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Terminal Tokyo application
Dec. 6th, 2013 02:26 pmOOC Information
NAME: Hawk
AGE: 24
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: previously Sousuke Aizen and Malcolm Reed
IC Information
CHARACTER NAME: Eli Delacroix
AGE: Physically and mentally 23, actually around 200
TIMELINE: 1988, right before his first Jump
FAMILY TYPES:
Dragon's Roar: Eli is stubborn to a fault and prone to making rash decisions when it comes to protecting his friends. Also the reincarnation of a dragon god.
Wind Guardians: He's a bit of a free spirit and hates getting forced into situations not under his control and would do anything to change that.
Virus Busters: Eli's very much a good soul, reincarnation aside, and does his best to do the right thing, even if he can't really handle the pressure of being the hero of the multiverse.
WORLD: The world before this one was ruled by God. This god's name was Nate Silverman. Due to a freak accident, he had reset the universe with his wife, Alice, and placed himself in supreme position of power. Together, they had eight children and the entire family became a pantheon of elementals; in this universe, that was synonymous with their species: dragon. Although the universe could not be called a failure, it was indeed a gigantic clusterfuck. Nate was very drunk on his own power, speciesist and had no qualms about playing hands-on with his toys. This was most definitely the origin of the universe's eventual downfall.
Due to infighting between Nate and Alice, where she prophesied that one of his sons would destroy Nate and take his position as God, Nate destroyed the essence of her consciousness while giving the elemental powers to another being to keep the world spinning. This fight between the two of them birthed a new species, broken bits of memories and emotions splintered in the struggle: the angels. Oldest among these angels was Thomas Hawkins, who held Nate's memories and was the most unstable of his siblings. He was the prophesied son Alice mentioned, although the angels' nature as essences of Nate worked in their favor as it meant they lived in one of his blind spots. He did not even know the angels existed.
Because of Nate's own selfishness and disinterest in really looking after even his own children, they were theoretically incomplete. When the angels were born, some of them unintentionally took the fragments meant for the children; their destiny was to merge with the elementals and make complete beings. For every elemental except one, the end result of the merge left the elemental in control of the complete being — they retained their looks and overall powers, with alternations to personality to stabilize them as well as gaining the angel's memories. The one who did not come out on top was the youngest, named Benjamin, elemental of light. Benjamin had a long life fraught with depression and many hard knocks. When it came to merge with his destined angel, Thomas Hawkins, he allowed himself to fade into the background with the promise that Thomas would keep Benjamin's loved ones safe.
By the time the universe was coming to an end, Nate had gone completely and utterly insane with fury and paranoia. Thomas, having already fulfilled the other pieces of the prophesy by becoming one with all the other elementals, had just enough combined strength to absorb Nate and grant peace to the dying world. As Thomas was determined to be nothing like his father, he decided to enter an existence-long sleep to let the world decide its own fate. By that same vein, he let the lingering souls of all ten elementals inside of him choose whether they would join him in the unending sleep, or if they would separate their personalities, the human part of them inside of the dragon, and reincarnate into regular lives, the ones they could never have before. Not a one of the elementals declined the offer. Not even Nate.
The current world is almost painfully normal, aside from the part where its foundation was laid over an alternate history before the new God (Thomas Hawkins) hit the reset button and decided to let the universe run itself. This resulted in something very, very close to our regular history. The only real differences are pieces where Aspects, the reincarnated elementals, may influence things. For the most part, these Aspects tend to awaken to memories of their original lives and are content to keep the world from the chaos it had been before. (Nate's Aspects, on the other hand, tend to only ever rarely wake up and, by that virtue, rarely make a mark on anything anyway.) These Aspects are unique in that they retain their exact essence every time they are reborn and are the only souls capable of true reincarnation in this universe due to being held inside of Thomas. For everyone else, they belong to a sort of collective unconscious where they return when they die and merge with all the other souls. When someone is born, a handful of this "lifestream" redirects into the body and becomes the new soul, making something new each and every time. (However, because Thomas loves to bend even his own rules, he can recreate regular souls from the previous universe to insert into the current one. He cannot, however, remake a soul that is original to his own, new universe.) Alternate universes aplenty sprang forth from this central universe where Eli resides — they're more often "for want of a nail" than "but what if there were lizardmen," though.
Magic does exist, but more as an inherent natural law than any sort of force that people can manipulate; the aforementioned reborn elementals, Aspects, can tap into it due to their connection to the previous universe but only in ways pertaining to their previous elemental affinity. However, because of magic's nature as something innate as physics, it is impossible to exist while innately nullifying magic; one of Thomas's children, Alexis, was born with the ability of magic nullification grafted to his soul. Due to that, it is impossible to bring anyone with similar powers into the current universe without some careful modifications to cancel it out... like mixing it with a universal constant such as God himself. Thus was Eli Delacroix born of Alexis' soul and Thomas' essence, the contradictory Aspect of both light (Thomas) and death (Alexis). He is a special snowflake.
