MoM app!

[princeofrats]

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Molly
AGE: 29
JOURNAL: sonopants
IM / EMAIL: sonopants@AIM, and molly.mcv@gmail.com
PLURK: sonopants
RETURNING: yep, I also play Klarion!

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Jayden "Mouse" Revell
CHARACTER AGE: unstated, probably about 18 or 19?
SERIES: The Movement (DC New 52!)
CHRONOLOGY: taken from issue 12, the end of the series.
CLASS: Hero!
HOUSING: Regardless of where he's sent, Mouse will run off and try to live in the sewers.

BACKGROUND:

The Movement takes place in the DC universe (the new 52 version), which is full of superheroes, intergalactic space cops, Frankensteins, and everything in between. Famous cities like Metropolis and Gotham have heroes like Superman and Batman looking out for them, while smaller towns with less supervillain activity tend to slip under the radar. Coral City doesn't have any villains to deal with, but its more run-down neighbourhoods like The Tweens (the slums between 10th and 20th street) are more concerned with a corrupt police force, and town officials who would rather raze the area and build condos than make any effort to improve the current living conditions. Luckily, The Tweens are protected by a small group of superpowered teenagers and young adults collectively known as The Movement, who have set up base in an abandoned underground factory and started a... well, a social movement. Their base houses a makeshift community centre that helps feed and shelter the needy, and with the help of social media, they have an entire neighbourhood armed with camera phones and blank masks, ready to record the police if they abuse their authority, and ready to protest and fight back against anyone who tries to push them out of their homes.

Unfortunately, The Movement is lead by a bunch of headstrong superpowered teenagers, and while they have genuinely good intentions, they screw up a lot, and their methods are questionable at best. Setting up a community centre in their home base? Awesome! Defending innocent citizens from corrupt policemen? Good idea! Taking the dirty cops into custody, holding them prisoner in said underground hideout, and trying to livestream their mock-trial on the internet? Extremely bad idea. Most of the series is concerned with The Movement butting heads with the police force, and their efforts to fight back against a group of violent, super-powered mercenaries that the mayor hires to get rid of them.

Jayden Revell, known as 'Mouse' to his friends, has the power to control rats, and is part of the figurative muscle of The Movement. He doesn't get much development in the series, since it was only 12 issues, but over the course of it, he deals with an unreciprocated crush on a teammate, gets beaten half to death by the mercenaries, is forced to shower and and wear a tuxedo by his friends, and eventually finds true love in the arms of a pet shop employee who likes rats and gives him cheese on their first date.

Anyway, backstory time! Jayden was born to one of the wealthiest families in Coral City, and had an extremely privileged upbringing on the upper-class side of town. Unfortunately for his socialite parents, Jayden also had a deep affinity for rodents, which his mother discovered the night she found him sleeping in his crib, surrounded by rats. Nevermind that he was cuddling them and looked quite happy, Jayden's mother was (understandably) horrified, and from that moment on, she and her husband did everything they could to keep their son away from rodents and the filth that he seemed irresistibly drawn to. As a result, Jayden's childhood was strict, formal, and meticulously clean. He tried his best to please his parents and live up to their rigid expectations, but no matter what Jayden did, nothing ever seemed to work out. He was more comfortable around rodents than people, happier in bare feet and the mud than in his private school uniform, and rats kept turning up wherever he went.

Eventually, the stress of having a metahuman son became too much to deal with for Jayden's parents. They had no idea how to handle his eccentricities, and after Jayden was suspended from school for a playground fight that escalated out of control when he lunged for the bully's jugular (something that he definitely picked up from his rat buddies), his mother just... stopped. In Jayden's words, first she stopped talking to him, and then she stopped talking to anyone. It's probably safe to assume that she had some kind of nervous breakdown. Jayden ran away from home and was taken in by the homeless people living in the sewers, who shared what little food and shelter they had with him. That kindness and generosity stuck with him in a big way; Jayden's upper-class parents had always looked down on the poor as practically subhuman, but they'd been the first people to accept him for who he was, and to treat him with genuine kindness even when they barely had any resources to spare.

Jayden spent the next several years living in the sewers, personally befriending every rat in Coral City, and changing his name to something that he felt more comfortable with - Mouse. When Virtue moved to Coral City and started The Movement, Mouse fell in with the group as some much-needed physical muscle, and never looked back.

PERSONALITY:

The most important thing to remember about Mouse is that he spent half his life being raised by sewer rats, and considers himself more rat than human. Rodents are much simpler than people; they don't lie to each other, they don't care about silly things like table manners, taking showers, or wearing shoes, and most of all, they like you for who you are. And Mouse? Mouse is their prince. Every single rat in Coral City is one of his family members, and as the only person capable of communicating with the rats and acting as a go-between for the rest of humanity, Mouse feels responsible for their well-being and happiness. They are his babies, he is their leader, and he takes his duties as their prince very, very seriously. He's happiest when he's just hanging out in his sewer lair, covered in rats, eating snacks and teaching his buddies how to do tricks and ride unicycles.

