HYPO

"'I've got a bad feeling we're going to know each other for a very long time.'""- HYPO talking to Levesque."

Overview
May Jägerin Janssens, (Commonly referred to as HYPO) Was a South African research associate who developed psychokinetic abilities after being severely injured by an Esper. She was entered as a potential candidate into the ARAC Index by Matthew Hernandez as a teenager, and by 2038, was followed and recognized by a contingent of people as being a prophetic deity. During the course of her story, she becomes friends with Anne Levesque after helping her and Takehito Hasegawa escape from certain death in a hospital.

Early Life
Janssens was born just after the turn of the millennium in Johannesburg, South Africa. She appears to look back on her early childhood without a great deal of fondness, describing her parents as both dysfunctional and overbearing, as they seemed unsatisfied with her adopted interests of botany and zoology. It wouldn't appear as if her education fared much better, as she remembers her schoolmates as being distinctly intolerant of her presence in the academic environment.

Upon Janssens turning sixteen, her parents decided to send her to a vocational/reformative program that was hosted in the former United States near New York in a self-contained living center. During this time, she met an aging Matthew Hernandez, who frequently taught her occupational skills like mechanical troubleshooting and painting. Hernandez partially assumed a paternal role for the girl as she became a woman, regaling her with stories about his experiences in Vietnam and Operation LAC. After an incident where Janssens destroyed an electrical transformer seemingly without ever physically affecting it, Hernandez entered her information into the ARAC Index, assuming that she would remain as a false-positive in the registry that already had so many.

In her early twenties, Janssens applied to an educational program related to the fields of anthropological and biomedical research in Hong Kong as an attempt to get away from an increasingly politically unstable North America. Upon being accepted, she relocated to eastern Asia and began taking classes on a new type of medical phenomenon that appeared to be causing psychological disturbances in individuals, acting as an orderly at a local field-hospital and assuming the role of a religious counselor to the patients she came in contact with.

Alterations
By the mid-2030's, Janssens had become known in the bioengineering spheres of medical technology as a psychological consult regarding Espers, having spent a significant amount of time speaking with them in private about their experience relating to the world around them. Having observed similar qualities within herself some years earlier, she kept her personal experience private while tending to the infirm, though she remained quietly disturbed by the similarities between herself and the individuals displaying psychokinetic abilities.

In 2036, during a research-trip with the man who would eventually be known as Tetsujin, Janssens would be mortally wounded by an Esper, requiring both of her arms to be partially amputated. This resulted in her amputations showcasing abnormal biological behavior that ventured beyond the scope of currently-understood medical science, the regenerated tissue demonstrating some degree of autonomous sentience as it actively resisted human interference.

By the second month post-operation, it was decided that she should be fitted with prosthetic arms and the remaining organic tissue be encased in a sleeve with a ballistic-fiber outer-shell and an inside lined with hypodermic needles that kept her flesh constantly inoculated with sedative drugs. Along with this, it appeared that her conscious mind created such forceful disturbances in the electromagnetic field that she was required to spend an additional month hooked into a psychokinetic inhibition device, the technology of which would eventually come to serve as a basis for her Electromagnetic Regulation Mask, or EMR Mask.

Escape, Reintegration
After six months of continuous medical care, Janssens was able to disconnect herself from the regulation technology she was hooked into, causing severe physical and psychological injuries to the hospital staff who were tending to her. She was able to steal several different prototype peripherals from the medical facility she was being held in, including her IV-connected hypodermic sleeves and an experimental head-mounted EMR device, of which she personally modified with the canine-like teeth that make prominent feature on the mask, having molded them out of sheet-metal.

Between her triumphant escape, previous history in the community, and visually distinctive face-mask, Janssens appears to have reemerged in some circles as a type of messianic or prophetic figure, primarily in those whose occupants remain terminally ill or otherwise disabled. This became especially true among those who had been made to eminently face their own mortality as a result of their physical condition, who often looked to Janssens as a consult on the afterlife and the preservation of consciousness after death. Cybernetic meditation, or the process of attempting to synchronize electrical signals between participants through electromagnetic and ultrasonic imaging software, became a common activity among her and her followers.

