Post by Cecil Martel on Nov 17, 2012 16:47:49 GMT -5
HEAR US NOW - - -
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LET THE WHOLE THING BLOW
B A S I C I N F O
★ NAME: Cecil Lee Martel
★ NICKNAME: Ceci, but only to friends.
★ MEMBER GROUP: Gijinka
★ POKEMON: Pidgeot
★ STATUS Legal
★ AGE: Eighteen
★ HEIGHT: 5’8”
★ WEIGHT: 145 lbs.
★ FACE CLAIM: Toma from Amnesia (otome game)
★ APPEARANCE:
Even with the Pidgeot blood running through his veins, Cecil’s looks are fairly mundane compared to some other gijinka out there, and you’d likely have to see his ID to know that he were anything other than an ordinary human...well, unless he’s dashing by with a Tailwind whipping at his heels, but that’s an entirely different matter. With blonde hair that edges toward tan much like the breast and wing feathers of his DNA donor Pokémon, he hardly stands out against the more outlandish pinks, blues, and other strange colors some of his fellow gijinka sport. However, he still manages to garner some stares from passersby just because of how freaking messy it is, perpetually sticking up in fluffy spikes that seem to point every which way thanks to his frequent abuse of his wind-generating abilities. Occasionally, he will attempt to brush the unruly locks, but more often than not the teen is content to just toss on a hairband - yes, a hair band, would you stop freaking laughing?! - to at least put some kind of restraint on it. His skin is fairly pale and on the rare occasions where exposure to the sun does affect him he tends to burn like a Corphish, with the only lasting scars being a few scrapes on his knuckles that never healed properly thanks to him constantly reopening the wounds.
Facially speaking, he has what one might call passably pleasant features, as least on the days when he hasn’t been in a fight recently enough to still be sporting a black eye or busted lip. His eyes, which can appear almost golden in certain lights, are really orange in color; bright and expressive but most importantly observant thanks to the near-perfect eyesight that so often comes with the territory when you've got bird DNA . Hardly a stoic individual, his tends to wear whatever expression fits his mood at the moment openly and without censorship, and has a tendency to grin or smirk as his "default" expression. The only exception to this is when he gets really pissed-off, as then he has a tendency to adopt a manic grin as opposed to the frown he gives to minor irritations. Those who see it are likely to shortly find themselves on the receiving end of a Air Slash, but thankfully for everyone involved it takes a pretty hefty insult to push this guy into attacking you seriously. Sure, he likes fighting, but that doesn’t mean he’s always out for blood!
Cecil is fairly average in height for his age, not exactly tiny but definitely not the tallest person you might happen to meet, standing at a full five feet and eight inches at his last measurement. Light in build, he often blames his lack of outstanding muscles on the flying-type DNA, but despite this he is still quite capable of holding his own. What muscle he does have is lean, clinging to his form without bulging from it, and even if he is on the scrawny side there is no denying that he’s at least tougher than your average human. His tastes in clothing are nothing special, mostly tee-shirts, jeans, and occasionally scarves and shawls worn around his waist more so that he can untie them and use them for warmth when it’s getting colder than for actual fashion. His favorite outfit consists of just one of these sashes, a tasseled yellow piece of fabric that can double as short blanket when not around his waist, along with a long-sleeved shirt under a short-sleeved jacket, fairly mundane black pants, and black shoes held on with double belts rather than laces since he tends to fray the hell out of those. That shirt is perhaps one of his oddest pieces of clothing as the body and right sleeve of the garment are both orange with black stripes, but for whatever reason the black arm is solid black. Likewise, the short-sleeved jacket he wears over it is black on the outside save for some white accents, a diamond insignia on left side of his chest, and some metallic bits including the metal rings in the jacket’s collar - two to each side - along with a section of four small spheres decorating the right side of his chest and the studs and buckle of the belt that encircles the jacket’s left sleeve. However, the inside is an entirely different story, as it is lined with soft orange, black, and yellow plaid fabric, which also helps to keep him warm during cool days. A black and white checkered belt encircles his waist, though it is often difficult to see thanks to the yellow fabric he wears over it, and only real piece of “jewelry” is the Staraptor feather he wears on a black cord around his neck. There’s no real in-depth story surrounding the adornment; he simply found it one day while out in the city, thought it looked cool, and decided to keep it.
