InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "watch your language >:["

lightplay (lightplay) wrote,
@ 2008-05-02 02:53:00

ooc...
NAME: Sethoz
AGE: 21
EMAIL: sethoz@googlemail.com
MESSENGER(S): yim - sethoz86
TIMEZONE: BST (GMT)
JOURNAL:

lightplay
PB: Aaron Standford

______________________

ic...
Name: Andrew Masters.
Alias: As a whole he prefers his full name although he will answer to any common variation of it.
Age: 27. April 1st 1991.
Race: Mutant.
Aware of Mutation: Yes.
Powers: Light Manipulation/Detonation; Andrew has the ability to control and manipulate particles of light and infuse them with more power. By exciting light he can cause it to increase in brightness and flare up, to the point of making the actual light explode. The level of explosion can be varied from small and harmless sparks to a larger and dangerous explosion. The later requires a great deal of light, and it is possible for the build up to become too much for Andrew to control or hold back, so much so that he looses his grip on the light and it will explode immediately, similarly the larger the light he creates the more strain it places on him. Andrew cannot however make light out of nothing and his power would be useless in the dark; he needs a light source to start with and although he can build up from most kinds of light, weak or strong, more effort is required the smaller the light is. Andrew also has trouble with the brightness of the light he creates. As it is normally so close to his face, with the brighter and stronger explosions he runs the risk of damaging his eyes and is forced to keep them closed, and has to hope that everything is working as it should.

He can also bend light around himself in such a way as to appear invisible to anyone watching. This is not true invisibility however, but an optical illusion. If he is holding onto something or someone, then this ‘cloak’ of light will stream around them as well and protect them from anyone else watching as well, although the moment contact is broken, unless he is focusing hard and has some good luck, the person or object can be seen again. Andrew has had limited success in bending light around objects he is not directly touching, often misjudging the size or shape of the object and more often than not he will only half cover an object so that part is still visible.

When he becomes ‘invisible’, his eyesight becomes severely compromised as a result of the un-natural way in which light is moving, and he has great difficulty making out anything beyond rough shapes. Effectively he is near blind in this state, and has to either remain still or reply on a wall or other surface to guide him. If he wanted to see the floor he would have to crouch down and get up close and personal with it. This lack of clear vision extends to anyone who might be also covered by his light.

It is harder to move and keep himself hidden than it is to simply remain standing still as he has to constantly change and move the light around him yet it is this part of his power which he uses the most and is the most comfortable using, despite the stress it places on his body, feeling as though with practise comes a greater ease. If he pushes himself too hard with either part of his power he will feel drained and tired, unable to focus on things and although it has never come to this, could quite possibly pass out from the stress.

Occupation: Electrician

Appearance: Most of the time Andrew likes to make an effort with his appearance, to appear neat and tidy whenever possible. He enjoys knowing that he looks decent, although more often than he would like this slips as the day passes and he becomes engrossed in his work. There is no fixed constant to his facial hair, ranging from completely clean shaven to rough stubble although he can’t stand to have it any longer than about four days worth and will take the time to shave. Clothes wise he likes to keep to simple colours, not overly fussy in which ones although if he has the choice he will pick darker colours such as blacks, browns, greys and darker shades of red, green and blue. Andrews owns a thick black jacket that goes down almost to his feet which he can often be seen in, finding it comforting and warm. Although he has no uniform for work he has a pair of very sturdy boots with special insular lined soles in case of electric shock. When he isn’t working he can either be still seen in those boots or in some tatty trainers.

No matter what the situation, he will always wear shirts which go past his elbows, even ones that he then covers with another shirt or jumper. It is a near obsession with him, to always have something covering his elbows, even resorting to ridiculously sized gloves on some days. He only owns one piece of jewellery, a leather cord necklace with a roughly made pewter ring pendant, which he wears almost constantly, under his shirt.