By 2037, HYPO had reacquainted herself with Tetsujin, who had become similarly deformed, and reinserted herself as an operational asset for November, who found use for her primarily in circumstances of unseen political espionage. As the only self-controlled Esper in the ranks of the organization, she was often called upon for situations in which her psychokinetic abilities would be of operational advantage to the group.

2038 Political Crisis
During the Spring of 2038, after mounting political tension, HYPO received information that two human assets who held first-hand accounts of the work being done to manipulate the flow of information and ideological dissent were being held in an unsecured civilian-purpose hospital under false identities. Under the assumption that JINRAI would sooner-than-later uncover the two people to be employees of the Interior Ministry, HYPO successfully infiltrated the hospital and saved Anne Levesque and Takehito Hasegawa from an assassination attempt by a JINRAI detachment, leaving them to flee and return to their government positions.

After TF Juno was dismantled by the Interior Ministry, HYPO would reappear to assist them with their integration into November, eventually coming to save their lives multiple times over. At the height of the political stalemate, HYPO convinced Levesque to spare 8MAN as he was already mortally wounded, providing a sufficient amount of plausible deniability to the real parties involved.

Aftermath
In the aftermath of the 2038 Crisis, HYPO's psychokinetic anomalies were reduced in destructive capacity significantly after the disturbances in the EM field caused by other Espers were calmed. Due to this, she opted to remove her mutations entirely, no longer having to consider the biological complications of removing a codependent colony of parasites from her body. This left her with two human arms once again, and was able to remove her mask without fear of causing severe disturbances to the natural world around her. While the primary human elements of the 2038 Crisis left Japan, Levesque asked HYPO what her plans were, to which she replied, "I have to look after friends." It's unclear whether she meant her 'clergy' or possibly Levesque herself.

Relationships

 * Anne Levesque Both Levesque and HYPO were initially confused by the goals and presence of one another, with Levesque especially noting that HYPO was a 'chaotic' presence in the world. Much later on, Levesque recognized HYPO as being the benevolent person she was, which quickly developed into a bizarre codependent relationship between the two. Levesque often sought spiritual and moral guidance from HYPO about the modern world and the nature of reality, of which HYPO was only able to partially answer; a common activity between the two being getting drunk together. HYPO shared her neutralizer pills with Levesque, which made them able to be physically nearby to one another for extended periods without Levesque experiencing a drop in her well-being. Levesque is the last person that HYPO talks to in the story, confiding in her that she trusts HYPO's judgement and moral/interpersonal integrity as a person.
 * Natalia Orlovsky Orlovsky and HYPO seem to have had an odd relationship, as they were both unable to reconcile the differences between one another. While they were able to tolerate the presence of one another, Orlovsky openly admitted that she thought HYPO was an 'eldritch horror' and considered 'not totally confused' as being the highest possible level of interaction between the two. It wouldn't appear that any animosity between them emerged in their professional environment, as they had no problem communicating and cooperating during operations.


 * Isaac Stross Stross and HYPO had a somewhat intimate relationship, as Stross was one of the few people without political restrictions who was able to service and maintain the technology that kept HYPO alive and functional. As he spent long hours in close physical contact with her, they had naturally developed a working relationship, though it's unclear to what degree they were involved. Stross appeared to have a very high opinion of HYPO, describing her as a 'force of nature' and 'unbelievable' in her abilities. He was often seen feeding and clothing her, as well as needlessly brushing her hair and dusting her clothes off. Levesque sarcastically referred to this relationship as 'a man-boy love situation' and mocked Stross for essentially acting as a door-mat for HYPO, which he denied.

Personality
May's personal convictions and beliefs are widely questioned by the people around her, as she's often entirely enigmatic and elusive in intent. This is compounded, naturally, by her few choices of words and the concealment of her face, of which few people have ever seen since her alterations. Botany and zoology remained her primary interests outside of psychokinesis for her arc of life, living in an abandoned apartment-building that appears to be overrun with the local flora and fauna. Levesque and Stross both seem to come to understand May's place in life as being a caretaker and nurturing figure in the lives of others, being a role that Stross assumed in-reverse for her. Levesque interprets her behavior as being 'Jesus shit' in relation to her upbringing in North America.

