Nemaisare

When It Rains, It Pours

Just gonna keep adding characters until the thread explodes, yes? I think this is a proper plan. Let's do this.

When It Rains, It Pours

Matthias Haylee Draper

Living on borrowed time, swinging too low to fly

---

Age: 39
Mutation: Energy absorption
Occupation: Funeral Director
Face Claim: Javier Botet

Jackie

Stuff

Appearance:
Quite tall in an unfortunately slender way, Matthias is about 6’6”. His proportions seem stretched, his hands too big for his arms and his limbs too thin to offer proper support. He rarely wears short sleeved shirts, or at least keeps a jacket handy, both as cover and to keep more of him warm. The same goes for his pants, no shorts or ¾ lengths, and definitely no sandals. He is almost never too hot, but is probably one of the first to grab his winter layers and the last to put them away. His clothing preferences are a plain, professional look, solid colours and often enough a suit. His one accessory is a wedding band on a chain around his neck. Underneath the clothes, he is exceptionally skinny, to the point of looking starved. It certainly doesn’t help that his ribcage juts and that he has no excess fat or muscle.

His face is angular, with sharp cheekbones and deep set, hazel eyes and sunken cheeks. His hair is black and wavy, curling when it’s short, wavy when it’s past his ears. He doesn’t let it get too long, and fluctuates between preferring it shaved close or at about three inches, or anywhere in between, he really isn’t picky. His eyebrows are relatively thick and flat, which, when combined with an overhanging brow, gives him a pretty good glare. He does need glasses, and has a pair of thick rimmed, black, rectangular frames, but wears contacts almost as often, because he can’t help playing with the glasses when they’re on his face, which is sometimes a bad idea in his line of work. While he does plan on shaving every day, it is not uncommon for circumstances to ruin those plans and leave him with a bit of stubble on his chin and cheeks until he can find enough time to shave uninterrupted, or work up the energy to bother.

His face is relatively expressive, though he’s more often smirking than smiling, and is as likely to use his words as rearrange his facial features to get his point across. He has a tendency to work his jaw when he’s thinking or restraining certain urges to be impolite. Sometimes, this gives him a look of jaw jutting determination or a bit of uncertainty. Other times he rubs the muscles there with a hand. It gives him a thoughtful air, but is more usually the consequence of irritation than contemplation.

Despite, or perhaps because of his height, Matthias rarely stands straight when others are in the room with him. He can, in fact, quite easily be observed shrinking into a slouch when someone comes across him. He certainly doesn’t make himself uncomfortable, nor makes it so blatant that it’s an insult, but he prefers being closer to the height of those he’s interacting with. Unless they annoy him or he should be presenting a more confident demeanour, then he straightens up. Or when his grandfather tells him to. He does usually stand straighter when alone or not conversing. For the most part, Matthias moves and acts as though he’s never in a rush; he doesn’t lag, he just tries not to get hectic even when others are. Unless well worked up, most gestures he makes are more idle than emphatic. And once he’s sat, one can be sure he’ll be staying sat for as long as he can manage. His voice is a low tenor with a slight rasp.

Personality:
To do his job well and keep his clients happy with his service, Matthias needs to be patient, forgiving and calm, willing to make compromises or concessions that always put the client first while standing firm on those points that would get the business on the wrong side of regulations. Thankfully, he’s capable of it, or his grandfather would have been sorely disappointed. But while mild mannered might be a good description of his general attitude, it’s not his default state. For the most part, it is true that Matthias is not very excitable. Really, he seems fairly mellow. Some of this is due to a lack of excess energy, when being loud and aggressively extroverted with his emotions would waste precious resources. Some of it is learned from the habit developed at work. But for the most part, Matthias merely prefers to have good reason to let the lid off his emotions. Otherwise, he can express himself just fine through his voice and choice of words. This does mean that his words often do not seem to match his mood, but he’s not fussed about it. He can get downright vitriolic while looking merely bored. Or be extremely enthusiastic and hardly move.

