General Information

Real Name Tanner Forest Grayson
Current Alias Brainiac
Marital Status Single
Classification Super

Characteristics

Gender Male
Age 33 (08/08/85)
Height 6'2"
Eyes Blue
Hair Auburn
Discovery May '00
Abilities Enhanced Memory
Parallel Processing
Power Immunity

Extended Information

Nickname Tan
Brain
Brainy
Relatives Harvey Grayson
Lilah Grayson
Skye Grayson
Azure Grayson
Sexuality Heterosexual
Handler N/A
Occupations Administration Assistant
Reg Recruitment Aug '03

Tanner looks the part of bulky, muscle man. In truth... that's what he is? He's got a massive 6'2" frame, and he grew into it around about the time he was seventeen. Naturally, around that time it was all about the looks, so he hit the gym. The upkeep is a bit much, but it does help Tanner shut off his mind for a while. He's got broad shoulders and worked up the strength so that it's not a problem to carry about boxes of files while they're shifting from paper to computer -really, it's not a problem, he can carry them just fine. Don't worry.

He's inherited his mother's auburn hair, although it sometimes looks brown just from lack of washing or sunlight -stupid underground facilities- and sharp blue eyes that sometimes look hazel that can, on occasion drift from attention. Typically, Tanner's high energy, so he usually has a grin or a smile at least on his face. He's not the sort to worry, so if he's frowning, there's something going on.

He'd thought about tattoo's before he discovered he was a super, but it never amounted to anything. While on his down time, he likes to chill out in jeans and henleys, but while working he tries to make a good impression with numerous illfitting shirts and some god-awful ties.

Essentially, Tanner is an exceptionally happy-go-lucky type of person. He feels things rather than thinking them out, doesn't let the day-to-day stuff bug him. He's charming and sociable, he's engaging and bright, and he has an intelligence that rivals most people to help him along. But for all that Tanner is sometimes the smartest person in the room, he's an exceptionally humble man, often more interested in other people and what they can do -he's always found people's powers fascinating and regularly makes comment on them. Almost always positive, almost always a compliment on something. He's never envious, he's rather happy with what he can do himself, but other powers are just as cool.

Curiosity comes with the territory, for the most part it's intellectually based, Tanner soaks up a lot of information on a daily basis, so he does like to read and chill out, just for him, not for any other reason. He likes to broaden his knowledge, reads autobiographies, textbooks and philosophy for fun. A lot of the time, Tanner takes pointers from other people, where to start broadening his interests, who is most interested in what. He feels if he can relate to something they do, or something they like, he can forge a better friendship. Being an excellent communicator with social interests, he tends to make friends rather easily, letting most prickly attitudes slid off his back and go with the flow.

While he's a very observant person by nature, his powers allow him to store and recall all his observations. He tries to not pry into the lives of people, since he understands some people like to keep things relatively private, but he unfortunately just tends to soak everything up unless at least one of his processes is taken up doing something else. Sometimes it can seem like Tanner isn't entirely focused, and this is usually the case, since he's off on numerous mental processes at once, while he's talking to someone he could also be managing the time table for numerous agents, handlers or staff members and rearranging his boss' personal diary to fit in any unexpected additions to the week and planning his own dinner only to forego that in the presentation of easier food. It's not that Tanner doesn't care or isn't interested, it's just that he cannot slow or switch off his mental processing.

Typically, Tanner isn't used for missions, since he's much better at information processing, but he is an eager to please sort. He'll go above and beyond what's asked for him, taking an additional steps that might be asked for or required and throwing them in to start with. It does give him extra work, but he's usually very happy to do it regardless. While he does, on occasion, wonder about his family outside of Regiment and the Wraiths program, he hasn't really gotten to the point where he'd rather be there than where he is. He's helping and he's being useful, and ultimately that's all Tanner really wants.

Tanner has a limiter in his shoulder that is almost never used. He's had it since he was 15 and after they figured out he was basically a living library of information he was given work that rarely meant his powers were off. If it does need to be triggered for any reason it releases a highly stimulating drug that sends his mind on a whirlwind of activity and basically makes him catatonic while in thought.

Enhanced Memory

Tanner is able to remember amazing volumes of information at the drop of a hat. He can recall things for longer, remembering something that he heard only as a young man well into his later life. Reading a book once installs the information into his mind ready for recall at any point, he can memories manuals, instructions, rules and regulations with one read through and instantly bring back the full information when asked. This gives Tanner what is considered encyclopaedic knowledge, given how vast his awareness and understanding is. He also has an element of number precision given his ability to recall complex equations and formula provided he's seen or read them before.

