Hurricane week, day 7

Profile time!

“No teenager should ever have to go through the same things I am.”

Name: Gabriel “Gabe” Ferris

Alias: (The) Hurricane

Birthday/Age: January 22, 16

Height/Weight: 5’6”, 169 lbs.

Relatives: Joel Ferris (father), Paige Ferris (mother), Edmund Coli (uncle), Vader (shiba inu)

Occupation: student

Interests: pop culture, graphic design, history

Powers/Equipment: none

Weaknesses: food, math tests, Joel

Bio: Gabe was just a normal kid, pretty much like any other teenage superhero. He did slightly above average in school, felt guilty about his parents’ divorce, had a few good friends, and so on. His main two friends were Corey Crane and Casey Doyle, whom he had grown up alongside, and lived close nearby. One day, he was heading over to Corey’s house, but had his visit promptly derailed as a spirit named Alterus possessed him and proceeded to overtake his body.

Alterus caused general chaos downtown, using his weather powers to mess with people. This caught the eye of a detective named Matthew Stuart, who promptly chased after him. Matthew did manage to catch him, and through some convincing (and possibly a threat), Alterus decided to become a superhero of sorts, and be nicer to Gabe. Only a little nicer.

Besides Detective Stuart, no one knows about Hurricane’s identity, or even the duality involved in him. Gabe feels like he should tell his father, Joel, but is worried about what he’d think. He then wonders if he should perhaps tell his school friends first, but decides against that, too. But as things get weirder and weirder for his friend circle, it seems like the secret’s going to come out sometime or another.

Character History: see Alterus

“Look, kid, get over it. I’m you now.”

Name: Alterus

Alias: (The) Hurricane

Birthday/Age: unknown, 356 (28 in “spirit years”)

Height/Weight: undefined

Relatives: none known

Occupation: superhero

Interests: meteorology, humanity, superheroics

Powers/Equipment: storm creation/manipulation, gliding, wind alteration

Weaknesses: melee attacks, open spaces, clear skies

Bio: Alterus is an exile from the spirit plane, which is what the fingerprint-esque symbol on his forehead indicates. Back home, he caused trouble with a gang of other spirit ruffians, and though he wasn’t the leader, he caused a lot of damage due to his extensive powers. After a particularly ill-fated turn of events during a failed prank, he was caught—alone, as his “friends” had ditched him—by Michelov, one of the chief spirits in his area.

His punishment was to be exiled to the human world, which, frankly, Alterus didn’t know much about, other than he could possess people there. And that’s exactly what he did. Being reckless and straight out of a gang of spirit vandals, Alterus simply possessed the first “sucker” he noticed, and that was Gabe.

Unfortunately for both of them, spirits can’t leave the host body until the host dies. A spirit can be removed via exorcism, but this would kill the spirit. Thus after Detective Stuart tells them to compromise or else, Alterus and Gabe try to get along and go out as Hurricane, the vaguely pilot-themed superhero. Alterus can manipulate the weather, but with limitations: he can only make the weather worse, and it takes a while, depending on the current weather conditions. Unless it’s already storming outside, Alterus usually sticks to just wind-related powers, as he can change that quickly and easily. Plus, who wouldn’t want to fling debris around at people?

Alterus is still a little mean to Gabe, sometimes taking over his body without changing his appearance (to fool the people Gabe knows). The two of them can communicate mentally, though, so Gabe usually just yells at Alterus until he stops. They’re sort of growing on each other. Sort of. Very gradually.

Character History: Alterus and Gabe are some of my earliest characters still hanging around, and were a sort of “mascot” for me on dA in ’05, along with Mitsuke, who is now Volt. Funny to say they were sort of inspired by Yu-Gi-Oh and D.N.Angel—just the general concept of a shy teenage kid with some other, more “badass” mind sharing his headspace. Alterus was the main drive behind the concept, and it wasn’t until much later that Gabe grew out of “that one kid Alterus possesses” and became his own character.

Alterus’s story changed around a lot, and his original one was so bad I don’t even dare mention it. In any case, he’s always been “different” than other people of his kind for some reason or another, and his “outcast” nature is what makes him so reckless. His wind powers also didn’t come until later, which now makes me wonder how he was even “better” than a normal human without them!

Gabe’s pudgy look comes from the superhero AU that finally saw Alterus reincarnated as a “main” character again. In the future of that story, I decided Gabe would humorously put on a few pounds and get a haircut…and surprisingly, it looked really good on him, fat jokes aside. When coming up with the designs for II, I decided to stick with the Hurricane look, to add more variety to the cast. It really sticks.

Next week: a certain unassuming deadpan detective guy!