“I look up to him. Out of all of us, he’s the one that has the most in his way of becoming a superhero. But that doesn’t stop him. Nothing can stop him. He just keeps going. Hours upon hours of study and practice. He doesn’t complain. He just does it. When we all graduate, I hope I can get on his superteam. I would trust my life to him in the field.”

–Martina Morelli, AKA Diabla

 

“I feel like such an asshole today. I jumped a little when Gunnar came into class. For a split-second I remembered when a Vril patrol found me in ‘45. He saw me jump. He was alright about it. Everyone jumps around him…but damn it, I should be better than that. I’m his teacher!”

–Dr. Hans Jugend, AKA Human Action

 

Name:

 

Gunnar Cropsey

 

Supername:

 

Captain Protector

 

Average Grade:

 

A+

 

Gunnar is an excellent student. Unfortunately, his academic success is probably linked to his lack of a social life. He studies, and then he studies some more.

 

Emergency Response Class: 

 

3

 

Gunnar’s goal at Martin’s is to become a superhero and rescue people as he was rescued. His ultimate dream, though it will take some doing to achieve, is to be the kind of superhero that travels to places and worlds that don’t see a lot of superheroes and do good such as an ARGO agent.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Emergency Response with A Focus on Rescue, Telepathic Development 

 

Gunnar needs little training when it comes to defeating supervillains, but when it comes to convincing a victim to take his hand or convincing a child frozen in terror to run to safety in the middle of a battle Gunnar needs practice–a lot of practice.

 

Most students that take Emergency Response with a focus on rescue and rebuilding do so in order to learn what to prioritize in a fight against a supervillain. “Do I go for the bad guy to stop him from hurting people, or do I go to save the people already hurt? If I’m with someone else, which of us does what?” Gunnar doesn’t have this problem. He knows exactly what to do in almost any situation. He knows his local superhumans and how to work with them. Gunnar’s problem is that when he pulls victims from danger, they tend to scream.

 

Gunnar takes Telepathic Strengthening and Development to make his noosphere voice sound more natural and less creepy. He has to communicate over the noosphere as his vocal cords don’t function with his supernatural silence power, but this presents a problem as an echoing voice that seems to come from nowhere combined with a perfectly silent hulk reaching for people tends to trigger the flight/fight response.

 

Once Gunnar is able to get his voice right, he’ll work on adding sound to his movements to overcome his supernatural silence. Once that’s mastered, he’ll work to turn his telepathy into a tool and weapon that can guide victims to safety while misleading his opponents.

 

Contact Education: 

 

Super Builders, Adams Theater Company, the Red Cardinals

 

Dr. Jefferson worked hard to find the best contact education for Gunnar’s unique condition, and the eclectic mix she came up with might seem strange at first glance, but it is helping Gunnar progress as a superhero-to-be.

 

The Super Builders are an international group of architects and engineers that use superpowers to build structures not only around the world but around the multiverse. Gunnar is serious about one day being on the vanguard of superheroics spreading superpowered help to the far corners of existence and the Super Builders will allow him to dip his toes into that world. It will also teach him how to apply his powers as a builder–superstrength and teleportation are great for engineering–so if he for whatever reason burns out on superheroics he’ll still have a career to fall back on.

 

The Adams Theater Company, owned and managed by one of the many Adams families of Joyous Harbor, is your average playhouse. The actors that work there are basics and superhumans. But they’re all actors. They all know how to communicate with their bodies. And that is exactly what Gunnar needs to learn.

 

Gunnar also works with the Red Cardinals of Mainline City on certain cases. The Red Cardinals are a superhero legacy going back to the 1930’s when the private eye Joe Finger chased a gang of smugglers through the caverns beneath Joyous Harbor and uncovered a sealed seaside cave containing the treasure and ship of 17th century pirate Mateo Lupe, better known as Rojo Pajaro, the Red Bird.

 

Rojo Pajaro dressed in a cloak of red feathers and used smoke and mirrors to give the illusion that he and his crew could fly. This illusion intimidated many of Rojo Pajaro’s opponents into surrendering, and when Joe Finger learned the secrets of the illusion from a chest of books found in the captain’s cabin he was inspired to apply it to modern crime fighting. Using the treasure chest next to the chest of books to purchase supplies, Joe Finger became a one-man haunted house and frightened criminals into submission as the first Red Cardinal.

 

Gunnar might seem an odd fit for the Red Cardinals. Like his classmate Martina Morelli, Gunnar falls firmly on the light side of the classic light vs dark superheroics debate. He wants to project reassuring calm with his presence instead of overpowering fear even when his powers make him an ideal fit dark superheroics.

 

Gunnar is a natural at Red Cardinal works. He takes to stalking and scaring supervillains like a duck to water. In working with the Red Cardinals, Dr. Jefferson hopes that Gunnar will learn what not to do in order to practice light superheroics, why others choose to practice dark heroics, and have a community to fall back on in case light superheroics don’t work out for him.

