Scatterbrain

Background

Powers and Abilities

Scatterbrain is a psychic of moderate potency, possessing the ability to read other people’s minds. He uses this power to great affect, easily delving into his opponents minds and retrieving their secrets. He often uses his power to eavesdrop on the people who surrounded him, hearing their surface thoughts as though they were said out loud.

Gage sometimes has issues controlling this aspect of his powers though. He often finds himself listening to thoughts that he isn’t interested in hearing.

As his powers evolved, Gage found that his capable of:

• Projecting blasts of pure psionic  energy at his opponents.
• Permanently altering and/or remove memories from the people that surround him.
• Releasing his astral  form from his body.

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Unfortunately, these feats drain him quickly. Each time he performed them he was rendered comatose. One of his bouts of unconsciousness lasted for days.

Scatterbrain is an accomplished football player, and a natural brawler. Even though his powers give him many options in battle, Scatterbrain generally chooses to duke it out with his opponents. He often lays them low with the brutal tackles that he perfected in football.

The Aquarium

The team is headquartered at the Aquarium, a high-tech lair underneath an industrial pier that was formerly used by Captain Dynamo.

The Aquarium’s resources include equipment with which Warner can monitor the police radio for watch words that trigger an alert to the team of a possible emergency. With these machines she can summon, monitor, and communicate with members of the team during engagements with hostile forces. There also are some private offices.

The team also uses a teleportation device called the Jump Station. It allows them to travel instantly across the continent to meet with one another. The team can activate the Jump Station by manipulating a device on their costumes. The Jump Station can only transport persons from the station itself to another location and back, but not effect transportation directly between two other locations.

The Aquarium also features a training simulator room that can present a number of threats to the team, and be programmed for a number of difficulty levels. The team refers to it as the Shark Tank.

History

Captain Dynamo, the much-beloved superhero protector of Tower City, was assassinated. His widow, former government agent posing as a now-retired investigative reporter Maddie Warner, discovered from his personal effects that he had been unfaithful to her countless times.

Despite her devastation at this discovery, Warner realized that without a full-time protector, Tower City would be vulnerable to Captain Dynamo’s legion of super-villain enemies. She used her skills and the information she discovered to track down five individuals who could have been her late husband’s illegitimate children.

Maddie traveled to an Eastbridge Texas high school in order to initiate contact with the future fifth member of the Dynamo 5. Gage Reinhart was in the middle of football practice when he was approached by Maddie.

By this time Gage was used to being approached by scouts on the field, due to his local fame garnered as the division leader in tackles. Thus, he assumed Warner was one of them. To his surprise, she made him a completely different offer while revealing the secret of his true parentage to him.

Siblings

With some coercion, Maddie was able to convince Gage to come to Tower city and meet his formerly unknown siblings. Upon his arrival, Gage found himself surrounded by four other young men and women. Being a typical 17 year old boy used to the amorous attention of teenage girls, Gage immediately singled out Bridget and hit on her.

Bridget immediately pointed out the idiocy of his action, since Warner’s story made them siblings.

While Gage digested this information Warner exposed the five youths to the unknown radiation that empowered their father, Captain Dynamo, 40 years earlier. The radiation immediately unlocked their latent powers, with Gage inheriting his late father’s ability to read minds.

Gage took the codename “Scatterbrain”, and joined his new family in protecting Tower City from evil as the Dynamo 5.

Heroes

Gage participated in several adventures during the early days of his superheroic career, battering away at the criminal element that rose in Tower City immediately after Captain Dynamo’s death. His powers often became the deciding factor in many of the Dynamo 5’s victories.

They underwent great evolution over the course of their adventures, quite often to Gage’s personal dismay and injury. At one point after using his powers to erase Synergy’s (yet another Dynamo offspring) memories, Gage fell comatose for several days.

During that time his brother Spencer impersonated Gage in his home life in order to protect Gage’s secret identity. Spencer (as Gage) made quite the impression on Gage’s family and his classmates at school, at one point openly engaging in a public display of affection with a young Black girl.

Unknown to Spencer, Gage was observing astrally and upon awakening, the enraged Gage attacked his older brother.

Initially, Spencer (who’s default form was that of a Black man) suspected that Gage was a racist, since Gage kept emphasizing that Spencer was kissing a Black girl while disguised as Gage. Instead, Gage saw this act as an invasion of privacy on Spencer’s part. The brother’s managed to talk out their feelings, and have since buried the hatchet.

