Character Name: Martin (last unknown)
Age: 12
Gender: Male
Species: Human (invalid)
Height: 5'8
Build: Lean and if he gets any taller, he'll be lanky. He's faster than he is strong and his body shows it. His hands and feet are growing faster than the rest of him but he is, overall, just your average 12-year-old boy.
General Appearance: Martin is black,
quite black. His hue is so pure that, in the sunlight, he glows blue. He wears his afro proudly and keeps a black comb (missing a few teeth) in his pocket to help his 2" 'fro stand it's proudest. His lips are large, his nose a squashed bell-pepper looking thing, but his eyes are warm and his smile shows straight teeth, if a bit more yellow than white.
His clothes were all found, stolen, or otherwise procured through life on the streets so they are patched and covered in rips and holes. He wears a pair of light denim jeans with both knees blown out and mismatched sneakers of different brands, one red, one black. He has a yellow long-sleeved shirt underneath a red plaid flannel that he uses to cover up his skinniness and hide his beloved flask. In the winter, he can be seen with a hat on, though he hates to wear anything that deflates his afro.
Additional Notes: He has limited access to running water to shower, so he has grown accustomed to his own aroma. However, it can be assumed that cleaner individuals can detect his stench.
Personality: He is a survivor first and foremost and knows about what kind of grit it takes to make it on the streets. He'll scrap, steal, perform, beg, or whatever else it takes to make it, taking it all in stride. To him its life - nothing to get too depressed about. He likes being cheeky and generally dislikes authority, though he'll suck up enough at the right times. He carries little with him and has little desire for material things (unless he can sell them, of course) other than a bed to call his own. Even at his young age he can be seen with a flask, and he wears a cheeky grin more often than not. He likes what most 12-year-old boys like - girls, sports, excitement, food, laughter, and freedom. He goes where the wind takes him and doesn't consider anyplace home, or uninviting. Home is where he lays his head and sometimes the suffocation of four walls makes him uncomfortable and itchy.
History: Martin was born to a homeless hooker in a cardboard box underneath a particularly filthy overpass. His mother was tough and nursed a fine baby boy into health, tucking him away in the box she called home to go walk the streets so that she could afford food. Martin's first memories were of traffic noises, car headlights, and the comfortable thrum of tires on pavement. Once he was older, his mother started leaving him with the gang of kids since he didn't know any better to stay put and couldn't understand mommy quite yet. The kids took well enough care of him, since they'd had it done for them - it was a cycle, really, of life on the streets since all knew it took a village. As Martin got older and started to be able to fend for himself he saw his mother less and less, calling her "Tamina" instead of mom since it drove away her business. Pretty soon, he was more interested in hanging out with the posse of kids and "Tamina" eventually stopped coming home, moving on to some other proverbial street corner where business was fresh. This instilled in Martin a sense of fleetingness with the people in his life, so he learned to cherish people while they lasted and then let them go. However, his gang of kids soon turned into a gang of adults and Martin was no longer of interest to them. They encouraged him to find his own overpass to start a life he could live alone and so he trekked out, using the skills he learned from the older kids to survive.
Of course, as fate would have it, someone came to him one day with a flyer boasting welfare housing in The Big City. Martin couldn't believe that anyone would put total strangers into a house with running water and all the amenities that he had learned to savor. With the intent to see what the fuss is all about (and see if he can't earn some Big City cash), Martin is traveling on foot to The Big City. Never having a great idea of 'home,' Martin doesn't expect to be there too long. He wants to see if its too good to be true, but the thought of staying one place forever makes him feel itchy.
Laura Wayne, short, blonde, plain and dumpy, stood in the corridor, clipboard in hand. "Martin-" She started to call, then glanced down at her clipboard to check the surname, "huh." She muttered, seeing there was none. She looked up again, "Martin." she called again with a shrug.
Unaccustomed to hearing his name spoken aloud, let alone from a female,
Martin, who had been sitting in a seat very near to the back of the crowded room, lifted his head like a dog who heard a sudden noise. However, realizing how terribly uncool he must have looked, he settled back into his chair and cocked his head to the left and right, feeling uncomfortable already in the claustrophobic and sterile waiting room. This place was not made for street kids: too many magazines boasting about crummy stuff that didn't matter, like lipstick and muscles, too many little kids sitting at special little tables with coloring books instead of empty beer cans to kick. In short, this was not the type of place that Martin belonged. Also, he was quick to notice, he was the only bit of color in the joint. Standing to his feet, the young black boy reached into his pocket and pulled out his jagged-toothed comb to start pushing up his two-inch afro as he walked forward towards the fat broad with a clipboard. "Yo, s'Martin," he introduced, slouching with his posture as he hooked one thumb into a pocket as he continued to fiddle with his 'fro.
