@FantasyChic Ha! Much as it would be a horrendously difficult weakness to overcome, it would make a pretty funny joke. Though I'm sure the character would start getting fed up, as might you. heh
Hmmm, you've got a point. I hadn't thought of it that way. I guess smoke is mostly just air with a few extra particles thrown in. Cool. Power development is fun. :D Be interesting to see how that added ability would affect her psychologically too, given as suffocation and the removal of a sense are two very debilitating methods of causing fear. And seeing people afraid of something you caused can be traumatising. Even if they're bad people. *bounces about excitedly* I am all of the eager to see where this goes.
Also, I stopped watching Daredevil after probably the second episode. I can't even remember why. Maybe I should go back to it. So much stuff on my list of things to watch.
@FantasyChic Ah. I figured that was far more likely, I just had this amusing image in my head of someone being all superpowered and threatening and then some other ordinary joe leaning over and literally just blowing them away. Of course, then the wind would also get to them, and they'd probably have realised this danger, but shhhhh, I'm entertaining myself.
Snrk. I bet Andrew could get blown away by the wind if he wasn't quite at a light enough density to phase through things but was making himself lighter. Whoops, there he goes. Haha. Oh I'm too easily amused.
Now I'm just going to sit here and think about all the things that some asshole could do via breathing to these characters. The worst I've come up with after this is fogging up Skylar's glass form and drawing a happy face.... That, or garlic breath.
I'm just curious as to Wisp's air manipulation weakness because I thought it as a 'ha! that'd be funny' kneejerk moment when I read that and then I couldn't get it out of my head. But how much active manipulation is required for it to be a danger to Wisp? Like, what if someone had a fan...? Or breathed heavily at her? Would that do anything? At all?
At 5’7” and over 180lbs, Andrew is a heavy man in a round rather than intimidating way. With a bit of a paunch, no obvious muscle and a penchant for smiling, he’s about as unthreatening as they come, and he likes it that way. His hair is brown, straight and longer on top than on the sides. It tends towards flyaway fashion due to its thinner wispiness as well as his habit of running his hand through it absentmindedly. He has small brown eyes that, more often than not, are complemented by dark circles beneath them. They are close set under straight, thin eyebrows, with a button of a nose and thin lips. He also has a bit of dark scruff on his cheeks and chin that he keeps short. He is of the opinion it makes him look older.
He has no distinguishing birthmarks, only a few small scars on his hands and arms from work or stupid accidents and a raised, angry looking scar about three inches long running vertically from just under his left collarbone. It leaves him with slight difficulty raising his left arm above his shoulder, but he doesn’t do that very often anyway. His voice is light, with an easy speaking rhythm, though it drops to a lower register when he’s speaking thoughtfully. His clothing choices usually consist of jeans and plain coloured shirts, sometimes vests, with comfortable shoes. Nothing fancy. He wears a medical alert bracelet on his right wrist.
| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |
Density Manipulation.
Andrew is able to alter the density of his body and other objects to great extremes. He can lower his density or raise it. With enough practice, he will be capable of stopping the alteration at any point between the two extremes he is capable of, and so, limit the effects it has on his body as well as using the partial changes to different advantage.
He is far more familiar with shifting to a lighter density, though he still hasn’t explored all it has to offer, but he has figured out that he can move through objects that are usually considered solid, such as walls, and let moving objects pass through him. He becomes lighter, making it easier to move him or for him to move himself, and he’s used this to move heavier things than he sometimes should, provided they’re small enough to affect the whole of them. He can walk on water and even air, though it’s not easy to move without something a little more solid to push against. He can also cool himself or something else down by lowering the density, and can withstand higher temperatures while his density is lower, but, so far, nothing that isn’t already humanly possible.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, while he has yet to realize that he can and so is completely unfamiliar with raising his density, it should have similar, though opposing effects on his physiology. Having a higher density would make it harder to inflict damage to his body or whatever he’s raised the density of. He’d also be harder to move, and far heavier(12 tons top weight, currently about 4 tons). At his highest peak, he could stop bullets and speeding cars, but he’d definitely be bruised afterwards. Explosions and heavier weapons would do less damage than usual, but he’d certainly feel it, and extremely small projectiles, like, grain of sand size, might penetrate his skin or pierce his eyes and do almost the same damage they would were he at normal density. Swimming would be impossible and fragile structures could break under him. He’d be stronger though, capable of dragging semis and lifting smaller cars. Though I doubt he’d ever throw them, both for insurance reasons and because he’d need both arms over his head and that hurts. He wouldn’t be able to heat himself up the same as he can cool down, as the latter is due to air movement, but he could gain a little extra heat from densely packed molecules, and would certainly lose heat much slower.
Through skin on thing contact, he can affect inanimate objects, and might develop the ability to affect other people, animals and plants, or at the least he’ll keep trying just to see if he can. Separate, small objects are easily isolated and altered, and he has to think about it as little as he thinks about changing his own density. He can change the density of part of a large object, like a wall or the floor or a car door, but it is much harder, and the default shape he manages each time is a circle, unless there’s already a line for his eye to follow, like an archway. With time, he might be able to change that. The amount he can alter is still limited to matching his mass. And provided he hasn’t gone over this limit, he can alter more than one substance at a time just as long as it is in contact with what he’s in contact with.
