Mivuli

Teenage Wasteland

@LovelyAnastasia

Teenage Wasteland

Kim Marie

@LovelyAnastasia@Vocab@Jangel13

---

"This is tha' Forgotten HQ right?" Kim nodded at that question, but her face did not waver from its stony expression. Not at the mention of the Scorps, nor when the redheaded girl called her doll, little pig. And then Erren came, to ask after the redhead. "...why don't we show her how I deal with people who come knocking on a door of outcasts after a large number of us were killed?" Brusque, was Erren, cutting to the point with a serrated edge.

"She hasn't started anything," Kim replied, with a glance at Erren, before her eyes snapped back to the ginger. "Yet."

But it transpired the girl did trade, and with information that came free of charge. Her hand - ashen with dust - tossed her Gamer badge and fealty to the dirt. That earned a smite of Kim's interest. So she hadn't come to speak for the colours that Kim harboured no interest in crossing. But then she spoke of a Scorps hangout. "That, kiddies, is meh trade."

Cards were on the table now. Not all of them, but that was too much a rarity. Kim raised her free hand to shoulder-height, in a universal sign for wait. Calm. "All right," she said evenly, briefly bending her first and last fingers in a sign of three fingers - for as many minutes - before she folded those against her palm too. Shiba on the roof would have seen that. Kim lowered her clenched fist, turning her body inward, and stared at the ginger's last remaining eye. "I do not suppose I have to tell a lass like you we do not invite trouble in our shop." She jerked her head towards the open entrance to the shop, and waited for the girl to pass.

She looked at Erren, and swiped the flat of her thumb across her temple, the sign for I'll keep a watch. There were three in the shop now, all shifty characters. Kim liked it none, but these days she liked little. With a beat of remote hesitation, she knocked her knuckles on her collar-bone, and turned into the shop in the wake of the girl. Her own signal for thanks.

Their base was small enough, and with a total of five in its quarters, it made for cramped arrangements. Feet shoulder-width apart, Kim stationed herself in the corner by the entrance. A bead of sweat careened down her forehead. It was only a matter of waiting before more streaked the same path. But cupping her hands around her ever ready pistol, she stood sentry to watch the trade carefully.

Teenage Wasteland

@LovelyAnastasia I like the nicknames you give XD But yeah, I tend to do the same by sussing out what type of character I can place into an RP, and how he/she would fare alongside the rest of the cast. I like to make them barely-whole, so that there's always one dysfunctional bit about them that's missing.

Teenage Wasteland

Kim Marie

@LovelyAnastasia

---

As the sun rolled heavy and slow across the sky, and dragged with it a cloak that rippled over clouds and pulsed warmly, the sobs beside Kim eased. Kin raised his head, and Kim said nothing, silence the medium and currency often exchanged between them. She didn't consider the boy unmanned for his tears. Only human.

But people - friends, sometimes - died, and the Earth continued to spin on its axis, the trade continued to flow. And duty could not be neglected. Kim rose to her feet. Weariness rolled off Kin's skin in waves, and she said, "I can cover some extra shifts." lest he need time off his feet. Lord - or whatever deity that remained - knew Kim felt hollow for the deaths. But the emptiness was no new sensation, and perhaps there was some part of her that felt she ought to be penalised for such a callous lack of grief. Slipping her pistol out of its holster on her hip, she nodded to Kin in brief goodbye, and turned to make her way back to base.

The landscape was half-barren, with patches of dry grass weaving across sand. Kim trod through them, taking care not to make so much as a crinkle, pistol in hand. As she rounded to base, she spotted Shiba, stationed atop the roof to watch the perimeter. She sent him a curt two-finger salute, and caught sight of a ginger straggler approaching the shophouse. Her gait bordered on a swagger, and an eye-patch dominated half her face. She was armed, and Kim was wary as she scrutinised the girl and stood at the threshold of the shop - inside which Marion Dwight was managing two guests. One - a blond, scarred on the face - had bags draped over the countertop. The second, dark-haired one didn't seem to have brought anything for trade, his tattoos like a second skin. He was speaking to Dwight.

A pair of strangers in the shop - soon to be three. They might have a guard atop the roof, but...

Kim stood by the entrance, keeping an eye on their visitors with a stoic expression. But she regarded the girl with sharper care. She appeared to have lost an eye, and it was the infirm who still walked that were inclined to warrant Kim's caution and concern. When they had forsaken a part of themselves, what else would they be willing to risk in a scuffle? How loose were their canons? In a low voice that carried, she spoke to the redheaded girl, "Have you come to trade?"

