Student: Nightmare [Team Phoenix]

Name: Sandra Marie Livingston (possibly an alias)
Codename: Nightmare
Age: 16
Appearance: Any, but since joining the school she has gradually become more comfortable with presenting herself in what she thinks of as her "normal" form. 5'2", black hair, dark-ish brown skin with silvery undertones, brown eyes.
Notable Skills: Bluff, Acting, Sleight of Hand, Finding An Exit, Dealing With Emergencies
Quirks: blends her own teas, very slow to trust, moody/shy/violent, keeps a cache of supplies just in case, enjoys climbing trees (in any of her forms)

Nightmare was being hunted by the Halls County Sheriff's Office in Texas when Phoenix Team recruited her. Prior to that, she was responsible for a series of brutal deaths and injuries, starting in her home and then tracking through a series of foster homes -- always in response to abuse, neglect, or other mistreatment (not always of herself). Headmaster Saint-Vincent and the other faculty have been working closely with her to help her develop better social relations and coping methods, with mixed results; she still tends to turn into a beast and stalk away into the forest at the back of the mansion when she gets frustrated. 

Nightmare is powerful and subtle shapeshifter, able to assume animal forms, mimic individuals, and assume a "nightmare form" that seems to be an expression of her rage. In her nightmare form she is nine feet tall, mostly humanoid but with pitch-black skin and blood-red eyes, covered in spikes, and equipped with wings, a prehensile tail tipped with a stinger of various poisons, and clawed hands and feet that are also capable of delivering powerful bio-electric shocks. She is both stronger and tougher than ordinary flesh should be, and is capable of flying at roughly seventy miles per hour. She acts as Jade's second-in-command, but has not formally accepted the position; she just finds it encouraging that people listen to her in emergencies.

Headless

I could hear the sound of the hoofbeats behind me, louder than the gasping efforts of my own mount. I urged my horse to greater speed, but the poor beast simply didn't have it in him; he stumbled, and I threw myself from his back before he could collapse on me. It was a rough landing, but at least I didn't have to worry about the horse; the rider wouldn't care about him.

The bridge was close now, mere yards away, and I made a dash for it: a covered bridge, its interior darker than the night around us, but spanning the stream that marked the edge of the rider's domain.

They drew up at the last possible moment, his black horse skidding to a stop before rearing up and screaming, its hooves no more than an inch from the first of the wooden slats. The rider held his seat, seemingly without effort, saber balanced in one hand as he drew back the hand that held his decapitated head. Its eyes were blazing with a horrible orange fire as he hurled it at me.

Fortunately, I had retained my cane. A gentleman should never be so undignified as to lose track of his hat, his coat, or his cane; and my cane, when I snapped it out to the side, extended a silvered blade from the tip. I pivoted, bringing the blade up at an angle, and sliced that accursed skull in half.

The rider drew back as if struck, the shift in his weight enough to cause his horse to stagger as well. For a moment we just stood facing each other: myself unharmed and staring, and the horseman headless but turned as if to look at me.

"All right, motherfucker," I said. "Let's do this."

The Horseman raised his saber, but his mount was too close to the bridge to charge. My blade parted the beast's throat, and it dissolved into unnatural black mist before fading away entirely; the horseman landed neatly on his feet, already placing himself en garde.

That was when Geoffrey hit it from behind, with a glass bulb of oil followed almost immediately by a lucifer to set it alight. The horseman whirled around, only to get generous coating of thrown salt; that was when I ran him through with my silvered blade.

Silver and salt, oil and fire. He was an old spirit, a strong one, but he couldn't stand against that. He writhed, cutting and flailing, but his time of reclaiming heads from the living was over.

And this, my eager pupils, is why we always hunt in pairs.

Student: Blink [Team Dragon]

Name: Tyler John Taylor
Codename: Blink
Age: 18
Appearance: 6'4"with broad shoulders and narrow hips, sandy brown hair worn long but pulled back, leather jacket that he will not be parted from.
Notable Skills: strategy games, particularly chess, basic cooking, camping, football, basketball, pop culture trivia, speaks French (Canadian)
Quirks: loves video games, works out to maintain his physique, doesn't see himself settling down romantically, night-blind, terrified that he might screw up and get somebody hurt

Tyler is a decent student, but frequently gets by on his looks and charm; socially, he's more of a follower than a leader, but he knows how to pick up on other people's cues and is always willing to lend a hand. In strategy games he is absolutely ruthless (but never cheats); in sports he's more laid-back. He's originally from Canada, but he's been in the States since shortly after his power kicked in and only occasionally lets his accent slip through. 

As Blink, he is a master teleporter, capable of teleporting either himself or others; he can still only teleport one person at a time, though, and he needs to either be able to see his destination or already be familiar with it in order to arrive safely. His role on Team Dragon is generally more supportive than combative, but his ability to teleport others gives him some offensive options.

Student: Nightfall [Team Kraken]

Name: Catarina "Cat" Altagracia Montoya
Codename: Nightfall
Age: 17
Appearance: 5' tall, with medium-brown skin, dark brown eyes, and black hair, with a gymnast's tight musculature; wears a black jeans jacked adorned with various patches that she's sewn in place herself.
Notable Skills: first aid, dance, gymnastics, driving, bluffing, reading reactions, speaks Spanish
Quirks: slow to make friends/keeps to herself, constantly polishing her glasses, likes animals better than people, nervous and has trouble relaxing, loves sushi

Cat is a relatively new addition to the school, as well as to Team Kraken. She's a solid student; what she lacks in insight, she makes up in persistence. She prefers not to interact with people she doesn't trust -- which is basically everybody -- and can come across as aloof or even hostile. (She is also quite capable of being actively hostile if she feels the situation warrants it.) She gets along better with the instructors and the younger students than she does with anybody close to her own age. 

