#16 Rusty and “Shiny” Shane Toledo

 

Universe/Storyline: The Band

Universe details: In the isolated city of Crescent where these characters live, superpowers spring from close encounters with death. Only people born in the city can gain these powers, and since this is a relatively new settlement, the first generation of people born there are just starting to show signs of super-fication. This means mostly kids and teens. Of the teens, Camille, Max, Amelia, Walter, and Rin decide to team up and form a band. They take it upon themselves to realizes that everyone deserves to be informed about the city’s unique predicament, they try to reach every kid in the city at once by putting on a live concert.

Besides the fact that they’re identical twins of age 13, these two have little to nothing in common.

Rusty was born first. He was named for his copper red-brown hair. He despises the infantile associations with the name but embraces it nonetheless. His brother Shane was born moments later, with the same copper red-brown hair, but his parents didn’t name him based on that. Recently Shane has started dying his hair black and calling himself Shiny.

The best way to sum up the personalities of these two is by comparing them to one manic-depressive individual. Shiny is the manic and Rusty is the depressive. While Shiny is bouncing off the walls, getting excited or angry, and just emoting to an absurd extent, Rusty is cowering in the corner, trying to drown out Shiny’s noise with a pillow over his head. The two brothers do not get along.

Rusty and Shiny don’t have any superpowers. They missed out on the concert, Rusty being too depressed and Shiny having fallen into a coma-like sleep that follows an intense day of hyperactivity. When Shiny wakes up to the chaos of the Powers Riots, he decides that he’s going to participate. He gathers up all of the sharp and shiny weapons he can find in the kitchen and sets out to start his own faction of non-superpowered individuals called The Vigilantes. However, no self-respecting teen even a year older than Shiny will join him, so The Vigilantes ends up being composed of a bunch of imaginative kids. To The Band, The Vigilantes are more of a nuisance than a threat.

Shiny and his new friends plague Rusty, hardly allowing him any time alone or peace and quiet. When he overhears what The Vigilantes are planning, he decides to go to The Band and share what he knows in exchange for sanctuary.

Category: 2011, Superhero