Michael Corrin Kelleigh

Corrin was an ordinary guy, working in SHIELD, when AIM threw him into the dimensional byways to get rid of him. Now that he's in Endless City, he's trying to find his feet, his way home, and himself – not necessarily in that order.

Michael Corrin Kelly was born the youngest child to a cop and an author, and spent most of his growing up time being bullied by his older sister and doing every sport he could shoehorn into his day. He especially loved figure skating, and took a third at the State Finals the year he was seventeen.

A lack of funds (skating is an expensive sport, and he wasn't quite good enough to get a sponsor) meant he went to college on a SHIELD scholarship, joining SHIELD for a four-year term after to repay them. This was *fun*, and he re-upped once his first term was complete. He was chosen for an undercover assignment against AIM's Irish operation based on his ability to speak Irish, and piped information out for several months before his cover was blown. AIM grabbed him and threw him into the dimensional stream instead of killing him – they needed a guinea pig, anyway, and whatever happened, the problem he represented would be gone.

He landed in Endless City, which is just that bizarre. He tried contacting the local version of SHIELD, but ran into Tony Stark first, in the form of taking down a man who was going to cream pie the inventor at a charity award gala.

As a result of the conversation that save started… “If you're as good at saving people from real threats as you are at saving them from pies, you're hired…” “Well, I do need a job…” Corrin ended up working for Stark Enterprises the very next day.

He quickly established a reputation for himself for sensible, level-headed work and reliable results, even on short notice, such as escorting the spoiled daughter of a French industrialist while Tony made a multi-million dollar supply deal (he didn't touch her once, which annoyed her and pleased her father.) This lead to other oddball jobs, like checking alarms in sub-basements of mothballed facilities.

Corrin is a man who likes helping other people, though he’s so damaged right now that he is easily confused and may not understand how serious a situation he gets into truly is. He’ll often try to talk his way out of a confrontation, and he’ll often give an opponent a free shot because he doesn’t want to be the one to start a fight.

Generally, though, he’s calm and he’s quiet. He likes gathering information before acting, and he dislikes being the center of attention. He’ll help where he’s asked to help, and will usually back off if asked to back off. He is accommodating. He’s also intensely private; he figures the amnesia is shameful and that it makes him too vulnerable, so he’ll do his best to hide it. This may take the form of not answering questions or he may lie in answer to them; a favorite technique is to ask the other person a question and see if he can get them to talk about themselves. This works more often than not!

pre-amnesia: He's sensible, responsible, and a bit shy, tho' he likes to smile. Post-amnesia: All of the above, but scared that he'll let down the people around him.

Solid energy forms: Corrin can project his own personal life energy as a solid object. Most often this takes the form of a katana. He is capable of other forms, but currently has a mental block about this. He wears a tsuba, a Japanese sword guard, as jewelry, and is convinced that the katana is based on this, not his own self. If he is not wearing the tsuba, he will not manifest the sword. If he is wearing it, or at least carrying it, he will manifest the sword, usually in the hand closest to it. He is right-handed, however, and will typically default to manifesting it in his right hand.

The life energy Corrin uses will disrupt the atomic bonds of just about anything so long as that thing is not itself alive. It will not disrupt the bonds of anything living. Therefore, if he cuts at an armored person with his sword, he will slice through the armor, but not the man beneath. However, the energy is solid, so he may bruise that man anyway. There are limits to what he can cut; his mind limits him to the general limits of a real steel blade, meaning he could, with a proper swing, one-cut a four-inch square wood beam, a one-inch iron bar, or a concrete block. If he’s willing to spend the time and effort, he could conceivably cut through just about anything by ‘sawing’; very dense, exotic materials such as adamantium or vibranium, however, interact with his personal energy in extremely unpleasant ways, and he could not possibly work on them for any amount of time. Exotic energies, such as many magics, will also have this effect.

Because the power source is his own personal energy, his own life, it will fluctuate with his health and with how tired he is. The ‘sharpness’ of his ‘blade’ will fluctuate with that energy, as well. The more tired he is, or more hurt, the more concentration it will take him to keep the blade ‘sharp’, or even to manifest it at all.

Note: the sword glows gold. There is no way to disguise this.

Life sight: Corrin can ‘see’ life, usually as kaleidoscopic colors all around him. This has limited uses: any large enough source of life ‘light’ will ‘dazzle’ him. For instance, he could see a man lying on a sidewalk, but not a lawn. He may be able to tell that a drowning victim is still alive, but may mistake a days-dead corpse for being alive, too, because of the presence of maggots and bacteria. At its extremes, he may be able to guess about someone’s general health or mood from the ‘color’ of their life light, but mostly, it all just confuses him. He has to make a conscious decision to see in this fashion, and he generally chooses not to.

