Rho (p)

Paul Asimov
Portrayed By	Nate
Gender	boy
Date of Birth	Dec 12, 1997
Age	15
Zodiac Sign	??
Aliases	Kitsu
Place of Birth	Indiana
Current Location	West Chester New York
Occupation	student
Known Relatives	Tim Asimov, father
Identity	Rho
Known Abilities	Solidifies air
First Appearance	Buffalo NY

History

Paul grew up in a pretty typical, small midwestern town surrounded by fields of soybeans and corn. He always lived within about a hundred yards of a railroad track. Which was nice and a lot of fun in his opinion. He'd walk down the tracks to the bridge over the creek and catch crayfish and build dams with the rocks. he'd ride his bike miles out into the countryside and pick wild raspeberries out of the ditches. He'd let the trains flatten pennies he places on the tracks. His father worked at the town grain elevator as a maintenance man and a volunteer fire fighter. His mother was a grade school teacher.
When Paul was about six years old, one fateful stormy spring morning, he lost his mother. She was driving to work in the early morning. The bridge had flooded out, but she did not see in the heavy rain until it was too late. They found her inside the mangled wreck of her car, pinned under the pylon of the bridge.
The next couple years were a bit harder for Paul, missing his mother. Being an only child, he suddenly had to fend for himself at home as his father needed to work longer hours at work to make ends meet. He was on his own, responsible for making his own meals and keeping the house safe, as well as making sure his own homework was done. He started to withdraw a lot more into his room, building models and reading book, and practicing the guitar, his final Christmas gift from mom.
Disaster would strike one more time in Paul's childhood. While he was home from school one afternoon, a train carrying large propane tanks derailed next to the grain elevator. they caught fire. That half of the town was evacuated. But Paul was concerned about his father, who was at the tracks trying to put out the fire. he broke past the evacuation lines and back toward the elevator, looking for his father. The propane tanks blew in a powerful explosion called a BLEVE. the pressure wave threw train cars hundreds of yards. It threw Paul about that far as well, miraculously landing unscathed in the basketball court of the nearby park. Paul's father was not to lucky. He survived, but the explosion threw him into the concrete walls of the grain elevator, and broke nearly every bone in his body.
Very hard times fell on the small family after that accident. Paul's father was hospitalized for months. Paul had to change schools as he was placed with a foster family while his father healed. That wasn't exactly fun either as he suddenly had two older brothers who constantly picked on him. When his father was finally able to come home, the family got stuck with a massive hospital bill. the injuries required long term, in-house care. His father could not work again. Money got very tight. The community rallied behind them and did fundraisers for a little whole, but after a year, it seemed like his father's problems were forgotten. Paul started to resent this little town, and couldn't wait to get out of there, even to get away from the shell of the man his father once was. he resented having to care for him so much. It was against the natural order.
During these hard times, strange things began to happen to Paul. The pressure wave from that BLEVE awakened something inside him. When he would lose his temper, sometimes the very air would seem to lock up solid. His classmates would trip over something solid that was made of nothing but air. When he'd fall off his bike, he seemed to fall in slow motion, as if through water. It would cushion his fall.
A few years went by with Paul struggling at home to help his father feed himself and other things. His grades suffered, and like many kids in small towns, he turned to drugs. When he was caught with a bag of weed in his school locker, the school and the county determined that his home life was not fit for him. For the second time, Paul was placed in a foster home, while his father was put into a Home for disabled veterans in Fort Wayne. Paul continued to grow angry at the world. At the same time, he wished that he could do something to help his father get out of that awful place. His powers began to develop further as well. By the time he was thirteen, he knew that there was something special inside of him. He would sneak out of the house at night and test to see what kind of things he was capable of. He knew that he was a mutant now, and the idea kinda scared him. But perhaps he could use these new abilities to do something for himself and for his father.
Paul ran away from his foster parents, who were very controlling in his opinion. Living on the streets was harder than he thought. He travelled East as he went. He used his powers to attack people in the night, immobilizing them and taking their wallets. More often he uses it to steal food, or sometimes drugs. Sometimes he would mail some spare money to his father, with a letter saying that he was okay. Ever Eastward he fled, stealing a dirt bike now and then, ducking the police and sleeping in shelters and under bridges. He joined up with a gang in Buffalo, who made him their leader once they discovered what he could do. However, he got the wrong kind of attention. The Brotherhood had gotten whispers of a mutant gang operating in Buffalo. They sent Toad to look into it. Toad muscled his way in, beat the snot out of all of them, and told the kids that he was calling the shots now. But he could offer Paul a lot of great things, IF he can prove himself. It was time to pull off a bigger heist, not this two-bit pickpocketing and larceny. If Paul could pull off this heist, the Brotherhood would make him a Made Mutant.
That time came after a month of planning shortly after Paul turned fourteen. His pals and him had been watching an armored truck make pickups from a nearby bank. They knew when it arrived every Wednesday morning. They knew how many people it held. They made their move. Paul used his power to immobilize the guards as they opened the truck's doors. His friends provided cover and also made off with the cash. It seemed successful. What they weren't counting on was Gambit watching the heist from a nearby Starbucks. A few thrown cards broke Paul's concentration. The guards opened fire. he had to shield himself and his friends from being shot, and they ran off, to meet at their little hideout in an abandoned warehouse. Gambit followed them. Thus ensured a little bit of a fight between Gambit and Toad, while all the kids ran for cover. Gambit came out on top, and grabbed Paul by the collar and hauled him off to Starbucks to finish his latte.
Gambit spoke to Paul, seeing the potential the kid had. He also reminded him a little of himself as a kid. Gambit could see the potential trouble Paul could get into as well, if he went to the Brotherhood. He told Paul about a place he could go that would help him. After a long talk into the night, he convinced Paul to try it. They rode Gambit's bike into New York, and to Xavier's Academy. A boarding school? Really? But after a week of being kept under light guard, and getting to meet the staff as the school, maybe it wasn't so bad. Proffessor Xavier convinced Paul to stay on by agreeing to give his father a generous stipend every month to help make life easier for him. In exchange, Paul was to be a student at the Academy, and work on honing his mutant power as well as learning to be a better person. The Brotherhood would still love to get their claws into him however, if they can ever convince him to come to them instead.

