Post by Natalie Makena on Mar 11, 2013 19:06:03 GMT -5
[/font][/size](NATALIE ELIZABETH MAKENA)- - - - - -the b a s i c s
Name: Natalie Makena
Nicknames: Nat
Age: Twenty-Two
Gender: Female
Membergroup: Tourist
Occupation: -----
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- - - - - -the a p p e a r a n c e
[/size]hair & eye color: naturally, Natalie has light brown hair and blue eyes, but she has recently died her hair a light red color.
height: 5’6
weight: 130 lbs.
tattoos & piercings: Natalie has her ears pierced, but nothing else.
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- - - - - -the p e r s o n a l i t y
[/size]Likes: scarves, carameled candies, wealth, the smell of coffee, felines.
Dislikes: red apples, turtle-necks, snakes, storms, the cold.
Traits: sly, strategic, sharp, brooding, passive, underhanded, charming, acquisitive, impulsive.
Overview: Natalie comes off as a different sort of person to different people. She alters her emotional characteristics based on the person she is confronted with in order to better achieve what she desires from the situation. Natalie can be charming and flirty at one hand, or aggressive and emotionally cold at another. She, an observant and sly character, assess the person she’s dealing with, and dawns a mask to best approach them with. When she’s not looking to manipulate the situation, Natalie often comes off as uncaring and almost amused with most situations that she’s confronted with. She’s witty, in a sort of dry detached way, bantering as it pleases her and not when it doesn’t. She’s indepedent and calculating, lonesome and sly, and horribly, painfully, lonely.
Natalie tends not to care. However, when she does find a cause or a person that somehow manages to weave its way to her attention, she tends to care immensely. She’s fiercely loyal, and while she doesn’t tend to show it very often, she’s just a hint of motherly and a tenfold protective. She doesn’t tend to show this aspect of herself, of the fact that she cares, very often, making it difficult for her to create lasting relationships with people who don’t see that she cares at all. For all her cleverness, she’s almost overly intelligent in the way she hides and find the way to deliver the low-blows. She makes rash decisions, and her condescending views of those arrogance and little intelligence often get her into trouble, which forces her more often than leave the life she began to create and start over somewhere new. Again. However, for those she respects, Natalie can become very polite (if a bit distantly) and charming in order to gain their affections. She’s greedy in the sense that when she wants something, she will often stop at little to get it—including people she admires and their friendships (however twisted). [/left][/size]
- - - - - -the h i s t o r y
[/size]Overview: Natalie grew up in a house in France with a father that gambled often, drank even more so, and a mother too caught up in her own grief and woe-is-me to protect her accidental children from her husband’s drunken rages and family’s downward spiral. Natalie, before she turned eight, learned how to keep out of the way of her house, where the best places were to hide—the roof, that is, sometimes the closet—and how to sneak past her parent’s bedroom in the dark hours of night to take food she’d been denied for dinner (wasteful, just a waste, you’ve already eaten enough, girl). It didn’t’ take long, only until Natalie was ten, before finally her father decided to drive home drunk one night and get himself and his wife killed, for the young girl to become orphaned in the poorest of the poor outskirts of a small town in France. Natalie was swept up into a foster-care system for several years—so many families unable or unwilling to put up with an emotionally fragile and angry little child—before she eventually, at twelve got herself out of it by running away. Far away.
It was almost comical what happened after that. Something straight out of fairy tale, or some comic book or story. Natalie cut her hair—too dangerous, far too dangerous to be a girl in the streets of the darker parts of Paris—and got a job shoveling animal manure in a traveling circus as a boy. The director of the tent, a greedy, sleezy old man, saw a boy too small to be as old as he claimed and looked the other way, needing the help and the free-labor.
