Aviator
the ghost of pimping past
Full Name: Azrael Amias Westley Emery, Sixth Prince of Castillon
Name Meaning:
—Azrael is the name of the angel who, in Jewish and Islamic tradition, separates the soul from the body upon death, otherwise known as the Angel of Death.
—Amias stems from the Latin word amare, which means “to love.” A variant spelling was used in the epic poem “The Faerie Queen.”
—Westley is derived from an English surname meaning “west meadow.”
—Emery was originally a Germanic surname until the Normans introduced it to England from France. It means “industrious,” “powerful,” or “ruler.”
Nicknames: Friends and family members have dubbed him nicknames like “Rae” and “Pain in the Az,” but the only one that’s really stuck is the one his mother used to call him, Azzy. Ever since her death, he is not fond of hearing this nickname from others’ lips. He is quick to correct overstepping courtiers that the proper way to address him is “Your Highness.” One of his older sisters, upon experiencing his powers once, remarked that it's much like being on LSD, and insists that his superhero alias should be "Blue Acid" or "Moon Rocks." Azrael sincerely wishes she'd stop. Personally, he much prefers the title "the Conjurer."
Gender: Male
Age: 28 years old, but he is often mistaken for younger on account of his slight build and boyish features.
Birthday: May 24th, making him a tricksy Gemini.
Species: Homo Magi
Nationality: Castillon, which is an alternate version of the United States in which the British monarchy relocated to their colonies after having been vanquished in Europe by Napoleon. They have been ruling from there ever since, expanding their territory into an empire. So, in our-world terms, Azrael is American with English heritage.
Role: Neither, technically. But so long as he’s impersonating Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri, he is a guard until he can escape the subterranean hell that is Belle Reve.
Crime: Conspiracy to overthrow the monarchy of Castillon, which worked, but not as Azrael planned it to. He cut a deal with Kryptonian forces to lower national defenses long enough for them assassinate all members of the royal line preceding him, in exchange for all of the precious stone viridium that they’d like. Unbeknownst to him, the Kryptonians twisted the deal: They murdered the royal line in addition to just about everyone else in Castillon. Azrael was one of the sole survivors of the invasion, because they spared him. So he essentially has a nothing kingdom to rule over. In addition to successful conspiracy to overthrow the government, he committed financial fraud of thirty million kruge (the Castillon currency) in the days leading up to the execution of his plan, stolen directly from the emperor's checkbooks.
Powers: As a homo magi, Azrael has the inherent ability to wield magic; however, his magic takes on a distinct form. His power, if you will, is hallucikinesis, better known as illusion manipulation. He can induce vivid hallucinations, bending one’s perception of reality as he sees fit. When he first discovered his ability, it was primarily limited to visual hallucinations, but now that he is an experienced user, he can affect any combination of senses at the same time. He can cause objects to change shape, size, and color; make targets misinterpret the distance or number of an object; cause entire objects and landscapes to disappear and replace them with imagined ones; and simulate excruciating pain without harming a hair on the target's head.
The main hangup of Azrael’s ability is that an illusion is only as vivid as he imagines it to be. Unless he’s copying a person or place that he already knows, he is essentially an artist drawing without a reference, and small details of an illusion may escape him, like adding shadows or the shimmering air above a fire. Moreover, if he is conjuring the image of a person well-known to others, the product is only as good as his memory. He may misplace a feature, shattering the realism of the illusion. Perhaps somewhat obviously, one must remember Azrael’s illusions are just that. He has absolutely no effect on reality no matter how terrifyingly real they may seem; just on people’s perception of it, even if it’s everyone around him. Finally, his abilities require sustained concentration to use. If he is suffering intense pain or solving a complex equation, his illusions will falter. If he is unconscious, they will dissipate entirely.
Skills and Weaponry: Unfortunately, Azrael is most definitely not a fighter. In fact, he’s hopelessly incompetent at just about anything martial or physical. Aside from magic, his only real skills lie in administration. He is a bureaucrat and a damn good one, with a keen mind for research, finance, and data synthesis. He genuinely enjoys formulae and equations, acting as both an accountant and actuary for the city that his father, Emperor Maximilian, has put him in charge of, New Reynes. Secretly, he combines his business acumen with an artistic flair as a fashion designer and CEO of luxury brand Felicity LLC. Azrael enjoys spending his free time designing unorthodox, dreamlike dresses and naughty lingerie for both sexes.
Allegiances: The Castillon Crown, at least in theory. Azrael would have been executed if his family found out that he was planning treason, but since the Kryptonians have reduced Castillon to a wasteland, that’s no longer a threat. As its ruling lord, he has an allegiance to the city and people of New Reynes, which is geographically where New Orleans is in our world.
Enemies: His father, Emperor Maximilian. To a lesser extent, Azrael held grudges against several of his older siblings, but they’re all dead and gone now. His new enemy is the Kryptonian race of invaders who obliterated the kingdom that he was supposed to inherit through their deal.
Appearance: Azrael only looks half the part of a prince, and perhaps unfortunately, it’s the less impressive part. He’s not the tall and strapping hero who will battle a thousand demons to come to your rescue. Rather, Azrael is clean-cut, expensively clad, and pale in the way of imperialists who send soldiers to do their bidding while they manage budgets in offices. In other words, he looks like a good Christian boy. Which is good for his disguise. People are less inclined to think that a good Christian boy fantasizes about murdering most of his relatives a hundred different ways and stealing the throne, let alone has the chutzpah to actually do it.
Azrael’s coffee-brown hair is cut and styled in a particular fashion: long on top and shorn close on the sides and back, with a deep side part. The hair in front flips up along his brow, revealing that it’d have a somewhat wavy texture if it were allowed to grow out. He has a long, narrow face with a broad forehead and a squared jaw, producing a slightly boxy shape. He has a long nose that slopes upward at a delicate, almost feminine angle, and his eyebrows are arched in a perpetually haughty expression, as if he’s questioning your intelligence. His lips are narrow and naturally downturned into a frown, making him look cold and regal and disappointed. Azrael’s eyes are round, wide-spaced, and a dark hazel color, containing glints of brown and green and gold. Conveniently, they seem to shift to match the shade of the suit he’s picked out for the day. He is right-handed.
Wardrobe: If it’s just a day at the office, “smart casual” is the best phrase to define Azrael’s wardrobe. He likes to experiment with colors and patterns while still retaining a neat, polished appearance. One day he may wear a blazer, business shirt, khakis, and Oxfords, and the next a fun plaid button-down, dark wash jeans, and Chelsea boots. In cooler seasons he will top off the look with a stylish red leather jacket. However casual, everything in his wardrobe is expensive, either tailored or designer-made, and made of premium fabrics like cashmere, silk, and Vicuna wool.
Outfits Jacket
Scent: Luxardo cherries and cinnamon, expensive cigars and moonlight on metal
Height & Weight: 5’11” & 170 lbs.
Body Modifications: Um, no. The day that Azrael gets tattoos or piercings is the day that he gets disowned from the royal family. However, nestled in the hollow of his collarbones is a distinct birthmark, a symmetrical zigzag that resembles horns, which glows red when he uses his powers. When dormant it is the whitish-silver of a healed scar. People typically think it is a tattoo because it looks so deliberate, but Azrael was born with the mark. Additionally, he has a rather prominent burn scar on his lower left leg, where the skin is crinkled and raised but lost most of its discoloration over time.
