[hider=Recent Events update located in Profession and at the bottom.] Name: Vern Closet Smith AKA:"The Limit Breaker" Age: 29 Appearance: Loose, long sleeved, button down shirts with dark slacks, a black woven belt, and slip-on dark shoes make up Vern's normal attire. He has black hair with subtle brown streaks and dark brown eyes. Under his modest clothing, Vern is faintly defined all over. His entire body is evenly toned but he still has enough surface fat to be a comfortable pillow should the need arise. [URL=http://s15.photobucket.com/user/Haeo/media/Vern.jpg.html][IMG]http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a354/Haeo/Vern.jpg[/IMG][/URL] Theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND236ej70Tc Height: 5'11" Weight: 165lbs Likes: complex and subtle flavors, natural medicines, exotic spices, cooking, subtlety and complexity in music or art, up-front honesty, decisiveness, quiet, discussion, people, Co-op gaming, thinking things through, clothes that fit the person and not just the persona, healthiness Dislikes: Delusions, contempt, closed minds, passing judgement, crowds, plastic, PVP addicts, excessive improvization, excess in general, revealing outfits, predatory behavior, incompetence, guys who walk out on commitments, doctors and medicine Party Trick: Vern knows a few things about getting the most out of the body he's got. In short, he can lift, break, bend, throw, or catch things that should be too heavy for someone with his build. But, "limit breaking" can cause deep bruising and other soft tissue injuries. He can also go from extremely coordinated and precise to epic clumsy as soon as he gets distracted by conversation. He can't walk and talk at the same time. Profession: Recently managed to acquire his first business, a small bookstore and supply outfit called Ink Sparks located just off a shady corner of the mall parking lot. You know, the spot with the graffiti and the flickering streetlights. It turns out that this tiny storefront bookstore actually maintained wholesale connections and used its extra large backroom to process and ship large orders of books out to schools, libraries and other institutions. The prior owner had dabbled in... other kinds of shipping, damaging the store's reputation and attracting the wrong crowd of customers. However, the legitimate portion of the business was easily profitable as it was. Vern was lucky, and he only had to modify a little of the business. But, it would still take awhile for its reputation to recover from prior scandals, resulting in higher profits. In the meantime, Vern continued living in his apartment and caring for the building, carefully saving money and looking for his next business acquisition. Bio/Personality: Vern started out as the youngest child in a successful family. His grandfather had started with a truck and passed on a farm, a store, a small shipping business, and a storage complex to his children when he died from a heart attack at 78. His widow never had to work for money after he passed and she never lacked for the company of her children since several of them stayed close to home, taking over the management of the family businesses. Vern's father had the management of the shipping business. That kept him close enough to home and productive enough that, by the time Vern was 18, the man owned a locksmith's shop and a small auto body shop as well. He was well on his way to achieving what Vern's grandfather, his father-in-law, had. Then he started losing weight. The cancer wasn't fast but it was stubborn. After almost two years Vern's father passed away, not from cancer, but from the chemo and radiation. The cancer had never gotten bigger than a small button. The condolences from the doctors felt less than hollow that day. Not satisfied with the doctors and their excuses, Vern started studying alternatives to commonly accepted medical practice. His family supported him financially but retained some distance. In their eyes it was just a way of grieving the loss of his father. In a way, part of it was. But then he started finding things. Herbal remedies for cancer that had hardly any side-effects and were not toxic to the patient were the discovery that really turned it from a grief quest to a crusade. He was going to change the world, re-discover these millenia old cures that worked so well for so long, and fix all the evils of modern medicine. Then the law stopped him. It had actually been made illegal to practice herbal medicine over a hundred years before, back when modern medicine was still in its infancy. So, no matter how hard he looked, Vern wasn't able to find anyone who could teach him the finer points of natural medicine. The crusader spirit died. But, he knew that people were stubborn. Somewhere, hidden in something legal, would be part of what he was looking for. Then he found martial arts, yoga, and the wonders of aroma therapy. Martial arts preserved the understanding of the body with an eye toward using it to break things without suffering