The Hunter
Name: Clerise Nicole Wilson
Nicknames: That b***h with the crazy eyes. Or, you know. Cler (pronounced Claire)
Gender: Female
Age: 24
Category: Life
The Weapon
Name: Balthazar
Nicknames: Captain/Cap'n, Balthy
Type of Weapon: Essentially, a giant metal hoola hoop made to ******** yo' s**t up. It's bladed on the outside, with two places where it can be safely gripped. The inside ring is perfectly smooth, it just has a gap in the middle of the metal big enough for hands to grab.
Former species of weapon: Reaper - Grim - he wielded a dual ended scythe, which has since fused together into the hoop of death.
Gender: male
Personalities:
Clerise
Headstrong and a tad off her rocker. She ran away from home at the ripe age of sixteen eight years ago, and has since made a relatively successful career out of the normally futile endeavor. She'll crack a joke at anyone's expense, and usually doesn't mind if someone does the same.
Unless it's a Bad Day. If it's a Bad Day, she will be nothing but a rotten b***h to anyone who bothers her by breathing wrong-- she never had anything traumatic happen to her, it's not triggered by anything in particular-- she's just nearing 25 but acts as if she's going on 50, and is on the crabby side of the spectrum. Her personality has been fueled by carnies, be it the firebreathers who double as alcoholics, or the lion tamers who have a death wish-- all the people at the circus are just a little bit not together. But they hold each other together, in their own little way, a piecemeal little family of people who have no place in the current world.
So Ms. Clerise Wilson is both crabby and crazy... But mostly crazy. Not just chop off your arms and legs and leave you in a bag beneath the lake kind of crazy (no matter how much she wishes she could do it and get away with it) -- just your run of the mill carnie with poor social skills and a penchant for pulling crazy stunts.
Like racing along rooftops, shimmying up streetlights and swinging from the overhang just because she can, and all sorts of acrobatic stunts associated with the circus. Of course, she's a fabulous acrobat, but beyond that she really lacks any useful skills in life. For ******** sake, she dropped out of highschool and is barely literate.
(Not to mention the voices that seep into her world and underneath the bigtop tent's flaps, the voices echoing in the back of her mind at night that leave her shrieking and gasping, her form left shaking in the wake of nightmares that have not left her since childhood.)
An aside: She will, also, wish she could cut you-- but, well. One, that formal training of hers is rather lacking: she can dodge and swing and dance on foot and in the air-- but christ she's got the left hook of a teenage boy attempting karate for the first time, and kicks will end up with her doing a 360 and faceplanting.
And two? Well. She hardly wants to alienate the only people in her whole goddamned life that actually understand everything she sees and hears and knows. So...SLIGHTLY better behavior time. Enough so that Caelius and H won't kick her sorry goddamned a** back out on the streets, an ever present paranoia lurking in the back of her mind.
(Her old circus friends were never afraid of her violent rants, considering she definitely can't back them up!)
Balthazar
Balthazar was once a bounty hunter, but that's about all that he reveals to Clerise. He's a quiet fellow, really, who makes fun of failures and encourages her...you know. Next to never.
She doesn't really talk to the ******** that much-- her thoughts are certainly louder in her own head than his words, and as a result he likely feels a little cramped. If she's not screaming inside (and usually outside) about the poor quality of the corn dogs in the cafeteria or something equally shallow, she's stewing over some ...issue that, frankly, he could not possibly care less about.
Balthy is far from a genius, but when it comes down to the wire, he bosses Clerise around, and she listens. It's where the nickname Cap'n comes from-- in the heat of battle, Clerise loses herself to the form of the hoop-- lets her natural instincts of weaving and dodging take over, and lets Balthazar handle the more offensive tactics. Two steps to the left. Four back. Hoop in the air, left hand, hop through it to close the gap-- like a ballet instructor.
(Like the Ringmaster, who Clerise misses more than she wishes.)
Cap'n does a crap job of calming her down or soothing her ire unless that temper's gotten her into dire straits. In fact, he often teases her so much that she does nothing but get MORE angry. but he does hate one thing: seeing her mopey.
It's not productive for anybody when Clerise is depressed, let alone his own purposes...so he talks to her, then. Just enough to get her distracted and onto better things-- like violence and training and getting better, why are you ever so bad at fighting...?
(PS He has an Australian accent because ******** you, that's why. Aussie reapers can totally exist. Right? ...Right?)
Why did your human character choose to become a Hunter?
Clerise spent most of her young life seeing random s**t and being loud about it. A number of times her poor single father threw her at psychologists and therapists, trying to diagnose the shadows she saw every now and again, to explain away the whispers that crawled up from beneath her bed. To silence the howls after the nightmares around the full moon.
But the only thing either of them got out of it was her resolution to shut the ******** up about any weird things she may have seen. Clerise wasn't smart enough to grow mistrustful of doctors until she was eleven or twelve, and by then, she had her own hobbies on her plate to distract her until exhaustion.
She had begged for gymnastics lessons, a hobby that became her outlet for...everything.
Under bright lights against blue mats, there was very little scary in the walls of a training gym, as opposed to the strange things she'd see outside, flashes of fear shooting down her spine at the glimpse of rotting flesh-- or worse. The stench of it.
The gyms were not immune to such invasions, but the redhead was often working so hard that the occasional sight of her childhood terrors did not make her falter.
The girl was sixteen and failing freshman year for a second time before she really and truly had enough. Enough of the disappointed looks from her parents and counselors, enough of feeling trapped inside the confines of good suburban society. It was as if she was born in the wrong country and the wrong time, as the 1930s in Romania would have been a better fit--
Because Clerise? She was obsessed with the circus.
The dumb clowns, the big red tents and the men in coats all buttoned up that announced the world famous acts one after another. She begged her parents to go every ******** time the circus was in town-- every year, she went over and over again.
