Post by Kai Newalu on Sept 3, 2011 13:33:59 GMT
Eyes: Kai’s eyes are a mossy hazel which blend to a dark jade at the rim. His irises are almost without texture, the expected lines and marks in the hazel hue so subtle that they’re almost unnoticeable. He often finds himself watching people but his eyes are so warm and appear to be so genuine that whenever he’s caught in such an act it’s never taken offensively. There’s always a glint in his gaze that tells of some unspoken secret, so secret that if asked he often doesn’t know himself. His eyes are set under a deep and thick brow which at once gives him an edge of darkness and mystery without particular effort.
Hair:
Thick, mid-brown, Kai’s hair has always been long. It hovers around his shoulders in loose waves, sun-bleached to a reddish-brown during the summer months. When he’s working or trying to look in some way professional he ties it back in a tail at the nape of his neck. Otherwise it hangs loose and messy, annoyingly falling into his face against his best efforts to ignore it.
Height:
6’4”
Build:
Calling Kai broad would be putting it lightly. Hours pushing himself in the gym over the years has made him a fairly muscular man. He’s extremely strong and at first glance can seem intimidating. This is something he plays on from time to time and has been known to use it to his advantage.
Style:
Being so tall and broad, finding clothes that fit is very difficult, so when he does find something that fits and fits well he stocks up on it. That, added to the fact that he hates shopping, means that his wardrobe is very simple and plain. Black, grey and white dominate most of his clothes and he tends to turn his nose up at patterns or bold prints. When at work or working out he wears simple and plain sweatpants and t-shirts or vests. The rest of the time he dons dark jeans, a t-shirt or button-down shirt. On occasion his mother-in-law makes an attempt and livening up his wardrobe, buying him fancier things while trying to convince him to get rid of his old, faded shirts. Every time he tells her the same thing; they don’t fit but thanks anyway. Most of the time he doesn’t even try them on.
Other:
Has a scar over his left eye from a bar fight that got out of control. He also has three tattoos.
Play By:
Jason Momoa
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Strengths:
Physical Strength. The most obvious of Kai’s good characteristics and what he would insist is his best. He has worked hard for it, too. Being physically larger than average has many advantages. For one, very few people consider challenging him, and when they do they’re usually very drunk so it doesn’t require much effort to convince them that it was a bad idea. He does take a little bit too much enjoyment from ‘convincing’ someone with a fist, but he always insists that they deserved it.
Ambidextrous. Another physical strength but one he doesn’t put too much thought into. It means that he has an advantage with small, insignificant things, like not needing to switch the telephone to the other hand when taking a message. It also means that he is as skilled with one hand as with the other... which is something he’s quite smug about.
Persistent. He doesn’t like being turned down (not that it happens often) or being told ‘no’, and he takes it as a personal challenge any time it happens. He can push for something for hours or even days if he thinks it’s important enough and usually he gets his own way.
Laid back. He tries not to get too worked up about anything. Life is too short to stress about a flat tyre or a cancelled appointment. He tries to see the brighter side of things and if he can’t find one he tries to move quickly past it until there is. His manner comes across as playfulness at times though he treads the line between it and carelessness. However, when it comes to Tahlia he isn’t so easy-going. He has always been firm with her and she knows now that no means no and there is no point in arguing a case against him.
Passionate. This could be said of several areas of Kai’s life. Passion is a large part of who he is, whether its passion for his family and his beliefs or passion for the women he meets on a night out. He puts so much of his heart into his actions and his words. That’s not to say he’s soft but he feels deeply and completely, whether it’s just for one night or for the rest of his days. He believes in making the most of what is given to him.
Protective. Tahlia is his and his alone and he does everything in his power to keep her safe, to shield her from anything bad and to try and keep her as happy as possible. He keeps his social life completely separate from his home and work life. Tahlia knows nothing of his nights out or the women he meets and he refuses to let the division between them dissolve. Part of him, though he knows it’s probably not the best decision, wants to let Tahlia believe that there was no one else for him but her mother. And while so far that’s been mostly true, he’s terrified of tarnishing Marnie’s memory.
Weaknesses:
Attractive women. Ever since puberty hit him like a steam train, Kai has been drawn to the beautiful sensuality of the opposite sex. When he meets a woman that in his eyes is attractive (which usually means that the woman is very beautiful my most standards) he can’t help but strike up conversation, flirt and depending on the day, push his luck with her. He can be picky though, and the women who usually snag his attention have tan skin, are taller than average, have expressive eyes and beautiful smile and are not afraid to show a bit of skin. In his words, “You wouldn’t take a car out for a ride if you didn’t know what it looked like first.”
