BLK3: HERGENROEDER, HOLLY [DECEASED]

[T-Fox*]

DECEASED


Name: Holly Hergenroeder
Gender: Female
Age: 16
School: Silver Dragon Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Law, Activism, Smoking Cannabis

Appearance: Holly is a small girl, standing at 5’4” and 130 lbs. She sports a head of medium brown-golden straightened hair that reaches only just down to her breasts, which they are rather small and non-descript. Her eyes are a dull green, almond-shaped and a tiny bit bloodshot from both her pot habit and long nights up studying. Holly’s skin is slightly tan, a gift from her ¼ Native American heritage and time spent walking to and from school in the heavy sun. Light, large freckles dust her face, and she has rather big lips and a gap tooth, which may contribute to her lisp. Her ears also point out slightly so they look big, when in reality they’re no bigger than anyone else’s. She has a small, rounded nose, and her eyelashes are almost non-existent.

She dresses practically, and doesn’t care for make-up. When she was “recruited”, Holly was wearing a white button up shirt, black cotton vest, a checkered skirt with the hem line just below the knee, white socks, black faux-leather lace-up shoes, and a loose hemp bracelet with a forest-green bead woven into the centre, worn on her right wrist.

Biography: Holly was born in Bryan, Texas, to Sparrow, a modern-age hippie, and Alan Hergenroeder, a high-priced lawyer. The two had only been married for 2 months when Holly was born. Sparrow originally lived with her mother on a Klamath reservation, before falling pregnant at a music festival in Oregon to an unknown man, while Alan was visiting said music festival in order to scope out a possible “tree-change”, a change in location from the hectic urban life to a more simple rural life. They impulsively married, but Alan really couldn’t get the feel for rural life, so moved back to Bryan with his new wife, who only had to pack a few sets of clothing and left the rest of her belongings to her mother.

The change in scenery was a great shock to Sparrow, from sharing a house with a fellow group of like-minded individuals to the cold coloured Bryan upscale apartment building, not so much her daughter. Her and Alan named their new child Holly, and already started minor conflicts on the correct way to bring her up. Should she be breast-fed or bottle-fed? How long is too long in the bath? Do they punish her when she does something wrong when she’s clearly not old enough to understand what she’s doing wrong? It always ended up in Sparrow’s favor, and as such it seemed like Alan was only there to pay his wife’s keep, rather than letting him raise a daughter out of the goodness of his heart. He loved her, she loved him, but it seemed like she didn’t want to let anyone touch her daughter.

However, one way in which she couldn’t deny her husband’s input into Holly’s life was the vast selection of private schools available to her. Alan was a wealthy man, he rarely ever lost a case, which meant he made a lot of money. He enrolled Holly in Silver Dragon Academy when she was 5 years of age, and he knew he’d made the right choice. In all her class work, Holly excelled greatly. For the next few years, she was at the top of every class she was in, always beating out one other kid whose overzealous and paranoid parents forced them to study almost every afternoon and every day when they got home. They got jealous of her natural ability, since she was never forced to study or showed any signs of stress. They knew she didn’t come from a wholesome, rich, WASP family like they did, so they began to make fun of her for any trivial reason. She spoke with a lisp, so they started with that. Her lips were kind of big, so that become the hot topic too. If she ever made a mistake in class, they’d make fun of Holly for making a fool of herself. Kids were cruel, and her parents didn’t help every time she’d come home crying. Different advice from each parent; Sparrow told her to ignore them, while Alan tried to toughen her up. Again, this brought the two of them at each other’s throat again, not even caring what Holly had to say about the matter.

One day, Sparrow had enough. She didn’t uproot her entire life to be bossed around by “some yuppie”, so she grabbed all her things (still, only her clothes), stole a few hundred dollars from Alan’s wallet, and left in the middle of the night, trying to move back to her mother’s reservation. Alan only found out a few hours after she’d gone, time spent moping about the lounge room, that Sparrow left Holly behind.

He wasn’t expecting this; he thought that she would have at least taken her own daughter when she left, but now he was left to raise a kid who’d been taught nothing but simple good intentions by her mother from the moment she left the womb. Everything Sparrow taught her did buck-all to prepare her for the harsh reality of growing up. She thought Holly had natural talent and didn’t need to study. She thought if Holly ignored the harsh words, they’d go away. She even thought that there was no point in actually going to school in the first place, since she didn’t even think about the possibility of her daughter becoming a major success or something revolutionary. So Alan was left to correct 9 years of mistakes on his ex-wife’s behalf while preparing her for the business world.

And soon, Holly began to see the same way. She understood now why other parents forced their children to study at all hours, since the work was now getting harder and harder and her grades were gradually slipping until she was only above-average instead of spectacular. This was a competitive school, no denying that now, so Holly knew she had to toughen herself up. Every day, she realized how much optimistic B.S. her mother filled her with, and grew to love her father even more each day. She grew to love him so much that she knew she had to follow in his footsteps, become a lawyer just like him.