Okay, so the second most important thing about being raised by sewer rats? Your human social skills take a nosedive. In some ways, Mouse is practically feral. In his mind, he's a rat first and a human second, and he doesn't shy away from the rougher aspects of this. He's totally prepared to go straight for the enemy's jugular teeth-first, for instance, and when one of his rats dies in battle, he's heartbroken... but also totally ok with eating the dead rat afterwards. He's usually shirtless, hates wearing shoes (how can he feel the dirt between his toes if he's wearing shoes!) and smells like a walking rat's nest. Mouse lives in a sewer and is not a fan of soap or water; bathing hides his scent too much, and he doesn't like washing off his perpetual layer of grime and filth. At one point, when he's trying to work up the nerve to ask his teammate Tremor out on a date, his friends literally have to drag him into a shower and help wash his hair.

Mouse ran away from home when he was about 10 years old, and in a sense, part of him never really grew up. He thinks in childlike straight lines and doesn't have much of a brain-to-mouth filter, which means that he says exactly what he thinks, regardless of tact or politeness. His trains of thought tend to have a whimsical fairy tale kind of logic to them, too - he considers his full title 'The Prince of Rats and All That is Filthy', for instance, and when he writes a love letter to his teammate, Tremor, he finishes it off by inviting her to become his rodent queen in the sewers (actually, he finishes it off with "PS: I am sorry my rats ate some of your candy", but that's what happens when you have rats for wingmen). Most of the time, this stuff comes from a relatively innocent place, but sometimes he can overstep boundaries without realizing it, and it takes a while for him to understand where he went wrong. Going back to the crush thing, Mouse's logic goes straight from 'I'm a boy, she's a girl, I think she's pretty and I really like her' to 'TRUE LOVE IN MY RODENT CASTLE', and he doesn't hesitate to kiss her out of nowhere and loudly announce that they're getting married, even when Tremor is obviously not enjoying the attention. (Tremor is asexual and uninterested, and when she tells him this, his confused response is "... A sexual what?")

Mouse is the muscle of The Movement, and... not quite the brains. He isn't stupid, not by a long shot (he's more self-aware than he seems, and can even be kinda snarky when he's in the mood), but he looks to other people for leadership and direction. His current leader is Virtue, the head of the Movement, who acts as both general and de-facto big sister to him even though she's several years younger. Virtue is the person he trusts to be morally upright, give him orders when they're on the field, and to console him when one of his rats dies. She's also one of the few people who knows his old name. Even when he acts on his own, jumping into a fight to defend a woman being harassed by a police officer, he goes by Virtue's moral code, and says something along the lines of "Leave her alone! Virtue says you don't get to do this anymore!"

Overall, Mouse knows exactly who he is. He's the Prince of Rats, Ruler of All That is Filthy, and regardless of what other people think of him, he's going to be himself and enjoy it... even if his friends literally have to drag him into a shower and wash his hair once in a while.


POWER:
Rodent control: Mouse can control and speak to rats! He can command thousands of them at a time, to the point where he's been known to surf down the street on waves of rats, and immobilize enemies by encasing their legs in what can only be described as furry rat pyramids.

It should be noted that the rats Mouse commands are his friends rather than expendable minions and foot soldiers. Each and every one has a unique name and history, and as Mouse puts it, every rat is his favourite. He loves them all, and is absolutely devastated when any of them die.

Accelerated Healing: This one isn't strictly canon, but in issue 8, Mouse gets beaten unconscious and suffers everything from fractured bones to internal bleeding. He's totally fine by the next issue, because comics! I'm going to interpret this as Mouse having an accelerated healing factor. Injuries that would usually take weeks to heal will instead take a few solid days of bedrest.

Agility: Not quite a superpower, but Mouse is surprisingly strong, fast and agile, and can parkour the hell out of his surroundings. He's a good fighter, even though he doesn't have any martial arts training.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉

COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[ Good morning, imPorts! There's a grimy face on your screen today, holding the communicator waaaaay too close for comfort. Seriously, you're getting a close-up of Mouse's eyes, before he blinks and holds the device out at arm's length. ]

Virtue, Katharsis, Vengeance Moth, Tremor, Burden! If any of you are out there, come find me! I dunno where you are and none of the rats here know what you guys smell like, so I can't find you! I'm at... uhm... [he falters slightly, and the camera wobbles as Mouse turns to glance behind him. ] ... The lady in the car said this was (insert the name of his city here), and there's a... there's a bike shop next door. They sell bikes.

[ Suddenly, the camera pulls back and away from Mouse, settling a few feet away from him in an angled downshot that clearly shows the head of the alleyway he's crouched in, along with the nearest street signs. Something that looks suspiciously like a rat's tail flicks in front of the screen, and Mouse brightens up immediately. ]

Thanks, Benjamin!

... Okay, it'll probably be a while 'til my friends get here, so I should introduce you guys to some new friends I made in the meantime. [ Mouse settles down into a cross-legged sitting position, and two giant, hairy sewer rats crawl up and over his shoulders to rest in his palms. ]

This is Mrs. Nesbit! And this is her cousin, Hebert. He wanted to be fancy today, so I made him a bowtie out of a gum wrapper. [ The rat is, indeed, wearing a bowtie. He's very dapper. ] ... And they wanted to say they'd be very grateful if you'd stop putting poison traps inside your restaurants, okay? You wouldn't like getting poisoned if you were just trying to eat, right? Nobody likes barfing.

... Okay, that's all. I'm done now. [Click!]

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

link!