During a night spent with Stross, HYPO related the deep insecurities about her personal condition to him, explaining her severe distaste for her medical abnormalities and the religious aura surrounding them. Her mask, especially, appears to be a sensitive subject, and one she remains consistently defensive about, often deflecting questions about its purpose and function. Other concerns about her appearance are expressed, including her bionic prosthesis and the possibility of revealing her face to ordinary people.

May's spirituality is only ever elaborated-on through her teachings, and rarely, if ever, comes out in regular conversation, with the exception of Levesque, who May taught about the concept of Buddhist reincarnation and the nature of reality as human beings perceive it. While explaining this theory, Aristotle's Applied Metaphysics comes through in multiple footnotes, which can imply a layer of western philosophy to her thought-process. As she's in Japan, Shintoism is a recurring philosophy that she has learned to understand with her time in the country, having conversations with Levesque about the late Hasegawa and where his soul might be in accordance with his religious beliefs, or whether humans have souls at all.

Stylistically, May appears to be a mild adherent to the Zef and gangster styles of years past, probably owing to her South African heritage. This is reinforced by her modified UZI sub-machine gun and a shirt she frequently wears with a design popularized by Yolandi Visser, a Zef figure. The name HYPO is a callback to graffiti culture, of which she was heavily involved in while she was in North America.

Appearance
HYPO appears to be a sturdy, somewhat strong-set, fair-skinned woman of above-average height with brown hair and green eyes. Her hair is cut down to a very reserved and understated low-maintenance crop that rests messily on her head and sheens gently in the light. Her eyes are an off-green, somewhat olive color, with vaguely yellow highlights that appear to glow slightly in low-light conditions. Her facial features, though rarely seen, appear to be fairly typical for an Afrikaner, with a straight, narrow nose, and strong cheekbones.

In 2038, HYPO's clothes were generally understated in presentation. She wore a dark-brown denim jacket with the sleeves rolled just beneath her elbows with a black ZEF shirt underneath and an off-green keffiyeh around her neck for protection from the elements. She wore form-fitting black cargo-pants with drop-leg straps on them for a holster that seems to be missing, with magazine-pouches clipped tidily onto her belt. Her feet are covered with buckled black bosuzoku boots. She wears a canvas-stitched holster that is able to hold her UZI.

HYPO's bionic arms were primarily intended for diagnostic purposes at first, as military-purpose bionics offered the greatest degree of articulation and flexibility for testing responsiveness, though, seeing as she escaped from medical care, they were never replaced with something inferior, and so they remained. They appear, generally, to be entirely inorganic in nature, though it becomes clear without sleeves that her arms are wrapped-off with a grey ballistic-fiber heavy-duty sleeve-system that covers the biologically volatile tissue on her arms and keeps it sedated.

Her mask is of similar esoteric origin, originally having been a shop-room prototype to fit an electromagnetic regulation device inside of a head-mounted apparatus that would keep the especially severe manifestations of uncontrolled psychokinesis at bay. Its appearance is primarily in earth-tones evocative of military applications, mainly in olive-drab and soil colors. The mask was built with three-indent earmuffs that served as a radio headset, with peeling registration and decommission stickers on either side. The most distinctive feature of the mask, however, is entirely cosmetic and exists as a modification made by HYPO herself, being the sheet-metal, exaggerated teeth in an askew expression that are mounted onto the face-plate of the mask, resembling a samurai menpō with canine teeth. This was primarily done, originally, to ward off unsuspecting or unknowing people from approaching her and becoming ill, but it quickly became an identifying characteristic of her presence, and a symbol of the resistance that November works toward, though it's highly unlikely that she intended this.

Trivia

 * HYPO was originally drawn in late 2016.
 * Her in-engine model is one of the highest-quality character-models made, clocking in at almost 46,000 vertices.
 * It would appear that HYPO is almost six feet tall, as she stands only slightly shorter than Stross, who is over six feet tall. It's never explained whether this is natural or if it was related to her biological alterations.