InsaneJournal

Wyatt is a small guy with small bones and build. Although he has a boyish appearance, he also has a rugged look to him. His hair is often messy and untamed, a mop of dark brown hair. His facial hair grows quickly and he often has a five o'clock shadow. He does try to keep himself clean shaven, though he does allow a bit of a mustache or goatee to grow at times. His eyes are a piercing blue and are oftentimes the "windows to his soul". A pair of glasses sit on the bridge of his nose for reading as he is far-sighted. He has a willing and ready smile, and it can sometimes charm him out of sticky situations. Wyatt has a pair of black wings that sprout from his back. They can be hidden in two pockets in the skin of his back. He has his clothing custom made to accommodate his wings. As such, he has a tendency to wear suit jackets and collared shirts because of the gather at the back. It hides the slits cut in them to allow his wings to slide in and out. Most of the time he pairs his suit jackets with a pair of jeans and sneakers.

Probably one of the nicest and most respectful young men one would ever meet. He loves life, loves to have fun, and loves being around people. A smile is waiting for almost anyone He's a social butterfly, but he tends to be the quiet one, listening more than contributing to conversation. At the same time, he is content to be by himself with only his falcon, Kitty, for company. Helpful and happy, it's hard not to like him. He is the type to hold in his feelings until he blows up, but he blows up quietly. He rarely has a harsh word for anyone, and they have to really offend him or someone he cares about to get one from him. He has taken a lot of abuse in his life, and he is getting kind of tired of it. He isn't quite as passive as he used to be. He likes to joke and B.S. with his friends. He is witty and can be funny when the mood strikes. Overall, he's a fairly down to earth and grounded kid.

When Josiah Valance was a toddler, his father went to fight in World War II. Young Josiah grew up with tales of his father's heroics in the war that took his life. Adam Valance, had been a fighter pilot in the war. Casualties abounded during that unfortunate time in history, and Adam Valance was one of those. Josiah grew up without his father, but with glorified visions of what a hero he must have been. He created stories out of the letters his mother kept, and from friends of his father that survived to call on he and his mother, conveying condolances and telling them how brave Adam had been.

All during his life, he dreamed of doing exactly what his father had done, so in 1963 when the Americans entered the Vietnam War, Josiah signed up. He trained to fly bombers and participated in the bombing of North Vietnam. Unlike his father before him, he survived the war and returned to the states to continue his service in the US Air Force. During the war, he achieved the rank of First Liutenant. After returning to the states, however, he continued to climb the ranks. Right after his 51st birthday, he was made a Lieutenant General. It was then that he realized he hadn't settled down and started a family. A little late to realize that, but he had never seemed to have time for women, dating, marriage or children, so he had avoided it altogether. It wasn't long after he opened himself up to the idea that he met and married a much younger woman, Susan Jefferson. And it was only a few months after their marriage in 1987, that Susan announced her pregnancy.

Josiah was overjoyed that he would finally have a child to share his love of flying with. He was even more overjoyed when five months into the pregnancy an ultrasound announced that it would be a boy. From birth, Wyatt Valance was surrounded with flying paraphanalia. The themes of his bedroom decor, birthday parties, Halloween cosutmes, t-shirts, etc. were all planes and pilots. Wyatt fell in love with flying just as his father had, and the stories of war from his father and those of his grandfather made it seem even more grand. Two sisters followed Wyatt's birth.

When Wyatt was 5, his father retired from the military. He moved his family to Las Vegas and began his own business, giving flying lessons in small prop planes. He often took Wyatt up with him. But not all time with his father was quality time. As a military man, he was hard on his son. Wyatt was a boy who quietly observed, quietly enjoyed things and kept to himself. He never quite felt comfortable in the lime light. He was sensitive and turned to his mother for more than he turned to his father for. A fact that bothered his father immensely. On more than one occassion, he'd been beaten simply because he was a "pussy" or a "momma's boy". His mother did him no favors by coddling him, either. His father never touched his sisters. They were girls, and his father had the old school mentality that they were weaker than men, both in mind and body.

One thing he had to thank his father for, however, was the thick skin he graced him with. Nothing bothered the boy. He could be beaten for hours on end and he would rarely make a peep. He'd gone unconcious a few times, but the main driving force that compelled his father to continue the beatings was the unsatisfactory way in which they didn't seem to break Wyatt. Life continued on this way for Wyatt until he reached his 12th year. It was only a few months after his birthday that he felt an itch near his shoulderblades. It itched incessantly for three weeks before he looked in the mirror to find that he had small black feathers growing there.

He was horror struck. He didn't know what to do. His first instict was to tell his mother, but he didn't know what she would do, and he didn't want her to tell his father. The next person his mind turned to was his Grandmother. Nana June was nearly 80, but she was so spry she was often mistaken for someone 20 years younger. She was his father's mother, but he knew that she wouldn't tell. The next day after school, he ran to his grandmother's house and banged on her door. She let him in, knowing from his stricken expression that something was wrong.

