Dante Mercer

Name: Dante Mercer

Age: 27

Birthday: March 23rd

Gender: Cis male

Orientations: Homosexual demiromantic

Category: Citizen, villain of sorts, your friendly neighborhood stalker, NPC

Birth Place / Hometown: Manta Carlos (So he claims, to some, but not really.)

Occupation: Accountant (the most normal and dull thing you could think of, of course.)

Race/Species: Shadow monster. Looks fully human most of the time, and keeps actual species a secret.

Appearance Description:



Dante is a slender man in his late twenties that's a lot stronger as well as scarier than he looks. If he didn't usually wear such a pleasant expression, and laid back posture in his every day life, his features would make him look naturally grim. In fact, Dante is a master at putting off that type of vibe and making himself seem smaller, less intimidating, and less important. It's not a power, it was simply learned out of necessity on his part. People didn't like him as a kid, or his abilities.

He never really stopped having difficulty making actual connections, but he did manage to start getting viewed as a harmless and nice presence in other's lives- as well as the guy they might just invite along to something when they don't have any better options.

It's better than nothing.

Dante has soft, straight and neat, grey hair. His eyes are a mild light blue-violet, and they look kind. He has a straight, sharp nose. His eyebrows are thin and dark. His smile is gentle. He's five feet eleven inches tall. He usually wears simple outfits made up of slacks and button ups. He's decently orderly, but not too orderly, not threateningly so. Because Dante tries very hard not to be threatening.

Shadows creep around him a bit more than they do for others, no matter how much he tries to avoid it.

Personality Description:

Dante really doesn't want to hurt anyone.

He's just a little messed up inside.

He understood himself and his abilities terribly when he was young, and it hasn't gotten too much better since then- but as a kid in the foster care system, he mostly had to resort to multiple forms of denial in response to this. It was the only thing that let him survive, and it stayed with him. The ability to deny, deny, deny, just swallow it all down- as well as make himself seem harmless and pleasant, at all times.

For the most part, Dante doesn't break. When he does, he tries to find a quiet hole to crawl into to do so, and even then things are warped. He doesn't know how to fix his own problems, just bottle them up, let them burst, repeat.

Being a shadow has helped him keep all this under the radar, he just has to embrace that symbolic part of himself rather than the other sides, and not scare anyone away like he used to.

Dante on the surface is pleasant, kind, a very helpful guy as well as forgettable and unimportant. An average guy with an average job, and perhaps a little more than average nice persona.

Dante in his purest form is overemotional, moody, so very lonely and desperate not to be thrown away (what can he do? he'll do anything. be anyone. just say the word), clingy, full of insecurities, twisted, without malicious intent but in need of somewhere to vent all of his bottled up negativity. He's afraid of living up to being a monster, what others used to call him- but also willing to make one of himself for a higher purpose.

Dante in all honestly is a lot, and trying to be just the opposite of that.

For the most part, nobody has really gotten close enough to break his facade.

Well. Until...

Species traits/Powers:

Shadow monster

Dante is a being of darkness and questionable existence. When he was young people hated and were afraid of him, afraid of the dark, ready to lash out and punish him in the place of things they didn't really understand in general. He's usually solid, but sometimes he feels just a bit fuzzy.

Dante is immortal, and can heal, but doesn't lack the ability to feel and register pain just as much as anyone else. He can pick himself up with some determination, and won't die, but he feels a whole lot. He's oversensitive in general, which can be a gift and a curse, as he can both hear, smell, and see a lot, but also be overwhelmed by all he picks up. He has some added strength, but not so much that he could lift a car with his bare hands or anything- that he would do with added shadow limbs.

Shadow limbs:

Dante can use thicker fog like shadow limbs, usually hand shaped, to do various things. They're very strong, more solid than they look, as well as being quick and agile. The bigger the limb the more concentration it takes/the less he can keep up other limbs. It's easier having either a bunch of small limbs or one big one, but it also depends on Dante's energy levels.

