—INFO & PERMISSIONS.
BASIC INFORMATION
Name: Juno Steel
Canon: The Penumbra Podcast
Age: 38
Bio: Juno Steel has a history he'd say is typical for kids who started at the bottom of the economic ladder on Mars; he grew up in Oldtown, the poor and run-down district of Hyperion City, and he grew up rough and mean. He bluffed his way through school with little attendance, ran away from home a lot, hid in the sewers, and got into trouble on the regular with his friends Sasha Wire and Mick Mercury. His mother never managed to kill him, though it wasn't for lack of trying. But where she failed with Juno, she succeeded with his twin brother, and it left Juno with a case of survivor's guilt that has shadowed him his whole life.
Even so, he's always wanted to be a hero, which carried him through his falling out with the Hyperion City Police Department and into a long career as a private eye. As a PI, he devotes himself to his work to the point that it makes up his entire identity, and all his efforts are to make Hyperion just a little better than the day it was before, which is like bailing water out of a sinking ship with his bare hands. Hyperion operates on a system of money over morality, and crime is one of its most lucrative businesses; against a city of corrupt officials and dirty cops, Juno doesn't stand much chance of making a dent alone.
That doesn't stop him from trying, and it's not out of selfless nature or nobility. For Juno Steel, the world is a story that revolves around him — he's the only one that can set it right, and when it goes wrong, it is always his fault. He tries to bury his self-loathing and guilt under a noir archetype persona, the cynical and world-weary detective with a heart of stone. In reality, Juno is just a tired, miserable lady trying desperately to atone for things he doesn't believe can ever be forgiven. So despite his hero's heart, on the outside, Juno Steel is all sharp edges; he keeps everyone at arms' length, sabotages his own happiness because he deserves to suffer, and limits most of his words to snappy one-liners or rambling monologue.
SYMBIOTE INFORMATION
[RHO] - [BARRIER MANIPULATION]
The symbiote allows the host to create psychokinetic barriers that absorb (and later deflect) incoming damage, drawing on the host's mental strength to do so. It requires focus to create and maintain a barrier, which encourages the host to hang back and use the power to shield others.
RANK 1 ( beginner )— The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 3x3 metres. A barrier can protect against any incoming damage, as well as being able to stop an object in motion.RANK 2 ( intermediate )
— The barrier can be maintained for up to five seconds at a time before the mental strain causes the host to lose focus. Another can be created approximately two minutes later, as long as the host has regained their concentration.
— A fraction of the damage absorbed will always be transferred to the host. The extent of physical pain caused is dependent on the amount of damage that struck the barrier, but it typically results in aches and bruising. Heavy damage can cause internal bleeding and broken bones, and in extreme cases, permanent injury such as nerve damage.
— Only three barriers can be used in a day, and use results in mental backlash; migraines, fatigue, and a worsening mental state. The host's existing flaws (ex. anxiety, paranoia, depression) will be exacerbated until the host recovers with rest.— The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 5x5 metres.RANK 3 ( advanced )
— The barrier can be maintained for up to fifteen seconds at a time. Another can be created approximately five minutes later.
— Only five barriers can be used in a day. Mental backlash from strenuous use is worse and can take multiple days to recover from.— The host is able to put up a single barrier with a surface area of up to 8x8 metres. At this rank, the host can choose to create the barrier as a curved dome that can shelter themself and allies, rather than a flat wall.
— Any incoming damage is reflected by the barrier, bouncing it back in the direction it came from. The host's body still absorbs a fraction of the impact.
— The barrier can be maintained for up to thirty seconds at a time. Another can be created approximately fifteen minutes later.
— Only eight barriers can be used in a day. Strenuous use can result in a week of mental backlash; continuing to use abilities to their full extent before recovering from existing strain can result in a permanent worsening of mental state and a susceptibility to frequent migraines.
BROOD: [SARGAS]— Richard Gecko (ophidia )
— November 11 (
— Darlene Alderson (
— KD6-3.7 (
— Luv (
NEST PERMISSIONS
Beyond the barriers of yellow POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS tape is a sense of a lady solid but not steady, roots deep enough to hold a falling tree in place. Juno has dug his heels in hard, stubborn-minded and resolute — but the place he's put himself is a graveyard. None of it is hidden. Juno knows he's a desolate wasteland of a person, and the people around him might as well know what they're getting into.
