Post by Jason Sharpe on May 7, 2024 16:08:00 GMT -5
WELCOME TO LOS EUROSIA,
JASON FOSTER STRUM
"And I wanna tell you who I am
Can you help me be a man?
They can't break me as long as I know who I am"
BASICS
NAME: Jason Foster
AGE: 26
BIRTHDATE: August 13th
PRONOUNS: He/Him
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Potentially Complicated
OCCUPATION: Unemployed
NEIGHBORHOOD: Transient
MEMBER GROUP: Gifted
POWERS:
Aerokinesis - Jason is an airbender. He can bend the element to his will, be that in the form of imprecise breezes, focused jets, pulling in more air to breath more efficiently, stopping the breath from moving in and out of another's lungs, shaping it into blades sharp enough to cut glass. He can dispel a strong breeze and can condense or expand it. He can even work on an almost atomic level to separate various gases or airborne elements, though notably, he cannot make these gases out of nothing.
His control of the element is masterful, having spent his whole life using his abilities, both in the safety of his home in very loud ways, as well as in school in much more subtle ways. Later, he learned to use it to fight.
XXX - He knows he's capable of something else. He's felt it. But his memories are hazy and to be honest, he might even be a little bit scared of himself. For now, those memories and abilities remain undiscovered.
THE LOOKS
HEIGHT: 5ft 9in
WEIGHT: 145lbs
HAIR COLOR: Brown
EYE COLOR: Brown
FACE CLAIM: Berk Cankat
OVERALL APPEARANCE:
He's always put a lot of effort into his appearance, especially his hair. Sometimes, he even spends the time to dye a small bit in the front to have a streak of purple when he's feeling just a bit extra. He prefers to shave, but living on the run and not having a home isn't always conducive to keeping up appearances.
Jason is a big fan of scarves. Warm clothing in general, but scarves are his thing. Also gloves, gotta love those. He is a big fan of layers, lots of them, and even in warm weather he doesn't like to show off any more skin than he has to. At the moment, he's not got a lot of spare clothes, almost living in a cream sweater and light jacket.
Some of this is due to the scars. On his hands, his back, his side, his left leg...burns and scraps and stabs and lashes, traces of magic used on him by other Gifted. Some are clearly healed through the use of powers. Others naturally. He covers it well, but he walks with a bit of a limp in his left leg. It's noticeable when he runs. Most things are still aligned properly, but Jason is worn out and it's apparent even in just his faded brown eyes.
Despite that, he's almost never found without some sort of smile, either in those eyes or on his lips. He's picked himself up off the ground one too many times at this point, why stop now?
INSIDE
LIKES: the stars, animals(pets, but all kinds), purple, scarves, pockets, food(asian, ice cream), thunder, camping, naps
DISLIKES: people who dislike animals, Hunters, yellow, onions, lightning, dancing, snow/being cold, being under the influence of drugs, being alone, being entirely nude, deep water
STRENGTHS:
Calm Under Pressure - Jason's always had confidence, in himself, in his Gift, in his family. But it took him a while to figure out where the line between confidence and being an exhibitionist and braggart were. High school drama and sports helped him sort a lot of that out, especially when it came to being the right amount of 'there' for his younger sister and later Seth. He's always been a comforting sort, doing whatever he can to hold it together for those around him so that they can feel safe. He’s learned how to control not just his Gift but his emotions.
Positive - Despite everything, Jason's always been the sort to try and look on the bright side. He’s been taught recently to be wary of other people. To avoid eye contact and not to trust they don’t have it out for him. But he knows that’s wrong. Beyond that, he’d never been one to mope about his current situation. Life is worth living, sometimes one just has to search harder or dig deeper or look further ahead for those little moments. He’ll always fight for those moments.
Restraint - Coupled with responsibility. Anyone can use a gun. A skilled person can use it well. But it takes a strong will to know when not to use it. His Gift makes a lot of things easy. As much as he loves the feeling of flexing that muscle, subtlety is important. So too is knowing just how far he can go. Boundaries are important, to know where the line is and how to break it, should he need to.
