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MICHAEL LYLE VAEL

"Lyrics/quote that fits your character"

BASICS

NAME: Michael Vael

AGE: 44 years old

BIRTHDATE: February 11

PRONOUNS: He/Him

SEXUALITY: Heterosexual (mostly). Was open-minded and experimental in his wild youth but that's largely in the past. Is much more likely to look at an attractive man and chuckle about how they "might have had fun twenty years ago" than consider any sort of advance seriously.

RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

OCCUPATION: Sector Liaison (Day Job) - Michael spends most of his time at the Sector acting on behalf of Gifted people who need help. The ones who have been displaced or are in trouble. Examples of this might include securing them housing or jobs. Finding them fitting circles or therapies. And then making sure they're settled in okay and are adjusting to these types of changes. Though his place is typically at a desk, manning the phone, or making "house calls", he is occasionally pulled to assist in situations/cases in the field where his own Gift might prove useful (such as keeping others calm in crisis, making dangerous Gifted more amenable, inspiring trust in wary/flighty individuals, etc).

Bar Owner (Mostly Hands-Off) - Michael also owns a bar where he will occasionally pull a night or weekend shift when one of the staff calls out. He tends to spend a lot of time there even when he isn't actively helping out anyway. 

NEIGHBORHOOD: The Heights

MEMBER GROUP: Sector

POWERS:

Emotion Manipulation - Michael can sense and influence the emotional state of others. Make irritated people more irritated. Stoke dissent. Force calm on someone going absolutely ballistic. Numb a person's inconsolable grief. Soothe suspicions. Etcetera. The stronger a person's emotions are the more effort it takes to influence them. Touch isn't required but it does make it easier. Is most effective on an individual and focused basis. Can be widespread but trying to assert his influence over too many people tends to be exhaustive and often induces headaches, nosebleeds, and queasiness. 

THE LOOKS

HEIGHT: 5'11''

WEIGHT: 165lbs

HAIR COLOR: Dark brown (salt and peppered)

EYE COLOR: Green

FACE CLAIM: Paddy Considine

OVERALL APPEARANCE:

Michael's a fairly-average looking guy. Normal. Not handsome enough to demand attention or catch an eye but also not boring enough to be entirely ignorable. It's a sort of middle ground that he navigates well. His build is slim and just muscular enough to perhaps suggest he was a bit of scrapper in his youth. His hair is kept short — sometimes clean and styled, sometimes very much not — and he tries to maintain about a weeks-worth of patchy, salt-and-peppered growth along his jaw/face in an attempt to look "not so old". 

Outside of work, or at his bar, his attire tends to lean one of two ways. Either he's clean and crisp, smelling nice with a smart, well-put together ensemble, or he's wearing the same raggedy/wrinkled t-shirt he slept in and may or may not have remembered to button his jeans. Whichever it is, he usually gives off the appearance of a man trying to seem younger (and cooler) than he is. Band t-shirts and denim. Clunky boots. A little too much cologne when he's neglected his laundry or stinks like a brewery. He tends to accessorize as well; wearing simple studs in his pierced ears, bracelets on both wrists, rings on a couple of fingers, and sometimes even a necklace or two.

For his day job at the Sector, Michael cleans up fairly well (federal agency standards and all). At his best, he can pull of a three-piece suit like any other. At his worst, he'll at least attempt to still look clean and smart with a long-sleeve dress shirt to cover his heavily-tattooed arms. Sometimes, mostly on house calls or in the field (when it's typically smarter to seem more personable than professional), he'll even risk rolling the sleeves up or loosening his tie; letting it be known that he "doesn't really care for the fancy stuff either".

INSIDE

LIKES:

• Horror films (the campier the better)
• Loud and rude music
• Boxing and sports-betting
• Babies and toddlers; children are so cute and entertaining before they really learn how to talk. Michael's a bit of a baby-whisperer and handles kids of this age very warmly and very well.

