F08 - LOCKE-BALDWIN, KATANA 'KAT' [DECEASED]

#1

DECEASED

Name: Katana Morrigan “Kat” Locke-Baldwin
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: Saint Editha Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Watercolour painting, mathematics, gymnastics, playing the guitar, long distance running

Appearance: Kat is a tiny girl, standing at just 5’3” with a slim, svelte figure, causing her weight to stay around 109 lbs. Her only real source of muscle can be found in her legs, which are decently toned from running. She is Caucasian, but tans very easily, meaning she maintains an olive skin tone. She likes to maintain this tan during the winter months by using tanning solution. Kat abstains from using any makeup whatsoever, but she does have a number of piercings. She has both ears pierced three times, a stud piercing in the side of her nose, and a navel piercing.

Kat keeps her hair short and straight in a pixie cut. It is naturally a light brown colour, but she dyed it white a couple of years back on a whim, and because it would annoy her parents. She ended up liking it so much that she’s kept it that way ever since. Kat has a small, rounded face, with thin lips to match her thin eyebrows, dark brown eyes and an average sized nose. She is nearsighted, and so uses contact lenses to deal with this. Occasionally, she’ll wear coloured contacts in colours such as red or purple, simply to confuse and unnerve people.

When it comes to her wardrobe, Kat has two aims in mind; to try and confuse people, and to try and dress as differently to her parents as possible. She mixes and matches feminine and masculine clothing frequently, and it is highly unlikely that she’ll wear the same style of outfit two days running. Her wardrobe is filled with dresses, t-shirts, collared shirts and tank tops for her upper half, as well as skirts, shorts, trousers and jeans for her lower half. She also has a number of hoodies, cardigans and peacoats for the colder months. The one rule she does have, however, is that she’ll never buy anything that has any sort of logo or reference on it; her parents constantly wear t-shirts with references to whatever anime or video games they’re watching, and Kat wants to distance herself from them in this regard as much as possible. One of her favourite outfits is a maroon waistcoat over a white collared shirt, complete with a navy blue tie, worn in conjunction with a knee length skirt, also in maroon, with a belt and a pair of black dress shoes to complete things.

Kat wore her full school uniform on the day of the abduction, which included her blazer, skirt, and neatly presented tie, with the only additions she made being her piercings and a purple pansy in the lapel of her blazer.

Biography: Jacob Baldwin and Tina Locke were a couple of secondary school sweethearts, and practically everyone around them predicted they would be married within a few years of leaving school. The pair went to the same university, and the predictions quickly proved to be true, as they became engaged two months after graduating. A year later, Tina gave birth to the Locke-Baldwin’s first and only child, Katana.

Whilst Jacob and Tina were perfectly suited for each other, they were, unfortunately, very clearly unprepared for taking care of a child. Kat’s full name, for example, was chosen thanks to her parents’ love of video games, anime and manga, drawing inspiration from some of their favourite JRPGs. If anyone asked about the origins of her names, however, they would state that they chose them based on their love of world history and mythology.

Kat’s parents also provided her with the very bare minimum of love and support; they fed her and provided her clothing and shelter, but little more than that. They struggled to give her emotional support whenever she was upset, and preferred to sit her down with a drink and a snack in front of the TV, rather than play with her. Whenever Tina and Jacob brought Kat with them to visit family or friends, they would act like perfect parents, doting on her and talking about how smart and special she was, but as soon as they were back at home, they would return to their previous state of practically ignoring their daughter. Kat spent a large portion of her early years in a confused and hurt state, wondering why she wasn’t shown the same amount of love and attention constantly.

Due to her emotional neglect, Kat was very quiet, shy, and withdrawn for her first few years of school. Her classmates struggled to get close to her, as she would retreat back into her shell as soon as they became friendly, worried that their friendliness was as much of an act as her parents’ performances outside of home. She preferred to spend her time alone, drawing or painting studiously. Although she was deeply unhappy for these years, this love of art would persist with Kat for the rest of her life.

Gradually, Kat began to realize that those classmates who had attempted to reach out to her actively did want to be friends with her, as they continued to attempt to include her in their activities and group work. She began, slowly, to reciprocate this, talking more and being more and more open as time passed. There were a few of her peers who had given up on her and lost interest, but the majority of them, along with her teachers, were happy to see Kat beginning to flourish. She quickly formed a tightknit circle of friends, and would spend the majority of her time with them at break or after school.

