overstrain | a small fish in a pool of sharks

BACKGROUND

Terrence Nowell is a clone of a demigod (referred to as "Terry" from here on out and his original as "Terrence") who had been killed by a hunter specific for killing their kind off. He was created by others in his original's faction for a war among themselves, but another demigod from the opposing faction had secretly messed up the creation process. Thankfully, Terry still retained most of what a demigod clone should be, but he was inflicted with the need to consume blood in order to extend his lifespan. Moreover, he had other deficiencies that really set him apart from the real demigods, such as not having his own weapon code and being unable to synchronize with any of the other demigods. If anything, the people within the faction who didn't care much about the clone would have used Terry as a meatshield so that he could have some use with an partially immortal body. They were pretty dissatisfied with the result and treated him as something they had to begrudgingly deal with because he was nothing like Terrence, who was essential to the faction because of his abilities and charisma.

Terry's first year living with the other members of the faction in a pocket dimension was something he would never like to live out again. Despite being created to be a replacement of a important figure that they lost, someone that they needed, he sure as hell didn't feel wanted. Most of them didn't want to talk to him. Some didn't even want to be in the same room with him, much less in the same dimension. In an attempt to fix this, another member from the same faction gave Terry a phone and locked him into a room that cut itself off into another separate dimensional pocket with a huge supply of blood in big cartons. Inside that phone was an app with a red design with a white exclamation mark on it, labeled as EMERGENCY. The app included an audio diary of the original Terrence, who had a hobby of doing things like this. The reason why is the app was labeled as something with importance was because it became important evidence of the circumstances behind the original's murder, which the faction had been looking into. However, they no longer need it because the case had run into multiple dead ends for a while, so they had given it to Terry.

He was told to listen to all of them and try to become like the original more. Even when he didn't want to listen to the audio entries, they started playing on their own, even if Terry had broken the phone out of desperation. It was absolute torture. Terrence was nothing like Terry expected: quiet, hateful, and manipulative. The trait that really stood out that he remembered hearing in the audio diaries were that he sounded really manipulative towards people who he considered as pawns. There was a lot of psychological warfare going on at the time that really hurt many people, even irrelevant innocents, to meet his goals--Terrence generally held no empathy from what Terry could hear from the diary entries. He was quick to drop others if they seemed useless, manipulated them to do what he wanted out of them, Terrence absolutely hated people and thought that was what they deserved. This was someone who Terry was expected to become. He didn't like it at all. Even if he chose to live like his original, the hunters would just come for him too. The mere idea paralyzed him with fear. Sometimes when he felt desperate enough, he clawed at the door and screamed in that empty room that he didn't want to be like this.

With his sheer determination to leave and live his own life, he used his power of pinpointing, where he could locate anything and everything as long as it existed within that world. It took several tries to fully understand how it functioned and he finally found a way to escape. So, he fled after declaring to the empty room (he's sure someone must have heard it, the creepers they are with their surveillance) that he was going neutral in this senseless war that they created for themselves. And... yup, they caught wind of it, but chose to leave him alone for now, because they had more important matters to take care of at the moment.

Meanwhile, Terry landed in America some time in 2010. For the first several years, he had to fend for himself in the wilderness and racked up survival skills on his lonesome quickly--killing wild animals left and right for food and blood to extend his lifespan too, but he didn't enjoy doing that. Pinpointing was really useful in detecting where they were too, making it easier to hunt. However, some time when he lived out in the wilderness, he came across Nana, Terrence's ex-girlfriend who was also on the same faction in the demigod war, who was searching for him. She tried to force him to come back by telling him that he was needed, but he lashed back, saying that he knew that and that it wasn't really him that they wanted. They ended up getting into a huge fight that burned a huge chunk of the forest down until Terry managed to get away. Other demigods often dropped by, saying that he was pretty easy to track due to his demigod identifier that makes him smell like cinnamon. Most of them respected his decision to stay neutral, but there were always some who tried to take him back. These sort of encounters continued even when Terry found his way civilization, in which his patience really ran low with the persistent ones and fought back so hard that they wouldn't bother him again. He really learned how to improvise most every day tools as weapons and didn't hold back on aiming to kill them. He never got to successfully kill one, despite knowing their death points, a variant of achilles' heel, but he did do things like shooting a demigod in the neck with a gun without hesitation even if that didn't kill them. All those aggressive encounters with other demigods really awakened his battle-hungry side.

Once he managed to get most of them off his back, he decided to go search for the Hunter who had killed his original to put down his fear. What better way to eradicate your fear than wiping them off the face of the earth? Unfortunately, that didn't end up well, even though Terry ambushed her, she got away from the whole scuffle unscathed with Terry sliced in half across his stomach with a chainsaw. Some torture was involved because the Hunter was fascinated by her target being unable to die and it left him traumatized and paranoid for a good portion of his life. He was still conscious throughout it all and it wasn't until several days until another demigod came and performed some heavy duty healing magic to restore Terry's body to make it whole again. The demigod that healed him was Terry's creator, who oversaw the cloning process. The same being dropped him off at the doorstep of a human on a whim.

