Name: Katherine "Kit" Adebayo
Species: Siren (Phoenix)
Occupation: Surgical Resident at WR General Hospital
Age: 27 Years Old
Played By: Bex
Face Claim: Ayo Edebiri
"I've been murdered plenty of times, and I was never this dramatic about it."
TW: Sibling death, surgery (mention)
If asked, Kit would say that her first life was a distant, half-remembered thing: a proud family of sirens whose legacy hung like a chain around the neck of all who bore their name, a sibling rivalry that came to a head when the younger brother she loved died at the hands of a hunter she had angered, the rejection of a mother who couldn’t cease blaming her for this loss, the weighty expectations of a father who, in lieu of the son he’d lost, placed all the educational opportunities he’d gathered on the shoulders of a daughter ill-equipped to carry them in the time period in which she was born. Kit would claim these memories to be painless, too far away to ache.
The truth, of course, was something different.
She would never admit to the way she still felt her mother’s glare on the back of her neck years later, would never speak of how her brother’s cries never quite left her ears. She would certainly never tell anyone that her father’s rejection when her education taught her to carry opinions different than his own stung centuries after he was dead and buried. No, the autobiography Kit crafted for herself was a different beast entirely.
To hear her tell it, her story began with a fire.
While she might not admit to her father’s expectations that had sparked it, Kit would never deny her fascination with learning. It was a thing that drove her all her life, and it was a dangerous drive to have. Plenty of people in the cities she flittered through had little desire to share lecture halls with a woman so unafraid to speak her mind. Kit was smarter than most of the men she came into contact with, better educated, and she made no effort to hide this. It was inevitable that someone would take offense; it was inevitable that they would take action.
The action they took was a violent one. They set fire to the house where Kit was staying, intent on making this lesson a deadly one. Unbeknownst to them — and to Kit, at the time — fire was a poor choice of method to kill a siren.
Kit emerged from the blaze with new abilities and a new life; one she had no intention of wasting. With each new life she was granted, she furthered her education. She was never interested in anything beyond that, until she met Ezra. Unlike most people, Ezra took no issue with Kit’s extensive vat of knowledge. Instead, he reveled in it. He wanted to hear what she had to say, respected it. It was something she’d never imagined she might have.
And it was something she was always going to lose.
The romance held steady for years before Ezra lost his life in an accident. So shaped by her brother’s death she couldn’t prevent, she found it impossible to accept the death of her lover. She began searching for a way to reverse it, but with the necromancy she’d learned about in her studies, there came a problem: Kit would be born anew a thousand times over, but Ezra wouldn’t.
Necromancy was tricky; there were guarantees you couldn’t make. Immortality was a far better answer. But whereas necromancers were happy to sell their services, the undead were a little more complicated. The fact that they had to hide from hunters made it hard to be certain about details she learned, and Kit was unwilling to offer Ezra anything but the best. She didn’t just want him to be immortal — she wanted an immortality that wouldn’t ache.
She needed to do more research, needed to determine which flavor of immortality was both easy to replicate and easy to exist inside. At first, the research was small; she simply paid a few undead for information. But it was never enough. Just as she had when pursuing endless education throughout her lives, Kit needed all the answers.
The experiments started almost harmlessly. A slip of poison in a mare’s glass to see how he’d react, a touch of fire against a zombie’s leg to see how much pain she felt. But inevitably, things began to snowball. What happened when you cut off a vampire’s limbs? Could a fury survive without the organs in their chest? She needed to know.
It took lifetimes and lifetimes of experimentation. Each time Kit died and was reborn, she’d pick up where she left off. Until, finally, she found the solution she’d been searching for. After tireless comparisons, she determined the ideal scenario and brought Ezra’s bones to a necromancer for resurrection. Things went off without a hitch… until Ezra was in front of her, and she explained the situation to him. Excitedly, she recounted her experimentations, unaware of the horror on his face until he spoke up. Not only did Ezra have no desire to pursue immortality, he also had no desire to be around someone who had so callously tortured endless people in the name of science. Despite Kit’s desperate pleas, Ezra walked away, leaving her alone.