Hair: Dark brown although in certain lights it appears lighter. His hair falls roughly around his head in no real style, reaching to the bottom of his ear but never any further. Most of his fringe is brushed off his face in a side parting.
Eyes: Blue

Personality: To those that have any sort of contact with him, Andrew comes across as a bit of a joker, a trickster who is happiest when he is distracting people and making some kind of light hearted fun, whatever kind of fun that can be found in the world they live in now. This carefree attitude is only partly a mask, because Andrew truly believes in making the best he can out of an admittedly terrible situation. There is little point in his mind about moaning or crying about things; not only has sulking or being moody never helped him in the past but he fails to see how it could help now, adopting the approach of trying to fix what he can instead of moping. It helps, he knows, that he actually enjoys his job and the challenges it presents him. The few years he spent before the war studying electricity and how things work stand him in good stead and the lack of access to things he had before is at once frustrating and opens up the challenge. Stubborn to a fault, he relishes a challenge and is often attached to near hopeless causes simply because they give him something else to focus on.

Andrew isn’t scared of his power, what he can do and what he has become even though part of him knows that technically he should be. They feel as though they are a part of him, as if they have always been there and he just never noticed before the war. Andrew has found himself using his powers more and more in recent months, to the degree that he rarely gets through a day now without using them at some point, either to increase his light or simply to walk through the corridors un-noticed, often growing tense and unhappy between long periods of not using them. He takes care not to use them in public, knowing that reactions will not be favourable, even if part of him doesn’t understand why. Logically, of course, he knows that if someone saw the strange powers he seems to have suddenly come into possession they would be afraid or angry but on another level the idea that anyone could feel differently about their powers, that they could not want them or not understand them is completely alien to him and he has trouble understanding the different point of view even if he is flat-out told such a thing. Instead he would simply feel sorry that they aren’t like him or don’t understand his view point, not getting the irony of him feeling that while being the same on the opposite side.

This inability to truly empathise with a view point he doesn’t understand isn’t limited to the fear of powers and although he tries his best at times to try and sympathise, to put himself in the shoes and mindset of another, Andrew simply has great problems. This defect is not wholly down to a lack of imagination but more his childhood and the lack of contact with people he had growing up. Having few friends and only rare times spent truly interaction with someone willingly has left Andrew closed off inside, hidden under his playful outer behaviour. He is not one to try and make friends outside of a casual interaction unless the friendship somehow appeals to his stubborn nature and could provide a challenge; in most cases this had led to him making some rather unusual and even unwise choice in friends. He is used to being alone most of the time and unnoticed, to moving from one place to another with only a limited amount of contact with people, so long conversations and interactions can make him almost physically tired and cause him to become short tempered.

He doesn’t really realise it, but a tiny part of him is distrustful of Horizon, a niggling feeling that if he ever took the time to focus on it or analyse, he probably still wouldn’t realise why he felt as though he did. Andrew has never felt truly at ease with the idea of faceless corporations but it’s only in the back of his mind. If asked, he would say he approves of Horizon and on the surface he does. Certainly they went out of their way to help the world after the devastation, and he knows he owns his life and continuing existence to them but just occasionally, there is a feeling he can’t place or understand when the company is brought up, a feeling that makes him uncomfortable.

Skills: His job means that he knows a good deal about electricity, how wiring works, how to not electrocute himself or others and how to best fix things that go wrong so that light and heat are available whenever people need them. He takes his job as a challenge and often spends his free time trying to improve his work so that his ability and skills as an electrician is constantly increasing, and considers himself one of the better electricians left.

At school he learnt both French and German, and retains a basic understanding of both the languages, as well as being able to speak some of it and read it, although in neither is he overly fluent or comfortable. When he wants to relax, Andrew likes to draw; complicated circuitry and detailed close ups of things such as a diagram of blood vessels or how a room is put together, his work being skilled in dimensions and detail. He has very good hand to eye coordination, and used to practise archery in the years before the war although of course with the situation the way it is now, he is rather rusty in the sport.

