Hope Summers
| Hope Summers | |
|---|---|
 Portrayed by Ruby Stokes | |
| Codename: | |
| Affiliations: | |
| Birthdate: | |
| Journal: | xp_mimetic |
| Player: | Lauren |
"I wasn't trying to attack! I would never attack people. I was trying to sneak in."
Hope Summers: Interdimensional refugee, vandal, crybaby.
Contents
Details
Character Journal: xp_mimetic
Real Name: Hope Summers
Codename: n/a
Aliases: n/a
First Appearance: December 22, 2023
Date of Birth: January 1, 2015
Place of Birth: Unknown
Citizenship: American(ish)
Relatives: Nathan Summers (AU, father), Jean Grey-Summers (AU, grandmother), Scott Summers (AU, grandfather)
Education: Patchy; reads at about an 8th grade level, but has finished and exceeded high school math and physics. Knowledge of history and society is okay for an alternate universe, but doesn’t apply to ours
Relationship Status: She is 16
Occupation: Pain in the ass, chaos gremlin, instigator of unintended crimes
Team Affiliation: Generation X
Biography
Childhood
Hope was born on January 1, 2015 to Nathan Summers (aka Cable) and his now-deceased Askani wife, in another dimension. The timing of her birth, as the first baby born after the events of M-Day in the XP universe, caught the attention of multiple factions. Two of these were Clan Akkaba and the Askani.
Clan Akkaba is the cult dedicated to resurrecting En Sabah Nur, existing simultaneously and independently in many dimensions; the Askani are an interdimensional group originally from a far-future dimension dedicated to opposing the resurrection of En Sabah Nur in any dimension and repairing damage caused by Apocalypse and other threats to the multiverse. Mutants on both sides had visions of Hope’s birth and that she could be the key to the realization of their goals - and that made Hope a target.
The Askani contacted Nathan, one of their agents, and informed him of Hope's potential importance to their mandate. Earth-92 had been ravaged by its version of En Sabah Nur, and the X-Men there had defeated him with Nathan and the Askanis’ help only after he had caused immense damage and loss of life.
As the world struggled to recover, it was hit by a second wave of disaster - damage to the dimensional barrier before Xorn was able to repair things on M-Day. Earth-92 is now split into multiple conflicts between humans, mutants, and other beings who have invaded through tears in the dimensional wall. Nathan - by this point in his rather strange life a paranoid and intensely mission-driven man - was desperate to repair this damage.
Since then, Earth-92’s larger nations have broken down into different territorial and existential factions and the X-Men spend a lot of their time dealing with the interdimensional incursions as well as defending their territory from others. Technology is split between stuck in the mid-90s (VHS tapes, floppy disks, cassette tapes) and practical advances by the X-Men that use mutations or help from the Askani to defend their territory. New Liberty is a self-sustaining commune with Charles Xavier as its final authority, and produces or trades for food and supplies.
After speaking with the leader of the Askani, Nathan determined that his baby had the potential to help them achieve its mission - not just of stopping Apocalypse from resurrecting throughout the multiverse, but also of repairing the damage to Earth-92.
Nathan named the baby Hope. With significant help from the other X-Men, including his parents, Jean Grey-Summers and Scott Summers, he raised her in the haven of New Liberty, previously known as Salem Centre, New York. Hope believes she is his biological daughter, and that her Askani mother died.
Although Nathan took on the role of her father, his duties for the Askani (and, frankly, his very serious mental health issues) meant that Hope was essentially raised by the village of New Liberty, particularly her grandparents and a few other X-Men. These included Earth-92’s versions of Alani Ryan, Clarice Ferguson, and Jubilation Lee. One of the consequences of the damage the world took on before Xorn fixed things is accelerated time, compared to our world; by the time Hope made it to the mansion in December 2023, it was already March 2031 in her own world.
Hope was raised with the expectation that she would be a key player in the Askanis’ battle against Apocalypse as well as repairing the dimensional barrier, and began training for that role accordingly, with a focus on powers control. Her education was not great, typical for kids in New Liberty - it happens between everything else that needs to get done, though her helper shifts in the lab were often filled with math games, and Hope developed a particular talent for math and physics as a result.
Living At The X-Mansion
Hope and Nathan arrived in New Salem on December 22, 2023; Hope, amazed by her surroundings, looked away for a few moments, and when she looked back, Nathan had disappeared. She spent the day in Salem Center, searching for her dad both physically and telepathically - using the vial of hair that she always carries with her to copy his powers - but found nothing and set out to find the X-Mansion to use Cerebro to locate Nathan. Once there, she realized she didn't know anything about the residents. Having been warned about realities where the X-Men are not heroes, she attempted to sneak in, only to engage in extreme property damage when the plan immediately fell apart. She was finally subdued in the empty Cerebro chamber by Rogue and Artie, and spent the next few weeks recovering and meeting the mansion residents, including some she'd known in her own dimension.
