Camry Bells

The Basics

Name: Camry Joan Bells
Nicknames: Cam
Age: 15
Orientation: Heterosexual
Desired Rank/Job: Student, Library Assistant
Powers:

Hair Color: Dirty blonde
Eye Color: Gray-blue
Any Piercings? Ears (two in each), naval
Any Tattoos? Dream-catcher on her right ribcage
Any Scars? A few handfuls of minor ones from various incidents that are barely noticeable, one major one on the left side of her lower back from an only-recently-fully-healed stabbing
General Appearance:At 5'5" and 106 lbs, Cam is of relatively average size though she has perhaps a little less fat and subtler curves offset by somewhat more developed and toned muscle mass than most. Her wardrobe style is borderline-tomboy, but is really just very casual; tank-tops and sleeveless shirts are her tops of choice, she wears jeans and jean-shorts almost exclusively, and owns exactly one pear of tennis shoes and no other footwear. Her hair is usually pulled back into a slightly unkempt ponytail or hastily brushed out with a baseball cap shoved on top. Occasionally, she may do some simple braids to keep it out of her way. She wears makeup regularly, but not a lot; usually just lip gloss and mascara. She's fond of wide and/or bulky but tight bracelets and almost always wears a simple chain necklace that disappears beneath her top where it holds her AA and MA chips.

Cam was somewhat traumatized by her brief stay in juvi and wears her time served rather baldly, at least to anyone who knows what to look for, in her mannerisms and body language. This is especially apparent at Hammel: an environment that she still regards as another cell, however velvet-lined. She enters every room in a hyper-vigilante and guarded fashion, no matter how casual she might attempt to act, with everything from constantly-roving eyes to keeping her back to a wall at all times. Its not even conscious. She'll still pocket more food for later than she'll actually eat when other people are around. There's a pause that Cam can't shake every time she reaches a doorway, part of her still looking for a guard to ask permission of before passing through it. She actually does still ask permission to use the restroom, regardless of situation, if there's any staff around to do so of. Unless you invade her personal space a little too suddenly and suddenly find yourself in a fight you didn't even realize you were starting though, these mannerisms are frequently obscured beneath the bad-ass, street-wise, tauntingly-smirking, tough-girl attitude she adopts.

The one time that everything from her wardrobe to her attitude changes though is when Cam goes on a date. In fact, the attitude bit might very well adjust slightly even just when spending time with a guy she's falling for. Cam on a date goes from wife-beaters and faded jeans to diving necklines, bared abdomens, and short skirts... though she still won't wear heels. She will however don lipstick, foundation, eye shadow, take the time to actually do her hair, and replace the stand-offish swagger of her gate with a sensual sway. It becomes all about laughing at his jokes rather than making jokes at his expense. She shifts gears almost instantly from the stereotypical bully to the stereotypical bimbo.
Personality: Upon first impression and on the surface, Cam comes across a lot more self-assured than she actually is. She's bold, outspoken, unapologetic, and seemingly confident. She rolls with day-to-day mishaps as well as any sort of flirtatious or romantic situation or interaction with a blaze, dismissive, attitude that borders on apathetic. Cam is also casually insulting and belittling with her peers, talking shit the way some people make small talk, and will often bulldoze and bully anyone who lets her.

Some of it is genuine, a sincere representation of how she feels and who she is. Most daily struggles, other than school work, really just don't get to her. Cam knows she's had worse and could, with just one misstep, be in a worse situation all over again. So its usually just not that serious to her; everything is relative, after all. When it comes to guys, Cam has managed to avoid becoming a cynic. Sure, heartbreak happens, but she's mostly just accepted that as the inevitable price to pay for the good times that come first. Besides, she's cheated on more exes than have cheated on her.

The whole bullying thing isn't really hers though. It comes from the same place most of Cam's persona does: someone or something else. Her psyche mirrors her power in that she's a natural mimic. Cam is extremely easily influenced, making most of the details of the way she acts and even many more fundamental aspects of who she is very fluid. Anyone who isn't cowed by her becomes someone to aspire to. Anyone who lends her even the slightest aid becomes someone to emulate. Her speech patterns and social ticks shift subtly depending on who her favorite TV character at the moment might be. Cam constantly defines and redefines who she is and what she wants by everyone else around her, even if they happen to be fictional. Its not conscious; she doesn't even realize it. Ask her where she first heard a word she's been using a lot lately or something like that and she probably won't even be able to tell you. Moreover though, if she does remember, it won't faze her; something she's been saying like she totally understands it Cam will freely admit to hearing only a day ago on a TV show, completely oblivious to how she's discrediting herself in doing so.

