Hutchinson, Opal

-NAME

Opal Cain Hutchinson

-GENDER

Male

-AGE

27

-BIRTHPLACE

Prophets' Dominion, Aenias City

-BIRTHDATE

June 14th, 413 A.R.

-THEME SONG

Pendulum - Watercolour
Lostprophets - A Town Called Hypocrisy






-PICTURE

Spoiler:

-DESCRIPTION

Opal stands about 6'1 and weighs a decent amount mainly due to his arm balancing out a slender and otherwise athletic frame. He's got deep, long black hair, and a very pale pallor and clean complexion, due to having to maintain his appearance for the nature of his business. Ignore the picture; he has nothing obscuring his eye, but will usually be seen walking with a cane. He has two green eyes, twinkling with that slight taste of deception and deceit, and if you get close to him, you'll find that his aroma is seductive and yet professional, draws you in yet keeps you alert.

He's deadly charismatic in mannerisms but will also appear rather cold and edgy at the same time. He's an enigma, a figure shrouded in mystery most will want to further investigate, despite knowing, feeling, understanding that they most definitely shouldn't. Opal wears a pinstripe white suit, jacket-longcoat, trousers, and all, with a black tie and white shirt, alongside black gloves over each hand, and a cane in his organic right hand.

Opal's left arm is entirely prosthetic, from the shoulder down, fashioned of an expensive lightweight metal, bronzed and custom-fashioned in order to allow the Ascendant to go about his business with a party piece very literally up his sleeve. His fingers themselves are clawed and sharp, but the bronze surface of the prosthetic, along the pauldron, reads a faded engraving due to years of movement, but inches before the stump, curved around the ball and socket joint; 'Thanatos'.

-PRIMARY WEAPONS

- Thanatos, a bronzed prosthetic left arm which can be loaded with projectiles and hidden blades
- Zelus, a scoped, steam-powered rifle
- Kratos, a gear-driven extendible rapier

-SECONDARY WEAPONS

- Deimos, a semi-automatic pistol
- Phobos, a pepperbox-headed sword-cane
- Erebus, a long-barreled gilded revolver
- Nemesis, a smaller gilded revolver






-SKILLS

- Tactical thinker.
- Excellent calculator.
- Number cruncher. Works well with statistics and trajectories.
- Brilliant shot.
- Steel will.
- Rather good schemer.
- Opportunist.
- Incredible precision.
- Lightweight, supple, flexible, durable, and strong prosthetic which Opal is skilled with.

-WEAKNESSES

- The occasional oversight.
- Plans are too circumstantial.
- Quickly grows bored.
- Not exempt from fits of extreme emotion.
- Despises insubordination.
- Doesn't like dirtying himself.
- Realist.
- Selfish.
- Only has one arm, yet the other is a prosthetic.

-COMBAT STYLE

You're dead before you ever see him draw his weapon. Every one's concealed exquisitely, and Opal moves fast enough that... basically, just don't get on his bad side. Ever. He knows precisely where to aim with any of the three weapons, and any action with them is made to be as lethal as possible. He's trained to a T, and hits hard and fast. After one, you're lucky enough if you're getting back up again.

Opal can unsheathe his blade and cut you down in a single fell swoop, partially due to the fact that he usually carries it in his prosthetic hand, and partially due to the fact that he's been trained to within an inch of his life in Ryuhi, and then just a little more. He's an excellent marksman and has before cut many a man down from a distance with his pistol and the chambered rounds in his prosthetic.

Opal's professional, but if he ever loses his cool, it's likely to only just reinforce the sheer steel-willed determination he has and make him want to kill you even more and even faster. Not a good tactical decision, there, mate. He's also highly skilled at controlling and manipulating his anger to let it feed into his actions gently, and slowly, as a source of fresh energy.

-PERSONALITY

Cut short, sweet, and simple, Opal is a deceptive, selfish, cold, and incredibly harsh individual. His deathly white pallor mirrors his mannerisms and actions completely; he's a man of few words, and when he does become more exuberant and talkative, he hardly ever says what he means. He's manipulative and controlling to a T, and constantly enjoys simply to mess with people to see what reaction, although everything - yes, everything - is always part of a larger picture. It has to be. Opal plans out things, every single little detail, and controls as much as he can to ensure that it all goes as smoothly as is possible on his end.

