Neon

Age: 29 30

Birthday: Who knows tbh

Gender: Trans Man

Category: Prostitute and Bartender at Temptations

Appearance Description



Neon looks like an anthropomorphic concrete building covered in neon lights. He stands at a tall 6’7”ft with medium brown skin covered in freckles and dresses in monochrome colors in modern, fashionable styles, sometimes patterned, often not, paired with colorful piercings and accessories. The bulk of him is very simple, but his hair and eyes draw attention in particular because of their bright neon colors. As much as he would love to experiment with colors in his wardrobe, he would loathe to coordinate his outfit and have his hair/eye combo ruin everything by changing at the middle of the day. It’s wiser to stick to colors that aren’t as loud as his hair. People often mistake him for pastel goth but the truth is that he would prefer to be a pastel everything.

As far as body goes, Neon is on the thin, slightly muscular side. He has a lot of tattoos, with the most prominent one being barbed wire around the neck, arms, torso and stomach. On his left arm, he has a KitKat bar barcode, which is symbolic for how he loves chocolate, and underneath it are a list of important dates he’d rather not forget. On his right arm, he has a tasteful black pattern going down his elbow. At the back just slightly below his shoulders are white angel wings. Neon is always looking for good things to ink on his body, so he might eventually have more tattoos.

Everybody who spends enough time at the City would be able to recognize Neon, even if they don’t know him personally. He has a rather distinct appearance. One can’t shake the feeling that he always seems to be around somehow.



Personality Description

Neon has a very aloof and contemplative demeanor that give people the impression that he’s a smart man, and he is, but it’s not usually in the way they think. He won’t be able to cite thinkers or answer deep Math problems, but he’s a fast learner who’s very rational and sharp, and he’s very good with his hands. He looks at objects, people, and events, and he sees patterns that may emerge and how they line up. He doesn’t act until he understands, which sometimes makes it look like he doesn’t like acting at all.

Neon always aspires to be the bigger person in a situation, but integrity is bad for the health. Because of this, he gives off the aura that he’s unaffected by bad things happening to him. Sometimes, he even convinces himself that he’s unaffected. He suffers from a bad fear of detachment from his surroundings and his own body, so it’s common for him to partake in substances and activities that could boost physical sensations. Oddly enough, he’s not really the sort of person that would get addicted unless he’s in a really bad place, and even then he can stop any time he wants.

Perhaps a better word to describe him would be “deliberate.” Neon is deliberate in almost everything he does, even if most people don’t see it. He chooses actions that would yield the best results; the right amount of words that could help a person; precise wiring that could jolt a TV back to life.

Underneath his quiet exterior, Neon is very passionate, competitive and perfectionistic, with most of his causes being centered on altruism or other interests. Neon is a nerdlord that finds almost everything interesting and they inspire him to pursue something like them too, but he’s afraid to pursue them because of his own insecurities. His biggest critic is himself, and he doesn’t really forgive himself if he quits a job, a cause, a hobby or a person because of his own mental issues, which happens often.

Neon’s the type of person that breaks little by little underneath the surface, shrugging off the small things until they build up and eventually overwhelm him. This sort of coping mechanism is not very healthy, and it got so bad that around his early twenties, it developed into full on depression. Neon still does suffer from depression, and when he’s in this state, he prefers to be surrounded by people even if it’s frustrating to him.

He has no pretentious bone in his body. Neon is very open-minded and accepting of most people, and he wouldn’t really think badly of anyone unless given reason to. He loves change and innovation, seeing them as the natural progression to evolution. Even though he’s a good kid, he prefers it if people want to change because of their own decision and doesn’t like forcing his help on others until he can very plainly see that they need it.

Although he prefers intimate, one-on-one conversations, he can laugh and have fun with large groups of people, but after a fun night, he would need days to recuperate. His jokes can vary depending on the kind of group he’s in. He’s not very verbal with his affections – rather, they manifest courteous nods and pats, and how he would invest time and money to get someone he likes something they really like.