WEAKNESSES:
Wary - Sometimes Jason is a little too good at putting up walls. He doesn't warm up to people. He's not a 'let's make friends with the neighbors' type. He would rather not have any neighbors at all. Jason's been hunted most of his adult life and had too many people taken from him for it to be worth making those connections. It is an immutable fact that anyone he meets is either going to try and get one over on him, or he's going to get them killed simply by association. It's better not to risk getting close.
Afraid of Himself - Thanks in part to his Gift and in part to his drive to protect those he cares about, Jason has done a lot of things he isn't proud of. He's lied, stolen, even killed. He's tried to make a point to never do so when he can avoid it and to never take a life in cold blood. But he knows all he has to do think and he can take the breath from someone's lungs. But maybe that's just the dogma from what he went through in captivity.
PTSD - Jason's had a rough recent past. He's done a lot of things he isn't proud of, things that make him feel pretty selfish. On one hand, he's angry with himself. On the other hand, he's angry with the people who hurt him and his family. Especially since he was captured and tortured but even while on the run, he's struggled with having a positive outlet for his emotions and he's prone to nightmares and panic attacks just beneath the veneer of calm. As his sister was always fond of saying to try and get him to open up "it's always calm in the eye of the storm."
OVERALL PERSONALITY:
He applied what he learned in school to his Gift. In some ways, using his abilities to control the very air around him wasn't so hard to hide. He learned how to blend in. But he never stopped using his Gift. He could flex his muscles with circulating air in gym class or playing with the breeze on an already windy day. He practiced much more intensely at his family home, learning how to ride the ebb and flow of the wind. He worked in tandem with his sister, but they would also practice against each other. Once in elementary school, he learned how easy it was to win a fight before one even started by depriving the boy bullying his younger sister of air.
Jason didn’t always know what he wanted to be, but helping others, especially Gifted, had always appealed to him. He’d thought about nursing or some other first responder positions. His parents always encouraged him to dream big and reach higher. Which is why he started school as a criminal justice. Because as encouraging as they had been, he felt obligated to go further. It was perhaps fortunate that he never finished his degree, considering it wasn’t really what he wanted. Being on the run with Seth, he had a lot of time to think about what he wanted out of life, but not a lot of time to really do anything about it. That had always been a ‘next step.’ Something to come after they were safe. Something he hoped to share with Seth, one way or another. Until there wasn’t a next step anymore and it was too late. But he still clings to that dream of helping people. He’s just not sure how to do it anymore.
Since his capture and the torment he endured, the questions about his family, the girl he was on the run with, what other Gifted he’d encountered, what he knew about Blackstorm (a name he had never heard before, but he was branded as a spy for him regardless)the pain and suffering both physical and mental all for a purpose he didn’t understand - during and since, the man hasn’t spoken a word. He’s not ashamed to admit to himself how much he ached and cried and prayed that Seth was okay. That this was his fault and if she could just make it somewhere safe, whatever they did to him would be worth it. It helped, even if it left him broken.
BACKGROUND
HOMETOWN: New Haven, CT
FAMILY:
XXX Strum - Mother - Professor - Gifted[element/weather related] - Deceased
XXX Strum - Father - Lawyer - Gifted[element/weather related] - Deceased
Jenna Strum - Younger Sister - 24 - Gifted[atmokinesis] - Missing
PETS: none
HISTORY:
The Pledge
Jason spent the early years of his life in New Haven. He was born to a wealthy, loving family. He didn't always get along with his sister, but they didn't entirely get on each other's nerves growing up so even that was almost pleasant. The only catch? The Strum family has been Gifted for a long time. It is a blessing and a curse. One he and his sister were always encouraged to flex and learn and grow with.
His mother was a professor and while officially he and his sister attended public schools, they were always pushed to be the best. He tested out of a lot of basic level classes in school and took college level courses in high school, mostly to appease his parents. But he enjoyed it. School work didn't always make sense to him, but it was about figuring out the challenge, learning how to overcome his own limitations, and being flexible with how he solved the problem. School was organized and taught him how to set goals to get what he wanted. The same applied to his magic.