While he is not afraid to speak his mind, Matthias is also not one to share everything on his mind, and he is an accomplished liar to cover up his secrets. As such, he’s pretty good at shaping his words to suit the situation without completely compromising his freedom of speech in favour of circumspection. He does have a fairly abrasive manner once you get to know him, having a biting inner voice that sometimes gets let out and other times emerges only as a rueful observation. He can be sharp and sarcastic in most of his dealings with people and, outside of speaking with clients – whom he treats with a genuine, though sometimes hard to find, patience and understanding – mixes acerbic observations with straightforward talk. He’s also not afraid to use a bit of derision or pointed commentary to turn the conversation away from any subject he doesn’t want to talk about. It gives the, not entirely mistaken, impression of a defensive man.

This isn’t to say he’s not friendly, but spending any amount of time with him can be a bit of a roller coaster ride if you’re not used to his mannerisms. He doesn’t put his problems on anyone, though he can share them freely if they come up and it doesn’t seem ill-advised, he just doesn’t expect any help with them that hasn’t already been offered. He can and will, however, make himself a problem for anyone else when he’s frustrated enough by what he has to deal with to let it out. A really bad day or something that becomes the last straw in a string of annoyances, irritations or bad luck can see him getting positively explosive, for a short time. In the same vein, while he genuinely likes helping others, and has been known to do so without even being asked every once in a blue moon, he doesn’t like to accept altruistic reasons alone, and usually finds it fairly easy to come up with alternative reasons, or ulterior motives, for doing something nice. It’s not so much embarrassment at the possibility of being caught doing good as it is merely not a notion that suits him. He has a rough sense of humour, and a bit of a different take on things.

People, to him, are merely a mixture of good, bad, and idiotic, himself included, and it’s extremely rare that any one individual will strike him as only one of the three. He doesn’t really bother judging them, just noting what he should expect from them and to what standards he should hold them. If they surprise him, then they surprise him, whether pleasantly or not, and if they never move away from what he’s come to expect, that’s fine too. Matthias, in general, doesn’t react to surprise with the typical start and momentary taken aback freeze, or violent overreaction. Instead, he tends to break into a rough, genial rudeness that he may or may not apologise for later, depending on the nature of the surprise and what he thinks of it. Sometimes it’s almost immediately, and other times he simply backs off and moves the conversation on, he’s not afraid of admitting he was in the wrong or telling someone to bugger off if they think he was and he doesn’t. And he can be extremely stubborn about whatever he feels like being stubborn about, whether it’s not apologising or continuing an old argument for years if it’s not going anywhere to wear the other down or just having a different opinion. If he feels strongly enough about something to take action or resist the tide, it will take an exponential effort to change his mind. Thankfully, for his own efforts, he usually reserves this for things he thinks matter. Others having to deal with him might not be so grateful.

Of course, a certain lack of energy can see his mood shifting more unpredictably than is generally healthy, and though he tries to be aware of those moments and rein himself in, or leave the premises if he can (if his attitude is causing problems people shouldn’t have to deal with), it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes, he’s just fed up enough that he feels if he has to deal with it, others can deal with him and tough luck if they don’t like it. Other times, even aware and trying not to be rude, his words just run away on him. And apologising is harder when he’s cranky. Usually, he just takes his annoyance out in little ways and has, quite often, done something similar in nature to, for example, draining more heavily from a stranger jogging by if they look too energetic.

While Matthias is a generally irritable man, he does have his moments of changing pace. He’s learned how to separate himself from society’s norms by seeing things his way rather than by seeing himself their way, but it’s not foolproof. So, it’s become something of a lifelong challenge for him to fit into society from the outskirts without falling into the trap of conformity. Occasionally, he loses, and ends up feeling unsurprisingly guilty and often despondent over his actions, sometimes even remorseful. When this happens, his defensive wall crumbles more into desperation and justification where usually he’d merely accept what happened as the way of things. Just another part of his life that he has to deal with. His calm breaks far more easily during these moments. When he manages to meet the challenge, Matthias is mannerly, sociable and mostly pleasant to be around. He can never really blend in, being built rather like a scarecrow, but he can slip into being a nice enough man that people don’t pay him any more mind once they’ve gotten over that part. He’ll hold doors open, be a good host, give someone a hand (provided they seem to need it), say please and thank you and excuse me, smile and nod if someone does the same and be overall agreeable, by rote. None of these actions are forced, but they aren’t thought about either. They’re merely habits that may or may not cover up his less friendly demeanour for the short term.

