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| Real Name: Timeteo Ortega Lopez | ||
| Aliases: Timmy, Timo | ||
| Identity: Secret | ||
| Occupation: High School Student Reporter | ||
| Citizenship: U.S.A. | ||
| Education: Currently attending high school | ||
| Birthplace: Galveston, Texas | ||
| Date of Birth: 12/20/1994 | ||
| Known Relatives: Lucia Lopez Garcia (Mother), Damian Ortega Torres (Father, in prison), Alejandro Lopez Ramirez (Maternal Grandfather), Teresa Garcia Covas (Maternal Grandmother), Bernardo Ortega Moreno (Paternal Grandfather, Mexican crime lord) | ||
| Group Affiliation: None |
Background
Years ago, in 1979, 5-year-old Lucia Lopez Garcia and her parents tried to slip across the border from Mexico to the United States illegally. They failed, were caught and sent back. Determined, her parents changed tactics.
A local powered crime lord, Bernardo Ortega, offered to provide funding to complete the process of emigration legally, in return for favours. Usually this involved the recipients, when they finally got legal status, to smuggle stuff to his family in Galveston. He made sure there would never be a paper trail, so if they got caught, nothing traced back to him.
Something different happened with the Lopez family. While her parents were meeting with Ortega, Lucia met his young son, Damian. They hit it off instantly. When Bernardo saw this, he saw instant potential. He had plans, to send Damian as soon as he was old enough to the U.S., to take over business operations there. With his family’s history, however, there would be strenuous legal hoops to pass through with the possibility that it would be denied altogether. Marriage to an American citizen would, however, bypass much of that.
Instead of the usual deal, he made a new one with the Lopez family. When both children turned twenty, they would marry. It wasn’t just to be an arranged marriage, though. Bernardo came up with a plan to be sure they two would know each other intimately.
While the paperwork was being established, the Lopez family stayed at the Ortega estate. Lucia’s parents were terrified, but Lucia didn’t see anything wrong. She had fun there, with her new friend. Then, when the paperwork finally went through and they moved to the United States, in Los Angeles, Bernardo arranged to let his son call Lucia every weekend, and every summer arranged for the Lopez family to take a vacation to the estate to visit. Lucia’s parents were too scared to resist.
So, Lucia and Damian grew up knowing each other. Best of friends, and later, Bernardo got his wish when they fell in love as teenagers, even as Damian’s powers of radiation control manifested. Life for the Lopez family, though, was happy. They might not have liked the Ortega interference, but they lived a good life, running a small Mexican restaurant. Lucia started college as soon as she graduated high school, studying journalism, and when the time came she was happy to marry Damian, even though she was still in school. She even got pregnant within the first months of her marriage.
Life for the new couple wasn’t quite as happy, though. While Damian would have been happy to be out of his father’s business altogether, he felt he had an obligation. He was good at it too. His powers included the ability to perceive and interpret radio waves, which helped him plan operations.
Timeteo was born in the middle of all this. His mother was just starting work at a local paper, nothing nearly as big as the Times, and was too busy to piece together the clues of what her husband was doing.
Still, family life was loving. Damian hated doing what he did, so balanced it out by trying to squeeze every ounce of happiness he could out of his family life, and for a time, things were great.
Then, Damian got arrested. Timo was three at the time, and all he really remembers from that was his mother being furious. He’d later find out his father got a 15-year sentence for massive property damage and multiple cases of assault.
Timo barely knew his father growing up. Given that he was housed in a prison out near Hawaii, it wasn’t easy to visit, though they’d talk on the phone regularly, when he was allowed to make calls. Timo’s life turned more to emulating his mother. He’d inherited her curiosity, and wanted to be a reporter just like her.
When he was ten, he was with his mother at work on a day off from school when a battle between one of the many superheroes operating in the L.A. area at the time, and a villain named Photon, happening right outside the building. Of course, Timo was intent on ‘getting the story’, so while everybody else ran to escape it, he followed one of the cameramen outside to watch the battle first hand.
