Ruby City Application

[onethirdhuman]

<sub>PLAYER
Name: Ixaix
Personal Journal: n/a
E-mail: abigail_gardner@ymail.com
AIM: Ixaix


CHARACTER

Name: Haru Fairchild

Age: 19

Appearance: Haru is slight and small in build, 5' 2" on a tall day and 105 pounds on a heavy one. Her thin frame is pure muscle though she doesn't look it and she follows an intense daily training schedule to keep in peak form. She has an odd shade of hair that normally appears to be pale brown, but in direct light seems white-blonde and in the shadows takes on such a dark hue as to be black. The common theory among her siblings is that it's a form of camouflage--she could care less. She keeps it cropped short in the back with the bangs swooping forward to hide her color-shifting eyes for when sunglasses aren't appropriate.

Much to her brother Mercury's chagrin, Haru wears mostly black in a typical punk-goth fashion. Rarely seen without her signature trenchcoat and tall combat boots, she never strives for an overly feminine fashion but despite her best efforts it's impossible to mistake her for anything but a young woman. Around her neck is a constant necklace from which hangs a silver cross and a blue guitar pic but beyond that she wears no jewelry.

Haru slouches, trying to make herself appear smaller than she is. Much of this is due to her instinctive need to remain hidden and unobtrusive, but part of it can be blamed on her status as a social outcast among her peers. Since she first began at the age of five, Haru speaks clearly, rapidly and with a cynical wit.

Chosen PB: Delfine Bafort, to be slowly replaced with drawn icons. Maybe.

Personality: Despite the love given her by her siblings, Haru has always felt like an outcast among her peers. Early on in her childhood she developed a defense mechanism of being an aloof loner to protect her secretly tender feelings. The death of her only friend by her own hand only served to cement these feelings in her.

Haru is stubborn, strong-willed and quick to leap to the defense of those who she perceives are in need of aid. Always an advocate for the underdog, she has no tolerance for bullies. Her immediate response to any situation is to be pessimistic and cynical so that when the worst inevitably happens she's already anticipated it. These things add to the first impression she gives of being a cold and arrogant lone wolf.

Once her hard outer shell is broached, Haru proves to be a loyal and warm friend-- there is nothing she won't do for a friend in need; yet if this friendship is betrayed, there is very little that the other party can do to regain it. She is a romantic at heart and spends many long evenings absorbed in fantasy books both classic and modern. Though she'd never admit it, she's been known to cry at sad moments in movies, smile warmly at kittens and generally act more feminine than her attitude conveys.

World Information: Haru's world is identical to our own modern Earth-- except for, you know, there being vampires and werewolves in it. This will result in her fourth-walling people, especially taking into account that she's a closet otaku.

In Haru's world, the science of vampires and werewolves is both simplistic and complicated at the same time.

The simple part: Every Damned is a murderer, even though not every murderer is doomed to become a Damned. What the specific trigger is is uncertain, but the end result is the same-- a newly turned Damned goes feral and temporarily insane. If they survive this stage, then when they come to they are a full fledged werewolf or vampire with the hunger for blood or flesh, respectively. Some Damned never manage to come out of the feral stage and that is where Haru steps in-- one Damned cannot kill another, so before she was created they were forced to guide humans in the hunt.

The complicated part: Damned come in two types--werewolves and vampires--and from there are further divided into physical and psychic.

To Become A Vampire: By default, vampires tend towards the psychic over the physical. Humans who become vampires have committed a murder that is cold and calculated.

To Become A Werewolf: By default, werewolves tend towards the physical over the psychic. Humans who become werewolves have committed a murder born of passionate rage.

To Become Physical: As implied by the name, a physical Damned is one who committed a murder that involved more brawn than brain.

To Become Psychic: As implied by the name, a psychic Damned is one who committed a murder that involved more mind over matter.

Therefore, physical vampires and psychic werewolves are rare. Psychic werewolves typically have a shorter lifespan as their nature tends to send them towards suicide by human hands, being unequipped to deal with the constant pressure of a million minds invading their own.

History: Haru was formed rather than naturally born-- her creation was the direct result of one human scientist, Jack Fairchild, discovering the existence of the Damned and of their unique DNA. The Damned's DNA contains three strands instead of the regular two; this third strand proved to potentially be the key to all sorts of medical advancements and spurred Jack to begin the Damphir project.

The basic idea was to create a being that, while partially Damned, would have enough mortality to render this third strand usable in human subjects. It took several years, yet the correct mixture of genetic codes was eventually formulated and the baby grown in Jack's young wife. Haru was born on the first day of spring, hence her name, and promptly proved a disappointment. While she contained the strange triple helix of DNA, the third strand proved to be unusable for human testing. Deemed a horrible waste of money and time, the project was dropped and Haru would have been scrapped had several of her Damned donors not stepped in.

