Archived:Brooklyn Harley

Personality
Brooklyn is a very extroverted character. She enjoys being around people, whether that involves talking or snagging omething out of their pocket is up for debate, but she works better in a group than alone. Despite the fact that she expresses kelptomanic tendancies, she is very excitable and has an avid sense of humour. She likes poking fun and making jokes. She appears laid-back and sarcastic about most things, but she pays attention more than people think. It's unclear on why she developed this outer shell of appeared naievity, but it works to her advantage when she wants to get things going, which she likes.

History
The Harley family was never the greatest at setting a standard. By the year 1990, Mary and Alexander Harley had three children named Julie, Andrew, and Jebediah. All three had a criminal record by the time the graduated high school, but Andrew was the only one to ever get caught doing something illegal. It appeared that only one thing set the three of them apart. Andrew and Julie were planned children with Mary and Alexander as their parents. But Jebediah, the oldest of the three by three years, was only a step-sibling. His father was Alexander, but his mother was Eris, goddess of discord. He fought with monsters from his teenage years onwards along with mortals that his step-siblings had to deal with, never making it to any Camp, instead faring his own with a sword gifted to him at birth.

Over the next decade, Andrew got arrested and charged 20 years for breaking and entering, theft, and assault, leaving the other two siblings on their own. Fearing a similar fate, Julie and Jebediah fled east together, to New York, outside of the City near Connecticut. Neither young adult knew how to make an honest living, so they both acquired minimum-wage jobs and made most of their money criminally. While Jebediah, or just Jeb for short, did dealings on the black market, Julie was a thief. They had this setup down-pat for years, from 1994 to 1999. It was that year before the new millenia that something odd occured to Julie.

Julie usually got her money off scams and petty theft. The owner of a convenience store across the city in which she lived one day stepped outside and around the corner to take a smoke, leaving Julie alone in the store. It was small and family-run, not having security cameras. Not expecting this, Julie made the split-second decision to reach over the counter and snag the tip jar by the register she didn’t bother opening. Suddenly, a male voice behind her made her jump. “Don’t take the tip jar.” Julie whipped around and saw a man in a navy blue business suit leaning casually against the chip shelf. “Figero’s worked hard for that. Get the register instead. He’ll be back in…” He casually checks his watch. “Thirty-eight seconds. You’re welcome, by the way.” Julie doesn’t know what to do. He certainly didn’t walk in, and he wasn’t there a few seconds ago. Julie decides to take his advice, and cracks the register open with seconds to spare. When she looks up, the suited man is gone.

The police didn’t find any evidence of Julie ever being near the store. Two weeks later, when Julie pulled off her next actual money-grabber at a public festival, the suited man returned. He seemed to be in a rush, but once again gave her a tip on how to successfully pull off the theft. Over the course of a few months, she encountered this man on multiple different occasions. He’s always helpful in one way or another, and though Julie would never had admitted it, sometimes she needed the hint. One day, however, she grabs the man before he can disappear and pulls him into an alleyway. “You’re following me. How do you even know where I’m going to be? Is someone tipping you off?” The man then disappears from her grasp. Floating past the “what the Hell” phase, she found something attractive about his nonchalant attitude. So when she saw him loitering back at the festival, she laughs instead of get angry. She convinces him not to disappear and the two chat for a little while. Instead of robbing anything else at the festival, the two bought some drinks and spent the evening together. One alcohol lead to another until Julie invited Hermes over to her place, just for the night, maybe explain how he did that disappearing act in the alleyway. Gas? A projector?

It wasn’t until the next morning she came to her senses and realized the insanity of her drunken night. A god? Yeah right. But nonetheless, Julie discovered that she was pregnant. And she was furious that her partner had just left. Pregnant on a one-night-stand? Ridiculous! Of course, when Julie told her story to Jeb, he knew exactly what had happened. But that did not quell Julie’s anger, and it festered inside her through her pregnancy. She even considered getting an abortion at some point but decided against it.

