Sebastian Rothul D9 -Resub- <Fin>
Jan 31, 2016 0:04:59 GMT -5
Post by charade on Jan 31, 2016 0:04:59 GMT -5
Lean. Rough. Strong.
Sebastian is what the streets of district nine made him. Both his hands are covered in calluses and littered with marks and scars from old struggles, old battles. A tangled mane of deep brown hair grows unchecked from his scalp in the winter, though in the summer he hacks it off as best as he can; its’ never as neat as he hopes it to be.A prominent scar is etched across his head, going down vertically across his right eye, a reminder of the life he left behind him. Beneath his often scowling brow, a pair of ever alert grass green eyes analyze everyone he comes across for the purpose of getting ahead of them.
While he looks down on nearly all people he meets, it’s not entirely because he doesn’t respect them as he towers above most at six foot five. Still, his nostrils flare and his lips curl into sneers or slowly part to reveal an almost hungry but bored grin on a regular basis, making it quite obvious as to how he feels about others. When push comes to shove, Sebastian will strike first, and was no qualms about fighting dirty. He’s helped in this respect by his muscular build and wiry strength, tendons as taunt as steel cord. Sebastian had to adapt, evolve to survive on the streets, and it cost him nothing to workout, though it gained him much.
Intelligence is the key. Sebastian has a conniving mind as sharp as a knife. He’s ambitious and shrewd, and generally out for number one, and has no qualms about doing whatever it takes to stay on top. With him, what you see is what you get. If he doesn’t like someone, he’ll tell them straight to their face. If he thinks he pull one over on them, he’ll do so with no regrets. It’s why he has a problem with so many people, feeling that they don’t say what they mean, hiding behind masks and fake smiles, pretending they don’t know what reality is. He’s lived it, and has no patience for anyone that pretends otherwise.
The most important thing to him is survival. It’s what he’s good at. No matter how many times he’s been knocked down, he picks himself back up, dusts himself off and goes for the throat. Pragmatism has served him better than silly things like honor and fairness, preferring to fight dirty whenever he can as it generally ends the fight a lot sooner and with less damage to himself. Honor is for the people that can afford it. He feels it gives him power, because he doesn’t waste time on social niceties. It’s been said that some are born great, others achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them. Sebastian would rather steal it given the opportunity. Less work for more of a payoff.
His entire life, Sebastian has felt like an accessory to murder, that death and he were old friends, despite the fact that he’s never actually killed anyone. His mother died giving birth to him and his father hated him for it as he grew older, declaring every now and then that though the doctors said his wife had had a weak heart, Sebastian had killed her to spite him. It wasn’t until he was older that he learned his mother had cheated on his father with a peacekeeper and when he was born with bright green eyes, a shade that neither parent had, it was obvious whose son he was. Eventually, he hated his father as much as his father hated him.
When he was twelve years old, he started to decide what real power meant to him. It was the ability to instill fear. His father did that whenever he got drunk, slapping him around and screaming at the top of his lungs. It made Sebastian cower like a cat dowsed in water every time. But then he started to notice how adults acted around reaping time. How four words could reduce two families to whimpering wrecks crying out in anguish as they wept. It was at this young age that Sebastian knew he’d rather be the person on the giving end of that spectrum.
It felt like his father understood that. Rothul senior was a supervisor in a cannery, and abused his position to no end. Telling people what to do seemed to be a lot better than being the one told what to do. When Sebastian was fifteen, he tried to turn the tables after one too many beatings, sneaking into his father’s room with a knife in hand and holding it to the man’s throat as he slept. Unfortunately, his dad woke up, and in a fit of rage, beat him within an inch of his life, holding Sebastian down and using the knife to carve a line into his face. But when the deed was done and more violence was threatened, Sebastian laughed, spitting blood from a split lip and daring his father to keep going. He didn’t. And Sebastian knew why. In his father’s eyes during the beating he hadn’t seen anger; only fear, and that was when his father’s hold over him was broken.
Something predatory awoke in Sebastian that night, and followed him ever since. Every now and then, his father would yell at him, but the beatings stopped altogether. Sebastian never made a move against the man again, knowing in his heart that the threat of what he could do was ten times more terrifying than anything he did do. As fate would have it, only a few short months after the fight, his father died in a workplace accident due to a faulty walkway, plummeting to the ground and cracking his skull. Sebastian was free. But he realized that he’d be put in another cage if he didn’t do something, and so as soon as he heard the news, he packed a bag full of food and fled his house before they could stick him in a group home. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but he wagered anything was a step up.
What he found was completely unexpected; Sebastian fell in with a gang of orphans and runaways living out of an abandoned mansion that looked like it must have been some long dead government official’s summer home. Life there was good. The gang took what they wanted, grew what they wanted and lived how they wanted, far away from rules and regulations, save for reaping day, when the peacekeepers rounded up all the street and junkyard children and forced them to stand and wait. However, Sebastian soon found out that his new paradise wasn’t all it was made out to be. There were still rules that some of the older kids put in place, and to his annoyance, the rules didn’t seem to apply to everyone. He would get in trouble for doing things that other gang members weren’t, but his accusations of favoritism were responded to with threats of banishment.
Eventually, the teens in charge decided that Sebastian was a threat to the next kid in line to take over, and summarily voted to exile him before he could harm any of them. Now while Sebastian had had plenty of dark and moody thoughts about the gang members he didn’t like, he hadn’t planned on acting on any of them, content to take his anger out on other people. After they forced him to leave his new home however, he soon plotted revenge on the lot of them, seeking and finding other outcasts from the little kingdom. Zanita Luzell was the name of the outcasts leader at the time. Another enemy. Another obstacle in his path. But only for a time. While he wrested control of the outcasts from her using threats and acts of violence, Zanita earned his respect after beating him in a straight up fist fight.
That respect would turn into admiration, and became a mutual love after many hard days living together; after learning how similar they were. Life was a whirlwind after they admitted their feelings for each other; his personal life got better, even as things got worse for the outcasts. Their numbers dwindled. Some lost to the games, others to the detention center. Half the time, Sebastian wasn’t even sure how many of them were actually left to wander the barren campground they called home. But he had Zanita, and albeit grudgingly, he looked out for her adopted brother too. In the present day, he still ekes out a meager existence on the streets and in the alleyways of district nine, picking fights and picking through trash. He likens himself to a lion, but he’s closer to being a feral dog. Even so, he has Zanita,Kovu,and he has his pride.
It isn’t much, but it’s his.