APPEARANCE: Most people would consider Eli an attractive man. He's tall, standing at about 6'2 with long dark hair and bright blue eyes. Most of the time, he never stands up straight and instead slouches slightly, making himself look shorter. Clothing wise, he tends to dress casual, normally wearing t-shirts and jeans instead of suits and the like.
On his right wrist he wears a wristband that looks like it was lifted straight out of Tron. Officially called the Portable Tracking Device and unofficially called the Trigger, Eli uses it to take note of the different universes he comes and goes from, giving them designations and allowing small notes on each one. It also keeps him from going off track from the "safe" universes into the "bad ends", alternate universes without Aspects or ones controlled by a fire Aspect gone mad.
PERSONALITY: To most people who just meet Eli, he's very much the journalist stereotype of upbeat, eager, forever curious, and poking his nose where it doesn't belong. Unlike most journalists like that or god forbid the paparazzi, Eli in actuality is incredibly subdued in his upbeat nosiness. He's aware of the boundaries of what he can do and what he should so that he never crosses the line and upsets somebody by going too far. In fact, he tends to be quite the gentleman to people he doesn't know, polite and following the other person's lead in daily life and conversation. To those who do know him, he's a radiantly positive person who tends to lean towards incredibly sarcastic when he thinks someone is being stupid or when he's bored. He can be childishly curious before switching to seeming beyond his years at the drop of a hat. Don't take his curiosity over everything to mean that he's not smart. In fact, he's the exact opposite. His curiosity about many different things is more that he wants to learn about topics he hasn't learned yet than not knowing something and being obtuse about it. He never asks the same question twice and doesn't show off what he knows if there's no reason to.
Underneath that upbeat exterior is a whirlwind of emotions. Due to being the Aspect of Thomas Hawkins himself, his non-magical quirk is that he feels emotions far stronger than normal humans can. When he's sad, it's like his dog has been murdered while if he's happy, it's as if today is Christmas and he got the Red Ryder BB gun he wanted and so on. Not only that, but he's also incredibly stubborn and able to hold a grudge for quite a long time. Put all that together and most people would believe he's a timebomb ticking towards an emotional breakdown in the near future. While he's not, he is aware of the concerns of the people around him about his emotions and to keep people from worrying about him unnecessarily, he puts up a front to hide what he's feeling. There are moments when that front cracks and when that happens, he tends to be sulking or surprisingly sarcastic. He's learned how to control his emotions for the most part, but in stressful situations, he tends to lose control, making him either useless or incredibly dangerous and prone to doing something stupid.
Due to awakening to his Aspect memories at a young age, Eli lives in a perpetual existential crisis. He is constantly in doubt over everything he does in his life and whether or not it's what Thomas would do instead of what Eli wants. His sexuality, favorite foods, even his hobbies are forever in question because of Thomas' memories rattling about in his head. He does try to keep it from controlling his life by using the memories to do the exact opposite of what he remembers Thomas doing. One of the few things that Eli does not have doubts about is his friendship with Shannon Vaughn, the Aspect of fire. Their friendship had nothing to do with Aspect-related things and even after Eli found out that Shannon's the fire Aspect, their friendship grew stronger despite the originals of their Aspects hated each other and wanted the other dead. This one friendship is the third most important relationship in his life, outside the relationship with his father and the one he has with his older brother figure Jasper Keaton.
HISTORY: The story of Eli's life is strange, even among his fellow Aspects. He was created from the soul of Alexis Hawkins, son of the god of the current universe Thomas Hawkins back in the previous universe when he was still an angel. Because of Alexis' power nullification, Thomas had to fuse the reincarnated soul with his specific aspect to keep it from cancelling itself out.
And then once Eli was created, Thomas dumped him into a graveyard in an Illinois town in the 1700s.
He was autopilot from then on, living by a gravestone that cannot exist yet does. The townspeople thought of him as a demon or some kind of evil spirit at first and there were attempts to exorcise him from the graveyard, but it didn't work. Familiarity soon came once the realized that he was no threat and he was soon turned into a story to frighten children into behaving and generally thought of as not really existing, along with being a subject of interest with the town's children. Over the years many children snuck into the graveyard to meet Eli and play with him, as well as some adults coming in to find him and remove him, with the children successfully finding him and the adults oddly unable to.
Things changed in 1974 when the journalist Marcus Delacroix came to investigate the stories of the so-called graveyard imp on the advice of a friend. When Marcus met Eli, the boy went off autopilot for the first time in his life and connected with the man. Not believing he was the graveyard imp, Marcus took Eli with him back to Chicago and adopted him. Life went by normally, if slightly odd because Eli didn't have much in the way of knowledge about surviving in the modern world.
While both Eli and Marcus were curious about who Eli was and why he was left in that graveyard, they had no idea where to even start looking for answers until a file with seven names and pictures were sent to them , along with a note stating that these people were the key to finding out the truth as to who Eli is was sent to them six months after Marcus had taken Eli from the graveyard.
