Robin Engell

Robin Engell

16 || uncertain, gynesexual-leaning || uncertain, male-leaning || Hero, Student || American

PERSONALITY

POSITIVE

✔ Smart, Self-Aware, Creative, Persistent, Trustworthy, Well-Read


NEGATIVE

✖ Prideful, Bitter, Withdrawn, Escapist, Jaded, Fanboy/Dork, Guarded


LIKES

✔ Japan, Snacks, Rhythm Games, Escapism, Dressing Up While No One's Watching


DISLIKES

✖ Bullying, Being Cold, Failing, Real Life, Bitter Food


PERSONALITY

Robin has curated a serious personality, the image of someone he imagines is separate from others and immune to ridicule. He's guarded and biting and bitter, all in an effort to defend himself from rejection.

And yet he knows that he himself is a reject, rejected by schoolmates and friends and family and the lingering effects of an anti-quirk culture, and still unable to find comradery even among other rejects due to his pride, an instilled shame in parts of himself that would let him otherwise open up. A voluntary outcast, even with pangs of loneliness.

Robin believes he is someone who exists on the border in everything, unable to fully commit to an identity, a location, a people, a community, a personality, a gender. His body exists on the border of boy and girl - his face, both his faces, somehow feel as real as the other. The most important border he lives on, however, is the border between reality and fiction - he's conscious enough to acknowledge escapism as unhealthy, but desperate enough to try and reject the reality he's in.

And heroes and villains, he's started to think, are beings who somehow live and thrive on that border - creatures from comics brought to life in the real, separate from the population, but still co-existent.

However, underneath a guarded image is a dork, an anime scholar who likes old mecha and sci-fi and games, and a witty, enthusiastic hero-in-training. It's a person he lets himself be in private, but won't show without feeling comfortable with people, without letting himself slowly and accidentally slip through.

Despite appearances, he does feel comfortable in both his forms, though he's embarrassed to present as female.

APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 170 cm (5'7") / 154 cm (5'1")


WEIGHT: 60 kg (131 lbs.) / 45 kg (99 lbs.)


HAIR/STYLE: Male - Black, thin, silky texture, coarsely brushed and swept to the side. Just on the cusp of being too long to get away without managing.

Female - Dark Brown, long and straight, still thin and silky. It's brushed straight and detangled given time to prepare it.


SKIN/SCARS: Fair


EYES: Male - Dark, sharp

Female - Green, rounded


NOTABLES: Robin has noticed that his two forms seem to draw more heavily from either of his parents, his father in his male form and his mother in his female form.


Robin is athletic as a result of his hobbies and lifestyle, not due to specific training - combining an active lifestyle and a quirk that quickly burns through calories, he remains on the skinnier side despite how often he eats.

His style varies, and he tends to put more effort into his feminine outfits than his masculine ones. Even still, putting lots of effort in is rare, and he would rather dress in whatever is comfortable and available. He prefers solid colors and fitted jeans.

His frame in both forms is lithe, trained for endurance and speed over raw strength, with little to no body fat due to his quirk. With overuse, his skin thins and tightens over his physique with the lack of fat and water, lending a sickly, veiny appearance.

HISTORY

“I don’t have a quirk.”


Laminate wood of a school desk, glossy and cool against the boy’s red cheeks. Muffled voice spoken through layers of fabric and skin.


“Whaaat? Yeah you do, come on! You said they looked at your pinky toe before, right?”


Their voices are loud with the teacher's absence - an overgrown nail, pointed and hardened, slips through his shell and pries open his arms, prods at his burning face until it’s slapped away to the laughter of the blonde boy standing to the side it’s attached to. It retracts once he’s revealed, sword to sheathe.


“I don’t.”


“Robin, we’re almost in middle school, you have to have your quirk by now.” A girl this time, brunette and beautiful to him, constantly wrapping a finger with hair that reels from her scalp like thread from a spool. “It’s alright if you’re embarrassed, because we’re friends, right?”


“Aah, look at his face!” Interrupted instantly by the blonde, who yells over stubborn and calmly spoken protests, dancing, bouncing foot to foot. “He’s totally embarrassed! It’s something gross, right? C’mon, let us see!”


She’s standing now, letting hair unravel and drag along the floor, like a hero’s cape. Indignation, defense, the drive to protect fill her heart, lead her to jab her finger into the louder boy's chest.


“Don’t make fun of him, Dillon alright? What if his quirk is actually super strong and he doesn’t want to hurt us? And - and he wants to protect us by making sure we don’t know what it is, in case some super strong villain comes in and asks about him! Or maybe the teacher comes in and has to take him away to be isolated - maybe it's that strong!” She flips her hair, an arc, a rainbow that shines white and brown and red, mosaic glass catching light.


“Huh? That’s really cool though – wait, is that true, Robin?!”


The two of them, turning, staring, drilling holes in his heart with strength that might rival genuine powers. Glancing to the side, locking, welding shut his jaw and his heart.


“I told you,” he mumbles, “I don’t have a quirk.”