Opal doesn't often fight, but resorts to combat when challenged or when it becomes necessary - and he is an incredible fighter. He's lethal, deadly, and fights with no holds barred; be it with sword or shot, he'd deadly accurate, both an excellent marksman and bladesman. He's also thoroughly adept at several martial arts, having learnt them due to having to view his disability as an opportunity to further refine himself and train himself - Opal's arm is a gift, not a burden, and it must stay that way. Something this permanent that could take a drain on him must be viewed in a positive light if Opal is to continue in the same way that he does currently.

Opal views a lot of things in this way. Every wrongdoing must turn into an opportunity; every bad turn into a new road, and so on, and so forth. In his line of work, he can't afford to be halted by inevitability, so, instead, he's just become flexible, and hasn't wasted his time on becoming bitter or angry; sure, he holds his personal vendettas against a choice few people - and they should be very, very scared - but Opal tries not to let emotions mix with business and agendas simply for the fact that it gets messy very quickly, as his Ryuhian mentor once taught him.

Opal's a perfectionist. Everything has to be tweaked to the absolute maximum, even to a degree where it becomes almost similar to obsession and compulsion. He's even been known to organise things in perfect symmetry, and while away hour upon hour organising menial appearances and the like. He can seemingly pass time without a second thought, never moaning about a six-hour train journey from Yataris to the City he visits oh-so-often on business - because there is always a way to use this time, constructive, enjoyable, or not.

Opal hardly ever shows genuine, legitimate happiness, and if you catch him doing so it's a rare moment indeed. He tries to shut his emotional system off as best as is possible to, once more, remove emotions from entering his path, and so the only thing he generally tends to feel is apathy. As his path runs its course, it will become more apparent that this apathy will slowly eat away at him until there is no blood or sympathy left within this black-haired man's veins; just ice.

Finally, the black-haired Ascendant himself has been known to be a total and complete control freak. EVERYTHING must fall directly under him if it's even more than the slightest touch important - and if it isn't, then he trusts it to one of his most loyal subordinates. He doubts everything and reads further into everything even if he's not supposed to, making him a complicated and rather bad lover and companion; he doesn't hold many friends, just truthful subordinates who are still of use to him. His proximity to people is simply based on what they can do for him, not how reciprocal their relationship can be.

Opal tries to view everything on a bigger scale. People are not people; they are pawns. He cares not for people's friendship, or love, but really manipulates those feelings to get close to them, and toss them away or kill them once he's done. This is how he's risen so fast in just the space of a few short years amongst the Syndicate's ranks - he's a true chessmaster.

Put simply? Opal's a cold, hard, bastard, and none except one have ever broken that shell - and she's long-gone from this man's past, at least, as he knew her, anyway...

-HISTORY

Born in 411 A.R. to Prophet Irassos, Opal spent the first twelve years of his life in the Prophets' Dominion, younger sibling of four years to his sister, Ruby. The pair shared the same mother, and were both legitimate children and heirs of Irassos; but the leader, being a monarch, knew that he couldn't let his love obscure his path, the one that he'd been set upon. And, thus, he told himself that once Opal and Ruby came of age, they would be sent away again.

The first few years of Opal's life, he was pampered and treated. A baby who was fair, brought up with the right morals and ideas, despite one thing vacant from his life: a family. He saw Ruby on occasion, but, consistently, she was bitter, and busy training for one thing or another. And, then, at around the age of seven, she arrived. They said she was the caterer's niece, but, in his heart, Opal knew from the looks upon her face, that she was something far, far more than just that. She was tanned; her accent, odd. She didn't belong here...

At first, the air was hostile between them, but Opal, intrigued by this new addition, approached her; the two quickly became friends, and Opal discovered her name: Eshara. "Eshara what?" He asked. "Don't you have a last name?" In response, the young girl simply shook her head and looked at him in confusion.

Despite Eshara's assigned duties, the pair grew up together, and, sure enough, by Opal's eight birthday, Ruby was gone. The pair had never been too close to each other, but always close enough; by this time, Opal too had learnt to become bitter, angry that his parents never saw him, something burning inside that shouldn't have. He was a prince who couldn't see his father, didn't know why he was entitled to an empire, why he was so important; even his mother was hardly ever around, either, darting away on some form of officious business...

