Latent Element Challenge: Raiju's Abilities

Raiju was terrified when he first discovered his element. He had just finished making a campfire to rest for the night and about to grab a fish he had caught earlier that day to cook it when he slipped on a rock and fell into his fire. Panicked, he rolled out and kept rolling trying his hardest to put out the fire, assuming his fur had caught fire, but after a couple seconds of not feeling any pain, he stopped. Checking himself he realized he was completely unharmed. No burns, no burnt fur patches, nothing. At first he thought he was just really lucky and got out before the fire could catch but then he thought about it more while he rebuilt his fire as he destroyed the last. There should have been some fur that was burnt regardless of how quickly the fire went out so after he got his new fire started, he slowly brought his paw closer and closer to the fire testing to see if he could feel any burning but he felt nothing besides the heat. Before he knew it, his paw was inside the fire and he felt nothing. He stared at his paw for a while after trying to make sense of what he just witnessed. Out of further curiosity, Raiju put his paw back in the fire but quickly pulled it out when the fire started to look green but this time he panicked as his paw was on fire and burning a bright green. He quickly shook his paw and the fire went out and once again there was no injury or burnt fur. Raiju didn’t sleep that night, too terrified of whatever was happening to him.

Raiju can use his magical abilities at will like moving a limb. All he needs to do is focus and he can use them. He’s learned that he can get better control over his powers through meditation and often uses the late nights and early mornings to meditate. After a while, using certain abilities requires less focus and he can use them more naturally but at first it takes him a fair bit of time to consistently use a certain ability. He’s fairly experienced at using most of his abilities though he’s not very strong at using them yet in terms of combat. He can manage to do whatever else he wants with minimal difficulty but he still avoids combat at all costs.

It’s taken him a while to develop his skills but he’s discovered that he can absorb fire which has given him an immunity to being burnt, has thermoreception which is basically infrared vision, can create a fire shock wave but has yet to learn how to control it and often creates one when he’s mad or scared, he can also create a fire ball from his paws which he can manipulate to look like creatures or objects though he can’t make them last very long yet, and his paws can catch fire allowing him to burn things with a single touch; regardless if his paw is on fire or not. He’s still trying to figure out how to discover more abilities but he’s mostly content with the ones he has. The one he works on the most is trying to turn the fireballs into creatures that have some form of sentience but this has proven to be a really hard task for him though he has managed to create small birds of fire that seemed to have some sentience to them before they burned out. Now he’s working on making creatures that are larger and can last longer. His favourite to create is a small canine that seems to remember him every times he creates him and he’s gotten to the point where the small puppy like fire creature can last a little while as long as he retains some form of focus.

Raiju normally only uses his abilities when he’s alone or fighting creatures if he has to. Normally he’ll just use it to build fires for cooking or simply practice his abilities to work on getting stronger. He has to be careful since there has been times where he’s accidentally created a small forest fire but he quickly learned that he can put his paw in the fire and focus and he’ll absorb the fire’s energy and put it out. It’s taken him quite a while to really get used to his abilities but Raiju is fairly comfortable using his abilities when he’s alone but whenever he has to go into a town, he gets really worried that he’s going to slip up and accidentally use his abilities. He’s more worried about hurting someone and causing the whole town to riot and come after him because he knows he’d have to defend himself and hurting others is something he doesn’t want to do. He’s already lived his life as an outcast so he doesn’t want to make his already bad reputation worse; if that’s even possible.