Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12
Hobbies and Interests: Singing, swimming, video games, knives
Gift: Siren Voice
Power Details: Raja’s voice has a disorienting, sedative effect on those who hear it. The exact effect varies from person to person, but generally those affected experience some degree of drowsiness, confusion, and sometimes loss of physical coordination or feelings of nausea within. The severity of the effects experienced are generally proportional with the volume at which Raja is vocalizing. Those affected will begin feeling it within a window of anywhere from 5 to 20 seconds after first hearing his voice, with the time it takes also being proportional to volume and clarity. It is the sound of the vocalization rather than the content that causes the symptoms; people listening do not have to understand the language Raja is speaking, nor does he have to say intelligible words. Animals who process sound the same way that humans do are similarly affected. Recordings of his voice do not retain this effect, but speaking over the phone or via another means of direct communication does as long as he can be clearly heard.
Limitations and Drawbacks: Raja’s Gift is involuntary, and it affects everyone other than himself who hears his voice, regardless of his intent. It only lasts as long as he is actively vocalizing, so the effect can’t be maintained indefinitely; once he stops, the effects will dissipate in a few minutes. Though someone doesn’t necessarily have to understand what he is saying, they do have to audibly hear him in order to be affected. This means he can be drowned out or interrupted by environmental noise fairly easily, the effects are less pronounced over distance, and anyone who is hard-of-hearing or deaf is resistant or immune. He has to primarily communicate through sign language or writing, in order to prevent others from experiencing the negative effects of his Gift.
Appearance: Rajender is tall and has a slender, fit figure, standing at 5’11” and weighing 167 pounds. He has an inverted triangle body shape, with broad shoulders and a more tapered waist. His limbs are long, and he moves with relative grace rather than the awkwardness of someone still growing into his height. Raja is Indian-American and has a warm brown skin tone, black hair, and dark brown eyes. His hair is thick and loosely wavy in texture, and it reaches just past his shoulders. He alternates between wearing it loose or pulling it up into a bun. He has bleached the last few inches of his hair and dip-dyed it a dark blue, which has begun to fade at the ends, creating an ombre effect. Raja has an oval-shaped face with fairly androgynous features; he has full lips, a straight aquiline nose, and long eyelashes. There are a few small scars on his hands from when he has gotten careless playing with knives.
Raja dresses fairly casually, but he enjoys accessorizing with jewelry, enamel pins, and the like. He has a bridge piercing in his nose, in which he wears a plain gold barbell. On the day of the trip, he was wearing a red-orange tank top with a graphic of a black skeletal hand making a peace sign, underneath a dark denim jacket decorated with enamel pins. He also had on dark blue distressed cuffed jeans and black and white lace-up Converse shoes. The pins on his jacket consisted of a black and green flying saucer with the words “I Want To Leave,” a red and gold anatomical heart, a yin-yang symbol, a bisexual pride flag, a black circle pin with the words “BIRDS AREN’T REAL” in white block font, and a heart-shaped pin depicting the character Skeletor laughing with the words “Live, Laugh, Love.” He was also wearing his usual barbell in his nose piercing and a set of three gold rings on his left hand on his index, middle, and little fingers. His hair was worn up in a messy bun, with a few locks loose and framing his face.
Background:
- Raja was born in Bend, Oregon, into a well-off family. He lives with his parents, Kishan and Manju, and his younger sister Aumma.
- Raja always loved singing, and from a young age he dreamed of having a professional career. However, when his Gift emerged, it soon became clear that it would never be possible for him to perform in front of an audience due to the potential hazard hearing his voice caused to others. While recordings of his voice are safe, he was crushed to realize he could never have what he considered a true musical career.
- Along with the regular difficulties in communicating that his Gift presented, Raja went through a period of depression after fully realizing that he wouldn’t be able to sing professionally. He went through a couple of years of homeschooling so that he could learn sign language and train himself to communicate non-verbally before returning to public school in middle school.
- Raja has recovered from the worst of his depression with time, though not so deep down he is still bitter that his Gift eliminated the possibility of his dream career.
- He still often sings in private. He records covers of songs and goes through a fairly regular cycle of uploading them to various platforms before deleting them in frustration.
- He is on the swim team, participating in long-distance events. He also enjoys swimming casually.
- Most of Raja’s friends are people who share his interests in music and video games, though he pointedly does not participate in any music-related extracurriculars at school.
- He has a tendency to lash out at other people when in a bad emotional state, which has resulted in the end of some friendships, but he maintains a generally good reputation. Usually he blows off steam by swimming laps or playing shooters or fighting games.
- His most esoteric hobby is collecting and doing tricks with knives; he saves up his allowance so that he can buy any unique-looking knives he finds and with the help of the internet has taught himself to do simple tricks like spinning, flipping, and throwing them.
- At school, Raja excels in math and is decent to mediocre in everything else. He plans to go to college for a degree in programming, intending to go into the video game industry in some fashion.
Other Skills: Strong swimmer, fluent in American Sign Language, knife proficiency