The closest person on their list, Jasper Keaton, was the best person to look up first. While he originally ran them through a loop by having them help him look into the murder of his father and the threats against his own life, he was willing to explain the concept of Aspects to Eli and Marcus, as well as accompany them on their journey to find out the full truth about Eli, since Jasper did not know that he was both the reincarnation of Thomas' son and Thomas' Aspect.
There were plenty of missteps in their quest to find the other Aspects. When Eli was twelve, a search for Matheus Rocha ended up with hired thugs attacking the three of them and causing Eli's Aspect memories to surface prematurely and nearly got them killed, if not for the timely arrival of the man they were looking for. While future mistakes happened, none were nearly as bad as that one and tended to be thought in a better light than that incident.
Finally, when Eli was fifteen, they got the truth of the entire situation, not only about who Eli was, but about the search they were sent on and who sent them on it. Getting involved in the affairs of two other Aspects, Sister Marie Hawthorne and Edward Shaw, Eli and the others learned from the half-mad Edward that the search was for nothing as the only real answers for him were in the previous universe and that Eli and the other Aspects were only here to remind Thomas of the corpses he used to create this universe. Sister Marie, who was not insane nor the Aspect of the previous universe's God, explained the truth to Eli, that he was the reincarnation of Thomas' son mixed with his own Aspect, and that this entire quest he was sent on to find out who he really was was in fact nothing more than a game Thomas was playing to amuse himself and give a kid an adventure. Eli, understandably, was upset about the entire situation and made the decision right then that he wouldn't let Thomas pull his strings anymore and that he'd live his own life free of the Aspects and whatever plans they had for him after the so-called quest was done.
Returning to Chicago, Eli and Marcus tried to settle back into normal life. Eli went to school, made friends, and tried his best to be a normal kid. Jasper kept in contact through letters, having become almost like an older brother to Eli. The other Aspects, however, wanted to be more involved in Eli's life. Both Eli and Marcus tried to remove them from their life, but it felt at times like an impossible task. It wasn't until Eli followed in his father's footsteps as a journalist that he believed he found an answer to their Aspect problem. While poking around near a crime scene, Eli met Shannon Vaughn, Edward Shaw's successor as the Aspect of fire, and they soon became fast friends. Knowing that he worked for the police, Eli asked for his help in getting restraining orders against the Aspects hounding him. Even though two Aspects worked with Shannon in the police department, he still put the restraining orders through for Eli.
Then Jasper disappeared. Matheus and Javier Vasquez, the two Aspects working in the Chicago PD, secretly worked on finding Jasper without raising suspicion from Eli. A year after they started, Shannon let it slip that Jasper had gone missing. Angry was an understatement for how Eli felt and he dragged the two police officers out to berate them for leaving him out of the loop. Once everything was settled and the two Aspects apologized, Eli was brought into their investigation. Later, they held a meeting to discuss the investigation at Javier's home, but they were interrupted by a mysterious group rushing in and grabbing Eli, Matheus, Javier, and Shannon. They were thrown into a van where they found two other Aspects.
With no clue if the other Aspects were grabbed or why, they instead decided to explain what the hell Aspects were to Shannon as he was unawakened and probably never going to be, due to being fire. He didn't quite believe it and they didn't get much of a chance to expand on it beyond Shannon's specific Aspect being a major dick before they got to their destination. The organization who grabbed them were aware of the Aspects, but thought they were actually a powerful cult. Jasper's disappearance rattled them and they had grabbed everyone else to see what they knew about what happened. Once they realized they had no idea where Jasper went off to, they were let free.
After they were freed, the Aspects all decided to meet up at Javier's home to figure out what to do next. Michelle Lautner, the Aspect of Air and one new to Eli, gave Eli a business card for a nightclub in Los Angeles and revealed to him that Jasper was last seen there. As it was the only solid lead they had, Eli headed out to LA to check out the nightclub and ask the owner anything he could about the last time he saw Jasper.
What Eli didn't know until he arrived there was that the club was owned by Thomas Hawkins. Eli was furious about meeting him, but he didn't leave, knowing that Thomas had information that he needed. And he did, sharing that Jasper had come to the city specifically to speak to him about giving him the memories of all of his lives as an Aspect, but Thomas declined to do so and instead showed Jasper his predecessor, still alive and insane due to being overwhelmed by the memories of all his lives. Thomas then also shared that Jasper was no longer in this universe, but had been taken to one of the many alternates that existed alongside it.
Since Eli is unique among the Aspects, only he can jump between universes without damaging the entire multiverse while doing so. Thomas gives him the choice of leaving behind his universe to find Jasper or to not go, but Eli immediately chooses to go find Jasper. Giving Eli time to return to Chicago and tell everyone what's going on, Thomas then disappears with Eli to train him in how to jump between universes. It takes Eli only two months to finish his training and receive the wristband to assist him in keeping track of where he is in the multiverse.
