insert fancy title here | Third's Character Storage

[amithethird]

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━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

full name: Castor Redmorn. Most use the
formal "sire" or "your majesty" but his close friends just
call him Cas.
age: 25
gender: male (cis)
sexuality: bisexual probably, but he hasn't given
it much thought. Look he has worse problems right now.
role: the king

appearance: Pale, tall, and stately, Cas cuts an
imposing figure if you don't look too closely. If you do,
you'll notice the dark circles under his eyes, his often
stiff movements, and the ghosts of bruises decorating
his arms and hands. He wears long sleeves, keeps his
public appearances short and from a distance, and
generally tries not to stress himself out, but he can't
hide all the marks his illness leaves.

━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

𝕴𝖋 𝕴 𝖘𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖉𝖎𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝕴 𝖜𝖆𝖐𝖊,

𝖙𝖍𝖊𝖓 𝕴 𝖜𝖔𝖚𝖑𝖉 𝖉𝖎𝖊 𝖎𝖓 𝖛𝖆𝖎𝖓,

𝖋𝖔𝖗𝖊𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖒𝖔𝖗𝖊 𝖗𝖊𝖒𝖊𝖒𝖇𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖉

𝖆𝖘 𝖆 𝖐𝖎𝖓𝖌 𝖜𝖎𝖙𝖍𝖔𝖚𝖙 𝖆 𝖓𝖆𝖒𝖊.

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personality
fair-minded, honest, compassionate, humble
stubborn, trusting, curious, affectionate
dense, self-doubting, fool-hardy, unimaginative

By all accounts, Castor is a friendly, likeable person. He grew up learning how to get on anyone's good side within a matter of minutes, and over the years, he's found he just genuinely likes other people. He likes hearing what they have to say, learning about their lives, and making them smile. He likes to think most people are good and expects them to behave honestly, which can be both a benefit and a curse depending on who he's dealing with. He's not the most clever person in the realm, truthfully, and it takes effort for him to realize when people are deceiving him and act accordingly. Being harsh and domineering doesn't come naturally to him, though he does have a stubborn streak. He's not willfully defiant - he just thinks what he thinks and it can be difficult to persuade him otherwise. And though he's loathe to put the lives of others in danger, he doesn't always think things through when it comes to his own safety. That too is a skill he's had to perfect. Dealing with his illness is a constant challenge for him, and it's humbled him to the point of insecurity. He's not confident that he's the right person to be leading his people, because a king should be a symbol of strength and a constant, reassuring presence, which he is not. The best compromise he and his court have found is to hide his illness from his people. Lying about his own health is one of the few times you'll catch him being dishonest. However, despite his doubts in himself, he does know one thing: he may not be healthy, but he does know how to run a government, and he's not about to let someone who doesn't know the first thing about being a leader take over his kingdom. He is not going to let his father win by failing.

reputation
Cas rarely shows his face in public, and most interaction with the public is handled by his attendant who is tasked with delivering news and decrees to the people. It's a safeguard put in place to keep the public from learning about his illness, but also to keep him away from stressful environments that could trigger an episode. Because of this, many people regard him with unease. Those most disillusioned with the monarchy have gone so far as to circulate conspiracy theories that the prince actually died a long time ago, and now the government is being run by corrupt puppeteers.

━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

history
Cas was born a sickly child, plagued by frequent fevers and bleeding episodes. He couldn't play outside with other kids in the court because his mother feared he'd hurt himself, and his father was plagued by fears that he would die before he turned five. Afraid his wife would give him another sickly child, the king had an affair with a bar maid as insurance for when his firstborn inevitably died. However, Cas made it to his fifth birthday, and his tenth, and his fifteenth, and when he was sixteen, he all but begged his father to finally start teaching him what he needed to know for when he inherited the throne. Their relationship was always strained, to the point where his father treated him as if they weren't even related. There was never any affection in their relationship. Everything was a formality, and nothing Cas did was ever good enough for his father. Despite this, he found it difficult to hate him outright, but he resented the man's treatment of him right up until the day he died.

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illness
Castor's primary problem is the fact that when he starts
bleeding, it takes a long time for it to stop. This leads to all
kinds of secondary complications that make his life difficult.
Fatigue, joint pain, and frequent bruising are the easiest to
deal with, but other symptoms are far more serious. Too much
stress or activity can lead to spontaneous bleeding episodes,
often heralded by sudden dizziness or a nosebleed. Sometimes
the impact of them can be lessened if they're caught in time,
but there's no real treatment besides rest.
Cas knows he has to be careful not to do anything that might
get himself hurt or trigger an episode, as one day he's sure
that'll prove fatal, and most of the time he is. However, he gets
restless being confined to the palace all the time, so he sneaks
out from time to time. It's fairly easy to get around unrecognized
since he doesn't go out in public as The King of Baazing Zee very
often, and when he does he's always dressed up. It's been said he
looks like a totally different person with his hair slicked back.

━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

𝖄𝖔𝖚 𝖐𝖓𝖔𝖜 𝕴'𝖒 𝖑𝖎𝖐𝖊 𝖆 𝖌𝖍𝖔𝖘𝖙,
𝖘𝖔𝖒𝖊𝖙𝖎𝖒𝖊𝖘 𝕴 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖋𝖆𝖉𝖊.

𝕬𝖓𝖉 𝖎𝖙 𝖍𝖆𝖚𝖓𝖙𝖘 𝖒𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖆𝖙
𝕴 𝖍𝖆𝖛𝖊 𝖙𝖔 𝖇𝖊 𝖙𝖍𝖎𝖘 𝖜𝖆𝖞.

𝖄𝖔𝖚 𝖘𝖆𝖞 𝖎𝖙'𝖘 𝖌𝖔𝖓𝖊 𝖈𝖔𝖑𝖉,
𝕴 𝖘𝖆𝖞 𝕴'𝖑𝖑 𝖉𝖔 𝖇𝖊𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗.

𝕭𝖚𝖙 𝕴 𝖆𝖑𝖜𝖆𝖞𝖘 𝖘𝖊𝖊𝖒 𝖙𝖔
𝖉𝖎𝖘𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖊𝖆𝖗 𝖆𝖌𝖆𝖎𝖓.

━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

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friends: ☀
positive: ✩
neutral: ☯
complicated: ∅
negative: ☁
enemies: ☢
romantic interest: ➵
family: ♠

━━━━━━ ♚ ━━━━━━

the king's attendant, saewon agawa: ✩
He feels indebted to Saewon for his loyalty, and he puts a great deal of trust in him. Sae has taken care of him for a very long time, taking on duties he shouldn't have had to and performing them well. He has no idea about Sae's curse, or his relationship with Nori. He does have his suspicions that Sae isn't nearly as soft or meek as he pretends to be, but that doesn't bother him, and he certainly would never expect him to betray him.

the right-hand man, aurelius d'artagnan: ☀
They've been best friends since they were young, and Cas has put Aurelius through the wringer over the years. Cas has always gotten himself into trouble, some of which Aurelius has had to pay for. That happened more often when they were children, and as an adult Cas tries to keep his bad decisions from getting anyone else in trouble. That doesn't do much for Aurelius, though, as he's committed to keeping his friend safe (even if it's just from himself.) None of Cas's exploits escape Aurelius's notice. Cas appreciates that Aurelius has always been there for him, and he especially appreciates that his friend doesn't treat him like he's made of glass. There's a big difference between just looking out for him and trying to micromanage his life at the slightest hint of danger. Cas sometimes feels guilty about worrying Aurelius constantly, and that guilt has only gotten worse recently. He has his suspicions about his friend's feelings for Rosaria, but he can't just give them his blessing and back off. In his mind his reasons are purely selfish and political, but his fear of what would happen if he broke off his and Rosaria's engagement has prevented him from doing what he considers to be the right thing.

the cook, ismene adair: ✩
Ismene is a delight to have around the palace, and no meal is ever boring with her around. He's somewhat embarrassed about the affection she shows him, but he can get over it for a good conversation. She's one of the many people around the palace who he enjoys talking to just to hear stories of the outside world and of what other people's lives are like. Anyone who's well traveled is automatically fascinating to him.

the gardener, rhoswen sireli: ∅
Cas's relationship with Rho is complicated in the sense that he would like to befriend her, but she is not making it easy. He can't help but feel bad that she's intimidated by him, and he feels worse for bothering her all the time, so he tries very hard not to overstep her boundaries. It's driving him crazy, though, trying to act so professional, and the fact that she hasn't been immediately taken in by his charms is frustrating, yet oddly fascinating.

the lady of the court, rosaria irving: ☀
They've been friends since they were children, and she's someone he feels he can trust implicitly. He's confided many of his doubts and fears in her, and so far she hasn't given him a reason to think she'll use those against him. She's also the only person he could pull of a scheme as insane as a fraudulent engagement with. Before his father died, Cas was feeling the pressure to get himself a wife already, and he knew that would only get worse. Afraid that no other woman would be as understanding about his desire not to have children, he proposed a deal to Rosaria: they could just pretend to get engaged for now, and when his father finally died, they could figure out their plan then. Unfortunately for them, the old king died sooner than expected, and they realized now they would be expected to get married. They've been pushing off the wedding for a couple years now, coming up with excuses to buy them time, though by now, Cas feels pretty resigned to his fate, and most of his energy has been put towards trying to find some kind of loophole that will allow him to appoint an heir who isn't a blood relative. Rosaria's suggestions are a lot more...crafty, and he's not positive lying to everyone further is a good idea. It's something they have yet to talk about fully, as it's much easier just to pretend it's not a problem and carry on with their lives.

the illegitimate heir, kenji hagihara: ☢ / ∅
Cas's feelings about his half-brother are complicated to say the least, and a lot of his feelings about their father have gotten mixed up in how he feels about Kenji. He resents his father for having the affair and for not having any faith in his ability to run a kingdom, so he resents Kenji's existence by default. He doesn't think Kenji can run the kingdom better than he can, even if he is perfectly healthy. Kenji doesn't have the experience or the education needed, and he's not going to let him take over. However as time goes on, he starts to see Kenji as another victim of their father's neglect, which complicates his feelings about how he ought to deal with him and his bid for the throne.

the heir's right-hand man, noriyaki hideyoshi: ☯
They've never met knowing full well who the other is. Cas once met Nori during one of his secret trips into town and talked to him a long time about swordsmanship, a subject that Cas has always found interesting since he was never allowed to truly get good at it himself. At the time he thought Nori seemed like an interesting, respectable person, and he'd be surprised to learn of his involvement with the rebellion.

the spy, crina vasile: ✩
Crina was hired as an entertainer before Cas took the throne, and he took a liking to her, so now she comes by the palace to perform somewhat regularly. He thinks she's a delightful, fascinating person with real talent, and he likes asking her questions about her family and her travels. She's also one of the few people outside his regular court who knows about his illness. Shortly after his coronation, he decided he needed to get out for a while, and he ran into her as she was leaving to work her job at a local tavern. He asked if he could tag along, and well, how could she say no? She'd suspected for some time that something was wrong with him, but that night confirmed it for her when he nearly passed out in the tavern. He asked her not to say anything about it to anyone. At the time he was more worried about her telling his attendant that he'd snuck out and narrowly avoided having another episode, and it hasn't even crossed his mind that she might have told someone else...

the barkeep, valka shieldcutter: ☯
They've also never met knowing who the other was. Cas has been in her bar a few times and knows her as the mysterious, angry barkeep. They've never had a very long conversation, as she's not one to shoot the breeze with customers.

the doctor, hecate: ☯ : ✩ / ∅
They're never met, as they've never had cause to. Doctors are the one place he doesn't frequent in town, as he has his own physician in the palace.
future: Despite her sharp tongue, he finds Hecate to be an enjoyable person to be around. She's smart and compassionate, and of course he can't help but feel grateful for everything she's done to help him. He's not aware of her involvement with the rebellion, but if he were, he'd be very confused by it. Hecate has always treated him with kindness, and she knows full well who he is. So if she's on the opposing side, why would she save his life? Why not just let him die or even kill him herself? She's far more complicated than he thought.

the bounty hunter, shouta fujimori:

[amithethird]

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𝐌𝐲 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬
𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐬
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐚𝐧𝐬
𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲.

𝐒𝐨 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐯𝐲 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭
𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐠𝐮𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐠𝐠𝐞𝐫
𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞
𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭
𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐲
𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲.

𝐌𝐲 𝐰𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐞 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞,
𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐚 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐫
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐟𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐞!

𝐏𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰
𝐦𝐲 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬
𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐦𝐨𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝
𝐨𝐧𝐥𝐲 𝐛𝐲
𝐞𝐧𝐯𝐲!

𝐈 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐚
𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐲!

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞
𝐚𝐫𝐭!

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐤
𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐝𝐚𝐲
𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐧𝐞𝐚𝐫
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐟𝐚𝐫!

𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞
𝐡𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨!

𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭
𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞.

𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐛𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮.

𝐈 𝐚𝐥𝐰𝐚𝐲𝐬 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰
𝐈 𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐨𝐧𝐞,
𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞
𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐥𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐩𝐚𝐢𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐛𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐬𝐜𝐨𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐛𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐞
𝐬𝐮𝐧.

𝐎𝐟 𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐛𝐥𝐞 𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐬
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐧 𝐨𝐟 𝐭𝐡𝐞
𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐞𝐱,
𝐦𝐲 𝐧𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐢𝐬 𝐁𝐫𝐮𝐭𝐮𝐬
𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞
𝐑𝐞𝐱.
_________________________

playlist:
Brutus - The Buttress
Ouija - Harley Poe
Killer In The Mirror - Set It Off
Bloody Nose - Jack Conte
KITTYHAWK - Ki:Theory
Honey I'm Home - GHOST
_________________________

trivia

- She's actually spent very little time
in the world outside the prison or the cult's compound,
so she's easily fascinated by little things, which she
approaches with child-like curiosity.

- She's never had anything you could call a "hobby."
So in prison she took the time to learn how to do
a bunch of random stuff like sketching and knitting.

- She also worked out a lot in prison. She's a lot
stronger than she looks.

- Time in solitary confinement stole her voice from her,
and sometimes she wonders if she even remembers how
to speak normally anymore.
_________________________
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given name: genevieve hanna gates
goes by: gate
also answers to: gehenna, inmate
age: 23
gender: nonbinary (answers to she/her or they/them)
sexuality: pansexual
role: inmate 2, the mad magus

________◈________

appearance
Gate used to have mouse brown hair and brown eyes, but her experiences with spirits and other supernatural energies has bleached the color from her. Standing at 5’5”, she’s not a particularly imposing figure, and she often looks distracted. She wears mostly dark colors and simple, comfy clothes that swallow her up (sweaters, turtlenecks, etc.)

