Alias: Wildcard
Age: 17
Date of Birth: November 8, 1993
Hometown: Reno, NV
Height: 5'9
Weight: 100
Hair Color: Black
Eye Color: Brown
Nationality/Race: Caucasian/Thai, natural born American
Occupation: Student/Gambler
Personality Profile: In a word? Cocky. Loesan considers himself to be smarter, better-looking, more talented and certainly luckier than most people, and thinks he's doing them a favor just by being around them. He cracks jokes frequently, hits on attractive women as naturally as he breathes(and almost as often), and generally just tries to be the life of the party. While this might seem like just a protective veneer(and it is), it's a very hard one to crack. Underneath one might find a fairly normal young man with more than his fair share of insecurities and bad memories just desiring some honest friends and a place in the world. Thrill-seeking and gambling are a core part of his personality however, and no matter how well you know him or how honest he is with you(or himself), they're two of his favorite activities.
Physical Description: Physical attractiveness is a subjective thing, but most people tend to agree that Loesan is at least cute, and he'll be the first to tell you that he's had scouts trying to get him into modelling since he was a kid, and not to worry, big things come attached to small packages. Neither muscular nor fat, the best way to describe his body-type is "slim." He's in good shape, but hardly has the normal "superheroic" physique.
His clothing tastes tend toward expensive brands and a combination of "'20's mobster" and "cowboy chic," which unfortunately means he often looks like he just escaped from a boyband. He's rarely without a hat of some kind, favoring a fedora he claims belonged to John Dillinger and that he won off a collector in a poker game. His jackets are always Armani, his shirts are always Versace, and he claims he has to have his pants custom-tailored. He frequently wears jewelry, and what he does wear is invariably platinum and diamond. Perhaps oddly, he always wears high-quality trainers with these, but then, if you'd had to run away half as often as he has in his short life, you'd stay away from shoes prone to flying off or losing traction as well.
Character Picture (Optional):
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Mutation/Powers:
Primary: Probability Control - Can influence "luck." Either making himself luckier, or making someone else less lucky. He does not control the effects of this precisely, he more 'wishes' for something good to happen to him, or something bad to happen to someone else along a certain line. In the past, he most often used this ability while playing games of chance so he'd get a card he needed, or the dice would go his way. Less-selfishly, he can cause a shooter's gun to misfire, or someone to trip or run into an obstacle, or for a car's engine to suddenly die for a moment.
Secondary: Superhuman Reflexes - This, unlike the other two, is more of a passive power. It's not always on, but as soon as adrenaline is dumped into his system, Loesan's perception of time starts to alter slightly. He perceives the world moving around him at a much slower rate, just fast enough to understand the spoken word as if it was a bad special effect slow-mo distortion. When this is happening to him, he can move his body faster than normal, shifting out of the way of a bullet, blocking a knock-out punch, finding a way inside a martial artist's defense.
Tertiary: Pheremones - Loesan can augment and increase his body's pheremone production at will, affecting the moods of those around him who breathe them in. Those affected find themselves feeling calmed and friendly toward him, and are often in a slightly suggestible state. While based on a natural human ability, this is as far beyond normal pheremonal influence as Quicksilver is beyond normal human running speed.
Drawbacks/Weaknesses/Side Effects: Probability control is very inexact, he can decide he doesn't want to be shot, but can't pick whether the gun misfires, explodes in the shooter's hand, or if some poor passerby happens to trip in front of him and take the bullet accidentally. He can decide he wants a lucky hand of cards, but three royal flushes in a row are enough to make a nun call you a liar and a cheat. Superhuman reflexes usually require a short burst of superhuman speed to use... Which means using them makes him tired and hungry, and he's quite likely to pull/tear muscles and fracture his bones if he tries to do too much, in addition, the state of heightened awareness that allows him those few seconds of grace is horribly draining and very limited term, usually only a few seconds at a time, once or twice a day, any more than that and he'll render himself unconscious if not comatic. Pheremones are limited to a 'calming/befriending' effect on those around him. He can't stop a raging berserker with it, but he can usually defuse an argument or talk his way out of things. In addition, females under the influence of his pheremones are reluctant to 'ruin their special friendship' with him. And, of course, they only work on other humans/humanoids breathing his air. In addition, since the pheremones have to be produced within his body, much like his reflexive abilities, using them for a protracted length of time leaves him feeling drained, and he only really has 'reserves' at any given time for 4 hours of effect without a large meal and a good night's sleep to replenish himself.
