:: Puppet Master ::

Your Role-player Name :: The Painkiller. I really need to get it changed.

Your View On Role-playing :: It's pretty cool.

...okay, fine, I shall elabourate. I don't like to see roleplaying as a 'game' or competition--that kinda kills the spirit of cooperation, doesn't it? I like to see it as cooperative writing--and most of my writing falls under that these days, I don't really write independently any more. On the other hand, I'm also not very 'serious' about roleplay--I'm in it, most of the time, to have fun, and whilst (as I hope will become evident over the course of this profile) I like to think the writing I offer to RPs doesn't suck, it's not as good as it would be if I sat down for like four hours and committed myself to writing the godliest three paragraphs you ever saw in your damn life. It's supposed to be fun, not a work out, innit? On that note, also don't expect clinical, formal writing from me; I like to really get into my characters and that reflects in the writing of both posts and profiles. So if my character is a neurotic, surly punk with severe anger and control issues (note, I'm foreshadowing here :P) you should take the entire post with a grain of salt; there may be unusual spellings/speech patterns in the writing of the post itself, there might be a lot of profanity, huge run-on rambling sentences, outright lies, so on. I feel clinical, formal writing detracts from the quality of a post because it doesn't enable the reader to really get a feel for your character (unless your character is in turn clinical and formal), so I make sure my posts and profiles reflect my characters beyond dialogue and thoughts. It may take some getting used to and some people definitely aren't fans of it, but for me it's a hell of a lot more fun than writing out a drab old thing, and like I said, it gives the reader a much more interesting and reflective post.

Your Idea of Character Development :: It's a necessity in keeping an RP and a character interesting so long as it stays realistic. The ultra-masculine tough chick (and there goes more foreshadowing, I should just stop) may soften up over the course of the RP and learn to value softer emotions like compassion or sadness, but I can't imagine such a character transforming over the course of the RP into a bona fide genuine girly girl who weeps at the sight of a broken nail (not just because of my extreme personal aversion to such a transformation :v). It's just not something that happens over the course of the time most RPs cover. But don't discount it fully. A character should be gradually changed by interactions with other characters and the world around them over the course of an RP--not necessarily in a blatant manner, but just so that a reader can realise "Wow, he would never have done this back when the RP first started". Of course, not changing is also a viable option--but it could also lead to drastic consequences. For example, at a key moment, a certain character refuses or fails to overcome a personal flaw they've had all along, resulting in bad things. That's viable too.

Your Estimate on Time Commitment :: Frankly I tend to RP in the later hours of the night/early hours of the morning anyway, so...not many commitments in those hours :v I'm more than capable of posting twice a week and more, so no worries there.

:: Puppet Basics ::

Izzie Jackson

Nick Name :: Technically, Izzie Jackson is her nickname. You wouldn't know it, however, seeing as she adamantly refuses to answer to anything but that. Were you to have the balls to venture the name 'Isabella Jackson-Valverde' in her direction, you may well end up with her knee in your gut, her wand between your eyes, or possibly both. She can't fucking stand that eyesore of a name. I mean, shit, for one, Isabella is just a retarded name. It...just is, end of discussion. She vastly prefers Izzie, which has been her preferred moniker for so long it's all but become her first name. And as for Jackson-Valverde...come on, who the hell wants two fuckin' last names? Was one not enough? So she dropped the latter one, mostly because nobody could pronounce it worth shit anyways (it's va-oo-VEH-jee, dammit, not val-ver-DAY, what's so hard to figure out about that?), and thusly did she become Izzie Jackson. She's set on having it legally changed to that soon too, just to get it all over with so that she'll never have to hear that fucking abomination 'Isabella Jackson-Valverde' ever again.

Age :: 17

Blood type :: Muggle-born and damn proud of it. People who grew up with magic are too damn soft. Don't know how to really live, y'know? Couldn't handle themselves in a real fight worth a damn without busting out their wand and just stupefying a motherfucker. So yes, if you can't tell, Izzie's very muggle-born and very much has yet to fully adjust to life as a magical person (she doesn't like the term 'witch', so she just uses 'magical person'. It can be a bit awkward); she still tends to refer to the Muggle world as 'the real world', her first impulse is always to do things with her hands and not with her wand, and sometimes she still finds herself going 'how the fuck is that even physically possible?' before she remembers 'wait, magic made physics its bitch a long-ass time ago'.

Sexuality :: Izzie is about as uninterested in sex as they come (...that was a horrible pun). She's asexual, looking upon heterosexual sex with literal disgust and revulsion, and looking upon homosexual sex as weird and unappealing to her. It's not surprising, considering how distanced she is from any real semblance of gender identity, that she also feels nothing by way of sexual attraction and has no interest in sex.

House :: Gryffindor. She's not nearly clever enough for Ravenclaw, too much of a genuine asshole for Hufflepuff, not enough of a genuine asshole for Slytherin, and ultimately, it was her passionate, impulsive character that led to her winding up in Gryffindor. She was actually this close to ending up in Slytherin (the hat did this whole prattle about how he could tell she was 'power hungry' and 'ambitious' or some such bullshit), but then she decided lions were way cooler than snakes, and into Gryffindor she went. That's literally all that happened. She hasn't regretted it for a second ever since. Lions are still way cooler than snakes.

:: Puppet Appearance ::

((See the actual description for in depth details on all information provided below, and note also that the thumbnail is the closest approximation I could possibly find, not an exact fit)).

Height :: Approximately six feet and five inches.

Weight :: A little over three hundred pounds.

Eyes :: Has complete heterochromia--one eye is green, the other brown.

Hair :: Black.

Physical Description ::

You can pretty much mark Izzie for a Muggle-born at first sight--there's just no doubt about it. And it's not just because in her time off she walks around in shabby jeans and boots and leather jackets (because dragonskin, whilst so much more badass, costs more Galleons than Izzie will ever own at one time in her life, ever). Everything about her appearance--her build, her general demeanour, her very skin, is all very...un-wizardly. Even decked out in robes (a state of being she avoids like the plague), she still sticks out in a crowd of wizards, and there are several reasons for this. For one, that just tends to happen when you clock in at 6'5--Muggle or wizard, that's...kinda tall, though Izzie has never felt anything but angst over it. Seriously? 6'5? She couldn't be just a little bit taller? Hey, at least she has the build to back it up--her long years of ceaseless physical workout, engendered by the philosophy that neglecting her physique entirely in favour of magic is just beggin' for big trouble, have paid off significantly, the result being she looks more like a boxer or a football player than a witch, with her shoulders nearly thirty six inches across, her biceps wider around than some people's legs, and her body, rippling with muscularity, in its entirety weighing in at about two of your average Hogwarts students put together. She sees no point in being strong with magic if you can't back it up by being strong 'for real'...and Izzie's pretty strong 'for real'.

