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Schuyler Z. Boer - Part Two(view spoiler)[
History, continued
Sky’s early youth was rather charmed; Kay actually put an effort into being more of a stereotypical father for once, Rose loved all of her children, and Dean and Clay were very good older siblings. Alice, Eve and River were less enthusiastic about their new brother – River was no longer the baby of the family, Eve hated Sky for getting their father’s affections while Kay was still indifferent to her existence, and Alice just didn’t really care either way about a new sibling – but they weren’t actively malicious. Eve and River pushed him around a bit, but Dean and Clay stepped in on his behalf often enough that River eventually gave up. Sky adored Kay, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Kay proudly displayed Sky’s gifts of artwork in his office, made an effort to put aside time to play with Sky each day, tucked him in to bed, read him stories, and generally treated Sky like the best thing since sliced bread. This continued on into Sky’s early school years, the boy never understanding why his siblings always seemed so conflicted or even scared when Kay came home. Even Eve, who possibly adored their father even more than he did, would flinch whenever Kay caught her off guard, or would panic whenever she messed up no matter how small the misstep had been.
Then, Sky woke up on the wrong side of the bed one day; he picked a fight with River, broke a vase and got caught in a lie when he said the cat did it, threw his vegetables at Eve at lunch, doodled on his schoolwork instead of doing it and yelled at his tutor when she tried to get him back on track, smeared his pudding on the wall when he was put in time out, and accidentally spilled water all over his father’s desk when he was snooping through Kay’s stamps. Exasperated, Rose took the other kids out to watch a movie and left him at home with the nanny to calm down. Kay ended up getting back first, coming home early after a particularly nasty day at work. At first, Kay seemed to be relaxing, enjoying being home with his favorite son – and then, he heard what all Sky had been up to, and found out what state his desk was now in. As it turned out, some of the papers he’d left out were extremely important… and they were now ruined. The nanny left fairly soon after that (she was more of a glorified babysitter than an actual nanny, since Rose and Kay were extremely hands on parents, and was only really called when both parents had to go out), and a livid Kay went to go clean things up in his office. Sky tagged along, pestering his father and generally making a nuisance of himself, ignoring Kay when his father finally snapped at him to go to his room. This was apparently the last straw for Kay, who completely blindsided Sky when he spun and backhanded the boy hard enough to send him to the ground. Sky quivered on the floor as Kay snarled at him to get his sniveling rear to his room before he really gave him something to cry over, the boy scrambling to obey this time. For the first time in his life, it was a scary thing when Kay followed him in a few minutes later – his father ordering him to tell his mother that he tripped and fell against a table if any questions ended up being asked before storming back out again. Terrified, Sky kept silent when the rest of his family finally made it back, even when a concerned Dean asked him if he was okay later that evening. Things seemingly went back to normal, his father showing no signs of being angry that night when he tucked Sky in like usual, or even at any point the day after that. When his jaw turned an angry green and yellow the day after that, Sky did as he had been told and told his mother that he’d hit it against a table.
When Clay and Dean cornered him alone, however, it didn’t take long before he folded under their pointed questions and sobbed out what had actually happened. After that, his big brother and sister became his constant guardians, hanging out nearby whenever Kay and Sky were together. At first, it didn’t seem like a necessary measure – Kay stayed happy for weeks after that, Sky’s caution fading quickly as what had happened began seeming like a one time bad dream. Then, Rose had to go away to visit a dying aunt, leaving Kay the sole parent in charge, and the bad dream became a reoccurring nightmare. While Kay could handle being a dad for a few hours every evening and morning, he just didn’t have the patience to do it every hour of every day – but he was too stubborn to just call in the nanny and stay at work, not wanting to disappoint Rose when she got back. Instead, he struggled through the first few days, trying to juggle keeping track of his work over the phone and through emails while also keeping an eye on and caring for six children… and then exploded. Sky got to witness his father’s full temper being vented out for the first time, watching in horrified shock as Kay threw his siblings around, before getting to experience it first hand.
By the time Rose finally got back nearly a month later, Sky was bewildered and scared out of his mind. It didn’t make any sense – why would his dear, loving father do anything like that? He’d never acted like that before, so it had to be because Sky had been bad. Despite Clay and Dean’s reassurances that it wasn’t really his fault, Sky began double and triple checking everything he did, doubting his actions and thoughts and becoming stuck in an endless cycle of worry, fear, and self-hatred. Eve didn’t help matters, since she seemed to agree wholeheartedly that Kay’s violence was his fault; his sister took every chance available to snap at him and shove him around. Even Rose noticed Sky’s withdrawn attitude, trying uselessly to cheer him up and find out what had happened. Clay and Dean eventually managed to use this concern to talk Rose into talking Kay into letting Sky go to public school – telling her they thought he was just lonely.
Kay absolutely refused to send Sky to public school, since he was certain that it was nothing more than a glorified babysitter payed for with taxpayers money, but he did finally agree to a compromise. Thus, Sky was sent off to a very expensive private school that was touted for its education. Sky hated being sent away from his family, already missing them before he even really made it to the school, and kind of hated his two siblings for having talked their parents into sending him away. He didn’t feel any better about things for several days, since he was shy enough at the presence of dozens of other kids that he wasn’t able to reach out and was thus left alone with nothing to think about but schoolwork and his homesickness. Finally, though, nearly a week into his first week at school, Sky made his first friends, Titus and Evelyn. Or rather, they dragged him into their group of friends, smothering him with good natured ribbing and jokes until he felt at home.
Things only went up from there. Sky was a naturally clever boy, and, with the help of his newfound friends, he kept his grades up high – Sky wasn’t the top in his classes, but he never once failed a class since his grades never dipped below a B. In return, he helped support his friends, all of them working together to keep each other in good shape. All rewards were shared, no limelight taken by a single person, and Sky loved it. It was awesome to be able to share the glory of a success with friends, being able to try to embarrass them by singing their praises at the top of his lungs while knowing the favor would be returned at some point.
Then his first summer break came, when Sky returned home. He was overjoyed to be back with his family, even if he now was left missing his friends, overflowing with tales of his time away. Rose (and subsequently Kay) was relieved to see Sky back in such high spirits, glad to see that Clay and Dean had apparently been right. Meanwhile, most of Sky’s siblings were just as happy to have their cheerful little brother back, and were making sure he knew how much he’d been missed. Eve, however, was doing her level best to wipe him off the face of the earth with the intensity of her glares – she hated that not only was he the family favorite, but now he was getting to go off and have adventures and make friends while she was stuck at home, and she wasn’t afraid to let him know it, much to his chagrin. Still, for the most part, Sky’s first summer break was awesome enough that he was sad when it came to an end, even knowing that he had his friends to look forward to back at school. This trend stayed fairly constant over the next few years, though occasionally his father would be in bad mood while he was home… which made him a lot happier to be heading back to school, nursing and hiding new bruises and cuts. Still, whether or not his father was in a good mood, Sky loved hanging out with his siblings.
(hide spoiler)]
Schuyler Z. Boer - Part Three(view spoiler)[
History, continued
As time went by and Sky got older, Titus (as well as Kay and River) talked him into joining several of the after-school athletics; Sky tentatively trying out wrestling, track, boxing and swimming. As it turned out, he enjoyed most athletics (though the first few weeks after he joined all of them simultaneously felt like they nearly killed him – while Sky was in good shape, he wasn’t in that good of shape) and slowly rose through the unspoken ranks. Titus was the head of most of them – which was why he’d pushed Sky to join them – and he didn’t mind spending extra time showing Sky little tricks and tips to help him get better faster.
Meanwhile, at home, things were getting a bit more interesting. Sky’s siblings were growing up right along with him, growing interests and hobbies of their own, and it sometimes amazed him how far they’d go in the months he was away. Eve was determined to make their father proud, splitting her free time between rubbing elbows with the other wealthy kids around and trying to learn all she could about the pharmaceutical industry. She’d grown up to be quite the little diva, much to Rose’s amusement, and the two were nearly identical – Eve had her mother’s dark hair, slender frame and elegant good looks, but she had also gotten Kay’s height and green eyes, which put Eve a good head taller than the petite Rose. River had a bit of a thing for water life, and was often found out snorkeling in the huge pool out back that he’d managed to talk Rose into having turned into a sort of terrarium. He was the most casual out of the family besides Sky, and tended to embarrass Eve whenever she brought any of her highfalutin friends over. River was an even mix of his parents – he had Rose’s dark hair, Kay’s green eyes, and was firmly in the middle between their heights and body types. Alice was a nature lover, often irritating Kay by protesting animal testing over dinner, spending most of her free time writing up letters to state officials to try and keep companies from being allowed to dump slop into rivers (she was occasionally able to convince River to help her with those) or to keep forests from being mowed down to make room for new housing. She also liked working out in a garden she’d made in one of the lower acres of their property, keeping their house fairly well stocked with fresh fruits, vegetables and honey. Alice took more after their father – she was tall and sturdily built with bright red hair, but she did also have Rose’s light blue eyes. Dean didn’t really have any specific hobbies, instead going around and helping her siblings with theirs. Her one personal interest was a rather concerning tendency towards pyromania, Sky often wondering how she hadn’t burned the house down when she usually had at least one candle lit at all time and when one of her nervous ticks was flicking a lighter on and off. Dean was more petite, like Rose, but otherwise had Kay’s green eyes and red hair. Clay’s free time was taken up by multiple activities; Sky’s older brother had a mildly unhealthy fascination with death (which somehow included a deep love of vampire and zombie movie and books) his internet search histories on the subject deep and odd enough that they would probably leave anyone looking through it who didn’t know him absolutely certain he was a serial killer, but he also had a much more common interest in building a money collection (he had a closet full of different types of currency from around the world), art, and a thing for finding funny obituaries and tombstones, as well as graveyard humor jokes (which kind of went back into his fascination with death, but which he would insist was an entirely different affair). Clay was tall like his father, but otherwise looked like Rose; he was slender, with black hair and light blue eyes.