Limitations: Andrew is mortal and as such can die from any kind of fatal illness or serious disease that he could catch; it will take him just as long as anyone else to recover from being hurt or ill and with the current climate being as it is, his average life span is short. He has only a basic understanding of how to fight and defend himself, relying far too much on his powers as a means of protection and as such would fare poorly in any kind of serious fight or something similar. Due to an accident during the war he has a burn mark on his left elbow which occasionally limits movement and causes pain.

His inability to deal with people for any serious period of time could easily be considered a problem, as he grows tired of talking to one person, in some cases obviously so which could cause trouble and offence. Although it is not something he talks about or even consciously thinks about, Andrew is deeply afraid of the creatures that live outside the complex, his darkest fear that he could someday become like them, that his powers are just a stepping stone to an eventual monster status. His dreams are often haunted by monsters therefore, and it is rare for him to sleep a whole night through without interruption.

History: Andrew Masters was the second child born to his parents, as well as being the second son, born three years after his elder brother. Right from the start he was treated as more the middle child than the favoured youngest, his mother Rebecca longing for another child, a daughter to complete the family almost from the moment he was born. She had no real interest in another son and his father, Tim, was far more concerned with making sure both of his sons were instructed in the proper manners and behaviour boys should have instead of making sure that Andrew felt the love a child deserves from his parents. Although they never shied away in taking care of him and making sure he had everything he could need right from day one, Andrew was always constantly aware growing up that something was missing from his life. It didn’t help that when he was five, his mother gave birth to the long awaited daughter, both his parents instantly doting on the girl. It would have been easy enough for him to resent her and there were times when he did, times when he wished that the little girl had never been born even though he knew it wouldn’t have changed the way his parents treated him.

It hurt to see the way they showered affection on her and all but ignored him, hurt more than he really realised and as the years passed the odd feelings of resentment began to crop up more and more, the focus of his anger and hurt shifting until it was focused on his parents, with both his brother and sister all but being ignored. It wasn’t a happy household, his brother evolving into an almost painful stereotype of what a boy should be, full of sport and macho aggression and little else.

Andrew was rapidly growing into an angry boy, constantly feeling powerless. It was almost worse at school, the one place where he felt reasonably at home. He enjoyed the time he spent there, with people who were paid to take notice of him but at the same time he had the almost uncontrollable desire to act out, to get more of the attention he so desperately craved. It was a terrible conflicting time for him, almost torn between the two extremes and unable to enjoy the middle path he tried to go down, to try and enjoy school while at the same time having to feed the need to be noticed and have people pay attention to him.

The years crawled by, Andrew spending his time either in uncertainty at school, his rapid swinging from a misbehaving child to a near teachers pet ensuring that he had no real friends to speak off, unable to fit into any of the groups there, which only led to him feeling more alone and uncomfortable. Life at home was little better, Andrew virtually ignored except when his father would occasionally remember he had a second son and try and instil in him some of the traits his older brother possessed. There seemed no way out of his unpleasant existence and as he sat his exams at sixteen Andrew knew that he would have to make some choices about his life, even if all the options seemed terrible to him.

Part of him wanted to carry on going to school, the only place he had felt a degree of comfort although he had no idea what he would actually study or what he wanted to do with his life. School however seemed the only choice, the only way to get some kind of escape from his life at home when almost like a miracle an escape route of sorts opened up to him. His uncle, a loud and easily excitable man by the name of Ben had immigrated to America over a decade ago and was belatedly feeling the guilt at having neglected his relatives. He invited one or more to come and spend at least a summer there and once Andrew realised neither of his siblings really wanted to go and disrupt their lives in England he jumped at the chance. With the decision finally made everything moved at a rapid, almost mind boggling speed for him, hardly having time to come to the realising that he really was finally getting away from his family before he was boarding the plane to what he hoped would be a new life.

