ANDREW
Université Grimm Campus principal
Mai 2016 - Deux jours après l'explosion
"Opa! Salut, vous entendez? Oui, non, c'est un peu fou. Mais je vais bien, et Janelle. Elle attend le téléphone, oui. Peu d'autres personnes aussi.
Il regarda brièvement par-dessus son épaule, se demandant si son grand-père pouvait entendre la sous-déclaration dans sa voix. C'était comme si un jeu vidéo hyped up ou la sortie de livre allait sur le chemin que la ligne s'est balancé par la porte. L'impression d'avoir des yeux sur le dos lui faisait squirter les épaules et il pensait qu'il avait probablement l'air d'avoir à pisser vu à quel point il était fougueux. Mais c'était bon d'entendre la voix du vieil homme. Mais ça va? Nouvelle Alexandrie et ça, le ferry ne fonctionnait pas, n'est-ce pas? Oh mon dieu, oui, c'est bien. Génial. Non, je ne peux pas avoir les infos, le pouvoir, pourquoi je n'ai pas téléphoné plus tôt. Maman et papa... Bon, bon à savoir, hey, salut, ouais. Je ne peux pas parler longtemps, pas mon téléphone, juste vérifier. Assurez-vous que vous faites bien...
Andrew a laissé ses mots s'éloigner, sûr qu'ils auraient compris. Il n'avait pas été certain de l'ampleur de la panne de courant, de sorte qu'ils n'avaient peut-être pas été bien, une pensée qu'il n'était pas habitué à gérer. Ce qu'il avait l'habitude de faire, c'était les rassurer sur sa santé. Il connaissait la routine qui les empêchait de s'inquiéter. Eh bien, de trop s'inquiéter.
Assurez-vous qu'ils puissent l'entendre dire les mots. Souriez-leur s'ils pouvaient le voir, et soyez honnêtes à propos des petites choses qu'ils pourraient aider. Soyez honnête sur les grandes choses aussi, bien sûr, mais pas au téléphone quand il n'y avait rien qu'ils pouvaient faire, juste avec son médecin pour l'instant. Mais il n'a reçu qu'un seul appel téléphonique et il a dû choisir entre leur inquiétude et prendre rendez-vous. De toute façon, les choses ont probablement été prises en charge par des urgences, il s'en sortirait bien.
Donc, il n'a pas mentionné la façon dont son cœur avait sauté avec l'explosion. Il a juste souri au téléphone et s'est moqué des blagues de son père pendant une minute avant qu'il ne se rende compte que les choses étaient bonnes. C'était assez de soulagement pour savoir qu'ils n'avaient pas eu autant de problèmes. Bien qu'il y ait eu des ratés sur le pont, apparemment, mais pas avec eux. Effrayante, mais aux émotions mitigées, surtout, il était juste reconnaissant.
C'est vrai, non? Vraiment? C'est une bonne chose, oui. Je vais lui dire. T-Oh, qu'est-ce que tu en penses d'autre? Barbecue poulet, duh, utiliser autant que nous le pouvons avec le frigo dehors. Bien sûr, oui, je rappelle dès que je peux. Je dois remettre mon téléphone au travail. Toi aussi. Prends soin de toi. Je t'aime. Très bien, au revoir.
Il a raccroché.
Je l'ai immédiatement regretté.
Ce n'était qu'un de ces mouvements automatiques qui était beaucoup trop facile à gérer. Mais ils avaient l'air bien. Heureux d'entendre de lui, mais autrement aucune plainte ou préoccupation à traiter. À moins qu'ils ne tirent le même coup qu'il était, puisqu'il avait évidemment dû l'apprendre quelque part.
Secouant la tête contre lui-même, Andrew laissa tomber sa main et donna à Janelle deux pouces en se retournant. Elle a souri et s'est glissé devant lui. J'ai déjà composé. Retrouve-toi là-bas, Cherry.
Ouais...
Il s'est déplacé à leur place habituelle de déjeuner de printemps, en utilisant la journée nuageuse pour accrocher une table de pique-nique habituellement déjà parlée (bien que ce fût peut-être les événements récents qui l'ont laissé vide) et attendre que Janelle le rejoigne. Un sandwich et une pomme, en économisant le reste pour des collations, et beaucoup de temps pour regarder et écouter sur d'autres conversations de gens. La plupart du temps, c'était pareil. Les cours annulés ou poursuivis (et les étudiants heureux ou tristes de l'un ou l'autre), quelqu'un a mentionné être dans un accident d'autobus qui doit avoir été terrifiant à l'époque, et tout le monde avait des théories ou des questions ou un avis à ajouter sur l'ensemble de la situation. Beaucoup ont eu des histoires (ou des plaintes) sur la façon dont ils ont passé leur nuit impuissante, et il était pleinement prêt à les rejoindre lorsque Janelle s'est assise en face de lui.
Apparemment, ils ont compris ce que c'était. Papa dit, et si ce n'était pas assez d'avertissement, alors elle ne connaissait évidemment pas son père. Les Aliens envahissent.
| NAME: |
Andrew Blythe ​Williams
| NICKNAME(S): |
Annie, Andy, Drooly, Cherry​
| ALIAS: |
Someone else make something up.
| D.O.B.: |
10/05/1992
| AGE: |
23
| SEX: |
Male​
| SEXUALITY: |
Heterosexual
| APPEARANCE: |
At 5’7” and over 180lbs, Andrew is a heavy man in a round rather than intimidating way. With a bit of a paunch, no obvious muscle and a penchant for smiling, he’s about as unthreatening as they come, and he likes it that way. His hair is brown, straight and longer on top than on the sides. It tends towards flyaway fashion due to its thinner wispiness as well as his habit of running his hand through it absentmindedly. He has small brown eyes that, more often than not, are complemented by dark circles beneath them. They are close set under straight, thin eyebrows, with a button of a nose and thin lips. He also has a bit of dark scruff on his cheeks and chin that he keeps short. He is of the opinion it makes him look older.
He has no distinguishing birthmarks, only a few small scars on his hands and arms from work or stupid accidents and a raised, angry looking scar about three inches long, running vertically from just under his left collarbone. It leaves him with slight difficulty raising his left arm above his shoulder, but he doesn’t do that very often anyway. Another, older scar runs down the middle of his chest to just past his sternum as a thin, puckered line. His voice is light, with an easy speaking rhythm, though it drops to a lower register when he’s speaking thoughtfully. His clothing choices usually consist of jeans and plain coloured shirts, sometimes vests, with comfortable shoes. Nothing fancy. He wears a medical alert bracelet on his right wrist.
| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |
Density Manipulation.

