#arc.strength

[arcanakrp-blog]

HA SEUNGWOO – STRENGTH. AGENT 08.

                                              [   FILE TYPE: CLASSIFIED   ]

//: LOADING PROFILE: HA SEUNGWOO …

international age: 24 birthplace: busan, south korea arcana: strength team number: six

//: LOADING MUTATION: FERAL MIND  …

application one: hunting intuition — hunting is not easy. it requires attention, focus, skills, practice. but it can be easier when these skills come to you as easily as breathing. hunting intuition gives seungwoo all those talents, enhancing his instincts so he can hunt, be it animals, people, or even objects. also, in the sorry case his target is a person, seungwoo can get a sense of their weakness, their vulnerabilities, making it simpler to catch them. or kill them, his choice. this application makes him the perfect tracker. there is, though, one thing needed for such a power to be better used: patience, a skill seungwoo barely has. being too eager, getting annoyed of waiting, getting ahead of himself can always jeopardize his efforts, putting the mission he’s in in danger.

application two: anger empowerment — anger is an well-known friend of seungwoo, one he’s been nurturing since young, since his life went out of the rails, crashing and burning in its collision course. when he gets angry he’s able to unlock other powers such as getting stronger, being able to lift heavier objects, fight harder, all rage and destruction, giving him a huge edge in fights. one downside to this power is that once it passes and he calms down, whatever wounds he has been inflicted are harder to heal, and depending of much energy he spent he can even have to stay in bed for a day or so.

application three: enhanced instincts — enhanced instincts consists of seungwoo having stronger instincts than what would be considered normal. mainly his predatory and fight instincts talk louder inside of him, shout until logic is forgotten and he can think quickly and efficiently while working on those instincts alone. he thinks and do things quicker, easier, though they might not always be the logical choice. he thinks quickly, instinctively, making him ideal for missions that need them to be fast and precise. however, this application can be dangerous when mixed with anger empowerment, making him reckless and destructive.

overall strengths and weaknesses: — seungwoo’s strength is in how well he matches his power, almost as if he was born with it, made for it. it’s like destruction is a part of what he is, and doing it is easy for him. he detaches himself from reality in a way that makes the job in arc easy - he doesn’t think about, doesn’t get bothered because of it. if he is ordered to steal, he does, if he has to kill, he does. he has heard people joking about how he’s the perfect soldier: soulless and quiet. truth be told, he’s just tired of feeling. when it comes to his weakness, weirdly enough, they’re also attached to his power and how linked it is to the person seungwoo is. his impulsiveness, his hot headed persona makes it easy for him to get out of control, to go berserk. it’s not been once or twice when he has gotten warnings from the higher ups, having part of his pay taken away for making stupid mistakes just because he got too angry, too consumed. in the end his biggest strength is himself, but it’s also his downfall.

//: LOADING HISTORY ..

PRE-MUTATION

november third, 1992 - 4:00AM

it’s raining when he’s born. a thunderstorm, her father will tell him one day as he’s all dressed up jeans and a polo shirt. but for now they’re scared he’ll even make it, all eyes on him and on his mother, prayers going around the room. but he makes it, so does his mother. they’re fighters, after all, born to live, born to win. seungwoo doesn’t cry when he leaves his mother’s womb, eyes wide open, looking around as if inspecting the place, as if being born is just another task he has to do. his father will also tell him one day that once a baby is born not crying is because their spirit is happy to come to the world, because they have a special purpose to fulfill.

seungwoo used to like that idea. now he thinks it’s utter crap.

january fifth, 1998 - 2:35PM

he is lying on the ground, one arm lying on his side, the other hand grabbing a wooden sword tight against his chest. there’s laughter and then applauses, and quickly seungwoo is on his feet, eyeing the crowd with a huge smile. he smiles, proud and happy, finding his family easily. they are in the front row after all, just as usual, mom, dad and his brothers: sungwoon wearing his school uniform, and the youngest on his mother’s lap. his family is not that old tired cliché of the broken rich family - the sad little rich boy, always alone, always waiting for his parents to come. no. his father always makes a place in his busy schedule for him, his mother is always there for all his little school plays, every single event. he comes down the stage still wearing his prince costume, hugging his mother tightly. happiness - he is so sure at the time that he’s found it.

august fifteenth, 2006 - 2:30AM

“are you sure no one knows?”