So, as strange and improbable as it was, Natalie had joined the circus. Her act as a boy didn’t last long, but it did last her long enough to prove that she was capable of hauling the animal’s crates, cleaning their stalls, and doing it without mouthing off or talking. She ate little, didn’t get much of a pay (at all, actually), but it kept her away from the officials searching from her. This continued for about a year, Natalie turned thirteen, and they traveled about Europe. Natalie learned to pickpocket from one of the trapeze performers, and started making a pay off of that. She had a talent for the balancing act, and was prompted to assistant of the trapeze performers (and later a performer herself). She saved her money, year by desperate year, and eventually left the circus at seventeen years of age on the shores of Ireland without long goodbye. (if someone accidently left the cages of the abused and cramped animals open the night she disappeared, no one could ever really say anything)
Natalie was seventeen, had a little over ten k in American money, and had no friends in Ireland. She eventually made enough money off her pickpocketing career to stop sleeping in a tree behind an old bookstore, and possibly bought a car (without papers, or a license, but that was her business) to sleep in instead. Jobs were difficult for her to maintain once gotten, (too many questions, too many curious glances at her lack of schooling), and eventually, the money ran so thin that she was unable to pay for a gallon of gas outside her destination in England. It was there, when, desperate and angry, that Natalie caught a glimpse of an advertisement for an antique jewlry auction just a few miles away from where he car finally ran dry.
She hesitated.
Two nights later, armed with only her clever eye, skills of a pickpocketed and trapeze artist, Natalie lie, slipped, danced, flirted, and stole over thirteen-thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry.
Thus, Natalie had become a thief.
It wasn’t her real name. In fact, at the time of the robbery, she had been going by the name of Allana Knolls. After that, she never had the same name for more than a month—unless her next long-con called for more than that amount of time. She learned to steal and quickly became addicted to it. Why shouldn’t she, when those she stole from where stupid enough to let her? Why shouldn’t she, when the money she stole would barely dent their large fortunes? Natalie saw herself more of a Robin Hood to herself than anything else. Her cons and heists quickly became more elaborate and complex. She grew in knowledge and in wealth. She had enough money to buy three separate identities at once and used all three of them to steal some more. She was good, fantastic at what she did, and no one could ever, would ever catch her.
Until they did.
The ground was falling from beneath her feet when Natalie caught a ride on a freighter to America. Too many close calls, too many knife wounds from deals gone wrong, too many good men and bad men alike on her tail. She bought herself one last (one last) new identity and swept into Coral Ridge flashing smiles and hiding in the shadows at those who looked twice. She died her hair and cut her hair, got rid of her tan, flawlessly adopted a British accent, and settled in for the long haul. She didn’t plan to stay forever, just a little while perhaps, until things died down and they took her picture off of criminal watch. And maybe, if she started to like the town a little too much, like the celebrities and their rich lifestyles bloated with more material things than they knew what to do with and less sense on how to keep them than most, that was okay. She would be okay. She could deal with having no real friends in the world, of practicing different smiles in the mirror, of spending many moments watching of her shoulder. She could do this.
Really.
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- - - - - -the p l a y e r
[/size]Name: Daze
Roleplay Sample: [take from ‘secrets RPG’ at onemoresecret.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=library&action=display&thread=132]
“—ay looks like to be perfectly sunny with a few clouds high in the sky. It’s going to be a bit windy, with threat of mild storms from the north, but chances of rain are very unlikely to reach the city, around five or six prec—”
Kaija rolled in her bed, eyes still closed, hand reaching out to crawl up her dresser and finally reach the top of her ancient alarm clock (it came with the flat) and flick the dial, clicking the radio off. She didn’t have to look at her bed to see the faintly glowing neon red numbers of the alarm clock, nor the pre-dawn filtering light flickering through the slats of her window’s curtains, to know that it was scarcely five o’ clock in the morning. Her body, already protesting due to the late time she had gone to bed the night before, could tell her just as easily how early it was. Not that this was any earlier than Kaija normally woke up.
The girl rolled out of bed, swinging her feet over the mattress and standing after a few minutes of lying there and forcing herself to wake up. She twisted the knob ontop the alarm again, turning it on back to the radio at a slightly lower volume than it had before.