injuries. Yoga preserved a profound respect for the body's own ability to heal and the belief that the body's energy could be generated and channeled. Aroma therapy used herbal effects to alter the mind and affect the body. Vern studied all of them but he was no super-student. He aquired a part of two martial arts, Karate and Aikido, and pair those parts with yoga's emphasis on relaxed extension and mastery of the breath. Then he used what he learned from aroma therapy and began using the oils of medicinal herbs on himself directly, as well as the aroma. The effects were both subtle and significant. He gained a good amount of strength, mostly in his core muscles instead of his arms and legs, and he stopped getting sick as often or for as long. Still, even with those results, he wasn't able to go farther without a proper teacher who knew how to take personal health and make it professional. So, he was stuck. Vern's family were also beginning to lose patience with him. He was rapidly becoming the family's first "black sheep" in generations. They stopped sending money. So, he looked for work. Being stubborn, upset, and 21, along with some odd situations of questionable legality, resulted in him setting off with a traveling freak show as their newest attraction, "The Limit Breaker". He wasn't on stage alone for months but shared the scene with the group's "Strong Man". It was a fact that he couldn't lift as much weight as the far larger man, but when he slipped during a trick and accidentally threw a 150lb barbell toward the small crowd Vern lived up to his stage name. He got a hand on the barbell and managed to plant it into the stage hard enough that it snapped some of the boards, and he did it with a smile and a victory pose as though it was all part of the act. It took a week for his arm to heal and another week for it to change back to normal colors instead of a mix of lime green and royal purple, but he was famous. He was glad that he wore a mask and went shirtless during that performance. It was different enough from his normal dress that he was still able to disappear after shows. And there were a lot of shows. Videos captured by cell phones went viral on the internet and the size of the crowds trippled, seemingly overnight. The business was booming. But, the fangirls were becoming a problem. He was having a harder and harder time getting away without letting anyone get a look at his face. They all had cell phones and the mask was creating a sense of mystery that just kept pulling them in. Eventually, after their last show in Shine Junction, "The Limit Breaker" quit the show and walked away at the height of his popularity with his earnings. He still exchanges e-mails with his former co-worker, the "Strongman". But, other than that he has no real connections other than family. It took a couple nights at hostels before he found a place that suited him. It was small and out of the way. One of two small apartment additions built on top of a three story, four bedroom house. To get to it he had to follow the, fairly clean, alley around back and then climb three flights of wood stairs that were slippery when wet and worse when icy. But, the owner of the building hadn't been able to get any renters for the house or the other apartment so he cut Vern's rent in half in exchange for help with maintaining the building until it became profitable again. With the reduced rent, Vern could afford the place easily enough but he needed to find a job. Specifically, he needed a job where he could avoid talking to people or attracting attention while getting enough money to take care of business. He had his personal goals but it was time to live up to the example his father and grandfather had given him. He needed to establish himself so that, if he ran into the right girl, he could take care of her properly so that she could have freedom to live worry free if he happened to die before he planned. It was time to take that budding tradition to the third generation. Step one, get back to earning money and work on finding businesses to buy. Since coming to Shine City, Vern's outlook on life has changed only slightly. Being present for a murder, even when the details were out of his view, and befriending his cross-chasm neighbor have caused him to be even more careful about things in general. He is more inclined to worry than ever, especially since his new friend had a stalker problem and a couple neuroses to season her life with danger. Still, in spite of these factors, Vern has not seen or heard from his neighbor in weeks. He worries constantly but strives to distract himself with work, hoping to hear from her soon. Also, though he has never been a very social person, he has begun to seek social venues for the sake of practice. He is a business owner now. He needs to be able to move casually in various social circles without embarrassing himself or weakening his business reputation. However, he has avoided clubs in favor of visiting various cafes and restaurants for these practices. [/hider]