| info.

CWs; (referenced) parental death, murder, underage drinking, drug use, grooming / predatory relationships

PLAYER INFORMATION

PLAYER: Nik
ARE YOU AT LEAST 18 YEARS OLD?: Unfortunately Yes
CONTACT: exits / exits#8071 / PM this journal
CHARACTERS PLAYED: N/A

CHARACTER INFORMATION

NAME: Kate Galloway
CANON: Original
CANON POINT: After finishing year 11, but before starting in the military
AGE: 16

APPEARANCE:

At 5'1", Kate doesn't look like much, but she carries herself with the over it, irritated aura of any teenager, complete with masterful eyerolls and brow raising. Often seen sporting a tan from the amount of time she spends outdoors, with brown hair and matching eyes, her most striking physical attribute would likely be listed as the waist length hair she often wears straightened to within an inch of its life and a surprising amount of muscle for a teenage girl. Together, it creates a package that seems... somewhat confusing, conflicted between girlishness and adulthood in the way only a teenager can be.

One thing is clear about Kate — she dresses for comfort and movement more than style. Her wardrobe is a rotation of trainers, combat boots, leggings and hoodies, and dressing up usually means switching the leggings for jeans and the hoodie for a leather jacket. She mostly avoids jewellery, having worn the same pair of stud earrings for years on end, but she holds a special attachment to the wedding band she keeps on a chain as a necklace; it's her mother's, after all.

Athletic and buzzing with energy, Kate moves almost constantly. Whether she's fiddling with something, tapping her foot or just generally shifting her weight from side to side, it's been frequently commented that Kate "looks as though she wants to get out of any given situation". She's wound tight, and everything from her movement to the way she keeps her arms close to herself like a shield speaks to that. She does her best to hold her facial features under control — something she hasn't yet mastered, but her poker face is definitely better than the average 16 year old's — and tries to appear unaffected. Irritated. Over it. Anything that makes it seem like she just doesn't care about anything any more.

CONTRACT PAYMENT: Make it so her parents never died. So that everything that happened after that is undone and life is put to rights.

QUESTIONNAIRE:
note: I'm writing both IC and OOC answers in places because there may be discrepancies between what Kate would say and what her actual response in the situation would be.

What does family mean to you and who do you consider a part of your family?
— IC.
Family's the people you grow up with. Your siblings and shit. Guess it's usually like, blood relatives or whatever, but... Aye. Whoever you grow up with. Means people who you're supposed to take care of. Even when they're really annoying and shit.

What is the most frightening thing you've ever done? What part of you did it test the most?
— IC.
... Guess applyin' for th' army was pretty scary. Didn't know if they'd accept me. Put me through a lot of tests and shit, like my physical skills. Weren't sure what I'd do if they said no.

— OOC.
The most frightening thing Kate's done is ghost the guy who was responsible for giving her powers. Knowing he was aware of where her school was, the general vicinity of where she lived, were both things that played on her mind when she tossed her phone and got a new number. It also cut her off from her social circle at the time, who were more concerned with making sure they had a source for their illicit substances than whatever happened to Kate, and being (understandably) unwilling to tell the whole story to anyone (even her brother), she had to grit her teeth and put up with a messy friend circle break up. Including, but not limited to, arguments at school, name calling, and one particularly nasty physical fight.

What is your favorite diversion? Hobbies, indulgences, vices? Would you put off important things for that diversion, or would you be more strict about how you spend your time and/or money?
— IC.
I like running, I guess. Uh, parkour? You heard of that? 'S like running and climbing and shit. That's fun. 'S better than school. Like doing it when I can. What d'you think's "important" shit, though?

— OOC.
Athletics are, and likely always will be, Kate's greatest love, so parkour is a big distraction for her, and something she tends to place over a lot of other things. Like school. But she doesn't consider school important for her — she was never an academic and just saw school as a place she was legally forced to be, wasting time she could use to work on her athletic skills.

Nowadays, she also finds herself more drawn to using substances such as alcohol to distract and dull her pain. Drugs less than she used to after splitting from her friendship group, but alcohol pretty often. While she wouldn't say it's her favourite in the same way she would say exercise is, she relies a bit too heavily on it in general, and can easily be talked into a drink.

However, she wouldn't place parkour, or any sort of workout or other distraction, over the safety or happiness of her family (well, her brother now). This would include work in Jigoku-cho, due to the terms of her contract.

You've worked with your Faction a while now and you feel like the reward of your contract is within reach. But at the last moment, you are told you have even more service to pay beforehand, an obscure clause in the contract being exploited to keep you under your boss's thumb even longer. Your Faction Leader hasn't spoken on this, and might be able to dispute it. Do you go to your leader? Do you argue the dispute yourself? Do you begrudgingly accept the additional work? Something else?
— IC.
Sounds shit but... What could I do about it? Not a legal expert. I'd do what they wanted.

— OOC.
Kate's... mostly accurate here. She would grit her teeth and get on with it, unwilling to rock the boat too much and ruin her chances of getting her contract fulfilled, but she wouldn't be happy about it. She'd definitely make complaints and snap back about jobs she felt were unfair before going off and doing them.

