Personality

Imani Abbot has a passionate, albeit it bubbly, personality, with a strong sense of justice and purpose. She's not one to stand by and do nothing when she sees injustice in front of her. It is very difficult for her to just ignore such things, and sometimes she just doesn't know when to quit and just let it go. She's pretty vocal about her views, often times speaking before fully thinking out what it is she's saying. It's no surprise that some people consider her to be highly opinionated, but you couldn't ask for a more staunch, adamant supporter in your corner. Despite a streak of stubbornness, she will apologize if it turns out she's wrong. Playing into her inability to just let wrongs go unanswered is her tendency to get frustrated when she hits a dead end or is forced to abandon the quest. She beats herself up, begins to doubt herself. She has a habit of indulging dissembling humor and sarcasm when upset, as opposed to just getting to the center of what's actually bothering her.

While Imani has all the right qualities that a hero should have, she also has a bit of a Robin Hood complex. If we were talking about a DnD alignment, she'd definitely Chaotic Good. She's far more concerned with doing the right thing and helping others than she is with following the letter of the law. She would much rather stand for what is morally right in her mind, even if it means breaking the law to do it. To date she hasn't run afoul of law enforcement, but this trait of hers is bound to eventually become a problem.

When working with other heroes, Imani tends to be a team player. She very much knows her role, which more often than not means she's information gathering, extracting civilians, or she's a one woman diversionary tactic. She tends to defer to those more experienced than herself, until such a time as orders come into conflict with her own personal beliefs. While she definitely will vocally question an order if she doesn't agree with it, she more often than not will grudgingly go along with them...to an extent, anyway.

Abilities

Imani's powers are based largely on the scientific theory of the tesseract, a four-dimensional construct approximated in three-dimensional terms as a cube suspended within a cube. When an industrial accident resulted in her body being struck by dimensional particles, she was given the ability to change the vibration of her molecules in a way that causes her to enter into a state of tetradimensional existence. This leaves her with the potential to do a lot of things while breaking the rules that apply to a three-dimensional world. There's a lot that she doesn't know she can do at this time, but she has termed the things she does know how to do as “weird things.” Those weird things include:

• Duplication: While not the correct term for this ability, it's the only label she can think of to give it. She can cause multiple instances of herself to appear at the same time. These are not copies, clones or doppelgangers. She can occupy the same physical space harmlessly with...well, herself. Multiple instances of herself may interact as if they are different people, but are, in fact, just more of herself. The advantage is that what one Imani knows, the others will know. When using this ability, she may appear to occasionally flicker or appear to move in stop motion, especially when there's a bunch of Imanis at once.

• Teleportation: Again, the label's not entirely correct. Just as Imani can make instances of herself appear in a certain space in time, she can also move herself in the same fashion. This allows her to move great distances instantly, even appear at different points in time. Her ability to use this power is a bit imperfect, especially when trying to go to places and times she's never been to before. The less familiar she is with where she's going, the higher the chances that she's not going to wind up when and where she desires.

While Imani has normal resistances to most everything, she does have some resistance to telepathy and mental domination. Because she's not always entirely part of three dimensional space, it creates a weird sort of mental screen that makes it difficult to perceive her thoughts or get a hold of her psyche. However this does not mean she's completely immune. A sufficiently powerful psychic who is open minded enough and has the intellect to detect that she's not entirely part of this dimension, and can intuit where her psyche is at (for lack of a better way to put it) can reach her with their abilities.

Beyond her tesseract based powers, Imani has learned some basic combatives training (so that she can learn the right way to throw a punch) and is a talented hacker (hence the hactivist occupation).

Weaknesses

• The Mind's The Limit: Remember the Little Engine That Could, and his mantra, “I think I can, I think I can?” If Imani doesn't think she can do something, it won't happen. She has to really believe she's capable of doing a thing with her powers for it to work. For simple things, such as calling up two or three instances of herself, or making relatively short teleportation hops, this isn't an issue. But the more complicated the task, the more she may doubt her ability to pull it off, therefore basically sabotaging herself.

• Too Much Information: Because what one Imani knows, all the others know, sometimes there's just simply too much coming information coming in at one time. This can lead to dizziness, disorientation, and in extreme cases simply blacking out and causing the other instances to vanish.

• I'm Not A Physicist: If Imani happened to be a theoretical physicist, she would probably have a much firmer grasp on just how much power is at her disposal. However, she's not, and therefore she only has access to a fraction of her potential. And unless something drastic were to happen to her understanding of the theory behind her abilities, she never will meet that potential.

