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Name: Alois Scholz

Nickname: , and Schatzie

Age: 19

Birthday: November 1

Sign: Scorpio

Gemstone: Tourmaline

Blood Type: A-

Fav. Food: Cakes, sweets, fruits, and the occasional curry-covered sausage

Hated Food: Vegetables, anything that mixes poorly with sugar (because who needs salt)

School: Destiny City University

Hobbies:

Taxidermy - Alois and death go together like bread and butter. He never had a taste for the living, and disliked the unpredictability stemming from them. People disenchant him with their need to seek out weaknesses, and their ephemeral nature - though they may be present in his life now, that could change any moment. Even from a young age, he suffered a disconnect with the concept of mortality, which was recently expounded upon with a certain injury. As a means to both nurture his curiosity on the subject of death and the lifeless, as well as ascertain a means of reenacting nightmares in his own right, Alois discovered taxidermy. And with it came curious creations that only part with him at his discretion.

Alois partakes in two different kinds of taxidermy, at different frequencies. The most common is traditional taxidermy - the art of sloughing the skin off an animal, sculpting (or purchasing) a base, and dressing the base in a means that maintains the animal's natural composure. Secondly he enjoys rogue taxidermy - a means of tacking together different skins to create a monster of fiction, or simply something disturbing enough to garner a second look. As a result, he'll stuff anything dead. Found some roadkill? Great, hand it over. He'll even pay for a good subject, provided he has the money for it. If someone wants something immortalized, even in a creepy fashion, he's the man for the job.

Taxidermy might be an eldritch subject, but it's quickly becoming a necessary means of expressing himself.

Golf - Borne from his time depending on a cane, Alois learned to use the tool for more mischievous affairs. At the time, he took to teeing off anything someone might be seeking - car keys, a rubix cube, pretty much whatever he could find. It eased the burden of dealing with an injury at the time, and now that he's healed, he found the very informal version of golfing much to his taste. Though he doesn't intend to compete (he finds it disdainful), and he has no inclination to collect a full set of clubs, thwacking something into the distance is still highly satisfying, especially if the object he chose belongs to someone else. Especially if it's important. Oh, did you want that? Well, go get it then.

Piano - His family has owned an old, worn piano for as long as he could remember. Due to tradition, he began learning to play it as a small child, and grew up with lessons off and on. Sometimes he'd undergo months of not playing because the piano needed tuning and they didn't have the money to hire one. However, with the introduction of the cheap keyboard, Alois can now play as often as he wants without having to worry about falling out of tune. It's not as fun as the real deal, but the keyboard will do in a pinch. He isn't one for classical music, and he favors playing moody, contemporary pieces. If his musical talent were graded, he'd make a solid B. Alois plays during the bookstore's slow periods. He'll play whenever he's sick of looking at words in there.

Pranking - Sometimes Alois gets a wild hair, and when he does, someone's bound to notice. Being such a crafty b*****d, Alois loves playing tricks of all kinds on people. When he was a kid, they were more the innocent type that the victim could even laugh at, but now that he's almost 20, they've taken on a much more insidious nature. He'll likely volunteer in the cafeteria of a school for a while, then mix laxative in the ketchup dispenser. Sometimes he'll target single people, via sneaking around in a parking lot and pulling the spark plug off of their car and just leaving it hanging. Normally the pranks are easily fixed, like how one can simply put the spark plug back on. There's less chance of him getting found out and beaten into a stain that way.

Virtues:

Astute- That man standing uncommonly close to the trash can is probably a drug dealer. The way she crosses her legs away from her husband is a good indicator she's cheating. Three people dressed scantily have stood at that corner in the past week; it must be a hot spot for prostitution. Alois is keen to people and places around him. He'll observe and make note of things normally overlooked. Though he's not always right, he thinks he has a pretty accurate grasp of which streets to stay off and which people to avoid. It's kept him out of harm's way most of the time.

Adaptable- If something puts a hitch in his plans, Alois isn't jammed up for good. He can readjust to sudden changes in circumstances and still attempt to accomplish the task at hand. If he moves between countries (as he recently did), his life doesn't draw to a close. He can still make friends and function, or even keep relationships with old friends. All it takes is some quick thinking and changes in a routine, so all is not lost. If that fence is too high to scale, climb on the dumpster and jump it. If you don't know the answer to question 3, take a glance at the smart person's paper.