Andrew is able to alter the density of his body and other objects to great extremes. He can lower his density or raise it. With enough practice, he will be capable of stopping the alteration at any point between the two extremes he is capable of, and so, limit the effects it has on his body as well as using the partial changes to different advantage.
He is far more familiar with shifting to a lighter density, though he still hasn’t explored all it has to offer, but he has figured out that he can move through objects that are usually considered solid, such as walls, and let moving objects pass through him. He becomes lighter, making it easier to move him or for him to move himself, and he’s used this to move heavier things than he sometimes should, provided they’re small enough to affect the whole of them. He can walk on water and even air, though it’s not easy to move without something a little more solid to push against. He can also cool himself or something else down by lowering the density, and can withstand higher temperatures while his density is lower, but, so far, nothing that isn’t already humanly possible.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, while he has yet to realize that he can and so is completely unfamiliar with raising his density, it should have similar, though opposing effects on his physiology. Having a higher density would make it harder to inflict damage to his body or whatever he’s raised the density of. He’d also be harder to move, and far heavier in general(12 tons top weight, currently about 4 tons). At his highest peak, he could stop bullets and speeding cars, but he’d definitely be bruised afterwards. Explosions and heavier weapons would do less damage than usual, but he’d certainly feel it, and extremely small projectiles, like, grain of sand size, might penetrate his skin or pierce his eyes and do almost the same damage they would were he at normal density. Swimming would be impossible and fragile structures could break under him. He’d be stronger though, capable of dragging semis and lifting smaller cars. Though I doubt he’d ever throw them, both for insurance reasons and because he’d need both arms over his head and that hurts. He wouldn’t be able to heat himself up the same as he can cool down, as the latter is due to air movement, but he could gain a little extra heat from densely packed molecules, and would certainly lose heat much slower.
Through skin on thing contact, he can affect inanimate objects, and might develop the ability to affect other people, animals and plants, or at the least he’ll keep trying just to see if he can. Separate, small objects are easily isolated and altered, and he has to think about it as little as he thinks about changing his own density. He can change the density of part of a large object, like a wall or the floor or a car door, but it is much harder, and the default shape he manages each time is a circle, unless there’s already a line for his eye to follow, like an archway. With time, he might be able to change that. The amount he can alter is still limited to matching his mass. And provided he hasn’t gone over this limit, he can alter more than one substance at a time just as long as it is in contact with what he’s in contact with.
Knows he can
-phase through things
-walk on water
-cool himself off
-lighten/phase smaller things

