Institute application

[theveilisin]

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Emi
ARE YOU AT LEAST 16 YEARS OLD?: Damn kids, get off my lawn
IF UNDER 18 YEARS OLD, PLEASE STATE YOUR AGE: /shakes cane
CONTACT: sweetjerry
CHARACTERS PLAYED: Fai Flourite comparative_insanity Souji Okita spes_phthisica.

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Luvander Páwa (He has no canon last name; Páwa is a name he's chosen, after the Volstovic word for 'peacock'.)
CANON: The Volstovic Cycle (Havemercy & Steelhands, predominantly the latter)
CANON REFERENCE: The Havemercy wiki barely exists, and the Steelhands entry isn't exactly impressive, so have the Amazon page instead. The only thing I've really got on the character is a brief blurb about his backstory from the authors.
AGE: In canon he's probably in his late twenties to early thirties, but I am gleefully aging him down to fifteen.
GENDER: Cis male.
YEAR IN SCHOOL/FACULTY POSITION: Year 10.
APPEARANCE: Luvander is a bit on the short side, though not remarkably so, and although he's well trained, he leans more toward 'wiry' than 'muscular'. He has medium blond hair which he wears tied up in a sloppy ponytail at the nape of his neck, and his eyes are a fairly unremarkable shade of blue.
He dresses in flattering, elegant clothes, which might admittedly seem just a bit outdated, and the color scheme is occasionally somewhat eccentric. He has a big, purple scar on his neck in the shape of a hook which seems to continue down across his chest, but he usually hides this by wearing scarves. In this AU, this is the only scar he's ever managed to get.

PERSONALITY: If you want to be charitable, you could definitely call Luvander eccentric. Since most of the people he knows are not much interested in being charitable in the first place, it’s more likely to hear him referred to as being crazy as a soap teacup. A more accurate assessment would be that he is a man who has figured out his own personal peculiarities while living within a group full of equally colorful men, and has worked out how make them work to his advantage – and that he’s just a little bit insane, just like all the other airmen.

Most noticeable is probably the fact that he never shuts up. He appears very fond of the sound of his own voice, in fact, and is extremely prone to meandering monologues which are most of the time both colorful and nonsensical in nature. He doesn’t much seem to care if what comes out of his mouth is entirely suitable for the situation, or makes sense at all, or even if it makes him come off as either hugely insensitive or just plain weird. Since his attention span is also a little bit erratic, it’s not unusual for him to jump from one subject to another without warning. All of this might seem like traits solely belonging to someone rather incredibly self-centered, but as Adamo points out, it’s actually often a case of Luvander trying to fill up the silence so no one – presumably including himself – is going to have to feel awkward. Regrettably this doesn’t always work, especially in the case of more timid and cautious personalities, but that doesn’t change that it is just as much an attempt to make people feel included as it is a symptom of verbal incontinence.

Despite his blatant weirdness, he is also among the most well-balanced of the motley band of madmen he belongs to. This is made particularly obvious if you compare him to the other surviving airmen after the war, and how well they seem to cope. Balfour is quite frankly neurotic, shows signs of suffering from PTSD, and describes himself as suffering from 'phantom airmen' in the absence of his dead comrades; Adamo feels uncomfortable with his new place in life and is generally angry with the world; Rook escapes the city and is an absolute mess of grief and rage after losing his dragon; Ghislain pisses off to become a pirate. Meanwhile, Luvander manages to wriggle out of any responsibility toward the government which might otherwise limit his career choice, buys himself a hat shop right next to the great big statues erected in the honor of the airmen, and names the shop after his dragon. While the others seem caught up in their past lives, unable to move on, Luvander seems to have landed on his feet and is adjusting admirably to life as a civilian, and although he clearly mourns his dragon and the people he lost, he seems to have put that part of his life to rest.

