⫸ B A S I C I N F O R M A T I O N ⫷
"Eheh."▼ | BIRTH NAME : | Mason Rivera
▼ | ALSO KNOWN AS: |Mace (nickname by co-worker)
▼ | GENDER : | Male
▼ | AGE : | 24
⫸ A P P E A R A N C E ⫷
"Hrmm...I've been wantin' to get a tat done by this guy, but he lives on the other side of the country."▼ | P H Y S I C A L S T A T S : | ▸ HEIGHT : | 6’ 2”
▸ WEIGHT : | 188 lbs
▸ ETHNICITY : | Half Filipino, half european mix
▸ HAIR COLOR : | Dark brown (natural, shows in the roots), beach blonde (dyed, slightly faded)
▸ EYE COLOR : | Light brown (natural), wears greyish green contacts
▼ | PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION : | Mason exhibits an aura of stillness and calm; he walks with his shoulders relaxed, arms hung out of the pockets of his loose, comfy jacket, and a serene, almost sleepy expression worn on his face. He’s fairly tall at 6’ 2”, with a half-decent build (somewhat fit with a bit of a gut because of his desk job), and is covered in piercings and tattoos that he makes no effort to hide. In spite of that, his presence in a room is barely above that of furniture, and he’s happy to keep it that way.
He has naturally tanned skin - owing to his half filipino background. His face is semi-sharp in frame, completed with an unremarkable nose and mouth, eyebrows thick and dense, and a strong jawline lightly peppered with a bit of facial hair. Dark circles permanently sit below slightly thin, upward slanted eyes thanks to a harsh combination of working late nights and insomnia. His hair is styled in an undercut and unkempt textured top with a bit at the front having grown long enough to brush just above his non-prescription black rimmed glasses. Behind his left ear is a scar that runs down his neck from a surgical operation due to a skin defect at birth.
Apart from basic hygiene, he’s not one to care too much about his appearance on a day-to-day basis, though it’s mainly because it’s too much extra work for him to be bothered with rather than a lack of interest. Coloured contacts are the one exception for him. He enjoys sporting a pair of glasses or sunglasses for their look, so he’s willing to put in a bit of effort for that by regularly wearing contacts.
▼ | ATTIRE : |Mason prioritizes comfort and convenience above all else, but he makes an effort to look decently presentable, if not a bit too casual. His workplace being a tech startup, this isn’t a problem.
His typical outfit consists of a slightly loose t-shirt or sleeveless, a light puffy jacket (air conditioning at work is unreasonably strong), cargo pants, and a pair of sneakers, each of which he has about 2-3 of at home that he cycles between.
⫸ P S Y C H O L O G Y ⫷
"..."▼ | PERSONALITY TRAITS : | On the outset, Mason has a bit of a ghostly disposition that he likes to embellish for fun; calm, secretive, and has a tendency to walk in and out of people’s presence without them noticing. In spite of that, he’s quite friendly; his relaxed and patient temperament make him easy to talk to, given that his enigmatic nature doesn’t scare you off. However, while he is amicable, he’s not exactly a smooth talker. He can only speak in an articulate manner when he’s making a conscious effort to do so. When he lets loose a bit , he’s much more emotive and bumbling - almost childlike - and is easily flustered.
His secretive behaviour is rarely intended to be malicious or deceptive however. Apart from the comfort in having his motives under wraps, he’s thoroughly uncomfortable with other people - even those he’s closest to - knowing about his internal problems. In contrast to how he presents himself to others, he is far more prone to negative emotions than he lets on, but chooses to suppress and bottle them up. He’s well aware of his problems but will at most, use them to joke about himself.
Mason has a strange but close affinity for unnecessary complexity; he loves fiction with layers of symbolism, and much of the tattoos on his body reflects that. He sees this affinity as a representation of himself as well, best illustrated in his tendency to overthink his actions in even the simplest of social interactions. Mason is deeply perceptive of other people’s behaviour, but he can’t apply his observations without a plan; forced improvisation will cause him to overwhelm himself with his own thoughts.
On the upside, when he does have to put this to strategic use and has the preparation time to do so, he can be very effective at subtly getting others to do what he wants. Unfortunately, this natural inclination for manipulation bleeds into his behaviour with people he’s close to as well, the guilt of which weighs heavily on him.