“honey, please. this doesn’t concern you.”

he is leaning against his father’s office door, attentive to not make any noise. seungwoo holds his breath, closes his eyes. he had seen it: the whispering, the two of them talking around corners. his father has been sullen, quiet, not like his usual self. he doesn’t know what is going on. he’s asked, of course he has, but all his mother does is smile, tell him to not worry, to focus on his studying.

“it does concern me,” his mother replies and it gets harder to listen. he gets closer, focus. “what will we do?”

“i have money to cover it, jiwoo. don’t worry for now. and if they don’t shut up even then, there are other ways. you know it.”

seungwoo hears steps, runs to his room. she wonders what other ways are those.

april first, 2008 - 3:55 PM

he is called to the principal office.

seungwoo walks through the corridors of her all-boys school, white floors as pristine as white shirt and black tie. his back is straight, eyes focused up front. he can hear them whispering, gathering in the classroom like roaches. seungwoo acts as if he doesn’t care, steps determined. he smirks to a friend as he passes by. anyone would think going to the principal is just one more of his school duties.

he sits down when asked, looks ahead, annoyed. the principal stares at him with that expression, the one that says it all: she would wish to be anyone but the one to carry the news she is about to give to seungwoo. the boy breathes in, waits for it.

one hour later he is in a car, going back home. it’s almost as if he can feel the eyes on his back as he leaves the school. they are silent, of course they are, but it’s almost like they’re shouting: the son of a crooked man, a corrupt businessman who was stupid enough to get caught. a fucking murder. it’s a weird feeling, seungwoo thinks as he fights against rage on the backseat of the car, to watch such a beautiful castle crumble. to find out its foundations that he once thought to be so strong were actually sand.

may twenty-third, 2008 - 9:00PM

it’s quite simple what happened: hes father owned a construction company. his father lied, used used cheap materials to make construction costs lower, ignored safety issues, all to make business more profitable. now one of his buildings had crumbled, killing twenty people, hurting at least fifty. he’s in jail as more and more shit is uncovered. there are journalists at the front of his house every day, a sea of interviews, his mother being questioned time after time as they tried to see where she fit in that whole mess. for now they’re playing the innocent family, the ones who didn’t know. which is true for seungwoo, he never knew. he thought his father was the best man he ever knew.

he wakes up from her sleep, the bad dream still ringing on his ears. seungwoo stands up, neck hurting from the uncomfortable position he was. he looks around, sees his younger brother sleeping by his side. he’s only thirteen years old. he deserves better than this. he looks at the time, dinner has yet to be served. they don’t have maids anymore, no one but their trusty driver, who decided to stay with them even if they can’t pay him anymore. they’ve been cutting excessive expenses here and there, all to pay or his father’s lawyer and lawsuits costs. but they still gotta eat.

“mom?” he calls, stands up and goes up the stairs. he looks around, call her again. but when seungwoo finally finds her in her room, he has to look up, eyes wide, heart stop beating for a second. he runs away. when he finally finds her, he wishes he didn’t.

may twenty-fourth, 2008 - 8:25AM

the media doesn’t respect even his mother’s funeral. security tries to keep them away but there they are, taking pictures, making a fuss. seungwoo doesn’t cry.

when they arrive back home seungwoo and his younger brother go to her room, lie on her bed. his older brother arrives an hour later - he smells of alcohol and rain, his shoulders damp. he scoffs when he looks at the ceiling. that chandelier had always been so pretty.

“she was weak,” her brother says, and seungwoo stares at him for a while. it’s the first time he punches him for real, though not the first time he wanted to.

it won’t be the last too.

november third, 2010 - 4:00AM

seungwoo feels his knuckles hurting, blood dripping from the corner of his mouth. the place they live now is smaller and this bathroom with its white walls and low ceiling makes him almost claustrophobic. he hates the place ever since they moved in years ago, once sungwoon was old enough to be their legal guardian, once his father had no way out of prison and their money was running out. they lived out of what was left, lived out of what whatever sungwoon did for a living, seungwoo didn’t even want to know, fuck it. it’s not like they get along.

there’s a soft knock in the door and he looks up, watches as the youngest walks in. jiho has always been the best of them and he still is. he does well in school, has the brightest smile he has ever seen. their mother’s smile. seungwoo no, he is all their father, all lies.