He has been described by the authors as being a natural caretaker due to having many siblings growing up, and this is made rather obvious by his behavior in Steelhands as well. The moment he realizes that Balfour is having trouble with his new prosthetic hands, he - without waiting for consent - tracks down his address and invites himself over, apparently to make sure the younger man has a proper breakfast, but probably also just to check that he's okay. And once he and Adamo decide to keep an even closer eye on the younger man, he seems to take very naturally to it. All the later secret meetings are held at his hat shop, it being a neutral location, and despite the tense situation he also seems to rather enjoy his role as a host. It could be speculated that a man who at first comes from a very lively home, only to spend years and years living at the Airman, might find that living on his own all of a sudden feels a bit empty.

However, as an alumnus of the bro culture in the Airman, Luvander does appear to have a somewhat unkind sense of humor at times. He mentions how he at one point in the past put fire ants in Balfour’s clothes – most likely underwear by the sound of it – and in Havemercy his only remark when Thom is miserably lamenting the ink handprint across his face is that he thinks it looks dashing. Adamo also recalls that he has a tendency of innocently resolving a situation – Raphael’s missing books, in this case – that he probably caused in the first place, suggesting that he perhaps strives to be somewhat more subtle about his pranks than some of the rest of them, but that he nonetheless finds amusement in them. And some of the jibes and jokes he makes are definitely on the insensitive side on the whole. Yet you never get the feeling that there is any true malice behind his actions, but rather a somewhat skewed sense of humor, cultivated in an environment where not picking on others in one way or another were seen as signs of weakness. This, coupled with a temperament that compels him to not let go of a joke unless more or less forced to, seems to be the cause of his sometimes disrespectful behavior, rather than outright cruelty.

Even when things start to get serious, Luvander seems to be unable to stop running his mouth or simply making light of the situation in ways which understandably are taken as rather offensive by some. On the flip side, you can definitely tell that sometimes, this very way of acting is a kind of defense that he employs. It appears that he’s not good at – most likely not comfortable with – expressing anything that touches him on a more personal level, and making fun of a situation or telling random anecdotes allows him bypass having to deal with actually talking about his feelings. Balfour notes that for someone with an extremely expressive face and lively mimicry, he very rarely expresses any genuine emotions at all, and the best way of telling if something has gotten to him is usually via the absence of any expression at all.

That is not to say that he's emotionally deadened or compromised as such, and some things definitely get under his skin. Often this is hinted at by a flicker in his carefree demeanor, a pause that goes on just a bit too long, or as mentioned above, him simply going still and unmovable, suddenly devoid of hyperbole and absurdities. The only time you ever really see him properly break character is when the dragons and his comrades are concerned, and when there is a direct risk of actual, right-this-moment physical danger to people.. When faced with seeing what’s left of their dragons disassembled and ready to be built into new dragons, he definitely displays open rage, even if it’s expressed through a helping of venom and sarcasm and an inability to move or look away, rather than a lot of shouting and punching people. When Raphael turns up after having been presumed dead, Luvander is noticeably moved to the point of actually being speechless, something that really doesn't happen often. And when it looks like they’re going to have a fight, he immediately and unthinkingly gets in front of the civilians, clearly focused on the task at hand, even if he might still let a glib line or two slip.

And of course, being a trained soldier, he will not show a moment’s hesitation in putting himself in danger for someone else, or even giving his life if he has to. This is obviously best demonstrated by him taking a direct hit by a catapult with his dragon rather than letting Adamo get hit from behind, but also by how readily he and the others decide to break into a prison and defy their on ruler for the sake of a former comrade. He does seem more inclined to think before he leaps than some might be, but that doesn’t mean that he won’t still leap with gusto once he’s figured out what he’s supposed to do next.