Physical Disabilities: Hyperopia in both eyes, which is really unfortunate for a bureaucrat. As a kid, he used to wear glasses when working on a computer or reading, but stopped when some of his older sisters made fun of him and never went back. He also has allergies to bee stings and peanuts, which is really unfortunate because he used to love Thai food. Lastly, he has some long-term concussion symptoms, such as frequent headaches, disorientation, mood swings, long-term memory gaps, and an inability to stay asleep for more than a few hours at once.
Faceclaim: Finn Cole
Personality: The Castillon royal court is a snake pit, and Azrael fits right in. But fitting in isn’t enough for him. He strives to be the monster with the longest teeth and sharpest claws. Underneath a neat, polished demeanor lies a dark heart that will justify almost anything to achieve its goals. Azrael is a schemer. He will come up with an alphabet list of contingency plans on top of contingency plans, complete with double-crosses, mindfucks, and violence to eliminate his rivals. He is a manipulator of facts, believing that perception is reality, and a lie told often enough becomes the truth. Unlike some pathological liars and borderline psychopaths, though, Azrael is fond of introspection, and he goes back and forth speculating whether his illusory powers are a byproduct of this deceitful nature, or vice versa.
Fortunately for Azrael, he is a strategist and a visionary, able to see patterns and trends and act on them, but he uses his gifts selfishly. He has a razor-sharp mind for puzzles and problem-solving, ruthlessly weighing assets against liabilities to arrive at the optimal solution. He is smart and loves learning, readily absorbing information like a sponge, but he thinks knowledge is pointless unless it’s used to achieve something. It's hard to throw him for a loop; he commonly uses inductive and deductive logic to arrive at conclusions and draw comparisons between unrelated scenarios and concepts. Azrael is a big-picture thinker who enjoys philosophizing and pondering questions that can't easily be answered. If something strikes him as odd, he has an obsessive nature that goes wild asking itself, What's missing? until he figures it out. For this reason, he's pretty much a human lie detector. He watches others carefully while pretending not to, strategically timing the moments that he weighs in. Thus, despite his (many) flaws, Azrael is a genius administrator, unafraid to do diligent research to acquire information and innovate new methods when the current system isn’t meeting quotas. During a stint of exile from Castillon in his teen years, he got his start as a bookmaker in Italy, where he took bets on horse races and football matches, calculated odds, and fixed the outcomes to earn maximum profit.
A gambling man to his bones, Azrael is addicted to winning. He is very image-conscious, and much of his persona is constructed to appear successful and confident. He says the things that will garner social approval, and he longs to impress those in court who are of a higher rank of him. Well, he did once. But time and time again of rejections and belittlement has iced over any affection he may have once had for his family. Now, he seeks only one thing: their destruction, and a chance to seize the throne for himself. While he publicly respects the chain of command, there is a rebellious streak in him that absolutely defies being told what to do if he thinks the order is illogical. He strongly believes that authority should be earned on merit, not given to someone due to birth or standing or material assets. However, his beliefs are not so passionate that he’ll fight for them when nepotism benefits him. Being seventeenth in line, he has a small claim on the throne, but it’s better than no claim.
Azrael may be arrogant, thinking that he can take down any opponent with wit and cunning and connections, but he’s no fool. He doesn’t rush his machinations, and is content to wait for the perfect time to strike, comforting himself with promises of what the future will look like when he’s on top. He loves a good challenge and can be brash and impetuous, unable to resist showing off when he has an audience. He’s a natural on camera, analyzing everything he says and does through several different perspectives before committing. He’s polite, courteous, and chummy when there’s something to gain, having plenty of “friends” whom he can’t stand and sometimes require all his self-discipline to tolerate. On behalf of both his personal goals and his obligations to his province city, New Reynes, he is a tirelessly hard worker, oftentimes forgoing sleep to meet deadlines and oversee budgets. As such, he is prone to accidents, burnout, and mood swings. On the flipside, he is a critical thinker with a constantly active mind. The mundane bores him, and he balks at the thought of being “ordinary,” which is the driving fear behind many of his achievements. He has delusions of grandeur where he is the Castillon emperor who unites all of the world under his control.
For one with such a self-assured facade, others can be surprised to learn that Azrael has plenty of fears. He has a paranoid streak, imagining dangers where there are none, and exaggerating mild ones. There's a switch inside of him that flips onto attack mode and is damned to shut off, because he knows the line between predator and prey is a thin one. He's prone to worry and anxiety, and feeling safe is paramount to him. On the flip side, he's good at reading between the lines to sense imminent danger and has acute reflexes. These traits make him very sensitive to power dynamics and figuring out who's in control. He's courageously protective of those for whom he is responsible or genuinely cares about, wanting to shield them from being misled or taken advantage of. When his thoughts are racing and he feels in danger, he has certain techniques and habits that he uses to ground himself. Azrael does not like anything that he cannot control because he feels threatened by it. He thinks people are inherently evil, that humanity undressed is no better than the primal instincts that drive one animal to hunt and kill another, and people will generally do whatever they can to get ahead if they think they can get away with it. As a result, he thinks that most people are out to get him, likely to interpret kindness as an attempt to patronize or a setup for future sabotage.
Positive Traits: Ambitious, driven, strategic, intellectual, patient, organized, diligent, goal-oriented, decisive, punctual, efficient, visionary, tenacious, charismatic, polished, affable, intense, daring, opportunistic, protective, confident, innovative, polite, sophisticated, articulate, observant, mysterious, bold
Negative Traits: Conniving, materialistic, competitive, paranoid, brooding, selfish, manipulative, cold, ruthless, dishonest, amoral, anxious, two-faced, distrusting, showoff, withdrawn, controlling, rebellious, violent, aggressive, vain, arrogant, exploitative, power-hungry, obsessive, insecure, snobby, standoffish, volatile, cruel, fearful, defiant, outspoken, judgmental, insensitive, detached, condescending, clumsy, addictive personality
MBTI Type: INTJ
Hogwarts House: Slytherin
Moral Alignment: Neutral Evil
Temperament: Choleric-Melancholic
Likes: Geometric patterns, research, equations and formulae, philosophizing and intellectual debates, getting stuff done, puzzles and riddles, between midnight and sunrise, fashion, architecture, theatre, playing music, karaoke, impressionist paintings, firing guns, pocket billiards, Scrabble, Italian and Latin languages, Soppressata pizza, calamari and octopus, garlic bread, seafood soups, luxardo cherries, dark chocolate, black coffee, stimulants and hallucinogens, Havana cigars, partying with Italians, birds of prey and paradise, bold and cold colors, 90s alternative, opera, complex harmonies, dark fairy tales, dragons, graphs and spreadsheets, the ticking of a clock, traveling in luxury, creating illusory worlds, tricking others
Dislikes: Interruptions, someone walking slowly ahead of him, dysfunctional technology, red tape, illegible penmanship, losing, his father and most of his older siblings, being touched, emotionally-charged decisions, hypocrites, organized religion, astrology and pseudo-sciences, poetry, superhero movies and comics, dancing, video games, golfing, cheap pizza, spicy foods, raw vegetables, milk, nuts, fruit pies, custard, alcohol, weed, 80s music, sad rap, loud noises, open flames, dominoes, white noise, nature, humid heat, tarot cards and tea leaves, running, working out, sentimental objects, court gossip, small talk, social media, bright sunlight, nightclubs, camping
Habits: Walking industriously fast like he's in an airport always, smiling coldly when he's talking down to someone, shaking off a physical touch, calculating numbers without a calculator, tipping up his chin in defiance, having a coffee and cigar in arm's-length, speaking in idioms and double entendres, writing informal texts like a treatise to the pope, sucking his cheeks in disdainfully, over-tipping when sitting down to ensure optimal service, checking his reflection in any mirrored surface, making food appear outrageous colors with his powers, picky eater who generally plays with his food more so than eats it
Fears: Hospitals and doctors, failure, public humiliation, falling in love, fire, loud noises, growing old, going insane, being stranded in nature, bees and moths, drowning, clowns
Hobbies: Working, playing flute and bassoon, designing clothes, skeet shooting, karaoke night, plotting to take the throne, pranking others with hallucinations, recreational drugs, looking at art, playing pool, dining at fancy restaurants, organizing and reviewing ledgers, sketching new fashion designs in a Moleskine notebook when he can't sleep
Mental Disorders: Shows traits of PTSD, narcissism, OCD, OCPD, schizoid, and Asperger's, but he's never been diagnosed. It would be unbecoming for a prince to have a record of mental disorder. Moreover, Azrael displays highly gifted intelligence to the point where he finds it difficult to relate to or is just plain uninterested in the lives of individuals with low to average intelligence.