Despite this, she has been recruited to the recently-formed Team Kraken -- in part for her power, and in part because of her absolute willingness to fight. She is working on developing more control, both of her power and of herself; she's been reprimanded for overdoing things during training once already, and doesn't want a second reprimand on her record. Cat's most obvious ability is the power to summon darkness, suppressing all visible light in an area of her choosing, but she can also shut off most electromagnetic radiation (notably including radio waves). When she extends a field of darkness around her, she can feel everything that happens inside it, so despite her lack of physical enhancements she generally has little trouble dodging enemies unless they can see in the dark. 

She once used her darkness to escape a particularly nasty situation, actually traveling through the darkness to take herself outside of a building where she was being held. She would love to be able to move around that way at will.

Student: Veil [Team Dragon]

Name: Chance Justin Rutherford
Codename: Veil
Age: 18
Appearance: 6'0" but lean enough to look taller, light skin, brown eyes, dark brown hair
Notable Skills: guitar, driving, boxing, track and field, basic handyman skills
Quirks:gay, enjoys brightening the school uniform with fashion accessories, loves theater, talks a lot (especially when he's nervous), wants to be an entertainer

Chance is a quintessential Theater Kid, with a flair for the dramatic and a deep love of being the center of attention. He is a decent but not exceptional student, strongly motivated by praise from his instructors. He took up boxing in middle school when he first started getting seriously bullied for his flamboyance, found that he enjoyed the exercise, and added track and field to his routines as well. When he's not entertaining an audience, he enjoys building and repairing things. 

In his identity as Veil, Chance is the second-in-command for Team Dragon, and the primary reason that they're largely undefeated. He uses his ability to create psychic illusions to keep himself hidden and ensure that the rest of his team is not where they appear to be, allowing them to attack unseen while their opponents attack non-existent targets. The power is not without its limitations; at present, Veil can effectively influence about thirty people at once, with a maximum range of about ninety feet. Because his power is psychic in nature, any cameras in the area will record actual events rather than the illusions. Nevertheless, it has proven to be a huge asset for the team.

Student: Armor [Team Kraken]

Name: Allison "Ally" Catherine Colvin
Codename: Armor
Age: 16
Appearance: 4'8", with a petite build, light brown hair that she mostly keeps shaved, and blue eyes.
Notable Skills: electronics, lockpicking, welding, soldering, math, physics, chemistry, Science!
Quirks: enjoys stress-testing her creations as much as inventing them, thinks hot dogs are the best food ever invented, forgets to practice fighting and related skills, doesn't like the sun, loathes spawn-campers.

Ally is the school's first gadgeteer, and the faculty are still working out how best to deal with her. Quiet and prone to wandering off on her own, she tends to get absorbed in what she's doing to the point of ignoring obvious dangers -- especially when her power has kicked in and she's busy working out a design for something that's going to be really, really cool, she promises. 

Her masterwork so far is the suit of power armor that she uses to make herself part of the newly-formed Team Kraken. Its design and creation has put a serious strain on the school's budget, but when she's wearing it she can monitor, decrypt, and disrupt all sorts of broadcast communications, use controlled EMP bursts to fry electronics and (potentially) send people into seizures, and recreate some degree of super-strength and damage resistance. She hasn't worked out how to make it fly (yet) but she has equipped it with jump jets that allow her to leap about sixty feet forward and forty feet up, along with a variety of non-lethal armaments to deal with combative opponents. Her real power, however, is that given the time and resources she can assemble the right tool to handle nearly any situation.

Faculty: Headmaster Jonathan Saint-Vincent

Name: Jonathan Charles Saint-Vincent
Codename: The Saint, but he rarely uses it
Age: 86
Appearance: 6'1" with broad shoulders and well-developed arms and torso; his legs are of regular proportions, but otherwise atrophied. His eyes are mismatched: one green and one gray, and his salt-and-pepper hair is neatly styled. Tends towards business suits. Owing to various attempts to cure the nerve damage caused by polio, he looks about half his actual age.
Job: Headmaster, teaches history

Jonathan Saint-Vincent presents himself as an affable older man with a variety of intellectual and political interests. He is considerably older than he looks, and is completely paralyzed from the waist down owing to a childhood brush with polio. He detests using a wheelchair and used to get around with crutches and braces, but recently one of the students (a gadgeteer named Ally Colvin) provided him with a supertech exoskeleton for his legs. (He still has to be careful about how he moves; the rig provides movement but not feedback. Ally says she's working on actual prosthetics but hasn't cracked the neural integration problem yet.) 

Jonathan is a sort of jack-of-all-trades psychic, with modest (but well-practiced) telepathic abilities, telekinesis able to lift up to about three hundred pounds, and minor cryo- and pyro-kinetic abilities. He can defend himself one-on-one, but generally avoids super-battles. He's far more interested in running his school and helping his students prosper. While he's an active and committed proponent of the idea that Exceptionals and Mundanes can live together in peace, he does sometimes have qualms about sending teams of students into potentially dangerous situations, and the recent business in South America has dropped him back into his doubts -- despite the fact that Dragon Team returned completely intact, and with a new student/team member. 

Publicly, he is known as one of the world's foremost researchers into "deviants" and their origins and powers, and his stance on the need for well-considered policies that promote equality and integration garners him both support and opposition from various interested parties.