rhiot archer
nicknames/aliases: archer, sergeant archer, archie
age: mid-to-late-twenties
appearance: average height, lean. black fuzzy hair that tends to cowlick in front. does quite a bit of exercise and rucksacking due to his occupation, so he’s pretty fit, but not bulky or necessarily defined. his eyes are dark brown and monolidded. if he isn’t in uniform, then he’s wearing very boring jeans + t-shirts and jackets, almost always in greys, whites, or blacks. his sunday outfit consists of black slacks and a white button down. if he’s feeling it, he might even wear a tie.
current location: wherever the army sent him this time
family: rhiot’s mother is deceased. his father is a chinese-american man he literally never met, or even knows anything about, so as a result, no one really knows the extent of rhiot’s ethnicity. he has a twin brother tobias, who has no powers, and is equally in the dark about their father.
rhiot was raised by his mother’s parents. his grandparents are still living in utah and he absolutely adores them, and visits every chance he gets.
powers: rhiot can do what he calls ‘mind-sharing’ and what other people call ‘mind whammy’ or ‘what the heck are you doing to my head.’ it’s a bit difficult to explain, but essentially, rhiot can “link up” mentally with up to eight people, besides himself and loula.
this link-up consists of a lot of different things. everyone in on it can see, hear, smell, feel, sense, etc, what everyone else is seeing, hearing, so on and so forth. that’s the first level; if rhiot opens the channel deeper, then other things like the sharing of emotions, strong surface level thoughts and impressions, and occasionally sometimes even powers can happen.
there have been times when a strong emotion of fear, usually generated by flashbacks or nightmares, gets channeled out from rhiot and tends to drag other people into it with him. he’s accidentally forced people into his nightmares and flashbacks that way, but since he’s synced up with loula, it’s not nearly as bad as it used to be.
rhiot’s power also works on animals, as evident in loula. the effect it is having on her is an interesting one, and in the police state timeline, it’s one of the things scythe labs is trying to figure out.
weaknesses: if he loses contact with loula, he freAKS OUT. fireworks and other unexpected loud noises. he’s great at overwhelming people with no psychic ability or experience, but he’d probably get his mental butt destroyed by an actual telepath.
personality: rhiot is anxious, depressed, meek, and introverted. he is not, however, a coward, but the instinct to run towards danger is more of something that’s been trained into him than is natural. he is very kind and compassionate, but that’s often hidden by his depression and anxiety.
rhiot is a mormon with wavering faith. he goes through many of the motions and attends church when he can, but is unsure on some of the doctrine, and a bit too apathetic to quite make the spiritual connection he feels like he needs to. he was raised in the church by his grandparents, who are very devout, and strives to be like them when it comes to integrity and personal strength. rhiot has a habit of comparing himself to people he views as better.
loula assists a great deal with rhiot’s more negative moods. he gets anxiety and panic attacks often that she has intuitively learned to soothe and help him work through. he’s grown probably too attached to her, since they spend far too much of their time synced up.
rhiot also spends an inordinate of time during deployments and active duty synced up to the rest of his unit. as a result, he cannot stand to be alone, even though if things were different, that would be his usual preference. he needs the company, but he also needs the company to let him just sit in a corner cuddling his dog.
despite all of this, he’s actually a competent soldier, if not necessarily a competent adult.
general history: so rhiot exists in two different timelines/story arcs. idk what is actually canon, so i’ll do a quick rundown of both.
rhiot’s mother greatly resented her parents’ way of life, and ran off from home when she was younger, did it with some dude, and came back pregnant with twins. when she found out that rhiot tested positive for superpowers and tobias did not, she took tobias with her when the kids were maybe four-to-eight years old and disappeared again, because she thought very poorly of powered people. she came home now and again, usually when her grandparents tried hard to get her to reconnect with her son, but stayed away so much that rhiot doesn’t really think fondly of her. he doesn’t know tobias very well, either, and unfortunately, tobias has adopted some of his mother’s thinking when it comes to powers.
rhiot’s powers probably manifest earlier on, but they don’t actually realize what they are until he’s sixteen or so. this is when the timeline starts to diverge.
battle buddies: basically, exists in the same universe as pretty much all the other superpowerverse characters. (ours, but with powers.)
at sixteen, rhiot is selected for training by the MUGD. this is just before the military gets in trouble for essentially forcing/kidnapping people into the MUGD program, so rhiot’s one of the last of the non-volunteers. he goes through rigorous military training, and even though he can opt out by the time he’s an adult, he stays in anyway, because he doesn’t know what else he could even do.
rhiot trains as an Explosive Ordinance Disposal officer, and during said training, meets and links up somehow with loula, a dutch shepherd trained to sniff out bombs. he becomes strongly attached to her, and they get very good at their job. eventually, MUGD assigns them to a spec ops team called November Red. rhiot gets strongly attached to these losers as well.
in present time, he is still in novred, and is an anxious, PTSD-riddled mess, kept stable by loula, his unit, and army-mandated therapy.
and now
police state: much of this is very similar to rhiot’s original time line. in the american state, everyone with powers is brought in to be used by the government in some capacity. rhiot is picked up late, around sixteen, because of the subtle nature of his powers. he has no choice but gets sent off into the army for training. he meets loula earlier in this timeline.
scythe labs, a science organization funded by the american state, takes a keen interest in rhiot’s power, but more importantly, in a way to make it into some fashion of technology that they can implant. they see his ability as an advantage that could be put into their military and law enforcement as a whole, and so essentially, rhiot and loula undergo regular rounds of human experimentation.
at present, rhiot is in the capital, acting on november red to work on patrolling as part of martial law, and to sniff out the rebellion and instigators in the city known as fealty. he is a lot worse off emotionally and mentally than in the original timeline.
regrets: ever agreeing to leave his grandparents, being unable to reconnect with his brother even know that their mother has passed and he has nieces and nephews, somehow having let his mental health slip so badly (it’s not your fault rhiot).
fears: not having loula with him, not being connected with her, anyone he’s linked up to dying or being really hurt, the fact that his grandparents are really getting old and they’ll have to die someday.
on a scale of 1-10, how angry would he be with someone hacking and stealing his identity: he has no real opinions on this. probably like a 3? his records are sealed up super tight so well it would be really hard, right? wait what do you mean three different people hacked the MUGD and have our files, one of them was a kid???? does this mean i can’t go home for christmas
music: spotify playlist here