Family:
— Maximilian Emery, Thirty-Second Emperor of Castillon // father // presumably deceased
— Harlow Abbott, Seventh Consort of the Emperor // mother // deceased
— Chandler Emery, Fifth Prince of Castillon // older brother // Age 34 (?) status unknown
— Fifteen half sisters and four half brothers by nine different royal consorts; Azrael is seventeenth in the birth order of the twenty-one total siblings, all or most of whom perished or were taken prisoner in the recent Kryptonian invasion.
— Gabriella Alessi // ex-girlfriend // Age 31 (?) status unknown
— Flora Alessi // daughter // Age 11 (?) status unknown
Hometown: Born in Los Sueños (our-world equivalent: San Antonio, Texas). Currently lives in New Reynes (our-world equivalent: New Orleans, Louisiana).
Backstory:
Azrael Emery, Sixth Prince of Castillon, is the sixth and youngest son of Emperor Maximilian. His mother, Dame Harlow Abbott, served in the Emperor's elite guard, the Asura, for seven years before her beauty caught the eye of the emperor and he took her as his consort. The move was largely made by the fact that she was already pregnant with his child and could no longer continue her knightly duties after her first trimester. Thus, at age thirty Harlow gave birth to a son, Chandler, and became the envy of every other lady in court, on account of being the newest bauble on the emperor's arm. Not for long, they thought, because the longest of Maximilian's consorts lasted for five years before he moved on to the next one. Harlow was no exception to the rule. Six years after Chandler's birth, she bore another son, but her husband had already divorced her for a younger woman by the time she came to term (in fact, the emperor had a set of twin girls with said younger woman during the gap between Harlow's sons). Of course, their broken-off union didn't stop him from picking Harlow's baby's name: Azrael, named for one of the twelve archangels.
In the colorful, semi-arid city of Los Sueños, Harlow was a single mother of two, but a single mother with a lavish bank account as a former consort. She spoiled her sons rotten, and even though she could afford a whole house staff, she was there for each first that her boys had. A talented musician, she taught her sons to read music and play the flute. She nurtured them, taking them on holiday to the savannahs of Nigeria and the beaches of Spain, and sent them to the best schools, where Chandler excelled on the ice hockey team and Azrael participated in band and the debate team. Everything was perfect until the Carnage, the day the sky rained fire.
The three dominant superpowers of this world are Castillon, the European Union, and the Chinese Federation, and they are almost constantly at war with one another in endless territorial conquest. In retaliation to Castillon's attempts to annex Iceland, the E.U. rained down bombs on the southern border of its mainland. Harlow was killed in the bombing. Chandler and Azrael were luckier to be at school when it happened, where they had an extensive underground bunker in the event of such an emergency. Nonetheless, Azrael was in the middle of marching band practice when the football field was inflamed before his eyes and he lost consciousness shortly thereafter. He sustained a grade-three concussion and a nasty burn on his lower left leg, the latter of which would have been much worse and possibly resulted in amputation if not for Castillon's cutting-edge surgical tech. However, the symptoms of his concussion persisted for three months, during which time he was hospitalized in a long-term ward. Azrael emerged with a newfound tendency to flinch at sudden sounds, frequent headaches and disorientation, and an unhealthy fondness for morphine.
The fallout of the situation placed Emperor Maximilian in an awkward position. The question of what to do with his two motherless sons remained. His current consort was a woman whose physical attractiveness was rivaled only by her selfishness, and she made it clear that she did not want to raise children that were not hers. Thus, the emperor, who was in the process of brokering a peace treaty with the E.U., decided to kill two birds with one stone. As part of the deal, Princes Chandler and Azrael would be sent as political hostages to Italy. The boys were ages fifteen and nine at the time that their charter plane arrived in Genoa, a flight that Azrael spent in a deep opium-induced slumber.
Unlike most hostage situations, they were treated quite well. The brothers attended an academy for nobles from all over Europe, given a housekeeper to see to their needs, and mingled with court at social functions. Azrael excelled in school, having a gift for numbers, while his brother quickly ascended to popularity on the football team. However, Azrael was malcontent. His mother was dead and his father had sold him like cattle to her killers. On a less noble note, Emperor Maximilian had sent his sons off with a minimal budget compared to those of the other courtiers. Wearing clothes that were a size too small and glutting himself on free school lunches to hold him over until the next day, Azrael quickly grew jealous of his foreign peers. He and Chandler didn't always have the best reception, too. They were frequently the subject of court gossip, rumored to do all kinds of lurid things.
About a year into his stay in Genoa, something incomprehensibly strange happened. On his walk home from school, Azrael was bruising and in tears because a bigger German prince had tripped him in the school yard, laughed at him with his friends, and won the ensuing scuffle. He was walking down the Via Garibaldi as he always did, and reluctantly stopped crying when he saw an ostrich barreling down the street, weaving between cars. Nearby were a jaguar, a brown bear, and a rhinoceros, running around and causing havoc and occasionally chasing civilians and cars. Yet strangely, no real damage occurred. No one was trampled, no buildings were leveled. And, most strangely, when a sniper put a bullet through a zebra, it simply vanished. Dissipated into dust. None of the animals were captured, and when they passed outside of the city's limits, were never seen again.
Azrael continued home, shaky and scared and attributing it to a hallucination he'd experienced on painkillers, which he still used for his lingering concussive symptoms. It wasn't until after he woke up from a miserable nap later that evening and awoke to the most bizarre news report of his life that he reconciled he wasn't the only one to have imagined such a thing. And then at school the next day, something else peculiar happened. Azrael was disappointed in gym class to get a pink jump rope; he'd wanted a blue one, but he was a slow runner, and by the time he reached the pile they'd been picked through and only pink remained. Or so he'd thought. When he tripped over the rope and had to restart, he noticed that, inexplicably, he was holding a blue jump rope. He could have sworn he'd selected a pink one. A strange yet delightful notion crept into his mind. For lunch that day, Azrael sat alone as usual, and tried to transform his mashed potatoes into mac and cheese. He was astonished when it actually worked. But when he bit into them, for all their misleading appearance, they still tasted like mashed potatoes. It was through a variety of such experiments that he came to understand that he possessed an unearthly magic, able to manipulate the five senses and warp people's perception of the world around them.
