man
I can BE your street machine
I'm taking risks, that's what I mean
'Cause I'm a motorcycle man
We get our kicks just when we can
When we can
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle, motorcycle
Motorcycle man
Motorcycle Song
Born To Be Wild
Motorcycle Song
Born To Be Wild
Springsteen: Born to Run
silver pants and silver hair tonite an android make
my best friends has claws for hands and xray eyes to see
— his name is paul —
my parents think my robot's trouble
motherboard and cpu control the way paul thinks
my program was written fast and might not be bug free
— he's four feet tall —
my parents think my robot's trouble
oooh i only wanted a best friend
i only wanted someone that i could trust yeah
shiny head and shiny heart tonite an android make
my robot has hose for arms
and speaks through l.e.d.
my parents think my robot's trouble
i only wanted a best friend
i only wanted someone that i could trust yeah
silver pants and silver hair tonight a robot make
my best friend has claws for hands and xray eyes to see
i only wanted a best friend
i only wanted someone that i could trust yeah
All about Barcelona: http://www.musictory.com/music/Barcelona
Quotes
- "VROOM!"
Trivia
- Mike doesn't eat like normal people, he refuels.
- Mike is an exceptional mechanic. (Yeah, go figure.)
- Mike does not use his first name. Only his parents do, and it sends a chill of dread when they do.
- Mike looked like (young) Taylor Lautner only taller BEFORE he went totally machine. Honest. It isn't just the Image Inducer.
- Mike has changed supranym (that's "superguy alias" in other words) from Meck to Mekk, and in the process, gone from the creamsicle orange and white costume of Xaviers days to a more spiffy-cool red and black, which you may see as an icon when viewing logs. Except where flashbacks are concerned, you should see the Mekk picture henceforth.
Personal Story Arc
Studies of myth and storytelling have shown that a character's story, if it's at all interesting, can be expressed in terms of arcs: short bits of story containing setup, conflict, challenge, failure, recovery, and triumph, in varying degrees and combinations.
The currently popular three-arc screenplay model has three separate arcs which make up each plot point, plus a secondary arc which reflects/reinforces the ongoing primary arc. This normally happens as a series of interacting/overlapping events punctuated by three plot points: Setting Out, Winning/Failing, Returning.
The first story arc begins with the Outsider/Loner Kid who learns he has Unusual Gifts. He uses the gifts unwisely, precipitating Personal Catastrophe, requiring his Rescue by his Father. This is portrayed in the "comic" in the Origin Story section of the timeline. This arc is also the first SETUP.
Part two of the arc is Going To Study Under A Master, i.e. Xavier's. Arriving there, he Makes Friends (and enemies), Overcomes his Self-Imposed Limits (through the assistance of a Terrifying Other and with the help of other Mentors and Friends) to become an Apprentice Hero. When attacked by Overwhelming Enemies, he and his friends are able to help stave off the enemy, saving their friends and mentors, until the Offscreen Hero (a deus ex machina common in apprentice-stories) defeats the attack. This arc is also the first "TRIUMPH".
Part three of the arc, Going Home (for summer break) results a conflict with his parents, when the Master's Feet of Clay are revealed too clearly and Mike's parents Refuse To Send Him Into Danger. This is the first "DEFEAT".
The second story arc begins as Mike is unable to return to Xaviers. However, Finding A New Master, Mike is able to go to a new school (Barnes) and resumes training, which with a few iterations of the "self-improvement, growing in skill and power, facing challenge and winning or failing" micro-arcs. This is another SETUP.
Part two of the second arc, "Overconfidence Brings Disaster", is a re-iteration in a different context of Mike's "origin" arc; the "Halloween" storyline reiterates the whole 'transformed into a machine Life comes through death' trope in a different context. This is the second DEFEAT incidentally.
Part three of the second arc, "Winning At A High Cost." Too much of this happened off-screen, frankly, and wasn't the subject of a clear focus in story, so was revealed in flashback if at all. However, the "Hunt" storyline in the game resulted in Mike, while operating at his greatest effectiveness, being only partly able to defend others, with some fatalities that should not have occurred for which he feels personally responsible. This is a MIXED WIN/LOSS.
The third arc begins with Mike returning to his parents' for Christmas. Setup starts with a tragedy: his sister was stillborn on his 16th birthday. His awareness of his limitations in humanity were made even more painfully apparent to him at that point, and only got worse back at school when he not only failed to help his friends (the African Warlord story line), but did not even know about their situation until well afterwards, failing even as a friend. This is a SETUP phase for "The Broken/Disillusioned Hero".
Part two of the third arc is again a sequence of skill-building, contact-and-mentor nurturing, and unfortunately happens too much off-screen.
Mike has become implacable in his determination to stop being 'just a machine' and 'just a toy car' which resulted in him focussing for over a year on the redesign of his primary chassis. This is another "Train, grow stronger, self-transformation" arc. As it's more complex, it has taken much longer, but was brought to a close by the "Death of Derren Michaels" catastrophe; Mike is no longer at a point where he can allow the status quo to continue unchanged. (Technically this is a Transformation Through Death instance again.)
Part three of the third arc will be another three-element story, but whether it results in Tragedy or Triumph hasn't been determined yet. Whether or not Mike will succeed at reconstructing himself, what and who stands in his way, and what will happen afterwards, is still in the future.
Timeline
- Summer 2012
- Spring Term 2012
- Winter Term 2012
- Fall Term 2011
- Summer 2011
- Spring Term 2011
- Winter Term 2011
- Fall Term 2010
- Summer 2010
- Spring Term 2010
- Winter Term 2010
- ORIGIN STORY
On July 4th, 2012, on the day his parents were returning to the United States, Mike assisted Heather Brown as backup for a clandestine meeting wherein Quenton Michaels attempted to rescue his parents. Things were far beyond "worse than you think" and Bad Things Happened. People and monsters died. Mike, possessing a vehicle, reshaped it to "catch" the body of Quenton's father Derren when it was knocked away by a Rage attack, and because of the psi component of his power, the tendrils of which were wrapped through the mechanically-shapeshifted "crash bag" that Mike used to make the catch, he felt the life-energy depart from the senior Michaels. This was incredibly traumatic, despite all logical arguments.
Mike has thus spent the majority of the summer without emotions as a result. He has not returned home for the summer for more than a week, and was able to fake normal responses while home, thanks to some of the LMD tricks he has been studying to improve his 'human impersonation'. He is slowly re-engaging full-time emotional processing, and has engaged the services of one of SHIELD's therapists to help him arrange a cognitive frame that doesn't become paralyzed by flashbacks.
Meanwhile, his parents have returned to their regular work, though now living in the same city: they moved to Detroit, where Ana Drakos has taken an assistant position, and Kyrios has relocated his design facilities. The Long Island test garage where Mike sometimes works remains operational.
Ana's health was an issue following the stillbirth in January 2011. Her year-long leave of absence was in part intended to allow her to deal with that, and she has resumed a much more active lifestyle than she had been living when acting as a more-than-full-time priest. She and Kyrios are considering attempting one more child. They are currently unaware of the tragic incident.
Coming up for air for a bit after creating the "next chassis" design, Mike assisted Heather Brown in her search for information about the disappearance of the family of Quenton Michaels.
He met the android named Echo (and the strange fellow who had befriended her), met a young woman with a demon infestation who went by Fiona, met a few of the new Xavier's students without breaking his promise not to go back on the school grounds, and began work on the 'fulcrum' device necessary to completing the chassis transition.
He also changed his "codename" spelling to "MEKK" … but he's not sure why.
Mike's 17th birthday was spent in Jerusalem with his parents.
He returned to Barnes Academy, having decided that it was time to finish redesigning his body; the 10-year-old's concept of life as a car was not working for someone who was nearly a legal adult.
Nothing was recorded for this period. Presumably Mike was a school drudge.
While Mike'd parents went on pilgrimage through Europe and the middle east, Mike remained at Barnes, continuing his studies.
Private schools do not follow the same kind of regimented structure as that inflicted on the inmates of public schools; Mike was well into material that would be considered college-level by ordinary schools, at least as far as math, physics, mechanical engineering, and writing were concerned; he began examining how to quickly encode language, and became quite competent with guns of various makes; he still refused to use them to kill things, although he explained that he would, if necessary, kill for food for other people.
He spent some time working on theater and acting; his emotional presentations were now completely convincing despite his lack of facial expression and sometimes-limited movements, often even without total reliance on the image inducer.
He continued to befriend the LMDs at various SHIELD locations in Manhattan, insomuch as they and he were able to become friends, using the argument that he needed their insights to help him maintain his own human presentation.
He continued to monitor his father's business, even going so far as to handle delivery of a custom sports-car engine to Stark Enterprises, though he had no evidence that Tony knew anything about it, and he didn't breach the secret with the garage crew.
So it shouldn't have been a surprise to Mike to receive an invitation to a "Halloween in the Summer" party that Stark threw.
