Quentin Quire

This page is about the Phase 2 incarnation of the character. For other uses, see Quentin Quire (disambiguation).

PHASE 2

Quentin Quire
Portrayed by Baekho
Codename:	Omega
Affiliations:	X-Factor
Birthdate:	September 17, 1997
Journal:	xp-erverse
Player:	Ben

Now is the time for my revolution. And you all will fucking burn.

An angry loner who suffered severe bullying, Quentin Quire pulled a Carrie when his telepathy manifested. The X-Men stopped him before he crossed the line of no return, and he enrolled at Xavier's to learn to control his mutation and gain some perspective on life.

Details

Character Journal: xp-erverse

Real Name: Quintavius “Quentin” Quirinius Quire

Codename: Omega

Aliases: Jack Chin, Tamago Yaki, Jimmy Cheung (fake ID's)

First Appearance: April 10, 2015

Date of Birth: September 17, 1997

Place of Birth: South Korea

Citizenship: American

Relatives: Quartus and Lucia Quire (adoptive parents)

Education: High school diploma

Relationship Status: Single

Occupation: Student, activist, rabble-rouser, all-around asshole

Team Affiliation: X-Factor

Biography

Childhood and Adolescence

Quartus Quire is the wealthy owner of a massive construction company in New York. He and his wife Lucia tried unsuccessfully for years to have children; Quartus refused to believe, as his doctors advised him, that he was infertile. Ultimately, after much pestering from Lucia, he had no choice but to face reality, and accepted his wife’s proposal that they adopt. And if they adopted internationally, she argued, they would be seen as such great people who’d rescued a poor child out from a miserable situation. And while adoption, particularly internationally, is burdened with hurdle after hurdle, it’s nothing a few hundred dollars here or there can’t simplify. So in early 1998, the Quires welcomed their new son, whom they named Quintavius, or Quentin for short.

Quentin’s early life went about as well as can be expected when being raised by a pair of rich, class-conscious, apathetic white people who’d only had a child as a status symbol. Quartus and Lucia weren’t abusive, but they were emotionally absent, and Quentin was often left to his own devices. He grew up a loner without friends, a constant target of bullying, finding his only respite in the words of Roald Dahl and Philip Pullman, and later JD Salinger, James Baldwin, and Karl Marx.

His telekinesis manifested without incident or trauma when he was 13, but he wasn’t powerful enough to cause any trouble. His manifestation did spur him to research online about mutation, where he learned that mutants were banding together as a community, just like any other minority. He became very active in the online mutant community, finally finding some people with whom he could identify. He kept his powers a secret in real life, though, as he understood the danger he’d encounter if it were revealed. And really, no one else deserved to know the truth about him, anyway. He did start dyeing his hair wild colors, though, so he could at least approximate the otherness that some mutants experience.

In early 2015, Quentin started having an affair with his history teacher. Tom Logan received his MEd and started teaching at Quentin’s prep school only a couple of years earlier. He was well liked and respected by his peers, students, and parents. And he was one of the few (if not the only) teachers whom Quentin respected. His American history class focused on the actual people and their struggles: black people and post-slavery racism, the working class’s abuse from the middle and upper classes, women’s emancipation, gay liberation, disability awareness, and the intersection of all these classes. He was a younger, hotter, gayer Howard Zinn.

And Quentin really wanted some of that. So he did what any other 17-year-old who was hot for teacher would do: he made a Grindr profile and hoped that he’d find Tom on it. And a week later, he did, and the two arranged to hook up. Quentin didn’t put his face or his real name on his profile, though, so his appearance at Tom’s door was a terrifying shock to his teacher. Tom invited Quentin inside, at least to get him out of the cold and so his neighbors wouldn’t see such a young visitor coming over late at night. He expressed his concern about Quentin going online to have sex with strange men and asked Quentin if things were okay at home. They ended up having a long and intimate conversation in which Quentin for the first time vocalized his problems at home, his loneliness, and his confusion with his identity. It was a huge relief to actually say these things out loud to a sympathetic ear.

And then they slept together.