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P E R S O N A L I T Y
★ POSITIVE:
- Brave - It’s not secret that flying-types are in general built more for speed than for strength and often come up short when compared to other types, and Pidgeot are thoroughly average birds. Still, Cecil doesn’t let his supposed inferiority as a gijinka get to him; he isn’t afraid to stand up to anyone who he thinks is in the wrong, even if they are stronger or more vicious than him. There’s very little that can send this guy running and terror, and he’d gladly throw himself into danger’s path, even if it’s not always for the right cause....
- Determined - Once he gets a crazy idea stuck in his head, he's just not going to give up on it. Nor will he back down from a challenge, even if he's already on the losing end. Giving up is for wusses and frail bird or not, he’s not the type to turn tail and run for safety. While this might be admirable in some cases, it can be more grating in his when he gets himself in over his head.
- Outgoing - Ceci isn't afraid of talking to strangers and is open and friendly with pretty much everyone he meets - at least until they start press at any of his berserk buttons. Basically, as long as you’re civil to him, he’ll return the favor, but he has little patience for hardcore assholes and is fine with telling them that. Still, in a good setting, he especially enjoys cracking jokes - sometimes at the expense of others - and tries his best to keep the mood up when chatting with them. You might even call him “bouncy.”
- Loyal - Leaving his friends in the lurch is something that Cecil detests. If you're friends with someone, you help them out, right? As far as this idiot's concerned, his friends' enemies are his enemies and their problems become his problems. It doesn't matter if you try to push him away, as he'll still try and help regardless, annoying as this can be.
- Reliable - For all his faults, Cecil does his best to be someone others can count on. If you ask him to do something, he’s not going to blow it off to go have fun, no matter how much he might look like a flake when first meeting him. He holds promises he’s made to others above all else in his personal honor code, and breaking one by not fulfilling the requirements goes against just about everything he believes in. That doesn’t mean he’ll go quietly, but in the end his griping is usually good-natured.
- Observant - Though it might look like his head is usually in the clouds, Cecil is actually pretty good at keeping an eye on the world around him. Not much escapes his eyes, whether it includes people following him, Pokémon trying to ambush him, or just picking up on little movements or posture changes that might give away how someone’s feeling. He’s not perfect at it, of course, and can still step on a landmine if he misreads things.
★ NEGATIVE:
- Reckless - Unfortunately, being brave won't always save your life, and Cecil tends to forget that a lot. And while he is a bit more careful when actually dealing with emotions, he tends to be careless in fights both with others and wild Pokémon, charging in without so much as a thought to how he could get himself killed. Hell, he even enjoys fighting, actively seeking it out whenever he’s particularly bored or troubled, which says a great deal about just how foolish he can be.
- Stubborn - While Cecil enjoys being someone others can rely on, he has a stubborn streak a mile wide and hates having to ask his friends for help; he'd rather struggle on all by his lonesome and fail than succeed with someone else's aid. And good luck changing his mind once he's got it in his head that he's going to do something, no matter how stupid that "something" may be.
- Nosy - As far as he's concerned, her friend's problems are his problems as well and he won't take no for an answer if he decides that he is going to help them conquer those issues. Which leads to....
- Hypocritical - He likes to help others but stubbornly resists being helped and, while he detests murderers (both criminals and those with the law on their side), he loves a good fight. Cecil is a mess of contradictions and he is well aware of it. And while it sometimes disgusts him, in the end it’s just another part of life. Instead of crying about how unfair it is, you have to pick yourself up and keep moving on.
- Quick to anger - Cecil’s temper is one that is easy to trigger when faced with touchy subjects such as anti-gijinka hate crimes and Epispect’s policy of eliminating illegal gijinka. He normally tries to keep himself under control, but to be blunt his restraint is lacking. In recent years he has gotten better at not attacking people, but sometimes he still slips if you really manage to piss him off.