________◈________

abilities
suppressed: Her connection to the astral plane and thus the beings that exist on it has been dampened by the prison guards so that she’s not a threat to anyone. Instead of the destructive displays of psychic power she’s know for, she can only use minor telepathy to speak to others, and some telekinesis to lift and move small objects. However, just because she’s less of a danger to others, that doesn’t mean she’s no longer a danger to herself. She’s still a conduit for the spirits beyond the veil. The only difference is that now she can’t easily draw on the energy of the astral plane to defend herself against unwanted influences, and she’s frequently plagued by voices, visions, and nightmares that scramble her brain.

unsuppressed: When she possesses all her faculties, Gate is a master at using the power of other beings for her own gain. She herself is only capable of minor psychic feats, but when she lets a spirit share her body, she’s capable of far more destruction. It just depends on which spirit she’s communing with at any given time. She can’t have more than one spirit possess her at a time, though. Otherwise the strain would be too much. There’s always a chance she can lose control of a particular spirit, and some are more dangerous than others, but she has some kind of understanding with most, even if they don’t necessarily like each other.

These are the spirits she mainly communes with:
Gereon
A sly, cruel specter whose talents lie in getting into people's heads. The oldest.

Aldebrand
A temperamental spirit and the most dangerous. Immense telekinetic power.

Quiris
A sentient weapon who takes the form of a bardiche (a type of bladed polearm.)

________◈________

personality
pos traits: observant, intelligent, adaptable
neutral traits: ambitious, reserved, delusional
neg traits: arrogant, ruthless, unprincipled

Gate seems like the kind of person who would be level-headed and logical. She's quiet and thoughtful, and she's always watching everything, taking it all in and keeping extensive mental notes. In reality, it doesn't take much to push her over the edge. She's emotional and unpredictable, often motivated by whims that may not make sense and may not even be her own. She doesn't know what she wants to do with her life anymore, but she does know that she's not content to fade into the background forever. Maybe she'll fail the rehabilitation program and return to her cruel ways, or maybe she'll redeem herself, but either way she's determined not to be a nobody. The only thing standing in her way is her own mind. Tormented by guilt and the murmurs of spirits, it's hard for her to sort out her own thoughts sometimes, and she's often easily distracted, especially nowadays since she finds it more difficult to actively ignore the things going on in her head.

________◈________

personal history

Gate was raised in a cult. There's really no way around that. Her people prayed to the spirits from beyond the veil, believing that their leader had been given special power by these beings. The truth of the matter wasn't far off. Their leader may not have garnered favor with the spirits, but he was definitely drawing power from them, and as time wore on, he became more and more powerful, performing terrible feats of magic to keep the authorities from breaching their compound. He unleashed hell upon all who would oppose them, and they called him Gehenna.

Gate was this man's child, and she had a twin brother named Gideon. They both knew it would be up to them to carry on their father's legacy, but it wasn't clear who his position would ultimately go to. The spirits could only talk to one of them, or so they were told, and so there was always an unspoken tension between them. When they were both 18, their father unexpectedly became ill. Whether it was a natural human illness, or a sign of something more sinister, no one could say for sure. Either way, it didn't matter. No one could save him, and he died, leaving governance of the cult and all his immense power to his children. Specifically, his son.

Gideon was ill-prepared for this responsibility, and he begged Gate for help frequently. She always agreed - it was her brother after all - but as time went on, she felt more and more resentful. She's studied the arcane her entire life, working hard to commune with spirits and see beyond the veil to prepare herself for the day she'd inherit her father's power, and it had all been for nothing. Instead her idiot brother had the power, and he couldn't even use it properly. This wound festered for a couple years and she was constantly pulled between her love and loyalty to her brother and her resentment and ambition. Eventually, the latter won out.

When she was 20, the cult was threatened again by the government, and they learned of a plan to raid the compound. Their followers begged Gideon to do something, show their strength and drive the feds away with his power, but he hesitated. He couldn't make a decision, and time was running out. So Gate made a decision for him. She challenged his authority publicly, and in cold blood she killed him in front of everyone else. Immediately their followers deferred to her, and thus she took the title of Gehenna for herself.

It wouldn't last. Though she was more decisive and ruthless than her brother, she was still young and inexperienced, and ultimately, the raid succeeded. Every last person was arrested, herself included, and she was locked up under maximum security until they could figure out how to contain her.

What she did to her brother haunts her, and her three years in lockdown have turned her timid, shell-shocked, and silent.

________◈________

_________________________
_________________________

_________________________

𝐍𝐨𝐰 𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰
𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐧𝐨 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭.
𝐈 𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐬.
𝐓𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈'𝐦 𝐜𝐮𝐭𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐚𝐭.
𝐈 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐠𝐨𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐝.
𝐅𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐰𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬.
𝐋𝐞𝐭 𝐰𝐞𝐚𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐬𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐞𝐚𝐫.
𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐛𝐮𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞.
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐞𝐫 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐨𝐫.
_________________________

additional trivia:

-
_________________________
_________________________

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friends: ☀
positive: ✩
neutral: ☯
negative: ☁
enemies: ☢
romantic interest: ➵

________◈________

the spirits
Gate doesn't necessarily trust any of them by nature of what they are, but she's on relatively good terms with the main three she contacts.

Gereon: ☯
They don't trust each other and he tends to play mind games with her, but in the end they both have similar goals.

Aldebrand: ☯
Keeps the closest eye on him, but doesn't worry about him manipulating her. His desires are simple, if not dangerous.

Quiris: ☀
Dependable and quiet, the weapon has never let her down.

________◈________

the inmates

0, akuma: ✩
Gate knows a leader when she sees one, and Akuma ticks all those boxes. She knows what he's here for, and truthfully she's impressed. She also wants to make sure that he knows she's not admiring his work because she's a groupie. She admires him because she almost was him. She's made it clear that she's not scared of him, and they get along pretty well.

1, the wolfman's prodigy: ?

3, norizaki: ?

4, nyx: ✩
Very curious about her. She and Nyx seem to share some abilities, and she can't help but wonder how the girl ended up with them. Nyx also treats her with kindness, and well, Gate's been alone and losing her mind for so long...

5, the sanguinare: ?


the handlers

1, the operations coordinator: ?

2, kane: ☁
They butt heads more than you might expect. Something about his attitude just pushes her buttons. Maybe it's the fact that he doesn't seem to be even a little scared of her, or maybe it's because he's so harsh with her, but either way, she doesn't appreciate his presence, and they get along best when they don't have to speak to each other.

3, kiyoko: ☁
Kiyoko is too much like how Gate was back before the compound was raided, and that's terrifying to her. She knows what the handler could do to her, being so ruthless and having her under her thumb. How could she not? She knows what she herself used to be capable of, after all.

4, the combat specialist: ?

5, the resident supernatural expert: ?

6, the newbie: ?

[reynard]

(lol maybe one day I'll code this if I'm feeling fancy)


▌>𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚎 >𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚠 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎 >𝚊𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚔
▌
▌
▌> 𝙻𝚒𝚎𝚞𝚝𝚎𝚗𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝙰𝚛𝚝𝚎𝚖𝚢 𝙵𝚊𝚕𝚔, 𝚄𝚂𝙽
▌> 𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚎 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎: 𝚁𝚎𝚍
▌
▌> 𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚕𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚕: 𝟷
▌> 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔: 𝚌𝚊𝚙𝚝𝚊𝚒𝚗
▌
▌> 𝙳𝙾𝙱: 𝟶𝟺/𝟶𝟼/𝟷𝟿𝟿𝟹 (𝟸𝟾 𝚢𝚛𝚜)
▌> 𝚜𝚎𝚡: 𝙼
▌> 𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝: 𝟻'𝟷𝟷"
▌> 𝚠𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝: 𝟷𝟼𝟶𝚕𝚋𝚜
▌
▌> 𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚜: 𝙰𝚛𝚝, 𝙰𝚛𝚝𝚢
▌> 𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢: 𝙰𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚗
▌> 𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜: 𝙴𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑, 𝙹𝚊𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚎, 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚎
▌> 𝚚𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜: 𝚋𝚊𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚕𝚘𝚛'𝚜 𝚍𝚎𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚎 𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚎𝚛𝚘𝚜𝚙𝚊𝚌𝚎 𝚎𝚗𝚐𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐
▌> (𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚝𝚎𝚍 𝚂𝚝𝚊𝚝𝚎𝚜 𝙽𝚊𝚟𝚊𝚕 𝙰𝚌𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚖𝚢), 𝚗𝚊𝚟𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚊𝚝𝚘𝚛 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚄.𝚂. 𝙽𝚊𝚟𝚢
▌
▌>𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚊
▌>𝚜𝚎𝚡𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢: 𝚋𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚡𝚞𝚊𝚕
▌>𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚛: 𝚋𝚕𝚞𝚎 (𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚎 𝚏𝚞𝚗 𝚘𝚏 𝚖𝚎)
▌>𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚍: 𝚍𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚎𝚛 𝚌𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚝?
▌
▌
▌> 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎?
▌
▌𝚎𝚡𝚌𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚝 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚙𝚛𝚎-𝚍𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠:
▌"Which is all well and good, of course."
▌-laughter-
▌"But you know, there's a time to have fun - to stop and just breathe in the fact that
▌you're gonna to be among the first people to see a new planet - and there's a time to be
▌serious, you know? And that's my job. I'm the, uh, the serious one."
▌-laughter-
▌"Uh, is anyone else gonna be listenin' to these interviews?"
▌-indistinct response-
▌"Oh, they're gonna make fun of me."
▌-laughter-
▌"But seriously, as the captain I'm the one who has to make the snap decisions if
▌something goes wrong. I have to keep us all on course. And that's a lot of pressure for
▌one person, and especially for me. Because I, uh...I do hold myself responsible for all
▌of these people and their lives. I do take my job very seriously. If anything goes wrong,
▌that's...that's on me, you know? And I know and you know that we're all a team. That
▌if something goes wrong, it's likely not gonna be any one person's fault.
▌"But still, I'm the captain. And these people are my responsibility. So even if it's no
▌one's fault, if something goes wrong...it's still mine, you know?"


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
charismatic, responsible, affectionate, funny
light-hearted, adventurous, calculating, independent
emotionally manipulative, avoidant, cynical, messiah complex

Arty has a layered personality, and it can be very hard to uncover those layers. On the surface, he's a very charming individual who wins people over fairly easily with his humor and concern for others. He's often checking in with his crewmates to make sure they're doing ok, and for him, that's just as important as making sure the engines are working. The crew is, in a sense, his machine to maintain, and he takes that job very seriously because he genuinely cares about everyone under his command. However, that mindset does lend itself well to seeing people as puzzles to be manipulated.
Art is very good at social games, and he'll say whatever he needs to in any given situation to make things go smoothly. He knows it's disingenuous and fake, but who isn't a little fake? Who doesn't put on different faces for different people? It doesn't matter whether he likes it or not, it's just reality. So if it means he can diffuse tension between his crewmates or resolve a conflict, he'll be as light or as serious as he needs to be. Being tasked with a job like that is probably the only time you'll catch him being serious.
Art doesn't like talking about himself or his feelings, and he'll go out of his way to deflect questions about himself. He's not a big fan of all those dark, scary emotions he knows are lurking under the veneer of levity, and if it were up to him, they would never come to the surface. It's not that his humor or compassion are always fake, necessarily, it's just that the light-hearted Team Dad is who he wants to be. Not the cynical, frightened person he keeps on lockdown.(edited)
[10:30 PM]
Art feels as if he has to keep himself constantly moving towards some new adventure - thinking about the future and calculating all the steps needed to get there - so he doesn't have to think about the past or present. He's very good at planning ahead in that respect, but it does mean things tend to get bottled up and pushed down, crystallizing like a diamond until those unpleasant feelings are much worse than they would have been if he'd just dealt with them.
So what keeps a person like him up at night? Or rather, what would keep him up if he let it? The truth is, even though he loves people as individuals, he doesn't feel quiet as positively about the human race as a whole. He thinks humans are greedy, destructive creatures who will always hurt each other in the end. He wants to believe that humanity can do better, but as the years have gone by, he can't see much evidence in favor of that. But he wants to believe things can change, so he tries to entertain that cynicism as little as possible and instead puts his efforts into taking care of individuals. Individual people are the only exception to the rule as far as he's seen.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━