• Just A Human: She is just as vulnerable and prone to injury and sickness as any other human being. The downside to that is that any injuries she sustains carry over to any other instances that are out and about at the time.

Equipment

Compared to other heroes, Imani doesn't carry a lot of special equipment. Most of what she has was designed by the folks at the Goodman Institute.

• Body Armor: Her suit has ultra light body armor built into the weave to help absorb some of the force behind physical blows, providing her with some protection should she be forced into melee. It isn't going to be stopping bullets, but it allows for a lot of freedom of movement.

• Communications Collar: The chest piece of her suit has a communications collar built into it, which works much like bluetooth collars. Retractable earbuds allow her to listen in to police scanners and pick up on communication frequencies she has access to (or gains access to). Microphones built in are sensitive enough that she can whisper, with an advanced design that cancels out background noise. The device can interface with her palm computer, which allows her to patch sound through to the collar if needed.

• Palm Computer: This circular device clips to her belt, where it's always within easy reach. It comes built in with a number of different functions, such as mapping, GPS, and decryption programs. She interacts with the device via a transparent holographic display.

• Pouches: Pouches attached to her gloves provide her a place to stow things like flash drives and adapter cords, as well as other fairly mundane things.

Backstory

Imani was born and raised in Dallas, TX, the daughter of a school teacher and a state politician. She spent a lot of time around her grandmother and grandfather. They were both very active in the civil rights movement in Texas, and had even made the trek to DC to watch Dr. Martin Luther King, JR give his iconic “I Have A Dream” speech. Imani hung on every word as they spoke of the struggles they faced back then, and it was no surprise that these stories played a great part in shaping her attitudes toward issues of injustice. She followed in their footsteps as she got older, though instead of taking to the streets to march, she took to the internet. She joined a hacktivist group called Daemon Spawn during her junior year of high school, where she adopted the handle “NaughtyThoths.” She was an active member of the organization until 2012. Daemon Spawn's mission was to expose corporate greed and misconduct. Their common tactic was to compromise the network security of these corporations, lift incriminating evidence, and then leak it to media outlets. Members of the group commonly took on monikers that nodded to creatures of myth associated with knowledge keeping – NaughtyThoths (Thoths, referring to Thoth, instead of thoughts) and Odintchano (Odin and 'Oh didn't you know') for example.

In the summer of 2012, Daemon Spawn turned its attention toward the Heinlein Aerospace facility in Frontera, TX. They believed the company was blatantly taking advantage of poorly enforced environmental regulations in the state. Repeated attempts were made to dig up some kind of dirt, to find anything incriminating to leak to the media. Eventually, it was decided that someone needed to get into the facility and access the systems that way. It was risky, but two volunteers stepped forward: Imani and another Daemon Spawn member named CoyoTease. They arranged to join a tour of the facility, and the plan was for CoyoTease to make a scene while Imani slipped off to complete their mission. Not only did the plan fail, but it failed in a completely unexpected manner...

Technicians at Heinlein were working on a revolutionary new method of dimensional travel as part of a contract with UNTIL. The day that Imani and her co-conspirator arrived for their tour was the day they were set to conduct their very first test. A containment failure caused a release in unstable dimensional particles. They flooded the facility, breached its walls, and soon enveloped the entire bordertown of Frontera. It all happened so quickly that there wasn't time to issue an evacuation: within 10 minutes, the town of Frontera was simply gone. When officials finally made it on scene, Imani was the only person left. Scientists from the Goodman Institute were brought in to examine why she survived when no one else had.

The rest of 2012 went by in a surreal blur. Goodman's brightest were stumped, and eventually came to the conclusion that there must have been something in Imani's DNA that had allowed her to survive the accident. They assigned Dr. Stan Gladwell to her case to determine the full ramifications of her exposure, and what it could do to her in the long run. She went into litigation with Heinlein's legal team, where she was faced with a difficult choice. If she chose to press on with charges, they would expose what the fact that she was a member of a notorious hacktivist group. This would ruin her father's political chances at a House Representative run in the next election cycle, and likely put an end to his career in the state of Texas as well. She would be turned over to the FBI, and be made to reveal the identities of other members of Daemon Spawn, whether by forcing testimony from her or gaining that information when they seized and searched her equipment. If she chose to settle and sign a non-disclosure agreement, they would agree to not disclose the true nature as to why she was there to start with. Unnerved by the fact she didn't know what was happening to her, fearful of exposing Daemon Spawn, and not wanting to bring scandal and shame on her family, she agreed to the terms.

