Age: 23
Gender: Female (She/Her)
Field of Study: Oceanography
Physical Description: Kay is a notable presence on campus, as she stands at a height of 6’4”, a fact that she greatly dislikes. Because of this, she frequently slouches or hunches over when sitting and standing, giving her very bad posture. She is Caucasian, but she maintains a rather ruddy sailor’s tan across her face, neck, arms and legs. This also serves to make the freckles that cover her arms and shoulders even more prominent.
For most of her life, Kay has been rail thin, with some lean muscle in her arms and legs thanks to her time spent on the ocean. Since starting at university, she has put on some more weight, weighing in at 175lbs, and so while she is still thin and lanky, the muscle definition in her arms and shoulders is now more prominent than before. Kay is completely flat-chested, and so uses push-up bras that she also occasionally further stuffs with items of clothing, in order to try and stave away dysphoria. She has a tattoo on her left shoulder, which depicts the ‘Free the Soul’ logo from ‘Virtue’s Last Reward’, inked in red.
Kay has an oval face shape, with full lips, a short nose with a straight bridge, and rather dull grey eyes that normally have bags under them due to her poor sleeping schedule. She is short-sighted, and wears a pair of rectangular glasses with thick, black plastic frames to correct her vision. Her freckles extend onto the back of her neck, onto her cheeks, and across her nose. Kay has thick, dark brown eyebrows that constantly threaten to meet in the middle; she usually plucks them to prevent this, but she often gets lazy and uses a razor instead. She also shaves daily, but her sensitive skin often leaves her with a number of nicks and cuts along her jawline and on her neck. Kay also suffers from acne, particularly on her forehead and chin.
Kay has light brown hair that she has been growing out for the past few years; it currently reaches down to her shoulders, with her bangs parted roughly to the left, almost entirely covering her left eye. It is very curly and fluffy, particularly towards the tips, and while she does her best to look after it, washing it frequently with shampoo and conditioner, she is notably inexperienced in caring for hair of the length hers currently is. She generally does little more than run a brush through it each morning, and so it often ends up quite frizzy and messy, with plenty of flyaway hair.
When it comes to her choices in clothing, Kay aims for comfort and little else. This normally takes the form of a simple t-shirt, hoody or sweater, and distressed jeans. She favours colours like blues and dark greens in everything she wears. Kay owns a couple of pairs of ankle-length skirts, but she only wears these in situations that she knows she’ll feel comfortable and safe in. She also likes wearing a tank top and shorts while in private, as she did so a lot when she was back in Wales, but she is too nervous and self-conscious of her appearance to do so in public nowadays. She doesn’t feel confident enough in applying makeup to wear it, but she does enjoy wearing simple pieces of jewellery, such as bracelets and pendants.
When she was abducted, Kay was wearing a black t-shirt featuring the cover art for the Justice album † in gold, along with a pair of dark blue distressed jeans. She wore a navy-blue woollen cable knit jumper over the top of her t-shirt, which had a large anchor pattern knitted into the front of it. She wore dark grey hiking boots, and a pair of mismatched socks; one purple, one light blue. For accessories, she wore a pendant with a small metal anchor attached, and a thick golden bracelet on her left wrist; a replica of Apollo Justice’s bracelet from the titular game.
Background:
- Kay was born in Newcastle Emlyn, Wales, to Graham Poultier and Dani Sargent. Her father works in a supermarket, while her mother works as a solicitor. She has no siblings, and no pets. Her parents are currently separated, and are not on speaking terms; Kay has not even seen her mother for the past four years.
- Kay was assigned male at birth, and identified as such for most of her life. While she experienced some uncertainty and discomfort over various aspects of herself, such as her body, her voice, and her birth name, she didn’t fully start questioning her gender identity until she was in sixth form. She came out publicly shortly after starting university, and is currently not taking any form of HRT.
- Graham had grown up in a small fishing village, and so had a great love of the sea. On his days off, and on many evenings after work, he would drive up to areas such as Llangrannog, Mwnt, and Gwbert, towing his RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) with him. Kay was curious about her father’s trips to the coast, and so would often tag along with him, whenever her school schedule allowed.
- Kay was immediately transfixed by the ocean and the Welsh coastline, falling in love with the sensation of being by the shore from her very first trip up to Penbryn. She would spend large parts of each outing simply staring, starry-eyed, out towards the horizon or at the cliffside, taking in everything that she saw and heard.