Less habit and more obviously sincere respect is only really found in his dealings with his grandfather or people he has known and liked for a fair amount of time. Even then, it can be hard to tell that he cares except to note that he’s more biddable and easily rattled out of his level mien when they frustrate or worry him. They don’t always get away with more though, since he cares enough to make sure they’re looking after themselves and not getting into trouble. They’re also the people he’s more likely to snap at when he’s reached his limits. His grandfather remains Matthias’ largest source of consternation. They’ve quite a close relationship, but he’s just as stubborn as Matthias, so they butt heads a lot. Around other, traditional, though not familial, authority figures, Matthias varies between ignoring them until they address him to being carefully familiar and always professional. In their case, he doesn’t talk back so much as picks which opinions to voice or agree with. He’s not much of a pushover though, as he’s difficult to intimidate. The harder they push, the less he feels like cooperating, but at least he’s generally smart enough not to push back.

To many, he might seem a little reckless in the company he keeps, but strangers rarely strike him as excessively dangerous, and while he can be cautious, he’s not really concerned for his own safety. Certainly, he doesn’t want to be injured, or killed really, but if it happens, it happens.

Power

Matthias’ one power, out of the few genetic differences he possesses, is that of energy absorption (chemical only). He can draw the energy from living things: plants and animals. He has to, because his body cannot produce it on its own and, without it, nothing would function as it should. His digestive tract is extremely faulty and too slow to absorb even a twentieth of what his body needs on a daily basis. In fact, it will react poorly if he tries to put more than two cups of liquid through it at a time. He can eat solid food, but even just a few mouthfuls will leave him feeling nauseous, anything more will be rejected within the hour; the faster he ate it, the faster it comes back up. Even rich liquids, like milk or pop or heavy soups, don’t stay down easily and often unsettle him, and he’s developed a tendency to feel a little sick just from seeing food, even if he doesn’t have to eat it.

To remain at his peak condition, which is, admittedly, less than average anyway, he should draw steadily throughout the day from whatever sources he can, but as it is a draining experience, especially on the elderly, he ordinarily tries to limit the amount he draws from any individual and is one of those rare few to come out of a crowded event with more energy than when it started, literally, in his case. He can start the process of draining something from almost 5’ away, and can continue the process, though the efficiency diminishes rapidly after 12’, up to 25’ away through the siphon effect. If a person or thing is that far away to begin, he might reach them by working through the closer energy sources towards them via an energy chain. He also cannot begin to drain anything if there is a solid and thick, physical barrier between him and it, something like metal or wood, even thick plastic, but not thin film or cloth. If he’s already started draining, these barriers will diminish the speed and efficiency of the drain, but won’t stop it.

The effects of a drain can range from simple fatigue to chronic poor health to fatality, depending on how much he takes and how long or how often from the same thing. At his worst (skin contact, at his limit of going without), he can kill a healthy adult human within two minutes. Ordinarily, it would take him six. He does have a fairly precise control, even better when he’s touching the thing, but the longer he goes without, the harder it is to moderate once he starts up again. He also has a tendency to slowly start draining from anything nearby if he gets relaxed enough because this power is always active, and is merely held back rather than turned off by his efforts to control it. He can go for up to six hours, or as little as ten minutes, without energy before he starts to feel any terrible consequences. It just depends on how much he started with and how active he is during and before the time when he refrains. The symptoms start with tiredness and shortness of breath a relatively long time before things will get serious as an early warning. Then they move into general muscle fatigue, abdominal pain and numbness or tingling in his extremities. The latter three worsen pretty quickly once they begin, the stomach pain in particular.