In addition to finding out how his siblings were growing up, he was finding out how his father’s business was run. Kay was taking Clay and River to his work to show them around, and would take Sky along anytime he was at home. He began springing little quizzes on them at odd times, questioning them on what they’d seen and what he’d told them, rewarding correct answers and scowling at incorrect guesses. Sky was interested to find out what all his father had been doing out at work all this time, though it was honestly pretty boring – if it weren’t for the fact that Titus and Evelyn seemed absolutely spellbound by anything he told them about these little trips when he got back from summer vacation, Sky probably would have forgotten nearly all of what he was shown by the time they got home. As it was, though, Sky made sure to write it all down in a little journal before he forgot it – after all, his friends had said that they might want to join the industry one day, and learning everything they could from the real deal would help them out a lot. So, he jotted down notes on the processes his father told him and his brothers about, notes on the new drugs they were testing, notes on what drugs failed and why, and notes on future drugs that his father mentioned, to later share with his friends. For whatever reason, Kay’s mood began steadily darkening during Sky’s visits home – apparently, his competitors had been making progress leaps and bounds ahead of Time Pharmaceuticals – and Sky and his siblings, as usual, took the brunt of it. Sky warned Titus and Evelyn that this apparently wasn’t great information anymore, since Kay’s methods obviously weren’t working, but they stayed interested anyway.
Much to his joy, a few weeks after his fourteenth birthday, Sky got a decidedly big growth spurt; gaining a good two inches over the span of a month. Once his body caught up with the changes, he began doing better and better in his athletics – as time went on, Sky stayed one of the largest boys in each group (Titus stayed a little bigger, though), which tended to give him a bit of a leg up on his competition.
His life, with a few occasional exceptions, was great.
And then, it wasn’t.
A new girl had transferred in not long after Sky’s fourteenth birthday, having managed to get into his grade despite being a little over a year younger. Sky didn’t pay much attention to her at first, not until she managed to become the head of each and every class within a few months – even beating out a rather grumpy Evelyn at mathematics, despite Evelyn having held the position of class head in that subject for three solid years before then. Even then, Sky was merely impressed by her, holding a mild, halfhearted disdain for her just for Evelyn’s sake. However, when she joined up with a number of the after school groups including all of his, Sky began taking her a bit more seriously – even learning her name (Gin (Jennifer) Pallas). She wasn’t quite as good as he was in athletics, but she was still good enough to give him a serious run for his money. A bit peeved, Sky threw himself into his studies, intensely focusing his efforts on improving his grades in his best class – science – until he was competing with her for the head spot in the class. When he finally managed to overthrow her, getting the highest grade in the class for the week, Gin just smiled wryly and tilted her head in acknowledgment, pausing by his seat after class to congratulate him and warn him she was only going to be better next time. That was how their competition officially began.
Gin was merciless – she would seem to be focusing in on one subject, easing Sky into a false sense of security as he struggled to beat the subject he’d chosen for that week, only to turn out to have been working on the same one all along. The most effective version of this when she trained hard physically and nearly beat him in one of the athletics groups, forcing him to train instead of studying or lose face there. Somehow, Gin managed to know the perfect balance to get both the best training and studying in, though it didn’t seem to leave any time for friends. Sky wasn’t willing to sacrifice his friends to win their little struggle, content to never be anywhere near Gin’s level academically if that was the price required. He told her as much a few months later when she gave him a double-edged compliment – that he was a decent opponent, and that he could be a great opponent if he just put a bit more work into it instead of spending all his time goofing off. Gin didn’t seem particularly fazed by his snapped retort, though she did hesitate before leaving Sky with a confusing comment – with friends like he had, he would never need enemies.
At first, Sky just brushed the comment off as her just trying to mess with him since he had been kind of nasty to her, but it did end up getting under his skin enough for him to go ask her what she had meant. He ended up getting an absentminded answer (Sky caught her while she was studying, and just refused to leave until he got an answer), Gin telling him that she’d overheard Titus and Evelyn talking with their other friends about getting tips to give their parents from him. Sky spent the next few days doing a little research on his friends, learning to his shock that Titus’s parents were part of a rival pharmaceutical company, and that Evelyn’s parents were stock traders. Still not completely convinced, he didn’t mention anything until after the next school break, when they wanted the new information he had collected. This time, Sky gave them data he’d just made up, still hoping Gin had been wrong. However, when the two came back, confused, several weeks later, asking him if he was sure that that had all been correct, a fairly heartbroken Sky confronted them. Titus and Evelyn played innocent for a while, but, after a few minutes of arguing, they started laughing. Sky was crushed as they cracked up and taunted him over how long it had taken him to figure things out, mocking him for never having asked any real questions about their families despite calling himself their friend – even going so far as to say that he was the real bad friend of them all.
Deeply hurt, Sky stormed off, starting to bury himself in his schoolwork and training until he realized he truly was turning into Gin. Determined, he went to find his other friends, only to find too late that most of his ‘friends’ were actually Titus and Evelyn’s friends – he was just a discardable extra that had been tagging along. If that hadn’t been enough, Titus and Evelyn then went on to more or less ostracize him; leading the other students to pick fun of and push him around. The next few weeks were more or less a waking nightmare for Sky, the teen just collapsing under the bullying and completely withdrawing into himself. He’d never really been subject to anything like that before – there had always been someone there to protect him, to comfort him, no matter what. Now, though, Sky had no allies, bearing the full, unrelenting force of Titus and Evelyn’s strength on his own. His schooling and training suffered greatly, Sky losing the ambition to fight for his standing, the boy only wanting to hide away as much as possible and pretend nothing was happening… which made it even easier for Titus and Evelyn to pick on him.
(hide spoiler)]
Schuyler Z. Boer - Part Four(view spoiler)[
History, continued
One day, out of the blue, a thoroughly fed up Gin showed up at his room and gave him one heck of a tongue-lashing, chiding him for his cowardice and weak will. Admittedly, it wasn’t the nicest half hour of his life, but, by the time Gin left (still grouchy), Sky was fired up and ready to fight. All the next week, Sky was back on his game during class and later during athletics, still keeping to himself but no longer actively hiding away. Once he felt he had gotten back into his rhythm, Sky went on to challenge Titus, something he hadn’t actually done for years. Titus, surprised but amused, accepted his challenge. The following day, Sky was jittery all through class, anticipating the challenge to come, still managing to enjoy having managed to scrape by being the head in the science class again, beating out Gin by one mark. To Sky’s surprise, Gin looked rather pleased that he’d beaten her – usually, she looked indifferent, but this time she actually smirked at him. Somewhat unnerved, he headed off to the gym, where the rest of the wrestling team was waiting to watch his first match with Titus. Things started off shaky for Sky, a mixture of his nerves and Titus’s confidence nearly ripping his own confidence away, but, once he paid attention to what was going on and realized he would actually be fine with the actual wrestling if he just believed in himself, he managed to turn the tides and beat Titus. This visibly shook Titus up, the older boy not used to losing. Things got even better during their boxing match, since that had been the club he’d been the best in for the last few years and he knew it; Sky trounced Titus, his confidence building with each called round, especially since the wrestling team had come to see this match as well (the ones that weren’t already in the boxing club), nearly doubling the number of people who saw Titus’s defeat. Their swimming match wasn’t quite as exciting for anyone except the two competitors, since neither of them had ever been all that awesome at it anyway – it was one of the few clubs that Titus was in that he had never been the head of. Neither ended up winning that match, since it turned out to be such a close call that no one could really tell which had won. The last match, track, had quite the audience – in addition to most of the members of the track, boxing, wrestling and swimming clubs, Evelyn and the cheerleaders had shown up (all those, however, were cheering for Titus, while the clubs were more split in their support). It was very close to being a tie again, but this time someone had taken a video of the race on their phone, with neutral parties looking it over several times before finally announcing Sky the winner. Both Sky and Titus were shocked by the round of applause that followed, as well as the crowd who came over to congratulate Sky. Sky came back again the next day and beat Titus again, doing it again the day after that, and the day after that, until Sky ended up being the head of all the clubs Titus had been. He lost occasionally to Titus, but never more than he won. Titus and Evelyn stopped harassing Sky, keeping to themselves as long as Sky did the same, much to his joy.