Platinum Records - Closed

@Pundii Damn, I hope you were happy with your results then!
@Ferris @vFear Congrats on making it through either way! Must be a bummer though, to have exams with Christmas on the loom
@Fillet Aye aye boss, you lucky centenarian

Platinum Records - Closed

@SouffleGirl123 Yooo (:
@vFear Could be anyone, I think. Curious, but do you guys all have finals now? Because we don't have them in December where I live.

Nightfall [original vampire RP]

You've got my interest.

Teenage Wasteland

Kim Marie

Kim stood by the graves. Shabby places of rest, but the best that could be arranged in current circumstances. Abel and Drake were murmuring two halves of a psalm, like paired bookends that bracketed a eulogy that evaded words and construction.

Turning her gaze to the crosses that marked the fallen, Kim wondered what it must feel like beneath layers of packed dirt. She had been present at the raid and attack. Her body could have easily joined the seven that already lay. She considered the prospect of her death - none too strange. How she had thrown her shoulder into the fight and retaliated with military precision and near-suicidal vigour, marching like a soldier into Death's open arms, only to have them rescinded from her.

Juxtaposed besides Drake and Abel, and their wrenching hearts, Kim felt alien, and so she turned away from the graves to leave. The loss of seven lives was a heavy blow to morale and manpower - she would not deny. Yet she could not muster the sorrow to grieve for them. They had fought and died on the battlefield, defending all the Forgotten had left in the world. One day, Kim would traverse the same path.

She came across Kin, huddled in the foetal position in quiet, palpable despair. Kin topped a hundred and eighty centimetres, but standing before the boy, Kim towered over him. She gazed down at him, with a peculiar expression wiped carefully blank. People talked often, and she knew what they thought of her - this curiously strange, grim robot. She was, however, far from blind to some of the nuances of human emotion, sighted enough to say the truth she thought he deserved to hear, in a flattened voice that broached no argument. "You did the best anyone could have to keep them alive. I hope you know that."

The boy was tough, hardened and lined, aged beyond his years. He was fearsome to stand against, a dedicated guard who laid down his life for his new community, and who rained hell on any who dared trespass the Forgotten. Of good men, Kim did not know many. But Kin - he was not a bad man. He had the makings of a heart Kim had imagined impossible to find anymore in this new world, encased in a tempered body and mind.

Backing herself up the wall, Kim slid down the texture of brick to sprawl her legs next to Kin. She thought of the foot-soldiers in World War Two - trapped in the runnels and trenches they had dug for themselves; taking their meals and rest together; standing shoulder-to-shoulder crossing fire with a faceless enemy; entertaining promises and fantasies of leaving the war zone behind, so that they may bear with the bloodshed of the present - and clapped Kin on the shoulder, in a show of solidarity.

Platinum Records - Closed

"Ten seconds, huh? That'll cost you two strawberry jam ones." As Jackson preened himself for the camera, Mikayla just grinned at the image of his face, captured in a miniscreen. She couldn't speak for herself - but she reckoned Miller could appear on footage with an egg smashed on his head and the majority of women would still find him attractive.

"Man, inflation hit us hard here," she said, pressing record.

Mikayla dodged to the side for Jackson to fiddle with a few knobs, letting the camera run a little longer for B-roll. "Nah, it was good," she said with a grin. "Girls online will absolutely love you." About to answer the next question, she ended recording, only to hear her name in a yell. With but a moment's preparation, Mikayla felt herself propelled forward in a bodily tackle from the back. She jack-knifed at the waist, but straightened her back with a beam as wide as the moon. She knew that voice, that practice. "Charging time!"

"So charge your battery, not at me," joked Mikayla, turning around to engulf her oldest friend in a tight if brief hug before pivoting to sling one arm over her shoulders and face Jackson. "You're going to have to ask the best member on this band if they're ready. I haven't the foggiest clue," she said to him, looking between Mackenzie and Jackson. "With you killing it onstage with the rest, and you holding down the fort, I can't imagine anything going wrong."

Teenage Wasteland

Standing at 170cm (5’57”), Kim is tall and slim, with arched brows that give her a dubious appearance, and brown eyes that look dark and bottomless. She has freckles and sun-spots, and has a pale complexion. Her black hair is short, cut routinely to leave an uneven edge, and often swept to the side and out of the way. She often wears a tank top, combat boots and oversized trousers with deep pockets, but she can’t find a Kevlar vest, and certainly nobody is giving up theirs.

Name:

Kim Marie

Age:

18

Faction:

The Forgotten

Personality:

Before the infection, Kim was a happy-go-lucky girl. The youngest and only daughter in a family of reasonably affluent means, there was little she had to worry for. She was clever enough, and got good grades, occasionally topping her class in the good years.

