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Malcolm Hayes
View attachment 84623
26 | Male | Homosexual | Red hair | Blue eyes | 6'2" | True Neutral
"Oh, believe me when I say I am aware of your feelings on the subject. But, you see, the thing is that I don't care."
Project Titan 2.0
Appearance
Malcolm is a fairly intimidating person, with his height and the muscle he rigorously maintains and the cold confidence he wears like someone else might wear a favorite jacket. Scars dot his hands and arms, from various fights he'd gotten into over the years. There is a tattoo on the back of his neck of the ace of spades and there is skull on his right shoulder, both of them being put on his skin in prison, with two more from a different source on his back.
Gao Yord, Nine Spires, is placed at the nape of his neck and
Paed Tidt, Eight Points, is placed closer to the center of his back. Both are Sak Yant, a kind of traditional Thai tattooing that is usually put on Buddhists.
As for his mannerisms, he walks and stands and sits with excellent posture, and has a tendency to lift his chin a bit as if to look down his nose at others. His smiles and laughs are rarely genuine. If they are, it's easy to tell, as he covers his mouth with one of his hands.
His manner of dress varies, though he tends to prefer the color blue. For work, he wears clothing that would be appropriate for it. In public outside of work, it is rare to see him in anything that might be considered less than "business casual". In privacy, though, he tends to dress for comfort rather than style, in warm sweaters and the like.
Personality
Loyal, Stubborn, Practical, Thoughtful, Self Possessed, Spiritual, Proud, Suspicious, Argumentative, Complicated, Opportunistic, Difficult
Malcolm is practical before nearly everything else, to the point of being morally questionable. He does what he deems necessary, what he sees as most advantageous or convenient, neither shirking from what he feels he must do nor embracing it. He has accepted that he is a being suited to violence, but he has also accepted that people like him are not what humanity needs to better itself. To that end, he pursues Buddhism as best as he can, meditating every morning he is able and maintaining a healthy body, with the hope that in his next life he will be something better.
However, all of that is buried under the surface. Most just see him as a cynic and an ass. He cares little for being around people, thanks as much to his experiences as his abilities, and tends to be upfront with his opinions and criticisms. That isn't to say he can't hold his tongue or pretend to be charming in the right circumstances, but he finds being proper to be draining. He's a difficult person to like, and even more difficult to get to know. If one can actually manage becoming friends with him, however, he is a startlingly loyal person and willing to follow someone he's committed to wherever they may go and regardless of what they may face.
Powers
Tier 3 Empathy - Malcolm is an empath, able to sense the emotions of those around him. He can't change or affect those emotions, and he can't "turn off" his awareness of others' feelings while he's conscious. The ability also has a limited range, topping out at a little bit more than fifteen meters (50 feet), and the precision with which he can sense a person's feelings lessens with how far away they are from him. His control over his ability has allowed him to focus on one or two individuals and sense their emotions far more precisely, to the point that he can sense suppressed feelings or when that person is lying. Touching a person gives the same kind of detailed sense without requiring him to focus, and he can't stop himself from doing that, either.
Pain Inducement - His secondary ability is to inflict pain. He doesn't do so by causing any actual damage to the person he's using the ability on, he's merely stimulating the nerves under their skin so that they send false pain signals to the brain. False or no, it feels like real pain. The limitation is that he must be touching a person, skin on skin, in order to use this ability. The amount of pain he can inflict depends on how hard he is concentrating and where he is touching, and the rule of thumb regarding the latter being "the closer to the spine, the more it will hurt". The head is the most painful area. As for how this pain affects his target, that depends on the person.
Mutation: All of the blood vessels in his hands and wrists, from about halfway up his forearm down, are discolored in an odd fashion. They act as an extremely accurate mood ring, basically, except the colors can be as difficult to read as the person. Emotions don't correspond to separate colors, like one might expect. Happiness isn't yellow, envy isn't green, embarrassment isn't pink. Each emotion has its own distinct shade of red, blue, or gray. For example, happiness is a light, soft blue, and sadness is a darker blue, harsher against his skin. Anger is a vibrant red, bright as blood, and love is a warmer, more welcoming shade of the same. Bitterness is a dark gray, while calmness is a silvery color. It's difficult to glean the meaning of the colors without spending a considerable amount of time with Malcolm, but he tends to cover his hands with gloves anyways.