By the end of the month, Sky was surrounded by friends again, including one he had actually already had – Mark (Markus) Graystone, one of the best members of the wrestling team. Mark had been one of Titus’s friends, and actually still was; he just respected Sky much more after his recent display than he had while Sky was wallowing in self-pity. This time, however, Sky didn’t take it for granted that his friends were true, realizing that they were mostly fair-weather friends. Instead, he went to the one person who had actually helped him when he had been at his lowest, and asked her why she’d done it. Sky wasn’t certain he liked Gin’s response – she just didn’t want to lose her competition; Evelyn had stopped trying to beat Gin after a few weeks, huffily tightening her grip on her spot as head cheerleader instead, and most of the other kids in the school either were fine just getting passing grades or didn’t have the willpower to reach for more, so Sky was the only one left who gave Gin incentive to push herself. Ego mildly bruised, Sky nevertheless asked if she’d be his friend… only to have his ego crushed when Gin turned his offer down. His hurt must have shown, though, since after a few minutes Gin reluctantly ended up agreeing to be his friend after all.
At first, they were friends in name only – nothing had changed, other than the fact that Sky started getting a little frustrated at how shut off Gin was instead of just pitying her. Mark didn’t really help matters, either; as it turned out, Mark and Gin pretty much hated each other’s guts, so Mark wasn’t able to understand why on earth Sky wanted to befriend the girl, and Gin avoided Sky like the plague whenever Mark was hanging out with him. This was an annoying puzzle, since he actually liked both in rather different ways; Gin was a rock – from what he’d learned about her, she would never lie or pretend to be anything other than what she was, nor would she allow anyone else to do anything less, and she was full of calm confidence that was somehow catching – while Mark was fun – he was who Sky could just hang out and relax with, he was an awesome wingman, and he was the guy who immediately came to mind whenever Sky was in a mischievous mood and wanted to do something dumb. He eventually just ended up working on Gin (pestering her) on one day, and hung out with Mark the next, splitting his days between the two. This actually worked, to his relief, Gin growing to accept his presence on her days while Mark respected the arrangement and didn’t mess with it.
Sky found out quite a bit about his two friends over the next year. Gin turned out to not be quite as stiff and cold as she had always seemed, actually possessing a (surprisingly wicked) sense of humor and the ability to relax if she chose. She just didn’t have a high tolerance for idiots, jerks, or airheads (Sky hadn’t realized there was a difference between idiots and airheads before getting to know Gin, but she had strong opinions on the matter – guys were usually idiots, while girls tended to be airheads), which unfortunately made up most of the human population. Gin didn’t blow up when she got mad, and it was usually a very bad sign if Sky could even tell she was angry at all – she was a very calm person, so when she went icy (her way of showing anger) whoever had ticked her off was going to pay, and usually in a big way; she could be very creative in retribution. Her father was some sort of scientific genius – she never expanded on that – who she looked up to and admired greatly, while her mother was just not in the picture (Gin went stiff and glare-y anytime Sky tried to press her on her family life, so he left it alone), and she was trying to become someone who her father would be proud of. Gin absolutely loved riddles, puzzles and strategy games of most kinds, anything that challenged her, while also managing to enjoy dumb games, (loudly criticizing) bad movies, and groan-worthy jokes, none of which used a single brain cell to take in. Mark, on the other hand, was a very loyal person, once his respect had been earned. He was a hot head who got into bloody brawls at the drop of a hat, but, although he cooled down pretty quickly, he always stubbornly refused to be the first to apologize. Mark loved the nicer things in life, and didn’t mind enjoying them fairly regularly. His parents were in the oil business (or rather, they’d inherited it from Mark’s grandfather, his mother’s father) and they had made out like bandits, well able to afford a lavish lifestyle – which is where Mark had gotten it from. Since his life was already set for smooth sailing, Mark didn’t take much seriously – he could generally buy his way out of most consequences. He was a genuinely nice guy, even though he could (and often did) do seriously dumb things that made that seem doubtful.
Slowly, Sky began working on getting his two best friends to get along… or even just be able to stand being in each other’s company for longer than a few seconds before breaking into shouting matches that tended to turn into nasty scraps. This was much easier said than done, but with a lot of patience and very gradual integration, he eventually managed to be able to hang out with both of his friends at the same time. As long as Sky was there, they were able to tolerate each other – for the most part. They still got into fights, but, once Gin learned how to use Mark’s strength against him, they usually ended quickly. Mark learned to respect Gin’s skill, Gin learned to ignore most of what Mark said to her, and reluctant peace was created.
That’s not to say it held consistently - they were all teenagers. For instance, to celebrate Sky’s eighteenth birthday, he wrangled up an unfortunate amount of alcohol and all his friends (fair-weather and otherwise) ended up getting very drunk. While plastered, Gin and Mark actually seemed to get along fairly decently, much to Sky’s delight. Unfortunately, while Gin chilled out quite a bit while drunk, it turned out Mark got bad ideas and the confidence to act on them. His first idea of the night was to go out and get tattoos, both Sky and Gin going along with it. The second was to have one of the others pick out each of their tattoos, which actually worked out fairly well (after Gin insisted the tattoos be animals and not words or symbols – apparently, Mark had been planning on Sky’s tattoo being a hand flipping the bird on the back of Sky’s hand) – Mark picked Sky’s, Sky picked Gin’s, and Gin picked Mark’s. Once that was done, Mark tried talking them into streaking back to the school, but that idea got voted down pretty quickly by the other two. Instead, they made their way back fully clothed, Sky almost immediately getting whisked away by a group of pretty girls who dragged him off to dance once they got back to the main party. Sky had been thoroughly enjoying himself and the eyecandy surrounding him for nearly a half hour, when suddenly Mark came staggering out of the other room, one hand over his broken, badly bleeding nose, being chased by Gin, who was absolutely furious – and a little more than half naked. Stunned, Sky had to save Mark from ending up with broken bones, physically restraining Gin to keep her from continuing to attack him. Apparently, Gin had been trying to take a nap to sleep off some of her alcohol-induced haziness, and Mark had thought that it would be a good idea to take some blackmail/mess with Gin pictures. So, he had mostly stripped her while she was sleeping, taking several pictures of her before she woke up and realized what was going on. Sky did as much damage control as he could, putting off actually dealing with anything until the next day when he could think straight (though he did have the forethought to confiscate Mark’s phone immediately, and demand that all other photos and videos that had been taken by the dozens of amused onlookers be deleted). The next morning was absolutely miserable for all three – Sky had a minor hangover, Gin had a major hangover, and, while Mark had no hangover whatsoever, he did still have a broken nose, a black eye, and several other very nasty bruises. Things were more or less resolved after Sky gave Gin Mark’s phone and let her delete the pictures, forced Mark to apologize to Gin (Mark wanted an apology for his injuries first, but the look Sky gave him convinced Mark to yield first), and had Gin accept his apology (which she did do… after socking him in his black eye again). Still, other than things like that, the peace did mostly hold.
(hide spoiler)]
Schuyler Z. Boer - Part Five(view spoiler)[
History, continued
Sky rather dreaded graduating, since he knew they would all probably end up going their separate ways; Gin was planning on college, Mark was talking about traveling, and, while he knew Kay wanted him to go to college too, he doubted there was any way that he’d be able to stick with either of his friends. Then, not a month before his graduation, he got word that Kay had been badly injured in an attack on the company and wanted to talk with all his sons together. When Sky returned and went to the hospital with his brothers, Kay told them that he wanted them to run the company while he was out of commission – ending up in a coma by the end of the week. Honestly, out of the three, Clay was the only one truly able to run things - he was the only one who had graduated college, he was the one who had gotten the most hands-on experience under Kay, and he was the only one with any actual interest in it. However, all three knew Kay would be furious if he woke up and found out that his wishes hadn’t been carried out, so they split up the responsibilities reasonably; Clay took on the lion’s share of the actual work in the company, River took on any job that required travel, and Sky took on the role of schmoozing people. He returned to school to graduate, filling his best friends in on what had happened. To his happy surprise, Mark offered to go back with him to help him out, Sky immediately accepting the offer. Mark then went on to look expectantly at Gin, who completely ignored him. Mark nudged Gin (which was verging on dangerous territory, since it hadn’t been all that long since the eighteenth birthday incident and she still hadn’t quite forgiven him yet) and somewhat patronizingly explained that it was her turn to offer to help him out, since Sky was obviously not ready for such responsibility. While Sky tried his best to ignore the bop to his ego, Gin replied it wasn’t her job to hold Sky’s hand every time he had to do something (which didn’t help Sky’s ego either). After a completely humiliating (for Sky, anyway) argument between the two, Gin was eventually nagged into at least considering it.
A few days later, when they finally graduated, Gin agreed to go help as well, as long as Sky didn’t bother her while she was taking her college classes online.