━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Art has always been an adventurous person. He's always wanted to be in the center of the action, doing the things that no one else has the guts to. As a child he had a reckless streak that his parents did their best to curb, but they didn't want to inadvertently squash his curiosity about the world, so they did their best to compromise. They took Arty to all kinds of community events, museums, and career fairs as a kid, and after taking him to an air show where the Blue Angels performed, he became fixated on the idea of becoming a pilot. The idea of flying above the Earth where you could see everything, and from a perspective that people on the ground would never get to see, pulling maneuvers more thrilling and dangerous than anything a rollercoaster could offer, excited him like nothing else.
When he was little he wanted to fly fighter planes, but as he got older he decided he didn't particularly care about how dangerous an aircraft was so long as he got to fly at all. Commercial plane, fighter jet, helicopter - so long as he was able to get in the air he would fly any of them. So as you can imagine, it took all of five minutes for the military to recruit him when he graduated high school.
He went to school at the United States Naval Academy where he earned a four year degree in engineering, and from there he went on to the Navy's pilot program. He excelled in his training and fell in love with flying helicopters in particular. When it was time to start his tour of duty, he was made a junior lieutenant, put in command of a helicopter crew, and assigned to the USS Harry S. Truman.(edited)
[7:23 AM]
Art served as a helicopter pilot for four years, flying search and rescue missions, supply drops, and recon, and he saw his share of [removed] during his time. The flight deck of an aircraft carrier is a dangerous place, and there were plenty of times where it was his crew picking up men blown off the deck by jets. And those were the lucky ones. In addition to the normal hazards of working on an aircraft carrier, he also saw his fair share of combat when the Truman was deployed to the Mediterranean. After her tour was done, he was reassigned to the USS Carl Vinson and deployed to the Pacific.
Though recon could be dangerous, it was always the search and rescue missions that got to him most, especially when those missions went from rescue to recovery. After four years of watching his crewmates get taken out by bad luck, dragging bodies out of the desert, and enduring the [removed] of politics, he decided enough might be enough.
To say that transitioning from military to civilian life was tough is misleading, because by all accounts he never really achieved that transition. He floundered for a year, trying to decide what the hell he was supposed to do now, and every time he thought he had it figured out something fell through or someone dropped the ball and left him stranded again. Sleepless nights became the new norm, the service's promises of helping him reintegrate into society fell flat, and now that he was on the outside looking in, he began to see the kinds of people he'd been working for all these years for who they really were. The suspicions he'd had at the tail end of his service, that the brass didn't really care what kind of [removed] they threw their people into so long as they profited, were all correct. He began having nightmares about the missions he'd flown, and he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he and everyone he'd ever cared about were just one step away from being snuffed out in the name of senseless violence disguised as patriotism and progress.(edited)
[7:23 AM]
After a year of fruitless job hunting and watching the world grow more and more corrupt and chaotic, one of his connections finally came through. Someone had talked up his success as a lieutenant to NASA, and he was given the opportunity to try out for their astronaut program. Specifically, they were interested in seeing if he was a good fit for a new space mission NASA and several other space programs were helming, the likes of which humanity had never tried before.
Art's experience commanding a crew and piloting aircraft quickly put him in contention for the captain's position, and when he learned he'd been selected, he was more excited than he'd been in years. He felt like a little kid again, and as the day grew nearer that he and his new crew were set to launch, his thirst for adventure was rekindled, and he remembered why he became a pilot in the first place. Despite everything, he actually felt hopeful again that he could do something with his life that didn't feel completely meaningless.(edited)
[7:23 AM]
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━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- A Handy Guide To Art's PTSD:
- His worst symptom is insomnia and recurring nightmares. The insomnia is often a
result of his desire not to dream. Before he joined up with NASA, he would self
medicate with alcohol or sleep aids to try and sleep without dreams, and afterwards
he tried to turn to more healthy coping mechanisms to achieve deeper sleep, knowing
it would be noticeable if he used his usual methods.
- Though it hasn't happened in over a year, during the year after he left the service, he
would sometimes sleepwalk. Most of the time nothing serious happened, but during
the worst incident he can recall, he tried to break into his neighbor's apartment and
the police were called. They didn't file a report when they realized what was going on,
hence it not appearing in his background check.
- Other symptoms: He tends to be more high-strung than other people, and if he's
having a bad day he's easily startled. His cynicism and need to protect the people
around him would also be classified as symptoms, as would his avoidance of talking
or thinking about his trauma

- Though he definitely should have in the year between the end of his military service and the beginning of his astronaut training, Art has never gotten his PTSD diagnosed. He always insisted he could handle it, and after he joined up with NASA, he actually was for the most part. He managed to keep his symptoms from noticeably impacting his job, doing what he had to just to keep them down to a manageable level. On the outside he's confident that he can keep this going through their mission, that he's figured it out, but deep down he's not sure what's going to happen if the stress really starts to pile on.

- Picked up Japanese and some Chinese while on the Vinson. Fully committed to learning Mandarin after joining NASA given how many astronauts are Chinese.

- From Texas. Hates snow.

[amithethird]

(rip the white fontmeme text that only works on discord lmao)



▌>𝚍𝚊𝚝𝚊 𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚎𝚟𝚎 >𝚌𝚛𝚎𝚠 𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚎 >𝚓𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚗
▌
▌
▌> 𝙹𝚒𝚊𝚗 𝙲𝚑𝚎𝚗
▌> 𝚌𝚘𝚍𝚎 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎: 𝚆𝚑𝚒𝚝𝚎
▌
▌> 𝚌𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚕𝚎𝚟𝚎𝚕: 𝟸
▌> 𝚛𝚊𝚗𝚔: 𝚖𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌
▌
▌> 𝙳𝙾𝙱: 𝟷𝟷/𝟸𝟻/𝟷𝟿𝟿𝟶 (𝟹𝟷 𝚢𝚛𝚜)
▌> 𝚜𝚎𝚡: 𝙼
▌> 𝚑𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝: 𝟻'𝟾"
▌> 𝚠𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝: 𝟷𝟺𝟶𝚕𝚋𝚜
▌
▌> 𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚊𝚜𝚎𝚜: 𝚗𝚘𝚗𝚎
▌> 𝚗𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢: 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚎
▌> 𝚕𝚊𝚗𝚐𝚞𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚜: 𝙼𝚊𝚗𝚍𝚊𝚛𝚒𝚗 𝙲𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚎𝚜𝚎, 𝙴𝚗𝚐𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚑
▌> 𝚚𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚏𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚜: 𝙳𝚘𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛 𝚘𝚏 𝙼𝚎𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚎 (𝙹𝚘𝚑𝚗𝚜 𝙷𝚘𝚙𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚜
▌> 𝚄𝚗𝚒𝚟𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚢)
▌
▌>𝚝𝚛𝚒𝚟𝚒𝚊
▌>𝚜𝚎𝚡𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢: 𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚜𝚎𝚡𝚞𝚊𝚕
▌>𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚘𝚛: 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚎𝚗
▌>𝚏𝚊𝚟𝚘𝚛𝚒𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚍: 𝚜𝚑𝚛𝚒𝚖𝚙
▌
▌
▌> 𝚌𝚘𝚗𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚞𝚎?
▌
▌𝚎𝚡𝚌𝚎𝚛𝚙𝚝 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚙𝚛𝚎-𝚍𝚎𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚎 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠:
▌"Oh yes, my family is beyond proud, though I do feel bad for my younger sister."
▌-quiet laughter-
▌"She is never going to hear the end of it. Nothing she does is ever going to be good
▌enough now. 'Well your brother is a doctor and an astronaut, you can aim higher
▌than a vet tech.' I hope she doesn't resent me for that."
▌-indistinct question-
▌"Well, now, I'm not entirely sure how to answer that question. Because I don't know
▌what we'll see until we get there. We have no way of knowing what alien life is going
▌to be like, no matter how much we think we know what to expect. There are theories
▌that there could be alien life that isn't even carbon based. It's theorized that silicon
▌could also be a suitable atomic building block because of how many valence electrons
▌it has in its outer shell, which is the same number as carbon.
▌"I'm going to cut myself off now before I get too far ahead of myself. You don't care
▌about carbon, after all.
▌"But regardless of what we find, I'm very excited by the possibilities. Though figuring
▌out how to keep all of my crewmates alive on a completely foreign planet is going to
▌be a challenge. I can only hope that what we find isn't too different from Earth. I don't
▌have a doctorate in treating silicon based life-forms."
▌-quiet laughter-


━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
reliable, intelligent, adaptable, resourceful
quiet, sarcastic, deep thinker, methodical
impatient, passive, anxious, insecure

Jian is having his midlife crisis a tad early. Not that you'd necessarily notice that just by talking to him. He's a very unobtrusive person who aims to make as few waves as possible in any given social situation. He's not shy, necessarily; he's just often preoccupied by whatever is going on in his own head. It's rare for him not to be thinking about something, be it an interesting scientific question, some philosophical musing about the universe, or simply a spiral of his own anxious thoughts. Another thing you wouldn't necessarily be able to tell just from talking to him: he's almost always anxious about something.
Jian has put a lot of effort into constructing a well-rounded, respectable face to present to others. On the outside he's always calm, rational, and dedicated to doing whatever task he's been given with methodical precision. In reality, he's fueled by stress, which becomes very apparent when he's put under pressure. The steadiness he projects disappears, and he becomes an easily irritated, impatient ball of nerves. It's also one of the few times you'll find him taking charge of a situation, though that looks less like leadership and more like him telling everyone to get out of his way so he can concentrate. Then as soon as the crisis passes, he'll be back to his usual quiet, smiling self.(edited)
[10:42 PM]
Though he doesn't often feel the need to drop the mask, it's actually not that difficult to get him to do it if you know what buttons to push. Isolation has been a huge recurring theme in Jian's life, and when the inner tornado of feelings gets too much for him to handle on his own, sometimes all he wants is for someone to listen so he doesn't feel quite so alone. It's not something he would ever ask for on his own, though. He was raised to always put his best foot forward and not burden others with his problems. The pressures of his upbringing have left their mark on him in more ways than one, and old habits are hard to break.
Jian has felt like many things - a projection of his parents' own aspirations, a friendly mask that others will find pleasing, a collection of doubts and worries being held together by duct tape - but never really a person. Only now, as he's heading off to some far away place where the pressures of society and his family don't exist, is this starting to hit him. He's realizing that everything he's achieved in his life was done for someone else's benefit. Did he ever make a decision that was truly his own? Has he wasted his life? He's too afraid to divert from his path now, though. His greatest fear is that if he were to drop all the masks he wears, he would discover there's nothing underneath them.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━



━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Jian's early life was somewhat tumultuous, and his troubles began before he was even born. When his parents learned they were having a boy, they were ecstatic. China's one child policy was still in full effect at the time, and though Jian's parents were determined to love a daughter as much as they would a son, they would have been lying if they said they didn't care whether they had a boy or a girl. Jian's aunt on his mother's side had a daughter, as did his aunt on his father's side, and both families had grown anxious for sons over the years. So learning that they'd gotten lucky was cause for celebration. The hopes and expectations they placed on him were exemplified in the name they picked for him, which meant "build" or "establish", and before he was even born it became clear that as the only boy in his generation, he would be expected to be his family's poster child.
But the universe has always enjoyed having a laugh at the Chen's expense, and when he was born, it became obvious right away that something wasn't right. Jian was born with albinism, which many members of his family found startling. Even in 1990, there were superstitions and stigmas surrounding albino people, and his grandparents in particular insisted that his condition was a bad omen. It caused such a stir, in fact, that his parents were able to obtain approval from the government to try for a second child, and four years later, his sister was born. They named her Xiang, a name which meant "good luck", as a last ditch effort to try and cleanse their family of their apparent curse before giving up on the idea of having the perfect family they'd wanted and turning their attention to the family they did have.(edited)
[5:09 PM]
Even if their parents thought their son was cursed, he was the only son they had, and the Chens were determined to make the most of that, genetic disorders be damned. Though they aimed to be supportive, in practice they just ended up coming down on him twice as hard, pushing him to work hard and aim high ever since he was young. As a child, Jian tried his hardest to please his parents, but he never felt like his best was good enough for them. He was still lacking in some way, so as he got older and won awards and commendations for his academics in school, he began to feel like he was being rewarded for doing nothing. Somehow he'd managed to trick all these people into thinking he was smart and capable, an anxiety that never truly left him. Compounded with the ostracism he received from his peers, there were even days that he felt he'd tricked everyone into believing he was human, which of course didn't help matters.
He managed to score a scholarship to Johns Hopkins University in the United States, one of the few accomplishments that managed to wring some genuine pride out of his parents, and all throughout his schooling he strove to be at the top of his class. Whenever he started wondering if medicine was something he genuinely wanted to do, he remembered how proudly his parents talked about him becoming a doctor, and the thought of disappointing them paralyzed him. He maintained this paralysis up until he graduated and passed his boards, and by then it was far too late to change course.
The opportunity to join a space mission took him by surprise, but it was a surprise he welcomed. He'd been searching for some way to escape working in a clinic the rest of his life, and while going to space seemed a little extreme, it would certainly accomplish that goal, so he agreed to join the crew.(edited)
[5:09 PM]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━



━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
- Is pretty good at code switching between Chinese and Western cultural norms, though there are some habits that die hard and some things he just doesn't understand. He tends to speak very indirectly, though he's aware that Westerners tend to be more blunt. He understands what most gestures convey as well, though he's never quite gotten the hang of why people wink at each other.

[amithethird]

(oh my god this is going to be a MESS)

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𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐓𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐤𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐝𝐢𝐠𝐚𝐥 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞
𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐫'𝐬 𝐑𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐝



━━━━━━ ☾☁ ━━━━━━

full name: Kesuk, Northern Water Tribe
age: 20
gender: agender (they/he), butch, anything but female
sexuality: pansexual
element: water
allegiance: Team Vaatu

appearance: Kesuk stands at 5'7" and holds themself with.......
a relaxed, self-assured posture, but their style of dress
often betrays that illusion of confidence and openness.
They wear thick fabrics and long coats, often buttoned
all the way up as if they're trying to hide. When the coat
comes off, it becomes clear why they might want to.
There's very little skin that's not covered in scars ranging
from small cuts to large burns. They always say their
scars don't bother them, though, and they wear most of
them like badges of honor. The one scar they can't hide
runs across their face, from just above their right eye
down to their left jawline, and it's the one scar they prefer
not to talk about. In addition to their scars, Kesuk has
several traditional Water Tribe style tattoos. These tattoos
are marred by cuts and burns, especially on their left
shoulder, but they doesn't really bother them either. They
have mixed feelings about their homeland and sometimes
they can't decide if they want to still feel connected to
home or if they would rather forget about it completely.

━━━━━━ ☾☁ ━━━━━━

skills
bending: When it comes to bending, combat is what
Kesuk excels at. They're most comfortable with 1x1
style matches, but that doesn't mean they're not used to
taking on larger groups in less structured settings. When
fighting, they're prone to using underhanded tactics that
would make a pro-bending ref pass out, and they 100%
subscribe to the concept of "anything to win." In some
cases it's necessary, as the matches they participate in
often have much higher stakes than simply losing out
on a championship cup. The underworld takes its fights
very seriously.
Kesuk is also a skilled healer, a talent they picked up
back home that has served them well over the past
several years.

crime: Kesuk knows their way around the city's
underworld. They've learned how to make connections
with more unsavory types to gain favors or information,
and they've learned how to put this intel to good use.
They know how to drive, how to pick locks, and how to
stay out of sight of the cops. They're also a decent liar,
though they usually prefer to settle problems with their
fists, which hasn't exactly served them well in the past.
They've been trying to be more open to negotiation,
though their pride makes that difficult.

━━━━━━ ☾☁ ━━━━━━

political influence: Kesuk's behavior as a child and their
sudden departure from their home seems like it would
have alienated them from their people, however that's
not always the case. While traditionalists see their
prodigal royal as a source of shame, there are those
who agreed with Kesuk's views about the backwardness
of the Water Tribe.

misc.
Has a mental/spiritual connection with Yura that neither
of them fully understand, and that neither of them were
fully aware of until after Kesuk left home. They often
have dreams about what the other one is doing, events
from their lives, etc. Though these dreams often feel
very real, due to their first person nature and the fact
that Yura remained at home for several years after
Kesuk left, Kesuk used to assume they were dreaming
of home out of sadness or guilt, and it took a long time
for them to realize they were dreaming from Yura’s
perspective. It wasn’t until they began dreaming of
other places - places they knew Yura had definitely never
been - and people they’d never met that they started to
wonder if there was something else going on.

