Name: Cade Sinclair
Age: 23
Gender: Male

Appearance (Before Awakening):
A fair-skinned, lightly freckled young man with an athletic body type built through sports like wrestling and soccer, as well as stolen gym time. He stood about 5'10 (but told people he was 6'), with deep brown eyes and a mop of red hair. His style mostly consisted of shorts, hoodies and athletic wear, though with a surprisingly stylish bent when he can afford it.

Appearance (After Awakening): (In full)
His hair and skin grew slightly paler, duller (save for a bold streak of new color), while his eyes turned a bright, ethereal icy blue. When he goes full throttle it's almost like halos of light form around these eyes, sun through ice.

His body filled out more, he became a little broader, and patterns took shape on his skin. These curling, cold to the touch, angular feathered designs take up the entirety of his back, tapering off as they reach down his hips, his biceps where they crest over his shoulders, and his hair line as they crawl up and around the nape of his neck. At first glance they might appear to be bright white tattoos, but with a closer look it easily becomes apparent that it's a layer of frost embedded in his skin that at times grows or contracts a little but never disappears.

He also grew a little taller, though to his dismay still hasn't broken 6'. Still lies about it. His sense of style hasn't changed much, though he now always dresses more warmly. Like gloves and thermals throughout the year warmly.

Vision: "Can you save even these people?"

She was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and would ever see. She stepped towards the shallows framed by a bright sun and rippling golden grass, ice peaked cliffs and warm fertile volcanic soil. She raised her left hand from the water which shimmered with silvery light. She raised her right hand which rippled with reddish heat. She held out the left, an invitation and a challenge. She held out the right, and her eyes suddenly flickered to the space at Cade's side. He looked too, eyes widening in shock.

"Oh my, this is unusual..."

Rank: 1st...?

Summoned Weapon

• Svalinn - Nordic Myth

Origin Story: The shivering shield of the goddess Sól which hangs in the sky before the sun in Norse mythos. It protects the earth as a whole, allowing humanity to withstand the sun's rays. If it should ever fall, as told by Odin, the entire planet would burn.

Relative Strength: ★★★★★★★✩✩✩
A myth with old, deep roots, concerning the protection of all creation... but in reality it has left the minds of most people and has been overshadowed by more contemporary legends.

Manifestation:
A massive circular iron shield, just over 4' in diameter. It is absolutely as heavy as it looks, though for Cade it might as well be just a big frisbee... since it floats, moving in tune to his will. When manifested but at rest, it hovers at his back. It is slightly concave, and on its face are concentric circles that radiate out from the center where a bubbly depiction of a sun is etched. Within each ring various runes are deeply carved, growing more numerous and elaborate as they reach the final ring on the shield's edge. When Svalinn's chilling magic is used the runes glow by stages according to its output, though even when not actively in use it is so cold to the touch that it can affect the air around it. It also affects Cade himself: he can wield the weapon perfectly fine alone, but if his sister isn't around to thermoregulate him then his frost layer builds up, slowing him down and otherwise negatively affecting his body.

Attributes

• Might: ★★★✩✩
  Already fairly strong as an athlete and vigilante, his Awakening just kicked it up a notch. His weapon is no sword of destruction, but getting domed with a two ton slab of iron still really hurts.
• Agility: ★★✩✩✩
  Not having to worry about lugging said two tons around means his speed doesn't suffer, and the shield is decently swift as it moves. Not the speediest, but good reflexes.
• Endurance: ★★★✩✩
  It's not like Cade has tested it (lies, he totally has), but Svalinn is practically indestructible. Cade himself is not, though Awakening has made him a lot tougher in general.
• Presence: ★★✩✩✩
  He has a strong will, but that's about all he has. It's through his willpower that he forces out his confidence and heroism. He's still working on everything else.
• Instinct: ★★✩✩✩
  A honed intuition since childhood with some experience in getting into fist fights, his instinct is higher than a newly Awakened but far still from that of a trained combatant. He'll get there, though.
• Resonance: ★★★✩✩
  Cade was meant to be a 2nd Rank, with two weapons that would balance each other out and a strong potential for growth. He still has that potential even with only Svalinn, and his resonance level means his side effects are not as pronounced as a certain someone else's.

