What I Might Be

Character profile content may be disturbing or unsettling to some, including but not limited to: terminal illness and loss of a parent, suffering of burn injuries, and mention of serious crime. Discretion advised.

About

Name: Armin Erhardt Knockenmus
Nickname: None.
He's done pretending.
Former Alias: HAZARD
Given the circumstances around his Elemental awakening, it's the best way he can think to describe himself – though some of the more smartalecky members of Epoch might call him "I, I, I don't know", after the uneasy, uncomfortable response he gave when asked for an alias.
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Pronouns: Masculine, he/him
Height: 185cm // 6ft 1in
Orientation: Still sorting it out.
He calls himself pansexual or demisexual as shorthand but all Armin knows is that he craves the closeness and intimacy of a romantic relationship.
Relationship Status: Single. Again.Element: Radiation
Level: 5
Techniques:
Gammakinesis lvl 2 || +6 STR/ATK
Infrakinesis || +2 STR/ATK, +1 MIND
Radiokinesis || +2MND, +1DEX
Fallout lvl 2 || +8 STR/ATK, -3 EHP
Night Vision || +5 MIND, -3 EHP
Breakdown lvl 2 || +12 STR/ATK, -ALL EHP
Nuclear Fission lvl 2 || +10 ATK/STR, -ALL EHPStats:
Physical Health
║♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥║ 20
Elemental Health
║♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥║ 15
Strength
║♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦║ 8
Dexterity
║♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦║ 9
Defense
║♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦║ 10
Mind
║♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦║ 15Equipment:
Sniper Rifle with Element Enhancement || +15 ATK [long range]
Mirror Shield || -5 EHPSkills:
Vehicles and machinery
0
Crafting and repair
║♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦║ 10
Medical
0Faction: GreaselingsPersonality:
clear-headed | principled | insightful | earnest | honest | observant
trusting | dreamy | noncompetitive
oversensitive | unconfident | jealous | petty | timid | defeatistAfter a lifetime of failing to live up to others' expectations, Armin has developed several self-deprecating coping mechanisms. After all, he rationalizes, if he's the first one to say how terrible he is, no one else can hurt him, right? Not only is this a dangerous downward spiral, as he now readily believes his own self-hate is truth, it also tends to make him immensely unpleasurable to be around.If only he could learn to look past his supposed failures, Armin might learn he has a lot to be proud of. Though unhealthily trusting, frequently opening himself up to further emotional damage in his desperation to belong, he's also a dedicated friend, loyal and eager to show his appreciation for those he cares about. His family's history has instilled in him a strong sense of right and wrong, and he's determined to step out of his comfort zone in order to do the right thing.… but not today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe tomorrow– oh it has to be today? But he doesn't feel well, maybe he can just do a little bit.

History

SUMMARY:
As the child of a well-known hero of the War of the Gods, Armin was expected to be a powerful Elemental. Instead, it seemed as if his human genes had proven dominant. On top of lacking an element, Armin had a weak constitution, frequently excusing himself from his responsibilities due to feeling vaguely unwell. Despite the community his father had built with other Talcord heroes, the public in general scorned Armin for his wasted potential.
Despite his father's best intentions, Armin nevertheless feared him for his powerful element mastery and his bloodstained history. His fear often turned to anger, as his father refused to leave Urania to help Elementals across Caelum. When Armin's mother tragically passed away, Armin himself left home, fearing his father's temper and desperate to do something to help Caelum.
He started with New Erewhon, latching onto the capital Glenys City's Aegis agency, but quickly became disillusioned with their inability and refusal to help those who needed them most.
His element finally awakened in the midst of a panic attack, severely burning him from the inside. He sought treatment immediately, but was turned away when testing determined he was not a Fire Elemental at all, but a Radiation Elemental. An Unnatural.
Armin was urged to find the Trench in order to get help, but a massive radiation attack had virtually shut the underground community down. Learning that a group called Epoch had attempted to contain the destruction, he returned to the Trench...