SAMPLES
FIRST PERSON: A thread with some blind dude.
THIRD PERSON: The police department's outdoor firing range is surprisingly empty when Marcus and Eli arrive. Eli doesn't look at all happy to be here, having gotten himself worked up into a deep sulk on the drive over from their apartment, while Marcus seems to be ignoring the sulk to make sure there's no one else around to watch them.
"Why do we have to do this?" Eli whined loudly as he sat on a bench and watched his dad remove his jacket and gloves to reveal the old burn scars on his hands and arms. "Can't you get Jasper to come up and teach me instead?"
"Jasper's a busy man running his multimillion dollar shipping corporation and he can't just fly up here to teach you, so you're just going to have to deal with me, Pip," Marcus replied before walking over and slapping him lightly on the arm. "Get up and go stand five feet in front of a target. I'll go clean this place up so we can get started."
Eli got up and mumbled as he went past his dad and did as he was told. Marcus followed and once he was standing next to his son, he held his left hand up to the sky while his right hand was held out forward with his palm up. Electricity crackled across the skin of his right hand and almost immediately, bullets came flying out of the targets and from the ground to head towards Marcus' outstretched hand. Eli looked momentarily nervous until he realized the bullets were arcing around him, never once going near enough to scare him. Once there were no more bullets in the air, Marcus dropped the handful or so he had into a wooden box and closed the top.
"Alright, tell me what I just did there."
"You tapped into my electromagnetic abilities to cause the metal bullets and casings to come to you as if you were a giant magnet," Eli said confidently.
"What about you not getting hit?"
Eli paused for a moment to think. "Um, let's see, was it my own electromagnetic field coming out around me like a shield to make the bullets pass around me and through me?"
"Good, Pip. Now I want you to try tapping into your powers and shoot a bolt at the target."
Automatically, Eli mirrored his father, his right hand going into the air with his left hand pointed straight out, but instead of holding his palm up, Eli was pointing his index and middle fingers straight out of the target. His right hand crackled loudly with electricity before a bolt snapped out of his left hand fingers at the target with a resounding boom and setting the target on fire.
From behind them, clapping starts up and Eli jumps, turning around with electricity still charged. Marcus immediately grabs Eli's arm and yanks it down as he accidentally fires, hitting the ground instead of the two Aspect police officers watching them, having leaped back in surprise at the lightning being fired at them.
"What the fuck are you two doing here?" Eli shouted before getting smacked upside the head by Marcus.
"What did I say about swearing? And don't react unless you have control of yourself," he said to him, his tone surprisingly calm outside of the mild annoyance. From beside him, Eli muttered a soft apology. "Officers Vasquez and Rocha, if I'm remembering correctly, my son has a restraining order on the two of you."
Javier Vasquez dusted himself off and looked slightly apologetic. "We heard from a reliable source that you wanted to use the firing range so we wanted to see what for."
"Is that reliable source blind and usually found keeping you two out of trouble?" Eli snapped in annoyance, pulling his arm out of his dad's grip as the electricity faded from his skin.
"We plead the fifth," Matheus Rocha said from his position next to Javier. "We didn't come here to recruit you to whatever you think we're going to. Think of us as mildly curious in seeing how you use your abilities."
"Fine, but I'm shooting you if you decide to cause trouble," Eli answered with a defeated sigh.
Marcus rubbed his temple as he waited for the bantering to subside and Eli's focus to return on him. "Okay, Pip, let's get back to the lesson before we get interrupted."
"Okay." He took a deep breath to try and calm himself down. "So what now?"
"Now you try again and this time try to keep your focus. Also, keep your right arm down when you're shooting," Marcus instructed carefully.
"Don't I need to keep my arm up? You do it every time."
"I do that because I don't have the same charging capacity as you do and I can't control it as well."
Eli nodded, seeming to get the point. He once again held up his left hand and aimed it at the remains of the target before shooting off another bolt, though this time it was smaller and faster. The boom shook to the bone and as Eli looked over at his dad to ask why there was a power difference in shots, a familiar chain jingle noted him to the arrival of someone else. Marcus rolled his eyes and sighed softly as Eli bound away to welcome the newcomer.
"Miss Lace and Mister Vaughn, what are you two doing out here in the firing range?"
"I heard a couple idiots were coming over here to violate their restraining orders and I wanted to see you shoot them," Shannon said, an amused tone in his voice as both Javier and Matheus started to protest.
"Sorry, looks like you're not going to be a murder witness today. My dad thinks it's a pain if I have to kill people in front of him."
"And we're done here for today," Marcus said as he walked over, picking up his discarded jacket and gloves to put on during the walk back to the car. "Eli doesn't do well when people are watching."
"Dad," Eli whined as snickers came from the other three. "You don't have to say it like that."
"It's my job to embarrass you, Pip. I'll see you at home later?"
"Yep, I'll be back in a little bit. Please don't get another ticket."