If he doesn’t get more energy soon after they start (roughly within the hour), his body will react of its own accord and start absorbing energy from whatever he can reach, whether or not it is something he wants. He won’t be able to stop, though he can slow it a little, until he’s regained the equilibrium every body needs. Unfortunately, this means anyone nearby who attempts to help him would not be safe, nor would anyone who isn’t trying to help. Needless to say, he tries pretty hard to avoid reaching this point. He can absorb some energy from dead things, but only if they are freshly dead, before their cells have a chance to breakdown. Recovery from going too long without energy is a relatively simple process if enough energy is available. The symptoms fade and he’s left to deal with the aftermath. It’s never pretty. If he doesn’t get enough energy, he will die, and that is that.

Apart from the physical reactions, there’s nothing actively visible or sense-able to the casual observer when he’s draining someone. To him, it just feels vaguely, or extremely, invigorating, or as though there’s an empty suction making him listless if he can’t reach anything and is still trying to draw. For whoever he’s draining from, the experience varies, but it would always start with fatigue and then most likely affect the nerves. If the drainee is suffering from health problems, those will probably also be exacerbated.

One added benefit to this power, depending on how you look at it, is that when he drains enough energy at any given time, generally a fatal amount if there’s only one thing available, it boosts his digestive system enough to have it functioning normally for up to half an hour afterwards. The reason this is a questionable benefit is that while his digestion is ornery, he can feel hunger, but not as strongly as were it functioning normally. He would, technically, have died of starvation years ago were it not for his ability to drain energy from others, so when his digestive tract begins working, it is extremely empty and he is extremely hungry. If there’s nothing nearby to eat, he is stuck literally starving. If there is food nearby, he’s stuck having to hold himself back from stuffing his face so he won’t throw it all up anyway.

When It Rains, It Pours

Eww.

When It Rains, It Pours

Ewwwwwwwwwwwwww.

My dad loves them too, and my mother likes them quite well, but Triv is mostly in agreement with me. So, it's probably not actually a good way to tell relationshipness, but oh well.

When It Rains, It Pours

Only if you think tomatoes are disgustingly squishy sacs of ew and like thai pizza. Otherwise, I claim no responsibility.

When It Rains, It Pours

Awkward

When It Rains, It Pours

Don't cross your fingers, Taco, it's harder to type then.

Also PLANT GRANMA!!!!!

The Mavericks | Neo-Genesis

My first post is feeling exceptionally boring. Yay. But I think I'm halfway through. I'm not sure I've got a reason for him to react to David, but I'm hoping going after him immediately isn't necessary.

The Mavericks | Neo-Genesis

| NAME: |

Andrew Blythe ​Williams

| NICKNAME(S): |

Annie, Andy, Drooly, Cherry​

| ALIAS: |

Someone else make something up.

| D.O.B.: |

10/05/1992

| AGE: |

23

| SEX: |

Male​

| SEXUALITY: |

Heterosexual

| APPEARANCE: |

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. Another, older scar runs down the middle of his chest to just past his sternum as a thin, puckered line. 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.

Power

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 in general(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

Limitations

• 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 artificially created 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.

Skills

• 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.
• He will try to make whatever food you ask of him, provided you can give him the recipe. It still might not taste great, but he's handy enough in a kitchen.

| 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 he was otherwise a happy enough child, eager to make friends and see his grandparents and ride the ferry to get to them. He was just lucky his grandparents had the money set aside for travel to be able to offer some financial help and forego their planned years of vacationing.