Brooklyn Harvey was born at a local hospital, swaddled without her mother. Due to a complication during the debacle, Julie died during birth and Jeb claimed ownership of the child. She grew up with Jeb as her only parental figure, which was not entirely sufficient in the regular parenting department, but he was a demigod and as Brooklyn matured, Jeb made sure she understood her heritage.

As Jeb would have expected, by the age of nine Brooklyn was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. She didn't do very well in elementary school, but her grades were always at least average. One of the first things Jeb noticed about Brooklyn was that she was a natural thief, just like her mother, and often cheated her way to the B’s that speckled her report cards. Jeb of course tried to deter her from that kind of behavior and sometimes it worked. Sometimes it didn't.

Brooklyn’s first encounter with a monster was at the age of ten. At that point she had instilled the belief that her surrogate father may be lying about the whole Greek God thing. Sure, tiw as neat to believe that her real dad was a god, but the other kids at school said it’s probably just Jeb covering for her absent father. But that belief changed instantly when she came home from school, pink backpack on her shoulders, one day. The young girl plopped her bag on the ground and something smashed through the window of their first-floor apartment, as if the bag had triggered some sort of invisible button. Through the shards of glass that made Brooklyn fall over came a monstrous golden mass. Claws, spindly legs, and a daunting biological weapon scuttled in through the remains of the window, hissing madly. Brooklyn screamed and climbed on top of the dining table, then jumping up and clinging to the ceiling light that barely stayed attatched to the ceiling. The maneuver towards the ceiling bought the girl enough time for Jeb to see the scorpion the size of a pony beginning to scramble up the wall opposite of Brooklyn, trying to climb up to the cornered prey. Jeb pounced upon the monster, a sword in hand. While the scorpion occupied itself with trying to reach Brooklyn, Jeb sliced his sword in a wide arc. It first bounced off the monster’s armored hide, but quickly caught purchase in the thing’s tiny eyes. But the damage was enough and the scorpion deflated like a balloon, crumbling into golden dust and leaving a shattered window and claw marks in the plaster. Brooklyn dropped from the light fixture which stopped working and didn’t stop crying until Jeb got her an ice cream as appeasement. Now Brooklyn believed every so-called myth that Jeb had told her. But Jeb never brought up the conversation of the Camp he was told to go to as a child himself. Was it selfishness? Nostalgia? Or did he just see himself in his girl that much?

Brooklyn evaded any direct monster confrontation until a few days before her fourteenth birthday. She started pickpocketing the year before, her childish innocence shielding her from ever getting caught. Jeb convinced her to take fencing lessons with some old French dude. Where he got the money for such lessons he never said. For her fourteenth birthday, Brooklyn went out to a farm outside the city with a few of her close mortal friends to ride horses for a few hours. Other than the regular farmhands and horse caretakers, the pack of five girls had the pasture to themselves. They rode around for about an hour and a half, talking and laughing to each other and talking about the high schools they all applied to or got accepted to. Brooklyn was quite content in moving on to the regular public high, but one of her friend’s spotless academic record earned her a place in a private school for the sciences. She was always adept in that kind of thing anyways.