She watched the girls, lithe and muscular, do balancing acts along wires, ride on horseback, swallow fire--and her absolute favourite.
The trapeze. With orange eyes bright with wonder and awe, Clerise squealed as they flew across the air, twisting and turning in every which way--
They were free.
It was beautiful.
It grew from her lifelong hobby to a fascination, to scary obsessive levels, and it expanded from the trapeze, to the tightrope, to any sort of acrobatics that could be done in the circus. After a particularly bad argument with her parents regarding the terrible face she'd seen the day before on their neighbor-- she left. Clothes in a bag, a fake ID acquired from a friend that knew how to party, and about $500 in cash to her name. Some of it stolen from her parents.
(It was a long time coming. She was an only child, and her parents were so tired. They loved her and she loved them, in her own way-- but a child that never stopped having terrible nightmares every few months, that broke down in shopping stores at random, that couldn't handle anyone new without immediate suspicion-- they were just so tired.)
A day later Clerise turned up on the steps of the circus, glaring down at the Ringmaster from her 5'10" stature, and demanded a job.
She wasn't successful the first night, so she slept in one of the tents, curled up against her duffel bag. She kept pleading: the second night, the third.
On the fifth day, he gave-- but only after watching her interact with the trapeze artists as they warmed up, comfortable and easy and happy.
Breathing in that terrible air that reeked of peanuts and elephant dung, surrounded by the women who were strong enough to be free--
She was happy. Clerise wasn't about to make some starry eyed bullshit proclamations of it being the first time she had felt happy all her life-- but god, it was better than getting cheesecake and a new leotard for your birthday.
So, at sixteen and paid in cash under the table because the Ringmaster did not even remotely trust that fake ID, Clerise Wilson joined the circus.
She quickly learned, on the road, that it was not all that it was cracked up to be. She filled in for sick and tired girls at first, riding on horses with perfect balance, appeasing the children with simple shows, at first. A full year passed before she was considered good enough to actually get up and on the bar, nevermind her years of gymnastics training-- the only real skill she possessed.
Her life blurred over the years. It consisted of traveling from town to town, changing companies a few times as the small ones died out with the passing of time, and, finally, flying through the air.
Her body was lean and hard-- little fat, all muscle. She had farm from a womanly figure, and had bruises underneath her knees and sore joints on most chilly mornings.
It was as though she woke up one day, suddenly twenty ******** four and still in the circus. She was no longer the bright teen star of the show, limber and quick and bright.
No. Clerise was ....worn down. Tired, even, of the only thing she'd ever known and the only life she'd made for herself. Instead of looking at the trapeze bars with glee and wonder and excitement-- it was with boredom and an itching feeling she couldn't quite feel.
So, when confronted at a dull bar in a drab city, Clerise gave the notion pause. He was a scruffy looking man with a shady face and an even shadier story, but...
(All cities were the same, after a while, too many people, technology far beyond her stunted mind, drab gunmetal grey all over the place, but he was different, dressed in white that stood out, trimmed with gold like popcorn butter and...)
She decked the ********. Or, more accurately the redhead tried to. With a look of surprise crossing Clerise's sharp, angular features, the man caught her fist with ease-- his eyes glinting in the dim, giving her an easygoing warning that it was, perhaps, not a good idea.
Unlike his offer. Which, he insisted, was one. A good idea, that is.
Clerise stared at him incredulously...and ordered another ******** Mexican Martini, or two. Or three.
And she thought hard about the fact that she was being offered a life beyond her aimless, wandering vagabond way. It was probably the alcohol and his piss poor attempts at being suave that convinced her to say yes.
In the morning, through the force of her hangover, the explanation for the liftetime of shadows and whispers convinced her that leaving the circus was, in fact, a great idea.
Weapon Ability
Soul Harvest - when used, Clerise spins Balthazar around one of her wrists rapidly, and after he's gained speed, he flies off her arm and towards an opponent. He glows bright colours that vary by the day and mood of the both of them, and leeches the life force of the first being he comes in contact with.
Physical Description:
Eye Colour: yellow rimmed with red (there's lines/bags underneath her eyes-- give her the crazy face)
Hair Colour/Style:
a line haircut
on top of her head = two buns, think sailor moon meatball head style, but conical instead! (like fat carrots :'D) They have black ribbons that come down beside her hair.
The bulk of her hair is red-- not ginger red but bright like rubies and blood, and is streaked with bright yellow in various places
Skin Colour: pale, but still pink! More time spent under the tents practicing than wandering the circus.
Clothing Style/Colours:
* a jester style neckpiece -- it's a collar!
* a white, open faced coat with broad lapels -- in addition to being the traditional white and gold (with the appropriate cloud shaped mist markings) -- it also has red buttons and trim-- it is a ringmaster coat!
* underneath the coat is a leotard worn by acrobats and gymnasts -- it is sparkly, red, and plunges to show just a little bit of cleavage in a v neck-- it does have sleeves that go to her mid upper arm
* thigh high boots in red/yellow, held up by magic. they have lacing in the front, and are heeled. i can only be so realistic ok
* arm/wrist guards -- she has similar metal bands around her ankles, no more than 3-4 inches wide-- just enough to shield her arms/ankles from the metal of the good Cap'n
* A broad sash that goes around her waist, tied in back? Not sure how to incorporate scarf-- if you has good idea, let me know! It'd be red, probably!
Extra:
* lip pierched, her left our right
* both ears pierced, nothing more than studs
* 3 black dots tattooed underneath her left eye, our right
* she has a crazed angry rape face on...well. all the time.
References: overall outfit smished together! x note: it's missing scarf, so pretend the collar extends behind her into a wispy scarf~