DISLIKES:

• Getting older (being advised to eat cleaner, stop drinking, etc)
• Paying child support for a kid who hates him more often than not and mortgage for a house he doesn't live in 
• Having to play "Dad" and bail his son out of trouble; not because it's a pain in the ass but because it's always exactly the type of shit he was doing as a seventeen-year-old so he can't really be terribly upset with him. But everyone wants him to slap the kid on the wrist or discipline him? For doing what seventeen-year-old boys do? What's the big deal? 

STRENGTHS:

• Takes the blows as they come (if you give him just a minute to groan about it first). Once the initial "this sucks", "are you kidding me", and exaggerated moans are out of the way, it's typically straight to "Okay, welp... let's get to it, I guess". He can muck his way through undesirable tasks and face let-downs, pushbacks, inconveniences, etc. with a surprising amount of resilience.

WEAKNESSES:

• Unreliable. It's rarely intentional though, truly. He does do his best to see promises through and would like to be dependable. Things just have a way of slipping through the cracks sometimes, especially if he gets caught up in other stuff. Unfortunately, more often than not, this "other stuff" tends to make the "unintentional" bit of the whole thing hard to sell. (It's difficult to be taken as genuinely remorseful when you were tardy or a no-show because of a late-night bender.)

OVERALL PERSONALITY:

BACKGROUND

HOMETOWN:

FAMILY:

• Madelyn Frank (Mother) -  For most of Michael's life there existed little love between them. Just a lot of unsatisfied expectations, disappointment, and generally-hard feelings. When he was much older and came to understand his Gift, he realized that a lot of these tensions were likely due to his own, uncontrolled emotional manipulation. As a child and a teen, he was always disappointed that his mother was gone; angry with her for working all the time and leaving him alone. Unbeknownst to him then, Madelyn sort of "sponged" this up and the two fed off each other in the worst possible way. They still rarely speak to one another but Michael hasn't truly held anything against her in decades.

• Mischa Vael (Father) - Michael's biological father was a renowned boxer. He died the day Michael was born, trying to protect his family during a brutal home invasion. Though Michael never got to meet him, he still ended up idolizing the man as a young boy and wanted to emulate him in every way. His childhood dream was to become a famous boxer like his Daddy and he gave it quite a spirited try in his young adulthood.

• Jonah Frank - (Step-Father) - Madelyn hastily remarried after the passing of her first husband. And though Jonah was a good guy for a while, as time went on, he became more and more aggressive. Eventually, he ended up in prison for assault. Just like with his mother, Michael would later grow up to realize his Gift likely had a play in his step-father's turn to violence. That his emotional manipulation likely fueled him in a very big way and that, had he not been Gifted, Jonah might have remained a fairly-decent man and treated his family better. But this was never a bridge he tried to mend and Jonah was killed in prison a little less than twenty years ago.

• Casey Vael (Brother) - Six years older than Michael. They keep in contact (but not very closely). Perhaps, in some small way, Michael never forgave his brother for leaving when they were children. He needed Casey then, begged him to stay, and the older boy still left — so Michael made damn sure to never need him again.

• Rebecca Scout (Daughter) - Born over twenty years ago. Bec's mother — before the girl was even born — insisted that she didn't want Michael in their lives at all. She told him to stay away and he obliged. They've never spoken to or met one another. Michael started to keep tabs on the girl briefly during her middle school/high school years when her maternal grandmother started mailing him photocopies of awards, drawings, accomplishments, etc. He knew she was one smart cookie that showed a lot of potential. But he kept his distance and continued to respect her mother's wishes — Bec didn't need him throwing a wrench in whatever big plans she had for her life. He couldn't be that selfish. Rebecca's mother married and Michael isn't even certain if Bec knows he exists at all. It's likely she believes her step-father to be her father as well as her Dad.

• Elijah Vael (Son) - Michael did only a little better by Elijah than Becca. He was born a couple of months into a marriage that lasted only a couple of months longer. Raised mostly by his mother. Occasionally though, she'd have enough of "playing Mommy" and dump the boy on Michael's doorstep. Sometimes just for a couple of days, sometimes months. Now seventeen, Elijah's kind of like a chip off the old block. Acts very much like Michael did when he was young and stupid. Even plays in a band! He still shows up on his father's doorstep every now and again (usually in some sort of trouble). 

