Gender: Male
Age: 18
Grade: 12th
Hobbies and Interests: Metalworking, Sustainability Activism, Creative Writing, Music
Gift: Capacitor
Power Details: Capacitor causes August to naturally draw any nearby electrical energy into his body, which functions as a storage medium of indeterminate capacity. This effect is subject to the inverse square law, and diminishes at distance. It reaches an insignificant degree at greater than twenty-five yards.
August can draw or discharge this energy at will, and in varying quantities and forms. This can be anything from small sparks, to a gout of plasma, to bolts of lightning akin to that of a thunderstorm, depending on how much he has absorbed. This also vaguely dictates the distance of August's abilities, as he needs to overcome the natural electrical resistance of the air around him to project at distance.
August can stop drawing energy around himself to some degree, but not completely, and constantly draws a small current from the Earth itself regardless of what other power sources are available.
Limitations and Drawbacks: While quite powerful, Capacitor has a number of serious drawbacks. August can only discharge as much energy as he has absorbed. The amount of energy required to incapacitate or kill another person on contact isn’t necessarily difficult to gather, but an arc akin to a real bolt of lightning will take several minutes to an hour to accrue depending on what power sources are available. While he can potentially return energy, modern electronics often respond poorly to the attempt, and trying to do so may destroy them outright. The simpler the storage medium, the easiest it is for August to recharge it; he can easily recharge car batteries and backup phone chargers.
There are obvious visual and auditory phenomena depending on how much energy he has accumulated - the more energy August stores, the more he begins to affect the immediate area around him. As the charge increases, the air surrounding his body ionizes and glows, and small electrical arcs will occasionally erupt out from his exposed skin. This can become potentially dangerous to those around him, and can occasionally set fire to nearby objects that he arcs to.
Additionally, August emits a natural electromagnetic field as a result of his Gift absorbing energy. A low charge, it causes disruptions to wi-fi and phone service, and generates small but detectable levels of current that may trip surge protectors in consumer electronics. At a very high charge, the field will short out and destroy integrated circuits, disrupt radio transmissions, cause extreme distress in migratory birds, and potentially cause costly damage to electrical infrastructure. August must sleep within a Faraday Cage over his bed, as his Gift is out of control when he is unconscious and unmedicated. He has a specialized insulated sleeping bag for travel, which performs a similar function.
August can feel the energy he draws from his surroundings, though he is only vaguely aware of the direction of the source. This presents itself as an uncomfortable paresthesia, from a slight tingle at the presence of a cellphone, or a distracting buzzing feeling near subway tracks, to unbearable pain and nausea if he were standing directly under power lines. These sensations are mitigated by medication, or by absorbing the energy until the source is depleted. The environment at his High School is bearable, assuming August is taking both his power-suppressing medication and low-grade painkillers. Unless he stays at home for an extended period of time, he suffers weekly migraine headaches as a result.
Out of fear, he has avoided testing his limits and so there is no raw data on the actual limits of his abilities. In all likelihood, absorbing too much energy would either explosively detonate his body, or ionize the surrounding air to the point it would ignite and kill him. Likely on account of his Gift, August has been struck by lightning twice. These events resulted in him reaching dangerous, nearly lethal levels of capacitance that were actively traumatic and physically agonizing.
Any significant mental or physical anguish can result in unintentional discharges of electrical energy. In theory, torture would be a brute-force way to deprive August of the full extent of his abilities if power-suppressing drugs were unavailable. Mortal injury would have an explosive end result should August be carrying a particularly significant charge.
Electrical circuits can be hardened against Capacitor in the same way that they are hardened against other electromagnetic pulses, and he cannot absorb energy through any significant shielding. While such shielding is common on many public utilities, it is too expensive to be standard on most consumer electronics.
Appearance: August is 5’9 and 135lbs. He has dark brown hair that he typically keeps in a short buzz cut; his hair has a habit of standing on end, otherwise. As using an electric shaver is an unpleasant experience for August, what little facial hair he has is usually closely shaved away with a safety razor. He has large, bright blue eyes and thick eyelashes. Freckles dot his naturally pale skin, and show up more frequently as a result of the time he spends outside. August has faint burn scars on his arms from childhood accidents involving his Gift. His face is somewhat gaunt and heart-shaped, and he has a gentle smile.
August almost exclusively wears handmade or secondhand clothes, with an idiosyncratic fashion sense most see as gender ambiguous and hippie-esque. On the day of the abduction, he was wearing grey cotton trousers, a loose handmade purple henley shirt, and a black cardigan underneath a green canvas military surplus jacket. He likes to wear a grey-blue handmade beanie that is a size or two too large for him, handmade jewelry, and colourful hemp bracelets. In terms of footwear, August typically wears thick-soled safety shoes as they provide greater insulation from the ground.
