- Me-

Name: Vern
AIM Screen Name: DamnitVern
Email: MyouTsuyoki@yahoo.com
Web Page: …this one.
Anything You Want To Tell Us: Not really, but thanks!

- Character -

Information:
Name; Terra Branford…though occasionally Tina Bradford. It's a not-so-common misprint.
Date of Birth; December 1st
Grade Level; Senior
GPA; 3.2
Age; Seventeen

School Schedule:
Other than having to deal with the "senior stretch" of almost completely pointless classes and the crap load she shirked over the past three years, her classes are pretty normal.
First Period; Honors French IV
Second Period; Honors German IV
Third Period; Physical Education
sneaky!Lunch
Fourth Period; Accelerated Chemistry
Fifth Period; Pre-Calculus
Sixth Period; English Literature
Seventh Period; Detention...everyday, for the rest of her life.

Extra-Curricular Activities:
Annoying Authority Figures; Terra has a deep-seeded dislike for anyone with power, and a naturally strategic mind. Which, of course, gives her the added end-of-the-day comfort of pissing off the school faculty with her latest - and greatest - attempt at "freeing the enslaved student body minds" and "overthrowing the iron-fisted reign of Vice-Principal Kefka". Most of her spare time is spent concocting these supposedly "brilliant" schemes.

Body Modifications; having a rather low opinion of herself, and absolutely no courage - not to mention time - to mutilate her skin with her own hands, Terra leaves the dirty work to the professionals. In a subconscious act of self-deprecation she firmly adheres to the body piercing culture; from rings in her eyebrows to banana bars through her navel, she's boasting a new body mod at least once a month. However, they do all boast that metallic sheen of bright red niobium.

Auto Restoration; Terra works part-time in a body shop, restoring old cars and bikes until she's forced to leave because the older mechanics can't stand her presence any longer. And then she goes to her foster home and fixes up her own restored bike until her foster parents can't stand her presence anymore. And then she heads down to "The Blind Eye", the local occult store she frequents, and mutters about what bike she'll be restoring the next day until they can't stand her presence anymore, but tolerate it because she is a paying customer. It's a vicious cycle.

The Occult; before you start having visions of Terra dressed in flowing black robes and spouting tragically bad poetry, let me explain. There has always been this gnawing feeling in the back of Terra's mind that there is much more to the world than simply what everyone sees, and promptly takes for granted. That suspicion leads Terra to the pursuit of discovering her "inner self"; which in turn leads, unfortunately, to dream analysis seminars, the avid search of fairy rings, and a sleuth-like determination to uncover the "greater truth".

NPCs:
Pearl; The Blind Eye's owner and, consequently, its only employee. Pearl is sharp-witted and constantly annoyed by Terra's "poor me" attitude, and the only reason the girl has taken to keeping the self-pity tendency in check. Despite this peculiarity, the girls get along well enough to consider each other friends; even if one is a bitch and the other is a mutilator.

The Barons; Terra never bothers to learn the first names of the adults with whom she's situated, but she does like The Barons excessively. Constantly cheerful, officiously kind, and compassionate to the point of nearly exceeding their monthly income, one can't help but like the couple.

Alexander, Kirin, Ramuh, Starlet, Rayden and Stray; the six children living in the Baron household. Terra has never thought to ask which ones belong to the Baron couple and which ones are fostered, or even if those are their real names or simply nicknames, but she loves them nonetheless. Their personalities tend to all blend together, which commonly happens with a mass conglomeration of children under ten, but Terra can name all of their favorite ice cream flavors without hesitation.

Appearance:
Terra is an average height of five foot seven inches, and a slender weight of one hundred five pounds. She's pretty, in one of those "Les Miserables" poster child ways; complete with big, sad eyes in a shade of hemlock green and one of those pale complexions that are so easily smudged with ink and grease and the like. Her hair is that peculiar shade of blonde-green that people get when they spend too much time in chlorinated water, though it's surprisingly attractive on her, and - though being incredibly long and quite luxurious - is almost always pulled into a ponytail.

Her daily accoutrements are usually some combination of shockingly short skirts, handkerchief shirts - or anything spaghetti strapped, and those clubber boots that seem to mold to one's calves and zip up the back. She does occasionally tone the outfit down to a more scholastic level by adding a pair of striped or polka-dotted tights and a cardigan of some sort. She always wears six gauge earplugs, in a shade of bright red, which compliment her rather expensive looking ruby necklace - that she supposedly got from her parents before they gave her up, but she tends to think it was just an overly-kind social worker.

Strengths:
Because Terra has moved so often throughout the course of her life she has an amazing chameleon-like ability to adapt to her surroundings, which makes her at ease no matter where she is. Chances are if a bomb was dropped in the center of the school she wouldn't do much more than blink, before ensuring all the cute little freshman were alive and accounted for.

Not really so much a strength as an interesting peculiarity, Terra has an "unique presence". Those who spend a good deal of time with her tend to attach a particular emotion to her presence. Some say she has a sense of calm, others an air of anger; it varies from person to person. Of course...not many people spend too much time with her.

I bet it's the short skirts that scare them off.

Oh! And she's amazingly proficient in languages, since she's lived in multiple foreign language speaking households.

Flaws:
Where to begin? Other than Terra's rabid dislike of authority, her serious mutilation problem, and that issue she has with beating up innocent toy-breakers, Terra has a rather peculiar disrespect for other people's stuff. She's constantly "borrowing" Pearl's things - including her clothing and anything she needs from the store - and if she manages to return anything it was purely by accident.

No wonder she doesn't have many friends.