“you two shouldn’t fight,” jiho says, touches his hand, “we’re brothers.”

seungwoo only nods, makes another false promise of doing better next time. he won’t, he won’t even try. he’s tired.

POST-MUTATION

unknown date, 2015 - hour unknown

he is drunk, that’s why he doesn’t remember. nothing flashy, really. he is at home, lying in his tiny apartment, the only one he could afford the rent for. he doesn’t even know how long he’s been there - lying, looking at the ceiling, drinking as if he didn’t have his stupid job at the convenience store tomorrow. fuck that job, really. but it paid the bills.

until there’s a flash of a light. seungwoo looks up, goes to the window, watches as it rain stars. 

he didn’t know he was this wasted.

two weeks later, 2015 - all the time

it’s like all he can see is rage, hate, consuming, destroying. when it starts to build up he curls in an u shape, shouts in his pillow. he can barely breathe, he can hardly take it.

july third, 2015 - 2:03AM

they find it after it happened.

he is sitting in an alley far away from the club he was just in. at first whenever it happened he’d lose consciousness, lose who he is. now it’s like he takes a backseat, watches flashes of it, comes back only to the destruction, to the afterthought. but he knows it was him, sees traces of what he is all over the violence. when the men in black look at him he smiles, all sweat and blood.

“so,” he says, trying to stand up, wincing in pain. his wounds always heal hurt more now, after it happens, “where are you taking me?”

january first, 2017 - 7:00PM

his body is sore, aching all over places he didn’t even know he could feel pain. training is hard, tougher than he expected, or at least tougher than he expected it to be after more than a year in this wretched place. he was one of the first ones to get in, his power one of the easiest to trace. how hard it is to find a guy who leaves a trail of destruction and god knows what else wherever he goes? not hard enough.

it gives him a sense of purpose though. a feeling of at least be doing something, living. his brother always used to say seungwoo was a good for nothing, that he wouldn’t amount to anything in this life. well, sucks to be him. as far as he knows he is stuck in some office, he finished law school, going the same path their father went. seungwoo wants very little to do with that. he wants sungwoon to fuck off. all the way off.

the only thing he misses from his old life is his little brother. for him seungwoo spun a history about a job abroad, lie after lie. he sends him money, half of what he gets so he can go to college and live well. he doesn’t care that he gets so little of his paycheck, not really. seungwoo himself is the smallest of his worries. 

to be here, in such a place, sometimes it feels weird still. he’s not used to having a partner, not used to working in a team. he’s not used to having to look out for others, carrying orders. but it’s his job so he carries on, does the least he has to to at least fit in a bit. fit in is enough, he doesn’t expect to go as far as belonging here. a monster like him doesn’t belong to anywhere.

[arcanakrp-blog]

SONG WONIL – STRENGTH. AGENT 08.

                                                  [   FILE TYPE: CLASSIFIED   ]

//: LOADING PROFILE: SONG WONIL ...

international age: 23 birthplace: incheon, south korea arcana: strength team number: six

//: LOADING MUTATION: FERAL MIND  ...

application one: hunting intuition —   what could possibly be scarier than the unknown you ask? how about the beast that knows everything about you? from a lingering scent, to the offbeat shuffle amongst crowds; from the palpitations of fear, to the spaces between the prints of your feet. insignificances building upon insignificances, like a voice that whispers inside his head, drawing a map on the blank parchment of his mind. he knows where you’ll run. he knows where you’ll hide. he already knows where you will be. really, how hard can it be to find the needle in the haystack if you already know exactly where it is?  

application two: anger empowerment — it’s a simple concept of equivalent exchange, and in this case, he’s trading his sanity for strength. power. rage. it comes in levels, correlative to the control slipping from his grasp. annoyance gives a little jolt, irritation is a platform above, and anger? anger is the crushed cement and brittle bones that meets his knuckles. anger is the blood pumping through his limbs, closing distance and heights with ease. anger is an unstoppable avalanche of fury, it doesn’t see friends or foes. anger is a beast. anger is a man. he is anger.

