Elwood, Zachary

[Zachary Elwood]

Zachary Nicholas Elwood
FACE CLAIM: Sam Underwood

♦ THE BASICS ♦

AGE: 22
GENDER: Male
ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
POSITION: local - freelance journalist

♦ THE ABILITY ♦

POWER: Memory Manipulation
Zach is able to get into someone’s mind and see their memory and even erase them. When it comes to seeing, if he is able to force the person to remember it, and the memory is strong enough, he can see it merely through touching the person and concentrating into seeing it. He will see the event through the person’s eyes and may even feel the way the person felt then. This works only if the memory is strong however. Most of the time, he needs to lock into the person’s brain, meaning he has to stare into their eyes to reach the brain. As this is as delicate as a bull in a china shop, the person will feel as though someone is rummaging through their head and it will naturally make them fight this intrusion. If the person breaks through, the connection is severed and so Zach often has to hold the person’s head if not strap them down. Luckily, their eyes tend not to close during that process, much like his.

Deleting someone’s memory is even more delicate and painful work. It’s almost like throwing acid in the brain, making it a very painful process for whoever he’s doing it to. When the memory is recent (deleting the past day for example), he simply deletes everything up to a certain time. It’s brutal but fast. If he must look for one memory in particular, the pain remains until he can lock onto that memory and erase it. Zach is able to delete the memory of the pain too, so people can not remember how hard it was on them and simply feel mentally exhausted and find their eyes to be dry, depending on how long it took. The memory removed stays in Zach’s mind for a while. If it was a particularly strong one, he can react as though it was his. Memories deleted cannot be brought back, but the emotion associated to it stays. For example, he can remove the memory of one nearly drowning but cannot take the fear of water that came from it.


LIMITATIONS:
- Zach needs to lock into the person’s brain through their eyes in order for his power to work. While his power can force the person not to blink while he’s doing this, the pain or discomfort felt will have them naturally try to break from this. He has to start over if that happens.
- Zach is unable to delete his own memory.
- Because it is not subtle, unless the memory was powerful enough for him to see it through mere touch, the person will know he’s going through their head. Anyone with mental shield abilities can prevent him from seeing anything and even injure him back.
- While he can erase a memory, an emotion associated to it can remain.
- Zach is not able to remove a person completely from someone’s mind. He can delete events but to remove a person entirely would mean erasing every memory the person has with that individual even those where no interaction with the two happened.
- If Zach wanted to erase something from your mind but couldn’t find it and chose to delete the entire day, everything that happened then will be removed permanently. It means you may forget the lesson you learned or things you did. It cannot be brought back even if a feeling of déjà vu can happen.


SIDE-EFFECTS:
- Zach is experiencing the memory he saw/erased. He can even feel the same as the person who lived it. It can alter his personality while dealing with the memory.
- The memories can also bring some mental disorder to him or at least mental fragility. He sometimes doesn’t know what memory is really his and which one comes from another person. He sometimes has to ask people if they really did things together or if they did it with someone else. This can prove to be very hard on his mind when he sees himself doing stuff he never would have done because it actually came from someone else’s memory.
- Using his power is mentally exhausting. He can feel intense fatigue afterwards.
- Since the whole time he is going through someone’s mind his eyes stay open, they can dry. The same can happen to the person he is looking in the mind of.

♦ THE CHARACTER ♦

HEIGHT: 6 foot tall
HAIR COLOR: brown
EYE COLOR: pale blue

MISC: Zach has trained a lot over the years, but he doesn’t always like to do that. It’s easy to know when he’s psyched up from when he is down through his style and weight, as he would drop training when he isn’t in a good mood. You can also tell when he’s trying to psych himself up because he’d do too much training. As for clothing, he’s very conventional. The wildest piece of clothing he owns has to be a striped sweater. He goes for neutral colors just so he wouldn’t have to bother with matching colors. About pants, he has a preference for jeans.

PERSONALITY: Zach is complex and has complexes. There is always a part of him that seem to be trying too hard, as though in competition with someone. It is true, he is in competition, only the person is not here and it is mostly in his head. When you talk to him, he’ll sound confident and strong but inside he doubts of his abilities. He hates that side of his however and this explains why he does his best to keep it to himself.

Zach can be a happy, witty and daring man but he has bouts of depression hitting him making him gloomy and not interested in doing anything. As he goes home less and less, this part of himself is not shown as often as it used to but he still has a pessimistic streak in him that can resonate and make him apathetic when dealing with hardships.