"What is it, darling?" He didn't know how to tell her, so he took off his shirt and turned around. The black feathers had sprouted a little more. From the silence behind him, Wyatt thought he'd given his grandmother a stroke or a heart attack. He turned around, pulling his shirt back over his head. His nana had her hand to her mouth. She pulled her hand away to reveal a small smile. She reached out and put her hand on his shoulder, drawing him toward the kitchen table.

Wyatt was bewildered. Nana June went about fixing them a plate of cookies and two tall glasses of milk. She sat down next to him and offered him the plate and a glass. He took it, but didn't think he could choke anything down. He was terrified. "My darling boy. I have something to tell you." She proceeded to tell her only grandson about his grandfather. The man who'd died in the second World War, had also been a mutant. His power had been to control gravity. As a fighter pilot, it saved him from many of the tragedies that befell other pilots from too much g-force. In dives and turns, he could keep his blood from flowing back down into his lower extremities, which kept him from blacking out and potentially crashing.

She went on to explain that his death had been caused by an inflight crash with a Japanese fighter plane. What she didn't know was that he had been using his power to keep one of his buddies aloft long enough to land safely on the ground after a wing had been hit by a missle. With his distraction on his friend, he hadn't seen the Japanese fighter plane headed right for him. The mid-air collision had errupted in a massive fireball that left debris and pieces of plane plummeting to the earth, and Adam Valance no where to be seen. She had a bit of a tear in her eye as she finished telling the tale.

"I think you're a mutant, Wyatt." She told him she would do everything she could to help him. But she told him that he would have to break it to his mother eventually. He wouldn't be able to hide the wings he had growing out of his back from her for long. Eventually, he told his mother, and had nana along to back up his story. He showed her his wings and she cried. They kept it from his father, especially when he discovered that he had pockets in the skin of his back that would hide the wings if he pulled them in. To the kids in his class, Wyatt seemed like a normal human boy. To his sisters, he was still their same passive older brother. And the only change his father discovered was the waning of his interest in planes.

With his own set of wings, Wyatt didn't have to depend up on the clumsy metal machines to get into the air any longer. His father continued to come down on him and his mother continued to coddle him all through his high-school years. His father expected him to join the military after he graduated and become a pilot in the Air Force as he had done and as his father had done before him. Wyatt never argued with the man, but he never went to length to assure his father that he would indeed join the Air Force.

With a final beating after graduating from high school, Wyatt said a tearful goodbye to his mother and left. He didn't know what he was going to do, but he couldn't stand to be around his father any longer. His nana had died a month before her 85th birthday and he felt like he had no one to turn to. Even his sisters were unaware of the abuse he took from their beloved father. He made his way North and ended up in Wyoming, in a small city just outside the Yellowstone National Park.

He found a small one bedroom cabin and kept pretty much to himself. He didn't know anyone, so he bought a computer. He had become pretty good at in school, but with so much time on his hands, he went to the library and borrowed all the books he could find on computers. Pretty soon he had figured out how to hack into certain databases, just for fun, and other more useful things, such as repairing and diagnosing problems. He even became somewhat of an online resource for people having trouble with their computers.

He found a job as maintenance in the park and pretty much had free reign of the place. During one of his routine checks of the park paths, he noticed a dead peregrine falcon at the edge of a rocky cliff. He picked her up and intended to report her to the Rangers. He knew the species was endangered and that the park would want to know about it. But he knew that Peregrine Falcons made their nests high up in the craggy cliff faces and he wanted to check for babies. He set the dead bird back down and launched himself into the air. He found the large nest quickly and found that there was only one baby left. The others had died and he was sure that the mother had been dead for a few days.

Cradling the fluffy baby falcon in his hands, Wyatt took her home with him. He knew if he reported her to the park that they would most likely make sure she was healthy and then release her back into the wild. But Wyatt had become attached and he couldn't bring himself to let her go. Because she was so fluffy and cute, he called her Kitty. She even acted like a cat sometimes, grooming herself, headbutting him, and nipping his fingers. He nursed her back to health and taught her to fly. And in time, he discovered that he could converse with her. Not with words, but with their minds.

From then on, they were inseperable. Wyatt continued to live in his small one bedroom cabin with Kitty, in peace and quiet. That is, until he got the call from his father. Josiah yelled at his son, angry that he was doing "nothing" with his life. He said that his life would improve if only he would join the military. When Wyatt didn't say anything, his father told him that he was worthless. Pulling from the depths of hurt and anger that had grown over the years, Wyatt quietly told his father that he hated him and didn't want to talk to him ever again. And he never did.

It was only two weeks later that he received the call from his mother telling him that Josiah had been killed in a crash while giving one of his lessons. A dull ache started in his stomach and stayed with him, even as he flew to Las Vegas and attended his father's funeral.

Wyatt has the ability to fly. He has wings that are light and fragile and can be hidden in pockets in his back. His wings move at a pace so fast they appear not to move at all. This allows him to fly at an amazing speed. He is also able to phase through solid matter at certain speeds. He can only phase through solid objects for as long as he can hold his breath as he cannot breathe while "inside" an object. While phased he has the ability to resist most attacks and has a high resistance to telepathy. Wyatt shares an empathic connection with Kitty, his falcon. Kitty is a Peregrine Falcon with the ability to fly up to 400 mph.