| Omri Laroche |
 |
| Portrayed By |
Corey Sevier |
| Gender |
Male |
| Date of Birth |
January 11, 1986 |
| Age |
24 |
| Zodiac Sign |
Capricorn |
| Aliases |
Crypsis |
| Place of Birth |
Thule Air Force Base, Greenland |
| Current Location |
New York City |
| Occupation |
Freelance Translator; Professor of Linguistics at Barnes Academy |
| Known Relatives |
Noah Laroche, father (Presumed Deceased); Julie Herold, mother |
| Significant Other |
None |
| Identity |
Secret |
| Known Abilities |
Physical and Linguistic Mimicry, Healing, Receptive and Projective Empathy |
| First Appearance |
??? |
History
Omri was born on Thule Air Force Base in Greenland on January 11th, the son of US Air Force pilot Julie Herold and Canadian Noah Laroche after a one-night stand. Having dual citizenship in Canada and the US, he was raised by his father in Iqaluit, Canada after his mother chose to continue her career as opposed to raise a child she didn’t really want. Noah, a charter pilot who ran short-range prop plane flights to Greenland and back for a living, did the best he could on his own, but his job required Omri to be a latch-key kid.
Early on, Omri was a natural linguist, picking up French, German, Spanish and Italian before he was 14 years old. His father assumed the boy spent all his time reading books on languages whenever he was gone on a flight, but the truth was, Omri just seemed to naturally grasp languages as he heard them. His father was a good man, and he had a great home life, even though his dad was gone days at a time for work. Omri's father also began to teach him to fly the plane when he had time.
When Omri was sixteen, Noah’s plane vanished over the Baffin Sea, and he was never found. Before he could be placed in the foster care system, Omri ran away from home. He ended up in Quebec, where he lived on the streets, stealing what he needed to survive. After about six months of thievery, he discovered there was a lot more money to be earned in prostitution.
During the next four years, Omri sold his body, funding a rather nice residence in an upscale hotel. His success in this was fueled by his developing mutant abilities, which allowed him to read the desires and emotions of his clients, and use those feelings to fuel subtle changes to his own appearance to appeal to what they wanted. By the time he was 20, his powers became great enough that he could empathically read his clients easily, and could make himself look like completely different people. His grasp of languages continued to improve as well, as if he were sponging the knowledge from those he empathically connected with. He began to notice he could give gentle empathic nudges to influence others’ emotions, and that he could use that same energy transfer to heal others.
He knew he was special, and needed to learn to better control and understand his powers. He was also tired of being a street criminal. Moving to New York, he decided to try to figure out how to be an Avenger, and put his talents to use. He's not made any connections to join them yet.
Sticking by his decision to stop prostituting, he applied and was given a job teaching French at a local adult learning center. After about six months of this, one of the other teachers there suggested he look into a job translating with a company his brother worked for, and gave him the card for Circuitech. Omri applied, and has been working there ever since. He spends his weekends and evenings working on his abilities, and has seemingly mastered them to a fully functional degree. He also has taken kickboxing classes for several years and practices with firearms. When he can, he even does some limited crime fighting on the side, but he still feels his powers are really more geared towards small time crooks or support for big league heroes.
Powers
Omri can sense the emotions and desires of creatures and people as long as he can see them in person. His visual contact acts like a focus, and allows him to read people as far away as he can clearly see. If he cannot see them, he must be within twenty feet, and seeing them through artificial means, such as on a television screen. He can read only one person at a time. He also uses this ability to increase his accuracy with firearms, using not just his eyes to aim, but also his emotional sense of the target.
Omri can give any emotion or desire to anyone he can see (same restrictions as Receptive Empathy). He cannot give someone an emotion they would not normally be capable of having. For example, he cannot make a straight person lust for someone of the same sex, or make a claustrophobic love being in small boxes. He could make a straight man feel love for a woman, however, even if she were not normally his type.
The same mental/physiological connection Omri can make with his empathy allows him to share his own energy to perform limited healing on others. He essentially projects his own life energy onto another, using it to heal them. This power requires physical contact. He is only able to heal a quantity of injuries equal to the life energy he possesses. While he can use his own energy to heal multiple people, the total of the injuries healed cannot exceed the total of his own life energy. As a fast guideline, he can only heal an amount of injuries that, in total, he could survive if they were his own. The more energy he expends, the more tired, weak and lethargic he gets. If he were to use nearly all his energy, he would pass out in a coma-like state, and to use all of it would kill him. For minor injuries healed, a good nights rest can recharge Omri. Major injuries like multiple gunshot wounds, massive internal trauma or large areas of first-degree burns can leave him weakened for several days. In the event he healed someone to a level that left him in the coma, it could take as long as a weak for him to slowly build back up to full energy. Omri can reverse this power as well, but he cannot make new wounds. He can only increase and worsen existing wounds, at similar energy costs to healing.
Omri can speak, read, write and understand any language or code he has sensed off someone who can do the same. If he senses someone who speaks Japanese but cannot read it, then Omri can speak but not read it. The same limitations apply to this that apply to his receptive empathy. Because of the type of cognitive resonance language has, he is able to retain these languages or codes for about a day before they rapidly fade.
Omri is able to manipulate his life energy to alter his appearance, making himself look and sound like any person (not animal). To do so, he must sense the person he wishes to mimic through another person’s mind. He cannot mimic a person from sensing that person. For example, he cannot mimic Scott Summers if he is standing alone in a room with Scott, sensing Scott’s emotions. He must sense the Scott Summers energy through the energy of someone else, so that he can see/feel the energies he needs to mimic for others to see/feel. This enables him to look, sound and, in normal, predictable situations, act like Scott. It does not allow him to react to abnormal, unpredictable moments accurately, nor does it change his clothes.
Timeline
- What's happened since you've been approved?
Quotes
Trivia
- Always has a harmonica on him
- Favorite food is kiwi fruit
- Vegetarian
Gallery