History
Malcolm was born a middle child, between two sisters, in one of the poorer districts in the London Borough of Haringey. His ability had always been present, for as far back as he would be able to recall in adulthood. As it was a mental one instead of a physical one, he was able to keep it fairly well hidden once he was old enough to understand that he needed to. Though, even without his abilities putting him at risk of discovery, his childhood was no easy one. His father was employed as a criminal, so the family's financial situation was always questionable. Neither of his parents were particularly open minded or accepting. His father's response to Malcolm asking if it was okay to like boys when he was six was an angry rant, and his mother responded with a simple no.
Amelia, his older sister, was the only member of his family he was close to. Malcolm liked to follow her around while she walked their neighborhood, visiting her friends and doing small errands for the household, and it was on one of these outings that he met John. John was a year older when they met, only seven, but already made to look after his younger sister. The two were fast friends. They'd only known one another for a couple of short months when Malcolm decided that he loved John. He didn't know it, then, but that love was going to shape the course of much of Malcolm's early life.
Amelia died when he was twelve. She was only seventeen, involved with exactly the wrong type of people, and ended up accidentally overdosing on heroin. Malcolm was deeply affected by her loss, but his parents weren't so moved. They both disapproved of their daughter's actions and the company she kept. His father was adamant that Amelia made her own decisions and her death was her own own fault. His mother felt she deserved it. His younger sister, barely eight, blindly agreed with them. Their reaction and their disgust is what turned Malcolm into such a cynic.
It was also that which turned Malcolm to crime. He ended up joining a street gang with John, soon discovering his gift for fighting hand to hand and then honing his skills at it. By the time he was eighteen, he was good at it. Good at reading opponents, good at blocking strikes, good at taking hits, good at throwing punches. Also, during the passing years, he hadn't even attempted to develop his power. Thus far in his life, all it had gotten him was pain. Pain from his parents, before he'd stopped trying to impress them. Pain from John, who did not and would not love him back. So, he'd ignored it as much as he could and did his very best not to focus on it. Even the general acceptance of Metas in the UK didn't spur him into training his ability. That would change, however, after he was put into prison.
John had always wanted to get he and his little sister out of London and the UK, to get her somewhere safe where they were not criminals. He came up with a plan to accomplish just that a few months before Malcolm's nineteenth birthday. The gang they were apart of worked under the leadership of a businessman named Levi Castor, who owned a club in which he operated a profitable drug ring. John's plan was for the three of them to break into the club and take what money they could get before burning the place down and running away. Malcolm was originally supposed to come with the John and his sister, but he knew Castor would pursue them until he got his revenge for such a massive loss of money. So Malcolm stayed behind, after the deed was done. He stayed behind, he was arrested, and he was sentenced to four years in prison for arson. John left with his sister. Safely, as Malcolm didn't mention his involvement with the deed or the money that had been stolen.
Four years. Four years, he spent around boys and then men he couldn't trust. Four years in which he worked on his ability, gaining control over it and skill with it, discovering his secondary ability by accident a year before his sentence was up. Four years he went without so much as a single letter from the man he'd decided to love when they were both children. After he got out, he was no longer sure of who he was as a person and he lacked John, who had served as his moral compass. He ended up turning to the same drug that had killed his older sister: heroin.
It's ironic, perhaps, that using it was what triggered his advancement to Tier 3. It gave him a rush, then induced a nearly catatonic state without slowing his brain function, allowing him to do nothing but focus on his empathy. He spent a year and a half as a travelling addict, making his way in a mostly illegal fashion across Europe and down into Thailand and hardly noticing the discoloration spreading up the veins of his fingers. It was on a street in Bangkok he met the Buddhist monk who dragged him back into sobriety and inspired him to seek a better path for his life.
He spent many months in the city, trying to learn to cope with the longer lasting withdrawal symptoms of heroin, dealing with the emotions he'd tried to get rid of through the drug, and learning of his new found faith. Then, when he decided he was ready to strike out on his own, he went to America and settled in Boston. In prison, he'd been taught mechanics, and found work in a shop with an owner that could accept his criminal history.
Malcolm currently lives in a small house in Boston, working as a mechanic and trying to keep to a more peaceful path.
Other:
-Has a young pitbull named Vera he found on the street
-Many things make him uncomfortable, from heights to spiders, but he is legitimately afraid of tight spaces
-He was born on Christmas, but teasing him over it is unwise
-He has quite the love for baked sweets like cupcakes and cookies
-Speaks fluent Thai