Astatine

The 85th schoolchild of the Freshman Class, Astatine spent most of his early life as a disembodied human consciousness. He sometimes goes by the identity Austin Timms, the name used in his civilian medical records.

Early Life

Astatine was engineered to be able to project his consciousness into circuitry. He was experimented on almost immediately after coming to awareness, and the resulting tampering and sensory overload caused him to wander aimlessly around the circuits for hours rather than complying with the staff's demands. Eventually, after 8 hours of wandering, his body lapsed into a coma, trapping him in the circuits.

For much of the year, he remained in the circuits, first escaping the testing room and inhabiting the School's networks before finally fleeing into the Internet. In the interim, he telepathically called to a nondescript rattata he called Willard, who he called onto to do physical things he was incapable of doing. Eventually, he learned the full extent of his powers and at the same time learned of the outside world through the Internet. Soon enough, he left the School's servers that he haunted for so long and made his way to the networks of PEFE, where he sought asylum. For a time, he lived in the Stormchaser, using a device given to his rattata by a staff member to communicate with other humans. There, he befriended other Schoolchildren (notably the freshman Vanadium and the 2010 Iron).

Eventually, he volunteered to be brought into a secure School facility in Sinnoh, where he opened doors and allowed the J-Team unbridled access to sensitive locations. There, he was able to find and repossess his physical body, though he needed Avery's assistance to get himself out.

Physical appearance

For much of the time he's been aware, Astatine had no physical body, instead manifesting as anomalous behavior in circuitry that can communicate with (and with the right amount of electricity, physically take control of) other beings. He mostly communicated telepathically, though a computerized device that can render speech will allow him to talk. In this form, he is often completely undetectible to anyone but an auric. Auric-spectrum individuals, meanwhile, can sense his presence and even recognize him as a human being.

The body he reclaims is a lanky adolescent male with a physical age of 15. As is typical of most schoolchildren, he is pale, dark haired, and has distinctive purple eyes. Said body has atrophied immensely in the intervening years it has spent in cold storage, which has given its new occupant no end of grief. He often dresses in typical skater boy attire, which is deliberate on his part as he is stuck in a wheelchair, which he treats much like a skateboard. The wheelchair he rides in is a pedal-powered exercise and therapy device, meant to help him regain muscular density and thus the ability to walk unassisted.

Personality

The circumstances of his birth and the year he spent in the networks and on the Internet had made Astatine vindictive toward the School. His attitude resembles that of an angry Internet user. That said, he is quite calculating and often relies on others to carry out his revenge more effectively. He fled to the J-Team specifically to gain an ally and was more than happy to help them carry out their operations. That said, he often intends to return the favor of those who do things for him willingly; he warned Willard of danger and kept him supplied with food, earning the latter's loyalty.

Once he regained his body, Astatine seemed to have mellowed out and now gives the outward appearance of a mischievous and hyperactive teenager.

Powers and Weaknesses

Abilities and skills

Astatine's standard power set is similar to most psychics (telepathy and limited telekinesis). His most notable power, however, is his ability to project his consciousness away from his body and into circuitry, allowing him to exist disembodied in cyberspace for extended periods of time. Of his power set, this has experienced the most use as it led to him being disembodied for much of his young life. While in cyberspace, his other set of powers have the potential to increase several fold as long as he has access to enough electricity.

One ability he gains when in control of sufficient amounts of power is physically manipulating other people's nervous systems, turning them into puppets.

Over the year he spent on the Internet, he has learned a lot about the outside world and also acquired the skills to bypass complex computer systems like those he used to inhabit,. He knows Morse code and can use flashes to simulate it when disembodied.

Weaknesses

Some of Astatine's greatest abilities are dependent entirely on the amount of energy he has access to. When limited to a flash drive or a small battery or dynamo-powered appliance, he is incapable of using any abilities besides telepathy. When in his physical form, Astatine is not capable of taking control of people for very long as it is energy intensive.

A year of stasis has caused his body to atrophy. As a flesh and blood being, Astatine is physically very weak. He is unable to walk unassisted due to legs lacking sufficient muscle mass. The energy expenditure of his psychic abilities mean that his body is constantly hungry and he spends much of his waking hours eating.

Astatine's Pokemon

Willard

Trivia

• Unlike most of his batchmates, Astatine's parallels to his element are not deliberate, and mostly tie to him being quite unstable.
  • Like the element, Astatine's powers were quite unstable at the start, resulting in his prior predicament.
  • Astatine spent only 8 hours in his physical body from the moment of his awareness before he was separated from it. This matches the half-life of his namesake element.
  • Although it has yet to come up IRP, Astatine is also meant to come off as slightly unhinged.
• Being on-record as the Freshman with one of the shortest life spans (beating out Radium, Hassium, and Potassium), Astatine is used as a case study of a "failed" experiment and is used by the School staff as a cautionary tale to the other Freshmen.
• As of 2022, he no longer has claim to the title of "shortest lived Freshman" as he is confirmed to have never actually died.
• His favorite beverage is probiotic yogurt, which was one of the foods suggested to him by his doctor.
• Astatine holds at least some--admittedly mostly parasocial--affection for his fellow Freshmen and considers them his siblings. This is likely because he spent much of the year reading about their files on the School's computers and got to know them that way.