ᴄʟᴀᴡꜱ, ᴛᴇᴇᴛʜ, ᴛᴏɴɢᴜᴇ

basics

name: rosalia francesca maria russo

nicknames: she goes by rosa

date of birth: march 21st, 2003

place of birth: the west of halcyon island

age: twenty-three.

gender: cisfemale.

pronouns: she/her.

sexuality: pansexual.

power: hydrokinesis, the controlling of water. rosa used to think this was something everyone associated with the russos could do, but she eventually realised this wasn’t the case. she is incredibly powerful, able to change the tides with a flick of her finger, but – she doesn’t. she prefers to swirl water in cups in her office, she likes making floating orbs of wine as a party trick. she can also bloodbend. don’t tell her this.

occupation: she’s her brother’s secretary. if anyone wants to talk to the underboss of the russo mob, they have to go through her first ( and she will politely open the door and offer them a piece of chocolate on their way in ). she volunteers at an animal shelter in the east whenever she gets the chance.

family: francesco russo ( father ), alicia russo ( mother), fansisco, niccolo and damiano russo ( brothers )

pets: two large german shepherds gifted to her by her father, pollux (a black dog) and castor (a white dog)

aesthetics: salted ice cream melting on your tongue, sunburnt dancing in the meadow, freckles like constellations, white linen drying in the sun, nails bitten to the quick, the sea licking at your ankles, your eyes stinging from chlorine in the pool on holiday when you were a kid.

talents: finding the good in people, plays violin and piano. she’s great with animals. she's an unprofessional skater.

habits: she tends to say 'like', like, a lot. she takes her dogs with her to most places.

inspirations: the girl you met on holiday when you were nine who got a little too into playing mermaids in the pool.

physical

height: 5’5

visual: long, blonde curls, sparkling bright eyes ( something seems to be gone from behind them, though ), tends to be covered in animal hair. her nails are always bitten and her lip is always split. her knees tend to be bruised.

style: a variety of knitted pieces, long white skirts, flip-flops or mary janes. she has a big, brown leather jacket she got from her dad that she tends to wear with everything. a plaid messenger bag. a variety of fun clips in her hair.

quirks: slouches a little bit when she speaks. rubs her arms like she's cold whenever she's uncomfortable. she pulls at the elastics she keeps on her arm whenever she thinks she's losing it.

personality

positive traits: kind, affectionate, detail-oriented, endlessly positive, supportive, hard-working

negative traits: sensitive, painfully awkward, passive, guilt-ridden, paranoid, cautious

personality quirks: she can't stay focused for long, her mind tends to drift. she's the type to remember the tiniest details about someone and not much else. she tends to bring presents for people wherever she goes. she's always making up for something she didn't do.

bio

rosalia russo was never made for the family business.

born as the youngest of the russos, with a suspicious age gap between her and her brothers to boot, rosalia was always the little one. forever doted on, always kept at a relative distance; the russos didn't need another soldier or future frontrunner, so rosalia was the baby of the family, rosy-cheeked redemption, innocent and relatively normal. a darling for the others to look at and say 'see, we haven't yet lost all of our humanity'. she was the little bird sitting on her mother's desk when she closed her business deals, the pig-tailed cutie offering lollipops to hitmen.

the thing about the family business, though, is that it's your business, whether you want it to be or not. her mother was in charge of the current faction, this mismatched group of fractured superheroes and already-established crime connections. 

something about it always haunted rosa. she was kept in the dark, but surely she could make out the shadows: the way people would sometimes disappear suddenly, the remnants of violence under her family’s shoes. the way rosa was doted on was starting to feel like an apology she couldn't accept, the redistribution of moral scales. her pretty, expensive dresses were beginning to suffocate her. 

but she adored her family. so any guilt and any understanding of the kind of games the russos played were swallowed down quickly. rosa wasn't ever the most outgoing person, but she was always there, in the back of a room, supporting the business, the family, in her silence, or at least pretending not to hear the worst of it. her grandmother taught her how to bake. rosa would bring lemon cookies to family meetings.

