Main Cast Powers

The place for the Main Cast's private musings on the powers they find themselves possessing.

Jack Bennett

•      "People ask us what are we. Are we human? Are we something else, something more? All questions I've asked myself.
       "I seem to embody the best and worst of what we've become. My body can isolate and stop the others when there power gets out of control, my spirit can see ways they can better use what they have. A blessing? Maybe if it wasn't costing me my very flesh.
       "I was never the brightest kid, but they changed that, too. Now I'm so much infinitely smarter, able to truly and completely comprehend what giving up my body is going to mean. I am both human and monster. I have walked in the dreams of men of power, I have ridden the waves of Space and Time. Wherever power is used I am there, a silent sentinal.
       "Is it my role to act the Jimminy Cricket to the Survivors? Is that why I've been made so smart and then had my body taken away? So I'd know the true consequences of power and school the others toward caution?      "This is too big. I'm just a kid, after all. Yeah, a kid who seems to be able to control whatever this energy is that we all were changed by. I guess I've sort of been dreaming that this would all be over soon and I could go back to my normal life.
       "Well, I got a hell of a wake up call. I remember looking down and seeing Brian crouched there on the steps of Lincoln like some sort of cross between Superman and Dr. King, getting ready to emerge into the age, a carpet of rich deep red rolling down the steps, beautiful, flaring out from him like a cape, like the blood of a wounded America crying out for help.
       "I guess it was sort of fitting, an irony, really, that it was a Kennedy's blood painting such an image.
       "I'd thought till that momment that my powers were sort of weak compared to the others... Until with less effort then it took to remember how to breath, I spread my 'fingers' and took control of every camera, every microphone, every T.V. station and broadcast that image across the country so they could share my horror and my awe. Even in death I was not denyed a voice. And in the end true freedom to speak and be heard, to let truth roll off your tounge and be heard... That, my friend, is the Information Age. That is -true- power.
       "Not that I ever did anything to deserve it. Not that I've ever done much to deserve anything. But at least my death would have meaning, a sacrafice against injustice to show the world the Survivors are human, that we bleed red, white and blue just like every other American.
       "Perhaphs because only in my death did I feel I've ever done anything deserving did Mandy's actions shock me so much; when she breathed strange, hot life back into my broken body. She hardly knew me and I can't say I was ever kind to her, though I've considered her a friend. I can't think why she would do such a thing. Other then what I said, she among us all is a true HERO. I don't care what mistakes she made in Georgia.
       "I could see it all along, maybe that's why the others need me. Because I have the power to SEE."

Brian Jaffe

•      "I've stood on the moon's surface, I've floated in space, thousands of miles outside of lunar orbit, I've travelled farther than any man before me, and from that distance the earth looks so small. It's not like the satelite photos. They're finite, bordered in white on every side, limited. Space isn't like that. It's like sitting in the front row of a movie theater, so that the screen stretches across every part of your vision, and the earth's just a pinprick of light on the face of it. It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I wish everyone could see it like I do."
       "When I'm close I can feel the earth, like I'm holding it cupped in my hands, and I think that if I squeezed I could crack it like an egg. There are six and a half billion people on the earth. People who could die if I if I lose control one day, if I mess up. It's a thought that would keep me up at night, if I still slept."

Arthur Redford

While i believe that I was one of the first to come to grips with and more freely use their "powers", I think that between Brian, Mandy, Jack, and myself, we(I) understand how they work less than anybodies. I can move over the earth at speeds over fifty times faster than anything ever created by man. My mere passage can create a wave of destruction behind me that rivals our neuclear arsonal. When I run, it seems as though everything stops. No matter what the crisis, it feels as though I have all the time in the world. And in many respects, I do. As we found out, I am not just moving fast. I am pushing through time itself. Around me, time slows, warps, and allows me to pass, where nothing else in history was given that privlage. Its terrifing really. I can run, sometimes I even seem to skip the intervening space between me and my destination. I once pulled my group of friends into a nightmare future that very nearly killed one of them. I have reversed death on several occassions though the cost to me was phenomonal.

Brian speaks of the beauty of seeing the Earth from space, and how he wishes that everybody could see it as he does. I want to show him the world as I see it. I can take that perfect moment, and freeze it. I can make those precious moments of that gorgeous sunset and stare at it till I am satisfied. I can make the world my interactive photo. I no longer feel the need to hurry, for I know that there is no longer any reason to.

Mandy Smith

•      FIRE!
       "It's been a part of my entire life.
       "I've lost family and friends to it.
       "I work at fighting it.
       "And now, I believe that I am possessed by it.
       "I have found that I can see in the future and far away through the medium of fire. My body has grown into a living metal statue, it moves as skin but is as strong as iron. Black metallic flesh covers my arms and legs and I have sacrificed my ability to feel, or touch anything. I have discovered that the world of thermal dynamics is mine to control, I can gather heat into myself and create shooting gouts of flame, a human dragon with an iron hide.
       "I am strong, the weather bends to my emotions, bullets bounce off of me.
       "I am Godlike.
       "I am a murderer.
       "I am BACKDRAFT."

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The AMERICAN GODS