Feeling like more of a failure than she had in lifetimes and finally feeling the guilt her actions left her with, Kit went to free her remaining experiments in hopes of gaining some form of redemption. Instead, her newly freed prisoners granted her just what she’d given so many of their peers through the lifetimes preceding them — a slow and torturous death.
Despite her rebirth afterwards, the manner of this death was the worst she’d ever felt, and it haunted her. Kit was desperate to redeem herself, and began pursuing a new kind of education — medicine. The skills she’d cultivated through years of experimentation had some place in an operating room, and saving enough lives might make up for the ones she’d taken.
Unfortunately for her, of course, redemption was a hard thing to find when a large number of the people you wronged could literally hold a grudge forever. Kit was all too aware that the undead she harmed, including the ones who ended her last life, likely remained on Earth alongside her. And, if there was one thing her life had taught her, it was that the past had a nasty habit of coming back around.
Character Facts:
Personality: Outspoken, intelligent, persuasive, spontaneous, resourceful, flighty, argumentative, obsessive, selfish, hedonistic
Due to her experience with Ezra and the fallout from it, Kit is cautious of relationships of any nature (platonic, romantic, familial, etc.) with mortals. She worries if she loves a mortal again, she may experience a repeat of Ezra’s death and the grief that drove her into doing terrible things as a result of it. Because of this, she tends to hold most people at a respectable distance. She’ll flirt, she’ll engage in surface-level friendships, but she tries not to let it get any deeper than that. This is the kind of thing that’s far easier said than done.
If asked, Kit will claim her choice to pursue a career as a surgeon in this lifetime is a way of making up for her past. While this might be partially true, it’s far from the complete picture. She found her experimentation on the undead to be engaging and fascinating in a way many things weren’t after lifetimes of expanding on her education, and her career as a surgeon is her attempt to chase that feeling.
Throughout various lifetimes, Kit has always gone by some variation of the name Katherine. She’s been Kate, Katie, Kitty, Kat, Kathy… Part of her hopes that if any other members of her original family were reborn as phoenixes in their lifetimes, this might allow them to better recognize her.
In this life, Kit bounced around foster homes until finding a long-term placement at sixteen. She was never formally adopted, and she is no longer in contact with her foster family. Due to her intense fear of interpersonal relationships, she maintains that this is for the best. Her current surname, Adebayo, was also assigned to her by the state.
Kit is multilingual, having picked up different languages throughout her lifetimes and retaining them when reborn.
She lives in a repurposed dry cleaner on Amity Road. It’s about as weird as it sounds.
4 notes
·
View notes
TIMING: Early April
LOCATION: Axis Investigations
PARTIES: Emilio @mortemoppetere & Arden @stainedglasstruth
SUMMARY: After hearing about the PI in town, Arden pays a visit to Axis Investigations and offers a proposal to Emilio.
CONTENT WARNINGS: None
Arden walked into the apartment building, glancing around warily. Nathaniel, her boss at the paper, had mentioned in passing that there was a PI in town, and after some googling and asking around she found her way to the run-down residence in Worm’s Row. Slowly, she made her way down the hallway, checking each door she passed until she found herself standing in front of a door at the end of the hall. It bore a sign– a messy scrawl of letters on a piece of paper that seemed to have been torn out of a notebook of some sort– taped to the door. Axis Investigations.
The door was slightly ajar, but she still gave it a knock before making her way inside. She looked around, taking in the office. It was a bit bare, and it had clearly been converted to an office space from a regular apartment, but it looked professional enough that it calmed her nerves slightly. Being directed to a random apartment in what was commonly considered the sketchy area of town definitely had her on the alert.
“Hello?” she called, eyeing the door that led further into the apartment. “I’m looking for an Emilio Cortez.”
—
It had been a long night. A couple hours of pretending he had some intention of sleeping before his restlessness got the better of him and sent him out into the night, stake in hand to take on whatever Wicked’s Rest had to throw at him. The hunt itself had been tame — nothing substantial worth mentioning — and the empty feeling that lived in his chest had taken hold once again before he’d even hung his jacket by the door. He’d been on the couch for a while now, just sitting, wanting a distraction but not knowing where to turn.
Luckily, it seemed, he’d have one delivered to him.
