Dane Petersen (WIP)

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[attr="class","smallinfoboxyakidark"]Dane's most notable traist is that he often claims superiority over others. His own natural intelligence and maturity throughout his younger years grew a hardened exterior with which he appears to be a know-it-all brat with little to no care for other people. He's socially inept and pushes people away who he deems unworthy, only truly willing to talk to people he feels would get him somewhere. He's selfish and self-serving, and his aim is to give off the impression of an individual that knows more than he really does. His precise memory only encourages this behaviour but often leaves him to be more of a tool for other people to use than a valuable partner.

Despite his aim to give off an appearance of cool, collected intelligence, Dane finds great difficulty in remaining calm in situations. Although he can work well under time sensitive pressure or due dates, the stress of threatening (especially potentially life-threatening) in-the-moment situations keeps him from functioning normally. He will begin stumbling over his words, thinking irrationally, and being unable to react efficiently. This is the most hindering during fights. Despite his demeanour, though, Dane lacks self-confidence as his slight edge in intelligence and work diligence was everything he had when he was growing up, but it has begun to mean nothing as everyone else reaches his level of maturity, too. So, he's constantly worried about every little thing gone wrong and often reacts irrationally in situations that should otherwise have an easy solution. His self-esteem is damaged and he is easy to emotionally hurt as he has begun to fear that he means nothing - which to most people, he does. However, Dane still wants to appear as the composed, mature man he was before to encourage others to speak with him, leading him to act in his superior manner.

It's very rare for people to walk away from Dane thinking about how great of a guy he is, due to his aforementioned bluntness and perfectionist attitude. He constantly nitpicks at tiny flaws and this leads him to reach for impossible achievements that further lower his self-esteem. As a result of all this, it's much more common for people to call him 'ignorant', 'pretentious', or a 'brat' while storming away from him than to comment on his exciting personality.


Likes:

• Challenging mind-games
• Reading non-fiction books
• Learning
• Symmetry (in arts, rooms, etc.)
• Creating plans or new ideas

Dislikes:

• Incompetence
• Gossiping
• Minuscule imperfections
• Large crowds
• Laziness

Fears:
• Minor ochlophobia, or the fear of very large crowds (typically when people are standing side by side with no room to move).
• Mediocrity: Dane has a fear of losing his intelligence and becoming just like everyone else.
• Severe change within himself. Dane's scared of becoming different because he believes he was perfect the way he was before he got on the streets.

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Panmnesia (major)
This is an advanced form of eidetic memory, allowing him to remember everything one feels, encounters, and experiences during certain points in his life. These periods are defined by Dane's conscious and subconscious mind: if his brain deems something as important (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) he will remember every aspect of it, from the smells to his emotions to even the smallest little visual detail.
This power also has obvious downfalls. Dane can occasionally get mixed up when he experiences situations extremely similar to past ones, as he's not sure if he's just imagining the same thing that happened before or if it's the real scenario. Also, whenever he's consciously saving an image in his mind (when it's subconscious, this occurs without him knowing) he zones out for a few seconds while his brain takes note of his surroundings and exact emotions and stores it in a 'library' within his brain. When his subconscious does this, however, his memories are not as accurate because Dane isn't allowing his brain to pause for a moment to register it. Instead, only parts of his brain function to remember it and therefore there may be some inconsistencies (maybe forgetting the presence of certain things, or his feelings at the time, or not remembering a smell...etc) and, when this occurs subconsciously, some of his involuntary human functions will pause for a very brief moment. One of these could include his breathing, which he would then have to continue consciously since the rest of his brain is occupied. These subconscious "memory saves" only occur during moments of extreme emotion, which do not occur often, meaning that Dane isn't completely aware of this happening.