Mike went as a Dalek, inhabiting and converting a golf cart to the new "body format". It was perversely appropriate.
And school started up not long after.
Mike spent most of Spring Term of 2011 being the model student. His attitude, once casually disrespectful of any authority, had gone 180 degrees around, at least while he was at school; whether this was due to a true personal reevaluation, or to having the time (and a much smarter brain than before) to think through the consequences of most of his potentially stupid actions, or because there were more people paying attention, is unclear.
Mike stayed close to Barnes, only leaving on weekends for what were usually safe excursions. He spent a great deal of his leisure time in the motor pool working on ways to improve SHIELD vehicles, and otherwise didn't do much of note, except to assist when an anti-mutant attacker tried to kill a popular boy-idol. There was no unfortunate fallout with parents; they had gone on back to Europe hoping that revisiting the ancient churches, monasteries, libraries and holy places would help Ana to recover from the continuing sense of emptiness that had followed her daughter's very short life.
At various points, Mike encountered Tony Stark, mostly as a side-effect of his acquaintance with Theo Fegenbush; the genius-kid with the mutant ability to influence machines was being groomed by Stark in an attempt to prevent the kid from becoming a total supervillain (and almost certainly dead by 20, or enslaved by someone like Sinister or AIM).
Mike's sister Helena Aloise Drakos was born on January 1st 2011 at 2:20AM PST, and never breathed. She was also a mutant, though to all appearances not one of the "special" kind whose genetic power factors were triggered. Instead, a misplaced bit of DNA prevented her brain, liver, and thymus glands from forming properly.
The funeral was held privately and Mike did not volunteer the information of what had happened to other students, and none of them asked. He didn't fault that; he hadn't discussed the pregnancy much. He returned to school, carrying a heavier class load and preparing to add college-level coursework, actually using the 'computer brain' he now lived inside.
His mother was ordered to take personal leave, and his father arranged to have his head mechanic run the daily operations, and Mike would stop by on alternate weekends, screen the accounts and check up on the garage while appearing to just be visiting and working on his 'special project' motorcycle; fortunately his father had hired honest men, and there were no attempts to embezzle, steal designs, or otherwise add to Kyrios and Ana's problems.
Winter term went by without school-related or mutant-related drama, at least for Mike. Because of his family situation and his mother's near-breakdown, he was unaware that several students and friends from both Barnes and Xaviers, having gone on a 'mercy mission' to help people in an African village where one of his former schoolmates lived,were captured, tortured, and generally brutalized by a warlord there. When they returned, neither Trevor nor Rashmi was around much, and it was more than two months before he learned the full truth. There was no good way to say "I'm sorry I wasn't available to comfort you in your tragedy" — Hallmark doesn't make a card for that — so he simply acknowledged them as usual, and said nothing, and they didn't either.
At the end of the term, Mike attended the formal joint dance held for Barnes and Xaviers' students. Nobody was killed, possessed, turned into anything against their will; oddly for a high school, there were no deflowerings with subsequent pregnancy drama.
Mike returned to school in the beginning of September, at Barnes Academy. His father thrashed a bit between the requirements of a business that was just taking off, and a wife who was becoming increasingly pregnant but who refused to reduce her workload.
Mike's mother Ana continued to have minor problems on and off during her pregnancy. This wasn't helped when Mike got special permission to visit friends at Xaviers' School and he was caught up by yet another demonic attack, which took him and at least ten other students away to a hellish half-plane which tried to turn them to monsters to adapt them to the demon's world where they would have been kept imprisoned forever. They had to die in order to be freed from the transformations, but that freed them from the false lives they had been trapped within. They escaped, with some effort.
They were returned after Thanksgiving. Mike returned home for a weekend then went back to Barnes, where he showed that his computerized brain had advantages for scholastic achievements: he caught up in less than a week, and after some work with the educators and agents it was decided that he could fast-track, continuing some high school classes at normal speed with peers for socialization (which wasn't as easily "doll-housed" as learning facts and physical skills), but also carrying a double course load, and doing special training with SHIELD agents, which meant that he was (hopefully) too busy to get into trouble. If only those good ideas had been successfully realized. A certain over-enthusiastic "inventor" type among the trainers, one Agent Kozlowski, began to take advantage of the robot kid's technical ingenuity and trust in the SHIELD agents. Koz had been forbidden access to hardware and advanced computing, but Mike could find scrapped hardware, and WAS advanced computing.
Kozlowski decided that he was going to rehabilitate his reputation as an inventor by trapping Mutant Town against "The Hunt" - an ongoing organized-criminal "contest" where various "hunters" were sent to attack powered enemies; one faction was strongly anti-mutant and went after their ghetto.
Along with several other students, Mike was caught up by the events surrounding the attempt by one Hunt faction to kill Magneto and destroy the Genoshan Embassy. Inhabiting a SHIELD tactical riot command vehicle, he was able to help suppress those hunters near the Embassy entrance, not a very pleasant activity, as well as coordinating the SHIELD response teams (commanded by regular specially trained agents, of course; Mike was mostly just a very smart relay and information aggregator.)
He returned to Seattle shortly afterwards. End of term, and his parents had seen news feeds including one that showed what others thought was SHIELD technology, but which they recognized as Mike using his power. Christmas break was tense for several days but one of Canon Ana's fellows at the diocese insisted on meeting with the family and discussing the obvious tensions, and things were greatly improved before the (always excessively busy) holidays. It was decided that Mike was allowed to use his gift to protect other people, and that there was no way he (or anyone, really) could be perfectly safe anywhere, so being trained at Barnes was better than staying ignorant.
Mike went home for the summer of 2010, and his parents became very concerned over some obvious changes to his personality; hyper-vigilance, the way he seemed to pause for a half-second before entering rooms, and the way he acted completely different about school and learning. And when his parents asked him what had happened during his school year, and learned about demon invasions, Magneto, the "students controlled by an enemy" and the near-constant dangers the students faced, they decided he wasn't going back there.
His mother took him along on a very low-tech retreat for a month, which bored him intensely; when she began to have some problems with her pregnancy, he insisted that she return (and the retreat center's nurse backed it up when Ana collapsed, and the nurse checked her blood sugar and blood pressure) so they returned to Seattle.
Mike's father took over, sending the boy to work pit-crew with his team that accompanied the engines Drakos Motor Specialties was sending to three Nascar teams. Mike was in car heaven and hell - He had to hide his mutation completely. He managed to do so.
Meanwhile, he knew he needed the quality of education available through Xaviers', but his parents forbade him to go back. He happened to have learned of Barnes Academy, and convinced his parents that it was as good or better academically and for power-training, and definitely a safer place than Xaviers', and they reluctantly agreed to send him there - the tuition was slightly more affordable as well, and that helped with medical issues. And Mike could travel to Seattle quickly on weekends.
