Santo Vaccarro

Character Information:
Name: Santo Vaccarro (Rockslide)
Canon: Marvel Comics (616)
Canon Point: Wolverine and the X-Men. Just before the beginning of Avengers vs. X-Men
Age: 17
Reference:
Santo article – Comicvine
Santo article – Marvel.wikia
summary of Wolverine and the X-Men vol. 1

Setting:
The Marvel Universe is one that looks more or less like the world that we live in. There’s a day and night, three hundred sixty-five days in a year, a United States of America, etc. The world operates like the real world and has everything it does, from iPods to apple pie. The key difference between our world and this fictional one takes place in its politics, which are based around and in response to the existence of humans with supernatural abilities, mutants with the genetic predisposition for these abilities, the existence of monsters, extraterrestrials, magic, demons, and even gods.

Yes, the Marvel Universe is one that is inhabited and by superhumans, most of which fall under the classification of either super hero or super villain, with a few shades of gray in between. Despite how long superhumans have been in existence, though, they’re not the norm and they’re hardly integrated to the extent that they are in universes like DC Comics. The people of Earth-616 are hardly used to the strange and supernatural, with New York being the main exception, although even they still live in either willful ignorance or dumb luck with the way that they are still constantly surprised whenever Nazis in the form of groups like Hydra or AIM attack, aliens like Galactus appear to eat the planet, or even random thugs with powers, like the Wrecking Crew or Serpent Society try to rob a bank or hold someone hostage.

The best defense for all the threats the come from superhumans, alien races, gods, etc., come from three groups: S.H.I.E.L.D., The Avengers, and The X-Men.

The Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate (S.H.I.E.L.D.) is a world peace-keeping organization that is designed to protect and defend the planet against technologically advanced threats. They are the world’s police and have their hands on just about every threat on the planet, whether it’s from reality altering Nazi threats to ordinary humans who happen to be ninja assassins. S.H.I.E.L.D. has the most authority of the three groups and have jurisdiction within just about every nation on the planet. They employ a large number of agents, soldiers, analysts, and just about any other job a large, powerful organization would need. Their main strength comes from intelligence gathering and espionage, and they have the best spies on the planet, such as Nick Fury and the Black Widow.

Next are the Avengers, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. This is a group of super powered men and women that united to defeat the forces that no one man could face alone. Throughout their history, the Avengers have always been a force for good, but have also been subject to numerous controversies and shifts in public opinion. While they’re given vast freedom to carry out their sanctioned form of vigilante justice, they have also been at the heart of such large scale conflicts, such as the Superhuman Civil War, which had heroes fighting other heroes, and the Dark Reign, when the team name and the United States was run by a madman thanks to the disarray started by the Civil War followed immediately by an alien invasion.

The third group, and the one most relevant to Santo Vaccarro, is the X-Men, but to understand them, you need to understand what a mutant is.

Mutants are like ordinary humans, or they were ordinary humans until they evolved and developed supernatural abilities naturally via a special gene known as the X-Gene. Where humans were homo sapiens, mutants were called homo superior, and were believed to be the next step in evolution. Each mutant had a power ranging from the mundane to the magnificent, and physical appearances along the same spectrum. Some mutants had benign powers while some could quite literally level a city block with just a sneeze. Some mutants could pass for ordinary humans, while others had appearances so unique that they hardly seemed human at all.

The problem with mutants, though, is that people fear change and the unknown, and fearing for their own existence, the majority of the world’s population saw mutantkind as a threat and, thanks to X-Men comics being a giant look at issues of prejudice and racism, began to consider ways to identify and control the mutant population through various methods.

There is no way to easily identify the most dangerous enemy to mutants, since they run the entire gamut of human nature. Most people against mutants are simply racist, hating what’s different and forming anti-mutant groups that resemble the KKK. There are others that see mutants as an abomination on mankind and against god’s will, and these religious zealots are organized and militant enough to go on their own violent crusades against mutant kind. One of the major early threats, though, came for the governments of countries themselves, which required mandatory registration of mutants, rounded them up in prisons and camps, and even created oversized, overpowered robots to hunt and kill mutants (which usually caused heavy collateral damage and deaths in civilian and urban areas as well).