▼ | SKILLS : | Programming: He taught himself programming at the age of 15 as a hobby, continued his education of it through a Computer Science program in college, and currently has had a total of 3 years of professional experience as a developer (please ask to see his resume). He specializes in backend and his favorite programming language is Python.
Housework & Cooking: He’s had to manage the household and take care of his siblings since he was a child so it comes naturally to him.
▼ | BACK STORY : | Mason was born in Brooklyn, New York, in a family of 6: mother, father, a younger sister, and two younger brothers. Both his parents had 9-5s, so he and his siblings were latchkey kids since they started school. On an average weekday, his parents would leave before their children woke up. Mason would get up before the others to make breakfast and help get his siblings ready to head out. Their neighborhood wasn’t particularly dangerous and their school was only a few blocks away, but as a small child walking to school with no one but several smaller children he was responsible for, he couldn’t help but be scared and anxious. By 7, his parents would be back home with takeout for dinner, though it was sometimes only their mother.
Their mom, who worked as a waitress at a local diner, felt guilty about having to leave her children alone for so many hours of the day, and did her best to spend every hour of her freetime with them. Unfortunately, this gradually takes a toll on her health - not helped by her history of heart problems, but she refused to tell her children in her efforts to not worry them. Their father was cold and emotionally distant from what Mason could remember, but loved his wife. When their mom grew too sick to work, their father started to resent the children, but kept it internal.
Mason slowly learned to read his parents from their faces and body language; he was still a child so his observations weren’t very concrete, but the way they acted made him extremely uneasy. He had his own share of issues (stress and anxiety from school and having to take care of his siblings), but he refused to overburden his mom, he wasn’t close to his father, and he couldn’t relate to his peers at school. Everyone was tired and depressed, but nobody said a word, and that was how they lived for years, until their mom died.
Ever since then, their father would start coming home later, then, for days, and sometimes, weeks at a time. They had to move into a smaller apartment. Mason assumed the role of the guardian in the family, managing the household, helping out his siblings, and working part-time to help pay for living expenses. Fortunately, as they grew older his siblings were empathetic to the responsibility he had and a lot of work was taken off his shoulders. His father was incredibly neglectful, but at the very least, he kept paying the rent until the youngest child turned 18.
Mason had his first serious relationship in his first year as a Computer Science student at community college, but it wasn’t a healthy one. His partner had a worse life at home than he had, which he let be the excuse for her toxic behaviour as he allowed himself to be gaslighted and emotionally abused. Thankfully, he broke up with her after a year with support from his newly made friends in college.
After graduation, he realized that his experiences in his hometown had made the place seem bleak and depressing, so he decided to apply for a full-time job in other states and countries. One of his old bosses was acquainted with the owner of a startup in Los Angeles, who was hiring a backend developer; they got in touch the next day. Pay was suboptimal, but the two got along well, and he was more than willing to accept a low but manageable salary if he liked the people and environment.
Mason never knew of the existence of his Delta power until a few months after his move to LA. The Delta-Point energy in his body slowly built up over time, helped in part by the amount of stress he endured since childhood. One of his co-workers was a Type-Blue Deltahuman with moderate telekinetic abilities. He kept it a secret from those he wasn’t close with so nobody at work knew about it at first. One night, when him and Mason were walking to a bar, a drunk driver was about to run his car into them, but his co-worker stopped it with his Delta power, a feat he was previously far from capable of. He divulged his secret to Mason that night and after a bit of experimenting, realized that Mason’s presence doubled the weight limit his telekinetic ability would’ve allowed otherwise. The panic during the moment the car was about to hit them had activated Mason’s Manifestation Event.
Turns out, their boss witnessed them in action; in fact, he was a Deltahuman too - a Type-Red low-level pyrokinetic. Mason explored and developed his control over his abilities with the two during his years working at the startup. He often wondered how and when he was exposed to Delta-Point energy. Neither of his parents were Deltahumans as far as he knew; it could have been kept a secret from them but he couldn’t identify a reason why they would do that. Perhaps one of his parents weren’t biologically related to them, though he didn’t care enough to clarify that theory*.
*This isn’t relevant to his arc (because he never finds out the truth nor does he care to), but to clarify, his biological father is a Deltahuman and he’s not the same one he grew up with. He was also a Type-Green Deltahuman whose energy was left in the house Mason was born in, allowing him to be further exposed at a young age even when he wasn’t around.
