Kevin Sydney

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PHASE 2

Kevin Sydney
Portrayed by John Hamm
Codename:	Changeling
Affiliations:	X-Force
Birthdate:	March 15, 1930

Journal:	Kevin Sydney
Player:	Dex

"I can work with anyone. The question is whether or not you'll survive it."

Practically immortal, shapeshifter Kevin Sydney is trying to understand the (much younger) members of his new team.

Details

Character Journal: Kevin Sydney

Real Name: Kevin Sydney

Codename: Changeling

Aliases: Too many to name

First Appearance: February 6, 2015

Date of Birth: March 15, 1930

Place of Birth: Chicago, IL

Citizenship: American (although legally dead)

Relatives: None surviving.

Education: The Office of Training and Education - CIA

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Intelligence Operative

Team Affiliation: X-Force

Biography

Kevin Sydney was born in a quiet lower middle class home in Chicago. His father worked as a roundhouse mechanic before an injury forced him into working as a representative for the local union. It allowed the family a small but stable income. His family was stable, quietly devout and incredibly staid. However, his uncle on his mother’s side was a conman, and between his various scrapes and bouts in jail, ended up teaching Kevin a few skills that the younger man’s family did not entirely approve of. Sydney attempted to enlist at the age of 14 but was easily found out. After completing high school, he spent a year training as a mechanic before the onset of the war in Korea. He immediately enlisted as was sent to the front as a raw infantry man.

In Korea, Sydney made a name for himself as a skilled sniper and excellent scout. He had an ear for the language and learned a remarkable amount of Korean and Mandarin, able to mimic a number of different regional accents to completely fool native speakers. He was recruited by the fledging CIA out of the field and was sent to train in a number of disciplines.

HOME AT THE AGENCY

Kevin Sydney was officially activated as an operative of the CIA in 1955. He began to work the field, first in Asia due to his language skills, but quickly found himself deployed all over the world. It was after eight years that his powers began to manifest. Because of the lack of public acknowledgement about mutants at the time, Sydney had no idea what was happening to him specifically. His powers remained at a very low level, restricted to power tricks such as mimicking fingerprints or expanding lungs to hold his breath longer. Most of the effects were instinctively used and Sydney didn’t think to challenge them further. While the CIA were leery of his abilities, they also recognized the asset that he represented and quietly kept any official record of his abilities secret.

Sydney worked into the early 90s, spanning the bulk of the Cold War. Over the years, he was involved in many of the CIA’s clandestine missions. Worrying to them was also the fact that Sydney didn’t appear to age, although he’d taken the precaution of dying his hair white and using make-up to simulate the effects. With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Agency finally decided that the risk Sydney represented was too great; they didn’t understand his powers properly, they were running out of excuses about how a 60 year old agent was still a field operative and his knowledge of the internal history of the Agency was too thorough to risk simply retiring him. Instead, a black team killed him with a single rifle shot through the back of the head while he was fishing off his back dock. His body was encased in wire, weighted, and dumped in the deepest part of Chesapeake Bay.

BACK FROM THE DEAD

Kevin spent a decade under the water, his body rotting and his flesh scored by fish and crabs. Finally, a large enough piece of flesh broke away to rise to the surface of the water. The cells contact with sun and oxygen immediately woke Sydney to his horrible state. He spent a week drowning and waking a few moments later to drown again before he finally was able to calm down enough to focus on freeing himself. When he emerged from the water, he resembled a movie zombie; flesh rotten and bloated, falling away, bones clearly visible through the mangled flesh, unable to see or hear or smell as all his sensory organs had long since rotted away. He stumbled for an indeterminable before passing out. His comatose was found by a pair of hikers under a drift of leaves. One of them, a young woman, braved touching him long enough to look for any identification. The pair left to get reception to call the police, unaware that behind them, Sydney’s body was rapidly changing. Putrid flesh sloughed away, replaced with healthy, firm muscles and skin. From the rotten pile, a young woman stood shakily, wiping the vile mixture of fluids from her body.

The trauma of the death and the awakening had badly scarred Sydney’s mind. Beyond the sheer psychological damage, the actual physical reconstruction of his brain had scattered his memories and personality. He couldn’t remember his name, couldn’t speak, and could barely figure out how to stand upright. He staggered away, eventually being picked up from the side of the road by a police cruiser. Without any identification, match to missing persons and obvious mental damage, Sydney was sent to a state mental facility. For over a year he was there in his female form, slowly putting together the damaged suite of basic motor skills. He slowly regained his ability to read, do sums and to talk, although he maintained his silence out of an instinctive sense for potential danger. One day, in the laundry, he picked up a set of maintenance coveralls and by the time he put them on, he was a twin of the middle aged Italian man who served as a caretaker. Sydney simply walked out of the institution under the guise.

For the next several years, Kevin would go from body to body, every few months switching unconsciously into a new form and keeping it for several months. What he didn’t realize was that his powers were operating on instinct trying to rebuild and repair his mind. Each new body forced different experiences which rebuilt damaged sections of his brain. Those sections restored their neural function which would unlock more memories and skills from his former life. Finally, one morning, Sydney rolled over as a black woman in her early sixties and sat up himself.