One of the first applications of his power to transform his wardrobe. He went from colorless shirts and too-tight pants to jewel-tone designer clothes and tailored suits that resisted wrinkles. But it wasn't enough for Azrael. Because when he let the illusion fade at the end of the day, he was still a shaggy boy in shabby clothes, while his peers took luxury for granted. He wanted money so that he could have real, tangible things, not the imagined ones of a sad boy who looked in on restaurants and arcades from the outside. Surprisingly entrepreneurial for a thirteen-year-old, Azrael was struck by inspiration when he saw a homeless man scrounging his last coins not for food or clothes, but for a box of cigarettes. He was still prescribed small monthly shipments of morphine to deal with the headaches and dizzy spells he got. Until Azrael acted out one day, staged a trip to the nurse's, and made himself throw up and claimed to see things that weren't there. The symptoms miraculously disappeared when he took his medication. As a result, his prescriptions of morphine increased in doses. Not that he actually needed these, of course. What he didn't use for himself he began selling in discreet alleys and streetcorners. Azrael made a tidy profit. Chandler, in his last year of academy, was too busy applying to colleges and partying with his friends to pay much attention to his younger brother's doings. The brothers had grown distant in the time since they'd left Castillon.
With his new flow of income and a hard-earned understanding of the limits and possibilities of his power, Azrael decided that there needed to be a change in his social image. Once Chandler left for college in Verona, he began to throw wild parties, with breathtaking decor that changed every weekend. One time it was under the sea. Another time outer space. The inside of a volcano. He appeared to hire the best in entertainment, and with his underground connections and lack of parental supervision, it was easy to get his hands on very potent liquor. Azrael generally hated large parties, finding the noise overwhelming and the conversation distasteful, but his quick ascension in popularity was worth it. Especially when he could drown his insecurities in alcohol and blow. Girls wanted him. Boys wanted to be him. And he continued to pump out some of the best grades in the academy, making the top ten routinely.
It was the night of his sixteenth birthday when he met Gabriella. A couple of his mates had taken him out to celebrate. Their mission was to hunt down some liquor, but they were scared of getting caught. All except for Azrael, who, unbeknownst to them, had made all four boys resemble the age of recent college graduates. Fearlessly, he pushed into a bar and ordered gin and tonics for all of them. Yet he forgot about the liquor when he glimpsed the bartender's face. She was a resplendent beauty of conventional Italian standards, with dark waves of mermaid hair and curves in all the right places. Her name was Gabriella, and she was nineteen. Azrael continued to flirt with her over the course of ten shots and several hours, and at the end of the night, he got her number. Having introduced himself as Harlan, a bastardized masculine version of his mother's name, and twenty-three years old, he continued the ruse on their first date. And the next, and the next. He learned things about her. Like she enjoyed painting and riding horses. And her father was a soldier, and she eventually wanted to go to university to study computer science. She'd been working as a bartender since she was seventeen, getting paid under the table because she was underaged, and cleaning up in tips despite the house paying her less than what was lawfully permitted.
They'd been seeing each other for five months when Azrael's ruse was exposed. At the arcade, he unexpectedly ran into some acquaintances at school, who bounced up to him and called him by his real name. As if that weren't incriminating enough, they yammered on about a biology assignment, asking if they could borrow his notes. Gabriella watched the whole exchange. After his friends left, seeing no way out of the situation, Azrael came clean, revealing his true name and age. But it was a selective story, and he conveniently left out the parts where he was a Castillon prince. Disgusted that she'd been sleeping with a sixteen-year-old, she ignored all of Azrael's future calls, and had him kicked out of the bar when he tried to find her there. Two weeks after that incident, she called him to inform him that she was pregnant.
Several months later, there was a breaking news report that Castillon had sunk a Greek ship, which was a direct violation of the peace treaty that had been brokered between the two empires. The next day, during history class, Azrael received a summons to the main office, where he was told a car was waiting for him outside. The driver of the black sedan was clad in an inconspicuous business suit, and he reached for something discreetly inside of it. He told Azrael to get into the car. Azrael obeyed. He was driven forty-five minutes away to a secure fortress that looked like it'd once been a prison where hangings were staged.
Tied to a chair in a featureless room was Chandler. The two princes were taught what would happen when the peace treaty was violated. Azrael watched as Chandler was beaten within an inch of his life, his nose smashed in, one leg broken at an unnatural angle, a grotesque rasping escaping his lips that indicated cracked ribs. Chandler was losing consciousness, but his torturers showed no sign of letting up. Azrael decided to intervene, ignoring the warning that his captors would rather not beat children, but would if they had to. Using his powers, he conjured the image of a venomous snake that induced pain and disorientation in those that it bit. Just before the snake closed on him, the last man standing noticed the absolute lack of fear in Azrael's eyes. Instead, hatred smoldered there. Desperate, the driver of the sedan backhanded Azrael across the face so hard that the world dissolved. He woke up at home with a black eye and a missing tooth and a bloodstained academy uniform. He made a few calls and found out that Chandler was in the hospital nearest his university. In critical condition but alive. Azrael blamed his father, Emperor Maximilian, for the whole incident, for knowingly violating the peace treaty and gambling with his sons' lives.
Freshly turned seventeen, Azrael made a visit to the bar that Gabriella worked at, where he'd met her a year ago. Sure enough, she was eight months pregnant and still working, because her father was overseas, her blind mother was jobless, and she was the only source of income. He waited until her shift ended, and before she could shoo him away, he gave her a tidy sum of cash. Enough money to live off of for half a year if she budgeted prudently. At a dearth of options once she gave birth, she reluctantly accepted the money. Azrael didn't answer how her when she asked how he'd gotten it. He walked away and out of Gabriella's life. A month later, he received a courtesy call to inform him that she'd given birth to a little girl named Flora.
Around the same time, Azrael was struggling to maintain his lavish lifestyle. He'd given Gabriella practically all of his savings, and he was scrounging to afford the expenses of his next weekend party. He doubled down on the drug deals to the detriment of his schoolwork, skipping classes and assignments to rendezvous with clients. One night, he met a particularly wealthy client in an upscale nightclub called L'Oliva Blu who sought a year's supply of opium. This was it. The big score that would get him flush again and hold him over until the end of the semester. They sat down in a private curtained-off booth of the nightclub to conduct the transaction. The client rifled through the briefcases, ensuring that he was getting his money's worth. When someone stumbled through the curtain. It was a student that Azrael recognized. In fact, it was Edwin Ostwald, the German prince who had beat Azrael up seven years ago and continued to be a regular nuisance at court. Hanging on his arm was a scantily-clad girl whose company he'd likely bought. And he saw everything.
After an impressive string of obscenities, Edwin threatened to turn Azrael in unless he gave Edwin a hit of dope. No, strike that. Edwin wanted all of it. Having no choice, Azrael surrendered the briefcases and returned his client's money, and Edwin left with tens of thousands of Euros' worth of narcotics. Humiliated and poor once again, Azrael used the last of his savings to pay some of the sellers beneath him to watch Edwin, and tip him off as to the German student's activities. Two days later, Azrael received word that Edwin was planning a hunting trip into the forest with two other friends. Slipping some laxatives into their sodas at lunch ensured that they did not accompany Edwin. On the day of the trip, Azrael stalked him from a distance as his rival went into the forest alone, armed with a shotgun and some snares. Taking care to keep a safe distance away, Azrael followed. When they were far enough away from civilization, he made Edwin hallucinate a living nightmare: He'd disturbed a nest of wasps, and a stinging mass of insects the size of a thundercloud was upon him. And then when that wasn't enough, they were joined by fire ants. Flesh-eating spiders. The pain was as excruciating as Azrael could imagine. Finally, when no end of his misery was in sight and driven mad by pain, Edwin used his own shotgun to blow off his head. A suicide. The perfect murder, because there was no perpetrator. Now there was no chance Edwin would threaten Azrael for money ever again, or blab his secret to the police.
