Haze

Haze
Author	/u/Mr_Serine
Pronouns	He/They
Civilian name	Elias "Eli" Swain
Alignment	Villain
Affiliation	Noncanon (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Blaster/Shaker
Born	(2004-03-15) March 15, 2004 Devilfish, Minnesota
Status	Noncanon

A new cape in town, calling himself Haze, has been advertising himself on Parahuman-related message boards, hiring himself out for both jobs and parties.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Civ: A fair-skinned teenager, straight black hair, brown eyes. Stands at 1,75 m tall. Has surgical scars around both his ears, generally covered by his hair. Almost always has a hearing aid in his left ear.

Cape: Sleeveless dark grey hoodie, spiral spray-painted on the chest. Dark jacket over that. Gas mask connected to a tank slung over his chest. Hatchet usually hanging from his belt.

Equipment and Resources

• A technically functional gas mask
• Hatchet
• Business cards

Lives in a student flat.

Hires himself out for both mercenary work and parties, giving him semi-solid income. Even has his own site.

Wealth Level: 5

Skills and Specializations

• ASL, lip reading
• Intelligent, hard to distract on account of him being three-quarters deaf.
• Programming

Mentality

A quiet kid, usually content to just sit back and listen, largely because of how much he has to focus to actually hear what's being said. Does have a wry sense of humour when he's actually engaged in a conversation.

Can be a bit apathetic, stemming from bad experiences. People rarely cared for his problems, so why should he care for them? It's also a defense mechanism, he stays within his haze so he can't be hurt.

This apathy was further exacerbated by his Shard.

Power

Trigger type: Single Natural Blaster/Shaker

Haze has pores all over his body, that can exude a thick dark red gas.

Breathing in the gas has various physical and mental effects:

• Generalized physical and mental lethargy.
• It counteracts adrenaline, reducing the chance of panic or rage (to a degree). Works even on power based equivalents.
• A dulled pain response.
• Surroundings become metaphorically blurry/dreamlike, much like laughing gas does.
• Blackout Drunk/Anesthesia style memory blackouts, IE still aware and awake, but after the fact your memory of events is blurry at best.

Extended and concentrated inhalation will eventually render someone barely able to move, however the time required for this makes it unlikely to happen outside social or hostage situations.

Haze has some control over the gas, able to compress it into semi-solid shapes for both blunt force and barriers. Solidified gas has a glass-like texture. When shattered it is easy enough to let it turn back into gas, and then re-solidify it, making ablative walls useful. Walls of compressed gas are about as durable as an old brick wall, and projectiles can hit with the force of a baseball from a pitching machine.

Other trivia:

• He can sense the movements of anything within the haze. On the other hand, it's difficult to spot him in the haze, as he subconsciously controls it to hide his movements.
• The haze will always be one cloud, gas that loses indirect contact with Haze will dissipate almost instantly. For the rest, it generally lasts as long as he needs it to, and when he's done he can either make it dissipate or suck it back in.
• It oxygenates the blood in much the same way as regular air, and can be used to breath in enclosed spaces.
• The gas does not affect him, he wears a gas mask both for the vibe and as a bluff.

Backstory

When he was really young, young enough to still be in a booster seat, Eli was in a car accident, the same one that took his mother away from him. Luckily he managed to survive, barely, but at the cost of a near fatal head wound. He struggled to survive, he EMT's were surprised he made it to the hospital, but survive he did, either through divine providence, force of will, or luck. All it cost him was his hearing. Rather, most of it. Thankfully his left ear still had some functionality, but barely.

Eli's father... Eli may have been wounded, but his dad seemed the more hurt. At the passing of his wife, the poor man became a broken shell of what he once was. A once jovial husband and father is now bitter and angry. Not to say he was abusive or anything, he was a fine father, but never as warm as he could have been. He was never much of a dad.

His deafness wasn't much of a problem in grade school, he had enough friends, and children can be surprisingly kind, but the bullying started in earnest when he transferred to high school.

It wasn't much at the start, only a small group and light teasing, but it escalated until nobody would slow down and communicate with him. He wanted nothing more than to have the same chance as everyone else. To have friends again. To have things be calm again. One day, when he went to try and hang out with his fellow students, everything was going great, but they wouldn't face him. They wouldn't speak loudly. They moved their words fast. His mind searched over and over for a way to make them slow down, but as he spiraled down and down he broke. Alone more than ever.

Trigger