when she turned out to have a power, a gift as her family called it, it only solidified her place in the west and all its violence, despite never wanting it. rosa didn’t realise it for years, or maybe she denied it, but since she was a baby, she was able to control the shape of water. she could pull it from the tap, she could part the sea. there was something so gentle about her, though, that she always preferred to just let the tide do its thing. she, born into a family with an extensive history of powered people, was meant to be one of the strongest the current had to offer. instead, she was only quiet, tame, she swirled water in cups out of habit rather than desire. if only she put the effort in, she would’ve realised all that she was capable of – because it wasn’t just water. it was any liquid. she could control a man by the blood in his body, though she never figured that out.

when rosalia was thirteen, members of the grid broke into her home on a school night while her family was away. it was something about revenge, something about a large drug deal gone wrong, something about stolen money. they had correctly calculated her family wouldn't be home, had wanted to steal something of value and vandalise the place. rosa shouldn't have been there, but she'd insisted on hanging back from a family night out to do her homework instead. she was trusted to do so because she knew what to do in an emergency, had long been taught to shoot a gun and sound the alarm, she knew how to make a man choke on the water from the tap in the kitchen. however, when faced with being held at gunpoint, she cried and she baked her captors lemon cookies to try and appease them. when her mother came home, she shot three of them dead on the spot. 

rosa was never really the same after that. she was anxious, easily unnerved, terrified of eyes landing on her. the trouble was that she was paranoid; the worse trouble was that sometimes she was right. when she thought a man had been following her home from school for a few weeks, he actually had. when she thought a car looked too familiar, it tended to be true.

rosalia became a weak spot in the family, the burden and the baby. too terrified to pass any responsibility onto, but a russo by blood all the same. after she finished high school, she gave up on her dream of being a vet as she feared being away from her family. she enrolled in a local college and got a degree in english literature, to keep her from twiddling her thumbs and to keep her away from the business for a bit.

she now works for her brother, she's his secretary. she sorts his paperwork, but maybe more than that, she keeps an eye on him. it gives her a purpose and an honorary part in the family business. besides, she likes talking to people. she's awkward, a little off-putting, but her kindness has always oozed from her like an open wound. perhaps the only place to put rosa was in the front, greeting people with her biggest smile; she wasn't made for guns and violence.

she can still feel the impact of it all, though.

she volunteers at the animal shelter. she knits sweaters for strangers. she's trying to be something good, but consistently finds herself falling short. she's trying hard and getting nowhere. sometimes, she considers nothing can make up for the fact that her family deals in blood. sometimes, she's waiting for some kind of retribution to catch up to her at last.

tldr

basics

name: yujin park

nicknames: jin, yu, jinnie (only for those closest to him)

date of birth: december 8th 1997

place of birth: the south of halcyon island

age: twenty-eight.

gender: cismale.

pronouns: he/him.

sexuality: bisexual.

power: pain manipulation. with one stern look, he can induce the feeling of pain, ranging from mild to ‘begging you were fucking dead already’. he can also take it away, but this comes at a cost – if he stops someone from being in pain, he takes on the feeling instead. now he might wish he were dead. 

occupation: on paper, head of human resources for the glass ( he knows all about the employee lifecycle ). in reality, he is their hitman. he is the guy that can make anyone disappear and not come back. the glass have stopped asking about his methods. he doesn’t care to kiss and tell.

family: father ( deceased ), mother ( unknown status ), twin sister ( buffy park, alive )

pets: a large, blue-smoke maine coon cat called sprinkles

aesthetics: the smell of leather balm, the taste of blood in your mouth, a fracture line. the weight of the trigger on your finger, alcohol sticking to your skin, the smell of something that was once on fire, but has long burned out.

talents: great aim, calm under pressure, the right kind of self-sacrificial, weirdly good at mario kart on the wii

habits: turns to smoking when overwhelmed, checks his door four times after locking it, locates the exit immediately upon entering a room.

inspirations: leon kennedy ( resident evil ), bucky barnes ( marvel ), shinji ( neon genesis evangelion )

physical

height: 6'2

visual: broad-shouldered, too tall for the elegance he carries himself with, permanently bruised knuckles, he's littered with pale scars

style: a lot of leather, most prominently his leather gloves. military boots. dark colours; marine grey, dark greens, blacks.