It was Ava, the scientifically-inclined girl, who spotted it first. She pointed out an equine figure out in the pasture, minding its own business. “Is that horse red or is it just me?” The other three mortal girls dismissed the question. Brooklyn remained silent. She could see exactly what it was. The horse had flames for a mane. And once she realized that, the horse looked up directly at her. “Back to the barn!” The girls obediently giddied their horses, but only three of them could convince their steads to break into a canter and make it safely away. This left Ava and Brooklyn caught with the firey horse. As the monster came into view, Ava screamed. “It’s on fire!” This struck Brooklyn as odd, but kept quiet. She and Ava begged their horses to go faster, even flicking the reins like they do in old Westerns. Nothing worked. “We won’t make it!” Ava cried. In a spur of emotion, Brooklyn directed her horse towards Ava’s and spanked it, sending it squealing into a gallop towards safety. Brooklyn’s own stead neighed and reared up on its hind legs, sensing fire. Brooklyn tumbled off the horse and onto the grass, now set ablaze in some areas. She rose to her feet as the horse barreled down upon her. Then she gets an idea. As the horse darts in a straight line towards her, Brooklyn streaked to the right like a matador in the Spanish ring with a bull. When the horse galloped back around, she did it again. A third time. A fourth. She didn’t have any sort of plan whatsoever, but it was buying her time. And she was slowly, agonizing as she does, carving a path towards the barn. Suddenly, something huge stormed out of nowhere and the horse exploded in a shower of sunlit dust. Riding a horse valiantly with a bronze sword in her hand was Ava. Doused with sweat, fire raging around them, Ava stumbled off her horse. “Please tell me… You saw the horse detonate too…” Brooklyn nodded mutley and inquired upon how Ava found a sword like that. “It was in one of your presents. From your dad-uncle. We checked all the gifts before you arrived here. Jeb… He’s outside. Told me to run this to you… But I just killed a flaming horse?” Ava passes out from a mix of shock and exhaustion. Brooklyn rides her unconscious friend back home to safety. She keeps the sword and no one objected.

When she was fifteen she killed a harpy with a sword. The next year it was some sort of rabid dog with flaming eyes. Finally, Brooklyn approached her aging surrogate father for a solution to her monster issue: “Is there a way to stop this? I can’t keep this up when I’m older.” It was now, after withholding the information for seventeen years, that Jeb purchased her a Greyhound set for Long Island sound. And it was three and a half weeks later that Brooklyn Julie Harvey arrived at Camp Half-Blood.

Offensive

 * 1) Children of Hermes are skilled thieves and are able to disarm an opponent and take their weapon easily.
 * 2) Children of Hermes can summon nearby animals to attack an opponent. The more animals summoned and the bigger they are, the more energy is drained.

Defensive

 * 1) Children of Hermes are able to increase their speed and stealth in short bursts, making them faster than most and undetectable for a short time. However, they cannot have a weapon drawn so the speed is purely for evasion.

Passive

 * 1) Children of Hermes have innate reflexes which allows them to fight and dodge quickly.
 * 2) Children of Hermes are extremely proficient with thrown weapons.
 * 3) Children of Hermes are proficient in dodge-rolls.
 * 4) Children of Hermes have the inhuman ability to leap great distances at once which this can be used to dodge or attack.
 * 5) Children of Hermes possess enhanced stamina.
 * 6) Children of Hermes can sense and manipulate locks of all types. The more complicated the lock, the harder to manipulate.

Supplementary

 * 1) Children of Hermes are able to endow a pair a shoes with ethereal wings which grant the wearer temporary flight, they may use it for themselves or give them to another, however they are only able to go as high as just over the tree tops, and they only last for a couple of days at most before the wings lose power.
 * 2) Children of Hermes can cause a person or a group of people to speak in different languages so that no one understands what each other is saying, the effects only last a short time.
 * 3) Children of Hermes are able to trick another into doing something for them or revealing a secret to them; nothing guarantees the person will complete the task, if they figure out they are being tricked.

3 Months After Character is Made

 * 1) Children of Hermes are able to teleport themselves, since their father is the god of travel. The further the distance, the more energy drained.

6 Months After Character is Made

 * 1) Children of Hermes can temporarily steal 1-3 demigod powers from an opponent or ally for a few minutes, the user gains some knowledge of their new powers. The more powerful the stolen powers are and the more taken, the more energy is drained when the power theft wears off. (If the target doesn't have their 3/6/9 month powers, they cannot be stolen.)

9 Months After Character is Made

 * 1) Children of Hermes can shift into a hawk for short periods of time granting them flight, the longer they retain this form, the more energy it drains and the more time they need to rest between transformations.

Relationships
TBD