However, Kat’s growing social circle, along with the way her friends’ parents acted whenever she went round to their houses, morphed her hurt and confusion towards her own parents’ actions into bitter resentment towards them. She realised that the way they treated her and acted towards her weren’t normal, and that they were the reason behind why she had felt so unhappy for so long. Rather than attempting to talk with them about it, Kat began to treat them with the same level of respect that they had shown her. This manifested in a number of different ways, ranging from her refusing to go by her full name whenever she wasn’t at home, to making sure her style of clothes differed from her parents’ usual attire of hoodies and jeans when she started buying her own clothes. She would also intentionally toe the line with any rules or regulations they placed, such as leaving her shoes lying about the house rather than in the shoe rack. Jacob and Tina would reprimand her, but a combination of their apathy towards parenthood and the fact that it didn’t stop her in the slightest meant that they stopped doing so very quickly.

Kat’s desire to distance herself from her parents as much as possible meant that she also shunned any of their hobbies or interests; most namely, video games, anime and cartoons, and comic books. Whenever she visited a friend, she would make it clear she had no interest in doing anything relating to any of these hobbies. This caused a few more of her peers to lose interest in her and stop talking to her, as she was unable to talk about many tv shows and a great number of movies with them, but she was far too invested in cutting all connections to her parents to care.

In this drive to be as unlike her parents as possible, Kat began looking towards sporting activities to try out, as neither Jacob nor Tina had any physical inclinations in the slightest. Although she didn’t find most of the sports taught during PE enjoyable, such as hockey or netball, she still managed to strike gold in the class when they moved to practicing athletics. In particular, she was drawn towards running; it was a sport that was simple to understand and to get into, and the adrenaline of running managed to distract her from any issues going on in her life, particularly when she began to develop and focus on her breathing techniques. As her interest in running grew, Kat joined an athletics club outside of school. She didn’t have the raw speed of some of her other classmates, but she did have an impressive amount of stamina, especially for her small size, so she gravitated towards long-distance running rather than sprinting. Since joining the club, she has participated in a number of marathons and half-marathons, and has taken to waking up early at the weekends to go for practice runs around the neighbourhood, before many people are awake.

The other physical activity that caught Kat’s eye was gymnastics, thanks to an extra-curriculum club that Saint Editha offered. Her interest in the sport stemmed from watching gymnastics championships on TV and wanting to pull off the impressive manoeuvres that professional gymnasts were able to do. Thanks to the gymnastics coach who ran the club, who was eager to teach and supportive of each and every one of her club members, Kat was able to seamlessly ease into this new sport. The majority of her effort went towards the uneven bars, as that was the gymnastics event that she had found the most impressive whilst watching it on TV. She turned out to be very adapt at the event, surprising even herself, and her coach mentioned on a number of occasions that she could very easily take first place in any competitions she took part in.

However, it quickly became apparent that Kat’s athletics and gymnastics clubs schedules would frequently clash, and she was forced to decide which club she wanted to dedicate more of her time towards. She quickly decided upon spending more time with her running; it was the sport she had picked up first, and she was also considering taking it up full time after graduating, whereas gymnastics felt more like a hobby she enjoyed a lot. She still trains with the gymnastics team when she can, but thanks to missing several sessions, she has slipped from being a dead cert for winning contests to merely a good gymnast. Whilst her coach was disappointed, she still enjoyed Kat’s presence, and continued to help and assist her to the best of her ability. Some of her teammates, however, considered Kat choosing athletics over gymnastics as a betrayal, and stopped talking to her, or insulted her behind her back.

A few years back, the Lockes and the Baldwins held a family gathering over Easter at the house of Kat’s Uncle Daniel. She spent most of her time with her uncle, and her cousin Allison, desperate to stay away from her parents and their act of caring about her. Allison had recently started practicing the guitar under Daniel’s tutorage, and they spent a good few hours playing some of the songs they’d practiced together, before teaching Kat some simple chords and the first few notes of those songs. By the time Kat and her parents left the gathering, she was hooked, and eager to be able to play the guitar herself. She began saving up for an acoustic guitar of her own, occasionally sneaking into the music department at school over lunch to practice with any spare guitars left there. She finally saved up enough money a few months back to purchase a guitar of her own, and she is dedicated to becoming proficient at it. She gets music lessons from the mother of one of her friends, and she practices every single night for at least an hour. Whilst Kat mostly practices the songs she’s taught during her lessons, she also attempts to play the opening riffs to songs she hears on the radio.

Kat does well at school, for the most part. She has around average intelligence, but is very focused on her work, and doesn’t get distracted from it, or disheartened if she gets an answer wrong. She is also very determined to do well at school, as her parents essentially coasted through school and university by barely scraping passing grades, so she very rarely gets anything lower than a B- grade. However, her teachers have stated that Kat doesn’t work well in groups, as she can become domineering and dismissive towards other peoples ideas, and she also rarely answers or asks questions during class, as she prefers to work things out in her head by herself.

