Johnny Gallo
| Johnny Gallo | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Chord Overstreet | |
| Codename: | Ricochet |
| Affiliations: | |
| Birthdate: | September 09, 1993 |
| Journal: | x_dangersense |
| Player: | Lisa |
Johnny Gallo was a full-time student and saw Xavier's as a vast improvement over a home-life with an indifferent parent, before an unexpected reconciliation with his father.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: x_dangersense
Real Name: Jonathan Gallo
Codename: Ricochet
Aliases: Johnny
First Appearance: March 24, 2009
Date of Birth: September 09, 1993
Place of Birth: New York City, New York
Citizenship: American
Relatives: Darren Gallo (father), Allison Gallo (mother, deceased)
Education: Junior at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters
Relationship Status: Single
Occupation: Student
Team Affiliation: New Mutants
Biography
Childhood
Johnny grew up in a lower middle class family in Morris Park in the Bronx. He was an active child and had significant issues focusing and paying attention from an early age. He was close to his mother Allison, a low level telekinetic with the shared secret of her powers providing a bond between the two and believed his home to be happy, utterly unaware of the tension between the closeted mutant Allison and Darren's emphatic anti-mutant rhetoric.
When Johnny was eight, Allison was killed in a hit and run accident and only just managed to save Johnny from the same fate by throwing him aside with her telekinesis. Deeply traumatised by the loss of his wife, Johnny's father Darren, never a particularly active parent, had difficulties coping with the situation and drew away from his son. Rumours about Allison's mutant status began to spread and Darren always vehemently denied them. Johnny kept her secret and, in the face of parental disinterest, began to throw himself into his school life, slipping into the role of the class clown and into as many sport-based extra curricular activities as he could manage, all the while passively avoiding time at home.
Johnny's own subtle powers began to develop at twelve though took him a couple of years to link his sudden drastic in agility and flexibility with a mutant power and he believed that his danger sense was simply jumpiness. When he did finally realise, he felt a renewed sense of closeness to his mother, even as he began to experiment with his powers, trying to discover the limits of his flexibility and agility.
His powers became public knowledge when he used them to avoid a bullying incident at school. Johnny's social life fell apart. His situation at home deteriorated as Darren became aware of Johnny's powers with Darren's ambivalence becoming outright dislike. Johnny considered running away more than once and would have if not for his sole remaining friend, Eddie McDonough.
Living At The X-Mansion
Things came to a head when Johnny was kidnapped by Astra where he was temporarily stripped of his memory and given a hollow, unshakeable happiness by the empath Joyboy before being rescued by Scott, Jean-Paul Baubier and Garrison Kane. Darren took this as an opportunity to wash his hands of his son and refused to even come to the mansion and instead faxed over Johnny's paperwork and had all evidence of his son's existence shipped over to the mansion.
This and the removal of the empathic buffer between himself and reality caused Johnny to regress emotionally. He became needy and unsure of himself and his position at the mansion, clinging desperately at Jean-Paul as a surrogate father, going so far as to travel to Montreal with him and to a crush on Lillian Jeffries. He also formed friendships with Julian, Dori and Victor Borkowski and had a run in with the Stepfords.
Darren was seriously injured by his then-girlfriend's son Rich who had taken Kick-laced steroids which had activated his latent super strength during the first contact Darren and Johnny had had since March. With Jean-Paul leaving for Muir, Johnny decided to go home, act as his father's carer and see about repairing the relationship.
Returning Home
Things got better. Johnny changed schools, genuinely believed that he would be able to repair things with Darren and regained his emotional equilibrium as he completed his senior year despite still dealing with his inability to concentrate and focus, graduating in the middle of his class and became involved in a parkour group who viewed his mutation with a certain degree of envy due to the advantage it gave him. Disinclined to try college right then, given how hard it had been to pay attention at school and get his work done, Johnny took a job as a tree trimmer instead.