Charles Xavier and Erik Lensherr were two of the earliest mutants to develop and control their powers, and were absolutely the two most influential to mutant politics early on. Both of them had very different views on how mutants should be perceived and welcomed by the world. Erik Lensherr believed that mutants, being the next step in human evolution, were superior to humans and were meant to subjugate the “inferior” race.

Xavier, on the other hand, was an idealist who believed that conflict between man and mutant would lead to ruin, and that the only way to survive was to promote tolerance and a peaceful coexistence between man and mutant. He knew that this wouldn’t be easy, and so he kept their identity a secret for a while, opening a school that would take in “gifted youngsters” and offer them the training and control that they would need to live with their power in a society that hated and feared them.

It was later revealed was that Xavier was also training a team of mutants that would stand up and protect not only other mutants but also the humans that fear them. This team was known as the X-Men. Over time, the X-Men became a powerful force that had different teams that suited different needs, including the detective agency known as X-Factor, a strike force known as X-Force, etc. The X-Men and the Xavier Institute were symbols of coexistence and the good that mutants could do for the world. Still the road was never easy for the mutant race. With mutants, it was always two steps forward and three steps back, and for all the good that the X-Men did, there was always radical mutants like Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants that were more than willing to commit acts of terrorism and wanton destruction in the name of mutant supremacy.

After a while, at the time that Santo Vaccarro enters the picture, the mutant population is rapidly growing, and the need for the school was greater than ever. There were still numerous threats to their kind, but for once, things were going well and the Xavier Institute was able to function the way that it was originally meant to: as a school.

However, that didn’t last long thanks to Magneto, who manipulated his reality-warping daughter, the Avenger known as the Scarlet Witch, to create a world where mutants were in control and were the dominant race. The false reality couldn’t last, though, and in the midst of a nervous breakdown, the Scarlet Witch said three words that would change the face of the world and mutantkind forever.

”No more mutants.”

In an instant, the mutant population that was set to be the dominant one in the just a few short years became an endangered species. Only one hundred ninety-eight known mutants were left in the world, and that number only got smaller as word spread of the mutant decimation, spurring hate groups and anti-mutant organizations to reignite their campaigns with renewed vigor, even going so far as to blow up a bus filled with depowered mutants even though they were technically human now.

The days of having a mutant school were long gone now. The X-Men weren’t just protectors and teachers, and the children of the Xavier Institute weren’t just students anymore. In order to survive, they had to become soldiers, fighting just for their right to survive or else the mutant race would become extinct.

To go along with their new life, mutants were eventually relocated/exiled out of the United States by madman Norman Osborn, who had become head of national security for a short time. The X-Men relocated to a floating meteor island off the coast of California and declared it a sovereign state called Utopia. They now had a land and international presence that was solely mutant, they were free from the anti-mutant sentiments of the United States and other countries’ governments, but they were also only less than two hundred mutant all gathered together on a small rock, making them an easy target.

And target the repeatedly were, often fighting for their lives on their own home. Eventually, though, after one particularly traumatic last stand for their lives, it became apparent that the children on the island, the former students of the Xavier Institute, really were becoming child soldiers. This led to a messy break up between Cyclops and Wolverine. Surprisingly enough, it was Wolverine, the X-Men/Avenger who claims to be the best he is at what he does (which is killing things), who couldn’t accept what the mutant race had become now.

Taking over half of the X-Men and most of the children with him, Wolverine relocated to Westchester, New York, and opened a brand new school where the kids could just be kids. Things for them, on the whole, are a bit better than they were on Utopia. Returning to just being students, the children were no longer expected to kill anymore, leaving their defense, once again, to the adult X-Men. Of course, the school isn’t without it’s threats and dangers either, and even if it’s not being treated like a military outfit anymore, the school still faces threats to their existence on a regular basis.

The Marvel universe is one like our own but where superheroes and the supernatural are commonplace. Santo has gone from being a student, an X-Man, a vigilante hero, a soldier in a war, and then back to a student again. The life he’s lived isn’t so much one of choice as it is one of necessity. Mutants are people with extraordinary powers, not unlike the heroes of the Avengers, but they’re different because they were born with a genetic predisposition for their gifts. Because of their genetics, they’re hated, feared, and persecuted by the less tolerant majority of the Marvel universe’s population.