He can’t change the density of particular body parts, though he can control the size of the area for other things, with his body it’s all or nothing, and with smaller things, it’s usually all or nothing as well, just by default. With practice and concentration, he might eventually be able to alter only a portion of the object.
He has to be touching the thing he wants to affect or the alteration will go back to normal on its own. Usually within 30-60 seconds.
So far, he has only been able to affect objects up to his own mass or down to a large pebble. With enough time to stretch his power muscles, the limit might go up by a fair bit, but it won’t go down by much.
While he can walk on both water and air, it’s rather like moving on very loose sand. Difficult to do at speed.
While he has the potential to maintain the density alterations indefinitely, or at least, for as long as he’s ever bothered to without it turning off on him, neither his heart nor his pacemaker appreciate the changes to their molecular structure. At lower densities, his heart rate speeds up due to the lowered blood pressure and at higher densities it slows down. Both leave him feeling lightheaded and might provoke fainting spells, though the former includes chest pains and the latter puts him at risk of his pacemaker shocking his heart out of sync, which at best means a few seconds of palpitations and at worst an artificially created cardiac arrest that won’t stop until he goes back to normal density and finds a magnet to switch it off and back on or collapses. Depending on his activity levels and amount of density alteration, 5 minutes might be his limit on the short end, though he has managed to walk for half an hour at his lightest before he started to suffer consequences. (This limit only applies to his own body, he can keep a thing’s density altered as long as he wants. And until he gets his pacemaker fixed, he's not at risk of the malfunctioning bit.)
Because he needs air to stay alive and there is an unsurprisingly limited amount within most solid objects, he can't stay phased inside them for long unless they are also at a much lighter density to allow airflow.
He can only keep up the alteration while conscious.
When he changes part of a thing’s density rather than a whole, there can be consequences. Such as raising the density of a car door causing it to become too heavy for the hinges holding it in place. Or making a part of the ceiling lighter might mean the things he didn’t realize were hanging from it fall down. Usually, unless it’s a small wall, the integrity wouldn’t be compromised, but it’s a good idea not to prolong the alteration. Also, there’s no visible change in the object’s appearance except that it might not move in the wind or stop water from moving through it.
He has limited, if any, protection against psionic, energy, or electrical(even less) attacks.



He can quote all of the Lion King, most of Lilo & Stitch, and still cries when Bambi’s mother dies. He also knows the lyrics to most of the better known Disney songs. He has no idea how this happened, and it has nothing to do with the number of times he’s watched their movies. Nope, nothing.
He is a bundle of useless trivia, from bug facts to flower meanings, from historical significance to the average number of people that can fit in an elevator or what the Guinness world record is for how long a chicken lived without its head.
He can drive.
He knows CPR, first aid, and emergency response protocol.
He has taken several self-defense courses, because you never know (and his grandma insisted). He’s probably forgotten more than half of them though.
Balloon animals.
Fluent in English, yep. Also knows rudimentary Spanish and German.
He will try to make whatever food you ask of him, provided you can give him the recipe. It still might not taste great, but he's handy enough in a kitchen.