It didn't last. Things got worse. Things with Johnny's father fell apart again, with Darren's anti mutant rhetoric returning with a vengeance and this time, with the proof that his views were valid given his injuries. His danger sense began to play up, making him startle at the slightest thing (such as mosquitos) and Johnny found himself kicked out again as Darren cut off contact once more, sleeping on friends' couches for a few weeks. He lost his job when he fell out of a tree when his danger sense reacted to a spider: though uninjured, he'd neglected to wear safety equipment. Unemployed and still couch surfing, Johnny quickly became jumpier and jumpier, his danger sense utterly out of control.
It was clear that he needed help.
Back To The X-Mansion
Johnny returned to the Mansion in late August 2012.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 147 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair: White
Other Features: None
Powers
Super Agility
A substantial portion of Johnny's mutation has to do with alterations in the composition of his skeleton, connective tissue and muscles, all of which are aimed at increasing his natural agility. His tendons and connective tissue possess approximately twice the elasticity of an average individual's, allowing him to contort and maneuver his form in a way that would be incredibly painful, if not impossible, for most. He has a considerable acrobatic prowess and is capable of complicated gymnastic stunts in quick succession. Along with the ability to perform these nimble feats with relative ease, his agility allows him to leap remarkable distances. What this means is that he is getting close to being able to replicate the feats produced by elite gymnasts but, and this is very important, without their levels of technique - so he while could do a comparable floor, bar or vault routine, he'd have his arms and legs flying all over the place and he'd have to learn to use something like a pommel horse or rings and put a lot of practice in before he'd get to that point.
Johnny's improved musculature also produces less of the toxins that lead to fatigue and allow him to exert himself physically for a long period of time with little difficulty and little influence upon the quality of his performance. This only applies to toxins are produced by physical fatigue: he can still be poisoned and so forth. He doesn't get as tired during exercise as baseline human at Johnny's level of conditioning would and recover from it half again as fast as they would.
Johnny's reflexes and reaction time were increased to about eight to ten times that of a baseline human. He processes some forms of stimulus, related to either his place in space or movement around him more quickly than average which would lead to situations like that one in Teen Wolf where Scott was like "I had all the time in the world to catch the lacrosse ball." That's Johnny. If he's paying attention, he's far more likely to catch the ball, avoid the punch or whatever because he has more subjective time to react. He's more likely to land on his feet if he falls because he can react to the part where he's falling so quickly. He'd never be able to dodge a bullet at close range because he just doesn't have the speed but if he was at a reasonable distance and his danger sense was working correctly he'd be able to dodge enough that a chest shot would just graze his arm instead or maybe pass by him. Anything else either requires super speed or dodging so early that the shooter would have time to adjust their aim anyway.
Danger Sense
Johnny has a danger sense that manifests as a tingling at the base of his skull and varying degrees of an adrenaline rush - it doesn't currently differentiate in terms of threats. The car about to hit Johnny and that mosquito over there will both generate the same reaction from it and it's also never going to be 100% reliable. He'll eventually be able to fine tune it to the point where the things that aren't threats will either not ping or do so at a very minor level. It's ultimately a very highly focused form of precognition that, while also being unable to be turned off, is also enhanced by adrenaline and or anxiety. Its baseline, once he's trained, will be picking up on something like 80-95% of immediate threats when he's calm. However, it picking up on one threat will lead to an adrenaline spike that in turn makes him more likely to get further pings off it. While this is a great asset in a combat situation, where he can be reacting effectively before threats manifest, it's a problem in his current situation where his anxiety about being unemployed and homeless is being compounded by the fact that he's constantly reacting to imaginary threats. And, unlike North or Layla, all it does is tell him that there is a threat and (maybe) what it is or where it is. It won't ever give him information about how the events are going to play out.
While this sense can be triggered even when he is asleep, stunned or disoriented, such circumstances slow it considerably and alleviate much of its usefulness. Sudden or extreme threats may cause this sense to react with excruciating intensity.
Equipment
N/A
Trivia
N/A
Plots
2009
Meta
Player: Lisa
E-mail: 150 px
AIM:
Player Icon Base: Chord Overstreet
Meta Trivia
Brought into the game by Kat under the x_ricochet journal until her departure in September 2009. x_dangersense was created to avoid loss of game data and to allow for the character to be apped. He was picked up again by Bounce in August 2012.
