Michael Wakefield

[Michael Wakefield]

The Basics

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Name: Michael Richmond Wakefield
Nicknames: None.
Age: 72
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Local. Totally not selling hallucinogenic dust to impressionable young adults.
Powers: Pixie Wings and Hallucinogenic Dust. It’s remarkably difficult to be taken seriously when your main power is sprouting pretty wings. Viciously attacking people who make jokes only gets you so far, so in his many years, Michael has learned discipline and restraint. Plus, people tend to be more afraid unsure of the silent ones.

Michael walks with a (very ornate and heavy) walking stick since his power has caused irreversible damage to his back, and he can no longer fly, even if he can still sprout wings for decoration. He can and does still produce hallucinogenic dust. Frequently. And he’s not selling it to people as an amazing drug or anything.
Play By: Anthony Hopkins

The Details

Hair Color: Silvery grey
Eye Color: Blue
Any Piercings? None
Any Tattoos? None
Any Scars? Appendectomy scar, bite mark in his wrist from a childhood scuffle.
General Appearance:
With his cane and his hunched-over way of walking, the wrinkles ever growing on his face and the thinning, white silvery hair, Michael looks painfully frail. Once powerful and strong, age has caught up with him (rather rudely so) and stripped him of his health, his vigour and, so he reckons, his dignity. No-one wants to spend their days hobbling around hunched over on a walking stick, no matter how pretty the stick. His piercing eyes still retain the same fire they had in their youth. Most of the life still within him seems to live in those eyes, easily his most intense feature.

Some people find his rare, genuine smiles to be rather unsettling. Perhaps because he does it so rarely, they expect something terrible to happen when he actually does smile. Or maybe it’s simply because he’s just not able to smile without looking somewhat like a classic villain. Whatever the case, he really doesn’t mind the fact that others are so disturbed by something so silly as a facial expression.

When out and about, he prefers to dress in the finest clothing he owns. Nothing he owns is particularly expensive, but it is all of high quality, and he dresses in order to make specific impressions. Expect him to wear dark clothing if he is not in the mood to be messed with, and slightly brighter clothing if he is in a good mood. Around the house, he normally wears what could be considered casual wear, but won’t hesitate to quickly change if there is a knock at the door.

Personality:
With a power like pixie wings, it’s very difficult for Michael to convince people that he’s not some sort of clown or other kind of performer. People think of pixies and their mind is immediately filled with visions of sweet, saccharine little creatures. The sort of minxes that like to play harmless pranks and dance under the moonlight. Michael simply isn’t that sort of pixie.

More like the typical ‘fairy’-type pixie, he is very intelligent and thoroughly cunning. If he wants something, he will have it. If it belongs to someone else, he knows how to get it. He has a way with words which he uses to his advantage, which certainly helps with selling dust to people who might otherwise have run for the hills. Or the police. He knows how to keep himself out of trouble, too, and how to use his very appearance to his advantage. It’s surprising just how many people freak out when they see pretty wings grow from someone’s back.

For the most part, he is a restrained sort of gentleman, and more passive aggressive than outright vicious, but if he feels he is wronged, he will not hesitate to take action. He is very quiet, as thought deep in thought, which is often quite true. He prefers to hold his tongue rather than outwardly criticise everything he sees, maintaining an air of politeness. Just because he does not like very many people does not mean he cannot be civil. He tends to behave positively around cynics, critics, theatre aficionados and just about anyone he considers near or on his own level, and can be fairly likeable when he wants to be. He also has a little bit of a soft spot for people as mad about dogs as he is. Not completely without hope, he does like children, but is convinced that most turn out to be ordinary, lazy, inconsiderate, worthless, talentless, unmotivated nitwits who would be better off shuffling off this mortal coil quickly and quietly.

Arrogant, he seems to think that he is entitled to high status simply because of his age, talents and power. It’s not that he believes himself to be superior to non-metas, however. It’s more that he believes himself to be superior to damn near everyone. He also reckons that it’s perfectly fine to use others for his own personal gain, be it through manipulation or simply selling his pixie dust in a dodgy alleyway somewhere. All anyone cares about is personal gain anyway, right? So why should he show an ounce of respect for others when he is given none, and why should he care about people who don’t care about the slush pile they’re all turning the world into? He is bitter and cold, most likely because his own interactions with the people around him in his life have been largely negative, unless they were family and/or other “intelligent persons”.