Heroic Alias: 'Svalinn'
Guild Assessment Result: --
Affiliation: If there is one good thing that the mega-corps have done for the world, it is the creation of the guilds. Though its only been a year, Cade has seen their positive impact for himself. Add the fact that they're the only real way make use of his power without risk of being slapped with a criminal charge or lawsuit and it means that Cade is essentially all-in on guild work, even if their sponsors are suspect to say the least. The Order of the Lake claims to be different, but though Cade is relatively loyal to it he isn't dumb enough to trust said claim at face value.

Personality:
Cade is competitive, critical, and confrontational. He has none of the charm one might expect from a traditional hero, but god damn if he doesn't pretend that he does. He attempts to come off as someone with a cooler head than he has, but needless to say he does a poor job of it. He likens himself to a leader but is the type to unintentionally sabotage others in the field by always going to grab the spotlight. He thinks he is better than everyone else. Scratch that - he is better. He has to be, because if he isn't then what's the point?

For a guy who's awakened weapon is a giant shield meant to protect people, it's sort of funny that there's probably a big does not play well with others notice stamped across his guild file. Hopefully they were nice and wrote teamwork needs improvement instead. Since he lacks true charisma his cocky attitude often rubs people the wrong way, especially if they're able to tell that his self-confidence is rather forced. His cheeky grin just a little too tight. It does not come easily to him, but then again, nothing ever did.

To say that Cade is emotionally closed off would be correct. He is not as trusting as his sister, and not as friendly either (he tries, sometimes). He grew up with a lot of hidden frustrations that he had no outlet for, artistic or otherwise, and he still harbors some of them. There is one person who he can never seem to hide even the smallest thing from, but he tries not to rely on her too much. He doesn't want -doesn't need- to rely on anyone. Because they should be relying on him.

Despite all of the evidence pointing towards a conclusion that Cade is abrasive at best and an asshole at worst, he is trustworthy and responsible enough that even strangers can, in fact, rely on him. To be useful, needed, and important to people are desires he holds in his heart even if at times he doesn't directly acknowledge them. He hates to see people hurting and tends to shoulder any and every burden himself. It may prove difficult, but over time it might be possible for his teammates to see the softer, caring, more playful side to him that he normally only shows to people he loves.

On Awakening:
It's been a couple months since Cade awakened. He actually finds it pretty sweet. Now his path is decided for him, or... more like a role he was destined for has finally appeared. Even though the other half of his Awakening was interrupted, and now he's always just a little cold at minimum even when he isn't using Svalinn, and his body gets tense, stiff, and wracked with shivers in the aftermath when he does if he wasn't close enough to CC, and he's been more prone to getting sick...

It's worth it.

And is he proud of CC for being able to utilize that sword and choosing to help others with it, like he's doing with his shield? Of course he is! She's amazing (don't tell her he said that). But is he also feeling conflicted because Lævateinn was meant to be his? ...yes, of course he is. He is equal parts guilty and jealous, his frustration over both the good and the bad sitting dense in the pit of his stomach.

History:
The Sinclair family was definitely not expecting twins. With their budget they would have struggled to support a third mouth let alone a fourth, but it wasn't exactly something that they could control. Even while living in a metropolis waylaid by corporate price gouging, corporate wage theft, and of course corporate controlled rented flats they chose to keep them. Somehow they'd scrape by.

And they did, for a while. It took years following Cade and Cecilia's birth for things to really go south. The latest round of layoffs had come for their father's job, and suddenly living on one parent's measly paycheck wasn't going to cut it. Yet the job market was brutal, especially for anyone with a shred of pride still left in them. Repeated failure, a sense of emasculation, and escalating arguments between husband and wife led to a building resentment that finally saw their father throw up his hands and walk out. To this day he hasn't come back. Their mother scrambled to make ends meet, taking extra shifts and part-time jobs, but there were too many months in missed rent and no extended family to fall back on. Eventually the kind, hard-working woman had to pack her kids up and leave. They lived in and out of shelters until their mother could secure a tiny, cheap apartment for them.

