Name: Michael Guerin Door: Door pass. Canon: Roswell: New Mexico Canon Point: Series 1 Episode 12, just after the Caulfield explosion. Age: 28 Appearance: Link! History: Here! Personality: Positive- Intelligent
Michael works as a mechanic, lives in a trailer, and doesn't at first glance appear to have a lot going for him. Most people know him as a troublemaker, someone known for getting into fights, for drinking, and for being a general bad influence. However, he's hiding a strong intellect and keen engineering skills, far beyond his training as a mechanic. At school, he was the only person to score higher than Liz Ortecho. Any consideration of what he might do with that intellect vanished after Isobel appeared to kill Rosa, with Michael and Max both promising to stay in Roswell with her. Now, ten years later, Michael uses his real talents to investigate, and work on rebuilding, the alien spacecraft that brought him to earth. His interest is in alien technology, not human science, and he shows his intelligence and capabilities when he needs to work with Liz on alien science.
- Selfless
Although he is a person who finds it hard to trust, Michael very much cares about the people around him. He wouldn't describe himself as heroic, and would say that he likes to keep to himself, to his own business, and not concern himself with other people's. However, when someone he cares about comes to him, he'll do everything in his power to help them. As a teenager, when Alex's dad attacked him with a hammer, Michael stepped in without any thought for himself, and came away from the situation with a shattered left hand that couldn't fully heal and still causes him pain. Even when his relationship with them was strained, Michael came to Max and Isobel's side every time any of them called for him. When he found Maria in tears at her bar, he stopped and comforted her, despite not knowing what was wrong, and despite not being all that close to her at the time. Although Michael has a tendency to push people away, and prevent them from getting too close to them, he's extremely caring and will always try to help the people he loves. The most prominent moment which displayed this trait was when he found Isobel apparently killing Rosa. He believed at the time that Isobel was behaving as she was due to trauma. Despite initially wanting to call the authorities, Michael agreed with Max that knowing she was a killer would further damage Isobel's psyche, and so to protect her, he told her that he had killed Rosa by accident. Later, when Liz had returned to town to investigate Rosa's death, Michael was entirely winning to admit to his guilt and go to prison for a crime he never committed, all to keep Isobel safe. Michael doesn't always make the right choices, especially when it comes to his relationships - but he'd do anything to help someone he loves, even at a cost to himself.
Negative- Untrusting
Michael is carrying a host of abandonment issues. His earliest memory is of waking up on a crash site on Earth, having lost his whole family and everyone he knew. Shortly afterwards, he was separated from Max and Isobel - the two aliens he'd found after waking - when the Evans family chose to adopt them and not him. What followed was years of moving through the adoption system, going from one family to the next. His upbringing was not only fragmented across different families, it was abusive. Michael learned early on that he couldn't trust anyone other than himself. As he reconnects with them, he does trust and feels a bond with Max and Isobel, and he is intensely loyal to them. However, this loyalty leads him to push himself away from them, when he helps Max to cover up the supposed murder of Rosa by Isobel, and takes the blame for it himself. This act isolates Michael from his only real friends. Unable to cope with the memory of what they had done, Michael pushes Isobel and, particularly Max, away. The trauma exacerbates his existing issues, making him more prone to outbursts of anger which also ends up pushing Alex away from him. Michael loses his most important relationships all at the same time, because of his overpowering instinct to close in on himself when he's in trouble. He keeps himself at an emotional distance from everyone for more than a decade, and struggles to let anyone else in. Michael believes that the people around him are fundamentally unreliable; even when they claim to care about him, they'll leave him some day. He continually 'tests' those who love him by hurting them and pulling away from them, trying to see if they'll leave - and, when inevitably they do, he's both devastated and vindicated at the same time. Years after Rosa's death, when he and Alex reconnect again, they're unable to pull towards each other without pushing each other away. Their shared history sits uncomfortably between them, and although Michael acknowledges that he will always love Alex, he becomes convinced that they're not good for each other. Michael is the victim of his own inability to trust people and let them in. He's the guy who leaves before the other person can leave him; he'll push them away and hurt them, even when he loves and needs them. This continues even after he acknowledges that he isn't good for Alex and wants to be good for someone, when he reacts to Max's death by sabotaging his relationship with Maria. No other trait more fiercely defines Michael as a character; his abandonment issues, and the untrusting nature that comes from them, have shaped his whole life.
- Angry
Michael has been angry at the world for as long as he can remember. He would say that being abandoned on an alien planet will do that to a person, but the truth is, he was dealing with more anger about it than Max and Isobel even before they were adopted without him. Because of this, his anger with the world can't be fully put down to what the world has done to him, though his experiences certainly haven't helped. Michael does not believe that people are inherently good, something that feeds into his distrustful nature. When questioned by Max about why he would never let him heal his broken hand, he explains that Alex had made him think that humans could be good, and the scars left by his father reminded him that they weren't. Michael also tends to channel most of his other feelings into his anger, using it as his dominant means of expression. He's gets into a lot of fights, and is regularly arrested for minor offences. He's someone who operates on the fringes of society, rejecting most natural authorities and living in a trailer which underlines his deeper desire for his residency to be temporary. When faced with adversity and upset, Michael will spoil for a fight. His emotional state is also connected to his powers; he recounts his telekinesis manifesting in destructiveness in his youth, which made him all the more difficult to live with, and further destabilised his home life. He also tends to hold grudges, finding it very difficult to forgive people who have wronged him; ten years after high school has finished, he still holds a grudge against Kyle, and can't understand how Alex can forgive him for all that happened there. He also struggles to give Alex a second chance, remembering always that Alex left to join the Air Force, and resenting that he chose to walk away from him. Michael does not easily forget or forgive. Beyond all of that, it's also worth noting that a considerable amount of his anger faces inwards. Michael dislikes many parts of himself; his propensity to ruin his own relationships, his secretiveness, his mistakes. He has expressed the desire to be better, to look to the future and not the past, and to find someone that he's good for. He puts a lot of blame on himself for what's gone wrong in his life, even when it was nothing he could have controlled. As with everything else, his feelings of self-loathing and guilt are expressed as outward anger, which makes it hard for him to get the support he needs.
- Secretive
It's unsurprising that due to the nature of his life, Michael has a tendency towards keeping secrets. He has always hidden his alien nature from the world, partly at the behest of his 'brother' Max, out of fear that he would be captured, experimented on or even killed by human authorities. It's worth noting his context, as a refugee alien on earth; he's grown up in a society whose pop-culture is fascinated with aliens. For every media that held a positive depiction, there was a negative one. Michael, Max and Isobel never thought they could take the risk to tell anyone, including their friends and family. However, Michael has gone further than either Max or Isobel in this regard; he has kept a considerable number of secrets from them, too, including the lab he created to study alien tech. In particular, he grew emotionally apart from Max after the incident between Isobel and Rosa, to the extent that he didn't tell Max he was bisexual, and didn't tell him how his hand was really broken. On his sexuality, Michael also spent ten years or more keeping secret his relationship with Alex Manes. Over the course of series 1, Michael's secrets are slowly revealed to his friends. Though he fights this development at first, he eventually becomes more open, and even eager to relieve the burden his secrets have put on him. He says openly that he's tired of secrets, and willingly answers all of Alex's questions about his past. Despite this, Michael continues to have a secretive nature, and he often acts alone without running his plans by his friends or alien family. At his current canon point, his recent trip to Caulfield saw him take off with Alex and Kyle in the search for aliens without so much as mentioning to Max and Isobel that he was going anywhere. Even though he has developed to the point where he dislikes his own secretiveness, it's still natural for Michael to be secretive.
Powers and Abilities: Michael is an alien. He doesn't know what species he is, but he knows he's not human. Due to this, he has the following powers and abilities: - Alien physiology: Michael may look human, but he's very different at a genetic level. His body contains proteins that look different from what's in the human body, and his organs look different too - they have a synthetic look, similar to the material used to build his space craft. On the inside, his body contains materials that look similar to the alien technology of the spacecraft he landed in. On a practical level, his temperature is higher than the average human's, and he can drink acetone which acts as a painkiller. His powers seem to come from a natural electromagnetic interaction; it's also noticed that he, like other alien things, smells like rain.
- Psychic communication: Michael can 'feel' other aliens of the same species. He's able to hear their mental distress and get a sense for where they are. He has also sensed that something was wrong with Isobel, even when she was not in control of her body due to being blacked out.
- Telekinesis: This is Michael's main ability. He's able to move things with his mind with considerable finesse. He has been shown moving large and heavy objects such as his trailer, and smaller more precise objects like kitchen knives. He can also use his mind to enhance the strength of his punches and kicks. He can use his powers with thought alone, or can channel it through his hands and feet.
- Alien pollen: Michael's alien abilities are rendered null when he's exposed to the pollen of a particular flower, which seems to grow only where there are alien remains.
- Serum and antidote: Michael is vulnerable to the serum created by Liz Ortecho. Intended to nullify alien powers, it does its job too well and will kill any alien injected with it. Michael helped Liz to develop the antidote which cures the effects of the serum, provided it is administered in time.
- Other: As well as his alien abilities, Michael is noted for his intellect. Liz claims that he is the only person whose scores exceeded hers in school, and questions why he never went to college or sought to do more than working as a mechanic. The science that interests him is alien, not human. He is a skilled mechanic, and is shown able to fix everything from cars, to electrical signs, to the broken pieces of the crashed ship's console.
Inventory: - A piece of the broken alien console;
- His vial of antidote to Liz's serum (he stole it);
- The guitar Alex gave him back in high school.
Samples: Thinking and Communicating. |
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angrycowboy
