Cecil Vogel
If you try hard enough, you can shift reality.*
Nicknames
Ceecee
Role
The Vigilante
Which Masks do they possess?
Lazarus Weller
Age
21
Gender
Male
Physical Description
Cecil is, as befitting a person of his social standing, very concerned with how he appears, though he probably shouldnāt have to worry so much. Heās inherited his motherās good looks, complete with blond hair and kind blue eyes. His religious application of several beauty products have successfully kept his skin smooth and his cheeks pink. Fair-skinned but rosy-lipped, Cecil is indeed a very pretty boy.
Although he dons the same crisp style of clothing his high-powered lawyer of a father does, Cecilās willowy frame is a stark contrast to his fatherās broad-shouldered and massive size. Cecil, true to his German heritage, stands at a very tall 183 cm, but is hardly intimidating at his weight of 140 lbs. He walks gracefully to boot, making him much more approachable than his long-sleeved button-ups would normally allow.
Cecil often has a smile for anyone who speaks to him, and greets everyone in a soft-spoken tenor reminiscent of warm summer days. Speaking of warm days, when the weather wonāt allow for long-sleeved button-ups, Cecil dons a designer polo shirt with dark wash jeans with boat shoes.
Personality
Ceecee tries really hard to be a good son. All he wants to be or, or tries to be, is what his father wants him to be. He doesn't stop to think about much else - all that matters is what his father (and second to that, what everyone else) wants from him. What he wants is irrelevant. Everyone else's needs come first.
Unfortunately, what he really is inside is a far cry from what his aggressive, testosterone-driven father wants Cecil to be. This leads him to become a very conflicted individual, sometimes displaying sudden out-of-character behaviors consistent with his true nature when he can't handle it anymore.
Cecil often feels empty, which he finds odd, but shrugs it off as something everyone probably feels but never talks about. You know, one of those things. To society, however, Cecil Vogel is vibrant and can really connect with people, easily remembering who's named what and their middle names and who they married and their children and their parents' names and all their ages. He's brilliant, coming up with ingenious solutions, and funny, bringing strange ideas to the table all the time. Unforgettable - that's how to best describe him. He's boisterous and colorful, vulgar in only the most polite of ways, and unafraid of speaking his mind. He's pretty proud and confident, indolent but not too much, and makes everything look so easy and graceful it's unfair. He sometimes has bouts of quiet intensity - strange given how talkative he usually is - but that's not something society can't forgive.
Cecil attends all sorts of social functions with his mother, and seems to fluidly balance his extracurricular life with his major in toxicology. He studies at one of the prestigious universities present in Throme, and although he doesn't have the best grades (nor is he a particularly remarkable student), he makes up for it by actively participating in so many clubs he might as well be the jack of all trades of the university!
He's not particularly self-sacrificing and is actually a bit of a loafer in terms of groupwork. He hardly pulls any weight, preferring to cover the expenses for the group and be a go-fer instead of actually doing heavy research and writing, and is self-interested beyond all else. If he wasn't so friendly and charming, people would actually mind. (Actually, some people do mind, but at least he's trying to help.)
What people don't know, however, is that Cecil needs to use makeup to hide the dark circles under his eyes, marks born from night after night of sleepless texts drowned in caffeine and sugar rushes. He's studying so hard that if he was an average student, his diligence would have propelled him into becoming one of the top students at the university. Unfortunately, Cecil just isn't one of the sharper crayons in the box - something he has yet to come to terms with. It's not that he doesn't want to do the researching and writing in group papers; he can't. He barely has enough time to study and pass all his subjects. His outgoing nature is a trick he's discovered - he only needs to really attend a party at its prime, get shot by a few or more photographers, and talk to the largest personalities in the room for everyone to have noticed him at an event. After an hour or so, Cecil can easily slip out of the mess and return home to spend more time study.
In actuality, he spends all night and all of his weekends studying, when not being a go-fer for the various clubs he's joined. And being a go-fer doesn't take too much of his time - by this time, he knows the streets of Throme so well he can cut a usual 30-minute ride through Throme into a short 10-minute walk. He's really less busy than he pretends to be, honestly. It helps that his sister coordinates his tasks and plans his day with him meticulously, carefully leaving time for any sudden appointments that might come up. On that note, Cecil is pushing himself towards a death from severe exhaustion, and if he keeps up the pace of the person he's trying to be, Cecil won't last very long. He's no workaholic - he'd be content to play around on piles of leaves on crisp autumn days and maybe go to a ski resort during the winter holidays. It's just that if he wants his father happy, he can't afford to do that - no time.
The Cecil everyone sees is so fake, not even the well-thought out opinions he voices are his own; they're echoes and modified versions of his father's opinions. Cecil doesn't even like thinking about "important issues" like politics and law. Those ingenious solutions? Not his, either! They're his sister's - the witty and foxy Tatiana has a mind that works like a charm, so unlike Cecil's own.
Cecil is also very very trusting - although he tries to cover that up as much as he can, because his father disapproves of this nature. It's not like he can help it - he just doesn't think people would do bad things. He believes in a kinder world, a world that certainly doesn't jive with the one he actually lives in. The reason he's friendly is because he really does empathize well, and he remembers people because everyone is important to him. The beggar down the street is just as important as the highest judge in the country.