Despite being a clear-cut mix of half-Scottish and half-Brazilian, in appearance, it's really only the South American in her that shows through (it's only 'til she opens her mouth and you get a nice big load of absolutely impenetrable Scottish accent that you realise she can't be full Brazilian). As such, she has none of the paleness of a Scot, her skin instead graced with a tawny brown hue, and afflicted conversely with more than its fair share of blemishes, whether they be the scars of childhood escapades and magical mishaps, tattoos of a motley assortment, even a number of birth marks. These are mostly port-wine stains--discolouration of a slightly paler hue than her natural skin tone, found in a couple of splotches on her upper arms, a larger one on her back, and some smaller ones dotting her throat. Awkwardly enough, she also has a spattering of light, faint freckles beneath her eyes (needless to say, freckles are not...er, becoming of South American folks. But that, for once, is the Scottish in her). The tattoos range from logos of her favourite bands (none of which are wizarding bands...apparently wizards can make shit come outta nowhere, kill a motherfucker with a thought, and friggin' turn into an animal, but they can't play a punk riff worth a shit) to the morbid and the grotesque. She doesn't do the whole 'inspirational quote on my left ass cheek' thing, so don't expect to see 'live each day as if it were your last' tattooed on her stomach, because she's already got a tattoo there of a huge chunk of flesh missing exposing her ribcage. Also, if she lived for a single day like it was her last, she'd probably get herself fuckin' killed. And the scars are a similarly wide variety--brought on by the rough neighbourhood she grew up in, her...er, 'daring' nature, and her tendency to get just a little too experimental with dangerous magic for her own good. Some are long and jagged, others small and focused, and a few that are just...weird and grotesque. All they have in common is that they're nearly everywhere. And, of course, as a teenager she's got at least a bit of acne dotting her face...though between the freckles, the birthmarks, the scars, the eyes, and the....well, everything else, acne generally isn't something you immediately notice about Izzie.

Needless to say, if Izzie was ever attractive, she stopped being that a long, long time ago. Furthermore, if she ever gave a shit about this, she stopped giving it a long, long time ago as well. With no concept of sexual appeal and either little understanding or little care for physical beauty, Izzie is more than willing to sacrifice the superficial appearance of her body in favour of power, both magical and physical, and if she could, she'd wholeheartedly choose to look like a horrifying beast of a woman, universally repulsive to all living things, if it meant she gained power greater than anything she has achieved thus far.

Strangely befitting of someone of her stature and general attitude, Izzie lacks any semblance of soft, delicate features--instead, her face is angular, rather as though it had been formed not of flesh and blood, but sculpted of marble and bronze, with sharp, defined features. Resting at the centre is a rather small nose, slightly pointed, with a significant crook at the dorsum to indicate that it's been broken in the past, probably more than once. Not a very pleasant sight--in fact, if there's anything attractive about Izzie's face (though it may be a stretch), it's her mouth. Set between slight dimples, shielded on either side by vague but emergent laugh lines, her mouth is remarkably expressive--and even though that wide range is generally wasted on a perpetual scowl, when she does see fit, typically inadvertently, to let show the occasional smile, it's almost beautiful. Beneath a high, wide forehead are a pair of eyes afflicted with what is generally known as 'complete heterochromia': that term, however, is about ten syllables too long for Izzie's taste, and she prefers the vastly simpler term "fucking mismatched". And they are. Her left's an almost pleasant woody shade of green, the other a vastly less pleasant, kinda weird, mottled brown. Sometimes it freaks people out. She loves that. Her hair, on the other hand, is a rather more simple affair--in that she doesn't have very much. She's always kept her hair cut to a pretty short, slightly uneven shave (because she cuts it herself and obviously she ain't no hairdresser), with a wiry texture and a tendency to spring up entirely untamed; it's a faded sort of black in colour, certainly not brown but also not quite fully black, but she just says it's black because it's her hair goddamn and if she says it's black you better be damn well sure that it's fucking black.

Identifying Factors :: Besides her height, build, scars, and tattoos, there's the fact that she looks latina but speaks with a Scottish accent so thick it might as well be some obscure Siberian language and has eyes of two different colours, which tends to kinda grab people's attention too.

:: Puppet Personality ::

Quirks :: Tends to crack various things--her knuckles, her neck, unfortunate objects within reach--whenever she gets apprehensive or irritated. Her left eye sometimes twitches and she doesn't actually notice until someone goes and says 'yo Izzie, the fuck is your eye doing'. Smokes a lot.

[color#660000]Personality ::[/color]

You could say Izzie is a sweet and kindly soul who knows nothing but love for everyone she meets, but if you did say that you'd be dead wrong, and she'd hex your ass. To say Izzie Jackson is an abrasive woman is like saying crocodiles are slightly aggressive creatures, or saying that Draco Malfoy is kind of an insufferable little shit. In other words, yeah, she's one hell of an abrasive woman. At her best, Izzie is rough, fierce, stubborn--possessed of an admirable loyalty for what few friends she has and a passionate, emotional soul. But unfortunately, Izzie is rarely at her best, and at any given moment is liable to take a turn for her worst--at which point she becomes cruel, callous, violent, towards inanimate objects and people around her. She's a veritable machine of ruthless invective, pumping out the most horrific blasphemies and obscenities just because she can, she insults and puts down almost everybody around her for lack of anything better to do or say, and she has anger issues that make the fucking Hulk look like a meek schoolboy attending his grandmother's funeral. Her caustic nature is only worsened by a very deadpan, mordant sense of humour--sarcastic, pessimistic, angry, profane, an obsessive control freak who absolutely needs to hold all the power in every situation and absolutely has to feel like she's bigger and stronger than everyone around her (which usually is the case, to be fair), it's not hard to see why Izzie forged on through her first years at Hogwarts mostly on her own.

Of course, Izzie did get sorted into Gryffindor for a reason, but that's a reason that comes later, after we discuss why she almost ended up in Slytherin. Because Izzie, perhaps above all, is power-hungry. She needs to feel like she holds power and can change things around her, or she feels worthless, incapable, weak. Having pulled herself up from the proverbial 'primordial ooze', so to speak, from a life of misery and hopes and dreams crushed, Izzie is now presented with the chance to be something more than the street rat she was growing up to be, something more than a hopeless delinquent with no money, no friends, no family, and no prospects--something more than an existence that was going nowhere and never would. And she's obsessed with making the most of that chance--obsessed, pure and simple, with power of every kind: namely, the power of using magic for destruction, for force, as a weapon to be wielded purposefully, because as a weapon is the only way she really knows how to use it. The straight fact of the matter is that Izzie simply wants to feel like she is truly significant--like she is respected and feared for her power, like she has pulled herself from the depths of destitution and despair and forged herself into a force to be reckoned with--like she matters. And she's convinced herself that in this pursuit she is willing to sacrifice anything she needs to.

