Cerise Mephistopheles {d3}

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Cerise "The Fist" Mephistopheles
Female
District Three
Twelve

*****

{Family}
Rivet Mephistopheles, her father, was a book printer and drafter.
Fawn Latchkey Mephistopheles, her mother, works with cameras.
Rovena Mephistopheles, her sister, is a seventeen-year-old Mary-Sue.
Derringer Mephistopheles, her younger twin brother, is a wanna-be Career.

{Appearance}

Already on the tall side for her age at 5'4", Cerise manages to give the impression that she's looking down on everyone, simply for the grace with which she carries herself: she holds her head like a queen, plainly superior to everyone in the vicinity. Long, springy legs give her a regal stride and a certain quickness, though her lack of mass gives her less physical strength than she'd ever like to admit.

Though authoritative, Cerise has something of a plain appearance: long brown hair, wide, curious brown eyes, fairly tanned skin. A slight underbite gives her jaw the firm, proud, jutting appearance that only adds to her air of authority, while her small, round ears emphasize her youth. Dark eyebrows and a thinner nose give her the impression of scowling, even when she's not exhibiting her most frequently used facial expression.

{Personality}

Nobody would ever accuse Cerise of being childish. She may be young, and may occasionally exhibit the sort of of cruelty found in schoolchildren, but she outgrew her childhood around the time her father was executed. This absence of childhood left a void that was quickly replaced by stiff and stern professionalism as she launched her career as a forger.

Cerise generally views herself as superior to everyone around her. She is stubbornly convinced that she's always right, and very difficult — if not impossible — to sway once she's made up her mind. Evidence contrary to her point of view would have to be not only substantial, but overwhelming for her to even consider a shift in opinion. That being said, Cerise rarely goes with her gut instinct, unless time constraints demand it. Rather, she sits down and contemplates ideas and solutions for as long as it takes for her to either reach a reasonable conclusion or for her to get frustrated and settle on something.

As may be apparent based on her air of superiority, Cerise has a hard time trusting people. It's not a direct result of any one event, simply a formed response to practically every person that's ever been close to her. She trusted her father, who was always her favorite family member, but he kept secrets that caused him to be executed, shaking her trust in him posthumously. Her mother always worked late, especially following Rivet Mephistopheles's execution, and was never really around for her children. Cerise has virtually always viewed Rovena, her older sister, as somewhat of an airhead — which is accurate — as she spends her days hunting down boys and paying little mind to anything else; Cerise's opinion of her is not at all helped by the fact that Rovena feels that she, as an older sister, is always right and always knows what's best. Last of all, Cerise's twin brother, the one she should be closest to in theory, earns the least respect, as his aspirations — to become a Career tribute and win the Games — are improbable to the point of suicidal; his mannerisms, following his goals, are neanderthal; his mental capacity, far as Cerise can discern, is hardly any higher than the scraps of metal he pretends are knives; and worst of all, people still think to compare the two children.

Regardless of how she views others, she is a natural leader, willing an able to take charge — as she does almost compulsively whenever the opportunity arises. Her voice is as blunt as her words are, commanding the respect and attention that most would not otherwise give to someone her age. She likes being viewed as something of an authority figure, as it means that the others have submitted to her and recognized her as superior. Cerise is the sort of person that would much rather be well-respected than well-liked.

From a young age, Cerise has always been highly curious. She can't stand not knowing something, even if the truth is somewhat less glamorous or spectacular than she imagined it. She tends towards impatience and loathes being kept in the dark or kept waiting. She views herself as an intellectual, and like many in her district, has an insatiable thirst for knowledge and a detached, impersonal view of the natural world.

{History}

Born to a book printer and an inventor that develops and improves cameras, Cerise Mephistopheles has always been exposed to saved materials from days past. Printed texts, newspapers, and manuscripts lay in stacks around the house, while photographs papered the walls at all times. The basement, which housed her father's printshop and mother's workbench, and the darkroom always fascinated her, even though they were off-limits when she was alone.

