~Graham Turner ~
La vie est bizarre parfois.
Un moment, vous êtes juste debout là, en gardant vos propres affaires, en attendant sur une figure d'autorité plutôt... calme pour vous donner les pouces jusqu'à se précipiter vers votre lit et de rattraper un certain besoin de repos et de détente. Si rien d'autre, s'il vous plaît laissez son DS ou Vita être là. Ou, si ce n'est pas trop demander, O.K. Mighty Lords of Chance, peut-être permettre sa guitare? Ce serait tout ça et un sac de Fritos.
Mais le suivant?
Le moment suivant tout ce que tu savais être bon et juste avec le monde est rembourré et jeté au loin parce qu'un de tes nouveaux amis décide de juste prendre une grosse merde de vapeur des lois de la physique. Elle était derrière lui. Qu'il savait être vrai. Puis il est parti. C'était aussi vrai.
Et puis elle s'était matérialisée juste devant ses putains d'yeux.
Ce n'est pas possible.
Mais c'était vrai aussi, apparemment.
Et pour battre tout cela, son apparence soudaine devant lui, et assez proche aussi, a fait tomber Graham hors de toute surprise. Et il a atterri sur son cul. Certains étudiants derrière lui se moquaient du petit clown.
Est-ce que tu aimes les idiots, les idiots?Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
N'EST-CE PAS AMUSÉ?!Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
Mais Graham ne les aboie pas. Pas encore. Pas avec le chef Honcho qui se tient à quelques mètres de lui. Sa vengeance sera faite, oh oui, mais pas encore. Ça doit mijoter.
Ses plans sombres n'étaient cependant pas dirigés vers Kitty. Ou peut-être l'avaient-ils été, mais...
Oups! Désolé. Pourquoi t'es-tu enfui comme ça?
Et bien... merde. Il ne pouvait pas être énervé à juste titre contre un ami inquiet maintenant, n'est-ce pas?
Eh bien, oui. Il pourrait. Mais il serait un crétin géant. Ça ne volerait pas, mec.
Graham s'est levé et s'est débrouillé, ignorant le snicking qui se passait derrière eux.
Il regarda le VeePee, puis retourna à Kitty. Il a baissé la voix et a regardé en bas.
Il faut que j'étende mes ailes et que je vole, chica. Il y a tout un monde de lotta là-bas et seulement tellement Graham pour faire le tour, tu sais?
Il a attendu un moment, puis il a toussé.
Puis il a murmuré.
Je ne pourrais pas voir. Là-bas. Trop de Talls sur le chemin.
Il l'a admis avec un soupçon de honte. La plupart des autres gars qu'il connaissait avaient déjà trouvé leur taille. Graham s'est perdu en transit. Ou livré à un autre enfoiré qui se tapait la tête des cerceaux de basket. Donc oui, il était un peu conscient de l'absentéisme. Ce n'était pas comme s'il était une nana qui pouvait obtenir en voyant le monde à cette altitude. Il arrivait un moment où il avait besoin d'obtenir quelque chose de l'étagère supérieure, et merde, sa fierté en tant qu'homme ne lui permettait pas de demander de l'aide à quelqu'un d'autre.
Alors, prends ton pied dans l'oreille, ma mère nature.
Cette petite explosion intérieure est presque devenue une grosse explosion. Mais d'une manière ou d'une autre, il a gardé ses pensées en ligne.
Puis la dame Smith a parlé.
Annonce des colocataires.
Génial.
Le premier groupe était Aspen, Alexis et Kitty. C'est ça. Les trois pourraient se déplacer et sillonner ensemble. Alors Anastasia et... Olivia? Oh, c'est ça! La nana du train. Le traître de l'espèce. L'un des smogheads qui a décidé de ne pas dire aux pauvres petits rafraîchissements à propos de l'abomination infernale qu'ils ont pu rencontrer si agréablement.
C'est pour ça que Graham a décidé qu'il continuerait la tradition asshatish. Aucune friandise n'aurait eu le 4-1-1 de lui.
