Angelo Espinosa

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PHASE 1

PHASE 2

Angelo Espinosa
Portrayed by Adam Rodriguez
Codename:	Skin
Affiliations:	X-Men, X-Corps, Xavier Institute - Staff, Red X
Birthdate:	July, 22 1986

Journal:	Angelo
Player:	Kate

The new world has basically turned Angelo's world upside down. He is currently focusing on is work as a lawyer for the Mutant Underground.

Details

Character Journal: xp_skin

Real Name: Angelo Espinosa

Codename: Skin

Aliases: "Miguel/Dienekes" (during undercover work)

First Appearance: August 27, 2003

Date of Birth: 22 July 1986

Place of Birth: Los Angeles, USA

Citizenship: American

Relatives: Juanita Espinosa (mother), Eduardo Espinosa (father; deceased), Gilberto and Inez (cousins; little or no contact)

Education: Graduate of Xavier's, Juris Doctor

Relationship Status: Married to Jean-Phillipe Colbert

Occupation: Lawyer

Team Affiliation: Elpis, X-Men, X-Corps

Biography

Childhood

To say Angelo's childhood wasn't idyllic is the understatement of the century, starting at the age of five when he watched his father die after a mugging. And it was all downhill from there, as he got increasingly involved with the local gangs. Naturally enough, the rest of his childhood was a violent one, leaving him with numerous scars (not all physical). At the age of fourteen, he was forced to shoot a friend of his to save his own life, his first - but probably not last - killing. It left its mark.

However, it wasn't all bad, or not from his point of view. He had a group of the closest friends he could have wished for, including Miguel Torres, and when he was fifteen, he started dating Miguel's sister Alejandra. By this time, Miguel was the leader of the gang, with Angelo as his second in command, and gave his full approval to the relationship. Angelo was happy, at this point in his life, but it wasn't to last.

When he was almost seventeen, he manifested, and that was the end of life as he'd known it. His friends turned on him, knocking him out and leaving him in a burning car, from which he barely escaped at the cost of a new set of scars on his hands. Unknown to Angelo, Alejandra witnessed the first part of this, before her brother hustled her away.

Angelo fled, leaving his mother (and the gang) to believe he was dead. He lived on the streets for approximately two months, begging and indulging in petty theft and prostitution to survive. By chance, he was discovered by Scott Summers, who gave him the chance to come to the school and learn about his powers, which he barely tolerated and refused to use in public. Angelo, realising he had no better options, accepted the offer of a safe haven.

Phase 1

Living At The X-Mansion

Whilst the school was certainly better than being on the street, it wasn't an easy transition for Angelo, especially as he tended to attract trouble. His initially suspicious attitude to the school also didn't help. There was a brief physical relationship with John Allerdyce that ended almost as soon as it had begun. Angelo then developed an intense crush on Paige Guthrie, a hopeless cause, he felt, because of her attraction to Jonothon Starsmore. A trip to the Salem Center mall with Artie Maddicks and Doug Ramsey resulted in an altercation with the local junior chapter of the Friends of Humanity - Doug was seriously injured whilst intervening on behalf of Artie, and Angelo and Scott Summers had to chase the gang off. In retaliatory incident where he and Marie D'Ancato were jumped by the same gang, Angelo, flashing back to the incident with his old gang, had to be restrained by Marie using her powers on him.

Angelo's friends tended to number among the more 'troubled' students: Marie (it was Marie who got him back in touch with his mother), Shinobi Shaw (a regular smoking partner on the back porch) and Sarah Morlocke (with whom he would regularly spar) predominantly. The situation with Paige became further complicated when he confessed his feelings for her and discovered she returned them - a tentative kiss in the gym ended in violence when Jono walked in on them and in the resulting fight, Angelo again blacked out, inadvertently striking Paige. Spiralling into deep depression as a result of this, Angelo refused to leave his room for many days and his roommates, Alex Summers and Shiro Yoshida, misinterpreting instructions from Moira MacTaggart - Phase 1, kicked him out. He received treatment from Moira and later moved into a suite with Bobby Drake, who was still recovering from being held by the FOH.

