#i don't have ocd but i do have strong oc traits and it's sometimes nice to see yourself reflected in a character

[suddenfossilfightersheadcanons]

Frontier Branch Leaders, pt. 3: Drake and Liu Ren

Pt. 1: Background Information

Pt. 2: Sean

Drake

-I stated in an earlier post on this blog that he's 27. Please forget that. He's probably on the cusp of 39 (circa 2015, at the beginning of Frontier).

-Originally from Sweden; moved to Copenhagen a few years before Frontier started.

-Absolutely hates the sensation that occurs when he enters his ancestral battle trance. To him, it's as being possessed, not to mention being utterly exhausting. Starting in his teens, he'd often have periods of abruptly losing control of this trance, and lashing out, sometimes violently, against tormentors and, in worse cases, family. Violet's interest in mysticism allowed her to help him work out what was going on, and slowly learn to detect when a wave of possession was imminent.

-Loves his Ankylo BO because he needn't fear injuring it during one of his trances. He feels most comfortable around padded and armoured vivosaurs.

-For a long time, he tried, desperately, to minimise the length of time he had to spend around children and, by extension, the youngest of the Wardens. He's terrified of hurting people accidentally. Moreover, he finds most people too loud, too much, too extraverted to deal with.

-Has a surprisingly excellent relationship with Sean, who quickly worked out that Drake was intensely sensitive to Sean's typical loudness. As such, Sean usually drops his volume around Drake, and where possible, emails or texts him, instead of talking, on bad days. When Drake's overloaded trying to handle the caseload that comes with managing not only Europe, but also cases in Africa, Sean will often offer to take over some of Drake's more menial duties. Drake, in return, bakes for him, and brings him odd fossil trinkets and weird rocks.

-Despite how much he hates loud people, he loves Scandinavian death metal.

-Known to abuse the World Gate to conveniently escape people. ('Sorry I can't come to your birthday, friend. I'm in Chile right now.')

-Suffered significantly with OCD from childhood, being at his worst in his teens and mid-twenties. He waited for almost 15 years before finally seeking help. While he still has intrusive thoughts and compulsions, they're far better managed now. His social anxiety is also significantly better than it once was.

-Was diagnosed with autism at age 4. Will scream if someone enters his office unexpectedly.

-Has some of the same powers as Violet—however, while she can communicate with spirits and occasionally see the future, he can merely hear spirits and detect psychic energy, but can't actually manipulate them well. Generally, if he can hear his ancestors chattering, he knows his bloodthirsty side is about to take over.

-Blows off frustration by punching pillows. If he punches walls instead, he will leave cracks in the plaster.

-Speaks Swedish and Danish fluently, as well as German and English proficiently. Has a very, very strong accent.

-Visits Switzerland all too often for the sole sake of buying too much Toblerone. Violet can and will raid his supply if there's any left by the time he returns to Fossil Park Europe, so he has about three days to consume everything he buys before she can find him.

-INTP 6w5 sp/sx.

Liu Ren

-Originally from Shanxi. Swears he's forty-eight years old, but Drake and Violet both detect a particular spiritual energy coming from him that's far too immense for him to be a normal forty-something. Writes exclusively in traditional Chinese, never mind that simplified characters have been in use since well before the 80s. Moreover, he's clearly far smarter than he lets on. Violet and Drake are both absolutely certain he's at least a century old, and aren't entirely sure he's human.

-Writes his name as 劉仁, but Violet swears that certain Qing-dynasty documents by 劉陽磊, a mystic and self-proclaimed witch, give off the same energy as Liu Ren's own writings.

-Fluent in Mandarin, Cantonese, six other Chinese dialects, English, and Portuguese.

-Tends to playfully rib Tria for her extremely strong Sichuan accent.

-Consumes obscene amounts of Sprite and Coca-Cola. Nobody knows how his teeth are still intact.

-When other Wardens get injured, he'll tell them to cheer up, and inevitably have a story of a similar injury. As such, he's been poisoned, burned, bruised, and broken over and over. Nobody knows how he's had time to suffer all these abuses, let alone recover.

-Drake and Sean both overtly dislike him. In part, it's that Fossil Park Asia has a longstanding rivalry with Fossil Park America, and that rivalry means that Sean tends to interpret Liu Ren's gestures as patronising, instead of circumspect, and Liu Ren thinks Sean to be green and overconfident. Drake's suspicions about Liu Ren's history remind him of his own supernatural tendencies, leading him to deeply distrust Liu Ren. Stryker is the only one at HQ who isn't concealing some kind of misgivings about Liu Ren, and even then, Stryker is notoriously unwilling to take orders. While Liu Ren has been there far longer than Stryker, and Stryker owes some success to Liu Ren, they exasperate each other.

-He's been in the job for over 25 years, and looked the same then as now. Though few people like him well, he's still impossible to boot from the position, as he's never actually done anything overtly wrong. Fossil Park America claim that he's overpowered and obsolete; Fossil Park Asia claim that he's done more for INTERFOL than Fossil Park America has in the last three decades combined. He's possibly the most experienced person in INTERFOL, and doesn't seem to be running out of momentum; as such, he's invaluable, even if he's incomparably ill-liked.

-Though he's not overtly frayed at the edges in the same way that many, many Wardens are, he can and will go very, very quiet if someone mentions anything to do with Cosmonium, and when he touches the stuff, he claims that it burns. Drake is starting to wonder if Liu Ren's apparent agelessness might have something to do with Cosmonium, and if there may be some awful incident at the heart of what drove him into contact with it.

-Occasionally takes partners for a night, but doesn't appear to be seeking companionship. Has a portrait of a wife in his office, but it's old-fashioned, in black-and-white, and nobody has ever met the woman herself. Mei Lian once worked up the courage to ask her name. Zha Youjing. When Mei Lian looked at the photo of Youjing and called her gorgeous, Liu Ren looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

-ENTP 3w4 sp/so.