ZeroCuero — Roleplayer Guild

“Goddamn it, this is stupid. You’re all stupid. I’m stupid. Forget this.”

Name: Gabriel Mattingly 
Gender: Male
Appearance: A human male of mixed decent—half-Scotch-Irish, half-Puerto-Rican.  On the shorter side, coming up at 5’8, but at least it’s a height much easier to lug around than those bulky 6’6 flying bricks. He has an endomorphic build, and often is forced to watch his weight to keep himself light enough for takeoff. His head is shaved, though back when he kept a full head of hair it was dark brown, nearly black. His nails are kept long and clawlike. His eyes are green—bright green, contrasting sharply with his cerulean sclera. His body is covered with a multitude of scars from past fights—most notably: a cluster of nicks along his jaw from a wave of shrapnel (this is why he wears a helmet now), two gashes on his back, and a chunk scooped from his right leg that causes considerable pain when running for extended periods of time. Swooping out from his shoulder blades is a pair of feathered wings: 25-foot wingspan, colored in vibrant reds and blues like a macaw. 
Back when he was a Hero, Gabriel felt the need to keep every aspect of his metahumanism hidden. During this time he would buy false teeth to cover his fangs, put in contact lenses, and wear exclusively baggy sweatshirts to hide his folded-up wings. 
…And then he became a Hunter, and realized that he was fooling nobody with that. Now he wears loose-fitting t-shirts most of the time, paired with jeans. Basic, but cheap; what’s the point of buying a nice shirt if you’re just going to cut holes in the back for your ridiculous bird wings, anyway? 
He didn’t really feel the need to change any aspect of his Hero identity when he became a Hunter, so when on the prowl he still wears what he wore back then. A sleek black bodysuit for top aerodynamic performance; layered over this is a set of loose red cloth, tied around the waist. This cloth is also secured by a belt, which holds four bags of throwing knives. Often he wears an arrowhead-shaped helmet with a large crest sailing into the air, perfect for slicing somebody from below. It is in the shape of a snake’s head, and covers his eyes. Around his neck is a completely decorative amulet in the shape of a conch shell cut at the cross-section and done up in fancy stones.
Age: 28

Alias: Quetzalcoatl, or Quetzal if you’re short on time. 
Alignment: Hunter
Identity: Started out as Private, became Public upon transitioning to Hunter.

History: Usually one is lucky enough to have their metahuman abilities manifest in, say, adolescence. Gabriel Mattingly was a special case. From birth he has sported wings: first tiny skin-covered things that grew and grew and grew into massive limbs capable of a kind of hover-flight. 
His parents were horrified. The whole family ended up relocating to a small mountainside home, both to avoid the public eye and to give the young Gabriel ample cliffs to literally spread his wings. He was twenty-two when he finally left home—homeschooled, with no plans to go to college—and became a Hero. And for a while, it was great. He was really able to hone his flying into something concrete and impressive, as well as conjure up massive windstorms to rattle around the bad-guys into submission. And every day, once the job was done, he was able to take the helmet off, peel the suit from his body, and head home, content to visit his ageing parents. 
And then it all changed when a Hero sent the entire Empire State Building into his mountain in order to squash the devil-portal that had opened up inside (or something like that), and those parents were killed instantly. 
It broke him.
For two years, the Hero known as Quetzalcoatl vanished off the face of the Earth. Many assumed he had died—that’s what the papers said, anyways. No one really knew what happened. 
Until he stepped forward and told them. Yes, on that fateful that in which he stood at age 25, looking worse-for-wear on account of his new smoking addiction and completely shaved head, he told all. His story, his identity, it was all laid out for the ravenous public. 
Everyone figured that this was it—that he would fade back into obscurity, and the world would forget the name of Quetzalcoatl. Maybe they’d learn how to spell it in the meantime. 
…And then he became a Hunter. 
Yeah, he’s kind of hated by most Heroes now. They call him a traitor, he calls them a bunch of kids, they go back and forth. It’s all in good fun, if you count good fun as trying to beat the shit out of one another whenever possible. 

Personality: People will jokingly call him a bitter old man. He is quick to frustrate, especially when it comes to those “damn tryhards with their gaudy capes”—a particular trigger is whenever one brings up his Hero past. He has an incredibly cynical view on life, and figures that if the Hunters fail to round up all of the Heroes and Villains terrorizing the streets then they’ll end up destroying each other anyway. The only reason why what he does is any different is because it takes less time. His self-esteem is something to be pitied—most of his humor derives from self-deprecating jokes or ambiguous references to suicide. Being raised on an isolated mountain certainly did a toll on his social interaction, as he prefers the company of himself to the point where he has taken up residence in the charred crater that used to be his childhood home. Whenever forced to interact with his fellow Hunters, he comes across as cold, awkward, and confrontational. 