A year and a half passed in relative calmness. Then, unexpectedly, Azrael and Chandler both received directives from their father by mail, telling them that at the end of the school year their exile in Italy would be over, and they'd be rejoining court in Castillon. Chandler, who had mostly recovered from his beating except for a crooked nose and a limping gait, was equal parts terrified and infuriated. He told Azrael he'd rather die than return to the father who'd allowed him to be beaten within an inch of his life. Feeling sympathy for the brother who'd suffered so he wouldn't have to, Azrael suggested that they fake Chandler's death, and that way no one would go looking for him. Chandler was dubious, but reluctantly agreed to entertain the idea, not knowing of Azrael's powers of illusion at the time. It was well-known that Chandler enjoyed surfing. So it would look completely accidental if a monstrous wave swallowed him up one day, hopefully without sparking a war between empires. The conversation about Azrael's powers wasn't an easy one. Chandler needed multiple proofs of the impossible before he agreed to go along with this surfing accident idea. When he did, it went blessedly according to plan. Numerous witnesses watched a young man fitting Chandler's description get swallowed by a forebodingly large wave, never to resurface. Meanwhile, the brothers drove to an airport, where Azrael tailored Chandler's face to match the one on a fake passport, and saw him off to Middle of Nowhere, Bulgaria.
Minus having to verify his brother's death in a freak surfing accident multiple times (Emperor Maximilian never believed him, for the record), Azrael's homecoming was lackluster. His siblings seemed to have forgotten him and Chandler during their absence, and when they did acknowledge him, it was typically to joke at his expense during court functions. Nineteen years old, Azrael attended university at one of Castillon's most prestigious, as is expected of a prince, majoring in accounting and minoring in design. He'd been picked on ruthlessly when he first started school in Genoa on behalf of his raggedy clothes, and ever since he started making his own illicit income, he'd obsessed over his appearance until it became a passion and status symbol. After obtaining his degree, Azrael joined his siblings in that he was given a city to govern and oversee in his father's name: New Reynes, a city known for its singular cuisine, jazz music, and vibrant nightlife. At least on the tourist brochures. What they didn't advertise was that it was largely a shithole, a hub of gentrification and violent crime perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy and victim of devastating hurricanes, sometimes several a year. Azrael hated the obnoxiously spicy food and the year-round soup bowl of humid heat.
But he proved to be damn good at his job. A natural bureaucrat, he halved unemployment and funded a major housing project in New Reynes within his first two years as the city's lord, having a keen eye for details and using records to get to the bottom of a mystery. The problem was that administration isn't a very glorious job, and he never received acknowledgement for his hard work. Instead his father and siblings showered him in disappointment that he didn't have Tommy's military accomplishments, or Maya's appeal to a variety of tasteful suitors. His resentment blossomed quietly.
At age twenty-five, fed up and bored with his lonely absorption in numbers, Azrael launched a fashion company under the name of Felicity LLC. Knowing that his father would disapprove of the operation as a frivolous waste of time inappropriate for a man, he kept his role as CEO under wraps, hiring a spokeswoman by the name of "Felicity" to handle any and all public relations. The luxury brand is on the rise and known for its avant-garde designs combining aesthetics and colors, also featuring a very slinky product line of lingerie. Running the business is work away from work, but it's one of Azrael's few pleasures. He does not wear his own clothes because he does not want any public connection with the brand, yet he designs especially for several B-list celebrities. (Side note: in the nine years since his return to Castillon, he's been sending monthly checks to Gabriella and Flora, despite having almost no contact at all with his ex-girlfriend and daughter. He very occasionally checks in with Chandler, too, who enjoys a quiet existence as a fisherman in the Black Sea.)
Six months ago, there was a bizarre occurrence. Satellites over New Reynes indicated an attempt for a foreign craft to penetrate the atmosphere. A traumatized victim of international warfare, Azrael feared that it was an attempt for the E.U. to bomb the city and finish the job they'd started when they'd killed his mother. However, when analyzed, the radio waves and frequencies it emitted were nothing like modern technology had ever seen. Not eager to pick a fight until he knew what he was up against, Azrael hesitantly made contact with the foreign ship. And inexplicably found that they were an alien race. Kryptonians, they called themselves. And the atmospheric security was so efficient that they couldn't descend without tripping an alarm that would blow them sky high.
The Kryptonians announced that they were interested in viridium, the precious stone unique to Castillon and not found on other worlds' periodic tables. As such, this claim didn't strike Azrael as at all unlikely. Casting off some of his assistants' stigmas ("But they're aliens!"), he arranged a secretive meeting with a representative from Krypton to negotiate a trade. But he was uninterested in any money, technology, or materials. What Azrael wanted was the Castillon throne, and more than that, revenge for years of abuse and trauma. He wanted his father and all sixteen of the older siblings who stood in his way to the throne dead. And so they struck a deal. A hundred kilos of viridium for each royal head laid at his feet.
Azrael spent the six months until present day stealing from the emperor's coffers under the guise that it was a mole somewhere else in the company, a book-cooking white-collar thief with no respect for the monarchy. Stealing from Emperor Maximilian himself was the best way to get his attention, because then the crime became a personal insult. New Reynes was almost twenty percent short in the taxes that they collected and returned to the monarchy, which was unheard of and made Azrael look bad, but he suffered the blow to his image for the bigger prize. Pretending to lend a helping hand, Azrael agreed to help his other siblings out with some of the ledgers for their cities, and unbeknownst to them, skimmed the pot there too, making the missing money a national epidemic. The press was under strict orders to keep mum about the situation, as the emperor didn't want word to get out that he was being taken for a ride. Until just a week and a half ago, the group of thieves was apprehended. They were remnants of an organized crime family completely innocent of the dirty paper trails that they were accused of committing, but Azrael falsified evidence to make them believable scapegoats. In the wake of their executions, Azrael, now a hero for restoring justice, invited the whole royal family to a celebration at the New Reynes palace. Minutes before the first carriage pulled up at the gates, Azrael disabled the satellites and atmospheric security system, allowing a Kryptonian warship full of assassins to descend, unmolested and undetected.
Chaos ensued as nobility dropped like flies, their bodyguards standing no chance against alien technology. But as the city was leveled, it quickly became clear that the Kryptonians intended to do more than just fulfill the deal they'd made with Azrael. Thinking it silly to have to ask a foreign monarch's permission for trade when they could just take everything they wanted, they killed or captured the residents of just about the entire city. Until Azrael was left the emperor of a ghost town. Honoring their bargain somewhat, the commanding General Zod made a point to spare Azrael, but made it very clear to him that the title he'd inherited meant nothing now. New Reynes was under new management.