Which is where Gryffindor comes in, because she's wrong. Izzie stands on the edge of the sword that is her need for power--she is close to being consumed by it entirely, but it has not yet devoured that tiny little Gryffindor spark that makes Izzie more than just a crass, power-hungry bully. She has made friends, something she did not have at any previous point, and though she does not realise it they have affected her possibly more significantly than her quest for power has or will. She is a passionate woman who knows only how to throw herself wholly into any pursuit she undertakes--and though, it is true, this applies to her relentless exploration of the farthest reaches of magic and power, it also applies to more admirable pursuits. Whether it be assisting a third year in the furtive concoction of a love potion for that lovely dame he's been makin' eyes with lately, or helping a fifth year study for their OWLs, or getting some fool's cat out of the tree it got stuck in, Izzie surprisingly often is found doing nice things for people...she just tends, consciously or unconsciously, to be a real asshole about it while she does it. Indeed, it seems Izzie is not at all aware of how willing she is to sacrifice her own time and energy for others and for her friends, and in fact, when she's in a good mood, when she's amongst her friends, Izzie can actually be fun to be with--when her humour becomes less insulting and more amusing in its own incisive way, when she's calmer and her temper less like a wolverine with anger management issues, when she doesn't feel the need to present herself as an intimidating figure of power, that little spark of Gryffindor, that bit of her that is still friendly and convivial, really shines through. So if the question is whether or not she's right about sacrificing anything to become more powerful, the answer is a resounding no, because she still takes joy and pleasure in being with other people, in carousing about with her friends and helping other people. But if the question is whether or not every day she gets closer and closer to being willing to do anything to achieve that power, to feel like she matters and has significance...the answer begins to shift to an all too clear 'yes'.[/color][/font]

Fun Facts ::
> Sometimes claims to be a misanthrope; most people generally agree she probably is.
> Hates being called 'lady' or 'girl' or...you know, things like that. It's not some sort of tomboy thing--like I said, Izzie has grown so detached from any semblance of gender identity that to be called a lady or to be called 'girl' would...actually weird her out, really. Like if you, as a guy, were greeted seriously with 'hey gurl' or something.
> Is almost always either practicing her magic, working out, or helping people around the castle. Any 'time off' she inevitably spends with her friends, but otherwise her day has pretty much no 'rest time'. But rest is for the weak and foolish. She shall have none of it.
> Izzie really, really hates feminine people. They just....they bug her. With their high-pitched voices and their weird mannerisms and their make-up...ugh, everything about them is weird. She doesn't get why anybody would wanna be all girly like that--not specifically because it's girly, but because it looks weak and stupid to her.
> Izzie is a fluent speaker of Portuguese. Arguably, she's also a fluent speaker of English, but considering half the shit that comes outta her mouth is slurred, thick, Scottish rambling, this cannot actually be confirmed. For all anybody knows, she pieces together a few key words that you can kinda make out and the rest is just gibberish.[/color][/font]

Pet :: Pet? Shit, does Izzie look like she has the kind of time to deal with a fuckin' animal and groom the damn thing and pick up its refuse and...all that shit? The hell she does. She's got better things to do than take care of toads or whatever.[/color][/font]

Likes ::
> Izzie loves duelling. It represents, to her, the ultimate test of power--to pit one's magic against another in a full out war of sorcery. Thanks to her single-minded dedication to the art of battle with magic, she's gotten quite good at it--but quite good is simply never good enough for her. Whether she knows it or not, Izzie will literally never stop pushing herself because she is always afraid that there is someone out there who is better than her, and this fact alone haunts her in nearly every respect--she can't bear to be anything but the best. The upside, as said, is that it's made quite a formidable duellist of her. The downside is that there is only so far you can push yourself before you reach a breaking point--Izzie refuses to recognise this fact, opting instead to constantly force the best she possibly can out of herself, and then force out a little more.

> Izzie loves her some good music. Well, 'good' is subjective: a lot of the music she considers easy listening would probably come out as nothing more than inhuman, demented noise to the average listener. But it's angry, it's violent, it's loud, and it's raw, all of which appeals to Izzie. Subtler music, such as jazz or classical, fails to do anything but make Izzie apprehensive and antsy--she keeps waiting for something to happen, but it never does, it just stays calm and quiet throughout, and she can't stand that. So she sticks with her metal and her punk music--whatever she is able to get her hands on, whatever she can blast into her ears at outrageously loud volumes, whatever makes her feel alive.

> Izzie likes cigarettes and alcohol. Well, she 'likes' cigarettes and alcohol as much as the next person who depends on them to deal with stress. It is true she cannot attribute her addictions to the stress of her relentless work ethic--these were habits formed long before she came to Hogwarts, but the habits she has adopted since have done nothing but aggravate her dependence on those substances. Best thing is, they turned out to be remarkably easy to sneak in--that crabby ol son of a bitch caretaker might get all anal over dungbombs n shit, but his methods are evidently not sophisticated enough to detect lowly Muggle drugs.

> Izzie, though she doesn't understand this herself, likes to help people. It makes her feel happy. Makes her feel like she matters and like she bears some kind of significance and had some kind of effect. In other words, it's the very same thing that drives her relentless, nearly self-destructive quest for magical power, but, as she has never realised that helping others gives her the very same feeling that she thinks she can get only from impressing upon others her power and fearsome force, it changes nothing. But she keeps on doing it, unconsciously, because it does make her feel happy.

> And plain and simple, Izzie likes her friends. Which is saying a lot, coming from someone who claims to hate just about ninety nine per cent of everyone she's ever met in her life. They're a motley, varied bunch, and they always have their fair share of spats and disagreements--but somehow, they seem to tolerate her, seem maybe to even like her, though she wouldn't go so far as to assume that much. But they let her join in with their mischief and merriment, so she sets aside her doubts and suspicions and just lets herself accept that someone actually wants to include her in their lives.[/color][/font]

Dislikes ::
> Oh man, where to start with dislikes? She could write a goddamn book (in fact, she's doing so. She started back in her first year and wrote down a single thing that annoyed her every day. She's been doing it since.), but let's see if we can't shorten the list a bit. Well, besides all the things I've mentioned above, Izzie can't stand most people. I know I've mentioned it before, but seriously, Izzie can't stand most people. She doesn't know them, they don't know her, they just bug her. And they're always goddamn talking. Man, talking annoys the shit outta Izzie. Hell, that's why she always hangs out with Erick. Besides the obvious fact (they're both huge and they both speak with obnoxiously heavy Scottish accents and therefore are capable of understanding the gibberish they spout while everyone else stands there scratching their heads), Erick doesn't talk. And when he does talk, he makes it count. Sometimes it's not such a good thing when Izzie can't tell what he's feeling and therefore can't tell if she's annoying him or not (which she oftentimes fears is the case), but generally, the fact that Erick himself never actually annoys or angers Izzie and the fact that he seems so capable of tolerating all her worst makes him, along with their mutual friends, one of few people Izzie really likes to be around.

> Izzie hates the more passive classes. Charms, potions, even transfiguration sometimes--she figures, shit, why charm something, or poison something, or turn something into a teacup, when she can just blast the motherfucker and be done with it? Surprisingly, the history classes don't fall under this umbrella of boredom--Izzie is fascinated by folklore and by tales of powerful wizards who preceded her, largely because she wants to study who they were, where they came from, and what they became. Unfortunately, she's yet to realise that if she wants to end up like them, then she's gotta try being good at something other than destruction--a reality, as her dismal marks in charms and potions would indicate, she has yet to comprehend.

> Izzie can't stand being outsmarted--a pet peeve of sorts made all the worse by the fact that it's not very hard to do. Not that Izzie is a lumbering brute of Crabbe-and-Goyle intellectual capacity (she's just a lumbering brute): it's just that she tends to get carried away with her impulses as opposed to thinking things through, and she was by no means any sort of genius to begin with. And at that she can't stand people who are smarter than her and know it--they're always pompous jackasses who do nothing but test her patience.

