Post by Natalie on Feb 20, 2014 21:14:42 GMT -8
Hah, you think you can take me on, Vee? Dream on, brown-noser! A teacher's pet could never beat the great Natalie!
Name: Natalie Bouchard.
Nicknames: Nat, Sooty, Sootsayer, Queen Black
Theme Song: Science Fiction
Age: 16
Class: Mage, level 5.
Appearance: Natalie is an Etrurian teenager just shy of adulthood. Lanky and awkward, she still manages to draw attention to herself through sheer force of personality alone, despite being shorter than most of her peers. Her every action and gesture is charged with energy in a carefully developed style; not through impulse or carelessness, but rather a conscious attempt to draw the spotlight to herself in every situation, a brunette dynamo that somehow seems to be always in motion even when standing perfectly still. Her tone is thoroughly laced with sarcasm, to the point where it is difficult to tell whether she is being serious or making light of a situation, with no distinction made between jokes and facts, a confident grin or snide smirk almost permanently inhabiting her features.
She proudly wears her academy robes almost every day, proclaiming her profession to the world. Most of her clothes are second hand items, however; frayed edges, patches, and slightly oversized pieces are common sights on her. She stubbornly makes light of the issue, though, to the point of having refused faculty members' offers of charity in the past. In stark contrast, she dedicates an uncharacteristic amount of attention to her hair, carefully brushing and braiding it every night, and touching it without permission is one of the few ways guaranteed to actually anger the young mage.
Personality: Aloof at first glance, flippant at a second, and sassy at a third, most people tend to dismiss the attention-seeking witch as a fool. While not particularly gifted at magic, or blessed with unrivaled genius, Natalie is committed to reaching the very peak of her potential, and proving to both herself and others that nurture and hard work can indeed prevail over nature. As such, she is extremely dedicated to the study of magic, choosing to spend most of her free time perfecting her craft. Her pursuit has alienated her from her peers, who had little need or desire to attempt to understand the resident oddball.
Ironically, while she gives the impression of being outgoing with her constant jokes and carefree demeanor, the teenager rarely allows anyone past her defenses, keeping her thoughts, opinions, and personal life tightly locked underneath a veil of nonchalance. She spurns large social gatherings, seeing little value in going along with the flow and fitting into a group. She yearns for friendship, but refuses to abandon her own sense of self and lofty goals to gain the acceptance of others.
Natalie pretends to have an obsession with fortune telling, which has been the focus of much mocking in the past; she steadfastly seems to believe in even the most outlandish superstitions, with tarot reading being her favourite. She has a paralyzing fear of drowning, to the point where she was never able to learn how to swim; a secret she keeps carefully under wraps. Her only hobby is drawing; on the rare occasion when she isn't studying or divining the future from cards, she enjoys charcoal sketching, though she has never shared her work with anyone before. She greatly values character and individualism over personal possessions and social standing, a result from her past and upbringing. She detests charity, believing instead in earning everything through her own effort, and hates being forced to rely on others, finding it humiliating.
Intensely competitive, she can't stand being bested; her narrow loss to Octavia in the running for class valedictorian kindled the flames of what had already been a heated rivalry and peculiar friendship. She has rarely left the other witch's side since then; purely to study her adversary's habits and understand her defeat, of course.
Backstory: Born to a poor family in the capital of Etruria, Natalie was never one to live in the lap of luxury. The youngest of eight siblings, she grew up in a house that was cramped at the best of times. The Bouchard household was loud, and certainly struggled to balance the accounting books every week; however, nobody who knew them could ever doubt her parents loved each and every one of their children, and not even hunger or the nightly elbows and kicks from the two sisters she shared a bed with could diminish the warmth and unity of the Bouchards. As she grew up, however, she grew tired of the mocking voices and disdainful looks people directed towards her family; she saw it every day, every time people walked past the run-down property, and every time her parents brought out the bedsheets that served as a makeshift roof every time it rained, on those portions of the house where the ceiling leaked. They were fools, they said, and their children were destined to be nothing but beggars and bandits.