- Resentful - There are just some things Cecil can’t stand, and he doesn’t even try to feel any differently. For one thing, gijinka-haters annoy the hell out of him, especially the douchebags in his class who gave him and the few other gijinka he knew during his school years a hard time. Even more so are the ones that resort to outright hate crimes. And while he’s more reluctant to admit the animosity he feels toward Epispect after they saved his life, he still holds them responsible for the fact that they refused to save both him and his mother, not to mention how they overwork his father in order to pay them back.
★ HABITS, QUIRKS:
- Since becoming a gijinka, Cecil has developed an affinity for high places: he enjoys sitting in trees, on roofs, and just about anywhere he can get a good view of his surroundings. Before graduating, it was always his habit to take his lunch to the roof and sit there dangling his feet over the building’s edge, shoes and socks off so the wind could tickle at the bare skin on his feet.
- Cecil really loves sour candies and foods. He once ate part of a Nomel berry on a dare and couldn’t taste anything for days afterward. Still worth it in his book.
- After playing a fighting game when he was younger, he adopted the attacking catch phrase of one of the characters in it, choosing to yell “FALCON PUNCH!” when using Wing Attack. People think he’s a big dork for it, but why should he care?
- He likes to abuse Agility and Tailwind in order to get places faster. In fact, when he was younger he frequently used those moves to avoid fights until he learned to stand up for himself and fight back.
- When bored or stressed, he gets fidgety. Most obviously, he likes to occupy his hands by twirling the Staraptor feather he wears between his fingers, but even when nothing’s really bothering him he’s rarely at rest. He swings his feet while sitting, leans his chairs back onto the back legs, spins pencils, bounces while standing, you name it. Even while napping he’s rarely still, tossing and turning in his slumber - even throwing pillows on occasion!
- While his eyesight during the daytime is impeccable, he’s nearly blind once the sun sets and gets lost easily.
- Enjoys a good fight to de-stress, usually with wild Pokémon and occasionally against humans and gijinka, though he tries not to pick fights with people unless they are a. willing or b. being assholes. However, sometimes he just can’t help but goad someone into attacking if it looks light fighting them would be a good workout...out of all his bad habits, this is probably his worst.
★ OVERALL PERSONALITY:
Cecil Martel is hardly an enigma; with this tan-haired Pidgeot gijinka, what you get tends to match pretty well with what you see. He’s a whirlwind of energy when he wants to be, a cool breeze when he doesn’t, and prone to bursts of anger that explode like a hurricane when pushed - although, thankfully, they tend to abate far quicker than real natural disasters. He won’t sugarcoat his issues with his temper, knowing that it can get the better of him sometimes, and he tries to apologize for his outbursts when he’s blown up at someone who did not deserve it.
Unfortunately, by his logic, he rarely pick fights with someone who doesn’t deserve it.
It goes almost without saying that the people he has the hardest time getting along with are gijinka-haters. Way back when, bullies often targeted the even scrawnier middle-school aged Cecil after discovering what he was either because they detested gijinka in general or due to resentment that he was only saved from the virus because his daddy worked for Epispect, which was far from the truth. For a while, he dealt with these bullies by running from them rather than fighting back. It took an upperclassman noticing his struggles to turn his life around, as the slightly older gijinka made a point to teach him how to defend himself against his attackers, and after actually winning a fight for the first time in his life the boy’s confidence soared. He started to enjoy a good brawl, and to this day he admittedly has a weakness for them that borders on worrisome. It’s not that he’s suicidal - he just genuinely enjoys the thrill of a good fight.
