Johnny Ohm

[milo]

OOC Warning:

This is a semi-canonical Villain. It was created by Electronic Arts for a videogame crossover and eventually included by Marvel in The Imperfects mini comic series to explore origins and such. Very little is explained about his powers, so I basically had to make lots of stuff up, based on the abilities he presents in the game/comic.

“It’s mind over matter, son.
I don’t mind and you don’t matter.”

Player nick: Warius. (A great friend who's character has huge impact, waiting for his return)
Name: John Ostrum, AKA John Savage (media-given nickname).
Codename: The Lightning Warrior, Johnny Ohm.
Status: Villain / Currently Unaffiliated.
Age: 38.
Height: 6ft 2in
Weight: 190 lb


Background:

“Johnny Ostrum and trouble… they ran in the same circles.
He was first in his class at the School of Hard Knocks.”

John Ostrum came of age in South Carolina, where Johnny's family was so poor they could not even afford electricity. Bitter and ashamed of his lower class roots, Johnny had an instant distrust for others. A true loner and rebel, he could barely contain his rage and was constantly on the lookout for trouble. He spent his life running afoul of the law - finally crossing the line from petty criminal to accused killer at the age of 24.

A particularly brutal bar room brawl in New Orleans ended with two men dead and two police officers in the hospital. Johnny, found on the scene intoxicated and unconscious, was tossed into jail and quickly found guilty. Johnny stubbornly claimed his innocence but absolutely no one believed him. Johnny lost all hope and faith. The doctor relayed his opinion to the court - Johnny was labeled a threat to society with no remorse for his hideous crime - and sentenced to death by electrocution.

Johnny's day of execution was a blip on the media's radar. But when the execution went awry, the media took a major interest. Johnny had taken the full brunt of the chair -- twice -- and survived.

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice on the same spot. Just before the third attempt, however, lightning struck the execution chamber 15 times in 15 minutes.

John Savage, the media called him, the man who rode the lightning and lived.

Or so was the tale, because no one could neither confirm nor deny it. After the incident that night, where no one in the execution chamber was left alive, John Savage’s corpse wasn’t found among the charred remains of the guards and witnesses.

Did Johnny survive and escape? If he did, he did it flawlessly. He had disappeared without a trace. No one knew or heard anything about him in fourteen years. Until now. Rumors speak of a bizarre man of his likeness seen somewhere near New York City.

Can they be true?

Johnny Ohm, Lightning Warrior

Passive Mutations / Body Modifications:

Johnny's X-Gene had been dormant for most of his life, finally becoming active into his adulthood as a result of prolonged exposure to lethal electrical discharges when he was sentenced to death by electrocution. The traumatic experience caused his body to become highly unstable, turning what should have been an easily regulated ability into an uncontrollable electricity sponge.

Johnny's body, obviously immune to electrical hazard, is constantly absorbing electrical energy from every possible source around him. As a result of this, all electrical devices in a 30-ft radius from him will malfunction. He has a sixth sense that allows him to ‘feel’ electricity around him.

Johnny's body feeds from this electrical energy; it fuels all of his body functions, including his remaining powers, and disposes of the unnecessary excess. As long as Johnny is charged with enough electricity, he won't require any sleep and his wounds will heal at an accelerated rate, not anywhere near enough to be considered a ‘healing factor’ but he will have greater chances of surviving mortal wounds if his charge is kept steady.

As a way of disposing possible overloads, his mutation has adapted his eyes as outlets to burst this electrical excess out, but as a side-effect to the aforementioned trauma he has no control over the flow of energy that leaves him and his eyes instead 'shoot' this electricity out uncontrollably at -all- times. Johnny's eyelids are able to stop this from happening when his eyes are closed, but if he gets too overloaded, the need for an exhaust will become overwhelming, eventually forcing his eyelids open if necessary.