Despite his amicable nature, Neon has a spine made of steel, and he’s not above cheating or dirty deals if he sees they’re the best course of action. If someone spits acid at him, he’d spit acid at them back. If they mess with him or his friends, he finds a way to destroy them. Sometimes, his own rationality would lead him to believe that some nasty people are better off dead, and he’s not above being the one to make it happen.



Powers

Neon is, possibly, the personification of the concept of a city. As such, Neon embodies many characteristics about cities that either empower him or bog him down. Oddly enough, people that are familiar with fae would sense that he gives off a fae-like aura, but whether or not that’s true is debatable.



Cities are magnificent things. They’re fast-paced, vibrant and colorful. They’re a new start for whoever may need them. Neon embodies all the good and glittering aspects of a city, which manifests in his powers.

Psychometry – Neon can get impressions of an object’s life to every dead or artificial thing his skin comes into contact with. He can’t accurately foretell the past of something, but he can get ballparks of how long it lived, what its uses were, if it lived a good life, if it was closely associated with a specific person. If the object belonged to a person for a long time and was particularly loved, he can use it to track that person. He likes using this power with buildings in particular because he can get lost for hours just mentally sorting through all the feelings that were experienced in a particular building. To him, almost every object in a city sings. He can’t use this power on organic things like plants or living people.

Light Manipulation – Neon can make light – sunshine, neon, fluorescent, you name it. He can make little balls of light like fluttering fireflies or Christmas lights, and at the other end of the spectrum, huge bursts or beams. His lights can break minor-medium illusions, and the larger bursts can break even the strongest illusions. Also, he can use them to make people happy, but their happiness will only last as long as they’re looking at the light. This power is limited by what he can see. They have no temperature or other effects. They won’t last once he leaves the area.

Minor Technomancy – It’s like necromancy, except he’s giving gadgets a second life. Neon’s touch can fix gadgets and robots no longer working as long as the components that made them work remained, and even if they weren’t, he can fix most things because of some natural mechanical intuition. For example, if your TV broke because it fell into a pool, you can dry it out, hand it to Neon and he can get it to work in a jiffy.

Neon Hair/Eyes – PASSIVE. Like mentioned in his appearance section, an odd side effect from being a personification of a city. Neon’s hair and eyes can randomly change to neon light colors at any given time. He has no control over this power.

Immortality – PASSIVE. In the sense that he would never age or die from old age. He could still die from disease, murder or being removed from a city for more than a month’s time. Basically, he can live a long life if he stays away from guns and salads.




Of course, cities aren’t all lights, technology and glamor. Beneath all of its glittering possibilities lies the horrible truth: Cities chew up the weak and bring them lower than they could go. Neon also embodies all the filth, corruption and pollution of a city, which manifest in his powers.

Fly Swarm – Neon can turn into a swarm of flies if he wills it. There’s really no limit to this ability, and he’ll still live if you kill some of his flies. If you kill 80% of them, he will die.

Degenerating Touch – An activated power. If Neon wishes to rot objects or plants, or fill a sheet of metal with rust, he has to touch them and consciously activate this power. The degenerating process is pretty fast if he’s focused, but it won’t work if he’s distracted. This ability does not work on people.

City Animal Communication – Neon can communicate with stray cats, dogs, mice and insects that grew up in the streets of the city. Of course, they aren’t always insightful, and he can’t talk to domesticated pets. Stray cats are cool but domesticated cats are a mystery.

Perpetual Sickness – PASSIVE. Neon is always sick. Always. Neon was raised in filth and ate food the equivalent of garbage his entire life. His body chemicals were altered in such a dramatic way that, if he switches to healthy food, he wouldn’t be able to digest them, and he can’t even breathe natural clean air properly even though he’s fine in sterilized environments. Removing Neon from a city and into something green like a forest would literally kill him. The upside of this is that he has a near cast iron stomach and can live off most kinds of food rats do, like moldy Chinese or stuff literally out of a dumpster. It would still be gross but you can’t be picky.



