Taro

[Noi]

T A R O !

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don't help me up now, i can stand my own ground
I DON'T NEED YOUR HELP , NOW ----------

In the cold breeze that I walk along,

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The memories of generations burn within me![/color][/b][/center]

FULL NAME: Taro
AGE: 24
NICKNAMES: "Red"
RACE: Wolf
PACK LOYALTY He & Himself
SEXUALITY: Heterosexual
CANON OR ORIGINAL?: Original

Been forever, since I cried the pain and sorrow!

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I live and die, proud of my people gaining![/color][/font][/b][/center]

HEIGHT: 6'2''
WOLF FORM HEIGHT: 2'4''
WEIGHT: 169 lbs
WOLF FORM WEIGHT: 98 lbs
BUILD: Tall, Toned, Lanky
TATTOOS & PIERCINGS: ---
HAIR COLOUR: Red
WOLF FORM HAIR COLOR: Red
EYE COLOUR: Green
WOLF EYE COLOR: Lime Green // NOTE: Right is sewn shut.

I'm here standing on the edge,

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Staring up at where the moon should be![/color][/font][/b][/center]

LIKES:

• Nicotine
  
• Alcohol
  
• Partying
  
• Playing Human
  
• Midnight Misadventures
  
• Cat Meat Fajitas (it's an acquired taste)
  
• Traveling Alone
  
• Enjoyable Humans
  
• Tight, Hidden Areas (i.e. Alleyways)
  

DISLIKES:

• Stress
  
• The Wilderness
  
• Larger Animals
  
• Fireworks
  
• Small Children
  
• Large Dolls/Mannequins
  
• Closed-minded Wolves
  
• Patronization
  
• Loud Music
  

FEARS:

• Rejection (Secretly)
  
• Death (Secretly)
  
• Full Blindness (Secretly)
  
• Beatles & Cockroaches (Secretly)
  
• Spacious Bodies of Water (Secretly)
  
• Nothing, of course!

STRENGTHS:

• Outer Emotional Detachment
  
• Physical Speed
  
• Intimidating Height
  
• Human Intelligence

WEAKNESSES:

• Closed-mindednesss
  
• Hypocrisy, obviously
  
• Lack of Brute Strength
  
• Psychological Nicotine Addiction
  
• Obsessive Compulsiveness

OTHER: Mreow.

Stray!

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No regrets cause I got nothing to lose![/color][/font][/b][/center]

MOTHER: Unknown
FATHER: Unknown
SIBLINGS: Unknown
PARTNER: ---
CHILDREN: ---
OTHER: ---
OVERALL HISTORY:

Even tracing all the way back to the days of his puppy-hood, separating the drug-induced haze of his current mind, Taro cannot remember either of his parents. The closest he can recall to the beginning? It was when she took him in. The sour, lonely old witch - it’s all she ever was. He was a pup, though. What better had he known than to let her steal him away from Mother? The ghastly human woman’s name was Usagi. As far back as he can remember to this day, she was his first and only guardian. She had lived alone, with her three cats, and her house had always possessed a heavy, mixed odor of tobacco and ammonia. It stung his sensitive nostrils, back then, burning itself a special place in his cerebrum. Perhaps if he’d known better, he would have loathed his life. Alas, those walls with the ripped, plum-colored wallpaper drew the limits of his universe in those young, ever so naïve years.

Usagi was angry. Making more sense of it now in his adulthood, Taro believes that her husband had abused and left her, at some point. There is no justification for the cruelties that she bestowed upon the young pup out of her severe distress. In that time, however, he had seen nothing wrong with it - only felt repeatedly the pain that he could never grow accustomed to, which he often blamed himself for. How did these episodes usually take place? There was no controlled warning for anything. He never really did anything wrong, but be in existence within her household at the wrong time. She would often sit at a table in her dimly lit kitchen, flipping through a book with thick, crinkly sounding pages. Tears would fall down her porous, liver-spotted cheeks, and she would raise herself from her chair and call his name in a strained, odd tone. It was at these times that he dared not run away. He would go to her, and brace himself for some form of terrible infliction. Whether it was by a knife, by her fist… the woman had even tossed him onto a hot stove. One particular nightmare that haunted him for years took place in that very kitchen, on one of those very similar days. She had risen from her chair just as he had trotted into sip from his mossy green-algae decorated bowl when she had whispered his name. A most odd sound from her, it had been - almost a dazed rasp. Upon looking at her, he had taken in her tears; her distant expression; the bloodshot eyes, and the burning-out cigarette that had been hanging from her dry, paper-thin lips. She called him again.

“Taro, boy. TARO!” An almost demonic bark had made him jump. “Come here, Sweetheart.” the voice had transitioned angelically, coaxing - quite enough to trick the young Taro into trotting over. She had picked him up and stroked him for a good minute, the tears moistening the skin beneath his brilliant crimson coat. And that’s when she did it. The cigarette - oh, how it burned in that instant that it touched his eye. For once, he protested. For once, it was too much, but her gaunt fingers remained constricted around the nape of his neck, pressing him onto it until it steamed out. He had turned around to bite her, finally, lost in his own rush of adrenaline and endorphins. She had gotten up at that point and tossed him against the wall, where he remained for the rest of the night.