That's not to say that Cam has an inflated opinion of herself though. She may not realize why all the time, but she certainly doesn't see herself as a respectable or admirable person. Cam "knows", beyond the point of even beginning to question it, that she's stupid. Grasping new concepts never came easily to her and understanding the mechanics behind them was always harder. And she's made a lot of poor decisions, primarily due to how much of a follower and how easily influenced she is. All of this has only been exacerbated by the ignorance of so much missed education. Cam sees being required to earn a high school degree at Hammel, as part of her parole terms, as a punitive rather than rehabilitative measure; she simply thinks they're making her feel stupid and embarrassed as further punishment for her crimes.

That said, Cam does want to change and find a better life, perhaps for the first time in her life. She never had any dreams of going to college, and even now that seems pretty far fetched, or changing her circumstances as a child. Juvi changed that though. In some ways, she's merely been scared straight, terrified of returning to Juvi. However, Hammel pulling her out of a bad situation and giving her a place to live, a purpose, and another chance has also given her hope for the first time in her life that she has real prospects and support for achieving them. However, its more that Cam wants to escape a worse life than find a better one, when it comes down to it; she knows what she doesn't want anymore but just doesn't have the experience or imagination to envision an alternative. She's really trying to leave the past behind but she just doesn't know what kind of future she's trying to mold.

Likes:

Dislikes:

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Fears:

Secret:

Father: Damon Bells (Deceased)
Mother: Alexis Bells (Deceased)
Siblings: None
Any Other Important People: Brian Christians (21, ex-boyfriend, in prison, low-level telekinetic)

Alexis and Damon were high school sweethearts in LA who went to prom, got married, and had a child all in the course of a single year when they were eighteen to nineteen. Damon loved Alexis with everything he was and had; he was thrilled to start a family with her and took pride in providing for her and their daughter Camry (named after the car he was driving when she was born) by working as first a painter and then getting into general construction as well. Maybe Alexis loved him too, at least at some point or in her own way, but she didn't return his devotion. She didn't leave him but she stepped out on him on a regular basis and flirted shamelessly even when he was right there. She was more interested in her tarot cards, dream interpretations, and growing new strains of cannabis (which at least she put some of the profits from back into their home and family) than relationships. Damon couldn't stop loving her though and so he drowned his feelings in alcohol.

Their idea of responsible parenting was making sure Cam didn't actually see anything; she wasn't allowed to go into the garage where her mother grew and smoked pot and her father didn't drink at home, opting instead to spend the extra money to go out to the bar almost every single night. Cam grew up pretending she didn't hear her mother coughing like she was going to lose a lung in the garage and that the music her mother blasted when her "friends" came over was actually loud enough for her not to hear what they were doing in her parents' bed. Every night, when her father came stumbling in the door at three or four in the morning, Cam was the one who convinced him he needed to let the night be over, lay down, and go to sleep as she tucked him in.

Her parents weren't completely negligent, of course. They both constantly, almost incessantly in fact, told her how much they loved her. Things were always tight financially, but it never got worse than the power being off for a few days. Her mother loved to eat with her, even if it was a very stoner, munchie-driven diet. Cam could always wake up in the middle of the night and talk to her mom about a bad dream, reassured by interpretations of its true meaning that actually made a lot of sense. And those herbal remedies her mom used instead of modern medicine? They actually usually worked pretty damn good. Her dad was always up to play with her too, even if she was only up to play with him when he was at least relatively sober; he taught Cam how to play every kind of poker, backgammon, Yahtzee, and checkers. Sometimes her mom would even play with them. Cam was never great at any of these games but had a ton of fun none-the-less. Playing cards was the one time they really felt like a family.

Cam didn't do great in school but it was a poor neighborhood with fairly sub-standard public education, so the teachers mostly just cut her some slack and passed her on to the next grade anyway. The lack of interest the system seemed to have in her education made her care less as well; coupled with how damn hard it was, Cam got into the habit of skipping fairly frequently and spending her time in busy LA shopping districts where she picked up a penchant for shop-lifting. She made friends easily enough, though often temporarily, as a social chameleon adapting herself to suit whoever she was hanging out with at any given time. In fifth grade, she made a more lasting friend in one Stefanie Lee, a charismatic little girl who Cam was more than happy to serve as sidekick to. In middle school, Stef and Cam ruled supreme, bullying most the girls and even many of the boys into submission.