Kat’s best subject is maths. She enjoys the logical aspect of it, the mental fortitude required to work out some of the most difficult problems, and the fact that maths encompasses so many different areas. Whenever she has a maths class, she’ll sit down and blitz through all the problems put in front of her, covering her notebook in workings out and answers. On more than one occasion, she’s been so focused on her work that she hasn’t noticed the teacher talking to her, or the bell signifying the end of class. She also enjoys maths and logic puzzles such as sudoku and futoshiki, and often has a couple of puzzle books in her bag at any given time.

Her other best subject is art, as her love of drawing and painting to help deal with her loneliness and sadness as a child carried on throughout her life. Her favourite medium to use has always been watercolour paints; she’s always had a knack for how to effectively paint with them, and a lifetime of using them means she’s a near expert at avoiding common issues, such as having two colours bleed together. When Kat isn’t hanging out with friends or practicing the guitar during lunch, she can be found in the art rooms, working on her latest piece. Her art teachers have noted that Kat’s work always seems to have a rather melancholy air to it, with a trend towards blues and greys.

One of the main reasons that Kat spends a lot of her lunchtimes working on her hobbies is the fact that her circle of friends is very small. She’s part of the popular crowd, but is only actual friends with a handful of people there currently; she’s only really part of it due to being friends with the majority of them as a child. Her issues with her parents, and her almost permanently bitter mood, have led to her putting herself first and for her to have a rather grim outlook on life. She’s perfectly decent if you’re not close to her, returning waves and ‘hellos’ in the corridor, but issues crop up whenever people get closer to her. Kat tends to be very selfish and thoughtless, borrowing things from her friends and never giving them back, and making jokes and jibes at their expense which can end up being seriously hurtful. She’s also known for being a bit of a hypocrite, as if anybody hurts her in this way, she’ll end up holding a grudge for a long time. The biggest issue is that Kat has a lot of difficulties in knowing when she’s hurt somebody, and when she does, she also struggles to work out what she did or said to hurt them, as her parents’ emotional neglect has skewed her ability of how to treat other people correctly. This, in turn, frustrates Kat further, as she truly doesn’t understand what she did wrong whenever she loses a friend.

Those who manage to stick with Kat, or those who can put up with her jibes and selfish nature, have found that she can be a surprising source of calm whenever they’re upset or worried, as she is naturally sympathetic towards people in a bad state of mind. She’s very effective at talking with them and discussing their problems, as she is able to think them through logically, and offer effective solutions. Even then, she’s managed to hurt those people closest to her, sometimes offering helpful advice and then instantly following it up with a joke that hits too close to home.

Kat’s relationship with her parents has, if anything, deteriorated dramatically over the years. They barely speak to each other at home, and Kat has absolutely no interest in bridging the rift between them. She believes her personality issues to stem entirely from their emotional neglect, and as they don’t appear to care about it or about her, or about making amends, she doesn’t see their relationship being mended even if she did.

Kat has a wealth of options for when she graduates. She plans on going to university, and has several in mind, with several different courses to go for. She’s currently leaning towards studying maths, with her heart set on Durham University, whilst keeping her running and painting hobbies active through clubs. However, she also has the option of pursuing a sports or arts degree at a different university, and she is keeping her options open for another few weeks at least.

Advantages: Kat has a lot of stamina, and whilst she doesn’t have a sprinter’s speed, she’s still faster than a lot of her classmates. She will be able to run for a lot longer than most people, and thus escape any pursuers. She will also be able to walk for long periods of time without getting exhausted, making long treks across the arena much less daunting. She is good at offering logical and helpful advice to people who are stressed out and in a bad state of mind, which could help any allies she encounters. Kat also prioritises herself over others, so when push comes to shove, she may find it easier to cut people loose or commit selfish acts to further her own survival.
Disadvantages: However, Kat’s chances of getting new allies are very slim, as she has a habit of being unintentionally unpleasant to people, via making fun at their expense or being inconsiderate and snide. She’s well known for this around school, as well, and has plenty of people who dislike her and distrust her, as well as several out and out enemies. Kat holds grudges for a long time, often over petty issues, which could mess with her mentally and lead her to making poor decisions. She’s also a very bitter and disillusioned person, which can often get the better of her and put her in a very poor headspace, which could also cloud her judgement and decision making.

Designated Number: Female Student #8

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Designated Weapon: Bubble gun painted to look like a real gun
Conclusion: Someone pushing through circumstances to become more than their nerdy-ass parents, that's practically the American Dream right there. Here's hoping she doesn't mouth off to the wrong person and snided upside the head.

DECEASED