Post by Backhand on May 29, 2018 0:13:36 GMT
Name: Fāng Zhěn/方紾
Alias: Backhand
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Style Points: 0 – Avant Garde
Alias: Backhand
Gender: Male
Age: 29
Affiliation: Superstar
Physical Appearance: Zhěn has what might be described as a rather alarming appearance. He stands at 5’-11” with something of a slouch, and is overall well-built and stocky, but seems to lack any especial presence. He has a rather tired or droopy air about him that typically only vanishes in moments of danger, which can prove almost infectious if one stays around him for long enough. He possesses the usual jet black hair, which he keeps quite short and without sideburns both out of necessity for his costume and to try and counteract his naturally sloppy image at least partway. His eyes are an everyday dark brown, though they are surrounded perpetually by deep, dark circles, and have a rather sunken look to them, whether he is well rested or not. Along with this, he has a sort of absent or glassy look to his gaze that can prove off-putting, something that he is glumly aware of. His nose is tall, thin, and hooked, his cheeks are rather recessed with prominent, rigid cheekbones, and his chin juts out a touch.
Rather self-conscious about various aspects of his appearance, Zhěn has a strong dislike of drawing much attention to himself. Thus, his streetwear is boring, as one might expect. Beyond that, however, he does very little to stand out in just about any category; his mannerisms are subdued and lack energy, his usual manner of speech is rather flat and to the point, and he generally likes to stick to the middle of groups. In a line of work like his, however, where standing out is an inevitability, he has compensated via his outfit, which complies with his desire for anonymity through its design. It echoes both the classical look of a charioteer and the similarly bedazzled raiment of a western man-at-arms in a bizarre fusion of cultures, with the studded and collared robe of the former under the barbute helm and steely pauldrons, boots, and gauntlets of the latter. The various metallic pieces appear as bronze, while the underlying fabric is colored a rich purple, with the entire array covering the full body. More recently, Zhěn has also made the addition of a simple greyed cape, though curiously with added weights spaced throughout. Though rather expensive-looking and more than likely paid for by a sponsor, the design of the outfit is Zhěn’s own, as can be seen from how the helm sports a sealed and dark-tinted visor.
Personality: As can perhaps be guessed, Zhěn is rather reclusive, and has been for the majority of his adult life. Outside of his career as a Superstar, he tries continually to avoid the public eye as much as possible, and dreads the media about as much as the next guy over might dread the dentist. Among friends and family, however, this issue is nonexistent. In such company, he still seems like he might prefer to be without it, but is nonetheless a much more open individual, and has a knack for getting others to open up as well, having a very slow, smooth style of speech and being a better listener than a speaker. He has quite the collection of on-hand sayings and idioms and a decent body of quotes to boot, and he enjoys reaching into this bag of sound bites with a raised finger and a nod of the head whenever he can. As soon as crowds or cameras come into the picture, however, his thoughts center mostly around finding the door and returning to his books. This can be easily remedied, however, by him simply appearing in-costume, as he hasn’t actually directly disclosed his identity to the public. Despite it being on-record and very much visible, precious few would actually bother to look up who a fairly unknown hero is under the mask; thus, he holds the benefit of relative anonymity as Backhand, and as that alter-ego is much more secure in the spotlight—though he certainly still doesn’t try much for attention.
Being a child of two decently successful Superstars, Zhěn has been exposed to the buzz and politics around them since his late youth, with both the good and the bad laid plain. Fame and fortune lies there, certainly, but so too does idolism and media intrusiveness, even as with any celebrity, and the former never enticed him much and the latter scared him greatly. At the heart of the matter, however, is something much more wholesome that has always captured his attention much more than either: the opportunity to help people, and to see the thankful eyes of the aided. Though he is fully aware of the rather uninteresting sentiment that lies there, he feels that it’s a perfectly noble sentiment, and can quite confidently and without hesitation answer as much when asked about his motives, knowing full well that many a Superstar can’t say the same.
There is, unfortunately, still a less noble side to that sentiment all the same, though perhaps not one he likes to consciously think about. For all his life, he’s had the tendency to appear as an odd man out, and has only ever really felt comfortable around the certain subset of people he calls friends, a characteristic that only makes the former item worse. Being able to see people he doesn’t even know both grateful and content works quite a ways to making him feel content as well, as he feels this is the only real way he could ever find total acceptance in the eyes of a stranger.