Enraged and humiliated that he'd been so easily tricked, Azrael realized that he had no future in Castillon-- no one did. However, as badly as things had turned for him, he had one thing he hadn't before: freedom. Raiding his office and home safes for all of the priceless valuables that he could carry and pawn off, Azrael made the one move left to him. It was time to pack up and start a new life in a new world. He checked his schedule for upcoming appointments and noticed that the day after the invasion, an ambassador from a different Earth was supposed to visit him. Since the procedures for interdimensional travel were as of yet still unknown to Castillon, he was forced to wait for this messenger to whisk him away elsewhere. And now with the help of his illusions he is impersonating Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri, guard in Earth 1966's most secure prison, until he can find his way out of the subterranean hell that is Belle Reve to the world above and start a new life for himself. But getting out of Belle Reve is almost as challenging for guards as it is for inmates, a place where every secret is kept under lock and key. Also unknown to Azrael is the fact that his and Njeri's trip through time and space was tracked by the Kryptonians, potentially leading them on an interdimensional wild goose chase, should they find Earth 1966 more conducive to their needs than Castillon.
In the colorful, semi-arid city of Los Sueños, Harlow was a single mother of two, but a single mother with a lavish bank account as a former consort. She spoiled her sons rotten, and even though she could afford a whole house staff, she was there for each first that her boys had. A talented musician, she taught her sons to read music and play the flute. She nurtured them, taking them on holiday to the savannahs of Nigeria and the beaches of Spain, and sent them to the best schools, where Chandler excelled on the ice hockey team and Azrael participated in band and the debate team. Everything was perfect until the Carnage, the day the sky rained fire.
The three dominant superpowers of this world are Castillon, the European Union, and the Chinese Federation, and they are almost constantly at war with one another in endless territorial conquest. In retaliation to Castillon's attempts to annex Iceland, the E.U. rained down bombs on the southern border of its mainland. Harlow was killed in the bombing. Chandler and Azrael were luckier to be at school when it happened, where they had an extensive underground bunker in the event of such an emergency. Nonetheless, Azrael was in the middle of marching band practice when the football field was inflamed before his eyes and he lost consciousness shortly thereafter. He sustained a grade-three concussion and a nasty burn on his lower left leg, the latter of which would have been much worse and possibly resulted in amputation if not for Castillon's cutting-edge surgical tech. However, the symptoms of his concussion persisted for three months, during which time he was hospitalized in a long-term ward. Azrael emerged with a newfound tendency to flinch at sudden sounds, frequent headaches and disorientation, and an unhealthy fondness for morphine.
The fallout of the situation placed Emperor Maximilian in an awkward position. The question of what to do with his two motherless sons remained. His current consort was a woman whose physical attractiveness was rivaled only by her selfishness, and she made it clear that she did not want to raise children that were not hers. Thus, the emperor, who was in the process of brokering a peace treaty with the E.U., decided to kill two birds with one stone. As part of the deal, Princes Chandler and Azrael would be sent as political hostages to Italy. The boys were ages fifteen and nine at the time that their charter plane arrived in Genoa, a flight that Azrael spent in a deep opium-induced slumber.
Unlike most hostage situations, they were treated quite well. The brothers attended an academy for nobles from all over Europe, given a housekeeper to see to their needs, and mingled with court at social functions. Azrael excelled in school, having a gift for numbers, while his brother quickly ascended to popularity on the football team. However, Azrael was malcontent. His mother was dead and his father had sold him like cattle to her killers. On a less noble note, Emperor Maximilian had sent his sons off with a minimal budget compared to those of the other courtiers. Wearing clothes that were a size too small and glutting himself on free school lunches to hold him over until the next day, Azrael quickly grew jealous of his foreign peers. He and Chandler didn't always have the best reception, too. They were frequently the subject of court gossip, rumored to do all kinds of lurid things.
About a year into his stay in Genoa, something incomprehensibly strange happened. On his walk home from school, Azrael was bruising and in tears because a bigger German prince had tripped him in the school yard, laughed at him with his friends, and won the ensuing scuffle. He was walking down the Via Garibaldi as he always did, and reluctantly stopped crying when he saw an ostrich barreling down the street, weaving between cars. Nearby were a jaguar, a brown bear, and a rhinoceros, running around and causing havoc and occasionally chasing civilians and cars. Yet strangely, no real damage occurred. No one was trampled, no buildings were leveled. And, most strangely, when a sniper put a bullet through a zebra, it simply vanished. Dissipated into dust. None of the animals were captured, and when they passed outside of the city's limits, were never seen again.
Azrael continued home, shaky and scared and attributing it to a hallucination he'd experienced on painkillers, which he still used for his lingering concussive symptoms. It wasn't until after he woke up from a miserable nap later that evening and awoke to the most bizarre news report of his life that he reconciled he wasn't the only one to have imagined such a thing. And then at school the next day, something else peculiar happened. Azrael was disappointed in gym class to get a pink jump rope; he'd wanted a blue one, but he was a slow runner, and by the time he reached the pile they'd been picked through and only pink remained. Or so he'd thought. When he tripped over the rope and had to restart, he noticed that, inexplicably, he was holding a blue jump rope. He could have sworn he'd selected a pink one. A strange yet delightful notion crept into his mind. For lunch that day, Azrael sat alone as usual, and tried to transform his mashed potatoes into mac and cheese. He was astonished when it actually worked. But when he bit into them, for all their misleading appearance, they still tasted like mashed potatoes. It was through a variety of such experiments that he came to understand that he possessed an unearthly magic, able to manipulate the five senses and warp people's perception of the world around them.
One of the first applications of his power to transform his wardrobe. He went from colorless shirts and too-tight pants to jewel-tone designer clothes and tailored suits that resisted wrinkles. But it wasn't enough for Azrael. Because when he let the illusion fade at the end of the day, he was still a shaggy boy in shabby clothes, while his peers took luxury for granted. He wanted money so that he could have real, tangible things, not the imagined ones of a sad boy who looked in on restaurants and arcades from the outside. Surprisingly entrepreneurial for a thirteen-year-old, Azrael was struck by inspiration when he saw a homeless man scrounging his last coins not for food or clothes, but for a box of cigarettes. He was still prescribed small monthly shipments of morphine to deal with the headaches and dizzy spells he got. Until Azrael acted out one day, staged a trip to the nurse's, and made himself throw up and claimed to see things that weren't there. The symptoms miraculously disappeared when he took his medication. As a result, his prescriptions of morphine increased in doses. Not that he actually needed these, of course. What he didn't use for himself he began selling in discreet alleys and streetcorners. Azrael made a tidy profit. Chandler, in his last year of academy, was too busy applying to colleges and partying with his friends to pay much attention to his younger brother's doings. The brothers had grown distant in the time since they'd left Castillon.
With his new flow of income and a hard-earned understanding of the limits and possibilities of his power, Azrael decided that there needed to be a change in his social image. Once Chandler left for college in Verona, he began to throw wild parties, with breathtaking decor that changed every weekend. One time it was under the sea. Another time outer space. The inside of a volcano. He appeared to hire the best in entertainment, and with his underground connections and lack of parental supervision, it was easy to get his hands on very potent liquor. Azrael generally hated large parties, finding the noise overwhelming and the conversation distasteful, but his quick ascension in popularity was worth it. Especially when he could drown his insecurities in alcohol and blow. Girls wanted him. Boys wanted to be him. And he continued to pump out some of the best grades in the academy, making the top ten routinely.
