[ooc] application

[pheromonal]

IC
Name: Daken (his given name is Akihiro, though he's not used it in some fifty or more years.)
Fandom: Marvel comics
History link: Marvel Wiki
Age: somewhere in his mid-sixties
Canon point: At the end of Siege, as he's escaping from Broxton to go be a pain in Wolverine's rear.

Personality:

Hideous.

I'm completely serious. Daken is the worst kind of person. He toys with people, winds them around his little finger and then tears them apart when they've outlived their use. People are easy, you see. Simple needs, simple desires, for the most part he finds it fairly easy to figure out what makes a person tick, and even easier to exploit it.

Daken has two goals in life. The first being revenge against Wolverine for... Well, at this point it seems to just be for the fact that he exists. It's something that has been an integral part of him for so long, that even now he knows his reasons are moot, he still fully intends to act on it.

The second, and more important, is power. Deliciously vague, of course, but isn't it always? He spends a lot of time and effort playing a decent, trustworthy guy in order to forge connections and bonds that will allow him to climb his way to the top. On the other side of the coin, he much more openly toys with people and manipulates them this way into doing his bidding. Bullseye is the most frequent victim of this, Daken frequently uses his pheromones or just outright teases the poor guy to the point that his anger makes him act in a surprisingly predictable manner.

He has daddy issues out the wazoo. Which started with his beef with his adoptive mother and was cultivated and exploited by Romulus for the length of his life. It's kind of sad when you realise this guy is in his sixties and he is still liable to fly off the handle and kill your face if you compare him to Wolverine, but that's conditioning for you. Really, a lot of this stems from the lack of love in his life, though he would be disgusted and possibly even insulted if anyone suggested as much. As a child, his only real friend was his father, though this relationship was ultimately destroyed by his powers (rather, the fact that he didn't know about them and so couldn't control them) and his jealously and resentment towards his mother and step-brother. After all is said and done, Romulus scoops the child up, steps in as a father figure and moulds him into a weapon. Daken loves him, but Romulus never loved Daken, and this is an incredibly painful point for him.

He is most assuredly an incredible sadist. He takes great pleasure in killing and hurting people in unusually cruel ways. He hurts people and tells them it's for their benefit (such as brutally attacking a soldier and then telling him it was better as now he wouldn't have to go to war.) What is even more interesting, is how sometimes he really does seem to blur the line between sadism and masochism quite brilliantly. Much as I hate to keep bringing him up, his relationship with Bullseye plays this quite clearly. He goads the other man until he snaps, and sometimes it can be hard to tell whether he's enjoying getting his way or the brutal attack more.

In fact, his most damning trait is quite possibly his bloodlust. He likes to think himself something bigger, more important, but he is a killer to the core and has been since he was a child. Even without his memories, his first instinct is to come out guns blazing (or claws slashing, as things may be.) It's the biggest stumbling block on him in his quest for power, arguably larger than his issues with Wolverine and Romulus. On a long enough timeline, Daken will always, always succumb to he need for a good bloodbath, and anyone who's survived being around him for a long enough time knows it.

Seriously. When Bullseye is calling you a bloodthirsty psycho, you have issues.

And he really does. Aside from the ones I mentioned, delusions of grandeur are pretty big for him. He considers himself a king, a god, and no one really helps to dissuade this self-image. When the Norns wanted to use him to help bring about Ragnarok, in his own mind this only cemented his destiny for godhood. Daken is all about ego, though sometimes he gets so caught up in his games that he forgets all about it. Even those who seek him out and consider him perfect for the roles they choose are quick to note that he has far too much pride, and that will be his undoing.

Powers/Abilities:

Daken shares a number of mutant abilities with his father. The first being his healing factor, which manifested at birth. He's been blown to bits and regenerated completely within a day before. It's likely safe to assume that like Wolverine, so long as there is some organic matter left, his entire body will be able to rebuild itself. It also slows his ageing to a crawl, despite being in his sixties he looks at least half his age.

