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Individual
Character's full name: Dein Flasher
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Kite
Gender: Male
Age: 20
Date of Birth: 02/02/1992
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Litchfield, Ohio, because it's some random place that seems to be in the middle of nowhere and is flat.
Nationality: American
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: Varied mix of Ukrainian, Dutch, and pretty much anywhere vikings went.
Appearance
Hair color and style: Medium-dark brown cut fairly short on the sides; a bit shaggy overall.
Skin Tone: Fair but tans easily, and is usually fairly evenly tanned
Eye Color: Dark brown
Height: Roughly 6'2"
Build: Extremely thin-limbed - not skin and bones, though he has very little muscle mass, but just proportionately very narrow and delicate. He also has a shallow ribcage, almost as if he were compressed while lying flat on his back.
Visible mutation: Fragility and general appearance thereof - nothing specific
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Considering that he has broken both arms (humerus, radius, and ulna), three metatarsals and five fingers in his left hand, four metatarsals and three fingers in his right hand, fourteen ribs (mostly repeatedly), his right femur, left tibia and fibula, right fibula, right kneecap, thirteen metatarsals and a tarsal (9 right and four and one left), and somewhere in the range of three dozen toes… yeah, he has a lot of scars. None are especially over-the-top or showy, though the jagged line curving along his right knee and down his shin has been compared to a snowflake's edge thanks to its convoluted pattern.
Other features:
Everyday clothing style: Eh, jeans and a t-shirt. Nothing fancy. He does miss his old felt Stetson, though. He also has socks. Perhaps someone will be nice enough to give him shoes and a jacket.
Uniform: Nope
Sleepwear: Currently not possessed.
Miscellaneous clothing: Currently not possessed.
Character
Personality: Most people who come across Dein tend to get on pretty well with him, and it isn't really just because all those people are people who grew up with him. He has a healthy sense of humour, although his habits of rocking normal chairs and swinging on old tires over rivers have led to several incidences of broken bones (what hasn't, with him?), and he doesn't take much of anything personally, and if that's added to his lack of a grudge-holding habit, well, some people might not like him but there aren't a lot of people that he particularly dislikes.
Not known for shyness, reluctance, or a heavy dose of inhibitions, Dein tends to do a lot of things on impulse, including daring and being dared. He loves Truth or Dare, Spin the Bottle, and essentially anything involving alcohol, though being from the middle of nowhere he has some rule-learning to do. In sports, he's hard to stick on defence, but is quite happy to run the length of the field over and over and over. Less happy to get tackled, since he almost always ends up with something broken yet again, but hey, that's all part of the game. And he doesn't mind being prescribed pain meds again, to be honest. He's no abuser, but that doesn't mean he dislikes the effects. On the other hand, he's pretty logical and is surprisingly good at thinking things through when he has to. He might not like to, but he can.
Dein isn't a city boy, and he's really way too naive to go around acting like a wanna-be gangster - because that's all he is, and all he knows about gangs are what he's seen on t.v. while laid up on the couch with one or more broken bones. He tries very hard to be 'cool,' and he currently believes that being tough and mean and well, 'gangsta' is cool. Still, he has room for improvement in either direction, so to speak. He isn't disturbed by blood and guts - growing up on a smallish egg operation, whenever someone felt like chicken it meant going out and grabbing one of the hens that wasn't doing so well - but there are other ways to scare off a person from the darker roads - and plenty of ways to bring them in closer.
Hobbies/ Interests: While not especially big on music, Dein does enjoy a mixture of celtic reels and jigs (especially reels), select rock tracks, and a scattering of other random things. He also adores grapes, though wine is not his choice beverage and he isn't a big fan of raisins, and pomegranates also make the short list. He also collects metal lizard statues and figurines, just because he can, and secretly enjoys a few choice novels. Having spent a lot of time with nothing to do but watch tv (and not the best cable package), he has developed a taste for gangster movies, though he won't eschew others, particularly flashy sci-fi/fantasy adventures with decent special effects.
Job or part time job and description: No, though one would be nice since he's totally broke.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: He doesn't like cats. He grew up with a particularly 'social' barn cat that was apparently mutant-phobic; it terrorized both him and his older brother, right up until Sam kicked that cat out the hay loft doors.
Special talents: Dein is skilled at capturing live, fully awake chickens that do not want to be caught, swallowing pills dry, and stacking metal lizards. He's also a fair hand at flipping coins to impressive heights, less so at catching them, and is surprisingly good at hiding his interest in certain historical fantasy books.