- Graham was absolutely delighted that Kay shared his love of the sea, and as she grew older, he began to teach her more about his hobby. This started off with simple things such as teaching her how to tie knots, sharing his binoculars with her to watch seabirds, and letting her drop anchor, and eventually led to him teaching her how to row the boat, and how to steer it using the outboard motor. Kay has a photo, sealed in an envelope and secured at the bottom of her desk drawer, taken after the first time she successfully piloted the boat from Llangranog to Penbryn.
- Kay also enjoyed swimming in the ocean, something she did on many occasions when her father dropped anchor to watch birds or read in peace in the boat. She loved the feeling of floating in the ocean, in how different it felt to swimming in a pool, and the entrancing sense of isolation she got from it, particularly when they were further away from the shore and away from other people. She always followed her father’s advice when it came to swimming, however, and never swam out of sight or range of the boat.
- On days where the weather was too treacherous or the water was too choppy to launch the boat, Graham and Kay would still occasionally drive down to the coast to a surfboard rent shop and surf school, run by a family friend. While her dad preferred to spend his time in the nearby cafe, Kay was as eager to learn how to surf as she was to experience every other aspect of the ocean. She spent more time in the water than she did on her board, but she enjoyed each lesson regardless; she was eager to develop her skills further, and most importantly she loved spending time on the water.
- Graham would always play music in the truck on the drive to the coast, and while Kay detested the majority of it, she found that she was a lot more fond of the rare instances of electronic music he played, which mostly consisted of music from the late 90s and early 2000s. She enjoyed it because she found it a lot more distinct when compared to the rest of the music he listened to, and that the genre led itself to a much greater variety of songs. Her phone is filled with music by groups such as Daft Punk and Justice, which she will listen to on long journeys or while doing coursework.
- For much of her time at school, Kay was decently liked, but never particularly reached any great heights of popularity. She was quiet, kept mostly to herself, and was reluctant to engage with her classmates. While she would happily talk with them if they attempted to interact with her, and did enjoy spending time with them and going to events and parties with them, she would often get cold feet at the last moment and make a snap decision to stay at home or drive down to the coast, which ended up giving her a reputation as a very flaky person.
- For most of her teenage years, Kay only played video games sporadically, mostly at the recommendations of friends and mostly on her phone. While idly scrolling through the app store one day, she came across the Ace Attorney Trilogy, and on a whim, decided to download it. She was struck by how different it was compared to most of the mobile or PC games that she had played before, and fell in love with the writing and the character-driven narratives that the games provided. She quickly sought out and downloaded similar games, such as the remaining Ace Attorney games, Danganronpa, and the Zero Escape series. Although she only realised it in hindsight, the female characters in these games, Ace Attorney in particular, were a formative part of her realising her gender identity, as she would often idly wish she could be just like Maya Fey or Ema Skye.
- Unfortunately, Dani and Graham’s relationship began to deteriorate as Kay progressed through secondary school. Graham wished to move closer to the coast, as he felt he was stuck in a dead-end job and didn’t see a future for himself in Newcastle Emlyn, while Dani was perfectly happy where she was, and had no interest in boating or any of Graham’s other hobbies. She accused him of spending too much time out at sea and not with her, and began to drink heavily, frequently interrogating him as to whether he was cheating on her. This led to Graham spending even more time out of the house, and Kay would spend most of her time either looked in her room with her headphones on at max volume, or out at the coast herself once she learned to drive.
- During these moments, Kay would also play strategy video games such as Stellaris and Civilisation V to keep her attention away from her parents’ relationship issues. She enjoyed these sorts of games, as they would keep her attention for hours on end for a single campaign, and the growing number of tasks and events in each game kept her mind occupied and allowed her to block out any issues from outside the game itself. However, this came with the downside that she would frequently focus so much on her gaming that she put off or forgot about important homework until the last minute, causing her grades to steadily drop.
- Kay also came to realise that she was transgender while she was in sixth form, something that she severely struggled to deal with at first. She had realised that she had grown more and more uncomfortable showing skin and especially changing into her usual swim trunks, instead preferring to use her surfboarding wetsuit whenever she went out onto the ocean. She was even quieter, feeling uncomfortable and upset whenever she heard her own voice, and she began to grow dismayed whenever her given name and masculine pronouns were used for her.
- Despite the issues with her family and her gender identity, Kay managed to scrape together some decent final grades for her A-Levels. Completely uncertain as to what she should do after graduating, Kay enrolled at Swansea University, pursuing a computer science degree she only had limited interest in, partially in order to get some respite from the issues with her home life. Her time there was a disaster, however, as she struggled to engage with her courses and spent almost all of her time in her dorm room, lost in her own thoughts and distracted from work that piled up. She made very few friends, and would often spend long, sleepless nights, trying to grapple with her gender identity. She eventually had a full breakdown two-thirds of the way through her first year at university, unable to take things any longer, and dropped out.