Angelo had barely recovered from this when he was caught in John's out of control fire during the attack on the school by Pete's former employers. The magical intervention of newcomer Amanda Sefton, brought him out of a coma, and began what was to become a life-long friendship, despite Angelo's feud with Manuel de la Rocha, Amanda's eventual boyfriend. The friendship was tested by her magic addiction, but it was Angelo who stopped her from suiciding in the throes of withdrawals. He later accompanied her to Los Angeles, the first time he had visited the city since his almost-death at the hands of his gang. He used an image inducer to disguise himself, but it was definite progress. The trip almost ended in disaster when they confronted Amanda's 'owner', the black magician Rack. Angelo, racked with guilt for his part in giving Rack a loophole over Amanda, slipped back into destructive habits - Jono caught him burning himself with cigarettes and his friends made him return to his sessions with Leonard Samson. Anti-depressants enabled Angelo to find solid ground on which to build on. As did the relationship with Paige - the two boys, realising she would not choose between them, agreed to attempt to bury their issues and 'share'. His mother's relocation to New York also helped.

For his eighteenth birthday he received Joyita, a chocolate labrador puppy, from Paige, and the dog remains a treasured companion. He graduated high school at nineteen, but then found himself drifting, somewhat at a loss as to what to do with his life, having never had to think about his future before. He toyed with the idea of becoming a police officer, but Paige's breakdown and abrupt ending of their relationship threw him for a loop. It was his mentor Nathan Dayspring who took him in hand - the older man had become increasingly a father figure to the former gang-member over the years, and following the defeat of Nathan's uncle Gideon Faraday and the death of his father, Nathan offered Angelo a job with his non-government organisation Elpis.

Elpis and the X-Men

Angelo's role with Elpis has never been actually defined - one part researcher, one part personal assistant, one part 'minder' for Nathan, notorious for getting himself into trouble. It was, however, the direction he needed, and throughout 2006, he quickly became an integral part of the organisation, and he began correspondence classes in law to further his contributions. It also began to change his view of the world - against all his previous opinions on the matter, he asked for and was granted permission to become an X-Men trainee, taking the codename of 'Sancho' as a reference to Nathan's Don Quixote-like tendencies. When Logan was fired from his position of self-defence instructor, Angelo was approached to jointly teach the class with Lorna Dane - there were some misgivings about his ability to manage the time, but Angelo was confident he could maintain his busy schedule, and became somewhat popular with the newer students, such as Yvette Petrovic. Somehow he also managed to maintain a social life, striking up a casual sexual relationship with the recently-returned Sarah, as well as renewing his friendships with Marie and Amanda, also returned from absences. Bobby's marriage to Theresa Cassidy meant a loss of a roommate, and Angelo soon acquired a new one in the form of Forge. The two young men's busy schedules meant they saw each other rarely, but they enjoyed each other's company when they did.

A solo trip to Moscow for a conference almost resulted in disaster, when terrorists invaded the conference centre. Protecting his friend from Kashmir, Samie Kander and giving the X-Men as much information as possible whilst evading the terrorists, Angelo proved himself level-headed and capable in a crisis. This was recognised by him being elevated to full X-Man status after his return, taking as his official code name the old nickname Marie had given him: 'Skin'.

Disaster did strike in February 2007, when Angelo was caught up in the bombing of the Elpis office in Tel Aviv. Barely saved by the intervention of Domino, and forced to dig her out of the rubble to save her life in turn, the incident traumatised him deeply and led him to question his position as a staff member when he reacted badly to a post on the journals by Jennie Stavros. He withdrew into silence, refusing even to speak to Nathan or Amanda, and arrangements were made for him to go see Nathan's psychiatrist, Jack Leary upon his return to New York. The one small bright spot was that the near-death experience made him and Amanda acknowledge that their relationship went deeper than merely friends, although Angelo's mental state made things difficult and they agreed to take things slowly.

Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

After returning to New York, he started to make a gradual recovery, helped by his friends at the mansion as best they could, though he kept mostly to his suite and declined to return to any of his jobs yet. This seclusion ended when the FBI came calling, asking him to go undercover in New York to look for and infiltrate The Preservers - he was chosen because his gang background made him ideal for the role he had to play.

A week later, mission successfully completed, he emerged from debriefing and - after a night's sleep at his mother's house - headed straight to find Amanda. The ensuing evening of relaxation ended in the consummation of their relationship, and the mutual decision to take the whole weekend to themselves. Since then, things steadily improved - in April 2007, he took the self-defence teacher job back, and was no longer considered benched from the team. He also approached Forge regarding HeliX, inspired by his time with the younger Preservers. At the end of April 2007, he got something of a blast from the past in the form of a telephone call from Miguel Torres, leading him to go back to LA to rescue Miguel's sister Alejandra from the Kick gang she was involved with, as well as putting an end to a turf war. Miguel and Alejandra came to New York with him at the end of the week he spent in LA, and it seemed that that chapter of his life was well and truly closed.