Their dreams about Yura are further muddied by their
own dreams about the things they've gone through.
It's not something they like to talk about, but they still
haven't fully recovered from their two clashes outside
the ring. It makes them angry that they were so weak,
and that feeling isn't helped by their nightmares or by
how gun-shy they are around the metalbending police
force. Firebenders and fire in general doesn't bother
them much, oddly enough, which is good for their
fighting career, but they can't stand not being able to
breathe.

━━━━━━ ☾☁ ━━━━━━

𝐈'𝐦 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐳𝐨𝐧𝐞.
𝐓𝐨𝐨 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬
𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐛𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐭 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐨𝐰𝐧.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐝𝐮𝐦𝐛 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐥
𝐭𝐫𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈'𝐯𝐞 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐧.
𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐫𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐬 𝐠𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐞𝐩
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 𝐚 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐞.

𝐒𝐨 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐮𝐬𝐡,
𝐈𝐦𝐦𝐚 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐯𝐞.
𝐈𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐩𝐚𝐫
𝐰𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐧𝐨 𝐠𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐬.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐫𝐮𝐧 𝐚𝐭 𝐦𝐞
𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐝𝐨 𝐢𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐝.
𝐂𝐮𝐳 𝐈 𝐟𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐧𝐨 𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥,
𝐧𝐨 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐰𝐥,
𝐧𝐨 𝐬𝐜𝐚𝐫𝐬.

𝐈'𝐦 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐩𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐬𝐡𝐲 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐛𝐨𝐦𝐛.
𝐈'𝐦 𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐝𝐞 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐫𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐦.
𝐈'𝐦 𝐭𝐨𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐰𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈'𝐦 𝐜𝐚𝐥𝐦.
𝐆𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐰𝐨 𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐚𝐮𝐠𝐡𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐩𝐚𝐥𝐦𝐬.

𝐈'𝐦 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐝𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐡𝐮𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐞.
𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐛𝐚𝐥𝐥 '𝐧 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧.
𝐌𝐲 𝐟𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐨𝐭 𝐬𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐫𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐭,
𝐈'𝐦 𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐬𝐢𝐱 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐩𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭.
_________________

𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐚 𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐠 𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧
𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐮𝐝𝐬.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐚𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐧𝐬 𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲.
𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐲.

𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐦𝐞 𝐈 𝐬𝐡𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐰.
𝐂𝐮𝐳 𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨 𝐜𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐧.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐢𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐚 𝐠𝐚𝐦𝐞.
𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐲 𝐰𝐚𝐲.

𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲 𝐧𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧 𝐚 𝐦𝐢𝐦𝐞,
𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐚𝐟𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐝.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐞𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧
𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐥𝐮𝐜𝐤,
𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐮𝐩 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐰.
𝐂𝐮𝐳 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐈 𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥 𝐲𝐨𝐮,
𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐨𝐨𝐭𝐡 '𝐧 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐰.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐞𝐞 𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞
𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐚 𝐬𝐚𝐯𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐝.
𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐨𝐠𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐨𝐟
"𝐨𝐡, 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐠𝐮𝐲."
𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐧𝐚
𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐫𝐲,
𝐉𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐤 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐜𝐭
𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐢𝐧𝐝.

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personality
resilient, clever, adaptable
ambitious, reserved, rebellious
self-centered, dishonest, unprincipled, quick to anger

Kesuk is not a team player. It's not necessarily because they actively hate working with others - they like having people they can rely on, and they can be extremely loyal to people they trust. Rather, Kesuk doesn't work well with others because they operate under the assumption that other people are going to throw them under the bus at a moment's notice. They play nice when needed, but the second it's no longer necessary, they return to their "us vs them" attitude. This attitude comes from both a practical and more emotional place. On the practical side, they've been running with criminals long enough now to know that you should never take someone at their word. On the emotional side, their upbringing taught them that you can't rely on anyone to stand behind you, and that you have to take matters into your own hands if you want to be safe or happy. Deep down, Kesuk just wants to feel like they belong somewhere and that they have people who will love them unconditionally. As it stands, their twin sister is the only person they feel unconditional loyalty to, but they couldn't stay back home with her in that environment governed by arbitrary rules and backwards traditions.

━━━━━━━━━━━━ [size=130]☾☁ ━━━━━━━━━━━━

history
The second of a set of identical twins, Kesuk was born into the Northern Water Tribe royal family and raised female. Their father, the chief, was disappointed that he had not received a male heir, and the way he treated his daughters reflected that, though they both had their own ways of dealing with it.

Kesuk, the more hot-headed of the twins, always thought that the misogyny of the Water Tribe was stupid, and they resented being a girl more and more with every passing year. They pushed back against the femininity that was expected of them, getting into fights, vocally complaining about the rules they were expected to follow, and rebelling against their father whenever they got the chance. As a result, their sister Yura often doubled-down on being the quieter, more well-behaved daughter, giving in to what was expected of her. While this often frustrated Kesuk, they found they couldn't resent her for it. There were times they even felt guilty for acting out, because on some level they thought Yura was the way she was because of them. After all, if they weren't such a terror, would their sister feel the need to be so quiet and unobtrusive? The thought was never enough to get them to stop, but it always ate at them in the back of their mind. Even so, they were selfishly grateful that Yura did take this stuff seriously, because then it meant they probably wouldn't have to worry about succeeding their father as chief.

Then their younger brother was born, and that changed everything. The twins were 13 when he was born, and as soon as their father realized he had the heir he'd been looking for, he began paying less attention to the twins. His treatment of Kesuk, especially, became less lenient. He'd never exactly been easy on them, but now with their brother in the picture, their father had no patience for Kesuk's rebellion. Even small expressions of discontent were met with anger, and when Kesuk was 15, they finally decided they'd had enough.

They packed up a boat, said goodbye to Yura, and set out for greener pastures. While one could argue that isn't what they found, they did find the freedom they were looking for. They formally ditched any last traces of their womanhood and started a new life as just another citizen of the world. However, they quickly found that their street smarts really only applied to the Northern Water Tribe, and that the rest of the world was very different from home. It was rough going at first, and they had to take opportunities where they could find them. One such opportunity presented itself in the Fire Nation's capital city.

After getting into a fight with some other kids on the street, a passerby commented on Kesuk's skill as a bender, and asked if they'd ever thought about putting those talents to good use. From there, they got sucked into the world of pro-bending, and they got involved with an underground fighting circuit, headed up by a man named Wei. Wei ran his ring out of his otherwise legitimate dojo, hiding the underground arena underneath his gym. Kesuk was almost immediately snapped up by him and his crew and began working and training under his supervision. A lot of people liked the spectacle of the underdog child from the Water Tribe, and Kesuk leaned into that persona. They got their tattoos and worked their way up, improving gradually until they won as many fights as they lost. They were never a favorite to win, but everyone liked watching them in the ring anyway because they always put up a good fight, especially once they started figuring out ways to compensate for their small size and relative inexperience. They added an arsenal of dirty tricks and creative moves to their traditional Northern style waterbending, keeping each trick just within the limits of what was acceptable so no one could come after them for cheating. Things were going well for them, but eventually their hot-headed nature got the better of them.

Kesuk may have been an audience favorite, but they didn't get along with the rest of Wei's fighters. One woman was particularly nasty towards them, often taunting them about their heritage and telling them just to go home already. One day, about a year after Kesuk had first gotten involved in the ring, that fighter got hurt during training, significantly hurting her odds of beating Kesuk in their upcoming match. However, this wasn't just a regular match. It was an elimination round for a tournament that was just getting started, and a lot of people had a lot of money riding on her making it pretty far. Wei decided to pay Kesuk to throw the fight, which Kesuk wasn't happy about, but they always needed the money, and Wei was willing to pay quite a bit to make sure this tournament went smoothly. Kesuk was ready to go through with it, too...until his opponent decided to pick that night to mess with them. She thought that no matter what she said to them, they wouldn't actually push back, because they needed to lose the fight in order to get paid. She also assumed that Kesuk knew what would happen if they defied Wei. She was wrong. She said one too many cruel, asinine things, and Kesuk snapped. They kicked her ass and effectively ended her bit for the championship.

Wei was not happy about this.

He confronted Kesuk after the match, and Kesuk refused to apologize for what they'd done. Their irreverence pushed him over the edge, and a fight broke out. Kesuk might have been able to slip away until Wei got a couple of his enforcers involved. The three of them backed the teenager into a corner and nearly killed them. It was only their trademark creativity that saved them. After running out of what little water they had, badly injured and with a hand literally around their throat, they managed to spit in Wei's eye and freeze it, badly injuring the man's eye and giving them enough time to get away.

They left the Fire Nation the next morning, angry with themself for losing to the likes of Wei, and vowing that if they ever found themself in that kind of position again, they wouldn't lose.

They arrived in Republic City and sought out the fighting circuit there. Now a free agent, they had to build their own reputation and their own persona, and they quickly became known for the same things that made them a fan favorite in the Fire Nation. They started winning a little more than they used to as they got more practice, but they were still a long way off from being a champion. They wouldn't let things stay like that for long, though. They were determined to keep improving and climb their way up the ranks so people would think twice about messing with them.

They didn't get very far, though. Not long after they made their debut in the circuit, a police taskforce - headed at the time by Hitoshi - raided the arena, seeking to arrest anyone involved. This time, Kesuk was determined not to lose. They intentionally picked a fight with Hitoshi, baiting him into giving chase, and trying to gain the upper hand with their usual arsenal of tricks. It went well for them initially, but their success didn't last. Hitoshi quickly proved to be the more skilled fighter, especially with the use of his cables, and as the fight became more frenzied, Kesuk began to lose their lead. They were inches from being caught, and as they made one last desperate attempt to escape, something went wrong. Hitoshi's cable snapped and went wild, and though he managed to deflect it and escape unharmed, the cable flew back and caught Kesuk right across the face. Now injured and barely able to think straight through the pain, they were essentially out of the fight, but still they refused to concede or run away. They would have easily been arrested and imprisoned if it weren't for Jin.

Satsujin had, at the time, also been an active player in the underground bending rings. He passed himself off as a firebender at the time, and the two had heard of each other, but never actually fought, or even really met, so Kesuk was very surprised when he turned up to save their ass, though they weren't exactly happy about it, especially when they realized Jin was an Avatar.

Once they'd gotten to safety, Kesuk pushed back at first, insisting they didn't need anyone's help. Their tune changed completely when Jin asked them to teach him waterbending. The two have been together ever since, and though Kesuk was somewhat wary at first, they recognized a kindred spirit in Jin, and the two became fast friends.[/size]

(ahahahaha coding borked, and oh my god I never updated their backstory fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge)

- Can't even remember how they got most of their scars. Most of them came from amateur/illegal bending matches. Most of them.
- Burn scar on their left shoulder is from the owner of a gym in the Fire Nation capital that hosts a lot of illegal fights. Kesuk was paid well to throw a fight there, but broke the deal when their opponent decided to make the fight personal. When the gym owner confronted them after the fact, things quickly got ugly.
- They received the scar on their face from a police raid on an underground fighting ring that went wrong. It's also where they met Jin.
- Kesuk's damage can essentially be boiled down to the fact that they hate feeling vulnerable. They hate feeling weak and for much of their life, they feel as if they were told over and over again that weakness was inherit to their being as a woman, that this weakness was a good thing, and that it was who they should be. So when they left home they tried everything they could to try and contradict this. Even if they disagreed with womanhood being inherently weak, they still discarded it. They started fighting as a way to prove their strength. They took their fight with the ring leader in the FN and their fight with Hitoshi so personally because it felt like the universe was trying to remind them that despite everything, they're still weak. And they always will be. So for them, a rematch against Hitoshi isn't about getting revenge for a scar: it's about fighting the part of themself that's still too vulnerable and insecure. It's about making it so no one will ever be able to hurt them again.(edited)
[3:08 PM]
- The primary lesson they need to learn: lashing out and being the better fighter won't make you feel any less vulnerable. The only thing that's going to help them heal at this point is for them to realize that vulnerability isn't a bad thing. Deep down, all they want is to feel like they belong somewhere and with someone, and unfortunately for them, vulnerability is what allows us to form those genuine connections with other people.
- Has a mental/spiritual connection with Yura that neither of them fully understand, and that neither of them were fully aware of until after Kesuk left home. They often have dreams about what the other one is doing, events from their lives, etc. Though these dreams often feel very real, due to their first person nature and the fact that Yura remained at home for several years after Kesuk left, Kesuk used to assume they were dreaming of home out of sadness or guilt, and it took a long time for them to realize they were dreaming from Yura’s perspective. It wasn’t until they began dreaming of other places - places they knew Yura had definitely never been - and people they’d never met that they started to wonder if there was something else going on.

[amithethird]

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𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙎𝙘𝙝𝙤𝙡𝙖𝙧
𝙏𝙝𝙚 𝙋𝙧𝙤-𝘽𝙚𝙣𝙙𝙚𝙧



━━━━━━ ↺ ━━━━━━

full name: Song, United Republic
age: 25
gender: female (trans)
sexuality: demisexual biromantic
element: air
allegiance: none

appearance: At nearly 6' tall, and often stiff and blank faced, Song certainly....
doesn't embody the stereotypical "loosey goosey" airbender. She dresses
in well-made clothes that still leave her enough room to move when needed,
and she always keeps her hair tied back. She wears her glasses on a chain
to keep them from flying away in her daily life, and during pro-bending
matches she has special goggles that she wears instead.

━━━━━━ ↺ ━━━━━━

skills
bending: Air may be the only element Song is capable of bending, but she's
never believed in letting that limit her. For her, the air is just an extension of
herself, and bending is a way of life. She frequently uses her airbending as
part of her daily routine, and she's very deeply entrenched in the philosophical
and spiritual side of it. She often embodies the detachment that comes
naturally to airbenders, but she's also learned the adaptability of water, the
decisiveness of fire, and the patience of earth. She believes in balance in all
things, and in learning from those who are different from you.
Of course, this high-minded idealism doesn't exactly come across when she's
beating someone up in a ring. In the pro-bending scene she's know as the
Ice Queen (affectionate) and the Discount Avatar (derogatory.) Depending on
the situation, she'll airbend like she's some other type of bender. If the fight
calls for aggressive moves and straight-forward pushes, she'll blast her
opponent like a firebender. If she needs to wait for an opening, she'll stay
grounded and deflect or absorb attacks as they come like an earthbender.
She's even found success redirecting other benders' attacks with powerful
enough wind gusts like a waterbender, and of course she's a master of
evasion.

swordplay: A lesser known hobby of hers is swordfighting. It doesn't get as
much use as her bending abilities, but she wanted to learn how to use a
weapon because she wanted to develop a better appreciation for how
non-benders live in the world. She has great respect for non-benders who
can hold their own, as swordplay didn't come as easily to her as bending
did, and she struggled with it for a while before she became competent.
She enjoys sparring from time to time, during which she forgoes the use
of bending entirely, though she wins far fewer of those duels.
She's experimented with using a sword in conjunction with her bending,
and she's produced some interesting (and potentially deadly) results,
although she feels she won't have much cause to use such a technique.