His most notable and recognisable mutation is his claws, retractable and made from bone, they differ from his father's in small ways. Where Wolverine had three that emerged from between his knuckles, Daken has two that emerge from the same place. Also unlike Wolverine, Daken's skeleton is not laced with Adamantium, and so his claws are pure bone, with a dark and jagged appearance. He also has a third that emerges from his inner wrist, these are bonded with metal from the Muramasa blade, which is the only thing known to be a surefire way to put Wolverine and those in his bloodline down for good. It's housed in an adamantium casing in his inner wrist to protect his own flesh.

His senses and reflexes are enhanced to superhuman levels. I... am not sure there's much to expand on there.

He differs from Wolverine in two key areas too.

After his time training with Cyber, Daken is immune to telepathic probing. He also - and this is the big thing - controls pheromones. He casually douses just about everyone to make them bend to his will. Be it to make them more angry, or make himself seem more charming or even to get them in to bed. His power applies to more than just feelings, however. He is able to alter another person's sensory perception, for instance, he can slow another person's perception of time to make himself appear to move at superhuman speeds. He can also use them to mask his scent and make him undetectable to even the likes of Wolverine, (which is pretty special, I mean Logan can practically smell what colour socks you're wearing from 100 metres away.

Prose sample:

The list of things Daken hated was hardly a short one. Not in the least. One thing that ranked particularly high was this ridiculous mask he'd been forced to wear. Mask upon mask, playing hero for the cameras. They had been right, of course, it wasn't in his nature. Heroics were best left to idiots with no foresight. The kind of morons who waged war because they had different ideas on how to save the world.

It had been a necessary façade, being Wolverine - even if the whole thing had touched a bit too close to seeming decidedly Freudian for Daken's comfort - but now it was over. He was almost thankful to be able to ditch the spandex. He'd not fade into obscurity, not now. He'd lived his life in the shadows and that time had long come to an end, but perhaps it was time to return to his original points of business. Removing certain thorns and obstacles from his side.

One couldn't lose sight of their ultimate goal, but sometimes other matters were a little more pressing.

It was important to him, to never lose track. He wouldn't be the first to come close to the real prize in history. Alexander the Great, Charlemange, Genghis Khan. Mankind did occasionally spit out fantastic conquerors, but in the end, even Alexander had succumbed. Not to illness or to his enemies, but to love. Perhaps their physical deaths had been separated by over a year, but he'd died long before then. When Hephaestion had died, that was where his downfall began. One of the greatest generals of recorded history- the closest to godhood any human has come, and he'd ruined it with a silly thing like love.

It was all so...

Human.

Of course, he wasn't one of those mutants who considered themselves the figureheads of a master race imply because of a special gene. They weren't human like a shiba inu wasn't a dog. Breathing underwater doesn't change your hopes, desires, feelings. And that's what it meant to be human, wasn't it?

It was all a matter of heart.

The thought almost made him laugh into his drink. No. He wasn't different because of an X-gene and a few claws - though they did certainly help. He was different. Special. Better, because he had what so many of them were lacking. He would have the world at his feet and never allow himself to be hindered by things like "affection" or "conscience". Silly constructs that obscured your ability to reason.

Or to rule.

'For of men it may generally be affirmed, that they are thankless, fickle, false studious to avoid danger, greedy of gain, devoted to you while you are able to confer benefits upon them, and ready, as I said before, while danger is distant, to shed their blood, and sacrifice their property, their lives, and their children for you; but in the hour of need they turn against you.'

All of them, be they normal, mutant or otherwise superhuman were victim to these whims. Selfish, pathetic, simple creatures hiding behind the idea that their sentience made them more than animals. Something more special than cows heading for the slaughter.

So perhaps he'd bring them their slaughter. In due time.

It was slow going, of course, to build power and keep it, one needed to take their time. Forge connections. Debts, even. It could take a while, especially after recent... Setbacks. But it was so much more worth it in the end. More fulfilling, more... Permanent. Then he would burn the world to a cinder and have it rebuilt as he saw fit.

Lord knows it's a mess as it is anyway.

Links: just this teeny post and this thread I never finished