Word Of God from the authors has made clear that all the airmen are “somewhere on the Kinsey scale”, but that Luvander is definitely homosexual. In Steelhands he tells Balfour that once he’s holding a secret, it’s gone forever, and that indeed seems to be the case. Even after he leaves the Airman and the oppressive environment there, he still keeps making oblique comments which seem to suggest attraction toward the fairer sex, and it doesn’t seem as if anyone else is aware or his orientation. After all, if you spend enough time playing a role, that role is sooner or later going to become a part of you, and telling yourself apart from it might no longer be possible. Perhaps this is another reason for why Luvander seems prone to acting carefree even in face of serious situations, and why expressing himself without his perpetual jargon seems to come so very hard. Generally speaking, leaving yourself open and showing your true feelings in the Airman was more or less an invitation to merciless bullying, and Luvander had more to hide than most.

AU DIFFERENCES: The obvious difference is that Luvander is a teenager. For all that he has experienced both war and loss, he is nowhere near as worldly or self-assured as one of the famous dragon riders in his canon would be expected to be. And while he is resilient and good at adapting, the trauma of losing his friends and comrades will be more visible and affect his day-to-day life to a much greater degree for a while.

On the flip side, the oppressive environment he grew up in had a lot more to do with outside influences than bullying within the group, which subsequently became more closely knit and accepting, within reason, of each others' differences. Meaning that once he feels safe around people, he'll most likely be better at expressing himself to them and not obfuscating and misdirecting as soon as things get too personal.

POWERS/ABILITIES: Luvander's powers are based around the fact that he has a healing factor, which allows him to regenerate minor injuries in a matter of seconds, while more major damage will take anything from five minutes to an hour, depending on the complexity of what he needs to regain. Actually regrowing lost body parts is going to take several hours and will exhaust him completely.

This ability also allows him to heal people, although it's not quite as simple as a nice twinkly light and regaining up to 200 HP. No, if Luvander wants to heal someone with a broken leg, he needs to touch their naked skin, and through that contact he can take the damage upon himself instead. Which is to say, the target's leg will suddenly be fine again, but Luvander's will break instead. This is exactly as painful as one would expect it to be, but at least his healing factor means he won't have it for too long.

This of course comes with a number of limitations. First and foremost, if he takes too much damage, or takes on too much damage from someone else, he might not be able to heal it before blood loss, internal bleeding, brain damage etc causes him to die. Secondly, his body is otherwise that of a completely normal teenage boy, meaning that too much pain/damage might cause him to faint or go into shock, and if he takes on several injuries from others in a short time, the sheer trauma might cause heart failure and death.

A passive effect of this mutation also means that he can use skin-on-skin contact to determine if there's anything wrong with someone else, ranging from injuries to diseases. Mind, unless he has felt it before and recognizes it, he won't know what is wrong. He'll just be able to say where the problem is centered and roughly how serious it is. But without the proper knowledge he still won't be able to tell the difference between a case of bad food poisoning and gastric cancer, and could potentially endanger his own life by taking on something that is way too complex for him to handle at his current level. This ability might also allow him to pick up imbalances which signify psychological distress in the future, but for now this will at most register as a vague 'something is wrong' feeling - and he definitely won't ever be able to take on and heal something like that.

The only real offensive use of his power is the possibility of transferring injuries. To do that, he needs skin-on-skin contact with both the person he wishes to heal and the a potential enemy. Luvander can then let the damage pass through him from one into the other. That still means that he will have to deal with it for a split second or two, so it can't be too serious or it will disrupt his concentration and simply stay on him. It will also be healed a little bit during the time his healing factor has to work on it, so something like a broken nose would arrive as mere swelling and soreness and not much else. This little trick takes a lot of concentration, and for some reason doesn't work with injuries that Luvander has sustained personally.

AU HISTORY: Luvander is from a small country in eastern Europe which used to be known as Ramanthine. The Ramanthe people were originally believed to be from the Middle East, and led a fairly isolated existence on a rocky scrap of country which no one seemed to want badly enough to try to take over. A couple of hundred years ago, they accepted a large group of refugees from conflicts further north, although Ramanthine was hardly a rich country, which had very little to offer the sudden influx of citizens. This led to most of the refugees either having to accept serfdom to support themselves and their families, or choose to live in squalor. Civil unrest eventually followed, until the poor rose up and overthrew the rule of the royal family and old nobility. In 1886, the republic of Volstov was born.