A BRAND NEW WORLD

Fortunately, training as an operative served invaluable as Sydney adapted to a world changed in the fifteen years he’d lost. He was able to reach some of his assets and began to search for some answers. Finally, one of his inquiries put him in touch with an old friend; Christian Kane. Kane helped Sydney determine what had been done to him and put him in touch with Charles Xavier. Xavier was able to provide real answers about Kevin’s mutation, and used his powers to secure a psionic neural net in his mind so that his transformations would not cause the same memory loss or psychological trauma. Eventually, Sydney took Kane’s offer of a job; operating as a freelance intelligence agent, working with Kane’s old networks. Sydney completed a professional circle by returning primarily to work through Asian. He also began to work on his powers, exploring the limitations of his abilities.

The next chapter of his life started unexpectedly when Christian introduced him to Domino. A former NSA agent, she was a well-trained and deadly opponent, which Kane wanted to balance by improving her analysis and intelligence gathering skills. Their personalities clashed immediately, but professionally, they made a devastatingly effective team. They would still be independent save for M-Day, as Christian described it; destruction that soured humans on mutants and fueled intolerance and fear. Knowing the future Xavier would face, Kane asked the two to join with Xavier’s own intelligence group; to provide additional capabilities and expertise in order to keep everyone safe.

While his early meetings with X-Force were undercut by his extremely dim view of their experience and methods, he's slowly warmed to their abilities. After the first year, he began to push a new direction for the group, focusing their limited resources towards an offensively minded approach to intelligence. In the heightening security and mistrust of the world, he's pushed for a more aggressive early intervention. So far, this hasn't been expressed beyond a greater focus on cross training, but he's confident that it will be necessary.

Physical Characteristics

Height: N/A

Weight: N/A

Eyes: N/A

Hair: N/A

Other Features:

Kevin’s base physical look is that of a dark haired white male in his late thirties. He is just under six feet in height and his weight is a decently fit 175lbs. His hair is kept short and conservative and he wears no jewelry. He has no tattoos or piercings and his only accessory is an expensive but old self-winding Rolex. He typically wear dark, simply cut but finely tailored Seville Row suits, collared shirts and a tie. He wears a long grey trenchcoat and often wears a hat outdoors. While his overall style may seem a touch old-fashioned, the clothes are all modern cuts. This look is close to his original features, if slightly more symmetrical and touched up to improve his looks slightly.

That being said, due to his powers and his training, Sydney can switch his appearances in moments through either powers or conventional disguises. His true natural form is that of a grey skinned slim hairless androgynous figure with no nose and merely a slit for a mouth. If badly hurt or suffering great trauma, his body will revert to this form. Sydney does not unless absolutely necessary.

Powers

Kevin’s powers, in potentia, allow him control over each individual cell in his body and allow him to reconfigure them in any way possible. The reality is that the potential of the power is far too complex for a normal mind to control, stopping him from adopting inhuman shapes. Instead, the main facet of his power is the ability to change his physical form into a wide range of human shapes.

In his natural form, Sydney is a grey skinned body with a hardened thin internal frame and no organs. He has no heart, lungs or digestive system; all replaced by a bacterial stack which creates the fuel for his cells. In this form, he doesn’t need to breathe and is immune to gases, toxins, and disease. This ‘default’ form is what Sydney’s body will change into when he’s badly hurt, comatose or shocked. Otherwise, Sydney tries to avoid this form as much as possible.

In order to replicate a person, Sydney needs to have at least a visual. Optimally, touch or an article of clothing will provide a DNA print to build from. Visual changes will look the same but will not mimic DNA, fingerprints, voice, retinal prints, and other granular features. From a DNA print, the form is completely identical in all ways and can pass anything but a psionic scan. Sydney also can replicate a number of stock ‘characters’ at will; bodies that he’s worked on for years. During the change and in his base form, Sydney shows up as a mutant to scanning equipment but once changed, he only registers as a mutant if his subject is as well.

Past that, Sydney has developed a number of power tricks through selective control over his body. He can grow elongated claws or teeth, create ‘pockets’ in his flesh to hide small items or to store liquids like poison to use later. He can counteract fatigue or pain through ramping up his body’s chemical balance. He can also alter his body to improve his senses. However, that requires a physical change; for example, to increase his sense of smell, he grows a snout like feature in which the sensory organs can be stored. Enhanced sight gets him obviously inhuman looking eyes when used. Finally, his body has the ability to purge any foreign substance. So to sober up, he can quite literally sweat out pure alcohol. Rapid acting poisons and gases will still affect him, especially if caught unawares, but any slower acting agents are worthless as his body will naturally purge them.

Currently, it is unknown whether or not Kevin can actually die. When hurt badly enough, his body goes into a coma like state as the cells begin to replicate and repair the damage. If he’s without access to because building blocks like light and oxygen, the torpor state can continue indefinitely. However, because of the interconnectivity of all his cells, even parts of his body getting free are enough to revive the whole. However, he still feels pain and the traumatic shock of injury, which makes him as risk adverse as any normal person.