Because of the harmful effects of his Gift, August often wears custom-made gloves with rubber fingertips that allow him limited engagement with touchscreens and electrical appliances. Underneath them, he enjoys wearing various colours of nail polish and currently sports a glittery, iridescent dark purple. August often faintly smells of ozone as a result of his gift, and occasionally wears homemade lavender-scented fragrance to hide it.
Background:
- August Riley Hanlon was born in Bend, Oregon to Leaf and Elizabeth Hanlon, a couple that ran a successful landscaping company. Leaf’s Gift allows him to influence the growth of plants, and Elizabeth is able to fractally rearrange matter in a small area; these Gifts made reconstruction of gardens and lawns almost trivially simple for the two of them.
- August’s gift manifested at the age of three, tripping the circuit breakers in his childhood home and immediately draining the batteries on both of his parents’ cars. Though they attempted to manage it themselves at first with natural medicines and supplements, they began to see a specialist after August accidentally started several electrical fires. Once living in a typical subdivision became completely untenable, the Hanlons purchased a small, partially off-grid property just outside of Bend, Oregon. August’s bedroom is actually a separate building a short distance from the main house, without any wiring or electrical connections to speak of. If not, he would suffer chronic insomnia.
- August has a small to nonexistent social media presence, as he can only access the internet from a specially assembled computer that has been extensively insulated from his Gift. While he does own a cell-phone, it is an obsolete model with a keypad instead of a touch-screen, as he typically causes irreparable damage to touchscreens if he touches them with his bare skin. Because he is rarely online, he often finds himself embarrassingly unaware of the latest online trends or memes. While he has a few friends, he is often avoided at school as it is widely known that spending too long in his presence will almost certainly drain or kill a phone battery. As a result, almost no one ever elects to sit next to him in his classes and people avoid physical contact out of a misplaced fear of electrical shock.
- August enjoys creative hobbies, and discovered through a shop teacher that he could arc weld on his own by using only a length of tungsten rod and an extension cord plugged into a wall socket (though he must wear eye protection and specially made gloves). He frequently enjoys metalworking and often makes small figurines and metal art pieces for his few friends, and gives them to his parents to sell at craft fairs. He loves working on projects with others, and plays the cello in a small band at school. Focusing his Gift on redirecting power to the band’s guitar amps provides momentary relief from his worst symptoms. He keeps a detailed set of notebooks, for schoolwork and for personal journal entries. He enjoys creative writing, and works by hand.
- Acutely aware of how much people depend on electrical power, August is passionate about environmental activism and the development of clean energy.
- Despite being unable to use most modern electronics easily, August has had to develop a basic working knowledge of electrical engineering in the hopes of limiting the harm his Gift might cause. He modified an electric longboard that he rides to school. This helps, given the fact that he lives on a small farm just outside of town. At school, he carries a small lithium-ion battery pack that he offers to others in case he accidentally drains a phone battery. At home, he discharges current into a bank of batteries hooked up to his parents' house.
- August is on a steady dose of strong medication both to reduce the effects of his Gift on those around him, as well as to mitigate the discomfort that results from near-constant exposure to wi-fi signals, radio waves, and electrical infrastructure. The side effects of the medication are significant enough that, even if he wanted to learn to drive a car, he would not be legally allowed to do so. He won't use psychoactive drugs or drink alcohol out of fear of their effects.
- August is unsure of his sexual orientation, but hopes that he’s pansexual because he’d like to be open to a partner of any gender. He doesn’t have enough experience to feel confident saying for sure, one way or the other. August was raised without gender identification, and only identified himself with his birth gender at the age of eight.
- August’s friends often call him “Auggie.”
August generally resents his gift, as it causes him regular physical discomfort and social isolation. This feeling is often compounded by the fact that, when people discover the nature of his Gift, they often draw attention to the power of his abilities without much consideration of the difficulties he regularly faces in daily life.He is an excellent friend to those who do choose spend time with him, and can actually be quite charming and sociable if he is able to relax.
Though he is more than capable of physically defending himself from others, he is terrified of harming anyone or angering people as a result of his Gift. He has few friends and fears ostracizing himself more through confrontation and making enemies. As a result, he rarely stands up for himself and tends to shy away from conflict wherever possible.
Other Skills: Gardening, Basic Circuitry, Knitting