Volstov in 2017, however, had become a military regime led by a dictator with semi-religious status called The Esar, and in the finest traditions of humanity, what remained of the Ramanthe people were being heavily oppressed and marginalized. There were once more forces bent on overthrowing the despotic government, but the Esar had one very powerful trump card. With the rise of awareness of mutant powers in the recent decades, the government had handpicked a group and strong and useful mutant children, while quietly and effectively weeding out the rest. The few which were allowed to survive were trained and effectively brainwashed from an early age, until the Esar had a squad of faultlessly loyal (in theory) superpowered soldiers on his side, while the mutants which for some reason or other were still at large in the country where systematically hunted down, leaving very few opportunities for the people to fight back against this huge advantage.

The creation of the government's mutant squad had been code-named Project Dragon, and the soldiers eventually came to be referred to as the Dragons. Luvander had been one of the twenty-eight chosen since he was six years old. They were thirteen girls and thirteen boys, plus two trusted older mutants working as both their caretakers superior officers. The girls were chosen based on offensive abilities - on the assumption that girls are easier to control - while the boys all had more defensively oriented powers and were meant to serve as their handlers. To this end, they were all paired up in twos almost immediately after arrival, and Luvander was assigned a girl called Yesfir, to whom he understandably grew very close during their years together.

The Dragons were kept completely isolated from the rest of the world, and the only times they were allowed to go outside were when they were sent out on missions. The only contact they had with their previous families were heavily censored letters a couple of times every year, telling them that parents whose faces they could barely recall were very proud of them for serving their country. They were expected to serve fully from the age of twelve, and since they were more or less considered living weapons, that meant seeing a lot of death and destruction by a very early age, and causing most of it. In a group full of messed-up youths such as theirs, it will come naturally to some to try to patch up and care for those around them, and as a healer, Luvander of course assumed that this was his task. He would be the one to keep them all from falling apart when times were hard, and in between missions he would be the buffer that prevented them all from killing each other.

Because while they more or less lacked nothing in a purely material sense, these living conditions were hardly what you would call humane, and they were not treated with an abundance of kindness. This led to high tensions within the group, certainly, as a number of explosive tempers were under constant friction. But it also let to the Dragons being almost fanatically devoted to each other, since they were the only lasting human contact either of them had when push came to shove; their motivation to fight certainly had a lot more to do with protecting their comrades than any real loyalty to the government. It was them against the world, and while they were in battle, there was nothing that could defeat them.

Until, that was, another revolution came around, as they are wont to do in the absence of a fair government. Aided by forces from neighboring countries which had suffered from the Esar's ambitions, as well as a number of militant mutant rights groups, the palace and several military bases were stormed. The Dragons fought the attackers, because while some of them might indeed have wanted to liberate them, in the middle of a revolution no one really bothers to look too closely on the people in the enemy uniforms to check if maybe they're the people you're supposed to set free - especially if they are running at you and screaming.

When Yesfir put herself in between one of their sergeants and an attacking mutant, Luvander took as much of her damage as he possibly could before finally blacking out from exhaustion and pain. When he woke up, he was being taken out of the country in a helicopter belonging to the UN, and was informed that he was going to be taken to a safe haven for mutants in the US. When he asked about his comrades, they evaded his questions, and when he demanded to be taken back to look for them, he was told very bluntly that this was impossible. They weren't going to send a teenage boy back into a civil war which had already almost killed him. He was going to the Xavier Institute for his own safety and to be rehabilitated, and if there was any news of what happened to his comrades... well, he'd be the first to know.

SAMPLES

NETWORK SAMPLE:

My dear fellow students, can you possibly imagine what it's like to finally have the wealth of the entire internet to explore, after only every having access to what you could call the abbreviated version?

[Well, that is certainly a way of introducing yourself to the rest of the school. Luvander is straddling a chair, draped over the backrest, and he's grinning expansively at the camera. The accents suggests eastern Europe, and the elaborate top hat on his head suggests that he's confused about what century it is.]

