Brandon Tecks: The Maine Character

PERSONAL

Gender: None

Kit: Transformation

Location: Maine

AFFILIATION

Alignment: Hero

Team: Solo Hero

VITAL STATS

Strength: standard (rank 1)

Agility: standard (rank 1)

Mind: standard (rank 1)

Body: standard (rank 1)

Spirit: standard (rank 1)

Charisma: standard (rank 1)

RECORD

Fame Points: 0

Personal Wins: 0

Personal Losses: 1

Team Wins: 0

Team Losses: 0

Tourney Wins: 0

Tourney Losses: 0

STATUS

Status: Active

Pseudonym

Brandon leaned on the handle of his pitchfork. All the leaves that had fallen on his yard had been neatly arranged into piles up against the house. The sun was setting over the rustic field of trees that spread like a beautiful painting for miles in every direction. The light of the dipping sun played through the dilapitated treetops, casting long, warm shadows under the orange, red, and yellow. Brandon couldn't help but smile. He loved everything about the autumn in Maine.

He was distracted from the sunset by the sound of a car pulling up to the front of his house. He took a deep breath of the mountain air. A refreshing chill rolled down into his lungs filling him with the spirit of autumn. He said out loud to himself, "I wonder who it could be."

As Brandon walked around his centuries old two-story townhouse, The back-end of a pick up truck poked out from the corner. He smiled as he recognized it. The cerulean paint was peeling off in place revealing rust beneath. The bumper was hanging out like a broken arm. One of the sides of the truck bed had long since fallen off and had been replaced by a pair of unpainted two by fours secured with rope that wound around the body of the car. It was definitely Dale's old pickup all right. Brandon started to jog to get in sight when he heard Dale's heavy knocking at the front door of the house.

"Dale, I'm back here," shouted Brandon as he rounded the corner. He saw Dale dressed as he always was. His fishing jacket , a half-size too large, hung over his flannel shirt and a ripped pair of blue jeans that was anything but trendy. Dale turned away from the door to the sound of Brandon's voice. They clapped each other on the back and Brandon invited Dale in.

Brandon's living room was a bit small, but it felt a lot smaller with the actual moose head mounted on the wall. It was a buck, the first Brandon had ever shot on a hunting trip. It's long neck extended the head far into the living room, making it often more an obstacle than a decoration. Brandon's recliner was below and to the left of the moose, just out of the way of the fireplace, but near enough that on cold winter mornings, he could throw logs in the fire and enjoy a leisurely newspaper read.

Dale took the reclilner immediately, kicking the legs up as he did. Brandon went to the kitchen to get his friend something to drink. He didn't find anything other than water that claimed to be from the purest springs in Maine. When he returned, Dale was sitting with his head in his hands, wiping tears away with his hat.

"Oh, dear" said Brandon.

 

"What's wrong?" Brandon asked pouring water into a glass. He handed the glass to Dale who graciously accepted and began to drink before responding. Brandon didn't have any other chairs in his living room, so while Dale drank, he ran to the dining room to pull the chair away from the table.

Dale answered when Brandon came back. "I just had a falling out with the missus," he admitted.

"Oh, about what. It weren't nothing too personal?"

"Naw, it's just she was talking about leaving."

"A divorce?" Brandon asked. "Now that's peculiar."

"Not a divorce," Dale said through sobs. He gulped down some more water to steady himself. Brandon wordlessly took his glass and refilled it. "She wants to move. Said she wants to go to the city."

"New York?"

"She weren't specific. Says it's all too boring and quiet up here. Says she feels like she's already dead."

"Oh." Brandon found that he hadn't been looking at Dale for a while. He was instead staring out the window, watching the wind rustle through the leaves he had just finished piling. "I don't know. I find living up in the quiet lets a man get more acquainted with nature."

"That's what I said. You gotta show her, man. I took her out onto the lake today, out in the quiet. Y'know fishin' is all. She was on her phone the whole time complaining about bad 3G service."

Brandon sat quiet and still. He didn't know quite what to say, how to respond. Dale had finished another cup of water. Brandon wondered whether refilling it would be a tacit invitation for Dale to stay. He stared awkwardly at the glass, occasionally swinging his glance up to Dale's reddened face. "I'll do what I can," Brandon said.