Chronologically, the hand-holding incident was the third or fourth thing Armin ever committed to memory. Emotionally, though, it's the one that sticks out most in his mind.He was three. They were walking home. One hand cradled in his mother's, the other reaching out for his father. Daddy's hand. He wanted Daddy's hand, too.But Daddy didn't want to give his hand. Armin begged, pleaded, stretched out as far as his little arm could manage, and his father only relented when his mother joined in. "He wants to hold your hand, love." So he took his hand.And then, his Electrokinetic father shocked him.He only remembers crying, more from the alarm of his father hurting him than from any serious pain, and his mother comforting him, he didn't mean to, it was an accident. He only remembers that his father hadn't wanted to hold his hand and then hurt him when forced to do so.He doesn't remember the look of worry on his father's face as hesitated to take his son's hand. He doesn't remember that he'd voiced his fears, but if I hurt him…, or how his mother had reassured him, you won't hurt him, it's okay. He doesn't remember that he'd happily held both his parents' hands for a good twenty seconds before, triggered by his nerves and his obsessive thoughts, his father's element involuntarily discharged.He never saw the look of sheer heartache and helplessness and self-loathing on his father's face as he watched his only child cry. He never saw, late that night, his father bemoaning to his mother, I am awful, I am an awful father, he will hate me now. He wasn't awake to see how his father came into his room that night, stroked his hair and begged forgiveness.Had he been older than three, he may have remembered the incident differently. But he wasn't, and so, he didn't. It cemented in Armin a new belief: his father was scary.It seemed to Armin that he was the only one who thought so. After all, his father was a beloved hero. The man spoke little of it, downplayed his role in the War of the Gods, even went so far as to start his family in a small town south of Cherrystone, to avoid the recognition – and the bad memories – that came with the big Uranian cities. The townsfolk respected his need for privacy but they knew who he was. They knew who his wife was. Hektor and Ada. A Talcord hero and the wife he doted on.And when Armin was ultimately born, they all knew who he was, too. The son of a hero. The child of two Fire elementals. He would surely grow up to be a great wielder of Electrokineses like his parents.That's all the greater public ever thought about him.Except he wasn't, he wasn't anything like they expected him to be. A meek, shy boy, he didn't seem anything like a potential hero. Furthermore, his element wouldn't manifest. At first, the peanut gallery hand waved the discrepancy away – all children develop at their own pace, he's a precocious reader so surely that means his brain is putting more energy into that than into his element. Then they expressed concern – it's probably because he doesn't have any reason to use it, have you considered enrolling him in a young Elementals program and seeing if that helps him?Then, they wrote him off entirely.What a waste, such a strong lineage and he isn't showing any of it.
Are you sure you're a Talcord kid? You're making it up, I bet you're not even your dad's real kid.
If I was your father I'd be ashamed of you. After all he risked for our kind, to have a human child…
It figures, a disgusting murderer like him would have a disgusting son like you–Slowly, young Armin's fear of his powerful father turned to resentment. It was, after all, to his juvenile mind, all his father's fault for being so renowned in the first place. If only he'd had normal parents, he reasoned, no one would care if he was an Elemental or not. It didn't help matters that his father flat out didn't notice what people were saying about his son. He kept his nose to the grindstone, burying himself in work when he was away from his family in order to distract himself from the horrors he'd seen in his youth, and did nothing to assuage his son's growing fears.But his mother did.As a child, Armin's mother was his best friend, and once he began school and made other friends outside the Talcord family she remained his closest confidant. She assured him that it didn't matter if he wasn't an Elemental. She assured him that he was an individual, a manifestation of his own dreams and desires and nothing more. When he told her of the things people said about him she dismissed them as ill informed, did her best to bring his ego back up. Your father and I are both proud of you. We love you. He's just not very good at showing it. He believed her…… inasmuch as her own beliefs were concerned. When it came to his father, Armin took what she said with a grain of salt. After all, his father was a powerful elemental. He'd been trained to kill. Armin himself had felt the pain of his element. The scorn of the general public only made his opinion of his father worse. He wasn’t like his father. He didn’t want to be like his father.His father wasn’t someone to be idolized.To Amrin especially there was nothing he held more true than this. He was too close to his father to hold him