Things go sour

Nearly a year after the team was formed, the group was attacked in the Aquarium by a combined team of their past enemies. As a result of the battle Spencer is rendered unconscious and accidentally reveals his inhuman nature, much to the shock of his siblings.

The group reacted badly, expressing feelings of betrayal due to Spencer having kept his alien nature a secret. In turn, Spencer saw this as hypocrisy, and like all families the siblings have a blow out fight. The fight combined with the stress of the battle, and Maddie’s coma, caused enough stress to split the group up.

Gage returned to his home life, hoping to erase the damage that his brother Spencer had caused to his reputation there. While he was at home, his brother Hector approached him, feeling guilty that they were using their powers for their own gain from that point forward. Gage simply did not care, even with the knowledge that his sister had created a new Dynamo 5 to protect Tower city.

United

Maddie’s coma threatened to become permanent when Bridget approached him for help. Despite some initial misgivings, Gage eventually entered Maddie’s mind and woke her up. Unfortunately, the new Dynamo 5 eventually drew the ire of a combined force of villains that they had faced in the past.

The new team was quickly decimated and Bridget faced certain death. But sensing her need, Gage quickly assembled their siblings and raced to her aid. With the original team reunited, the Dyamo 5 made quick work of the combined force of villains.

Description

For a 17 year old, Gage is big… really big. He stands at about 6’2” and has layer upon layer of thick muscle all over it. His physique is similar to a young player that just entered the American pro football league. He has above average facial features, close cropped blonde hair and walks with a cocky swagger.

His costume is made up of a one piece blue and red shoulder-less leotard, that leaves his impressively muscled arms bare. The leotard itself has a hoody that Gage wears to cover his head and a highly stylized D5 near the center of his torso. Like his siblings Gage wears a red domino mask to hide his face.

Personality

Gage was a popular, arrogant jock who never gave a damn about what anyone thought. That lasted until he gained the ability to literally hear those thoughts. In addition, Gage was fairly obtuse and absentminded when he first started adventuring with his siblings.

His time with the team though matured Gage quickly. Furthermore, the fires of battle quickly forged a true emotional bond between his siblings and him. Interestingly enough, Gage is the only member of the Dynamo 5 that will openly argue with Maddie.

Despite his open air of arrogance, Gage often felt unsure of his place with his true family at home. Just the sheer physical difference between Gage and his family (he is a muscular blond giant of a man, while the rest of his family are short lanky individuals) made Gage and his siblings question his true parentage even before Maddie approached him on that football field.

Despite it’s obvious usefulness, Gage resents his ability to read minds. He hates his inability to fully control his powers and their constant evolution. He often dreams of having a “cooler” power like Livvie’s flight.

Quotes

Scatterbrain: “Myriad ! A little help ! These tools are kicking my ass !”
Myriad: “User your powers, Scatterbrain — read their minds !”
Scatterbrain: “They’re not thinking about kicking my ass, they’re just doing it !”

(After leveling one of his foes with a vicious tackle)
“Man, I haven’t had a hit that solid since we played Odessa last year.”

“Just blast this dweeb and we can all go home.”

“Shhh. I’m digging around his memories for something good.”

“Hey Voltage ! Remember that time Oatridge, Rudy, and Casciola stripped you naked and threw you into the girls’ locker room ?”

“Great. I can barely control the powers I got, and now they’re ’evolving‘. This just keeps getting better and better.”

“I was hanging out with my dad and brothers, and I picked up on my brother’s thoughts. I can’t always shut‘em out, you know ? Anyway, the little jack-off thinks I’m adopted ! Because he and my brother and my dad are all skinny dorks. I guess I can’t blame him, right ? But what if I was adopted ? So what ? I mean, what’s it matter to him ? Our dad still raised me just like he raised them… sometimes I hate this stupid super-power. I wish I could just fly, like… well, like that.”

“You’re in a coma. Doc Noble said I could enter your mind using my telepathy and maybe I could get you to… well… snap out of it.”

“You know what ? I’ve about had it with you. We’re gonna go help Livvie’s dad. If you think you can stop us… Try. Please.”

DC Universe History

The Dynamo Five can be dropped wholesale into the DC universe as is. Tower City can be yet another fictional city within the DC USA.

More interestingly though, each of the siblings could have been the illegitimate offspring of a certain Martian in a less cordial campaign.

By Bryan Gittens.

Source of Character: Dynamo 5 Issues #1-24 (Image comics).

Helper(s): Wikipedia, Darci, cassius335.