For Cade, still only a child then, he had to step up. He was now the man of the family. His dad was weak, a quitter. Not like mom, not like CC, and definitely not like him. He had to protect them all from pushy loan sharks preying on the poor, from thieves and creeps that skulked about the city day and night. When he got old enough he took odd jobs too, anything to help out even just a little. He liked to think his efforts really helped his mom so that she could rest easier knowing that every time she had to leave the twins alone that they'd be alright so long as Cade had anything to say about. They were on their own together more often than not after all, when they went to and from their crappy public school and when they waited for mom's shifts to end at home. As they grew up things got easier, all three of the Sinclairs working their asses off to get to a better place. By the time Cade and CC were in their final years of high school it seemed to have paid off; with Cade actually able to work part-time himself their mom didn't have to handle everything alone, and CC had even landed a scholarship for college.

Things were changing for the better, but there was a weird new twisted feeling in Cade's gut. He and CC had been extremely close growing up; they'd had to share everything out of necessity, and really only had each other to rely on, on top of being twins. And now she was going to head off to college for her art, a passion she shared with their mother that the woman had needed to give up. That similarity Cade didn't have had already driven a little bit of a wedge between his mom and himself, hastening her son's independence, but if it was going to mean growing apart from CC too... then what was he supposed to do? What did he even want out of life? He'd done great in his school sports teams (the ones that hadn't kicked him out for his attitude), but wasn't scouted. He'd made sure to keep his grades up near the top of his class, but he wasn't even close to valedictorian. There were many things he was good at but none he was best in, though not for lack of trying. He didn't have something that he wanted to truly chase.

So he applied for a grant, and after being surprised that it was given it to him, simply followed CC to further education. When he told her it was because he was worried about her going off on her own, it wasn't totally a lie. He took only the bare minimum amount of classes, spending more time working and putting money into the siblings' shitty shared room on city campus. Discontent but not quite able to place the feeling, Cade used what free time he had on certain extracurriculars. The kind that involved going out at night with bandanas wrapped around faces and baseball bats with words like justice written on them.

It was easy for Cade to fall into the vigilantism movement. He was an effected and frustrated youth. He had seen the city's bad side over and over, but he'd also met the few on the good side, and it was clear to him which one he'd rather be on. It started with coming upon a mugging while walking home after a night class. He wasn't a child anymore, he could provide tangible help - so he did. He returned to the apartment with a bruised cheek and split lip, but had ended up with a grateful new friend. The guy asked Cade to join a small posse to help make sure his girlfriend's boss never harassed her again, which they did by putting the man into a hospital. And from there recruited to larger movements, participating in more organized action under cover night. And, sometimes, even just solo rocking a scarf and goggles as he acted as free campus security.

It was something. It provided a decent physical way to de-stress, a little feeling that he was doing some good. He couldn't exactly get away with making up excuses for the wounds he returned home with, especially after the whole 'Awakening' thing started and it turned out a gaggle of well-meaning citizens was no match for one dude with a glowing sword. They'd barely escaped with their lives. These new ridiculous 'villains' had been showing up more an more, and it pissed Cade off that they were using their weird powers for petty things.

It sure would be nice to get one of those glowing swords himself though.

That night had been particularly rough. Cade made CC promise not to tell their mom, and in turn promised her that he'd be fine. This was all fine. It was something. He was doing something. Eventually, even if only a little, he would help make the city a safer, better place. For everyone, for CC - as long as he could make sure she'd always be there, could keep her safe--

"Can you save even these people?"

Motivation: It is, a little bit, what he's always wanted to do. Besides, why would he hurt people when he could help them instead?
...besides the villains he'll be fighting of course. Perpetuating the cycle of violence is based when its against unrepentant evildoers.

Optional:
Side Roles: Journalist sounds fun, so if needed I can certainly play a journalist every now and then! Also wouldn't mind playing a villain or two, minor, recurring or otherwise.