In short, the fact that becoming a Superstar was an unspoken expectation of him by just about everyone was essentially just icing on the cake for reasons he had to become one. Though he really only harms himself by both fearing the public and yet wanting its approval, in his career he’s found a way to kill two birds with one stone, his identity as Backhand allowing him to both mask himself and appear as one of society’s many idols, while also being able to simply help people, which he feels all in all is an opportunity none could pass up.
History: Originally a Beijing native and only child, Zhěn was eighteen at the time of the civil war, just old enough to remember it vividly years later and just young enough to avoid being an active participant. In the ensuing chaos that befell the shining city, his family promptly packed up and left, any sentimentality towards it vanishing like a puddle in the sun in the face of the destruction and violence and fear, and what Zhěn once called home ceased to be so. The group, consisting of his parents, his grandmother, and himself, would move to the deep countryside, far away from the center of conflict, where for a time the lawlessness and chaos of the land wouldn’t materialize. Nonetheless, as the weeks wore into months, one could occasionally still see the convoys of trucks riding down the byroads, and the echoes of horror stories on the air.
In time, though, the conflict would see its end, and the word on the wind became one of repair and rebuilding. At long last being able to return home, they would find naught but ruin and desolation where their abode used to be; however, this obstacle was made short work of, for there were three powers at hand to combat it. His mother, Yàn, who would in the coming days hold the alias of “Breakup,” held the ability to restore both simple and mechanical machines, broken or no, to their whole base components, whereas his father Jūn, later known as “Assembly, ” could create constructs and tools of great complexity by pulling spare parts together psionically. Zhěn’s own power had manifested as a child without incident, and thus he too was there to contribute. The three would aid not just in the repair of their own home, but would continue on to all the block, and then yet further. It was grueling and tiresome, but it was necessary, as it was for all others. Eventually, however, something resembling normalcy would return as the government again took power.
With the age of the Superstars now suddenly on the rise, and with the family having quite a bit of immediately local fame for their abilities, and with even Zhěn’s grandmother advocating for as much, his parents would join up with the first generation of the rising stars as a duo, together earning a good bit of reputation, and still remaining active to the present day. It was perhaps a surprise to no one, then, when but a few years later Zhěn too made his intent to join up and follow suit clear.
After the usual period of briefing and training of both body and mind had elapsed and many months had worn away, he at last found himself ready, prepared as an independent operator—“Backhand,” he dubbed himself. And just as soon, more specialized work found him as well, for his power was less useful for the standard street sweeps as it was for the mighty task of cleaning up the resulting mess.
He has done exactly that ever since, bouncing from place to place to handle the more potent cases whenever they arise, hardly ever able to settle down for long but quite active all the same, still preferring to ride alongside first responders and the like even when no trips are planned and relying on caffeine a touch too often. The hours are long and the job hard, but he probably wouldn’t have it any other way.
Power: Stasis manipulation. This allows Zhěn to either revert or decay the position and composition of objects, the method of delivery being touch by any part of the body. This only directly works on unanimated objects, with animated ones like animals and people being held under very specific rules. The rules for stationary objects, however, are simpler. When Zhěn touches an object, he can choose to either decay it, aging it up on an atomic level, or he can choose to revert it, undoing recent positional change and damages made upon it. For an example, touching wood and decaying it would allow him to turn it to compost, or touching a knocked over and battered street lamp would allow him to set it right and proper once again. Generally, the former capability is used for offense, and the latter defense, which he is more specialized in. Though things on the scale of a small house and larger require continual touch ranging from many seconds to up to minutes at a time, he is nonetheless able to treat the various components that comprise it as parts of a single object based on self-defined rather than automatic parameters. The same rules apply for complex objects of most kinds. When restoring an object to a previous position or condition, the broken pieces will wind back with the same speed, angle, and trajectory, in reverse from where they first fell if they have not yet been moved. If the pieces have moved, they will simply travel back in a straight line, the properties then behaving similar to magnetism, with a speed of about twenty miles per hour. Meanwhile, as aging something up has no correlating events, the aged objects will simply crumble as they would naturally. The pace at which something is decayed or reverted is quadratic in growth, starting quite slowly and becoming much quicker the longer Zhěn has touched the object. An object that is unaffected by natural decay, however, renders his aging power largely useless—a block of steel or a bit of plastic, for instance, will see no visible change. This can vary depending on the condition of said object, however; for example, if untreated iron were to be made wet first, touching it would rapidly reduce it to rust depending on the amount of provided water, as it would be aging as if it had been in continual contact with it.
