Pretend
NAME: Vincent King
KNOWN ALIASES: Pretend, That Damn Mime
AGE: 28
BIRTHPLACE: New York City, NY
AFFILIATIONS: Partners with Perform
- Invisible Construct Creation
The ability to create invisible constructs of different shapes and sizes, ranging from items such as tools and weapons, to simple shapes like such as barriers, columns, discs, platforms, rams, ramps, and slides.
Elodie King was a young woman living in a small town west of Paris, France. She fell in love with a young man and eventually became pregnant. Unfortunately, she was born into a deeply religious and conservative family who heavily shamed her for having a child before getting married. To escape the constant judgement and ridicule of their families, her lover proposed they leave France and travel to New York City in America to follow their dreams, hers being becoming an actress and he, a musician. Initially afraid and unsure, Elodie opted to stay, just until he got settled. But after a heated argument with her mother, she could take no more. She packed and left for America only to receive devastating news upon arrival. Her lover and the father of her baby had been mugged and killed shortly after arriving in America.
Alone, with no support system, and speaking almost no English, Elodie was in dire straits. She faced a great uphill battle as both an immigrant and single mother with no work experience, but she made it work, eventually finding a job at a laundromat. She and her son, whom she named Vincent after his father, lived out of their car for a while until she raised enough to afford their own apartment. Things were hard, but relatively stable for the next few years.
Then tragedy struck again. She was on her way home when a man yelled at and began chasing her. Because she still spoke very little English she couldn't understand what he was saying, and because it was dark she didn't see the credit card she'd dropped in his hand. Panicked, she ran into the street, was hit by a car and killed instantly. The young Vincent was devastated, and similarly left alone, just like his mother had been when she first arrived in this country. Distrusting of nearly everyone, he ran away, rather than start living with people he'd never met before. Life on the streets was hard but he learned to survive. Street performing in the Big Apple became his source of income. More often than not, most people tended to ignore performers, especially mimes, but Vince possessed a great deal of charisma, pulling more and more people in every day with his mime act. Then he made the mistake of letting his guard down.
He heard tales of a corporation offering food and shelter to the less-than-fortunate for their participation in just a few "experimental test trials" of a new drug. Unfortunately, he neglected to read the fine print. The trials were actually illegally run, dangerous, and downright inhumane. The few who survived were left with debilitating conditions and thrown back out onto the street. Vince was one who managed to survive and escape the deadly trials, though they had changed him forever. He could no longer speak but he found he possessed strange psychic abilities. He could create invisible objects with his mind. An ironic twist of fate.
All the hardships he'd endured and the all terrible things he'd seen, Vince posited that if world wasn't a kind place, then he wouldn't be either. Vince adopted the new villainous persona of Pretend, the mime who takes what he wants using whatever he imagines.
Invisible Constructs
- Vince possesses the psionic ability to create and manipulate invisible objects. Walls capable of blocking or impeding approaching objects and nullifying attacks, as well as boxes used as a means of containment to imprison others. He possesses sufficient enough control over his constructs to mold them into a variety of other shapes, and with effort, more complex forms. The complexity of the shape is only limited by his ability to imagine (mentally visualize) a particular form and keep it in sharp mental focus.
- The first person Vince allowed into his figurative "invisible box". She's a kindred spirit in a variety of ways, even besides the obvious. The two met when he accidentally interrupted her bank robbery and after he saved her life during the heist, they decided to split the haul. Whether it was kismet or just plain luck that they met, they've stuck together and have been partners in crime ever since, leaving in their wake silent chaos wherever they go.