Behold a Pale Horse
During the events of Behold a Pale Horse, Hope saw Marius on a rooftop in District X, then the Horseman Death, and used Cable's powers to engage him in battle, losing badly. She was saved by Arthur Centino, who sacrificed himself to give Marius his powers.
Physical Characteristics
Height: 5'1.5"
General Build: Slim but solid and well-muscled. She’s not a waif, she’s just short.
Eyes: Blue-green hazel
Hair: Red
Other Features: None
Powers
Hope is a very powerful Omega-level mutant with the ability to copy mutations for herself as well as sense, regulate, and amplify them in others. The base of her powers is psionic, with specialized micro-telekinesis and specialized telepathy allowing her to copy mutations as well as help other mutants use their own mutations. Some of her power set felt too OP to just let her have day to day, so those powers are labelled “plot only” to indicate that I would run any uses past the mods (either in an actual plot proposal or an ad hoc email) to ensure I wasn’t busting up the balance of the game.
As well, I will always ask a player before Hope copies their power, especially for unique powers (I may be looser with TK/TP). My intention with this character is always to work with people and cooperate and play, not to make anyone feel less special or to replace them in any way. The original player will always have the ultimate say over their character’s power and what I can do with it.
Power Mimicry: Hope’s primary power allows her to copy the powers of any nearby mutant, through a specialized micro-telekinesis at the molecular level that copies the X-Factor gene in their DNA and reproduces it.
- Duration: By the time she’s 16, Hope has worked up to being able to keep a power for about an hour, after which she needs to completely refresh the DNA match with the original user. The copied DNA degrades over time until it disappears. As a fully-trained adult at peak conditioning, the duration will extend to 4-6 hours. Hope cannot currently turn a mutation off once she’s copied it, though she can replace it with a new mutation (at an energy cost).
- Power: Hope is a very powerful mutant, and can bring that power to whatever mutation she copies - sometimes meaning that she can make a mutation much more powerful than the original owner. However, not only is this dangerous because she cannot use many (most) of them properly, it’s also extremely draining - there seems to be a built-in soft limit of the original owner’s power that Hope can only exceed with a lot of effort (or adrenaline), which may be a psychological safety feature courtesy of the specialized telepathy. Right now, exceeding the power limit burns through the duration more quickly and can cause not only powers backlash, but also inevitably powers burnout, meaning she would not be able to use her powers for a while afterward.
- Proximity: Right now, Hope needs to be within about 10 meters of the person whose powers she wants to copy for the initial copying. This radius will grow with time and practice. She does not, however, need to touch the donor physically. The person whose powers she copies suffer no effects from the copying, and they wouldn’t know she’d done it except under special circumstances (or watching someone 10m away suddenly manifest their powers). The full duration is more likely to be achieved if Hope stays close to the mutant whose power she copied, since the degradation of the copied gene(s) in her DNA can be prevented by topping up the copy periodically.
- Stacking: Hope cannot, at this time, stack powers and can only use one at once; with several more years of training, she may be able to stack two or three powers at a time and maybe more in a real crisis, but this will limit the duration severely.
- Usage: Unless Hope is familiar with a mutation, she essentially starts from zero with usage - not knowing how it works or what her body needs to do in order to use it properly. Under fire, this can lead to disasters, so she tries to stick with ones she knows or ones that seem close enough to ones she knows that she won’t completely screw things up. In everyday life, she’s just a mess, because when she sees a cool power, she absolutely wants to try it out; while she is used to manifesting a new power, which gives her some level of control (it’s not a surprise for her where it might have been for others), it’s still a new reflex every time.
Due to growing up with a version of the X-Men, there are powers that Hope is reasonably or very good at using. These are:
- Telekinesis (macro) - Hope’s favourite power to use and the one she’s best at, though she tends to use it as a blunt instrument in combat situations and her fine control could use some work. She is particularly good at telekinetic shielding as well as projecting telekinetic power offensively using a staff as a focus (imitating Cable’s psimitar).
- Telepathy - Hope hates using telepathy and her understanding and usage of it is weak. She thinks it’s creepy (and she’s right). She does have really good psionic shields, though, and she can perform basic telepathic team functions like switchboarding. But she will complain about it.
- Alani Ryan’s matter-phasing - Since this power destroys whatever the user phases through, Hope hasn’t used it much, except sometimes because she thinks Alani’s markings are cool and wants them herself. Outside the markings, she has no control over this power beyond the extremely basic “usually doesn’t phase through things she doesn’t mean to”.