America was everything Andrew had hoped it would be, a place where he was actually noticed and when his uncle made an off hand remark about needing a new apprentice in his electrician business, he begged to be considered. What he might have lacked in any kind of experience or real knowledge he more than made up for in enthusiasm and the desire to learn, grasping the basics easily enough. Upon seeing that his nephew was determined, Ben helped him apply for a work permit to stay in the country far longer than first planned, Andrew having no qualms about staying away from the rest of his family.

Even with the threat of war hanging over the world and the rapidly increasing tensions, Andrew felt happier than he ever had before, his anger slowly fading away as he threw himself into learning everything he could about his craft, basking in the attention his uncle gave him, just happy that someone actually cared. It didn’t take him long to associate the job with the attention, which only served to make him even more dedicated to his uncle and doing his work the very best he could.

It couldn’t last; this feeling of being content but even knowing about the state the world was heading towards, even Andrew couldn’t begin to dream of how it would suddenly end, almost instantaneous as though a flip had been switched somewhere and the entire world had gone mad together. Fire ran down on the world, so many bombs and explosions that night was changed into day by the sheer brightness of the whole thing. The war went on and on, a never ending cascade of noise and death. The things Andrew saw within the first week alone were enough to numb his mind because to allow himself to think about them, to remember them would have given him nightmares for the rest of his life. The days and weeks slid past, Andrew and his uncle just keeping their heads down and hoping to get through it all.

They still took jobs, and although Andrew’s legal status was questioned more than once it was decided that he wasn’t a threat despite his nationality. Even when first his uncle and then Andrew himself fell sick to the radiation poisoning that had spread over the country they still tried to drag themselves to as much work as they could, needing any job they could get. Bit by bit both slowly began to recover even as jobs became rarer and rarer as the war drew to a close. Andrew knew how lucky he was as he recovered faster than his uncle, returning to pretty much his health before he fell ill, while his uncle seemed stuck in an unending state of weakness.

Right at the end of the war they were called to one of the few surviving buildings in the area, and given the dangerous task of making sure the electricity kept on flowing. The place was a mess, the poor lighting and panic making it impossible for Andrew to make any kind of guess as to the nature of the building and what it was being used for. While his natural curiosity was peaked, Andrew tried to keep it in check as he went about his job, working twice as hard to help cover up the fact that his uncle was doing very little; indeed the mere effort it took to stand upright was taking a lot out of Ben and although he kept it a secret, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was dying. He just didn’t know how to tell Andrew, the young man refusing to listen to any of the hints that things wouldn’t fix themselves.

He had almost finished the rewiring when the panic in the building increased ten fold, screams and garbled orders to get out of the building. Grabbing his uncle, the two tried to make their way out as best and as fast as they could, almost reaching the exit before an explosion rocked the building, glass shattering and sending them flying to the side. He passed out, unconscious for an indeterminable time as the dust settled on the shell of a building, fire raging around and slowly dying out. When he finally came round again he found himself trapped under the broken body of his uncle, a few meters away from where they had first fallen, the man’s blank gaze staring at him. His arm was agony, a sickening stench of burn flesh drifting from there. It didn’t take him long to piece together what had happened, that somehow his uncle had saved him from burning alive and then died, his mind stuttering to a stop at that.

Andrew just wanted to curl up and hide from the world, making no effort to get away from the building, simply putting some distance between himself and the body, his disjointed movements coming to a stop as he bumped up against the wall. When people finally entered the building again, he didn’t know if they had come to help or if they were a group of scavengers, curling in more in his ball and wishing he was anywhere but there. The group headed towards the still body of his uncle, and closer up he could tell they were the latter, the sort who would have no problem with finishing off an injured person to get the clothes and items they had. With baited breath he waited for them to turn their attention towards him, knowing that with the numbers they had there was no real chance of getting any mercy from them.

Turn towards him they did, looking in his direction more than once and yet they didn’t move towards him, didn’t even seem to actually see him, just looking towards his patch of wall at the odd sounds that came from there. To his surprise, he realised he was invisible, that he had somehow managed to change himself, the jolt that he had these powers enough to spurn him to move and leave the burned out building the moment the scavengers had moved on, trying not to think about how they had stripped his uncle or the feeling of guilt for not helping Ben somehow. Although he wanted to explore this strange new gift he seemed to have, he was far more concerned with staying alive.

