Reagan Ness

Reagan dressed for a school photo

**Reagan Ness** is one of the metahumans from the Prefeton facility, and a new recruit into Orphan Company. She's known for her reclusive nature, and her preference for books over people.

Her abilities are focused on unleashing the power of her mind to interrupt or or inflict pain on other people, while keeping herself from harm.

## Strengths and Weaknesses

### Skills

Reagan excels academically, having been a likely candidate for valedictorian in the high school nature of the simulation. She's also good at distracting herself with video games and books.

### Weaknesses

Her anti-social personality makes her not great at making friends. Psionics are exhausting to use, and the more Reagan uses them the more tired she becomes. All of her offensive powers rely on being able to see the target, so anyone out of view couldn't be affected. Certain metals can also insulate against the attacks.

## Powers and Abilities

### Phase One Power

Psionics - Synaptic Static (L1): A basic psionic attack. Reagan reaches extends her mind into someone else's, before quickly withdrawing. Signals in the brain are temporarily scrambled, causing the target to be momentarily stunned, often followed by confusion and a headache. Only a single person can be targeted at a time.

### Phase Two Powers

Psionics - Synaptic Shock (L2): A more potent psionic intrusion. The sudden influx of energy into a target's mind is felt as a sourceless scream that echoes in their head. The scream can last as long as Reagan keeps concentrating on it, but it's very energy-intensive and holding it very long would exhaust her. The energy can be spread across up to four people.

Psychokinesis - Unseen Assistant (L1): Energy from the mind can start interacting with objects. Reagan can push, pull, lift, or throw objects weighing up to 50 pounds just by concentrating on them and focusing her mind.

### Phase Three Powers:

Psionics - Synaptic Shutdown (L3): The ultimate evolution of offensive psionics. A powerful blast of concentrated energy overrides every neuron in the target's brain and completely disables them. The massive amount of energy can be spread across only a few people.

Psychokinesis - Mental Deflection (L2): Incoming objects can now be stopped before impact. No one wants to be shot, unfortunately most people can't do too much about it. Reagan has found a way that works for emergencies, but not for very long. She's created a barrier of invisible psychic energy around her entire body that can deflect several small projectiles, or lessen the brunt of a large one until it's broken. It can be reformed, but it does have an upkeep cost that could limit use of other powers if it was continually built.

ESP - Neuron Sense (L1): A brain is just a loose collection of electrical charges running through meat. After interacting with people's minds so often, Reagan can detect when one is nearby. She can sense the presence of a person within 30 feet of her, unless their mind is insulated against it. All she knows is their relative position and distance from her, as she was never able to read thoughts.

## Background:

### Personality

Reagan is anti-social, frequently to the point of anxiety. She doesn't enjoy face-to-face conversations with people, often contributing very little if at all to discussions. She'd much rather stay in her room with the door locked than be in any large group settings. When forced into a social setting, this anxiety can present itself as being short and sarcastic as a defense mechanism, which possibly seen as rudeness or arrogance given her academic excellence.

### Backstory

Reagan Ness was supposedly one of the more recent arrivals to Prefeton, her mother having transferred to the military base a couple of years ago. The military kept the two of them moving around a lot, never really giving Reagan a chance to make many friends—not that she'd make many friends if she stayed in one place for fifty years. By now they've been on the island longer than most places they lived, and there wasn't much indication that they'd be moving again, though Reagan didn't know too much about the situation on base. She wouldn't be particularly interested either, because she held a deep-seated grudge against the military for taking all of her mother's time and making them transfer so much. She never speaks about her father, to the point where it's not entirely certain that she even knows about him, her mother is the only family member she mentions.

Reagan spends much of her time in her room, either studying for classes or reading on her own. When she isn't deep into a book, she can sometimes be found online playing video games but rarely actually interacting with people on voice chat. The few times she does try, it's met with the expected reaction for a girl on a console game, further reinforcing her silence.

She first began noticing strange occurrences around her a few weeks before learning of the other powered students, when people that tried to talk to her seemed to become disoriented or get a headache when she didn't want to talk. After a few instances, she realized that she was the source of the issue, and that somehow her mind was weaponizing her anxiety and sending out waves of energy to people. She practiced a little on unsuspecting people at school, and stopped when she had figured out how to avoid accidentally targeting people at random.