- Jubilee’s fireworks - Can use these defensively as close-range flares, but has never used them offensively.
- Clarice’s teleportation - This one has seen slightly more use as a utility power when Clarice wasn’t available, though the limitations of Hope’s own powers usage mean she has only used it for short-range teleportation of one or two people, and she has never practiced teleporting more mass. The time limit means people can get stuck somewhere if she’s not careful.
- Scott’s optic blasts - Hope has borrowed these while training, but is bad at aiming and finds it disorienting to have something come out of her eyes, so their use has not been prioritized over telekinesis.
- Other limitations: Hope can’t pick and choose what parts of each mutation she gets - she gets the entire thing, including physical mutations. So, for example, she’d get Kurt’s fur, horns, and tail as well as teleporting if she copied his mutation. If that mutant doesn’t have shapeshifting abilities that come with a painkilling effect or a fast healing factor, getting a physical mutation can be extremely painful for Hope when her body grows new appendages. (This is something her dad always told her she had to tough out, so she tries not to admit it, but she does tend to avoid physical mutations.) Additionally, using her powers a lot or copying more than two or three per day comes at a huge energy cost and eventually leads to severe powers backlash - nosebleeds, migraines, tinnitus and bleeding ears, and just passing out completely.
Power sensing: Hope can sense other mutants in her vicinity, within about 20 meters of herself. Eventually, she will be able to tell what class of powers they have - e.g. psionic-telepathy/empathy, psionic-telekinesis (specialty may be too tough for her to figure out, such as plain TK versus geokinesis), physical mutations (including shapeshifting), etc. In many years and a lot of training, she might be able to figure out exactly what someone’s mutation is, but I wouldn’t expect that to happen in the foreseeable future unless under special circumstances as needed for a plot or something.
Hope doesn’t yet know she can do more than just tell if someone’s a mutant, so it’s something for her to discover and work on. She also has to use it actively, since it’s an element of the microkinesis she uses to copy mutant DNA; if she’s not trying, it doesn’t work. There may also be ways to shield against it or avoid it; I’ll leave that open.
Power regulation and synergy (plot only): Hope will eventually be able to stabilize another mutant’s power if they are struggling to control it, using her innate specialized telepathy to link with the other mutant and work with them; this is also possible within a group setting to help other mutants use their powers together in synergy (for exact timing purposes, for example).
The other mutant(s) must accept Hope’s help; the specialized telepathy that is part of Hope’s powerset is not broad-spectrum and cannot change someone’s thoughts or emotions, it can only give Hope a way to contribute to and bolster someone’s control over their powers in a supportive role - more like a mind-link than a telepath going into someone’s consciousness. Hope must be in very near proximity (again, probably 10 meters) for this power to work well, though she could attempt it from further away - it just may not work as well - and it might help for her to be touching the other person, though not necessary. The stabilization may or may not be permanent, that would be up to the mods and the other player, as well as the needs of the game.
Power optimization and augmentation (plot only): Combining the specialized micro-telekinesis and telepathy, Hope will eventually be able to optimize other mutants’ powers, bringing them to their fullest potential. The microkinesis at the molecular level helps to adjust the other mutant’s body - particularly managing stress hormones and aiding processes related to energy consumption, inflammation or exhaustion - to allow them to handle their powers optimally, while the telepathy helps the other mutant to find the aspects of their power that could be optimized and accomplish it, while assisting them in working through any mental blocks they might have related to their powers. Through the link, Hope may also be able to augment that mutant’s powers with her own, allowing them to collaboratively (and temporarily) increase that mutant’s power to Hope’s own level.
This power cannot help another mutant develop new powers - it can only help to find the ideal version of their current powers. Without Hope’s help, the other mutant may or may not be able to reach this state again to the limits of their own powers (up to the other player and the mods and the needs of the game, obviously!), and any power augmentation would always be temporary. As with above, power optimization and augmentation would only work with a willing participant, as Hope is not able to change someone’s mind or take away their free will with her native powers, and Hope would need to be close for the process to work well.
Equipment
Hope carries around little unbreakable vials of DNA samples for mutants whose mutations she’s comfortable with - hair or blood, it’s super creepy. (She WILL be asking to add to her collection - especially the luck users.) I am also indulging myself by giving her a techno-organic staff that is designed to be reinforced with telekinesis - not quite a Psimitar, but similar, and made so that it telescopes in and out and can be carried in a backpack.
Trivia
Loves peanut butter.
External Links
Plots
2023
Meta
Player: Lauren
Player Icon Base: Ruby Stokes
Meta Trivia
Any curious little things about why the character, if the character had a prior player before you (and who they were), etc.