Tom and Quentin continued their relationship in secret for another couple of months. They agreed to strict guidelines: no communication during school hours or on campus except for what’s scholastically necessary, not going out together publicly, and no telling anyone anything, not even a hint. That was pretty easy for Quentin, seeing as he didn’t have any friends and didn’t speak to anyone or go out, anyway. But those rules didn’t prohibit sexting and nude selfies, which they sent to each other constantly.

And that of course ended up being their downfall. Quentin was browsing through some of their racier messages after school one day, when one of his regular tormentors grabbed his phone right out of his hand and revealed its contents to his friends nearby. Understandably mortified, Quentin used his telekinesis in public for the first time, slamming the bully to the ground and taking back his phone. He went straight to Tom’s office to tell him that their secret was discovered and it would only be a matter of time before it was revealed to the school at large.

Tom made the difficult decision to inform the principal and tender his resignation that afternoon. While he was only 24 and Quentin 17, the legal age of consent in New York, their relationship violated school policy and was a fireable offense. Better to come clean and own up to it and hope to salvage some prospect of his career instead of letting it crash down.

21st Century Digital Boy

Life only became harder for Quentin after that. Already prime bully material, Quentin became an even bigger target for violence after his mutation and his sexual relationship with a teacher of the same sex was revealed. “Quentin Queer” literally could not walk the halls unmolested.

On April 10, 2015, the violence reached a breaking point. Cornered by a trio of bullies at school, Quentin's telepathy manifested, and he inadvertently psychically linked up with everyone in a 100-yard radius and pulled them into the Astral Plane. He quickly realized that he had dominion there, and proceeded to pay back his tormentors for every perceived slight. When news broke of students and teachers inexplicably falling unconscious, the X-Men sent Jean Grey and Jennie Stavros to investigate. They followed Quentin into the Astral Plane and offered him a place at Xavier's where he could be safe and hone his abilities. He initially rebuffed them, but they won him over by pointing out that continuing the violence committed against him solves nothing. He needs to direct his rage in a productive manner if he truly wants to effect change.

Jean muddled the memories of Quentin's victims so they would not recall what Quentin had done to them, and then showed him how to return everyone to the material world.

Quentin mostly kept to himself once he moved to the mansion. What time he didn't spend alone in his room was dedicated to telepathy lessons, getting high on the roof with the one person he didn't find disagreeable, and publicly refusing to engage in Generation X activities. In July, Quentin accompanied a group of residents to a crafts fair in District X (to support the mutant community, not for the personal interaction), where they witnessed a group of police officers assault an unarmed mutant. He tried and failed to use his psychic powers to stop the cops, earning a small concussion, a bloody nose, and the ire of his peers. He expressed his outrage at the injustice of the assault and what he interpreted as the apathy and hypocrisy of his fellow mutants. Accusing everyone at the mansion of not caring about mutant welfare went about as well as could be expected and helped alienate him further from his peers. Getting a new roommate did not do anything to improve his disposition.

Jessica Jones, whom Quentin had written off in Gen X, saw something in him that reminded her of herself at a younger age, and took it upon herself to help guide Quentin to a better place. She told him about X-Factor Investigations and the good grassroots work it does. Intrigued, Quentin pleaded his case to Adrienne Frost and Warren Worthington, and after some consideration and assurance that he wouldn't bring the place down from the inside, invited him to join.

Do I Know You?

Quentin's lessons in telepathy continued apace, but suffered a drawback in mid-September when, when Jean dismissed him after he threatened her during a session on the Astral Plane. Outraged at his rejection, he tried to find solace again in the one person he trusted to do so: Tom Logan. Quentin tracked him down to his new home in Queens, but Tom was less than pleased to see him. And when Quentin revealed that he was a mutant telepath, Tom completely lost it and accused Quentin of having used his power to manipulate him into a sexual relationship with a student (even though as far as Quentin knew, his telepathy had not yet manifested). Quentin left, despondent. Clint Barton offered a sympathetic ear, but it was a night of drunken debauchery with Gabriel, followed by a genuine apology and confession to Jean, that gave him some much-needed perspective on telepathy and consent. But in true Quentin Quire fashion, he immediately followed up this good will by antagonizing Wanda Maximoff and his normally unflappable roommate.