in any sort of reverence. The War of the Gods was quickly becoming an event relegated to the history books, put in the general public's collective past. Nothing his father did was worth idolizing.Especially when he refused to help the rest of Caelum.Armin was three when New Erewhon's capital city Glenys debuted its Aegis program, announcing that they'd be employing Elementals as heroes to keep the peace. By the time he was old enough to comprehend the severity of what Aegis did they'd grown into a super power, known throughout Caelum for their heroism and dedication to keeping Glenys City safe. To Armin, it seemed Aegis would be a perfect fit for his father. After all, he was already lauded as a hero. He'd saved Urania. Protecting New Erewhon now should be a walk in the park.His father disagreed. "Leave your mother and you? No." Several times Armin brought up the prospect, and every time he was dismissed with the same answer. "You grow up, then you go. You help. I am needed here."Armin never argued back to that. He couldn't help. He knew he couldn’t. What good would a human do?Besides – the highly active lifestyle Aegis agents subscribed to conflicted with his chronic malaise.The sickness had started when he was still a preteen, nothing more serious than frequent stomachaches and migraines but still enough to make him excuse himself from his duties in favour of staying home sick. Doctors failed to find any underlying cause. Elemental healers failed to alleviate his sickness. With no main cause his parents, friends, and acquaintances chalked it up to poor diet, lack of fresh air, nervousness. Anything they could. Things they could encourage him to change. To no avail; he merely excused himself from any kind of mental or physical exertion under the guise of “not feeling well” and left his loved ones hurt, confused, and frustrated.The less charitable simply called him lazy – often as they clicked their tongues on the roof of their mouths and shook their heads, that a Talcord child could be such a failure.Nevertheless, Armin frequently found himself missing school – and, as he got older, work.School was generous. School offered him time on weekends and holidays to make up work. School granted allowances to make sure he’d graduate with the rest of his class.Work was not so generous.At eighteen, Armin was fired from his third part-time job for poor attendance, and his father was incredulous at the news. Like everyone else he’d been concerned when Armin first started getting sick. Sympathetic. Worried for his only child. Pulling every string he had, contacting the strongest Elemental healers he knew to try and set things right. Then, he was confused, unable to understand why then, if nothing was found to be wrong, was his son still sick. By the third job loss, he’d begun losing his patience. “This is life now Armin!” he once said in a fit of frustration. “You think life waits for you? You think life understands you? Life does not care, you must become stronger than this!”At his most sensible, Armin understood. After all his father had suffered through, he understood such sensibilities. His father’s slavers never gave him sick days. The False God did not allow his father to take time off to recuperate. His father only wanted to see him overcome his setbacks and grow stronger. He knew. He knew, deep inside he did. And yet, he turned a deaf ear to his father’s words, preferring to tell himself no one understood what he felt.One person did, though.Unlike Armin, however, his mother had kept her suffering to herself, holding her tongue rather than worry her family. Surely it would pass. Surely it was just an illness. Never mind her pain. Never mind her unusual spotting. Never mind the sudden weight loss toward the end. It was nothing worth worrying people about. So she told herself until, when Armin was nineteen, she finally collapsed and, bed-bound and nearly delirious, accepted medical attention.It was too late. Her womb was unsalvageable, riddled with tumors and wholly destroyed by her illness, and her surrounding organs were critically failing. Despite all his father tried, urgently calling in any human and Elemental he could name in order to save her, nothing could be done.She passed away quietly at 4:57 in the morning, with her husband and son at her side.From the first months after her passing, it seemed to Armin as if they might be okay without her. His father embraced him as his mother’s body lay prone, subject to the Aether elementals he knew who tried in vain to bring her back. His father stayed up late with him as they planned her funeral, as they shared memories of her, as they cried on each others’ shoulders. His father came home from work on time rather than staying late, cooking for the both of them, attempting to forge a connection with his son in the wake of excruciating loss.Soon, however, it became clear to Armin that his mother was the glue that held the family together. His father buried himself in work again. Armin retreated frequently to his room, blaming sickness but in truth unable to muster the energy to face anyone and pretend things were okay. Without his primary confidant, he suffered. Both he and his father both.The tension came to a