Theme Song / Quote: TBD

Appearance (Before Awakening) CC is rather tall for a woman. At 5'10", she was always glad she could meet her brother's eyes level instead of having to look up at him. She has fair skin spattered with freckles, and had a long mane of gleaming coppery-red hair that she was immensely proud of. Her face is sharp and angular, set with eyes that were a deep, expressive brown, and often wears a smug smirk, because that's frankly just the person she is. She had slender arms, ending in delicate hands with slim, dexterous fingers, all the better to hold a brush. All that said, she's not weak, she has tight, wiry muscles. But of course, she's not a body-builder or anything. Just...not soft.

Most of her clothing has some kind of paint stain somewhere on it, ranging from little specks along a hem to an enormous neon-blue splash across almost the entire front of a white tanktop that she kept because frankly she thinks it looks cool. She has a slender athletic build, and has a tendency to bounce her knees or tap her feet. She's fond of makeup, treating it as an extension of her art and herself as a living canvas.

She carries herself with a bouncy, energetic stride, like she's listening to a nonexistent playlist, and had a habit of snapping her fingers to the beat, whether 'the beat' even existed or not.

Appearance (After Awakening) CC has had one of the more obvious changes in her Awakening. To start, her copper hair brightened into a vivid flame-red, and her brown eyes ignited into an unnatural searing orange. When she's exerting herself, and her heat is rising, they blaze with their own firelight.

But, debatably more noticeably: both of her arms--on her left, from the elbow down, on her right, the entire arm up to the shoulder--have gained the appearance and texture of black stone, running with cracks and veins of bright red light. Like cooling lava. They glow in low light and have their own heat. Not hot enough to give you blisters upon touch, but more than hot enough to be uncomfortable. Like touching the hood of a black car in hundred-degree weather.

Even for her, actually.

It makes things like showering a constant trial, and sometimes she still puts a hand on her hip and is rewarded for her reflex with that sharp burning discomfort. She dresses more sparsely than she used to. Even long-sleeve shirts are often uncomfortably warm for her now; she lives firmly in the "tanktops or tee shirts and shorts when it's ten degrees outside" area. She's still a fan of makeup, but not being able to comfortably touch her face has certainly made it more difficult. She occasionally still tries to snap her fingers, but being made of stone puts a dent in that for sure. Unfortunately, without these hands she probably wouldn't even be able to hold Lævateinn.

She's also not as tall as her brother anymore, and she is not happy about it.

Vision: She was just putting the finishing touch on a painting she'd worked on for weeks, just the last few rays of light from the clouds left. Tongue sticking out in concentration, she brought the brush up one last time...

"Oh my, this is unusual. How did you get here?"

What? Huh? Where was she? What was going on? The feeling of sun on her face and grass beneath her bare feet, breezes tickling her back with her hair, the crisp clean smell of the air, the soft susurration of the lakeshore softly lapping...

And the impossibly gorgeous woman who was standing before her. She stared back, utterly bewildered. Part of her wanted to answer: 'I don't know!' But somehow speaking to her like that felt against all the laws of nature. So instead, she turned to the person that was somehow standing next to her.

"Cade, what the hell is going on?"

Rank: Functionally a 1st Rank, technically half of a 2nd Rank (more on that later).
Summoned Weapon(s)

• Lævateinn - Norse Myth

Origin Story: Lævateinn is a weapon shrouded by mystery and the long passage of time. Many interpretations have come and gone. Including the sword of the fire giant Surtr.

And it is clear that is where CC's Lævateinn finds its origin. A great blade wreathed in impossibly hot flame, raised at the gods to herald the end of all things.
Relative Strength: 7 - Well-known enough to have infiltrated pop culture and the collective consciousness, but it's no Mjolnir.
Manifestation: Lævateinn is an enormous greatsword longer than CC is tall with a hilt of size to match. The blade is as red as her new hair, and the great hilt and guard are the black of volcanic basalt. It glows brightly with a violent light and can be set aflame at a thought (sometimes. More on that later). If people with no measure of resistance touch it, it will inflict severe burns almost immediately, it outputs a tremendous amount of heat.
Attributes