Although things had started to settle down a little when he was six, he was waiting for a new heart for two years during which his health gradually diminished again. Thankfully, the worst moment that year, was also instrumental in bumping him up the wait list. He went into full cardiac arrest when he was 8 years old, and though they managed to shock his heart into resetting itself, continuing to live was not the only ‘gift’ he thinks that shock gave him. He’s not entirely sure, but he figures something about the electrical impulses combined with the emotional rush must have sparked awake some dormant genes in his cells a few years before puberty might have flipped the switch naturally. Or it triggered something that would have remained quiescent his whole life. Either way, after that day, he had a few accidents that involved falling through things he shouldn’t have fallen through. Like walls and floors… It took him some time, witnesses, and several colourful bruises to realize he wasn’t hallucinating.

During this time, he also had a brief fling with his neighbor, who was a nice girl and a good friend, after a talk about boyfriends and girlfriends turned into him admitting that he wasn’t sure he’d get that far. So, she invited him to be her boyfriend, her ‘ghost’ boyfriend after she saw him fall through the counter he was leaning on, which mostly amounted to proudly holding hands when they were together and doing most of the same things as they always had. With an extra side of her encouraging him to figure out the whole falling through things… thing. They talked about lots of things that fall, from her collection of beetles to the sorts of things he’d do once he had his power under control. From their different teachers and the notes he’d missed while dozing off to what they wanted to be when they grew up. She wanted to be an astronaut for a brief stint; he wanted to be a doctor, or a clown.

The boyfriend thing lasted about two months before they sort of mutually forgot it and then his family moved again, to a more affordable place in East Beach when the project started up. He didn’t forget her though, or the plans he’d had to be a superhero. But it never amounted to much of anything. Never in the right place at the right time, and he didn’t know anything about saving people. The fact that too much stress on his heart made it act up worse than usual didn’t help. Gradually, the ideals slipped to the side and the power was just this thing he couldn’t do that well anyway.

When he finally got his new heart, things were looking up, he was feeling good and 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 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 maternal grandparents, occasionally managing to convince his grandfather to take him out in his boat (it really wasn’t that hard). He spent plenty of time, too, in 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 that he was up to something and being sneaky. Ellen probably told them, because they did sit him down to talk to him about behaving responsibly a few days after he’d told her, but they never asked explicitly.

Unfortunately, in practicing and being unsure of what he was doing, Andrew wasn’t always balanced in shifting the density of his body, and it had a detrimental effect on the healing nerves around his heart. Eventually, they settled into a far slower heartbeat than was healthy, resulting in regular fainting spells that had his doctor reluctantly suggesting a pacemaker to regulate it. He didn’t enjoy the process, or the feeling of something else making his heart beat, but he got used to it eventually, and now it’s second nature to go through his daily routine with it and to talk about it if he has to. Because although he doesn’t do a lot of travelling, he has occasionally set off a store’s security. He is definitely relieved to be free of the fainting spells though, and has learned to be even more careful with his power than he was, but is far less limited than 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 barely lasted a full school year before she broke up with him at the start of summer. It hurt, but thinking back on it now, he’s not sure how they even lasted that long, given their extremely different approaches to practically everything. He got a job as a grocery store clerk where he used his power to shelve heavy things until he graduated. Then he followed Janelle to the university campus since he liked spending time with her and wanted a change of scenery 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 with an undeclared major, but found his attention constantly drifting no matter what class he was taking and decided not to use up his money until he could figure out what he wanted to take and stick with it. He has stayed on as groundskeeper though, and is saving up what he can while he works 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. Maybe it’s the lingering childhood disappointment that superhero isn’t a viable career move, but part of him isn’t sure anything he thinks of would be enough.

| 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.

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

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| NOTES: |

• Left-handed. Writing looks like this.
• Is an organ donor. He has a card.
• Also has a pacemaker ID card so he can flash it around when he sets a security alarm off and people start questioning his morals.
• Volunteers off and on at the children’s hospital.
• Collaboration and character driving noted.

The Mavericks | Neo-Genesis

So, just as a whole, making sure I know where we're at thing, what stuff is still out for the count from the CME?

Everything that's battery or electricity operated? Barring things on the power grid since it seems like that's been fixed?

So, like, cars and cellphones and.... a whole bunch of stuff that I can't list because my brain is dead and I gotta run....