Alors Deia? L'un d'entre eux a été enfermé. Un traitement spécial, hein? Ça devait être embarrassant. Il essaierait d'être cool avec elle. Ou pas. Ça dépend comment elle était. Nous sommes tous égaux dans ‘Murica, gurl.
...ou, tu sais, où qu'ils soient. Probablement la Terre. Espérons que la Terre. Oh mon cher Allfather, s'il te plaît, laisse-le toujours être la Terre.
Alors certains des mecs étaient les suivants.
Cheol et Smughead. Pauvre Cheol. Comment survivrait-il à l'ego massif du croisé autodidacte? Il a probablement étouffé pendant la nuit. Tout va bien, mon pote. On se souviendra de vous.
Mais avec qui est-ce que ça l'a laissé?
Si c'était le mini-horreur, il n'allait pas tout de suite. Mais il a été épargné.
Des scorpions. Le frère irlandais. Il pourrait vivre avec ça. Ils provenaient tous les deux des fosses de leurs pays respectifs. Les Scorpios sont des cols rouges littéraux. À cause des cheveux rouges. Il y avait beaucoup de rousses en Irlande, n'est-ce pas? Graham ne savait pas. Eh bien, le système d'éducation publique du Kentucky n'avait pas vraiment fait beaucoup pour enrichir la vision du monde du garçon. Il était ce que l'on pourrait appeler, culturellement affamé. C'était probablement l'Écosse. Ou l'une des «terres».
Ensuite, Sam et Jack? Graham ne les connaissait pas. Peut-être un jour? Peut-être qu'ils seraient aussi kewl katz. On ne pouvait que l'espérer.
Puis Smith s'est levé et a jeté un free-for-all sur les vraies pièces. Eh bien... c'était des dortoirs, n'est-ce pas? C'est pareil? Graham s'en foutait à juste titre. Quatre murs et un lit le serviraient très bien.
Et puis, hors de nulle part, elle appelle le Dr Murse. Graham ne savait pas pourquoi, mais il était sûr qu'il allait le découvrir. Quand la foule s'est séparée pour la bonne infirmière, Graham a regardé à travers.
Chœur.
Le pauvre petit Cheol était froid.
Qu'est-ce qu'il y a?
L'infirmière l'a emmené à l'infirmerie. Graham a fait une note mentale pour lui rendre visite. Le petit mec était son ami, que Cheol l'aimait ou non. Il avait été étiqueté comme tel, il en sera ainsi. De plus, ils étaient frères en bref. Si l'un devait empiler sur une autre, peut-être qu'ils pourraient se fondre dans les Talls, pour vivre parmi eux, pour voir comment l'autre côté fait.
Ouais...
Graham a souhaité le meilleur à l'enfant, mais a pensé qu'il serait bien. Superschool devait avoir un Supermedbay, non? Quelqu'un a dû se cacher qui pourrait juste toucher le garçon et éliminer sa maladie.
Après quelques instants, il regarda autour de lui. Il a vu Kitty. Il a vu les autres un peu en arrière. Mais il n'a pas vu le mec avec qui il vivrait.
Pour l'instant.
À moi! À moi, Scorpios!
Le garçon a crié, il a probablement arraché ses cordes vocales à l'oubli. Ils disent que si on écoute attentivement, ils peuvent encore entendre son appel rebondir sur les collines jusqu'à ce jour même.
C'est pas vrai, boyo!
Real Name: Reginald Wagner
Superhero Alias: N/A
Gender: Male
Age: 47
Appearance: How dapper is he, the tall, thin man in the flawless brown pinstripe suit? From his dress to his stance, not a single wrinkle nor even so much as a loose thread, the man would appear to be a gentleman straight out of an old romance novel. So how strange is it that such a neat man would carry the look of a madman?
Despite a neatly trimmed moustache, Reginald’s ever-thinning, ever-graying brown hair twists and contorts in all directions like the thin arms of a terrified house centipede scrambling from the sure death of an angry boot. A hint of terror always lingers behind shifty light blue eyes. Eyes always moving, always searching...