The change in personality of this weak-willed, over-optimistic bastard daughter of a lawyer to a quiet, no-nonsense, tough skinned, illegitimate daughter to a lawyer was quite sudden to her classmates, who’s tradition of making fun of the odd girl out was shattered beneath them. This girl was like them now; same overbearing parent, same enforced study schedule, same vigorous homework timetable and study plan for each day of the schooling semester. All throughout her early school years she’d been without friends, but now she started to bloom like hibiscus. Even easier comes puberty, since boys were now finding her “cute” and “nice”, finding any excuse to spend time with her. Her mother’s daughter would have been oblivious to the attention, or maybe even tried to take advantage of it. But Holly was now her father’s daughter, even if not by blood, and she thought the boys were sweet, but not one caught her eye as worth her while. She still had study to do.

Holly’s friends are few by definition. She has a close circle of real good friends who she goes out with occasionally, but she’s one first-name basis with at least everyone in her grade, be they the hipsters who despise the ground she walks on, or the pot heads who she shares a stall with when she becomes overloaded by her life.

When she was 14, Alan announced to her that he was planning on remarrying. Namely, he was engaged to an attractive blonde by the name of Cherrie with more plastic in her body than brain cells whom he picked up 6 months beforehand as his secretary. Suffice to say, this put a bit of a damper on Holly’s home life. Cherrie couldn’t keep her hands off of Alan, and not one sane girl in America wants to study to the sound of her father getting it on with a woman in the next room. She started visiting one of her more “calm” friends to study at their place, avoiding the apartment as much as possible. Holly soon found out why they were so “calm” about the massive amount of work piled onto them at that point in time; he took all the same classes as she did, shouldn’t he be as stressed as she was? It turns out said friend was a pothead, and even offered to hook her up with some stuff to calm her down. She knew the legal implications of cannabis in Texas, she’d even written a report on it for extra credit, so she declined strongly, at least the first few times. Every time she came over, he’d offer to hook her up again, and every time she was closer and closer to considering it. Eventually, once she turned 15, she conceded, and started a healthy bond with the drug. She’d only take it occasionally, never enough to become addicted, and this helped her form a good connection with the Silver Academy stoner crowd. Her grades slipped, but at least she wasn’t beating the hell out of herself every time she picked up a pen. She relaxed for the first time in years, and found some other creative outlets in which she could take up some time not spent studying, doing homework, or just plain working on school.

Holly became a part-time member of the school’s eco-club, a group that met every week and aimed to make the school more environmentally friendly. Most of them were also a group of raging liberals, who wanted to reach beyond what was humanly possible to change at the school and change it anyway. Holly really never cared for changing the impossible, and as such tried her best to keep the groups goals in check. Insert a recycling bin for recyclable materials into each room and make people recycle properly, or something that was a realistic short-term goal. Even though the group rarely listens to her, since she is still only busy enough to meet with them once a fortnight. Still, she does everything required of her to remain a member of the group besides showing up, such as spreading pamphlets, and attending various rallies and protests. One such protest was where she met a guy by the name of John "Jack" Lemmon, who she struck up a very good friendship with despite their different lifestyles. After a few months of good talking, she decided she wanted to take the next step and start dating him, and he became her first boyfriend.

Today, Holly has a rather strained relationship with her father. He almost lost her when she was 9, and even though 7 years have passed in which he was able to mould her into his own daughter rather than his stepdaughter, he’s still not pleased with the way she turned out. Her grades were dropping slightly, despite the vast amount of effort he put into making sure she did all her work, and he didn’t approve of her boyfriend, but she didn’t care. Right now, she knows she’s a smart girl, even if the results don’t show it across the board. Her teachers think she’s slacking, but she’s only just stopped being pernickety about every aspect of her schooling life, and found out how to enjoy herself.

Advantages: Holly is a girl of above-average intelligence, and doesn’t get tired easily. She’s used to staying up all hours to complete her schoolwork, and she’s pretty good at keeping herself quiet.
Disadvantages: She has minor trouble speaking, and is not very athletically inclined. Despite being the daughter of a hippie, she’s never left the city in her life, and would more than likely crack in the SOTF TV environment.



Designated Number: Team Black no. 3

---

Designated Weapon: Fragmentation Grenades x 3
Conclusion: Holly's going to be a fun one to watch no matter what happens, so keep an eye on this one folks! Will Holly crack under the pressure? Or will she overcome and turn into a resilient team leader?
Mentor's Comment: Huh. She seems like she'd make a better contestant on my show than fighting in TV... Alright, I just hope she doesn't break.


DECEASED