Life continued to be stressful, however, between his work for Elpis, his education and his missions with the X-Men all putting pressure on him. A close call on a mission highlighted to him and Amanda the tenuousness of their lives, her fear of losing him only making things harder. Spending time with Miguel only increased the feeling of being constrained into a life that wasn't fully him, and when Nathan was shot, he went without thinking to Trask's house with his Asgardian sword, revenge the only thing on his mind. He was retrieved by Scott, Cain and Amanda before any real damage could be caused, and the ensuing fallout left him questioning his commitment to the team and to his girlfriend. These doubts only increased when a prophecy Forge found in one of Irene Adler's diaries seemed to indicate his early death, and when the Church of Humanity kidnapped Alejandra and almost killed Miguel, Angelo broke one of the team's tenants - X-Men don't kill. He was benched from the team and remained unsure of whether he would feel he could take his place there again for several months. Amanda's two week-long disappearance, the return of old rival Manuel de la Rocha and a foray into a perfect dream world did little to help him resolve that doubt.

Called to Serve

Circumstances eventually brought Angelo back to his responsibilities. A mission to Alaska left Nathan in a coma and Angelo taking care of a distraught Rachel until he awoke. At the same time, a birthday gift from Amanda, the file on his father's murder, revealed more about the man than Angelo had known, their shared mutancy for one. He managed to protect his students during a field trip that became a battleground, and helped in reining in another student out of control. Then Apocalypse attacked New York and Angelo was forced to leave an unconscious Amanda in Sarah's hands while he went and got his mother to safety.

However, despite his return to his duties and loyalties, Angelo found himself being left behind by the two people he cared about most, Amanda and Nathan. In the wake of Pete's disappearance and probable death, Amanda left the States for several months, communicating infrequently at best. Nathan left him to maintain the Elpis office while he went to Wakanda, ending up in almost a whole-scale war, much to Angelo's unhappiness. Things came to a head with Amanda, at least, when she returned to New York, only to go to Spain with her ex-boyfriend, Manuel, not more than a couple of weeks later. Nathan's own reticence about what happened to him in January increased his feelings of being shut out and he eventually had it out with Amanda at least, the two of them having a loud arguemnt that culminated in them agreeing to try one last time to accommodate each other's busy lives better.

There were small victories, at least - Angelo found himself able to provide support and assistance to at least one student, Fred Dukes, new to the school and having troubles with his mutation. He was also able to assist members of X-Force in preventing an assassination at a conference on mutants, which he was attending as a representative of Elpis.

An X-Men mission in May 2009 in Budapest proved to be one of the most difficult yet for him, but he acquitted himself well, although not unscathed. Only two months later he found himself participating in the destruction of Taygetos, who were breeding and training mutant soldiers, which led to Nathan's being gravely injured. After returning to the mansion, Angelo announced his resignation from Xavier's staff as self-defense teacher and a hiatus from the X-Men in order to run the Elpis office and care for Nathan during his recovery.

The summer ended with changes to his relationships with the two people he cared about most, when first Nathan retired from the X-Men and went to live in New York to run Elpis from the city, and then he and Amanda decided they were not successful as a couple. They decided to stay friends, and their break up had a silver lining in that it allowed Manuel to admit that he was not jealous of Angelo's being with Amanda, merely at the fact that they could be 'normal' together. This revelation led to Manuel and Angelo making amends.

Winter of 2009 was not much easier on Angelo than the summer had been as his willingness to help Fred with his powers led to a bit of a disaster. After being contacted by Fred regarding the similarities between their mutations, Angelo agreed to participate along with David Haller in Fred's telepathic therapy to help him control his mutation by allowing him to experience Angelo's powers of manipulating skin, which would be possible through a psychic link between the two. After Haller established the psychic link, however, it resulted in Fred's skin stretching to massive proportions and refusing to hold a shape, which led to his falling into a coma. It was Angelo who explained the situation to Fred's girlfriend Callie Betto and who went to retrieve Fred from Muir on Boxing Day when the young man had recovered.

2010

2010 began for Angelo with his agreement to move out of the mansion with former flame John Allerdyce into an apartment in the city, and asking Miguel's sister Alejandra out for dinner. Both relationships grew steadily over the year, particularly Angelo's friendship with John, which grew despite John's repeated attempts to aggravate the easy-going Angelo. Angelo even helped John deal with some of John's issues with his family.