That isn’t to say that his sometimes reckless bravery gets him into trouble when he goes rushing in head first these days, but the confidence he built up over the years has seeped into his bones to the point where a couple cuts and bruises can’t knock it out of him. He might even be considered cocky by some, with the way he refuses to back down from a challenge even when he should know better, but that’s just the way he is. Cecil isn’t the time to do things half-heartedly or only part way, and not just in fights and Pokémon battles. He takes his responsibilities seriously, and refuses to put them off for something else even if he would rather be off having fun, punching Pokémon in the face, that kind of thing. Oh, not that he hates Pokémon - he loves them, really, but at the same time it’s a lot of fun to just be able to let loose and fight something that he can really go all out against. Erm, anyway, getting off track there. Being there for his friends when they need him is very important to Cecil, due in part to the fact that he has so few of them despite his outgoing nature. His longtime Pidgey buddy and “little bro” Ayna does not count. Those he does manage to gain despite his gijinka status and tendency to attack others he catches picking on others are therefore extremely important for him, and he will both do all he can to help them (sometimes uninvited) and more than likely never forgive anyone who harms them. When a friend of his gets hurt, he means it when he declares that he is going to kick the ass of whoever is responsible, even if he’s the one who often comes back looking like he just got tossed into a blender set to “puree”.
Really though, aside from his temper - and his rather stupid desire to jump at the chance to defend strangers for no better reasons than he hates seeing people get picked on and that he enjoys the fighting - he’s actually a pretty nice guy. A bit quirky at times and prone to odd thoughts and sprouting off dorky quotes while attacking, but that sunnier side to his personality is enough to prove that at least he’s not a complete asshole despite the sliced-up knuckles that would suggest otherwise. He enjoys joking and showing off, and likes to try and put others in a better mood if he can, even if that means someone has to bite the bullet and be the butt of the joke. Sometimes, he can even be a quiet listener when someone needs an open ear, and while he can be stubborn as hell he at least tries to understand their views and not judge them for it. He fully believes that as long as what you’re doing doesn’t seriously hurt anyone, then go ahead and do it. It’s only when things turn ugly that he ends up butting in, often without even asking first.
Perhaps the only thing truly surprising about him is that while he looks like just another fighting maniac, he’s also prone to making quiet observations and dwelling on some of his more personal thoughts until they get too heavy for him to bear, at which point he jumps off his balcony and heads off to find some Pokémon to tangle with. He finds that when he’s fighting, or has another task to concentrate on, either the effort needed to focus or the adrenalin rush is good for wiping whatever thoughts threatened to depress or anger him away. And for a friendly guy, he has his fair share: sometimes, he blames himself for the fact that his mother passed away as their family could only afford for one of them could receive the life-saving DNA transfusion. Hate, sometimes directed at himself but more often aimed at Epispect for refusing to save those who can’t afford their fees and for overworking his old man, can really gnaw at him sometimes and he feels that by running off to blow some steam he can at least keep himself from snapping at others as often.
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H I S T O R Y
- Cecil was born into a thoroughly normal middle-class family, although at a point in time when Georg and Jillian Martel’s future together was nonetheless looking bright. With the perfection of the long-awaited cure to the virus plaguing the city, the Epispect Corporation sought to bolster their security team in order to protect their research, and as Georg’s luck would have it a recommendation from one of their current employees - who had witnessed the man’s no-nonsense attitude and skill first hand while he still worked as a bouncer at a local bar - helped him to secure one of the open positions as a security guard at the labs. Jillian, on the other hand, worked as a teacher at a nearby school; the pay she received in exchange for instilling as much knowledge in her pupils as she could was hardly spectacular, but when her husband’s new job was finalized, the couple decided that they were finally secure enough to start trying for a family. And unlike some more unlucky couples, it did not take them very long to succeed, and a little more than a year after the cure’s discovery Cecil was born. He was healthy baby, if loud, with a mess of chestnut-colored hair that only seemed to grow messier as he grew from a squalling infant into a rambunctious child.
