Etienne Bouchard
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TBA
Real Name: Etienne Jacques-Michel Bouchard
Age: 16
Identity: Secret
Birthplace: Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
Date of Birth: November 15th, 1993
Known Relatives: Jacques Bouchard (father), Michelle Bouchard (mother, deceased)
Height: 6'1"
Weight: 160lbs
Eyes: Brown-Hazel
Hair: Light Brown
Grade: Junior
Dorm: Baldwin Hall

Background

I am from what you might call the middle of nowhere. If we're speaking all technical-like I guess I'm from an actual city, but nobody ever heard of 'Fredericton, New Brunswick' unless you're from there. Most days I'm lucky if folk know what New Brunswick is at all. It's a part of Canada, for the record. I'm Canadian.

If you weren't guessing from the name, the family's French Canadian. Both sides of my family's lived in New Brunswick since they came over from France, I guess. Been over for a few generations and whatnot. All I really know is Ma and Papa met in the same run-down worth-nothing town as I was raised in. There's some sort of big romantic hullabaloo about their story, but I don't know much about that neither. Ma died when I was three or so, I don't remember her too well. Most of the time it was just me and Papa.

My father's a lumberjack. He does okay for money but things weren't great. Even in a backwards town like Fredericton there were kids better off than me. Papa told me time and again I wasn't to let it bother me none but it always did. I guess I got what you could call a sense of pride. And of course it didn't help that Papa was away a lot of the time cutting down trees. I never could figure out why he kept a house in the capital and then had to go hours out of his way to do his job. It probably made sense to him but me and my Papa don't see eye to eye on a terrible many things.

My childhood was mostly normal. I spent a lot of time with sitters or at after school programs I didn't have interest in, on account of Papa always being gone and Ma being dead. I hated most of them, but I started playing hockey when I was petit, when Papa bought me some skates for my birthday. That was the one thing I did like about having to occupy myself. That is until things started getting weird.

I guess it was about three years ago, now. First I started noticing I was getting a lot more bendy. Most kids get taller and stronger, and I was getting that way too, but I was also able to twist into places most people couldn't even think about getting into. My reflexes got better: really, really better. I went from being a sort of no-name benchwarmer on the team to being one of the power forwards, on account of it being hard to check me and hard to keep me from scoring goals. For a while I was awful focused on hockey, even started talking to Papa about going to the pros. Then the rest of the story came out. Stuff I touched started blowing up. I don't mean I was causing accidents or nothing, I mean literally I'd touch things and they'd blow up after a couple of seconds. Hockey team wasn't real keen on me after the puck started going off like a grenade. I sent the goalie of some other team to the hospital before I got cut.

So there I was, with these strange new abilities that I couldn't explain, no father around to speak of, and nothing to occupy my time with. Bet you can guess what comes next.

That's right, I got myself into a boatload of trouble. Started sneaking out at night - not that it's so hard to do that when your Dad ain't in the same house as you - and putting my new powers to the test. You know, usual teenaged stuff. Random vandalism, graffiti, acrobatics. Of course for me they were all sort of extremes. It turned into breaking into places - not 'cause I wanted their shit, just to prove I could - and eventually I got myself caught. I went to Juvie for a while. I don't think it did what they wanted it to do.

I guess there was rules about what Papa could do with me after I got out, 'cause next thing I knew I was being shipped down to the States to some hush-hush secret school, to learn how to 'control myself'. Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Personality

Superficially, Etienne is exceptionally confident in himself. He has the casual kind of apparent self-assuredness that people frequently describe as 'smarmy'. He is very definitively old enough to have noticed women and the fact that he is attracted to him, and has developed certain habits and affectations in the hopes of getting noticed in return. He is very easy-come easy-go, evidently incapable of actually taking anything seriously. He is the kind of person who does things because he can and they amuse him, not because they need to be done; he is easily the kind of guy to actively go out of his way to get in under somebody's skin just to watch them flail. He is especially prone to being caustic and cuttingly snarky, although he is just as likely to turn that on its head and be charming and debonair if he thinks it will get him his way.

Beneath the cavalier surface, however, is a teenager who is ultimately tired of being alone. He harbors latent fears of being left out in the cold, never belonging, never being part of anything substantiated. He wants a meaningful relationship with his father, he wants to be an accepted member of somebody's peer group—but he'll never admit it. Those people who choose to poke at these particular points in Etienne are likely to come face to face with a snap, petulant anger which can be downright petty and childish; he isn't particularly patient with being psychoanalyzed and actively hates having his mind - and weaknesses - probed by telepaths.

(Interactive Muse)

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