quirks: stands up painfully straight, slouches when comfortable, tends to chew on his cheeks to keep from talking, likes to have his back against the wall. he always wears leather gloves (something something, blood on his hands...), but oftentimes settles for a fingerless type.

personality

positive traits: observant, loyal to a fault, compassionate, humorous, kind

negative traits: obsessive, sentimental, guarded, reckless, follows orders without question

personality quirks: he's always on the edge of saying something, doing something, but then falters. he likes to be the last one standing ( at parties, in rooms, in conversations ), he's awfully competitive. he goes out of his way to be kind to strangers, but can hardly be called nice.

bio

he had wanted to be good. he was a big-hearted thing with so much love between his teeth. let it be known that, at some point, yujin park had great intentions and had wanted to be good.

yujin was born the older twin to a couple that came together as often as they broke apart. his parents were tumultuous people, his house was never quiet. he shared a room with his younger twin sister, from which he could hear every argument, every broken plate, every insult his parents would throw at each other. yujin was always looking for an imbalance to correct, he was a half to a whole, after all. if his house was so unbearably loud, he'd simply be quiet instead.

he would protect his sister as much as he could. he was always looking for gaps to exist in, rather than creating space for himself. if he was useful to his sister, he didn't need to exist in his own right. he didn't need to consider what it meant to grow up the way he did, if all he ever did was look out for her. she was shielded from most of it, thanks to his great effort, but he knew better than to think she was unaffected.

the twins were born and raised on the poorest part of halcyon island. no one in their family was extraordinary, the way people whispered about, the way the mercies were. but yujin knew from a young age that something was wrong with the south of halcyon island. that sometimes, people weren’t born into a familial line of superpowers, but ended up being capable of the impossible anyway. he had wanted to be able to fly, though. he wanted to be able to fly away.

and he suspected he might’ve been capable of it. this was to say, he had always suspected there was something different about him. and he had really, really wanted it to be flight. but he was a quiet, sweet little thing, and he couldn’t have found out what he was any sooner than he did.

yujin loved school. it was an escape, a place that wasn't quiet, but he knew the rules of engagement, he knew what to expect. he would stand behind his sister as she would ask the teachers for extra homework on his behalf. sure, he towered over her, but she tended to be his voice. he didn't often speak. he was a good kid, tried his best. he was the kid that would cry to the sad parts of the movie night films, he was always the first to offer to help out, to go out of his way to be a good friend. 

as the twins grew older, the fighting got worse. yujin would sit in front of the twins' bedroom door so his dad couldn't turn his anger to his sister. naturally, yujin grew to carry most of the burden and the bruises, but it only taught him that being useful to someone else was a great way to cope with horrific circumstances. loyal like a dog, he would sit guarding the door. he never even realised that his sister would often simply use the window to leave the house entirely.

when his sister started leaving properly ( first staying with her friends for days, then nights, then weeks ), he didn't know what to do with himself. he didn't know who to be. sometimes he would wander, mostly he would hang around school. he began making his own friends, which he'd never done before. but he was a kind person, if a little quiet, and people took to him naturally. he made friends, played football, found a little life of his own. he even forgot about how he had wanted to be a superhero, once upon a time–

when he was sixteen, he got a call from his sister. she was in their family home, where the fighting had grown louder and worse with every day the twins had been absent, and things weren't looking good. she only came to finally grab her last few things and leave the house for good. their dad wasn't letting her.

now remember that yujin park had wanted to be good. he had only wanted to be useful. he’d once only hoped to be capable of flying, and he had only ever wanted his sister to be okay.

but this was always meant to happen.

yujin, in the kitchen, dodging a plate that could’ve been aimed at him or his sister. his father, angry like he’d never been before. and yujin caught a glimpse of the man, a reflection of him in the cutlery drawer –

then yujin’s dad was on the floor. screaming in pain. but no one had been hurt, no punches had been thrown, no skin had been torn. it was yujin. it was yujin’s mind. it was yujin’s superpower. one look, unimaginable pain inflicted. and yujin didn’t know how to turn it off. it went on for far too long, the screams echoing into late evening, until no more screaming could come from the man’s throat. then yujin put him out of his misery with a kitchen knife. 