Sky was thrilled; he got to avoid college for now (at least until Clay, Dean or Rose guilted him into it), his best friends were coming to hang out with him, he got to go home, his job was easy enough and didn’t take all that much time compared to most, and there was no danger waiting for him at home (well, other than Eve, who was livid that Kay had chosen Sky over her for no other reason than that he was a guy). He bought a large house to live in with his friends (he did this without consulting them, which Mark didn’t mind nearly as much as Gin – she didn’t appreciate the presumption in the least, but at least accepted the arrangements after a few long days), and settled in fairly quickly. To his delight, his best friends got to know and like his family quite quickly, the two households often intermingling.
The three were quite effective working together; Gin provided the actual information in a neat manner, Mark was great at buddying up with others, and Sky was the pretty face to relay both sides in a manner that hooked people. They still hung out together quite often outside of work, but since they spent a good deal of time together at work, they didn’t mind going their separate ways in their free time, either. All in all, Sky kind of loves his life at the moment (except for when Mark starts talking about his unfortunate crush on Eve, which is just as gross to Sky and Gin as it is for Eve).
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Artemis C. Evans - Part One(view spoiler)[
Category;
Real world – Modern setting – Normal
Name;
Artemis Cynthia Evans
Meaning;
Artemis - safe/butcher (Greek)Cynthia - of Cynthus (Greek)Evans - son of Evan (Welsh)
Nicknames;
Ace, Art, Temmie (use this and you take your life in your hands), Nerd (pretty much only used by her cousin)
Age;
Nineteen and a half
Gender;
Female
Gender expression;
Masculine
Appearance;
Ace is five foot six inches tall, just bordering on being tall instead of average – she’s still hoping for one last growth spurt, but isn’t holding her breath on it. She keeps herself quite athletically trim due to a nearly religious dedication to exercising, though she prefers working on her core and arms over her legs. Ace has dark brown hair that she cuts herself, which is why it tends to sticks out any which way when it can; she puts it up in a unicorn-like ponytail to hack it, then cuts the top and front sides back to a few inches long before putting the remaining sides and back up in a stub ponytail. Her eyes are heterochromic; the left is a light brown, while the right is an icy gray (she’s still convinced she looks more intimidating when she closes her left eye and glares at someone, but it really just looks like she got something in her eye – no one’s bothered to tell her yet, though). Ace has a strong jawline and chin, both traits she’s relieved to have, as well as a somewhat snub nose, which is a trait she could honestly live without, and an overall oval face which she’s pretty indifferent about. She doesn’t wear makeup, and just the idea can occasionally make her skin crawl. Ace is mildly double-jointed; her joints can go an inch or so further than most peoples, which makes it harder to put her in some arm locks, but it still doesn’t let her kiss her elbow (she tried, multiple times). She has a wide scattering of moles and scars, though she’s got just slightly more moles than scars. Ace’s favorite marks are a group of moles on her back that could be interpreted as the constellation Orion (with a small stretch of the imagination), since the irony just tickles her funny bone whenever she sees it, and a thick white scar above her jawline on her left cheek. Her fingernails are all chewed – except her pinky and thumbnails – down to just above the quick, a nervous habit she’s never quite managed to shake. (She can chew her toenails as well, but has only ever done it twice; once to see if she could, and then again to prove she could.)
Clothing;
Ace tends towards darker clothing, which has gotten her categorized fairly often as a goth. She doesn’t really agree with this, but doesn’t care enough to argue. Ace prefers to wear comfortable clothing when possible, and so tends to be right on the line of looking formal and casual. She likes wearing black jeans (preferably unripped – she wears too many real holes in her clothes to find ‘pretty’ holes amusing), blue buttoned short sleeved shirts, closed black corduroy vests (if she’s feeling really casual Ace will let her vest hang open, but on the whole she prefers them neatly buttoned up), and thick soled sneakers (the closest thing to high heels that she ever gets). She switches between a sharp black and gray fedora, and a black ball cap with a good sized image of a gold and gray western dragon sewn on it. Ace can live with or without jewelry, but what she’s gotten used to wearing is a slender silver chain necklace with a silver moon charm, a hematite ring on her right middle finger (the placement is handy, since she can subtly flip people off just by playing with her ring), and a black leather cuff around her left wrist.
Personality;
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Ace loves her name – Artemis – and fully embraces and tries to live up to it as much as possible, but she tends to go by her nickname more just for simplicity’s sake. Ace isn’t a particularly common name for a girl, but people are still much quicker to just accept it and move on than they are with Artemis – it tends to act as a conversation starter, and Ace prefers to keep conversation to a minimum with people she doesn’t know, and people who don’t know her name are usually strangers (or dangerously drunk friends that she wishes were strangers in the moment). Plus, Ace just works for her; it’s her initials, which is why she first started using it, it describes who she’d like to be, which is a first-rate person, and it describes what she probably is – ace.
Ace is a through and through nerd, and has even been named as such by a cousin. She’s rather picky about what she likes, but, once it’s been deemed acceptable, she will enjoy it into the ground. Ace is a huge bookworm, though she prefers youth fiction over adult fiction (she likes the settings and characters more) and most non-fiction. She loves anime, though again, she’s fairly picky about it – it has to have a good story at the very least, or else the characters, art and animation all have to be awesome. Ace has an easier time getting into manga than anime, since usually it doesn’t take a detective to figure out if it’s going to be up her alley – all she has to do is read the back and look at the front. She has a thing for cop shows (which is lucky, since so many exist), and most science-fiction shows, as well as quite a few animated kids shows. Ace has a thing for well animated movies, and she absolutely adores stop-motion animations, but again, story trumps animation skill.
She likes to think she’s a leader figure and a courageous little bugger – and, in a few specific cases, or, on some days, she is – but for the most part she’s really more of a voiceless, weak-willed coward. Ace doesn’t like speaking up, since she either doesn’t feel like her opinion really matters anyway or just doesn’t have a clue what her opinion is. She doesn’t like taking chances, since she thinks she’s more likely to fail than succeed. Ace doesn’t like being watched, since it makes her more likely to mess up because of the stress. She doesn’t like contradicting most people even when they’re wrong and she knows it, on the off chance that she’s actually wrong and they’re right. Ace doesn’t even really like taking up space, feeling like she’s not wanted most places she goes. She’s not overly confident most of the time (not that anyone would have ever guessed that after reading this), though, when she is, everything in this paragraph gets flipped.
Ace is an absolute smart aleck with a knack for sarcasm, a taste for noting irony, and a deep, deep love of wryly sardonic humor. Good jokes (or bad ones that catch her off guard) can occasionally tug her out of a bad mood or into a more open mood all on their own, and she has a natural inclination to be near people with good senses of humor.
Ace is mildly shy, but overall she just avoids people out of a disinclination to make and eventually lose any more friends. She is quite capable of striking up conversations with strangers, if she wanted to – she just very rarely ever wants to. Besides, all conversations with strangers is inevitably started with small talk, which Ace hates with a vicious passion and believes was created by an evil, evil person. Repetition gets old, no matter what, and giving and receiving approximately the same questions and answers for around sixteen years lost all charm about a decade ago. In any case, she has fairly strong abandonment issues, and so both cares strongly about the few friends she has while being terrified that they’ll leave her one day too after realizing they don’t actually like her, while simultaneously doing her best to avoid making new friends to keep from eventually losing them. Ace actually realizes that her jealously protective feelings towards the people she cares about isn’t quite necessary, but it doesn’t help her from still staying worried anyway.
She’s nervous around other people her own age or slightly younger; since she was raised primarily around adults, Ace is a different creature than her peers, and she knows it.
She’s somewhat balanced between being an optimist (believe it or not) and a pessimist – she is able to see the bright side of anything, but she’s also able to ignore it, and sometimes she just doesn’t care either way.
Ace loves most music, but she’s usually fairly private about what she’s listening to. She keeps the windows rolled up when she’s in a parked car listening to the radio, even on hot days, just popping the door open for a few minutes every now and again to let the heat out, she keeps her earbuds in whenever she’s listening to anything on the computer, and she keeps it low if the first two options aren’t available. In Ace’s opinion, if it isn’t appropriate for her to be singing along with her music, it isn’t appropriate to hear her music at all. However, when the music’s already out or when she’s alone, Ace gets a kick out of singing right on along with the music, usually the louder the better. Her singing quality varies from day to day, but she can usually keep the tune or harmonize without too many sour notes.
Ace is actually just a private person in general, not just with her music. It drives her up the wall when someone looks over her shoulder at what she’s reading, looks over the top or side of her computer to see what she’s working on, or come into her room without her permission. This is felt to the point where Ace doesn’t actually ever really feel comfortable except when her back is against a wall, with any doors or windows in front of her.
Despite her previously mentioned shyness, Ace likes to consider herself as being chivalrous. She likes opening doors for others, giving strangers a hand if they need it, using ‘ma’am’ and ‘sir’, giving her umbrella to someone without one (well, she would if she used umbrellas – she likes the rain) and just generally being a suave little tomboy.
She has mixed feelings on family, both feeling obligated to help them out because they’re blood while still not particularly liking most of what she has. There are a few exceptions, but overall Ace likes the idea of a family much more than the actual thing.