He heard the footsteps in the hall long before the knock sounded on the door, listened absently as they made their way hesitantly towards his apartment with the occasional pause. He’d gotten good at picking up when someone in the hall might be a client and when they were just a person in the hall. Typically, someone who stopped at multiple doors did so because they were looking for a specific one. And in this building? That usually meant they were looking for Emilio. So the knock on the door didn’t come as much of a surprise. Nor did the person who entered. He gave her an obligatory once-over, trying to determine whether or not she was a threat. She wasn’t undead, at least. “What for?” He asked, neither confirming nor denying that he was the person she was looking for.
—
She gave the man a once over. He was handsome, though quite disheveled; he couldn’t be much older than her– mid 30s maybe. It seemed his Yelp reviews weren’t lying; he didn’t strike her as much of a people person, even less so as he spoke. She had her fair amount of interactions with similar men. No bullshit, then.
“I’m Arden Han,” she said, pulling a business card out of her shoulder bag and offering it to him, “I’m a journalist at Something Wicked News. I’m trying to build some more connections in town, and I heard you’re someone who can get shit done.”
-
A journalist? Emilio had to admit, he hadn’t been expecting that. He’d had clients from all walks of life throughout his short career in Wicked’s Rest, but this was a first. He eyed her carefully, as if trying to deduce what she might be after through suspicious looks alone. Surely there was some ulterior motive here, right? There had to be.
“I don’t make a very good connection,” he said dryly. “Whoever told you to come here was probably fucking with you. I only get shit done when someone’s paying me to do it, and you don’t look like you brought cash. So, why should I do anything for you?”
-
Arden shifted uncomfortably as the man stared at her, and after a moment, she placed the card down on a nearby table. He didn’t immediately seem to intend her any harm, and, granted, if he was trying to run a business, killing a potential customer probably wouldn’t be the most sound strategy. Not that she was a business major or anything of the sort.
Regardless, she wasn’t about to let her guard down quite yet, and she found some comfort in the weight of her knife in her jacket pocket. Even if it was a false sense of security.
“You wound me, Mr. Cortez,” she replied flatly. “I did my research before coming here. From what I’ve heard, you’re a man who’s good at your job. You have your ear to the ground, you’re discreet, you maybe don’t mind getting your hands dirty now and then. However, you’re not the people type.” She didn’t bother putting it lightly.
“As a journalist, I need to be good with people. It’s the only way I can get my hands on information while being above board and maintaining my reputation. But, I need to have solid evidence to back my findings, and, sometimes, my digging can only get me so far, especially in a town like Wicked’s Rest where it seems everyone has secrets,” she throws it out as casually as the rest of it, but Arden focuses intently on the man’s reaction to these words.
—
“If I want to wound you, you’ll know it,” Emilio replied, tone still remarkably dry. He wasn’t entirely sure how to navigate this situation, which wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling. He was good at thinking on his feet when something was trying to kill him, but when someone was trying to talk to him? It became so much harder to know what his next move ought to be.
He let out a small, amused sound as she commented on his reputation. He knew there were reviews online — Javi had told him about it with an expression that said they weren’t particularly good reviews — but he’d never read them himself. He could only imagine what they said. Good detective, terrible person. It certainly made sense that they’d spell out plainly that he wasn’t ‘the people type,’ as the journalist put it.
Her dilemma made sense. Reputation probably mattered to a journalist more than it did to someone like Emilio, after all. And there was a certain level of danger to it, too; dig too much without knowing how to watch your own back and you’d wind up another corpse in the pile, another case on the desk of some overworked cop. Emilio leaned forward, a little intrigued in spite of himself. “And what is it you want from me, exactly?”
—
Arden smirked at the comment. “Noted.”
Her lips pursed slightly at his non-reaction. If he was a good investigator, he would have to have at least some idea that this town was not a normal town, right? She could only do so much before losing all sense of subtlety. She ran a hand through her hair, she could find out more later, he would be a good contact regardless.
“Look, I think we could have a beneficial partnership here,” Arden replied. “I would, of course, pay you if I needed you to look into something specific for me, but maybe we could help each other out here and there; we do both deal in the market of information.