While his friendship with John grew, another was seemingly destroyed when in May Angelo found out about Doug backing the Hellfire Club's choice of the woman who once tortured him for Black Queen. He very publicly told Doug that their friendship was over, and they would not get past what Doug did for the rest of the year.

In April Angelo participated in a mission in Pakistan and helped to save a train of refugees who were being attacked by the Imperial Guard, despite injury to himself. He announced upon his return home that he was taking some time off work due to bruised kidneys. At graduation he helped to protect the Professor from an attack by The Purifiers.

The summer of 2010 saw Angelo engaging in a prank war with Jean-Paul Beaubier which carried on into the fall, when Angelo announced that he was accepted into law school. He bought John a used car lot so John would have a supply of things to destroy, and also cared for his roommate when John came down with dysentery from a trip to India. Angelo received a bit of a practicum in his law classes when he helped Kevin Ford understand his lawyer's legalese.

2011

January saw Angelo and Doug beginning to mend their friendship after pummelling each other in a local fight club, helped along by a shared interest in finding culprits who tagged his mother's house with anti-mutant graffiti.

Angelo continued his sitcom-ish rooming with John and was often involved in talks with John about Amara Aquilla and talks with Amara about John. He also discussed going into practice with Warren Worthington once he graduated law school.

During the mansion Halloween party Angelo was amongst those possessed by their costumes and, along with Meggan, summons a spirit to lead them to the evil Red Bull.

2012

At the end of January Angelo traveled to Attilan with Sooraya and a team of X-Men to support Sooraya while she gave evidence against Sayyid, and was instrumental in rescuing Sooraya after she had been kidnapped. Angelo later helped his mother to organize a pro mutant event when some members of the Friends of Humanity who had been picketing the event violently manifested powers. Angelo saved an unidentified victim who had set on fire and also assisted in the recovery and protection of Michael Apfelbeck Jr. When Jenny Ransome and Philip Moreau Angelo helped give them a tour of the mansion before they were kidnapped by the Genoshan authorities. Angelo was part of the group from the mansion who were kidnapped by the Genoshan authorities and ended up in the prison. Angelo was one of the prisoners rescued during the X-Men's assault and managed to escape when the security forces sprang their trap. Angelo was one of the who meet with Russel Davies and later convinces Joeseph and Jobeth to speak out against the government. While Angelo was assaulting the city he was part of the group that ran into Dr Ryan and Tam Anderson and agree to work together to bring down the Moreau government. During the assault Angelo was part of the team that assaulted and destroyed the labs and located Betsy Braddock and Sarah Morlocke. In the final battle against Thomas Moreau Angelo assisted in the destruction of the tail and power core of the monster.

Angelo's return from Genosha was marked by being fired from Elpis due to his being accused of "terrorism" by the Genoshan government. He spent in a few days on Muir Island with Amanda and Sooraya, helping a grieving Nathan and Moira. Not long after his return, he was approached by Professor Xavier in helping with the creation of X-Corps - a humanitarian organization similar to Elpis, of which Angelo would be operational director. Angelo, of course, accepted.

The "return" of Rachel Kinross-Dayspring hit Angelo fairly hard - his method became not dealing with it, as it had already been determined she was not staying. The departure of Alejandra to Cleveland to be with Miguel was yet another blow to Angelo mental state.

In September Angelo, as one of the people with experience with Asgard, was recruited to help investigate a man posing as Thor in Minnesota. The experience ended with Angelo badly injured in the aftermath of a fight with an ice demon. Not long after his return from Minnesota, he began a relationship with Jean-Phillipe Colbert - something which, while neither actively tried to hide it, they did try to remain discreet about.

X-Corp's first official mission in October took a turn for the worse when, while investigating the disappearance of mutant children in the Congo, Angelo was abducted by Aghanne, a cult leader who believed Angelo would be responsible for the world's downfall. The accompanying team found Angelo right as he was about to be burned at the stake, and managed to rescue him. He spent quite a while in a funk following the events of the mission, though his friends and new boyfriend stepped up to try and snap him out of it.

2013

The year passed on a mostly quiet note, with Angelo throwing himself into X-Corps. He ended up taking new student Frank Ludlum under his wing, giving him an internship with X-Corp and trying to mentor him through his anger issues - which backfired on him when Frank snapped and punched him (they later reconciled). He also had to deal with the fallout of Sooraya's reaction to his relationship with Jean-Phillipe when Angel accidentally outed him. They reconciled as well, though it was hard for Sooraya to go against her faith.