How do you believe this character's powers will further develop in the future? Probability control could eventually become more focused and voluntary. Pheremones could grow to embrace more possible emotional effects. Superhuman reflexes develop into a more basic superhuman agility and dexterity, and possibly eventually allow short bursts of super speed(which will exact a terrible price on him for using, possibly even increasing the speed of his aging in addition to all the physical damage and exhaustion)
Background: In a lot of places in the 'civilized' world, prostitutes are looked down upon, shunned, jailed, or worse. There is one place in America where this isn't true however, the great state of Nevada. While prostitution is illegal in Las Vegas itself, the rest of the state is one of the only places on earth where you can buy a hooker without having to worry about having a new strain of STD named after you. In Reno there are streetwalkers and cheap brothels, but there are also rather high class establishments that cater to the rich and refined.
Chandra Deveraux worked in one of these, the world-infamous Madame et le Cheval. She was a young and rather carefree college student, a lady of the evening who saw no shame in what she did to augment her earnings while she was working toward her law degree. She was beautiful, confident, and one of the top earners at the establishment were she worked... Then she met Loesan.
She would tell the son she named after him about the man frequently throughout his early years. About his caring nature, about his charm, about the generosity with which he threw money around. She would tell him about how he seemed surprised at how attracted she was to him. She would tell him how they spent two marvelous weeks together, about how she quit her job at the Cheval the night after she met him, not wanting to ever feel the touch of another man again. And always, starting to tear up, she would tell him how one morning, he was gone. About how she searched for him, hired investigators to find him, filed missing persons reports, all for naught. Chandra never heard from the mysterious man again.
He did leave her pregnant though, and that was enough... For a time. She bought a house with her savings, bore her pregnancy out to term, finished college, and got a job with a small firm. But she had no friends, had long since lost contact with her family... And she never stopped looking for Loesan. Her son was raised more by nannies than he was by his mother, with her work and her obsession, and when he was old enough, he was sent off to private school.
In the fifth grade, Loesan recieved a frantically happy phonecall from his mother, telling him that she'd found his father at last. The boy, still young enough for hope, eagerly waited for his flight home so he could meet his father... Only to receive another call, two weeks later. It was an older woman he had never met, claiming to be his mother's mother, telling him that his mother had finally suffered a psychotic break and been found by the maid in the bedroom, curled up next to a life-sized doll crafted out of lunchmeat and ground beef that no amount of pleading or arguing could persuade her was not the man that she so desperately loved.
With that, life began to change very rapidly for young Loesan. Private school was out, his grandmother saw no need for such fancy trappings, and thought that "getting above her station" had been part of what had driven his mother insane in the first place. Public school it was... Going from private school to a public school system like that in Reno was a very hard adjustment to make, there were taunts, tormenting, and the usual sort of fights and bullying. His grandmother's only advice was "stop putting on airs and you'll fit in."
Loesan, however, knew he was special. His mother had always told him so, and he had always made high marks at private school(even if he barely managed a C average in the 'real world'). He ignored racial slurs, he learned to hide, dodge, and run from beatings, and he learned to make friends were he could. Between his home life with a drunk, bitter old woman who had been known to call him a "yellow bastard" or "chink-eyed mongrel" on more than one occasion, and a school life that was more concerned with survival than academic achievement, his grades suffered, and he didn't have many friends...