"You know I can't promise that."
NAME: Hawk
AGE: 24
OTHER CHARACTERS PLAYED: previously Sousuke Aizen and Malcolm Reed
IC Information
CHARACTER NAME: Eli Delacroix
AGE: Physically and mentally 23, actually around 200
TIMELINE: 1988, right before his first Jump
FAMILY TYPES:
Dragon's Roar: Eli is stubborn to a fault and prone to making rash decisions when it comes to protecting his friends. Also the reincarnation of a dragon god.
Wind Guardians: He's a bit of a free spirit and hates getting forced into situations not under his control and would do anything to change that.
Virus Busters: Eli's very much a good soul, reincarnation aside, and does his best to do the right thing, even if he can't really handle the pressure of being the hero of the multiverse.
WORLD: The world before this one was ruled by God. This god's name was Nate Silverman. Due to a freak accident, he had reset the universe with his wife, Alice, and placed himself in supreme position of power. Together, they had eight children and the entire family became a pantheon of elementals; in this universe, that was synonymous with their species: dragon. Although the universe could not be called a failure, it was indeed a gigantic clusterfuck. Nate was very drunk on his own power, speciesist and had no qualms about playing hands-on with his toys. This was most definitely the origin of the universe's eventual downfall.
Due to infighting between Nate and Alice, where she prophesied that one of his sons would destroy Nate and take his position as God, Nate destroyed the essence of her consciousness while giving the elemental powers to another being to keep the world spinning. This fight between the two of them birthed a new species, broken bits of memories and emotions splintered in the struggle: the angels. Oldest among these angels was Thomas Hawkins, who held Nate's memories and was the most unstable of his siblings. He was the prophesied son Alice mentioned, although the angels' nature as essences of Nate worked in their favor as it meant they lived in one of his blind spots. He did not even know the angels existed.
Because of Nate's own selfishness and disinterest in really looking after even his own children, they were theoretically incomplete. When the angels were born, some of them unintentionally took the fragments meant for the children; their destiny was to merge with the elementals and make complete beings. For every elemental except one, the end result of the merge left the elemental in control of the complete being — they retained their looks and overall powers, with alternations to personality to stabilize them as well as gaining the angel's memories. The one who did not come out on top was the youngest, named Benjamin, elemental of light. Benjamin had a long life fraught with depression and many hard knocks. When it came to merge with his destined angel, Thomas Hawkins, he allowed himself to fade into the background with the promise that Thomas would keep Benjamin's loved ones safe.
By the time the universe was coming to an end, Nate had gone completely and utterly insane with fury and paranoia. Thomas, having already fulfilled the other pieces of the prophesy by becoming one with all the other elementals, had just enough combined strength to absorb Nate and grant peace to the dying world. As Thomas was determined to be nothing like his father, he decided to enter an existence-long sleep to let the world decide its own fate. By that same vein, he let the lingering souls of all ten elementals inside of him choose whether they would join him in the unending sleep, or if they would separate their personalities, the human part of them inside of the dragon, and reincarnate into regular lives, the ones they could never have before. Not a one of the elementals declined the offer. Not even Nate.
The current world is almost painfully normal, aside from the part where its foundation was laid over an alternate history before the new God (Thomas Hawkins) hit the reset button and decided to let the universe run itself. This resulted in something very, very close to our regular history. The only real differences are pieces where Aspects, the reincarnated elementals, may influence things. For the most part, these Aspects tend to awaken to memories of their original lives and are content to keep the world from the chaos it had been before. (Nate's Aspects, on the other hand, tend to only ever rarely wake up and, by that virtue, rarely make a mark on anything anyway.) These Aspects are unique in that they retain their exact essence every time they are reborn and are the only souls capable of true reincarnation in this universe due to being held inside of Thomas. For everyone else, they belong to a sort of collective unconscious where they return when they die and merge with all the other souls. When someone is born, a handful of this "lifestream" redirects into the body and becomes the new soul, making something new each and every time. (However, because Thomas loves to bend even his own rules, he can recreate regular souls from the previous universe to insert into the current one. He cannot, however, remake a soul that is original to his own, new universe.) Alternate universes aplenty sprang forth from this central universe where Eli resides — they're more often "for want of a nail" than "but what if there were lizardmen," though.
Magic does exist, but more as an inherent natural law than any sort of force that people can manipulate; the aforementioned reborn elementals, Aspects, can tap into it due to their connection to the previous universe but only in ways pertaining to their previous elemental affinity. However, because of magic's nature as something innate as physics, it is impossible to exist while innately nullifying magic; one of Thomas's children, Alexis, was born with the ability of magic nullification grafted to his soul. Due to that, it is impossible to bring anyone with similar powers into the current universe without some careful modifications to cancel it out... like mixing it with a universal constant such as God himself. Thus was Eli Delacroix born of Alexis' soul and Thomas' essence, the contradictory Aspect of both light (Thomas) and death (Alexis). He is a special snowflake.