Self-doubt. On the outside, Kai comes across as confident, even cocky. Deeper down, however, is a softer layer of unforgiving self-doubt. He’s always asking himself whether he made the right decisions, whether he’s a good enough father, if Tahlia will be fine without a mother and if he owes it to her to try and find a replacement, whether he’s too hard on her or too soft, whether he should have moved him and Tahl away from Marseille when Marnie died and if it really was the best decision to stay where they were. Most of all, he just never feels quite good enough.
Likes:
The ocean.
Surfing.
Swimming.
Working out.
Lying in on a Saturday.
Watching cartoons with his family.
Coffee.
Their home by the sea.
Pistachio ice-cream.
Sunshine.
City nightlife.
His car.
Dislikes:
Being told how to raise his daughter.
How fast Tahlia is growing up.
Quitters.
Having his feet touched.
Monotony.
People who are too serious all the time.
Depending on other people.
Mind games.
Overcooked meat.
Habits:
Biting his nails.
Laughing louder than anyone else.
Biggest Secret:
For a month or so after his wife’s death Kai considered putting Tahlia up for adoption. The pain he felt every time he looked at his daughter and saw how much like Marnie Tahlia was became unbearable. He thought about letting her go to a family who could better provide for her. A family with a mother and a father.
Most Prized Possession:
His and Marnie’s wedding rings and her engagement ring which he keeps in a small box in the chest of drawers in his room. For a while after her death he wore his still and kept hers on a chain around his neck, but after a day of panic where he thought he had lost them he realised it would be wiser to keep them safe at home. He intends to give Marnie’s engagement ring to Tahlia when she’s old enough or gets engaged herself.
Reputation:
There are two sides to Kai Newalu. Most people only get to see one. There’s the professional side, the man who is always on time for work, always ahead in his tasks, who has more care and attention for his daughter than anything and anyone else. He’s not the perfect employee or the perfect father but he tries his damnedest to be as good as possible.
And then there’s the man who he becomes when he gets the chance to escape that life, to be a wreckless, carefree guy with nothing tying him down or holding him back. That guy – Jack or Steven or John or Karl or whatever the first name that came to mind that night – is the type of guy that will walk a girl home from the club and leave her bed after she’s fallen asleep, and with the dawn he disappears in the light of the real world again.
That being said, he’s incredibly flirtatious ninety percent of the time anyway, and while he’s never done anything to really warrant it, there are even women at work that give him sweet, girlish smiles any time he says hello.
T A I N T E D
Ability:
Electrokinesis, the ability to mentally manipulate electricity and electrical phenomena. Kai has mastered how to control electric currents and has reached the point where he can now create and focus electricity of varying intensity through his hands. This manifestation is visible as a blue-white glow and usually behaves as any current of electricity naturally would.
Beliefs:
He has no time to care about the politics and public relations of other Tainted. He doesn’t hide what he can do from his family and closest friends but he knows how most people react to hearing that someone is ‘different’, so he keeps it quiet.
B A C K G R O U N D
Place of Birth:
Perth, Australia
Languages:
English, French
Family:
Wife, Reyna
Daughter, Gabriella, aged 11
Daughter, Tahlia, aged 6
Twins, due around August 2013
Wife (three years deceased), Marie-Ninon ‘Marnie’
Mother, Jade, aged 64, retired, lives in Hawaii, USA
Father, Terrence, aged 65, retired, lives in Hawaii, USA
Brother, Keona, aged 38, priest, currently lives in Ohio, USA
Sister, Iolana, aged 41, hairdresser, currently lives in Glasgow, Scotland
Mother-in-law, Leonie, aged 58, music teacher, lives in Marseille, France
Father-in-law (seven years deceased), Pascal
Sister-in-law, Vivienne, aged 37, interior designer, lives in Marseille, France
Niece, Elle, aged 15, student, lives in Marseille, France
Others of Note: N/A
Pet(s):
The girls' goldfish, and their two kittens, Bernard and Brillo.
History:
I don’t really remember much about when I was a kid. I was born in Australia and when I was three my family moved to Hawaii. I only know this because I was told about it later. My grandparents on both sides were born and raised in Hawaii and my parents had this common desire to move there someday even though neither had ever been. I guess it didn’t live up to the dream, having three children in tow, because we moved to Ohio when I was five.