“My job requires that I keep my finger on the pulse of what’s going on in town so, I can keep you updated on anything that might be relevant to any case you might be working on. I could also help out with the people side of things. I can be rather charming and persuasive, and, when the situation calls for it, I have been told I can be quite persistent.” Annoying had been the word the police officer used, but-
–
It was an interesting offer. She seemed less annoying than his usual clients, to be sure, but… Emilio hesitated. He might not know a lot about journalism, but he knew the people who pursued it tended to be nosey individuals. People who wanted to uncover every stone, people who wanted answers to every question. And for him, where he was concerned… that wasn’t the best thought. People digging too much into Emilio’s past wouldn’t end well for anyone involved. He knew that.
But saying no would look suspicious, too. Saying no might pique her curiosity even further, might make her want to dig to find out why a detective living in an apartment that was just this side of ‘crumbling’ would turn down an offer for easy money. It was one of those ‘no right answer’ situations, one of those questions with no good outcome. Emilio had always hated those.
After a few moments of silence as he considered the offer, Emilio decided that it would be better to keep an eye on her. If she was as persistent as she claimed, she wasn’t going to give up easily. So he pursed his lips, nodding his head. “Yeah, all right,” he agreed. “That sounds like it could be…” What was the word she’d used? Oh, right. “Beneficial. But what exactly would you want me to look into?”
—
A thrill of triumph ran through her as the man agreed to her proposition. She honestly hadn’t expected him to concede that easily. Noticing his initial hesitation, Arden decided to take some pity on him. She had just barged in and kinda pushed him into a partnership, and he gave her the impression of someone who liked to work alone. He was giving very “darkness, no parents” Lego Batman vibes.
She dropped the excessively confident facade somewhat and gave him a slightly more genuine smile, ignoring his question for the moment. “I can sense your hesitation, so how about we give it a bit of a trial run? I can show you how much of an asset I can be, I can see if you’re really as good as people say you are, and we can see if we can put up working with one another.
“If you decide it’s not worth it, you can tell me to fuck off, and I’ll only come bother you when there’s cash involved. How’s that sound?”
–
A trial run. That sounded a lot better than committing to anything long term. If worse came to worse, Emilio could always leave town — he was good at disappearing — but he’d like to avoid that. A trial run seemed to be a good option to offer him an easy out without arising any suspicion that might encourage this reporter to look into the surly detective with the standoffish attitude.
“Okay,” he agreed, a little more at ease now. “But if I say it’s off, it’s off. No questions, no asking why. When I say to fuck off, you have to fuck off.” And he was pretty sure it would be a ‘when’ situation instead of an ‘if’ one. Emilio wasn’t the type to keep anyone around long-term these days.
–
Arden nodded, mind already racing. She would need to be cautious with this; she didn’t have many contacts in town yet, and Emilio had the potential to be a huge help. She couldn’t fuck this up.
“Deal,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Now, as for your earlier question,” she raised an eyebrow, “what do you know about Erebus Extractions and Refineries?”
–
He looked at her outstretched hand for a moment before sighing and taking it, giving it a firm shake. “Deal,” he agreed. Christ, he hoped this one wasn’t going to come back to bite him in the ass. He had enough trouble in this town without adding to the pile.
She was quick to cash in on the deal. In a way, that was almost a relief. It meant less time wondering what the first question she’d ask might be, less anxious mystery. Unfortunately, the question wasn’t one he had much of an answer to. Emilio clicked his tongue, shrugging a shoulder. “Not much,” he admitted, “but you give me a day or two, and I can figure some shit out. What are you after, specifically?”
–
The journalist wasn’t exactly surprised by his answer, but it just served to make her more perturbed by the situation. “Honestly? Fucking anything would be nice.” She gave a humorless smile, her frustration seeping through slightly. “I can’t find any information on leadership, and everyone I’ve spoken to– or tried to speak to, at least– has either refused to comment or seems to be kept entirely in the dark. Not to mention, everyone is still clueless about what’s been happening since the accident.”
“It’s suspicious, to say the least, and it’s certainly got my interest piqued. I’m going to keep looking, but I’m hoping you might have some more luck investigating through your channels.”
Arden paused, debating on if she should say her next words, but, after a moment, she sighed and turned to look Emilio in the eyes, facade dropping a bit more. “You’re a smart man, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but just… be careful.” I can’t have anyone else get hurt– or worse– because of me.