The X-Men and the mutants that stand with them, including Santo, don’t fight against a world that fears and hates them to become the dominant species, but to be seen as equals and coexist peacefully. It’s never been an easy fight, and their history is filled with pain and loss. This is the world that Santo Vaccarro lives in.

Personality:
Santo Vaccarro’s personality, much like his body, is rough around the edges.

He is that asshole best friend that everybody always wished they had. On the surface, Santo can come off like a jerk or a bully, and in some ways that’s exactly what he is. He’s loud, abrasive, and picks on people relentlessly in some ways. However, Santo isn’t a mean-spirited guy at all, really. Most people who see him as a bully usually just don’t know him very well and are looking at the things he does as a third party.

Santo just tends to go a little too far before he thinks and realizes it. He’s loud, yes, and that doesn’t go well with the fact that he’s also outspoken and lacks a brain-to-mouth filter to keep him from saying the dumb things that he almost always ends up saying. He just doesn’t think, and the moment something enters his head, he says it without any hesitation. This leads some people to assume that he’s thoughtless or an asshole. An example of this is when the younger X-Men get together for bonding time, and Santo decides to break the ice by bluntly stating that fellow mutant Victor Borkowski (Anole) is gay, unintentionally outing Victor except for the fact that just about everyone already knew that about him.

It’s not entirely that Santo is blunt and thoughtless, though. It’s also that he is just kind of dumb as well. Really, he just seems to not be as observant as the average, reasonable person seems to be. He misses a lot of obvious things, or just doesn’t care to take notice of them, like with Victor Borkowski’s sexuality, or more obviously when he finds out that there’s such a thing as a team known as the Young Avengers, something that was old news to everybody else. It’s not that he just doesn’t care or is too stupid to get it, but he tends not to sweat the small things, which leaves him out of the loop.

Adding to his dumb jerk exterior is the fact that Santo is kind of a prankster as well, usually in a way that’s ill-timed or inappropriate. He makes fun of people and will harass them incessantly, even in times when things are serious and the mood doesn’t lend itself to an insensitive jerk in the room. However, Santo really doesn’t mean anything by it, it’s just the way that he is and how he gets along and relates to other people. He doesn’t intend for his words or actions to be offensive, and usually they’re not really, but they’re still a bit inappropriate and tactless. Santo really wants to help the people around him, and if his acting stupid can break just a little bit of the tension or distract people from how bad their situation really is, then that’s why he does it.

That’s really the big thing about Santo’s jerk nature. You have to expect to be teased or annoyed if you’re around him, but he doesn’t do it to people that he knows or thinks can’t handle a little harassment. He jokes around, makes fun of people, and playfully mocks them, and while he almost always doesn’t mean to be offensive by doing it, it’s just part of his. It’s obvious that he often doesn’t mean anything by his making fun of other people, or making inappropriate comments about them because he does it indiscriminately, whether they’re his friend or not, he’ll probably say something stupid or inappropriate about them at some point… Especially if you’re his friend.

It helps that, as much as he might poke fun at someone, he can take the same treatment from others. He’s not the brightest guy in the world, so he might not get some of the more clever insults, but if you’re a friend, he will definitely roll with the punches. He’s laidback and good-natured, and while a lot of what he says might be thoughtless, he knows to stop when someone really does get offended, and he picks up on things that really do bother people. Really, for all that he says, he knows when not to say something as well, and won’t cross the line into territory that would intentionally hurt somebody or offend them. He teases because he cares.

Somehow, in spite of all of this, Santo is one of the friendliest guys out there, and really cares about the people around him and his fellow mutants. He somehow has a way of endearing himself to everyone that he meets, and is friends with almost all of the younger X-Men, respected by his superiors, and even the people that he doesn’t initially get along with come to find him respectable and reliable.