━━━━━━ ↺ ━━━━━━

political influence: Being from a village in the United Republic, Song doesn't
have much influence in world governments. However, she is a well known
face around the city in the pro-bending scene, and she knows plenty of
people from around the UR and the Earth Kingdom who she could call
in for favors. She also knows how to get in good with farmers and other
"simple folk" because of her upbringing as a farm kid.

━━━━━━ ↺ ━━━━━━

𝘾𝙪𝙩 𝙛𝙧𝙤𝙢 𝙙𝙚𝙫𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣,
𝙡𝙤𝙨𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙤𝙘𝙚𝙖𝙣,
𝙤𝙪𝙩 𝙤𝙛 𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙮𝙤𝙪.

𝙄'𝙢 𝙖 𝙢𝙖𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙣𝙚.
𝘼𝙣 𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙗𝙚𝙞𝙣𝙜.
𝙎𝙞𝙣𝙘𝙚 𝙄 𝙬𝙖𝙨 𝙖 𝙩𝙚𝙚𝙣,
𝙘𝙪𝙩 𝙢𝙮 𝙛𝙚𝙚𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙜𝙨 𝙤𝙛𝙛 𝙘𝙡𝙚𝙖𝙣.

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personality
dedicated, open-minded, supportive
observant, calculating, practical
uptight, cold, flighty

Song tries really hard to come across as no-nonsense and dignified. She takes everything too seriously, which can be both a blessing and a curse. It makes her really stiff and humorless to talk to socially, but it also means that she can be counted on to get things done and done right. As emotionally unavailable as she is, she's also surprisingly kind. She's not a very competitive person deep down, though she does love the spectacle of competition, and for her pro-bending is more of an intellectual exercise than anything. That means she doesn't see her fellow benders as threats, and she's not averse to sharing tips with them or picking them up when they're down. She doesn't see why she shouldn't share the knowledge she's gained with others. She does go a little wild in the ring, though. She may not be genuinely very competitive, but she does love the theatre of competition. She likes a little drama. A little performance. She's so uptight about everything else, she's got to find some way to let that energy out. It can be a little confusing for friends, sometimes, as outside of pro-bending she'll be very punctual, very structured, very serious, and then the second she's fighting, all of that goes out the window.

━━━━━━━━━ [size=130]↺ ━━━━━━━━━

history
Song grew up in the United Republic in a tiny farming village, surrounded by her aunts, uncles, and cousins. Traditionally those from Song's family have been earthbenders, and due to the sheer number of them in the family, most family get-togethers involve a lot of throwing rocks around and disrupting the local countryside with small earthquakes. Sparring as a form of bonding is ingrained in Song's family traditions, and Harmonic Convergence only made these family matches more interesting. Song's father got airbending during the event, and the skill was later passed down to her. As such, she's grown up fighting her cousins for fun, the lone airbender flying circles around her opponents, which was the beginning of her love of the bending arts.

Song has studied every nation's bending traditions intently, researching what she could in libraries and traveling to see for herself the things you can't learn from books. Her parents whole-heartedly supported this, and many of her earthbending cousins went with her on her trips, partly as support for their baby cousin who was still just a teenager, and partly because they were just as interested in seeing the world. While she's never technically gone further than the Earth Kingdom, she's still met lots of other benders living within the Earth Kingdom and the United Republic and learned their ways.

Song moved to Republic City for school when she turned 18, thinking maybe she'd become a scholar somewhere, but instead she got involved in pro-bending. She went to a match once out of curiosity, and after that it became sort of an addiction for her. The strategy, the spectacle, it was everything she could have wanted, and she went to as many matches as she could while still maintaining her grades. Of course, she would never admit to being a fanatic, and she often described her interest in the sport as a more intellectual pursuit than anything. Eventually her interest in the sport lead her to Cho, the firebender for the Laogai Lion Vultures, and they took a liking to each other. They started dating, but unfortunately it wasn't meant to last. Still, her time dating a big name in the pro-bending sphere put her on the radar of the city at large for a while, the "ascended fan" and notorious ice queen.

After a while she got tired of sitting back and just watching the matches. She decided she had the bending skills and the knowledge of the sport needed, and she wanted to get her hands dirty. She tried out for a pro-bending team, an audition which she passed with flying colors.

Song still keeps in contact with her family. They've been very supportive of her her entire life, of everything from her transition to her desire to travel, and she loves all of them dearly. However, she does find herself being embarrassed by them sometimes. Her whole family is farmers and country bumpkins, and while she loved growing up as a country bumpkin, she also had a deep desire to be taken seriously by people beyond their tiny village. She wanted to feel respected, and sometimes she feels like she won't find that if she sticks too close to her roots. She fears getting too openly enthusiastic about things or putting herself in "undignified" situations lest people realize where she's from and think less of her.[/size]

- Family got airbending during Harmonic Convergence. She's the only airbender in a family full of earthbenders.
- A rare jock-nerd. Has studied bending traditions from all around the world and incorporated different styles and philosophies into her own bending, which she uses to beat the crap out of people for fun.
- Love a challenge, and loves a good fight just for the sake of it. It's not the violence she cares about, though. It's about testing your skills and out-matching your opponent. She loves that intellectual exercise.
- Not very competitive, which sounds counter-intuitive. She's the kind of person who, after a match, will approach her opponent and either offer pointers for next time or asks how they got the upper hand on her, if she can't figure it out herself at least. She's a good sport.

[amithethird]

(Oh CS is going to break the coding and I'm going to be sad)

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ᴛʜᴇ
ᴀsʜᴇs
ᴄᴀʟʟ
ᴍ ʏ
ɴ ᴀ ᴍ ᴇ

............

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ᴘᴏᴜʀɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғᴜᴇʟ,

ғᴀɴɴɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғʟᴀᴍᴇs,

ʙʀᴇᴀᴋɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴀʙɪᴛ

ᴀɴᴅ
ᴍᴇʟᴛɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴀɪɴs.


ᴇᴍʙʀᴀᴄɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғᴇᴀʀ,

ᴄʜᴀsɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғɪɢʜᴛ,

ᴛʜᴇ ɢʟᴏᴡ
ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ ғɪʀᴇ

ᴡɪʟʟ ʟɪɢʜᴛ ᴜᴘ
ᴛʜᴇ ɴɪɢʜᴛ.


ᴛʜᴇ ʙʀɪᴅɢᴇs
ᴀʀᴇ ʙᴜʀɴɪɴɢ,..

ᴛʜᴇ ʜᴇᴀᴛ's
ᴏɴ ᴍʏ ғᴀᴄᴇ,

ᴍᴀᴋɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴀsᴛ ᴀɴ
ᴜɴʀᴇᴀᴄʜᴀʙʟᴇ
ᴘʟᴀᴄᴇ.


ᴘᴏᴜʀɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғᴜᴇʟ,

ғᴀɴɴɪɴɢ
ᴛʜᴇ ғʟᴀᴍᴇs,

ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ,

ᴛʜɪs ɪs ᴛʜᴇ
ᴘᴏɪɴᴛ ᴏғ
ɴᴏ ʀᴇᴛᴜʀɴ.




































































































































































































ᴅᴏ ɪ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ɪғ
ɪ ᴅᴇsᴘɪsᴇ ᴛʜɪs?
ɴᴏᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴇʟsᴇ
ᴍᴀᴛᴛᴇʀs,
ɪ ᴋɴᴏᴡ.

ɪɴ ᴀ ᴠᴇɪʟ ᴏғ
ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ ᴅɪsɢᴜɪsᴇs,
ʜᴏᴡ ᴅᴏ ɪ ʟɪᴠᴇ
ᴡɪᴛʜ ʏᴏᴜʀ ɢʜᴏsᴛ?

--

ᴅᴏ ɪ ᴄᴀʀᴇ ɪғ
ɪ sᴜʀᴠɪᴠᴇ ᴛʜɪs?
ʙᴜʀʏ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴅ
ᴡʜᴇʀᴇ ᴛʜᴇʏ’ʀᴇ
ғᴏᴜɴᴅ.

ɪɴ ᴀ ᴠᴇɪʟ ᴏғ
ɢʀᴇᴀᴛ sᴜʀᴘʀɪsᴇs,
ʜᴏʟᴅ ᴛᴏ ᴍʏ ʜᴇᴀᴅ
ᴛɪʟʟ ɪ ᴅʀᴏᴡɴ.

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ᴛʜᴇ ᴄʜᴇᴍɪsᴛ
ᴛʜᴇ ᴀᴍʙᴀssᴀᴅᴏʀ
ᴛʜᴇ ᴘᴜᴘᴘᴇᴛᴍᴀsᴛᴇʀ

full name: Kuan Feng
age: 31
gender: male (cis)
sexuality: ?
element: fire
allegiance: now that's a complicated question, isn't it?

appearance: Not a particularly intimidating figure by himself, Kuan has learned over the years how to either stand out or fade into the background as he sees fit. At 5'10", he's neither notably tall nor short, and he has a face that can very easily switch between kind but world-weary and cold and merciless. He tends to dress simply in neutral colors, though he always looks professional - a carryover from both his work as a professor and as an ambassador. Even when traveling to meet with foreign diplomats, he rarely partakes in the pomp and circumstance, and even then, only if absolutely required.

political influence: Kuan joined the President of the United Republic's cabinet two years ago as an ambassador for the UR. He was chosen because of the experience his academic pursuits had given him in parlaying with people of other nations and because the President wanted a more objective mind heading international negotiations, which are officially the only reasons. The third, unofficial, reason is because the Feng family has been friends with the President's family for ages, and after the political upheaval seen during the terms of previous presidents, especially that of President Raiko, he wanted someone he knew he could trust not to rock the boat or disobey orders. The irony in that isn't lost on either of them.
In addition to his position and the connections that come with it, he has a lot of money at his disposal, both from his work and from his family. No matter your occupation, station, or character, money can get you just about anywhere.

skills
bending: Kuan has mastered and invented a variety of firebending techniques:
lightning - the first specialized technique he conquered, and the beginning of his fascination with chemical reactions and energy. The basic principle of generating lightning - the separation of charges, positive and negative energy - is the basis for many of the techniques he's developed. He's also mastered lightning redirection.
light - the technique that first garnered him international fame. He's perfected it to the point where he can create light in more forms than just fire. Points, lines, spheres, and other simple shapes are his preferred forms when creating light that's untethered to any object, but just as fire grows stronger with more fuel, the light he creates is brighter and easier to control when it has a physical point of origin it can latch onto. He can use the air if need be, but because of air's unpredictable nature, those lights are often dim and short-lasting. Most of the time, if he wants to create light, he opts to simply make a nearby object fluoresce. White or green are the most common colors that occur when he does this, and he's still working on having greater control over the color.
the lightless flame - this technique is not one that he's spoken to anyone about, as it's the one he fears has the potential to cause the most damage. He's found that by separating positive and negative energy, if you take it far enough, you can create more than simple electricity, though he has yet to find a fitting name for what results. Whatever it is, it's not visible to the naked eye, and when it comes in contact with living beings, the effects are swift and devastating. Through his experiments on elephant rants, he's found that some types of metals seem to be able to block it entirely, which he finds fascinating as heat and electricity are both conducted by metal. He has yet to figure out how to treat its effects through either waterbending-based healing or other forms of medicine, as he isn't capable of doing either, and he refuses to let anyone else know what he's been doing.

manipulation/strategy: Kuan has a deep understanding of governments, people, and what makes them all tick. He's socially adept, and skilled at deducing what action people will take if given the right incentives. This has made him a skilled negotiator in the past - cutting right to the chase and discerning what it is both parties really want - but now he's turned those skills towards pulling other people's strings behind the scenes. He no longer has the patience to be upfront with people about what he's doing. That would only get in his way.

personality
patient, dedicated, intelligent, curious, resourceful, decisive
manipulative, extremist, messiah complex, detached, duplicitous
Kuan is a complicated individual, and it's hard to see how someone who claims to care about the well-being of others can cause the harm he does without a second thought. His answer to that, of course, is that the ends justify the means. He's a big picture kind of person, and following the complex threads that connect individuals, organizations, and systems comes naturally to him, as does exploiting them. He never wanted to play this part, but when tensions run high, he's always been one to make the hard choices and do what he feels needs to be done, no matter the cost.

history
The Feng family has lived in the United Republic since it was the Fire Nation colonies, and the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation influences have blended together to the point where the Fengs don't even claim either of them. The United Republic is both a blend of the four nations, as well as its own culture, a culture that the Feng family happily embraces. Kuan has always been proud of his heritage, and happy to serve his nation, be it through education or politics.

His first love has always been science, though. Not a very spiritual man, Kuan has always embraced the technological side of bending, and as people discovered more and more about the physical world, he began to wonder if, in seeing bending as a primarily spiritual endeavor, the world had lost out on some of its potential applications. He went to school for chemistry at the age of 18, applying wherever he could to help with research projects his professors were doing.

He excelled at his work, being taken on by a chemistry and physics professor at the university to assist in research regarding spiritual energy after only one year of school. The professor valued his insights and even credited him in the papers he wrote for his work. It was this simple act of putting a name on a piece of paper that lead to perhaps the most significant winter of Kuan's life.

After reading their latest paper, a researcher based in the North Pole named Akari wrote the university to express her interest in the project. She wrote that she'd hit a setback in her own research into spiritual energy and its relationship to bending and the spirit portals, and asked for assistance. The professor heading the project decided to delegate responding to Akari's questions to Kuan, and during their correspondence, Akari asked if he could come to the North Pole and observe her experiments for himself, if only to offer a second perspective, as there was only so much he could comment on when he was an entire ocean away. Kuan agreed and, with his professors' blessing, traveled to the North Pole that winter to assist.