> Izzie hates to be in any way limited or restricted. For an individual of an extremely curious temperament, who is so utterly devoted to exploring the farthest reaches of magic and what it can do, to have anything--whether it be knowledge, ability to practice her magic, or general freedom--restricted to her is just about the most infuriating thing for Izzie. But worst of all is when her restriction is herself--when she can't properly cast a spell, do a certain bit of magic, or replicate a particular feat magical or physical--there is nothing worse. For that reason, Izzie doesn't know how to quit--she won't stop until she makes the damn thing work, or...well, there is no 'or'. She is currently in the process, for example, of trying to become an animagus--a long, arduous process, and though she feels she's making very good headway, she's had several...setbacks. But apparently she has failed to be deterred by the time she literally set herself and damn near the entire dorm room on fire just by trying too damn hard.

> And of course, the most obvious--and perhaps most significant--hate in Izzie's wide repertoire: to be bested. She cannot stand to be in any way proven inferior--it represents to her a negation of everything she has worked herself into the grave to achieve, the worst possible outcome she can imagine. And therefore she underestimates nothing and in every pursuit--a duel, a class assignment, taking out the trash--she is determined to do her absolute fucking best and determined to prove herself superior in all respects. Of course, there are times when she simply is inferior (she's not about to go and duel the headmaster into defeat, is she?), and though she tries to force that reality from her mind, she can't escape it. And as such she drives herself as hard as possible to eliminate that reality, to make herself superior so that she will never again have to endure the indignity and the humiliation of being proven lesser.[/color][/font]

[color=]:: Puppet History ::[/color]

Family :: Just read her history Broseph Stalin.

History :: Isabella Jackson-Valverde never knew her father. In point of fact, she never knew anything about him either, except that he hailed from Brazil and his surname, which her mother saw fit to slap on Izzie along with her own. His fate, the reason for his absence, his age, his life, his interests, his profession--nothing else is known to Izzie, for her mother, though she never spoke ill of him and seemed to reflect even fondly upon him, adamantly refused to tell a single thing more of the man. All she knew was that she was born in Glasgow, the Scottish city also affectionately known as 'The Murder Capital of Europe', to a single Scottish mother who worked her ass off to pay rent for a shitty little tenement located in the Gorbals--a place that's exactly as pleasant as any other place whose name combines 'gore' and 'balls'. She grew up amidst a festering hellhole of violent crime, drugs, and delinquency: magic was the farthest thing from her life.

Isabella, for her part, never realised that there was anything wrong with her life--not at that point. She got used to it a bit too easily and too quickly for her mother's comfort, who sought better for herself and her child. Alice Jackson had hoped that if she tried hard enough, she could get Isabella into school--an education was key. Alice had never graduated high school, and she felt that if not for that, both her own life and her daughter's life could have been so much more than the misery they now wallowed in--and as such she worked harder than ever trying to get Isabelle into school. All the while, Alice sought to impress upon her daughter that better things awaited them beyond the Gorbals. If she taught her daughter as best she could and encouraged her and made sure she knew that the poverty they lived in wasn't all there was to this world, then together, they'd make it.

But, as the fine Scottish poet Robert Burns noted, "the best-laid plans o' mice and men gang aft agley", which roughly translates into English as 'shit happens'. And shit happened. Alice was a hair's breadth from being able to send Isabella to a nearby school when a rash of gang-related violence and an influx of drugs forced the closure of the school, and no other school could the destitute mother afford. When she tried to tell Isabella of places where people cared for one another rather than hurt one another, where you could count on running water and electricity and three good meals a day, her daughter merely laughed cruelly and told her mother to quit spinning fairy tales. Her attempts to keep her daughter from being swallowed up by the destitution of her circumstances and the delinquency that surrounded them fell through--for she had little time to keep a truly attentive eye on Isabella between the jobs she worked to keep the two afloat. As such, by the time she was nine or ten years old, she was sneaking out of the house at all hours of the day and night, going out to little alleyways to smoke and drink with neighbourhood boys who would demean and degrade her, shove around her pitiful little frame and make fun of how little she was, how skinny she was and how completely un-Scottish she looked. But she went anyway, because she knew of no other way by which she could lose herself in the comforting embrace of smoke and alcohol--and anyway, it was that way no matter where she went. People were always gonna be cruel and mean-spirited no matter where you went, a fact of life that became evident to Isabella along with the fact that in this cesspool, she was nothing but a speck of dust soon to be consumed by the bloodthirsty machine of crime and misery that was the Gorbals. She would vanish from the world--perhaps, like so many others, overdosing alone in a tub in some abandoned building somewhere, or stabbed to death in a gang altercation, among some of the cleaner, less torturous demises she could imagine--and then nobody would ever remember her name, or anything about her. Her existence would be forgotten completely.

Needless to say, she toughened up physically, even if mentally it wore away at the contentedness of her spirit and the stability of her mind. She learnt to respond to people pushing her around and exerting dominance over her with violence and hatred, as she felt force to be the only way she could effectively have her way and prevent others from seeing her as weak and vulnerable. She wasn't particularly big by this point, but compensated by being absolutely batshit insane--by throwing herself head-first into a scuffle, by dedicating herself fully, in that moment, to showing whoever it was pickin' shit with her that she was not to be trifled with. And she got her ass handed to her plenty of times. Some of the kids were older and bigger, and they bullied all the kids who flocked to them for smokes and alcohol--hardly anybody ever stood up to them, and when this skinny little latina chick who talked like a Scot started doing it, they just laughed and tossed her in the nearest dumpster. To them she wasn't even small-fry--she was nothing-fry. But she never stopped fighting like a vicious wolverine against everything and anything she perceived to be looking down upon her--no matter how many times she hit the ground covered with bruises and gashes.

She left the sanctuary of her home as timid, sheltered Isabella--weaned on unbelievable stories of better lives 'out there', taught that she could amount to something if she put her heart into it and if she got an education. By age eleven, Isabella was gone, and Izzie had taken her place--an angry, unhappy, aggressive fighter who knew the world was nothing more than the worst of it--and she figured she had experienced the worst of it. Her mother could rant on and on about how there was a better life 'out there', but they weren't out there, they were here in the asshole of Glasgow, and Izzie decided she was never going to amount to anything, so why bother trying?

At age eleven, however, things began to change a bit. For one, Izzie began to grow. Fast. Her height began to shoot up, around the same time Izzie began lifting weights (or rather, heavy objects, not actual barbell weights) in order to catch up to the kids who were bigger and older than she was. And catch up to them she did. By the time she was anticipating twelve years old, Izzie had grown to equal street kids years older than she was in height, and she was a hell of a lot stronger than she'd been before, strong enough to actually get in some damage before she got her ass beaten to the curb. For another, this was about the time she also began to discover music--which wasn't easy to come across in the tenements of the Gorbals, and anyway Izzie had figured most music was soft, prissy shit--didn't do jack shit for her, didn't make her feel nothin'. But it turned out, there was a whole universe of music out there that seemed like it was just made for Izzie--a universe of anger, mental anguish, and despair put into the form of music. It was anything but soft and prissy, and it sure as hell made her feel something as she came across more and more of this angry, blissful noise--something she'd never felt before, something she has never been able to actually put into words since. The closest approximation she could possibly come up with was 'joy'.

Another rather interesting change was that some crazy motherfucker in a bathrobe came to their tenement one day and told Izzie and her mom that Izzie could do magic.