POWERS & ABILITIES:

— power sensing.
Pretty much what it says on the tin! Kate has the ability to see and sense powers within other people (or within objects, but she is unaware of that as it isn't a thing in her world) through colours. Similar to how heat mapping works, but the colours correspond to powers instead of temperatures. She can pinpoint flow of power and how a power may be used, allowing her to provide information on incoming attacks or "weaknesses" (such as someone running out of their power, etc). As it is dependent on her vision, she can only sense anything within eyesight — no peeking through walls or anything else — and can cause sensory overload if she's in a place with high concentrations of powers.

— athletics.
Kate has regarded this as "her calling" since childhood. While her focus lies on short distance sprinting, she enjoys and tries most every type of sport, and tends to be good at most of them. Growing up, she was indeed That Girl you wanted to pick first every time team sports were involved, as she'd often be one of the best players on the pitch, whether it was football (soccer), rounders, tennis, or anything else a school could throw at you.

Until she quit athletics, Kate was considered a lock for an Olympic team and won numerous competitions in her local area, and still retains some of that skill to this day (though it has regressed somewhat due to parkour taking over as her main athletic pursuit / no longer being trained rigorously).

— parkour.
Something which gave Kate hope and a place to focus her energy after she quit her athletics track. She taught herself with the help of internet tutorial videos and after a lot of mistakes and injuries, she's competent at parkour. Not yet skilled enough to win any competitions, but she's capable of identifying and running easy and intermediate parkour runs.

— school brawls.
Kate isn't a trained fighter, but she's athletic and she's been angry for four years, so she's quickly figured out how to throw a good punch and come out on top of scraps with other schoolkids. Nothing that would make her be considered a threat to most people in any DWRP game, but something that will at least mean she's not about to go down without trying to fight back. (Y'know, despair and hopelessness notwithstanding.) It also means there's the option of training her to fight better...

SUITABILITY:

Age: 16
Though young, Kate has already seen her fair share of the dark side of existence, having fallen into a particularly bad hole of teenage rebellion after the death of her parents, and has sought out solace in drugs and alcohol before. While not the healthiest interactions with such things for a girl her age, she is accustomed to and (at least appears) hardened towards the idea of bad shit happens and bad people exist.

Furthermore, she has already applied to join the military at home, and is well aware of the fact that it is a career path which will expose her to violence and more bad shit but is ready to do so in order to help her brother finance his studies when he goes to university. In that way, exposure to Jigokucho would likely fall under the same umbrella for her — something she feels it is necessary for her to endure and push through in order to achieve her goals (in this case, seeing if they really can fulfil her wish for her parents' deaths to be undone).

FACTION SUITABILITY:

SHUTEN —
Being short and looking relatively unthreatening, Kate channeled her grief into anger and ensuring that people knew she shouldn't be fucked with. Now, this is very much in the context of "teenagers at school having school brawls", but the philosophy can certainly carry over to Jigoku-cho, particularly with the stakes of her contract fulfilment being as high as they are. She would be looking to prove herself and not be seen as easy pickings simply because of her age and lack of experience.

TAMAMAO —
Escapism has been a door Kate has opened many times since her parents' deaths and those indulgences could be seen as a kind of freedom — freedom from pain and suffering, if only for a little white. But, she could also learn something from the Tamamao Clan — how to live freely and for oneself. Having wrapped up her identity in her brother's wellbeing for the last four years — getting into fights with people who so much as looked at him the wrong way, choosing to go into the military because it offers (relatively) good pay which could help support him when he goes to university — she's lost sight of her own wants and desires outside of silencing her pain and taking care of her brother. Being placed in the Tamamao Clan could be interesting for her development, basically.

SUTOKU —
The most fundamental reason Kate could work in this faction is simple: her power. Being able to sense and identify nearby powers and their use is an incredible intel boon in various situations. While Kate, herself, is not the kind of person who goes out to amass intel and details on people, she does tend to question others and try to keep them talking about anything but her because she, much like the Daitengu themselves, likes to keep her own details under wraps — up to and including her name. It's partially for safety, partially because the thought of being known (again) as the poor little angry orphan kid is galling and she doesn't want it.

So, while not intentionally trying to fit the Sutoku intelligence gathering mould, she is the kind of person who could end up with a surprising amount of intel if simply allowed to go around and let people ramble at her as a way of distraction.

ENMA —
It would be difficult to look at Kate and see a person who respects and values order, for good reason. But while that may be the case, she is also a person who is very willing to go to the any means necessary lengths if it means she's helping her family — case in point; joining the military to try and help her brother financially. She may not necessarily like, nor agree, with anything that's being done, but she's willing to do it because those orders will allow her to help her family (by fulfilling her contract).

She may not be anywhere on the lawful alignment section, but she makes a surprisingly good soldier. Perhaps because it's so easy to hold her family over her head.

SAMPLES

TDM Top Level
TDM thread with Yujin