head a year later.Strife outside their miniscule family drama had grown dire. Unnatural elementals were ravaging New Erewhon, infiltrating Aegis, attempting to take down their top agents like Zephyr – a man Armin knew better as Gale O’Driscoll, another Talcord child, the friendly boy he’d grown up vaguely knowing though due to their age gap they’d never breached the barrier into legitimate friendship. Once again inspired by the struggles outside their peaceful country, Armin insisted his father join Aegis. After all, his excuse no longer held any water. He didn’t need to stay for them anymore. His mother was dead and he was an adult, capable of living on his own in the family house until he found his place in the world. Aegis needed a hero; who better than a hero from Talcord?And to his horror, his father refused again. The truth came out.“Thirty years I struggle already. For thirty years I fight. I do not want to fight more. I will not. This is not my fight.”How else should he have interpreted such a statement? To Armin, it was clear: his father was content with Urania’s peace, and the rest of Caelum should fend for itself.For the first time, he snapped back.“I can’t believe you’d be so selfish!!”
“As long as life is easy for you it’s fine for everyone else to suffer, is that it?”
“You’re no hero, you were just in the right place at the right time, if Talcord hadn’t done shit in the War of the Gods you wouldn’t have lifted a finger, would you?!”His verbal assault continued, nineteen years of pent up frustration and aggression spewing forth at once, leaving his ESL father little chance to understand what was said, let alone rebut.Armin fully admits he was the first to cross the line –“–you probably never even loved Mom, she was probably just the only way you had to try and have an heir! Yeah, Mom and I really let you down, huh?!”– but he insists his father made the misstep irrecoverable.Overwhelmed by the onslaught of wrongdoings, unable to get a word in to defend himself, and on top of it all accused of making his son and late wife miserable, he demanded attention. He demanded it by screaming his son’s name, pounding the countertop beside him. In his rage, his element set off, sending sprays of electricity out as his fist hit the counter.Armin, already traumatized by his father’s strength, reared back, silenced.His father took his silence as a chance to speak his peace, but Armin registered none of it. His mind reeled. He’ll turn it on me. He’ll turn his element on me. He’ll hurt me. He’ll hurt me. He’s a murderer. He’ll hurt me.Without any further protest, Armin left the family home, spending the night with a friend. The following morning, when his father was at work, he returned home, packed his important belongings, left a note stating his intentions, and left for good.He headed for Glenys City.Having moved out before he was financially ready, Armin struggled to find his footing in Glenys. Blending in with the crowds was easy; all he had to do was start going by his mother’s maiden name and no one batted an eyelid at him, as if he were no one worth thinking twice about. Living day to day, however, was another matter altogether. He insisted on eking out a living in the Silver District, as close to Aegis HQ as he could afford, but the best income his skillset was worth wasn’t enough to live paycheck to paycheck and he was forced to seek out roommates in order to keep a roof over his head. The jobs he found were poor – part-time customer service, trade apprenticeships – and his frequent sicknesses made keeping even these low-level jobs difficult.Whenever he got the chance, he reported to Aegis HQ.The crimes he filed were nothing special. Someone he worked with knew someone whose brother’s car had its window broken into. No, nothing was stolen. He heard someone at the deli say their daughter’s school locker was broken into. No, only her music player had been broken. His neighbor had come home to find their door open. Yes, something was missing. … yes, it was only their cat.Rarely were his reports followed up on, a fact Armin usually remained blissfully unaware of. In his mind, he was helping. He was helping the heroes of Aegis. He was combating the crime that plagued Glenys. He was one of the good guys.After two years of struggling, job-hopping, and moving between roommate arrangements, Armin had to admit that his living arrangements were not working. Bitterly, he relocated to the Bronze District, drawn by the cheaper rent and signing a lease for an apartment in Haven.There, he learned what true crime was.Horrified by the discrepancy between Silver and Bronze he immediately reported to Aegis, panicked, begging them to do something. He was certain there was a drug deal gone wrong in the apartment below his, yes it might have been gunshots he’d heard. He’d heard someone screaming for help as he’d returned home late one night, no he could not be certain it wasn’t a kidnapping.And still, Aegis did nothing. His reports of crime in the Bronze District were handwaved away, dismissed, “We’ll see what we can do but there’s a lot of work to be done in Silver and Golden, I can’t promise we have the manpower to investigate.”Quickly, his faith in Aegis began to wane.