| Apr 5 | People go to the Greenhouse to enjoy the outdoors. Christopher Zack Robin Mike | Up In The Attic |
|---|---|---|
| Apr 10 | Weekend Breakfast. Lucas is Grumpy. Armande is cute. Jono Kenta Lucas Mike | Lovely Morning At Xaviers |
| Apr 11 | Mike meets his new squadmate, Connor | Excelsior -- Fresh Meat!! |
| Apr 15 | In the attic Greenhouse again, Jono, Mike, and Robyn learn just how crazy Theo really is. | High Tensions |
| Apr 21 | Connor learns how much of a Crazy Train Xavier's is, Skyler confronts Robyn about earlier and Mike is emotional support. | The Aftermath |
| Apr 27 | Pop-Tarts are inadvertently taken. Conversation ensues. Mike, Connor and Thea | Pop Tarts |
| May 3 | Mike and Theo finally have a talk about what happened when Theo saw inside of Mike's brain. | Dealing With It |
| May 4 | Elizabeth shows a drawing (a large puppy!) to Mike, Robyn, Connor and latecomer Rashmi | Cerberus, Drawn As A Puppy |
| May 4 | Tara is in dreamland over an upcoming date with Six. Later, Connor shows up with his pre-Danger Room dinner and there is unexpected discussion of faith vs. reality. | Food For Body, Food For Thought |
| May 6 | Chloe has a theory about how people's powers become what they are. Connor and Robyn | Self Defining Powers |
| May 13 | An uninvited volatile visitor showed up. Mike, Darkstar, Jinx, Warpath and re-introducing Deadpool. | Knock Knock. Whose there? BANG! |
| May 15 | Lucas is playing music. Mike stops to listen. Lucas asks how Mike can believe in God. Theology ensues. | Pennyroyal Tea |
| May 16 | A brain-scrambly Jono returns to the mansion after being shot, and unsettles both Connor and Mike. They send him home. | His slightly appalled common sense |
| May 16 | Jono and Rashmi are both head cases, but they somewhat recover with a little help from their friends. (Mike and Connor) | Getting Heads Together |
| May 17 | Ice cream night is rudely interrupted by mutant hunters and a masked man. Misha, Mike, Robyn, Rashmi, Connor and later Jono - Kenta is mentioned but stays background. | Who was that masked mutant?! |
| May 17 | Lucas and Kael are in the kitchen. Theo joins, then [[Rashmi]]] and Mike come in after a hard fight, both in a rather sour mood. A starving Connor tops off the bill. | Lessons In Sulking |
| May 18 | Mike and Theo talk about impounded vehicles (among other things). | The New Sgt. Bilko |
| Jan 19, 2010 | The second day at the instutute for Mike and he meets Aleksey, Jono and Leo | Hello! My Name is "MIKE" |
|---|---|---|
| Jan 19, 2010 | Late that evening Mike meets Dallas and Richard who may be an evil doppelganger. | Robyn Redux |
| Jan 20 2010 | A training session with Rashmi and Jono. Mike meets Skyler and Rashmi and they go off on an Adventure. | Markings |
| Jan 20, 2010 | Rashmi recruits Mike, Skyler, and Zack to help her capture Lucas. Jono goes along to keep them from being killed. Maybe. | To Save a Demon? |
| Jan 21, 2010 | Recriminations and Accusations the morning after. Medbay scene, Mikhail, Mike, Robyn, Rashmi | The Powder Keg Has Been Lit |
| Jan 22, 2010 | Jono shows Mike that mechanical life exists in space. Indirectly. | Getting A Grip |
| Jan 23, 2010 | An encounter at the swimming pool; Mike observes that Dallas and Cloud have much in common | Kindred Spirits |
| Jan 23, 2010 | Comings and goings in the kitchen. Death cupcakes V1.0. With Cloud, Trey, Mike, Rashmi, Jono, Zack and Robyn | Just a Normal Saturday |
| Jan 23, 2010 | Later comings and goings in the kitchen. No death cupcakes, but stick-figure exposition. Intro for Evan. With Daisuke, Nathaniel, Rashmi, and Mike | Later, the Same Day |
| January 25 | More kitchen encounters. Death cupcakes V2.0. With Chezlie, Skyler, Heather, and Mike | Coincidental Gatherings |
| January 27 | In the garage, Mike talks Mikhail out of a suicidal plan. Rashmi guest-stars | Car Talk |
| January 27 | A close-to-curfew encounter: Mike and Rashmi are gently terrified by Magneto | Meet Miss Eep |
| January 28 | Mike finds Rashmi and Lucas talking in the Rec Room, and fails to sensibly retreat. | Oversharing |
| January 30 | Mike sees Owen go Bats and attack Jared and Rashmi and fails to sensibly retreat. | Megachiroptera Umbragenix |
| January 30 | Toccata And Fugue in B-flat on Fitting In. Your quintet: Dallas, Owen, Jono. Mike and Mikhail | a fugue on fitting in |
| January 30 | Mikhail asks Mike for help: to teach him to drive and to maintain a car | Driving Lessons? |
| February 1 | Mike finds Owen, Rashmi, Robyn, and Chezlie in the library, and study ALMOST ensues until Lucas brings flowers for his girl. | study-hall |
| February 2 | Mike meets Eddie while reading in the garage, and Mikhail fails to "borrow" a car. | Caught in the Act |
| February 4 | Before classes in the Rec Room, Mike encounters Cloud, Daisuke and Eddie and powers are exhibited. | Rec Room Before-Class Loitering |
| February 4 | After classes, Mike meets Jono and Kael in the courtyard. | Courtyard Encounter With Optional Snowballs |
| February 4 | Stopping at the dorms on the way to the dining hall, Kael and Mike find that Leo is leaving the school immediately. Owen and Robyn arrive to say good-bye as well. | Goodbye |
| February 5 | Mike gets a call from Dr. McCoy to come to his lab; Jono opens the door | Robot's First Words |
| February 6 | Mike tries to prank Mikhail with his new voice and image-inducer. Irony ensues. | Birds, Bees, Flowers, Robots |
| February 6 | Mike runs across a troubled Rashmi and tries not to give bad advice. James appears and growls churlishly. | In the Lobby, an Encounter |
| February 8 | Mike and James meet in the Auto Shop and get along rather better than before. | Car Nerds |
| February 9 | Mike meets some very interesting monsters fellow students while trying to do homework in the dining hall. Cam, Pryce, Rafael | Food for Thought |
| February 13 | Six wakes up after his overnight stay in the Ramsey Dorms, and finds Mike doing make-up homework in the lobby. | Six in the Morning |
| February 14 | Robyn, Rob, Jade, Mike, and Zack all seek Recreation | V-Day Impromptu Gather |
| February 17 | Jono explodes. Robyn, Rashmi and Mike drag him to Medbay where Hank and Mikhail are de-inking | Gordon Bennet! |
| February 20 | Cam brings French Toast to the cafeteria. Mike doesn't eat it. Dunstin and Six do, but Lucas is in a vile mood. | FRENCH TOAST!! |
| February 21 | Mike runs into Topher and Chloe in the gym. Gymnastic Geekery occurs. | Gymnasium - Shared Interests |
| February 22 | Mike and Rashmi independently decide to visit Jono in the medbay, Hank takes a nap, and Skyler appears suffering from sinister pains. | Visiting Hours |
| February 27 | Mike works on car parts. Cloud and Dunstin set off Scott's precious baby's intruder alarm. | Car Alarmed |
| February 28 | Scott and Lorna (and maybe Bobby) instill some self-preservation into Rashmi, Kael and Mike. Mikhail may not have learned better. | Lockdown! |
| March 1 | Locked down again, and Mike, Rashmi, Robyn, and James are hanging in the Observation Deck, chafing under the restriction. | Stir Crazy |
| March 5 | Lockdown rescinded, Mike accompanies Quinn into town (buddy system!) where they meet Robyn and James at the Grind Stone. When a completely human, sociopathic Jono appears, the panic button brings Hellion to their aid. | Having a Coffee |
| March 6 | Aftermath of Having a Coffee, Mike is still somewhat broken by the experiences of the day and goes to the sanctuary by the graveyard, to pray. Rashmi joins him there. | Compline |
| March 11 | Mike was taken out by the EMP event in Not Dead Yet - at the medbay, many things happen to many people | A Very Long Day |
| March 12-17 | Mike remains in the medBay while repairs are ongoing. This means he observes a lot of stuff. | A Very Long Week |
| March 15 | Mike has very strange dreams indicative of changes in his life, and someone is eavesdropping | Shifting Paradigms |
| March 18 | No longer a robotic paraplegic, Mike wanders in the Hedge Maze to do some homework, where he comes across Robyn and Rashmi | Back to Nature |
| March 18 | Mike and Rashmi meet the new kid Theo in the library. Theo has a way to go. | Shhhh!! This Is A Library!! |
| March 20 | Sinister's Marauders attack the mansion. Mike and Tara make a hole in the mansion. See the page for the cast. | Attack On The Right Path |
| March 21 | The day after the Marauders are taken down, and Mike, Tara, Chezlie, Rashmi, Jono, and Robyn all congregate in the gym for different reasons, as normalcy tries to return. | Stress Level Status Low |
| March 25 | Mike goes to the kitchen to refill the water for his eye-washers, and finds the drama club is meeting. | How To Gain Friends And Influence People |
| March 27 | Mike goes to the observation deck to find James sort-of cleaning the windows. | A Pane in the Glass |
| March 29 | In the graveyard Theo gets on Mike's nerves and Kael tries to make peace | Rest in Peace |
| March 31 | Mike clears the air with Theo and old-school Vincent shows up. | That OTHER Vincent |
(Please to imagine the following background as a series of comics pages.)
M.E.C.K. Preview Issue (in the back of a New Mutants comic, in 1995.)
Page One
A hospital room, could be anywhere, but it's in Taos, New Mexico.
The nurse lifts up a red-and-purple bundle, the doctor attaches clamps to the umbilical, all in tasteful silhouette. The mother, exhausted but radiant, looks up at the father, her black hair stringy and sweaty, and he looks down, huge and smiling behind the green hospital mask at his wife, black hair curling under the mandatory hairnet, and he holds her hand, "We have a son, Deacon Ana, thanks to God" and she smiles, "We do indeed, Father Kyrios, thanks and praise to His name."
The nurse asks for a name. "Cleanthes Michael Drakos," replies Kyrios.
"You'll have to spell that. Oh, and congrats, first baby of the New Year."
Page Two
A house in a suburb in anytown, sun shining, a young black-haired boy of three playing with a toy truck in a green yard, and the woman on the telephone, "Of course, Bishop, we would be able to be there in a month." Her husband, dressed ordinarily, speaking in greek on the other phone, "No, Mamou, it is a lovely town. No, I am not going to make my beloved wife and the mother of your grandson stop being a priest so they'll let me go back. First, she would say no, second, I like being a mechanic much more than being a theologian, third, I will make much better money, and fourth, and I've already spoken with Father Athanasios, he doesn't object to her being a priest, but the Metropolitan does, and it's his decision, and he's right. No, Mamou, I don't think it's shameful. The image of God doesn't have testicles. What, you can't be shocked, you're the one who said it first…"
In the yard the boy makes vrooming noises.