• Might: 5 - It's a huge fuckoff fire sword. Each strike would already be a volcanic eruption, even if it didn't improve her physical strength by a large amount. But because it did she'll obliterate anything you point her at.
• Agility: 1 - But that's only if she can hit it. CC never meant to be a hero, so she's entirely untrained in combat; and she has a very large weapon, so quick maneuvering is something that she really has to get the hang of.
• Endurance: 2 - This requires a bit more explanation. 2 is the level for purely her physical endurance, as a distance runner (though of course running and swordplay require very different muscle groups). But most of the time--that is to say, unless she's fighting alongside Cade who can thermoregulate her--she sits squarely at a 1. The limit on her combat isn't usually physical exhaustion, but heat. With a body that was never adapted to wield Lævateinn until it suddenly dropped in on her, it builds up heat quickly, and she can't manage exertion AND its heat for too long before she starts suffering from heat symptoms, rapidly escalating from heavy sweating to heat stroke if she doesn't manage it properly.
• Presence: 4 - Overconfident and cocky though she may be, her outgoing nature and extroversion collide to give her a kind of magnetic personality, even if she can be obnoxious at times. Her 'heroic ideal' may be atrophied, as she never intended to be one; but even so, she has an undeniable force of personality. And she's headstrong and stubborn, so even without a strong heroic ideal, her willpower is undeniably strong.
• Instinct: 2 - Not to belabor a point, but she never intended to be a hero, and so her training in any kind of combat is nonexistent. She's saved from a 1 purely because she's fairly quick-witted and observant to begin with, so with any luck she'll get better here before too long, she's a quick learner.
• Resonance: 1 - Cecilia was never meant to wield Lævateinn, and it knows. Consequently, their connection is tenuous and unstable at times; like, for example, lighting on fire without her actually meaning it to. It reacts strongly to her emotions, and it will remain as such until she earns its metaphorical trust. The is also the source of her inability to properly modulate her temperature while in combat.

Heroic Alias: 'Lævateinn'
Guild Assessment Result: [placeholder]
Affiliation: Cecilia doesn't care much for the guilds at all. But Cade does, and she cares a great deal for Cade. So she's loyal to the Guilds strictly by proxy.

Personality: CC has a very particular personality that people usually either love or hate (or hate to love). She's overconfident and cocky, and a smirk is a constant fixture on her face. But she's also highly social, very extroverted and outgoing. She makes friends easily, even if sometimes she can have some trouble keeping them for any length of time. She has a blindingly bright smile, even if a lot of the time it's rooted in being way too confident and probably being punished for it in some way.

That being said, all the easy (and obnoxious) confidence of CC's outward personality can't fully get in the way of a major cardinal piece of her: she is kind. Fitting a bit into the jerk-with-a-heart-of-gold archetype, as much as she'll preen, or poke fun at other people in a way that some might find mean-spirited, if she finds someone in need, she'll still put herself out to help them. This isn't helped by something that her brother has cautioned her about endlessly: she is trusting to a fault. Suspicion isn't something that plays heavy on her mind when she's meeting anybody for the first time, partially born from that sheer confidence. It has definitely gotten her into trouble before, but it's still just as present.

The last major piece of her personality is her relationship with her creativity. For those who only know her as a bit of a massive pain in the ass, it can be a bit of a shock the first time they see her buckle down on one of her pieces: in a vast departure from her cockiness, she is serious about her art. If she wasn't, she probably wouldn't have gone to school for it. The constant haze of heat that surrounds her hands mean that it's difficult for her to get close to the canvas without ruining the oil paint that she most often uses, and of her Awakening, that's the part that bothers her the most. She spent four years studying how to paint, and now her whole life's been turned upside down without even being able to paint in the style she knows. It's always been an important outlet for her negative feelings, and having it suddenly locked off really isn't good for her mental health.

History:

The Sinclair family was never the best off.

Living in corporate hell as they did, their decision to have even one child was one they came to after extended deliberation. What they did not expect was for their one child to become two. Their money was already tight; after all, it wasn't like there was generous maternity or paternity leave. But against advice, they chose to keep both children. They'd make it work somehow.

And they did, for a while. Cecilia and Cade didn't have a childhood of plenty by any means, but they didn't go hungry or have to skip schooling to work as kids. It was during this time--when two paychecks kept life stable for the twins--that CC first saw her mom painting. It was a passion of their mother's, but with the two of them, she'd been forced to almost give it up. But she still found time, once every blue moon, to pull out her watercolors and spend a few precious minutes with her art.