| BACKSTORY: |
 Born in New Alexandria, Andrew didn’t stay there long as his parents very quickly decided to move closer to the bigger hospital on the mainland when his birth came with the major complication of hypoplastic left heart syndrome and the commute between there and home cost too much time and energy, not to mention money they didn’t have. He was in and out of that hospital more times than his parents cared to count over the next several years, occasionally due to false alarms, and his heart acting up, and sometimes from the more usual troubles children can get themselves into. But he was otherwise a happy enough child, eager to make friends and see his grandparents and ride the ferry to get to them. He was just lucky his grandparents had the money set aside for travel to be able to offer some financial help and forego their planned years of vacationing.
Although things had started to settle down a little when he was six, he was waiting for a new heart for two years during which his health gradually diminished again. Thankfully, the worst moment that year, was also instrumental in bumping him up the wait list. He went into full cardiac arrest when he was 8 years old, and though they managed to shock his heart into resetting itself, continuing to live was not the only ‘gift’ he thinks that shock gave him. He’s not entirely sure, but he figures something about the electrical impulses combined with the emotional rush must have sparked awake some dormant genes in his cells a few years before puberty might have flipped the switch naturally. Or it triggered something that would have remained quiescent his whole life. Either way, after that day, he had a few accidents that involved falling through things he shouldn’t have fallen through. Like walls and floors… It took him some time, witnesses, and several colourful bruises to realize he wasn’t hallucinating.
During this time, he also had a brief fling with his neighbor, who was a nice girl and a good friend, after a talk about boyfriends and girlfriends turned into him admitting that he wasn’t sure he’d get that far. So, she invited him to be her boyfriend, her ‘ghost’ boyfriend after she saw him fall through the counter he was leaning on, which mostly amounted to proudly holding hands when they were together and doing most of the same things as they always had. With an extra side of her encouraging him to figure out the whole falling through things… thing. They talked about lots of things that fall, from her collection of beetles to the sorts of things he’d do once he had his power under control. From their different teachers and the notes he’d missed while dozing off to what they wanted to be when they grew up. She wanted to be an astronaut for a brief stint; he wanted to be a doctor, or a clown.
The boyfriend thing lasted about two months before they sort of mutually forgot it and then his family moved again, to a more affordable place in East Beach when the project started up. He didn’t forget her though, or the plans he’d had to be a superhero. But it never amounted to much of anything. Never in the right place at the right time, and he didn’t know anything about saving people. The fact that too much stress on his heart made it act up worse than usual didn’t help. Gradually, the ideals slipped to the side and the power was just this thing he couldn’t do that well anyway.
When he finally got his new heart, things were looking up, he was feeling good and there was only one fright when his body tried to reject it. But that cleared up and he avoided all the other risks through chance and a very faithful following of the care plan his doctor put together. So, he focused on school, and friends, and asking the neighbours if they wanted him to mow their lawn or walk their dog for a dollar or three until he was old enough to work. He liked visiting New Alexandria and his maternal grandparents, occasionally managing to convince his grandfather to take him out in his boat (it really wasn’t that hard). He spent plenty of time, too, in figuring out how the whole slipping through walls worked, and what else he could do with it. He showed his grandma, because she always seemed to have the answer to everything, and his parents were fully aware that he was up to something and being sneaky. Ellen probably told them, because they did sit him down to talk to him about behaving responsibly a few days after he’d told her, but they never asked explicitly.
Unfortunately, in practicing and being unsure of what he was doing, Andrew wasn’t always balanced in shifting the density of his body, and it had a detrimental effect on the healing nerves around his heart. Eventually, they settled into a far slower heartbeat than was healthy, resulting in regular fainting spells that had his doctor reluctantly suggesting a pacemaker to regulate it. He didn’t enjoy the process, or the feeling of something else making his heart beat, but he got used to it eventually, and now it’s second nature to go through his daily routine with it and to talk about it if he has to. Because although he doesn’t do a lot of travelling, he has occasionally set off a store’s security. He is definitely relieved to be free of the fainting spells though, and has learned to be even more careful with his power than he was, but is far less limited than before.
He’s gone through the rest of growing up pretty normally, managing to keep in touch with Janelle, the girl he’d ‘dated,’ and meeting up with her as often as they could manage. He did have one girlfriend in highschool too, though that barely lasted a full school year before she broke up with him at the start of summer. It hurt, but thinking back on it now, he’s not sure how they even lasted that long, given their extremely different approaches to practically everything. He got a job as a grocery store clerk where he used his power to shelve heavy things until he graduated. Then he followed Janelle to the university campus since he liked spending time with her and wanted a change of scenery anyway.
They rent an apartment together in the Sound while his parents have moved back to New Alexandria to live with his grandfather. He took a semester of classes with an undeclared major, but found his attention constantly drifting no matter what class he was taking and decided not to use up his money until he could figure out what he wanted to take and stick with it. He has stayed on as groundskeeper though, and is saving up what he can while he works out what he wants to do with his life.
The explosion’s left him with a faulty pacemaker and, although he doesn’t realize it yet, the other side of his power’s spectrum. He’s more concerned about his friends and family being okay than he is about himself though.

| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |
Andrew’s daily goals include making the most of the opportunities he’s given, having fun, and brightening at least one stranger’s day. He doesn’t have the means to make it big or hugely generous, but if he can do something for someone else, he’s going to try; handing over small change or giving a bit of his time or just offering an encouraging compliment are easy to do and a good habit to have, he figures.
His motivation comes from wanting to do something with his life to give back to a community that helped his family through hard times. He just hasn’t managed to figure out quite what he’s capable of or what he wants to do. Maybe it’s the lingering childhood disappointment that superhero isn’t a viable career move, but part of him isn’t sure anything he thinks of would be enough.
| SUPPORTING CAST: |
Bailey & Harrison Williams – Mother and Father
Andrew is close to both of his parents, often getting into emoji wars with his mother and watergun fights with his dad. He tries to get out to see them at least once a month, and usually manages more. He is greatly appreciative of everything they’ve done for him and the support they still offer, whether it be through tough love or just telling him to take a chance because he only lives once. They’ve been together since their own high school days and although they aren’t always obvious about their love, Andrew’s rarely seen them fight and swears they can read each other’s minds. Bailey is an aspiring writer who leads tours and assists researchers depending on the season, and Harrison works as an archivist at the New Alexandria campus.

Dietrich Best – Grandfather
Rough around the edges and still bitching about the bridge that ruined the ferry business, even though there’s still some tourists that want to ride on them, Dietrich isn’t the most forthrightly kind person you’ll ever meet. But he has a gruff voice and an easier temper than his sharp tone implies and a great deal of love in his heart, for all he finds it hard to show. He and Andrew are often co-conspirators when it comes to getting into mischief. His spirit’s dwindled since his wife died, burning a little more fitfully, and his mind’s starting to wander, but he’s still a force to be reckoned with in his lucid moments. He worked on the Regal ferry from 14 to 65, with a break only for the war.

Ellen Best – Grandmother(deceased)
She was her grandson’s bestest friend, her daughter’s greatest supporter, the harshest critic of her son-in-law, and the light of her husband’s life. Now that she’s gone, they all feel her absence, and for all it’s been eight years, Andrew still catches himself sometimes thinking that he’s found something she’d love to hear about.

Janelle Foss – Best Friend and Roommate
Friends since before they can remember, they had an on again, off again method of keeping up with each other during their school years when they were living across the city, but now that they live in the same apartment, they’ve given each other pseudo-sibling status and bicker about the rent while leaving silly little notes around the place for each other in the hopes of winning a smile. She knows about his power and his heart problems and his penchant for singing Disney songs in the shower. He knows about her string of weird boyfriends and very real crush on Gerald Butler and fear of driving. They’ve both agreed that if no one comes along for them by the time they’re 35, she’ll pity marry him and he’ll settle for what he can get.

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

Link One
Link Two
Link Three
| NOTES: |

Left-handed. Writing looks like this.
Is an organ donor. He has a card.
Also has a pacemaker ID card so he can flash it around when he sets a security alarm off and people start questioning his morals.
Volunteers off and on at the children’s hospital.
Collaboration and character driving noted.