His early childhood was a fairly peaceful one: he went to school like many other kids, although with the added embarrassment of being Mrs. Martel’s son, known to several of the older kids in school from the handful of pictures she kept on her desk. As humiliating as those photos were, it was impossible to deny that the young Cecil was something of a momma’s boy, even if she was something of a nag when she caught him trying to brush off a bit of homework. Instilling a sense of responsibility and a good work ethic into the boy from a young age was something Jillian strove to do from the very start and for all her young son’s grumbling, it’s safe to say that she succeeded. His relationship with his father was slightly more distant. True, he idolized his dad, but the secrecy involved in the man’s work meant that he was never sure of just what he was doing when he worked long hours at night and slept most of the day away. The only time they really saw each other was when he woke up for school or on the rare occasions when they had days off for the family to spend together. Those outings were always something Cecil looked forward to and while they were exceedingly scarce, he treasured them all the more for it.
Throughout his early schooling, Ceci was one of those kids who everyone knew but no one really could claim to be close to; a “friend” in loose terms, who no one particularly hated but few knew well enough to welcome him into their tiny dens of closer friends. He was a drifter, bouncing between whatever group would let him play with them for that day or work on projects together when assigned, but otherwise content to stare out the window airily, his mind on other things. Some whispered the word “airhead” behind his back as he bounced off, caught up in whatever game he’d devised for himself when no one else was free for him to join in with, and perhaps there was some truth to their words. It was almost like he was a leaf or, prophetically, a feather, drifting on the wind and content to bend to its will...never worrying that someday he would be caught up in more turbulence than he could handle.- While some schools discourage parent teachers from having their own children in their classes for fear that they might show favoritism toward their offspring - or, on the other side of the coin, be harsher on them because of their high expectations - this did not stop Cecil from being assigned to his mother’s seventh grade homeroom during his second year of junior high. And while the years had made him a little less clingy and a tad more down to earth with the other students, and although he would deny it if ever asked, he was happy to be able to spend time with his mother that wasn’t during one of the scarce weekends when she didn’t have assignments to grade and lessons to plan. Sure, it was annoying when others insisted he was only doing well because he was the teacher’s kid, but he was quick to shake it off. This was going to be his best year, and though it was odd to think so at an age where most kids hated their parents for “ruining their lives” over not getting them some silly gadget or another, he was determined to make his mom proud during his year in her class. And indeed, for a few months it seemed like Cecil was going to escape his seventh grade year with none of the drama that was usually attached to it.
Unfortunately, fate is kind of a douche and enjoys kicking people’s legs out from under them right when they feel their best.
It all started as a cough one of his classmates dragged in one day shortly before the end of the year - nothing major, just an occasional, gravely bark of sound from the back of the class. Probably just a cold, nothing to panic over. At least, that was until it started spreading through class like wildfire. By the time three days had passed, nearly half the class - including both their teacher and her son - had caught the same cough...and it was around that time that the first victim collapsed in the classroom, hacking up blood while his temperature skyrocketed. An ambulance was quickly called and the school shut down, but the damage was already done and once they realized just what they were dealing with, it was too late. Of Cecil’s class alone, fifteen kids contracted the virus, and out of that number nearly half of them perished, including the first victim. It was a tragedy for the school, and had the parents in a rage over how they could have allowed such a thing to happen; since cases of the virus had been declining in recent years thanks to Epispect’s cure, restrictions on students coming to school sick had grown lax, allowing for this micro-outbreak to occur. But while the school was able to amend their policies and move forward, putting the disaster behind them, the same could not be said for the families of the victims. No, for those who were still stable enough to be saved like Cecil and his mother, their fight was just beginning.
Cecil could barely remember anything between the point where they transferred him to Epispect’s medical labs and when he finally woke up post-transfusion, everything melting together in a feverish haze of pain and panic as both he and his mother fought to stay alive, thrashing against the fever and coughing up their lungs in a vain attempt to expel the sickness from their bodies before it destroyed them. In their more lucid moments, they whispered comforting things back and forth, even though they were too weak to even reach out and grasp hands. His father was there too, at some point, a shout above the haze, begging for something of the team of doctors that rushed by, only falling into an eerie silence at something his mother said after calling him to her bedside, something whispered so low that Cecil couldn’t overhear. The last thing he clearly remembered seeing was his mother’s face in hospital bed next to his telling him that they’d both be fine, that they would survive this and go home and see his dad and spend lots of time with just the three of them. And while parents tell many lies to their children over their lifetimes, whether about fictitious beings who grant them gifts during certain times of the year or how yes, they really will use what they learn in school in their adult lives, this one was undoubtedly the biggest Cecil’s mother had ever told him as well as the last. For when he finally woke up, now safely on the road to recovery, it was to a grieving father crying over him, something he had never thought possible.
