Appearance
Like a sunbathing lizard, Castel is often seen reclining in a hammock throughout campus. It can be hard to believe that he is an esteemed faculty member at UA High, but his relaxed air and easy-going nature put people at ease.
In terms of his actual physical appearance, Castel doesn't strike a particularly heroic look. His height doesn't help matters, as he stands at an average 5'6". He's built like a filled-out long-distance runner, lean muscle and fat hand in hand. And on top of all that, he's impressively tan. Chalk it up to a lot of hours put into gardening and yardwork, as well as actual hero training and trail running to get there, and this also means that he is an active and outgoing person. Catch Castel exploring new trails in the local nature preserve and scrambling up rocks to find new vistas.
His smile is often a crooked grin, accompanied by a glimmer in his eyes. Prominently enough anyhow is a set of snaggleteeth, one poking out between his lips whenever he isn't smiling. And of course, a few missing teeth, forever lost in the midnight hours amongst damp dirt and rough pavements.
He has a tendency to let his hair grow wild like climbing ivy. Currently, it is long enough to reach his shoulders, and he bunches up some of it into a roughish ponytail, tying it off with a yellow ribbon (or any of the other ribbons or hair-ties in the collection!). By all means, he does spend enough time on it in the morning that it doesn't look like an absolute mess, but if Bronislav's up early enough, he'll carefully comb it. Wild, but neat, that's the point. Lately, Castel has been trying new hairstyles, but whether he'll finally settle on one for at least a few months is an uncertainty. As far as grooming goes, he does his best to look at the top of his game, though his perpetual stubble on his chin tells other stories.
By ways of scars, Castel is not one to be cautious, and thus, he bears his mistakes. There are two on his face — the left eyebrow and left side of the chin — both from long-healed deep scratches in the course of his work as a ranger. Often, he states, with a wink, that they're the battle scars of wrestling a moose, but it couldn't be so, right? He has shallow claw marks on the back of his lower left leg, a reminder of a much more serious incident, though it's not one that he talks about much either. In fact, even as prominent as his scars are, he has a tendency to wave off questions when they do come up. His fingers, calloused from outdoor work, are criss-crossed by lightly-pigmented scars, the result of attempts at cooking, climbing, and little nicks with a knife while working in the depths of the mountains.
As it goes, he also sports a pretty impressive collection of tattoos. Most of them are restricted to his upper body and he has a specific love for botanical designs. His right wrist is encircled by a black-white rendition of a sea krait, and mirroring it on his left wrist is a simple braided design of cowrie shells. His right arm has multiple tattoos as well: a bundle of holy basil and crocus flowers. On his other arm, honeysuckle vines encircle his upper arm, accompanied by a geometrically enclosed Narcissus blossom, in a style reminiscent of vaporwave. Curling around his left shoulder-blade is a nautilus shell, splattered with the colors of the ocean at dusk.
Wardrobe
Castel is a surprisingly fashionable individual, honing his distinct taste and style in clothes for a long while. Yes, he may be a pain to look at with clashing patterns and colors, but it's all very much a Castel thing. His closet boasts a wonderful variety of printed floral patterns and muted earthy colors, now rebuilt from casual browsing at markets and recommendations from his close friends. He gravitates towards the looser fits, liking the feel and openness of the way his clothes hang on him. Sleeves are a pain in some ways to him, so it's better to do away with them. If anything, he keeps them rolled up, buttoning them neatly.
Weather is not much of a bother to him — he loves the soft mistiness of a warm summer rain as much as he does the muffled crunch of the deepest winter. He's the sort that would amble around on his daily errands during a blizzard, wearing nothing but a long-sleeved shirt and shorts and sandals, without a sign that the frigid air bothered him.
Parts of his past still bites at his heels. A punk phase that never quite went away, a fleeting year spent among the sunny rocks of the Pacific, the overwhelming fervor of a town that wakes up in the darkest days of winters — there are a few things he can't quite let go.
One is his propensity for black clothes, from black leather jackets, lovingly sewn in with patches and scavenged letters, to the workmanship of a heavily creased pair of boots. For a stifling childhood, the freedom to express himself through the bits and pieces of artwork he could find was freeing. Though some of these clothes aren't things he can wear anymore, he still hangs on to them as a reminder.
And a few t-shirts, gifts given to him by a very close friend, also comprise a lot of sentimental value in his closets. Sure, they may be sports shirts, but it was a shared comradeship and nothing could break that. At the start of hockey season, without fail, Castel puts on the strongest case for being a sports fan, strutting around in a jersey and generally being obnoxious about stats. Not to say it's wholly un-accounted for, as the man is no slouch himself on ice, even with layers of rust.
Of course, it would be remiss to not talk about the sweetness when Castel lets his young daughter pick out his clothes for the day, no matter how chaotic. A compromise, really, as he tries to work in elements of professionalism. Sometimes they work out. A lot of times, they don't, and his co-workers have been witnesses to these disasters.
On the topic of work, Castel does not own a formal hero uniform. Instead, his public-facing persona was that of an National Park Service ranger, with all the trappings and ornaments of that position. He still has the outfit, often whipping it out sans identifications for cute nature walks through the local preserve. For the search and rescue side of his job, he opted for a flexible set of equipment to fit the changing demands of different situations, picked and tested for durability and comfort in the field. He is no stranger to hiking and camping in the backcountry for days, even weeks at time, and will amble along, as easy-going as ever.
