Martin van Zijkens

Personality
Martin was never the kindest among his peers, quite often chastised by his school teachers and elders. Authority figures often looked on in disgust as Martin took advantage of his peers, often finding a way into tricking them out of their toys or sweets. Martin is arrogance exude, he scoffs at potentially fatal tasks marking them off as trivial with seemingly no regard for dangers to his life. Martin from a young age took interest in anatomy and the treatment of disease finding himself crudely treating wounds of those around him not for sympathy but instead for his own morbid interest or occasionally personal gain. Martin was quite unaffected by the knowledge of the gods and how they influenced mortal life, one could perhaps go so far as to say indifferent; this perhaps due to his irreligious upbringing and his general lack of interest in the concept of divine beings.

History
2000 Augusta, Maine. Anne-Marie van Zijkens worked as a nurse in the local hospital. She originally aspired towards something greater but economic limitations placed her in the situation she was in. It was particularly sunny and warm that day, the day she had met Apollo. The doctor had left Anne-Marie alone in the room with the patient, He had come due to a minor illness. He began in idle conversations with Anne-Marie and upon closer inspection she did find him particularly cute. With quite a skilled tongue the man had managed to secure the nurse’s number and her next friday night. It was the night Anne-Marie thought to herself, though at first quite disinterested she had grown quite excited and nervous as the date had approached. She thought to herself she was acting quite alike to a young schoolgirl. They had gone out to a japanese steak house that had a soothing oriental music playing the background. Idle chat flamed the fires of passion, the clock ticked by leaving behind the barriers of the past. When she had woke, morning beams of light fled into her bedroom. She sat up and looked around memories of the night before coming to her. She had looked around for her partner and saw no one. She ventured out into the small apartments kitchen and saw no one. She found a sour taste in her mouth thinking to herself “What a jerk, he didnt even bother to leave a note.” and so with that her normal life continued.

Anne-Marie woke up rubbing her eyes, she looked at the alarm clock by her night table it read “5:16” disgruntled she had become it was an hour earlier than it should of read. She groaned as she got up knowing the reason behind her rude awakening. Soft cries could be heard throughout the apartment. She went to the corner of her small sleeping space towards a small cradle and picked up a small demanding figure. She had named him “Martin” after her grandfather whom she was quite close with. When the pregnancy test signed positive days later Anne-Marie felt a mixture of outrage and shame, how was she to explain this to her friends, family and co-workers? None the less however as life continued on halting for no man, mortal or not.

The voice that belonged to the Martin’s primary school principal droned on, Martin had stolen some of the other children's playthings. This was a common occurrence for Martin and it has gotten to the point where it was suggested he should be recommended to a child's psychiatrist. It also didn't help Martin had slowly grown more and more isolated from his peers as the other children came to distrust and even go so far as to hate Martin.

.Martin gently swung on the local playgrounds swingset numbly sucking on a hardsweet which his grandmother had given him for his 9th birthday. The soft cry of a young girl pierced his ears, though not especially interested it tickled his curosity enough to lure him to the scene. The sight that met his eyes was not much different from the sound that met his ears, a young girl likely around the age of seven or eight laid crying gripping a swollen and slightly bloody knee. Martins eyes beamed towards the wound, He of course had encountered a bump or a bruise now and then throughout his life but it seemed for the first time he was seeing instead of experiencing a morbid thrill shook through him. The girl had now noticed the slightly older boy not knowing what to say she glared at him with tear-filled eyes. Martin out of impulse said "I could help probably!" Martin quite intensely realized he had no interest in helping the girl but he wanted to see more. He keeled down to the girls level and aptly raised his hand towards the point of wounding. His head was filled with a number of thoughts, "How does the skin mend back together?". "What caused it?", "What does it look like inside?". Before he knew it he was without thinking moving to touch the wound. His fingers connected, a sharp ping ran through his body Martin was overwhelmed with a intense feeling of draining it was as if someone was sucking the energy directly out of him. Martin's last few memories from that day involved the girl looking at Martin, then to her knee and her face filling with some sense of awe... or perhaps disgust? the memories were vague. Martin later woke up in his room, unsure if it was perhaps a dream or if he had wandered back to his home

