Ri Taylor

[Ri Taylor]

Name: Ri Taylor
Alias: None as of yet
Age: 16
Gender: Female
Tribe: Cigarettes
Rank: Commoner
Term of Residence in New Pork: 0-1 months
Political standing: Ri is very liberal and open-minded, as well as being quite moral. She does not believe in principles, because everything is conditional, but hates killing or harming another human being.
Romantic orientation: Straight
Marital status: Single
Nationality: Irish / American
Birthplace: NYC, USA
Country of residence: America
Occupation (pre-Plague): Artist
Weight: 97 lbs
Height: 4'3"
Eyes: Green
Hair: Blond, dyed black at the tips
Mutation: None
Mental disabilities: None
Physical disabilities: None
Fears: Strangely, she fears only being bored and normal forever
Likes: Rain, wind, snow, cats, rubber bands, things that sparkle or jingle, being strange
Dislikes: Conformity, being bored, close-mindedness, killing
Addictions: None
Average intellect / average test score: C's in math, A's in everything else
Merits: Usually loyal and reliable; handles surprises, violence, changes in plans, and similar things well
Demerits: Can be rebellious, easily bored, obsessive personality, is a bit of a kleptomaniac
Favorite food: Anything digestible
Family status: Only child, parents living outside New Pork
Crime record: One or two charges of minor theft, though nothing serious
Preferred weapon: Ri's weapon of choice is very simple and rather improvised ((see other for full description))
Fighting style: Uses speed and momentum, her preferred weapon, and, at times, throws objects such as rocks
Kills: None
Special skills: Excellent aim, can pick most locks
Habits: Stealing random small objects; says odd random words; makes random bizarre noises; draws on walls or floors; fiddles with something constantly
One word to describe: Eccentric
Appearance:

Ri Taylor's hair is dark blond, cut just below shoulder-length, and dyed deep black at the bottoms. Her bangs, which are shorter than the rest of her hair yet still hang across her eyes, are the only parts of her hair that has remained undyed. Her eyes are wide and pretty, her best feature; they are brilliant green, striking against her pale skin. The rest of her face is fairly ordinary, not ugly, but not remarkable.
She is very thin and wiry, but being little over four feet tall (three inches taller, on the dot), she looks proportionate. In fact, her built makes her fast and agile, and though she dislikes feeling so...small, she enjoys her ability to fit in spaces that many others can't.
Ri wears faded blue jeans and a plain red shirt, very common, very nondescript. Her necklace, an eagle's wing painted white, strung on a silver chain, is something she wears all the time, day or night. She wears it constantly despite the fact that New Pork is no place for jewelry (even though it wasn't expensive) and that it would probably break in the near future (what necklace is designed to deal with hard life in New Pork?).
As for her Coat...it is one of the ugliest coats known to mankind, and wears this constantly as well.
It is old and slightly tattered, and though it is warm and comfortable, it's hard to forget its ugly purple-and-white checkered pattern. Ri, however, loves her coat; she knows it's hideous, and also knows that in New Pork, a ridiculously ugly coat is a small price to pay for warmth. Plus, her coat has a massive hidden pocket where she carries a large amount of odd items she picks up or steals.
As an artist, Ri makes it her business to make boring or ugly things more interesting and attractive. Thus, she had painted a pair of feathered wings on the back of her coat in black, just below where the shoulder blades should be, to enhance the image. It certainly makes it a more unusual coat, and the wings are beautifully painted; she had outlined each feather with painstaking care and had filled the outlines in with subtly different shades of gray and black, making the wings look almost real. It made the coat much less of an eyesore.

Personality:

Ri Taylor is eccentric. She sometimes says random words such as "orange" very suddenly and for no reason whatsoever. She sometimes makes bizarre noises out of nowhere. Her current favorite is "Wa," which she says either right out of the blue or as some arcane noun, for example, "Wow. That was...wa." No one really knows what 'wa' means. In fact, even Ri doesn't really know what it means. She's a little off.

Ri has a very low threshold for boredom. She is easily amused, but she needs constant amusement; as a result, she is always fiddling with something. Luckily, the can always find something in her pocket to entertain her, because if she is allowed to grow bored, she becomes particularly twitchy and irritable. If someone is talking for a long period of time, she tends to zone and/or daydream. ...But then again, so do a lot of people.

