Mike

This character profile was last reviewed and approved by: Admin 12:36, 8 August 2012 (EDT) Please notify a moderator if any major changes are made.

Mike
Name	Michael Hastings Jr. (just 'Mike' to his friends)
Species	Fisher
Age	14
Height	115 cm
Weight	21 kg
Special abilities & skills	Logical/thinks clearly even under stress. Clever/good with puzzles and logic things
Unique ability	Shadow manipulation through the Gauntlet
Carried items	Gauntlet on left hand Warm, windproof jacket Duffel bag with food and necessities
Ability Ratings
Agility	Can manage 40-60 MPH for short stretches, and as a fisher, is naturally a decent swimmer. Mike's main plus in this field is his ability to accelerate rapidly from a standstill.
Strength	The Gauntlet at full power can lift a small car, but the rest of his body is pretty pathetic. He has little upper body strength, though the weight of the Gauntlet itself lends him some force.
Toughness	While the Gauntlet is hard enough to serve as a partial shield, the rest of his body is unguarded and vulnerable. Mike himself doesn't have much tolerance for pain. He just lacks the mass to take hits.
Energy	Mike has some inherent energy, which the Gauntlet employs in order to work. He has average or even slightly subpar stamina, which limits his speed to short bursts.

General Info

Mike is an individual who seems to have an uncanny knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Being the son of an inventor who insisted on living as far away from society as possible and was only just on the functioning side of mad scientist, his general response to anything that seems like it’s going to be trouble is to migrate to the opposite side of the room or, better yet, flee the premises entirely. Unfortunately, Mike’s latest problem has anchored itself firmly to one of his arms and he lacks the resolve or motivation to adapt his usual tactics to the situation.

As most people know him, Mike is jumpy and nervous, with a weak will but a high sense of self-preservation. This is not to call him a coward who'll ditch you when you need him- Mike is a coward, but he owns up to it and usually has the decency to take his friends with him. He's reluctant to speak up, is borderline insomniac by this point, and tends to panic easily. But on the flip side, it takes a lot to get him to stop thinking. While not any more learned than usual, Mike is clever, crafty, and has the sort of brain that solves problems. In an atmosphere where people are willing to listen to him, Mike can be a handy person to have around, though he is inexperienced in combat strategy.

His lack of self confidence tends to make him a satellite in most situations and he's very easily forgotten and overlooked. It should be noted he's not all doormat, though: being belittled and ignored for too long has given him a slow boiling temper, which can flare up surprisingly quickly, especially if he's under stress or hasn't been sleeping much lately.

Staring intently at Mike makes him uncomfortable. Asking more than five questions in short order with a stern look on your face makes Mike uncomfortable. Staring intently at the Gauntlet makes Mike uncomfortable. Any location that has a reasonable chance of being haunted makes Mike uncomfortable. Bringing up ghosts in conversation makes Mike uncomfortable. Mike is very rarely, if ever, comfortable. He also has a nervous twitch in one of his eyes that acts up from time to time.

Ability Info

Mike himself is somewhat sickly and doesn’t have the best immune system. Given that he’s wandering around in the great outdoors and often in the rain, this means that more often than not he’s dealing with some kind of cold. He actually has some pretty pathetic stamina and his physical capabilities are so-so at best, but his sense of self-preservation and a whole lot of practice makes him very good at spotting potential warning signs and, failing all else (which it usually does) he’s quite the sprinter.

He's no trained fighter and would probably be easily overpowered in combat thanks to his rather low pain tolerance.

Mike’s only supernatural abilities are attached to the Gauntlet. When active, the Gauntlet animates its own shadow, which can interact with physical objects. Its lifting strength and reach are both entirely dependent on how dark the area is — a dark area with lots of shadows, the arm is much bigger, stronger, and can stretch farther, though the further it stretches, the more it loses size and power. It is always anchored in Mike’s shadow, so in order to make use of any shadow to transport the arm, his shadow needs to be either directly or indirectly touching it. (He could stretch the arm across a hallway if his shadow was touching the shadow of one piece of furniture, which is touching the shadow of another piece of furniture, which is touching the next shadow, and so on and so forth- and it doesn't have to touch completely, as he can sacrifice some distance to stretch it across the gap) Light is the only barrier that really means something to the arm (a concentrated beam of light can actually 'cut off' the arm and force it to retreat, and a weaker light source can weaken its grip to the extent that someone held could wriggle out of it) as it is basically a controllable shadow — as long as Mike can see what he's grabbing at, he can get through just about any porous deterrent: through cell bars, under the cracks in doors, into narrow crevices... Physically, it’s intangible, even when holding onto something. The only way the physical world affects the arm is, like any shadow, it needs something to project onto. A bottomless gap or, say, a wide chasm without walls on either side would thwart its progress.

The greatest weakness of the Gauntlet is that it anchors Mike in place when using it. If he moves, the arm retreats back to an ordinary shadow, and a significant distraction (like, say, punching him in the face) will achieve the same effect.

Mike rarely uses the Gauntlet unless pressured into it or he feels that there's no other choice. Like most of his father’s inventions, he really doesn’t trust it, or understand its inner workings. Unidentified critical components of it came from Pumpkin Hill. That alone makes Mike extremely leery of it.

Miscellanea

Gauntlet

The Gauntlet covers his left hand from the middle of his upper arm down, and is made of some metal that has been blackened and tarnished horribly from the moment it rolled out of his father's workshop, save for the fluorescent green 'X' stamped on the back. It seems somewhat orange in color and has a rusty texture on the outside. According to Mike, the inside of the gauntlet is nothing so much as very cold, and his entire arm has been numb since it first happened onto his limb. It fits basically to the figure of his arm and hand, and its most notable feature is a round opening in the palm from which an eerie green light spills out. Staring at the light for long enough will show that there are small, silhouette figures passing back and forth in front of the light, each one with a wide, untrustworthy smile.

Trivia

• Likes: Sanity, predictable patterns, logic puzzles, beds, swimming, warmth, company, water (especially the sea). He also has something of an ear for classical music.
• Dislikes: Ghosts, the cold, insomnia, being alone to as he puts it, "Slowly go crazy in the wilderness", spinny rides or things involving a lot of spinning.
• Favorite color: Blue and green, particularly ocean tones
• Birthday: January 24th
• Home: Formerly a small house in the foothills of Pumpkin Hill. Presently, wherever there is reasonably even ground to sleep on.
• Voice: In my head, he sounds like Jay Baruchel as the voice of Hiccup from How To Train Your Dragon.
• Other Trivia:
  • He's under the impression that the Gauntlet is sentient, and tends to yell at it and blame it for his problems when particularly stressed.
  • Whenever his eye starts twitching, it's always the left one. Usually the lower lid.
  • Mike's hair is an accurate meter of how stressed he is. The messier it is, the closer he is to complete breakdown.

Beyond the Profile

Played By

Forum username: Person vs Badger

Credits

Character belongs to PersonVsBadger/PVB, picture by the same.

Only for use on spindash.net