Personality
A remarkably laid-back person, Castel has learned early on that life will throw some heavy obstacles at you and all a person can do is roll with it and see the good at the end of it all. He can easily find joy in the smaller stuff and has a habit of pursuing a lot of different interests and eccentricity. After all, in Castel's book, it's a great day when he tries something new! This sort of positivity can grate on other people's nerves, which is a fact he is aware of.
It's a hard habit to break, when it was the only thing that kept him going. A faint hope of uncertainty and the refusal to believe in the worst.
The chill and out-going persona is a sturdy, but fragile mask that he puts on for dealing with everything. Underlying his bright smiles runs an undercurrent of unresolved anger and impulsiveness, tempered by a lot of work with a therapist and patience. He knows he's able to do it, but it's a lot of time and patience — a newfound thing in some respects.
In the warmth of another's heart, Castel will defend his friends and loves to his last breath. Family, the one he's found, is a treasure that he isn't willing to let go. He absolutely dotes on those he loves, taking gentle care to remember even the smallest details or noting it in one of his ever-present notebooks. One way he expresses this care is through a carefully planned spread of breakfast and drinks, a thing he will happily get up early in the morning to put together.
He adores kids and has a ton of energy. Sometimes it's almost as if a switch has flipped, as he always has a cool fun fact on hand and waves his hands around a lot.
A lot of his work and teaching is driven by an underlying need to maintain independence — which has manifested in a variety of different ways. He believes that people should at least try to be self-sufficient, hence a lot of his hobbies being focused in gardening/horticulture and in the culinary arts. He also thinks on a more experiential level as well, preferring to devise scenarios where students can apply practical skills and find new ways of analyzing a problem.
In terms of ideals, Castel sees all people as worthy of living, whether they are a villain or a civilian. As a rescue hero, he seeks to minimize harm as much as possible, but recognizes that isn't possible. He works well under pressure and time constraints and with enough practice and experience, is able to divine the best route to take. He primarily specializes in disaster response and search and rescue.
Likes
- hot sauce (especially vinegar)
- bass guitar parts
- mycology
- camping
Dislikes
- full humidity
- slimy textures
- cats (allergy)
- pretentious people
QUIRK: INK BLOSSOMS
Castel is not one to divulge exactly what his quirk does, finding it hard to explain what comes naturally to him. He is able to pull and form tendrils and semi-solid structures from ink sources, which resemble the appearance of climbing ivy and plants. They are not fully mobile, since they have to be rooted to the ink source, but are able to pick up and hold up weighty objects.
At the heart of this quirk is that it's fundamentally ink-based telekinesis with some limitations. Castel is able to use his quirk on anything containing pigments and dyes, though, the more solvent that is present up to a certain point, the easier it is to manipulation and control. He can pull dyes and pigments out of clothes, but has the hardest time with those due to the permanent set of those colors to the point where he needs water mixed in to help his control. Stickier inks such as paints are also harder to mess about with, due to the natural resistance and tackiness.
Having trained a lot with his quirk and armed with a surprisingly large base of knowledge about organic chemistry and ink production, Castel is able to amplify the properties of the ink source he's using. For instance, inks can contain metallic compounds, which can be ramped up to form flexible metal armor as long as his quirk is active. He has good fine control over it, able to form more detailed limbs or tendrils as long as there is a good amount of ink he has access to. Moreover, he is able to make his own ink blends, given his expertise and is able to exploit certain properties for different situations.
He does have limits. Quirk usage exhausts him physically and mentally, even if it's second nature, as it's like lifting weights with the strength of his mind. Ink sources are prone to drying out faster while being affected by his quirk. Castel also has a sort of discomfort when it comes to his quirk, especially with how weird it feels when using it.
History
Castel swears upon the majesty of the mountains — those rough peaks poking out from the edge of the sky. He grew up among the trees and boulders of the Adirondacks, where the Rose family owned an expansive plot of land and a cabin. He fondly remembers exploring the woods and wading knee-deep into the rivers. But the heavy expectations of his family pushed down as he was swaddled off to a posh private school.
After all, he never really talks about how influential his family is. Or even exactly who they are.
That, he walked away from to enter a forestry and conservation program, away from his family and those expectations.
Taking a breath of fresh air for truly what felt like the first time in his life, he happily learned about the trees and natural resources. And when he graduated from the program, he accepted an internship with a local hero agency operating out of the Adirondacks in both conservation and rescue work. It was a short internship, but a fruitful one, as he was well on his way to becoming a search and rescue hero! He stayed on with the agency, working towards his license, before finally getting it a year later.
Feeling a need for change, Castel bid farewell to the hero agency that was his home and then moved across the country, finding a job as a park steward in the Cascades. He came to rest there for years, finally meeting a solid group of friends and his partner, Bronislav. Their family grew with two kids: Darby and Rochus.
They enjoyed a few years of happiness before the ill-fated ACCIDENT. It's all a blur in Castel's memories — the sinking feeling of days of not finding a single sign, the empty garden, the silence of the coffee machine. He couldn't stand to walk familiar trails or peer out at favorite vistas, not without Bronislav. Why couldn't they — all search and rescue professionals — find one of their own? The days stretched into a month, and then further as hope dimmed. If he had come back, it would be on the fine edge of a Hail Mary miracle.
A veil of crushing sadness fell upon Castel. He felt the trees pressing in, constricting his chest. The mountains felt wrong.
Gathering up his friends, he could only reassure them that it was temporary. He needed the space, and it would be a nice change of pace if the family went somewhere else. And luckily for him, a position had just opened up at the esteemed UA High in Japan.
So, why not?