Whew, this is a long one. Hang with me.
So, remember all that crap I wrote a few days ago?
Forget all of it.
I've got an entirely new system half-worked out. Let's see if I can actually explain it without all of my diagrams...
Imagine the Earth's magnetic field, with the north pole and the south pole and all of that. (You can tell how much research I've done >.<) Now imagine it existing in a human being, with our "north" poles being at the tops of our heads and our "south" poles being at our feet. As far as I understand, humans do have magnetic fields, but not like I'm talking about. We have tiny little fields that are constantly changing, literally with the fluctuations of our synapses. But I'm pretending this is one big field.
Actually, it's extremely small. WAAYYYY too tiny to actually attract anything at all, even the strongest of real magnets. It's so tiny that people have never really discovered its existence, not even the scientists that deal with the most miniscule magnetic systems.
But it's very strongly connected to our body systems, so that if it were to change, we would feel it. Normally that's not a problem because even when we're standing next to huge magnets, nothing really happens.
There's a small group of people who are able to manipulate these fields, though. Thousands of years ago (like, the first few years of homo sapiens) there was a big magnetic flare of some sort (again, I've done next to no research at all...) which corrupted the gene that controls the human body's magnetic field. People with the corrupted gene can manipulate their fields in certain ways, and if they work with it enough, they can even do it to other people's. It's not hard to learn how, but since the fields are so tiny, most people who have the corrupted gene wouldn't even know they had it.
Also, it's hard to pass on. It's recessive... in the extreme. Normally, a person who has one of the corrupted genes and one normal one would be a "carrier" and would be able to produce a child who is "magnetized" (the very creative word I'm using to describe those people who can manipulate the fields >.<) if their partner also had one or two copies of the corrupted gene. But it doesn't work that way. Even if two carriers pass on their corrupted genes, the child wouldn't be magnetized. Even if a carrier and a magnetized person pass on corrupted genes, the child wouldn't be magnetized. The only way to produce a magnetized child is for two magnetized people to pass on corrupted genes. But people with the corrupted genes are... well, not infertile, but less fertile than a normal person. It would take three times as long for two magnetized people to become pregnant than two regular people.
Understandably, magnetized people became very rare. (Not to suggest they actually KNEW they were magnetized--they spread unnoticed through all cultures and races as homo sapiens actually began to develop cultures and races.) In the present day, there are less than a thousand of them, and most of them are concentrated in the US (explain that later.)
However, for the past generation and a half or so, the population has been... not necessarily going up or keeping stable, but not declining so much as it normally would. This is because all magnetized people are being hunted.
Everyone's favorite genocidal maniac is looking for them. Addy (name change impending) is out to get the magnetized people. So most of them are on the run in small groups of two or three, which means that most most of them are now unable to form relationship with normal people, and if they do become part of a couple, their partners are more than likely to be magnetized as well. Boom. More magnet-children.
Most parents do give their babies to the M.A.G.N.E.T.S program (needs a new acronym... I'll do that later) so that they can be hidden from Addy and live a normal, not-on-the-run life. The children end up in one of a couple of schools (all in the US, because that's where the program is based) which will have usually five to ten magnetic students in it. They don't want too big a cluster, so that it will be harder for Addy to discover the schools, but they also want for the kids to have the support of a group of other kids in their same boat.
The whole reason Addy wants to destroy magnetized people is... classified. Actually it's very sketchy; not even the M.A.G.N.E.T.S. people are sure what's wrong with her. Also, forget about her having thousands of people following her. She has maybe twenty-five hired people on her side--mostly just big strong guys who can shoot people. A few detective-type people as well.
So, that's magnetism for you. I've worked out each of my characters' individual abilities, but it's kind of hard to explain them. (This is the part where I need my diagrams. Wish me luck.)
There's two categories: People who mess with your mind, and people who mess with your bodies. I'm starting with the mind people.
This would be Abigail, Hugo, and Charlie. They basically disorient your poles--move the poles around in such a way that your balance actually isn't affected, but your brain can't keep up with what's going on.
