POWER DESCRIPTIONS

Even without much training, Lucas has a very strong ability in psychometry. He can generally pick up things even from objects with very minimal emotional connection if he's focusing.  It takes effort on his part to not pick up readings off of especially emotionally charged people or items.  It causes a constant drain on him as, at this age, his peers are rather emotional pubescent teenagers.  With a mild impression, Lucas sees the scene or feels the emotion in a distant way; much like a memory, slightly removed from himself.  With stronger ones, however, he is mentally overwhelmed and experiences the entirety of the scene or event from the point of view of the person or the person who was touching the item.  In those more rare situations, it leaves him unaware of his immediate surroundings until he is released from the psychic impression ensnaring him.

His Holy Melody is a bit hit or miss.  Lucas has had very little luck utilizing it intentionally, to be honest.  Usually it is simply pulled from him when he is lost in the passion of playing his violin.  The fact of the mater is, Lucas's emotions are directly connected to his Holy Melody.  He must feel truly and fully enraptured of something for his Melody to work; not an easy task for a sixteen year old transboy.  When he gets into that perfect, trancelike state, those who can hear his song are revitalized.  Fatigue, minor to moderate scrapes and bruises, even minor sprains are all have the natural healing process accelerated to the point of healing within minutes.  More severe injuries, like concussions and broken bones are also accelerated but probably will not be fully healed during the duration of his playing.  Even illness is effected, Lucas's power giving a boost to the listeners' immune systems to fight off infections more effectively and rapidly.  But as wondrous as this power can be, it is completely dependent on his emotions.  If Lucas does not channel his passion and love and unbridled joy into his playing the only result is a pleasing melody; nothing miraculous about it.

APPEARANCE

Lucas is, to be blunt, pretty as hell.  He is easily mistaken for a girl and that's largely in part to the fact that he's trans and there's not much he can do about his delicate features. He was born with them and he is stuck with them short of plastic surgery. His eyes are wide and a such a pale blue that the blood vessels give them a purple to reddish hue in some lights.  He's been gifted, or cursed, with long eyelashes and an almost doll-like face.  Even when he scowls he looks cute rather than menacing. 

His height does him no favors as Lucas isn't all that tall.  He's just tall enough at 5'8" that he's at least tall enough to be taken seriously as a boy as opposed to a joke.  In spite of his best efforts, he's been unable to put on anything in the way of bulk and it means that even at his most masculine, he still appears pretty androgynous.  Naturally, his hair is somewhere between a strawberry blond and very light auburn.  He dyes it, however, in part to match his adopted family better and part to make the hair on his head less stark a contrast to his much darker eyebrows.  The one unusual thing about his appearance is the round, shiny scar just under his left clavicle, a reminder of that night that everything changed.

PERSONALITY

Lucas is... complicated.  On the one hand he's a bright kid with a creative streak who keeps his head down and minds his own business.  He tends to avoid making waves and slides under the radar a lot.  He's slow to anger and pretty self-controlled over all. Although he isn't super social, he's perfectly amiable most of the time.  Even when he dislikes someone he usually keeps a civil tongue in his mouth.

On the other hand he never really dealt with his childhood trauma and has just buried it under several layers of maladaptive coping.  He ignores his own problems to help others half the time but starts isolating when he gets overwhelmed.  If his isolation time is intruded upon it makes him rather snarly and defensive.  He punishes himself by pushing himself too hard to attain some degree of perfection or worth in some regards. 

He feels out of place in all social settings because in some ways he doesn't think he belongs; his birth parents are dead, his birth siblings are MIA, his adoptive parents dislike him, and his adopted sister is a mystery to him.  He clings to his earliest memories with a stubborn tenacity that has kept him from growing into himself.

Unbeknownst even to him, Lucas has a bit of a dark side.  He ignores that about himself which he doesn't desire to know, but it's still there.  That part of him is considerably less emotionally involved than he behaves as.  It's not that he doesn't care, it's that he isn't emotionally effected by much at his core.  It mostly manifests as a certain unflappable nature.  He's rarely, if ever, truly ashamed or embarrassed.  Very little gets under his skin and even he isn't fully aware of how much of his emotional reactions he manufactures. 

BIOGRAPHY

Lucas's life began in a very different world than the one he currently has.  He was born under the name Raisa Calliope Valentine and was the second of fraternal twins.  He was born healthy enough but his twin sister, Rayne, was rather frail and sickly from birth. It made him develop a protective, almost clingy, air in regards to her.  She was his precious twin and it was his duty and pleasure to keep her safe.