Ri's a bit of a kleptomaniac, or so it seems. She enjoys stealing random, useless objects. When she sees something that fits that description lying around, she gets this overwhelming urge to take it; sometimes she resists and gets away as fast as possible, but usually she pockets the object with skill born of practice. Because of this, her pockets are nearly always full of odds and ends. Every now and then, she'll clean out her pockets and give all the objects back, or maybe she'll give the item back a minute after she takes it; after all, she isn't stealing because she needs or even wants the items. She's stealing because it's fun and because sometimes if she doesn't she gets twitchy.

All of these traits can be a hindrance to Ri Taylor, but she does possess a number of better qualities. She is intelligent and quick-learning. She is quite loyal to her Tribe, and if a higher-up requests her to do something, it will get done. She is very reliable.
She is rather enthusiastic and outgoing as well; she can walk up to just about anyone and began talking, most likely about something random that has nothing to do with current events.
Ri is a bit of a realist; she hates to lie (though she is excellent at it) even to herself. She values directness and tends to say what she means. Hinting at something is pointless, or so she strongly believes.

She's a wisher, a dreamer-- somehow she can be that and a realist at the same time. It was dreams and her fear of living life normal, of doing what everyone else does until she dies, that lead her to New Pork in the first place.

Notable History:

Ri's family was always very Conservative, very traditional. In fact, they were almost fanatically strict. Ri herself always felt confined by their rigid regulations; they ran their household like a dictatorship. Maybe that was the root of Ri's odd behavior; maybe it was a rebellion.
Either way, her parents were dead-set on sending her to a good school...more than that, they had outlined half her entire life. She was completely under their control.
Ri was a dreamer. Her greatest fear was living the life her parents had set out for her. She would go to school for an impossible span of years, end up with a desk job somewhere, and work until she died. But her parents had her trapped.
She couldn't stand it. Finally, right before her fourteenth birthday, she ran away from home.

She spent two long years on the streets. She ran errands for a local store owner for food money, and painted city scenes and sold them. Sometimes she was commissioned to do particular drawings. Shelter was a constant problem. Winter was miserably cold. Life was not easy, but she was happy. She was free. She could do what she wanted; her life was her own.
She had some troubles, of course. She got into a few fights with some pushy people, but in whatever spare time she had, she practiced with her switchblade and with her improvised weapon, which she liked better because it was different.
She also got busted for stealing things every now and then, but since she stole only small things, the most she ever had to do was pay fines.

She was outside the border of New York, on a small quest for a perfect painting site (since she was technically homeless, she could just pick everything up and leave, after all) when the Black Plague came.
It was a long time before she managed to hear the whole story, what with her lack of TV. By the time she did, she cleansing had already begun.
Not long after, a few ghost rumors came her way of children in the city. Ri was interested; children living in an abandoned city was bizarre enough to draw her, and she made her way back north to find out more.
She positioned herself not far outside New Pork boundaries and toyed with the idea of entering the City. She had nowhere else to go; New York had been her only home.
It was only recently that she cut through the razorwire fences and went to live in New Pork. She was on her own for almost a week, and then the Cigarettes snapped her up.
She's been with them long enough to know quite a few member's names, but she is also a recent enough acquisition to know very little about said members.

Reputation:

Ri Taylor is reputed to be "a little off," as well was the cause of any small missing items. She is also the one with the wings on her coat and the wing necklace.
Besides that, she doesn't have much of a reputation.

Other:

I wasn't sure where else to put this, so here's the little bit about Ri's nifty little weapon. I'm not sure what to call it.

Most people have done this at least once in their lifetimes: you have an object -let's say it's a keychain- on a string or chain. If you spin it around and happen to accidentally let it go, it will fly across the room at a rather impressive speed.
Momentum. This is the principle on which Ri's weapon operates. It's a very simple weapon, actually; just a little, tough canvas sack on a long piece of rope. Ri fills the small sack with rocks or, better still, chunks of metal. Then, when she needs to strike an enemy, she simply spins the sack around and lets go at just the right moment; the bag of heavy objects will fly toward the enemy and do some damage.
Those bags to fly at fairly impressive speeds, remember.
Ri has practiced so often that her timing is near-perfect. As a plus, when she is forced to fight in close quarters, she can use it like a club.
Ri uses this weapon because she enjoys how versatile it is, because she feels that without sharp edges it may lower the chances of her killing someone, which she hates doing, and because it's not usual. Ri does many things simply because it's not usual.

What I'm really trying to say, I suppose, is that her weapon is very flexible, but looks like an ordinary bag. Because it doesn't look like a weapon, Ri could surprise people.,,

[Mina Crow]

[You know, this reminds me of Newheart xD Always play with the unexpected and such. I was waiting for Seraph to accept this, but hey, I can do so as well. Accepted, welcome to New Pork!]