Though he spends much of his time behind a veil of loathing, he isn’t totally without compassion. Despite desperately wanting to keep the world out, if something tugs at his humane side long enough, he might open up, offering advice or kind words. Once that’s out of his system, he closes right back up again, speaking more words to his dog Isis than to anyone else. Chances are the exact number of words he will speak to another person after a spell of kindness is two. Three if he wants to be polite. The betting’s good that those words will be short and sharp.

Your Vices

Likes:
+ Tranquility
+ Dogs
+ Snakes
+ Writing
+ Reading
+ Theatre
+ The company of intelligent people. Too bad it’s so rare.
+ Dramatic ornaments. Hence the two large black dragons on either side of his front door.
+ Swimming, or more accurately, floating around in the water.
+ Languages, and those who choose to learn more than one.
+ Travelling, not that he can do much now.
Dislikes:
- Anyone who dares to say anything negative about his power. They are easily taken care of by a wave of dust to the face
- Cats
- Cat people
- Being called a ‘water nymph’. Three guesses what happens if you do this. The first two don’t count.
- Twilight. Yes, he actually read it. What a terrible mistake.
- Television, for the most part. Especially the types of programs aimed at those in his age range.
- Wet weather. Hot weather. Well, actually, weather in general. He’s half-English, it’s almost hereditary.
- Being made to do tedious, boring things, like playing board games. He couldn’t give a monkey’s if you have all the red properties in Monopoly, he’s forfeiting next turn anyway.
- People who think they know everything, oddly enough. Even Michael admits that he doesn’t know everything.
- “Wow, you must have lived a very long, interesting life!” Yes, thanks for calling attention to it.
- Street preachers. Actually, anyone who stands in the middle of the street yelling nonsense at passers-by.
- PeTA. Just... just PeTA.
Strengths:
> Fluent in French, German and English. Speaks limited Italian.
> Cunning and often manipulative.
> Very determined, he hasn’t let old age get in his way.
Weaknesses:
> He is in near constant pain due to his power slowly damaging his spine over the years. It makes moving around difficult.
> His dog is far more sociable than he is.
> Can be pretty narrow-minded on occasion.
Fears:
> Someone trying to put him into a home. He wouldn’t put his dog in there.
> Something terrible happening to his daughter.
Secret:
He adores children, even the loud, annoying ones. They’re far too young to know any better, and he simply despairs for their futures.

Family Ties

Father:
Anthony Thomas Wakefield, deceased
Mother:
Lisa-Marie Wakefield (née Foréstier), deceased
Siblings:
None
Any Other Important People:
Sharon Fisher, 64, retired (his ex-wife)
Selene Fisher-Wakefield, 40, language translator (his daughter)
Isis, 9 (his blue long-haired Weimaraner)

History

Some time ago in France, a young seamstress named Lisa-Marie Foréstier dreamt of travel. She would sit at the window of her parents’ house at night and stare at the moon, wondering if it looked different across the waters. Then one day she met a visiting soldier, a young man named Anthony, who lived far across those waters and told her all about the moon and the stars. He spoke of home, and how none of the girls back in London weren’t nearly as pretty as she was. They fell in love fast, but there was a tiny little problem. Anthony couldn’t exactly just go anywhere while he was serving in the military. Within months, they had made plans to run away together, but they couldn’t go back to London. Instead they found a very small home in Geneva, Switzerland.

Five months after they eloped, Lisa-Marie gave birth to a very small baby boy. He was a month premature and very frail, but the soldier and the seamstress adored him and were determined that, with their love and attention, he would grow up strong and healthy. They called him Michael, after the archangel. He was given only the best that they could afford, which, at the time, wasn’t very much. Anthony found work at a local school, doing janitorial work while Lisa-Marie stayed at home to care for her child, though she offered her talents as a seamstress for a small fee per item of clothing. It wasn’t a large amount of money, and it wasn’t regular work, but every little helped. When Anthony was around, they spoke in English, ensuring that their child would be able to speak the languages of both his parents fluently.