Morality
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Neutral; he too naive to be bad, so to speak, though he does have potential to fall in with the 'wrong' people, but on the other hand he sure ain't some goody two-shoes, begging and scraping to please people. So maybe just a tiny little bit on the good side… for the moment. He has lots of learning to do, and doesn't really know just how bad - or how good - he is capable of going.
Mutations
Mutation description: Dein's nickname, Kite, is probably the fastest way to explain his peculiarity. Most of the time, he just looks like a deathly skinny and fragile guy who got real stuck in the gangly phase of youth, and most of the rest of the time people think he's a fancy kite with a skilled handler. Should anyone notice him in between those times, well, they and their stomach probably won't be on the best of terms for a while.
See, Kite can… reorganize his body. His bones, already very light and thin, spread out to a generally disturbing degree - and the sound of his ribcage separating tends not to be particularly pleasant - and his soft tissues blend together and stretch. He can still bend when stretched out, though it tends to be very awkward since his legs have an annoying habit of fusing together, and generally he just wants to get into the air as quickly as possible; he's rather less noticeable there, or at least for better reasons, and that's really the whole point of going through the annoying process anyway.
Kite's appearance as a kite isn't particularly consistent. If he has a very strong image in his head during the entire shifting process, he usually ends up looking roughly similar to it, though with severe limitations and often unexpected ways of filling in the blanks he wasn't focusing on. As such, if you happen to see a regal dragon kite drifting through the sky, and then notice that it has swirly pink polka dots on its oh-so-ferocious fangs, well, it just means the bossman was a little less in control that he could have been.
He makes a pretty big kite too; he rearranges his mass, so it's got to end up somewhere. Theoretically, he could probably stash a bunch of it in a line and reel, but he has a hard enough time keeping his tough, evil-looking kites from sporting flowers and rainbows (fyi, not actually capable of making a line and reel, but shhh, he doesn't know that). He generally ends up with a wingspan of seven to eight feet or so.
Note: reasonably tight-fitting clothing does become incorporated into his kite form. Jackets and shoes do not, normally, and neither do hats, though theoretically very thin, close-fitting examples might be. If his clothing contains roughly the same pigments as those he is trying to make a kite with, it becomes slightly faster to shift (in the range of 10-30 seconds, nothing huge) and the details tend to be more accurate, since he can, so to speak, point to his clothing and say "that colour!"
Strengths: He can fly! Well, glide; he isn't really mobile enough for it to be called powered flight, though he can make decent use of thermals and wind currents, and it's not like he's got a high mass-to-surface-area ratio. Quite the opposite, really.
When in kite form, Kite's metabolism is reduced to less than 10% of normal. Probably a good thing, because he doesn't have a whole lot in the way of internal organs at that point, so eating wouldn't work very well.
Last note is that, though Kite himself does not currently know, his nervous system is capable of regeneration without interference; a brain injury he'd die from before he had a chance to heal - his nerves heal at about the same rate as his bones do, which isn't exactly speedy - but a broken back he could, theoretically, recover from with time.
Summary: mostly, he can kind of fly.
Weaknesses and Limitations: Have you ever tried to walk around as a kite? Much less one without legs? Not so easy. Or getting out of a lightning storm without getting fried? Lightning likes kites way more than kites like lightning. Not being connected to anything and generally not having a distinctly different electrical charge from his environment really helps, but getting struck would probably fry him as much as the standard lightning-struck human.
Realigning his body takes quite a bit of time, usually in the range of five to ten minutes. Returning to a more three-dimensional shape takes less time, and he sort of springs back into shape in four to six minutes or so. The longer he's been in one form, the longer it takes to shift, especially with regards to coming out of kite-form. There is also a degree of nutritional requirement for shifting - it makes him hungry - but this is normally countered by the extremely reduced metabolism he has while in kite form. When in transition, Kite cannot move or react to any environmental or internal stimulus; he also cannot think normally, because the transition uses too much of his brain and he kind of lags.
Kite cannot bear additional weight while in kite form - not only does it screw with his aerodynamics, but his body simply isn't strong enough to handle it. A jacket would almost certainly cause him to crash - if he could even get into the air - and something like a backpack with a small laptop would probably break his bones. This fragility is present when not in kite form as well, though to a lesser degree; in general, impacts have three times the result that they would on a human (i.e. he has one third normal physical resistance and strength) and he cannot supply significant force, since punching something would probably just break him before it even bruised the target. Oh… and he doesn't heal any faster or more effectively than a human, with one exception: he hasn't clued in yet, but his nerves are capable of regeneration.