Eshara and Opal quickly bonded and became the best of friends, age differences aside. Two years apart, Opal always snuck her food, and helped her with her duties; and who were the caterers to argue? They knew who his father was. They didn't mess with him. And no matter how many hours Opal spent of his precious time asking his father to let him have Eshara as a sister, the Prophet refused, saying that 'it wouldn't be right' and that Opal 'didn't understand'.

Sick and tired of being treated like a child, Opal was insistent; he did understand. He was twelve, she was ten; and they were still friends, despite the maturity of the boy, alongside his academic potential, slanting upwards at insane rates. Without even being allowed to say goodbye, on the day of his thirteenth birthday, Irassos approached Opal with tears in his eyes, and addressed him, for the first time as months, as 'his son', giving him a black box, a packed bag, and putting him with a silent escort who took him out of the city and north, despite his incessant nagging and scratching. 'Where are we going!?' The boy screamed. What would Eshara think? What would she think of his leaving her alone in that palace?

And, then, he saw it.

Majestic. It was the first time he'd been beyond a few metres out of the city... garbed in an overcoat and his regular attire, he gazed upon a giant, stone structure, laced and laden with ice and frost; a huge, silver wall, stretching for as far as the pale boy could see in either direction. And at the base of it were people the likes of which he'd never seen before. Odd eyes, gently-coloured skin... silence upon their tongues as they gazed upon the prodigy. Ryuhians. He'd only read about them in books; he'd thought they were myths, people simply distorted by time and magic, mutated for no apparent reason or trend... but, no, they were real...

Opal crossed the threshold of the wall whilst unconscious, never allowed to know how to enter or leave, as was part of the deal. And, there, he was taken not to an elder, but to a mentor, a great Ryuhian warrior. Zian Yi. Opal sat before him in awe, the man cross-legged in front of a fire fuelled only by will and no fuel, no branches or firewood. That was when Yi spoke to him, for the first time in what was to be a long, tedious, painful, and yet fruitful and near-perfect partnership. 'If you are careful of what you take from the world, the world is kind in what it gives to you.'

Opal takes this creed today to the grave. Despite his other mannerisms, he will never cut through a tree, or crush a bug beneath his heel, even if just through pure - apparent - curiosity. Yi is the smartest, most honourable man Opal has ever known, and the things he said, some of them, at least, the black-haired man lives by and will take even to his deathbed.

Over the next five years, Opal trained in every martial art and method of sorcery detection Yi could muster. The boy spent every day behind the Silver Wall, yearning and thirsting for more knowledge; in a week, he didn't miss his servants or his food. In a month, he didn't miss his parents or his sister. And in a year, he didn't even miss Eshara, the one person he'd been taken away from.

Opal was trained in the arts of charisma, lies, deception, stealth, and yet in the arts of honourable combat, swift movement, deadly efficiency... he was an ultimate warrior, a boy raised to kill. A prince raised to destroy, as was the nature of the Prophet - a military leader just as much as a moral one. But even from a young age, the elder knew - there was something else within this boy. He thought not of what he could do for his country, but what he could do for himself. The Ryuhian techniques were founded to help the world and the people within it - not to assist yourself in furthering your own plans.

Life was humble for the boy with Yi and the Ryuhians. By the age of eighteen, he felt pure, refreshed, overwhelmed, and as if this were the only life meant for him. It was time for Opal to prove he was ready to cross the threshold of the Silver Wall once more, return back into society; he was to, as Yi had done before him, and, as he would later discover, his father, do battle with one of the North's deadliest beasts; a snow leopard. Quiet, silent, efficient; the perfect predator.

Just as he had been trained to be.

Opal had been offered a spear, knives, or a sword, being told that Yi had taken the spear, and his father the swords. The black-haired boy refused all three, confident that he would take this beast on himself with just his bare hands. Moments later, by the campfire, his quarry, his rival had been delivered; about the flickering inferno devouring the firewood, the would-be Ascendant sat across from the caged beast and stared it in the eyes. Only one of them would leave this forest in the next day - and neither knew who it would be.