His initial years were spent carefully hidden away from the life of crooked deals and assassinations his family line was infamous for; at least in the underworld.  He, and the rest of his siblings, were shielded from the dangers the rest of the family faced by a thick, impenetrable wall of ignorance.  Their father, in his infinite wisdom, thought it the best way to keep them all safe.

And for a while it seemed to work.  The protective cocoon the Valentine children were wrapped in was holding strong and they were none the wiser regarding the seedy underbelly of society the rest of the family clung to.  But good things never do last and the danger came a-knocking when their father least suspected.  It was impossible to hide away the vulnerable children in safety if one was not willing to stop playing the game. So that happy childhood came to a bloody end.

Lucas, then called Raisa, had been upstairs when the idyllic life he had known was shattered by the sound of gunfire.  Thinking nothing of his own safety, he had bolted down the stairs to find Rayne.  If something bad were happening he had to protect her. He had to find Rayne and his older siblings and make sure they and their parents were ok. 

He was crying out Rayne's name, in that sharp pitch that can only come from a terrified yet defiant child, when he ran directly into the path of a stray bullet.  It was like dying only the pain went on and on.  Paralyzed with the sheer agony of his wound, Lucas dropped to the hardwood floor, laying stunned in a slowly growing puddle of his own blood.  The last thing he thought before the darkness claimed him was his sister's name.

He awoke in a hospital, surrounded by the beep of heart monitors and the antiseptic smell that only medical facilities seem to produce.  He had lost a lot of blood, he had been told, and was lucky to be alive.  That was all well and good but where was his family?  Where were his parents and siblings?  Where was his twin? The doctors and nurses had no answers.  When the police came to question the apparent lone survivor they had no answers either.  The way they talked made it sound like the whole family was dead.  But that couldn't be.  Rayne had to be okay.  He would know if she wasn't, right?  They were twins!  He would have to know!

Alas, he never did find out.  He was put into the the care of the state and was eventually adopted by the Tierney family. Still, he never stopped searching for his sister or the rest of his family.  His adoptive parents thought it was insulting that in spite of being taken in by their family this child was so bent on finding the family that had clearly abandoned them.  It also didn't help that this child was not the well behaved little girl they had wanted.

That wasn't to say that Lucas, or Raisa, as he was still called, was a bad kid.  It was true that he was dealing with a certain amount of trauma and the loss of everything he had known.  And it was true that that made him sometimes hard to be around.  But as far as the Tierneys were concerned, the worst part of all was the way that he more girly they dressed and treated him the more he seemed to act out.  It wasn't an intentional thing on his part.  It was just that constantly having a feminine role shoved onto him when it felt so completely off got Lucas's back up and made him feel cornered.  It was no wonder it made him a bit tetchy sometimes.  

Since "Raisa" wasn't going to be the sort of daughter they wanted, his adopted parents took to adopting another child, providing Lucas with a sister again.  She was a bit younger than him and over all rather a sweet kid.  It wasn't the same as having his family back but it was nice to have someone who didn't get on him for breathing wrong.  She latched onto him as a real sibling but for Lucas it was strange.  He enjoyed her company but it felt like accepting her as his little sister would make him a traitor to his real family and the siblings he had never stopped searching for.

With the spread of the internet into every facet of daily life, Lucas's search went online. He had seen success stories of other twins that had been reunited through the internet and was still hopeful that maybe Rayne was out there somewhere. No matter how he searched though, he never found her.  But he refused to give up.

All that time on the internet did provide something, however.  It gave him a name for the disconnect he felt at his assigned gender as a girl: dysphoria.  It meant that he was a transboy.  Unfortunately, he knew well that his adoptive parents would never accept that sort of self-discovery.  They were too rigidly set in their all too conservative Catholic ways and he was up shit creek.

He gained an unexpected bit of leverage on his "parents."  His dear adoptive father, who was mayor at the time, was having an affair with a lawyer he had met.  This lawyer was a man.  To make things even more scandalous,  his wife was also dallying with another man.  Neither parent was aware of the other's affair and when Lucas found out through the accidental use of his newly awakened psychometry it gave him all the leverage he needed to twist whatever he wanted out of the two of them.

It began with money for clothing and accessories to fit his gender and ended with permission to attend Aurora.  It seemed that the Holy Melody that he so often inadvertently used when he performed had not gone unnoticed by Aurora's scouts.  It was no surprise to them that he also had more than a touch of psychometry, when that came out.

And so with his adoptive parents' curses and ill wishes that he went off to Aurora Academy in his second year of high school.  He no longer had to perform as a girl and he still had the both of them by the proverbial balls.  Things were looking up for Lucas.  Now if only his search for his missing twin could come to fruition. 

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