Greg Tawera

[Greg Tawera]

Gregory Kuruk Tawera

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Face Claim: Alex Meraz[/right][/SIZE]

When I am King you will be first against the wall

Have you seen what's happening out there
Have you even bothered to look

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Your name: Call me Leo (but fair warning, I’m a chick)
Time zone: GMT+10 (East Coast of Australia)
Other characters: N/A
Codewords: Nubbins, Peregrine, Bananas

Turn them against each other
And back into our arms

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Full Name: Gregory Kuruk Tawera
Name Meaning/Origin: Gregory: Greek; Watchful, vigilant. Kuruk: Native American; Bear. Tawera: Maori
Nick Names: Greg, Bear, Koala Bear, Teddy Bear, Teddy, Greggy Bear – Basically anything cutesy his friends ever heard him called by his mum
Age: 16
Date of Birth: 12th April 1994
Gender: Male
Race: Descendant of the gods
Member Group: Heroes
Sexuality: Straight
Canon or Original: Canon
Custom Title: Father Time (if you can think of something better please do feel free to change it, coz I really had nothing)

The powers that be can't help you now
Only you can help yourself

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Powers:
In general, one could view Greg’s abilities as a kind of time acceleration. He can accelerate time in relation to a certain person, animal or thing and cause them to age rapidly, or, he has discovered, he can accelerate his own perception of time to in effect know what will happen in the future by remembering it.

Aging Touch
Greg can cause more or less anything to age at will, through skin contact. In people the aging process will accelerate over the contact period. 5 full seconds of skin contact will age them by the equivalent of around 6 months, ten seconds will age them by somewhere between a year and a half , to two years, 20 seconds will age them by close to five years, and so on. If Greg was to hold skin contact with a human being for a prolonged period of time, say over two full minutes, they would face extreme physical alterations having effectively aged forty years or more. If Greg was to hold on for even longer, it is very likely that the person in question would die of old age. In all cases, the subject of his aging touch will experience a fairly jarring sensation, while their mind attempts to cope with the sudden change in the body’s biological age and tries to catch up. In average humans it can cause paralysis, but in Fallen, other Heroes or (if he was to attempt it) demigods, it wouldn’t be quite as effective, only leaving them disorientated and slightly dizzy unless he was to retain contact for over a minute. These effects would be directly proportional to the amount of time Greg has maintained contact and therefore to the amount of time they have been ‘aged’. On gods, Greg’s aging touch would be entirely useless as they’re aging system is quite clearly different from human systems.
Animals, having shorter life spans than humans, would be far more susceptible to Greg’s touch. It would take a very short amount of time for the animal to die.
In non-sentient materials, Greg’s powers seem to have a much easier time taking affect. If Greg was to place his hand on a plank of wood it wouldn’t take very much time at all for the timber to succumb to the aging affect, falling apart and decomposing. Depending on the material, however, results will vary. Wood and other plant or organic material is the easiest to degrade, while metal, rock, and bone tend to be much more difficult as they degrade less over time (with the exception of metal in an environment in which it is likely to rust), and plastic thus far is completely unaffected.

Prophesy
So far the way Greg’s prophesy abilities work has eluded him. His prophesy ability is actually a form of complicated self mental aging, so it’s almost as if Greg is remembering the future, and what he remembers may not be particularly accurate and will only be from his point of view. On top of this, the future is constantly changing depending on decisions made by everyone and everything, so it generally doesn’t stay set on one course for long enough for Greg to get a clear picture of what’s going to happen. He does, however, get a foggy picture of the most likely course history is going to take. The larger the likelihood of a particular event, the clearer Greg’s memory of it becomes. In smaller, less important or less likely to happen future-memories, the memory will come out less like images and more like a vague feeling or hunch of what’s going to happen (on the ‘I’ve got a bad feeling about this’ kind of scale).
Because his visions are a form of self mental aging, Greg tends to experience similar jarring effects to those that victims of his aging touch would. In unintentional prophesies, the side effects come in almost a gradient from no effect to splitting headache to knocked unconscious depending on the level of detail in the future-memory. If it’s just a hunch, Greg feels no side effects, in a detailed-ish prophesy (such as one where he does remember the event, but certain things are remembered wrong) he might experience headaches or dizziness, and in a super detailed prophesy (in which he remembers everything quite clearly) he could fall unconscious or in some cases become temporarily paralysed. Greg is capable of forcing himself to have a vision, however, as there is no use to forcing a foggy vision, the jarring effects he will experience will usually be the worst of the bunch, and with the added stress of the energy and concentration required to make the prophesy happen, the effects are generally worsened.

