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Individual
Character's full name: Javian Cliff Ainscothwaite Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: nope~ Gender: Male Age: 17 Date of Birth: 02/11/1995 Nationality/ Ethnicity: General western through southern European mutt. Theoretically. Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Somewhere in Toronto, Ontario. Probably.
Appearance
Hair color and style: Straight, somewhat shaggy, and hanging to about chin level. It is also lime green with lemon yellow highlights. Colour control doesn't exist, y'know. The roots are currently shading towards orange. Eyes: Violet fading to white towards the pupil. Height: 5'11 Build: Fairly slight, but quite dense. Visible mutation: Upon close inspection, Javian is visibly made of coral. His 'skin' is made up of little knobs and tubes of moderately spiny bits. The effect is most eerie for his eyes. Otherwise, well, he's green and yellow and purple and gold. Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Nope. Other features: His skin is gold. From a distance or casual look he just seems tanned, but, once again, it's a side effect of being made out of coral.
Everyday clothing style: Nothing special. Various t-shirts and jeans, mostly, with a ubiquitous hood, hood drawn and tightened. Notably not made of coral. Uniform: none Sleepwear: Not much; he prefers sleeping in water to keep from drying out. Miscellaneous clothing: Just the remains of his luggage: a backpack and a duffel bag, the former of which contains his stash of powdered super coral nutrition stuff, natural sea salt, and a spare water bottle. The latter just has clothing.
Character
Personality: Shy and rather jumpy, Javian tends to act exactly like a kid away from home for the first time in a complete new and assumed hostile environment. He doesn't trust anything or anyone, but at the same time can't quite yet understand just how far some people will go. He's a reasonably personable guy, although he is usually nervous around strangers, and since he's been on his own he's been downright twitchy. Still, he is untried, and he might actually have more of a backbone than it took to bolt across the border. Or maybe not. That could have been a one-time thing.
He's dissatisfied with the system, and the idea of following rules just because that's what the rule is. However, he's entirely inexperienced with ways to deal with it, other than his current attempt of just getting away. As such, he is rather open to influence in any direction on the subject. He just knows that it doesn't work, at least north of the border - and all evidence indicates that it's even worse south of it. He just knows that he's not in the system here. He's loose, unknown, free. The system can't touch him if the system can't find him.
Hobbies/ Interests: salt-water ecosystems, especially coral reefs; cats; tropical salt-water fish in general, sharks in particular. Job or part time job and description: unemployed Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Fears? Everything. Phobias? Currently free. Concerns? sorry, too busy trying to survive. Special talents: Well, he can stand on his head for longer than most people, and he's pretty good at walking narrow objects. He also seems to have some intuition in building salt water tank systems, but that may well be tied to him being coral.
Morality
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Javian doesn't want to hurt people. He would rather everyone got along. However, he has been hurt by people just blindly obeying their system, and he's not entirely certain anymore about whether or not those people should stay safe and be happy and whatnot. Aka, his moral compass has lost magnetic north and he might be open to working against certain people rather than just trying to help everyone.
Mutations
Mutation description: Javian is made entirely out of coral. He has no organs, not as would be recognized as such, and could indeed be considered the collective consciousness of all the individual animals that make up his coral. His coral is basically the same as natural coral, with just a few modifications. First, he's a little more desiccation-resistant than natural coral. He's not quite all the way there, however; he has to keep hydrated. His needs and physical details are also specific to his body material.
Javian is able to modify the growth rates and such of his coral. He can grow a thin tendril at about a foot per second if he isn't trying to be specific with colour, direction, or texture. Colour is really way, way beyond his control at this point, hence the current and changing colour of his hair and, less often, eyes [basically, he's the colour that the coral feels like being. He can't change it no matter how hard he tries]. However, he can produce specific colours to some extent; he just has to grow the segment from some part of his body that is that colour. If Javian is paying attention, it is relatively simple for him to direct the growth of new coral in physical terms, although he can really only concentrate on one growth point at a time. Javian's not much of a multitasked. As for texture, it's much like colour. Some parts of his body are of differently textured coral, though most of it is very fine and soft, for coral. If he's not paying attention, though, mutations occur. Sometimes the new coral ends up looking a little different than it used to. Sometimes a lot different. Additionally, the amount of coral he can grow is limited by his nutritional levels. If he is very well fed and hydrated, he can produce the approximate mass of his base body before he starts to feel hungry and dehydrated again. However, maintaining coral outgrowths increases his nutritional requirements. For short periods of maintenance (i.e. grow and snap off immediately) he can produce close to twice his body mass before becoming too weak to produce any more… but it gets pretty hard to continue making coral shortly after one and a quarter times his body mass. This is also assuming that he is doing absolutely nothing else at the time, and is starting as fully hydrated and fed as he can be.