Martin's eyes scanned the pages of the worn medical textbook it had to be terribly dated he thought to himself but none the less the intrigue it provided was valuable to Martin. Martin throughout the last few years had noticed something...off about himself and he was unsure if others had noticed but it was likely he thought to himself. Martin had a particular interest in the frailty of humans, the way they squish, crack and snap he simply loved it. Martin was unsure what he particularly loved about it, maybe the concept of undoing damage that should by all means end other forms of life or perhaps the simply morbidity of a human being broke down. However none the less life continued with or without Martin's cooperation so he promptly closed the book and continued on with his day as afterall today was his 13th birthday.

Martin walked out of his school, tracking his feet as they passed over the concrete. "Hey Cutie..." those words broke the silent patter of his feet, with a strange sense of unease throughout his body he turned his head to the side and saw what seemed to be.. a woman?, no looking down she seemed to be some form of malformed beast, half snake half woman. His eyes burst open and he started bolting towards the road ahead, he burst past a car driving down the road but the creature following following him was not as lucky and an awful splat could be heard, he looked at it from the sidewalk near the road, the creature seemed stunned for a moment its eyes bolting between him and a nearby ally, The creature slithered away unknown to Martin it had been badly injured from the car and didnt have the energy left in it to make a show of killing him. Martin was taken into a police department for a questioning involving what he saw, They had convinced Martin he had been witness to a brutal car accident and that was enough to convince him that the "creature" he saw was a figment of his imagination.

Martin walked down a condemned dirt path, a unused side path to school as he adjusted his jacket, a gift he received for his 14th birthday. he held up his wrist which displayed a knock-off gold watch which had been part of a set of two. He had sold the other at a hiked up price to someone he considered particularly idiotic, Unable to sell the second watch he ended up just keeping it, though not particularly fashionable he liked it. Martin being lost in thought over the trivial matter of his watch failed to notice the cracking of branches or the soft growl of a dog until it was too late.

There was for an instance a loud boom of flesh hitting flesh and the creaking of the rotting corpse of a long-since fallen tree, followed by a scream of terror from Martin. Martin in a flight of terror raised his hands in a crossed pattern as if the action would save him from what he at that moment seemed to be a particularly large wolf. However it was not crossed arms or an unknown specter that would save Martin no, Instead it would be the watch. Martin blinked for a moment and found himself playing a game of tug-o-war with the large wolf creature over… a crossbow? Martin had succumbed to his animalistic instincts and didn't question it. A Crack was heard in the short vicinity as Martin yanked the crossbow from the animal's jaw and slammed the chunk of wood over the beasts head, though not enough to seriously hurt the thing (perhaps only serving to fuel it in some savage way) it gave martin enough time to spring out from under the beast and run like he had never run before. Unknown to Martin, the reason he was unable to sell the watch that had once resided on his wrist was due to it being a gift from his father. Martin had a particularly hard time sleeping that night, when he awoke he gasped in horror not from the awful dreams that plagued him in the rare moments when he managed to sleep but to his aghast there was a quiver holding several bolts with some form of odd bronze-looking metal coating their tips.

Martin had begun firing the crossbow in a concealed part of a local park through some kind of morbid interest at first, it had developed into quite a hobby of his, though never reaching the level of interest that martin had in the medical fields it still grew to be quite a joy of his. Martin had also grew quite efficient at it and through some mental gymnastics and mnemonic suppression he had for the most part, forgot about the event that had happened the year prior with some form of foul beast which Martin would later come to know as a hellhound. Martin had been firing his crossbow at a mock dummy he had constructed from a pillow in a shrouded part of the local park which had for the most part remained unseen. Martin fired a bolt into the battered pillow when his nerves fired the warning signal, someone approaches!. Martin instantly flung back in a instinctual fit of paranoia to see the hulking mass of what appeared to be a dog which he only had loose memories of but none the less he remembered. He at first emitted a stunted shout which turned into the sounds of twigs being broke as the large mass started making its way towards Martin in a slow predatory way. Martin through some hidden knowledge in his body knew, he knew that this thing desired to end him and Martin knew he had to end it or there would be no more thoughts of ending, the end. The bolt flew forth from the crossbow placing itself promptly in the beasts shoulder which caused a large whimper to come out before the mass sprung towards Martin as he loaded another bolt. They went to the ground Martin mercilessly pounding the foul creature with the wooden contraception though he was unsure if it was to any avail. He had finally managed to load another bolt in between slugging the creature and keeping himself from being mauled. He with a final tug of energy pushed himself out from the beasts direct grasp and took aim directly towards its head and fired.