It was the night of his sixteenth birthday when he met Gabriella. A couple of his mates had taken him out to celebrate. Their mission was to hunt down some liquor, but they were scared of getting caught. All except for Azrael, who, unbeknownst to them, had made all four boys resemble the age of recent college graduates. Fearlessly, he pushed into a bar and ordered gin and tonics for all of them. Yet he forgot about the liquor when he glimpsed the bartender's face. She was a resplendent beauty of conventional Italian standards, with dark waves of mermaid hair and curves in all the right places. Her name was Gabriella, and she was nineteen. Azrael continued to flirt with her over the course of ten shots and several hours, and at the end of the night, he got her number. Having introduced himself as Harlan, a bastardized masculine version of his mother's name, and twenty-three years old, he continued the ruse on their first date. And the next, and the next. He learned things about her. Like she enjoyed painting and riding horses. And her father was a soldier, and she eventually wanted to go to university to study computer science. She'd been working as a bartender since she was seventeen, getting paid under the table because she was underaged, and cleaning up in tips despite the house paying her less than what was lawfully permitted.
They'd been seeing each other for five months when Azrael's ruse was exposed. At the arcade, he unexpectedly ran into some acquaintances at school, who bounced up to him and called him by his real name. As if that weren't incriminating enough, they yammered on about a biology assignment, asking if they could borrow his notes. Gabriella watched the whole exchange. After his friends left, seeing no way out of the situation, Azrael came clean, revealing his true name and age. But it was a selective story, and he conveniently left out the parts where he was a Castillon prince. Disgusted that she'd been sleeping with a sixteen-year-old, she ignored all of Azrael's future calls, and had him kicked out of the bar when he tried to find her there. Two weeks after that incident, she called him to inform him that she was pregnant.
Several months later, there was a breaking news report that Castillon had sunk a Greek ship, which was a direct violation of the peace treaty that had been brokered between the two empires. The next day, during history class, Azrael received a summons to the main office, where he was told a car was waiting for him outside. The driver of the black sedan was clad in an inconspicuous business suit, and he reached for something discreetly inside of it. He told Azrael to get into the car. Azrael obeyed. He was driven forty-five minutes away to a secure fortress that looked like it'd once been a prison where hangings were staged.
Tied to a chair in a featureless room was Chandler. The two princes were taught what would happen when the peace treaty was violated. Azrael watched as Chandler was beaten within an inch of his life, his nose smashed in, one leg broken at an unnatural angle, a grotesque rasping escaping his lips that indicated cracked ribs. Chandler was losing consciousness, but his torturers showed no sign of letting up. Azrael decided to intervene, ignoring the warning that his captors would rather not beat children, but would if they had to. Using his powers, he conjured the image of a venomous snake that induced pain and disorientation in those that it bit. Just before the snake closed on him, the last man standing noticed the absolute lack of fear in Azrael's eyes. Instead, hatred smoldered there. Desperate, the driver of the sedan backhanded Azrael across the face so hard that the world dissolved. He woke up at home with a black eye and a missing tooth and a bloodstained academy uniform. He made a few calls and found out that Chandler was in the hospital nearest his university. In critical condition but alive. Azrael blamed his father, Emperor Maximilian, for the whole incident, for knowingly violating the peace treaty and gambling with his sons' lives.
Freshly turned seventeen, Azrael made a visit to the bar that Gabriella worked at, where he'd met her a year ago. Sure enough, she was eight months pregnant and still working, because her father was overseas, her blind mother was jobless, and she was the only source of income. He waited until her shift ended, and before she could shoo him away, he gave her a tidy sum of cash. Enough money to live off of for half a year if she budgeted prudently. At a dearth of options once she gave birth, she reluctantly accepted the money. Azrael didn't answer how her when she asked how he'd gotten it. He walked away and out of Gabriella's life. A month later, he received a courtesy call to inform him that she'd given birth to a little girl named Flora.
Around the same time, Azrael was struggling to maintain his lavish lifestyle. He'd given Gabriella practically all of his savings, and he was scrounging to afford the expenses of his next weekend party. He doubled down on the drug deals to the detriment of his schoolwork, skipping classes and assignments to rendezvous with clients. One night, he met a particularly wealthy client in an upscale nightclub called L'Oliva Blu who sought a year's supply of opium. This was it. The big score that would get him flush again and hold him over until the end of the semester. They sat down in a private curtained-off booth of the nightclub to conduct the transaction. The client rifled through the briefcases, ensuring that he was getting his money's worth. When someone stumbled through the curtain. It was a student that Azrael recognized. In fact, it was Edwin Ostwald, the German prince who had beat Azrael up seven years ago and continued to be a regular nuisance at court. Hanging on his arm was a scantily-clad girl whose company he'd likely bought. And he saw everything.
After an impressive string of obscenities, Edwin threatened to turn Azrael in unless he gave Edwin a hit of dope. No, strike that. Edwin wanted all of it. Having no choice, Azrael surrendered the briefcases and returned his client's money, and Edwin left with tens of thousands of Euros' worth of narcotics. Humiliated and poor once again, Azrael used the last of his savings to pay some of the sellers beneath him to watch Edwin, and tip him off as to the German student's activities. Two days later, Azrael received word that Edwin was planning a hunting trip into the forest with two other friends. Slipping some laxatives into their sodas at lunch ensured that they did not accompany Edwin. On the day of the trip, Azrael stalked him from a distance as his rival went into the forest alone, armed with a shotgun and some snares. Taking care to keep a safe distance away, Azrael followed. When they were far enough away from civilization, he made Edwin hallucinate a living nightmare: He'd disturbed a nest of wasps, and a stinging mass of insects the size of a thundercloud was upon him. And then when that wasn't enough, they were joined by fire ants. Flesh-eating spiders. The pain was as excruciating as Azrael could imagine. Finally, when no end of his misery was in sight and driven mad by pain, Edwin used his own shotgun to blow off his head. A suicide. The perfect murder, because there was no perpetrator. Now there was no chance Edwin would threaten Azrael for money ever again, or blab his secret to the police.
A year and a half passed in relative calmness. Then, unexpectedly, Azrael and Chandler both received directives from their father by mail, telling them that at the end of the school year their exile in Italy would be over, and they'd be rejoining court in Castillon. Chandler, who had mostly recovered from his beating except for a crooked nose and a limping gait, was equal parts terrified and infuriated. He told Azrael he'd rather die than return to the father who'd allowed him to be beaten within an inch of his life. Feeling sympathy for the brother who'd suffered so he wouldn't have to, Azrael suggested that they fake Chandler's death, and that way no one would go looking for him. Chandler was dubious, but reluctantly agreed to entertain the idea, not knowing of Azrael's powers of illusion at the time. It was well-known that Chandler enjoyed surfing. So it would look completely accidental if a monstrous wave swallowed him up one day, hopefully without sparking a war between empires. The conversation about Azrael's powers wasn't an easy one. Chandler needed multiple proofs of the impossible before he agreed to go along with this surfing accident idea. When he did, it went blessedly according to plan. Numerous witnesses watched a young man fitting Chandler's description get swallowed by a forebodingly large wave, never to resurface. Meanwhile, the brothers drove to an airport, where Azrael tailored Chandler's face to match the one on a fake passport, and saw him off to Middle of Nowhere, Bulgaria.
Minus having to verify his brother's death in a freak surfing accident multiple times (Emperor Maximilian never believed him, for the record), Azrael's homecoming was lackluster. His siblings seemed to have forgotten him and Chandler during their absence, and when they did acknowledge him, it was typically to joke at his expense during court functions. Nineteen years old, Azrael attended university at one of Castillon's most prestigious, as is expected of a prince, majoring in accounting and minoring in design. He'd been picked on ruthlessly when he first started school in Genoa on behalf of his raggedy clothes, and ever since he started making his own illicit income, he'd obsessed over his appearance until it became a passion and status symbol. After obtaining his degree, Azrael joined his siblings in that he was given a city to govern and oversee in his father's name: New Reynes, a city known for its singular cuisine, jazz music, and vibrant nightlife. At least on the tourist brochures. What they didn't advertise was that it was largely a shithole, a hub of gentrification and violent crime perpetually on the verge of bankruptcy and victim of devastating hurricanes, sometimes several a year. Azrael hated the obnoxiously spicy food and the year-round soup bowl of humid heat.