The human was a medical student named Jace Evandre. He was Terry's first friend. Despite being an undergrad when they first met, he actually had his life together and was progressing well in life that he paved for himself. He was a man of few words at his usual cool and calm composure and was pretty amazing at quick thinking. He was also efficient at getting Terry to helping him get used to a more normal and peaceful life. Terry eventually settled in with full recovery from his paranoia and was able to bury everything that used to bother him. It was at this point of life where he started having a better outlook on life. His interactions were gradual, starting with Jace, then his friends, and then just about any stranger. His life was starting to be full of mundane peace that he really enjoyed. Sometimes he tried out part time jobs and eventually decided to freelance instead, opening up a sort of "Lost and Found" service, in which he would finds things for people and helping them find it would cost extra. When he wasn't out experiencing the real world with other humans, he stayed home with a marimba and played that extensively, since he was highly entertained with the thing--tapping it and it makes a sound--he's easy to please. He also watched a bunch of media and online videos. He eventually learned the most random trivia and learned to cook lunch for Jace as he grew older and had no time to pack food before he left for his job. He called it his payment for allowing Terry to mooch off him... not that he really minded. He sometimes pretended to be a college student at the nearby institution to crash into random classes if he was bored. Other than that, he played with Jace's 4 cats. Terry never had to worry about his need to drink blood either, since Jace was able to supply that with rejected donations easily from the blood drives. Life was great, even if all his friends were growing older while he stayed looking like a 20 year old forever. It's 2029.

The peace didn't last as long as he'd like, because Nana showed up once more. They met in private and discussed that the war that would finally break out in 2030. Many innocent lives would most likely be taken because a huge fight between demigods was definitely impossible to restrict in a single area. They argued, with Terry saying that he won't come back. Nana ends up slapping Terry so hard that he gets knocked out from it. Oops.

Then he ends up in Cetana lol

PERSONALITY

just thread with him. he's a bundle of surprises aka i'm writing this out later lol

ABILITIES

⬥ Pinpointing (Regained)

Terry can locate anything in the world as long as it exists within the constraints of that world, such as physical entities (cats), concepts (weaknesses), and information (blackmail). Locating vague concepts that aren't set in stone are a little harder to "find", such as attempting to find someone's future lover. However, it only finds out the location in that moment, like a snapshot, which is difficult to use as a radar for moving entities. In order to activate it, he blanks out for a good 5 to 30 seconds, depending on his physical well-being at the time. The healthier, the shorter the duration Terry spends spacing out. The more he uses it in succession without rest, the more tired he gets and each pinpointing thereafter takes longer to process.

⬥ Conditional Immortality (Not Regained/Innate)

He can take any hit and he won't die no matter what. Sure, he will still take the intended damage, but he will still be alive. The only way to actually die is to let his lifespan hit its limits by not drinking blood. Drinking blood is the only way he can extend his lifespan as long as it isn't his own blood that he's drinking. In Cetana, he slips into a coma when he reaches the end of his lifespan until someone feeds him blood through the mouth. The blood drinking condition is there, but his semi-immortality is not. His abysmal healing rate also stays.

⬥ Filter (Not Regained)

Terry has a filter that separates and eliminates the incoming toxins that may invade his body. The filter is what allows him to effectively drink blood without getting poisoned. For other toxin-like substances, he does have some resistance to poison. It also takes longer for him to get drunk on alcohol because of his filter. Medicine has an odd effect, because his filter doesn't know whether it's good or bad, so it doesn't know how to handle them. In-game terms, it would make him less susceptible to physical ailment debuffs.

⬥ Demigod Identifier (Regained)

Smells like cinnamon. There's no off button and Terry is the only one who can't smell it. The smell gets stronger the longer he stays in one place.

⬥ Heightened Sense of Smell (Not Regained)

Has a strong sense of smell. he's able to locate people by smell alone within a limited radius. However, it's easy for him to get overloaded with other strong scents, which is why he hates cologne/perfume and such. His sense of smell is pretty good in human-level range even without this power though.

⬥ Demigod-Level Endurance (Regained)

Enables him to last a lot longer. Able to stay conscious through major injuries, even possibly fatal. However, it can get overwhelmed by his lifespan limit. It can't break through that.

⬥ Downgraded Demigod-level Strength (Regained)

Softcap limit is lifting 1 ton/2000 lbs/~907 kg without straining himself too much. He can lift something heavier if he pushes himself. Also enables him to jump really high in the air. Able to kill Shadow Ravens with his strength alone.

⬥ Downgraded Demigod-level Speed (Regained)

Can accelerate up to 80mph / ~128km/h.

⬥ Parkour (Innate)

Pretty agile. Knows parkour enough to scale walls to an extent, climb fences, do flips in the air, and all that. This isn't supernatural. This used to be his way of exercising in the city.

EXTRA

⬥ Crazy good with the marimba. His favorite song to play on it is the nyancat song for however long he can last. It's his greatest challenge... his record is 28th loop without a single mistake because he got hungry and it was dinnertime. He can play it up to twice the speed at least once without any mistakes, but more than that frustrates him really quickly because it's too hard.
⬥ Favorite story is Tristan and Isolde. For some reason, the line "Oed’ und leer das Meer." really resonates within him. "Empty and desolate is the sea."
⬥ He's usually not picky with food, but he can't handle (very) hot and spicy well. His original loved spicy food. His favorite food is fried chicken. Second is bear meat.
⬥ Ironically, when it comes to drinks, he likes the most bitter one there is: absinthe. His original also loved absinthe.
⬥ His cooking specialty are egg dishes.
⬥ Favorite animal is snake.
⬥ Has been on one end of an unrequited romance for ten years and counting because Terry is an oblivious idiot who never found out about Jace crushing on him. Terry finds Jace as his best friend though. Things are painful for him lol...
⬥ Has no Weapon Code that allows his own personalized weapon like other demigods, so he really only has his body to work with. Has innate knowledge of how to use bow and arrows, due to that being his original's Weapon Code.
⬥ Has no soul. Demigods (and their clones) are not created with one. Once they die, that's it. They don't leave much behind either. This is why revival tactics involving demigods are insanely difficult and they resort to cloning instead.
⬥ other info when I can remember/think of more

a small fish in a pool of sharks—