As a boy, Michael was fascinated by other cultures, and was very attentive in class when learning languages. He was obsessed with literature and spent much of his time reading in both English and in French. His reading age was beyond that of his peers, and his parents always made sure that he knew just how smart he was. They rarely had a bad word to say about him, and his teachers encouraged his desire to learn as many languages as possible. Other children thought him somewhat narcissistic, though he did have a handful of friends.

He was eleven when his powers first made themselves known. Very suddenly, while out playing with other boys from school, he managed to get into a scuffle, resulting in Michael accidentally throwing dust into one boy’s face. The other child began to hallucinate, screaming of demonic creatures sent by the meta-human to find him and strip him of his flesh. Lisa-Marie had hoped this day would never come. She herself was a meta-human, with the ability to cast illusions. She had been told her mother was mad, and that was the reason she kept seeing strange things, but Lisa-Marie knew different. She had hidden her ability from Anthony for years, as she thought he would fear her if he knew. For a while, he did keep his distance,

Though she worried for his safety, she sent Michael to study at Kocher haute école pour les surdoués. He was the only boy in the school with his ability, and he was roundly punished for it by his peers, who would sneer and cackle, calling him the ‘fairy boy’ and trying to pick fights with him. They all shortly learned that this was a big mistake.

Angry and bitter for being thought of as effeminate and weak, he fought viciously with the boys and wasn’t above using his power to gain the upper hand. A quick cloud of dust to the face or a coating of it on his skin and they were easily taken care of - but that wasn’t nearly as satisfying as sprouting wings and kicking someone in the face. If they thought it was humiliating to be a pixie, surely it was even more so to be beaten up by one. At age twelve, he was bitten during a fight with an older boy, leaving a scar on his right arm.

At Kocher, Michael excelled in English, French and German, and had a fair grasp of Italian. He adored theatre studies and wrote plays of his own, thought most of them were self-insert wish-fulfilment stories where a male pixie became ruler of >insert country here< through hard work, determination, and obliterating his enemies.

Upon leaving Kocher, with funding from his parents, he was able to go to Cambridge to study literature. It was only in university that he realised that his dust was a very powerful drug, and other people reacted... interestingly when they came in contact with it. Managing to collect the dust from his skin, or generate it from his palms when necessary, he quickly discovered that there was money to be made from selling it to impressionable young men and women looking for a quick high. He would never be able to find out exactly what the appeal was, as it obviously didn’t work on him, but that didn’t really matter so much.

While at university, he joined one of the many theatre groups and would help to write dramatic plays which would then be shown at some festival or other. Though he eventually dropped out of university, he continued to show interest in the theatre, and when he was 30, ended up directing a play he had written himself in a small theatre in London for about a year. It was through this play that he met Sharon Fisher, the woman he would eventually marry.

She played the protagonist of his play, a young woman who tries to save the world from becoming enslaved by television... but fails completely and spends the rest of her short life protecting the last book in existence. It wasn’t a popular play.

Through their professional relationship, however, the two fell in love and for about a year he was absolutely taken by her. Until he began to realise just how clingy and impossible she was. If he ever chose someone to play a role over her, she became jealous and vicious, and once even caused a dancer to literally break a leg on stage via a strategically placed paperweight. She absolutely hated it when he so much as hinted towards going to Switzerland to visit his parents, and accused him of having a lover in Geneva he secretly wanted to run to.

Then one evening, Sharon became involved in an accident one the way home from the theatre, after having an argument with Michael. Stepping out onto the road at just the wrong time, she was hit by a bus. Luckily for her it had already started to slow down before she had stepped out, and so despite her injuries, she survived. For some bizarre reason, Michael chose this opportunity to ask her to marry him, mistaking his concern for her for romantic love. They were married in December of that year, and expecting a little bundle of joy not long after.

