Celeuxe Reivine

Born out of wedlock to an anonymous Otherworlder mother and a well-known, high-class human father, Celeuxe has always felt like the black sheep in his family. In order to quickly sweep the affair under the rug, his father's family paid his mother to hand over custody of the child and subsequently leave their lives, going no-contact both with Celeuxe and Celeuxe's father. Celeuxe grew up entirely in the clutches of his father's family. Even though he was the only child his father had, he never felt like he'd truly belonged -- no matter how many times his family assured him that he was just as much his father's child as he was his mother's.

It was blatantly obvious to him, even at a young age, that he didn't look like the other humans taking care of him and the other cousins that he would sometimes have around the house; it became even more obvious, as he grew up, that he hadn't inherited the natural ability to control essence on his own. Neither human nor esper, as a child, Celeuxe would often cling to his father, hoping desperately that he was just a late bloomer. He admired his father's class and effortless power, while blaming his mother both for giving him up and for stopping him from being an esper at birth. The fact that his mother never even tried to reach out to him only worsened his hatred. Celeuxe felt like, if she had really cared about him at all, she would've tried to find a way around the deal that she struck with the Reivine family.

As a result, Celeuxe has been endlessly training in order to prove that he can be better than the other members of his family. Even before he was old enough to start using EQE, he would get into fights with anybody who looked at him the wrong way, daring them to challenge him for being a "defect." He would spend hours at the gym, hours studying weapon manuals and mechanics, taking classes just so that he could learn different fighting styles and how to use or make different types of weapons. If he couldn't be respected at first glance, he could at least be feared -- and the respect would naturally flow from that, afterwards.

The moment that Celeuxe turned 18, he immediately decided to implant an EQE bracelet on his wrist and enroll himself in new fighting classes, trying to emulate the effortless essence use that he'd seen from his father when he was younger. While he was never a good student academically, he excelled in all the sports he tried during high school (even though he was certainly reprimanded more than a few times for being too aggressive on the court), managing to get into college with a sports scholarship for an EQE Engineering degree.

It was in college that Celeuxe would meet his main friend group: Dioe, his best friend that carries him through his academic classes; Jaime, his eternal rival ever since they'd met in taekwondo class when he was a child; Lisza, who always tries to run away from him whenever they're alone together; and Yumeno, who introduces him to music that constantly blows his mind. Celeuxe, Yumeno, and Jaime would combine their musical talents together to form the rock band, Grimwreck, playing at local venues around their college campus. In time, the five of them would end up applying to the Virion Project together as interns -- Celeuxe being dragged along not because he needed something that looked good on his resumé ("Who gives a fuck about my resumé?"), but because he wanted a chance to prove himself as part of what he saw as their division exclusively dedicated to beating shit up.

From day one, Celeuxe thought that so much about the Containment Division was -- stupid, to put it lightly. Set's constant critique and the way she always stuck to the rules was stupid. The fact that Jaime was in his division, constantly taunting him with how happy she seemed to be, was stupid. The fact that so much of their time was spent in training, running faux missions and procedures and sparring with each other rather than actually out on the field, was stupid. It didn't matter that he was so young, compared to most of the other members of the Virion Project. He could handle himself! He'd been training his whole life to do so!

Over time, though, Celeuxe begrudgingly started to find more and more fulfillment in his work -- something that he didn't think he'd ever find, given how much of a misfit he felt like he was when he was a child and even when he was in college. Juggling between his responsibilities at school (which he skips half the time, even though he still has to show up for tests), playing college-level hockey, practicing for his band, finding time to keep building and improving his weapons, and showing up for his internship (semi on-time) is certainly more than enough work to stop him from getting bored, at the very least. It's certainly better than staying at home all the time, even if he'll admit that Set's reticent nervousness about some disaster that she seems to be sensing on the horizon puts him on edge at times. Since when has Set ever been the kind of person to be scared of anything?

Celeuxe is skilled with hand-to-hand combat and a variety of different, fantasy-esque melee weapons: maces, axes, swords, and so on. His primary weapon is a custom-made gunscythe, which he designed and forged himself. Named the "God Shatterer," it's designed with EQE technology embedded in its handle that channels essence from the user directly through the weapon itself, allowing it to both fire bullets imbued with essence and serve as an "extension" of Celeuxe's own essence use, easily cutting through even the toughest rock the way a knife cuts through butter. When it's being used as a gun, Celeuxe digs the larger blade of the scythe into the ground to lessen the recoil from the weapon being fired; the bullets leave sonar wave explosions on impact, ripping through whatever they embed themselves into.

He uses his Terra essence both defensively and offensively, being able to both hurl large rocks and boulders towards his opponents and throw up rock walls in front of and around him, when necessary. His essence use intensifies with emotion; he often leaves craters in the ground whenever he's fighting or knocks his opponents off-balance by unconsciously making the earth shake every time his feet hit the ground. While Celeuxe relies more heavily on his weaponry, most of the time, he wields essence the same way that a natural esper would -- having trained with an EQE implant the second he turned of-age.