~Graham Turner ~
Soulagement.
C'est un joli sentiment. Une minute tu regardes dans le noir, puant mamelle de la mort elle-même, et puis la suivante, BOOM! C'est quoi, ça? WAKKA-WAKKA! La mort elle-même change en colocataire.
Merde, ce colocataire.
Graham sauta de son lit, disant à la gravité de se faire foutre pendant qu'il étendait un seul pied et s'enfonce dans la gorge du petit sourire, l'écraseant contre le cou. La vie a quitté le lion. Scorpio était mort. Comment expliquerait-il cela aux enseignants? Il ne pouvait pas. Il allait juste être transporté dans une cellule du sud du Montana où il allait pourrir jusqu'à ce qu'un rat ronflât ses restes pathétiques dans l'oubli.
Merde, c'était quoi ce fantasme?
Graham s'est giflé mentalement. Une façon d'échouer à tout le truc pacifiste, Grahamy, ole boy. Eh bien, réfléchis, ne le fais pas. C'est ça l'important.
Il s'est mis aux pieds, a pris un oreiller sur le lit et a jeté à son colocataire international. Oups.
Allez-vous-en, Mufasa.
Graham lâcha un rire moqueur qui devint authentique après un moment. On l'a eu. Bien joué, frérot.
Maintenant, c'est moi, mec. On devrait trouver l'autre mec. Il est probablement perdu et confus... comme un chiot perdu. Hachez-vous, lâchez-vous le cul et les pieds. Laissez aller chercher notre animal de compagnie.
Comme c'est noble. Graham s'est tourné vers la porte et s'est dirigé vers elle.
Son estomac grondait.
D'accord, donc peut-être qu'il n'était pas si noble. Qu'est-ce qu'il pourrait dire? Parfois, un gars a faim, et il n'était pas sûr s'il avait vraiment de la nourriture s'il avait déjà perdu un colocataire.
Tu prends le gars, tu prends le gogurt.
Il a donné un moment à Scorpio s'il voulait venir. Sinon, il trouverait le slowpoke lui-même et lui traînerait le cul à la cafétéria par l'oreille s'il le devait. Graham quitta le Fourth Floor Flat, s'éloigna du chemin d'un fou qui se lançait désespérément. Ça finirait sans pièce, celui-là. Oh, et bien. Dommage. Il y avait des questions plus importantes à régler, comme la nourriture. Il y avait de la nourriture quelque part. Et la nourriture améliorerait les choses.
Oh, et un colocataire. C'était probablement un truc aussi. La clé de la nourriture. Sérieusement, où était cet imbécile?
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.