The satyr assigned to Augusta knew something fishy had been going on in the prior few years. He had begun to sense a demigod, growing dim at first though slowly it grew to nudge at him daily he had known there was a young demigod in the area. Furthermore he had noticed a monster in the area had stopped leaving traces of itself. He was unsure at first if it had killed a possible demigod in the area and left due to lack of prey but he had soon known this was not the case as the demi’s smell continued to claim the area around it.

Martin strolled home from school taking a downtrodden path deciding today it would get some use. He walked and in some unnatural form of consumption skimmed through a medical textboox ignoring the bits he already knew and maintaining a brisk pace. This however was broken at the sound of a aching yell. Martin had no idea what he was about to get himself into, chalking it off as some old man who had displaced a hip a quick penny he had thought. Martin shrieked in pain as a spatter of an acidic liquid clung to his waist and ate through his cloth and to an extent, his skin. Martin with teared eyes looked rabidly around himself to see a giant ant charging towards him and a man...No, a goat? No however it was irrelevant and Martin knew it and as much as he would of liked to say he was shocked at the spectacle, there were more pressing issues to handle. Martin in a brief shriek of pain and anger slugged the giant ant with his backpack which served to daze it for a brief second more than enough for Martin to rush past it and get to the goatman. He looked at him to assess the damage, He had a long gash in side though at first looked like something a sharp blade would cause infact turned out to be the cause of an acidic material without thinking Martin knew that would be what awaited him in a few short moments as his side stung with a intense pain. Martin clasped his hands on the man and felt his focus be tugged from him somehow into the main as he had done many times before. The goatman seemed to have regained his ability to remain conscious which he had promptly used to push Martin away and with a loud thunk, The ant rammed itself into a tree and broke it down. Martin rolled to his side, unzipped his bag and pulled out the crossbow which he had begun carrying with him alongside with a quiver of bolts which he promptly clipped onto his belt. The ant however took no time for granted and begun its second charge towards the goatman, Martin promptly slung a bolt from the wooden firing machine he held in his hands. The bolt clanged with a metallic noise from the ant’s tough skin to the ground. The ant attempted to spit more acid at Martin though was met with a bitter end as the tone of a flute played and a sharp piece of plant matter and tree shot from the ground and into the stomach of the thing. Grace soon followed the battle both the goatman and Martin slumped onto the ground in a mixture of pain and exhaustion.The goatman had shortly after insisted to be called Mr.Geen as well as he was apparently a satyr, with the adrenaline leaving Martin’s body he begun to understand how bizarre the situation was.

Martin ate a tin of beans on a soft paper plate, as his “satyr” companion munched on a tin can, Martin shivered at the thought of how that would affect one's oral health. Martin took a deep breath and began to recollect the previous weeks happenings. He was informed of the matter of the hellens and immortals, he was given information about his lineage and the fact his father was an immortal. Martin was of course, shocked and thrown into a near existential crisis perhaps if his cynical attitude didn't stop it he would of reached some heartwarming conclusion over the fact greed is bad and he should put the collective above the singular, this was not the case and Martin decided he would attempt to suppress this information deciding he would convince himself this was a bad dream. However Mr.Geen informed him his fate was already decided and they were to make way for New York, and that there would be no time to linger. Martin said his goodbyes with his mother who apparently was just as shocked as him.

Martin stepped into camp, though he should of been struck with some sort of awe by this point he had already soon more than enough and he simply shrugged it off attempting to put it out of mind. In the first few days of camp while staying in the hermes cabin he was given a spear to train with and was shortly after claimed by Apollo.