“…Twenty-Ninth of April, five o’ three am., and it looks like today’s going to be mostly sunny with a few clouds here and there as well as high-paced winds…”
Kaija moved silently to her closet, slipping inside and changing quickly into her day clothes—a set of dark jeans and a v-neck—slipping on her jacket and lacing up her boots on the floor of her closet while she listened.
“…small chance of a thunder storm moving in from the north, but the chance is small even with the high winds of today. Expect clear skies and temperatures ranging from forty-five to sixty-nine in the late afternoon.”
Kaija finished lacing her boots with one last strong tug, tying a knot at the end. She stood up, keeping the radio on as she moved to the kitchen, packing up her supplies and grabbing two cliff-bars from the cabinet as she did. She unpackaged one, biting into it and slipped the other into her computer bag’s pouch, chewing thoughtfully.
“…and the quote of the day. ‘Time passes and with it the strangers whose faces you won’t remember. Some of these strangers will end up forgotten, while these same faces change your life in ways and numbers you can’t add up or hope to understand.’”
Okay. Kaija rolled her eyes as she moved back into her bedroom, flicking off the radio as it turned to give the reports to some accident there was last night in the park. The quotes from those radio stations kept getting stranger and stranger by the day. She wished the town was slightly larger, if only to have more than three radio stations—one of which was plain news.
Kaija made her way out of her apartment, nearly stumbling over the boy who delivered papers to each person’s floor as he raced past, only narrowly avoiding him with a quick jump back. Really, who even got the paper anymore these days? What could possibly be so important and news worthy in a smaller town like this one? She gave the boy an exasperated glance as he turned back (without stopping) to shoot her a hasty apology) and tipped her hat at him in what might have been a threatening way as she locked the door behind her.
Now started her way too long and complicated day.
She did some Intel work for the first few hours, up until ten. After that, she had to meet a guy at the park who knew some guy, whose sister was dating this guy, who had this cousin who knew about the gang-leader of some amateur criminal group that had been gaining cloak-and-dagger power in the town (you’d be surprised how deep and messed up this town was). She followed this lead for a bit, before realizing it was complete bull and skipping lunch to try and make up for the time it took for her to figure out what was actually helpful and what was just going to make her head-desk in the end. By then it was two, and she had to meet up with her mark who had some information from Allana (long story there) that she apparently needed to hear. Of course, the restaurant she was supposed to meet him at burned down last week, and no one decided to inform her of this. By the time she figured this out and was heading off some apartment to meet the guy there, he’d already canceled and skipped out of town, much to her frustration.
Kaija was walking down the sidewalk on the far side of town, heading off towards the library, when her phone started ringing. She jumped at the vibration from her jacket, still not used to anyone calling her (as there was only one person who ever called her and she’d only just relented to getting a cell last week at the man’s instance). “Hello?” she asked, sighing as she recognized the number (not that she would expect anyone else).
“Red?”
Kaija raised her eyebrows. “Who else would it be?” she asked.
“We need you to come in and help with this. Have you heard about the accident last night in the park?”
“Absolutely not, and yes, on the radio this morning,” she replied without missing a beat, fingers curling on the inside of her coat. “You know I can’t do that—so you must be desperate enough to ask. Why?”
“Do you know the details?”
Kaija thought a moment. “Not really,” she admitted. “It was vauge. Sounds mysterious though. Flashing lights in the park? Flooded river, something about a dismembered arm?”
“Come in and we’ll give you everything we know.”
“Can’t do that,” she sing-songed. “Crowds, people with guns, and a bunch of other crap I would find in that environment don’t do well.”
There was a sigh on the other end of the line. The voice lowered an octave. “…Red…” he started, quietly, and Kaija sighed, “…we really need you on this one. There practically nothing to work with, and it’s a lot bigger than the radio told you. You—you,” Kaija huffed, blowing her hair out of her eyes and starting to cross the street across from the library, “work with nothing, and we could really use some backup on this one.”