Adaptability comes with limits, though, as he can't work his way through everything. If he gets physically caught, he can't houdini his way out of a headlock. He can't really do anything about a plagiarism accusation, either.

Mindful- Alois enjoys life like he won't be around for much longer. To some, it might seem shortsighted because he doesn't make definite plans for the future, but rather responds to the events of the present. However, Alois knows from personal experience that planning for the future doesn't always go the way you want it to, so it's smarter to simply have loose plans and focus mainly on the present. He enjoys the occasional play or expensive dinner and tries to enrich his life with positive experiences. It's unclear if this behavior is due to past near-death incidents, or is simply part of his temperament. Suffice it to say, there's always the possibility of overindulging (especially when drugs or alcohol is involved). However, he'll only expose this side of himself when alone or with close friends. Everyone else gets the callous treatment.

Inspired - He doesn't understand how this might've happened. But, during his tenure in Destiny City, something manifested within him that gave rise to a certain enthralled view of even the most meager subjects in the world. For some reason, everything just feels so wholly connected. Everything yields its own convoluted story, be it the coffee rings on an old oak table or a half-used napkin left behind by a previous patron. Everything speaks volumes of memories, whether contrived by him or made known by some outside source. And in a way, all objects flow into one another in such an indescribably breathtaking pattern that he's often awestruck by minutia. The world is new. Everything is exciting. Don't you smell it in the air? Don't you feel it in your bones? These things could occupy his mind for an eternity, and when asked, he could speak for hours on the subject. The world speaks in tongues of riddles and nuances of tragedy, awash in a thousand layers of baser instincts and detritus.


Flaws:

Untrustworthy - He lies, cheats and steals. Word gets around after a while. Alois has a sinister reputation for being one of those people who's tough to trust, which impacts everything from his relationships to his job considerations. He's not going to do the right thing and return a girl's purse to the proper authorities, he's going to dig through it and find out who she is and how he can blackmail her for personal gain. He won't keep someone's crush a secret if there's something he can get out of it by divulging that information. He should never be your first pick to have a heart-to-heart with, considering your secrets will likely be spilled. People can safely assume he's up to no good.

Defensive - As soon as Alois thinks he hears something that might sound like it could be maybe possibly a threat, he gets defensive. Maybe you looked at him for a second too long, or you blinked strangely, or you sneezed in his direction... Whatever you did, it's a threat. He must engage his defenses. His behavior here causes him to start fights without meaning to, because of any misinterpretation of body language or tone. He'll get defensive to anyone, even his friends or family. Since he's been incarcerated before, he knows what it's like to have regret ground into him by others, and he hated that experience. He hated it enough to develop a lot of sharp quips to keep others at bay and fight off potential threats seeking to lay on the guilt. No guilt, no more.

Guarded - He's simply not friendly when he first meets someone. He wants them to think he's tough, that he's not to be crossed. He hates betrayal (hello irony), due to prior experiences, and makes up for it by denying his friendship to the majority of people he meets. By keeping just a few close friends around, there's less chance of them just walking out on him, right? After all, these people are the close ones, rather than a loose-knit group of friendly acquaintances. If they can grin and bear it through the douchebag exterior, then they'll have a chance at getting to know him without the walls up. He has a lot to regret, and he doesn't want others knowing about it lest they go seeking soft spots.

Disconnected - Due to seeing the world in such a markedly different fashion, Alois cannot function on the same level as everyone else. He can't relate to someone who lost a loved one, because he sees the event in an entirely different light. Everything to him is a series of metaphors or enigmatic nuances waiting to be discerned, rather than emotional connections begging for acknowledgement. Thus, that person whose loved one died won't hear any sympathy, any empathy, from him. He can't form that connection on a logical or emotional level, because there's a massive chasm between his interpretations and the typical way of viewing the affair. He can't manifest any emotional reaction to it. He's half-dead and trawled through dirt - emotions no longer surface in a typical fashion.

These changes look fine to me!