Lead

Lead (or occasionally Plumbum) is the designation given to the friendly, people-pleasing 82nd member of the Freshman Class made by The School. His most notable power is that of a sort-of poisonous touch, in which he can destroy any living cells or tissue with tactile contact (his secondary power involves controlling water). He officially worked as an assassin for the school, but was more of a glorified field medic. Not long after his retrieval, he received the civilian name Michael Yume.

Appearance

Though barely four years old as of 2025, Lead has the appearance of a tall baby-faced Eurasian male in his mid-teens, with poofy brown hair, a lean muscular build, and gentle purple eyes. He wears baggy layered clothing and prefers to don overcoats, transparent safety goggles, and baker's caps. Due to his powers being hard to control, he wears gloves or mittens.

Personality

From the perspective of non-School personnel, Lead is a pleasant person to be around with, friendly, considerate, and accommodating to a fault. He tries to befriend people, though in The School, this is mostly reciprocated with scorn and condescension, especially among the Noble Gases. Despite this, he has won one friend, Polonium, and was well liked by at least one of the scientists. He, however, is acutely aware of how his powers affect people and for a time felt that he didn't belong anywhere outside the school, which proved to be a challenging hurdle for attempts to get him out.

History

Lead was the 82nd Schoolchild to be formulated. For much of his life, he was subjected to observation regarding the nature of his powers and confined to a sterile room in a facility in Sinnoh. While in isolated containment, he met Polonium, who he quickly befriended. He became the only person that Polonium could ever talk to verbally. Due to the similarity of their powers (and the fact that the symbol for his namesake element, Pb, has nothing to do with his Galarian name), they adopted the name "poison buddies" to describe themselves. Lead remained steadfastly loyal to Polonium even after the latter escaped; when they met after several years, he chose to hide the fact from the higher-ups. His time in the School has been marked with menial activities that take advantage of his chief ability, including medical disinfection. Despite being marked as an assassin, his true function is as a field medic, patching up injured Schoolchildren and Templars.

Shortly after December 2024, he was captured by Yasu and put in J-Team custody, which he describes as being "a prisoner." Despite this, he shows no ill-will toward his supposed captors and his movement isn't actually curtailed by them. Yasu quickly gave him lessons on the ins and outs of the outside world. Not long after, Yukari Kanase haphazardly gave him the name "Michael" in an attempt to have him blend in with regular human society.

Trivia

• His appearance, personality, and general demeanor is reminiscent of Serial Designation N from Murder Drones.
  • The name he receives is based on N's English voice actor, Michael Kovach.
• His corrosive tactile powers, meanwhile, are drawn from SCP-734.
  • There is a certain palpable irony that a poisonous person is used as a medic.
• His personality can be described as "sweet", an allusion to the purported taste of the very poisonous compound lead acetate.
• His hydrokinetic powers refers to how lead was formerly used in pipes.