Despite his overwhelming desire to make a good impression on the young researcher and focus solely on the work, he found himself immediately smitten by her. She was witty, kind, and wicked smart, not to mention beautiful. It was so rare to find people around his age who shared his passions and who could keep up with him in a conversation, and it was hard not to feel flustered around her. As it turned out, she felt the same, and their working relationship quickly turned into something much more. Left to their own devices in a remote research lab near the Northern portal, they had all the space they needed to grow close and get up to somewhat inadvisable shenanigans of more than one kind. At the time, he didn't think much of any of it, and the only regret he had was that he had to leave when the first breath of spring arrived.

He hated to leave the North Pole, but he still had his schooling to complete, and Akari wasn't about to abandon her research. They promised to keep in contact, though, and they wrote each other often, and somewhere in the back of his mind he almost expected that once they were done with their respective projects, they would see each other again.

Then the letters just stopped.

He was devastated and confused, and in his mind the sudden silence had come out of nowhere. However, there was nothing to be done about it. He didn't have the time to return to the North Pole as his studies become more involved, and after three letters went unanswered, he become doubtful that sending more would make a difference. So he gave up and decided to try and move on, delving deeper into academics. While it never prevented him from living his life, he never truly got over her, and he was never quite able to recreate the spark he'd felt with Akari.

When he finally graduated, he was offered a teaching position at the university. While he was only teaching entry-level chemistry courses, Kuan still loved his work. He was well liked by his students, and when he wasn't teaching, he had time for his true passion: his experiments. He wanted to push the limits of what firebenders were able to do. After all, as others had discovered, fire was just energy created by chemical reactions. So was lightning. Light and heat and electricity were all interconnected, transforming back and forth from one to the other all the time in nature. What other forms of energy could there be that they just hadn't discovered yet? What other chemical reactions might firebenders be capable of catalyzing? And then there was the question of energybending. In recorded history, only the past two Avatars were known to have used it, but if firebenders could control three forms of energy already - light, heat, and electricity - was it possible for non-Avatars to unlock the secret of energybending as well?

It was a question he was keen to answer, and one discovery in particular gained him some international fame: firebending without heat. Kuan developed a way of producing only light through the use of firebending by studying fluorescent creatures in nature and studying how they were able to produce light. Knowing that fire was created through chemical reactions, and knowing that on some level, that's what firebenders had to be doing when they produced fire, he was able to figure out how to catalyze a reaction that wouldn't burn, just glow. He's the first to admit that he's not positive how it works from a molecular standpoint - it's all just theories right now - but many people in the scientific and bending communities didn't care. He spent a lot of time traveling after this discovery, sharing it with others, and making connections with people all around the world. The high didn't last forever, though, and as soon as the world was ready to move on, so was he. He'd figured out how to make the three forms of energy he knew of in isolation. Now to see if he could replicate his success with the fourth.

Meanwhile in the Fire Nation, the young Avatar had begun his firebending training. While earth and water had come easy to him, Mako struggled with air and fire. Even with the structure and discipline they felt he needed, his teachers in the Fire Nation felt they weren't getting through to him. They needed a new perspective, and hearing about Kuan's achievements in the discipline, they wondered if he could help. At first Kuan was stunned by the offer, but the more he thought about it, the more eager he was to accept. The Avatar was still young and not even fully realized, but perhaps he could still learn something that might unlock some new understanding about the lost art of energybending, so he agreed.

Though both Kuan and Mako were eager to work together, their teaching and learning styles weren't exactly compatible. Kuan had been so entrenched in the complicated worlds of physics, chemistry, and advanced bending techniques that he struggled to relay the basics to his pupil, and Mako only became more frustrated that he still didn't understand. Kuan was reminded that his primary job here was to be a teacher, not a researcher, and he wondered if perhaps Mako's instructors had made a mistake bringing him here. He admitted as much to Mako one night, explaining why this was so difficult for him. He hadn't thought about firebending from a learner's perspective in so long, and as they talked, they got into some of Kuan's research, and eventually to the subject of energybending. Mako was intrigued by the idea and they both wondered, since Mako had at least been able to contain fire that was given to him, could he contain and control other forms of energy? Could energybending just happen for him if given the right catalyst? They were both eager to find out, and in the moment, they were too excited by the prospect to think ahead about the potential consequences.

Despite their efforts, the much sought after fourth form of energy - spiritual energy - did not manifest for either of them. At first, they thought their experiment had fizzled and simply failed, but Kuan couldn't shake the feeling that something had happened. They just didn't know what. Then Mako got sick. Very sick. Not even an hour after they decided to call it on their experiment, he suddenly collapsed, and it took several healers many nights to get him well again. Kuan couldn't understand why he hadn't also gotten sick, and in the end choked it up to his greater experience with firebending. Once he was sure Mako was going to be ok, he apologized for letting his own curiosity get the better of him and excused himself from the Avatar's company.

The incident stuck with him, though.

He couldn't explain what exactly they'd created, but he knew it was some new and terrible form of energy. Something no one could see, but that could tear the body apart from the inside out. And so he turned his focus away from energybending and towards this new and terrifying technique. He kept his studies secret from the world, his colleagues, and his friends. He didn't want anyone else to have this power until he was sure of what it was capable of. Through years of study he was able to perfect the technique, using elephant rats as test subjects, to the point where he could reliably control the strength and direction of this energy, often with deadly results. He dubbed it "the lightless flame" and has vowed to keep anyone else from learning how to use it.

Then two years ago, everything started to change. Kuan was approached by the President and asked to be an ambassador for the United Republic. While he was hesitant at first, Kuan quickly took to the position, and he was able to establish positive rapport with most government officials across the nations. However, he'd barely begun his work when another development turned his life upside down. He received another letter from Akari, a letter which would turn out to be her last.

She told Kuan that her health had been declining the past several years, and she suspected that an accident that had occurred years ago while they were together at the North Pole had been the cause. No doctor or healer she went to could help her, and she knew she was dying, which was why she'd chosen now to drop another bombshell on him: he had a daughter. Mizuki, her name was, and she would need someone to take care of her when Akari was gone. She said she'd told Mizuki how to find him in Republic City, and she ended with an apology, saying that she hadn't wanted to keep this from him, but she knew he would have dropped everything if he'd known, and she didn't want to jeopardize his career. But hopefully it wasn't too late for him to be a part of his daughter's life.

He was grateful that Akari had written him ahead of time, before Mizuki arrived, because for a week after the letter's arrival, he was a distracted wreck. He didn't know how to process any of the emotions he was feeling, but he finally arrived at one conclusion: he was going to do his best with what he'd been given. He'd been able to handle the busy life of a professor and researcher for years. Surely he could handle this. However, being a father and a political figure turned out to be a lot harder than he'd anticipated.

The first month or so after Mizuki arrived were somewhat uncomfortable for the both of them. They were basically strangers, after all, and they were both still grieving. However, they were finally able to connect over bending. Mizuki had inherited her parents' ability to firebend, and her bending especially was unusual. The accident in Akari's lab happened right at the start of her pregnancy, and the electrical and spiritual energy that made her ill had done something far stranger to Mizuki. Kuan worked with her to try and get her propensity for generating lightning under control, and they finally started to bond, and the girl finally started to come out of her shell. It wasn't perfect, though, as Kuan still had plenty of responsibilities as the United Republic's ambassador, and juggling work and home life proved to be especially challenging. He found himself frequently exhausted, and he was sure the strange bruises that he kept getting were because of how much more active he'd been lately. He began to feel more and more like he wasn't cut out for fatherhood, and these feelings only grew worse after a minor incident in Ba Sing Se.

After the death of the Earth Queen, and the slow, rocky establishment of democratic elections in the Earth Kingdom, relations with the nation and its many independent states were tense. While trying to negotiate a border dispute with two such states who shared borders with the United Republic, Kuan received a death threat that forced both him and Mizuki into protective custody for a short time before the matter was resolved. During this time, Kuan came down with some kind of infection that left him bed-ridden for a week. He blamed it on stress, but even after they were able to go back home, he wasn't quite back to full strength. The time to himself gave him plenty of time to think, and he decided that Mizuki shouldn't live with him while he was still serving as the UR's ambassador, for both their sakes, and he sent her to a private boarding school where should could continue her education and make some friends her age.

While the separation was somewhat difficult, he made an effort to write to her often, and while she never seemed resentful or sullen in her letters, he always secretly feared that she'd grow to hate him for sending her away. However, he hasn't regretted sending her to school and keeping her out of his politics, especially within the past year, as it wasn't until now that his positive relationships with the other nation's leaders began to suffer, his health began to further decline, and the safety of his job became truly questionable.

Kuan went to several doctors and healers as his illness continued to drag on. Antibiotics and other treatments helped, but his symptoms always returned. He was tired, still finding bruises he didn't remember getting. He felt weaker than he did before, had fevers and chills that came and went, and couldn't seem to stop losing weight. No one could tell him what was wrong with him. Then one day after coming home from what felt like the hundredth doctor's visit, a thought occurred to him. He remembered what Akari's letter had said about the accident in her lab, and what she'd said about no doctors or healers being able to figure out what was wrong with her. He remembered his own studies, and especially what had happened to Mako, and suddenly he realized what was happening: he was dying. Whatever he'd done - whatever forces he'd been toying with - was finally catching up with him.

He was going to die, perhaps sooner rather than later. He would leave Mizuki behind - an orphan now - and everything he'd been working towards would suddenly be over. What was he supposed to do? How long did he even have? There was no way to know, so he decided he had to assume he could die any day now. Whatever he hoped to accomplish with his position as the United Republic's ambassador, he needed to get it done within the next year, or he would never get the chance. So he started drafting a plan.

With the death of Avatar Korra, and the birth of Avatar Mako, there has been much debate among world leaders on the role of the Avatar, and more specifically, the role of the nations in leading their people through crises during times where the Avatar cannot intervene. Kuan's position on the issue has always been clear: when the nations rely too much on the Avatar to unify them, they inevitably fall into disarray. It happened during the 100 Year War, it happened with Kuvira, and it will certainly happen again. With the young Avatar coming of age, and the issue fresh in everyone's minds, Kuan decided to make a bold proposal that had been at the back of his mind for a long time, even before he got involved in politics. He proposed that the nations form some kind of unifying council that would bring them together under one banner. Turn the world into a United Republic of nations where direct communication would be easier and borders would be of less concern. After all, the UR had achieved peace and prosperity, advancing further than any other nation in only a short time, and they only did that through the integration of cultures. He drafted a plan called the Unity Accords which would establish a League of Nations that would maintain peace between the nations when the Avatar could not.

This plan was hotly debated, and opinions only grew more divisive when the press began reporting on the talks between world leaders regarding it. The President himself asked Kuan if he was out of his mind proposing something like this, asking if he was only doing this because he thought he was going to die soon (which of course was true, but not the point. Why couldn't they see that?) In the end, no one could agree on whether or not it was a good idea. The Accords were ultimately tabled, and in aftermath, Kuan briefly disappeared from the public eye to take some "personal time."

The debates left him bitter and angry. He couldn't understand why there was so much resistance to the idea, because he was right, wasn't he? The nations were too easily divided. Too quick to be at each other's throats. Even the Earth Empire disaster wasn't enough to make them see that because they had the Avatar around to save them and bring balance. As long as they believed that the Avatar was the solution to all their problems, they would do nothing to help themselves.

So naturally, something had to be done.

The nations had to learn their lesson - a lesson they wouldn't so easily forget - and if he had to be the one to teach it, if he had to make himself into the villain in order for them to see the light - in order to leave something good behind for his daughter before he died - well...so be it.

Let the games begin.








Born in the United Republic, Ambassador Feng has served for many years in the President's cabinet as a liaison between the UR and the other nations, primarily the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom. Known for his quick wit and bold yet diplomatic strategy, the ambassador was generally well received by the leaders of the other nations. However, there has been friction between him and other public figures as of late due to his proposal regarding the formation of a League of Nations under a charter dubbed the Unity Accords. While some agree that checks and balances must be put in place to prevent future disasters such as the 100 Year War, the assassination of the Earth Queen, and the subsequent formation of the Earth Empire, there are those who object to the idea of bringing so many disparate groups of people under one banner.
As of now, the Accords have been tabled by the President and other world leaders, and Ambassador Feng has made few public appearances since.(edited)

Kibling Delta12/02/2020
A man of many talents, Kuan moonlights as a chemistry professor at a local university in Republic City. Endlessly fascinated by energy, its changing states, and its potential uses, he spent much of his early life dedicated to its study before he found work in politics. His talents as a firebender have often served him well in these pursuits, and he has been known to experiment, pushing the limits of what firebending is capable of. His experiments have been strictly small scale, however, as he is acutely aware of how dangerous uncontained energy can be.
While he makes no effort to hide his ability to generate lightning, he has spoken very little about the results of his other experiments.

Goes by the name Shyu when dealing with people...off the record, which he takes from the Great Fire Sage Shyu who towards the end of the 100 Year War put aside his loyalty to the Fire Nation to help the Avatar. Though it may seem strange or even cruelly ironic to go by the name of someone who once helped the Avatar, Kuan doesn't see it that way. He believes that the Avatar and what they stand for are not inherently bad. The problem is when people rely on the Avatar to fix all their problems while also clinging to petty nationalism. He sees Great Sage Shyu as a good example of how world leaders ought to act: putting the greater good above their own pride, and even their own nation.

[amithethird]

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name: Micha Masud Hayes
answers to: Micha in "real life." Goes by Haze professionally.
age: 24
birthday: november 29
race: mixed (Southeast Asian/white)
gender: male (cis)
sexuality: homosexual

languages: English, Bengali, a little Hindi, a little Arabic
occupation: freelance photographer
skills: photography (film and digital), investigation/detective work, cryptography, infiltration, parkour
weaknesses: formal education, writing, public speaking

appearance: Micha is 5'10" with dark wavy hair, brown eyes, and light brown skin. He tends to give off an air of "chill chaos" in whatever he does, toeing the line between being high strung and relaxed. He's always up and moving, always fidgeting with something, always sitting or standing on things he shouldn't be, but one doesn't get the sense that he's doing it because he's anxious; he's doing it because he's bored. He likes to dress in vibrant colors, and his red sunglasses are a common accessory, even on days where his colors are more muted. Patterned button-up shirts, dark jeans, and comfortable shoes are staples of his wardrobe.

personality:
clever, observant, athletic, bold
ambitious, restless, rebellious, extroverted
paranoid, self-serving, insolent, reckless

On the outside, Micha is an irreverent smart-alek who always has to do things in the most Extra way possible. He's been described as "a weird dude" more than once based on his mannerisms, sense of humor, fashion, and hobbies, and he's the kind of person who is chatty enough that after a while you start to think that you know him pretty well, right up until he drops some buck-wild piece of information about his life that has literally never come up before. He'll talk so casually about things like scaling a building or getting hit by a car that one can't help but wonder if anything fazes this guy.