PETS:

• Sid Vicious (13yr old ball python)

HISTORY:

Michael was not his mother's first son but he was the first she had to birth alone. Only seven months into her term, she went into premature labor during the maddening panic of a terrifying and brutal house burglary. She cowered with her older son — his young face swollen and trembling lip split by two heavily-delivered blows — held protectively against her while the thieves made off with all that they desired. Her husband had fought to protect his family but now he was silent (and that scared her far more than the pains in her abdomen and the blood on her dress). She and Casey hid until the police arrived and they rushed her and her newborn son to the hospital after pulling the sheet over her dead husband.

So, Michael's entrance into the world was complicated — too soon, too quick, and remembered mostly as a day of destruction and loss. A turbulent whirlwind of chaos that would very much become a major theme of his life — violence, recklessness, and causing his mother grief.

There were consequences of being born so early and, for a large part of his childhood, Michael was a sickly kid. But despite being a weak, sniffling thing, he was hellbent on being extroverted, disruptive, and an overall-scrappy youth. His mother was hardly ever around and, when she was, it was usually to sign him out of some sort of trouble. The two butted heads constantly and tension-free moments between them were ridiculously scarce. Madelyn had remarried and invested a lot into a demanding career; typically leaving her two sons alone with their quick-tempered and frequently-aggressive step-father. Casey and Jonah were constantly at one another's throats with fists bared but Michael was spared much of it (mostly because he just never came home). And when Casey, despite his little brother's begging, called it quits and got the hell out of the house — and out of Indiana altogether — the nights Michael spent at home became downright rare.

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To the great surprise of all his teachers, counselors, and even his peers, Michael decided to pursue college after high school. Despite excessive partying, drugging, and barely being present, he still managed to scrape together an undergraduate degree in business. At the same time, he also managed to pull together a rowdy punk-rock band with two other half-assed college-goers! After graduating, the trio threw their collective ambitions at the shared dream of making it big on the stage. Though Michael had a way with a crowd — his Gift made riling them up and getting them involved effortless — and the trio toured through California (leaving trails of trashed bars and hotel rooms in their wake), they never truly kicked off in a real big way.

There was a moment — a brief hiccup of time — when he thought he might give it all up and settle down. He'd knocked up a girl and, when she told him, he got it in his head that he could be there. That he should be there. That he would be there. Whatever she needed, he would provide. He'd get a "real job". Make use of his degree. They could get married. Buy a house and adopt a dog. The whole nine yards. He made her a million promises, was convinced himself that he could make good on them, and was all but giddy with the idea of providing for and establishing a family.

But the girl didn't want him. She was smart enough to know that Michael Vael could never be the person he thought he could be. She saw through him, knew all his promises would end up broken, and didn't desire the life of her or her unborn child to be built on such flimsy ground. So she asked him to stay away. And Michael, after some initial defiance, obliged. His daughter was born and he threw himself even harder into being the fuck-up that he'd been cast in their eyes to be.

More years passed in much the same fashion as they had before; a potential change only culminating when, once again, a woman announced she was expecting his child. This time, though, the mother-to-be was willing to give Michael the chance he'd been previously denied. Though he was less enthused about the whole thing this time around — a little jaded and disillusioned from his initial strike-out — he still hazarded a try. He quit his band and settled down. They got married. Bought a house. He got a boring job in sales. His son was born. But just as the first woman had rightly predicted, Michael didn't suit the lifestyle well. They were divorced within the year.

The wife-of-ten-months kept the house. The car. The kid (mostly). Even the dog. He didn't fight her for anything, happy as he was to just be done with it. He moved into a shitty East End apartment and picked up his deadbeat lifestyle right where he left off. The band was overjoyed to have their bassist/vocalist back (the crowds hadn't loved them nearly as much in his absence).

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The Sector, having sussed him and his Gift out for years, approached him with a job opportunity. And — mostly because he owed months of backpay/child support — he decided to take the position.

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THE PLAYER

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