Her father, Rivet, loved to include Cerise in his work, as she was the only one of his three children that showed any interest in technology. He would keep her up far past her bedtime, showing her how to use his manual printing press that he kept in an armoire in the corner — he deemed the industrial printer to be too much of a hazard — and not enough fun — for Cerise. She was content to rearrange the dyes to print little stories by hand, although Rivet had to provide the manual power for this device, as five-year-old Cerise lacked the strength to operate it.

However, when Cerise was eight, Rivet and a number of others were executed by the Capitol for being behind the printing and distribution of a rebel news paper that was sent to the other districts from Three in television crates. He was killed in front of the justice building as P\peacekeepers raided the Mephistopheles house that night, destroying Rivet's industrial printer and burning whole stacks of papers outside while the remaining members of the Mephistopheles family watched from their second-story window.

Cerise spent the following day cooped up in the basement, ignoring the smoldering piles of papers in their front yard, sobbing over the manual press that had been left alone by the peacekeepers. It was only natural for the distraught eight-year-old to print the most hateful, treasonous text she could come up with, displaying a rather large breadth of vocabulary for her young age. Sure it was illegal, but being so young and so filled with rage and hate and despair, Cerise didn't spare a thought to consequences. Instead, she proudly toted her leaflet off to school the following monday.

She'd only meant to show it off to a handful of peers — some friends, some rivals — but unfortunately, Cerise's creation caused something of a scene. A crowd gathered, and when her teacher, a young, sympathetic woman, intervene, the leaflet was discovered and confiscated. The teacher erroneously assumed that the treasonous writing belonged to Rivet — for who hadn't heard about his execution three days prior — and gave the eight-year-old a stern and patronizing lecture. Luckily, her teacher broke protocol and simply sent Cerise home that day with a letter to sign.

The insightful eight-year-old cursed herself for being so stupid half the way home and spent the other half devising a plan to remedy the situation. Her mother always worked well into the evening, and likely would be working even later to keep her mind off of her husband's execution, which gave Cerise around four hours to act. With one of her mother's cameras, she photocopied the letter, cutting out the individual characters of the copy until she had a nearly-complete alphabetic set. Cerise lay the letters together in sentences, just like she was used to from using her father's printing press, and carefully traced over the words until she had a rough second letter. Unsatisfied with the shakiness of the draft, she lay another sheet over her letter and traced quicker, using more defined, confident strokes.

There were still imperfections — Cerise had needed to draw an x without any sort of template — but the shaken and exhausted Fawn Mephistopheles barely noticed what she was signing. Cerise took the newly collected signature and, after much practice, added it onto her teacher's original letter. The forgery went off without a hitch, launching Cerise's career. It started with performing similar schoolyard counterfeiting — falsifying parent signatures, teacher letters, report cards — earning Cerise a small bit of money on the side. But by her twelfth birthday, she was forging tessera vouchers, bringing home more grain than than she was entitled to without having additional entries in the Reaping bearing her name.

Her mother, however, unaware of Cerise's illegal source of income, insisted that Cerise get a job, so as to prepare herself for entering the workforce eventually. It made sense that she would want such a thing. Cerise was the last hope for her family, really; her twin was too busy throwing scraps of metal at buildings and wishing he was a career, while their old older sister was likewise preoccupied falling head over heels for each new boy that so much as said hello to her. The forger agreed, if just to appease her worried mother, and was sent to a factory that manufactured small, intricate machinery parts. Cerise recognized this blessing in disguise, and used it as an opportunity to begin casting new dyes for her father's — for her own — printing press, giving herself a wider variety of jobs and a wider variety of clients.

Much as she would like to receive the credit, Cerise acts as a messenger for a larger entity when dealing with most of her clients, at least for the time being. She understands the limitations of her age where her business is concerned — after all, who wants to gamble on a document counterfeited by a twelve-year-old? — and how much safer it is for her that she purportedly works for a man named "The Fist." In truth, that was a nickname bestowed on her when she was seven as a result of her punching her brother in the face, leaving him with a broken nose and a bruised ego and her with a reputation for being predisposed to violence. The nickname held, and for awhile she was simply Cerise the Fist, as Mephistopheles isn't the easiest for children to pronounce and "The Fist" is a close enough approximation. Cerise herself neither fought nor fully embraced the moniker until she needed the alias.

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[Baby Wessex d9b [earthling]]

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