Ace is extremely protective of her friends, both in the sense of wanting to keep them and in the sense of wanting to keep them safe. She will not take anyone messing with her friends, and is quite happy to get into a fight on their behalf. In all seriousness, though, Ace would probably do anything for the friends she truly trusts. There aren’t many of those, though, and it takes a heck of a lot of patience on their part to get to that point.
She occasionally has fantasies about torturing others and daydreams about hunting both people and animals, and is beginning to be seriously concerned by how little that bothers her. It doesn’t help that Ace occasionally dreams about it as well, and that when she wakes up she’s struck by the fact that she can never really consider them nightmares – they’re just dreams.
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Tastes;
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Colors - Preferred;
Blue, pure red, black
Flavors - Preferred;
Lemon, mint, black pepper
Sounds - Preferred;
Deep voices, smooth music, out-of-breath laughter
Textures - Preferred;
Puppy fur, cold smooth metal, corduroy material
Smells - Preferred;
Rain (or wet dirt), pizza, mix of her own sweat and deodorant
Colors - Rejected;
Pink, neon yellow, mild orange
Flavors - Rejected;
Pear, lima bean, peanut butter sandwiches
Sounds - Rejected;
Shrill voices, scraping metal or plastic on metal, slurping noises
Textures - Rejected;
Sticky concrete, uneven bark, textured clay bricks
Smells - Rejected;
Sulfur water, most perfume, popcorn
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Artemis C. Evans - Part Two(view spoiler)[
Family;
Father;
Drew Evans
Mother;
Elizabeth Ann Evans
Aunt;
Fern Ellen Harris
Cousins;
Keith Garret Harris
Michael Warren Harris
Brant Daniel Harris
Trent Ezekiel Harris
History;
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Artemis’s childhood was a complicated affair. At first, it was kind of idyllic; she had two awesome parents who loved the absolute heck out of her – her dad was an extremely goofy man with a strong love of pranks, while her mom was one of the sweetest, kindest gentle people anyone was likely to find (which was probably the only reason she was able to take the sheer mischievousness of her husband in stride) – a fairly large house out in the country, and a large property to run around on and explore.
Elizabeth (or Beth, as most people knew her) was a naturalist gardener. She’d put a hold on her work to take care of Artemis, but she still did her own gardening and would make an occasional house call for a friend. Artemis didn’t particularly like being stuck in one spot, which was what tended to happen with planting and gardening, so she never really got into her mom’s work (at least, not past running grub worms and beetles up to their chickens or dragging water over once the plant or tree was in the ground) much to Beth’s apparent disappointment.
Drew was a history professor at a local academy, and there was no doubt he loved the subject. He was prone to launching into mini lectures anywhere with the slightest of provocations, but he truly did get excited enough about what he was saying that it usually managed to keep whoever he’d unintentionally trapped into a conversation interested. Even when he didn’t, people tended to humor him anyway. Drew had a natural knack for teaching, getting and keeping his audience’s attention by making history fun. There were very few people who he couldn’t hook after a few tries, the man even managing to catch his little girl’s interest eventually. Now, while the little Artemis didn’t really care about history, she loved interactive projects; Drew had her mummify a dead bird and build a tiny pyramid in the backyard as he told her about ancient Egyptian burial ceremonies, they made armor out of cardboard and had a mock battle with yucca stem swords and spears to learn about the differences between the Greek and Roman military strategies and arms, Drew carefully allowed her to try carving runes into wood chips (after Artemis still ended up cutting herself, Beth made them use paint instead) to show her what an earlier alphabet looked like, just to name a few. As she got a little older, it quickly became clear that, while burning dolls (for the Salem witch trials), blowing up plastic figures and popsicle stick houses (for some of WWII) and building miniature guillotines to lop off a doll’s head (for some of the French Revolution) was still quite entertaining to her, Artemis just wasn’t really as into the lessons on more recent history. Instead, her fascination stayed back in the ancient histories and mythologies.
Undaunted, Drew just went with it, Beth joining them to sneak in additional lessons in with the history (this was all in addition to Artemis’s regular homeschooling classes); Artemis got home-ec lessons in sewing to add two more heads to a stuffed dog (to make a Cerberus), she got mathematics lessons while learning to use an abacus accurately, and art lessons while trying to recreate Greek statues (she gave up on that pretty quickly, much to Beth’s relief – it was awkward, trying to explain to other parents why her five-year-old was showing off clay figurines of mostly naked men and women to her equally young friends), among many others. If it weren’t for the fact that Artemis really only had two friends who she had grown up with (whose mothers were both very good friends of her mother’s), she might have gotten picked on for the odd ways she liked to play. Artemis would drag her friends into mock wars, which usually included at least one pretend burnt mud animal offering to the gods of whichever civilization she favored at the moment, several intense stick fights (which were kept out of sight of their collective parents), a lot of running around on mini quests to get magical weapons or other items, and a terribly tragic death of a hero (usually Artemis, since her friends weren’t dramatic enough about dying for her tastes) followed by a funeral and then celebration (usually after the hero had gone into the afterlife or been turned into a constellation, though sometimes the hero suddenly just turned into a different soldier after the funeral). She also loved holding hunts – of course, most of the time when they had hunts, she was Artemis; it just made sense – where she and her friends would either hunt down invisible animals and insolent mortals, or she would try to catch her friends (who were either animals or insolent mortals). In any case, as it was, her friends were used to her weird tastes and just played along when it was her turn to choose what they did.
Then, when she was seven, Artemis’s father died – he drowned in the shower, likely after a stroke. Artemis and her mother had been out getting groceries, and Beth was the one who ended up finding him; Artemis can still remember the initial scream. It had been the first time the girl had ever heard her mom that upset and she had come running to find out what was wrong, only to have her visibly distraught mom keep her out and bustle them back out to the car, refusing to answer any of Artemis’s questions. Beth was still crying when they got to Artemis’s aunt’s house, the two women leaving Artemis alone with her older cousins to talk in Fern’s room. Artemis never particularly enjoyed being at her aunt’s house, since only one of her cousins (Trent) was nice to her, another (Keith) was an outright bully, and the other two mainly avoided her, but this time she was more upset over the fact that her mom was so upset and she had no idea why. After what seemed like forever, Beth finally came out, looking only slightly more composed, took her aside and told her what had happened. That was the first time that Artemis had ever cried out of genuine grief.
The next few days were a blur, Artemis feeling slightly out of it as people she didn’t know or only vaguely knew began filling their house, all yattering on in what seemed like endless repetitions of ‘We’re so sorry for your loss’, or ‘He was a lovely man,’, or ‘He’s in a better place now’, or ‘If there’s anything we can do, just let us know’, along with at least a dozen other meaningless polite mumbles that Artemis didn’t really feel like hearing after the first time. Even her cousins were being nice to her, all of them, for once, which just cemented in the fact that something was wrong with the world. Artemis wasn’t being put to bed with a myth, she no longer got an enthusiastic lesson on history in the afternoons, she didn’t wake up to the loud blare of the blender as he made a morning veggie blend to pour over his eggs, and she wasn’t able to watch her dad head off to work with a jaunty Roman salute and a yelled, “Salvete, Diana!”, which she’d always respond to with a mock- irritated growl, “It’s ARTEMIS, Dad!”. Instead, she read the myths to herself, her lessons were put on hold, she slept in late since her makeshift alarm no longer sounded (her mom ate fruit for breakfast), and she just paused briefly by the door before getting back to whatever she was doing since there was no one to interact with outside.
However, by the end of the week, a day or two before the funeral, Artemis had just… gotten over it. She was well aware that her dad wasn’t coming back, but she was fine. Artemis had readjusted enough that she was able to carry on as if her dad had never been there. She stopped starting to go look for him to get started on her lesson with him in the evening, she stopped noting things to tell him when he got home, and she stopped hesitating at the door when he would have been heading out to work. The funeral was somewhat somber but mostly boring to her, and Artemis was itching to get back to her room to work on a project she had started by the time it was over and she’d finally gotten through the ending wave of condolences.
While Artemis was back to normal, if vaguely more withdrawn than usual, her mom had more or less shut down. Beth stayed in the house as much as humanly possible, switching haphazardly between going through Drew’s things and smiling fondly at memories before beginning to cry again, eating while binge-watching movies and shows, sleeping for hours, and irritably scolding Artemis. While Artemis’s mom did eventually drag her life into some semblance of a return to ‘normal’ after several long months, her attitude never completely returned to what it had been. Where she used to have unending patience, Beth had patience to a point – once that point had been reached, Artemis could expect to be on the receiving end of a nasty tongue lashing. Her smile had returned, but Beth was still much quicker with a frown than with a smile now. Beth’s gentle sense of humor had been replaced by cynically bitter sarcasm, and her energy level was practically nonexistent. Artemis didn’t appreciate these changes, her own attitude shifting to reflect her confused aggravation, which in turn often ended up triggering Beth’s ire – the two trapping themselves in a never-ending emotional spiral.