Personality:
Terra is an idealist, believing in the rights of the people and that saving one life really is just as important as saving ten thousand. Being a quiet seventeen-year-old, however, her words often fail her, and her attempts to do right by the people turn into doing wrong by the unsuspecting faculty members of FFHS. Not that she minds, of course, and the few friends she has would probably say there was nothing she loves more in the whole of the world than watching Vice-Principal Kefka squirm.

Besides, he gives her the heebie-jeebies.

In all actuality there are two things Terra loves more than committing naughty acts against Kefka; restoring beat-up antiques and anything having to do with children. As long as she can remember she's had a love for old cars, and an even greater love for making them pretty. She's almost supernaturally adept at restoring antique models of motorcycles and automobiles, and is continuously in the process of renovating her own vintage racing bike with a Peewee Herman-like zeal.

Her love for children, on the other hand, is slightly less explicable. She was walking down the street one day, saw a child frolicking along, and "snap" went something in her mind. Ever since, she's had a sincere adoration for infants and puerile minds of all kinds - accept Kefka's, of course. Feeling an innate need to protect them, but not having the chutzpah to go out and volunteer for some organization, her mother-hen syndrome is inflicted upon her six younger foster siblings.

But they don't mind…too much.

History:
For as long as Terra has had a memory, she's lived in foster families. Having a different family every year was first nature to her, so it never occurred to her to be upset by the situation. Sure, she wondered who her parents were every now and then, and she did try to find them once or twice when she was younger, but it never seemed too terribly important. It wasn't as though her foster families ever starved her or beat her or locked her in closets for no good reason…(though occasionally with a good reason.)

And then she reached high school, and she suddenly saw the aura of mystification that surrounded a girl who had been bounced from family to family yet had no real one to call her own. And she embraced that aura like she had finally found her real mommy and daddy. It was amazing! The amount of angst and melodrama you could conceive just in the words, "…I never knew my mom or dad" was mind-boggling to the, up 'til then, under-appreciated Terra.

This new self-awareness lead up to Terra's current obsession with the "other side" though, thankfully, she tends to keep it on the down-low. There's only so often you can say, "I bet it was the fairies, they're wicked-evil" before people start thinking you're not playing with a full deck.

Anyway, moving from house to house and school to school never gave her much time to make - or keep - friends, as you can imagine. It was just as well, truthfully. Being naturally rather pensive, she preferred to spend her time quietly pondering how to infest the local authoritative institution and cause its inevitable downfall.

But, as most things are, her content and quiet life was blown to bits with her move into the Baron family. The Barons themselves are inflicted with such high amounts of cheer that can melt even Terra's angst, and with six other children in the house - three of which are biological children of the Baron couple, the other three fosters just like Terra - there isn't enough time to divulge in her ritualistic routine of nightly self-pity. Which, if you want to know, is why she picked up on the art of body modification.

With having so much free-time on her hands she thought it best to get a part-time job - since, after all, the Biggs City officials wouldn't be obligated to find her new living arrangements after her next birthday - so she could save enough to move into her own place…eventually, and turned to mothering the Baron children and the three younger foster children - who are constantly complaining about her beating up their friends who accidentally broke their toys.

As her last year of high school looms ominously in the near future, she finds herself withdrawing to her formerly reticent persona with the anxiety of leaving the life of foster families and school behind her and having no choice but to set out on her own. With her new family, and new school, she hasn't even managed to seem melodramatically grief-stricken by the forever absence of her long-lost parents…yet.

- Writing Sample -
The prayer bells on the door to The Blind Eye jingled just before a painfully handsome young man entered. Two sets of eyes lifted and strayed over his body for not-too-many moments before returning to their previous occupations. The young man stayed only long enough to take a quick survey of the small store's wares, and left with another ringing of the rather annoying prayer bells.

"He was good looking." The older girl said absently as she continued scritching figures out on a piece of paper.

"I suppose a normal girl would have found him dashing. But I'm hardly normal." the other replied, glancing sorrowfully up from her task of melting an aromatherapy candle.

"Give it a rest, drama-queen, that act doesn't work on me."

"You have no sympathy for my pain, Pearl."

Pearl smirked and crumpled up the piece of paper, tossing it carelessly over her shoulder to peak the mountain of crumpled-paper-balls that had already formed behind her.

"If business doesn't pick up I'll have all the time in the world to sympathize with your damn pain." She finally looked at where Terra was perched on a native spirit drum and gasped. "What the hell are you doing with my candles?!"

"I need wax" Terra replied simply, avidly watching the paraffin drip into the mortar she had also "borrowed".

"You are going to ruin me." Pearl lamented, shaking her head just before letting it fall onto the counter.

Terra was unmoved by the shop owner's melancholy display. "You go through this every month when rent rolls around. 'Oh, I'll never be able to afford to keep my shop; how will anybody be enlightened without all of my useless knick-knacks and scented prayer beads?'…gimmie a break." She pulled a box out of her cardigan pocket and began the arduous task of tearing off the tape.

"For someone who adheres to this crap, and is always bitching about her own problems, you have a rather callous reaction to my plight." The moment of tragedy had passed, anguish never lasted long with Pearl, and she rose to lean indifferently against the stained glass apostle shrines, absently watching her friend.

"Ah, but your problems are superficial, and I only believe in the nature behind 'this crap', not the science. The only thing your candles are going to help me with is causing a little mayhem in the school's bathrooms." Terra replied, dropping the M-80 into the "serenity" scented wax.

"Freak."

"Bitch."

There was a moment of silence that fell over the occult store, before the splash of another cherry bomb hitting the sweetly scented candle wax broke through, and Pearl quirked a brow.

"I have a craving for Taco Bell, you want anything?"