#braindead panic

Not participating in artfight this year for a Variety Of Reasons but I still wanted to get a good reference image of my Specialest Punk Rock Boy Alexei, with a slightly improved outfit

heres some Alexei Facts:

-Uses he/they pronouns, if you ask him what his gender is he'd tell you to eat shit and/or die but he IDs as nonbinary ftm/transmasc

-Pan and ostensibly poly but be aware he is super mega in love with his girlfriend Lu Chu Xie (who i also need to redraw)

-Alexei Pyretta is an electrokinetic, which means he can generate and control electricity with his mind. His control over it is iffy though which makes his hair all stick-up (its a lot fluffier when hes unconscious) and prone to shocking just about anything he touches if hes in a bad mood. Those gloves are leather but the palms are rubber to prevent him from exploding his phone every time he gets too mad on twitter

-in this image hes like...21/22 and 6'4"-6'6". Hes tall as hell boy

-he is in a shitty punk band with his friends and its called 'Dropkick Mystery'. they fight over the name a lot thats just what it is right now. i say its shitty but thats mostly bc they're just doing whatever, Alexei is a genuinely good singer/songwriter

-may or may not have an evil clone twin/body-snatching situation

-may or may not also be a werewolf

tfw you're a member of a 'cursed bloodline' of cryokinetic psychics thats been living out in the woods as hunters for generations and as the first member of your family in like a hundred years who decides to leave the woods to pursue higher education you get embroiled in a fucked up murder mystery that you're like 80% is because you decided to leave the woods like some kind of idiot and now the curse is kicking in and also you're a trans man who doesnt bind

long time no see koschei :^)

four androids walk into a bar

I'm percolating! Thoughts are percolating! Nothing is set in stone I'm just brainstorming here.

So like. I DO wanna pare down the roster now that we don't have to get Every Single Camper in there. We can at least like more easily relegate some characters to background status. Elton doesn't need to be here all the time. Nils is barely ever relevant. Its fine. They don't have to go they can just have greatly reduced roles.

Anyway like. Idk. Everyone is at a university probably, how they are brought together is...slightly unclear. Maybe they're all in the same Psychic Studies class, maybe they're in the same dorm building, maybe they're in an extracurricular together, maybe they're all participating in experiments for the psychic science program (willingly, like psych undergrads), maybe they're brought together by happenstance. Whatever. What I'm sure of is that it's not because they all have the same major. Koschei is undeclared (maybe history or wildlife management actually?), Rue is botany/biochem, Not Vernon is doing something in either English or film. You get it.

So what's the plot. Good question! Like I mentioned before my brain took some stuff from Gideon the Ninth and ran with it but I didn't really have much else until I got back into octopath and started thinking about Cyrus Albright's story again, which. I will not spoil but has influenced my ideas here

So there's either an old psychic studies building or a door in the current building/labs that nobody ever opens, right? It's always closed, it has a sign that says 'do not open', and as far as most of the students and faculty are concerned, the sign is put up because there's something maintenance or campus IT will yell at them for messing with otherwise. The only people who would suspect something is fishy are those who notice the door is lined with something to prevent psychic observation and interference in an area other than the labs.

And then one day one of the students goes missing. A psychic one. A lot of rumors abound- did they drop out without telling anyone? Did the stress of college get to them? Were they kidnapped? Was it a hate crime? Nobody knows. And nobody knows until Koschei finds himself on the other side of the door a few days later. Idk why he's there. Maybe he was invited to a trial, maybe it was open late at night and their curiosity got the better of them, doesn't matter. The point is that what's on the other side of the door isn't a maintenance room, or a server room, or anything else sensitive but normal. It’s a staircase into a huge underground facility full of weird labs and archive and test chambers. And in one of the labs is the desiccated husk of that missing classmate. Someone notices Koschei and he barely makes it out alive. But like- holy shit, what WAS that?? What can he do??? Who will believe him???? He could go to the campus cops, but he knows they won't do shit. He could tell the faculty of the university, but would they believe him, or would he invite further danger on himself??