A08: NATHANIEL LARSON

#1

Name: Nathaniel “Nate” Larson
Gender: Male
Age: 19
Hobbies and Interests: Video games, cooking, coding, old website design

Appearance: Nate stands at 5’9”, average for a man of his age and ethnicity, though standing significantly taller than the rest of his family as a result of his Klinefelter syndrome. He weighs 197 pounds, which is considered mildly overweight, owed to his sedentary lifestyle. Likewise, because of Klinefelter syndrome, most of his fat is distributed in a feminine pattern, concentrating in his upper legs and breasts, the latter of which creates a mild case of gynecomastia. He has a softer, rounded face, light gray eyes, and light blonde hair that is beginning to gray at the top and in streaks due to a combination of stress and heredity. His hair is wavy and shaggy, reaching just below his chin. His skin is a very pale color, prone to flushing red, and he wears rounded square glasses. In the real world, he typically wears sweatpants and loose jackets in teals and greys, his preferred colors.

Where his Avatar diverges most significantly from his real-life appearance are in his hair and eyes. Nate’s Avatar’s hair is entirely a silvery-gray, simulating what his hair may look like once the process of graying has completed in real life. His eyes are magenta instead of gray, and his pupils are replaced with a lighter shade of magenta that forms the “power on/off” symbol on most computers. In Cyber Reality, Nate’s glasses are shaded, appearing more like sunglasses. He also wears headphones of a teal color with two small pale cyan horns on the top, mimicking short, rounded devil horns. Nate does not typically bother to change his clothing in Cyber Reality, but he can occasionally be spotted sporting gear from the Splatoon franchise. On the day of the hijacking, Nate was wearing a teal hoodie with a small magenta sparkle logo on the right breast, a white shirt, gray sweatpants, and gray boots that are modeled to resemble the Pro Trail Boots from Splatoon. He was also wearing his signature headphones and a light grey scarf.

Background: Nathaniel Larson was born to Liam and Adina Larson in St. Paul, Alaska, on December 20, 2003. Adina, maiden name Tambor, is of Portuguese Sephardic descent; Liam is of Nordic descent, primarily Swedish. Both families had been in the United States for generations. Liam made a living as a commercial fisherman, and as such was away from home for months at a time. Adina was a general practitioner and worked at the island’s clinic. Adina had grown up on St. Paul and Liam had moved there at the age of 15 upon his father’s transfer to a fishing company located there. Liam was not present for much of Nate’s infancy, or childhood in general, which eventually drove a wedge between the couple despite Adina having acknowledged that possibility. Consequently, Adina and her parents were Nate’s primary caretakers for his first five years.

Adina was a caring parent and had her parents to fall back on when work became overwhelming. Her loving nature reflected conventionally in the disposition of her son; Nate was a sunny child who rarely cried or threw tantrums. He was born with Klinefelter syndrome, but that does not impact his health or social stature to any significant degree. He was outgoing and easily made friends with the few other children his age there. But as Nate grew older, Adina had her concerns regarding how her son would fare in such a small school district. This combined with their need for greater financial stability and independence sparked talks of moving to Unalaska, another significant commercial fishing center with a higher population. They moved from St. Paul to Unalaska when Nate was five years old. Life in Unalaska, aside from the population shift, was largely the same for the Larsons. Adina’s brother Samuel had two children by then: a daughter named Alice, three years older than Nate, and a son named Ethan, about the same age. That group of the family had moved from St. Paul to San Jose, California. Nate would connect with his cousins through the internet, aided by his mother, sparking a fascination with technology and the internet. Later, Nate and his relatives would transition to using Cyber Reality based platforms, though his mother in particular never truly became used to the technology.

Nate’s entrance into schooling went well. He proved to be an adept learner and was quick to make friends. Adina was relieved by the sociability of her son despite her work hours giving her little time to care for him. Instead, that responsibility would fall to Ariella Villanueva, a friend of Adina’s. Even after this arrangement became no longer necessary, Adina would continue to try to organize playdates between Nate and Ariella’s son, Arjun. They slowly opened up to one another, and Ariella offered a shoulder of support for the family.

Nate, meanwhile, was attempting to find forums for kid-friendly shooter games on his new Cyber Reality-compatible platform, where began interacting with two other users who he started to play the game with. These two friends, who he came to know as April and Thursday, quickly became better friends to Nate than Arjun had ever been to him; between them and Ethan, Nate no longer felt a need to interact with his graduating class. His slow withdrawal from social life was noticed by his peers, but as Nate wasn’t a particularly close friend to any of them, little change resulted from the process aside from some mild concern.