While all of this was going on, strange things kept happening to her. These events culminated into Imani actually running into herself coming in a door she was about to walk out of. A panicked call to Dr. Gladwell led to even more tests. In the fall of 2013, the scientist and his team determined that the unstable particles that she had been exposed to had altered her molecules. What was happening in the times where she randomly appeared places and when she was seeing multiples of herself was that her molecules were vibrating in such a manner that she was entering the fourth dimension. Gladwell termed it as entering a 'state of tetradimensional existence' that allowed her to essentially ignore common rules of the third dimension. There were many talks about the possibilities of her newfound abilities that, quite frankly, left her with a migraine and her head spinning. But what she did get out of all of that was that she had powers. And now new possibilities were coming to mind. Thanks to the NDA, she had basically laid her identity as NaughtyThoths to rest. And while she had no intention of poking the bear and going after Heinlein, she could continue her mission in a new way. She could do this, while helping people in need at the same time.

A few months and many consultations with Dr. Gladwell later, two new identities were formed: Tesseract and ANONsi. The skills that had led to her recruitment into Daemon Spawn now helped her bring criminals to justice when the judicial system failed. ANONsi has become a name dreaded by those trying to navigate the loopholes in the justice system to avoid conviction, coming forward with condemning evidence that has led to the indictments of several corrupt politicians and underhanded CEOs in Texas. Tesseract, on the other hand, is taking a bit longer to really become a household name. She recently made national headlines when she was caught on camera evacuating bank robbery hostages. The Goodman Institute, specifically Gladwell's team, contacted her shortly after, asking if she would be willing to move to Millennium City, where the bulk of their work was being done in a high tech facility. It would allow them to monitor her power progression, and advise her as she grows fully into them. She agreed, and headed up to Michigan, where she currently resides.

Affiliations

• Protectors of the World: Tess joined the ranks of the Protectors of the World in June 2015. Her first mission with the group saw her and others of the group thrown back in time.

• Daemon Spawn: A hacktivist group that was formed in 2002. Imani was an active member between 2008 and 2012. Daemon Spawn's mission was to expose corporate greed and misconduct. Their common tactic was to compromise the network security of these corporations, lift incriminating evidence, and then leak it to media outlets. Members of the group commonly took on monikers that pay homage to mythical creatures and deities associated with knowledge.

Friends

Dr. Stan Gladwell: Born in Wales, Stan graduated at the top of his class from Cambridge. He was recruited fresh from University to join L'Institut Thoth. He worked there for five years, before resigning his commission, citing that he was uncomfortable with the organization's work with known villains (even when said work is benign in nature). From there he was hired on with the Goodman Institute. His first assignment was a strange incident in southern Texas, where an entire town save one person had vanished. He was assigned to Imani's case, and the two took to one another quickly. He serves as advisor and confidante, and knows more about her life than anybody else.

Foes

Larry the Seagull Guy: First encountered in Vancouver, Larry has the ability to commune with and command seagulls. Lonely, sad, and a bit on the pathetic side. He attempted to cause trouble during an evacuation, seeking money to pay for medical costs for his sick dog. Rather than arrest him, Tess made (un)wise use of Protectors' resources to make sure Larry's canine companion was taken care of. Current status: At Large. (First featured in THE THINGS SPARROWHAWK MAKES ME DO: The Desperation of Larry the Seagull Guy)

Soundtrack

"My Boss is a Sniper - Gibbs' Rules" by Brian Kirk
"Chateau" by Rob Dougan

Gallery

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  References for Tesseract's original look

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  Protector's Group Shot (Tesseract seen upper left). Art by MJB.

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  Voreen & Tesseract. Art by Parikuu.

RP Hooks

• Does your character work for or with the Goodman Institute? Then it's possible you may have met Tesseract and/or Dr. Gladwell.

• Imani's father, Malcolm Abbot, is a Republican representative for the state of Texas in the House of Representatives. If your character follows politics, then they may be familiar with the fact that he tends to follow party lines on most all issues.

Miscellaneous

• Tesseract's face claim is Naomie Harris.

• Dr. Stan Gladwell's face claim is George Blagden.

Comments

Have you worked alongside Tesseract? Feel free to leave a comment below!

"Tesseract is still rather new to this business. There's untapped potential there and a fighting spirit that will get her where she needs to go. In some ways she may be my 'special project'... her greatest setback is only her mind and imagination. When her barriers are finally let down I do believe the sky is the limit for her. She only needs time, and she's got that in spades." - Sparrowhawk