But he proved to be damn good at his job. A natural bureaucrat, he halved unemployment and funded a major housing project in New Reynes within his first two years as the city's lord, having a keen eye for details and using records to get to the bottom of a mystery. The problem was that administration isn't a very glorious job, and he never received acknowledgement for his hard work. Instead his father and siblings showered him in disappointment that he didn't have Tommy's military accomplishments, or Maya's appeal to a variety of tasteful suitors. His resentment blossomed quietly.
At age twenty-five, fed up and bored with his lonely absorption in numbers, Azrael launched a fashion company under the name of Felicity LLC. Knowing that his father would disapprove of the operation as a frivolous waste of time inappropriate for a man, he kept his role as CEO under wraps, hiring a spokeswoman by the name of "Felicity" to handle any and all public relations. The luxury brand is on the rise and known for its avant-garde designs combining aesthetics and colors, also featuring a very slinky product line of lingerie. Running the business is work away from work, but it's one of Azrael's few pleasures. He does not wear his own clothes because he does not want any public connection with the brand, yet he designs especially for several B-list celebrities. (Side note: in the nine years since his return to Castillon, he's been sending monthly checks to Gabriella and Flora, despite having almost no contact at all with his ex-girlfriend and daughter. He very occasionally checks in with Chandler, too, who enjoys a quiet existence as a fisherman in the Black Sea.)
Six months ago, there was a bizarre occurrence. Satellites over New Reynes indicated an attempt for a foreign craft to penetrate the atmosphere. A traumatized victim of international warfare, Azrael feared that it was an attempt for the E.U. to bomb the city and finish the job they'd started when they'd killed his mother. However, when analyzed, the radio waves and frequencies it emitted were nothing like modern technology had ever seen. Not eager to pick a fight until he knew what he was up against, Azrael hesitantly made contact with the foreign ship. And inexplicably found that they were an alien race. Kryptonians, they called themselves. And the atmospheric security was so efficient that they couldn't descend without tripping an alarm that would blow them sky high.
The Kryptonians announced that they were interested in viridium, the precious stone unique to Castillon and not found on other worlds' periodic tables. As such, this claim didn't strike Azrael as at all unlikely. Casting off some of his assistants' stigmas ("But they're aliens!"), he arranged a secretive meeting with a representative from Krypton to negotiate a trade. But he was uninterested in any money, technology, or materials. What Azrael wanted was the Castillon throne, and more than that, revenge for years of abuse and trauma. He wanted his father and all sixteen of the older siblings who stood in his way to the throne dead. And so they struck a deal. A hundred kilos of viridium for each royal head laid at his feet.
Azrael spent the six months until present day stealing from the emperor's coffers under the guise that it was a mole somewhere else in the company, a book-cooking white-collar thief with no respect for the monarchy. Stealing from Emperor Maximilian himself was the best way to get his attention, because then the crime became a personal insult. New Reynes was almost twenty percent short in the taxes that they collected and returned to the monarchy, which was unheard of and made Azrael look bad, but he suffered the blow to his image for the bigger prize. Pretending to lend a helping hand, Azrael agreed to help his other siblings out with some of the ledgers for their cities, and unbeknownst to them, skimmed the pot there too, making the missing money a national epidemic. The press was under strict orders to keep mum about the situation, as the emperor didn't want word to get out that he was being taken for a ride. Until just a week and a half ago, the group of thieves was apprehended. They were remnants of an organized crime family completely innocent of the dirty paper trails that they were accused of committing, but Azrael falsified evidence to make them believable scapegoats. In the wake of their executions, Azrael, now a hero for restoring justice, invited the whole royal family to a celebration at the New Reynes palace. Minutes before the first carriage pulled up at the gates, Azrael disabled the satellites and atmospheric security system, allowing a Kryptonian warship full of assassins to descend, unmolested and undetected.
Chaos ensued as nobility dropped like flies, their bodyguards standing no chance against alien technology. But as the city was leveled, it quickly became clear that the Kryptonians intended to do more than just fulfill the deal they'd made with Azrael. Thinking it silly to have to ask a foreign monarch's permission for trade when they could just take everything they wanted, they killed or captured the residents of just about the entire city. Until Azrael was left the emperor of a ghost town. Honoring their bargain somewhat, the commanding General Zod made a point to spare Azrael, but made it very clear to him that the title he'd inherited meant nothing now. New Reynes was under new management.
Enraged and humiliated that he'd been so easily tricked, Azrael realized that he had no future in Castillon-- no one did. However, as badly as things had turned for him, he had one thing he hadn't before: freedom. Raiding his office and home safes for all of the priceless valuables that he could carry and pawn off, Azrael made the one move left to him. It was time to pack up and start a new life in a new world. He checked his schedule for upcoming appointments and noticed that the day after the invasion, an ambassador from a different Earth was supposed to visit him. Since the procedures for interdimensional travel were as of yet still unknown to Castillon, he was forced to wait for this messenger to whisk him away elsewhere. And now with the help of his illusions he is impersonating Lieutenant Cyrus Njeri, guard in Earth 1966's most secure prison, until he can find his way out of the subterranean hell that is Belle Reve to the world above and start a new life for himself. But getting out of Belle Reve is almost as challenging for guards as it is for inmates, a place where every secret is kept under lock and key. Also unknown to Azrael is the fact that his and Njeri's trip through time and space was tracked by the Kryptonians, potentially leading them on an interdimensional wild goose chase, should they find Earth 1966 more conducive to their needs than Castillon.
Sexuality: Bisexual
Relationship Status: Single
Crush(es): Can totes see him falling for Shi without realizing she's a gay gurl... maybe Levina too.
Past Partners: Gabriella Alessi, with whom he has an eleven-year-old daughter named Flora. With her being the sole exception, Azrael maintains that he's never been in love and never will. He is frightened by the idea of another person making him so weak.
Turn-Ons: Exotic types, pixie cuts, tall and leggy, hourglass figure, stylish clothes, high heels, bright eyes, long-haired guys, looks good in leather, well-mannered, supportive, calm, gentle, good listener, praise, competing, splurging on his sweet, wearing them on his arm, multiple partners, mind games, power, lip biting, long nails, acid makes him horny as a mf
Turn-Offs: Lots of tattoos or piercings, overweight, bad posture, no fashion sense, loud-mouthed, unintellectual, on the phone while he's talking, sensory overload environments, sad rap or country music, uptalk accents, hurts his image, attention whore, talking down to him, aware that he's a prince, oversharing, crying or losing temper, gossipmonger, religious
Dominant or Submissive: Submissive
Playlist:
- Lay All Your Love on Me—ABBA
- Ecstasy of Soul—Zeds Dead
- Miracle, Baby—Nothing But Thieves
- Hardest of Hearts—Florence & the Machine
- Civil War—Guns N' Roses
- Ghost—MisterWives
- Stole the Show—Parson James
- Sacrilege—Yeah Yeah Yeahs
- Nightmare—Halsey
- Long Snake Moan—PJ Harvey
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