Now, Timo had inherited his father’s family’s powers, but he didn’t realize it. Up until that point, they’d never manifested. When Photon hit Timo with his namesake Photon Beam by accident in the crossfire, the beam didn’t hurt him but instead manifested his latent powers. At the time, this turned him into a living flashbomb that distracted Photon long enough for him to be apprehended.
At first, Timo couldn’t control his powers at all, and his family was at a loss for a way to help him. They kept him home from school, away from neighbours, trying to hide his abilities, afraid more that it would make him a target of organizations wanting to use his abilities than any sense of future secret identity.
In the end, it would be Bernardo that saved him. When he heard of his grandson’s problems, he took a trip out to Los Angeles immediately. He was many things, a criminal and killer among them, but he had a sense of loyalty and love for his family as much as any other man.
Bernardo could control light as well, and beyond that, the entire electromagnetic spectrum. So, it wasn’t difficult at all to help Timo come to terms with his ability. He taught the boy, over the next two months, how to sense light and the rudiments of control over it. When he had enough control to get by, he returned home, and Timo started working on his own, at home, in learning his abilities.
By the time of the quake the following year, he had enough control over his powers that he was able to help save a number of people from his school while donning a costume he’d kept for play purposes and had worn under his clothes that day. (As he did every day when there was no gym class, just trying to feel like a superhero.) His closest friend figured out quickly who he was, since he’d seen the costume before, but the rest of the school was too in shock to pay enough attention to recognize him.
His family all survived the disaster, as did Jeffie’s. A lot of people drowned, however, and that determined Timo’s future more than anything else. Any possibility of following his father’s family business was washed out to sea that day along with most of Los Angeles.
Starting in the refugee camps, and then as they took up residence with volunteers to await the reconstruction in what would soon be called San Angeles, Timo worked with Jeffie on his powers whenever they could find time alone. Jeffie became a sounding board, a brainstorming partner, and just plain support for Timo as he tried to figure things out. A photon beam like the one that hit him that day is the first thing they figured out during these brainstorming sessions, but if it wasn’t for Jeffie, Timo never would have thought to create force fields.
Over the years that followed, Timo learned many things, including how to shape the light to create illusions, first simple like making himself invisible and then more advanced, complex illusions. He also learned to sense ultraviolet and infrared light, giving a hint that his powers could advance beyond light and to the full electromagnetic spectrum like his grandfather… if only he had enough science knowledge to spot it.
The family eventually moved back to San Angeles, into a house in what became known as the Melting Pot, where they also got a building to reopen the old restaurant. Lucia got a job at the newly formed San Angeles Register, as their lead reporter on superhuman activity. Things were returning to normal. Even Jeffie ended up living close by, though that was more design by their parents than luck.
When he started high school, Timo still took after his mother. He joined the school newspaper. Unlike many school newspapers, this one covered the local area as well, especially superhero activity. Timo immediately took to that section, and the following year he was promoted to reporter after proving he was willing to go to great lengths to get the information for their column. Of course, his mother reporting on the same thing helped.
Still, Timo advanced more and more. When he learned how to turn himself, for very limited durations, into light and travel great distances, he decided he was ready, no matter what the Freedom Brigade thought. Jeffie helped him design and put together a new costume and he’s started taking to the streets helping people and fighting crime.
Costume
RP Logs
Place RP Logs you want here.
Stats
Real Name: Timeteo Ortega Lopez
Aliases: Timo, Timmy
Age: 15
Hair: Dark Brown
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'4"
Weight:
Known Relatives: Lucia Lopez Garcia (Mother), Damian Ortega Torres (Father, in prison), Alejandro Lopez Ramirez (Maternal Grandfather), Teresa Garcia Covas (Maternal Grandmother), Bernardo Ortega Moreno (Paternal Grandfather, Mexican crime lord)
XP Log
Total XP: 0.75
August 2009: 0.75 XP gained.