Well, until she couldn't anymore.

After their dad walked out on them following his layoff and constant arguments with their mom, CC's comfortable life shattered. In the ensuing maelstrom of missed rent and financial ruin, CC grabbed one thing, half out of impulse and half out of a desire to go back: the watercolor palette. She was an emotional wreck during their series of moves in and out of shelters. But CC had always known what Cade was thinking, and she saw how much pressure he put on himself, even if he was just kid like her. And her mom was stretching herself so thin she barely had time to do anything at all outside of working and sleeping. So she decided right then and there that she wasn't going to be someone that they had to just...take care of. She was going to be someone who could take care of herself so they didn't need to. She wasn't gonna cry, ever.

It was a childish promise that she inevitably would never be able to keep. She wasn't like Cade. She was awful at hiding any of her emotions, wore what she was feeling on her sleeve more often than not. She definitely cried, and not infrequently. But that stubborn insistence gave her enough of a foothold on emotional stability that she could get through school. It let her spend her time at home with Cade waiting for their mom to come home. It let her poke fun at her brother now and then, because she could feel some of the fun burning out of him and the thought scared her more than she ever let him know. The two of them were almost always together; at school, at home, in the same bunk bed, on the weekend, they were like each others' shadows.

By the time the twins were in high school, life had gotten a little easier for them. Working their asses off meant that their mom could finally take a well-deserved rest after raising two teenagers on her own. Things had reached a kind of stability. She took her schooling as seriously as she could. But Cade always outstripped her in grades, because at night, after her part time job, when he studied, she would take that same palette of watercolors out and paint. Night after night, even when only a fragment of pigment was left in each cup. Then she took the plunge to take some of the money that she'd earned, go out one day, and buy some brushes and a set of cheap oil paints. Her grades...really didn't improve. At all. But her art did. She blossomed, really starting to develop her own style and come into her own as a painter. And her obsession with painting didn't go unnoticed. When the final year of high school came and she dared to apply to art school...

Well, she definitely cried when she told her family she'd gotten a full ride.

She also cried when she learned that Cade had gotten a grant to go to school too. She hadn't let him know, obviously, nor their mom; but the idea of leaving both of them to go live off on her own scared the hell out of her. She'd never not, of course; she knew that her mom had wanted to study art when she was younger, and was determined to be the artist that she never could. But it didn't make it any less scary. So Cade being there with her would make her feel so much better.

The second she got the chance, she buckled down and applied herself like she'd never applied herself before. Flew forward in ever class; her childhood had given a work ethic that some of the other students there could only dream of. Now that she was finally free to spread her wings, she lunged forward at every chance. She did feel bad, though; because she was focusing so hard on her studies, Cade didn't have time to. After all, someone needed to keep the place they lived functional. It was a constant guilt that dug little fishhooks into her skin. But, she rationalized, as soon as she graduated and started working as an artist proper, she could start really making some actual money and pay Cade back for all he'd done.

And then, of course, the dumbass had to start getting into vigilantism. The first time he'd come back to their dorm with his face busted up, she'd just about had a heart attack then and there. She wanted more than anything else for him to stop. What if he got hurt? Like, not a black eye hurt, but hurt hurt? But she knew her brother. And he knew that the bonehead wasn't going to stop if she asked. So all she could bring herself to ask was for him to be careful! The idea that he was in danger weighed on her mind constantly. But she still flew through school, graduating summa cum laude with high honors. She did her best to ignore the news every time vigilantism came up, especially after the advent of Awakening. Every time she thought about it, there was a painful squeeze in her chest. It started to leak into her mind when she was working on art, too, now. He was in danger, wasn't he? All the time. She wished she could do something. Wished she could help him somehow--

"Oh my, this is unusual. How did you get here?"

Motivation: She didn't want this. She certainly didn't ask for it. But it happened. And with her boneheaded brother constantly throwing himself at danger, what kind of sister would she be if she didn't use her new big fuckoff fire sword to help?

Side Roles: (Do you also want to play a supporting character — civilian, journalist, opportunist, etc.?)
Theme Song / Quote: (Just for flavor if you like.)