ens causa sui

Player: Heather
Age: 41
Invited by: Mish
Contact: Discord: vikael | Plurk: vikael
Current Characters: n/a

Character: Fantomex | Jean-Phillipe
Canon: Uncanny X-Force Volume 1, Issue 27
Age: Appears mid-20s (is actually 5, it's a thing)

Background Information: A wiki? In this economy?

Personality: The casual observer, Jean-Phillipe presents himself as a flippant and sarcastic man who casually acquires and discards friendships as they serve his purposes, and this is exactly how he would prefer you see him. He isn’t so determined to fight his own battles as to be adverse to getting help, and he’s not above using manipulation and/or his powers of "misdirection" to get it. If spinning his actual circumstances in such a way as to play on someone’s sensitivities or principles gets them to help him out of a bind, he won’t hesitate to use that to his advantage. That isn’t to say he’s completely heartless and doesn’t have a moral code he adheres to himself. Those few who have earned his trust will have his often ambiguous loyalty, and while he’s adverse to threats upon his life, he will risk them to save those he cares about. Never one to seek out a fight, he isn’t one to back down from one should it present itself, though if the one he’s facing has a sentience capable of misdirection, it’s very possible they’ll end up fighting an illusion of him rather than the real deal.

He lives by a code of ethics all his own, and it rarely goes along the same lines of “right” and “wrong” as society would dictate it. He has no qualms with stealing, even if it was something so cruel as stealing a man’s sentient skin after he abandoned the man to a fate many would consider worse than death. Killing is also not a faux pas, and is often necessary for a variety of reasons. He doesn’t those moral constructs cloud his judgement, though he does have a sense of guilt around, for instance, having to kill a child. While he logistically understood the child Apocalypse was molded and shaped from birth to become Apocalypse, and that the only true and right answer was killing him before he was a threat to the world at large, he realizes and understands why others would see it as a crime against humanity. If given cause to do so again, he wouldn’t hesitate a second time, knowing that child would have become a monster. It was what he was made to be from the moment he’d come into being. He isn’t ignorant to the fact that many people don’t view his actions in such an objective light, and isn’t afraid to face the consequences of those actions, though he also thinks those people who would condemn him for saving the world are, in a word, moronic for allowing themselves to be so blinded by their own morals. His motivations don’t bend toward selfless preservation of mutant life, but he understands that his teammates’, the closest he’s ever come to friends, do. His loyalty runs deep to Logan and Betsy, and he will even go so far as to ignore the logical prodding of his second brain to ensure they are saved.

Many of his motivations for staying with X-Force also revolve around Betsy Braddock and his, as he says, unrequited feelings for her. He would arguably do anything for her, up to and including traveling to an alternate dimension to retrieve a weapon that may or may not put down Apocalypse to help her save Warren. It was no secret Jean-Phillipe harbored no love for the fly-boy, but it was important to Betsy, and so Fantomex stayed to help. He had no qualms with abandoning Deadpool to being shattered by Iceman to get help to save Betsy either, suggesting his loyalty to her doesn’t extend to the rest of his team.

While he can accept Betsy’s feelings for him will most likely remain locked away, he’s having a hard time at this point believing they don’t exist. When his he was put on trial for the murder of the child Apocalypse by her twin, Brian, and their brother Jamie and sentenced to being completely erased reality, she defied their wishes, broke him out, stole him away, and sacrificed her entire ability to feel sorrow just to save him. After all he’s been forced to do, and all he’s chosen to do, and how unscrupulous he is in all his dealings, after all the things he’s said to her and all the things they’ve done together, he can’t understand why he was worth that sacrifice.

Using a sample of blood taken from the boy he killed who would become Apocalypse, Jean-Phillipe, in secret, cloned the boy again, growing him inside the world in a completely virtual environment with a loving family and nurturing home. Originally intended to be a sort of social experiment to see if the boy was inherently evil because of what he was made to be or if the environment would dictate the boy’s morals. As he started visiting the boy, Evan’s, virtual world as his “Uncle Cluster” he started to develop a fondness for him that turned into love. He regrets that it was necessary to introduce him into the conflict so early in Evan’s life, but trusts Evan will do good and right. Even though it’s only been a few months in the real world, years passed for Evan in the virtual world, and years passed for Jean-Phillipe as he helped raise him, and he genuinely loves the boy as an uncle.

While Jean-Phillipe claims to be French, speaks with a French accent, has a taste for wine and fine cheeses, he isn’t actually. Jean-Phillipe is simply the persona he’s developed in his search for individuality after being raised as a part of the Weapon Plus project inside The World, an artificial research facility enveloped in a pocket of accelerated time. He has admitted he only uses the French accent because it’s proven to annoy and confuse people, but he embraces Jean-Phillipe as a real person. It makes him happy when Betsy calls him by the name he’s chosen for himself because it tells him she recognizes him as a person rather than the weapon he was made to be.

Abilities & Inventory: Fantomex is an artificially-evolved mutant and has multiple brains that allow him to perform parallel processes, has nano-active blood, and has a symbiotic relationship with a techno-organic, semi-sentient organism called E.V.A. that manifests as his primary nervous system.

E.V.A.: A machine-level conscious techno-organism that manifests as Fantomex’s primary nervous system. He can remove her, and in this form she can become a flying saucer that can be large enough to admit passengers. In this form, she also has a medical bay. She can also be small enough for him to ride, and can general electromagnetic blasts for self defense. Fantomex is telepathically linked to her, so if she’s damaged or otherwise effected, he feels it too. He can take remote control of E.V.A. and see through here “eyes”, but it takes a lot of concentration and leaves him vulnerable. In the same vein, when they’re separated, since she’s his nervous system, he doesn’t feel any pain.

Secondary nervous system: Can be activated when detached from E.V.A. Has limited functionality and only allows him to see in black and white.

Misdirection: His mutation is a sort of manipulation of the psyche that can also include limited illusions. A lot like jedi mind-tricks, he can make someone believe they’re in love with someone they’re not (like making the Horseman War believe he was in love with Betsy), or make someone believe he and others are people they aren’t (like disguising himself and Betsy as Merlyn and Roma to confuse the Jamie the evil goat demon). He can also make people believe he’s in a location he isn’t, allowing them to dismember an illusion while he remains at a safe distance nearby.

He can enter a trance-like state to heal himself and can even perform self-surgery in this state (like removing bullets).

He’s an expert marksman, even when not using bullets that never miss.
He’s an expert at reading body-language, which allows him to tell pretty accurately when someone’s hiding something, and how to best use misdirection on them.

Possible Nerfs: His ability "misdirection" comes with its own nerf in that the bigger the illusion he casts the more he has to focus on it, which leaves him vulnerable while doing so. As for E.V.A., his nervous system/ship, I would be perfectly fine with him only being able to manifest a small version, not large enough to enter but large enough for him to ride on like a floating disk. He does this in canon sometimes.

Inventory:
His black and white costume, minus the mask (seeing as he'd given it to Betsy very recently before leaving), and two black semi-automatic pistols.

Corsairs: Fantomex was created to assassinate mutants, but decided he didn't want to be used as a tool, rebelled, and has been something of a fugitive ever since. He idolized a figure from French popular culture of the early 20th century, who was a thief and an assassin and even took a stylized version of his name as his own codename. He values freedom over all else, and can be incredibly selfish (even where the love of his life is concerned).

Test Drive Sample: Here and Here

Questions: I'm open to any other nerfs you feel he needs on his powers!