Heatstroke

   So I've had this character bouncing around in my head for ages. Originally he started as part of an AU X-Men fanfic story I was playing with in high school. The story, kind of inevitably, took place, or at least started, in high school. The story as I remember it was a coming of age, coming to terms with new powers, etc, kind of story.

   Heatstroke, who I've never settled on a 'normal' name for, was one of the pseudo-villains of the story. He was a bully, a football jock who had self esteem issues and took them out on other people. He was big and strong, popular among the football crowd but had a bit of a temper and when he got angry he got cruel instead of loud. He wasn't the 'pull the wings off butterflies' kind of cruel, but he wasn't the 'just beat up the kid who got in his way' kind of bully either. He was the 'shove the claustrophobic kid in his own locker' kind of bully. He was also reasonably intelligent, though he tried to hide it behind his jock persona.
   As I remember the story I had been creating then, various characters were developing their powers, and you know, mutant scare. Heatstroke obviously bullied these new mutants, calling them freaks, etc. Right up until he himself started showing powers. Heatstroke's ability is Thermokinesis. He can manipulate his own body temperature and the temperatures around him. Initially he was not in control, and only affected temperature in large areas and based on his moods. He gained the nickname Heatstroke when he would cause the temperatures around him to raise drastically when he got angry, often giving people heatstroke. As he learned to control his powers he found he was able to also reduce temperatures, and to focus the power down to smaller areas if he chose. He also found he was himself effectively immune to temperature as his body would self regulate to protect itself.

   So I never went anywhere with the original story. It was a tad too generic, I hadn't really come up with a good plot or reason for the story, and frankly I have always had trouble with trying to write fanfiction. I should probably dedicate a post to that set of thoughts by themselves. Anyway.

   Over the years this character keeps coming back to me. There is something about him I've always really liked. He is so different from many of the characters that have stuck with me over the years. Most of them are various reflections of myself, or self insert characters that have slowly evolved over time into their own things. Some are based off of friends, aspects of who they are that struck me and developed in my mind into interesting characters. But Heatstroke is neither of those. He is the image of the kind of person I disliked, though thankfully never had to deal with in my own school days, humanized into an interesting person, if still not a good person.
   As I grew so did this character, I don't have a story for him yet, though I have written him up as an NPC/villain for the Super-Hero game I'm going to be running. But in my mind his story has continued. After high school, between being a decent but not amazing football player and being a mutant, he didn't go to college. Near the end of the time he was in school he got in some trouble with the law, nothing major, and his abilities were never overtly part of it, but it made people start to fear him. In the end his father died of severe heatstroke, it was ruled an accident by the police, but there were rumors. He left his home town, moving to the city to escape the people who knew what he was and feared him. He didn't have any real skills, and was angry at the world for as he saw it 'ruining his chances at a football scholarship by making him a freak'. He ended up working construction and other physical labor jobs. Some of the people he worked with were ex-cons, and eventually they got him going on jobs with them. He finally found a use for his powers and started learning how to control them better. And thus was born the 'Super-Villain' Heatstroke. I picture him being in and out of jail in his early twenties, until he learns how to not get caught. He learns to use his powers with deadly precision, boiling a person's brain, or freezing their heart. He also learns he doesn't like to kill if he can help it. Killing is messy, it upsets people, and frankly he doesn't like how it makes him feel. He prefers burglary, and becomes a B&E specialist. He can melt a whole in a door or freeze a safe lock to make it breakable. Over time I picture him becoming calmer, less driven by anger and more just trying to live his life using the skills and abilities he has.
  One of my favorite scenes that I came up with recently involved a bank robbery gone south, where the crew he is with ends up stuck in the bank with hostages, trying to figure out how to get out. The cops of course cut off the power and air conditioning. A basic hostage negotiation tactic, cut off the air so it gets uncomfortably hot inside and the hostage takers are distracted and more likely to make a mistake. Except Heatstroke can just compensate and keep himself and his team cool.

I guess that's all I've got on Heatstroke at the moment. Maybe I'll try writing out that scene later.