- Kay returned home to Newcastle Emlyn to live with Graham, who had split with Dani whilst Kay had been in Swansea. She spent the next four years drifting aimlessly, spending all of her time either out at sea, locked in her room listening to music and playing video games, or at work at a variety of part-time or odd jobs. She couldn’t bring herself to be interested in any of the jobs she found herself in, however, and would often miss shifts, mess up simple tasks, or leave things unfinished, causing her to be fired multiple times. She took up smoking to try and alleviate the stress, which seemed to help calm her down somewhat, and she continued to do so to this day, always carrying a couple of packets of cigarettes on her person. She currently gets through half a packet per day, and while she knows it's a bad habit, the stress relief it brings her is too great for her to consider giving it up.
- Eventually, in a desperate drive to change her life and stop herself from being utterly miserable, Kay started to look for other avenues that she could pursue. She wanted to leave Wales entirely, as despite loving the coastline and her time spent out at sea, everything about her home left a bad taste in her mouth, and she felt as though a drastic course of action was the only way to help herself. She wanted to remain by the coast, and she saw multiple articles online praising the University of Cascadia; when she realised that it featured an oceanography course, her mind was set. Her father was incredibly sad to let her leave, but he understood her design, and fully supported it.
- Since enrolling at the University of Cascadia, Kay has found some measure of happiness that she had struggled to find while in Newcastle Emlyn. She came out publicly as transgender, including to her father who continued to support her wholeheartedly, and started presenting as female. She gets to spend a lot of time outside, on and in the water, which she appreciates greatly, although she does still miss the oceans and coastline of Wales.
- Because she doesn't get to spend as much time rowing or hauling her father's boat into the ocean nowadays, Kay has started exercising in her dorm room to keep herself fit and healthy. While this started off as a sporadic series of light exercises that she would perform every few days when she found the time to do so, her workout routine is something that her innate discipline has truly latched onto. Her routine now includes lifting weights and using a rowing machine that her father bought her as an early birthday gift, and she will exercise regardless every single day, no matter what. She finds the routine to be an excellent way to distract herself whenever she is getting caught up in her own head or feeling particularly stressed out.
- Kay still deals with self-esteem and self-image issues, however, that can cause her to shut herself away and refuse interaction with anybody. She has the same issues as she did in secondary school, where she will cancel plans at the last minute or fail to show up to parties or group projects, and so her labels of flaky and unreliable have followed her to the USA. She does decently well in her classes, especially as she has a huge love for the subject she is now taking, but she still has moments when she will fail to discipline herself and focus on the coursework she should be doing.
- Kay’s main friendship group at university comes from a board game group she is part of. She joined as she felt that playing board games would be similar to playing strategy computer games, and that it would be a good way to allow her to spend time with people and take her focus away from her mental health and self-worth issues.
- Kay joined the expedition as soon as she caught wind of it; even outside of the benefits that participating in it would provide her academically, the chance of travelling via boat and spending two weeks on an island close to the ocean was everything she could have possibly dreamed of.
Assets: Kay can be an incredibly disciplined person when she sets her mind to it; when she forces herself to perform a task, to ignore all distractions, and to see it through to completion, she will do so to the very best of her abilities. She has above-average body strength and stamina, which could assist her in a fight or in other physical situations. Kay is also incredibly experienced in and around water, and is a talented swimmer, which may provide some help to her. She is used to cold weather situations, and is less affected by low temperatures than many of her peers. She will have brought a good supply of cigarettes with her for the trip, which may help to calm her down during stressful situations.
Limitations: However, if Kay is unable to discipline herself or force herself to focus on something, then she will be incredibly easily distracted, lost in her own thoughts and inside her head, and greatly unaware of her surroundings. She can also very easily set her focus on a task that isn’t immediately vital, and ignore the much more important things that she should be doing in order to complete it. Kay has depression, and very low self-esteem, and so making a mistake or failing at something could easily put her into a very bad mental space. She has a reputation for being quiet, a little odd, and very flaky, which could make her seem untrustworthy to others. Finally, while Kay's supply of cigarettes should help alleviate her stress to a degree, if she runs out or loses them, she will no longer have this method of relief, and could easily encounter nicotine withdrawal syndromes.