However, Johnny has managed to get a hold of advanced technologic equipment to help him regulate the aforementioned mutation effects, including a set of surgically inserted electrodes and a pair of goggles that contain the energy from shooting out of his eyes.

The special goggles successfully block the plasma-like energy and prevent it from leaving his eyes. If someone was to remove these goggles, uncontrollable bursts of lightning plasma would escape his eyes until his body was completely depleted of all energy.

As a result of blocking his primary energy ‘vent’ (his eyes), Johnny would suffer from extreme overloads. To counter this, he has had surgically inserted electrodes over his hands, arms, chest, back and head that help him regulate the current inside his body.

The electrodes on his shoulders and back work primarily as exhausts and as such are constantly sparking with arcs of electricity, much like a Tesla coil, sometimes thin filaments (if his charge is low) and sometimes with thick lightning arcs (if he's charged at his maximum). As long as these are functional, he shouldn’t have to worry about overloading.

The ones on his hands and arms are used for directed and/or regulated discharges, and are the base of most of his lightning energy-related powers.

And finally the ones on his head and chest are the ones he uses to -somewhat- regulate the influx; he still can't prevent his body from absorbing electricity at all times, but he can either increase or dampen the absorbing rate and/or the radius it affects.

Active Powers:
All of Johnny's active powers are fueled by the electrical energy obtained from his electrical absorption. Without it, he wouldn’t be able to perform any of these.

Uncontrolled Plasma-projection: Restrained by his goggles, these are -devastating- if he has the right amount of energy stored and waiting to come out. Basically, it is lightning concentrated in a wide, unrestrained plasma beam. Johnny would avoid using them in most circumstances because he can't actually control them, and they have a big drawback. Once they begin to ‘leak’ out, they will not stop until all of his electrical charge is drained out.

Electricity-based energy projection abilities: Derived from the electrodes on his arms and hands, which allow him to discharge the existing energy inside his body to a variety of effects. Directed lightning bolts are his main weapon, ball lightning being a second, more difficult, favorite. He has also been known to generate electrostatic shields around him to fend off attacks. The intensity of his attacks is directly proportional to the amount of energy he has stored in at the moment.

Flight: Very rudimentary form of levitation, done by ionizing the air below him and causing lightning bows to shoot out of the electrodes on his arms and hands; since they are basically his own support, it's very hard to stabilize. He can't propel himself to high speeds, and he has a hard time reaching low-end running speed, which is his absolute maximum.

Summon Lightning / Lightning Rod: Johnny is able to psionically manipulate the weather, specifically to generate and call down lightning. He can't manipulate any other aspect of the weather but this, and he can’t control –where- the lightning will strike, but by increasing his electrical absorption rate and radius, his body becomes an instant lightning rod. This is where he gets his cheesy codename ‘Lightning Warrior’, perhaps his most important and deadly ability since it's used to fuel his power and make it self-sustainable to some degree. A single lightning strike would 'super-charge' him enough to channel its power into attacks and call yet more lightning to keep on going. However, Johnny needs a fair share of accessible energy to be able to do this in the first place.

Weaknesses:

As stated before, if Johnny's body is completely depleted of electrical energy, he would basically lose all of his active powers, making him no different from a common human of his height, weight and build until his body finds more electricity to absorb. If he doesn’t find any, he would have the same physiological needs than a common human, such as requiring sleep.

This is difficult to achieve, since once he gets the right amount of energy his powers are basically self-sustainable, but he can actually be de-powered in a variety of ways. If he finds himself in a place where he’s completely unable to draw electrical energy from any source, he will be basically helpless.

His main weakness: large bodies of water. Should he find himself surrounded by any, he would basically 'short-circuit' and have his entire charge drained out in no time. They need to be significant bodies of water, though; simply splashing some water on him won’t do it; or if the water body is small, it would paralyze him for a moment but he eventually would just re-absorb all of it. A large pool worth of water or anything bigger would generally do the trick.

Skills:
Firearms, brawling, streetwise, and any other skills a criminal / convict would require.

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