Things only got worse once Beth got back on track with Artemis’s schooling. Drew had been the one to come up with most of Artemis’s lessons, even if Beth had been the one to oversee them while he was out at work, and it showed; the lessons stayed at least vaguely entertaining, enough to keep Artemis’s focus from wandering off to things she found more interesting. Unfortunately, Beth didn’t have the same knack as Drew, and Artemis found herself unable to concentrate on the dry, boring textbooks Beth gave her to study, no matter how hard she tried. Her grades, which had previously stayed in an A average, began falling. Beth took this as Artemis being stubborn, but Artemis genuinely just couldn’t focus – her mind would wander after reading for a few minutes, or she’d find herself reading the same paragraph over and over without having registered a word of it. Beth began making Artemis work and rework the same lessons over and over in a day until she eventually got an A, which only made Artemis begin dreading her schooling. After all, at one point in time, she could whip through her lessons and be done after lunch – now, she was lucky if she finished before supper. The more she dreaded her schooling, the worse she got at it… and the worse she got at it, the angrier Beth got. The angrier Beth got, the worse Artemis felt, and the worse Artemis felt, the worse her concentration got, and the worse her concentration got the longer it took to scrape through her lessons, which only made her dread them more.
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Artemis C. Evans - Part Three(view spoiler)[
History, continued
Things came to a head when one of Artemis’s two best and only friends had to move several states away, but Artemis wasn’t allowed to go to the farewell party to say goodbye because she hadn’t finished her lessons the previous day. Artemis had a whirlwind tantrum and utterly refused to do any of her lessons for a week. Instead, she buried herself in her books, escaping into fantasy world after fantasy world to try and forget the pain of losing the last chance to see her friend – well, at least, that’s what she did until Beth came in and confiscated her books as an incentive to get back to her lessons. At that point, she came very close to running away from home. If it weren’t for the fact that she was just old enough to think it over and realize she was way too far away from anywhere else to probably survive running away, Artemis would have gone for it. It made her feel somewhat sick that not getting to say goodbye to a friend that was just moving away made her feel worse than losing her dad, and now she didn’t have any way to stop thinking about it. Even trying to fantasize her way through it with elaborate daydreams didn’t help, since the thought just kept popping up and wrecking her imaginary world.
After that, though, Beth gave up on trying to keep Artemis’s grades up to As, instead just settling for getting the lessons over and done with no matter the grade, merely leaving the girl feeling humiliated with disgusted notes on the particularly badly graded lessons.
For a while, Artemis tried spending more time working on her schooling, taking the time to go back over her work and double and triple check what she’d written. Sometimes this helped, but, as a whole, it just left her with the same grade after a much longer time working at it. Slowly, Artemis’s time began to trickle away from genuine hard work on her lessons to goofing off and daydreaming, the switch happening gradually enough that she didn’t notice until she found herself spending most of the day distracted. Both Artemis and Beth began hating her schooling, since it effectively kept both of them from doing more interesting things with their time with only ever seemed like pathetic results to show for it. Even history began to be torturous, since Artemis only ever did well with the ancient histories, which was only a small part of what all she was supposed to know.
Not even a year after Artemis’s dad died, the youngest of her cousins – her favorite – died as well; Trent was speeding around a corner and ended up flipping his car. This time, Artemis didn’t even go through an initial grieving period. Instead, she went straight to numbly indifferent, even as she watched her aunt and cousins sink into various stages of grief. Oddly enough though, helping her sister through her grief was what really seemed to help Beth. Artemis’s home life was still stressful since Beth’s yelling sessions still made Artemis want to crawl into a hole and shrivel into nothingness, but she didn’t lose her temper nearly as much anymore.
A few years later, a couple months after Artemis turned nine, she found out that she would be taking a martial arts class that was starting up to give her a way to defend herself and a way to get a bit of social interaction in. This was met with a mix of extreme trepidation – ever since her one friend had moved away, her other friend had been pretty distant as well, so she hadn’t really gotten to hang out with any other kids her age for a long time – and excitement; Artemis had always loved the idea of weapons and fighting (despite the fact that Beth had always been very strict about not allowing her to have any real or toy weapons – Artemis and Drew had only barely skated by with being allowed to use yucca stems as weapons) and was eager to learn how to fight for real. The evening of the first class finally arrived, and Artemis was a bit surprised at how calm and relaxed it ended up being; she was the only one there, besides the instructor and his son, and most of the lesson was spent exercising and learning basic stances. The next class got a bit more stressful when a huge family joined who were apparently quite good friends with the instructor and his son, leaving Artemis feeling left out before and after the class, but the lesson itself was pretty much like the first. Things got slowly but surely worse after that – apparently, the family was fairly wealthy and influential, and several of the kids decided they didn’t like Artemis. That decision made, all the other kids in the family began blatantly ignoring or looking down on her, opening the road for the instructor’s son and most of the new kids that joined the class after that to do the same, making Artemis dread the quarter hour before class technically started and the half hour afterward where she was left with them. It was one thing to feel lonely at home, when there was no one around besides her mom, but it was another thing entirely to be lonely while being essentially forced to watch other kids thoroughly enjoying each others’ company right in front of her. If it weren’t for the fact that Artemis actually really loved the classes themselves, she would have hated the martial arts class as much as she hated her regular lessons after the first month. She tried making friends with new students, but, it seemed like, no matter who it was, someone from the large family was already friends with them first.
Fortunately for her, the large family slowly began dropping out of class over time, until there were only four of the kids left. After that, Artemis began making a few friends, though she never really put too much hope into those friendships since it seemed like a lot of people just came for three or four lessons before giving up. After a year, she’d given up on trying to make friends, instead focusing entirely on the martial art itself while she was in class and ignoring being ignored. Between the extra little bit of practicing time there it gave her, and the time she spent on it at home, Artemis began making surprisingly large leaps in skill over a few months. Soon it became quite clear that she was second only to the instructor’s son in the kids class in terms of skill – which was ironic, considering her position in the class actually was second due to her having been the second person to join the class – and some of the adult class even started giving her encouraging comments.
A year after that, the instructor decided to begin sparring matches, much to Artemis’s delight. After all, she was one of the best students; this would just be a new, more fun and more challenging way to show it. Artemis couldn’t wait; eagerly anticipating the arrival of the sparring gear, and then impatiently counting the days until the time that the instructor had set for the start of the sparring matches. Finally, the time had come, and Artemis was practically exuding excitement – everything was awesome, from the plastic foam gear to the taped boundaries on the floor, and the only thing she needed to remember was to keep from hurting her opponent. Then, the match actually began, and Artemis was trounced almost immediately. As it turned out, technical skill was worth diddly-squat against bigger, brawnier, smarter, faster older boys with much less concern about holding back in their punches and kicks. Humiliated, Artemis waited until her turn to fight that evening came again, expecting things to be different this time when her opponent ended up being a shorter, physically weaker girl. Unfortunately, that shorter, physically weaker girl liked throwing an unending barrage of punches that tended to win matches – three hits to the torso or head to win – even though her technique and punches were horrendous. Later, when Artemis’s last opponent of the night ended up being the instructor’s son, she already knew she was going to lose, though her head was still left spinning by just how quick and hard it ended up happening.
Artemis slowly got better over months of matches, enough to be able to beat most of her fellow students, though the three that she had gone up against that first night still whooped up on her regularly. She got used to the mild beatings, the padded gear absorbing a lot of the strength of their hits, though she still did her best to keep the strength of her own attacks to a minimum. This came from the extreme double standard she seemed to be held to – everyone else was free and clear to wale on her, but if she tried to relieve stress and let loose, her opponent would go down with a yelp and she’d get reprimanded. Even when Artemis just tried to end her more obviously uneven matches with the younger or newer kids quickly to let them both get to matches that were more even in skill (and admittedly to boost her ego, which never quite recovered from those first matches), the other long-time students (the instructor’s son, the heir of the large family, and the heir’s sister) would make their disgust and distaste for her clear when she went to sit down and wait for her next match. This was made especially clear when she forgot her sparring gear one night (her family was coming to see the matches for once, and she was flustered enough at the thought that she forgot and left it out next to the door) and had to use a spare set that didn’t quite fit – her second match of the night was against one of the heir’s little cousins, who she finished off aggressively without giving him a chance to fight back (using a cleaner, kicking version of the heir’s sister’s technique). The family’s displeasure at this was immediately visible when she went to go sit down, but she ignored it like usual… until her last match ended up being against the heir. He only got three clean hits, since that was the official end of the match, but he made each count, and got in a few extras before each round was called.
In addition to being humiliated yet again – this time because she had been trounced in front of her family – Artemis woke up the next morning to several nasty bruises where the hard plastic in her gear had been smashed into her face and wrists; since the gear didn’t fit, some of the blows she took weren’t absorbed by the plastic foam. This had the added irritant of giving her cousin Keith more ammunition to tease her about, as well as giving him the idea that it was fun to mess with her physically as well as mentally. Now, anytime she went to her aunts, Artemis had stay on guard against her twelve year older cousin, otherwise he’d trip her and force her down on the ground, and then either press and hold her pressure points, put her in an arm and wrist lock just past the point of being comfortable, press her head down against the ground hard enough to genuinely hurt, or rub his knuckles against her skin hard and fast enough to burn before he’d let her back up. He also liked throwing light punches at her, throwing things, or tugging her hair when she wasn’t paying attention, telling her that she should be able to defend herself against it all since she was in a martial arts class.