Their battle began fresh the next morning. They circled themselves at sunrise as eagerly, the Ryuhians watched. Their skirmish went on for what felt like hours; each dealt to each other near misses, would-be fatalities, nicks, scratches; they were on even turf. They circled each other, one feral as was the next. Both growled in that same manner; both snarled in that bestial visage. Opal knew the battle was almost over; the leopard retreated to the hills for another few minutes as he sat down and recovered.

However, the beast was smarter than it had appeared. Whining and creating falsified pain from a freshly-dealt wound, the snow leopard didn't go back to lick its 'cut', instead, it sprinted around the back of an off-guard Opal, and snarled at him from the distance. It locked onto its prey, it found the most opportune moment and spot, and it pounced.

Surging through the air, an animal, especially slowed down, frame-by-frame, is a majestic, beautiful, and above all else, terrifying thing. Jaws ready to crack and crush beneath those steel-strength teeth, the snow leopard had jumped. The game was all but over. He had but to make contact.

And, then, Opal spun. He hadn't heard the assault, the ambush, but he had heard the whistling of the air a moment before as the leopard readied itself to pounce. It sheared through the air, and Opal pushed himself flat, sliding out of the way; instead of reaching his neck, the jaw instead met his forearm, tearing through flesh, muscle, sinew and bone indiscriminately, ruining the limb beyond measure; but just as fang had sunk into flesh, the black-haired boy had grasped a nearby piece of flint, and had gutted the leopard through its underbelly.

Slumping to the ground and dropping the rock, Opal collapsed into a spiralling, painless oblivion, near-dead and delirious with a gutted snow leopard atop him, left arm crushed, mangled, bleeding, and absolutely ruined. But, still, he was alive - barely. And he had passed the test. Zian Yi and a few other choice elders took the unconscious boy back to the city, whereupon an escort was waiting for him, that very same man - five years ago that day. Indeed - it was Opal Hutchinson's eighteenth birthday, and he was rushed to hospital, comatose, whereupon surgery and treatment was discussed.

It was made the understanding that no expense would be spared - the boy would be fitted with the best prosthetic money could buy, and shouldn't need to replace it. As he accustomed to it, making a quick and full recovery after the treatment and therapy, Opal spent another eighteen months in the Dominion, ensuring he could still do everything as perfectly as it had been in Ryuhi - and the moment he failed, he committed himself to another week of solid training.

This continued for a year and a half, Eshara and Ruby both having disappeared without a trace, the nineteen year old trained to peak physical fitness and totally impervious and oblivious as to the world's desire for him. What would he do? Where would he go? His father was still late fifties, and planning to rule til the very day he fell ill and died. There was no way he could sit on his thumbs for ten, twenty, thirty years... no... he had to... he had to make something of himself.

That was it.

It all clicked into place, one little cog setting in motion changes which shaped Opal into the man most know him as today. Everything slid into place, every gear in the machine, every piston, every cylinder, every single last little damned detail, all ironed out through to perfection. He packed his bags, ordered a new prosthetic model, moved a little money around, and, finally, looked to the bag he'd been given to take to Ryuhi - clothing, supplies, and everything had been provided for him, all of it... so he hadn't ever opened it.

But... that black box.

Taking it upon himself, Opal, stunned and set into motion, ready to leave and make himself, was halted once more only by nostalgia. Shutting the door and flipping open the lid, there sat a polished, fine, hilt. Gear-powered, with a switch sitting on the crossguard... a rapier, extendible and sharp as it had ever been. Testing it with the weaponry disciplines Yi had taught him... it was... perfect. Almost as it had been built for an extrapolated adult form of his - it would've been far too weighty in those younger years of his life... how did he... how did they...

It didn't matter. No. Opal packed everything up - he was following a lead.

Another two and a half years spent chasing dogs up trees, following posters, paper trails, voices, echoes upon the wind; it slowly turned to an obsession for Opal. What was he looking for you ask? Just what was he trying to find? Well... it wasn't just an organisation, or a caste, or an elite cadre of criminals, profiteering agents, and assassins. No... the Syndicate had always been more than that... it was an idea.

And he'd found the weakest link, too.

Twenty-two, having just found that reality had found itself, having murdered, slaughtered, killed, tortured, just to get his way to this man... Opal finally realised that he had a meaning. He was the master of precision, of calculation, of cold, clean, predictable tactics. So why would he work on the scenes when he could work behind them? The Syndicate.