application three: enhanced instincts — be stronger than a prey; be smarter than a predator. adaptability is the most fundamental of requirements to tip natural selection in your favour. the need to survive is just as innate as the need to live; both are one and the same. it’s a compulsion of sorts, as involuntary as he detests it to be. it’s nothing that he can translate logically enough to interpret. it’s more than just sensing, it’s less than just thinking. he just knows — knows when to ‘fight’, knows when to ‘flight’. the safest course, the quickest route. whatever it takes for him to live another day.

overall strengths and weaknesses: — at first look, one would think what a terrible complement this power is to his personality. it’s poetically ironic how the gift of mindlessness manifested in an individual that so strongly clings to his own composure and humanity. he detests what it had made him become; to the point where he’d willingly be a pushover than to lose control. and most of the time he is in control; he makes sure of it. but while a man can tame a lion; he can’t contain the carnality it was born with. so when the disparity between the man and the beast finally disappears, the only one left standing is an amalgamation of absolute fury. — he becomes quite literally, a one-man army; indiscriminately destroying everything in his path, completely undeterred. strength, speed, durability, stamina — all of his natural parameters receives a massive boost. the further he’s enraged from provocation, the longer he’ll remain in frenzy. that said, there is a time-limit before he reverts and passes out from exhaustion — meaning he’ll be rendered completely immobile and useless. the only way to counter this is to separate him from threats that’d agitate him further, or hope he’d pull himself back through a mental anchor. provided he hasn’t sustained too many injuries and still possess a reasonable reserve of stamina, he can probably go berserk a second time. — however, even in that state, it seems that a sliver of consciousness still exists in the form of a) complete disregard for those who poses no threat to him and b) a mental block that — for now — always prevent him from landing the killing blow. perhaps it’s some pathetic attempt at easing his remaining conscience; a coping mechanism. it’s furthered in how he has purposely divided himself into two entities: ‘me’, and ‘that thing’. this separation, however, only seems to contribute to the confusion his own identity; it cripples his certainty at times. is he the man or the lion? — emotional setbacks aside, he’s gotten more proficient at the passive aspects of his powers through training. prefers it even. they complement his already observant nature and turns him into a sharp-thinking, decisive and perceptive scout. there’s a balance between his use of logic and intuition that allows him to minimise risks and any overall outcomes that would force him to resort to going berserk. (push come to shove, he’ll probably won’t resort to it anyways unless especially ordered otherwise.) that being said, there are situations where he struggles to discern between trusting his logic or instincts, and this has been especially compromising on the battlefield.

//: LOADING HISTORY ..