The bed beside his was empty.- It’s a difficult thing to do, recovering your strength while grieving over your losses, as Cecil learned the hard way. At twelve, he’d not only lost his mother, but he now had a whole new existence to get used to, as well as a host of guilt issues to overcome. He knew, with his father’s many instances, that it was not his fault his mother died; already in Epispect’s employment, his father had not been able to work out a deal to save them both, and though it pained and distressed him more than he could put into words he had to follow his wife’s request to let Cecil have the transfusion instead of taking it herself. And while some parents would have resented and punished their child after they “cost” their precious spouse’s life, Georg was not one of them. In fact, after he was deemed well enough to leave, it was Cecil rather than his father who pulled away, fearing that his father must hate him for living when his mother died. It was a misunderstanding born of fear, stress, and survivor’s guilt, but with his father now working even more hours with Epispect to help pay off the cost of the transfusion - along with his wife’s funeral, an affair Cecil had still been unconscious for - he hardly had any time with his young son to insist that it was not Cecil’s fault, and the two continued to drift farther apart as the young gijinka withdrew from everyone around him. Desperate to provide his son with some kind of comfort, Georg eventually sent Cecil to spend a summer with his aunt.
Though it was an act of desperation on his father’s part, being shipped off to his aunt and uncle’s home at least filled the boy with an unsteady sense of peace if nothing else. When he wasn’t being pestered for attention by his two younger cousins, the boy had plenty to occupy his time in the modest aviary they owned. Unlike her more practical brother, his aunt had spent many years as an amateur trainer and even after settling down and trying to find a “real” job and starting a family, she was never really able to truly part with her passion. Thankfully, neither could her husband, and though his main line of work was as a tournament organizer these days, they both bred and raised flying-types to either sell to promising young trainers or for transporting and delivering packages. It was not exactly a booming business, but it was enough to keep their family afloat as well as cheer up one hurting nephew. At first, all the chores his aunt would assign him to were just something to keep his mind occupied and hands moving so he would dwell on his mother’s death and guilt as much, but over time he gradually grew to actually enjoy the work. Sweeping molted feathers from the aviary floor, cleaning off the perches, and checking the birds over to make sure they weren’t coming back from deliveries with any injuries from running into wild Pokémon on the way was pretty simple work, but there was something therapeutic about it that put the boy at ease. And, though it was a bit embarrassing to admit it, the boy with bird blood in his veins would often talk to the aviary’s feathered residents. Sometimes it was simple stuff, like commenting on the weather or scolding that one stubborn Spearow that always returned from her deliveries riddled with fresh scratches from picking fights. Others, the topic of his one-sided conversations would swing to deeper things. He would ask what it was like to fly, or what Pokémon did when they lost someone close to them. Occasionally he would just tell them stories about his mother or sit in silence once his work was done, letting the birds tug at his hair for attention until he dozed off in here, a pile of feathery creatures on his lap. His favorite task by far, however, was when his aunt handed him several of the birds’ Pokéballs and told him to take them to the park to stretch their wings. Out there in the clear air, unrestricted by the walls of their cage and unburdened by packages, they sliced through the clear sky as easily and naturally as if they had never set foot on the ground in their lives. Those afternoons watching them wheel and dart through the clouds was probably when Cecil truly fell in love with the graceful creatures. And yet watching them filled him with a kind of ache. The flying-type in him longed to be up there with them, but even if he could now whip up small gusts on accident when startled, his body was still human enough to be locked firmly to the ground.