a few days later, after yujin had scrubbed all the blood off the floor, but while the noise still somehow echoed off the kitchen tiles, a group of suited men showed up at his door. yujin thought he was done for. he thought these men were coming to take him away, never to be seen again.

instead, the men gave him an offer. an offer with lots of money, and a contract to sign. yujin was sixteen, hands shaking, blood still under his fingernails. they wanted him for what he could do with his mind, nothing more. they wanted to help him. they took him to their glass skyscrapers and told him they could teach him how to control it. they’d been mercies before, they could make something out of him.

and they did. they built a perfect attack dog.

they gave him some training, then held his hand through his second murder. he was told to kill someone, and make it hurt. he'd already done it before, he could do it again. it wasn't even someone special, just a low-ranking member of a rival group. it wasn't about the man with a target on his head. it was a test of obedience; it was to see if yujin would follow command without question.

he did. he did as he was told, he was so great at what he did. he was quiet, never too much trouble, unusually good at sharpening a knife, hands still shaky, a child scared out of his mind. he’d be the best dog they had ever seen, he didn’t want to know what the alternative could be.

slowly, he worked his way up. killed more people, hurt more people. he proved himself trustworthy, the go-to guy when any enemies needed to pay up. the screams haunted him, having to use his power this way kept him up at night. 

now, he was a good dog, he’d never deny a command. if the glass wanted someone hurt, he’d do it, no questions asked. but he figured out the easiest way to grit his teeth and bear it.

yujin learned that it didn’t matter how he hurt people. the glass didn’t care for his methods, they cared for how loud he could make people scream. they cared that he was on their side, more than they cared for how he took care of things. and he could take care of things perfectly well without using his ability. 

he’s the head of hr now. which is an entirely meaningless title, a formality bestowed upon him alongside a doctored degree. head of human resources means something very different to the glass, though it does come with some perks. he has some freedom, has proven himself plenty loyal, lives in a glass-clad high-rise apartment of his own, has all the money a kid could’ve wanted. he has so much. 

sometimes he still wonders what it would’ve been like to be able to fly instead.

tldr

men have one thing happen to them and have to become cold-blooded killers about it smh

wanted connections

basics

name: apricot jasper beaumont

nicknames: apricot. don’t call him anything else. (cottie)

date of birth: march 21st 1991

place of birth: the south of halcyon island

age: thirty-five.

gender: cismale.

pronouns: he/him.

sexuality: gay.

power: trajectory manipulation; the ability to control and alter a projectile’s trajectory path once fired or thrown. he mostly uses it to throw paper planes at people’s heads. ( sometimes, he has the weirdest dreams from which he’ll wake up screaming, where he is the bullet instead of the man controlling it, and he has torn a dozen people to shreds ).

occupation: operations coordinator for the grid – the man in charge of all the ins and outs, all the alleys and all the eyes. if there’s a deal happening, he knows about it. if there’s a problem, he’s unfortunately the one solving it. he could be called a second in command, but it’s not how the grid functions; it’s also not what he would want to be called, as he imagines it would make even more people come and bother him with their issues.

family: adoptive parents ( alive ), adoptive younger siblings ( alive ).

pets: none

aesthetics: the sound of beans grinding in a coffee machine, the smell of tangerines, the setting sun at the edge of the island, bouncing back from a fight with blood in your mouth, the feeling of a brick wall against your back, a home you can’t find but are always running from.

talents: incredible at annoying people, has a habit of making friends despite not wanting them,

habits: he picks the highest surface in the room to sit on; the sofa arm, a table, the stairs, he doesn’t like not having a vantage point. his sentences have more swears than words in them. he’s a lifelong vegetarian. he carries a lighter, but he doesn't smoke.

inspirations: your divorced dad who wants his kids to think he’s still cool.

