CAMPER FORM
Name: Malakai Theodore Hecebus Geisel
Alias: Mal, or really just about any contraction or combination of the above syllables
Age: 10
Gender: Male
Powers: Confusion
Aura: Purple, high frequency, greeny-teal accents.
Overview: Mal is an energetic, mercurial, outgoing, and creative kid with some offbeat hobbies and a tendency to worry too much. Which is bad, because he doesn't have very good control over his powers yet, and they're set off by high stress. Whoops!
Appearance: Fortunately, there is already art, and I just have to describe it. Blue, wavy, somewhat messy hair, greyish skin that blushes easily and strongly, jughandle ears, and the wee tiniest stick limbs you ever did see. He usually wears mismatched clothing - in color, style, and seasonal appropriateness. What he wears when appears to be arbitrary, but he's got his reasons, probably. Well. Maybe. He is very, very short.
His gestures tend to be expansive and wild - even in a world of cartoons, he's one animated kid! His arms and legs are either locked tight to him or flung outwards in crazy loops and circle motions.
Personality: Mal is an odd little duck, but a lovable one. He's a very smart little fellow, who likes to learn and learns quickly. He starts off sort of shy and a bit defensive, but once he warms up to you, he's lively, playful, and ever so sweet. He loves to make things, and to share them. His mood is somewhat inconstant, and swings to extremes with relative ease. He worries a lot and easily, but it also doesn't take a lot to make him laugh and forget his troubles - at least for a little while.
He's deeply passionate, and throws himself utterly into anything that takes his interest - and oh, the interests he knows! Right now, his hobbies include writing and reading poems, puns, and other fun things with words; knitting and crochet; bird watching; and, most recently, origami. Hobbies in the past have included soccer, hacky sack, and the making and use of slings. While these skills no longer hold his undivided attention, he goes back and practices with them sometimes to make sure he hasn't forgotten how to do them.
History: Mal's parents, Bryce Kilman and Harriet Geisel, had a brief and purely physical relationship with some unexpected consequences, Mal himself chief among them. Bryce and Harriet thought that joining forces (read: marrying) to care for their child would be the the best course of action, but despite their good intentions, they proved to be too personally incompatible. (Neither of them ever took the others name - not a point of contention, just some fun trivia.) They split without too much fuss or resentment when Mal was five. The three of them still spend holidays together sometimes, when Bryce is in the area and can get the time off from work, which isn't very often, and hasn't happened for a couple of years now. Mal has never visited any of the places his father's lived in over the years, and is only just starting to wonder why.
Harriet and Mal live in a trailer, at a relatively nice park in Maryland. Harriet works in appliance repair, and spends a lot of time on the road every day - but, the pay is good, and she's never had to buy new appliances. The work can be draining, however, and more irritable than either her or Mal would like. She is honest, earnest, and kind, and works very hard to provide for her son and herself. She's a little concerned about Mal's apparent lack of friends, but she knows constantly bothering him about it probably wouldn't help. He has plenty of friends, he always tells her, and just seeing them at school is enough. It's alright.
And while he does have a few friends at school, the fact is that Mal gets along a lot better with the teachers and staff than he does his peers. His offbeat hobbies and studious nature have set him apart in all the wrong ways, unfortunately, and Mal is an occasional target of bullying. He's not as vocal a participant in classes as he would like to be, and doesn't play as much at recess anymore, but keeping a low profile keeps him from feeling the lash of scorn of the envious. The only class he can't hold back in is English - his main passion being, after all, wordcraft and wordplay of all forms, from prose to poetry, from meter and rhyme to etymology and storytelling. He takes to most reading assignments with gusto (nobody, not even a word nerd like him, will like all books). He especially savors the chance to read aloud in class - it gives the burgeoning thespian in him a chance to shine. Granted, the especially impassioned readings also earn him a lot of guff from the bullies - sometimes there's just no winning.