While your brain is scrambling around to figure out what's going on, Abigail can influence you. All she has to do is say something to a disoriented person, and they will accept whatever she said as fact. At least, it's that simple for something easy. If she wanted to convince someone who didn't know her that her name was Samantha, she could do that easily. She would have to work harder--warp the poles more, or repeat whatever she's saying several times, or even get into an argument with the person--to convince someone she'd known for a long time that her name wasn't Abigail.
Hugo does something similar, except instead of influencing your knowledge, he literally sucks the "concentration" out of your head. He gives you temporary ADD. You would forget what you're doing at that moment, and depending on how strongly he affected you, you might have a hard time concentrating on things for the rest of the day or even longer. It's harder to defend yourself from Hugo. If you're certain enough about something, Abigail won't be able to change your belief; but Hugo can disorient anybody, and there's not much you can do.
The only way I know how to explain their disorientation of people is like this: Imagine a person with a line running straight through their body, starting at their feet and running to the top of their head. This is their magnetic field--obviously it's more circular, not just a line, but I'm using a line right now. When you're disoriented, the line tilts. It doesn't matter what direction; as long as it's not straight up and down, as it would be when you're standing normally, your brain will be massively confused. The farther it tilts, the more disoriented you would be. It doesn't affect physical balance though. There might be feelings of nausea if it's tilted far enough.
Charlie is the other character who gets into your head. Picture the person with the line-field again. Charlie, instead of tilting the field, stretches or compresses it. If the field is longer than you are (stretched), then it will seem as though time is moving way too fast. When the field is compressed, time seems to slow down. It's all perception, but it's strong enough to completely confuse most people. Charlie has been using this ability mildly on himself and the people around him since he was a baby, but it was so weak that no one ever noticed it. When he was enjoying himself, naturally he would want the situation to last longer, so time would seem to move more slowly. The difference would be so minute that no one would notice until after, when they looked at a clock and realized it had only been one hour. But when he starts "training" with this ability, it gets to the point that things would seem to be fast-forwarded or moving in slow motion. It's helpful when they're fighting because the enemies would be overwhelmed by how quickly the battle happened, but he and his friends would feel time so slowly they could react to everything without a problem.
Others affect people only physically.
Xin can move people around by pushing or pulling their fields, as though there was a metal bar through the person's body that he was literally grabbing and dragging.
Maria can cause intense physical pain without actually inflicting injury by twisting the field. (If the line through the person's body was a rope, she would twist it around. Even one rotation is absolutely excruciating; you can imagine how much power this gives her.)
Other characters have the ability to heal or defend.
So, if you were injured, there would be a break in your field. If it were just a cut, the break would be miniscule, but it still exists. If you broke your leg, there might be a large gap in the field. Either way, the field is affected by everything that happens in your body. Lillian can mend these breaks, and as she does, whatever injuries would be healed. Addy's power is to create these breaks. If the break happens before the injury, then the body would simply break down--if you were running, for example, when the break was created, then your ankle might be sprained. If you were just sitting down, your organs would start to dissolve inside your body.
Billie's power is more defensive, but can also be used for healing. He prevents the sort of tilting disorientation that Hugo and Abigail cause. He can also right a field that has been tilted. If Abigail had already influenced someone's belief of something, Billie's righting of the field wouldn't make the person remember what they had thought before, but they would no longer be disoriented.
I believe the only person I haven't covered yet is Hailey. Her power is potentially the most powerful of all of them, but there's a huge weakness.
Hailey can suck away people's magnetism. They would not be able to use their powers as strongly when she's "feeding" from them. It would gradually return to them when she stops, but they would be very vulnerable. The downfall, though, is that when she has sucked magnetism away from other people, she essentially becomes a stronger magnet. She's so much stronger that anyone she hasn't fed from would be able to affect her much more potently. If, for example, she sucked off Abigail's power, Abigail wouldn't be able to do anything to her. But if Maria was there while this was happening, and Hailey didn't do anything to her, Maria would be able to cause Hailey much more pain than she would a normal person, because Hailey's field would be temporarily much stronger.
So, wow. If you stuck with me through all of that, thank you. And congratulations. I think typing it all out has helped me understand it better, so if you didn't, oh well. Also. I was much too lazy to go back and reread this so it's probably quite incomprehensible in places xD.
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