He cultivates the image of the "unknowable weirdo" on purpose, though. And while it is true, he is just kind of a weird person naturally, he plays it up for other people to keep them from looking too closely at him. He's a more secretive person than he seems, and he's also paying attention far more often than people realize. He's always thinking, always mentally taking notes, and he's always looking over his shoulder. Everything he says or does is hidden behind layers of code - sometimes quite literally - and you have to be paying attention to realize what's really going on under the surface.

Micha tends to throw himself head-first into danger, sometimes in the name of fun, but often in the name of achieving his goals. He's a very ambitious person who isn't content with being ordinary or simply "adequate." He wants to be the best at what he does, and he will do whatever he needs to in order to get there. Most of the time he's just out for himself, but he's not a complete bastard (hard as it often is to believe.) He genuinely hates people who take advantage of those who can't defend themselves, and he delights in exposing people who deserve it. But he doesn't see himself as a hero for it. In fact, he's not sure real heroes actually exist. Deep down he thinks everyone is a little bit of a bastard. Everyone is a little selfish, and anyone who believes otherwise is just kidding themself. There are a lot of things about this country that he would like to change, but he feels certain someone like him doesn't have a chance against the power of the monarchy, so why bother, right?

history:
Micha's father was born and raised in New York, but his mother is from Bangladesh. They met when a traveling nurse position brought his father to Dhaka. His mother was working in the kitchens in the same hospital, and they often stopped to talk to each other when she was up on the patient floors delivering food. After a while they fell in love, and once his contract with the hospital was up, they got married so she could get her green card and follow him back to the States.

Micha has lived in New York his whole life, and his upbringing was a strange mixture of both American and Bengali culture. He grew up with both Islam and Christianity, often celebrating holidays from both religions as neither of his parents converted to the other's religion after they got married. This lead to many an interesting discussion over dinner, but the issue of religion never seemed to drive a wedge between his parents. They honored each other's traditions and seemed to accept each other for who they were regardless of their differences. They always emphasized that Micha was free to follow or not follow religious practices and traditions as he saw fit. (Even they couldn't be considered strict followers of their own religions, as his father rarely went to church, and his mother often joked that there probably wasn't a point to her still observing halal practices, as remaining married to a Christian man was in of itself haram.) Micha doesn't consider himself religious now, but on the whole he gravitates more towards his mother's faith. Aggressively homophobic Christians tend to crop up more than aggressively homophobic Muslims in NYC, and he's been surprised by how many queer Muslims who still practice there are. Many of his friends are from that community as well as the Indian/Southeast Asian/Arabic community in NYC.

On the whole, Micha doesn't consider himself a practicing Muslim, and he definitely gets up to plenty of things that at the very least are...questionably halal (though he likes to argue that his very existence isn't halal, so he probably can't screw it up that bad in the grand scheme of things.) However, he does observe Ramadan, doesn't drink, and is careful to observe other halal practices around his practicing friends. He's not really the praying type, but even he gets desperate sometimes, and he's been in plenty of desperate situations in his life.

After graduating high school, Micha went to college for one semester before deciding it wasn't for him. He's always been an "out of the box" thinker, and he often struggled in a traditional school setting. He's always worked better learning by himself in his own way, so after suffering through one semester of college ("trying it out" at his parents' insistence) he decided he would just teach himself what he thought he needed to know. His parents weren't exactly happy about this, insisting he needed an education if he wanted a stable job, but he didn't think college would be able to teach him everything he needed to know in order to go into the field he wanted to be in.

Micha has always been interested in journalism, especially investigative journalism. And he's always enjoyed photography. So his dream job was to be a photographer for a newspaper or other news outlet, and in particular, he wanted to be in the middle of the action photographing the most interesting stories, getting the toughest shots. He wanted to take photos that would make the front page of the paper. And the best photos tend to be of things that people don't want photographed. Illegal activities, scandals, corruption. All of it. He wanted a piece of that puzzle, and he knew in order to get into that world, he would need to develop a very particular set of skills.

It has taken a lot of work, but through sheer audacity, a little bit of natural talent, and plenty of dumb luck, Micha has managed to achieve his dream, though perhaps not in the way he initially imagined. Micha is a freelance photographer who operates under the pseudonym "Haze", and for the right price, he'll get you evidence of just about anything you want him to. He specializes in photographs, but he's been known to produce documents as well (for an extra fee. Breaking and entering without getting caught isn't cheap.) He started out with a lot of small clients, mostly people who wanted evidence of their spouses cheating on them, but he's worked his way up to the point where he's gotten dirt on some of the most powerful people in the kingdom. Many of the biggest stories in the news the past few years have had photographs attached credited to him. He's built a reputation as an insane person with no will to live...but a reliable one never the less, and all the major news outlets know that if they want to run an investigation piece that'll really make headlines, they'll want Haze's work to run alongside it. Pictures, after all, can speak louder than any written work can if they're done right. There are many people who want him exposed, but so far no one has been able to figure out who "Haze" really is. Some of that has been the aforementioned dumb luck, but the rest is the result of hours of painstaking, borderline-obsessive paranoia.

Haze may be reckless when pursuing the perfect shot - climbing buildings, trespassing, etc. - but in all other areas of his work, he doesn't take chances. He only shoots on film, never makes digital backups of his photos, and he keeps all the negatives in a fireproof safe hidden in a place he's fairly confident only he can find. He keeps track of all the photos he's taken using an elaborate coded archive, and he runs his business through layers and layers of proxies and redundancies. He does have a website where people can contact him, but it's minimalistic, built off a free domain name, and connected to a burner email account that he changes every week or so. He's careful to the point where it's somewhat ridiculous, but to his credit, he's never been caught. There have been close calls...but no definitive breaches, and he continues to get clients in need of his talents, both the big news organizations and the petty spouses.

Though he has to admit, his latest client is a little different from what he's used to. He recently got an invitation to work for a mysterious benefactor with something of a mission for him and a few other people they hand picked for this job. At first he wasn't sure he liked the idea of working with a team, but his curiosity got the better of him.

trivia:
- His parents are under the impression that he makes his living selling photographs to stock photo sites, which to be fair, he does also do in addition to his main gig. The biggest lie is honestly just about how much money he actually makes, and he has to be careful not to make it obvious that he has more money than he logically should.
- Lives in a studio apartment in Brooklyn. Has converted the bedroom into a darkroom, so he's made the living room his bedroom. He's not often home, and he gets in and out by climbing the fire escape more often than not, so many of his neighbors aren't 100% sure if his apartment is even occupied. Local cryptid.
- Spends a lot of his time lurking around NYC and keeping his eyes and ears peeled for potential stories. He likes to get onto beats early, even if he's not going to be the one writing about them. It really pays off when a paper approaches him for photographs of a particular story and he already has several on file.

playlist
weheartit

[amithethird]

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................................𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚑𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊 𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢
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"Soap?!"
Yes, she goes by Soap. No one is quite sure which came first: the attempts at
shortening her name that eventually landed on something ridiculous, or her refusal
to admit that yes, that B&E on the news was her, often accompanied by her catch-
phrase, "Don't look at me, my hands are clean."

"Is that her real name??"
Sophronia Bonewits? Oh absolutely not. At least, it's not if you're defining "real name"
as the name she was born with. But she picked this name a long time ago, and she's had
it for so long, it's become more real to her than the name her parents gave her.
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personality
driven, insightful, tough, honest
shameless, sassy, independent, wiley
nosy, reckless, troublesome, tactless

Soap is hard to pin down, in every sense of the word. She's spent so much of her life going
about her business with no regard for the consequences of her actions, and that makes
her a bit unpredictable. And yet, paradoxically, it's easy to figure out where you stand with
her. She's not one for the Brits' style of communication - beating around the bush and not
saying what you mean all the time. She's very direct, and if she thinks you're an idiot, she
will let you know it. She won't hold that against you, though. Some of her best friends have
been idiots. She herself is, in fact, an idiot.

Everything about Soap's life says that she should be a sad edgy darkbastard, but she's been
there, done that. Got the t-shirt. Would prefer not to go back to what she used to be. And
the best cure for that, in her opinion, is not taking herself too seriously. She's not one to
posture or pretend to be something she's not. She knows what she is, and what she is is a
feral nerd with a semi-useless superpower and no social skills. She doesn't care if others
see her as competent so long as no one is trying to stop her. The thing she cares most
about now is solving mysteries and learning new things, and there's no shortage of those
kinds of things these days.

Soap has a very one-track mind. Once she's decided she wants to know more about
something, it can be very difficult to divert her course. Nothing short of an act of God is
enough to get her to drop something, but she's gotten very good at pretending to let
something go while continuing to pursue it in the background. She can be extremely hard
to control at times, and it's hard to find something to threaten her with that will actually
get her to behave. It's a trait her superiors are well aware of at this point, and it causes
them no shortage of strife. But her tenacity comes in handy when push comes to shove.
If you have a mission that can only succeed through a combination of reckless ingenuity
and sheer willpower, Soap is definitely the one you want on your side.


history
Soap was born in 1794 in Virginia. The United States was still a new nation that had barely
begun to be tested, and the world in which Soap grew up was constantly changing. After
the War of 1812 and the advent of the Industrial Revolution in the US, Soap's family
decided to try their luck out west. At the time, she was engaged to a young man named
Thomas, and after much discussion, his family decided that they wanted to join Soap's
family in traveling west, and so when she was 19, they all packed up their lives and left
Virginia. While living the life of a frontier housewife wasn't exactly her dream, it was a
life she'd made peace with, and she certainly had enough grit to make it. She was prepared
for the hardships of farming on the plains and living miles and miles away from civilization.
She never could have prepared herself for the rifts.

In 1816, a hole in time and space opened up near her and her husband's homestead just
long enough to let something alien through, though neither of them would realize it until
disaster had already struck. This alien life-form was an incorporeal parasite incapable of
living for long without a flesh and blood host. On its home planet, it found those hosts in
the animals and other sentient beings there, but those beings were not like the humans it
ground itself among. It tried to take up residence in Soap's body, and it was not prepared for
what it found. The encounter happened late at night. One moment she was sleeping, the
next she felt as if the back of her neck was being seared, though not by heat, but by bitter
cold. It sent her into a panic that Thomas was unable to bring her down from, and he was
positive that she'd just suddenly gone insane. That is, until he saw the handprint on the
back of her neck. Thinking she was being possessed by a demon, he sent for a priest
immediately (or the closest they had out there), and in the meantime Soap was left a
catatonic wreck. She knew something was wrong with her, but she had no idea what. She
felt sick and cold and her head felt like it was being weighed down with ice so cold it
burned. And there was a voice that kept trying to speak to her, but she refused to listen.
She was so desperate to be free of it that she become violent towards anyone who came
near her, and she spent almost a week in a confused, terrified stupor.

The priest her husband called for did an exorcism on her, but in the end, that's not what
brought her back. In the end, the alien lifeform perished, but not before doing irreparable
damage to Soap's mind and body. When she dreamed, she found her self floating out of her
body, and it took a lot of effort to make her way back. She could usually return before her
husband woke up, but the few times she couldn't, he woke up to her lifeless body staring up
at the roof of their cabin, cold to the touch and dead as far as he could tell. More than once
she terrified him by suddenly returning to herself as if she'd come back from the dead, and
he became convinced that this thing was not his wife anymore. She tried to reassure him
that she was still herself, but she knew he didn't believe her, and she was afraid of what he
might do. She expected him to leave her or send her back to Virginia. She wasn't prepared
for the night he tried to kill her.

The next time her soul left her and she suddenly woke up after seeming to be dead, Thomas
finally panicked and snapped, convinced that the demon hadn't really left her at all. He got
out of bed and with an eerie calm went to find his rifle. Soap could tell something was wrong,
but she didn't get the chance to do anything before he returned with the gun. Then he shot
her. And after that he didn't know what to do. He spent the next three days pacing, wracked
with guilt and horror over what he'd done, and all the while Soap lingered in her astral form,
slowly growing more and more ferociously angry that this had happened to her. She was angry
at every little thing that had lead to this situation she was trapped in, and all that energy had
to go somewhere when her body - which Thomas had been too afraid to move from its place
on the bed - healed enough for her soul to return. After three days she got up again, bloody
and furious, and she killed her husband. Then she fled.

The story of what had happened spread like a morbid folktale, and most people who heard it
didn't quite believe it. Few people knew exactly what had happened, as Soap and Thomas's
neighbors hadn't heard the initial gunshot, nor had they come to visit the homestead during
the three days Soap was dead. All they knew was that Thomas's wife had been possessed by
a spirit and hadn't been right since. Then after a long while of not hearing from any of them,
some of them saw her fleeing into the night, covered in blood, her wild eyes reflecting the
moonlight. After Thomas was found and buried, the cabin and the farm were abandoned, and
Soap never returned.

She spent many years roaming the American West, first as a vagrant and a ghost story in her
own right, and then as an outlaw as she began to come to terms with the strange powers she'd
been given and learned to control them. She changed her name to Sophronia Bonewits, a
somewhat morbid play on words that she felt was appropriate, and she never changed it even
after her name became infamous among cowboys and homesteaders alike. She ran with train
robbers and highwaymen until a mistake finally got her killed, and after she woke up again,
just like the last time, she once again moved on to find somewhere far enough away that her
name wouldn't be recognized. (She'd already changed it once, and she was loathe to change it
again. That was just too much work.) She ended up traveling all the way back to the East
Coast, but that certainly wasn't the furthest she'd end up going.

Soap has traveled all over the United States, Canada, Europe, and even parts of Asia. She has
spent her immortality seeing all she can, learning all she can, and trying to come to terms with
her life's troubled start. She's had to figure out for herself what she really wants out of her life,
and she's had to live with the ghosts of her past, sometimes literally. After deciding that she
wanted to put all the things she'd learned and lived through to good use - and perhaps fill in
some of the historical gaps in her knowledge - she was recruited by Aion in the UK to help with
the current temporal crisis. Though she doesn't have all the facts about the being that started
this whole ordeal for her, she does have her suspicions that the "demon" was very real, and
learning that it may have been a displaced alien has brought up some of her old wounds she
thought she'd left behind. She doesn't like to think about it, though. She just tries to stay
focused on her work and her mysteries.

