Angelo Espinosa

Angelo is currently working for Elpis, living at the mansion, teaching self-defence and a member of the X-Men, as well as undertaking part-time college courses. He is effectively Cable's foster son, though it's never been said in so many words.

Details

Character Journal: x_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, taking correspondence college courses

Relationship Status: Dating Amanda Sefton.

Occupation: Elpis employee with no specified job title, Nathan's minder; teacher (self-defence).

Team Affiliation: Elpis, X-Men

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.

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 Jonothan 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 Dr. Moira MacTaggart, 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 Dr. 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.

The Road Forward

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 have been steadily improving - in April 2007, he took the self-defence teacher job back, and is likely no longer considered benched from the team. He has 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. Since Miguel and Alejandra came to New York with him at the end of the week he spent in LA, it seems that that chapter of his life is well and truly closed.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'7

Weight: 142 pounds.

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.

Plots

2003

Hurricane Isabel

2004

British Invasion

Daddy's Girl

Red X Mission: Stonewall

Asgard

Skippy (plot)

Casa Dulce Casa

Repodemon

Heiress Discordia

Proteus (plot)

2005

Shadows Fall

Stigmata

Lost In The Woods

Mutants and Molotovs

Lost Generations

2006

Lost Generations

Trinity

Kashmir Waltz

House of Wind

Sanctuary

Buzkashi

The Gates

2007

Epiphany Frosts

Kaiten

This Savage Land

Turf War

Meta

Player: Kate

E-mail:

AIM: AvarielWings

Player Icon Base: Adam Rodriguez

Meta Trivia: Kate likes to draw IC inspiration from Adam Rodriguez' stint on CSI: Miami, for such things as Angelo's recent buzzcut and love of ugly shirts, due to it being a great source of icons.