Powers

Paul is a mutant with one sole ability; to alter the consistency of air, making it solid or viscous like a liquid. Hardened air takes on a slightly crystal-like appearance, so that one can see the edge of the effect if you look hard enough. He can control the shape of the air that he effects to some extend, able to make basic shapes with the hard air, such as ramps, spheres, walls and blocks. The hard air has the density and hardness of wood. If he concentrates really hard, he can make it as dense as brick, but doing so is taxing to him to the point of physically damaging him. Hard air can be broken if subjected to a blow that can deliver 500 to 1000 lbs of force, about as hard as a professional boxer or martial artist. He can also change the air to be as dense as liquid, giving it a water-like quality. These powers have a few special tricks as side effects. He can project dense air ahead of him, which he can run or travel on. This effectively allows him to 'fly' in the same way that Iceman slides along on a little track of ice. A wall of dense air can deflect bullets and most physical attacks, unless it is strong enough to break through it. He can make dense air around people, immobilizing them. Water-like dense air can be used to arrest momentum in a fall or a car accident for example. It can also exhaust a target, since breathing in air as thick as water is physically taxing, and could potentially knock out most people. People encased in solid air cannot breath at all, so he cant leave them in there for too long. Lastly, one silly little trick he has learned is Air Guitar. he can create a set of string out of dense air that he can play like a real guitar, though the strings are slightly brittle.
The dense air has a few drawbacks, mainly that it is still made of air. Thus energy, light, electricity and radiation can pass through it. It won't stop these kind of attacks at all. His constructs of air are immobile. he can't move around the effect once he produces it. he has to dismiss it and make another one somewhere else. Dense air burns like a lump of coal. Liquid air is explosive, much like the concentrated oxygen that you'd find in a hospital. Paul has to be careful not to expose his effects to flame, or else he might seriously hurt someone. Lastly, his powers won't work at all in a vacuum, obviously. At high altitude, they are quite diminished. The hardness of dense air decreases by a factor of one for every two thousand feet of altitude.

+Talents

Paul can play a guitar fairly well. Many of his personal heroes are considered the best guitar players in the world. Living on the streets for a few years, he's learned how to fight dirty, but he is by no means a very strong kid. He can run, sneak and he can hide due to a short life of evading the police. He is something of a self-taught amateur in Parkour. being a bit of a delinquent, he doesn't have the best education right now. Paul is of average intelligence

+Personality

Paul is shy with those he doesn't know or trust. It can make him seem a little standoffish. He lets a little bit of himself out with those he counts as friends, which are very few. He has a good sense of humor when he lets his guard down. he is so used to having to pretend to be a tough kid, he has trouble remembering what it was like to be normal. But it's in there somewhere.

Timeline

Paul has explored the Academy grounds and talked with a few students.

Quotes

• "Yes, there's a little p on my costume. I know. STFU."

Trivia

p is the Greek letter Rho, and is commonly used in mathematical equations to represent Density.