Cecil doesn't really know what he is. He knows he wants to help others - this much is true. It takes an iron determination to actually refuse to give the poor beggar anything, when all he wants is to give the beggar all his money, then go to a store, buy the beggar new clothes, then go with him to an expensive restaurant and treat him to a steak. Too bad his father doesn't see philanthropy as a just cause. This only adds to Cecil's feelings of inadequacy, and he suffers severe waves of guilt when he reflects on all the opportunities to help people he's missed. Furthermore, the feelings of needing to help leave Cecil confused and sometimes, when he can't resist the urge anymore, he actually gives in to it and is happy and yet angry with himself for not being the son his father wants him to be. Peachy, isn't it?
The harsh lights and pressure piled on him isn't to Cecil's taste, but what does a puppet really feel? A puppet is happy when his puppeteer thinks he's done a good job. Unfortunately, Cecil's father still thinks his son is too weak, too feeble, not strong enough to possibly become the tour de force his father wants him to be. Cecil, by all accounts, is trying his darnedest to be a good son, and naively believes that if someone tries hard enough, he can do whatever he wants. He just wants everyone to be happy, never mind his own happiness, never mind what he himself wants. Just...if everyone is happy. Perhaps that's what he really wants.
Someone give him a shooting star. This boy needs it before he kills himself of exhaustion.
Skill(s)/Abilities
Planning/Coordination ā Throughout his life, Cecil has been juggling extracurricular activities with his studies. This makes him excellent at planning his schedule, and being very aware of the time it takes him to accomplish things.
Toxins/Poisons ā Now this is something Cecil excels at. With a major in toxicology, what did you expect? He may not be the smartest kid, but heās invested so many hours into studying heās more than halfway decent in the application of poisons and where to find them. (Exams and theories, however, are an entirely different matter, as shown by his grades.)
Sense of Direction ā From all the running around heās been tasked to do, Cecil is much more familiar with the ins and outs of Throme than your average Joe. He knows the shortcuts that cut through the heart of the city and the alleys everybody forgets.
Cooking ā Cecil isnāt half-bad at cooking, and loves his food very much indeed. Loves it almost as much as sharing it, in fact.
Gardening - Flowers and plants! If Cecil only had the time, he'd grow a garden so beautiful it'd make anyone who saw it think he/she stepped into heaven! (Or so Cecil thinks.)
History
Cecil Vogel is the only son of Attorney Reinhart Vogel and his socialite wife Renee Vogel nee Ingram. Heās the fourth of five siblings, the rest being sisters. His sisters are all growing up quite nicely (although some of them took after their father and look mannish), fitting well into their roles as politician, actress, model, and attorney-to-be, respectively.
All his life, heavy pressure has been piled on Cecil by his father. Reinhart found his son rather wimpy, given the boy would rather spend his time playing as opposed to studying or even playing sports, for heavenās sake. Renee, on her part, tried to make Cecil feel better by telling him that if he just tried, he could do whatever his father wanted him to achieve between parading her beloved son through party after party. Cecil never dared speak out against his father, and has thus been living under his fatherās imposing shadow his whole life. Although he failed the entrance exam to a prestigious school, he got in thanks to some strings getting pulled. Cue Cecil trying his darnedest to pass all his subjects.
He did. Barely. Unfortunately, his father thought this wasnāt enough and demanded his son participate in extracurriculars. Some of his teachers sympathized and gave him larger grades by virtue of his effort. Others barely passed him. It was all right. At least he was passing.
Then highschool came. Another entrance exam failed, another bribe passed, and another harrowing year spent trying to survive. Cecil was getting less and less sleep. He was an average student unfit for the school for the gifted he was enrolled in, and although he empathized with people excellently, he was less adept at making logical connections like his genius-classmates were. However, he put on a brave face and with the help of his model-sister Tatiana (to whom he is very close), he managed to appear brilliant and confident to everyone. Heād plenty of friends, and he trusted them all, even after some of them stole credit from him.
His father thought him a fool. Cecil thought his father just lacked faith in people.
Reinhart wished his son would go and study medicine, and Cecil wanted veterinary medicine. They eventually settled on toxicology - under the pretense that Cecil preferred it over actual medicine, as it would help him understand and possibly find the cure for cancer. As of his late teens, his father had begun to fall for Cecilās act, and it was coming together quite well.
Then his model-sister got pregnant and ran off with some hippie-artist to Shanghai, never to be heard from again save for the letter she left Cecil on his bureau.
Cecil didnāt understand why she left him, and why so suddenly. He didnāt even know she had a boyfriend. He understood, however, why she didnāt tell him about her boyfriend beforehand. Their father wouldnāt approve.
All Cecil wants is a chance to be born into some other family, or the chance to fade into darkness. His father was getting angrier, and Cecil bore the brunt of his fatherās heat ā now Cecil had to make up for the fact that his sister didnāt live the way their father wanted her to. Now Cecil had to coordinate everything on his own. Now Cecil had to ā
He found the mask in his satchel a week after his sister disappeared. It was a very dark time for Cecil, and the mask was, at first, some amusement for him. The mask eventually became his shield, a way of deflecting his fatherās anger ā when Cecil wore the mask, he was the son his father wanted: everything and more.
Over the years, he learned of the Grace Stone ā and to Cecil, it was mesmerizing. Whatever it was, whatever it could do, Cecil was sure it would make his father - no, the world- happy.
All he needs to do is get it.
Attitudes
~No idea yet. Will be updated as soon as he meets someone.~
Other
*The quote is by Christopher Meloni.
