Gabriel Desmond

*“My life is to know.”*

— Gabriel

**Gabriel Desmond** is a terran human who was mysteriously transported to the Cyber3423 hotel in Seattle Prime, at a time when the same had occurred to the Seekers. Although he was supposed to be on a plane en route to his own timeline's Washington D.C. at the time of the unfoldiing events, the young man took to the strange circumstances quite calmly. When the Seekers left the hotel, he was recognized by Ryuusei Cartwright as an employee of NOVA and shortly thereafter became separated from the group. Presumed missing, Gabriel was displaced to his original destination.

Ten years later, Gabriel was presented with the oppoortunity to investigate this uncertain point in his past when a work trip took him to Seattle. To his confusion, there was a barren lot in the location corresponding to the hotel in Seattle Prime, portending a premature end to his inquiries. This impression would quickly unravel as the way out of the lot didn't lead Gabriel back to the streets, but through the event horizon of the Worldpool.

## Background

Originally from a completely mundane Terra, Gabriel worked as a reporter from a very young age, alleging an interest in astrophysics but a lack of opportunities to pursue any other career. Shortly before the events at Seattle Prime, he was employed as a correspondent and occasional host for FM Radio N.O.V.A., remaining ignorant as to its nature as one of the fronts for the organization of the same name.

Although his direct nature and cold, harsh and factual on-air persona were found unappealing by the local director, he excelled at producing results. Identifying useful sources and studying each subject he was assigned to came naturally enough to counteract his initial unpopularity with management. Combined with good teamwork and budding leadership skills, Gabriel's integrity and determination to produce quality work solidified his place as a recurrent reporter for a well-established team. Shortly after his return from Seattle Prime, Gabriel was given more autonomy as a reporter and assigned to cover news of organized crime and corruption. He developed a favorable work relationship with his team, despite having to be convinced or coerced to attend their social gatherings.

Over the following nine years, Gabriel would become just shy of a star reporter, kept deliberately unremarkable for the sake of discretion but always producing valuable content. When the nature of his employment was revealed to him by Falerin and Abode, he began to wonder if this near decade of single-minded determination had served as a distraction from NOVA's own corruption - Or a weapon to expose rivals and threats to the public.

## Appearance

Gabriel has reached his thirties well in health and appearance, thanks to ten years of constant movement and traveling for his work, as well as half of that time pursuing martial training as a hobby. His tall body is only subtly toned, however, as he practiced a soft style and never had the dedication to focus on building strength other than at his core.

He tends to keep his very dark brown hair cut short and in a formal style, but wears it loosely since getting lost near the Immertot hut. High cheekbones, peculiarly uniform amber eyes and a symmetrical face framed by thick eyebrows make for strong and youthful features, but the impression is completly reversed by the adverse effects of ill sleep on his skin and mien.

## Behavior

A self-proclaimed hypocrite, Gabriel shows several inconsistencies in his personality. His disposition towards strangers is polite and distant, while often fairly kind and helpful towards his allies. However, he is not terribly patient with people who are obtuse or not forthcoming, and is consistently poor at following the advice he himself gives to allies in need - In particular when it comes to being receptive to the kindness of others.

Conversing with Abode, he has suspected the genius loci of exerting an impressive degree of emotional suppression, alleging to identify it because of the similarity to his own issues. Whether this was projection or an accurate assessment, it is certainly true of him as well: Gabriel displays an uncanny degree of equanimity for someone thrust into his circumstances, and compartmentalizes to an unhealthy degree until an overt emotional reaction can't be postponed any further.

Gabriel has expressed insecurity about the legitimacy of his own motivations, worrying that his obsessive pursuit of understanding is an impractical coping mechanism, and that his kindness is instead a purely selfish desire for validation out of fear of uselessness. Feeding these insecurities, the presence of danger sees him adopting a flat affect and expressing himself in a harsh, almost ruthless manner. At times, this has gone as far as expressing killing intent. This extreme is not lost on Gabriel, even forcing him to realize that his own life is on the line as well, but has thus far gone largely unexplained.

## Abilities

Gabriel has a variety of skills as a result of having had a hard time settling on a hobby. He has displayed notable proficiency in the kitchen, proving to have memorized a large variety of recipes, but often making rookie mistakes and ruining food when testing his own. Radio work has developed a vocal talent that he has been moderately reluctant to employ, despite sharing the story of his entire production crew often staging open-mic nights.