Well, that's basically what happened. Generally, when a jackass in a green bathrobe somehow ends up in your home telling you your kid is a witch, it's grounds for a healthy bit of scepticism--typically, the kind that involves a jackass in a green bathrobe flying out the window at rather high speeds. After all, for her own part, Izzie had never felt any kind of...'magic'. Not that she was directly aware of. So Izzie pretty much told the dude he was full of shit, and, deciding he was probably here to rob them or something, furtively began looking for some sort of weapon to knock the bastard out with or something whilst her mother tried to diplomatically coerce the 'poor misguided gentleman' the fuck out of their home. But when he insisted that magic was, in fact, real, and that Izzie, in fact, possessed it, the eleven year old demanded proof.

The crazy bastard started reaching into his bathrobe thing, which prompted Izzie, convinced he was reaching for a gun or something, to dive for the nearest object that could arguably be used as a weapon. All she managed to accomplish was slamming her face into the wall (she was not and is not the most agile of persons), but it didn't matter anyway, 'cause when she staggered back up to her feet (cursing profusely at walls in general), the dude didn't have a gun pulled. He was holding...the fuck? Some sorta stick? She watched pensively, her unease not at all abated, as he pointed the stick calmly towards the dinner table, where set on two plastic plates were a few scraps of meagre food, said something in what Izzie guessed was Yiddish or something, and then...and then outta fuckin' nowhere, it seemed, more food appeared. Their plates, previously sparse and empty, were now filled--still with crappy, none-too-gourmet delicacies, of course, but filled nonetheless with more food Izzie'd eaten at one time in her life.

Izzie's mother, who practically started murmuring hail Mary's the second the food came outta nowhere, was convinced: this man must have been telling the truth, as insane as it seemed to her. But Izzie, for her part, was not impressed and not convinced.

"How the fuck did you do that?" she demanded, her eyes narrowing on the madman as he twirled the stick around in his fingers with a pleasant smile on his lips.

"Magic." With that one word, he returned to silence.

"Bullshit," Izzie declared. There had to be some kind of trick here. Some kind of...something. Food didn't just come outta fucking nowhere--and for fuck's sake there was no such thing as magic. She said as much to the guy in the bathrobe. But in doing so, without even realising it, she shifted her argument; she didn't have magic. Even if magic existed somewhere, that somewhere was not in her. As she pointed out, if she could make food come outta nowhere, she damn well woulda been doin' it every mealtime every day instead of half starving every day. But the man merely replied that Izzie could not be blamed for that: for one, food can't come out of nowhere (apparently it was an exemption to some Gramp's Law of Whatever The Fuck Izzie Didn't Give A Shit About), and for another, she would not have been able to cast a spell as he had just done, for she had no control over her innate magic, and perhaps if there was a reason it had never manifested itself before now, it was because Izzie had always been single-mindedly devoted to her body as opposed to mind and soul. Which...didn't make jack shit sense to Izzie. She still wasn't buyin' any of this bullshit. Magic? It went against every tenet of common sense in the book. And Izzie liked to think of herself as rather a rational sort of person (...sometimes), leading her to once again reject this whole notion.

The man took it in his stride, simply saying many refused to believe the reality put before them, which irritated Izzie even more to be lumped in with the 'many'--even if they were the ones who actually had brains in their heads from the sounds of it. So he asked, what would he have to do to convince Izzie? Well, apparently 'make a million dollars and then give it to me', 'make me the biggest and strongest person ever' and 'kill that fucker who kicked my ass the other day' were not acceptable methods, so the man offered his own: suppose he turned into a cat, right here, right now, before their very eyes?

Both Izzie and her mother met eyes for a moment, and their expressions said the same thing: worst case scenario, he yells something in Yiddish again and nothing happens. So Izzie cautiously gave her approval, and the man smiled, and without another word and without any sort of fanfare, he went and he turned into a fuckin' cat.

Izzie inspected the man-turned-feline closely--examined just about every strand of fur, peered into its eyes like an optometrist in the midst of an exam, and then stepped on its tail as hard as she could just to see if it jumped up like a cat too (whereupon it launched about ten feet into the air spitting furiously). Yep, no doubt about it--this here was a bona fide cat. It looked up at Izzie (still a bit irritated, apparently, from the last part of her test) as if expecting a responce, to which she said again, "How?"

At that, the cat began to grow upwards, the fur began to rescind into its skin, its paws turned into hands and feet, clothes began to appeared around its body, and before them stood once more the crazy motherfucker, who was starting to seem less and less crazy (still, Izzie decided, a motherfucker) and more and more...well...

"Magic," he replied simply again with a warm, pleasant, entirely polite sort of smile.

Whelp, there wasn't much room for further denial by this point. She and her mother conferred furtively before Izzie went back to the robed man and ventured more than a little cautiously, "Okay, magic exists. How do I do it?"

"That's why I'm here," the man replied. "There is a school for young people who have not yet learnt to control magic, called Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wi--"

"Called the what?"

"Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry," the man repeated evenly.

"Who the fuck's bright idea was that?"

Well, nobody ever said Izzie was gonna make it easy on the poor bastard, but at last, the picture came about: Izzie, born of non-magical blood, possessed magic. This man was here as a representative of a school with a god-awful fuckin' name, not far, in fact, from Dufftown here in Scotland. And at this Pigpimples school ("Hogwarts," the man corrected. "Whatever," Izzie retorted.), they'd teach her how to use this magic, to control it and to make it work for her to do great, unimaginable things. Perhaps, Izzie realised, things that could get herself and her mother out of the destitution they'd lived in all their lives. And perhaps, she realised just as much, things that could make her more powerful than any street kid who'd ever beaten her down to the curb before.

For just about the first time in years, Izzie, in a moment of indecision, turned to her mother. Alice Jackson was still all but in a state of shock over all this outrageous news--but still, she had accepted the man's story as true, even throughout her daughter's own scepticism. When Izzie turned to her for the final decision, she looked back into her daughter's face, realising that this meant she'd have to leave her for months and months and Alice would be alone in the hellhole of the Gorbals. But she also knew, just as well, that this was simply no place for Izzie to grow up--that Izzie would never actually be happy here, and for all her efforts to forge a better life for her daughter, she had never had a better chance for that than this. And so when Izzie turned to her, Alice was silent for what felt like hours, before at last, she gave a tiny nod.

What followed whipped past like a whirlwind for Izzie. She had to go to London to buy her books and her magic stick ('wand' as the 'wizard' said it was) and her assorted other shit--the wizard offered to come with her, but she turned him aside, feeling the need to explore this all for herself. And explore she did--she spent far more time in Diagon Alley than she needed to, simply marvelling at everything. To attempt to list every single thing that evoked wonder and awe in Izzie at Diagon Alley would be the very definition of a Sisyphean task, for on every corner was something completely out of this world, something that simply defied logic--flying broomsticks and animals out of a fantasy book and buttered beers, whatever the fuck that meant (didn't taste jack shit like beer to Izzie). There was even a huge-ass bank staffed by 'goblins', with underground tunnels and carts and, she learnt in passing, a goddamn dragon, all of which she discovered whilst venturing to collect money from the vault the wizard had opened for her and deposited a little sum of cash to get her started in the wizarding world. And quite frankly, Izzie still considers it a point of pride that she didn't immediately give her books and materiels list the proverbial finger and just go and buy all the crazy shit that she was most fascinated with, 'cause god knew there was a shit-ton of that. Alas--reason, for once, prevailed. Izzie forced herself to stick with all the things on her buying list. In fact, her only gratuitous purchase came about in a bookstore of all places--where, whilst slaving about looking for the boring ass titles listed on her list, she caught her eyes on a thick, hardcover book called "The Most Powerful Witches And Wizards In History".