Everything in Juno Steel is heavy and dark, something bitter on the back of your tongue, something worse in the pit of your stomach. A low-grade headache that starts in his cybernetic right eye (cyclops, he calls himself) and digs its claws into his brain. There's so much self-loathing that it makes your teeth ache, not just wretched but scathing and vicious and cruel. Reaching into Juno's head means being exposed to that from the inside, an atmosphere that really does believe what Juno believes; like it's cold, hard fact that he's the worst thing that's ever happened to the world, a world that seems so hopeless through his eyes. And he's someone starved, too, someone who rations every resource — hope, trust, happiness — spread so thin he can't survive on it, so it's no wonder the place is so bleak. He won't let anything grow here. Any flicker of good feeling gutters out too quickly to make a difference.
There's his home: dark, foreboding, a lighthouse that tells him to turn away. His mother's cruel, cold voice whispering in the halls and the impression of bruises, of different hurts beneath the skin that will never come out. Benzaiten's ghost hanging in the air like an accusation of Juno's guilt. Juno's bruised knuckles and scabby knees, bluffing his way through the world, convinced that he could make himself sharp enough that anyone who hurt him would come out worse off than he would.
BROOD PERMISSIONS
Like looking at a bathtub full of glass and contemplating stepping in, sharp edges and hurt and a feeling of KEEP OUT that is as much for visitors as it is for the lady himself. Every little shard of Juno Steel that you pry out of him this deep comes out of a wound.
Juno might be a dead landscape, but what he does have in abundance is guilt. If the state of mind Juno has settled down in is a graveyard, then he dug most of those graves himself, and he put the bodies there, buried each one. He blames himself so fiercely for all of those deaths that they're easy to see if you're reaching for his memories. Cases that went wrong, people he couldn't save. Annie, rotting in a factory, alone and afraid. His brother — his twin brother, Benzaiten, when it should have been Juno instead. His fault, every last one of them.
Those are the details. Stepping back to see the whole it makes, Juno's mind is one thing: self-centred. Put his picture at the centre of a conspiracy board, because as far as he sees it, everything is his fault, everything in the whole world. He's the sole person responsible for saving it, for fixing every problem he can latch onto. And when it doesn't work, he's the one to blame. There's something stuck there, like a splinter under the skin you can feel but can't quite pull out, a poison in Juno's system and it sounds like his mother's voice:
"Juno ruined everything. And we never... let him... forget it."
Deeper down, Sarah Steel's voice changes to something else, not too different — but this comes with a far worse pain, with the distant sound of someone screaming and electricity crackling, with icy fingers digging into his mind like a disease: I will get what I want, she hisses. Miasma. And the tomb, the place where Juno should have died, wanted to die, someone he loves safe and sound on the other side of an airlock, protected from the bomb, protected from the way Juno ruins the lives of everyone who ever gets close to him. It weighs him down all the time, this constant awareness of when it would be easier, better, more satisfying to die. When he can finally just let go.
When you hit rock bottom, there's something there, like it's been buried as deep down as it can go — but still warm, still soft and alive and beating. Protected by a cage of brittle bone, it must be a heart, it seems like it has veins that spiderweb out to touch everything, and it isn't a heart. Not really. It's just the faded impression of a man like a knife, sharp teeth and a sharper smile, but no name at all. Even in Juno's mind, the man is only him, and if you push harder for a name, all you can dig out is a scrawled note, a terribly soft voice: "I'm afraid I don't tell anyone my name. It would take someone very special for me to tell it now."
The weight of guilt there at the bottom is so strong it feels impossible to get out from under it.
MENTAL LINK
Even from a glance, there's nothing good. Juno's mind is a pit of tar and it wants you to sink. It gives the impression of a black hole, every flicker of light drowned out without making an impact, just dark as far down as it goes and pulling.
The bitterness of guilt washed down with the sharp burn of cheap spirits. Deep water too heavy to surface from, a red dust storm too thick to push through. Eyes tired from the glare of neon signage. Broken glass and raised voices; heartbeat jumping at the creak of floorboards, a child who feels like a monster hiding in the dark corners. The crushing weight of grief, of hopeless despair, of not wanting to face the next day ahead. Faintly, the smell of cologne that isn't his, something intoxicating about it that can't quite be pinned down.
There's something wire-taut and determined strung through the whole thing, but it seems like if that breaks, the whole thing comes caving in on itself — and on Juno's worse days there's a strain on that tether saying why not? and give up.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCES:PERMISSIONSPhysical Affection: Y
Physical Violence: Y
Romance/Relationships: he's very much in love & not the best candidate for polyamory
Thread-jacking: Y
Back-tagging: Y
Fourth-walling: N
Offensive Subjects/Triggers: I don't have anything I need to avoid! Juno himself comes with warnings for child abuse, severe depression, and suicidal ideation.
Anything Else? N/A
[ISA] • DRAGONSTRIKE @ PLURK
—ADDITIONAL ABILITIES.
—PERMISSIONS.
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