Page Three
At school, a seven year old boy with long black hair in a two braids on either side of his head is standing in front of a classroom, and the teacher presents him to the class, struggling with the name for a moment, "This is Clee-ant-this Drakk-us", and the boy looks up at her seriously, "CleANtheez Dray-Kos, ma'am." The class laughs.
Later, two of the bigger kids in the playground have cornered the boy, "You're a girl, right, you have a girl's name and girly braids."
"No, I'm a boy, and I have the braids because my grandpa is Blackfoot and I lived with him until last week cause Mama and Papa were abroad."
They beat him up anyway, and the next day his hair is short and he tells them that they have to call him 'Mike'.
Page Four
Career Day and ten year old Mike Drakos is being interviewed by a bored-looking cameraman and a too-cheerful "tv hostess" along with two other kids from his school; this is taking place in the cafeteria as part of "human interest" filler for a morning magazine show that nobody really watches.
"OK, kids, introduce yourselves and say what you plan to be when you grow up."
A pink-dressed, frizzy-haired blond girl says, "My name is Suzy an' I wanna be a nurse!" but her mother, off-screen, is making frantic waving gestures, "Uh I mean, a doctor."
This gets the requisite fake chuckle from the TV Hostess. "That's wonderful, Suzy, I'm sure you will too."
The next kid is shoved in front of the camera, "I'm Kevin and I wanna be a cartoonist so I can meet girls."
"Good luck with that one, kid," the cameraman says, forgetting that the microphone is hot . Oh well, they can take it out in the edit.
The last kid is the dark-skinned boy with curly hair, "I'm Mike and I want to be a motorcycle."
"You mean motorcyclist, of course," the TV Hostess says, not quite condescending because that would be bad for ratings, but the last thing she wanted was some kid being too cute and going off-script.
"No, I wanna be a motorcycle. My dad says I can be anything I want when I grow up cause this is America."
"CUT," the TV Hostess says. "OK, can we please get another kid here, in case the director decides to cut that one?"
He doesn't, and Mike's mother Ana makes a good sermon out of the incident.
Page Five
Another school, older, not quite a teenager, a new teacher, "Class, please welcome Mike Drakos. Mike, could you tell us a little about yourself? Where are you from?"
"My folks are wandering minstrels," Mike answers, deadpan, "Dad's a yeti, and Mom's a mermaid, but her tail has dried out. No, wait, the cover story. Dad's a yeti MECHANIC and mom's a dried-out-mermaid PRIEST and we're from, uh, Cleveland."
The class stares, and a few of the kids laugh when he says "Cleveland."
"Is your dad really a Yeti," one of the boys asks at lunch, and Mike answers, grinning, "Well, what else could he be? He's got too much back hair to be a gorilla," and the kid next to him snorts his milk out his nose.
"He is a mechanic though," Mike says, passing a wodge of napkins to the milk-snorter.
Page Six
Winter in a bigger city. A thirteen-year-old Mike is in a garage somewhere, helping his Papa reassemble a carburator.
"That's really good, Mike," the older man says. In his work tee-shirt, the athletic-style white thing that too many people call a "wife-beater" because Marlon Brando wore one in Streetcar Named Desire, the man's powerful physique is on display, along with at least enough back hair to confirm that "Yeti" thing.
Mike looks up at his Papa, "So Mama's going to be back for Christmas, right?"
"Not for the one on Sunday, but yes, she'll be back for the old-calendar Christmas on the 7th.
We shall have regular Christmas with your grandma Violetta in the rest home, and Old Orthodox Christmas two weeks later."
"BEST thing about having mixed-religion parents, two Christmases," Mike grins. "Two chances for presents."
"You are a very greedy young man, you know this?" His father admonishes, "Have you done your homework yet?"
"Yes, Papa, and why do they give homework over Christmas?"
"All teachers are evil, son, you told me so yourself. Now, you are done with the carburator, yes? Then let's put that on the engine."
Page Seven
Its the day after Thanksgiving, the next year, and the 14 year old Mike Drakos is bored by the parade of floats on the television. Wandering into the kitchen, he unwraps a bit of some sort of pie from the refrigerator, pulling the tinfoil swan apart… but instead of discarding it, he absent-mindedly eats the tinfoil in between bites of the pie. His mother, about to fasten her clerical collar onto her shirt, watches him from the door to the dining room, arms crossed.
"Cleanthes Michael Drakos, what are you eating," she demands.
"Uh, just the leftover venison pie from Grandpa's, you said I could have it?"
"You just ATE that tinfoil."
Mike looks around, "I did? Uh, will I die?"
She sighs, "You didn't the last four times you did it, but I want you to pay attention when you eat. You know what the doctor said about blockages."
Mike also sighs, a long-suffering "Awww mom" sigh. Then he perks up instantly as she fastens the collar to her shirt.
"You going to work? Can I start the car for you?"
"All right, and make sure the chains are on right."
"WOOT!" he shouts, disappearing through the garage door.
Page Eight
Inside the garage, Mike turns the key in the engine of the powerful blue muscle-car that his father has customized for his wife, and touches the wheel, grinning, "VROOM!" but then a spasm of pain crosses his face and he fades away, becoming transparent, one, two, gone.
"Mike?" his mother says, looking around the empty garage as the electric door rolls up in response to the switch by the door.
VROOOM, the car motor races, and the car door pops open. She looks in the back seat, then in the front, under the car, and calls into the house, "Cleanthes Michael, get back out here."
When she turns around her son is standing by the car, looking dizzy. She sighs, "Get in."
She calls her husband on the cell-phone: "Mike's eaten tinfoil again and he's staggering around AGAIN, I'm going to take him to the clinic on my way to see Mrs. Hollister at the E.R. Could you meet us there?"
Mike has the good grace to look sheepish, but he's really too dizzy to complain.
Page Nine
It's a summer morning, and Mike is sitting on the seat of a camo-painted four-wheel-drive vehicle behind his father's garage.
Nobody else is around. He takes a deep breath, turns the key. The engine catches sporadically, sputters and Mike says, "VROOM."
He fades, one, two, gone. The engine evens out, nearly purring.
A moment later one of his father's assistant mechanics comes out from the garage, "Damn, Kyrios, your kid is GOOD, he got that engine working fast!"
Kyrios comes out shortly, scowling, and waves at the man, "Get back to work, Swede."
He turns off the engine. A moment later, Mike appears, fading/falling sideways away from the 4WD and rolling to his feet.
"CLEANTHES! Stop doing that!" his dad yells.
Page Ten
First day of school. One of the seniors, football star all american stud type, varsity jacket and everything, drives up behind Mike as he walks along the road toward the school. He's riding on an ordinary-looking, used but still well maintained, Suzuki 250CC street bike. This is a semi-rural area, still the end of summer, and the senior is wearing just a tee-shirt, shorts, sneaks, and the mandatory helmet.
Mike is wearing the standard jeans-and-teeshirt himself, looking like the amateur weightlifter teenager. He hasn't grown into his father's size, but the potential appears to be there; he's nearly the same size as the football player.
"Hey Drakos," the jock says, and as Mike turns to look at the bike then at its rider, he stops the engine, and says, "Hey, Jason says you've got this special knack with bikes."
Mike shrugs, "yeah, what about it?"
"Want to go for a ride?"
Mike just grins.
"I'm Jerry Smith. You knew that though. Can you do a Hayabusa?"
"You got the picture?" Mike asks. Jerry reaches inside his teeshirt, pulls out the center spread from a motorcycle magazine, hands it to Mike.
Mike looks at the picture, grin growing wider, "Awesome." He waves a hand at the guy, "Step off a minute then."
They swap places, Jerry standing on the road, Mike mounting the bike. Mike says "Vroom!" and … vanishes. The jock gets on, and turns the key.
The engine VROOMS, and the motocycle changes to match the picture, engine growing to 1340CC, lines flowing into a sleek shape that breaks the speed limits while just standing still. Of course it's cherry red. The jock looks down at the seat as the ordinary leather turns into luxury black split cowhide, "Woah!" and his clothes change to a bright red leather riding suit, the helmet to a sleek number with full face coverage. Exactly what the guy in the picture was wearing.
"AWESOME,"Jerry says, and, wrapping his hands around the hand-controls, twists the throttle. They roar away like a very fast red blur.
Page Eleven
"I don't want to hear any excuses," his father says, as a sullen Mike sits strapped into his seat.
"What I want to know is how you got two young men fighting over you, and you can claim it's innocent and nothing … you know."
"It WAS innocent. They just … both of them like to ride me."
Mike's mother puts her hand to her forehead, stifling something, a laugh or a sob, it's hard to say. His father frowns harder.
"Did I not tell you that you were to stop this … merging thing?"