That had been the final straw. After the incident, one of the old felines had tipped him off on how to escape, feeling enough sympathy for him to finally come to his aid, however half-heartedly. Before Usagi woke the next morning, he had slipped through a narrow opening past an easily-overlooked cabinet door. The world outside was strange to him, and at that point, he had been around seven years old. He ran, oblivious to the fact that he needed to disguise himself in the city. Instinct was on his side, though. Until around the age of thirteen, he managed to make a living off of hunting and making his narrow, growingly infamous escapes from what now he knows were hunters.

Taro, at around the age of early fourteen, ran into another wolf who took it upon herself to teach him the ways of disguise. Her name was Terra. He was infatuated with her, and stuck by her side by as long as she could. Being too nice to turn the pup away, Terra acted much like a mother to Taro for the length of a year, before she was killed and taken by a hunter that Taro had unknowingly led to their plastic-and-plank “den.” It’s an incident that Taro continues to blame himself for, and something that he’d never tell anyone about. The female taught him the ways of human disguise, and it was beneath her careful, matriarchal stare that he tried on his mask for the first time.

After that, it was pretty much all a blur. Taro began making human friends, and quickly learned to blend in. Unfortunately, his vulnerable age paired with such virgin naiveness made him the target for avid party-goers. He was drawn into alcohol, drugs, and reintroduced to his number one fear: cigarettes. Ironically enough, it became his major addiction. At the sad age of sixteen, Taro was popping pills, smoking weed, doing lines of cocaine on occasion… the works. He quickly rose to the title of “life of the party” in many groups, before going home and taking off his mask, wallowing in his misery in very much a similar way as Usagi had done.

Years passed. One. Three. Six. Jail. When he hit twenty-two, Taro was finally arrested. It was a very new experience to him, needless to say. Caught up in drug trafficking, he arrested along with an assumed friend of his for possession and intent to distribute freebase cocaine. Witnessed by his “friend,” Taro, wishing to help his friend and escape himself, dropped his disguise in order to distort the bars with the steel-strong jaws of a wolf. However, upon seeing the display, the confused human lashed out - literally. In panic mode, a fork was dug into Taro’s face, barely missing his left eye and leaving two deep scars there. This might have not been so bad, had Taro not already been severely afraid of losing his vision all together. In an effort to defend himself, Taro lunged at the man, animalistic feelings taking over. He bit a chunk out of his friends neck in his wild frenzy, only to taste the blood and meat and step back, mortified. He pried the bars apart, running past the stunned guards and making his way out of the establishment. It was that day that he ran back to the location of Terra’s old den. He fixed it up nicely, and it is where he currently lives. On occasion, he will go on a klepto’s trip and steal some things for his make-shift home. He will sometimes go and party still, but he is not nearly the junkie that he used to be.

Filler Notes: Usagi was actually wolf, whose mate had been killed. She plucked Taro off from another pack, and built her life around wallowing in her own misery, taking out her unreasonable hatred for their species on the unfortunate pup. Whether he will find this out at one point or another is undecided.

Ever stray!

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So I'm gonna live my life as I choose![/color][/font][/b][/center]

NICKNAME: Noi
AGE: 16
EXPERIENCE: Eight Years (Off & On)
HOW DID YOU FIND US?: Truth of Tomorrow
PASSWORD: The Scent of Lunar Flowers
RP SAMPLE:[/blockquote][/blockquote]
wordcount;; 1430

In, out… in, out. Her small stomach rose periodically, the damp denim texture of her romper irritating the fair, sensitive skin of her torso. Her hands still rested there, only they had loosened their hunger-fighting grip, serving less of a purpose than to sprawl themselves there idle-mindedly. She worked on distracting herself from everything by admiring the beauty of the bright stars above her. She picked out what few constellations she knew, the time passing bringing an impossible sleepiness to her eyes. Her hysterical sobbing had gradually subsided, fading into silence, and she allowed the chirping of crickets to calm her as she shifted into a more comfortable position on the hard, satisfyingly cool cement. Everything hurt, but all could be taken care of, eventually. It was how she coped with things. Everything would always be better tomorrow - always, no matter what happened. A lot of people admired her for her optimism, but it was all she could do to move on with her life. Really, she wasn’t ever looking at the bright side of things. Nope. She was simply denying that there was a dark side, at all. Yes, that was it. Jett Grove was in complete denial. At least it was working for her, right? Well… except for tonight. Tonight, reality had pretty much bitch-slapped her right across the face. She let out a deep sigh, the foul taste of her recent spill causing her to grimace. Where the hell was her car? She’d need to find it - and not just for her tooth brush and related items. Actually, retrieving her guitar, first, made much more sense to her. The thought flitted past all of her problems in her mind, proceeding to the forefront and causing her to bite her lip, smearing the red lipstick in the process. Damn. She’d sold herself before, and it looked like she’d be doing that at least once or twice, now, just to get money for a new instrument. Her hands came up to her forehead, and she stretched the skin across her face stressfully.