Artemis wasn’t sure how to feel about the fact that he was now her favorite cousin.
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Artemis C. Evans - Part Four(view spoiler)[
History, continued
Ever since Trent had died, Keith had been much nicer to her – he was the one she could geek out with over different types of weapons, since he had a veritable weaponry in his room (he liked to think of himself as a hunter, despite not having anywhere to hunt), he was the only one who acted like he respected her thoughts and opinions anymore, and he was the one who she could hang out with and truly talk with. Keith would ask her to play online games with him, he would start talking about books with her, and he’d teach her how to actually hold and use all the weapons she’d only ever really read about and imagined using before. Eventually, Keith even taught her how to brawl, though he insisted on her learning without gear. She accumulated a lot more bruises and cuts (a LOT), but, after the first week of still trying to hold back to keep from hurting her cousin and getting in trouble, Artemis finally let loose and let fly, and it felt good. Unlike the other students, as long as Artemis didn’t tell anyone else about their arrangement, Keith took his lumps without complaint – he just didn’t hold anything back, either. Their fights may have hurt like no one’s business, but Artemis couldn’t deny that it was deeply satisfying and made some dark little part inside her sing whenever she saw her bigger, stronger cousin walking away from their fights covered in blood and bruises.
Meanwhile, she was improving in her sparring matches as well, having gotten quicker at dodging attacks out of necessity with her cousin, enough so that she managed to beat even the instructor’s son (-once. She beat him once. Still...). It wasn’t many months after that that the last few of the long-time students (including the instructor’s son) either decided to switch to the adult class, or just dropped the martial art class altogether, leaving Artemis as the unchallenged head of the kids class.
Around this time, Beth gave up on monitoring Artemis’s schooling, telling the young teen it was up to her what her education would end up being. Artemis’s mom was sick and tired of struggling tooth and nail with her, and just gave up. Artemis both hated and loved this; on one hand, she could focus in on the few subjects she liked, if she even wanted to keep working on it at all, but on the other, it hurt Artemis deeply that her mom had just given up on her. It hurt very badly to know that the one person in the world who was closest to knowing what her intelligence was had had such low hopes of ever being able to get through to her that she’d just stopped trying – Artemis’s view of herself began dimming at that point, and the low grades she continued to have in most subjects after that didn’t help in the least.
At fourteen, she earned the highest rank possible in the kids class, becoming the teacher’s assistant in the kids class and then going on to take the adults class after that. This year and a half were awesome; she was respected by the other students, whether they were adults or kids, she made a few great friends who stuck around, and she had become a lean, mean fighting machine (and she knew it). Unfortunately, before she could get anywhere near graduating the adult class, her instructor moved. With the class disbanded, Artemis no longer got to meet with her friends either, giving her a double shock.
Still, her mom had started volunteering at a local non-profit to get out of the house more, and Artemis began volunteering as well after her martial arts class broke apart. She mostly did grunt work since she wasn’t comfortable enough around people to work up front; lifting and moving heavy bags and boxes, carrying furniture, food and books out to client and customers’ cars, and pretty much anything else anyone could think of. Otherwise, she stayed at home and spent her time reading, working out, and drawing in her free time, doing schoolwork and chores the rest of the time. A few months later, Artemis’s mother became the manager of the nonprofit, after which they were there nearly every day. This was one of the best times of her life since her dad died, since the nonprofit became a sort of second home – one where everyone seemed to be in a good mood all the time, where she made multiple awesome adult friends, where she was able to focus more on working than on her schoolwork, and where she worked alone for long enough periods of time that she could stay lost in her imagination the entire time she worked. Beth was the happiest she’d been in years as well, though she was left absolutely drained at the end of every day. Artemis finally had what felt like a little family of friends, who actually made an effort to find out her interests, made time in their schedule to stop and chat with her, who thought about her when they were out on vacations and brought back little knick-knacks for her, who all remembered and got together to make her birthdays something special instead of just another day of the year – and she absolutely loved it. She loved having people she wasn’t afraid of openly teasing for fear they’d take offense (and vice versa), she loved knowing that she had people outside her blood family who cared about her and were encouraging in everything she did, from drawing to getting her drivers license, and loved actually fitting in with a group for once in her life. Then the management shifted, her mother ended up stepping down and more or less quitting her work for the nonprofit, and once again Artemis was left lost. The new manager wasn’t a bad person, but she yanked things from being a comfortable community center where people came to relax and chat into being a much more clinically cold business. Artemis still doggedly continued to volunteer, but the new tone of the place slowly chiseled away her resolve until she eventually just came in a few times a month instead of at least once a week. She still got to visit with her family of friends every now and again, but for the most part their paths stayed separate.
After that happened, Artemis kind of gave up on people in general; she knew that others were able to make friends easily, but it seemed like any time she even tried, she was punished and then they left anyway. It had happened too many times to be ‘them’ - it had to be her. Artemis decided to stick with what she was good with – art, history, and physical prowess. At first, that was enough – she was able to work her grievances out with her cousin in their fights, and keep busy enough with her studies, exercise and art that she just didn’t have time to let herself fall into self-pity. However, when her cousin got arrested for drunk driving and was thrown in jail for several years, Artemis had to come up with a new plan.
She began taking late night drives up to the city to stroll through the less appealing parts of town, practically begging to be attacked. If Artemis wasn’t able to get a fight there, she’d find a bar and find some burly drunk idiot hanging around that she’d insult and harass until she got her fight. Still, even this wasn’t particularly satisfying, and the gas to get out to the bigger cities was too expensive to keep up for long, since she didn’t have a job. She tried hunting out on her property, like her cousin was always on about, and that was fun enough – as it turned out, it was actually a lot more boring most of the time than her child self had thought. The kill wasn’t as big a moment as Artemis had always imagined either, and actually cleaning and dressing whatever she’d killed was a long, (very messy) fairly mind-numbing chore as well, and since her mom flat out refused to eat most of the animals Artemis caught, Artemis was the one who had to cook them up as well. Still, the few brief moments just before Artemis actually caught and killed the animal – whether it was a deer, rabbit, or wild pig (those she didn’t eat – they were just pests that she left for the vultures) – were what kept her going; the moment just before release, when she could see that the obliviously calm animal was a dead critter walking, the moment after release, when she knew her shot was going to be dead on (or if it wasn’t, though that one wasn’t quite such an enjoyable moment), the moment when the animal either went down or started staggering off, when she actually got to move, to chase and run it down, and the moment when she’d finally caught it, just before Artemis actually killed it, when she knew that she had proven herself as a predator.
Honestly, Artemis half-wished that there was a way to hunt people, though not to the point of killing - while she wasn’t certain whether that would even bother her, she didn’t like the idea. On the other hand, there wasn’t any way she could think of to have a satisfyingly real hunt where the person or people she was hunting were genuinely terrified for their lives that didn’t end with her going to jail, even with the element of actual homicide or even just seriously injuring her ‘prey’ being out of the picture. Artemis tried playing paintball once or twice, which actually came close, but she wasn’t a fan of guns as weapons, considering them too impersonal. In any case, since she had no desire to see what prison was like, she satisfied her hunting itch by continuing to hunt animals out on her property and occasionally (when she was in a particularly playful mood) stalking a person through a crowd and either shooting them with a rubber band or ‘stabbing’ them with an unsharpened pencil before vanishing off into the crowd.
Artemis wasn’t able to escape adulthood duties forever, even though it still tended to catch her off guard that she was actually an adult, and ended up getting a dead-end job washing dishes at a local bistro until she either found a better job or somehow ended up with a windfall that allowed her to retire comfortably for the rest of her life (… yeah, she wished).
She’d always thought that being an adult would have felt different, that there would have been no way to forget about it once she made it, but Artemis still felt the same as ever. Her imagination still tended to run away with her, she was still awkward and slow to warm up around other people, she would still geek out (her cousin’s term) over books, anime, myths, movies and television shows, she was still the image of a tomboy, and she was still lonely as all get out. About the only differences were that now her mom had moved to a different state to get back into her gardening career, so Artemis now lived in her home alone (and paid the bills, which was not one of the more fantastic things about being an adult), she drove, Artemis now had a job (as previously mentioned), and she had to deal with people asking her nearly constantly about several things; ‘Have you decided on which college you’re going to, sweetie?’ No, she hadn’t managed it quite yet.