Thanks to his ability to grow coral, Javian can regenerate lost body parts. Fortunately for him, this regrowth is pretty much automatic; it seems that the coral that makes up his body knows where his boundaries are supposed to be. Unfortunately, coral is brittle. While Javian's body coral is far more flexible than natural coral has any right to be (he can move as well as any normal human can), getting smacked around can result in pieces of him falling off. Once a piece of coral has broken off Javian, he can reclaim it by coming in contact with it again - but only if it's still alive. Coral starts to die pretty quickly out in the nasty terrestrial world. Javian's coral has a lifespan of a minute or two in dry air, and twenty to thirty minutes in salt water. Note, however, that he can't absorb coral. Once it's grown, it's grown. It's not going back in his body. He also cannot take control of naturally-produced coral, nor can he animate any coral beyond the bounds of his personal body in any sense other than providing life and controlling growth.
His senses are also altered, being coral. His sight is not significantly different overall from that of a normal human, in terms of acuity and colour range. However, his vision is not affected by entering water, and he might as well be completely blind in the dark. His hearing is of slightly more limited range than a normal humans, and of slightly wider frequency - but really not enough of a difference to show up anywhere except on a hearing range test. His sense of taste is basically non-existent, as is his sense of smell. His sense of touch, however, is equally sensitive on all parts of his body - and reasonably sensitive on all coral outgrowths, so long as they are still attached. His body-sensitivity is almost to the level of a normal human's fingertips.
Strengths: First off, conventional attempts to kill Javian won't work. He has no organs, after all, so no vital spots. Stabbing is not particularly useful against him. He also doesn't breathe as most would recognize it, nor have a distinct circulatory system. As such, drowning isn't an issue (especially in salt water). Coral that has become separated from his body and died remains as a coral skeleton, which is far pricklier and more annoying to deal with than living coral. He can function equally well above and below water, and his sense of touch makes for working in the dark - or around a corner - a simpler task.
Weaknesses: Javian is very sensitive to drying out and must drink salt water regularly to maintain his health, and it's generally best for him to sleep wrapped in something damp or in water itself. He is even more sensitive to salt balance; he is ideally isotonic to ocean water, and fresh water must be rapidly followed by salt. However, he is also essentially allergic to many preservatives and chemicals. His lack of organs means that his nutritional requirements are rather touchy - it has to be dissolved in water, be of unusual proportions by human standards, and consumed far more regularly than the food of most other large living things. He is limited in function in that he is so fragile (it is a hassle to have to reattach or regrow a limb), he cannot move or reabsorb coral, and he cannot currently generate specific coral types with any intention. His sense of touch can be a drawback in that he feels pain as much, if not more than, a normal human. This includes breaking off sections of coral. It hurts. It isn't a lasting pain, but it does hurt. Also, his coral outgrowths are completely immobile.
Fighting Style
Explanation: If fighting is necessary, Javian will probably attempt to either immobilize his opponent(s) with coral or, if it is likely that a little discouragement will work, poke them until they run away. Pros for fighting style: Most people don't expect to be attacked by coral. Cons for fighting style: Most people can break coral.
Faction Allegiance Unaffiliated
History Of Your Character Javian probably wasn't born with that name. The name he was born with is probably still on a record somewhere north of the border, but his link with those records is rather uncommunicative at the moment. See, Javian was adopted. His adoptive parents died before they had a chance to tell him. The following aligns more with what actually happened than what he thought actually happened.
Javian was adopted by Jartina Mejor and Liam Ainscothwaite, two mutants who had recently immigrated from their conservative home in South America to the swollen metropolis generally known as Toronto, Ontario, Canada; their small birth country would not let them marry, even though neither were particularly showy mutants.
The boy soon named Javian was abandoned at the hospital where he was born, left behind by his biological parents. His eyelashes were neon blue at the time. His eyes were sort of burgundy. The hospital passed him on to Child Services, and soon he was in the home of Jartina and Liam. They raised him as their own, as normally as a kid made out of coral could live. He was in and out of mutant-friendly doctors' offices a lot in his early years, sorting out what he could eat and how, what nutritional proportions he needed, how often he needed to hydrate, how much salt he needed (and how much freshwater he could tolerate), what (if anything) caused potentially dangerous reactions (or, in the case of drugs, no effect at all; most, as it turned out), and a host of other critically important details.