On her tenth birthday, she set out to prove them wrong.
She took the entrance exam to one Etruria's most prestigious magic academies behind her parents' backs, scrounging up the money for the test by pawning off trinkets discarded in garbage piles and begging for spare change on the streets. With next to no practice in basic fluent reading beyond what little her parents had taught her, let alone basic magic theory, she failed horribly, earning nowhere near the score necessary for admittance; however, the teachers deemed her to have enough potential for spellcraft to be a passable witch, and sent her back home with a practice notebook, inviting her to retake the exam in six months free of charge. Her parents were both furious and concerned, baffled by their youngest's sudden passion; she isolated herself, running away from the house when it grew too noisy to study and working over the tiny manual's questions, challenging herself to come up with variations. When the book was finally exhausted beyond use, she broke into the capital's public libraries at night to improve her vocabulary and learn what she needed; nobody paid attention to the tiny beggar girl who sneaked around the back door in rags.
She outdid herself on her second attempt, scoring fourth among all entrants, instantly earning a scholarship, and shocking her parents yet again. She left the household, still unwilling to reveal to her parents just what had sparked her interest in magic, drawing away from her siblings even as they all attempted to persuade her to stay. Within a month, she was living on-site at the boarding school, surrounded by new and dazzling luxuries she had never experienced. A terrifying ultimatum hung over her head, however, clouding her mood; only five scholarships were handed out each year among all students, and she certainly could not afford to pay tuition. Fourth place was not enough. She had to be the best, to show the world how mistaken they were.
Excel she did; day and night, she studied, forsaking all interaction with her fellow students to bury herself within textbooks and incantations. When the mocking started, she turned the tables around, growing sassy and sarcastic, earning a reputation as the class clown outside the lecture hall. A host of nicknames sprung up around the strange girl who marched to her own beat; none seemed to stick, however, until a fateful event in her second year. When the casting of a fire spell gone wrong ended with her covered from head to toe in ashes and grit, the name Sooty grew viral, to the point where even some of her teachers assumed it was her real name. Her annoyance at the moniker grew to the point where she felt she had to do something about it, and in a moment of sheer anger, she decided to vengefully cover the entire cafeteria in soot. Her plan worked a little too well; she was almost expelled, but was allowed to stay after no small amount of heartfelt tears and insistent begging, truly afraid for the first time since she had been accepted. While she never once dared push a toe past the line again, the event earned her a reputation as a troublemaker among her fellow students, further marking her as a pariah.
Despite having her highs and lows, Natalie never slipped past the third place in her grade, and even took first on a few occasions, earning the attention of a certain fellow overachiever. The competition between the two was fierce; Natalie could never get along with the school princess Octavia, and worked with burning passion every school term to dethrone her from the top of the grade charts. What was once bitter resentment at assuming Octavia's grades were favored by her connections turned to grudging respect after forced to work with her at a tournament that very same year, where she saw first-hand that the other girl's reputation was well-earned. The duo somehow blazed past every other entrant in the competition through flawless, if unexpected teamwork. Over the following years, arguing and bickering with the blonde came as second nature to her, yet no matter how vitriolic their words grew, the bitterness that rose up within her when other students mocked her seemed strangely absent when Octavia was around. When graduation finally came, she sullenly accepted Octavia's nomination as class valedictorian during the ceremony, but refused to give up; one day, she was determined to surpass her rival. It was no wonder, then, that the two of them were arguing when the world twisted and folded into itself, time shifting backwards in a phenomenon neither of them had any explanation for, leaving them stranded thousands of years back with nothing but the clothes on their back and each other for company.
They carried on arguing anyways.
What had traveling to the past changed? Did her parents even remember her, or had she simply never been born in their new reality, one that was being rewoven with every breath, every step she took having repercussions in a distant future she couldn't possibly foresee? She had no way to know, but one thing was certain; if the name Bouchard became well-known in history, nobody would dare mock her family again.