It was then that she heard a car park. Eyes wide, the girl turned over on her stomach, wincing some as she watched a dark figure approach. Of course, she was scared shitless, unable to see who the person was in the dim-to-nonexistent lighting of a random old alleyway at night. She cowered a little, managing to scoot back on the ground a couple of inches, but otherwise frozen in place until the man was practically walking on top of her. Her jaw gaped as she recognized Ben, and she moved to sit up. However, before she could raise herself, he had kneeled and grabbed her up into his arms. “Hey!” she protested, not entirely have any reason behind it. She squirmed a little before finally falling limp and crossing her arms, deciding that it wasn’t quite worth her energy and effort. He obviously wasn’t going to put her down. She huffed irritably. How the hell had he found her? Now what was she going to tell him?! There wasn’t a person in the city that knew who she was and her name all at once. She gritted her teeth with an unreadable expression on her face, deep in thought, already, even as he was still adjusting her seat. Oh, so she was an invalid, now? She looked down at her hands, weaving and unweaving her fingers repeatedly in numerous random patterns. She could lie to him again, but what if this bullshit was just going to be reoccurring? Maybe he really had liked her drumming that much. She could see him as turning out to be the persistent type. Or… maybe he actually cared? Jett stole a glance over at him as he got in and began to drive away. She didn’t bother to ask where they were going, which probably just made it even more obvious that she had no better place to be. She couldn’t help but mentally shrug. Did it even matter what he assumed, anymore? If he’d just left whatever after-party had been going on to search every obscure corner of that end of Switchblade for her, he was bound to prod and scrutinize her until the full truth was hypothetically forced up and out of her throat like so much junk food earlier that night. She redirected her blank stare from her hands to out past the windshield.

Switchblade looked even more dangerous at night, especially in the particular area she’d ran off to. Her eyebrows furrowed and she bit the insides of her cheeks as they passed men in trench coats on the corners, and near-naked women bent over, halfway inside the windows of shady looking vehicles. It was almost a weird feeling to accept it was all part of her life, now. Given, she hadn’t exactly found her place in it yet, but decision time was to be expected, soon. Defense didn’t come out of the goodness of the law-breakers’ hearts. She’d have to find some way to make her keep. Perhaps because of this, the comfort of being one of them wasn’t yet second nature. These people all appeared to be so foreign, even if some of them were the ones to take her under their wing. Given, Vitius was probably not as ruthless as, say, Delinquo, but it was a gang all the same, partaking in illegal activities, scaring the general public out of their minds, etcetera… Wait! She’d forgotten all about the similarity in gang. She looked over at Ben, the look on her face making it quite obvious that she had something to say. However, the solemn look on his own made her turn back straight again. Later was better. Why did this situation feel so familiar? She hugged herself, sinking down a little in her seat. They finally pulled into a neighborhood, and she looked out the passenger side window with a confused expression as she tried to pull up some forgotten, stored memory of the place, possibly hidden reclusively in the back of her brain. That’s where a lot of useful information seemed to go, since she had started smoking. However, this place didn’t seem familiar in the least, and she was about to be the first to speak up and ask where they were. Before she could, though, they were pulling into the driveway of a nice looking house.

Was this… his? Her face suddenly held a strong, mixed look of ‘what the fuck?’ She looked over at him to present it, hoping he was good at reading expressions. She then pursed her lips as he asked her the well-expected question, readjusting her seat so she could sit up, level with the older man. She sighed audibly, an obvious sign of her frustration. How was she to word this? She could be blunt, but if she answered vaguely enough, the question would probably just branch off into more specific ones, and then they’d both be fucked in the way that they would be sitting there all night. “I ran away from home.” She decided to go with the simple response, anyways, testing the water. She shifted uncomfortably, eventually pulling her legs up and sitting still. Balled up as she was, the seat seemed to dwarf her, which was fitting for the situation. She felt suddenly quite awkward and meek, with, of course, the smallest hint of revolt. At his next question, Jett rolled her eyes halfway, immediately hoping that he hadn‘t seen. Did she have a place to stay? “If you drove me to my car, I could stay there. I don’t think I could give you directions, though.” In other words, she really didn’t know the first place to look for it. Jett was stubborn, though, and she wouldn’t give any more than she needed to. She looked up onto the driveway, her glances at him shifty and fleeting, and through the still-damp red hairs that fell messily over the better half of her face. Her eyes were full of shame - shame that she sure as hell wasn’t about to let him in on. She decided at that point that it was her turn to ask a question. “Why are you so interested? Why didn’t you just leave me alone?” She looked him dead and hard in the eyes. The question was partly posed to shift the subject, but a good half of her genuinely wanted to know. What were his motives? He was a complete stranger. He was also a criminal. Bad people didn’t have big hearts.

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Until I fall! Stray! Stray!

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Lyrics by Steve Conte. Song: Stray! [/blockquote][/blockquote]

[James]

ACCEPTED