Used as she was to seeing, hearing, and smelling all sorts of different people, not-people, aliens et cetera, Laura didn't even flinch as she caught a whiff of Martin. It definitely wasn't the worst smell she'd encountered, as a memory of one particular visitor – green skinned and with a constant, pervading aroma of rotting flesh – flashed briefly in her mind. She dismissed it and gave Martin her welcoming, friendly smile. "This way, please." she said, indicating the corridor she had come from with a wave of her hand. "Second door on the left."
Martin regarded the plump woman with her polite smile and professional demeanor the way an elderly woman might a drug dealer. His deep, dark eyes narrowed in cautionary suspicion as he looked down the hall where she was gesturing him to go, his mis-matched shoes planted firmly in place in customary defiance. Digging into his pocket, Martin pulled out a ripped, crinkled, water-marked, and stained piece of paper that had clearly been through just as much as he had and thrust it forward for her to see. Many of the words had been blurred from rain or tears or condensation, but legible still on the top was the headline 'Welfare Housing.' "This about them housing places, ain't it? Whassis all about, lady?" he asked, nodding his head down the hall to where she was indicating him to go as if she'd just asked him to drown a bag of puppies. He folded his long, skinny arms over his small chest and shifted a little closer to the woman to keep any of the other nobodies from overhearing why Martin was there.
Her left eyebrow lifted ever so slightly, the only visible sign of Laura's bemusement. "Krung Thep does indeed offer such housing to immigrants who require it." She explained, "Providing the immigrants, like all the other immigrants are granted entry to the city. The interview is part of the review process for admission." Her hand was still extended, still pointing down the corridor. "Second door on the left." she repeated.
"I dun'
reeeequiiiiiire et,"
Martin drawled, stretching the word out as if in mockery as he stuffed the flyer back into his pocket with as much finesse as a Neanderthal. The underlying tone of pride was impossible to miss, as was the way he held his head a touch higher at his admission, his large, flat nose jutting up into the air. Need housing, pfeh, he didn't
need anything from these rich hoity-toits. Maybe just a place to crash for a few days, a couple of loaves of bread or something, but certainly, certainly not a house to call his own and be stuck inside forever. Wiping his nose on his sleeve, he turned his head and followed the direction of her point towards the second door on the left, wondering just what kind of 'interview' was required to need a bed. "Dun make no sense," he groused as he took a step forward and started towards the door she'd indicated. His gait was long and awkward, with his arms swinging and his legs taking long strides, resembling a baby giraffe that had just gotten used to its legs. "Innerview fer a fuggin bed, whassup wi'dat?" he asked as he turned the handle and entered the door...
Mentally, Laura rolled her eyes, formed a reply explaining that it was admission to the city that required an interview, decided not to bother. The kid probably just wanted something to gripe about. She assumed him to be a teenager, around fifteen, judging by his height. A little on the young side, perhaps, but not a problem if he required housing anyway – she could make a note on his file to put him in a place with a supervisor. Providing the interview was successful of course. She followed him in to her office, shutting the door behind them. "Take a seat" she said with a brisk smile, indicating towards several chairs in front of the desk whilst she herself took the chair behind it.
Once inside the office,
Martin stopped cold and looked around with wide eyes that accentuated the white parts of his ordinarily dark pupils. His shoulders were rigid, drawn up like blinds around his ears as he heard the door click behind him, detecting some sense of finality in that
CLICK. Uneasy with the whole setting, Martin slowly dropped his bony shoulders and put a long, awkwardly large hand on the back of a chair, sighing as he shook his head. "They ain't 'nuff air in here," he commented to himself as he looked around at the close proximity of all the walls to each other, and then the way the furniture was stuffed inside. "Looks mo' like a dollhouse or somthin. Ya'll need some windows in here, how you live widdit like this?" he asked, pulling out the chair and sitting, the fraying hole in his denims allowing one black knee to peak through.
Laura ignored Martin's comments. More teenage griping, she figured, not worth rising to the bait. Probably what he wanted. Maybe if he saw he wasn't going to get a rise out of her he'd drop the smart-ass comments. "You have a rather distinct accent." she remarked, still just able to smell him from the other side of the table and making a mental note to invest in an air freshener. "Where are you from?"
