Tzai

In TBD-Supers, a shockingly beautiful teenage superhero.

Powers

• Damage Resistance
• Transcendent Beauty (Androgynous)
• Permeation
• Affliction - Gaze Attack: Hallucinations
• Inspired Intuition

Personality

Detached, unfazeable, polite, selfless, nonviolent, charitable, passive, gentle.

Appearance

Breathtakingly beautiful to both genders. Pale skin, long light-blond hair, with eyes that are remarkably large, aquamarine, intense, and long-lashed. 5/10", slender but solid.

Publicity Photos

Background

Peter Wellington was born in 1970 in Oxford England, to parents John and Elizabeth Wellington, old-money aristocrats and generous benefactors of Oxford University.

In 1980, the Wellingtons funded an expedition to the mountains along the Turkey-Iraq border, in search of biblical artifacts. The expedition came under attack by hostile mountain tribes who fired Russian-made RPGs at their convoy, causing a rockslide which swept the entire Wellington family, and dozens of workers, down a steep embankment overlooking a rushing tributary of the Tigris River.

John and Elizabeth died in the slide, and young Peter's body was never found.

The Wellington fortune was put in trust, with various distant relatives attempting to claim it, and after a lengthy court battle, Oxford University was given stewardship over the remaining properties and other assets worth over 100 million dollars.

In 2007, a semi-autonomous squad of US Special Forces in northern Iraq first heard rumors of a pale-skinned mystic boy living with a remote mountain tribe. It was said the boy could perform miracles. A year later, the squad traveled with a group of 600 pilgrims to see this supposed miracle worker.

What they discovered was a striking adolescent Caucasian boy, fine features and crystal-blue eyes, near-white hair hanging to his hips, walking peacefully and humbly among the people, though he was treated by them as a god.

The Wellington connection was almost discounted because Peter would have been near 40, not 17, but DNA analysis confirmed his identity. After numerous appeals from the stewards of the Wellington fortune, Peter, or has he now preferred to be called, 'Tzai', eventually agreed to return.

Tzai explained to Oxford administrators and government investigators who had given up the search for him 28 years previously that he'd been ejected from his parents' vehicle as it careened down the slope, and ended up in the river below. He clung to a floating log for days, drifting in and out of consciousness. In a deep and steep-walled canyon, he awoke to see the river splitting -- the majority of the torrent down a violent series of tumultuous rapids that extended far downstream, and a swirling whirlpool which seemed to be swallowing everything that went near it. Including Peter.

Then there was a long period of darkness and hunger and cold.

Then he could see again, though no light was present. The river was underground, flowing calmly but steadily by, and he was on an underground beach. Great columns, ornately carved with images of war and worship, lead him to a massive stone table. On the table was a clay tablet, wider than than the boy, covered in tiny writing in a language he did not understand. Over the days, months, years, subsisting on tiny river fish, Tzai somehow came to know the name of the tablet: The Tablet of Destinies

Sometimes Tzai thought he was not alone, that some divine force was in the underground temple with him, someone called Enki. He was never sure, and sometimes when he thought he was speaking with Enki, he'd realize he was speaking to himself. But it was Enki who gave Peter his new name, Tzai.

Tzai studied the great tablet and thought deeply in the darkness, and much time passed.

Then he awoke from a slumber, walked into the river, and floated downstream. The river flowed for miles in the silent black, until it descended steeply into a hole with no air. Tzai nearly drowned.

The mountain tribes discovered him in the reeds and nursed him back to health. He was with them for eight years before the soldiers came, which means he was also underground for more than nearly two decades.

In Oxford, Tzai seemed uninterested in meeting people his own age (either his apparent age of 17, or his calendar age of 39), and the doctors, intrigued and concerned by the remarkable journey the boy had endured, were in a furor over various test results. It seemed the boy had an IQ off the charts, but more than that, there was clear evidence of psychic phenomena. Data were sent to the relevant government agency and a file was started on him.

But it was the boy's mesmerizing physical appearance that eventually caused his greater powers to be exposed. A physician examining him, overcome with desire, began to assault Tzai -- and then suddenly suffered debilitating hallucinations and fled from the room. Tzai fled as well -- by shifting phase and drifting straight through the wall and back to the Wellington estate.

This event and associated video aroused the interest of the DEA....