Tanner's displayed abilities in enhanced reading, able to process the information he reads quicker and thus have a reading speed quicker than most humans, and a small degree of audiographic memory thanks in part to his enhanced memory and his parallel processing, allowing him to recall memories based on what he heard at the time along with what he saw.

LIMITATIONS: Due to the sheer brain processing that is required to retain and recall the amount that Tanner does, he is prone to extreme headaches when pressed for too long using too much of his power. At times, there can be a level of stress related to what Tanner has to recall, however his personality itself seems to balance this out exceptionally well, but might also be a coping method to deal with the information he is unable to forget. As Tanner has such a vast memory, he cannot forget anything at all.

From time to time, certain memories are triggered without Tanner's express consciousness, either due to a word or phrase, or a sound. Usually, Tanner needs to follow the thought process, regardless of if it's important or not. However, due to his parallel processing ability, it's not always detrimental to do so.

Parallel Processing

As a sub-set of his enhanced memory, Tanner is able to run numerous complex thought processes at once. While some people would get caught up with the intertwining thoughts, Tanner can run things through seperate parts of his mind to keep them on course. He does sometimes lose focus on at least one thing, usually his active mind, leaving him motionless to let the processes follow out.

To date, Tanner has run four thought processes of complex nature simultaneously without a massive headache or nosebleed. He is unable to properly function with lower level processes however, which leaves him motionless and unaware of his surroundings for the most part. It can be exhausting and regularly looks like Tanner is seeing things, as the processes play out, usually like visual effects to him.

Power Immunity

It is Tanner's least active power that makes him most valuable as an aide for the Regiment. Tanner's immunity appears to be more than a standard immunity to toxins or diseases. Tanner has demonstrated that he is immune to powers themselves in a larger manner than just not suffering the effects. He has illusion immunity to stop others altering his perception of reality and awareness, toxin, poison and acid immunity to protect against contact with other supers or harmful agents of gas or attack, a psychic shield which renders him immune to empaths, telepaths and any kind of mental manipulation like consciousness swap or memory alteration.

Telekinetic attacks at Tanner's body are dissapated upon impact, seduction manipulation has no effect on him, sensory attacks or paralysis attempts have no effect and Tanner displays full awareness of illusion or reality warping abilities. His powers cannot be absorped through skin contact and he has demonstrated spatial immunity.

LIMITATIONS: Tanner is not impervious to power negation; if his powers are shut off he is just as vulnerable to things as anyone else would be. While he is immune to most attacks, he's not always immune to effects -someone with telekinesis could throw something at him and he would still be hit, while Tanner is aware of an illusion or warped reality, he still sees the illusion or alteration and uses one of his processing banks to filter it out, thus taking up some of his mental attention.

Tanner's immunity is constantly active, taking up a lot of his energy, which does mean that Tanner either sleeps more or has to boost his energy levels constantly. Tanner needs to be exposed to something to figure out if he is immune to it -he has discovered he is not immune to life force absorption, but is immune to power absorption, he is not immune to density manipulation but does have spatial immunity. Just because Tanner is immune to a portion of the power does not mean he is immune to all of it.

Harvey Grayson wasn't a rich man, or an exceptionally successful one, but he was a fairly well to do man in small town Indiana. He met Lilah through work, a newly build condo complex hired Harvey to oversee the painting and decorating, while Lilah's company did the interior decorating for the furnished sells. The pair hit it off and ultimately ended up buying one of the condos when they eventually settled down together.

It wasn't long until they started their family, Skye was born just a year after their wedding and eighteen months later, Tanner joined the family, followed by Azure just two years later.

Early Life

There was nothing majorly remarkable about Tanner's upbringing. He was close to his sisters, got along with his parents and had plenty of friends to play with. He was never an exceptionally bright boy or overly gifted, but he was friendly, playful and generally a happy young boy. When Tanner was four, the family moved to a small but quaint house with plenty of land, close to Lilah's mother. Within a year Tanner and his grandma were making soap while the girls took up a love of pottery with their mother, and Harvey saw to building their own kiln on the property.

Before long, Tanner was helping make clothes with a loom and figuring out how to braid Azure's hair. It didn't make him incredibly popular at school, but Tanner rarely let things like that bother him. His little sister thought he was the coolest thing, and Tanner had a tendency to let problems just roll off his back. He was dumb or obtuse, but getting hung up on things seemed like a silly way to spend his time when he could focus on just having some fun and not caring what people thought. Tanner had his sisters, his best friend and that was good enough for him.

Middle school showed that being 'popular' wasn't important and honestly, he got by just fine with just being friendly.

Powers & Regiment

Things changed a little when Tanner was 15. He started getting good at school. At first it was nothing spectacular, just getting better at focusing on things, remembering details, then Tanner started to notice that he remembered a lot of details and could work out some more of the complex equations and problems. He got through the reading material faster and had a habit of writing his homework while laying out other subjects in his head. His course work got harder but Tanner got better and the teachers started to praise him for his effort.