Their faces, their words, the screams and laughter of a class on their last day of school all mix and blend and warp in his memory, embellished like paint on canvas.


A merciless desert's heat-induced mirage.


---


His mother died some months ago. 


An accident with her quirk, his father had told them, unending fever and insatiable appetite until she faded and left, a puddle erased by the sun. Bitter tears in his eyes and bitter words in his mouth, he explained to a middle schooler the best he could that his mother wouldn't come home, that she had been mugged, strained her body too hard in defense and set something very wrong in a way no doctor had the experience to know. 


"Quirks," he followed, the boy and older sister weighed down and dead on their couch, "are dangerous. He used one against your mother. And she used hers in defense. And it killed her, sent him to jail. Promise me, both of you, that you won't use yours." 


And yet, in that same voice years ago, Robin hears the only good ever spoken of his quirk. 


"When you're like that," a father caught between shame and pride boasts, "you look just like your mother." 


In their bathroom late at night, a girl glows red, reorients from shapeshifting, adjusts the shirt hanging loosely from her shoulders. Lips, dry, swallow water that isn't there. 


In her eyes and chest and the mirror external, the image, the feeling of her mom. 


And for a long moment she stares, reaches her hand to touch her reflection and back to touch herself, her arm and shoulder and chest and face.


And for a longer moment, she cries. 


Ugly and muted, stuffed still with a clenched towel, cotton fabric in her mouth, wet fiber on her face. The hair in her eyes, texture of her skin, sensations of small and cold while collapsed on tile. 


White noise, static, scrambled sensations of pain and loneliness overwhelmed with shame as a voice cuts through, muffled by cheap wood.


"Robin," his sister, slurring, drowsy, knocking, "Is that you?"


"Don't!"


Brusque, quick, ashamed as she hears her voice. "Don't come in!"


"Robin, are you a girl right now? Are you crying?  I-"


"Stop!"


"It's okay, Robin," soft, sympathetic, far from her bombastic default, "I'm," a small stutter, "I'm sad too. I miss her too." 


Long silence, divided by choked sobs.


"Can I come in?" 


Door opens, creaks - a girl with fists and eyes clenched, pressed against each other and hidden. Voice strained as her body.


"Go away. Please." 


"... You can talk to me, if you need to. You can cry too, Robin. I'm here, alright?" 


She leaves without saying more.


---


“I’m not letting you skip school,” his dad had said, hands on wheel, eyes on road, “just because you screwed around too much and overused your quirk. If you’re that embarrassed, think about it next time.”


No protest from a frightened girl’s eyes and lips could trump the jaded man's resolve pushing her out the door, no words she could ever be willing to speak. No protest emotional or physical had the strength to move against his words in their drive to class.


And so a girl in boy’s clothes sits in a laughing home room on her fourth day of seventh grade, bitterness and fury and tears leaking from her eyes, sweat from clenched fists. And she sees her peers laughing, the boy and girl he'd called friends along with many she hadn't, and she knows that years of hiding her quirk, of training and praying and twisting its power to try and make it cool has been lost. Eventually calm, eventually back to status quo as they’re wrangled and directed and set to learn math and English, until she’s almost convinced things might continue as they always had.


And that afternoon at lunch, the friends of her friends slowly pull them away to laugh, and to mock, until she sits alone, with a note to home about having used her quirk in school.


"It would have been better," her father said that night, "if you hadn't been born with it at all."


---


Midday sun bright and high, baking a city of asphalt, endless pans that fry and scald the people who've built them. Still alone, snacking on chips seasoned with sweat, squatting.


Pressed against a high-school's brick wall in the shade of three older boys. 


"Come on, we just wanna see the goods! Dillon says you've got a really hot quirk - just a quick flash, alright?" The blonde one trailing him nods with eyes downcast, affirms with a mumbled answer. 


"Dillon doesn't know shit, and you can fuck off." Crunch of a chip, crinkle of a bag as it's stowed away. Standing as the other boy speaks.


"Don't pretend you little queer, just let us see, alright?!" Stepping forward, pleading with hands and eyes and voice. And Robin slips, half-crescent on his lips, half-smile.


"You that into boys?" 


"Look-!" 


Stepping forward, balled fists swing and connect and knock him off balance, backward into the wall, bruise to pride and body that makes that half-crescent wane. 


"Stop fucking with us - you can turn into a girl, and we wanna see, alright? It's that easy! I bet you jack off to yourself all the time, so don't we deserve a little action too?!" 


Answered with a balled fist in turn, skin burnt red, boiling blood hot and bright, scalding and searing like the asphalt beneath. Connecting bone to cheek, reeling as pain of impact and pain of burning work in tandem to build a brief cry. Staggering back then forward, stepping wild while Robin pedals back, catches a fist to his gut, an opening he takes to dive forward, wrap his arms around and bring the older boy to the ground. Whole body hot, red, overcooked and searing and painful, hot leather in a locked car with that older boy trapped inside, screaming, flailing. Robin's thrown to the side, blood boiling still, hot in his ears and cheeks and fists and chest. 