We stayed in Ohio for a long time. I think it was partly to do with how old my brother and sister were by the time we stopped there. Keona was ten and Iolana was already thirteen. They didn’t want to keep moving us around once we hit our teenage years because, in their own words, “It’s hard enough being a teenager without having to make new friends every year or two.” I know Iolana appreciated it anyway. She loved the school she enrolled in and would have put up a fight if they tried to move her. It was a good school, too, and when Keona was old enough he enrolled there too.
I was easy to please. I made friends easily no matter where I was and it didn’t matter how old people were either; I would talk to anyone and everyone. I think my first best friend in Ohio was twice my age. I just never really saw people for what they looked like or how old they were. People were either fun to be around or they weren’t and I couldn’t see how anything else really mattered.
I was fifteen when my parents succumbed to their desire to move again. Iolana and Keona were old enough to make their own decisions and they both decided to go their own ways. I had to go with my parents. I hated leaving. Over the years I had made a few very good friends and I even had my first girlfriend who I was convinced I was in love with. I was fifteen. What did I know? She was cute and my first and I just didn’t want to leave it all behind.
I figured we were moving to a different town or even a different state and that I’d be able to see my friends every couple of weeks, so when my parents announced that we were moving to New Zealand I didn’t really accepted it. I fought with them, yelled and called them everything I could think of. I had been a pretty tame teenager up until then but it was like all of those hormones burst through a dam and I went wild. I hated them, I hated New Zealand, I hated my new school. I acted up. I was in detention every other day for stupid things, like smoking in the bathrooms or fighting in the yard. I was expelled from one school and was forced into another; a boarding school two hundred miles away on the other side of the island.
Strangely enough, it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I’d missed so much time and study at my old school that they held me back a year and I had already been one of the oldest in my class before so I ended up at least one and sometimes two years older than the others. It suited me fine. I was able to get a part time job in the nearest town. I was the first kid in the school to be able to drive. Legally, anyway. I had a lot of ‘friends’ who would try to persuade me to drive them places or get them booze but I rarely did. I didn’t care about making friends there, which was probably the best decision I could have made because I accidentally fell into a pretty close friendship with one of my classmates, John, and he’s the only one out of all of them I still talk to today. I actually dated his sister, Emma, for a few months before she went nuts and went off to join a convent.
When my parents heard how much I had changed they were willing to let me come home, but I was three months from graduation and I chose to stay on.
Unfortunately, it didn’t really make a difference. I was eighteen when the crazy stuff started. I had snuck Emma into my dorm and we were fooling around. I was in the shower and she climbed in after me and...
There must have been something about the electric shower or the poor wiring in the building but there was a huge crack, the water stopped running, the lights went out and Emma collapsed. How she didn’t die I still don’t know but she was in the hospital for two days and when she came out she refused to ever see me again. She told John that I was evil-spirited. He didn’t believe her, called her crazy and not much more was said about her.
The entire floor of the dorm building had been blacked out. Every fuse was blown, every appliance shorted out. They were able to trace the source of it and surprise, surprise, it was my room. I was expelled instantly. I think they thought I had hooked up fourteen TVs and stereos into the one socket or something and while they couldn’t figure it out they blamed me anyway. I was beyond angry. I was so close to graduating and suddenly it was over.
It took a while to convince my parents that it wasn’t my fault and they accepted that it was just faulty wiring and the school not wanting to deal with angry parents questioning their health and safety. I knew better, though. I could feel the electricity in my blood that night before anything had happened and I knew it was me that did it, whatever ‘it’ was.
I did what anyone in my position would have done; nothing. I got a job in a sports store near where my parents lived and I kept my head down. It wasn’t until months later that this guy came in looking to buy a kayak or something, I can’t even remember, but what I do remember is what he said to me when I took him down to the back of the store. ”Thirteenth of April. You were expelled for nearly setting fire to your dorm. A girl nearly died in your room. I can tell you why.” He was from a place I’d never heard of in France and after a four hour long conversation that was more about me throwing countless questions at him, he had convinced me to see if Sanglignee Academy could help me.
I was nineteen when I left. I had told my parents I was going to study in a place that didn’t mind that I hadn’t finished school. They seemed pleased enough and used my move as an excuse to finally go back to Hawaii. I stayed in the Academy for five years, learning as much as I could and practising my ability every day, which was something the experts in the Academy called Electrokinesis. At first it was dangerous. We had to find somewhere that I could let loose without the risk of frying everything in the same room as me. I got pretty good as time went on and I even started coaching some of the younger kids that started arriving. I think that’s where I first realised how much I liked helping people to better themselves.
For four of those five years I didn’t date. What happened with Emma wasn’t serious but I didn’t want to risk anything like that again.
