Found my old drawings from when I was about 13 where I had a thunderbirds with powers AU!! Some of the powers never made sense but I thought they were cool at the time and I wanna explain them:
Primary powers: Prescience
Secondary powers: telekinesis
Scott is, before all, an extremely competent commander, and an absolute beast on duty. His Prescience allows him to make life risking assessments in a fraction of a second. It essentially allows him to see events right before they happen. Whether that be a rock falling onto an unfortunately placed civilian, or the aftershocks of a calamity- Scott will ALWAYS be able to save as many lives as possible, even more on the days his brothers are also on scene. The saddening downside to this, however, is when he's home. He'll be in between rescues, comfy clothes on, ready to lay down on his expensive sofa and watch shows he started months back- when it'll flash behind his eyes in sharp bursts of grief. Calamities. Death and hospitals. Volcanic eruptions. The industrial machine that turned on mid clean, a man's legs dissapearing into the metal.
Half a world away, with only a few seconds warning. That messes with a man.
His primary awakened quite young, young enough that Gordon wasn't around yet and it was mostly used to block anything that got thrown at virgil by a grumpy John.
He can, like all the other Tracy's, use his secondary powers to a certain degree. They're not as powerful as their primary, but they can also be nurtured to be more than they were when awakened. Telekinesis - using ones mind to manupulate objects. It never used to be much, only able to sustain it long enough to move objects across the table, or fetch himself a pen from across the room when he was knee deep in documents demanding his attention. Nowadays, he can blow a boulder up from inside out before it reaches an establishment, use it to send a person hurtling across a gap in the earth, catch them before they splat on the ground. But it takes a toll on him, strains his mind the more he uses it, and the mental blackout it causes is worse than normal exhaustion. The splitting headache it causes can keep him grounded for days.
Primary powers: Emotional manipulation
Secondary powers: heightened strength
Virgil has been described as the 'peacemaker' of the Tracy family on official platforms. In recent years, I myself am victim to making him the main medic of the brothers, but back then I just knew what the official site told me. Anyways- emotional manipulation can mean many things in many fandoms, and there are sooo many different branches officially and unofficially, but emotion based is the one I'm still drawn to the most.
Virgil uses this gift to calm the masses. To gently persuade terrified kids to cross unstable ground, to direct hordes who weren't originally willing to listen over the sound of their nervousness. To pacify harsh arguments at Tracy industries by competitors looking for weak points. To softly lull his brothers to sleep when they can't sleep because of nightmares. To soothe Alan when his ghosts start getting too loud.
And rarely, he'll use his gift for darker purposes. To install doubt into the man so very ready to pull a trigger on one of his brothers, who were only there to help. To direct a villain right into the path of the law enforcers, trying to ignore the man's horror at his body no longer obeying him. For his own morbid curiosity, forcing the man with a bomb to spill out all his secrets, to know why he tried to harm so many people. He can't help his own anger bleeding into their trouble minds, and as a result, their fear bleeds strongly into his.
So many emotions, theirs and his becoming his and theirs, its a maddening and dizzying abyss, one he must fight to escape from. This is why he tries so hard to make sure he maintains a pacifist point of view, to only use his powers for settlement, to bring people home without too much interference. So he too doesn't get lost. He's also able to put up a sort of 'sheild' within rooms. He will let his power emerge and cover an area, and whoever in it will have to stop and take a breath. He'll pump into it as many positive, calm vibes as he can and let it dissolve naturally without focusing it on one person. He hates doing that to his brothers- watching Scott's eyes go blank arguing with Alan, stopping mid sentence, Alan's eyes going hazy when all he was doing was trying to make a point to his oldest brother who still sees him as someone who needs help tying his shoelaces. The shield is a much gentler version of the extreme, spreading calm, not the commandment to. People are naturally drawn to him, his calm, his steady ability to make unbiased decisions, his amazing ability to control his own dark emotions.