Even then, with close to no real idea of the workings of magic and the wizarding world, Izzie had her mind set on exactly that: power. She knew magic at this point only as a means to power and to prosperity--as a means of both crafting a better life for her mother and herself, and as a means of making herself more than a hopeless street rat. Armed with this new and vast and mysterious power, Izzie was aware that might beyond anything she had ever imagined before was at her fingertips--if she could catch it, and she became determined to.

I won't describe the continued amazement and sheer awe Izzie felt as she found herself then whisked from Diagon Alley off to some King's Train Station in London, and then on towards the train that would take her to Pigpimples. But there was something to be said for the moment Izzie realised that there was a whole world of magic out there--judging by the kids who, from their talk and their mannerisms and just about everything else about them, were pretty used to all the shit that Izzie was still having trouble wrapping her mind around. In other words, Izzie had come into this believing that magic was some sort of thing you...'grew into' maybe? With just a few individuals capable of it scattered across the world? Shit, she didn't know--she just knew that apparently a whole wide world of wizards and witches existed, operating much like the 'real world', except with magic. Hell, there was even a goddamn Minister of Magic--they had the whole shebang going. It was pretty damn dizzying--to think there was an entire universe Izzie had never known of, existing all around her and right under her nose--even, she felt, a bit humbling, in a very irksome manner. But it was no matter, she reminded herself. She'd never need to feel humbled again now that she was gonna learn how to fly and teleport and turn into animals and blow things up with her mind and kill shit with a thought...well, okay, according to her little book (which she read the entire way to Pigpimples) she was probably gonna have to work a bit to get to that point...but hell, Izzie was gonna make this happen. She set her mind to it, and that meant it was gonna happen. Magic was gonna be her key to...well, to everything.

Arrival at the school gave way to a slew of other huge revelations, though undoubtedly the most awe-inspiring was the fact that apparently this place was called Hogwarts, not Pigpimples ("Oh yeah," Izzie muttered under her breath as the headmaster dude gave his schtick). The amount of people packed into the 'grand hall' was absolutely dizzying to Izzie, who stood off on her own, the big, angry-looking muggle-born that nobody really felt any need to approach--they would've been irately rebuffed anyway, as Izzie had far too much to take in and learn to deal with idiots bugging her now. She sat through the speech churned out by the guy who called himself the headmaster, before they began 'the Sorting'--in other words, in which she would be told which table she was gonna sit at. Which didn't seem too important to Izzie, but she figured, hey, there was probably some kind of significance to it. Which was confirmed when the headmaster plopped a hat on a chair and the damn thing started singing about the 'houses' and their assorted traits and whatnot (she was just a bit too overwhelmed by everything else at this point to think 'holy shit, that hat is fucking singing').

Eventually, the name 'Valverde-Jackson, Isabella' was called it, and it took Izzie a second to realise that was her 'cause, for one, they apparently fucked up and mixed up her names, and two, she hadn't been called that whole damn thing in years. Scowling at this, the towering, irascible first-year-to-be marched over to the hat, sat down, shoved the thing on her head, and waited for it to shout something.

Hmmm...interesting...

Wa--the fuck? Are you in my fucking head?

Now now, is there any need for such coarse language? I'm merely here to figure out where you belong, my dear.

...where I belong?

Certainly. Whether you'll find yourself in Hufflepuff, where dwell the just and loyal--or perhaps in good old Ravenclaw, with those of wit and l--

Yeah, look, I sat through all this just five seconds ago. Let's just stick me in one of these houses and be done with it, eh?

If you insist. As for you, I think...Slytherin.

Slytherin?

Third table from the left.

...they all look like douchebags.

But they are ambitious, and they seek power. Is that not as you are?

Well, I guess it i...hold up a second. Is that a snake over their table? Fuck that, I don't wanna be a fuckin' snake. See, lion, that right there, that's a real animal.

Ah, Gryffindor. Home of the brave and the daring. Well, I suppose... I see some of the red and gold in you, if that's the path you feel is most appropria--

Yeah, yeah, point is, lions. We done?

If your mind is made, then so too is mine. We are.

"GRYFFINDOR."

And with that, Izzie tugged off the hat, and to thunderous applause, took her seat at the table located beneath banners of red and gold and lions. Thusly did she begin her first year at Hogwarts--as a Gryffindor.

It was, no question about it, the best year of her life until that point, though she worried and fretted incessantly throughout. She had told herself time and time again she'd have to work hard for the magical power she so direly sought...but she never expected it'd be weeks before she could get her damn wand to cast a little fuckin' light. It seemed whatever it was that had prevented her magic from manifesting itself until now was also working its ass off to keep Izzie from being any good at it...well, fuck that. She didn't care if she had to go a week without sleep if it meant at the end of that week the light from her wand was just a little bit bigger--if whatever it was keeping Izzie from excelling was so determined to hold her back, then she'd be equally determined to push right on past it, and then surpass it completely. So obsessed came she to be over the matter that she not only completely neglected to socialise or meet other people at Hogwarts, she literally never spared a thought to it the whole year. All she thought of was training, practicing, learning, and of her mother, far away in Gorbals, freezing and starving and working herself to death whilst Izzie came every night from a fine feast to a warm bed. Well, she assured herself adamantly, that'd change soon. With this gift, that'd change soon, and forever. She vowed it would be so.

Maybe it was for that reason Izzie never actually realised that wizards of Muggle descent were looked down upon in some corners of the wizarding world. If anyone ever pointed at her and chuckled with his friends, she was far too busy murmuring incantations under her breath and then murmuring ungodly profanities under her breath when the incantations either failed to work or, invariably, failed to work to Izzie's expectations. Even her aggressive and combative nature, otherwise perhaps the most blatant aspect of her personality, went unknown and unnoticed because throughout her first year Izzie withdrew into herself and focused completely on advancing her skills in magic, unconsciously spurning and avoiding any kind of human contact the entire time.

When her first year ended, Izzie came back home more jubilant and alive than Alice had ever seen her--once cold and distant, it was now all Alice could do to get her daughter to shut up about all the insane things she'd learnt to do. And when she wasn't buzzing around her mother talking about things Alice had absolutely no idea about, she was stuffed up in her room studying again. Alice, of course, didn't mind--it felt wonderful to have her daughter not only back again after so many months, but back happier and more active than she'd ever seen her daughter to be. But what irked and disappointed Izzie, when she was away from her mother and locked away in her room, was that she realised that despite the progress she'd made in her first year, life was no better here for her mother, and whilst at home Izzie was not able to perform any of the magic she'd learnt in school. In other words, not only could she not practice her magic first-hand, more importantly, she couldn't use anything she'd learnt to make life easier here.

To say it bothered and disgruntled her would be an understatement, but she forced herself to be content with helping her mother physically as much as possible--and, when she couldn't do that, she perused her school books, forcing herself to be content too with theory rather than practice. Even still, she feared greatly that whatever paltry skills she had managed to glean in that first year would rust and falter in the interval. She couldn't wait to return to Hogwarts--to be able to cast magic freely, to practice magic as she liked, and no more of this theory and reading bullshit, which was no substitute for the real thing. The entire time, of course, let it not be forgotten that Izzie never failed to neglect her body--for though she sought magical power, she came quickly to believe that there had to be a balance between magical power and physical power, for what good was a wizard without their wand? Nothing, unless you were just as obsessed with strength as you were with magical power, which without question reflected Izzie's sentiments on the subject. So at the very least, between theory and helping her mother to the best of her ability, she could occupy herself with that.