This has to do with the fact that, for all that Santo is an annoying jerk; he also wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s honest, and has a strong moral code, even if it’s challenged at times. While he might be a bit quick to anger and has considered killing before, he only feels that way because the people around him are being threatened or have been killed. It’s understandable considering all the he and his fellow young mutants have been through. He’s watched people die, lost two very close friends, and been manipulated by evil assholes. His beliefs and sense of morality has been challenged constantly, and he’s come close to killing out of anger, revenge, and hurt. However, he hasn’t crossed that line yet, whether it came from his own feelings about wanted to be an X-Man and a hero, or the reminder of such from the people around him, he’s never crossed the line because “X-Men don’t kill.”

Santo is incredibly loyal to the people around him and the friends that he makes. In a way, he takes the role of a big brother figure for all of the young mutants. He’ll tease and annoy the hell out of people, but nobody messes with his people, and he goes to great lengths to protect the ones that he cares about. His driving motivation is to protect his friends and family, and a lot of his drive to get better and stronger comes out of the moments where he has failed to protect someone or witnessed a friend be killed. He takes these moments hard, they deeply affect him and leave him vulnerable in a way that he can have a difficult time showing publicly due to his rough exterior, but he definitely feels them.

His strong loyalty to his friends also comes from him noticing and realizing each of their strengths, and how those match up with his own shortcomings. Santo is proud of his mutation and very proud of his great strength. He’s absolutely a brawn over brains type of guy, but he recognizes that his friends have skills that he doesn’t have, are better at things that he might not be so good at, and more than anything else, if they’re brave or gutsy, he respects that more than anything. After mutants became an endangered species, only a handful of the former students became X-Men. However, all of them were pulled into a conflict where they had to fight through hell just to survive and get home. Once everything was said and done, Santo confronted his superiors and the team leaders, insisting that if the other students, particularly Anole and Pixie, weren’t allowed on the team after they had earned it, then he would quit just to make room for them.

Threatening to quit if two other people weren’t allowed on the team is an incredibly selfless act for Santo, considering that his big dream (after being a professional wrestler) is to be a superhero. He has a strong drive to fight crime and injustice and to be a hero. So much so that he even convinced his best friend, Victor, to go along with him and become vigilantes in San Francisco with him behind their leaders’ backs. They were good at it too! They were able to hold their own against a group of villains known as the Serpent Society and a villain known as Mister Negative, and even gained the approval of their superiors to keep doing what they were doing.

Speaking of Victor for a moment, it’s very telling that he is Santo’s best friend. Even though they started out fighting often and not getting along at all, even though Santo annoyed Victor to no end, and they were both sure the other hated them, Victor Borkowski eventually became Santo’s closest and most trusted friend, so much so that they are almost always together. This is just another example of how, despite Santo’s rough, alpha male type demeanor, he really doesn’t prejudice or dislike people because of sexuality, gender, race, religion, etc. He only sees people, and if he likes you, then you’re automatically his friend, and it’s hard to get on his bad side. This isn’t just evident with Victor, but also with how easily he became friends with other controversial characters, such as Sooraya Qadir (Dust).

All in all, Santo is a big dumb teddy bear made out of rocks. He’s the big brother that everyone can’t stand a lot of the time but wouldn’t trade for the world. He’s a bit thoughtless, and will incessantly tease the people around him, but that’s just the way he shows that he cares. He’s rough around the edges, but he genuinely cares about and is loyal to the friends around him.

When it comes to him arriving in this new setting and becoming part of the In Between of life, dreaming, and death, Santo really wouldn’t be that fazed by it. He’s been in other dimensions before, and, to be honest, this would all go way over his head, and he’d just as much leave the freaking out to someone who actually understands the situation. He’d, of course, want to get home eventually, but if he figured out that wasn’t possible, he’d try to make the best of the situation. Things wouldn’t change too much for him, really. He’d still be his same old self, and he’d want to help anybody that needed it too.

Besides, living on a giant turtle would be awesome!

Appearance:
Check out
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pictures

Santo is a big dumb rock. He usually towers over his friends, putting him at over seven feet tall, but he can change his size to suit his needs, often getting larger when in a fight. He can also change his shape to look more human, but he seems comfortable in his less humanlike form.