There was a problem. After the drug-like haze of marriage, Michael realised he did not love Sharon. At all. And now it was already far too late to turn back, with a child on the way. He didn’t exactly hide his feelings towards the woman, either. He wasn’t violent or vicious towards her, but he saw no reason to pretend to be happy with their marriage. Sharon, being as naive as she was, kept hoping that the baby she carried would make him fall in love with her again, as though babies magically solved everyone’s problems. As it turned out, that wasn’t true at all, although Sharon thought that their daughter’s arrival had softened him somewhat. He spent a lot of time with the baby when he could, even speaking to her in French and in German. He made sure that Sharon agreed to call her Selene, after the Greek goddess. Very early on he instilled in the girl his love of languages, which would eventually lead to her becoming a language translator for the Swiss Embassy in London. He was exceptionally proud when her power manifested. She was a late bloomer, and her power was that of flight, but he was happy for her all the same. Perhaps he was a tiny bit disappointed that she rarely used the power... but then, he couldn’t really blame her, it being such an obvious power and people being as stupid and close-minded as they were.

However, much as he loved his daughter, he still was not in love with his wife. Fearing that the woman would not allow him to see his daughter if they were to divorce during her childhood, he stayed out of a duty to her, though the rising tension between them was always obvious to the studious young girl. Their relationship finally came to an end when Selene was sent to Kocher. Michael went with her. She was ecstatic to be able to spend as much time as she wanted with her loving grandparents, and seemed a lot more confident and happy in Switzerland. Michael put that down to the crazy harpy Sharon not being there. For years he wrote plays and directed in a local theatre company, also supporting his ailing parents. His father, a long-time smoker, began suffering from COPD. Not long after, his mother’s power began failing her, and she became unable to control her illusion casting. His daughter, having graduated from Kocher by this time, left to study languages in Wales.

With work opportunities dwindling as he aged, Michael began selling his pixie dust again, constantly amazed at how the desperate would never even question it. No-one ever seemed to care what it was or where he found it, as long as it worked. Not that it really mattered to him. With his daughter studying in Wales, his marriage dissolved, his parents ill, his only true company was that of Isis, his beloved Weimaraner puppy. Within months of one another, his parents passed away, and his homesick daughter returned to continue her studies.

As he approached the age of sixty, the pain in his back only grew, and at sixty-three, he was no longer able to fly, though useless, cosmetic wings could still be summoned if he so desired. For whatever reason, his hallucinogenic dust could still be generated perfectly well. He discovered shortly after that painkillers no longer had any effect on him, but was advised that spending time in the water might help. As a result, he started going to swimming pools, in an attempt to follow doctor’s orders but also keep moving. He wouldn’t let this get the better of him. He discovered that swimming or even just floating around did help somewhat, and he felt most relaxed in the water. Unless there were boisterous idiots around, as there were, without fail, every single time.

His daughter decided to move to London, saying that she felt there was more opportunity for her there. She bid him a tearful farewell with a promise she would keep him updated - which she does. She became a translator for the Swiss Embassy in London, which made her father incredibly proud. With his parents and his daughter gone, Michael finally decided there was nothing left for him in Geneva. Taking care to choose somewhere calm where he could live without having to worry about too much anti-meta nonsense, he settled on Pilot Ridge. Selling his house and many of his more valuable possessions, he was able to afford a nice bungalow in what he hopes is a quiet area. If not, he is not afraid to take matters into his own hands in order to get some peace and quiet.

Six months later and Isis, now aged nine, is out of quarantine. With theatre work not forthcoming, Michael collects and sells the dust he still produces, more concerned with being able to afford an outdoor pool than the safety of his clients. Besides, he’s doing them a service. Maybe. Anyway, he needs a pool. The water relaxes him so, and he absolutely loathes going to the public swimming pool. Besides, the dust hasn’t killed anyone. Not as far as he’s aware, anyway.

Roleplay Example

See Mitya Makarov, if you please.

What About You?

Name: Lilac. Maybe.
Age: 22. Or am I?
Experience: since the beginning of time
How Did You Find Us? I was originally looking for my glasses.
Ready To Play? Hang on, let me find the dice...

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[Dryope *]

Accepted

Genius, sheer genius. You know what to do.

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