Javian survived his first few years of life, and though he started school late, survived his first few years of school. His 'parents' were very careful to encourage the school to be proactive about bullying, but they had also taken the precaution of selecting a school known for mutant-tolerance. There were a few scuffles, but nothing serious, and all in all, people tended to enjoy Javian's bright, cheerful colours. Javian's grades were far from spectacular, but they were reasonable, and Javian really didn't show any signs of repressed brilliance or depression or anything else. He was just a kid. Who happened to have special coral-related needs.
So, yes, his life was quite normal. He had no clue that he wasn't the biological offspring of Jartina and Liam, and really no reason to suspect that he wasn't. The only problem was the events that occurred about a month after he turned seventeen. His parents were in town visiting a friend of theirs, and were involved in a minor collision on the way home. A little damage to the car, nothing disastrous. Except Liam suffered whiplash and a mild concussion… and things started breaking. Liam's mutation involved altering pressure. The concussion played havoc with his control. He was identified as a mutant, and had the misfortune to have been in a collision with someone violently afraid of mutants.
The other drive pulled out a handgun and opened fire. Liam and Jartina died. A number of passerby were injured, either by stray bullets or by the ensuing panic. Javian was in class at the time. He was called to the principal's office, and there the news was broken.
The next few weeks passed by Javian without ever really sinking in. He was briefly visited by the police, but they already had the guy and plenty of witnesses. Then came the Child Services people. Javian didn't want to go anywhere. His parents had had life insurance. The house was paid for. He could just keep going to school, finish off his last little bit, graduate. CS said he was seventeen. He was still a minor. It would be best if he had a legal guardian and support network, if only to help him through the adjustment.
The official ruling was that Javian would go into foster care and his inheritance would be put into a trust. He was placed with a family and suddenly surrounded by a couple of screaming children and frequent blasts of fire, thanks to the mutation of one of those screaming children. Javian couldn't take it. He had never unpacked (and only lasted a week in the household anyway), so he just gathered his luggage, left to visit a friend, and kept on walking. He boarded a train headed south and crossed the border before the alarm could be raised on his disappearance. By the time his foster family found out that he had never gone to the friend's house, Javian had vanished into the mysterious wonder of the nearest place that was perfect for disappearing into.
New York City.
Without any further plans, of course.
Roleplay Where did you learn about this site?: Google-search for a living site. Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: nope! Sample RP: Javian pulled his legs up underneath him and hunched a little deeper into his hood. The filthy, stained river rippled past his feet, swallowing most of the space beneath the little bridge and threatening his shod toes. He took a long, slow sip from his bottle and grimaced at the taste. The water up north may not have been the greatest, but it was way cleaner than this. He'd last filled his bottles at a water fountain at some little sports park, one already deserted for the approaching evening.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the darkness of the spring evening in the stained city. Javian scrunched up tighter into his shadowed nook, but the footsteps kept coming closer, not hesitating, perhaps a little unsteady by certainly not hesitating.
They stopped a few feet away and a bottle crashed against the underside of the bridge. Glass pattered across his hood and caught in the folds of his sleeves, some tumbling into his lap to prick against his belly.
"Y'wanna be unner here, ya pay me a, a, a whatsit. Y'gotta pay," the slightly rambling voice, raspy with age and disuse and alcohol and cigarettes and who knew what else abuse, growled. "So common, you. Pay, or get out of here. Tha's my spot, n this's my bridge."
Javian shivered, but he really couldn't spare anything. Surely there would be other places to sleep. He hesitantly shifted, and murmured in a wavering voice. "I-I'm going."
The newcomer snorted, but the sound turned into a hawking glob fighting alternately to escape its violent expulsion and to escape its diseased host. "No no no no no. Tha's not it at all. You pay, kid. You pay!" He stomped closer, and a hand wrapped around Javian's knee and squeezed.
Javian yelped as his leg crumpled and in desperation sent out as many lines of coral as he could manage. Some of them hit something soft. Some of them collided with the bridge or the ground and collapsed. The hand let go, at least, and the pain of his injured leg quickly faded as the coral rebuilt. However, the half-screamed cursing before him wasn't all that much better, and he bolted for the dim not-quite-as-dark of the world out from under the bridge. Something caught light as he moved, the man still swearing repetitively, and pain flashed twice, three times, four, and the fainter sensations of coral outgrowth vanished. He fled into the night, but was not pursued. He didn't dare try to sleep under some other bridge that night, however. He stuck to better-lit areas, areas that were less comfortable and protected by less likely to be claimed.
Still, he wasn't surrounded by screaming, fire-breathing kids in a house that wasn't his just because some rule said he couldn't have the house that was his until he'd seen another birthday.
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