—
Oh. So she was looking for that kind of information. Things seemed a little more complicated, all of the sudden. Emilio wasn’t just a private investigator — he was a hunter, too. And while he’d never quite bought into the idea that humans ought to be kept in the dark about absolutely everything (he’d always been open enough with Vida, after all), he did know that things could get messy pretty quickly when people dug into things outside their comprehension. The last thing he needed was for the journalist to run around telling people he was nuts if he told her the truth of things that went on behind the scenes in Wicked’s Rest.
He’d tread lightly, then. Test the waters before revealing anything too deep, figure out what she thought was happening and either confirm or deny those theories.
“I’ll look into it,” he promised, making up his mind with a curt nod. “But I can’t promise I’ll find what you’re looking for. I’m not about to go digging through those mines myself.” Not without a better reason than money, in any case. Emilio might not care about his life as much as some people thought he ought to, but he wasn’t looking to get himself killed by something as stupid as a haunted mine. That wasn’t how he wanted things to go. “And, hey, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m good at making it out of shit.” Whether he wanted to or not.
—
Even the thought of him going down into the mines made her stomach turn. Arden was not a fan of enclosed spaces to begin with, but going into the mines of Wicked’s Rest seemed like the kind of thing that would absolutely get you killed. “That’s entirely fair, not that I would ever ask you to do that, for the record. Even on a good day, there’s weird shit in those mines, and currently there’s a leakage of some unknown inky substance.”
”I figure it might be a long shot, but maybe you can find something I’m missing. I just-” She paused, realizing she was maybe about to be a little too honest with this man she just met. As a journalist, she felt the need to maintain an air of professionalism in her public interactions, and especially to never air her theories or worries to people. People were already panicking over the incident with the mines, her being honest and telling them that she had a bad feeling about the entire situation would not be a wise decision. Granted, this conversation wasn’t exactly public, but it still felt wrong nearly letting her worries slip out.
However, she was attempting to form a sort of partnership with the man, and while he told her not to worry, Arden still felt guilty asking him to do something that could potentially be dangerous when she wasn’t even sure he knew the full extent of dangers that lurked in town– especially not without being upfront about her concerns.
“I just don’t feel great about this whole situation,” she said, after a moment, “and I’d feel better if I were armed with some more information.” She looked up at him with a small smile. “So, I will likely continue to be somewhat worried, but I’m glad to hear it.”
Shaking herself out of the mess of emotions bubbling in her chest, she backed up slightly, her smile turning confident once more. “Anyway, I’ve taken up a good chunk of your time. My card’s on the table if you need to contact me, and I’d be happy to help if you need me to look into something or someone for you. Thanks for hearing me out.”
–
At least there was that. Plenty of people came to a detective and figured there was no real limit to what they were allowed to ask that detective to do, figuring that Emilio was a puppet whose strings they could hold for the right price. He’d never liked clients like that, even if he couldn’t quite afford to turn them away. This concern, while irritating, was preferable to that. “I wouldn’t do it if you did,” he told her, but the tone wasn’t quite as harsh as the words might imply. She wasn’t the worst person who’d ever walked through his door, at least.
He raised a brow as she continued, making note of her voice. She was passionate about this, and Emilio understood that. That need to find answers, that unquenchable thirst for the truth. Part of why he’d gotten into the PI gig was because he wanted the truth, too. He never wanted to be in another situation where he was caught entirely off guard by something that had been happening under his nose for months, never wanted a repeat of the betrayal he’d suffered from his uncle. He wondered if she, too, had a story like that, some awful thing that made her need the truth no matter what it cost her. He wouldn’t be surprised if she did. Everyone, he’d found, had something in their past making them the way they were.
“I get it,” he offered, shrugging a shoulder. “You want answers. I get that.” And maybe he could give them to her, and maybe he couldn’t. It was hard to say for sure, hard to be certain. He nodded his head as she smiled, not returning the expression but not looking quite as irritable as he had when she’d walked in, either. “Yeah,” he agreed, “sure. I’ll let you know if I need an assist, and I’ll keep an eye out for your shit, too.”
It might be the beginning of a decent partnership… or the worst idea either of them had ever indulged in. Time would tell.
5 notes
·
View notes