Upon his entrance into middle school, Nate was approached by Arjun, who, though awkwardly, made it clear that he wanted to try being friends again. He had expressed a surprising amount of concern when Nate began to retreat from social life, something Nate was surprised and touched by. Because of this, Nate accepted, but it became clear quickly that Arjun’s behavior was dissimilar to that of Nate’s other friends. Arjun had feelings of inferiority and admiration in equal part, developing a sort of hate crush on his friend that led to him lashing out by spreading rumors about Nate's sexuality to the class at large. As these rumors began to take hold, Nate's social position within his class began to deteriorate and their treatment of him began to shut him out and treat him in awkward ways that he noticed. Arjun would become more bold with time, leading their friendship to become openly confrontational as Nate put together what was happening.

The behavior culminated in a confrontation one lunch period when Nate left the cafeteria to use the bathroom and returned to find his bag’s contents on the floor, with his tablet missing and the entire cafeteria staring at him. Impulse having overtaken him, he left class an hour later, found Arjun’s bag, and rifled through its contents, finding not his tablet but a house key. Nate, in his hot-headedness, ran out of the school with Arjun’s key with no concrete intent of what revenge he wished to exact. He barged into Arjun’s room, but to his unfortunate surprise, found Ariella there. Nate dropped the key and left the house. But by the time Arjun had arrived home, news had spread of what happened. Ariella chose not to push a case or publicize the incident, but Arjun spread the news among the class, causing some other students to punch down on Nate as well. Liam, meanwhile, apathetically suggested that his son learn to defend himself.

Nate, who had never before considered his orientation, completely retreated into himself regarding the topic, but a saving grace had supposedly arrived in the form of Katerina Moran. Katerina, another girl his age, had offered to be Nate’s girlfriend, though not on romantic terms; more-so, it was an agreement to conceal Nate’s reported sexual orientation. Going public about their ‘relationship’ caused the taunting to die down considerably. Additionally, the smaller nature of the community, while not completely rectifying the issue, helped to stifle the taunting, especially as accusations spread to more and more students. Though his reputation never recovered from the prior incident with Arjun, the male students consistent in their avoidance of him, the mockery itself subsided with the passage of time. Dating Katerina only proved to Nate that he had no interest in women; it was a difficult realization that his online friends helped him to come to terms with, having already accepted their own queerness and having come from more accepting school environments.

Nate slowly began to adopt a more misanthropic view of society as a result of the bullying, but for a time, things stabilized. He was able to come out to his supportive parents, he had a positive relationship with his friends, and was generally left alone at school; targeting Nate had grown old. He had begun to associate the internet with safety regardless. His mother ended up enabling his overuse of the internet and Cyber Reality as a means to make him happy. He also developed considerably ‘online’ interests during this period, such as the old internet and old web design, fascinations that stick with him to this day.

Just about when he started to clear the air with old friends, though, Katerina decided to reveal that Nate, in fact, actually was gay. She did so by leaking a recording of the phone call where he had admitted this during prom. A fight broke out, and Katerina spilled punch on herself to look like the victim. Though about half of the students in his grade, having grown into more understanding perspectives, developed a degree of animosity towards Katerina for revealing that, the other half, including students from a grade or two above Nate, once again took note of him as a target of derision. Even though many students were disillusioned with Katerina’s behavior, few of them trusted Nate after his confrontation with Arjun, meaning that no peer came to his defense. Having had his trust shattered twice in a row, he transformed into a hostile person, the repeated behavior drastically altering his view of other people.

Taking his father’s words to heart, Nate tried to defend himself; this led to him preemptively picking fights with the people who he identified as threats, only extending his mockery. His refusal to back down from being called gay worked against him in that it gave peers further reason to mock him. His grades fell off a cliff as he was constantly wary of some kind of attack rather than working or studying. Though Adina pleaded with the school to do something, the parents of the bullies began to complain about their children missing school due to suspension affecting their income and employment. Additionally, as Nate was now behaving as an aggressor, whether motivated by self defense or not, he started to be punished for his behavior as well, something that deeply embittered him. As none of the students could be expelled due to the school being the only one on the island, the administration struggled to cope with the situation, until a concretely expel-worthy situation happened: a full-on brawl between Nate and another student, two years his senior, immediately after school let out for the day. Nate lost, and this incident prevented him from returning to the school for the rest of the year.