And if you didn't answer 'terrifying' to that question after some careful consideration, I am honestly questioning your sanity. From what I've surmised so far, about two thirds of anything that isn't porn seems to consist of people religiously recording their pets, and that's the least alarming part. Oh, and bear in mind now that I am disregarding the instances where people apparently combine the porn with the pets.

[Luvander, do you have a point there? At all?]

The point- [Ah, there it is.] -is that I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing here. You could say that I am somewhat of a novice when it comes to social media, if you will. Twitter appears inane, Facebook seems to be a very polite way of stalking your loved ones, Tumblr scares me, and whatever that Reddit place is supposed to be, I can honestly say that I really don't want to know.

[For someone who doesn't understand what he's doing, he certainly seems cheerful about it, at least.] So for now, I am limiting myself to the school network, in hopes that if I embarrass myself in some hideous fashion here, at the very least that is a completely ordinary occurrence in American high schools, at least if I'm to believe the movies.

Oh, and I suppose the lot of you can give me some tips? I have unlimited Google at my disposal and I feel I haven't been quite traumatized enough yet, so why don't you hit me with the best you've got?

LOG SAMPLE:

Three months had passed since he'd fought in a revolution, a fact which he didn't feel very much like advertising, since no one is very impressed by that sort of thing if it turns out that the side you fought on was that of the fascist oppressors. If he had been one of his friends, if he'd been Rook or Ivory, Erdeni or Havemercy, he would have fought and cursed; he would have hijacked a fucking plane if he had to, anything to get back home, to find what was left of his comrades or go down in flames if there were none left alive. But he wasn't either of them, and Luvander had always had the rare talent of actually thinking before he acted. He knew exactly how small the chances were of him finding Regina-blessed anything in the mess that was Volstov right now. He knew exactly how much difference an angry teenager with self-healing powers would be able to do, military training or not.

Besides, who was he supposed to fight? The revolutionaries? The foreign mutants? The government who had put them in that shitty position in the first place? Everyone?

He sure as fire wanted to fight everyone, but that wasn't the same as that being the sensible, reasonable alternative. If he actually had anything to go on, anything at all, that was a different matter, and he promised himself he'd be out of Xavier's as fast as it was possible without breaking any major laws of physics. Until then, sitting tight where he was safe seemed like the best alternative, as frustrating as it was.

In the meantime, he was going to have to figure out how a school worked, and if there was really any truth behind the high school dramas he and Niall used to marathon - he suspected it was all an elaborate joke the Americans were playing on the entire world. They had given him the past months to 'acclimatize', which was a nice way of saying pull himself together and stop trying to wring the neck of anyone who came up behind him without warning. But they said his progress had been impressive - he agreed, he was quite surprised by how good he was at holding a normal conversation without accidentally murdering anyone at all - and it was time for him to rejoin society... or more accurately, to join society for the first time, since he'd never had much of that in the first place.

As they told him all about how it would be good for him to spend time with kids his own age, learn how to navigate through the life of an ordinary teenager, study something other than how to pick apart and put together guns, Luvander had agreed as pleasantly as he could. Firstly because... well, what else could he do? Where else could he go? Not long ago, this place would have been paradise to him, and he supposed that for a sort of prison, he could do a lot worse. And secondly because if he was to be completely honest with himself, they were right. The school really was a nice place, and in a lot of shameful little ways, he felt better than he ever had before. Of course, everything would be a lot better still once the rest of the Dragons arrived, as he still had to hope they would, but once they did... he could think of worse places to call home. He'd come from worse.

Here, all anyone had ever asked of him so far was that he wouldn't harm himself or others. Since he'd never been all that keen on either, it didn't seem like such a bad deal to him, so here was where he'd wait. He barely gave the next thought any room at all, but it nonetheless cast a shadow far greater than its horrible simplicity would suggest:

He might as well get comfortable, just in case he had to wait forever. Just in case he was the only one left.