But she came to the Forgotten a shell of who she had been. At the start, she was just a scared, shaking fifteen-year-old, who quaked in her Converse sneakers. Now, she is nothing if not quiet. You would have to pry her lips open for conversation, and her replies are often grunts, or monosyllabic. She’s a person of few words, Kim is, and sullen. She would make a good soldier; sometimes, she stands like she’s carved of marble, still enough to convince flies to land on her. Even then, she does not move. She takes orders, if they’re yelled at her, or passed under a breath. Enlist her into a turf war and she’ll throw herself into the battle, frontline or no. People have whispered rumours about her, but just because she is close to mute, she’s not deaf. She knows some of them think she’s cold-blooded. She’s heard gossip that she kills squirrels for fun – ridiculous, there are hardly enough around for that anymore. It’s strange though, she could embark on a mission with almost suicidal determination. But the moment she is attacked, she lunges forward screaming, fighting ruthlessly, tooth and claw, her way back to life. Once, when she was out on a personal scavenge, a Scorp jumped her. They scuffled, but it was Kim who left with nothing but a bloody lip and crooked tooth, and the nameless Scorp lying in a pool of growing blood.

Backstory:

Kim was fifteen when the outbreak struck. With one fell blow, she lost mother, father, and twin brothers. For two weeks, she sealed the windows and locked the doors and grieved. She barely ate. In the bubble of her home while the world wreaked havoc outside the walls, time was not sanctioned to pass, as she haunted the halls like the ghosts her family had become.

One day Kim opened the door after someone had been banging on it for five minutes straight, to reveal an old friend on the other side. Josephina forced herself in and locked the door behind her back. She was bleeding from a cut above her temple, but she managed to propel herself into Kim’s arms and almost knock her over. Perhaps it was the way warm blood dripped onto Kim’s back and shoulder, or the sensation of heat and flesh under her hands, but it was enough to pull her back into the present, and do for Josephina what she had had no opportunity to do for her family. Kim cleaned the wound and wrapped Josephina up; Josephina made sure Kim had enough sustenance and brought her back from the brink of a wasted death. She told Kim about her short stint with the Gamers, that she had abandoned when fights for glory and bullshit started taking place. She had tales about a faction they could both go to, and live out the rest of the apocalypse back-to-back, arm-in-arm.

Kim had to admit the prospect of having someone else to live for was attractive.

When they were both well, Josephina led them out the door for the last time, the two of them laden down with all the supplies they could carry. She had heard that the Forgotten were stationed in a shopping district, and that was where they went. But on the way, they encountered Coyotes, who fell on them like a tsunami wave, pouring in from all sides. Armed with bricks, shovels, and pitchforks, they descended upon the two girls.

Kim fought back, scratching and kicking at hands that tried to fall on her. Eventually, she wrenched a hammer out of one Coyote’s hands, and began to beat her way out. She broke elbows and collarbones and the fingers of someone who had been holding a gun. He dropped it. But not before a shot rang out and Kim heard a quiet exhale of breath from behind her.

Death never loses its flavour. At least, it hadn’t in the first three weeks. Even though the population had been decimated, and the streets were still littered with errant corpses no one had bothered to clean up, the children from The Coyotes weren’t acquainted with murder. But as they scurried like kids about to be told on, and she crawled to Josephina - whose blood was flowing in a steady free stream from the gunshot wound over her heart - Kim felt she could kill someone right there and then. Or had she already?

She stayed there for a long time, Josephina’s head cradled in her lap. She watched those eyes empty until they were as blank as the sky they stared up at, and the life drained from her cheeks through a hole in her chest. Kim waited for a deathbed acquittal, for the Coyotes to return with whooping calls and an axe to cleave her neck clean through. But neither ever came. Josephina died quietly, the wind whistled hollowly around them, and the blame for her last friend’s death sat heavily on Kim’s shoulders.

Kim picked up the pistol – ill-gotten gains, that made her feel sick to the stomach – and the bag Josephina had been carrying. With each step feeling like lead, and each breath like a knife in the heart, Kim found her way to the Forgotten.

She never spoke Josephina’s name again.

Other:

• A mean grappler. She can defend herself, even on the ground.
• Owns a pistol, and scavenges for ammunition
• Will use anything within sight to fight. Bottles, knives, and sticks are all fair-game
• Light on her feet, and proficient in sneaking quietly in the cover of shadows
• Has been with the Forgotten for three years, is aware she could be considered disposable and has no qualms about how trivially her life could be used by authority as a means to an end (i.e. in a turf war)