But... going in meant going in for life, and starting at the bottom. Opal couldn't afford to do either of those; brash and young, he cut a path up to the weakest man at the top, one Joey Garza, and shoved the blade straight through and into his heart, as he had done to many a man beforehand, once a murderer without qualms, and always a murderer without qualms.

As if by sorcery, they appeared but a moment later. His companions; the men, the other five leaders, the Ascendants! Opal dropped his blade, and realised how much of a stupid mistake he'd done, his hands flicking to his waist as he readied himself to draw revolvers. And, then, between them all, a figure advanced towards him, and asked him a very simple question. Just the one. No more, no less. A grin carved an old face in two, as both recognised the profit and mutual agreement and understanding of this situation...




-FINISHERS

Level 1 - Shards of Andromeda - A purple, ethereal energy collects about one of the 'barrels' at the palm of Opal's prosthetic hand. He charges it, before cocking the arm back and releasing it; a barrage of shard-like energy darts are released in the enemy's direction.

Level 2 - Lazarus' Tomb - Purple flames flicker forth about Opal's form; his boots seem to spread this fiery scourge ever further with each step. With his hands, and an inferno within his eyes, he presses them together, leather of his gloves melting, and forges bars made only of fire, and establishes a cage about his target. Eventually he walks away, cackling, and clicks his fingers - the cage explodes.

Level 3 - Oblivion Unending - Giant purple pincer-like lance-blades extend forth from Opal's elbows in arc, around a metre long. These weigh nothing and are totally ethereal; Opal instead leaps towards the enemy and chains a few combinations together, the lances staying around for about three minutes, before leaping atop their torso/equivalent and jamming both lances in there, leaping back, and letting them explode.

Level 4 - Zenith Meteor - Opal takes a glove off, and sticks his hand up to the sky beneath a glinting sun. It quickly begins to ignite with a purple flame as he strains and balls his fist, before eventually, when the heat becomes unbearable, pulling it down in an arc and shooting the miniscule fireball in an enemy's direction. This fireball is intended to distract and miss, slamming against the floor, as Opal smirks to himself, his eyes glinting a deathly purple-black.

Slowly, the ground rumbles, and in the distance, stars seem to get closer. A shower of them, indeed. Glinting, flaming... no, not stars... rocks. Meteorites. As Opal sprints away and rushes to cover, desperately slaloming around, the meteorites each maybe the size of a bed, begin to fall towards his enemy, burning with that same deadly purple flame, crumbling on contact and releasing AoE energy waves.

Level 5 - Jericho - Opal clasps his hands together, and begins to float into the air as a ghastly black-purple flame collects about him, lighting his very eyes. He suspends himself in air, and launches a barrage of fireballs towards the ground near the enemy; slowly, they stick, forming a great black-purple line in the sand, until, finally, they all ignite; and two ethereal gates rise from the depths of Hell themselves, draped in chains and ignited as if they lead the passage to Hades.

Opal raises both revolvers, expands the chambers out from Thanatos, and simply unleashes a barrage of hellfire and rounds both at once, simply streaming from him, fired towards the gates as they swallow every single projectile without even shuffling. Finally, Opal sighs, absolutely exhausted, and sheaths his weapons, raising his hands and clapping them together once his cumulative efforts have all finished and he's out of both ammunition and energy.

The gates swing open towards the enemy. Opal drops to his knees, and every projectile launched at the gates is mirrored tenfold and infused with the tortured souls of the wicked as they fly out from the other side upon the enemy. Round after round after round, hundreds more than Opal fired... just unleashed upon whatever creature is unlucky enough to be on the other side, a constant hailstorm of blazing hellfire.

And if there's anything unlucky enough to be alive after that, as the doors swing shut, a giant pillar of black-purple hellfire raises, and, taking its toll on Opal once more as the Ancestor scrapes at the fibres of his very being, the pillar aligns with the target from the doors inching closed, and as they slam shut, it launches; ka-boom.






-CUSTOM RANK

THE AGE OF APOCALYPSE

-ALIAS/NICKNAME

Ross

-OTHER CHARACTERS

Prophet Irassos