Where Gabriel truly excels, however, is in study. Equal parts coping mechanism and raw metacognitibe ability, he practically devours knowledge if given the chance, and has spent much of his time in the Abode reading about past exploits of the Seekers and the supernatural phenomena involved in them.

In terms of combat, Gabriel doesn't have any noteworthy experience. At the behest of his employer, he has a fair degree of practice with handguns, and later martial training makes him a qualified - but not masterful - hand to hand combatant. However, a lifetime in an Earth where consensus reality is completely mundane left him with no magical power or prowess to speak of.

During the assessment of General Morgan as a threat to the Seekers, Falerin revealed the cause of Gabriel suffering headaches or intense migraines when reality alterations such as Uncreation or Delphi waves affect him or his perceivable vicinity: Gabriel possesses sufficient will work to alter the fabric of spacetime, and such effects painfully resonate with the dormant, atrophied ability. He has not taken well to this realization, nor other opportunities for power presented by his dormant nature.

At present, Gabriel's will provides him with resonant awareness of reality alteration, with repeated exposure allowing him to specifically identify Delphi radiation. In addition, he experiences an expanded form of spatial awareness that ranges from his immediate surroundings to encompassing entire buildings and minor geographical features, depending on circumstances and varying laws of reality. Initial experiments were reluctant, and at one occasion accidental, leading to the quick discovery of the painful side effects of pushing this power. The subsequent decision to minimize the temporary pain side effect has been validated by a severe misunderstanding prompting a much more severe excess of his estimated safe threshold, which resulted in being completely incapacitated by pain for upwards of 24 hours, with lesser aftershocks lasting beyond that.

An epiphany seemingly caused by his insistence that uncreation is not within the scope of his abilities led to a complete transformation of Gabriel's understanding of space. While such did not vastly improve his abilities, it did provide him with a clearer understanding of his power's breadth, depth, and hazards. Several incidents have since induced fleeting but staggering expansions of Gabriel's perception, with one in particular showing him the extent of the damage caused by General Morgan's violations of reality.

## Future

Gabriel has apparently initiated a stable time loop by sending a HitMARK unit back to the present from the year 2087, ordering it to offer assistance in repairing Rhea's laptop form. Reality had suffered compound damage to her user interface following exposure to radiation and Delphi waves during the Seekers' visit to the instance of Orphic Academy attended by De'thion Durroth. According to the unit, this mission served to maintain the integrity of time, but it provided only the name "General Morgan" when pressed for details about the integrity failure, otherwise replying only with "Spoilers." The sole exception was calculating a probability of 2 that Maelstrom was correct in speculating that the loop would effectively continue after General Morgan's defeat.

The unit identified as a HitMARK X, when the latest generation of these automatons known to Abode was VI, making the existence of HitMARK VII units in the alternate Immertot a surprise. Further, it assumed the familiar shape of Radio N.O.V.A.'s News Director, someone whom Gabriel had spoken of but never described. In doing so and verifying its knowledge of the future by predicting a succession of events immediately before their occurrence, enough evidence was provided for Gabriel to accept the HitMARK's aid. After notifying Abode by relaying a verification message from Falerin Ardendor himself, the unit diagnosed and repaired the laptop.

At all times, the unit preserved the integrity of time by providing minimum necessary knowledge about future events, keeping its predictions thereof too close to their fulfillment to allow their distortion. Once its mission was fulfilled, the unit identified itself as a violation of reality and undid itself as per its primary protocols.

While the consequences of this action are yet to be seen in greater detail, it has for the moment earned the Seekers the attention of the Farpoint. Falerin has since effectively absolved Gabriel of responsibility for the Chronomantic loop by calling forth and sending the HitMARK units himself while stating uncertainty about when they were gifted to him, and by whom, thus providing plausible deniability and taking the human's place in the loop.

When Gabriel's perception of space was briefly expanded to the scope of all of reality across the entirety of time, he had several strange experiences preceding it. One was a vision of what appeared to be a lost memory, in which an older version of himself convinced him to go on the investigation that would begin his journey across worlds - Thus fixing his travel to Immertot in time, as well as erasing the memory due to the effects of interacting with the future of his time stream.

## Trivia

* Gabriel has, regrettably, seen Fulcan wearing nothing at all.
* Collateral damage from a rogue uncreation has merged an analog of Gabriel Desmond with Gabriel, the CaelOS AI. This has caused their appearances (When the latter physically manifests) to be completely identical.