"Dad, I can't. I tried, I went a whole week, but then I fell into Mr. London's VW. It was horrible."
"I can imagine," Kryios says, looking over to Ana. "Have you seen that car? The man is a swine and the car is a pigsty."
"Kyri, I think we need to have a private talk before we decide how much punishment is coming here," Pastor Ana says in her full pastorial attitude.
Mike gulps. Doom, serious doom, when she invokes the Private Talk.
Page Twelve
At dinner, they are all quiet, until Mike finally breaks the silence, "I'm really sorry."
"What's it like," his mother says, in a non-inquisitorial voice. "Does it hurt when you merge?"
"Huh? No, not at all. It feels really good … not like that, nothing sexual, honest! It's like, feeling really strong and powerful and stuff." Mike blushes, and mumbles, "And it feels really cool to be driven."
"That is almost TOO much information, son." His father shakes his head. "Listen. We decided that you should help me out at the shop every day. No more merging with your friends' vehicles, unless it's an emergency. Period. "
"They were treating you like an object they owned, son," Ana says, "and that's not healthy for you or for them."
Mike stirs the mashed potatoes around on his plate, "OK. Yeah. It was getting weird. Papa. You want me to come over after classes?"
"Yes, that would be the best thing, and you're coming with me tomorrow since you're still suspended for two days. I want to see just how this 'repair' thing you do works."
"It doesn't stay, Papa," Mike says, "I wish it did, though."
"I'm glad it doesn't. You'd put me out of a job."
Page Thirteen
Kyrios looks at the headlight he has just removed from the 1963 Corvette which is, or contains, his son.
"Did that hurt?"
*beep-beep* is Mike's answer, in their code, one beep for yes, two short beeps for no.
"Whoops… the headlight just changed back to the way it started again. Do you feel safe about un-merging?"
*beep-beep …. beep*
There is a sort of shudder, as the Corvette reverts to the dumpy, primer-coated Cavalier that it had been. Mike fades in next to the car, and his father drops the headlight, curses as it breaks.
"What's wrong, Papa?"
"Your eye."
Mike looks into the drivers' side rear-view mirror. He blinks - his right eyelid is normal but the eyeball behind it has become chrome silver and shiny glass in the center. "Oh shit."
"Your mother will kill me."
She doesn't, but it is a close thing.
Page Fourteen
There are few creatures as loathesome as the petty bureaucrat without real power, and of these, an assistant vice principal of a highschool is unusually poisonous.
Leonard Albert Crabtree, Assistant Vice Principal, is also cursed with a name that is, in the mouths of students, all too easily mangled into insult and disrespect.
He scowls at the young man with the curly black hair. Nothing special. Not a star athlete, so no deference is required. A waste of potential there. Not a star student, so no emotional nurturing is required. A bit of grease showing on his blue-jeans, an unacceptable insult to the standards of the school except that of course, his father is a mechanic, a common greasemonkey no doubt. A history of tardiness. And then there was instigating that entirely perverse brawl between the Star Quarterback and that geek from the Chess Club.
"MIS-ter Dray-con." He temples his fingers in a "pondering the recreant" posture. "This is the fourth time I have seen you in this office. The first two times were for unacceptable tardies. The third time was for inciting riot. Do you know why you are here today?"
Mike looks up from staring at his feet just long enough to shake his head "no".
"Your homeroom teacher has failed to provide the doctor's note explaining your need for that … eye decoration, MIS-ter Dray-Con. Therefore, you have not provided a note to her."
The scowl he emits then is calculated to throw terror into the weak mind of the youthful reprobate; Crabtree practiced it in the mirror to ensure it had the expected potency.
"But I…"
"TUT! No interruptions please. You will raise your hand to ask permission to speak."
Mike immediately sits on his hands, sullenly refusing to meet Crabtree's gaze.
"This school has a strict dress code. I know because I wrote it. It permits, and I quote, 'Plain prescription eyeglasses or non-colored contact lenses to correct vision, sunglasses with tinted lenses only with a doctor's prescription to protect the eyes or treat a condition, and patches only to protect injured eyes or to conceal an empty socket.'" Crabtree favors the offender with a superior frown.
"Clearly you do not meet the requirement. Do you have anything to say for yourself?"
Mike shrugs, not speaking, insolent obedience personified.
"Mister DRAY-con," the Crabtree admonishes, "You will remove that patch immediately or I will."
"No," Mike says. "You touch me and I will scream so loud … "
The Crabtree's face scrunches into a fierce, pursed-lipped frown, and a hand lashes out like a striking snake, but Mike has ducked and is yelling … in the scramble the eyepatch winds up on the floor, and the Crabtree gasps in horror at the sight of (he assumes) a silver and glass prosthetic eye, garish and utterly unacceptable.
Mike flees the office, and Crabtree starts to yell down the hall after him, but the little beast has fled. Furiously, Crabtree prepares the letter to the family ordering another week's suspension for insubordinate behavior.
Page Fifteen
The red corvette roars down the back road, ninety miles an hour. Earlier in the day it was a Chevy ¾ ton pickup (not in the best of repair but extremely clean and shiny white) belonging to Crabtree, but now it's Mike's furious escape.
He goes over it in his mind, justifying the theft and the fit of temper.
His parents wouldn't believe him, they didn't believe the first three times about Crabtree, even if they were right about his rides with Jerry and Jason… he was just going to leave the truck in the next town. Serve the bastard right.
Mike wasn't paying attention when he approached the railroad crossing.
(Why don't they look?)
He just wants to get across as fast as he can, so he can dump the losermobile, get back home.
The train has other ideas. Trains don't stop quickly. The red corvette is totalled.
It takes a day before the police will believe that Mike didn't steal Crabtree's truck and run away.
It takes another day before the note arrives in the Drakos household, and the righteous wrath of both parents descends upon Crabtree, only a few minutes before he is furiously corrected on the proper family name, and the offending eyepatch is discovered in his desk drawer of confiscation by the principal, who spends an hour apologizing for the situation and for his underling.
It's another day before the police report about a red corvette with no plates and no driver and a train happens to be seen by Kyrios Drakos as he talks to the detective sergeant about his missing son.
Page Sixteen
The junkyard has compressed it into a cube by the time he gets there. Kyrios begins to weep as he touches the block of metal.
"Cleanthes, please don't be gone."
At his words, the metal block changes color to pale blue and white and something resembling his son appears, standing beside him, staring at the ground.
Kyrios puts his hand on the shining metal shoulder of his son, "It's time to come home now."
His mother breaks down in tears when she sees him, alive but metal, and that doesn't help either, but after that, it gets worse. "Cleanthes, your father and I have been talking about this for a while, and we had decided to send you to a school for people with gifts - a friend of mine, a man named Wagner, told me about it. The school is for mutants."
Mike hasn't found his voice yet. He tries to answer, but cannot.
He finally writes it down. "Mutant. So that's what I am. OK."
Page Seventeen
Christmas. Mike looks in the mirror, without flinching this time. Three weeks later and he can finally do that. He looks a bit like his own robot double: silver and glass eyes, stylized black rubber "hair", his face frozen in a neutral expression. His body has seams allowing it to move, and annoyingly, he's covered in a sleek metalflake white automotive paint - couldn't be red, of course, but he had a bottle of red pinstriping paint that could fix some of it. He's getting used to it, being a robot. It looks … acceptable, really. If you like cars.
He wonders if he's hungry — or rather, thirsty. The Drakos have a son who gets thirty miles to the liter. Premium only. 10w40 for dessert.
"Mike? Come down, Ana is back from the church."
Mike pulls a blue-jean jacket on, for appearances, and heads downstairs.
Page Eighteen
His mother is sitting in the breakfast nook, organizing some papers.
"Hi, Mom, how was the service?" His voice sounds like the radio, a rapid sample of the voices of the people currently talking or singing. It took a few days to find it, and it was a shock when he did.
"It was different this year. People think you ran away, and got hurt, and that we're sending you to military school. I'm tired of explaining that it wasn't anything of the sort and it's not their business, but you know how church ladies can be. Did you want to see Jerry or Jason? Both of them sent you cards."
"I don't think so. I'll write them a letter for New Years."
Kyrios comes in from the garage, "Ah, there you are. Your Christmas present is in the garage, but first your mother and I will have our regular eggnog. You, I'm sorry, only get the unleaded."
Mike makes laughing noises, "That's very funny, Papa," he says in a "not really" voice from one of the obnoxious morning DJs.
He sips from the glass. Unleaded, yes. 89 octane. It does have a bit of alcohol in it too. Ethanol 10% to improve octane during winter temperatures.
Page Nineteen
"Happy Christmas," the usual toast. They exchange gifts. Mike had made gifts in art class, so that was covered… but his allowance and personal savings had gone into buying parts for a Chevrolet ¾ ton pickup, to replace the one that disappeared. Crabtree is still a jerk but that, his Mom insists, does not permit one to steal from him and even less does it permit one to simply pretend it never happened. And it was finished - it kept Mike busy for three weeks, and there was NO merging allowed in the manufacture.