In early November, Quentin was drawn into the psyche of a terrified mutant in Quebec, who had reached out into the Astral Plane for help before she was to be lobotomized by a religious fundamentalist/anti-mutant surgeon. As a result of his inexperience, he also drew in Gabriel, Wanda, and Jean-Paul Beaubier, leaving the four of them in control of the girl's body, while the girl's own personality was nowhere to be found. The four escaped the hospital and, despite troubles encountered along the way, got down to Montreal to recruit Jean-Paul's guardian to help them return to the mansion. When they did get back, Xavier guided Quentin and the rest into the recesses of their shared mindscape to find the girl and bring her back. The experience brought the four closer together, helping to mend the enmity between Quentin and Wanda, and provided an excuse for another night of intimacy between him Gabriel.

Quentin moved into his own space after another almost violent confrontation with Amadeus. His first official case at XFI was similarly disastrous; while investigating the murder of a poor mutant named Mole, the team was savagely ambushed by mutant feral Sabretooth. Quentin thankfully escaped without major injuries, but several of his teammates were not so lucky.

Great Attractors

The year 2016 began with Quentin and the mansion's other psis dragged into the astral plane where they it colonized by parasites, remnants of the rebuilding of reality a year prior. Through their combined efforts, they cleansed the astral plane, and Quentin did what he does best to recover from the ordeal: have sex with Gabriel and then get high.

He made a few more notches in his bedpost in the months that followed, with Kyle Gibney in July, Xavin Majesdane in September, and Jean-Paul (finally) in November, following the latter's discovery that his mutations may have contributed to his Olympic wins. Not all of his encounters ended so pleasantly, though. Following months of sniping and agitation over the journals, he telepathically forced Maya to experience his years of bullying and harassment pre-Xavier's. And though she tried to make him see life from her perspective, too, he casually dismissed her, more intent on maintaining their animosity than healing it.

Physical Characteristics

Height: 5'9"

Weight: 130 lbs.

Eyes: Brown

Hair: Black but dyed pink

Other Features: Quentin has one piercing on each earlobe, and one helix piercing on his left ear. He also has a two tattoos. The first is on his left pectoral, obtained in December 2015, which reads "or does it explode?", the final verse of the Langston Hughes poem Harlem, which is also the poem at the beginning of the Lorraine Hansberry play, A Raisin in the Sun. The second is on his right bicep, obtained October 2016, and is of the Greek god of wine and celebration, Dionysus.

Powers

Quentin is a hybrid telekinetic/telepath. Unlike many of these dual psis, though, his power is not evenly split between the two abilities. His TK is only a reflection of his own physical strength; he can’t lift any more or any longer than he’d be able to life with his own two hands. Presumably, a combination of strength training with TK training could enhance this ability but only to mundane limits. This ability could theoretically be refined into tactile TK, thus essentially doubling his physical strength.

Quentin’s real power lies in his omega-level telepathy. Unlike many of the other psis, Quentin is a brute-force telepath and unable (or possibly unwilling) to perform subtle applications of the ability. He can dismantle psychic shields, overwhelm a mind, create intricate illusions, and manipulate his corner the astral plane with stunning aptitude. Though he has yet to find the proper occasion to use it, he can also generate bursts of telepathic energy to use offensively.

Despite this, his own shielding is relatively weak and he can be easily overwhelmed himself. He is also still very crude in his uses of telepathy and so uses more energy than a more talented psi would, which exhausts him fairly quickly.

Equipment

Nothing yet.

Trivia

Quentin has a pet chinchilla named Fuckwad.

External Links

x_communication posts by tag

x_journal posts by tag

x_logs posts by tag

Plots

2015

21st Century Digital Boy

Do I Know You?

Case File: A Better Mole Trap

2016

Great Attractors

The Two Sided Coin of Ambition

Meta

Player: Ben

E-mail:

Player Icon Base: Baekho

Meta Trivia

The decision to racebend Quentin as Korean was partly based on the difficulty of finding a PB with the right kind of hair.

Quentin was described in his application as a mutant amalgam of Holden Caulfield, Thomas Barrow, and Jesse D'Amato.