Skills: 
- Good at identifying birds
- Above-average memory
- Contains a detailed knowledge of the Hero network and how it works (i.e. how heroes usually act, what their motivations are, the likely next plan of attack, etc.) 
Abilities:
- Flight
Using his wings, he can fly upwards of two-hundred feet in the air. However, this requires a lot of energy; think twenty minutes of flight = the energy required to run a 5K, and any overexertion can result in awful, awful cramps. Seriously guys, ice pack on the joints for like, three days. It sucks.
- Wind Manipulation
At perfect health, he could hypothetically create tornadoes, dust devils, waterspouts, and wind storms using the air roared from within. But being a smoker does a number on your lungs, as does living off of Nature Valley bars, so more often than not he can, at best, buffet around an enemy a bit. Maybe throw them into a corner…knock them down, maybe…get something in their eyes…wheeze. But ignoring offence, he can also manipulate the air around him while flying to lighten the strain and increase his speed.
- Fangs
Just a mouthful of pain. Though seeing as more often than not he pursues his enemies whilst torpedoing through the air, and that said enemies are likely to have armor, or plated skin, or some kind of protection that would otherwise require a more-than-adequate hold to puncture, these bad boys are better off used for opening beer bottles at parties. 
- Shifting
If a problem is too intense to face with wit, finesse, and puffs of air, then with enough energy and concentration Quetzal can alter his form into a slightly stronger version; his skin becomes tough and green, his senses sharpen, his stamina improves, he becomes stronger—he even grows a bit taller!
…I mean, hypothetically. It’s only happened once or twice in his life, and goddamn does it take a lot out of him. The last time he remembered shifting, it was a life-or-death scenario—the incident, in fact—and afterwards he found himself taking a solid week off just to rest. It’s been years, now. He’s not even sure if he can do it anymore.
Equipment:
Throwing knives – four sets of twelve, stored in four bags secured around his waist. Each measures six inches in length, is made of steel, and can hit a specified target at high speeds via Quetzal’s gusts of air. Not always knives, but always something lightweight and pointy. 
Blowpipe – oh my god this thing is ridiculous. It’s a two-foot-long hardwood pipe used for firing poisonous darts at foes from great distances. It never even hit one target, but back when Quetzal was in the hero business the media kind of made it his trademark. He was glad to be rid of it upon becoming a Hunter, but secretly he desires to become very skilled at using it; so he hasn’t gone ahead and gotten rid of it just yet.

Pridopus suddenly found themselves frozen to the spot. They couldn't even remember the last time they addressed anyone on purpose, let alone this slightly off-putting woman towering over them. Words suddenly lost them; so fast that they didn't bother to question how it was that everyone in this establishment seemed to be understanding one another perfectly, regardless of their starkly contrasting appearances. 

They met the woman's gaze dead-on and felt a strange chord of intimidation. They were just so...blank? No, no, that wasn't the right word, not nearly the right word, for there was something in those eyes, but nothing like anything Pridopus had seen before. And they'd seen plenty of eyes, usually furrowed in a deep glare as they watched the tiny figure scamper off with two handfuls of "supplies". They'd seen tiny red eyes that flashed in warning; green eyes that twinkled and dazzled anyone who saw them; rows upon rows of blank white sclera emptily gawking from the maw of a cave-sized hellbeast.

The point was, these eyes were not like that. But they were eyes not unlike their own. There was just a certain wizened quality to them, almost as if the figure above were saying you think you've seen some crazy shit? I could one-up you a million times over.

And why stop here? 

What if this woman could travel of her own volition, not subject to the will of some kind of experimental cosmic force? 

What if she was just stopping by, and if they didn't act now then they would lose the chance-

The chance to go home?

...Or maybe Pridopus was just reading too much into it.

This was probably just a normal human person.

Oh wait. They still hadn't responded yet. So they have just been...staring into the eyes of this innocent person with unsettling intensity until now. They blinked; tears had begun to well up in their eyes from said prolonged staring. They struggled, raking through their brain in attempts to latch on to some semi-coherent string of words to throw back at this nice lady to prove that they weren't some kind of shady robber about to take their stuff.

(At least, not in this moment.)

Their eyes suddenly latched on to the trail of steam corkscrewing around itself in the air in front of them; it, as well as the intoxicating aroma of...whatever that was, took their eyes to the mug in the hands of the other. There we go. "W-...Where did you get that?" As they croaked out the words it became increasingly obvious that they hadn't had a prolonged exchange in quite some time; their voice was not dissimilar to the sound of an old chair being sat on. The bandanna really didn't help much in terms of comprehensibility with the damper it put on the already weak sound.

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