Kim Marie

"C'est le QG oublié, n'est-ce pas?" Kim a hurlé à cette question, mais son visage n'a pas dévié de son expression pierreuse. Pas à la mention des Scorps, ni quand la fille rousse a appelé sa poupée, petit cochon. Et puis Erren est venu, pour demander après la rousse. "... pourquoi ne pas lui montrer comment je traite avec des gens qui viennent frapper à une porte de parias après qu'un grand nombre d'entre nous ont été tués?" Brusque, était Erren, coupant au point avec un bord dentelé.
-- Elle n'a rien commencé, répondit Kim, en un coup d'œil à Erren, avant que ses yeux ne reviennent au gingembre. "Encore."
Mais il a transpiré la jeune fille a fait du commerce, et avec des informations qui sont venues gratuitement. Sa main - Ashen avec de la poussière - a jeté son badge Gamer et fealty à la terre. Ça a gagné un peu d'intérêt pour Kim. Elle n'était donc pas venue parler pour les couleurs que Kim n'avait aucun intérêt à traverser. Mais elle a parlé d'un repaire de Scorps. "Ça, les enfants, c'est du meh trade."
Les cartes étaient sur la table maintenant. Pas tous, mais c'était trop rare. Kim a levé sa main libre à la hauteur de l'épaule, dans un signe universel d'attente. Calme. « Très bien, dit-elle de façon uniforme, en pliant brièvement ses premiers et derniers doigts dans un signe de trois doigts - pendant autant de minutes - avant qu'elle ne plie ceux contre sa paume aussi. Shiba sur le toit aurait vu ça. Kim a baissé son poing serré, tournant son corps vers l'intérieur, et a regardé le dernier oeil du gingembre restant. "Je ne suppose pas que je dois dire à une fille comme toi que nous n'invitons pas les ennuis dans notre magasin." Elle se branla la tête vers l'entrée ouverte de la boutique, et attendit que la fille passe.
Elle a regardé Erren, et a balayé l'appartement de son pouce sur son temple, le signe pour que je garde une montre. Il y en avait trois dans le magasin maintenant, tous des personnages décalés. Kim n'aimait pas ça, mais ces jours-ci elle aimait peu. Avec un rythme d'hésitation à distance, elle a frappé ses doigts sur sa clavicule, et s'est transformée en boutique dans le sillage de la fille. Son propre signal de remerciement.
Leur base était assez petite, et avec un total de cinq dans ses quartiers, il a fait pour des arrangements à l'étroit. Pieds écartés de la largeur de l'épaule, Kim s'est stationnée dans le coin près de l'entrée. Une perle de sueur s'est soignée sur son front. Ce n'était qu'une question d'attente avant qu'il n'y ait plus de stries sur le même chemin. Mais en coupant ses mains autour de son pistolet toujours prêt, elle se tenait sentinelle pour regarder le métier soigneusement.
Name:
Kim Marie
Age:
18
Faction:
The Forgotten
Personality:
Before the infection, Kim was a happy-go-lucky girl. The youngest and only daughter in a family of reasonably affluent means, there was little she had to worry for. She was clever enough, and got good grades, occasionally topping her class in the good years.
But she came to the Forgotten a shell of who she had been. At the start, she was just a scared, shaking fifteen-year-old, who quaked in her Converse sneakers. Now, she is nothing if not quiet. You would have to pry her lips open for conversation, and her replies are often grunts, or monosyllabic. She’s a person of few words, Kim is, and sullen. She would make a good soldier; sometimes, she stands like she’s carved of marble, still enough to convince flies to land on her. Even then, she does not move. She takes orders, if they’re yelled at her, or passed under a breath. Enlist her into a turf war and she’ll throw herself into the battle, frontline or no. People have whispered rumours about her, but just because she is close to mute, she’s not deaf. She knows some of them think she’s cold-blooded. She’s heard gossip that she kills squirrels for fun – ridiculous, there are hardly enough around for that anymore. It’s strange though, she could embark on a mission with almost suicidal determination. But the moment she is attacked, she lunges forward screaming, fighting ruthlessly, tooth and claw, her way back to life. Once, when she was out on a personal scavenge, a Scorp jumped her. They scuffled, but it was Kim who left with nothing but a bloody lip and crooked tooth, and the nameless Scorp lying in a pool of growing blood.
Backstory: Kim was fifteen when the outbreak struck. With one fell blow, she lost mother, father, and twin brothers. For two weeks, she sealed the windows and locked the doors and grieved. She barely ate. In the bubble of her home while the world wreaked havoc outside the walls, time was not sanctioned to pass, as she haunted the halls like the ghosts her family had become.
One day Kim opened the door after someone had been banging on it for five minutes straight, to reveal an old friend on the other side. Josephina forced herself in and locked the door behind her back. She was bleeding from a cut above her temple, but she managed to propel herself into Kim’s arms and almost knock her over. Perhaps it was the way warm blood dripped onto Kim’s back and shoulder, or the sensation of heat and flesh under her hands, but it was enough to pull her back into the present, and do for Josephina what she had had no opportunity to do for her family. Kim cleaned the wound and wrapped Josephina up; Josephina made sure Kim had enough sustenance and brought her back from the brink of a wasted death. She told Kim about her short stint with the Gamers, that she had abandoned when fights for glory and bullshit started taking place. She had tales about a faction they could both go to, and live out the rest of the apocalypse back-to-back, arm-in-arm.
Kim had to admit the prospect of having someone else to live for was attractive.
When they were both well, Josephina led them out the door for the last time, the two of them laden down with all the supplies they could carry. She had heard that the Forgotten were stationed in a shopping district, and that was where they went. But on the way, they encountered Coyotes, who fell on them like a tsunami wave, pouring in from all sides. Armed with bricks, shovels, and pitchforks, they descended upon the two girls.
Kim fought back, scratching and kicking at hands that tried to fall on her. Eventually, she wrenched a hammer out of one Coyote’s hands, and began to beat her way out. She broke elbows and collarbones and the fingers of someone who had been holding a gun. He dropped it. But not before a shot rang out and Kim heard a quiet exhale of breath from behind her.
Death never loses its flavour. At least, it hadn’t in the first three weeks. Even though the population had been decimated, and the streets were still littered with errant corpses no one had bothered to clean up, the children from The Coyotes weren’t acquainted with murder. But as they scurried like kids about to be told on, and she crawled to Josephina - whose blood was flowing in a steady free stream from the gunshot wound over her heart - Kim felt she could kill someone right there and then. Or had she already?
She stayed there for a long time, Josephina’s head cradled in her lap. She watched those eyes empty until they were as blank as the sky they stared up at, and the life drained from her cheeks through a hole in her chest. Kim waited for a deathbed acquittal, for the Coyotes to return with whooping calls and an axe to cleave her neck clean through. But neither ever came. Josephina died quietly, the wind whistled hollowly around them, and the blame for her last friend’s death sat heavily on Kim’s shoulders.
Kim picked up the pistol – ill-gotten gains, that made her feel sick to the stomach – and the bag Josephina had been carrying. With each step feeling like lead, and each breath like a knife in the heart, Kim found her way to the Forgotten.
She never spoke Josephina’s name again.
Other:
A mean grappler. She can defend herself, even on the ground.
Owns a pistol, and scavenges for ammunition
Will use anything within sight to fight. Bottles, knives, and sticks are all fair-game
Light on her feet, and proficient in sneaking quietly in the cover of shadows
Has been with the Forgotten for three years, is aware she could be considered disposable and has no qualms about how trivially her life could be used by authority as a means to an end (i.e. in a turf war)