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Category;
Real world – Modern setting - Normal
Name;
Schuyler Zef Boer
Meaning;
Schuyler – Shelter/scholar (Dutch) Zef - Joseph (Dutch) de Boer - the Farmer (Dutch)
Nicknames;
Sky, Boss (only used by Mark, or occasionally Gin when she’s mad)
Age;
Twenty
Gender;
Male
Appearance;
Sky is five foot eleven inches tall, his height an inherited trait from his father. He’s got a powerful frame, thick with muscle – Sky works hard every day to keep himself in the best shape possible. He’s got an almost bear-like feel with broad shoulders, a thick neck, and large feet. Sky has waved auburn red hair (also from his father) that he keeps cropped short and combed down, though it’s actually rather hard for him to keep it in good shape – his hair gets mussed up almost ridiculously easily, but for whatever reason, his hair also greases up quickly, so anytime he combs it back, it goes completely flat (which he thinks makes him look like a bit of a schmuck) for a while before finally fluffing back out. His eyes are a light blue, the specific shade straddling the line between blue and gray almost exactly; they can switch between looking icy blue and light gray depending on the lighting. Sky has a square, well defined jaw, a firm chin, and carefully shaped stubble (he’s a bit torn on the stubble – being clean-shaven makes him look young and inexperienced and outright beards just aren’t his thing, but he feels stubble leaves him looking unkempt.). He’s got a large red birthmark at the base of his neck which he’s rather sensitive about, not being a particular fan of the blemish. Sky also has multiple milia; while there’s a small group under his left eye and another running along his collarbone, most are individual spots randomly dotting his skin. He doesn’t have many scars and all have stories attached, from the white line slicing across his palm and over the web of his right hand (from a dumb mishap where he tried – and quickly failed – to learn how to juggle… using knives) to the crescent over his heart (where a cat had sunk her claws in as she took off from her human seat when she was startled). Sky has two tattoos; a dark, very realistic eagle on the flat of his right shoulder blade (that sucker ached like no one’s business for weeks after getting it), and a UV tattoo of a blue-white lightning bolt that curls around his right forearm.
Clothing;
Sky likes looking sharp, but he also likes being comfortable. This isn’t an easy thing to achieve, but he does his best (and usually comes out looking casually sharp, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing). He’s not much of a jacket or vest person, preferring as few restrictions around his chest and arms as possible, though he has to admit he makes them look good when he does wear them. Sky does like long sleeved shirts, as long as they have snugly-fitting cuffs and collars that can be popped up, as well as dress pants that are clearly creased. He avoids wearing a tied tie as long as humanely possible, but doesn’t mind having the untied tie draped around his neck. Sky wears a gold signet ring on his right forefinger – the pattern inside is elegant cursive letters (SZB) carved into blue layered agate – and a gold Jaeger-LeCoultre master ultra (the modest name never fails to make him grin) on his left wrist.
Personality;
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Sky is firmly opinionated, and often refuses to accept other points of view despite thinking of himself as being open-minded and being willing to listen to other points of view. However, while he may listen, it doesn’t mean he truly considers it and weighs the potential truth – instead, it will more or less go in one ear and right back out the other. Still, particularly good arguments can occasionally mess with him over time, replaying in his head and putting a seed of doubt in his mind, especially if the points made are repeated by multiple different people.
Sky is fairly conceited, and absolutely adores being flattered or praised, despite trying hard to be humble. Quite often, he’ll do something generous or selfless in the hopes of being praised or acknowledged for it, even though he does feel guilty if he realizes that’s why he’s doing it. Sky has a thing for reciprocity, and it bugs the absolute heck out of him when he does something nice for or says something nice about someone and the favor isn’t returned at an appropriate time. He can generally detect flattery pretty easily, but that doesn’t make it any less appreciated – unless it’s overdone. If Sky’s being flattered to the point of ridiculousness, it just makes him uncomfortable.
He doesn’t really get flustered. Sky is very easy-going, and it takes quite the doozy of an incident to get him embarrassed or shocked. Honestly, he gets hit worse by second-hand embarrassment than by first-hand embarrassment.
Sky doesn’t really take rules seriously; he considers them to be more like really good suggestions than iron-clad laws. He still tries to follow them, but it doesn’t overly bother him if he has to break a rule or two to get something done. Lying, cheating, stealing, they’re all unpleasant things that he feels mildly guilty over… but he’ll still do and feel perfectly reasonable in doing. Sky doesn’t like having others break rules with him – being lied to, stolen from, cheated, so on - but he’ll usually accept it as fair play.
He enjoys life, enjoys taking time to indulge his senses and get his heart racing. Sky can really zone out and relax when he intentionally focuses in and concentrates on only one sense. Music works great for this – classical and opera, hard rock, pop, oldies, country, choir, soft rock, jazz, nightcore – he likes it all, though his favorites are fluid and change from week to week. Views are nice too, as long as Sky’s seeing them in person and not just in a picture. He loves sweets, meats, pastas and potatoes, though he prefers his foods simple and natural; the more hoops it took to cook something, or the more processed the ingredients, the less likely he’s going to like it. Smell is about the only sense that doesn’t do much for him.
Sky does not make promises lightly. Promises are one of the few rules he never breaks, and despises having broken. Sky hates making promises, hates the chain of obligation he’s left with. He avoids making them as much as humanely possible. However, on the rare occasions that he does make a promise, Sky will do anything to come through on it, no matter what. The only times he considers himself to have made a promise are when he says the exact words ‘I promise’ or ‘I swear’.
He is not a fan of making fun of people, except in jest. Only when Sky knows that the other person knows he’s kidding is he okay with making fun of them. Otherwise, he ignores whoever it is that left him with a bad taste in his mouth, almost to the point of pretty much pretending they don’t exist. Sky doesn’t tolerate cruelty from anyone, no matter who or why.
Sky rarely backs down from a challenge. He’s got a lot of pride, which doesn’t often work in his favor. However, while he’s stubborn as a mule, Sky isn’t stupid. He won’t put others in danger or do anything particularly stupid just to fuel his ego.
He’s got a nasty temper, though it’s slow to ignite. However, no matter how much it takes to actually get him mad, Sky is outright dangerous once he’s blown up. He’s violent and loud, and has a tendency to punch people or walls and throw anything at hand.
Sky isn’t much of a book, tv or movie person – he enjoys each occasionally, but they aren’t things he spends big chunks of his time on. He can binge, when a friend or family member is into something and wants him to, but he avoids it when he can. On the other hand, Sky is absolutely addicted to games; computer games, video games, board games, he loves them all. He’s got a particularly big thing for adventure games, or any games that are controlled by arrow keys.
Sky may not open his heart until he really trusts someone, but he does open his arms to anyone who wants to be his friend (or at least wants to pretend to be his friend). He enjoys these half-hearted friendships as long as they last, and accepts when they end. Once he has a true friend though, Sky holds that bond close to his heart and will fight hard to keep it. He loves his family and closest friends dearly, and would do anything for them.
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Tastes;
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Colors - Preferred;
Sharp yellow, blue, violet
Flavors - Preferred;
Cherry, chocolate, cayenne
Sounds - Preferred;
Husky feminine voices, trilling cats, thunder
Textures - Preferred;
Smooth skin, soft edges of old book paper, cold water
Smells - Preferred;
Oiled metal, A/C, cut grass
Colors - Rejected;
Orange, light soft brown, milky yellow
Flavors - Rejected;
Avocado, salmon, menudo
Sounds - Rejected;
Chewing, cutting glass, crying babies
Textures - Rejected;
Thin oil, grease, gritty plastic
Smells - Rejected;
Raw fish, hot skin,
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Family;
Father;
Kerstan Boer
Mother;
Rosaline Boer
Brothers;
Clay Hans Boer
River Pieter Boer
Sisters;
Adeen Hendrina Boer
Eve Henrietta Boer
Allisandra Denise Boer
History;
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The youngest of six siblings, Sky was the son of Kay and Rose de Boer. Rose was a retired actress, who had quit the business fairly early to become a mother after falling for and marrying Sky’s father. Kay, the founder and CEO of Time Pharmaceuticals (a half-billion dollar industry), was absolutely smitten by his lovely younger wife, and did his best to give her whatever her heart so desired – up to and including kids. Kay had never had an interest in having children (he actually rather disliked the pesky little things) but he knew Rose wanted them badly, which was how, only five years after they’d gotten married, they ended up with five children.
Now, running a pharmaceutical company was not a particularly easy task, and some days were harder than others. Kay would come home, run down and furious over a new drug turning out to have too many negative side effects, or a scientist having sold information out from under his nose to a competitor, or some other business-related nightmare, only to have to deal with a crowd of hyperactive, stubborn, misbehaving toddlers. His stores of patience slowly emptied with each new addition to the family, with every bad day at work only being compounded by the kids he didn’t even want at home, until he finally snapped for the first time at home. Rose began noticing how much better behaved the kids were becoming, but never once even dreamed of connecting that to the sudden increase in cuts and bruises she saw – she just thought that the additional bumps were from their normal roughhousing (which had started after the boys had started pushing their luck with their sisters), and that their otherwise good behavior was just a miracle.
Soon, the children were perfect little angels whenever Kay was home; only speaking when spoken to, polite, and absolutely obedient. Rose was amazed by his seemingly natural knack with the kids, the kids were a mix of terrified and awed by their father, and Kay was enjoying his time at home again, even beginning to see the appeal of being a father. For once, it was his idea to have another kid – much to Rose’s delight – and he was pleased to find later that it ended up being a boy (he wasn’t as fond of his daughters as he was of his sons).
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