Weaknesses: While Greg is able to turn his aging touch ability on and off, he’s a rather emotional individual, and if he becomes too overly focused on his emotions rather than on keeping his powers in check, his touch powers will likely turn themselves on without him realising. As well as this, his aging touch abilities are dependant entirely on skin contact with whatever he wants to age – for example, if he wants to age a person he will have to actually touch the person themselves, not just the clothes they’re wearing. The mental jarring that takes place during the aging generally is a delayed effect – at minimum the subject would have 5 to 10 seconds to break free of Greg’s hold depending on whether they are human or descended from the gods – even this isn’t exact; some individuals would have even more time. There are some materials that will resist the aging process, and some that simply refuse to age altogether (including the gods), and that is a huge hindrance to Greg’s abilities.
His prophesy powers are another thing all together. He honestly has very little idea what he’s doing on this front. He is able to force a vision of an important event, however it takes too much out of him and isn’t accurate enough to be worth it. The last time he forced a vision it knocked him out for two days. It really isn’t something he’s keen to try again. His less taxing prophesies are generally quite vague, and in many regards limited. With time, he will perhaps gain more control over this power, but for now, he’s stuck with what he’s got.

Anything else: It may not be one of his descended-from-the-gods superpowers or anything, but Greg was a fairly violent kid who grew up to be a fairly violent teenager. He’s gotten into a fair few fights over his life and, while he doesn’t have any formal training, he’s a fairly proficient (and vicious) street fighter. He can definitely hold his own when it comes down to fisticuffs, and certainly isn’t above cheating or playing dirty to achieve his goals.

You are dirt beneath our fingernails
Your very breath is a gift from Olympus

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Hair color & Style: Black, short, somewhat spiked
Eye color: Extremely dark brown
Skin Tone: Naturally dark
Height & Weight: 5’10” 76kg
Build: Athletic, toned
Scars & Tattoos: Traditional Maori design covering his left shoulder blade and going a short way down his back, as well as a similar design in a ring around his right calf.

Other: Greg has taken to wearing fairly moody clothes a lot of the time. Hoodies, dark colours; anything that screams ‘don’t mess with me’. He is actually tall for his age, thanks to his Maori heritage, but is still only 16, so he doesn’t quite match up to the height of most of the other male heroes, something he’s somewhat sore about. And being 16 years old, his posture is as slack as would be expected unless his standing off against someone (he’ll stand straight to make himself seem taller. It’s fairly common to see Greg bruised and cut as he can’t help himself and often gets into fights. Unless you’re one of the lucky few who he deems his friend, the closest you’ll see to a smile on his face is a sneer.

Contemptible children
You need to be reminded of the order of things

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Occupation: High School Student
Place of Birth: Sydney, Australia

History: Etenia Black’s family moved to New Zealand for her father’s job as a volcanologist shortly after volcanic activity was detected nearby in the mid 80’s. She attended the local high school and as she grew older, she fell in love with Ihu Tawera. At the age of twenty, Ihu was able to obtain a steady job a short way across the water from New Zealand’s west coast in Sydney Australia. The two settled and lived their quite comfortably for two years before giving birth to their son, Gregory Turuk Tawera. Greg’s parents were always heavily emphasising the importance of family, and so once a year at Christmas the three of them would fly over to his father’s hometown to visit his extended family. Unfortunately, the costs of constant travel meant that the small family of three was never quite game enough to become a family of more, and that certain sacrifices in other areas had to be made.
Most of Etenia’s family still lived in the United States, so Greg always felt much closer to his father’s side and the Maori culture in general. As he grew, Greg became a very proud and sure of himself individual. If anyone was to bad mouth him or his family, he wouldn’t hesitate to teach them a lesson. It was looked down on by his family, but he continued to do it. He became almost a school yard bully type of person, with a few followers encouraging his actions – though he never really picked on people like a bully would, he just wouldn’t hold back when it came to retaliations. As time went on and Greg began attending high school, his violent nature went from people deliberately insulting and him reacting, to him thinking of himself as better than everyone else and taking offence if they disrespected him in any way, in which case he’d take it upon himself to show them why they should give him respect. His family, worried that he was coming home so often covered in bruises and that they were receiving phone calls from his school about fighting, attempted to send him to a psychologist, however this didn’t seem to have much of an effect.
Around the time the gates appeared, Greg was paying little attention to the news. The snippets of information he knew came mostly from his grandfather on his mum’s side, as he was one of the scientist called over to study the initial energy spike within the mountain.
When the gates opened on the 28th of June 2010, Greg experienced something extremely new to him. Whenever he held on for something for too long it seemed to get old, or in some cases just die altogether. He shut himself away for a while and practiced to get this under wraps. Just as soon as he’d learnt to control his first ability, he began remembering things before they happened; his mum dropping and breaking a plate, a car pileup on the Princes Highway. He knew something was happening, but he didn’t tell anyone – he was freaking out, it only made sense that they would too. For several days his temper was worse then ever, and then he got his biggest vision yet.
He could remember seeing faces he didn’t recognise, he was fighting something alongside them, it was like a lion and a bird put together. He could see a sign with some strange place names on it. He could remember that one of the guys’ names was Tony Fitz-something or other, that he could teleport and that he needed his help for- something. When he woke up on his bedroom floor three hours later he had a splitting headache, but he ignored it and headed straight for his computer. A couple of painkillers and several Google searches later, Greg had filled in the gaps in his information and managed to track down Tony over the internet.
He explained in the email everything he’d seen and asked that Tony ignore how crazy it all seemed and just try to teleport so that they could get started on sorting out this Johannesburg Griffin business.
Since the heroes have begun gathering in Sydney, Greg has taken to skipping school and catching the bus from his home, in the Southern part of the city, to Morgan's place in the west; helping bring together the saviors of the world was slightly more important than his education at that point, he felt.