APPEARANCE: Most people would consider Eli an attractive man. He's tall, standing at about 6'2 with long dark hair and bright blue eyes. Most of the time, he never stands up straight and instead slouches slightly, making himself look shorter. Clothing wise, he tends to dress casual, normally wearing t-shirts and jeans instead of suits and the like.
On his right wrist he wears a wristband that looks like it was lifted straight out of Tron. Officially called the Portable Tracking Device and unofficially called the Trigger, Eli uses it to take note of the different universes he comes and goes from, giving them designations and allowing small notes on each one. It also keeps him from going off track from the "safe" universes into the "bad ends", alternate universes without Aspects or ones controlled by a fire Aspect gone mad.
PERSONALITY: To most people who just meet Eli, he's very much the journalist stereotype of upbeat, eager, forever curious, and poking his nose where it doesn't belong. Unlike most journalists like that or god forbid the paparazzi, Eli in actuality is incredibly subdued in his upbeat nosiness. He's aware of the boundaries of what he can do and what he should so that he never crosses the line and upsets somebody by going too far. In fact, he tends to be quite the gentleman to people he doesn't know, polite and following the other person's lead in daily life and conversation. To those who do know him, he's a radiantly positive person who tends to lean towards incredibly sarcastic when he thinks someone is being stupid or when he's bored. He can be childishly curious before switching to seeming beyond his years at the drop of a hat. Don't take his curiosity over everything to mean that he's not smart. In fact, he's the exact opposite. His curiosity about many different things is more that he wants to learn about topics he hasn't learned yet than not knowing something and being obtuse about it. He never asks the same question twice and doesn't show off what he knows if there's no reason to.
Underneath that upbeat exterior is a whirlwind of emotions. Due to being the Aspect of Thomas Hawkins himself, his non-magical quirk is that he feels emotions far stronger than normal humans can. When he's sad, it's like his dog has been murdered while if he's happy, it's as if today is Christmas and he got the Red Ryder BB gun he wanted and so on. Not only that, but he's also incredibly stubborn and able to hold a grudge for quite a long time. Put all that together and most people would believe he's a timebomb ticking towards an emotional breakdown in the near future. While he's not, he is aware of the concerns of the people around him about his emotions and to keep people from worrying about him unnecessarily, he puts up a front to hide what he's feeling. There are moments when that front cracks and when that happens, he tends to be sulking or surprisingly sarcastic. He's learned how to control his emotions for the most part, but in stressful situations, he tends to lose control, making him either useless or incredibly dangerous and prone to doing something stupid.
Due to awakening to his Aspect memories at a young age, Eli lives in a perpetual existential crisis. He is constantly in doubt over everything he does in his life and whether or not it's what Thomas would do instead of what Eli wants. His sexuality, favorite foods, even his hobbies are forever in question because of Thomas' memories rattling about in his head. He does try to keep it from controlling his life by using the memories to do the exact opposite of what he remembers Thomas doing. One of the few things that Eli does not have doubts about is his friendship with Shannon Vaughn, the Aspect of fire. Their friendship had nothing to do with Aspect-related things and even after Eli found out that Shannon's the fire Aspect, their friendship grew stronger despite the originals of their Aspects hated each other and wanted the other dead. This one friendship is the third most important relationship in his life, outside the relationship with his father and the one he has with his older brother figure Jasper Keaton.
HISTORY: The story of Eli's life is strange, even among his fellow Aspects. He was created from the soul of Alexis Hawkins, son of the god of the current universe Thomas Hawkins back in the previous universe when he was still an angel. Because of Alexis' power nullification, Thomas had to fuse the reincarnated soul with his specific aspect to keep it from cancelling itself out.
And then once Eli was created, Thomas dumped him into a graveyard in an Illinois town in the 1700s.
He was autopilot from then on, living by a gravestone that cannot exist yet does. The townspeople thought of him as a demon or some kind of evil spirit at first and there were attempts to exorcise him from the graveyard, but it didn't work. Familiarity soon came once the realized that he was no threat and he was soon turned into a story to frighten children into behaving and generally thought of as not really existing, along with being a subject of interest with the town's children. Over the years many children snuck into the graveyard to meet Eli and play with him, as well as some adults coming in to find him and remove him, with the children successfully finding him and the adults oddly unable to.
Things changed in 1974 when the journalist Marcus Delacroix came to investigate the stories of the so-called graveyard imp on the advice of a friend. When Marcus met Eli, the boy went off autopilot for the first time in his life and connected with the man. Not believing he was the graveyard imp, Marcus took Eli with him back to Chicago and adopted him. Life went by normally, if slightly odd because Eli didn't have much in the way of knowledge about surviving in the modern world.
While both Eli and Marcus were curious about who Eli was and why he was left in that graveyard, they had no idea where to even start looking for answers until a file with seven names and pictures were sent to them , along with a note stating that these people were the key to finding out the truth as to who Eli is was sent to them six months after Marcus had taken Eli from the graveyard.
