Name/Alter ego: Zayne “Z” Maddox
Work Place: Barista w/ remarkable
latte art skills at his coffeehouse, Inferno. Wants to be a rockstar of sorts, as well as run the coffeeshop, and can be heard singing w/ the PA system at times, occasionally entertaining those nearest him with decent vocal covers or ridiculous parodies.
Personality: Despite being born the third of four brothers, Zayne was perhaps the most teased and this stayed with him ever since, teaching him how to hold a grudge for quite a long count of years. He doesn’t trust readily, erring on the side of caution if he suspects a double-cross. Otherwise he lives for every moment on the edge, or even jumping straight off of it! While to some he may seem brooding, he does have the capacity for niceness... it just doesn’t present itself to everyone, or on command. Zayne has a passion for music and for coffee, practically living on both since his Kent High days. His favorite pastimes are being a smart ass and pulling pranks – some harmless, and quite a few either potentially those of a troublemaker or rather dangerous. Tends to scoff at his brother Rhodri when told there is good in him, definitely seeing himself as the ‘bad boy’ and loving every minute of it.
Supername: Svarog
Powers: Strength, Pyrokinesis, Molecular Immobilization
Weaknesses: Powers are more often than not linked to emotional triggers (all 3) or keen, unbroken concentration (Molecular Immobilization).
Can’t tolerate anything extremely cold (such as ice) for long periods of time. If exposed to cold for long periods, he will fall seriously ill for a few days.
Superhero or Supervillain: Supervillain
Archrival: Talhyn
Appearance: Zayne was born with dark brown, nearly black hair, though he tends to have a majority of the length dyed blond. He is fairly tall but not very, and has a moderate build. It is hard to pinpoint the color of his eyes, so in describing him some merely say they are hazel. In one form of light they look blue, a different angle and they’re green... a third angle and they’re brownish gray... Hazel works fine for him, unless you’re using that as his given name. Zayne is by no means the fittest young man on the block, but it is clear that he enjoys extreme sports and other rough-and-tumble activities. You will rarely catch him without a cup of coffee and an iPod or other musical device/instrument. He and his brothers are American-born, though have Slavic, Welsh, and English ancestry. He is the third child out of four, pushing 29 into 30, and never really took an interest in college with the exception of classes that applied to his passions.
[Chad Kroeger]
History/Backstory: Zayne and his brothers were born in America to parents of Slavic, Welsh, and English ancestry... with a dash of Italian somewhere in there. Their grandparents had lived in Gotham. When Zayne’s parents became adults they all packed up and moved to Superville. There are a grand total of four Maddox boys on this branch of the family tree:
Brock, the eldest at 36. He was born without superpowers.
Jake, the next-oldest at 34, was also born without a speck of latent super-talents in his veins.
Then there was Zayne himself, now 30. He has been gifted with powers since childhood.
And finally came Rhodri, the youngest at 27, who also has superpowers.
From the moment Zayne and Rhodri learned they were different, their older brothers had noticed as well. Jealous, they heckled the younger siblings as most children did at that age, to the point of being bruised by the bullying simply for being different. In plain sight of their parents, Brock and Jake were well-behaved... the moment they turned their backs, however, was when all hell generally broke loose. Most of the pranks Zayne pulls these days can be directly linked to various schemes his brothers once pulled on him, with his own twists.
Molecular Immobilization came first, discovered when one of his brothers tried to knock over a tower of blocks that had taken him a child’s idea of forever to build. No one could really explain how it had come about, but it infuriated Zayne’s older brothers that he could do something they could not. Needless to say their rift grew at a very early age, with one or the other constantly harassing him or trying to get him to do the dirty work behind a rather nasty prank in order to get him to take the heat for it. Sometimes Zayne did it merely to get them off his back for a while... other times to vent out frustrations he couldn’t let loose upon his brothers without some sort of serious retaliation.
One of Brock and Jake’s worst pranks involved tying a fast-asleep Zayne to a tree and then burying him in snow, as one does to someone who had fallen asleep on the beach. Zayne vividly recalls the cold that day, and how he had tried everything to warm up until flames simply sprung around his body in his fear of freezing to death and anger knowing his brothers were responsible. He had been a teenager then, and ended up dreadfully sick for a good two weeks thereafter, but he managed. However, after that day he’d become very fond of fire... and avoided anything cold like a vampire avoids the rising sun.
He pretty much kept to himself thanks to his elder brothers’ bullying, all the while contemplating the darker path upon which he’d decided to trod. Despite the dissention between brotherly bonds, however, Zayne was rather close to his youngest brother, Rhodri. Perhaps it was because, like him, the kid was different. With powers... and also teased by their brothers and everyone else Brock and Jake knew in school. How Zayne so longed for – and still longs for – proper revenge against them for all the years of torment... It wasn’t enough that they’d ‘helped’ unleash a new superpower by trying to break up his teenage romance during prom night, and since seeing Zayne toss a car like a football have since left him alone...
Zayne is biding his time for the perfect opportunity to repay Brock and Jake for ‘everything’ tenfold... and have a blast doing that while creating general mayhem along the way! His brother Rhodri keeps managing to somewhat talk him out of it, even though of late they too have begun to drift apart some.
When not roaming the streets for something fun and potentially dangerous to do, Zayne owns a coffeeshop called
Inferno on Dark Knight Lane, also working there as the chief Barista (which is a unisex term for bartender, he’d like to point out quite clearly). He has grand dreams of fortune and fame, or infamy as the case may be as his alterego Svarog. Whether those dreams will stay as they are or dissipate altogether is another story...
Particularly since the day Mercedes Zavala strolled into his establishment. Yeah, she might be a cop, but that’s what made her all the more interesting to him. But it was more than just what she did for a living... if only he could just put his finger on what it was...
Goal 1: Fortune
Goal 2: Fame
Goal 3: ......
Goal 1: Mercedes Zavala