Summary: low mobility when shifted, incapacitated during transition; very weak physically and easily injured all the time, but more so while in kite form.
Physical Abilities
General Physical Capabilities: He's a scrawny weakling who can (and has) crack a rib just by being on the receiving end of a friendly slap on the back. On the other hand, he can work for a decent length of time - he's a farm kid and he spent a few years dancing at his mother's behest. And everyone else's amusement. He's also quite flexible, both in the dancer sense (though he would really rather not do splits) and in a mutated sense; flimsy is the term more often used, but he does bend a little bit more than normal people do. Little bit.
Fighting Style: RUN AWAY. 'Cause he kind of breaks upon impact. Even better, don't get in one - maaaayyybe fly scout.
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: If successful, he doesn't break. That's a pro. If it fails, well, he's in for a world of hurt. That… would be a con. In terms of teamwork, he's bloody useless in a fight.
History Of Your Character
Dein Flasher was born and raised on a farm in the general vicinity of Litchfield, OH - more often known as the middle of nowhere's forgotten twin brother. His family and associated workers provide eggs to places no one really cares about.
Dein has an older brother and a younger sister, but the latter he precedes by four years and has never had much to do with. Aila, his sister, was also the only non-mutant one out of the three of them. That might have had something to do with it.
It started with Sam; first time he went out with his dad into the building that housed all their breeding eggs, he pointed out a few dozen and asked why they weren't shiny like the rest. Daddy-o was mighty confused, brushed it off at the time, and then got even more confused when those happened to all be dead eggs - and the only dead eggs. He didn't raise a fuss about it, but tried Sam with other eggs. He didn't find any of the unfertilized eggs 'shiny,' only fertilized, viable eggs.
Well, that was a useful mutation for an egg farmer, so Old Man Flasher got a nice soft start to getting used to mutants. Undoubtedly a good thing; he was pretty conservative overall, and if he'd had to deal with Dein right off the bat, it wouldn't have gone over well.
Anyway, Dein was born about two years after Sam, and started out as just a bit of a fragile kid. He broke his first toe before he was three years old, and by eight had broken both arms and a leg. Didn't slow him down, though; he still ran and argued and squabbled with his brother and every other normal boy in his school, once he was old enough to head off.
When he was about thirteen, Dein went on a visit to a neighbouring farm, a cattle range. Everything was good right up until Dein squeezed through the fence on a dare and startled the nearby cow; she kicked, and caught him in the knee.
Dein got a pretty heavy dose of pain meds and lecturing for that. His mother's solution was to pull him out of soccer (too aggressive) and put him into the school's dance program.
Yeah, like ballet was going to save him from injury.
Not that he was going to admit it to anyone - he always blamed his continuing enrolment on his fiendish mother - he actually kind of enjoyed the physical aspect of ballet. He also broke a few more toes (generally several at a time) and three ribs. By now ordered to drink milk until he burst at least five times a day, his bones weren't getting any tougher and he was prescribed calcium supplements.
At fifteen, he was diagnosed with hypercalcemia - calcium poisoning - when he fainted in class and was hospitalized. Away went the calcium supplements. He didn't return to dancing, and suddenly had way too much time to spare. One of the younger barn cats, Ottoman, had recently taken a disliking to Sam - unusual, considering that just about every single living thing loved Sam. Dein had never had a whole lot to do with the cats, at least not up close. With so much time to kill, though…
After a few weeks of being stalked, attacked, clawed, bitten, and in general prey to Ottoman's fury, Sam and Dein were helping stack a new shipment of hay - chicken bedding - when Ottoman burst out of the rafters and landed on Dein's head.
Frantic scrambling ensued. Somewhere in the mess, they got the cat off Dein and Sam may or may not have accidentally kicked Ottoman; end result was, however, that the cat flew out of the loft doors and hit the ground just as the truck full of haybales backed up. Poor kitty.
The next summer, something even bigger happened. A nasty storm blew up, not heavy with lightning but packing some strong winds. Right up until shortly before it hit, the sky was clear and the day was warm; Dein was out with a couple of friends, lounging in a neighbouring field and passing around a few bottles. Dein was all but asleep when everyone started yelling and laughing, and by the time he had blinked himself away and lifted his head, they were already running for his house - it was the nearest, and the storm was coming on fast.