Part of the Damned condition was that they could not kill themselves or each other. This had always been a problem as, if a Damned turned out to be too much of a problem or was drawing too much unwanted attention to the Damned community, they were forced to lead humans on a hunt. In the modern day and age, when their existence especially needed to be kept under wraps, this served to be harder and more time consuming than they liked. Haru, who was mortal enough to kill the Damned and bore their strengths, was the perfect solution.

Raised mainly by Luken, Zayvian, Mercury and Anna, Haru never wanted for love despite her biological "parents" abandonment. With the benefit of her memetic memories and the rapt attention of her loving siblings she quickly grew into a bright child, though she didn't speak aloud until she was five. Skipping straight over the "baby talk" phase, Haru dived straight into speaking in complete sentences, albiet in several different languages. If a Damned had learned the language before it resided in her mind and made her hard to understand to outsiders. Until she learned to control her powers she was kept under close guard and therefore remained isolated until middle-school age.

Although she was initially friendless, she quickly made acquaintances with Matthew Black. Popular, outgoing and beloved by all, their friendship befuddled their peers yet remained strong throughout their middle and high school careers. He became the only person outside of her "family" to know her secret.

In their junior year, however, tragedy struck when Matt was driven to murder his abusive foster father and fell prey to the Damned urges. However, whether because of his friendship with Haru or for some other, darker reason, he managed to fight off the bloodlust for several weeks before going insane during a peprally at school. Matt had seen this coming to a certain extent and knew Haru would be able to put him down-- yet Haru was taken completely by surprise. In the ensuing battle, Matt left several long scars down her back before she managed to put a bullet through his heart. He died in her arms and left Haru in a completely catatonic state for several months. Her brothers and sisters decided that it would be best to move her from the hectic life of New York City to a smaller town in another state. It's recently after this move that Haru will arrive in the game.

Strengths/Weaknesses: Haru is highly allergic to garlic, rowan and silver-- so much so that just the smell of garlic can make her throat close and a simple prick of either rowan or silver could easily make her sieze. For this reason she carries three shots of specially mixed adrenaline in her first aid kit, created by her doctor brother Zayvian.

She still suffers from PTSD after Matthew's murder and occasionally suffers a panic attack complete with nightmarish flashbacks. The triggers for these attacks are varied and get worse the more stressed or worn-out Haru is.

Abilities: All you need to know in one bite-sized entry.

First Person: [The train rolls into the station, doors opening silently. For a long moment nothing happens-- then an attractive young woman stumbles out as if she's been shoved, followed by three large black lupine dogs and one cat. The feline springs to wrap himself around her neck, gold eyes wide and staring about them with some mixture of fear and curiosity. She absentmindedly strokes his head, frowning down at the watch she found while on the locomotive. A pause, a slight tilt of her head... and she winces, clapping her hands over her ears as if pained by a loud screech.

Within seconds she has the device figured out and turned on, the feed revealing a face that's hard to read behind her dark sunglasses and passive expression. She's clothed entirely in black, most of her slight frame hidden by a heavy trenchcoat.]

Where am I? Dimension, year and date, if you please.

[One of the dogs barks and she sighs before adding--] Also, are there any squirrels here to chase? [A mewl from the cat.] Oh, for the love of-- And some fish too. [Another bark.] No, I don't think there's such a thing as a squirrel-fish...

Third Person: Later she would look back on this day and marvel that the weather so perfectly matched her mood; the grey sky filled with looming black clouds, the sharp chill breeze that bit into any portion of exposed flesh, the smattering of cold rain that served only to dampen instead of drench... Later this would strike her as too cinematic to be a coincidence. For right now, she could only focus on the object in front of her.

It was elegantly simple, beautiful in its spartan design. Such a work of art deserved to be enshrined in a museum rather than out in the elements alongside hundreds of other gravestones... But then, the young man laid to rest there deserved to be above the ground rather than beneath it, so perhaps it all worked out in some strange way.

She laid the flowers across the stone after moving the wilted ones from her last visit to the ground, then settled in among the newly grown grass. For several long moments she simply sat, tracing her fingers along the engraving on the cold stone. When she spoke her tone was carefully neutral, soft with repressed emotions.

"Hey, Matt. How're things going... you know, up in Heaven? I know, I know, I always made fun of the idea of Heaven before, but... I mean, where else would you be? Yeah, laugh it up, assface..." She drew her knees up and under her chin, sighing. "So I guess you already know we're moving out to some hick town in the middle of nowhere. Zayvian says I need to get out of the city... I'll still come to visit, of course, but..."

Trailing off, Haru buried her face in her knees. "Why didn't I see it coming? Why didn't I know you were in pain? Why didn't you tell me, you bastard?" Lifting her head, she allowed a few tears to roll down her cheeks before swiping them away furiously. "...I'll never forgive you, Matt... For dying before I could tell you..."

Leaning forward, she pressed her lips against the gravestone before whispering softly, "I love you." She stood up, bowed her head and walked away. Thus she missed the robin that flew down and alighted on the headstone to watch her retreating form. It gave a soft chirp before flying off into slowly clearing skies.</sub>