MH: Shane McDove

Name: Shane McDove

Age:27

Gender: Male

Zodiac: Aries

Birthday: 1st of April

Height: 183cm

Weight: 76 kg

Block: Chef

Species/Race: Human

Class: Part puppet

Weapon(not really):
A regular metal spatula with a leather strap on the handle, always seen dangling from his right wrist.
The spatula is made from hardened metals and its capable of withstanding high temperatures and sword strikes. So yes, if you fight him with a sword, he will fight back with a spatula. But he sucks at fighting so whatever, right? Right. The spatula was given to him by the hotel owner when he became Head Chef.

Personality:
Perfectionist: He can't cook food half-heartedly. It's not that he never wants to. He just can't. It feels so wrong that he'll abandon the recipe the moment he starts.
Sweet tooth: He loves making sweet desserts, especially fruit tarts and fruitcakes. He mainly bakes them for himself and anyone who wants to eat them.
Strict: He can't stand it when people waste food. At all. If he finds someone wasting food, he will not hesitate to hit them on the head with his spatula and lecture them (provided he can do so without getting into trouble, anyway). If he can't do that without getting into trouble, he'll sulk.
Forgiving: As long as you don't mess up inside the kitchen, he'll forgive you easily.
Unforgiving(yes, contradicting. Just wait): If you mess up in the kitchen, he will never trust you for the rest of your life. No questions asked.
Laid-back: Outside the kitchen, he's calm and easy to please.
Hard working: He'd determined in the kitchen, being quick and efficient. He expects the same of other and can't tolerate half-hearted co-workers (cue the spatula).
Easily embarrassed: Despite his overall personality, he doesn't take well to compliments for some reason, especially when it has to do with his cooking. He gets flustered. Not a lot but it's still noticeable.
Careful: He's ridiculously careful when it comes to fire.
Sarcastic: With people he knows well, he tends to be a little more sarcastic but he smiles more often.
Insomniac: Pretty self-explanatory. He sleeps lightly and only once a while.
Poor diet: He doesn't eat much. He can go for a whole day on a few sweets. Healthy? Not at all.

Likes:
Sweets (especially fruit tarts and fruitcakes)
People who eat a lot of food
People who don't waste food
Roasted meats
Picky eaters (he likes a challenge every now and then)

Dislikes:
People who waste food (like they ask for something but never finish it)
Rats
Lazy kitchen workers
Ecstasy pills. (doesn't stop him from taking them, though)

Strengths:
He's the perfect liar and can lie without feeling a shred of remorse. If need be, he can act as well.
He loves poisons and studying them. He often tries out the poisons he uses, eating them after lowering the toxicity to see what it feels like and tastes like (he makes sure to have an antidote close by). With that knowledge, he can then change his recipes to match his needs.
He's not afraid to try it on guests if he knows it works but he does give them forewarning. Sometimes. And he always gives them the antidote before they get too ill.
Has an enhanced immune system, hence why he's lasted so long with his addiction.
...........He's good at sewing.....?

Weaknesses:
His left arm is made out of wood so, obviously, setting it on fire isn't the best idea. He has no other replacement and doesn't know how to attach another arm so if his current one gets busted, he's pretty much screwed.
He can't fight. At all. He's good at dodging though. And smacking people on the head
He takes ecstasy pills. Not a lot but it's enough to give him withdrawal symptoms if he goes for too long without.

Talents:
Poison: His ability allows him to change the properties of a food. More often than not, he uses it for poisons. His hands will glow a barely noticeable white and silver strings will appear on his fingers, one property per string per finger. A food with more than ten properties will not show some and he can't change what he sees. The skill is not precise, in the sense that he can't change how salty something is but leave its sweetness alone. However, he CAN change how poisonous something is. The most he can do is double the toxicity or lower it to a quarter its potency. He can't make something poisonous; the property must already be there. Though anyone can see the glow if they look hard enough, the strings are visible only to him so it looks like he's wriggling his fingers over the foods. The drawback is that he must be able to see the food and that it takes a while for him to 'turn on' the skill, meaning he can't do it at the snap of his fingers.
History:

Shane had always wanted to be a chef. To be precise, he'd always wanted to be a chef in a high-class hotel. Despite his relatively poor upbringing, he set his standards high and practised from a young age. His mother taught him the ways of the kitchen while his father did the encouraging from the sidelines. He learnt a variety of recipes and took a quick liking to desserts because, well, most kids like sweet things and Shane was no exception.

When he was eighteen, Shane worked for a small but well-off cafe. The years that followed remain as the man's favourite memories to this day. He spent six years working there before he got the offer of working at a high-class hotel, his dream come true. With the cafe owner's blessings, Shane left the cafe and joined the hotel. There, the work was both thrilling and challenging. Despite this, he persevered, going all out to keep up with the demands for food as well maintain the quality. It wasn't long before he was promoted to head chef. By then, his father had retired and his mother was near retirement. Nonetheless, they were doing well, thanks to their son who willingly sent over two thirds his income every month.

At the age of twenty-six, he was kidnapped (though 'captured' is more appropriate since he isn't exactly a kid...). It was then that he was introduced to the world of the supernatural. He was bound (unwillingly) to a contract with a mysterious man and forced to obey his orders. If he didn't... well, he didn't have a choice. Even if he tried to fight back, his body would move on its own accord. The man turned out to be a sorcerer. He stole people away and bestowed them powers for unknown reasons. One thing noticeable was that the powers always suited their talents, hence why Shane could manipulate the properties of food. Of course, that skill was exploited by having him poison those who double-crossed his master. There were plenty of those people, to say the least. Within a year, Shane grew accustomed to poisoning people and watching them die (the almost-literal inhalation of ecstasy pills helped him cope but he was soon an addict).

One day, after a successful assassination, he asked his master about his motives. His arm was promptly destroyed for questioning him. The arm was later replaced by a wooden one, constructed by another of the man's slaves, known only as the Puppet Master (ironic, considering the user was also a puppet to the master). That same day, Shane fled the place after having been told to get out of his master's sight. He wandered aimlessly for several hours, his only aim being "get away and find some place safe". Too tired to react, even as mists cloaked him and a bridge appeared before him, Shane simply trudged onwards and promptly collapsed the moment he reached the doors.

Additional Info:
No longer with a source of income, Shane's parents work at the cafe where Shane started out. His father does the cleaning at the end of the day while his mother helps in the kitchen. The owner took pity on them and gave them more income than he technically should. His parents have no idea where their son is but hope he is doing fine.
Shane often wonders how his parents are faring but he never quite got the courage to find out. He has no idea how his parents would react to a son with a wooden arm and the ability to poison easily.
You can call him whatever you like. From 'Shane' to 'McDove' to 'pretty boy/girl'. He doesn't care.
He's perfectly straight.
His room has shelves of vials and jars, filled with a variety of liquids, leaves and berries. Most are poisonous. He uses them to make new poisons and antidotes.
When he sleeps, he doesn't bother with a shirt. He doesn't see the point in wearing a perfectly clean shirt for one night then putting it to wash.

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Art by ~Hiyonori-Yumiko
I need to stop joining groups but I never seem to hold myself to that.