The end of the year brought with it some excitement, though not in a good way, as Angelo, along with several other mansion residents (including Jean-Phillipe) were kidnapped by Belasco's troops and dragged into a faux limbo. With the time displacement, they were trapped their for a couple of weeks before a rescue team came to get them out.

2014

Angelo laid low for most of the year, recovering from his experiences in the fake Limbo. In February he reemerged to join a Red-X in helping to evacuate the mutant island Avalon when it was threatened by a tsunami. He also welcomes Rachel and Cecilia Reyes to X-Corps.

2015

After the attack on Muir Island Angelo led a team to Egypt to find more information about the Dark Raiders. While they were there, they were attacked by their 1980’s counterparts under some kind of mental compulsion. After the Dark Phoenix destroyed the world, Angelo was one of the people moved to the new world by Xorn.

Phase 2

One of the first realizations in this new world was that X-Corps could not function without assessing the new situation first and Angelo was part of the decision to let it go dormant for now. He focuses on his work as a lawyer and assisting the Mutant Underground.

Once again he resorted to his method of "not dealing with it" in order to get through the year. He withdrew for the most part, focusing on work and only coming out when his boyfriend dragged him. In July he was contacted by an old X-Corps contact to help get a mutant in danger to a safe place. Otherwise it was a blessedly quietly year.

2016 continued on in the same quiet vein, and even had a few good parts - namely an impromptu trip to Atlantic City to ward off M-Day related depression, and attending Sooraya's naturalization ceremony, as she became a US citizen.

2017-18

2017 was a little more interesting, with Angelo stepping up to write for Angel's pro-mutant newspaper under a pseudonym, giving mutants legal advice in a world that hated them. He was also tasked with taking care of his boyfriend after Jean-Phillipe overextended himself on a mission, and in the process, they talked about their relationship and found themselves engaged, with slightly mixed reactions from loved ones.

In August, Angelo's Asgardian past came back to haunt him when Asgardian problems leaked over to Earth, and he helped clean up the issues. 2018 was a blessedly quiet year, with Angelo hanging in the background and helping Sooraya with her new job of looking over the European Underground contacts.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'7"

General Build: Short for a man, quite muscular now because he worked hard to build up from his skinny teen self.

Eyes: Brown.

Hair: Black.

Other Features: One earring, numerous scars including a gunshot wound to his torso, burns to his hands and elsewhere, and an old gang insignia cut into his shoulder. Tattoos of elven runes down his spine.

Angelo's skin is a dull grey colour, and in times of stress can seem to sag if he loses his fine control of his powers. Generally he's able to pull it in firmly enough to maintain a regular appearance, apart from the colour.

Powers

The average human body is covered by about two square meters of skin. Angelo possesses almost ten square meters of skin that he has a degree of mental control over. His skin cells are more elastic and resilient than a normal human's, allowing them to remain viable despite limited blood flow. This limited blood flow accounts for the grey appearance of his skin in its normal state.

By force of will, Angelo can extend his skin from his body, stretching distances of up to fifteen feet and beyond while still maintaining his sense of touch and a degree of manual dexterity. The tensile strength of his distended skin is sufficient to exert enough force to lift the weight of small objects with little to no effort, and Angelo has been shown to support the weight of another full-grown human with some effort.

When contracted, the thickness of Angelo's skin offers him some protection against blunt force trauma, although other forms of injury such as burns are often especially traumatic due to the extensive nerve endings in his extra skin.

Equipment

The elven sword he brought back from Asgard. He keeps up his practice with this and has been known to take it on missions.
The superspy watch Alison Blaire commissioned from Forge as a gift for Angelo, before she left. He wears this at (almost) all times, along with a Spartan coin on a chain - a gift from Nathan.
The state-of-the-art organiser Amanda gave him for Christmas. He relies on this. A lot.

Trivia

As students, Angelo and Amanda were known as the Nicotine Twins for the amount of time they spent on the back porch smoking. Until she arrived, he had been trying to give up. He has yet to manage it, though he smokes less than he did.

Somewhere in Angelo's room is a sketchpad full of reasonably good drawings of people in the mansion and a few from outside. He does not voluntarily mention or show this to anyone. Ever. He's not (really) embarrassed by it, it's just not something he feels the need for people to know about.

Angelo's feelings towards projective empaths are much like Doug's feelings towards technopaths, if somewhat less extreme. Based on the actions in the past of Manuel de la Rocha, Benedict Devlin of the Preservers and Sayyid ibn Aziz, he now treats any hint of an empathic manipulation ability with deep distrust, although if he likes the person in question he will try not to show it.