And then I met Marnie.
I was twenty-three – damn, almost ten years ago now –when I met this woman who was the most beautiful, delicate creature I’d ever met in my life. It was her first day waitressing in Cafe Beau in San Square and it took me the length of time to finish my lunch to work up to asking her out. She laughed and said no. So I went back the next day and tried again. And the next day. And the next. After about a week of rejections I finally managed to convince her to go for a drink with me. I think she just wanted me to stop pestering her and I told her that taking me up on my offer was the only way I was going to stop.
Is it bad that the woman I married only went on a first date with me because I irritated the crap out of her?
It worked anyway, and she must have had a good time because she agreed to see me again. The second date was even better than the first and third was even better again. I knew I loved her almost immediately but it took several months of dating for me to build up the courage to tell her. I remember it because it was all I could think about all day. I’d never felt so much for anyone before and nothing felt right when I wasn’t near her. That night, I pulled her aside after taking her out to her favourite restaurant and I told her that I had something I needed to say.
She beat me to it. She knew what I was going to say and she blurted it out first. I was so surprised I actually laughed and when I asked her why she said it so fast, she told me how she had been waiting for the right moment, but when she realised I was about to say it she had to squeeze it out, because she didn’t want the first time she said it to be an “I love you too.” It made me love her more.
On the anniversary of our first date I asked her to marry me. I wanted it to be spectacular but I ended up bumbling through the evening and just asked her. I know I sounded like a complete idiot. But I must have been doing something right because she said yes.
We didn’t keep my ability a secret from her family and I thought it was about time to come clean with mine. My parents barely believed me and that was fine by me. Her relatives were the ones I was worried about, but I needn’t have been. They had heard of Tainted before and none of them cared. Her dad even made jokes about not letting me near the TV when the football was on.
The following year was hard. We had planned the wedding for exactly a year after I had asked her to marry me, and in that same month Marnie’s dad passed away. He had cancer and by the time the doctors found out it was too late. He had one wish, and that was to give Marnie away on our wedding day. But he didn’t make it. He died two weeks before. I asked Marnie if she wanted to postpone but she refused. She said that if her dad knew that we delayed our wedding because of him he’d be waiting at the gates of Heaven to tell us off and we’d have an eternity of listening to him nag.
Our wedding day was one of the best days of my life. Another came over a year later when Marnie told me she was pregnant.
Tahlia Marie Newalu. She was tiny when she was born despite being full term. Everything about her was perfect. I thought that I had known the strongest kind of love by being with Marnie, but when I held that tiny little girl in my arms for the first time was overwhelming. I thought I had died or was just about to with how tight my chest was. It took everything I had to just keep breathing.
Mum had been nagging me for years to give her a grandchild and at twenty-seven years old I had finally felt like I was ready. And I was. I loved being a dad from the very first day. Tahlia made our family perfect. It was like there had always been something missing but until she showed up we didn’t even realise it. I had been working as a trainer in a gym in Marseille and I started taking extra shifts to make ends meet. Marnie’s mother offered to give us money but at the time I was too devoted to my girls, I wanted to do everything I could for them. It made me feel like I was worth more than I probably was.
Eventually my parents stepped in and even though I protested, they insisted on helping out the only way they could think of from the other side of the world. See, when I was a kid they started a savings bond that was supposed to be for when I went to university. I think they kind of hoped I would still mange it one day but when Tahl was born they gave up on that and forced the money on us, to help with a different kind of future. Thanks to my parents we were able to put a deposit on an amazing house down by the ocean just outside Marseille. Three bedrooms, two and a half bathrooms, a huge living room with massive windows that looked out over the beach that Marnie would stand at for an hour at a time while she tried to get Tahl to sleep.
I couldn’t have asked for a better life.
Yet one day three years ago, when Tahlia was two, I came home from work... and it did get better. Marnie was waiting in the kitchen with the widest smile on her face, Tahl resting on her hip. Even when I kissed her she was still grinning. When I looked at her with a grin of my own without knowing why we were smiling, she said so quietly that I could hardly believe my ears, ”Kai, we’re having another baby.” I could have kissed her until passed out. In fact, I think I did, because the rest of the evening was a blur.
Months later, she went for a routine scan and she called me afterwards. I was working. It was the first scan I couldn’t be there for, and they had told her the sex of the baby. She wanted to tell me in person and said she was going to stop by on her way home. I remember being on a high waiting for her and as the time went on and she didn’t turn up, I figured she had stopped to get food or Tahl needed a bathroom.