 

In Touch With Nature

     Elemental Form: standard (rank 1)

 

The moon hung in the sky, floating in a sea of stars. Outside in his backyard, Brandon knelt on the floor. Pebbles ate into his knees.The cold wind pulled at his clothes and hair as though begging him to take them off. Brandon's fingers hung down, brushing the tips of the grass. He felt the blades of grass as they bent to his touch, each and every one. Brandon looked up from where he was kneeling. Around him crickets chirped in a perfectly arranged rhythm. Brandon felt his body beginning to sway back and forth to the music of the nature around him.

He leaned forward more and his palms hit the dirt. It crunched satisfyingly under his weight. As he leaned into the dirty, its color and consistency crept upwards onto his skin, rolling slowly up his hands and then onto his arms under his shirt. He crumbled as the effect spread to the rest of this body, snapping off at the shoulder and falling to the ground as clods of dirt. Last to go was his smile. Teeth suspended in the air slowly turned brown and fell as grains to the ground whence they came.

 

His Full Potential

     Self Body Manipulation: ultimate (rank 4)

  • Area Affect
  • Super Area of Effect

 

For a second, he was ground and then he was much, much more. Brandon grew, pushing outwards, growing, stretching expanding to be larger than his body could ever have dreamed. He became the ground and felt his own house on top of him. For a time he returned the favor that his house had done him for many years, supporting it and keeping it safe. Then he kept growing, spreading out even farther until he could feel the weight of his whole city and each one of its inhabitants. Feet trod on him and he was okay with it because he was so large.

His expansion continued from a city to cities. A metropolis spreading in between. The suburbs like a pause in action between the hustle and bustle of the major urban areas.

Then slowly, it stopped. Brandon was finally back to what he had been deep inside all along. He was Maine, the eastmost state in the Continental US, in all it's glory.

 

Maine Knows Itself

     Enhanced Senses: supreme (rank 3)

 

He couldn't let his size distract him. Brandon had a goal in mind. With great effort he got to thinking, focusing on himself on how he felt. Every patch of dirt felt different than each other. Brandon tried to remember exactly the feel of the patch in his backyard. The soft loam that ran through his fingers, the amount of moisture that stayed on his palm as he let it fall back to the floor, how many rocks were in it. Soon he was concentrating on a single backyard on the west side near the border of Vermont, his backyard.

Brandon heroically strained his mind to follow a route he knew much better on foot. He traced his way along his roads and a dirt path through a thicket of woods. Eventually he found a house. It felt right. He hoped it was right.

 

I Think The Word Is Rustic

     Emotion Manipulation: standard (rank 1)

 

Olivia stuffed her blackberry into the breast pocket of her suit jacket and then, thinking better of it, pulled it out again. Tapping her feet, impatient with herself and everything in the world, she sent an email to her boss detailing her schedule for the next week. As she put the blackberry into her pocket again she caught a glimpse of movement out the front window and rolled her eyes. The goddamn critters were everywhere and she was sick of it and sick of them.

She took a deep breath, pulling all the air she could into her lungs and screamed upstairs to her sleeping husband, "Dale,I'm going off to work. We'll talk when I get back." Without waiting for a reply, she walked to the front door and pulled it open.

What used to be her front yard was a tunnel of trees leading to her car parked out on the road. The leaves were vibrant autumn colours, mixing together. The faint smell of pumpkin wafted by. Olivia stood paralyzed on her front step. A leaf detached itself from its tree and swirled its way down from the highest point of the tree to land on Olivia's nose. A fawn sauntered by on spindly legs. Olivia vaguely recognized it as the shadow she had seen earlier and felt guilty for having cursed at it in her head. She watched it eat berries off a nearby bush. After it finished, the fawn turned and looked Olivia in the eye before cantering away into the woods. Olivia's arms flung out in a grasping motion as though she was going to catch it, but it disappeared into the trees.

Olivia started walking toward her car, tears in her eyes. "Oh My God." Olivia whispered. "I love this state."

Brandon shrank back into himself. He lay in his backyard on top of the clothes he was wearing, staring up at the sun with a smile on his face.