Page Twenty
"Your turn, " Kyrios says, and they lead him into the garage wearing a blindfold, turn the lights off, he takes off the blindfold. When the lights come on again, Mike almost manages to make his inflexible face smile.
A deep red 1968 BMW S60 road bike. Mike is speechless but he wouldn't know what to say anyway. He writes it on a 3x3 post-it.
"Thanks, Mom and Dad. I love you."
"You'll need this at school," his father says. "And you can drive it there, after we have Christmas at your Grandmother's place. But no merging where people can see you, and absolutely no riders."
Powers
Mike is a living automotive robot with the advantages and disadvantages that entails.
In addition to that, he can merge with a vehicle (within certain broad limits and definitions) and transform it to match a template (generally using a photo and within other broad limits) and it will change to correspond to the template.
When merged, he usually goes into a telempathic rapport with his driver, though some can block this, and he will be learning to control this.
Weaponry would have to be present in the original for it to be present in the merge-and-change, but it can be present as cargo and incorporated by the change.
He is able to perceive around the vehicle for (avg) 500 yards, and has normal-range human-like vision directly forward of the usual direction of travel.
While merged with a vehicle, he can use its normal motive abilities as if driving by remote control. He requires fuel to do this.
If the vehicle is destroyed (vaporized, exploded) he is ejected and stunned; if it is just damaged, he has some temporary impairment (see MERGER:Taking Damage). There is no innate physical limit on how long he can remain merged, but there is a mental limit (usually about 24 hours, see MERGER:Merge and Upgrade for more details).
When he is ejected or unmerges voluntarily, the vehicle will return to the state it was in before he merged, but damage or repairs made to the merged vehicle will persist in the reverted vehicle.
As a mutant who is newly come into his current state, he doesn't know about many or most of his capabilities, except where obvious. He'll learn about them over time, in training, etc.
Specific details about Mike's robot form follow. These are normal attributes of the body and do not constitute "superpowers" except that some of them exceed human norms.
His body is now living metal and mechanisms, it isn't a shapeshift, it isn't a sustained thing.
It is not something he can or will be able to turn on or off. It's the after-effect of being heavily damaged while merged with a vehicle.
It would depend on the method and power mechanics whether or not a given "power damper" could affect him, and to what degree. This is not immunity; this is simply "Look carefully at how it works." He might be resistant or immune, he might be more vulnerable or even completely paralyzed by a power that wouldn't bother a regular human or mutant.
He will, of course, register as a moderately powerful mutant to any device which scans for the unique psionic signature present in human mutants. He doesn't have DNA. He has an encrypted schematic buried inside his primary processor.
General Structure - Mike is 5'11" tall, and before the change was an athletic-appearing, fairly muscular young man of about 15 (New Years day). His body reflects that shape, but it is now made of the materials one would find in an automobile: Iron or steel, mostly, but also aluminum, rubber, chrome, glass, fiberglass, platinum, and other metals.
His internal organs don't make sense to ordinary mechanical analysis because they are partly rotated into another dimension. This means he weighs about 300 pounds instead of the 3/4 ton he would otherwise.
His design is complex, but any sufficiently mad-genius-grade scientist with robotics knowledge would be able to understand it with appropriate study. His father would be able to figure out most of it in time, once he figured out the dimensional rotation controls on most of the modular parts. (That's how the mass and volume is reduced.)
This is not a means for Mike to gain the power to grow huge; the modular components don't function correctly (with a few exceptions) when they are fully rotated into normalspace.
He has several drive units, one per limb section, which allow him to move, and a power module, or "main drive motor". Workings of that system are found under Fuel and Respiration below. He has an air intake, and exhausts air which is no more toxic in volume than a normal human's, due to some filtration and post-processing.
He looks like an accurate casting of a human was used to create a humanoid robot, with metal articulation bands not particularly like those of Collossus but still allowing some ease of movement. His face does not move much, having a fixed, simplified expression. He has "boots" instead of feet with toes, which was part of his initial body dysphoria.
He is NOT anatomically complete by default, which is just as well (and oddly NOT another part of initial body dysphoria.) He doesn't know yet how to access that part of his system, but it's there. It doesn't work to make human babies in any case. (It requires a dimensional rotation to "enable operation" at all.)
This apparent lack-of-parts still disturbs him, sometimes.
It's possible to take him apart (he doesn't know this and will probably not be happy to learn it) starting with a (properly sized) hex-key twist-lock in his navel and a second twist-lock under the "bump" on the back of his head. Both must be disengaged to unlock him and they will return to locked after five minutes if he isn't disassembled. If disassembled, the parts won't make much sense, but they're mostly modular and it wouldn't be difficult to put them back together. He will remain conscious unless his primary processor (in his chest) is turned off using the off-switch. The secondary processor in his head can retain sensory information for an hour or so and answer simple questions if the primary is off. (The collar shown around his neck in some of the pictures is cosmetic. It makes the neck look better sometimes, more car-like. Consider it an add-on accessory if it needs to be noticed in-game. It's about as durable as a hubcap.)
Mike he has a four to five hour cyclic downtime every night, which closely resembles "sleep". He consolidates memories, runs diagnostics, performs tuning, and then has dreams, generally not involving sheep, electric or otherwise. He can postpone it for up to a day, like anyone else, but finds himself becoming erratic if he does so. This does not apply when merged with a vehicle, when but he will feel the need for a downtime increasingly unless he is stunned/damaged.
Mike doesn't have a voice box, nor a "tongue" in the usual sense. (His tongue is generally a probe or docking port for ingesting whatever fuel he uses.) He has stereo speakers (good but not superior quality) and a radio inside him, and can only speak by sampling stuff off the radio. It's a normal AM/FM/HD radio that accepts appropriate radio broadcasts. It doesn't have an iPod dock, and if it did, it's inside his throat so wouldn't really work all that well. His "stock of phrases" is about 20 samples, ten to fifteen seconds in length, and he can usually find something close to right if none of them fits, but if not, he'll have to write down what he wants to say. (He'd be mute entirely except for random tuning radio stations, except that the car had a radio and Crabtree had left a cheap voice-recorder in the glovebox, one of those "don't forget the milk" reminder toys. Perhaps someday he'll manage to upgrade it.)
His "Mental" voice sounds like his old one did, should someone contact him telepathically. His mind isn't particularly hard to read once you find it, but it 's rather quiet except when he merges with a vehicle (most of his main processor being dimensionally rotated so "far" away) so someone who hears thoughts but cannot block them, won't find him to be annoyingly intrusive. Of course anyone with a technopath power would hear him more easily.
UPDATE: Due to in-game story Mike acquires an external, artificial voice box. See the "Voder Collar" tab for the details.
Durability - Mike is as durable as a ¾ ton pickup. At the fists, elbows, knees, feet, head, and neck, he is especially reinforced (fenders and bumpers). His skin is painted an elegant white, slightly metalflake, which he finds bland, so he got some red pinstriping paint and outlined parts of the "inlay" pattern that assists his articulation.
This paint protects him from rusting when exposed to salt and water.
Scratches can be repaired with a touch-up paint kit.
Dents and other serious damage could be repaired by mechanokinesis (someone else's), by merging with a vehicle, being repaired, then emerging, or by Mike merging with an undamaged vehicle then leaving the damage behind (only if it has a corresponding "part" AND NOTE, he doesn't know that he can do this at incept).
Except for repair, he doesn't heal any more than your car, boat, or motorcycle; it requires conscious effort and action for him to be repaired. For major damage to internal systems, if he were dissassembled, he would be able to intuit what needs to be done to repair himself, but only if his (well protected) primary processor is undamaged and he has working sensory inputs. He has to SEE it to know what to do. He would have to be disassembled. Further, if parts are required, they're either custom or expensive.
Like a car or boat, he isn't fatigued by extremes of temperature, but his "design parameters" prefer temperatures between -20C and +120C for efficient operation. He can overheat or sieze up like an auto would if he is kept outside those temperatures too long.
His outer skin is at least 0.90mm zinc steel with protective paint, which is the standard for a Chevy ¾ ton pickup fender. It can be damaged by anything that would damage the outside of a car – ball-peen hammer, etc. His internal systems are more durable; the drive unit and main processor are highly durable (like an engine block) and would survive most things short of a 20MM high-caliber round. Other systems, like the motors driving his limbs, could take damage from ordinary .25 caliber pistols. He can overheat if driven too hard, and if he does he may (depending on its configuration) damage his primary drive unit (motor).
In his robot form, Mike has a 10 meter "sense of awareness" around his body which tells him, generally, that something is there. It's possible to fool it if you know how it works - it's like a faint 'radar ping' showing shapes and general surface textures. He can see normally with his eyes, which operate as headlamps in the dark if he wants them to (and provide about as much light as two bright flashlights). Without that, he cannot see in the dark. His eyes see the same frequencies and colors most people do.