Power Set:
Formally Precognition: Users have the ability to foresee possible futures and observe what may happen. As knowledge of the future invariably causes that future to change, visions of the future are subject to frequent shifting. While not being able to select futures or travel through time, these visions may assist in possible courses of action
Formally Chrono Vision: The user can see any point in time, from only a few days or months into the future, up to events all throughout time, whether that be along their own timelines or along the timelines of others.
Currently Omnichronal Perception: The user can see every event across all of the infinite timelines simultaneously.
Other Skills: Reginald is a very successful fiction author, with thirty-eight novels published and many more short stories floating around. He is also an incredibly proficient marksman.
Weaknesses: Alcohol. Mr. Wagner is a terrible alcoholic. Compounded with a fairly low tolerance, he commonly finds himself shit-faced to the point of incompetence. He is also not exactly what one would call a brave or selfless man. In the face of danger, Wagner will take flight over fight any day.
Subject: English
Personality: Paranoid. If anything can define Reginald, it would be his paranoia. He is always on the lookout, searching for signs of the coming end. If not outwardly expressed, then it’s bouncing against the walls of his mind. But laugh, go ahead and laugh, but we’ll all be weeping in the end.
The author suffers from Obsessive compulsive disorder, the culprit behind the paranoia, behind the ritualistic behavior, behind the repetitive words and actions. He is very aware of it, but despite his many attempts at combatting it, he is a slave to it, a puppet pulled along by a cruel puppetmaster.
But that is not the side that Wagner would ever allow his students to see.
While not completely able to suppress his nervous body movements, he can hide them well. He is rather well-spoken, always carefully selecting his words to charm those around him. Add in a fairly friendly smile and he could almost pull off a sophisticated persona.
Almost.
But Reginald Wagner is a tormented man. His mind is constantly on the edge of just snapping. Between his OCD, and the constant barrage of nightmarish possibilities that come with his powers, Reginald can hardly function. So he drinks. A lot. He drinks until his mind is dulled. It helps...quell the madness. The visions stop. The rituals are suspended. Not always a surefire solution, as sometimes they manage to slip through the gate of booze, but often enough to provide some greatly appreciated peace. He has found himself having to drink more and more lately, just to get back to the peace. Whether his mind is adjusting to the booze, or something more sinister is occurring is yet to be seen.
Backstory: Reginald Wagner, where does one start with you? The beginning, one would assume, but one would be wrong. Unlike many of his ‘colleagues’, Wagner’s abilities did not start until much later in his life.
But perhaps that is jumping a bit?
Oh, alright. Fine. I’ll tell you, but do try to stifle those bored sighs.
He was born to a lovely set of folks that are now ashes sitting upon his sister’s mantle. Raised in a small, nameless town in New York, Wagner had an average life. Not really adept at any subject in particular, not really skilled at any instrument or sport, he somewhat coasted by. Not that it mattered. Mother and Father would take care of any college fees. Heavens know they had more money than they even knew with which to do.
He attended university in Maine, originally for Psychology. But classes bored him. He had more motivation to attend various parties across campus, rather than study. He was good at parties. But that eventually caught up to him, as such things tend to do. His grades dropped. Then he dropped. Why explore the works of Freud, Skinner, and Pavlov when one can explore the works of Jack Daniels, Captain Morgan, and Jim Bean?
The next few years were a drunken blur. Then the visions started.
They started small. Maybe he would recall exactly where his lost keys were. Or perhaps he would answer the phone moments before it rang. But they rapidly grew more frequent and more...powerful. He would catch himself zoning out, having the most peculiar daydreams. Men in suits shaking hands, the Yankees winning the World Series, a white numbered ball shooting into a line of similar balls.
But something was off about these visions. They were always so...vivid. And he could remember them so clearly after coming out his dreaming.
Then there was 9/11.
Reginald had awoken in the middle of the night, just a few weeks before the horrible tragedy. He had to piss something fierce. Yet as he was tainting the porcelain bowl, he floated away. He found himself suspended in air over what could only be New York. He felt so weightless. So...light. And such a breathtaking view. He could see all of Manhattan. Which was weird. He had never been to the Big Apple.
Then the plane hit the tower. And then he heard the screaming.
