Francis Gariel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deerlyloved) wrote2016-10-29 11:14 pm
deerlyloved) wrote2016-10-29 11:14 pm
► Character Info
| Stats | |||
| |||
| Permissions & Objectives | |||
| Permissions BACKTAGGING: Y 4TH-WALLING: Y THREADJACKING: Y MIND READING: ASK FIGHTING: Y ROMANCE: ASK INJURY: Y KILLING: ASK |
|||
| Appearance | |||
| Francis is tall and rail thin, heavily freckled and babyfaced in a way that makes him look a little odd. He looks less grown up and more like a kid that's been stretched, due to the affect of his core fragment on his aging. He's a beanpole and not particularly attractive or particularly ugly -- except for the scars over his right eye and across his chest, which aren't pleasant to look at at all. | |||
| Background | |||
| Francis started out as the younger son of a fairly well-to-do pair of businesspeople. Busy with work, his parents, while otherwise perfectly normal and caring, spent very little time at home. Instead Francis was mostly raised by his much older brother, Antoine. Unfortunately Antoine was a strange and unpleasant child, and Francis faced emotional and sometimes physical abuse that ultimately left him quite withdrawn. He was by nature a quiet person, and little notice was paid to the brothers' outwardly loving and pristine relationship.
At ages 10 and 17, their world was turned upside down by the appearance of a monster termed a "negative core". Their existence hidden from the public of the flying cities in which the Gariels lived, negative cores were creatures born of an excess of negative emotion in a person or place, warping living things into monsters with unique and deadly abilities based on their emotional "core type". A neighbor had become an "anger core", and in his rampage seriously wounded the young Francis, leaving scars on his face and chest and taking out an eye. The monster was eliminated by agents from outside the cities, in the massive towers that made up the other known portion of human civilization. Called Shell, the special police force was tasked with destroying negative cores and covering up related incidents. Surviving witnesses to a core faced mandatory relocation to the towers, provided with job opportunities and appropriate housing. Under this policy, both Francis and his brother were spirited away, reported deceased to their parents. While Francis by all rights should have died then, his life was spared by his inclusion in an experimental trial. By implanting pieces of negative core (core fragments) into human beings, humans could obtain the abilities of those cores. With his brother's consent, Francis had his eye replaced with that of the same core that attacked him. Unfortunately this had predictable side effects. When feeling the associated emotion, so-called "incomplete cores" would activate their abilities, but at the same time be "possessed" by their fragment, unable to control them. In Francis' case, monstrous enhanced strength came at the cost of a berserk rage, running until his human body collapsed. Like all cores, over time he also gained regenerative abilities, only countered by weapons treated with the chemical "positive heart". In order to better control his new abilities, Francis was put through a training program, learning to suppress emotion and handle higher levels of physical stress. Meanwhile, Antoine entered the science department of the Central Tower Corporation, the business and de facto government of the towers. After some time he was able to enter the program in which Francis was enrolled as staff, and continued to be his unpleasant self. However, another young researcher named Thomas Stover found himself increasingly uncomfortable with the extremes of the program. After four years, Thomas flexed the influence of his high-ranking family to pull Francis from the program, under the guise of studying whether an incomplete core could assimilate into normal society. In short, it worked. Thomas signed on to a unit of Shell as medic, its members trusted to deal with any potential disasters. There, at first Francis kept to himself, too shy and unsure to make meaningful connections with others. In response, after a year a new recruit, two years his junior, was made his roommate. Otto Hellinger was a rough and tumble boy, arrogant and brash, focused only on destroying as many cores as possible. But he was kind at heart, and quickly he and Francis became the best of friends. A positive relationship with someone his age brought Francis out of his shell, and he proceeded to join the found family of his unit. Though not an agent, he busied himself with learning to cook and generally care for the unit's shared living space. By the age of 20, he was still quiet, still unsure of himself, but happy. It's then, though, that the real plot of the story set in. Another new recruit, one Anna Baker, set the unit on a series of discoveries, uncovering the history of their world, the origin of cores, and the corruption of the CTC. Francis joined his friends on their journey to save humanity, combating CTC agents including other incomplete cores, and attempting to prevent the flying cities from falling back to the core-filled surface of their planet. In the process new friends were made and some lost, including an incident in which a CTC group lead by Antoine, in an attempt to recover his brother, attacked the unit's base of operations. The attack ended in the deaths of Antoine and Thomas, and Francis seriously wounding another of the unit members in a berserk fit. In the end, Francis found himself even more closely bonded to his friends. In the name of that bond, he gave his life, fending off CTC agents while the remaining members of the unit tracked down the final cure for the "soul pollution" that caused cores. Though he'd passed, his sacrifice enabled Anna, Otto, and the rest to revert the surface cores to their original forms, allowing the population of the flying cities to return to the surface and begin rebuilding the planet's society. | |||
| Personality | |||
| Francis is in general a gentle sort of person. Tall and rail-thin with freckles and fluffy red hair, he could be described as an odd sort of dandelion. His slightly strange baby-faced appearance and the scar over his mis-matched right eye are a bit offputting to some, but he's not terribly concerned about that most of the time. In fact he accepts most things with a mild, disconnected attitude. Years of childhood training in suppressing his emotions and potentially deadly side-effects if he doesn't have left him a bit spacey and often not particularly reactive, though he is interested in others and fundamentally kind.
His priority, above all, is finding ways to help others. While Francis isn't usually the type to mope, he keeps a gaping lack of confidence under the surface. As far as he's concerned, his status as incomplete core leaves him less than human, his outward scars a symbol of the damage gained over his troubled childhood. He doesn't like himself, but he isn't the giving up sort either. Rather than dwell on his problems or take them out on others, Francis simply wants to do well by the world, as if doing so can make up for his perceived lack of humanity. Despite that base friendliness, Francis has a hard time making deeper and more meaningful connections with other people. He's shy by nature and even moreso after his experiences, and this combined with his low emotional response can make him hard to engage with at first. People with no reason to stay in contact with him often don't, not out of malice but simply a lack of spark in the acquaintanceship. However, those who have stayed for extended periods of time have found Francis to be, while subtle, not at all blank. He's sweet and encouraging and, while awkward, always means well. Over the course of his story, Francis learned to connect a little more easily and accept his emotions more. Otto and Anna were particularly impactful in that area, and to be told he has a bit of a crush on both. Not that he'd realize it -- Antoine considered sexuality and romance useless and sloppy, and discouraged both in his little brother. Though Francis isn't truly asexual he has very low conscious engagement with those types of feelings and doesn't recognise them as what they are. However, by the time of his death he's learned to let himself love, let himself cry, and value his own place amongst the people he cares for. Yet, he still considers himself inhuman, and died wishing he could be. | |||
| Contact/Notes | |||
| Thank you for reading, those of you who have! I can be contacted via PM or on plurk at | |||