All that changed not long after his fifteenth birthday, however. Loesan had not only finally gotten himself invited to a party, but he was actually fitting in well with people for once(the alcohol probably didn't hurt), dancing, making people laugh, and he had just found himself off in a bedroom with Mary Parker, the prettiest girl in school. He was having his first makeout session, which was rapidly heading toward, quite possibly, much more than that... When the door suddenly burst open, and there was Jake Stevens, Mary's boyfriend and the Defense Captain and largest lineman on the Reno High football team.
It was hardly something he could lie about, and with a rather well-rounded female on top of him and his jeans having, at some point, found their way down to his ankles, running wasn't a viable option either. And so... Loesan did what he did best. He talked. He talked and talked and talked, about his respect for Jake as a human being, about how well the team had been doing, about anything complimentary he could think of...
And somehow, it worked. Jake's anger seemed to flicker and go out like a candleflame, and after a couple minutes of talking, he wandered off, a slightly glassy look in his eye. Loesan was mystified, but happy... At least until he noticed Mary was dressed again, and trying not to look at him too directly. She left not long after, muttering something about how they were such excellent friends and she was glad she hadn't made such a horrible mistake. That soured his feeling of triumph a bit, but he made it out of the house party with his jaw intact as well as his virginity, and so counted it a net gain.
After that, Loesan's life started to change very rapidly. He quickly realized that the encounter with Jake had been more than a fluke, and that he could defuse most dangerous and tense situations with ease, as long as he decided he wanted to, badly enough. He could convince people to do things for him, just little things, but often, that was enough.
More, as he started to use this ability in the obvious way(to get into casinos), he found that he was lucky, too. Not always, not predictably, but it was the same as with his other ability. If he wanted to win badly enough, if he needed it with all his being... He'd draw a handful of aces, or kings full of queens, or the roulette wheel would come up on his number.
Of course, nobody likes it when a snot-nosed kid takes them for $40,000 in a poker game, not even one they feel a strange kinship for. The luck would extend there as well, men winding back for a punch would slip on something, those chasing him would trip over a stray dog and get bitten for the trouble... And in the few rare cases where kindness and luck ran out, he found his last ability. It came when he took a prizefighter in texas hold 'em, going all in with a pair of twos... Only for two more to come up in the turn and the river.
There was no time for calming when the fighter swung on him, no time for wishing something bad would happen to him... And rightly, there was no time to avoid it, either. A massive, callused fist coming hard enough to quite possibly kill him, or at least make him forget half of everything he ever knew... Except, at the last moment, it seemed to slow to a crawl, and he shifted out of the way, feeling muscles all down his spine scream as he did so. Two more blows came, each dodged as easily as the first, and as he stepped out of the way of the third, he drove his own fist up into the fighter's exposed chin. He knocked the man(who was easily a foot and a half taller and twice his weight) out with a single blow... And broke half the bones in his hand in the process.
The pit boss was not amused, the prize fighter had been a high roller, and had made a lot of money for the house in the last couple years. Now he was laying unconscious in a hospital room with a crushed jaw and six broken teeth. Loesan's fast talking wasn't quite enough to get him out of this. Especially not when a specialist security consultant recognized him for what he was, and had him confined in an air-controlled room where all communication was by video-link. His charm wore off very fast then.
He was still a minor, and even in Reno they don't bury minors out in the desert for cheating. Thankfully, his luck manipulation was not discovered, so nobody decided to ignore his age, just this once. Going purely on apparent super speed/strength and pheremones, it was decided by the security consultant(an alumnus in his own right) that the best place for the troublesome young man was the Cobalt Academy, and it was the consultant himself who explained the deal to Loesan. On his word, no charges would be pressed, his grandmother would not be informed... But he would go to Cobalt, and learn to use his abilities for more than just card-sharping.
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: Loesan is a classically-trained pianist of more than passing talent.
He also considers himself an excellent shot, but since his experience with firearms consists entirely of videogames and paintball, that's a bit debatable.
He speaks with an extremely thick accent that seems to be a blending of TV cowboy and inner city youth.