Kaija chewed on the bottom of her lip. “No,” she said, firmly, after a moment. “Sorry, I can’t. I’m super tied up right now—nearly literally, last night, god, last night— and I can’t work in the conditions you provide. Leave photos and folders in the drop-off section, and I’ll take a look at them, okay? Th—” Kaija yelped as a car turned down the road, far too quick, nearly hitting her, “god—you idiots!—sorry, not you, some guy; obviously drunk. Geez. Okay. Right. Drop them off, and then we’ll talk.”
There was a heavy sigh from the other end of the phone, the chief obviously not happy with the answer. “Fine. They’ll be there by nine, okay?”
“Got it,” Kaija chirped, fingers already itching to shut the phone. “I’ll call you when I’ve looked at them. Bye.”
And the girl shut the phone without waiting for a reply, pocketing it as she pushed open the swinging doors to the library.
She’d always loved this library. It seemed so… old and comforting, with dim lights and thick carpets and rows upon rows of wooden bookshelves twice as tall as she was. Kaija had found herself spending more and more time here as time went on. There were never many any people, and it was always quiet and calm. She could easily do some reading, or research, without being interrupted for hours. She usually came here on Saturdays, such as today, to just read and take a break from her tense life. However, today was not a day for reading.
Today she was on a mission.
Kaija asked the librarian quietly where she could find books written on the history of this town. The librarian gave her a strange look—apparently not getting many requests for that particular book of trade—before directing her all the way to the back shelves, underneath the overhang of the second floor and to where the last row of bookshelves were pressed firmly up against a wall.
The blonde brushed her fingers alongside the covers of the books, eyes quickly scanning the spines of the books and their titles and authors in the smaller individual section. At last she found a book that might be what she was looking forward, and Kaija leaned forward with gleaming eyes to relieve a particularly thick and boring looking book from its shelf.
There was a flash of light as she pulled the book away. She blinked, momentarily blinded by the glint, before setting the book down on the shelf below and peering towards the back of the shelf. Along the back of the bookcase, just hidden from view by several other thick books, laid a crack in the wood. However, what came from the crack itself was far more interesting.
Gleaming through the hole in the wall, scarcely a millimeter wide, and two inches long, was bright, white, light.
Kaija frowned, brushing her hair out of her eyes and squinting as she leaned in closer. She put both hands on the books parallel to the winking light and pushed, forcing the tightly packed books away with some effort to get a better look at the light.
It was strong and unnatural looking, sending off little beams and winks of light that caught on the thick dusty air, so bright that Kaija had to narrow her eyes even to look at it this close on. She reached out with one hand, all five fingers spread apart, pawing at the light until it reflected against the palm of her hand. She blinked down at it both curiosity and confusion, moving her hand over to peer at the light. Kaija slowly lifted her head, tracing her hand forward until she was reaching out to touch the wall where the light was coming from.
Just as she was about to touch it, the girl clenched her hand into a fist, pulling away. At first, she hadn’t even realized she had done it until her hand was firmly back at her side, registering the goosebumps that had sprung up along her arm. Kaija took a step back uneasily, blinking when she had realized just what she had done. She shook her blonde head once, as if to clear it, before walking around the bookcase to see what laid on the other side.
It was a wall. Kaija laid her hand, tracing the line between where the bookcase laid firmly against it, chewing on her lip. She glanced sideways down the wall, unable to spot any windows or doors that might give her an idea of how thick the wall was, and if it was possible to even have something on the other side. Okay, then. Kaija turned to look around, eyes flickering around the mostly empty library, before spotting someone facing a bookshelf not too far away. She hesitated, before slowly making her way over to the figure, booted feet silent on the thick carpets and the musty air.
“Excuse me,” she said quietly, after the briefest of pauses a foot or two behind the person. She waited until they turned, before gesturing towards the wall the bookcase laid next to. “Do you know what’s on the other side of that wall?”
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