F07 - CHILES, SOFIA [DECEASED]

#1

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Name: Sofia Chiles
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: Saint Editha Academy
Hobbies and Interests: Folklore, Ballads (especially pertaining to highwaymen), Exploring and Nature, Herbology, Reading

Appearance: Sofia is a young woman of slightly above average height, standing at 5'7". Her weight of 10 stone 5 gives her a generally athletic build. Her fitness is the result more of a naturally active lifestyle than any sort of organized regime; as a result, her muscle is of the wiry, practical sort. She tends towards pronounced motions, often content to sit still unless and until she feels the need to act, at which point she does so quickly and wholeheartedly.

Sofia has a wide, expressive face, and usually broadcasts her emotions clearly. This is particularly true of her eyebrows, which she keeps shaped but close to their natural thickness. Her eyes are dark brown, similar in color to her hair, which she cropped close to her head (perhaps an inch and a half at the longest), in a more traditionally masculine cut. She has a wide mouth, with front teeth ever-so-slightly crooked, and a broad, short nose. Her cheeks are full. Sofia's Caucasian complexion is naturally pale, but she spends enough time outside to sport at least a bit of a tan in all but the darkest parts of winter.

Sofia usually dresses for a combination of practicality and fashion, but her aesthetic differs from that favored by most of her peers. She cultivates an intentionally androgynous look, favoring trousers and button-down shirts; these tend to get dirty and somewhat ragged in relatively short order. Her ears are pierced once apiece in the lobe, but these days she never wears earrings. On the day of the abduction, Sofia was wearing the traditional male uniform of Saint Editha Academy, complete with blazer; her clothes were freshly cleaned and in good condition for a change.

Biography: Sofia was born in Bellington on October 13, 2007, to Amber Chiles, the sole bright spot in an otherwise dark year for her mother. Amber, a young woman employed in a small general store selling food and everyday products, had earlier in the year lost her mother to cancer, and two months before Sofia's birth her husband—and Sofia's father—an office secretary named Joshua Chiles, was killed by American forces. He was caught in collateral fire while on a business trip to Cornwall, and the fighting there meant it took almost a month before his fate was confirmed. Sofia was thus born into a lower-class, single parent household, one where every day represented a struggle. It was only through vast community support combined with assistance from distant cousins and a modest but not insubstantial inheritance and life insurance payout that Sofia was able to have as normal a childhood as she did. She was often passed to neighbors for safekeeping, and developed an early flexibility and independence, entertaining herself in varied company or alone and under differing degrees of supervision. She did not attend preschool; the cost was comparatively high, and scheduling pickups and drop-offs would've been nearly as difficult as procuring caretakers for her.

When Sofia began primary school, it was something of a relief for her mother, though Sofia did not make the transition easily. Used to greater freedom and less structure, she chafed at the imposed order, frequently tuning out lessons that failed to immediately engage her attention. She was prone to mercurial relationships, easily befriending other students and just as easily falling out with them or cultivating feuds.

One of the few activities Sofia took seriously and excelled at was reading. She held a deep love of stories, and could spend hours alone, engrossed in books. A large part of this literary fascination was due to Amber. In an effort to connect with and entertain Sofia, Amber frequently regaled her daughter with stories. These mostly took the form of folklore from her own childhood, typically edited to feature a fictional ancestor, named Maisie Rose. Amber claimed that Maisie was an outlaw, a highwayman and rogue, the only woman ever sentenced to hang for armed robbery in Bellington.

These stories served as a way for Amber to cope with the death of her own mother, a number of whose traits she worked into her stories, and to provide an outlet and role model for Sofia more active and adventurous than Amber herself. A side effect of this, however, was that Sofia developed a highly romanticized view of rebellion and archaic forms of crime. This helped inform her uncooperative attitude towards school authority, and while Amber realized that this was a problem, she was also unable and unwilling to put in the time and effort to resolve it. Sofia was frequently involved in minor scuffles and was often in detention, but consequences solely enacted by the school made little impression on her beyond furthering her adversarial relationship with the institution. Sofia to this day thinks fondly of the stories she was told as a child; though she is now aware of the fictional nature of the narratives, she still feels a personal connection to them and holds their lessons close.

As Sofia grew older, she took advantage of the greater opportunities for autonomy afforded to her, generally spending as much time as possible out and about. She loved exploring the town of Bellington and its surroundings. She found the freedom and potential for adventure even in her sleepy hometown exhilarating. Sofia liked to imagine herself as a character in her favorite pieces of folklore, tracking down local monuments both well-known and largely forgotten. She spent her free time in the fields and streams and wooded areas, something that caused her mother anxiety on more than one occasion when the air raid alarms blared and Sofia was nowhere to be found. While Amber halfheartedly chewed her daughter out for these incidents, she was more relieved than upset, and as such never imposed meaningful consequences. Sofia, however, viewed any risk brought on by her actions as part of the fun. She found the modern world dull and depressing, a constant stream of forced activities she didn't find inspiration in coupled with an overwhelming national anxiety over the state of the world. Getting away from it all helped her find peace and calm, yet also excitement. She often brought friends on her ramblings, and these were the times she was most engaged and articulate.