Virgil is a big dude (one might say.. hench). This could be a side effect from his secondary- heightened strength. His muscles have to work twice as hard as an ordinary person to keep up with the strain his power puts on his body, but unlike most of his siblings- his does not come with a price. It seems he is also unable to progress with this ability. What he lifts now is what he will lift forever.
Primary powers: Technopotence
Secondary powers: gravity control
Come on. John, the eye in the sky? Father of EOS, the AI? This man was born for technology powers. It is how it sounds- he is basically using technology in the same way those of religion see their God as omnipotent- all seeing, always present. Code might as well be his first language, computers his children, technology his mother. He is able to access many cameras at once, have eyes all across the world, hear every little thing on one thousand dollar microphones or two euro headphones. If he really wanted to- he could cause an entire nation to go dark, just with a single blink. He created EOS out of boredom one day, the artifical intelligence that Gordon dubs his niece. She is born of code that realistically speaking should not exist. Her and John have their own entire language.
There is nothing that anyone is able to hide from John. Not for long. No password can stop him, firewall stump him, no robot can deny his will.
He is quite partial to moving funds between rich assholes to charities that need it... completely anonymous, so that they don't get recognition, of course.
He is the man behind International rescue these days. Wherein Scott is the face in the light, he is the man in the shadows, watching for threats. He tells them exactly where and when to go, even before calls are made, floating on radio waves and wading through morse and stars alike.
And the machines. Watching him, you'd swear they were alive. The birds- their girls- react to John like baby birds react when their mother approaches the nest. Any glitch in their systems- found and repaired in seconds. Any damage taken, Brains was directed to it swiftly. And when John was around, their engines purred louder than they ever did. There is a downside, of course.
Despite all the beeping, the bright flashing lights, the visual and auditory imput- code is alot quieter than humans. And when you're in the vast emptiness of space, with only these screens, coming down to earth is similar to being deaf all your life, before having hearing aids and being placed next to a screeching kettle. Watching people on cameras from above is one thing, being crushed in the middle of a loud, disorganised crowd is another thing. It causes him distress- and the most splitting headache you could possibly imagine.
His secondary is gravity manipulation- it came a little late in life, possibly triggered by his ascent to the stars. He often forgets whether or not he has gravity enabled on Five, until Alan visits and finds himself on the ceiling instead of the floor, John staring at him in confusion from his seat.
Primary powers: water manipulation
Secondary powers: communicate with water based lifeforms
'Like a fish to water', is a phrase Gordon takes seriously. With his Primary, sometimes Gordon doesn't even need Four for a rescue. Able to swim using currents, propelling himself through the water with just his thoughts, he's faster than four could ever be. He is also capable of 'holding his breath' for an absurd amount of time while under the water, which is what he tells his brothers. Its actually more scientific than that. Something about him having the same ability as some aquatic creatures, called diffusion. He doesn't possess gills, so that he can stay underwater forever, or the gills and lungs that some amphibians have, allowing for land and sea life. With diffusion, it allowed him to absorb oxygen from the water into his skin, but is unfortunately limited by his... well his human body. He could probably last an hour to an hour and a half before he starts to feel the sensation of drowning. But then he does something else. He'll manipulate the water around him to part around his nose and mouth, allowing him an extra few minutes of air in a pinch. Obviously it can't last, an air pocket that size. It would take a tremendous amount of force just for that, with the entire sea pressing in from all sides.
He is still a victim of being human. Though he is capable of ascending and descending to the depths at an incredible rate, he'd be deader than a doornail. The pressure would quite literally pressurise him. In short, he'd crumple. It really, really pisses him off. Especially when he's entertaining himself trying to study a whale or orca or shark that decides they suddenly want to go deep.
His secondary is he's able to communicate with aquatic life in the same body of water as him. He prefers to communicate with those who live in the ocean, not so much inland rivers and bodies of water. He finds that whales, certain sharks, dolphins and the like are alot easier to 'talk' to than crocodiles, river sharks and especially those pink River dolphins. They really did not want to talk to him.
