Romain Martineau
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Name______
Romain Émile Martineau III
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Age______
19
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Alias______
Might choose one later? N/A
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Appearance______
Romain is six foot tall and has a fairly athletic physique. He has slightly darker skin than the typical Caucasian. He has a small scar on his right cheek from when he was a child. His eyes are a lighter tone of brown. His accent is mostly American due to spending the majority of his life here, but he does have hints of French dialect creep in to his way of speaking every now and then.
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Abilities
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Water Manipulation
At first, an ability such as Water Manipulation might not seem overly intimidating when compared to powers such as control over fire, but when used correctly it can be one of the most effective and potentially lethal abilities.
The most commonly used subcategory of Water Manipulation, for Romain, at the very least, is it's shaping. The power to lift, separate and move water. This allow the user to control some of the vast waters of planet Earth, that cover roughly 70% of the world's surface, giving the user the ability to create jets, waves and bullets of water whenever near a source of it. Romain has a limited control of this, and can only carry and manipulate so much water at one time - he couldn't exactly generate a dangerous tidal wave.
He doesn't just use water in this way, however. It is common knowledge that approximately 65% of the human body is made up of water, meaning the very human body itself can be manipulated, to a degree. Romain could make someone stop dead in their tracks and freeze their limbs by manipulating the water inside of them - even take minimal control of their limbs. If he focuses all of his energy on the manipulation, he could even tear the water out of a person, killing them in the process, though this would require some intense concentration.
Another very useful side of this power, is that Romain is able to purify water. He can take liquid from a sewer or the ocean and make it drinkable. This can be the difference between life and death in some situations.
Romain has to rely on his location to use his powers. If Romain was alone in a desert, or any other location with a lack of water, he would be virtually powerless due to the lack of water. He can take in water and use it at later time, but only a certain amount. He must use his surroundings to be a serious threat. When in urban areas, he can take water from piping.
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Skills
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Romain is quite the linguist, learning English, German and French from a young age, all of which he is now fluent in. He later picked up Spanish, which he is now conversational in. He is very physically capable after spending a great deal of his childhood and some of his early teen years on his uncle's farm in America. He is also very confident in the way he speaks and acts, being fairly charismatic, allowing him to often use words as a way of winning people over.
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Personality Traits
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Generally, Romain is quite a cold individual. He is not rude, or arrogant, as such, but he is not friendly. If someone begins a conversation with him, he won't be insulting towards them, but he certainly won't pretend to be interested if he isn't. He does not go out of his own way to accommodate others, he doesn't suck up, and he despises it when people look down on him and pity him. This is likely due to the circumstances of his childhood, most of which was without a father.
Really, Romain can be a caring and kind person, he just doesn't like to show it. He prefers to maintain a "don't give a fuck" type of image, because it helps him survive in life. So that's how he goes about life, building up a metaphorical wall around himself and cutting himself off from anyone other than those he is close to. When he is close to someone, however, he is much warmer and accommodating.
The vast majority of the time, Romain will get on with what he has to do and will never cause problems - he isn't a troublemaker, and he isn't an asshole... unless provoked. Whilst typically a calm and responsible individual, Romain is very likely to react to things in the heat of passion. He does not deal with extreme emotions very well, and can be very contrasting to his usual self. For example, if he is extremely angered by someone, he will be aggressive and will be unable to hold back, releasing built up tension in one big flurry. This means that Romain can be quite volatile in out of the ordinary situations.
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Backstory
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Romain was born in the spring of 1927, into a reasonably wealthy family - his father a very successful author who, at the time, was fairly well known in France. He spent the first 5 years of his life with his parents, living in their fairly large and beautiful villa in southern France, not far from the city of Avignon. Romain was home tutored by his mother, who had been a full-time teacher before wedding Romain's father and becoming a housewife, having no need to work due to her husband's generous income. After Romain's birth, she had all the time in the world to tutor him alone, leading to Romain being a very intelligent young boy. He learned about his abilities fairly early on, but never really used them out of fear of alerting his parents and being seen as abnormal.
When Romain was still a young child, his mother discovered that his father cheated on her. Being a very audacious and strong-willed woman for her time, she left, taking Romain with her and heading to live with her brother, who owned a small farm in America. Romain settled in very fast, already having a grasp on English due to his mother's teachings. Romain began to attend school now, meaning he had friends. He also spent his afternoons working on his uncle's farm, which was hard work, but it taught him a lot.
By 1938, Romain's parents had reconnected. After a little while, Romain and his mother returned to the villa in southern France and returned to life as usual. This was particularly hard on Romain as he was leaving a place where he had a lot of friends to return to a place where he had none. Having spent six years out of the country and learning a lot back in America, Romain found it hard to re-adapt to this lifestyle.
In 1939, only a year after Romain returned to America, Germany declared war on France and war commenced between the two countries. Romain's father, being a man of the people, was hailed to Paris to work as a radio host, someone to comfort the people with his words - he obliged and left for Paris. Several months later, Germany began their invasion of France, and despite the risk, Romain's father remained in the capital.
Romain was in two minds about what to do at this time. On one hand, he was desperate to fight to protect his country - which he knew he could do, as, despite the fact he was too young to enlist in the army, he knew he could still use his powers effectively to fight. This was quite an ignorant thought, as even though he had some control over his abilities and could probably even take down some enemies, war was no place for a 13 year old, he would get killed within a day, his youth and innocence was still very much intact and he was not ready, physically nor mentally, for the horrors of war. Despite the temptation to run away and fight, he had his mother to worry about, who he loved dearly. If he left, she would be all alone and would be left to cope without any support. In the end, Romain came to his senses and stood by his mother, stepping up to become the man of the house at the meagre age of 13. In years to come, Romain realised how stupid his plan of running away to fight was, regardless how close he came to doing so. Around this time, Romain's father passed away in Paris. Romain never learned what the circumstances had been to his father's demise.
In mid-1941, Romain and his mother fled France in fear that the Germans would spread their invasion southward, heading to America to seek refuge. Both were welcomed with open arms back on to Romain's uncle's farm, where they moved in for the foreseeable future, uncertain of when the war would end and if they'd ever be able to go back to France. Unsure if they would even want to, now that Romain's father was gone.
In his teen years, Romain remained a student and worked on the farm, just as he had before returning to France. He rekindled his friendships and, all in all, despite the war going on behind his back and the loss of his father, Romain's life was actually as good as it had ever been. He also spent some time nurturing his powers, experimenting them if he was ever alone. He never did much more than play with water in a glass until his mid teens, at which point he went out to the lake and played with the water there. He was aware he was different, but it never really concerned him as he was used to it. He truly grasped the full potential of his abilities, when he was around 17 and began to construct shapes with water and launch them at objects.
Despite living on a farm, the closest town to him was not far away, and he often went there, so he was by no means cut off from civilization. After leaving school he began to work full time on the farm, his uncle giving him money for his labour. Romain had every intention to go to College in the coming years, as he had all the qualifications to do so, but he wished to have a good allowance before doing so. However, at some point in 1946, at which point he was 19, a man named Erik Lehnsherr came to him, speaking of a group of people just like him. After some convincing, Romain realised he wished to truly hone his abilities, as he saw them as a gift. He followed Lehnsherr to become a student of Charles Xavier.