He met Seth through his younger sister in high school. The two girls were partners on projects more than once and a handful of casual encounters in passing were all it took for him to become infatuated with the young girl. But it was more than her charming freckles or secret singing or her skittish nature that endeared her to him in a way he had never understood then and only later grew to see as love. It was that she was like him and his family. She was Gifted. And she didn't know how special she was. What began as an older brother or a mentor wanting to both shelter her and open the world to her, their attachment to each other developed into a friendship and then more. He couldn't teach her how to use her Gift, something only she could do. But he could encourage her to harness her powers and push her to master the extent of them and then more. Defending herself was just as important as growing a garden for food, or vines for a rope or the branches or trunk of a tree to make a shelter. She was a princess and he her knight and he would do everything in his power to see her thrive.
The Turn
While Jason and Jenna had been taught their Gifts were a blessing, they were also taught the consequences. That there were those who thought power like theirs didn't belong in human hands. And those Hunters would resort to violence first rather than ask questions. When Jenna went missing, Jason knew something was wrong. But he was too late to do anything about it, for his sister and especially for his parents. The scene he returned home to was something he never managed to put into words to anyone except Seth. More importantly, he knew he wouldn't be too late to help her.
Jason knew he was next and laid low for a while. He stayed in contact just long enough to see to his parents' funerals and their family home. On the off-chance Jenna wasn't dead, he couldn't bring himself to sell it and left her a way to contact him. And then he convinced Seth of the dangers of staying in New Haven, and the two ran. He spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to his sister. But she never answered her phone and while he's never given up, his focus had to shift to himself and Seth. Jason had heard of Los Eurasia from his parents, and so he planned their way there. A road trip where they spent more times on the side of the road as in hotels. His family holdings and Seth's abilities ensured they wouldn't starve. Some days, he almost enjoyed the closeness he and Seth experienced on that trip. He never lost his appreciation for the stars or his admiration for her. Other times, he could feel the shadows closing in.
Until that all shattered. In Oregon, so close to what would be their new home, he was alone, picking up an early breakfast when the Hunter found him.
One moment he was picking up breakfast burritos from a local food truck. The next, he heard Seth screaming. As much as he knew she wasn’t there, he couldn’t stop himself from turning toward a woman and meeting her gaze. All he remembered was her opal-esque eyes. And a wave of sensory overload and voices and thoughts and dreams hit him and the rest was a blur fractured by a few lucid moments. His knees in the pavement as he ripped the SIM from his phone. Someone’s hand around his neck, their grip going slack as he pulled the air out of their lungs. Jenna’s voice in his head reminding him how to find the North star. And then sudden pain before nothing.
Jason spent almost two years wondering why they didn’t simply kill him.
No longer having to run was almost a relief. He still didn’t get consistent sleep or meals. But he gathered from the interrogations and experiments he wasn’t going to be given the mercy of death. The longer he went without speaking, the less they bothered asking him questions or treating him like a human being. At first, he’d thought his silence made him strong. But he realized at some point, after the days had turned to months and the months to some unknown length of time, that what he thought had been self-imposed silence to protect those he cared about (if they were still alive) was some involuntary side effect of the terrors he refused to acknowledge. So, his body has acknowledged them for him.
He wasn’t the only one at the compound. But there weren’t many. He learned a Gifted's length of stay depended on their magic. Whether it could be controlled with drugs and other stimulation or whether it was deemed too dangerous. Despite his ability to take the very breath from another, he was kept heavily sedated and unable to focus.
The Prestige
It was by sheer accident that he managed to escape. A power he didn’t even know he had and still isn’t sure how to access again. To be honest, he doesn't remember all of it. His time there or his escape. But whether that is a price or simply a crutch to protect himself with, he's not really sure. It might even be a blessing.
He stumbled into some Blackstorm agents and had gotten tangled up in their politics. In a way, he felt compelled to join them, being as the Hunters who captured him assumed as much already. Better to have some sort of protection than to go it alone. It required some work, especially considering his lacking communication skills. But he’s finally managed to get to Los Eurasia. If Seth’s alive, she’ll be here. She has to be.
He’s just…not sure what he’d do if he ever saw her again after so long. Two years is an awful long time.
THE PLAYER
NAME: North
AGE: 30
TIMEZONE: EST