ASH BISHOP | 26 | MLB PLAYER | GRADY SIZEMORE
+ strong, driven, good strategist, open-minded, good leader
- easily distracted, stubborn, overbearing, perfectionist, not academically minded
Ocular Manipulation - Ash is able to adjust his own vision as if his eyes were camera lenses. This includes altering focus, exposure, and zoom up to three miles, low-light vision and night vision, and ‘saving’ specific images to memory down to exact details. He can also, as of recently, virtually swap eyes with another person that he has had physical contact with. This allows him to see what they are seeing through their eyes, though it’s a one-way street and they cannot see what he sees. His ability to do this is limited to within a 10-mile radius for now, though Ash has proven that he can take it farther with practice.
"What are we now, the X-Men or something?"
As a kid, Ash always saw himself playing baseball in the major leagues, and worked through learning disabilities in high-school to stay on the team. He ended up with a hard-earned baseball scholarship, but even with the scholarship, he fought tooth-and-nail in college not to lose it, and gave his soul to stay on the baseball team. It all paid off when he finally got signed to play for the Oakland A’s, and he quickly he proved himself to be a fantastic pitcher as well as a talented hitter, earning a rookie of the year award. He played two years for the A’s before he was traded, and ended up playing for the New York Yankees.
Having rooted for the Yankees since he was young, Ash finally thought he had made it, until he began to suffer from dizzying ‘hallucinations’ on the field. He started to pitch more chaotically, his batting average dropped significantly, and after accidentally throwing a pitch directly at a batter and injuring him, Ash was benched. After weeks without improvement, doctors were baffled as to what was causing Ash’s bouts of disorientation, and talk was beginning to spread about his contract being reevaluated if his ability to play was compromised.
Facing losing everything he had worked for in life and having no backup plan, Ash sought different help. Better help. He had noticed, during one particular episode of hallucinations, that while he had lost focus on home plate, he seemed to zoom in on a camera man in the stands. This initially confused him, and like other times, he passed it off as a delusion. But Ash was nothing if not a little curious about what he had perceived, and resolved to be more aware of later episodes. He began to keep journals of the things he thought he saw during his hallucinations, but when he presented his notes to the doctors, they referred him to a psychologist, thinking Ash’s ailments were less physical and more neurological.
The psychologist was of little help, however, and the coach, the owner of the Yankees, and the entirety of the MLB was starting to get more and more impatient. Ash was close to giving up when he found his shortstop’s camera left behind in the locker room. Suddenly, everything clicked. He poured over his journals, and it was all there: focus, zoom, lighting…what he had been seeing weren’t hallucinations, it was his untrained eyes trying their best to see.
Ash went to 13 different optometrists, explaining his problems. None of them could help him, as his vision was 20/20, his tracking was perfect, and his hand-eye coordination was flawless. There was nothing to fix. There was, however, something to train and hone, and at last, Ash found a doctor who could help. She was a pHD, and not trained in medicine, but in biology. Specifically, in genetic mutation. She said Ash was very special, but she used a word Ash had learned to hate. She called him a mutant.
Soon enough, Ash was learning how to adjust to his mutation. He was playing and seeing better than he ever had, and it didn’t take long for him to get back in the game. He pitched perfectly, his eyes doing all of the calculating and his body making adjustments to follow. It was a perfect system, but nobody could know.
'Neurological Problems', they called it. It was vague, and Ash lost count of all of the times he had assured a fan that he was 'healed'. Except, he wasn't. He was still a mutant, and that still scared people. So he didn't say anything until one day, someone wanted to listen.
Mutant Town, it was called. He wasn’t exactly sure how he’d stumbled across it, but here he was. Everywhere he looked, there were people who were obviously different. From the four-armed mechanic smoking a cigarette outside Midtown Speed Shop to the eye-catching woman with quills poking out of her skin, Ash saw it all. And suddenly, everyone wanted to know why a famous Major League Baseball player was hanging around with mutants. Suddenly, Ash was lent a ear that might understand how it was to experience what he was going through.
Within the next week, he bought out a crumbling brownstone in the heart of Mutant Town, and in the off-season, he works alone renovating the property and testing the extent of his abilities.
