Rylan Sloan

"""A guy puts on a tight, rubber suit that crushes his manhood to teleport down here and crush a beautiful girl from getting mugged by a creep and he doesn't even get a thank you? It makes me not want to continue this line of work to be completely honest."

- Rylan Sloan, Chapter 3 of The Supervillain and Me.

Rylan Sloan, as of Super Charged, is a nineteen-year-old boy and secretly the super known as Iron Phantom. He is dating Abigail Hamilton, as well as living with her, Connor, and Cal.

Before the Series
Rylan lived a normal life until about the age of eight. Around then, he started getting really bad migraines and getting dizzy all of the time. When his parents took him to the doctor's, they got the news that he had brain cancer, a type called Medulloblastoma. In Rylan's words, "It's cancerous, and it's pretty much the worst kind of brain tumor a kid can get." He went through surgery to remove it and chemotherapy and radiation therapy after that to make sure it was gone, making a friend named Mary who read to him and played him music. Though it left him with a nasty scar and crippling anxiety, he recovered from his cancer, with it never coming back.

After his recovery, when he was nine, he began developing powers. When he was sitting on the couch with his mom one day, he accidentally projected his thoughts. The healing came next, and while it's unknown how he discovered this power, it's known that he first practiced on animals, only trying on a human when his mom thought she would have to go to the hospital to get stitches after accidentally cutting her finger. Next, he would accidentally teleport whenever he felt he was in danger.

Nothing else particularly noticeable happened until three years later, when Rylan was eleven. He was in the car driving with his parents when he got a stomach ache. His parents started worrying about him, saying that they would take him to the hospital, but before they could get there, another car driven by a drunk driver rammed in front of the car and hit it, which killed Lila and David Sloan.

After his parents died, he moved to Morriston to live with his grandfather, though his grandfather moved out quickly within the year. There, he went to middle and high school with Abigail, where he first met her. In this time, Rylan developed a slight crush on Abigail, though he never acted on it at all until he started moonlighting as Morriston's favorite Iron Phantom.

The Supervillain and Me
Rylan's superhero persona, the Iron Phantom, is the first time Rylan appears in the book. Three guys are threatening Abigail, saying things like, "We could have some fun with you," and insinuating that they were going to rape her. Abigail, at first, is fairly confident that she'll be fine, but as more time goes by, she becomes more and more worried that Connor isn't coming to save her. Just before anything happens, however, Iron Phantom saves her, using his telepathy to tell her to run. She does, but not far.

After Rylan fends off the guys, he walks over to Abigail, revealing the snarky side of him that he never quite had to confidence to show in public. He heals her forehead, causing only minor pain to him.

Appearance
Rylan is described with messy brown hair and darker brown eyes. He's tall, standing at 6'1", with tan skin and strong muscles and abs because of his super DNA. Abigail describes him often as attractive. He has slight stubble on his chin.

Powers and Weaknesses
Rylan's powers came from the fact that he had cancer, surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy at age eight. It's unknown which of these situations caused his powers, as all of them posed extreme threats to him, but everyone -- in the series and out -- agrees that his cancer caused his powers.

Because of his cancer, however, Rylan has three main powers: he is able to teleport, he has telepathy, and he can heal people. All three of those have limits, however. The teleportation wears him out quickly if he does it too much, and if he does overextend himself, recovery is slow, even for a super. Telepathy only works one way, so he can only give messages to other people. His healing also only works one way, meaning Rylan can't heal himself, which he describes as his only hamartia in The Supervillain and Me. Rylan also can't heal fatal wounds.

Trivia

 * In Men in Tights, Rylan had only green eyes. However, in The Supervillain and Me, he only has green eyes in his superhero persona, which are actually just colored contacts.