Knows he can -phase through things -walk on water -cool himself off -lighten/phase smaller things
He can’t change the density of particular body parts, though he can control the size of the area for other things, with his body it’s all or nothing, and with smaller things, it’s usually all or nothing as well, just by default. With practice and concentration, he might eventually be able to alter only a portion of the object.
He has to be touching the thing he wants to affect or the alteration will go back to normal on its own. Usually within 30-60 seconds.
So far, he has only been able to affect objects up to his own mass or down to a large pebble. With enough time to stretch his power muscles, the limit might go up by a fair bit, but it won’t go down by much.
While he can walk on both water and air, it’s rather like moving on very loose sand. Difficult to do at speed.
While he has the potential to maintain the density alterations indefinitely, or at least, for as long as he’s ever bothered to without it turning off on him, neither his heart nor his pacemaker appreciate the changes to their molecular structure. At lower densities, his heart rate speeds up due to the lowered blood pressure and at higher densities it slows down. Both leave him feeling lightheaded and might provoke fainting spells, though the former includes chest pains and the latter puts him at risk of his pacemaker shocking his heart out of sync, which at best means a few seconds of palpitations and at worst an artificial cardiac arrest that won’t stop until he goes back to normal density and finds a magnet to switch it off and back on or collapses. Depending on his activity levels and amount of density alteration, 5 minutes might be his limit on the short end, though he has managed to walk for half an hour at his lightest before he started to suffer consequences. (This limit only applies to his own body, he can keep a thing’s density altered as long as he wants. And until he gets his pacemaker fixed, he's not at risk of the malfunctioning bit.)
Because he needs air to stay alive and there is an unsurprisingly limited amount within most solid objects, he can't stay phased inside them for long unless they are also at a much lighter density to allow airflow.
He can only keep up the alteration while conscious.
When he changes part of a thing’s density rather than a whole, there can be consequences. Such as raising the density of a car door causing it to become too heavy for the hinges holding it in place. Or making a part of the ceiling lighter might mean the things he didn’t realize were hanging from it fall down. Usually, unless it’s a small wall, the integrity wouldn’t be compromised, but it’s a good idea not to prolong the alteration. Also, there’s no visible change in the object’s appearance except that it might not move in the wind or stop water from moving through it.
He has limited, if any, protection against psionic, energy, or electrical(even less) attacks.
He can quote all of the Lion King, most of Lilo & Stitch, and still cries when Bambi’s mother dies. He also knows the lyrics to most of the better known Disney songs. He has no idea how this happened, and it has nothing to do with the number of times he’s watched their movies. Nope, nothing.
He is a bundle of useless trivia, from bug facts to flower meanings, from historical significance to the average number of people that can fit in an elevator or what the Guinness world record is for how long a chicken lived without its head.
He can drive.
He knows CPR, first aid, and emergency response protocol.
He has taken several self-defense courses, because you never know (and his grandma insisted). He’s probably forgotten more than half of them though.
Balloon animals.
Fluent in English, yep. Also knows rudimentary Spanish and German.
| BACKSTORY: |
Born in New Alexandria, Andrew didn’t stay there long as his parents very quickly decided to move closer to the bigger hospital on the mainland when his birth came with the major complication of hypoplastic left heart syndrome and the commute between there and home cost too much time and energy, not to mention money they didn’t have. He was in and out of that hospital more times than his parents cared to count over the next several years, occasionally due to false alarms, and his heart acting up, and sometimes from the more usual troubles children can get themselves into. But was otherwise a happy enough child, eager to make friends and see his grandparents and ride the ferry. He was just lucky his grandparents had the money set aside for travel to be able to offer some help with the hospital bills and forego their planned years of vacationing.
Although things had started to settle down a little, he was waiting for a new heart for two years during which his health gradually diminished again, and he was bumped up the wait list when he went into full cardiac arrest at 8 years old. They managed to shock his heart into resetting itself then, and possibly did a little more than might usually be expected. The electrical impulses sparked awake some dormant genes in his cells a few years before puberty or an adrenaline rush might have flipped the switch naturally. Or it triggered something that would have remained quiescent his whole life. Andrew isn’t really sure, he just knows that after that day, he had a few accidents that involved falling through things that he shouldn’t have fallen through. Like walls, and floors… And had to work to get the hang of this new trick. As the cardiac arrest was the most recent exciting thing to happen to him before the first moment when he went to lean on a counter and whacked himself in the chin instead, he’s just assuming that’s what it was.
During this time, he also had a brief fling with his neighbour, who was a nice girl and a good friend, after a talk about boy friends and girlfriends turned into him admitting that he wasn’t sure he’d get that far. So, she invited him to be her boyfriend, which mostly amounted to proudly holding hands when they were together and doing most of the same things as they always had. It lasted about two months before they sort of mutually forgot about it and then his family moved again, to a more affordable place in East Beach when the project started up.
