Tolys Mareika (SWAP AU)

The loyal dog heir to the Mareika family's EQE monopoly, Tolys Mareika is intelligent, analytical -- and deathly paranoid, fearful both that he's not as capable as other people perceive him to be and that other people don't perceive him to be capable at all. Having lived his whole life with the weight of his family name crushing him to the ground, Tolys wants nothing more than to make his father feel like the investment they've put into him has been worth it. He's not a natural esper, the way the rest of his family is, so that's already one point down. He's not sure if any of his achievements could've been at all possible without the influence of his family, either -- so that's an uncountable number of failures he can't account for, on top of that.

Guilty and insecure, Tolys often comes off as cold and distant, snapping at whatever sets him off (only to feel awful at his own outbursts, afterwards). He sees the Virion Project as a way for him to prove himself, finding his own solution to a problem that's impacted so much of his family's production line and profits. It's not like he isn't devoted to and passionate about his work, genuinely enjoying the process of research and the field of biology as much as he can let himself enjoy anything at all. It's just that so much of his life has been entangled by a web of expectation, he finds it impossible for himself to picture a world where he actually manages to live up to them.