Time passed much more quickly than it ever had before for Izzie, and before long it was time to leave behind the destitute conditions of the Gorbals once more for Hogwarts. It wasn't easy to say goodbye to her mother a second time, but Hogwarts, in all its glory and all it represented to Izzie--magic, power, learning--lay before her, and to it she went eagerly. Her second year did not change much from her first--except that perhaps her obsessions became more focused. Izzie's interest in subjects such as potions began to wane, whilst her favour for aggressive, duelling types of magic intensified, and before long, a nascent interest in darker magics developed. It was here, she realised, that the most powerful magics in the world lay--why was it, after all, that so many of the men and women in "The Most Powerful Witches And Wizards In History" had turned out to be Dark Wizards? After all, she reasoned, nothing made magic inherently 'dark'--it was the use of them that made them dark, and their immense power, she felt, could be used for better causes than they traditionally were turned to.

As her delvings into the literature of darker, more powerful forms of magic increased, so too did her own magical power. Whilst her involvement in classes such as charms and potions shifted from disinterest to full on neglect, her capabilities with other forms of magic became more and more formidable (relative to a second year student, that is to say), and indeed, the first time she actually came close to interacting with other students was upon applying for the ability to join the Duelling Club in her third year. She was convinced that in the duelling club, she would excel, and, in her slightly earthier terms, 'kick ass'.

And kick ass she did. Her single-minded dedication to aggressive magic produced quite a skilled duellist for her age, and though she couldn't brew the simplest of potions without blowing up the castle and her attempts to transfigurate a mouse into a teacup merely resulted in her losing her temper and blasting the poor animal, she felt no shame and only pride in the method by which she had gone about practicing and focusing on those areas of magic. And above all, it was immensely satisfying simply to be talked about as one of the best of the duelling club, to have power and to have others know of and acknowledge that power.

The time of her third year saw, with this increasing 'reputation', if such a word could be ventured, a shift in Izzie's social habits. The fact that people possibly respected her made her immensely happy--and though she did not realise it, the idea that she could help people was just as satisfying. And she didn't know--and still can't point out--when it started; perhaps a student asked her for help with something, she consented (however irascibly), and it just went from there. The fact of the matter was that by the middle of third year, Izzie was using her intense dedication to whatever pursuit she set her mind to in order to help others rather than to obsess over her own magical prowess. It became well known that you could ask Izzie help with anything, be it a potion, a spell, or some obscure, ancient concept--and with the full devotion of her mind and body she would find just about every possibly useful bit of information, practice it, memorise it, bring it back to you, explain it, and then help you get it right. She'd still be an asshole about it--perhaps calling you a moron for not already knowing such simple concepts, or commenting on how damn ugly your stupid cat is when she climbs back down from the tree it decided to get its ass stuck in before she went and got it back for you--but the fact is, she helps, she helps to the full of her ability, and she never expected anything in return, mostly because in helping others she found a way to fill a void created by her relentless pursuits of power.

Just as possible, perhaps this behaviour was influenced by a change in Izzie's views of other people in general. She came to Hogwarts regarding other people as at best distractions and at worst enemies, and she felt herself far too concerned with her magical studies to waste time on such things as friendship and fun. How then, was it, that around her third year at Hogwarts, Izzie not only made a friend, but several? That wasn't supposed to happen. She was supposed to be an asshole, someone nobody would want to befriend anyway--that way, she'd never have to deal with that kind of bullshit. She saw the imbeciles, going all over the place, chatting with one another about the most inane bullshit, wasting their valuable time on such boring drivel--made her want to vomit. She had better shit to do than listen to people yarn on and on about the most inconsequential of trivialities.

But Erick Blacktalow proved...a different breed. In that he never did that thing that seemed to infuriate Izzie so much: talk. He was, much like Izzie at this point, a solitary figure--perhaps more of one, since Izzie had begun to actively involve herself in Hogwarts life as a duelling club member and as a general helper to any student in need. And perhaps it was that very fact--cliche though the whole idea may be--that caused them to gravitate towards one another. Erick ended up being one of few people to achieve the art of not pissing Izzie off just for existing, and Izzie, for this reason, found herself more and more seeking his company--he was also a muggle-born just as she was, just as much a stranger to this world as she was, and to top it off, when he did speak, his accent was just as impossibly thick and indecipherable as hers was, which was a plus.

Through Erick, Izzie came to meet other students with whom the Ravenclaw was acquainted. A motley assortment, by all regards--hailing from all houses, from all bloodlines, from all sorts of personalities and ideals. Their general friendliness and the bond they shared intimidated Izzie, who avoided them as much as possible and had a tendency to 'disappear' whenever they came across Erick hanging out with her. Eventually, they must've trapped her or something (the full body-bind curse, perhaps?) because there's no way Izzie at that point could have stood to actually socialise with them if she could help it--there was just something that compelled her to distrust and to fear. And yet somehow, at some point, she was unable to avoid interacting with some of them. They knew her only as 'Erick's friend'--the one who never failed to simply vanish into thin air as soon as they came across her--but far from being in any way malicious or wicked, they seemed almost to accept her and to want her there. And the more that happened, the more Izzie's fear of them as a collective and as individuals in that collective began to abate, and the more she came to feel strangely like she enjoyed being with them. And thus, compounded with the fact that for some reason they tolerated her in turn, Izzie Jackson found herself, for the first time, with those strangest of alien, frightening things: friends.

Finding friends for the first time in her life had a marked effect on Izzie in general. She didn't exactly undergo a full on transformation into Mother Teresa or anything, but she did become just a little less crass, maybe not quite so aggressive, and certainly happier in general to at last have consistent, friendly human interaction--not that she ever thought of it in such clinical terms. She just knew these people weren't assholes to her, that they included her in their merriments and therefore, did that not make them her friends? Shit, wasn't like she knew the exact definition of the word or anything. She knew only that she enjoyed being with them--with Erick, with Niles, with Celine and Dalia and Richard...hell, even with Grayson, who logically speaking was supposed to be exactly the kind of person who annoyed Izzie most. And furthermore, she realised that beyond enjoying being with them, beyond seeing them as her friends, she cared about them.

But she could not let herself turn from the ultimate pursuit--no, she could not let herself be distracted. She kept this in mind as her third year at Hogwarts passed into her fourth, and her fourth gradually into her fifth, each successive year bringing Izzie more and more magical power. In her fifth year she was casting nonverbal spells with ease, had been able to apparate without splinching (...much), and delving into the dangerous art of spell-crafting--and by this time, she was slowly, cautiously turning her theoretical research of the Dark Arts into practice. Nothing major (she was not, for example, going around and creating horcruxes all over the place), but she began to practice some of the less destructive curses, having gained a degree of mastery with jinxes and hexes. No, she was done with those--now, she sought mastery over curses. Such spells as the blasting curse and the reductor curse quickly became small fry for her, and she found herself wishing she could venture deeper into more powerful curses--of course, without practicing them on living people... That much she was not quite yet willing to do in her pursuit. But two more years of simply perfecting all the spells and digging deeper into untestable forms of magic have come to test her patience. She seeks wider avenues in which to pursue her needs, greater freedoms and better methods, lest she be overcome and what few things that are left more precious to her than her quest for power are consumed whole by it.