physical

height: 5’10

visual: scrappy, with all these edges to him that look like they were beaten into him to be that sharp; there is a little, permanent dent in his cheek from a fight he shouldn’t have picked. his hair has grown past his ears, he clearly hasn’t cared to cut it.

style: everything this man wears is oversized, it’s mostly hoodies and sandals. he still wears his wedding ring ( he should probably take it off ).

quirks: will kick off his shoes at any given opportunity, scrunches his nose when he’s judging someone ( this happens a lot ), his shoulders tend to be slouched with this current of tension right underneath his skin, like he’s three seconds away from straightening them and picking a fight. he tends to lean into people when he’s uncomfortable.

personality

positive traits: devoted, quick-witted, resourceful, creative, caring

negative traits: pessimistic, passive, clingy, persistent, confrontational

personality quirks: he calls everyone kid or kiddo. the biggest sign that this man trusts you is when he starts whining about things in your presence. he takes real pleasure out of being the most annoying person in the room.

bio

apricot beaumont was born with a more normal name and perhaps a better chance at life, but that’s not the part that matters. the noteworthy bit is that apricot beaumont was at the right place and the right time when he was two, when a ball was accidentally thrown his way, and he stopped it mid-air without trying. 

his biological parents – a poor, teenage couple from the south of halcyon island – watched in horror as they realised they had cursed their son with his mother’s affliction; she was a powered individual, now her son had turned out to be one, too, despite their prayers. to live in poverty was a challenge of its own, to live in poverty with an extra set of rules enforced upon oneself, with the threat of the directorate growing, was downright unmanageable. the couple’s prayer wasn’t answered as it had been stated, but a saviour presented itself nonetheless: a woman had been eagle-eyeing the playground, had watched the ball as it remained hovering in the air. she said, ‘let me take the boy, i’ll give him everything you couldn’t’, and the toddler was swept away to the north of the island.

his adoptive mother was a vulture. a normal woman by all means, but one who had seen the mercies rise into power, one who understood how useful it could be to acquire a little superhero of one’s own. she was incredibly rich, but it was never enough. she was a social climber, worked in a skyscraper tower with some of the mercies. by all means, she was setting up the young boy to be her ticket to the top of high society.

he wasn’t apricot yet, though. that name came from his adoptive father, a soft-spoken artist who had no business being in love with a woman as stern as his mother. apricot’s father would spend hours pressing keys on a piano, letting the sound resonate all over their grey, minimalist, high-rise apartment. he brought an unfitting warmth to apricot’s life, and gave him a name that would forever make him stand out as something he couldn’t be: soft, sweet, pliant.

apricot grew up navigating a house he couldn’t understand. under his mother’s eye, everything had to be straightened, quiet, perfect. she had rows and lists of expectations for him, and he was never able to live up to them. or rather, he didn’t try. he preferred to wait till she was out of the house, then he would come out of hiding, press the piano keys, play violin when the living room felt too quiet. 

and his power? it wasn’t exactly what his mother would’ve liked either. he had stopped a ball mid-air as a toddler, he had doctors poke and prod at him to put a name to his ability. trajectory manipulation. they thought he would grow up to be most wonderful, to have a perfectly useful power that the mercies could recruit him for. he would be able to bend bullets away from their paths, he could redirect a hit after the trigger had already been pulled. except… it never happened. every part of him resisted this journey that his mother had set out for him – he was never good enough, could never control his power enough, was never this superhero prodigy that his mom had adopted him for. and maybe he didn’t want to be. inside of him, there was this ever-unsettled soul, filled with anxiety and need, someone from the south that had been ripped away from his home at such a terribly young age, and he had never learned to find a home elsewhere.

he was the family disappointment before there was even much family to disappoint. the family grew, though. when his mother realised that apricot wasn’t going to play ball, that he wasn’t her ticket into the limelight of the mercies, she simply adopted more children. they were more compliant, or at least quieter about their disapproval of being their mother’s pawn. rather quickly after that, apricot became shunned in his own home, only dragged out for public events. they locked him in his room with his piano and his violin, and they told him he’d better be quiet about it. 