And the fight's paused as that older boy hesitates, fingers his burns and glares to the other, who irons the wrinkles from his shirt with his hand. 


"You wanted my quirk, didn't you? Wanted to cop a feel? Hope it was hot enough. Piss off." 


Walking, fading steps and skin to a lukewarm status quo. He leaves the parking lot, leaves the school without glancing to the blonde boy who stayed behind. 


---


“Your teachers called today.”


His father’s voice a siren as the door opens that night, an alarm tripped as soon as his bag touches the floor. Alone at their coffee table, Hamburger Helper in tupperware resting in his hands and the words of a mystery novel in his eyes, locked even as he speaks to his son.


“Oh yeah?”


Door shuts, clicks, lets Robin sidle past clutter to the kitchen. His eyes unfocused as his dad’s – a conversation through words alone, without any soul behind them.


“They said you skipped class again.”


“Sounds right.”


The smack of wet pasta as he fills a bowl, smack of lips flapping useless words.


“Do I even try to scold you?”


“If you want.”


“You know I don’t want to scold you, Robin -”


“Then don’t.”


“- but you’re making it really hard.”


Stepping over clothes and stray books in a direct path to one of the two bedrooms in their cramped space. Gaze skewed, off-center, down and to the right as he traces the grain of the wood floor he can see.


“Where were you?”


“Arcade.”


“And you think you’ve got a future spending all your time there? With a quirk like yours? With a quirk at all?”


Full stop, freeze, sudden flash of cold that wraps beyond freezing into a sensation he can’t place as cold or hot.


“I know you're too young to remember, but I remember the quirkism, protests and murders and Christ, quirk camps, all sanctioned by the President and Congress and whoever. And it's still out there, too. Just because your sister got vigilante work with the state department doesn't mean you can, or even should. What would she say?”


“I dunno. Nothing useful.”


Another few steps forward.


“What would your mother say?”


More steps, a door unlatching, swinging, creaking open and masking a weary sigh.


“If you wanna ruin your fucking life, go ahead, Robin.”


Swinging back, an arc in reverse, a fading rainbow that thumps and clicks as it leaves.


The sound of groaning wood and fabric grinding fabric as his father dresses, morphs and shapeshifts into a third shift office drone, miserable and poor. And through the muffled wood, the front door latches open and shut, and that man leaves to sell data plans to callers.


Shame swallowed with a spoon of cold pasta.


And yet he knows the life his father wants is one that he will hate.


---


"Yuuei."


Pages of printed sites waiting on the coffee table as Mr. Engell returns, each headed with the emblem of a newly minted school.


"U.A.?"


"Yeah, close enough."


Door creaks, groans, clicks shut with a muffled cry - the clack of his father's soles on hard wood float above it, settle and sway on the surface of his ears while his eyes are tethered to the ground, to the glare of the rising sun on the finish.


"What's that?"


"A hero academy."


And for the first time in a long time, the two sit side to side, and his son explains who they are, when they were founded and under what philosophy, and recites their code.


And his son explains why he wants to attend.


"I've been studying on my own, you know, even though I'm skipping most days. Things I'm interested in. I've been training my quirk, and I can make it useful, something to be proud of, I know I can. I'm learning Japanese and getting fluent - I'm pretty athletic since I bike everywhere and go to the arcade to dance - I play fighting games so one-on-one combat isn't new to me."


Not new at all, he thinks.


"Do you hear yourself?"


His father leaning back in his seat, darkness between his palms and his eyes.


"You're comparing a game to reality," incredulous. "Heores, villains, that's just comic book stuff too. It's a fad, you know they won't last long - the world doesn't work like that."


Two arms dangling, loosely tied between Robin's legs, and punctuation to his father's voice, small and quiet, ellipsis in afterthought.


"This is really what you want to do?"


"I just don't want to be here."


Immediate, candid. Abstract and weighty and distant and so filled with hurt he's convinced the boy means much more than he says. Sighing, weary, wary, worried - weighed down and waiting and ready to reject before his words break free of his heart.


"I never wanted a son with a quirk, Robin. It's why your mother and I had you and your sister examined so early."


He sees Robin tense.


"And I never wanted a son who was a daughter, either."


Tensing harder, shaking.


"You're not... Who I expected you would be."


And his son rises from that dirty sofa, brushes off his jeans, steps forward and over the coffee table. "That's fine," a lie in his mouth. "I shouldn't have expected it."


Steps heavy, quick, fluid in a memorized path to his room before he's called out.


"Robin, wait."


The old man with his arm stretched out, his expression tight and screwed up and creased with age and hurt.


And after a moment of reluctance, "Get me the paperwork and I'll read it over."


Freezing, cold on stone-still flesh that's warmed and thawed with a warmth in his core, temperature rising, quirk-induced fever that feeds itself, burns and boils and cleans like a bath from the inside.


"Thank you." Whispered. And he steps forward again, moves to open the door to his room.


"I'm proud of you, son."


Last minute, hail mary words he speaks and must feel, caught and deflected just as it clicks.


"You don't have to lie to me, dad."