Without the protection of his uncle and with the sudden ending of the war, Andrew didn’t know what to do. The world was ruined and for the first time in his life he was without any kind of guidance, there was nobody telling him what to do or how to do it. He banded together with some of the other survivors of the city, drifting from place to place as they tried to find shelter and food as best they could.

They, like almost everyone else left alive heard about Horizon which promised food, shelter and protection. Slowly the group inched along the ruined roads, heading towards what remained of New York. They had almost reached their destination when the group was attacked by a small pack of wild animals, the beasts driven mad by the radiation and hungry for any sort of prey. The first sign of trouble was when one of the stragglers was pulled down and away from the group, her screams quickly silenced as the beasts gorged themselves. On instinct the rest fled towards the Complex, none willing to risk themselves and all happy enough to use the time the dead woman had given them. Even with the time though it didn’t seem as though they would reach safety before the beasts came back. The complex came to the rescue, driving back the beasts and bringing the group to safety.

He slid easily into his powers now that he could finally devote time to practise them, somehow having an instinctive grasp on what they could do and how to use them right from the start. There were times when he pushed himself too hard or too soon, ignoring the warning he could feel in his body but it didn’t take long for Andrew to understand his limits. He was smart enough to limit his practising to times when he could be reasonably confident he was alone, slowly growing more and more confident about both his powers and what he was as time went on until he felt as though they helped define what and who he was; along with his job, Andrew quickly earning his keep by returning to his old profession and just keeping himself going day by day.

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writing sample...
The pencil moved rapidly across the paper, held very lightly and hardly making an indent on the white. Paper and writing equipment was in short supply nowadays – then again everything was in short supply – and whenever possible he did his best to make them last as long as possible, drawing on both sides and making the image as pale as possible. It was rare enough to have the time to be able to indulge in something as ‘simple’ as drawing, not to mention the actual enthusiasm to allow yourself to become lost in the art. Gradually the speed of the pencil slowed down, although each stroke remained as confident as the one before, the artist never expressing any doubt about where to place the pencil, his brow furled in thought and concentration as he twirled the pencil, finishing off the drawing with a small circle.

Andrew Masters examined his attempt with a critical eye. He knew it was more than decently drawn, having no problem with accepting when something he did was bad or was good. Every line had been carefully placed, the drawing of a flower anatomically correct with each small semi-circular petal the same size and shape as the next one, the cluster of smaller heads bunching together to create an image of a larger flower. It was good, it was a reflection of what he had been trying to make, it was more than good. It was… it was all wrong.

He sighed and let the paper slip out of his fingers, watching as it fluttered to the floor, buffeted by the slight air resistance it met before hitting the floor. Later, Andrew knew, when he wasn’t feeling so dejected by his failure he would pick it back up and examine it carefully again. He would turn it over and start afresh on the other side, another image that would almost certainly end up as wrong as this one and when that was done and he accepted that he would pick which side offended him the least and pin it up on the wall. It was a silly thing to do, to show what he thought of as mistakes to the world but by putting something up at least Andrew was making some effort to personalise an otherwise starkly decorated set of rooms – he could never bring himself to really think of it as home.

And it wasn’t as though anyone was going to be coming inside anytime soon.

Once again, he let his eyes drift down to the flower drawing, the crease in his forehead showing that he was still as unhappy about the end result. It was indeed almost perfect; but perfect in technical skill only. You could tell it was a flower, a Polyanthus if the tattered book he had lying open on the floor was correct, but it didn’t look as though it had come from memory or being alive.

It wasn’t a drawing, it was a copy. A very good copy but nothing more than a shadow of what was in the book, the faintest shadow of something that had long since died when the world had. The spirit of the flower, the essence was missed and he didn’t know how to create that.