Nils Anthony

I was an Air Force brat from the day I was born. Dad had joined up a few years prior with full intentions of making a career out of it, and Mum was quite happy to tag along with him. As such, I was born on a base in Greenland, where I spent the first four years of my life, before we moved to Britain, to a base in Suffolk called Mildenhall. My little sister was born there, when I was five. We lived there for three years before we were moved to Germany, where we spent a merry two years before being sent to Italy, for another two years, before getting sent back to Suffolk for five years before we finally got hauled back to the states to a base outside of San Antonio, where we stayed until I hit college, which ended up getting me here, just like Mum and Dad.
Now, they're all in Japan, which Mary, my sister, keeps raving about. I have to admit, although I miss Mum, Dad, and Mary a great deal, I'm a great deal more thankful to not be hauled off all around the world anymore. To be true, College Station isn't exactly a dream home, but it's a nice town, and I think I'll be happy here. It feels surreal to think I'm not about to be rushed off to some unknown location.
I have to admit, my life has taken some rather unusual turns, and my dreams of being a star on the Stage have been pretty well dashed to pieces. Lets face it- no one in the business cares if you can sing and act if you can't dance. And I most assuredly can't. Still, it seems somewhat thrilling to realize that I am free to go in whatever direction I choose. Life has never been more promising than it is today.

(Taken from Nils' first essay in Freshman level Composition.)

Nils' home life has always been if not ideal, at least comfortable. His parents, while a little eccentric, were always loving and supportive of their two children, and were always going out of their way to make the constant moves as smooth as possible for their kids, even going to the trouble of buying them pets and going through the paperwork to make sure they could take them from country to country. In fact, if it weren't for his unique talent, he would easily say he had an ideal childhood. It is hard to make friends when you can read their past off of the toys they share with you. He had a reputation for being nosy and a sneak, growing up, which caused his classmates to conspire against him, since he'd made many of them look bad by sharing his ill gained knowledge. By their move to Germany, when he was seven, he had learned, with the urging of his supportive but confused family, that the best idea is not to share what you've learned unless it's important. After that, he discovered he made friends quickly and well, his natural charm finally managing to come into its own. His natural taste for the dramatic led him to get involved in theater when they moved to Italy, where he discovered the charms of the limelight. By the time they moved back to Suffolk he was such a changed individual that many of his old classmates did not recognize him.
It was around the puberty mark that things started getting complicated again. When his classmates were starting to get crushes and date, he found himself very little interested in the pretty girls his male friends swore by, and instead found himself lusting after the boys of his class. Mary became his confidante in these matters he wasn't sure if he could trust to his parents, and to this day she is still delighted by every new boy he dates.
His parents weren't unobservant, however, and they encouraged him the best they could without letting on they knew. They were just relieved at every day that went without weirdness, between his psychometry and his sister's telekinesis. John and Lucy loved their children, but they couldn't claim to understand them. They were both Texas born and bred, whose conservative upbringing was constantly at war with their desire to do right by their talented but unusual children.
They were both very relieved when they were sent back to Texas in time for Nils to attend college there. They felt much safer leaving him somewhere they were familiar with than at a school in another country they'd never even heard of until they got there. They were the ones responsible for talking Nils out of going back to England for college.
Nils spent much of his high school career trying to break into the theater world, with little success. A particularly humiliating failure at a Rent audition caused him to switch gears, and after a semester as an English student he fell in love with Philosophy. He'd been searching for answers on that score for as long as he could remember, being unable to reconcile his psychometry with the world around him. He still remained active with the drama department, and became well established in the gay community in College Station.
Junior year he met Aimee and Connie in French class, and he befriended Aimee when she came to class wearing motorcycle leathers. They bonded over bike talk, and it wasn't long before he was playing matchmaker for her and Connie. Or at least, trying. In fact he probably did little to nothing to encourage the two girls to get together, but even so he couldn't be happier that his two best friends have such a wonderful life together.
They got him to start gaming, and that circle has become his family here here in the US.
Chrys' death hit him hard, and he's willing to do anything to get to the bottom of it, even though he's coming to realize that no matter how deep his friendship is with the rest of the group, there's a very real chance he may lose one or more of them by the end of it. Ronnie's blatant rejection of him is very hard to deal with, but he's glad at least that the rest of the group now seems willing to listen.
At least this new boy he found promises a pleasant distraction when the facts get too much to deal with.