PRE-MUTATION

— 1부 it starts off picture perfect, a happy polaroid stained in sepia tone: a family of five evermore content under a roof that barely stretches over them all. there’s always a united hope to strive for the better, but still, a routine is settled and becomes normality. he doesn’t think he can imagine a life better than theirs. so this is how it begins: mother wakes at dawn and leaves just before the sun rises; she’s careful in her steps to avoid startling them all out of slumber. father rouses them out of bed and into the kitchen for their morning meal; the steaming scent from the dishes on their table is something he can still remember. then it continues: he bids father goodbye and takes his little sister’s hand; they separate before the gates and at the sight of respective friends. when they return at sunset, they’re welcomed with the warmth beyond father’s cooking and mother’s smile; they’re welcomed with home, and this is where it ends: rinse. reset. repeat. this was how life was meant to go on. but what good is a story if it can’t progress? — 2부 mother gives them too many apologies, but he’s learnt to forgive. he’s learnt to suppress childish materialism and urges for things she can’t give. he’s learnt to smile and offer the reassurance he can provide. “it’s okay eomma.”, “i don’t want it.”, “i don’t need it.” — all the lies that makes him her pride. his siblings are still too young to understand why, but it’s okay, they’ll learn. he’ll teach them, he’ll guide them. mother isn’t the one at fault. mother just needs comfort and their support. father surely would’ve agreed. but how can he know for sure? father is gone now and nothing’s the same. he’s holding his little brother while his sister and her tears cling to his frame. mother is busy greeting suits and dresses for father, so they can’t be a nuisance. he’ll hush them quiet and shield them from piteous eyes. it makes him sad, it makes him want to cry. but how can he dare cry if mother hasn’t yet? (but when she does, he doesn’t know. when they’re out of sight and sound asleep, she cries and cries her heart out. but he doesn’t know. mother doesn’t think he knows. so that’s what he’ll make her believe. he doesn’t know about the lingering tear stains on her cheeks, he doesn’t know about the weariness dragging down her eyes under all the make up, he doesn’t know that her cooking tastes nothing like fathers. she’s okay. she’s strong. that’s all that he knows.) (isn’t this why they say ‘ignorance is bliss’?) — 3부 life is unfair. it’s not a lesson he hasn’t learnt, it’s simply a reminder he can’t forget. he knows it could be worse, that they could be worse. they could be starving, or struggling out on the streets. but they still have a house, they still have clothes, they still have food, they still have each other. he knows it could be worse, but he also knows they could be happier. he wishes they were happier. he wishes that mother doesn’t have to work day and night to provide for them. he wishes that his younger siblings didn’t have to envy their classmates. but that was the reality, and he can only do his part as best as he could. he’s already mastered father’s recipes, he can help his siblings with their homework, he can ease mother’s load with the housework, he can take care of them all, and he can take care of himself. it doesn’t matter if others belittle him, whisper behind his back, shove him against cement, or knock him down into the dirt. it’s okay. he’s smart. he knows how to hide the bruises, he knows how to hold the pain throbbing under his skin, he knows not to let any of them worry. but he’s wrong. he’s not smart. they hound on him further for his indifference, hate that they can’t get a reaction, hate that they can’t pull him down to their level. maybe that’s why he won’t fight back, maybe that’s why he won’t let them get their satisfaction. they can’t use him as a pedestal if he’s already the ground that they step on. it’s his petty form of revenge, and his biggest mistake. one night, he’s not alone. one night, he’s caught under the soles of their shoes, bruised and battered by their pent-up frustrations. one night, while he’s waiting for the pain to pass, he hears his name before his vision blacks out. the next light that he sees is a ceiling too bright to be his own. the next sight that he sees is his little sister and brother crying by his bedside. he tries to call their name, a broken whisper that barely brought them relief at him gaining consciousness. he’s quickly tended to by coats of white before he regains the life from his beaten limbs. two days, that’s what they tell him. he’d been out cold for two days. but he can barely concentrate on ache in his head when his siblings are clinging to him, crying about mother. what happened to mother? — 4부 he’s older now, they all are. he’s supposed to be on the surge of his roaring twenties yet he feels weary, aged. he blames it on the influence of living with his grandparents, and they say he’d always been an old man at heart. it’s something he can’t deny, looking back on how far his siblings has grown. then they say he’s more like a parent than an older brother. now that is something he could deny, for this has always been a family of five, even now despite the void of their parent’s absence. that’s not a gap that anyone will ever replace. but life goes on. no matter what happens, it always does. whether it’s another tragedy or a sky of shooting stars, his life will go on. only it just won’t go on the way he thought it would be.

POST-MUTATION

— 5부 at first, he’s haunted. in dreams; in visions. a forest too unfamiliar to traverse, yet he always knew exactly where to go, and what to find. he doesn’t bother to spare much thought, there’s no indication of his health being compromised so far. but sometimes, he feels it. like a voice speaking to his conscience, like a pair of eyes watching over his shoulder constantly. someone, something; is stirring alive inside of him, changing inside of him. from absentmindedly taking a shortcut home he’d never found before to finding their family’s cat who went missing last year. then there’s the alertness, wariness, and sharpened reflexes he never knew he had. he tries to blame it on the caffeine, but how long can one fool themselves into ignoring the elephant in the room? the answer: no need to fret, because the elephant won’t ignore you. — 6부 the only thing he can equate the present with now is to a movie. something straight out of science fiction. he’s travelling over the world while being employed in a (questionably) stable job. if somebody told him two years ago that he could make money off having anger issues then he would’ve labelled them as batshit insane. and that’s exactly what he remembered doing at the botched job interview they arranged for him. right before he cracked a table split open at their annoying insistence that there’s something wrong with him. back then, just the notion that a collective for super powered people existed was enough of a joke for his lifetime. but that’s the reality. and these are the facts: he’s not a superhero, he’s not here to save the world. he’s here because they compelled him with a paycheck enough to provide for his siblings’ future. selfish? perhaps. but he has a responsibility to take care of them and he’d stop at nothing for it. even if it meant leaving them behind with his grandparents. even if it meant distancing himself from their lives. and it doesn’t matter what they want him to do, who they want him to protect, who they want him to kill hurt. he doesn’t believe in noble desires. not anymore. they say to never underestimate the man who has nothing to lose, but that’s only because they haven’t met the man who has everything to protect.