When Dein tried to get up to follow them, seeing the dark clouds boiling on the horizon, he found it unusually difficult, and not in the way that alcohol tended to make it. Eventually, though the haze and the fading light, he saw the way his arms stretched on and on and on, a thin webbing spreading back to what should be his ribs. The wind began to pluck at a handful of ribbons he didn't remember seeing before, and then all of a sudden he was hurtling towards the clouds, picked up and flung by the early winds.
Ever seen a kite get caught in a storm? It's not pretty, especially for the kite. That wasn't Dein's finest hour, but he did learn something rather important.
Imagining himself as human worked. It also dropped him a dozen feet onto rather hard ground and broke both legs and a few ribs, and no one quite believed his story.
Once he was able to walk without crutches again, Dein set out to figure out just what had happened. His only experience with mutants up to that point had been his brother's way-too-accurate judgement on the vitality of eggs, and Sam wasn't really considered a mutant; he was just freaky good at guessing eggs without really looking at them. Whatever it was that Dein had done, though, well, that was rather different.
It wasn't long into his experiment that Dein got results. After all, since imagining himself as human had worked, why not imagining himself as… whatever it was he had inadvertently turned into? After trying out a few different options - birds, dragons, rocket ships - he thought of a kite, and when he next noticed anything (the passage of time wasn't it), he was skewed into a rough diamond shape with streamers where his feet should be. First thing he thought was that he made a pretty freaking big kite.
Second thought was more along the lines of 'wtf, why a kite?'
That may or may not have been everyone else's first reaction.
Over the next few years, Dein was unceremoniously awarded the nickname Kite, and broke several more bones in the friendly pursuit of discovering his capabilities. Carrying weight was quickly crossed off the list, but with a good wind he could get going with a roll of toilet paper hooked on each wing. Unfortunately, he had no way of getting it to unroll when he wanted to, so no pranking was to be done. Eventually he noticed that he was never really hungry after spending time as a kite - even on one of the occasions where he spent the entire day as one. That was pretty cool.
Less cool was the storm that blew up and carried him too high to drop out pretty much before he could blink. Twenty years old at the time and getting pretty comfortable with being involved in running an egg farm, he didn't need to go anywhere. Although once he realized where he landed - waaaaayyy farther than he had any right to, but kites can keep flying a long ways without being awake - he wouldn't complain so much - he'd always wanted to see New York City.
Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: Google! Needed a new game; last one died with the September Disruption.
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Nopedy nope
Sample RP:
The storm caught him before he could reach the ground, though he angled himself as best he could to plummet through the increasingly restless air. He could only risk going so fast, or when he did hit the ground it would be with too much force - but perhaps he should have taken the risk.
And now he couldn't see the ground for the lashing rain beneath him, and it was all he could do to slip out of the strongest wind channels into weaker ones - whenever he was picked up by a faster one, it felt like he was about to be torn apart. There was nothing for it, though, but to endure. Most of the storms that passed through Litchfield were quick, short-lived things. Surely this would be much the same.
Surely… it would be…
Dein clung to that thought as the storm crashed on around him, no longer even trying to control his path and just trying to keep from being ripped to shreds. He seemed to be doing reasonably well, for the moment, but he couldn't turn to see if the storm were fading at all behind him - its winds certainly weren't bothering to be so kind. Nothing… for it… but to… endure…
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Dein's eyes flew open with a start and a paper-like rustle. Straining his head from side to side, he managed to get the branch poking him out of his immediate field of view. More light flooded in, then, though still dappled and weak, and he gave the rest of his body a shake - and abruptly stopped. Dein had felt a lot of pain before. This wasn't a record. But still, it reached a pretty decent score. Internally grimacing - since his current face wasn't exactly equipped with the muscles necessary to change expression - he slowly flexed one arm/wing, then the other. Both ached, but he could live with that. Nothing seemed to be broken anyway, mercifully.
Okay. He figured it was safe to guess that he was in a tree; nice and clichéd, wasn't it? Kite in a tree. Anyway, that dealt with the branch in his face. Now, where was the tree? That… he couldn't really see. He wiggled a little. All right… branch under his right arm and legs, two under his left arm. Would they support him through a change? Hopefully. If not? He couldn't see down, but the branches all seemed to be reasonably thick - he couldn't be that high up. All right. Here went nothing…
Somewhere between kite and human, the branches stopped holding him up and he tumbled from the tree, though he did land on something soft. He was still lagging a bit much to notice, however.
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