:: Final ::

Sample Post ::

Jack Jackson - Mobile Suit Gundam: Ghosts Of Zeon -- It may be a bit long for a sample post and might not make much sense seeing as it, too, is of an RP based on a franchise, but it should give a pretty good indication of my posting style. Helps that the character in this sample is also quite like Izzie.

'That was about the point Jack burst into throaty, deep laughter that permeated throughout the hangar and resonated across the walls. Burst into laughter for several reasons. Namely, the image of the petty officer, all poised for battle, all ready to duke it out with his fists, getting cracked upside the head with a wrench thrown by some skinny lil chick from across the catwalk. The whole 'hitting some lady' bit amused her too, though, just 'cause....when was the last time Jack'd been referred to as a 'lady'? Shit, had that ever even happened? Funny shit. "You got some good aim, kid," the master chief managed, still chuckling a bit as she cracked her neck and started back up the walkway, clapping the wrench lady on the shoulder with just a little less force than the haymaker she'd thrown at her friend down there. "Maybe you knocked a few brain cells into that dude's head. He could really use the help." And with that, she left that particular scene behind with nary more than a thought to it. Okay, so she was still picturing the wrench to the head bit, yeah, but she pretty much straight up forgot about the fight. Not only because...well, she hadn't really come out of it any worse than she'd gone into it, but...it just went right outta her head. Replaced with thoughts like 'bwahahaha she dinged him right in the noggin with a wrench' and 'man I better grab my gear before shit goes down 'cause I know it's gonna in like five minutes' and 'fuck I'm hungry, they got any burgers 'round here?' and 'shit where do I pick up the shit they said they were shipping ahead to my quarters?' and 'FUCK I HAD MY EXTRA SMOKES IN MY SHIP-AHEAD BAGGAGE' and 'I really wish Miranda were here with me' and 'sometimes I wonder what it feels like to be a cockroach'. Those kinds of world-shattering revelations.

Finally, she was at the requisitions office. Some irritable looking dude with a dumb beard, sitting at the front desk and reading a newspaper (shit, people still read newspapers?) glanced up at her like she was inconveniencing him extremely, before grunting out, "What?"

"What?" Jack fired back irascibly--dammit, she was not about to be outclassed in a game of who could be the more irritable. "I'm here to requisition shit for my suit, 'cause this is the requisitions office, I didn't come here to admire the goddamn scenery."

The officer stared up at her with half open eyes that looked for all the world that they just wanted to shut then and there and never open again, before he released a tired groan, set down his newspaper, and turned back to the monitor of his computer. "Name, rank, posting."

"Master Chief Jack Jackson, ACOS Squ--erm." She just about had to think on it for a minute. "17th Reserve Team."

Clack clack clack clack clack click. The officer typed away at his keyboard, glanced at the results, and then looked back up to Jack. "What is there to requisition?" he demanded unhappily, such that Jack half expected him to follow that with 'what's the point of requisitioning when we're all gonna die in the end anyway'. Alas. He disappointed. "You've been assigned a GM Space Command II. It's already outfitted with the vulcans and the beam sabres and 90mm machine gu--"

"Yeah, fuck that," Jack cut across impatiently. "Got anything better?"

The officer stared at her again (she was starting to think his brain had a buffering period when it came to registering shit other people said). And then he replied, "Why should I waste my time getting you other weapons when you're already completely fitted out?"

"Look asshole," Jack retorted. "I been in the Federation military twenty eight years and I been pilotin' sixteen of 'em. When I ask for better shit, I damn well expect better shit."

"Oho!" the jackass exclaimed with clearly exaggerated shock and impression. "And I've been shucking out requisitions to you assholes for damn near thirty years of my life, aren't I such a special snowflake?"

"Yeah?" Jack snarled, leaning forward with patience rapidly dwindling. "And didja kill seventy one Zeke suits back in the One Year War, gramps?"

"Well I'll be damned, seventy one!" the moron belted out, refusing to be impressed like he killed seventy one mobile suits by lunchtime. "Why, that's even more than Char Aznable did back in the war--wait, no it's not, he killed what, three times that many? I deal with your kind all the time--hotshot pilots who think you're fucking aces 'cause you got off a lucky shot and took out a mobile suit once and now you think you're Breniff goddamn Oguz now or something. I'm not dealing with it. Nice try."

Jack's blood boiled. Who the fuck did this asshole think he was to belittle her? Shit, he'd probably've fuckin' tripped if he tried so much as piloting a goddamn Ball...and now that Jack thought of it, that wasn't even fucking possible. Who the hell did he think he was to belittle those seventy one glorious kills--sure, it wasn't fuckin' Johnny Ridden, but those Zeke bastards had gotten years of experience in their big machines of death before the Feddies even knew they existed. I'd like to see you take down seven'y Zekes one goddamn month after seeing your mobile suit for the first fuckin' time, she wanted so badly to jeer at him, maybe accentuating that with a punch to the face or two, except even Jack knew when that just wasn't gonna work out for her.

So she tried a different tactic. "Look, I don't need the goddamn rifle," she ground out, clearly forcing herself to be patient. "It would be a waste of...well, everything, to give me the gun. Give it to someone who'll actually use it. I know you definitely had twin beam spears shipped to Dakar and they can't possibly be in use 'cause they ain't standard issue on no suit, so you might as well just give me one. It'll be put to better use than the machine gun."

Cue the obligatory staring while this information registered with the old fucker before finally, he groaned again. "Alright. Fine. It's not like anybody is batshit insane enough to use those damn things. Well, except..." He glanced up at her again, sighed, and then went clicking and clacking back at his keyboard, at last hitting the enter key with the air of finality of someone who's finally done with it. "There ya go. The tech's'll be workin' on getting that onto your GM shortly. Thanks for your business."

And Jack was just about to cut the guy some slack and leave, before a thought struck her. "Missiles?"

He just gave up. With yet another groan, he sank back in his chair, and rubbed at his eyes. "Will you go and never come back if I have the techs mount a missile pod?"

"Sure thing chief. Mount it on the right shoulder. No--the left. Wait, no...yes, the left."

The requisitions officer looked up at her with eyes that were by now devoid of the irritation of before, replaced now with nothing short of exhaustion and the kind of 'I really need to retire from this shit' look you only ever saw in requisitions officers for some reason. He clicked and clacked at his keyboard again for a few seconds, before glancing back up to Jack. "There you go. It's on its way. Goodbye."

Without another word, Jack turned on the heel of her boot and walked out, with a small smile gracing her cold, thin lips. And then, just to add insult to injury, before she walked out of earshot, she glanced over her shoulder, and called back, "Also, I lied! I'll be back soon as I need new shit! Here's hopin' you retire by then, gramps!" And then she was gone, leaving behind a very unhappy, very tired requisitions officer in dire need of a shave.'

Code :: Favourite book? I dunno, toss up between Half Blood Prince and the seventh book, whose name escapes me for some reason at the moment. The one where [SPOILER]Voldy goes moldy and Neville inexplicably becomes a badass.