What Tanner realised was that he was barely really putting in additional effort.

It was his grandmother that he told; he thought that maybe he might've been one of those Supers, that his brain was suddenly a super brain. Nana told him to hush up, if he wasn't hurting anyone, there was no point in attracting attention to himself. He took it at face value. He knew that supers that were dangerous had to go into custody, and while he didn't like hiding things, he didn't want to have to leave his family either. With Nana knowing, and keeping an eye on him, Tanner just assumed it was okay to pretend nothing was different at all. So, for another two years, that's what he did. He kept up the newly excellent grades he was getting, and put in the effort to make it look like he wasn't just suddenly naturally good at things; which meant a lot of reading, which turned out to be much more fun than he thought when he started being able to understand it all. He soaked up biographies, then autobiographies, then science books and maths books, turning to science fiction and into the literary greats.

Tanner started helping other students study, and it was through one of those students that Tanner's fate ultimately changed.

Tanner's study buddy happened to have caught a cold, one that made her sneeze uncontrollably. Unfortunately for her, it messed with her power that she was slowly getting control of, and she ended up spraying a thick acid substance during one sneezing fit. Everyone ran scared in the library, except for Tanner. Although he was the closest and got covered in the acidic spray, there was almost no damage to his skin from the contact, it let Tanner stay to help get the girl under control. Both their parents were called to the school, as well as the authorities. It allowed Tanner to say goodbye to his parents and tell them it was okay, to let Nana know he was sorry and for Tanner to support his fellow student on the way to the juvenile facility they'd be held at.

Tanner was just shy of 18 when he was approached by people from the Regiment, informing him of his potential and what they would like him to help them with. Tanner, ever eager to help, agreed almost instantly, figuring that some of his fellow juvenile inmates would be getting similar offers.

Agent to Administration Assistant

Tanner started the training to become an agent shortly after being transferred to Maine, fresh off the youth facility and newly 18. He was raring to go and with a go-get-them attitude that endeared him to most people. He didn't mind being in the facility, didn't mind his life changing utterly, he was ready to do what he could and was so in awe of all the others around him.

He trained and assimilated handbooks on weapons and martial arts and any other technical aspect he could get his hands on. Although transferring that from knowledge to action was a little less simple. It took a lot of training, partially because Tanner's secondary power kicked in any time he tried to execute something and started processing complex scenarios to offer options, leaving him distracted and unfocused. His handler did what she could to work with him, trying to minimise the stimuli, focusing on technique and how to put that into action. It wasn't incredible going, but there was some progress made.

Tanner ended up being largely helpful in assisting his handler to train his team mates, and eventually to help train other agents where his understanding of situations started to help; being immune to a lot of powers offered a helpful void in danger too. Tanner went on a total of two missions, and while at first he was amped and excited for the first one, the reality came crashing down on everyone involved when Tanner's brain tried to process too many things at once and he ended up with a wild migraine and nose bleed in the middle of the mission and had to be led to a safe spot until they could finish things up. He was horrified to have put his team mates in danger and hated the thought of being dead weight in the field.

It didn't work against Tanner, who had been worried that his inability to properly perform as an agent would result in him being excused from the Regiment program. He knows his handler went to bat for him, understands that her fighting for him to stay was pivotal in his remaining with the program and made a point of being as useful to her as humanly and super-humanly possible.

It was Tanner's tenacity in assisting that really changed things. He'd been an agent for ten years, been on two missions and fallen into much more of a support role than anything else. It was pitched as a method of using his abilities while helping the bases on a wider scale. So in 2014, Tanner shifted from being an agent to being an administrative assistant to human resources and personnel management. Which was really a fancy way of saying he was a personal assistant. It was a good move though, and while Tanner hated leaving Maine and the friends he'd made there, he knew that the role would involve traveling to most of the bases, although he did figure out why Inferno was one of the most hated bases -where was the sunlight?

His new boss, Sean Palmer was a very complex man, but decidedly enjoyable to work for, and Tanner appreciated the challenge to his abilities. He learned everything he could about administration, discovered that he was also semi-responsible for reminding Sean when he had doctors appointments or had to take care of bills or other personal errands. He didn't mind in the least, soaking up the responsibility and how well he did it. Moving from base to base was a good way for Tanner to keep active and see how far he could expand his powers, he also loved meeting new people, flourishing with human contact while Sean shied away from too much socialising.

When more Human Resources personnel were hired, enough to staff the bases with individual teams, Tanner had no problem moving full time to Washington to head up the Limbo facility -least of all when he knew it was so that Sean could see more of his son.