Things came to a head for Armin the night of the Genesis Ball, 5328. He wasn’t intending on celebrating. He barely knew anyone to celebrate with, anyway. He was supposed to work. 5:30-9PM, a closing shift, little more than customer service and folding clothes. And yet at 5:28PM he sat in his car outside his workplace in a panic.He didn’t feel well.He didn’t feel well but he couldn’t call out. Genesis was tonight. If he called out they’d think he was just trying to party for Genesis. But he wasn’t. He didn’t feel well. It was too late to call out anyway. He was supposed to clock in in two minutes. –in one minute now, but he didn’t feel well. Truly. Honestly. He couldn’t work. But he had to work.He couldn’t work but he had to work. He couldn’t work but he had to work. He couldn’t work but he had to work. He couldn’t work but he had to work. He couldn’t work but he had to work–And in the midst of his panic attack, he suddenly felt overwhelmingly hot.The heat gave rise to pain, and the pain gave rise to actual pain, it hurt, it hurt and his sickness was forgotten instantly as he watched as the flesh on his arms reddened and smoldered, his skin drying immediately and cracking under the immense heat radiating beneath the surface.He raced himself to the nearest emergency room, clinging to the front desk in tears as he checked himself in. He was burning alive. It felt like he was on fire. No, he wasn’t an Elemental, but– but his parents were both Fire Elementals, maybe, maybe it was his element, maybe it was finally awakening–He was brought to a room, his burns bandaged, set up with an IV of saline and an NSAID and Ambrosia, all meant to treat his pain and lessen the effects of his supposed element, and all of which had little to no effect. He was left moaning, begging for help, any help, as his blood work was processed and his treatment plan formed.He never received any help. As soon as his blood work was analyzed he was rapidly discharged – for the safety of other patients, so he was told, as the nursing staff dropped a bombshell on him. His burns were from radiation. His own body was the source.His Fire Elemental parents hadn’t made a Fire Elemental child.They’d made a Radiation Elemental.As he signed his discharge paperwork a sympathetic nurse – a Gas Elemental themself, if they were to be believed – gave Armin quick, whispered instructions on where to go from here. He’d find help in the Trench. They knew an entrance he could take. That was all they told him as they left him to dress, careful of his newly bandaged wounds, and sent him out on his own.With little other direction, his mind still reeling from the test results he’d been given, Armin merely wandered the Bronze District. His own troubles weren't at the forefront of his mind. Other than the frequent jolts of pain from the multitude of burn injuries coating his body, his mind was fixated on his mother.Her womb had been riddled with tumors…With great difficulty, and more than a few stops to ask directions from citizens, Armin found himself in the Trench, and yet even the revelation of a hidden district beneath Bronze wasn’t enough to snap him out of his reverie.But the colours swarming in the sky were.The sheer number of people gathered to gawk or complain about power outages and noise pollution was enough to get through Armin’s head that such a thing wasn’t normal, and yet for a brief, frightening moment he couldn’t turn his eyes away. It was only when he realized what he was seeing, when exclamations from others like him made him understand that he was looking at pure radiation, that he snapped back to reality. In a panic he raced back topside, back to his apartment, eager to hide in bed and pretend there were no problems like he usually did.When his flat regained power, he tentatively sought answers.There were few to be found. A radiation emission – that much he’d already surmised. Something about the amusement park – wasn’t going there anyway. Aegis had crossed paths with a group of Trenchers calling themselves Epoch–That much caught his attention.With his burns still aching and his sickness even more pronounced after the brief exposure, Armin returned to the Trench, seeking Epoch, seeking answers, seeking help, seeking a way to help. When he ultimately managed to meet with Epoch’s council, however, he struggled to state his case, and they failed to sympathize with him. He was unknown. A nobody. After the stunts pulled the other night, of course they were hesitant to give any no-name off the street a chance.Eager to please and desperate to keep his one lead afloat, Armin opened up to the council and admitted the truth – starting with his lineage.“Armin Toller isn’t exactly real. It’s not my name. Toller is my mom’s name. Before she married my dad, that is. My real name is…”

Miscellany

-Due to his element lying dormant for twenty-three years Armin suffers from, among other things, a loss in taste and smell sensations. His chronic sickness also has his element to blame – but he doesn’t know that.-Despite appearances, Armin is an avid crafter. He will absolutely drop everything to braid you a friendship bracelet if you're nice to him.-Though he likes all animals, Armin is particularly fond of prey animals – deer, mice, rabbits, small birds, et cetera. He feels a certain kinship with them.-A hopeless romantic and struggling desperately to rebuild the tight-knit loving connection he had amongst his family in Urania, Armin has been through a string of short-lived relationships and one night stands since relocating to Glenys. His failure to find love has only exacerbated his self loathing, and he's quick to declare love for people he barely knows.-After becoming disillusioned with Aegis, he's spent less and less time trying to file incident reports, and ultimately stopped visiting HQ altogether. Probably for the best, as Aegis now has a new agent, whom Armin isn't quite ready to face yet...- FC: Janis Ancens
- Pinterest: link
- Playlist: link
-Twitter: linkUser Info
Name: Ätzend (ET-send). Commonly called Ätz.
Pronouns: she
Legal adult?: Ye
Platform: Discord, Google Docs is okay too!
Rp preferences: I've got a comfort meme finally! It is here: link