He awoke hours later to find himself sprawled out on his bathroom floor, drenched in, judging by the smell, something he’d rather much wish was water. Dazed and confused, he went back to his bed to sleep off the massive headache.
He shrugged it off as just a bad, whiskey-infused dream. So when his dream was replayed on the big screen, Reginald knew something was up. Either he was going crazy or…
No, that was pretty much it.
Wagner treated himself, mainly by writing down his ‘daydreams.’ He wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more. Eventually he started going over some of the stories, fixing them up a tad, making them more pleasant to read. And he sent them in. And got published.
His writing career took off afterwards. Sometime during the release of his sixth novel and the rights to his fourth book “The Marvelous March” being picked up by a studio, Wagner stopped drinking. He returned to school. With an interest in a subject now sparked, he easily snatched up an English degree. Some certifications later, and he would be teaching in a New Jersey public school whilst continuing his novels.
So just a man with the gift of sight. Nothing unusual, no?
Perhaps. Until one cursed night. Reginald was reviewing some quizzes over a nice cup of coffee. Then he felt one of ‘them’ coming on. What he saw was unlike anything he had seen before. There was no sense of weightlessness, as he was now accustomed to. He felt himself ripped from his body, ripped from the world. Ripped from the galaxy. He saw eons pass instantly in front of his eyes. Then there was nothing. And beyond that, there was something.
Oh how that terrified him.
It took all the man had, but he managed to wrestle control of himself, returning back to his apartment, to his coffee and his cats. He didn’t know what that was. He had never experienced anything like it before. He didn’t want to, ever again. All he did want, was a drink. He was just so goddamn thirsty.
The daydreams continued though. And whilst the nothingness never returned, the visions became more vivid. But the most terrifying thing, was that Reginald found that he could direct them. He could think of something or someone, and his daydream would star them. He saw his father’s death, a violent car crash, mere days before it actually happened. Then he saw his father graduate high school. He saw his mother weeping on her wedding day.
He could see anything.
Then years later, Reginald poked the bear. He tried to reach out. Not to a person, or a place, but to reality itself. And he was successful. Oh boy, was he ever. He found himself not being dragged but sprinting headlong into the abyss. First time. Then everything. Then nothing. Then something, once more. But instead of turning around, of leaving good enough alone, curiosity spurred the man.
So the arrogant man threw back the curtain, expecting to see Oz the Great and Terrible.
But Oz was not meant to be seen. Could not be seen. Mortal eyes had no place in the beyond. Yet here was Reginald. He died, forever. Then he lived. Then died. It continued for what could only be described as eternity.
But that didn’t happen. That was someone else. Reginald did not look upon The Beyond. But his mind’s eye peeked.
Everything shattered. Reginald was torn apart. Even The Beyond was no longer. Then Reginald awoke in his apartment. He had lived countless lifetimes, died infinitely more, but no more than a handful of seconds could have passed. And…
Oh God.
He could see everything. He couldn’t look away.
Everything.
Reginald might have went mad. Likely did, too, but he returned. From the sheer power of his will to live, he returned. But the whispers started...and Reginald desperately wished he hadn’t.
It was The Beyond, speaking words that could not be spoken. Always there, but never there. He would die, but keep on living. Others would die, but keep on living. The world would die, but keep on living.
He dove back into the booze. Hard. Trying to end it, to end anything. And it worked...somewhat. It dulled the sight, keeping the unthinkable from entering his mind. The more he drank, the more muffled it would be. In the small periods of sobriety between drunken nights, Wagner would experience the worst of it. The visions were still dulled, but if he focused, he could see any of them. And the whispers...sometimes he believed they were gone. But as more and more booze wore off, the louder the whispers got. It was never as bad as the first time, but he knew what could happen. He gazed into the abyss which was never meant to be. What laid beyond, gazed back at him.
So how does Herculean Academy fit into this? He got a job as an English teacher at the school. Just a means to an end for Wagner, desperately searching for a means to silencing his power.
For the majority of his adult life, Reginald tried to expand his sight. For the rest, he would try to blind it.