When he finally got his new heart, things were looking up, he was feeling good, there was only one fright when his body tried to reject it, but that cleared up and he avoided all the other risks through chance and a very faithful following of the care plan his doctor had put together. So, he focused on school, and friends, and asking the neighbours if they wanted him to mow their lawn or walk their dog for a dollar or three until he was old enough to work. He liked visiting New Alexandria and his grandparents, occasionally managing to convince his grandfather to take him out in his boat (it really wasn’t that hard). Andrew also, of course, spent some time figuring out how the whole slipping through walls worked, and what else he could do with it. He showed his grandma, because she always seemed to have the answer to everything, and his parents were fully aware he was up to something, they just were never quite sure what.
But in practicing and being unsure of what he was doing, he wasn’t always balanced in shifting the density of his body, and it had a detrimental affect on the healing nerves around his heart and eventually they settled into a far slower heartbeat rhythm than was healthy, resulting in not a few fainting spells before his doctor reluctantly suggested a pacemaker to regulate it. He didn’t enjoy the process, or the feeling of having something else making his heartbeat, but he got used to it eventually, and now it’s second nature to go through his daily routine with it and talk about it if he has to, though he doesn’t do a lot of travelling, he has occasionally set off a store’s security. He is certainly glad to be free of the fainting spells, and has learned to be even more careful with his power than he was, but is far less limited than he was before.
He’s gone through the rest of growing up pretty normally, managing to keep in touch with Janelle, the girl he’d ‘dated,’ and meeting up with her as often as they could manage. He did have one girlfriend in highschool too, though that only lasted a year before she broke up with him over the summer. It hurt, but thinking back on it now, he’s not sure how they even lasted that long, given their extremely different approach to practically everything. He got a job as a grocery store clerk until he graduated, then he followed Janelle to the university campus since he liked spending time with her and wanted a change of scene anyway. They rent an apartment together in the Sound while his parents have moved back to New Alexandria to live with his grandfather. He took a semester of classes, but found his attention constantly drifting to other points of interest and decided not to use up his money until he could decide what he wanted to take and could stick with it. He has stayed on as a groundskeeper though, and is saving up what he can while he figures out what he wants to do with his life.
The explosion’s left him with a faulty pacemaker and, although he doesn’t realize it yet, the other side of his power’s spectrum. He’s more concerned about his friends and family being okay than he is about himself though.
| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |
Andrew’s daily goals include making the most of the opportunities he’s given, having fun, and brightening at least one stranger’s day. He doesn’t have the means to make it big or hugely generous, but if he can do something for someone else, he’s going to try; handing over small change or giving a bit of his time or just offering an encouraging compliment are easy to do and a good habit to have, he figures.
His motivation comes from wanting to do something with his life to give back to a community that helped his family through hard times. He just hasn’t managed to figure out quite what he’s capable of or what he wants to do.
| SUPPORTING CAST: |
Bailey & Harrison Williams – Mother and Father
Andrew is close to both of his parents, often getting into emoji wars with his mother and watergun fights with his dad. He tries to get out to see them at least once a month, and usually manages more. He is greatly appreciative of everything they’ve done for him and the support they still offer, whether it be through tough love or just telling him to take a chance because he only lives once. They’ve been together since their own high school days and although they aren’t always obvious about their love, Andrew’s rarely seen them fight and swears they can read each other’s minds. Bailey is an aspiring writer who leads tours and assists researchers depending on the season, and Harrison works as an archivist at the New Alexandria campus.
Dietrich Best – Grandfather
Rough around the edges and still bitching about the bridge that ruined the ferry business, even though there’s still some tourists that want to ride on them, Dietrich isn’t the most forthrightly kind person you’ll ever meet. But he has a gruff voice and an easier temper than his sharp tone implies and a great deal of love in his heart, for all he finds it hard to show. He and Andrew are often co-conspirators when it comes to getting into mischief. His spirit’s dwindled since his wife died, burning a little more fitfully, and his mind’s starting to wander, but he’s still a force to be reckoned with in his lucid moments. He worked on the Regal ferry from 14 to 65, with a break only for the war.
Ellen Best – Grandmother(deceased)
She was her grandson’s bestest friend, her daughter’s greatest supporter, the harshest critic of her son-in-law, and the light of her husband’s life. Now that she’s gone, they all feel her absence, and for all it’s been eight years, Andrew still catches himself sometimes thinking that he’s found something she’d love to hear about.
Janelle Foss – Best Friend and Roommate
Friends since before they can remember, they had an on again, off again method of keeping up with each other during their school years when they were living across the city, but now that they live in the same apartment, they’ve given each other pseudo-sibling status and bicker about the rent while leaving silly little notes around the place for each other in the hopes of winning a smile. She knows about his power and his heart problems and his penchant for singing Disney songs in the shower. He knows about her string of weird boyfriends and very real crush on Gerald Butler and fear of driving. They’ve both agreed that if no one comes along for them by the time they’re 35, she’ll pity marry him and he’ll settle for what he can get.
cottonferret,
Qia,
spicykvnt,
Festive,
Rockette,
Skai,
Snowdrops,
Cleveraptor,
ButtsnBalls,
Dion