When used on living creatures, meanwhile, both aspects of the power manifest quite differently, as the power cannot directly affect something that is animated. Reverting someone cannot effect their position, as they are animated. It can, however, still restore the condition of their body to a previous state, which is beyond useful for healing complicated injuries, though it remains useless against the likes of long-lasting diseases, and it cannot restore the dead, as a beating heart is an animated object, too. Decaying someone, likewise, does not actually age them up. Rather, energy seems to dissipate from their body instead—their vigor is decayed. Notably, the effects of this are very temporary, lasting for about as long as Zhěn has touched the afflicted, the effects rapidly disappearing as soon as his grip comes off.
Lastly, he has rather recently made a breakthrough in usage of stasis manipulation, specifically in relation to his decaying capability. Though he as of yet has no idea how to actually activate it, he has once or twice managed to execute a full extended decay on something without any warmup time by striking at it. Though Zhěn has been making attempts to discover the exact trigger of the ability and to extend this to the purpose of reversion, no success has been made. He is nonetheless confident that this is a field where his power will develop in the future.
Drawback: Exerting his power too often has some rather adverse effects on Zhěn’s health, giving him a rather sickly appearance and leaving him feeling continually unenergetic. Though this would seem a minor issue, the fact that he is very frequently called upon to repair damaged infrastructure and mend extreme injuries, and also do lots of hurried traveling related to both of these issues, makes it a very regular problem that could have more fearsome side effects down the line. Furthermore, he seems completely unable to use his power on himself in any way, shape, or form; in other words, he is unable to heal himself, or weaken himself were he to desire to. When attempting to use his power on very large objects, he must be touching a piece of said object at all times during the process. Should he lose this connection, the process will promptly end completely, which could result in a dangerous rain of debris depending on the object in question, and must be started again from scratch, the slower initial speed still included. Notably, if he is attempting to repair something that has been damaged for longer than about a week, he must understand exactly how the whole version of the object ought to look, or the repaired version will appear flawed. For example, if the object in question is a demolished building, the result might have unrepaired furnishing, or misaligned windows, or backwards wallpaper, or any number of fatal errors. It is with this in mind that he is so often hurried between place to place when the objective is to rebuild, as errors of this manner can prove highly dangerous if the repaired object is something as complex as a person.
In regards to both range and possible scale of objects, something as abstract, unending, or impossible in scale as an entire road, an acre of ground, a city block, or anything of the sort, stasis manipulation is doomed to fail. In order for an object to be reverted or decayed, Zhěn has to be able to comprehend it as a single object, which isn't feasible with anything that large in scale. Attempting to manipulate something of that variety will indeed only effect exactly what he's touching and nothing more. Rather than an exact set distance, range operates on a similar principal; he has to be able to understand exactly where the object should be reforming or returning to. Nonetheless, the distance becomes impossible to comprehend over ranges longer than about a third of a mile (which notably also functions as a very hard cap on the scale of things that can be effected). If someone were to, for instance, send him a letter from a decent distance, he wouldn't be able to comprehend where it ought to be sent back to, nor the distance it would be sent, and thus would be unable to revert its position.
Strengths/Weaknesses:
+ Holds a very steady and reassuring sort of presence while masked, and is skilled at calming the panicked
+ Skilled in aikido with additional specialization in takedowns and holds, all with the intent of thwarting or pinning assailants without inflicting injury
+ Is dauntless when viewing severe injury and destruction and the trauma of either, feeling confident that he can mend each
+ Has a rocksteady set of morals and won’t fall prey to doubt in dire circumstance
- Can potentially be reckless and willing to overextend in unnecessary attempts to win the approval of others
- Appears frightening and acts standoffish towards strangers when unmasked
- Is overly certain in his moral compass in situations where it might be required to bend
- Holds a certain sort of covert resentment towards post-meta society that could interfere with his direction and certainty
Likes/Dislikes:
+ Slightly pretentious philosophical reads, doing his job without a hitch, the occasional lazy day off, herbal tea, overtly safe action flicks, fish and fowl, receiving anonymous gifts
- Anything related to the media, the necessity of sponsorships, large and/or attentive crowds, having his motivations legitimately questioned, having his advice written off
Fears: Failing to live up to his parents’ legacy, his actual identity beginning to matter to the world at large, a second civil war
Style Points: 0 – Avant Garde