Since Mal's mom usually works late, Mal spends his after school time in the public library, which is a very short ways from his school. He's just as friendly with the librarians as he is with his teachers, and they all think he's quite darling - though he could use more friends. He always comes in alone, does his homework, and picks up some new book to read until his mom comes to pick him up. Once they're home, Mal helps his mom out with a few small chores, cleaning the harder to reach areas under furniture and grabbing ingredients for her while she's cooking. He tries to keep pretty quiet at home, because even a young guy like him knows that his mom needs her rest after working so hard all day.
By now, you may have noticed that Mal's been keeping a tight lid on all of the usual outlets for his creative and playful energy. This is kind of a bad thing, and the strain of it's starting to show in ways both expected and not - the expected being moodiness, trouble sleeping, and occasional outbursts when he can't keep it under wraps anymore; the unexpected being the early development of his first psychic power - confusion.
The first manifestation of this ability was in an English class right before lunch. They were going through a short play, and the teacher had assigned everyone parts to read. Mal had read ahead, and his part - the teacher had to have picked it especially for him - was full of all kinds of puns and clever jokes, but it didn't come up until a little later in the story. Mal tried very hard to patiently wait for his classmates to reach his part, in their unenthusiastic, bumbling way, but it was taking them so long, and he was so excited -
Well, the next thing he knew, a cloud of yellow gas spread out from under his seat, and all the students around him started talking absolute nonsense! Mal froze, watching the luminous cloud appear and disappear, and his classmates react to it. Everyone was right as rain in a few moments, and then the lunch bell rang, so the teacher took to to be an elaborate prank to stall until class was over, but Mal had a couple important questions to mull over after that. Why hadn't the gas affected him the same way it had his classmates - and why hadn't anybody else seen it?
The second time his powers manifested themselves were on a field trip to the museum the week after that. Mal's mom hadn't been able to pay for his ticket, so Mal was going to have to stay on the bus with one of the TAs and the bus driver. Mal was literally the only kid in his class that wasn't getting to go in to the museum, and as he watched his classmates climb out of the bus, a couple of them looking back at him, covering their mouths and giggling, all he could think of was how awful and unfair it was that he was being singled out like this, and how much he'd like to go - like anyone his age when confronted with the vast injustices of the world, he started to cry. Unbeknownst to the TA who rushed to the back of the bus to comfort him, he also released another cloud of confusion gas - and her reaction to it only distressed him further, naturally. Then the bus driver pulled the TA back out of the cloud, keeping out of it himself - he could actually see it! It turned out that the bus driver was a small-time psychic himself, and told Mal exactly what was going on. The bus driver helped cover for Mal, too - he told the TA that she'd fainted on the way to comfort Mal, and that he'd stopped crying almost immediately and asked if she was alright - essentially true. The rest of the wait wasn't too bad, now that Mal had a lead, however unlikely-sounding as it may have been. They played rummy, too, and that helped.
That night, Mal screwed up his courage and asked his mom about what had happened and what the bus driver had said - and to his surprise, she confirmed it, telling him that there had been a few psychics in the family in previous generations. They both worried about how disruptive - and potentially dangerous - his particular power was... And his mom worried about how early it had manifested at all, compared to her parents' stories about the previous psychics in their family not developing any abilities until their middle teens. Mal hunted up as much information as he could at the library (as secretively as possible - never taking out the books he read, and always clearing his internet search histories), and chanced upon some info about Murmuring Pines on one of the library computers. He printed out their contact info, and got his mom to sign him up for at least one summer.
Mal knows their budget is tight, and even government training camps need some admission fees, so he might not get another shot at this. He's packed up some clothes and his Dr. Seuss books - even if they're below his reading level, they're still some of his favorites - and is eagerly awaiting the start of the summer. He's determined to learn how to control his power, so that he doesn't accidentally hurt anyone.
Tia made this lil pixel bobber dealy!
and here is an important image. 