He can hear as well as he used to as a child; the general teen hearing damage from listening to loud noisy rock music was fixed by his mechanization. He has a very limited sense of taste, usually able to tell the flavor of whatever his current fuel is and measure the quality of it. His sense of smell is not very strong but he can detect the smell of burning, of rotten eggs, and a few other "warning" odors. His kinesthetic sense is sharper than before - he can tell precisely where every part of his body is relative to the center of mass, and can move with gymnastic-quality agility. This does not take him outside human norms, nor even into olympic levels, but it means he's graceful and can pick up physical skills and stunts fairly easily.
Finally, his sense of touch - while it would seem that being a robot would spoil this, in fact, he has very good tactile-brush, tactile-pressure, and temperature senses, can feel pain and itch when appropriate (but can turn it off) and can feel tactile pleasure. For instance, a footrub wouldn't unkink the "muscles" of his feet any more than it would a car tire, but it would feel very nice to him. It might not feel so good to the person administering the massage. Scratching his paint would sting or itch, a touchfree car wash would feel like a nice shower.
He's a robot, but it's HIS body. This applies to whether or not he's merged with a vehicle. A possession-expert with power on the scale of the new mutant Karma could overwhelm his human mind, but his processor unit is sufficiently different from a human brain that they'd have to spend a bit more time or effort getting hold of it. A speed bump, not a real barrier. A machine-possessor could enter, but he might be able to fight them, the same way any sentient machine could. Regular telepathy works on him – Because much of him is shifted dimensionally in robot form, he doesn't leak surface thoughts more than a foot away, so he won't be accidentally read by an oversensitive but unshielded telepath, but he can easily be read deliberately, like any non-shielded person.
Cyberpathy would also work, a bit better, but he's a human not an OS, so hacking his mind wouldn't work unless the attack would succeed against a human mind on the network.
When merged with a vehicle, he's as "leaky and loud" as any average teenager, in the psionic frequencies.
It would probably require incorporating a device to his robot body to give him an effective psi-barrier.
Being a robot means being stronger than most people. Mike can lift about a ton and a half and carry it around at up to 1/4 his top speed, assuming that he's on a surface that can support the movement. He won't become stronger or weaker through normal means - if he wanted to "beef up" he'd have to figure out how to physically upgrade his body. He can run unburdened at up to 45 miles per hour on a good road in good conditions, and can maintain that speed for as long as his fuel will support it, or until he needs sleep. He would be faster if he didn't have human-style legs and their less-efficient-than-wheels conversion of engine power to motion, but he's OK with not having that.
NOTE - certain kinds of vehicle might limit him in some of these. Merging with a golf cart would keep him from moving faster than 20MPH because of the speed-limiter. See the section on merging, below.
Fuel and Respiration - His system is fueled by whatever was the fuel type of the last vehicle he merged with. This changes with each merger as soon as he emerges. He will have a day's supply of appropriate fuel on emerging, unless he thinks too hard about where it comes from. (One of those 'centiped walking' things.)
This means if he somehow merged with a wind-up clockwork vehicle he would emerge with a "mainspring" and need to be wound. If he merged with a hybrid vehicle, he would have the same limitations and advantages of the particular hybrid, and if he merged with something with a very primitive motor he would require a different fuel mixture. Merging with a rocket would not be a good idea; he'd run out of fuel at some point and be unable to move, and unable to refuel. Merging with a battery-powered vehicle would require him to plug into a charger capable of feeding the correct voltage.
He needs to have a source of oxygen if his current power system uses it, i.e. Air, or air tank underwater, and if exposed to a gas that would damage the power system, it would damage him if he 'breathed' it.
No matter what his power source, he has a very effective "scrubber" that will remove the toxic parts of any gaseous exhaust, concentrating them into pellets which he can excrete. The pellets can be quite nasty. He excretes them the usual way but the "exhaust port" is normally closed and sealed when not in use. He doesn't overheat the room he's in – his waste heat emission, mostly through “breath”, is generally at most 200 KW/H where a normal human is on average 100KW/H. If sedentary, he's a 25 Watt bulb, if working hard, 200 to 300 watts depending on his current drive technology. His body temperature is basically "room temperature" plus 10 degrees F., unless he is exerting himself for a long time, when it will go to perhaps plus 20 degrees F. In the sun in summer he might get uncomfortable to touch.
This is an actual superpower in the traditional sense and is subject to suppression by any means that normally affects any psionically-mediated mutant power. (That describes about 3/4 of them according to some measures of the Marvel Mutant World.)
It's primarily psionic, i.e. a part of his mind-energy web. This is one power, but individual elements are broken out here to make it easier to read.
It's too late for him to angst over this one getting worse, unless through some causality-breach physics he were returned to flesh-and-blood. When he merges with a vehicle, Mike's body maps to the vehicle. If a part of the vehicle is damaged, destroyed, or removed, he is protected from the psychic shock by the permanent transformation of that part of his body into a mechanical analogue. If he had not changed all at once, he would have gradually been transformed over the course of months or years.
Damage to the vehicle he is merged with will persist until it is repaired, or until he emerges and re-enters, when it can be temporarily repaired. If he has changed it, then the replacement parts must be the right ones for what he's changed it to.
Mike knows how standard merge-and-repair works, in excruciating detail.
Mike can merge with most vehicles, and can 'upgrade' them either to their own 'proper, in perfect repair' template, or he can change them to a different but similar vehicle, i.e. car to car or truck, motorcycle to motorcyle, but not motorcycle to car or truck. Adding an axle is hard.
He can, of course, leave it just as it is without changing it. If he doesn't completely understand the vehicle mechanically, he cannot change it, but he can still learn to drive it, and figure out how it works.
He can only change it once per merger (barring something like a multi-mode vehicle, which uses its own systems to change) and then only within about 30 seconds of merging. He has to emerge and re-merge to change it again.
To merge requires him to be touching the vehicle, optimally in the "Driver's Seat" and to visualize turning on the vehicle and accellerating away. He leaves an afterimage that fades away over about two seconds, but his merger is instant.
Changing the vehicle to something different requires a strong image of what the target looks like, and Mike needs to know at least the basic specs of the target for it to change. For example, a page from Motor Sports Magazine with the performance stats of the latest Ferrari racecar and a photo from the ad brochure would let him change an ordinary Plymouth into that Ferrari.
If there is a picture of a driver in the vehicle, and he has someone in the 'driver's seat' when he changes, and they are actively or latently psionic, then he can change their attire (if they're willing) to match that of the driver in the picture. This cannot of itself grant powers or changes in physique etc.
ONCE HE EMERGES FROM THE VEHICLE, it returns to normal within seconds. Repairs will be undone, color and style changes will revert, fuel consumed or added will still be consumed or added (sorry). If he changed the garb of his driver it will revert at the same time.
He will always emerge in the safest place near the vehicle, but no further than 10 feet away. If that's not possible, he might be unable to VOLUNTARILY emerge. (He might still emerge involuntarily when he falls asleep.)
He can usually remain merged until he hits the involuntary “I must sleep” phase, which can be delayed up to a week at most if he is on a nonstop-except-for-fuel road trip. (He's experienced this once.) See Taking Damage for how long he can be stuck in merger by injuries.
- This is a psionic process; he is technically a psionic symbiote piggybacked on specific machinery.
- The vehicle he merges with (if he changes it) is changed to correspond to what he thinks it will be. In that respect it's a bit like Forge's power: things can be made to work that are simply IMPOSSIBLE but if he can rationalize how it works, it will be possible FOR HIM, and it may not make sense to anyone else, or be anything they could copy.
- If he didn't have a fixation on vehicles, it could have been ANY machine. But, the fixation means it has to be something self-moving, mechanical, and that someone could theoretically ride. (This might, eventually, relax to where he could merge with smaller "conceptual" vehicles like RC helicopters etc. but not until he knows a lot more about how he does things.)
- If he didn't think in terms of type-of-vehicle he'd be able to change between them much more freely, but even if someone told him that, he probably wouldn't be able to change it now.
- He's thought about "transformer" mecha but doesn't believe the mechanics of them yet. If someone were to convince him that a particular design would work, and he merged with something similar to one of the endpoints (like the cycle-battlesuit in Bubblegum Crisis) he would be able to upgrade that end, then change to the other stage(s) according to the rules of the design. He hasn't yet considered “Battle Armor” as a vehicle, but (for instance) the Iron Man or War Machine armors are vehicles.
- Some vehicles have a personality implicit in their design. A sports car is implicitly fast and sexy and devil-may-care and overconfident. A steamroller is ponderous, stubborn, and insensitive. An army assault chopper has about 1000 pounds of attitude in a chip on its' shoulder. A fighter jet is fast, sneaky, and a fierce hunter loving to kill.
When Mike merges with one of these, some of those personality traits can leak into him, and it's one of the reasons it's GOOD to have a driver who can say no sometimes.