[arcanakrp-blog]

KIM JOON – STRENGTH. AGENT 08.

                                                  [   FILE TYPE: CLASSIFIED   ]

//: LOADING PROFILE: KIM JOON ...

international age: 24 birthplace: seoul, south korea arcana: strength team number: six

//: LOADING MUTATION: FERAL MIND ...

application one: hunting intuition — Joon possesses an enhanced instinct/talent for hunting and tracking down prey people to capture and/or kill. In terms of missions, he is able to use this to track targets down if necessary, and it is also extremely helpful in noticing the behaviors, patterns, and weaknesses of targets.

application two: anger empowerment — Joon has the ability to gain strength from his anger. When he is angry, he becomes stronger, faster, and more durable than he would be otherwise. However, this is also his most dangerous state as he has very little control over it and is quickly overwhelmed causing him to enter an animistic state where he has no control over his actions

application three: enhanced instincts — He possesses stronger than normal instincts, primarily in terms of predatory instincts like in hunting and in battle, however, it can be applied to other areas of life on occasion. Joon is able to process situations differently, although not necessarily more logically, and instinctively choose the most successful move

overall strengths and weaknesses: — He has always been good in a fight, but with the addition of his enhanced instincts and strength he has become even better, as long as he can keep his cool. He’s able to quickly pinpoint weaknesses in opponents and use them to his advantage. He has also learned to rely more on his instincts in combat than pure logic and strategy, but he still struggles to trust himself entirely due to the unpredictability of his other abilities.

Joon’s strength is a blessing and a curse. Essentially, the stronger Joon becomes the less control he has. If he is able to keep his anger to a reasonable level is able to control himself and his strength, however, once he reaches a certain point, he is no longer able to control himself or his actions and is reduced to almost an animistic state. He is unable to differentiate between friend and foe and will instinctively attack anyone or anything that crosses his path. When in this state, he is an incredible force to be reckoned with, but he is also unpredictable, which makes it difficult to harness in missions. This is not a state he typically enters willingly and it is used as a means of maximum destruction as opposed to a mission that requires tact and subtlety. Entering this animalistic state is very draining and leaves Joon exhausted. This can last anywhere from hours to days depending on how long he was out of it. At the time, Joon is unable to control his thoughts or actions, however, when he has calmed down again, he is able to remember everything he did while out of control, for better or worse.

Despite being a one-man wrecking crew, Joon’s abilities have also made him a natural in reconnaissance. Before Joon gained a relative amount of control over his anger and was more of a liability on missions than an asset, he spent a fair amount of time honing his reconnaissance skills from the ARC. Hunting intuition and enhanced instincts pair together extremely well and make it very difficult for people to evade/hide from Joon. He’s able to physically track targets while also being able to remotely analyze movements and make reasonable predictions about what their next move may be, however, this is more difficult to do and is never an absolute guarantee since people can move unpredictably at times and their instincts could conflict with Joon’s, or as he says, they’re wrong

//: LOADING HISTORY ..

PRE-MUTATION

Joon was fairly neutral. He wasn’t particularly good or bad, smart or dumb, but that didn’t stop him from getting into trouble for the dumbest shit. He spent his high school years partying, getting into fights, and running from the cops for the most part quite successfully, but when it came time for him to grow the fuck up and get a life, he hadn’t exactly garnered the greatest reputation. Luckily, Joon was good with his hands and had spent his summers restoring an old car long forgotten in his grandfather’s garage which was just enough to land him a job as a mechanic. It paid enough to secure him a shitty studio apartment a few blocks away from the shop and still have enough left over to go out to grab a beer with his friends a couple times a week and not starve to death, so Joon couldn’t complain. Actually, he could complain and did very often about the shitty plumbing and being bored to tears changing oil all day, but he also didn’t care enough to try to change it, so he got over it.