then the public events stopped. the dim limelight of being powered in high society faded entirely. the cinder incident took away the last bit of use and status that apricot could’ve provided his family with, this last notion that he could’ve grown up to be a cherished superhero, was ripped away from him. now, he was simply an inconvenience. an inconvenience that was fed and housed, but never looked at twice beyond that. he looked after his little siblings whenever he could, because they faced the same type of abandonment from their mother now, but apricot was the oldest. he knew how to cook, he knew how to help the littles with their homework. he tried his best to give them somewhat of a functioning family, to give them the normal life he’d read about in books. but he could only take so much of it; sometimes, he would look out his window and realise he was trying to find something out there.

he ran away from a gilded cage when he was eighteen, with nothing but the clothes on his back. all the mercies he had once known as his mother’s acquaintances turned him away at their doors, didn’t want to be associated with teenaged trouble like that. he was alone, out on the street, tried to scrape by and ended up selling drugs for pocket money. these are the parts of his life he doesn’t want to remember – the few times he got into trouble with a capital t, the few times he realised that he could, indeed, bend bullets away from their original target, could instead make them blast through the gunman. 

after a few years, denver mccall took apricot under his wing without even knowing he had an ability. denver, a decade older and four times more peaceful than apricot could ever grow to be, saw a feral young man on the street and gave him a cup of lukewarm coffee. 

they never became some bullshitty found family; apricot was too abrasive to live with and too eager to leave. he couldn’t stay between four walls for too long, otherwise he would panic, he would feel trapped again, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself. but denver gave him a purpose. apricot began running denver’s drug operations, because the grid needed money and apricot knew the backstreets of the island like no other. apricot began volunteering at the soup kitchen, because apricot had a heart somewhere underneath his hardened exterior, and he had never let go of the guilt of leaving his siblings behind, so this was his way of trying to atone. he worked his way up easily, because he might’ve been a pessimist and a dick to be around, but he was reliable, willing to get the work done, and had incredible insight when needed. he had grown up navigating every tense evening in his home like a game of chess, he was valuable because he knew what forms danger could take. denver, whilst an amazing leader, was far too peaceful to follow through when work needed to be done. apricot, on the other hand, was always the person to shoot first, to act first, to react before he was even given a reason to. it was a lingering survival instinct, an anxiety that never resolved in his throat. it was a million things he should’ve gone to therapy for, really.

he only let himself get trapped once, one person managed to convince apricot to stay between four walls. but apricot was never tamed, had only grown to be manageable at best, and he could never be kept. he realised this when he eventually found love, then let it die. he wasn’t made for playing house, and could only walk that tightrope for so long before he’d accidentally string himself in it. a couple lies here and there, one too many nights away from his marital bed to wander the streets instead, and he ended up with divorce papers handed to him. 

now, apricot only has his work to worry about. he’s dedicated to the grid, he runs a tight ship for as much as denver will let him. there’s whispers about him on the street, about how no nonsense he is, about the way he can stare people down. in reality, he’s mellowed out a bit – he complains for the sake of complaining, and his favourite pastime is throwing paper planes at people that walk past his little office. he hasn’t got a family anymore, but if he did, it’d be the grid’s members – he tries to take the young ones under his wing. maybe because denver did it for him, or maybe because he knew what it was like to be a brother once, and he misses it dearly.

tl;dr

grumpy old man, will throw things at you for fun. 

wanted connections

his siblings - apricot was the oldest of a gaggle of adopted children with superpowers. their mother was a stern woman who kept them on a tight schedule of socialising with the most influential people in town and trying to become prospects to the mercies, until the cinder incident changed public opinion. after that, apricot cared for the kids as much as he could, his mother’s interest and eyes not on them anymore. apricot ran away at eighteen, and leaving his siblings behind is the only thing he regrets.

people that know him from his time on the streets - he was more feral, though tended to bite rather than bark. a young drugdealer, he was known as an annoyance, mostly, but one that could cap people in the ass with a bullet. he’s different now, less likely to jump into every fight, and he’s ashamed of all he had to do to survive back then. he wouldn’t like the reminder now.