Abilities:

Santo isn’t really a man at all anymore, but is instead a psychic entity that forms and shapes his body out of stone, earth, and other materials around him. Typically, his body is constructed out of hard granite, but he can create it out of any rock that he can find in any given area. He’s practically immortal and invulnerable to most types of attack, being that he’s made of rock. He’s also super strong and never gets tired because of the state of his body.

Somehow, despite not having a functioning living body anymore, he can still sleep and eat, and seems to needs to do both to some extent. His body can still feel, taste, smell, see, and hear.

Santo is also capable of breaking up his body at will, such as launching his fists or, more impressively, blowing up his entire body as an attack, only to reform it later.

Even though Santo is a psychic entity, it seems that he is limited by his need for his stone body, and whenever his body explodes or is destroyed by somebody else, he describes that he can still see and hear but just hovering over the spot where he was destroyed. It’s reasonable to infer that he can’t move or interact without a body to do it for him, and is grounded in place until he reforms his stone avatar around him.

Inventory: Nothing but the pants he’s coming in with.

Suite: Earth sector would suit Santo best, mostly because he’s made of rock, and being closer to material that he can keep up his body with just in case of an emergency. Really, though, he doesn’t care where he goes as long as he can stay with Victor. The number of floors doesn’t really matter to him.

In-Character Samples:
Third Person:
For all the issues that the Jean Grey School had, it was already home to Santo Vaccarro, and he was glad that he left Utopia along with the others just to become students again, even though he wouldn’t admit it. As much as he wanted to be a hero and an X-Men, as awesome as it was to fight along the big dogs like Colossus and Wolverine, it still never left his mind that he wasn’t a soldier and he didn’t want to be pushed into a situation where he was forced to be one or kill just because Cyclops might eventually tell him to.

It was even more obvious that this was the right change whenever he looked around at the friends that he’d left with. They were all used to fighting just to survive, to witnessing the people they knew or cared about being murdered, and to feeling hopeless. That didn’t make them soldiers, though, and Santo didn’t want them to be, and he didn’t want to be, and he wasn’t just going to split up from his best friends… They made the choice to leave obvious.

His schedule, which had been once been filled with waking up, training, and fighting some vampire or bigot asshole of the week had finally returned to just normal, mundane activities. Now, he woke up, and went to class like any other student. With a few exceptions of course for classes like psychic defense or Hank McCoy’s interesting take on biology. It wasn’t all perfect though, there were still assholes trying to kill them, and the school had even been designed to try to kill them too at times. After all, how many schools had random training programs that would attack you with chainsaws and lasers while you were in the bathroom?

Still, for all the confusing and nonsensical things that happened around the school, it really felt like things were looking up and returning to the way they used to be before the world went to hell around them. That’s how Santo felt at least. He could see it when Victor was out playing basketball with the others instead of running through training exercises, or when Idie, a small fourteen-year-old girl was talking to other students and reading books instead of learning how to use a submachine gun.

Sure, life might not have been as exciting as Santo would have liked, and it was hard for him to just go back to being considered a child after years of being treated like an X-Man and a necessary part of his entire species’ survival, but that was a difficulty that he could deal with. He could sleep at night against without thinking about all the people that he lost, or the high probability that he would lose someone else tomorrow. Things definitely weren’t perfect, but for the first time in years, they were getting better.


Network:
[He has to actually sit down in front of a computer to talk to people in this place? That’s so old fashioned! It was kind of an awkward situation for him too, since it just mean that now he’s massive body was taking up not just the space in front of his console in the café, but also the space in the front of the consoles on either side of him, making things cramped and uncomfortable for those around him while he plays on this turtle Skype.]

Okay, listen up, nerds. I don’t know if any of you have noticed or not, but we’re on a giant, freaking turtle! I don’t get how there’s a city on this poor guy’s back, but aren’t people worried about it sinking underwater or, I don’t know, rolling over or something?

What if it gets bored? This just seems like a poor idea all around. [He shrugs] Can the turtle talk?

Anyway, if there are any X-Men here, you should probably check in so I don’t have to listen to a certain someone complain anymore. Check in especially if you’re Wolverine or Cyclops. Cyclops because I just assume this is his fault, so I call first dibs on punching him in the face if he’s here

Yeah… That’s something that should happen.