Then my phone rang. I didn’t recognise the number. As soon as the voice on the other end asked if I was ‘Mr. Newalu’ I knew something had happened.
On their way from the hospital to the gym, the car was hit by a truck. The driver fell asleep at the wheel. He was killed when the truck rolled down the embankment. The car was destroyed. The accident report said that Marnie’s reactions were astonishing as she had managed to spin the car so the truck didn’t hit the door next to Tahlia. Instead, it hit the driver’s side. The car was totalled.
Marnie had passed away before they got her to the hospital. The doctors wouldn’t let me see her because of how much damage her body had taken. They didn’t think I could cope with the shock. They tried to save the baby, too, but he was too premature. He lasted about two hours in intensive care. I got to hold him when they knew he wasn’t going to survive and he died in my hands; even wrapped in a blanket he was too small to hold in my arms. I have no idea how long I stayed in that hospital room but it was dark by the time a nurse told me that my daughter needed me. I was so torn. I didn’t want to leave that room because I knew as soon as I did it would all be real. But I had to. The only thing I had left was Tahlia and the nurse was right, she did need me.
Tahl had been lucky in the accident. She banged her head the second the truck hit and was knocked out cold, so by the time she woke up I was there beside her bed. She had broken her arm and had to have three stitches on her head behind her ear but she was alive. The doctors said it was a miracle that she had survived. I would have agreed but I was too numb. When she woke up and looked at me... I’ll never forget how her face changed. I had been crying and my heart was broken into a million pieces and she could see it on my face. She was two years old but she knew that anything that upset me that much...
She cried. And I mean, she wailed so loud and scared that whatever was left of my heart turned to dust. I held her and rocked her until she fell asleep and I stayed with her through the night, though she kept waking up with nightmares. I couldn’t sleep. The following morning they said we could go home and Vivienne – Marnie’s sister – drove us in my car because I couldn’t. I didn’t care. I refused to let go of Tahlia.
The weeks that followed were the hardest. Everything reminded me of Marnie. I was completely useless and while I tried to help organise the funeral it was mostly taken care of by Vivienne and Leonie. They did everything. I was catatonic when it came to anything but Tahl. It was like she was the only thing I felt I could do right by. Even that didn’t last though as depression set in. There was a period when I was so low that I thought about giving her up for adoption. What kind of a life could a little girl have when all she had was a father who could barely function for himself? I had filled out the paperwork, done my research and had told no one what I was planning.
Vivienne found the forms the morning before an arranged meeting with the agency. She slapped me so hard across the face that my cheek swelled up. She yelled at me and swore that if I abandoned Tahlia she would kill me. I think I believed her, in a way, but it was how she said it that had me seeing sense. Abandon Tahlia. That wasn’t what I was trying to do but once she said it that’s the only way I could think about it and the last thing I could ever do was abandon my little girl. I wanted a better life for her but Vivienne told me that there was no better life for her than the one I could give her. I was ashamed that I’d even considered it and I asked Vivienne to not tell anyone and as far as I know, she didn’t.
It frightens me to think about how things would have been different if Vivienne hadn’t found those papers.
It was hard. Living was hard, but I did it for Tahl. Everything I did from then on was for Tahl. I considered moving away, maybe moving to Hawaii to be nearer my parents or back to Ohio to my brother, but I knew I didn’t want Tahl growing up not knowing who her mother was. Leonie, Vivienne and her daughter – my niece – Ellie, were the closest family we had and I couldn’t bare taking Tahlia away from that. A few of my friends now think it’s strange that I’m still close to my deceased wife’s family, that Ellie now babysits once in a while and that Tahl stays at her grandmother’s every weekend, but that’s how it is. That’s our life and as unconventional as it is, it works.
Present: Every day brings a new effort to do right by Tahlia. I balance work with spending time with her and sometimes it’s not ideal but it’s better than any alternative I can come up with. I know some of her teachers frown at me for making her do her homework in my office at the gym when I have to work, but most of them understand and Tahlia doesn’t mind. She actually likes hanging out at the gym. She reminds me of me when I was her age; making friends with everyone that says hello to her. She’s shy though. That much she gets from her mother.
Future: For the foreseeable future I’m not going anywhere. I’ve got a well-paying job and its flexible enough that when I need to and when I want to I can spend time with my daughter. As long as I can take care of her, I will, and that’s all that matters.
O U T O F C H A R A C T E R
Name: Mews
Age: blah...
Gender: Yup.
Location: Here!
RP Experience: *shifty eyes*
Other Characters: Nona!
RP Sample: Eh. No. Nah. Don’t think so.