Of course, summer only lasts so long and before he knew it the time came for Cecil to return to his own home and start a new year of school. It was with a heavy heart that he left his aunt's family - for, in the few brief months he had spent there, he had just begun to open up to them again - as well as the birds that had comforted him when he was sad or lonely. But even if he was going to have to go back to the place where it all started and brave the new year without his mother's guidance, his aunt at least made sure that he wasn't going to have to face it alone; before his father showed up to take him home, she plopped a newly-hatched Pidgey in his arms and told him to take good care of the young bird. For the first time in months a genuinely excited sparkle lit in the boy's eyes as he hugged the fluffy hatchling tight, vowing to do his best to make sure his new friend grew up big and strong. With the little bird (who was quickly dubbed Ayna) sitting on his lap and peeping up at him for attention, the ride home was a lot less awkward than it could have been. Sure, having him there as a buffer and a distraction wasn’t enough to completely eradicate the guilt he felt being with his dad but by being able to focus on petting the chirping pile of fluff he was able to at least chat. It was just a bit of small talk, and the emotional distance between them never really closed, but at least it was a start on a path toward building some bridges.- While things settled into a somewhat awkward but stable rhythm at home, school was a different story entirely. In hindsight, not transferring to a different one after the micro-outbreak was probably a bad idea, as many of the students from his previous year shared classes with him...and many of them had either had to undergo transfusions themselves or else had lost friends and classmates to an illness they and their parents now blamed on his mother for not stopping before it spread. As she was permanently out of reach, their disgust turned solely toward him; how dare he come back when so many people hadn’t, especially when he’d only survived because his daddy worked for Epispect! It didn’t matter to them that it really had nothing to do with his ties to the company (as he’d already signed his life over once, there was no way for him to bargain or sell his loyalty again to make a deal that would have saved both his wife and son), they were merely looking for somewhere to lay the blame and the scrawny bird boy made a good target. Of course, it wasn’t like everyone hated his guts, but those who would warn him when bullies were waiting outside the building waiting to ambush him were few in number. Fights were a frequent occurrence for him - though, if there was one good thing about his eighth grade year, it was that it forced him to learn to use at least some of his gijinka powers. He couldn’t - wouldn’t - fight back when he felt like it was his fault in the first place, but neither did he want to get beaten to a pulp. So he would run, a Tailwind pushing him forward so that he could keep ahead of them. It hurt, knowing he was a coward, but he couldn’t blame them. If taking the heat for his mom was the only way he could make it up to her for causing her death, he’d do it. At least he wasn’t alone in all of this, though, with Ayna at his side; looking back, he would credit the Pidgey with keeping him sane. During the weekends they would often spend all their time away from the busy parts of the city, just getting away from it all.
Though the year was a difficult one for him, it still passed by quickly enough and summer came around again. This time it was Cecil who opened up and asked his father if he could spend the summer at his aunt's, and after a little begging on the boy’s part he was allowed to go, thus beginning an ongoing tradition for the teenager: he would spend the summer with his aunt, uncle, and cousins at the aviary and return home in the fall when school started up again. Again, this trip was the highlight of his year, and he enjoyed seeing an excited Ayna flutter around like crazy as he played with the flock of friends he hadn’t seen since he was just a baby. And in a way it was a reunion for him as well, getting to spend more time with both his family and the birds he had come to love. He was good with them, and they in turn enjoyed having him there to to pet and care for them. His compatability with them did not go unnoticed by his aunt and uncle and soon before he left again they made him an offer: if his dad allowed it, he could start working there officially part-time once he was old enough. Of course there was no way that he was going to turn down such an offer, and the boy was practically bouncing with excitement when he went hold and told his dad about it that fall. He agreed, but before any of that could happen, Cecil needed to face yet another challenge: his first year of high school.