Old habits die hard, sometimes not at all if you’re Joon, which is why he found himself smoking outside a bar while holding a cold beer to his eyebrow to prevent it from swelling when the meteor shower started. It was the burden of being the biggest guy in any given bar; someone always had something to prove and trying to fight Joon seemed to be the most common way to go about it. Unfortunately for them, Joon wasn’t one to discourage violence and shutting people down in the form of broken noses just so happened to be one of his favorite hobbies. He wasn’t usually one to start fights, but he did love to finish them. Stars were a rarity in Seoul with all the light pollution from the city and it was even rarer to see a meteor shower. For a moment, Joon wondered if he had been hit harder than originally thought, but once he was sure he wasn’t seeing things, he instantly began digging in his pockets for his phone to text his friends to come out and see. He didn’t even have a chance to unlock his screen before a flash of light filled the sky blinding him. It could have been seconds or minutes, he couldn’t tell, but by the time Joon’s eyes could focus again, he decided that the stars could go fuck themselves and went back inside without telling anyone about what he had just seen.

POST-MUTATION

Joon didn’t dream, and if he did, it wouldn’t be about driving off into the woods to find some meteor, which is probably why it felt like each and every detail of it was seared into his brain. He could feel the ground beneath his feet and the way his jacket sleeves caught on branches as he wove his way towards where some dream instinct told the meteor should have landed. When he woke up that morning, he could have sworn he could still smell the dirt and trees surrounding him, but the reality of waking up in his shitty studio apartment in Seoul told him he was losing his mind.

The change in Joon wasn’t immediate. It was a slow burn of splintered door jambs, a dented steering wheel, and countless coffee cups martyred against thin apartment walls. He blamed it on stress, work or whatever, until he couldn’t even pretend to lie to himself like that anymore. A dead end, 9 to 5 job can drain the life out of you, but he was pretty sure it didn’t do this. The smallest things would send a swell of rage red hot and alive through his veins until Joon’s entire body trembled and all he could hear was the sound of his blood rushing through his ears. Looking back, it was a miracle he kept it together for as long as he did, even if it was a bit pathetic by any other standards.

The first time he lost control it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, thankfully. By that time, he had already stopped hanging around crowded clubs in favor of small bars tucked away in alleys and back streets where he could safely keep human contact to a minimum. All it took was a look and Joon was seeing red. His brain seemed to shut off losing control of his body and any thoughts that didn’t involve destroying anything he could get his hands on. Unfortunately, he got his hands on pretty much everything by the time the police got there, but by then, he had managed to calm down enough to not want to tear them limb from limb, and for the first time in his life, Joon went them willingly. The entire fight, if you could even call it that, was stuck on repeat playing over and over again in his mind. He could remember the screams and the feeling of their bones snapping under his fists, in his palms, but worst of all, he could remember the terrifying satisfaction it all had brought him. Joon had never been weak, but he had never felt so strong in his entire life. He had also never felt so out of control or as helpless as he did in the back of that squad car. That was the moment Joon began realizing he had become a monster.

They tested him for every drug under the sun, it was the obvious explanation for what he had done, and when they came back negative no one was entirely positive what to make of it. Regardless, multiple instances extensive of property damage and assault were more than enough to put Joon away for a couple of months. He didn’t even last a week. Turns out everything about prison pisses Joon off in the worst way and news of an inmate cracking cement walls and fracturing steel doors because someone made eye contact with him in the cafeteria traveled fast in the right circles. The Collective came to collect him in a matter of days.

He went with them under the guise that he was being transferred to a higher security facility; not that it particularly mattered, no one was putting up a fight for Joon to stay after the chaos he had caused in only a couple days. They promised to help him learn to control himself. They called it his “ability” like it wasn’t the worst thing to ever happen to him, and they were ready when he flew across the table with clenched fists and fire in his eyes. They made their offer as if “no” had ever been an option for Joon, as if there was still a place for someone like him out in the world. He knew they all knew better than that, but at least they had the decency to pretend. The promise of a hefty paycheck didn’t hurt either.

Joon was one of the first of the Arcana to be found, subtlety wasn’t exactly a part of his skill set, but he was relieved to see he wasn’t the only one who had recently become a time bomb. He learned to cope, somewhat, with the cards he had been dealt in the following months and years and began to realize it wasn’t all bad. He eventually reached a point where he could be around people again without the fear of breaking at any second; he still teeters on the edge of disaster nearly every day, but he has become a bit better at managing it. Once he began to level out, Joon realized that his strength and rage weren’t all that he had gotten that day and began working on improving his other abilities with much more success