 

Metapathogen: 

 

Regeneration, Teleportation, Supernaturally Silent, Total Immortality

 

At a cursory glance, Gunnar Cropsey seems blessed. Superstrength. Superspeed. Invisibility. Teleportation. Completely silent movement. An extremely powerful form of invulnerability. Other superhumans would kill for this list of powers.

 

With his strength and speed, he can fight any supercriminal. With his invisibility and silence, he can trail any supercriminal and uncover his plot. With his teleportation, he can reach any trapped victim. And with his invulnerability, he can throw himself as a shield over anyone to block any attack. He can be Captain Protector.

 

Gunnar is incredibly durable even by the standards of other superhumans. Most conventional attacks can’t break his skin. Any damage his body does sustain repairs in an instant. A force projector takes off his head, no big deal, another one appears on his shoulders. Even total atomic annihilation does little to slow him down. He reappears with a fresh body in seconds. Dr. Colt believes that his powers might simulate a hypostatic union.

 

A hypostatic union is when a physical body is bound to a homo fabula spirit from the astral darkness as was the case of the Thor of the 1940’s who was human Grant Farrel merged with homo fabula Thor. In a hypostatic union, as long as the spirit remains, the body can be remade, and as long as the body remains, the spirit can be remade. For a hypostatic pair to be destroyed, both the spirit and the body must be destroyed at the exact same time.

 

Dr. Colt theorizes that Gunnar may have a “spirit shell” that repairs his body. But examinations have thus far been fruitless. Dr. Colt further theorizes that the elusiveness of the theoretical shell may be due to an extension of Gunnar’s supernatural silence. Something may be “cloaking” the shell as a way to protect Gunnar.

 

One can look at the list of Gunnar’s powers and assume that Gunnar is one of the luckiest boys on the planet. But when they notice that his powers are listed as a metapathogen instead of a hyperstatsis, they begin to wonder what the catch is.

 

The catch is that Gunnar cannot turn off his supernatural silence and invulnerability.

 

Gunnar cannot speak. He cannot play an instrument. If he wants to listen to music, he has to be a room away. Nothing he does makes sound. He can tear a wall down with his bare hands and not a single piece of debris will make a sound.

 

He has grown up with the innate sense that his parents should notice him if he makes a noise without actually being able to make a sound. It is only when he stands face-to-face with a person that he exists to them.

 

His invulnerability prevents him from having any body but the one he was born with–a horrifically misshapen caricature of humanity. His body is a hump-backed mass of rough skin with the texture of rocks and the color of a riverbed bottom. His face has a hole for a nose, an eye that looks like it’s sliding down his face like an egg, a scalp of ingrown hair, and a mouth that opens to the cheek.

 

He looked like he was made out of mud slapped together to approximate the human form and moved without a sound. Because of this, his family and friends nicknamed him Mudghost.

 

Modern technology could repair Gunnar’s body…if it didn’t constantly repair itself. To overcome this, Gunnar would have to undergo a long and arduous process to modify his hyle and risk transforming the physical manifestation of his hyperstasis into something less useful.

 

But Gunnar would rather keep his powers the way they are and work to make his curse into a gift.

 

He believes so long as he can use his powers to protect others that he is blessed, not cursed.

 

Behavior: 

 

Exemplary

 

Gunnar is a shining example of the transformative powers of education. He pursues his dream stumblingly, haltingly, but he pursues it nonetheless. And little by little, he makes progress.

 

His incredible perseverance stems from simply wanting to emulate the goodwill he observed as a child. He was rescued by a superhero, and now he wishes to rescue people as a superhero.

 

There are portions of the world that choose a simpler existence than the common one of noosphere telepathy and interway teleportation. One such portion is Guthrie, Georgia, where men find pride in living simple, self-sustaining lives. They grow their own food, clear their own water, sleep under stars undimmed by electric light, and are happy.

 

When BOL supercriminal Twist-and-Shout attacked Guthrie with a superstorm to “demonstrate how reliant on the outside world Guthrie truly was,” a young Gunnar teleported in front of Twist-and-Shout to ask the supercriminal questions. He wanted to know why he was destroying all the farms. It seemed such a stupid thing to do that he had to ask Twist-and-Shout why.

 

Though Gunnar wore a sack over his head, he was still terrifying enough that Twist-and-Shout was startled. The supercriminal lost control of his storm powers in his fright and lifted Gunnar and himself into the atmosphere. Gunnar wasn’t in any real danger, but the young boy was confused and frightened. If he had thought about it, he could have teleported back to the ground. But he was spinning in the air head-over-heels. He was too scared to think.

 

Fortunately, Twist-and-Shout was being closely followed by his rival, the superhero Anticyclone (which yes, is a hurricane. But there were so many superheroes already named Hurricane that the aerokinetic decided on Anticyclone as his supername). Anticyclone rescued Gunnar and nearly strangled Twist-and-Shout to death fearing that he had done something horrible to the boy.

 

Gunnar was inspired by Anticyclone. The people of Guthrie had always had an aversion if not an outright distaste of the outside. But here was a being who might as well have been from another planet helping him, comforting him, and protecting him.