Skid field: Corrin can project a force field which is tough enough to save him from sharp things like knives and small arms fire (handguns, rifles…) but not from the bruising getting hit would cause him. Like his sword, this is powered off his own personal life energies. The field is nearly frictionless; items may ‘skip’ off him, or otherwise be deflected, or even reflected, which can make trouble for people near him at such times. If he throws the field on another object (he can only throw one field at a time, either on himself or on something else) then that object becomes super slippery, such that it would be difficult to hold or pick up. If he throws the field on a flat surface, such as a sidewalk, he can ‘skate’ on it. The field has no real strength to it; it cannot hold him up, for instance, if he covers a manhole with it. It will withstand a weight, such as a single step, for perhaps a quarter of a second before deforming to the breaking point, and it will therefore at least slow him down if he’s falling from a height. He would need to re-throw it several times, however, to save himself from even a short fall, such as off a six-story building, and he’d have a blazing headache afterward.

As with the solid forms he creates, the formation and maintenance of the force fields depends on how healthy/awake he is. They’re less taxing than the solid forms, however, so he could put up a personal field even if he’s too sick, dizzy, or woozy to form an object. The fields will persist for between a quarter and a half second if he drops them unplanned (such as when someone KO’s him), but will drop immediately if he drops them deliberately.

Note: anything Corrin puts his field around will glow gold. There is no way to disguise this.

Irish: Corrin speaks idiomatic Irish, courtesy of his parents, who are both Irish-American and who both still have close relatives back in Ireland. Corrin used to spend summers there with his back country cousins, hence his near-native accent with the language.

Tactics and strategy: He’s been trained by SHIELD in all of the basics—small unit tactics, team assaults, and operation planning. He is competent at all of them, although he is not particularly gifted in any of them.

Police work: His background with his father and his training with SHIELD make Corrin familiar with how police forces work and what sorts of things they can legally do—and what sorts of things they might do in the grey areas..

Skating: Corrin was, once upon a time, a near world-class figure skater. The major reason his name is not nationally known is because he had to quit because of money concerns. If he hadn’t quit, however, there is a very good chance he’d have taken home a medal in either the Worlds or the Olympics—possibly both.

Hand to hand: He’s a SHIELD-trained operative. He can hold his own against most regular people in a straight-up physical confrontation, once he actually allows himself to hit back. Combat specialists such as Captain America, however, would be able to flatten him relatively easily.

Kendo: He carries a sword! SHIELD started him on kendo and he loved it, proving to have a real talent. He spent a large chunk of his free time during both his tours fencing with the local masters, both SHIELD and otherwise, and has the moves to show off with as a result. It really helps, too, that his ‘sword’ weighs nothing, and therefore doesn’t tire him the way a normal one would.

Parkour: Corrin is a fan of sports, especially sports he can play by himself. A cross between a foot race and an obstacle course, with points for style, diversity, and overcoming challenges in new and interesting ways? He is so THERE.

Tony Stark: Hey, when your boss is Iron Man…

Hoverbike: It's blue, gray, and chrome, flies by anti-gravity, and needs eight hours of charging per week. It has no weapons or other specialties, but who cares? Its top speed is 380 mph!

Amnesia: Corrin has total, trauma-induced amnesia. The Denevan parasite using him as a host was intimately entwined with his nervous system at the time of its death. It had replaced some connections, notably ones related to friends and family, with itself, and as a result those connections no longer exist. Also, the beast's dead body left metabolic poisons behind in Corrin's system, and those will take a long time for him to recover from. He can learn, yes, and he still has language and most skills, but people? They're all gone for him, and that terrifies him.

Weak will: Corrin has a very short ‘life’ to draw from, and he is still very easy to confuse. As a result, empathic and telepathic attacks will affect him far more strongly than they might even an average person. He literally has trouble figuring out who ‘he’ is: if someone invades his head, he’ll hesitate to identify the intruder as a stranger, because they might just be a stray bit of his own id haunting him…

Vulnerability to Energy from the Darkforce Dimension: The Darkforce Dimension 'feeds' on life energy and light energy… both of which Corrin produces in copious amounts. Minor contact with a darkforce power will sap his strength as if he has been working hard; prolonged contact will result in increasing dizziness, confusion, and eventually, unconsciousness. If he remains in contact after this point, he will die.

Nightmares: Corrin's scrambled neurons throw up all sorts of wrongness on a regular basis. He can suppress this during the day, but at night… he has trouble sleeping for more than a few hours at a time, without drugs, because his dreams drag him through good and bad and horrifyingly confused. Many involve a theme of him disintegrating, watching helplessly as he is eaten alive or dissolved or pulled apart by a thousand thousand clawing hands….