Look into their eyes
To see where evil lives

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Descendant of: Geras
Mother: Etenia Tawera ne Black
Father: Ihu Tawera
Siblings: N/A
Other Important Relatives: N/A
Marital Status: Single
Ethnicity: Mostly Maori and Native American with dashes of European in there every now and then
Wealth/Social status: Lower-Middle class; he can afford certain luxuries, but he still goes to a not so privileged public school.

Detailed: Family has always been pushed as an important thing by Greg’s parents, and so, as one would expect, it has become important to him. Not what they think, most of the time he’s not particularly concerned with their wishes, but he cares about their general health and well being, definitely. Greg has slightly more respect for his grandparents than his parents, just because he feels like age should bring you at the very least a little bit more respect if nothing else. If anyone was to insult his family, Greg wouldn’t hold back, so one can only imagine how he’d react if someone was to actually physically hurt them.

Never give up
Never surrender

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Likes:
-Video Games
-Sport
-Fighting
-Winning
-Cooking

Dislikes:
-Most people
-Being underestimated
-Being Disrespected
-Losing
-People knowing that he likes cooking

Fears:
-(somewhat ironically) Old Age
-Death
-Losing the few people he actually cares about

Weaknesses:
-Impatient
-Bad tempered
-Impulsive

Strengths:
-Not hesitant
-Confident
-Lots of practice fighting (no formal training, but he’s gotten good at street fighting on his own)
-Fiercely loyal to those he actually cares about

Quirks & Habits:
-Bites his nails when he’s bored
-Rubs the back of his neck when he’s nervous
-Tends to dig his right foot into the ground if he’s angry at someone he’s not allowed to hurt

Secrets: He actually enjoys and is fairly skilled at cooking
Goals: Stop the gods from taking over his playground by any means necessary

Personality: Probably the most apt word to describe Greg is ‘proud’. It’s something he protects extremely violently. If anyone hurts his pride in anyway, they will experience what it’s like to be at his mercy. He’s not really one for self-control. He’d rather follow his instincts, and a lot of the time that instinct tells him to hurt things. Greg throughout his schooling life has put out a rebellious bad-boy recluse image, and most people of weak character have learnt to steer clear.
He has kind of a weird thing when it comes to respect. He values it quite highly, but only gives it to those who have proven their worth in his eyes. This makes it quite difficult for most people to gain his respect at all seeing as he’s developed a method of thinking which makes him feel like he’s better than most people. He doesn’t like to interact with people that he doesn’t deem worthy of his respect, but for those who he views as his equals or his betters (as if he’d ever regard someone as better than himself) he’s quite willing to chat and do the normal things one would expect – whether they’d like to be stuck chatting with him is another; he can be interesting to talk to, but his general attitude can get really irritating after a while.
His idea of being better than most has only been perpetuated by the appearance of his powers. He regards his abilities as proof that he’s better than humans, and thinks that it gives him the right to do more or less whatever he likes to them. The only real reason that he’s one of the good guys is that he doesn’t like the idea of being ranked below someone else and having all his chew toys taken away.
Greg is in every way an ‘ends justify the means’ kind of guy. He doesn’t care what he does or who gets hurt as long as the ultimate goal is achieved.
Things between Greg and the other heroes are already becoming strained. Having to take orders from Morgan really isn’t sitting well with Greg and Tony’s not exactly happy with the sixteen year old at the moment either; it seems like only a matter of time before someone snaps.