Peak Human Reflexes (minor)
To be able to save memories quickly and accurately, Dane's mind is constantly looking at small details even when he isn't aware of this. This leads him to being able to see tiny muscle shifts that may warn him of an incoming attack, and his body will react for him in these cases. This does not mean he will be able to dodge bullets midair or anything ridiculous like that, but he might (if he's paying a lot of attention) be able to notice the movement of the finger on the trigger and that may lead him to reacting fast and possibly, if he's lucky and the other is slow, moving out of the way of the gunshot before it reaches him. However, that depends a lot on luck and often it will not happen unless the enemy is hesitant in shooting him.
Because of this, though, Dane's a little more skittish than usual. If he sees someone moving to shake his hand, he may flinch as the original muscle movements may lead him to believing that they're about to hurt him. This doesn't happen often, though, but it can and does. Often, he tries to ignore little details subconsciously because it distracts him for his current task, which can cause this power to go mostly unused.

[attr="class","smallinfoboxyakidark"]April 11th, 1991

Dane's conception can be accredited to simply a lack of protection and an abnormally high teenage libido. Both his mother and father were 19 when he was born, only in their second year of university and still getting used to the idea that they should be working a little more than they did in high-school. After having Dane, the 'happy family' that was Dane, his mom, and his father slowly started going down the drain while Dane's father experimented with other women. Thanks to his power, Dane remembers vividly the yelling, the screaming, and the smashing of bottles against walls once his mom found out about his father's disloyal ways. After that, Dane never saw his dad again.

When Dane reached the age of around four or five, he was maturing a lot faster than many other children. He had gotten his natural intelligence from his father, and he acted significantly older than he was due to his isolation during the day. His mom was always out, whether it be because she was attending classes, working or because she was spending time with her friends at the bar, and Dane slowly learned to take care of himself. The household had very little money, though, and he found himself going hungry many days of the week.

Dane both dreaded and adored school. Everyone around him was less mature and seemed to be significantly dumber, but he also could spend all of his time engrossed in textbooks as they slowly became his best friends. He was bullied almost nonstop due to his frail and thin body structure as well his unnervingly logical outlook on everything. This contributed to him slowly losing empathy and care for others, aided by his steadily increasing ability to process more quickly than others. He even started to find teachers to be stupid, as they treated him as much younger than his mental maturity and their methods of teaching were too slow for the young boy. He ended up 'skipping' two entire grades total, one when he first got into school (got put in a year early) and another when he displayed comprehension far beyond the others in his class. This did not stop the constant bullying at all, and honestly only made it more prominent as he was the youngest in his grade and he was the social outcast. He drew further and further within himself as a result of that, but he slowly began to enjoy being on his own and it stopped bothering him.

Eventually, as it was bound to happen, Dane's mom ran out of funds to support both him, her, and the apartment they lived in. It wasn't tough for his mom to choose to put Dane up for adoption, considering he reminded her of his father and he was a snobby know-it-all. Besides, he was 'getting old enough to know how to take care of himself' (he was maybe 12). Dane spent a long time in the orphanage, undesired by every future-parent that made their way in due to his snarky attitude and humour that often ended in the parents being embarrassed. However, eventually someone did walk in, see Dane, and want to take him in. Dane despised them. It wasn't because they were rude, no, far from it: they were a lovely old couple who just wanted to care for a young child. It was simply because Dane saw them as ignorant and stupid. And this opinion never changed.

After a numerous years spent with the older couple, Dane had had enough. His 'parents' were retired by then and couldn't pay for him to go to college while all Dane really wanted was to continue school. He tried working while living in their house, but a lot of his income seemed to go to electricity bills, water bills, etc. This frustrated Dane immensely, and he felt trapped which was something he hated. Since he'd never felt any love for his foster parents, it wasn't long before he decided to start trying to save up to run away.

By the time had Dane recently turned 20, he decided he'd saved up enough. He had about enough money to buy a one-way train ticket to New Blackborough and some basic necessities as well as enough to pay for an apartment for a month. He left in the dead of night without leaving even a note, determined to start his life over in the new city. In New Blackborough he works as a bartender, living in one of the cheaper parts of the middle-apartments.



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