- Cargo can be integrated into an upgraded form. He sort of knows this but hasn't thought about it. He can merge without upgrade, leaving cargo as cargo. He can also upgrade without integrating cargo if he wants. Living things are NOT CARGO for this under almost all situations. Cargo is anything "carried by" the vehicle and it has to be possible for the vehicle to move under its own power with the cargo in place.
- He can integrate weaponry and other mechanical devices as he upgrades, as long as it makes sense to the end-system, e.g. It makes no sense to integrate a winch into a race car, but it might make sense on a truck. Weaponry is integrated subject to some common sense. If he upgrades a VW Camper into a combat-equipped Hummer, he'd need to know where the mount points and ammo feeds would be, etc. and he'd have to have the guns and ammo on the Camper as cargo.
- While he can “create” parts during an upgrade, HE CANNOT CREATE weaponry, it's a subconscious block, because it would be part of himself being destroyed if he shot a missile (even a bullet). If weapons are already part of the vehicle he can integrate and use them without that problem.
When he's merged into a vehicle, he has access to all the innate senses that come with the vehicle, i.e. he can directly read the diagnostics and computer, if it has them, but he ALSO has access to any radio, TV, etc, that's connected to the vehicle's power AT THE TIME HE HE MERGES/UPGRADES, or when it's part of the target-vehicle standard equipment if he upgrades.
He has a "traffic-sense-of-awareness" that extends a minimum of 500 yards around him when he is merged - he can feel everything around as though it were radar-surfaces .This sense can be jammed by strong electrostatic fields and by pulsating magnetic fields.
He cannot distinguish fine details from this, but he might recognize the difference between two people based on their height or build.
When moving, his awareness extends outwards to 30 seconds distance (reflex-distance basically) in the direction of travel, and to 10 seconds in other directions. This sense is not dependent on light - it works in the dark etc.
For cars and motorcycles, because the driver sees by sight primarily, he can see clearly in the primary direction of travel and he can "see" out the rear view mirrors. This is normal human vision (except not bothered by bright light) and requires at least some light to see with, slightly better than 20/20.
He can "feel" the wind of travel, the texture of the road, and (ouch!) bugs, rock and gravel chips, as well as feeling everything touching the surfaces of the vehicle, inside and out.
He can hear anything spoken by passengers. He can only smell or taste if the car was equipped with sensors when he merged, or they're part of the design specs for an upgrade.
He can hear anything that happens outside e.g. a car that would be audible to a normal hearing person sitting on the hood. He can filter out but not completely remove the sounds of road noise, wind, weather, and traffic.
He has a rapport with anyone who is in the driver's seat. (See Auto Pilot vs Driver.)
He can also "speak" to his passengers (assuming more than one) through a wordless telempathic communication as long as they're passengers.
What he does know: he can feel stuff around him as well as see, hear, and touch, he has this really cool rapport thing with drivers, and he can use the senses of stuff that was in the car sometimes.
What he doesn't know on incept: That he can empath to more than just the driver. Nor does he know the precise limits and the changing ranges for his Sense of Awareness, or that he would "see" using different senses for vehicles like jet fighters.
Merging with a vehicle means that Mike has psychically BECOME the vehicle. Upgrading a vehicle is building a different self-image and enforcing it on his mechanical self.
When a vehicle in which he is merged takes damage, he feels it. The pain is less intense than a broken bone etc, but it is pain and it is bothersome and cumulative and it doesn't go away quickly.
Using the “hit points” analogy, if he merged into a car that had 100 hit points distributed intelligently over its structure, more dedicated to more necessary functions, etc, and his car-body took 25 “hits” of damage, he would be in pain, distracted, and would have to take extra attention focusing on what he was doing, and the urge to emerge would be strong. At 50 “hits” he would be effectively “stunned” into passivity, though if he had a driver in rapport, the link would allow the driver to manage his body with as much skill and effectiveness as the damage permits. At 75 “hits” (car totaled) he would be stunned, passive, and unable to emerge on his own initiative. If no further damage is taken, he will remain stunned/in shock, “recuperating” 5 “hits” per 24 hour day until he is below 50 (Note, there is no self-repair!) or until someone repairs it. If the vehicle takes more than 90 “hits” (nothing left of the structure larger than a baseball) then he is forcibly ejected, stunned and unconscious, and will require the same recovery time as it would to get back below 50 as prior. During this time he will have a strong unconscious aversion to merging again until recovered.
Note that taking any damage is always somewhat traumatic since his connection with the vehicle is psionic - it's his self-image being forcibly attacked, in effect.
Also, if he gets repaired before emerging it will alleviate the trauma to whatever degree the repair was good. A shoddy repair will result in a not-stunned, sick-feeling Mike for a day or two. Ejecting from “25% or greater” damage will result in 3-30 minutes of stun, and sick-feeling Mike for a week to ten days.
Once merged, Mike can drive his new "body" expertly … if he knows how to drive the vehicle normally. It won't be able to do anything that it isn't designed for. Cars won't fly (though they might plummet) unless the design shows how they can. He is a skilled driver of automobiles and motorcycles, not so much other vehicles, and he'll have to learn how to manage the others, but it will be faster than learning to walk. More like, a day or so to become competent, and a week to become expert, if he is soloing.
However, if someone else is in the driver's seat, he automatically goes into telempathic rapport with them, and there is a distinctly pleasurable feel to this for both him and the driver, and it's got a feedback loop. The more closely as-one they act, the better it feels, without really an upper limit or "climax", which means he can VERY quickly learn or teach, within hours, depending on whether he or the other person is a better driver. The driver would have to be able to reach the controls, etc, of course.
NOTE, a psionic with telepathy, empathy, cyberpathy, or technopathy, will have a deeper rapport, and it will feel very much better for both, potentially addictive but the effect only lasts a few days after a ride. If that psion has shields that would permit them to block the connection, they can, of course, but Mike's still in control of the vehicle and they might find it harder to get it to do what they want.
NOTE ALSO: this does not extend to communicating verbally, sharing memories, or other common mind-meld tricks UNLESS they are within the ability of the driver. It does extend to a shared sense of "body" which allows some sensory overlap (both ways).
The Rapport is psychologically addictive, for some people. Mike just enjoys it for what it is, and doesn't care whom it's with, but it's possible for the driver to form cross-fixations with other emotions, which have (as shown in bio) resulted in some odd and disturbing conflicts.
Mike can move things around within his "space" - that space being about half the distance of his perceptual sense. This is a limited telekinesis; he can handle only one or two things, and not for very long, but he could (for instance) stop at a self-service gas station, unscrew his gas cap, move the fill nozzle to position, slot and process his gas card, return the nozzle to its proper place when finished, screw on the gas cap, take his reciept, and drive away, just in time for Gladys Kravitz to yell at her husband. He can help hold people on his seat, he can add some protection from being thrown around in an accident, etc. However, initially, he doesn't really know he can do this. He's only done very minor stuff as part of rapport.
Due to events in-game, Mike acquires a voice-replacement device which he wears in a collar. This is a mechanism that uses a magnetic interface to Mike's latent machine-morphing power (the power that cannot change his robot-self) to allow him to speak. When Magneto created it, the device used Magneto's power to operate and the Master of Magnetism amplified the effectiveness somehow. Hank McCoy modifies the device, or uses it as a template, and comes up with a battery-operated equivalent which Mike can operate without unusual effort, after spending time learning how to make it sound right.
The voice sounds like Mike's original voice, but always has a bit of a "machine" overtone. Think, the "robot" voice filter used on some pop songs, but without sounding completely inhuman, only "processed". (initially it may sound more robotic as he learns to use it.)
He can adjust the volume from whisper to a normal human shout, but cannot use it for "sonic attacks" beyond what a normal human voice could do. It's hard-tuned to sound like his voice, and won't do other people's voices nor will it do sound effects (though his radio/voice-cap can still sample and play those).
The battery power means he has a 4 hour "talk time' - which can be extended by not using it to babble - and a 29 hour standby time - left on for 29 hours will drain it to the "needs recharge" state of 1/2 charged. It needs a 2-hour recharge whenever it gets below 50% charge. If drained completely (like cell phone batteries, which is probably what it uses) it needs a 6-hour "soak charge".
He carries his school-provided image inducer in the same collar. The image inducer can be set to provide the appearance of normal facial expressions, by means of simple presets, and it uses a connection to the voice interface to generate those expressions. His image inducer is limited to only presenting clothing and his "original" features. (He has a few photos his parents scanned for him, but had to fill in for missing image quality so he chose an actor he strongly resembles for that purpose. Also because the actor is very good looking.)
Also because it's convenient, the collar carries Mike's communicator/cell phone, but if he wants to use it to text he has to take it out.
When Mike uses his image inducer, he will often use the smaller more lightly armored collar, when in his "fighting uniform" he has a larger and heavier add-on bracket that provides more protection for the devices. The collar shows when image-induced so he can explain his voice as being due to an injury and a prosthetic device that allows him to speak.
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