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irikahkrios · 5 years

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Im a sucker for superhero aus and the one you came up with is dope pls tell me more

HHHHHHHHHH WITH PLEASURE,,,,

so i really only have a couple of characters figured out, as far as their hero names + backstories + powers. so i’ve gotta develop the rest of them more. but here’s a sloppy list of most of the things i’ve got so far, under a cut because it got super long:

as far as the basics, pretty much everything about garrus is lifted directly from canon. ex-cop who got fed up with red tape and started protecting the streets as the masked vigilante archangel, led another team at first but they were all killed due to sidonis’ betrayal, doesn’t have any superpowers and relies solely on his combat and tech skills and the powerful sense of Unkillable Bastard Energy that sustains him. big batman vibes (only unpowered member of a superpowered team, relies on tech, brains, and sheer willpower, Big Angst due to losing people in the past, tries to say he works alone but is inevitably followed around by a big family of allies who loves him)

his costume is silly though, i know that. my favorite part of this au is the silly costumes. it isn’t just “practical armor” like garrus as archangel in ME canon; it’s still armor, but it’s very much a superhero costume.

he’s very careful with his secret identity, probably the most careful out of anyone on the team. it’s because of his experiences with his first team, and his fear of being betrayed again. he eventually opens up to a few people, but it takes a good long while, possibly a few years, for him to reach that point.

i haven’t figured out yet how emmett/sunsurge got his powers, but i’ve thought a great deal about said powers and their numerous applications. the most basic description of his powers would be “manipulation of solar energy.” in practice, this translates to a number of things, including but not limited to: flight, invulnerability (he’s so hot that weapons/bullets just melt when they touch him), shaping of energy into solid matter (he constantly does stuff like make glowy chairs out of solid energy so he can sit down, and often illustrates his points when talking by providing visuals in the form of energy masses), energy projectiles and weapons, etc

when he activates his powers, his physical form turns into a mass of glowing energy, with his hair and beard (and also body hair lmao he walks around shirtless) becoming rippling orange energy that sort of looks like fire. transforming into a blinding-hot being of pure energy is handy for preserving his secret identity, but it also means that whatever clothes he’s wearing when he activates his powers are burned to ashes by the heat he gives off. when he first started as a hero, he always used his “shaping energy into solid objects” power to create his costume every time he transformed. meaning that every time he turned back, he would just be naked and had to store a change of civilian clothes (identical to what he was wearing before, to avoid suspicion) in a safe place to change into after he was done.

i know for a fact that he meets one member of his team (haven’t decided who yet) when they’re working at a retail store in their civilian identity, and they gradually figure out that emmett is sunsurge when he keeps constantly coming in to buy like a dozen identical shirts and pants at a time.

eventually, after the superhero team forms and they all pool their resources and talents, the team’s “tech person” (who i think is probably gonna be tali) makes a costume for emmett that can stand up to his extreme temperatures, so he doesn’t have to create his costume out of energy every time. and also everyone on the team probably encourages him to get into the habit of taking his civilian clothes off before he activates his powers, resulting in far fewer trips to the store to buy new clothes.

his costume is ridiculous and i love it. it’s gold and shiny, and consists of tight pants, boots, and a long vest/coat (it’s sleeveless and worn open, and reaches his calves like a long, flowing cape). no shirt; he wears the vest/coat open, with nothing underneath. he says it’s to soak in more of the sunlight that charges his powers, but everybody’s pretty sure he just likes to be shirtless.

i talked about irikah/wraith’s backstory in this au here, for those who haven’t seen it yet. it’s too long and complicated to recap here lmao

she’s a mystery, even to herself, but she’s pretty adamant on having a costume that protects her identity, even if she doesn’t know what that identity is. she’s got a mask and hood, and i think when she’s doing hero stuff she gets into the habit of keeping herself partially “blurred out” and intangible at all times?? like, she’s translucent and difficult to make out visually, with the added benefit that any surprise attacks will pass right through her.

i’ve talked about her powers, but i guess it wouldn’t hurt to recap. she can distort matter (mostly her own, but with some effort probably object around her and with even more effort possibly other people), resulting in powers that include super speed, short-distance teleportation, intangibility (and thus immunity to weapons/bullets), phasing through solid objects like walls, etc.

of all the heroes on the team, she comes the closest to being a “full-time” hero, due to not really having a civilian identity. before the team forms, she probably lives with one of the other heroes, and once the team forms and they have a big fancy base of operations she lives there. i think she’s their “science person” in the same way that tali is their “tech person.” they probably collaborate a lot on projects.

after her reunion with her family, they all decide to still live at the base, for several reasons. irikah is most comfortable there, since it’s been her home for years, and thane 1) is most comfortable in a space like that as well and 2) wants to make her happy more than anything. they were both worried that kolyat wouldn’t like it there and asked if he would prefer to be somewhere where the three of them could try to be a normal family again, but he just laughed his ass off and told them that the three of them were far past the point of being a normal family, and that the base was fine.

i figure kolyat has a lot of mixed feelings about the whole concept of superheroes. like, on one hand, this is an au that operates on Comic Book Logic and so the superheroes are necessary to defeat the supervillains, like it’s a whole system and everything. but also like….he sort of lost both of his parents to this system and lowkey resents it. i mean, his mom was presumed dead but actually just lost her memories and gained superpowers and spent years as a hero, and his dad spent those same years doing assassination jobs for villains instead of caring for the grieving son who needed him. this might be a necessary system, but it’s one that’s had a profound negative impact on his life, and he has to deal with that as he gets used to having his parents in his life again and the three of them start to untangle the complex knot of fuckups and sheer bad luck that brought their family to this point lmao

i haven’t decided yet if thane has any powers; if he does, they’re minor ones and only serve to augment the skills he has. much like garrus, thane in this au has pretty much the same backstory as in canon. trained to be an expert assassin since childhood, was brought out of his cold, unfeeling mindset when he met irikah, entered back into it when he lost her, etc. the only major difference is that she isn’t actually dead lmao

so yeah i think my next step is to start developing other characters and deciding what their powers are and how they fit onto the team. but wow i really love this au so far, i love superheroes and i love mass effect and i love aus where the krios family get to be alive and safe and happy, bioware do not interact

#superhero au tag #yaboylone #god i'm sorry this took so long

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