The closest person on their list, Jasper Keaton, was the best person to look up first. While he originally ran them through a loop by having them help him look into the murder of his father and the threats against his own life, he was willing to explain the concept of Aspects to Eli and Marcus, as well as accompany them on their journey to find out the full truth about Eli, since Jasper did not know that he was both the reincarnation of Thomas' son and Thomas' Aspect.
There were plenty of missteps in their quest to find the other Aspects. When Eli was twelve, a search for Matheus Rocha ended up with hired thugs attacking the three of them and causing Eli's Aspect memories to surface prematurely and nearly got them killed, if not for the timely arrival of the man they were looking for. While future mistakes happened, none were nearly as bad as that one and tended to be thought in a better light than that incident.
Finally, when Eli was fifteen, they got the truth of the entire situation, not only about who Eli was, but about the search they were sent on and who sent them on it. Getting involved in the affairs of two other Aspects, Sister Marie Hawthorne and Edward Shaw, Eli and the others learned from the half-mad Edward that the search was for nothing as the only real answers for him were in the previous universe and that Eli and the other Aspects were only here to remind Thomas of the corpses he used to create this universe. Sister Marie, who was not insane nor the Aspect of the previous universe's God, explained the truth to Eli, that he was the reincarnation of Thomas' son mixed with his own Aspect, and that this entire quest he was sent on to find out who he really was was in fact nothing more than a game Thomas was playing to amuse himself and give a kid an adventure. Eli, understandably, was upset about the entire situation and made the decision right then that he wouldn't let Thomas pull his strings anymore and that he'd live his own life free of the Aspects and whatever plans they had for him after the so-called quest was done.
Returning to Chicago, Eli and Marcus tried to settle back into normal life. Eli went to school, made friends, and tried his best to be a normal kid. Jasper kept in contact through letters, having become almost like an older brother to Eli. The other Aspects, however, wanted to be more involved in Eli's life. Both Eli and Marcus tried to remove them from their life, but it felt at times like an impossible task. It wasn't until Eli followed in his father's footsteps as a journalist that he believed he found an answer to their Aspect problem. While poking around near a crime scene, Eli met Shannon Vaughn, Edward Shaw's successor as the Aspect of fire, and they soon became fast friends. Knowing that he worked for the police, Eli asked for his help in getting restraining orders against the Aspects hounding him. Even though two Aspects worked with Shannon in the police department, he still put the restraining orders through for Eli.
Then Jasper disappeared. Matheus and Javier Vasquez, the two Aspects working in the Chicago PD, secretly worked on finding Jasper without raising suspicion from Eli. A year after they started, Shannon let it slip that Jasper had gone missing. Angry was an understatement for how Eli felt and he dragged the two police officers out to berate them for leaving him out of the loop. Once everything was settled and the two Aspects apologized, Eli was brought into their investigation. Later, they held a meeting to discuss the investigation at Javier's home, but they were interrupted by a mysterious group rushing in and grabbing Eli, Matheus, Javier, and Shannon. They were thrown into a van where they found two other Aspects.
With no clue if the other Aspects were grabbed or why, they instead decided to explain what the hell Aspects were to Shannon as he was unawakened and probably never going to be, due to being fire. He didn't quite believe it and they didn't get much of a chance to expand on it beyond Shannon's specific Aspect being a major dick before they got to their destination. The organization who grabbed them were aware of the Aspects, but thought they were actually a powerful cult. Jasper's disappearance rattled them and they had grabbed everyone else to see what they knew about what happened. Once they realized they had no idea where Jasper went off to, they were let free.
After they were freed, the Aspects all decided to meet up at Javier's home to figure out what to do next. Michelle Lautner, the Aspect of Air and one new to Eli, gave Eli a business card for a nightclub in Los Angeles and revealed to him that Jasper was last seen there. As it was the only solid lead they had, Eli headed out to LA to check out the nightclub and ask the owner anything he could about the last time he saw Jasper.
What Eli didn't know until he arrived there was that the club was owned by Thomas Hawkins. Eli was furious about meeting him, but he didn't leave, knowing that Thomas had information that he needed. And he did, sharing that Jasper had come to the city specifically to speak to him about giving him the memories of all of his lives as an Aspect, but Thomas declined to do so and instead showed Jasper his predecessor, still alive and insane due to being overwhelmed by the memories of all his lives. Thomas then also shared that Jasper was no longer in this universe, but had been taken to one of the many alternates that existed alongside it.
Since Eli is unique among the Aspects, only he can jump between universes without damaging the entire multiverse while doing so. Thomas gives him the choice of leaving behind his universe to find Jasper or to not go, but Eli immediately chooses to go find Jasper. Giving Eli time to return to Chicago and tell everyone what's going on, Thomas then disappears with Eli to train him in how to jump between universes. It takes Eli only two months to finish his training and receive the wristband to assist him in keeping track of where he is in the multiverse.
