[attr="class","official"]

"FRIEND"

Combat Application

Name: Friend
Race: Human
Affiliation: Himself

Base Stats

Aura: B
Stamina: A
Power: D
Agility: C

Technical Skills

There isn’t much form or function to Friend’s fighting style. If anything, he is a very pragmatic man: use whatever is at your disposal, and keep hitting the guy until he’s down. Knifes, firearms, explosives, improvised bludgeons, he’s done it all. If anything, while not a particularly trained enemy, his unpredictable approach to combat (every cheap shot counts, every strategy works, and every step ahead is worth ten) makes him dangerous, along with his terrifying manic energy, and his many followers who act under him almost blindly - or at least until their programming ends.

All in all, though, the reason he uses every trick in the book, and even some he wrote himself, is because in comparison to other warriors, he isn’t all that powerful. Very dangerous, of course, but it’s his mind and charisma that make him evil and dangerous, not necessarily his ability to kill. After all, anybody with enough motivation can kill somebody: it’s WHO and WHY that matters.

Deadened Nerves: Maybe it’s drugs, maybe it’s the scarification, or maybe it’s that day spent in the morgue, but Friend can’t really feel much anymore. His body is basically null, and his nerve endings are totally fried - meaning that he WILL get damaged over time, it just doesn't bother him all that much. Friend doesn’t mind taking a knife in the palm of his hand if it means he can use his other to shoot you two times in the gut.

Augmented Metabolism: Friend’s body acts weirdly: the man has a surprising control over his stomach, allowing him to hide items in it, and regurgitate them at will, along with his lungs, which allows him to hold his breath for longer. Grenades, acid bottles, keys, anything that he can swallow, he can hold. What’s more, toxins and poisons have a lessened effect, he's been known to scar quickly after taking a wound, and he’s able to slow down his heartbeat and lower his body temperature to appear “dead”.

Devious Mastermind: Hidden weapons, body armor, hostages, bomb threats, hidden snipers, use of thugs, pocket sand. There is no strategy or resource too low-hanging for him to grab from the fruit and gorge himself on.

Brainwashing: Considering how many people end up wearing the smiley face in service of the guy, it’s almost as if Friend had started a cult. His invasive charisma and malignance seems to attract downtrodden or dangerous people - and they seem to follow his orders. And if they don’t, well, there are methods.

Equipment

Friend has no interest in mastering (and committing) to one specific weapon. He considers it a waste of time, in a way: only Huntsmen will take the time to master one singular way of fighting. Normal people must make do with the rest. And the rest is versatile indeed, if you know both where to look, what to look for, and how to use it.

Here is a list of weapons who have been confirmed as being used by the terrorist known as Friend: knives, assorted bludgeons, firearms (sidearms, rifles, shotguns, automatics, the list goes on), explosives and heavy ordnance (including grenade launchers), improvised weaponry, which includes chairs, pencils, books, furniture, bedsheets, power tools, electric cables, soda bottles, and in one singular case, one of his own teeth, spit out into someone’s face. There’s no standardized carry, Friend seems to pocket what feels right for the situation. He has also been known to wear body armor from time to time, mainly bulletproof vests or padding at the elbows and knees, but this doesn’t seem to be a constant.

Semblance

Happy Happy Tear Gas: Friend’s aura manifests as a cloud of off-white smoke around him, trails of ashy fog behind his strikes and his dashes, and other smoky effects. This effect can happen consciously or can be triggered by adrenaline, but its effects are more powerful when he decides to activate his semblance.

Manifesting like sickly spores out of his skin’s pores, or as jets from mouth, nose, ears, or even his missing eye, the smoke is somewhat of a irritant, akin to tear gas: it burns the eyes, nostrils and lungs if breathed in, which can cause crying, sneezing and coughing, and long exposure can both cause rashes to develop and knock out anybody caught in it. Huntsmen (and other aura-sensible people) can use their energy as a buffer, though the smoke will eventually dig through if the victim spends too much time in the cloud.

Friend can influence the smoke in a few ways: First, he can basically “direct” the ash in a direction by cupping it into his hand and throw it, or blowing it out with an exhale. While lingering and about as heavy as air, meaning it doesn’t rise and stays at about the same place, Friend can’t influence its movement or direction - so he has to let physics do the job. Second, he can influence its corrosion levels: the more aura he invests in, the more abrasive and burning it gets, so at max aura invested in the smoke, it can cause lung bleeding if breathed in. Thirdly: Friend can influence the quantity of smoke created, again having to spend more aura into the smoke to create more. Filling a building (like a police department) or an equivalent space with the darn thing pretty much depletes him.
There’s a distinct disadvantage to this technique: Friend sheds away a portion of his defense whenever he wants to create some smoke. The more intense his application (as described in the earlier paragraph), the more aura he has to shed. If he wants his full aura back, he’s going to need to call it back, ending the direct aggression that the smoke causes (though the symptoms that already developed in any exposed person will linger). In a way, Friend can “cash in” or “cash out” with his aura, with how much of it he spends in quantity and effectiveness. The two described effects (a super aggressive smoke in enough quantity to fill a police station) require him to go utterly empty in aura, meaning that in those cases, beyond natural ability and using the smoke as cover, Friend is very very naked.

As a final note, Friend has mastered the art of using this ability for a much more devious objective: by minimizing the aggressivity, and focusing the smoke into someone’s lungs, and keeping said smoke there for an extended period of time, Friend can cause the victim (which must usually be weakened or tied up) to be a victim of brain damage - which means they’re perfectly viable patients for some good old fashioned brainwashing. To note, none of the brain damage has ever been permanent (to Friend’s dismay), meaning that with a strong enough will, a victim may be able to break through the programming (in thematically perfect timing to ruin Friend’s plan) and go back to their old selves.