▼ | PERSONAL ARC : | Mason doesn’t have any external goals for now; his siblings live on the other side of the world, so the most he can do at the moment is try to contact them.
His main arc will be primarily an internal battle, where his facade of unending patience and calm is repeatedly challenged and worn thin over time, and his emotional suppression and passive hero complex grow more and more self-destructive. This could end tragically for him if he doesn’t have the willpower to pick himself back up at his lowest moment, but it’ll depend on how the story goes.
⫸ P O W E R I N F O R M A T I O N ⫷
"Heh."▼ | POWER CLASSIFICATION : | Type-Green
▼ | POWER DESCRIPTION : | Power Buffing
Mason’s power is being able to temporarily loan others some of his Delta-Point energy, in order to boost their own Delta power. What this does to different Deltahumans changes from person to person as it depends on how a boost in energy will affect their abilities.
In order to exert his buff on someone he has to be able to see them. His irises will emit a subtle lime-green light when it’s in effect, only really visible in the dark so it’s generally easy to hide (especially with sunglasses). The glow does grow brighter the stronger the buff is however, and if he is straining himself, veins on his body will bulge through the skin and emit the same light. Once he loses eye contact with the person for 10 seconds, their borrowed energy will return back to him. This makes it much harder to buff multiple Deltahumans with this particular function.
The target of his energy loan isn’t limited to Deltahumans; he is also able to infuse objects with them, but instead of eye contact, he simply has to touch and hold onto the object (he refers to this as charging the object). When an object is charged, it acts as an extension of Mason himself. When held by another Deltahuman, the buff will activate like an external battery. Its strength and duration of buff is fixed depending on how Mason charged it and the amount of energy will only decrease when in contact with a Deltahuman (it runs out much slower if the Deltahuman isn’t using their powers). This ability consumes much more time than regular buffing, but it covers the limitations of eye contact. He keeps this a secret from others until the situation calls for it.
A currently unknown function of his power is the ability to transfer some of his energy to another Deltahuman and give them a permanent boost in power. He’ll discover this ability during the story.
▼ | LIMITS : | How his power works pertaining to Delta-Point energy is as such:
His energy is divided into 2 parts: energy to loan for the buff (strength energy), and energy used up during the buff (duration energy).
E.g. If he loans 80% of his Delta-Point energy (strength energy) to someone, this will nearly double their abilities. However, the rest of his energy (duration energy) is used to keep this effect going, and with 20% left, he’d only be able to hold the buff for about 30 seconds before he risks ashing. The difference in strength of buff + duration given the amount of input is closer to exponential.
Short, heavy buff: 80:20 => about 2x power, 30 sec duration max
Average buff: 50:50 => about 1.5x power, 10 min duration max
Long, light buff: 20:80 => about 1.125x power, 1 h duration max
If these buffs are used beyond his time limit, he’ll risk ashing, in addition to a few other side effects (see weaknesses below).
This isn’t mathematically calculated because I want there to be a degree of flexibility and quantifying it to such an extent may not be fun. I’ll let the writer decide what each buff means for your character’s powers given the approximation above.
His buff will have no effect on permanent transformations, but the Deltahuman will still gain a boost in the amount of energy they have stored.
▼ | WEAKNESSES : | Mason needs a moderate level of concentration to be able to buff someone. If he’s aggressively interrupted (e.g. being attacked), he will likely experience a side effect called "leakage" in which his Delta-Point energy will overreact and start slowly seeping out of his body. This will not only reduce the maximum strength and duration of his buffs, but blur his vision, rendering his power much less effective overall. Continued use of his power in this state will also worsen it. This state will gradually lessen and go away within 3-6 hours, depending on how much he worsens it, and his Delta-Point energy will then return to his body.
Leakage can also occur if he overexerts himself, but it’s less likely. Apart from ashing, what’s more likely to happen if he uses over 97% of the energy in his body is that he may not be able to take back all the energy he loaned. A unique characteristic of his Delta-Point energy is the ability to adapt to other Deltahumans while retaining its connection with him. However, this characteristic will weaken exponentially when he has less than 3% of the energy left in his body, causing a small amount of it to be stolen by the Deltahuman being buffed. Naturally, he keeps this a secret.
⫸ O T H E R ⫷
"Ehehe- Guess I'm easier to read than I thought."