SAMPLES
FIRST PERSON: A thread with some blind dude.
THIRD PERSON: The police department's outdoor firing range is surprisingly empty when Marcus and Eli arrive. Eli doesn't look at all happy to be here, having gotten himself worked up into a deep sulk on the drive over from their apartment, while Marcus seems to be ignoring the sulk to make sure there's no one else around to watch them.
"Why do we have to do this?" Eli whined loudly as he sat on a bench and watched his dad remove his jacket and gloves to reveal the old burn scars on his hands and arms. "Can't you get Jasper to come up and teach me instead?"
"Jasper's a busy man running his multimillion dollar shipping corporation and he can't just fly up here to teach you, so you're just going to have to deal with me, Pip," Marcus replied before walking over and slapping him lightly on the arm. "Get up and go stand five feet in front of a target. I'll go clean this place up so we can get started."
Eli got up and mumbled as he went past his dad and did as he was told. Marcus followed and once he was standing next to his son, he held his left hand up to the sky while his right hand was held out forward with his palm up. Electricity crackled across the skin of his right hand and almost immediately, bullets came flying out of the targets and from the ground to head towards Marcus' outstretched hand. Eli looked momentarily nervous until he realized the bullets were arcing around him, never once going near enough to scare him. Once there were no more bullets in the air, Marcus dropped the handful or so he had into a wooden box and closed the top.
"Alright, tell me what I just did there."
"You tapped into my electromagnetic abilities to cause the metal bullets and casings to come to you as if you were a giant magnet," Eli said confidently.
"What about you not getting hit?"
Eli paused for a moment to think. "Um, let's see, was it my own electromagnetic field coming out around me like a shield to make the bullets pass around me and through me?"
"Good, Pip. Now I want you to try tapping into your powers and shoot a bolt at the target."
Automatically, Eli mirrored his father, his right hand going into the air with his left hand pointed straight out, but instead of holding his palm up, Eli was pointing his index and middle fingers straight out of the target. His right hand crackled loudly with electricity before a bolt snapped out of his left hand fingers at the target with a resounding boom and setting the target on fire.
From behind them, clapping starts up and Eli jumps, turning around with electricity still charged. Marcus immediately grabs Eli's arm and yanks it down as he accidentally fires, hitting the ground instead of the two Aspect police officers watching them, having leaped back in surprise at the lightning being fired at them.
"What the fuck are you two doing here?" Eli shouted before getting smacked upside the head by Marcus.
"What did I say about swearing? And don't react unless you have control of yourself," he said to him, his tone surprisingly calm outside of the mild annoyance. From beside him, Eli muttered a soft apology. "Officers Vasquez and Rocha, if I'm remembering correctly, my son has a restraining order on the two of you."
Javier Vasquez dusted himself off and looked slightly apologetic. "We heard from a reliable source that you wanted to use the firing range so we wanted to see what for."
"Is that reliable source blind and usually found keeping you two out of trouble?" Eli snapped in annoyance, pulling his arm out of his dad's grip as the electricity faded from his skin.
"We plead the fifth," Matheus Rocha said from his position next to Javier. "We didn't come here to recruit you to whatever you think we're going to. Think of us as mildly curious in seeing how you use your abilities."
"Fine, but I'm shooting you if you decide to cause trouble," Eli answered with a defeated sigh.
Marcus rubbed his temple as he waited for the bantering to subside and Eli's focus to return on him. "Okay, Pip, let's get back to the lesson before we get interrupted."
"Okay." He took a deep breath to try and calm himself down. "So what now?"
"Now you try again and this time try to keep your focus. Also, keep your right arm down when you're shooting," Marcus instructed carefully.
"Don't I need to keep my arm up? You do it every time."
"I do that because I don't have the same charging capacity as you do and I can't control it as well."
Eli nodded, seeming to get the point. He once again held up his left hand and aimed it at the remains of the target before shooting off another bolt, though this time it was smaller and faster. The boom shook to the bone and as Eli looked over at his dad to ask why there was a power difference in shots, a familiar chain jingle noted him to the arrival of someone else. Marcus rolled his eyes and sighed softly as Eli bound away to welcome the newcomer.
"Miss Lace and Mister Vaughn, what are you two doing out here in the firing range?"
"I heard a couple idiots were coming over here to violate their restraining orders and I wanted to see you shoot them," Shannon said, an amused tone in his voice as both Javier and Matheus started to protest.
"Sorry, looks like you're not going to be a murder witness today. My dad thinks it's a pain if I have to kill people in front of him."
"And we're done here for today," Marcus said as he walked over, picking up his discarded jacket and gloves to put on during the walk back to the car. "Eli doesn't do well when people are watching."
"Dad," Eli whined as snickers came from the other three. "You don't have to say it like that."
"It's my job to embarrass you, Pip. I'll see you at home later?"
"Yep, I'll be back in a little bit. Please don't get another ticket."
"You know I can't promise that."
