Trowa Barton

## Personality

Trowa is a quiet, pragmatic boy who rarely uses more words than needed to get his meaning across. He also rarely speaks unless he thinks his words will have some impact on the situation. Between the two, he’s non-vocal enough he can come across as simple to those who don’t know him well. He’s had little in the way of peace or stability in his life, and has spent all of his life either in battle or preparing for it in some way, and so maintains a constant state of alertness. He has a tactically-inclined mind, but little self-motivation when not assigned a mission. He has a strong sense of loyalty once he ds come to trust someone, and is absolutely ruthless when it comes to fulfilling assigned goals.

## Powers

Trowa is essentially a low-level feral. He can communicate with animals via an empathic link, though not control them. His physical manifestations include keen hearing, eyesight, and excellent darkvision combined with superhuman stamina, balance, and reflexes. His powers do not grant enhanced strength or durability. Trowa also has a minimal healing factor; he doesn’t heal much faster than a baseline human, but he does heal completely, without evidence of damage, and is resistant (though not impervious) to disease. This did not retroactively remove scar tissue or bone calluses formed before the manifestation of Trowa’s powers.

## Talents

Trowa’s had a battlefield education. He’s a good improvisational mechanic, knows basic wilderness survival, and is potentially lethal in unarmed combat. He’s also highly skilled in knife fighting and small-arms weaponry due to his time with the merc squad. He’s fluent in Russian, Chechen, and English, knows enough to get by in Ingush and Albanian, and picked up a cross-cultural smattering of common phrases in his travels with the mercs.

## Interests

Trowa is fond of animals and has an interest in stargazing and spaceflight. He also owns a small cedar flute that he plays on occasion; he doesn’t know how to read sheet music, so can he only learn songs by rote.

## History

“Trowa” has no memory of an early life. At five or six years of age, he was found by patrolling mercenaries just inside the Ingushetia side of a desolate stretch of the Ingushetia/Chechnya border. He had burns on his back and an untreated head wound, and could tell the rough men nothing of who he was, where he’d come from, or even his name. Fortunately for him, he was unusually self-reliant for his age, and the men who found him, while hardened, were not completely heartless. Instead of being killed or abandoned to his fate in the tumultuous region, he was taken in.

At first, he was something of a camp mascot, but it was soon made clear to him that everyone in the merc company who expected to eat was obliged to pull their weight. The nameless boy did camp chores, learned his way around weapons, and did whatever else was tasked of him, from cleaning up the aftermath of a bloody job, helping tend the wounded, to helping probe for landmines. He quickly learned that tears or objections would be put down with mockery, a quick blow, or the threat of abandonment, and learned not to speak unless it was utterly necessary.

The mercenaries had no stake in regional fighting beyond their contract. When they left the area after almost two years, they took the boy - by this point, bearing the less-than-kindly-given nickname “Nanashi” -- with them. It wasn’t terribly difficult to bribe border officials to ignore the boy’s lack of paperwork, and if there was less affection between them than there was a sense of possession, it made little difference to the boy. He had enough to eat most days, and he had seen what happened to children who did not have protectors. He even took a suppressed sort of pride in being what their company commander called “a good soldier”; it was the highest praise the man ever seemed offer anyone. Above all, there was the prospect of travel - to see something beyond the war zone that had comprised his entire life so far.

“Nanashi” stayed on with the troop for another six years. While there was occasionally some half-hearted discussion among the mercs who retired about taking the boy out of the life with them, the reality was that doing so was simply too much trouble. It was one thing for people to look the other way when smuggling kids across war-torn borders; it happened all the time, and usually for more sinister purposes than that of their company. Taking one back into less chaotic territory without any kind of official documentation - or even a proper name - raised questions that no one wanted to get tangled up in. Eventually, the boy realized it would never happen, and settled resignedly into the disciplined, impassive role of “good soldier”. There was nothing else to aspire to.

It was during this time that the boy’s mutant powers began to manifest, though the only overt strangeness of it was the boy’s budding ability to sense the presence and disposition of animals. Any sense of childhood fancy had long since died out in him, and in his mind this could only be some unexplained sixth sense or madness, either of which could jeopardize his standing among the mercenaries, making him seem unfit. He utilized the sense as a tool, but kept its existence entirely to himself.

As tends to happen in war, their luck eventually ran out. A girl in one of the villages they’d used as their base gave away their location to enemy troops in exchange for money to help feed her family. The battle was a desperate, bloody melee, with both sides slaughtering each other down to the last man… save for the boy, who managed to escape with the badly wounded company commander. The man died before sunrise. Nanashi took what was useful from the body, and began walking.

He ended up in a small city about fifty miles outside of Gjakova. With few prospects available, the boy took a desperate gamble. He adopted the alias of one of the most recent man to join the mercenaries, “Trowa Barton” a young man who, despite his skills, had mostly been notable for having more privilege than sense, and had been loose-lipped about his wealthy family and their hysterical objections to his profession. He contacted the concerned family and was able to provide enough details to convince him that he was their son needing money for passage home. His final message to them after he collected the wire transfer was to let them know where he’d last seen their son’s body.

Alone and purposeless for the first time in his life, “Trowa” ultimately assigned himself the mission of making it to Barton’s homeland, the United States. Although he was forced to use more perilous and underground means than his namesake would have, he eventually managed to migrate via Canada, but found himself with no more purpose when he’d arrived than he’d had before. When Charles Xavier contacted him mentally, informing him he was a mutant, it was both a relief and a profound confusion. While being at the school is certainly a better option than living on the streets, being a student is something beyond Trowa’s experience. All the same, he accepts it as his mission and intends to apply himself, both to his studies and the protection of the school itself.