Adina was sent into a panicked frenzy by this development, forcing Liam to take time off to care for them both. Nate, meanwhile, spent all of his time in bed. He stopped reporting his personal situation to even Thursday and April, who were going through tribulations of their own; though he listened to their vents and offered support, there was nothing that he could truly do at such a time to help them. Tiffany, though, tried to aid Nate despite his distrust of her. Thursday and April came to help him after being informed by Tiffany of the truth of Nate’s situation, but felt off-put by his newly hostile behavior and attitudes towards other people in general. Still, they knew that Nate could not afford them pulling away at such a crucial period in his life.

Nate, meanwhile, started to separate his online identity from his real-life identity, the two becoming so irreconcilable in received attitudes that it began to cause dissociative episodes. He struggled significantly with his sense of self, and his level of escape into the internet became unhealthy enough to the point where he would spend up to fifteen hours a day deeply entrenched in online culture. His sleep schedule fell out of its regular cycle, too. A spike in aggression, possibly as a result of this behavior, was noted by both parents. He spent most of his time escaping into Cyber Reality, worlds where he imagined or felt he could have power and control while he languished in the lack of it.

Adina was beginning to crack under the pressure of conflict and her son’s worsening mental state. no longer able to bear all of this stress alone, she moved with Nate to San Jose for the family support and to get away from life in Unalaska. Liam moved down with them after completing a trip two months later, and both secured positions in their preexisting respective fields. Liam was not able to support Adina emotionally very well, and their marriage is beginning to deteriorate, something that Nate is currently too absorbed in Cyber Reality to consider much. Nate’s friend group began to deteriorate, too, from mutual stress partially caused by Nate’s situation; April, however, was successful in keeping the group together through this period of stress. She created an official Splatoon team for them, intending for it to serve as a glue for their friendship, and it remains what they bond most over and the game that Nate spends most of his time playing.

Nate began attending Sycamore High School in his second ninth grade year at the age of fifteen. As a consequence of his month of absence from school as well as low grades, he was forced to retake the ninth grade. He took very well to the new-to-him system of school in Cyber Reality, feeling far more comfortable and at peace there. His move to San Jose set a positive trend for his academic performance, able to work up to the B and C range by eleventh grade. Though he does not spend much time on the school’s server in particular, having a bit of an angry and impatient personality that is not conducive to extra activities there, he spends almost all of his school and free time in Cyber Reality.

Though Nate is starting to mellow out, he still harbors resentment and negative ideas about schooling. He continues to be close with his mother, and is still on good terms with Ethan. He does not yet know whether or not he will pursue college. Nate developed a resistance to the outdoors, spending all of his time in Cyber Reality or otherwise online when he was not at school. To placate his mother regarding this, he handles all of the chores in the house for her while she is at work of his own volition. Nate continues to play competitive games with his online friends, spending most of his leisure time doing so. Their relationships with one another are currently strong. He also occasionally spends time with Ethan. He aims to work in Cyber Reality in the future, citing what he believes to have been a significantly positive impact on his identity and mood, but has made no significant effort towards this goal aside from dabbling in basic coding.

Personality: Nate, first and foremost, is a defensive person. Preferring the company of those he knows to those he doesn’t, he is inclined to introversion, shy, and quick to snap if provoked. Nate’s aggression and anger is an extension of his defensiveness, and a measure he has adopted in order to protect himself against threats that usually are not there. He is easily flustered and takes incredibly unkindly to jokes; though on paper logical and intelligent, he is easily thrown off-balance and particularly bad at adapting to new situations. Nate is used to his comforts: his friends, his family, and his games. When taken outside of that environment, he becomes highly reactive, even if it is insisted by his friends and mother that there’s a softer, kinder soul beneath the front that he projects. And though that soul does exist—one that cares for, tries to help, and pities others—once access to it is lost through any form of betrayal it is nigh-on impossible to regain.

Reputation: Nate does not fraternize much with his peers at Sycamore High School, as he does not have a positive history interacting with others in a schooling environment. Therefore, Nate’s perceived mostly as a loner, even within Cyber Reality, even provided his success with games within it. He is known as someone who does not participate strongly in a school community, and when talked to, puts minimal effort into conversation, coming across as dry and closed off. Additionally, he is never seen during physical classes. When paired up with him in class, he is an effective worker, but little else is known of him beside that.

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Designated Number: A08

Designated Weapon: W-14 — Kolibri Pistol [2.7×9mm Kolibri]
Designated Utility: U-29 — Wallhack Glasses

Evaluation: "Well, well, look at this tyke. It looks like you'll finally have an outlet to vent all that anger and bitterness, A08! If I may give some advice, though, it's this: try not to self-destruct before you have the chance to wreak some havoc. I want some action." — [LINCOLN], Announcer