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𝚂𝚘𝚙𝚑𝚛𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚊..................
........"𝚂𝙾𝙰𝙿"
..................𝙱𝚘𝚗𝚎𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚜

age: some (~200)
species: alien
gender: nonbinary female
sexuality: pansexual
role: researcher
abilities: astral projection,
communing with the dead,
immortality


appearance: Soap certainly looks
human enough. At 5'5" she's not the
most intimidating figure, and brown-
eyed, brown-haired humans aren't
exactly rare. She doesn't dress to
stand out either. Hoodies and jeans
are her clothing of choice. The more
she's able to fly under the radar, the
easier her job is. However, if you
look close enough, you'll spot the
things that make her different.
It's mostly little things that the
average person would just find weird
or creepy. She tends to sleep with
her eyes open, and in the right light,
you might catch a reflection coming
from behind her eyes, much like a
cat or a deer. The air around her is
often colder than it should be, and
her skin is always frigid and clammy.
But the weirdest thing is the scar on
the back of her neck. It's a
discolored patch of skin that could
almost be a burn scar, shaped like a
hand print, as if someone grabbed
her by the nape of her neck.


skills:
- athleticism
- library science and artifact handling
- speaks several languages
- investigation/detective work
- no formal combat training, but she's
scrappy and vicious when cornered

weaknesses:
- a bad shot, don't give her a gun
- a terrible medic
- bad at following orders
- can't charm her way out of a paper
bag, she'd rather punch you and run
- see description of abilities


abilities: Soap's primary power is
her ability to project her soul out
of her body, which comes with a
number of benefits and drawbacks.

Her immortality is probably the
greatest benefit. The connection
between her soul and her body is
complicated and weird now, and
it means that simply damaging
her body is not enough to destroy
or banish her soul. Likewise, her
soul being removed from her body
is not enough to kill her body. So
they're sort of at an impasse. And
thus she can't die. This does
cause some problems, though. If
her body takes enough damage,
it won't be able to hang onto her
soul anymore, and she'll be ejected
from her body. Though she heals
faster than a regular person, it
still takes a few days (give or take,
depending on the type of damage)
for her body to heal enough to
support a soul again. This means
that she's stuck in her astral
form until then.

Soap's astral form is usually
invisible to regular people, and
only those with senses attuned to
the spaces between planes are
able to truly sense her when she's
like this. She's incapable of
interacting with objects or people
in the physical world, though she
can still see them, and most
things cannot interact with her.
Though over the years she has
perfected a technique that allows
her to be seen and heard on the
physical plane by others. When
projecting on the physical plane,
she appears as a semi-translucent
white figure whose features are
vague and shifting. Her form is
much more clearly her when
drifting between planes, but it's
very difficult for her to keep a
consistent, solid form while on
the physical plane. She looks like
an honest-to-god ghost, and her
presence tends to freak people
out, regardless of whether or not
they've seen her like this before.
She believes this fear response
is largely involuntary.

While in her astral form, Soap
is able to see more than just the
physical plane. She's also able to
see the souls of others who have
become trapped between planes.
Actual ghosts. She can speak with
them and interact with them,
which has often proven useful
when investigating certain events.
Ghosts have a whole wealth of
knowledge that the living just
aren't capable of possessing, and
they'll share it with you if you
know how to ask politely.

Another quirk of her powers, also
owing to the fact that the link
between her soul and her body is
more flexible now, is that her
body and soul are capable of
pairing up with more than just
each other. Soap is able to
transfer her soul into suitable
hosts that aren't already
occupied by another soul.
In theory this means she could
take over a corpse, but she's
never actually tried it, and she's
not sure she wants to. This also
means that her body can be
taken over by another soul while
it's unoccupied. It hasn't happened
many times...but it has happened.
It's not an experience she's very
fond of.

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.𝚁𝚒𝚜𝚎𝚗 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚍,
.......𝙻𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚍𝚘𝚗'𝚝 𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚐𝚒𝚟𝚎.
..........𝙼𝚞𝚛𝚍𝚎𝚛 𝚋𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚢 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎,
......................𝙸'𝚖 𝚏𝚞𝚐𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎.
....................𝙲𝚊𝚛𝚟𝚎𝚍 𝚒𝚗 𝚖𝚢 𝚊𝚛𝚖,
........................𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙼𝚊𝚛𝚔 𝚘𝚏 𝙲𝚊𝚒𝚗,
..........................𝙾𝚗𝚎 𝚎𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚜𝚒𝚡,
.........................................𝙰𝚖𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚌𝚊𝚗!

𝙸'𝚖 𝚊𝚕𝚠𝚊𝚢𝚜 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚜 𝚜𝚘𝚖𝚎𝚋𝚘𝚍𝚢 𝚎𝚕𝚜𝚎.

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res for relationships

[amithethird]

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𝐈 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡 𝐈 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐚𝐲 ________________________________________


________________________𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐈 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐥𝐢𝐞.

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full name: Adrian Left Hand
goes by: Adrian. Occasionally Addie.
age: 27
gender: female (cis)
sexuality: pansexual or two-spirit, depending on who's asking
role: the pathologist
________________________
playlist:
✗ Reminders - Radical Face
✗ loud mouth - tiLLie
✗ I Love My Friends - Foster The People
✗ Love For Long - Jenny Owen Young
✗ Which Witch - Florence + the Machine
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

appearance: Adrian has long dark hair, brown skin, and brown eyes. She keeps her hair long, though she's
not a strict follower of Lakota tradition when it comes to cutting it. She's been out of the state for so long,
and she's left behind a lot of her heritage in an attempt to fit in better in her field. She does like wearing
traditional beadwork, though, and in recent years she's tried incorporating it into her wardrobe more often,
partially out of guilt for all the years she spent trying to fit in with white people. Now that she's back home,
especially, she feels a little less pressure to be so meek about it. She dresses fairly outdoorsy - practical,
durable clothes in neutral colors - when she's not on the job or out in the field, but when she's working in a
lab or other medical setting, she tends to just wear plain scrubs.
________________________

personality:
pos. traits: intelligent, observant, driven, brave, honest
neutral traits: unorthodox, workaholic, competitive, curious, introverted
neg. traits: arrogant, pessimistic, blunt, pig-headed

Adrian has always had an incredible memory and a knack for noticing things other don't. She'll remember
anything you tell her, for better or for worse. Her memory comes in handy in her field, where there are
literally thousands of different kinds of organisms that can cause human disease or obscure the ones that do.
It also helps her a lot in pathology, as her recall of human anatomy is excellent. Despite her intelligence,
she's had to fight like hell to get to where she is. Her age, race, and gender have all made it that much harder
to get into a good job, but she's done it, and she's damn proud of it. Her pride has turned into arrogance over
the years, though, and she often assumes she's the smartest person in the room. She doesn't always let on,
knowing when to keep her opinions to herself, but that part of her brain is a lot harder to control when she
hasn't had her coffee. Some of this arrogance is a front, though. In general she hates admitting when she's
wrong, because she's constantly second-guessing herself. She can't stand feeling like she might have made the
wrong call, and she tries to run away from those feelings by staunchly defending any decision she makes. It's
caused her trouble in her relationships more than once, and she's aware that, as someone who's so dedicated
to people telling the truth, that her behavior is pretty hypocritical.

She's not a total jerk, though. It's not always apparent, but she does care a lot about people, and she cares a
lot about her people. She'll do anything - has done anything - for her friends, though these efforts
combined with her belief that she always knows what's best or right have also caused friction before. She's a
competitive person, with both herself and others, and sometimes she just doesn't know when to stop and
leave well enough alone. It makes her a very dedicated worker, though, and a very loyal friend.
________________________

history:

Adrian has always been intelligent, though what she choses to do with that mind has varied wildly over the
years. Born and raised in Hot Springs, she grew up hiking in the woods with friends, playing in the creek, and
bringing bugs and frogs home to her family. Her younger brothers, Chase and Shaun, were always more than
happy to help her on these quests, much to their parents' chagrin. As she got older, she found new ways of
frustrating her parents when bugs and frogs didn't interest her anymore.

It's not that Adrian had a bad relationship with her parents. They were never abusive or neglectful, but they
weren't perfect. She often felt like they didn't understand her, and they often pressured her to excel in
school and be the well behaved oldest daughter. Her father talked a lot about her "potential" and how he
wouldn't let her waste it. As she hit high school and the pressure just kept ramping up, she pushed back more
often. She didn't understand why she wasn't allowed to screw up and have fun like other kids, so she went out
and found trouble under her parents' noses whenever she could, just to blow off steam once her school work
was done. (She may not have liked her dad's attitude, but that didn't mean she was going to fail on purpose.
Even if she resented her parents, there was still a part of her terrified of disappointing them.)

Adrian's troublemaking tendencies finally got her in over her head when she was 17. As a teenager she hung
out a lot with Alex and [Mechanic], and they would often go goof off in the woods at night on Alex's family's
land. One of those nights in question, after attending a baseball game, the trio found a body in the woods.

The body belonged to Ethan Anderson. There was no question about it when they saw him. After all who didn't
know the mayor and her family?

Mayor Anderson had two sons, Theo and Ethan, and though Ethan was never in school with Adrian, she and the
others had seen him around before with the other Andersons. In particular, they'd seen him with his mother
when she and Alex's father were both running for mayor. It had been a bitter, contested election, which didn't
exactly end with a graceful concession and a firm handshake after the ballots were counted. Everyone knew
that Alex's father didn't exactly like Mayor Anderson, but none of the three teens thought he'd been bitter
enough to literally kill her adopted son over it.

Whether he'd done anything to Ethan or not, the fact remained: his body was on the Clarke family land. Afraid
that either Alex's family was going to get framed or they really had done something to Ethan, the trio
decided they wouldn't report the body. Alex objected to the idea of moving the body and throwing it in a
nearby lake, so they just covered it up and left, but later both Adrian and [Mechanic] agreed that covering it
up wouldn't be enough. Without Alex's knowledge they moved the body and dumped it elsewhere, thinking that
would be the end of it for a while. However, the body surfaced not long after, launching a long and drama filled
investigation in which all three of them were arrested and questioned multiple times about the murder. In the
end, their appearance at the baseball game saved them. The charges, even the charges of tampering with a
crime scene, were dropped, but The Trio, as they were referred to, were forever associated with the case, a
case which remains unsolved.

After her parents got the arrest scrubbed from her record, Adrian was eager to leave town. Even though she
knew she and the boys hadn't killed Ethan, the town was still divided on it. When she left for college, she
was happy to start over somewhere where no one had ever heard of this case. She went to school and got a
Master's degree in epidemiology and pathogenesis and landed a job with the CDC.

She gives 100% to her work, and she loves every second of it, but this case has brought up some feelings she'd
been trying to avoid. The murder case from ten years ago still haunts her, and she's been struggling the past
several months to keep it together. She thought she was over the fear and guilt she felt back then, but of
course, she's never worked through those feelings, so sometimes they can't help but bubble to the surface.

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𝐈'𝐦 𝐞𝐢𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐨𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐭,
𝐨𝐫 𝐈'𝐦 𝐚𝐧 𝐨𝐩𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡
𝐚𝐭 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞.
____________________

trivia:
- A member of the
Oglala Sioux Tribe,
while she may have
grown up in Hot
Springs, she has
plenty of family
members who still
live on the Pine
Ridge Reservation.

- Still has nightmares
about Ethan. During
the investigation,
they were at their
worst, but they had
slowly stopped over
the years. However,
now that she's home,
she's been having
them again.

- Not much of a
drinker. Her uncle
was an alcoholic and
as she's gotten older
she's decided she
doesn't want to go
down the same road.

- Likes board games
and video games
where you solve
puzzles. Does not
understand the
appeal of first-
person shooters.
Will rag on Fortnite
as a scam all day.

- A terrible cook,
but she knows how
to bake. It's just
chemistry, after all,
and she's very
meticulous about
it. It really pays
off, though. Her
desserts are to
die for. Sometimes
she'll bring stuff
in to work and
leave it in the lab
break room, often
anonymously. No
one would believe
her if she owned
up to it. She's not
the "brings baked
goods to work to
be nice" type.
____________________

𝐒𝐨 𝐢𝐭'𝐬 𝐛𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫
𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞
𝐨𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐰𝐚𝐲 -

𝐢𝐟 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞
𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞
𝐟𝐚𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐦𝐞.

𝐒𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐜𝐚𝐧
𝐝𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦 𝐈
𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐞𝐝
𝐨𝐮𝐭
𝐰𝐞𝐥𝐥.

𝐀𝐧𝐝 𝐈...
𝐈 𝐜𝐚𝐧 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭
𝐠𝐨 𝐭𝐨 𝐬𝐥𝐞𝐞𝐩.

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𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝? 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐠𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐞𝐭𝐡? _______________________________


_________________𝐈 𝐬𝐚𝐰 𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐰𝐚𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐦𝐞

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friends: ☀
positive: ✩
neutral: ☯
complicated: ∅
negative: ☁
enemies: ☢
romantic interest: ➵
family: ♠
________________________
playlist cont.:
✗ In The Woods Somewhere - Hozier
✗ Haunted - Radical Face
✗
✗
✗
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

dr. vincent ellington:

jaime walker:

[the lab tech]:

dr. arthur peachey:

[the therapist]:

tofu and sushi:

alexander clark:

[the mechanic]:

theodore anderson:

diane juniper law:
____________

abigail williams: ∅
Adrian has spent a lot of time with Abby - in a sense. She's poured over records and patients histories,
trying to figure out where Abby may have picked up this infection. She's retraced her steps through
countless moments of her life, and she's spent many long nights looking at samples under microscopes
and trying not to look at the sealed storage locker where the girl's body is still being kept. She feels
like she knows her, and sometimes in ways she would rather not.

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𝐈 𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐭𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞
𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐭 𝐤𝐞𝐩𝐭.

𝐌𝐲 𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞,
𝐈'𝐦 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐝𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐲𝐞𝐭.
____________________

trivia:
-
____________________

𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐲 𝐲𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬
𝐈 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐈'𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞𝐚𝐫?

𝐈 𝐟𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝
𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠
𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐰𝐨𝐨𝐝𝐬
𝐬𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐰𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞.