Claiming:Camp/Kate Fay

Name: Kate Fay

Gender: Female

Age: 17

Species: Demigod

God Parent: Hecate (I forgot about cabin fullness when I first conceived this character. At this point it will be a lot of work to pick a new cabin for her, so I have left the alternative cabins out. If there isn't room in Hecate's cabin, then I'll think of some different options.)

Mortal Parent: Unknown

Appearance: I've created a digital image.



Personality:

History:

Hello! I'm Kate Fay, daughter of Hecate! Have time for a game of Ninja? No? I'll guess you're here to find out about my back-story then. Fine, just promise me we can play Ninja afterwards. Oh, and you'd better keep this under wraps; I didn't even tell Strike this whole story.

See, I'm an orphan (or at least I thought I was. Do we count godly parents?) At any rate, I spent some time in an orphanage, and yes, while I'm sure there are good orphanages out there, this was not one of them. In fact, it was so stereotypical that in hindsight it's actually quite funny. If you want to know what it was like, pull just about any book with an orphanage off the shelf and have a read. For now, I'll spare you the details. Anyway, you may have noticed I'm there anymore, and no I was not adopted. I did what any normal person living in a storybook orphanage would do; I blew that taco stand when I was about 12.

Fun fact: there are worse things than orphanages. These include, but are not limited too, being eaten slowly by insects, dying in a vacuum, eggnog, and trying to live by yourself in the woods.

I suppose I did OK. I had a change of clothes, some Band-Aids, and a bit of money I, ahem... found lying about the orphanage (I used it at the nearest town). Now, trying to live on a few dollars with no source of income can cause you to do some crazy things, like eat uncooked ramen noodles (don't try it unless you are really, really broke). So yeah, my mission was a success if you call barely surviving the wilderness for just over a week and losing about a fifth of your body-weight "success." It was about then I met my mother, Hecate.

Hecate was, well, strange. You'd think that after 12 years of thinking I was an orphan I would be psyched to find out I had a living parent, and yes, under other circumstances I might have been. There is just this one tiny thing about Hecate: she's scary! She wears black robes, glows green, and there is just something strange about the way she talks.

At any rate, it was late in the night of my something-th day in the woods (and I'll admit, at this point my ego was at its lowest) when Mrs. Green comes wafting through the woods. Now, I wouldn't call myself a coward, but I find it very difficult to be brave by myself. That said, I'll be honest; there may have been some screaming and scrambling and tripping and general foolishness before my mother was able to initiate conversation. Even then, my end of the dialogue consisted mainly of nods and single word sentences.

It's been about 5 years, so I don't remember all the details and they're really boring anyway, so here is a summery. She told me that I was a demigod and most of the basic stuff that entailed. She told me some of the powers I would develop and that the knowledge alone would not only trigger the development, but also begin to attract monsters. She also gave me a crossbow with a single bolt, explaining that it was celestial bronze, one of the few materials monsters could be harmed by. The bolt was enchanted to return to the bow a few seconds after firing, and the bow itself could morph into a rubber band. Lastly, Hecate told me there were many others like me, and had been for millennia. In fact, although they had only been in America for a few centuries, there were old magic items left behind be deceased heroes all over the land, even in this forest, and that I should keep an eye out for them.

I don't remember falling asleep that night, but when I woke up Hecate was gone. At first I thought I had been dreaming, but I felt strange. I felt a bizarre sense of... well, I can best describe it as awareness. It wasn't quite the same as seeing, but I knew what was all around as though I could see. The feeling escalated throughout the day, until I started to suspect I actually hadn't been dreaming. My suspicions were confirmed when I dug through my pockets and found the crossbow/rubber band.

Strangely, this didn't bother me as much as it had the night before. In the sunlight the idea of being a demigod did have a certain appeal. The idea of having special powers, the greater ability to change the world... it would be like being a character from a story. Also, having a weird, green, ghost-y thing for a mom is better than no mom, right? More importantly, Hecate told me there were others like me. I had been experiencing a profound lake of purpose since... well, forever, but more so now that I was out on my own. Finding my kind was my new purpose, right after dinner.

It was at this point I made some laughable attempts at using my new crossbow to find food. Let's just say it's hard to use a crossbow with zero experience, but on the bring side, you can give some wildlife a good work out with very little practice. More raw ramen for me.

Over the next few days I practiced shooting and tried my best to bring out my powers. It took surprisingly little effort to learn some of my basic powers, like fireballs and shields, but shooting was coming along slowly. The only reason I practiced it was because it didn't drain me like the fireballs and because I didn't know if Hecate would be upset if I didn't use the weapon she gave me.

Did I mention the monsters? They showed up rather quickly after my powers started to appear. They were mostly small ones, abnormally large insects and such. I really didn't have much trouble with them. It wasn't until later I met a real challenge.

Before that though, I shot a rabbit. I think it was mostly luck, but I managed to get pretty close to it before shooting which helped. I didn't have any good way to cook it, so I had to burn it to a cremated crisp for sanitation reasons, but it still was a nice change of pace from crunchy ramen.

About a month into my exile, I ran into a big game-changer. It all started when I received a letter. Yes, you heard me right. I got a letter in the middle of the woods. It fell from the sky one day, wrapped in a bleached white envelope. It was addressed to me, Kate Fay. In the return address corner it said "Hecate, Goddess of Magic" and in the other corner it simply had a picture of a caduceus. I opened it up and found a letter from my mother, warning my about a particularly dangerous monster in the area: the Nemean Lion, a beast with an impenetrable hide. Hecate wrote that I could defeat it, but I should get help first. Someone else in the woods could help me.

Not a second after I finished reading a I heard a monstrous bellow from the distance. I didn't need to turn to sense the glint of a gold hide shimmering through the trees. I ran. I had to find whoever it was my mother told me about. As I rushed through the trees I could hear and in fact "see" the beast behind me. It was bigger than a sedan but smaller than a van. It crashed through the trees, steadily gaining on me. I reached out with my newly found powers and turned a small sapling into a temporally invulnerable obstacle. When the lion hit the tree full tilt, trying to smash through the sapling, it nearly did a complete 360 flip, head over heels. At any rate, it crashed hard, allowing me to get a better lead.

Seconds later, I found found him. The person Mother had referred to, Strike. He was standing up in a tree, well hidden. I would have missed him entirely if I hadn't spotted him with my omnidirectional "vision." I immediately knew he was a demigod, or at least not a mortal; there just something about him, as sort of aura. I stopped and called out to him, asking for his help against the lion. We had a short argument about the natural habitats of lions and the likelihood of one living in these woods when the lion arrived, settling the dispute for us.

Strike agreed to battle the lion with me rather reluctantly, but I could already feel a certain synergy in the air. One demigod was powerful; if two worked together, what couldn't they accomplish? Strike did not disappoint. We thrashed the Nemean Lion and sent it scurrying away with only one eye.

Strike and I swapped stories, but I kept the part about meeting my mother to myself. It was just too weird of an experience to share. I found out he ran away from home two years prior and had been living off the land ever since. We decided to work together to increase our chances of survival. It was nice to have someone to talk to. (It should also be mentioned that Strike could hunt and build a spit, so no more ramen, yay.)

I believe I didn't actually know my personality until a met Strike. Before I had only lived in a gloomy, uncannily storybookish orphanage, and after that I was all by myself. This was my first time really having fun with other people, and it brought out a fun loving side I never thought I had. We had some good times roaming around the forest, occasionally fighting monsters. During that time span I found an amulet which allowed people to travel through shadows, which I gave to Strike, as well as a few other things I found and sold to the nearest museum, a rusty celestial bronze shield, for instance. (They must have escaped attention all these years because of the mist.) Strike even found something once, a gold ring (it might just be a normal gold ring, but it doesn't matter.) He tossed it to me, saying that it might be good to pawn, but I've hung on to it.

He also taught me a game called Ninja. It's a bit like tag with just your hands and a few more rules. I really enjoyed the game, but it gave me the idea to learn hand-to-hand combat. After all, you never know when you may be deprived of a weapon and need to fight for your life. After some convincing, Strike agreed to try it. We then started practicing, well... fisticuffs. It wasn't anything like Karate or Tae-kwon-do or anything, just freestyle fistfighting.

This wonderful part of my life went on for a long time, but about four years later Strike and I got separated.

It all happened one day when Strike was off hunting, which he always does alone. I was wandering around the edge of our campsite (which mostly consisted of a hastily built fire pit and some blankets strewn about.) when I heard a hissing noise and smelled a strange scent in the air. The next thing I knew, I was coming to in a cell of some kind.

(OOC: This next section has to do with a group that consists of mortals who can see through the mist. They have discovered the truth about the Greek gods and all, and are attempting to collect artifacts and capture demigods in order to gain power. I hope to use them as the antagonists of a quest I'm going to suggest soon. They aren't fully explained here, so I thought you should know.)

The cell was tiled on all sides except one. The other side was a large window with small slits for air on the top and a door on the side. The door appeared to have an electrical lock. As I rose to my feet a man in a lab coat stepped into view on the other side of the glass.

"Hello, Angel. My name is Charles." He said with a smile, bringing out a clipboard. "Awake, are we?"

"Where am I? Where is Strike?" I demanded.

"Your friend? He's not here. Two demigods would be too dangerous. As for where we are, that's not really important. I hope you don't mind answering a few questions."

I ignored his last statement. "That's not an answer! Where is Strike? What do you mean too dangerous? What are you going to do to me?"

"Don't worry about Strike. I say too dangerous because I'm afraid we have some rather unpleasant experiments to run, and we don't want you to resist. Really, there is no point in it. We have your weapons, there is nothing you can do by yourself."

"Unpleasant? What do you mean? You can't just experiments on an American citizen!"

"Angel, we only found you two demigods via a large amount of surveillance across the country. We've been watching you for a while. long enough to know you won't be missed." he said with a tight smile.

"Missed!? You're going to kill me?" I said, alarmed.

He let out a deep sigh. "Well, yes. Are you ready to answer my questions now?"

"If you really did so much research you'd know Strike is more than capable to follow your tracks to... wherever this is, right? Just let me go before there is trouble!" I argued.

"Again with Strike!" he raised his voice, partially losing his cool. "You want to know about him? Fine. If he isn't dead, he thinks you are."

My response was a kick to the window. It wobbled a bit, but didn't break.

Charles regained his composure. "Don't bother that's bulletproof glass. I'd wager even your powers won't break it. Now where was I? Yes, your friend, let me explain. Are you familiar with the Nemean Lion?"

"Too familiar."

"Did you know that it's more than just tough hide and claws? In the old days it used to steal women away. Then when heroes came after it, it would appear before them as the wounded woman. As soon as they let their guard down, BAM!" Charles smiled and adjusted his glasses. "This is all in the lions nature. It will do such things without prodding. If you have enough resources, human included, you can make it do them your way."

"What do you mean?" I asked, already suspecting the answer.

"We trained, if you can call it that, the lion to mimic you, Angel. By now I'm sure the lion will have lured your friend in and killed him."

"No, Strike's too good. That lion could never defeat him!" I kicked the window repeatedly in futility.

Charles seemed bored of the situation. "Please stop that. Our sedative is expensive; I don't want to use any more than I have to. I've spent most of this time answering your questions. It's your turn."

I stopped kicking, but my mind raced to find an escape route. I didn't have to look around to survey my surroundings. The room was featureless except for the electric lock on the door. The metal electric lock. I plan began to form. I assessed my resources. They had taken my crossbow and other weapons, all I had were empty pockets. Then I remembered the gold ring Strike found. It was on my finger. That would do.

With a start I realized Charles was still waiting for an answer. I gave him one. "If we must, let's get this over with. Fire away."

Charles smiled, "Thank you, Angel." He looked down at his clipboard; I took the distraction.

I lashed out with my arm sent a surge through the electric lock. It had the desired effect; the door sparked, sputtered then slide open. Alarmed, Charles looked up, right before I jabbed him in the stomach with my fist. I sent a charge through the gold ring, and Charles gasped, dropping to the floor. I made a dash for the exit. I found myself in a strange complex of hallways, but the way the exit was marked as a fire escape route. I raced through the halls, twice running into startled people in lab coats who a tazed in a similar manner.

Finally, I opened a door leading into a sewer, dimly lit with flickering electric lights. I found a ladder and climbed out, only to find I was in New York city, far from the woods I previously resided in. Long story short, I ran around until I got lucky and a satyr noticed me. I'm sure you can figure out the rest.

So here I am at camp! I never did find out what those guys were doing or what happened to Strike, but I'm sure he's fine. He's tough like that. Unfortunately, I actually have no idea where he is. I don't even know where the old forest is. But anyway, about that game of Ninja...

Weapons: gold ring (can be electrified), formerly owned a magic crossbow

Maelstromis (talk) 07:49, December 18, 2012 (UTC)