Incorporeal:

Dante can take on a wispy shadowy form, in a humanoid shape, completely flat and thin, or like a fog, and not be touched by any physical means. He can creep along unnoticed like this, practically a perfect sneaking as well as breaking and entering method if he can find a crack to slip through. He's still subject to mental and spiritual attacks/protections like this- that is, if you can find him. His smell goes away in this form, and his aura becomes even more muffled.

Muffled aura:

When in a humanoid form, Dante can water himself down enough to give off the aura of just being a very average human, not a monster, not someone with powers. Even when using his powers, he can quiet things down a great deal, not perfectly but when people aren't expecting him anyway it's more than enough. As said above, when in incorporeal form and not otherwise doing anything, it's at its most invisible.

Biography:

Dante's origins are questionable, but he was pretty much born into the foster care system. Due to his monster nature, the creepy aura around him as well as his hiccups of power, he was constantly being shuffled around and never in one place for long.

And when he was in one place, nothing good was happening to him there. Dante quickly adjusted himself, trying too hard to be both pleasant and average, as well as very agreeable to what others wanted from him. This improved his life in some areas and brought worse consequences in others. He's mentally buried most of this, and in his current state, wouldn't be able to function otherwise.

He'd gotten a Starlight Academy invitation letter at around elementary age, but put off ever accepting or looking into it until he was eighteen and needed somewhere to go, someplace different to be, since he was at the end of his rope with his own psyche and needed to switch it up.

Even when he did move to an island full of powered people, and hypothetically even his own species, his old habits of making himself more ordinary and agreeably neutral, unthreateningly average, they never went away. He was in too deep, and had been taught that was how he was going to keep surviving with any sense of comfort. So while he had been getting cozy with his abilities in secret for the last handful of years in his life, he didn't take many magic related classes, didn't do anything ambitious or crazy. He majored in accounting and then quickly got a solid job in just that, and has been settled there ever since. He's neither rich or poor, lives in a classy apartment, has a routine in his everyday life, and has casual friends without closeness.

It's enough. And even though he sometimes has flashes of memories, even though he sometimes breaks down from the lack of care and fixing he's received, even though he's lonely, he's the most safe he's ever been. It's enough, right?

Somehow though, he'd tried getting into a relationship, and still marvels at how quick and easy, how simple, it can be to just change your life, have a change of heart.

Being heated about something, after a life of denial and easily swallowed blandness, feels good.

He doesn't know what'll happen to him if it stops now, and doesn't want to know. He won't let it happen. It's too late for that, too late to go back.

Extra:

Worst Memory: In denial about most of them even existing.

Best Memory: Anything Cody related.

Likes: Cody. Working with clean and unemotional situations and being able to forget about himself.

Dislikes: Really looking at himself and his own mental state. Thinking about his past. Being lonely and not having any real connections. Being himself.

Weaknesses: Being left alone after actually getting attached to a person. Self hatred and denial. His own bottled up and shaky emotions. Being weak willed/too neutral in a lot of situations.

Strengths: Figuring out puzzles, getting through repetitive but clean work, shutting off his brain to get things done, surviving fucked up situations through any means necessary, determination/stubbornness in certain situations (either work/logic challenges, or something he's truly invested in, the second bit being an aspect he hasn't previously been able to show off)

Fears: Being a monster. Losing Cody/having Cody hate him/being unimportant to Cody. Being honest to himself and others about everything.

Habits/Hobbies: Playing logic/strategy based games/brain teasers, reading, working

Skills / Talents: Dealing with complicated situations as long as he doesn't get his emotions mixed into it, doing paperwork, business style writing, dealing with numbers, getting along with everyone at least a little just by being harmless and inconsequential (even if people don't always have lasting interest in him, at least they usually also don't have strong feelings of hate in there), stealth related pursuits, putting on a facade and burying things

Additional Information:

Pretty much a survivor of every type of abuse, and has a whole mixed cocktail of mental things going on.

Cody Chord's official stalker. So official and professional.