Biography

Neon was born with another name to a family that’s dead to him, in a rundown loft within a city that he despises. He grew up in a household that perpetuated a cycle of abuse: his alcoholic father was a lower rank Mafioso member who often got chewed out by his boss so he took his frustrations out on his mother, and his poor, beaten mother took everything out on her kids, raising her hand when one of them even so much as cried or yelled. Neon was the second oldest of five siblings, but as far as he was concerned, he was the oldest and, perhaps, even most responsible person in the family.

The five siblings attended a local public school, but when Neon was ten, his outstanding performance earned him a scholarship for the prestigious all-girls private school at the other end of town. Neon happily attended with the idea that he’d be able to get a good job and put an end to his parents’ reign of terror.

It was harder than he thought.

The first problem was supplies. Even if Neon had a scholarship, he could barely scrape by with the necessary school supplied needed in books and projects, and his father often threatened to hit him when he tried asking so he leeched off his classmates. Second, he didn’t realize that he’d been acting like a surrogate parent to his siblings until they were separated. Often, Neon would get in trouble for leaving class at the middle of the day to assist his siblings with problems, like his little sister getting bullied or his little brother crying because they made him go on-stage.

Neon studied and worked hard, and when he reached fourteen years old, he finally snapped at his parents and broke down mentally. Unfortunately, poverty could afford little dramatics, so after a week of staying in bed, Neon’s mother forced Neon to go back to his old school.

Neon became a rebel, and in being a rebel, he found himself. Neon traded his school skirt for pants, put on a black blazer and cut his own hair short, switching his given name “Alicia” to “Alex.” He got mixed up in the wrong crowds, and for a year and a half, got lost in a haze of cigarettes, alcohol, loud music and the insides of many girls’ skirts. This first time his powers manifested, he was face down in an alley covered in his own vomit, with the garbage around him rotting to the point they were black. His own arm turned into a bed of flies.

Neon went home, and immediately, his face met his father’s fist. His father screamed at him for losing his scholarship, and while they were on that topic, he also hated his “tomboy” look and “blatant lesbianism.” When his father was done “pounding the sense out of him,” Neon turned into a swarm of flies and traveled into a city far away from home.

This new city sang. The histories of buildings sang underneath his fingertips. Neon found odd jobs to sustain himself. They weren’t strictly legal and they weren’t always safe, but he lived as a man living on his own terms. He was comforted by how, if he ever experienced any pain, he could take full responsibility of it. He went through several jobs – assistant mechanic, fast food cashier, bus boy, store attendant, teacher’s assistant.

Neon got his name Neon when he started working as a waiter at a night club. He learned a lot of things there. He learned that he was good at telling drinks from smells, how to wink at the exact time to earn more tips, and how to tie cherry knots with his tongue. He learned that he was a little gay, and he had a soft spot for small boys that blush a lot. He absorbed this scene into himself that his eyes and hair reflected his feelings, and he could replicate the happiness he experienced from watching them with little balls of light.

He learned a lot of things in the city, more than what he could’ve learned in school. He became the man that he was because of it. Of course, it wasn’t always perfect. Neon had gotten mugged and injured; almost murdered a few times, harassed way way more. But you take the good things with the bad.

Around 19, Neon got his invitation to Starlight Academy and, after 5 years, graduated with a Dual Major of Mechanical Engineering and Creative Writing. Neon has since officially integrated himself into the streets of Manta Carlos city, living in a small bedspace at the ass end of the Underground, switching jobs as many times as he switches hair colors. His favorite kinds of jobs always seem to be shady to some degree. Neon keeps a close ear to the ground, and often knows what’s going on within the city, even if he doesn’t know people personally.



Additional Information:

Give him sweets and you’ll be his favorite person.