Not all fairy tales
Have a happy ending

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Role Play Sample:

Greg snarled and made another lunge for his victim as the two of them were dragged apart, but just began laughing bitterly when it became apparent that whoever was holding his arms behind his back weren’t going to let go any time soon. He watched as the guy felt his face to see if anything was bleeding. It was. The thought made Greg smirk happily to himself. As the boy’s hand came away from his face red, he glared up at the sixteen year old.

“Crazy hori bastard.”

The anger from hearing that statement was just what Greg needed to break free from the hold the others had on him. He tackled the guy to the ground again and after a few more punches were exchanged managed to catch a hold of his opponent’s throat. He squeezed momentarily and could feel it as the boy began to age. His eyes lolled back in his head and he went stiff. A vicious grin worked its way onto Greg’s face and it was almost a difficulty to let go of the guys neck.

As he stood, he saw a teacher running over, having finally noticed the crowd of people that had gathered around to see the fight. “What the hell’s going on over here?” the staff member demanded as he saw the student paralysed on the ground. Greg shrugged and stated simply in his strange cocktail of accents; “we were playing footy. He fouled me.”

The teacher was horrified. “So you did this to him?? Go to the principle’s office NOW Tawera.” His dark eyes rolled boredly and he slid his hands into his pockets. “He’s fine; he’ll be his filthy useless self again in about ten minutes.”

“I said go.”

Raising his hands in mock surrender Greg muttered a couple of ‘fine’s and began strolling casually in the familiar direction of the front office. The kid deserved it, really.

***** Application made by malkavian_princess @ caution? *****

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[Zach Grigori]

It's looking good so far. ;D

The image tags for proboards are the same as invisionfree, I think. (I know next to nothing about invisionfree codes) [img]link here[/img]

Okay, now on to the beef of the thing. I'm going to jump around a little bit, just because my brain works that way. >.>

When it comes to Greg's aging abilities, did I understand correctly that once Greg is touching someone/something and aging them, that they're temporarily paralyzed? I don't have a problem with this in theory, but it might be better for the purposes of role playing the character that the other person has a chance to break his hold. It seems that if he touched them, there would be no way for them to fight back. As it stands, the only way to defend one's self from Greg's touch is for someone else to save them, or to, well, age and die. If you can come up with a different weakness of Greg's that will allow another character to at least have a fighting chance to break his hold, that would work out well if you want to keep his paralyzing effects.

When it comes to his prophesies, can you explain a bit more about the fatigue/headaches he feel afterward? You mentioned that after he tried to force a vision, he was knocked out for two days. How does this relate to visions that simply come to him? How strong would a vision have to be before it gave him a headache? Does he always see things, or does he get hunches without the vision part? Does the vision feel real to him? Etc.


Also, this is mostly unrelated to your app, but you should probably know. Greg is fairly important to the Heroes because of his ability to see the future. As such, we've been npc-ing him until he was claimed. (As in, "Greg told me to come here." "I'm going to send Greg to Antarctica if he sends me on one more pointless mission." *cough* Tony *cough*) There's only one thing in your app that contradicts what he's done "on-site" so far. We've had it set up the the Heroes are slowly trickling in, because Greg doesn't see them all at once (This works out extremely well since we're still getting members). Therefore, if you want to keep your app the way it is, that's fine. However, Greg shouldn't be able to recognize all the Heroes. He'll have "follow-up" visions that point them out individually so Tony can go track them down.

Also... Tony is a bit miffed with Greg right now. Just so you know.

Anyway, it's looking really good so far. Let me know once you've edited the app. (You may have noticed that it says I edited it. I just fixed one of your size tags. It was bugging me. >.> )

[Greg Tawera]

Awesome, thanks so much for the help, I'll get right on it. And also, I best double check; have they already defeated the griffin? Or is that still in the future?

[Zach Grigori]

The griffin has already been taken care of. Currently, most of the Heroes are re-grouping in Sydney after that battle.

[Greg Tawera]

Thanks! Well it's been edited, so if you want me to fix anything else let me know. Otherwise I think I'm done

[Zach Grigori]

APPROVED!

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Don't forget to update your Canon claim, apply for a Faceclaim, and add yourself to the Active Characters listing!

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