By a stroke of luck the high school he went to didn’t have many of his former classmates, but unfortunately the school was also a lot bigger and with far fewer gijinka students than before, so while he no longer had to deal with anyone with a personal vendetta against him he was still the target of anti-gijinka attacks from human students. In that, it was back to business as usual, and Cecil often found himself running like hell to get home after school before someone caught up to him...at least, that was until a senior intervened when a group of older kids cornered him in an alley and proceeded to scare them away by lighting the trash can next to them ablaze. That was how Cecil met Yuri, an Arcanine gijinka who couldn’t stand watching someone pick on a smaller kid just because they were different. That night he helped the younger boy get home, talking with him all the while to distract the younger from the pain of the fractured wrist the bullies managed to give him and striking up a quick friendship. Never mind that it wasn’t “cool” to hang out with a younger kid; Yuri dragged him into his group of friends and introduced him as their newest member without batting an eye. It was a shock to the boy’s system after he’d grown used to people hating him for one reason or another, but after a few weeks of awkwardness, he eventually reciprocated the open friendship the others had to offer. Some were gijinka like him who had felt out of place until Yuri gathered them together, while others were humans who had been friends with the Arcanine for years. But no matter what they were, they were a tight-knit group who helped the Pidgeot come out of his shell much the same way the birds had during the summer.
While the bullying didn’t stop just because he had Yuri’s protection, the Arcanine and the others helped teach him how to fight back, once Yuri had given the bird boy a long overdue heart-to-heart talk over why just running away as best he could was complete bullshit. Now, on weekends, he was no longer just running off to escape - he was going out to meet the group in places like the seaside or the mountains to train with them. Sometimes they’d even compete to see who would win a mock-battle between the gijinka and the humans’ Pokémon, though never seriously enough that either side came away with more than a few superficial scratches. Because of them, Cecil began to enjoy school again, and as he grew more confident with using his abilities and the idea of fighting back, he came to realize that fights didn’t have to be just one person beating the crap out of another one-sidedly; more than that, he found that without the constant guilt of “I deserve this” beating down on him, he actually kind of enjoyed just letting go and fighting, whether against wild Pokémon or against some asshole who thought he was still an easy target.
The first year passed quickly after that, and before he knew it the time had come to say goodbye to Yuri, who was graduating that year. But while it was sad that he had to part with one of the people who had helped set him straight, Cecil didn’t relapse into the gloomy kid he had been before. No, he still had people to welcome him back after his first summer of “working,” and he himself became a protective force for new students coming in that were bullied the same way as he once was. Years passed, and while he didn’t grow out of his scrawniness, he grew into his abilities more and more and the role he had fallen into in Yuri’s wake. The other had left a deep impression on him, and while he sometimes felt like he couldn’t completely fill his role, he did his best to keep other kids like him safe over the years. Attacks against younger gijinka were met with retribution from him, and he became somewhat infamous in his school as being one of a group of rabble-rousers who were always getting into fights. Just because they didn’t know the fun times they had aside from protecting others, they were judged as being trouble makers, but that was fine with him. If they had to make a little trouble to protect others, then so be it. He had been there on the other end of that bullying once, and if he had anything to say about it, he wouldn’t let that happen to any younger kids on his watch.
After graduating, he once more took up his work at his aunt and uncle’s aviary, and he continues to work there while keeping in touch with a few of his old friends just in case they should need him. His plans for the future are uncertain, the boy not sure whether he wants to find another job to save for college or keep working with his family or perhaps even take a different route and become a professional trainer like some of his human friends, but one thing’s for certain: the possibilities are as open as the sky above him.
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P L A Y E R I N F O
★ OOC NAME:
★ AGE: Twenty-two.
★ OTHER CHARACTERS: Completed derps include Kouki Hidaka, Cornelius Clarent, and Haruhiko Hamazaki. Derps-in-progress amount to (at last count) Makoto Yuuya, Lyall Eldridge, and Malcolm Pendragon. More possible, but I don't want to bring up any further down the list than that. :'D
★ RP SAMPLE:
-points at crappy modposts- They're that way. :<
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★ template was made for wretches and kings, do not steal ★
★ template was made for wretches and kings, do not steal ★
CLEAR AND TRUE
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