Despite his 'cool' attitude,
Martin was unable to keep still for too long as his deep cocoa eyes kept slowly shifting from thing to thing - lamp, desk, wall, chair, bookcase, wall, and then back to the fat blonde lady. His leg began to bounce, slowly at first as he waited for her to say something and cut the tension in the claustrophobic room. When she finally asked, he was ready for it, as if he'd been anticipating it for longer than he actually had been, his nervous tendency coming to a head now that he was indoors with fancy folk who were hellbent on judging his worth. Sitting up straight and grabbing his knees, he nodded his head as he spoke. "Rayfare. Fo, mebbe five days souf 'a'ere. We all talk like dat down 'er."
"Rayfare? Never heard of it." Replied Laura with a frown. Maybe it was the name of some small immigrant community in one of the other cities. Maybe it wasn't a city at all, just some make shift settlement by the side of a road. She thought of all the possible places. A city south of Krung Thep somewhere. Probably not too far south of Krung Thep. Laura doubted the boy in front of her had been able to travel by plane or craft, so it was five days south by foot or car. But did he mean south east, or south west? The speculation was useless, so Laura decided to try again. "What
province are you from? Chon Buri? Brachuap Khirir Khan?" Even if he was an immigrant, in Laura's book he should know what province he came from.
Martin caught her frown and was instantly offended, his brows knitting together as his jaw set in a pout that jutted his fat lower lip out. "You think I'm stupid or somethin?" he asked, shifting forward as he leaned to one side, looking the plump woman dead in the eye with a look that was meant to seem righteously indignant.
"You da one who dunno where Rayfare is, dun play me off as tha foo," he replied, slumping back into his chair so that his back touched more of the seat than the cushion, his long, gangly legs stretched out so that his mismatched sneakers pushed against the front of her desk. "S'in Chon Buri. Pretty big place back in the day. Now it's mostly old buildin's n' warehouses; overgrown lots and basketball courts," he explained, drumming up a clear memory of his rather carefree life on the streets as he leaned his neck over the back of the chair and looked up at the ceiling. With his hands clasped over his scrawny chest, he sighed, as if remembering something terribly fond.
Laura was usually a rather mild, inoffensive woman who preferred to ignore attempts to start trouble than engage with them, but the part of her brain that usually told her it wasn't worth it was silent right now and another part of her brain, the part that said 'you don't have to take crap from people. Not at work, not anywhere, not from anyone, any age.' was talking rather loudly. "Boy." She said, standing, "If I thought you were stupid, you would
know about it. Now, either you are here because you are genuinely interested in living in Krung Thep, or you are wasting my time. In the latter, just get out right now. In the former, it might,
just might be in your best interest
not to try and antagonise me every time you open your mouth.
Do I make myself clear?" Laura held the pose, and expression, as long as she could, not really knowing what to do next and worrying that she'd deflate and just look stupid. But she was older than this kid. Maybe not taller, but definitely a lot older, and probably a lot stronger, too, and she took comfort in that.
Initially,
Martin's eyes drew wide as the rolly-polly blonde stood her ground from the opposite side of her desk, treating him with some kind of polite sternness that had nothing to do with cuffed ears, boxed chins, or slapped cheeks. Being accustomed to much worse, his expression settled down, though he leaned back in his chair as if to try and escape this woman and her strange wrath. "A'ight, a'ight!" he said with impatient exasperation, as if this lady were now wasting
his time instead of the other way around. If anything, her outburst of demonstrative assertion sparked a little flame of respect for the woman, since she had earned it instead of just sitting all dumpy like on the other side of the desk and expecting it. With a deep breath like the wind after a cruel storm, Martin licked his lips and then proceeded. "Like I says, s'in Chon Buri. Old factory district, lossa run down shit..." he stopped suddenly and looked over at the woman behind the desk, and then slowly amended, "stuff."
"okay." Laura said, taking a deep breath to calm her nerves and slowly sinking back into her chair. "Thank you." hopefully they wouldn't have to go through the same little drama every time she asked a question, or this could be a very long interview, Laura thought as he threw a quick glance at her watch. "Right, she continued, making a quick scribble on the form in front of her, "and how old are you, please?"
Once the lady was sitting again and the room seemed a bit larger without her roundness cutting the place in half,
Martin absently scratched at the back of his neck as he yawned. "Twelve," he answered, bouncing his leg so that the hole in his jeans danced around the black bony kneecap that peered out. He leaned back, way back in his chair and crossed his hands over his skinny stomach and leaning his head back against the ridge of the chair, effectively stilling his nervous twitches - for the time being anyway.
Genesis Gauntlet
Stumble!