Sofia's readings and explorations fostered in her an interest in the natural world, and especially in plant life. She purchased a few old books on herbology, and started to catalog the materials she encountered as she explored. This gave her ventures more of a purpose, while also tying them further to her almost nostalgic fascination with how the world used to be (or at least how she believed it once was). It also gave her a feeling of self sufficiency. She could find materials of some use free for the taking, often regarded as weeds, and if she didn't actually do much with her finds besides drying samples and stowing them away, she told herself she could if the opportunity arose. She tends to try to treat minor illnesses with herbal tinctures, thought at her mother's behest still falls back fairly easily on traditional medicine.

Sofia also took to singing when alone, favoring traditional ballads. These appealed to her because of their ties to folklore and also their rough, unpretentious manner of delivery; she could sing in her own voice, imperfect though it was, and unaccompanied, and still be in the spirit of the music. In fact, in her eighth year Sofia briefly took choir classes in school, but quickly discovered a deep-seated incompatibility; she did not cooperate well with others and bristled at the direction given her.

By the time she started at Saint Editha, Sofia was fairly established among her peers as eccentric. Her interests were largely backwards-looking, and while she didn't shun the conveniences of the modern world, she also found little spark or romance in them. She had an old cell phone that she often carried at her mother's request, but left it off or forgot to bring it (or claimed to have forgotten it while leaving it on purpose) often enough that she was frequently hard to reach. She lacked interest in discussions about modern bands, but was thrilled to spend time with elderly residents of Bellington, including many of those who watched her when she was young as well as the grandparents of her classmates, learning old songs and talking about how the world used to be.

Her relationships with her classmates were substantially rockier. Sofia made quick friends on a casual level, but was also easily insulted, and struggled to back down. She rarely faced bullying, but this was mostly because in her younger years she had established a reputation as one willing to physically fight those who crossed her, something that occurred less frequently but still often enough to be a part of her reputation in Saint Editha Academy. She was disciplined for this by the school, usually in the form of detentions or brief suspensions, but as she tended not to be the aggressor her punishments weren't too heavy. Her mother made halfhearted attempts to reign her in, but generally let Sofia do as she chose. Among those she is close to, Sofia was warm, talkative, and always eager to lead an adventure. To the bulk of her classmates, however, she was a wildcard who tended towards sullen silences, apathy, and explosive outbursts.

Sofia's academic performance was also decidedly mixed. She struggled with subjects requiring lengthy study, frequently failing maths assignments simply due to not turning them in. She did well in English as long as she enjoyed the focus of a lesson, but if a book irritated or bored her in some fashion, she'd put it aside in favor of personal reading and try to bluff her way through exams and essays, with inconsistent results. Even a willingness to cheat did not keep Sofia consistently in the academic clear, and she's still in the bottom third of most classes. Physical education, on the other hand, was a place where Sofia excelled. Sports helped her burn off energy and channel her aggression into competition, and her marks there have always been high. She did not, however, join any teams outside of the class, largely because she doesn't do well with continuous teamwork; she could work even with someone she hated for the span of a gym class, but couldn't practice with them peacefully week after week.

Sofia's relationship with her mother is complicated. Sofia loves her mother dearly, and tries her best to not disappoint the woman. However, Amber is quite different from her daughter, extroverted yet somewhat demure, proper in her dealings with others and always focused on her work—in fact, pouring herself into her work was a large part of how she coped with the loss of her husband. Amber is now the manager at the store where she's worked since Sofia's birth, and as such their financial situation is better than ever, though still imperfect. Sofia briefly attempted to help out around the store, but the results were poor and mother and daughter collectively decided that working together would be bad for their relationship; Sofia has not found another job since. Sofia is the more assertive of the two, pushing against her mother's rules and attempts at discipline, and Amber does not really know how to control her daughter, especially now that she's in her late teens.

Sofia plans to look for work more seriously following her graduation. Her poor academic record makes further education impractical. She's considered trying to make something more of her herbalism, but has not yet seriously investigated the possibility.

Advantages: Sofia is in fairly good shape. She's been in a number of schoolyard tussles, which is more than some of her peers an say. She's used to spending a lot of time on her own, including in unfamiliar environments.
Disadvantages: Sofia is touchy, mercurial, and aggressive towards those she doesn't like. This means she has a reputation among her class that may lead others to avoid her, and these traits are also likely to stir up trouble in a high stress environment. Sofia also doesn't take danger particularly seriously until she's forced to directly confront it, which may be far too late in the context of The Program.

Designated Number: Female Student #7

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Designated Weapon: Flare Gun
Conclusion: Listen up, Robin Hood, this isn't a fairytale. Cross the wrong person and you're liable to get crosses. Like, in your eyes. You know like in cartoons? Ahh forget it.

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