He is not all dark however. Most of the time, he can prove pleasant. But he is more of an observer than one who jumps in the action. He can do that, when pulled by someone he trusts and/or like. He’s more of an introvert, but one who likes being around others. He has learned over time to speak his mind more and he does so but he still keeps a lot inside, especially what’s really important. If someone hurts him, chances are they will not know because he keeps it inside until he can no longer and lashes out.

Zach can take critics well. He learns from the constructive ones and brushes off the others. Intellectually, he’s very confident, but emotionally, he is frail. There is always a part of him that is certain whoever he likes, whether it is a lover or a friend, would eventually give their affection to someone else. It makes him compensate by trying hard, sometimes too hard. he tends to kill a relationship before it’s fully dead.


SECRET(S): Zach is still unable to go back to his family and not feel resentment. He loves them but hates the person he is when around them, as he instantly grows gloomy and quiet if not defensive or downright spiteful. As long as he doesn't see his brother, he doesn't compare himself to him but does as soon as they are together or he starts thinking of him.

♦ THE HISTORY ♦

Kayleigh Nolan is a woman who simply cannot live alone. Her first husband was a sickly man she took care of. It managed to awake the motherly fiber within her. Sadly, they couldn’t conceive and he died before they could have a child. Certain she couldn’t be pregnant, she remarried and tried to adopt. This was how Kayleigh and Declan Elwood adopted the little Christopher. As it often happens, Kayleigh got pregnant of Zachary shortly after. Scared that Christopher would feel he was not part of the family because he didn't share their blood, she tended to give him a bit more. To Zachary however, it felt like a lot more.

As he is now older, he understands it was more a matter of circumstances and different personalities between them that had their mother treat them differently and that she actually loved them both just the same. Had Zach been the older one, Chris would have had to wear his old clothes. Had Zach been the one who wanted to play with Chris and accidentally broke his toy, she would have told Chris to play with Zach’s toys and punish him if he broke them in retaliation. Only the situation was reversed and Zach was too young to see she was being fair. All he saw was how much more attention Chris seemed to have and how he always had the new, nicer stuff. Chris demanded a lot of attention while Zach was quieter, this was why she gave him more attention. This made Zach resent his brother however and often quit whenever Chris joined him. He had better technique at playing piano but Chris was the one who liked to give little concerts to family and friends, so he was naturally more praised than Zach since he wouldn’t play as often. He quit playing piano because of that. He would also ditch friends the moment they saw his brother and commented on how cool he was. He just never felt like he could compete. To make matters worse, their father left for a woman over ten years younger. Their mother didn’t try to stop it. She had a very calm and accepting attitude towards it.

She remarried a few years afterwards to Jonathan Marlowe. If Zach had to talk about his childhood and younger teenage years, he’d say they were sad and boring. But he also knows now that he was mostly responsible because of his mindset. He had no idea he was a mutant and when recruiters showed up, he was certain they got it wrong and they meant Christopher. He really wanted him to be the freak, a comment that shocked their mother. She was very upset that he’d treat his brother that way. This led to an argument and Zach, for the first time, complaining about the favouritism she did. He said some nasty things at that moment and the only reason why it didn’t take a worse turn was because of his mother’s calm nature. She refused to lose her temper over this.

It was hard for him at first at school. He was stuck with a bunch of freaks and some had really scary powers. He also hated his. It stayed like this until he realised that no one here knew Chris. Then Zach tried too hard to be cool. It was more laughable than anything really. After a while, he found some middle ground, but he always competed against his brother, people just didn’t know what. He started working out and tried a bit of everything. He still returned home for vacations but that had a terrible effect on him. He always felt like whatever he did, his brother could too and perhaps even better. In his eyes, Chris always looked taller, stronger and better at everything he did, even the things Chris never even tried before. It made him compensate when back at Bellefonte when he was not simply too gloomy to do anything or just dropping the clubs he was in, to join them back a week or two later.

Zach’s writing essays have always been good. At home, during a summer, he once won a prize for teenagers having an article he wrote published in the local newspaper. He had been told by the editor-in-chief that he could come after college and he’d have a place for him. Flattered but not interested in living in the same town as his brother, Zach chose to work at a newspaper in Kalispell instead. While he’s just in freelance and can’t make much of a living with that, he tries hard. It annoys him however that he’s asked to write mostly on mutant-related matters. He wishes he could write books someday as well but knows his chances of making a living as a writer are slimmer than as a journalist. This is why he doesn’t intend to quit his job anytime soon. That and the fact he just started it.

♦ THE PLAYER ♦

USERNAME: Bobby
AGE GROUP: old-timer
EXPERIENCE: a long time
WHERE DID YOU FIND US? four other characters

[Robbo *]

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