And I say 'talk'. It's not talking like "Hi how are you?" "Good thanks how are you?". It's more like he can read their vibes. Mating, eating, location is what they mostly think about. And he'll match their frequency with simple words, and he'll maybe get single word answers back. For example, he's squishy, and a target in the open sea. A bullshark got a bit close once, and he projected 'leave' at it, watching it turn away and dissapear into the deep. He also told Scott that an alligator told him to fuck off, once. He says there's no point in trying to talk to jellyfish, it genuinely is like trying to talk to a plastic bag.
Primary powers: Clairvoyance
Secondary powers: Sealing
You must be thinking, 'this has nothing to do with his thunderbird, how is she going to spin this?' And I'd say, you're right, it has absolutely nothing to do with his character at all, and I cannot spin it to match his thunderbird. I was 13, and I was obsessed with spooky shit at that point, and also Klaus Hargreeves. That's why he has that. I hate it, but based on the photo I can't even lie about it. Anyway.
Clairvoyance in the most B rated, over the top sense ever. I say clairvoyance but im aware its probably closer to medium. The most accurate representation id probably use is 'seeing beyond the veil'. The ability to see ghosts. Wherever he goes, if there's a ghost, it will find him. Alan is able to talk to the departed, guide them, get information from them.
He awakened really young, actually. But nobody noticed. When he was young and they still lived on the mainland, Alan from a very early age (around two) would have screaming fits that would last anywhere from twenty minutes to hours. Sometimes he would even pass out. It wasn't in a tantrum sort of way, but he would cover his eyes or his ears and cower in corners, just crying and crying and crying. They were living in a Manor in England at that point of their childhood, and he'd point blank refuse to walk into the area that used to be the servants quarters way back in the day. When he was dragged into there, he fought tooth and nail to get out, screaming the house down all the while. Everyone was at their wits end.
When the kids used to visit the farm with their parents, Alan would always run off to go find his imaginary friend, who he said would 'protect him from the mean ones'. It stayed that way until about seven, when their grandfather made a comment about him being too old for an imaginary friend. Imagine his face when Alan 'relayed' a message from his imaginary friend. Who was actually his grandfather's best friend who had perished way back in the day transferring a bull to the cow pen. He had described him perfectly right down to his stetson, the tobacco he was chewing and where the hole in his stomach was. That's when everyone in the room understood what was stressing the youngest out so much. Jeff kept Alan at the farm and sold the Manor the next week.
Little Alan called them the 'mean ones'. Fifteen year old Alan still does. They're horrifying. Most ghosts just wander around, living their afterlife like they'd do every other day of their life, re-enacting. Every so often they'd interact with him, and if it's in his ability he would help them to get where they needed to go. But these ones...he can't. The mean ones are those who have been dead so long they've corroded. The ones who died horrifically, those who fucked up and did something so horrific in life they have nowhere to go, no chance for redemption. Those ones are greedy, they sense he can see them and they are desperate. They scream at him and wail and demand help he cannot give, claw at him and cause him pain. They terrify him. From their wounds, to the curses they throw at him, to when they follow him until his ears bleed.
It's bad some rescues. His brothers are hesitant to let him on the scene of massive calamities, and he understands why. It's not pleasant to see fresh spirits, those who can't understand why they are seeing their bodies from above. But at the same time, he isn't limited to rescuing the living, like his brothers. While they guide the living to ambulances and first aid, he's picking amongst the rubble, guiding those to that pretty little light they see in the distance. It's almost more rewarding, in a sense. He'll stay there for hours after the last living evacuated, his brothers waiting patiently in their birds for him.
His secondary is sealing. It's like creating a little vacuum. Much like space, there's no sound, nothing can penetrate that darkness. He uses it when the dead get too loud.