 

Anticyclone wasn’t disgusted by Gunnar’s appearance.

 

Gunnar didn’t think anyone from outside Guthrie would be able to stand his presence.

 

In that moment, Gunnar vowed to become like Anticyclone. He wanted to protect people, no matter how strange they were to him.

 

Gunnar lives on campus in a spartan apartment on the 15th floor. He maintains the frugality of Guthrie and it has served him well in his studies. He doesn’t hang out with students, he doesn’t use the noosphere beyond projecting his voice through it, and he doesn’t play video games. In the little free-time he has between his arduous coursework, he reads superhero biographies–Anticyclone’s being his favorite.

 

Little by little, he transforms himself from Mudghost to Captain Protector.

 

Appearance: 

 

It is an undeniable fact that superheroics, despite its inherent nobility, contains a degree of superficiality. All the costumes, supernames, and poses are superficial. Captain Marvel saves the world with or without a red suit and winning smile.

 

But many superheroes believe that these theatrics aren’t superficialities but necessities. Some even believe that the essence of superheroics is in these theatrics.

 

In times of danger, people run toward what is attractive, familiar, and reassuring and run away from what is ugly, strange, and threatening. When a boy sees a muscular man with a flowing cape and colorful costume, he knows he is safe.

 

An entire industry is devoted to making sure superheroes look their best. Heroes with metal skin use specially designed wax. The dress of one of Tokyo’s mahou shojo or magical girls can cost thousands of dollars. The Fishermen of Joyous Harbor all shop at Mackenzie’s for their yellow and black outfits. Nothing else will do.

 

If one wants to be a superhero, it’s not enough to do one’s best. One has to also look like one can do one’s best.

 

It is thus such a sadness that Gunnar presents so much promise in emergency response training but is held back by something he can’t control.

 

Gunnar is horrifying. It’s the truth. He accepted this long ago when his family called him Mudghost. But he never imagined that it would hinder his dream to the extent that it has. He figured that he would put on a mask and use the noosphere to talk and that would be that. But there was so much more to appearing like a superhero. The way Gunnar stood, the way he moved, the way he approached victims–it was all wrong. His movements were stiff and intimidating and worst of all perfectly silent. Gunnar never really got to learn how to move in a social context. Childhood taught him to make quick movements to get peoples’ attention or to move out of the way of people that couldn’t hear him. But quick, efficient movements are easily read as threatening.

 

As if his body wasn’t enough of a hindrance on its own, Gunnar has also struggled with costuming. He’s gone through several costumes trying to be the bright, inspiring superhero he wants to be.

 

His first costume was a mask made out of a potato sack and workman’s overalls. Gunnar hoped to project a wholesome, working-class persona similar to many superheroes from the 1930’s who wore costumes rummaged from theaters and circuses. The result wasn’t what he wanted. People thought he was a criminal or worse still, a psychopath. There’s an art to masking one’s face without looking as if one has something sinister to hide. Gunnar did not have the art.

 

He then enlarged the eyeholes hoping that if people could see his eyeballs they would recognize his humanity.

 

That only made it worse.

 

His second costume was a professional looking jumpsuit with a simple white mask in a stoic expression. He thought that the mask would communicate resoluteness. He thought wrong. He looked like a statue or a corpse.

 

He then added a cape hoping that it would communicate majesty and traditional superheroics.

 

That only made it worse.

 

His third costume was a colorful red outfit with green stripes and a blank, featureless mask.

 

It made people think of monster-clowns and Christmas-demons.

 

He then drew a smiley face on his mask.

 

That only made it worse.

 

It was at this point that Lucia Regio, AKA The Conductor, staged an intervention. Lucia is the fashionista of Martin’s and she often spends her hard-earned concert money on making sure her friends are clothed by the very best from the superhero costume industry.

 

Gunnar’s current costume takes inspiration from the Skull Savior superhero legacy of Japan and is actually made by the very company that produces the outfits of the modern Skull Saviors, Hongo Designs.

 

Though the Skull Saviors wear costumes themed around skulls and skeletons, they design them in such a way as to not frighten innocents that behold them. Hongo Designs has described their style as “acknowledging a little creepiness so as to avoid implying a lot of creepiness.” Gunnar’s skull themed costume makes his intimidating presence and trembling movements seem part of a gimmick.

 

Gunnar’s costume features a skull helmet with large, oval eyes that look friendly and inviting–perhaps even cute. His hump-back is covered by a beetle-like shell to make it look like part of the costume. Round shells are added to the sides of his legs and forearms to tie the shell on his back into a “shield” theme for Captain Protector. The shells on his arms and legs pulse with a gentle light and glow when he moves attracting visual attention to his motions. On Lucia’s insistence, gloves that light up when Gunnar gestures were added. She knew from her concerts how important clear gestures were for a performance. To complete the look, a muffler scarf was tied around his neck to give the majesty of a cape without risking the creepy effect of his second costume.

 

Gunnar’s new costume has served him well. His approachability scores from volunteer model victims are way up. There’s still the matter of getting his movements and telepathic voice right, but progress is definitely being made in the right direction.