During the summer between eighth and ninth grade, Cam was hanging out at Stef's house late one night and got a ride home from Stef's older brother. She was fourteen at the time and, though she knew she'd been filling out and getting some attention from boys, she was swiftly enamored and flattered by how friendly and attentive the high-school senior boy was during the ride. He'd been heading out anyway, going to a weekend in TJ with some of his friends, which was why he offered her the ride on his way. After talking though, he told her she was welcome to just come with him. Cam's mom liked to drive down to just below the border periodically, so she had her passport and everything. And with her mom having been pretty sick for a while now and her dad drinking more than ever because of it, they probably wouldn't even notice if she didn't come home for a couple days. And he was a senior after all, and hot, and inviting her, and it was Stef's brother so she knew she could trust him. So Cam said yes.

He had some pot in the car which he didn't want to risk trying to get across the border so they pulled into a side street and hotboxed. Cam acted like she knew what she was doing but, despite her mother's proclivities, she'd never actually smoked it before. She was stoned silly, just watching the lights pass and feeling the wind blow as they drove with the windows open the rest of the way down to TJ. It ended up being a weekend of firsts, from really seriously drinking for the first time to getting her first non-ear piercing to getting her first tattoo to losing her virginity to Stef's brother. The sex wasn't bad; he knew what he was doing and was considerate of her inexperience. He was actually going to college and everything though, so it was clear it wasn't going to be anything more than a one-night-stand. He barely spoke to her on the drive up but Brian, an older of his who was riding back with them, provided better conversation and they'd exchanged numbers by the time they got back to LA.

However, while she'd been down in TJ, Cam's mother died. It turned out that sickness she'd been dealing with and refusing to treat with anything other than her herbal remedies, much less see a doctor, was actually lung cancer. No surprises there; she'd been a pretty heavy and pretty long-term smoker. Still dealing with the after-shock of her first time and, to a lesser extent, everything else that went down in TJ; Cam was still trying to mourn the mother she hadn't gotten a chance to say goodbye to and her dad was drinking more than ever. Stef's brother had told her about him and Cam and so she wasn't talking to Cam anymore either.

Brian was there for her though, when she decided to call him for lack of anywhere else to turn. They started seeing each other and, before long, she was spending more time at his home than hers, finding comfort in their intimacy and escape in drinking getting stoned. It was her freshman year of high school and the academics were harder and the social environment more difficult to navigate and Cam ended up skipping a lot of that too to be with Brian. She was barely into her first semester before she dropped out altogether and, in a neighborhood as crime-ridden as hers, truancy wasn't exactly a high priority for anyone.

When her father's luck finally ran out and he died in a drunk-driving accident, she hid out from social services at Sean's and made moving in with him official. While she'd only smoked pot for personal use before that, Brian decided she needed to help contribute to rent at that point and got her dealing for him as well. Frankly, Cam loved her life at that point. She felt adult and responsible and on her own two feet and she was usually faded enough not to worry about things like grieving her father.

Life with Brian was all thrill and passion. Brian was all about going to parties and having the times of their lives. Cam's life became a series of benders. Brian got her the fake ID and they clubbed and bar-hopped and went to house parties and they always brought "party favors" to break the ice. She drank and smoked pot heavily during this period.

Then the cops raided a party they were at. Hand-in-hand, they made a run for it. When a cop came around the corner, Brian hurriedly told Cam not to freak out and then did the impossible; with a wave of his hand, the cop's gun-hand snapped up and slammed the barrel into his own head, knocking himself unconscious. Cam watched in shock and felt something, some kind of energy, flow between their clasped hands when he did it. Then she saw another cop coming up behind them and, without even really knowing what she was doing, sent him hurling up and into a wall.

Unfortunately, while Brian knew his own powers and limits enough to do subtler moves like the one with the gun, Cam didn't even understand what was going on and throwing a grown man fifteen feet into a brick wall with enough force to leave cracks caused her to instantly pass out. As he knelt and caught her, Brian was tazered into submission by a third cop. Cam was arrested and convicted of underage drinking, possession with intent to sell, and resisting arrest. Her telekinetic attack was attributed to Brian, a known meta criminal with a long record, so at least she wasn't charged with assaulting a law enforcement officer as well. Small comfort; she was still on her third strike and going to prison for a while.

Cam didn't do as well in juvi. These were mostly way more experienced and hardened criminals than her and a far more hostile environment than she knew and she was out of her depth. She may have been a bully at school but here she was the constant victim of daily-increasing abuse, ending up in the medical ward with a shank in her back before the first week was up, ironically on her fifteenth birthday. Brian had a long criminal past and knew all the prison and juvi grapevines, so what happened to Cam got back to him. To protect her, he did something he'd sworn he'd never do again; he contacted Hammel and asked for help, one last time, not for him but for someone else. It took about another week for anyone to come meet him as he didn't have exactly a positive history with the institute but, once they did, he told them all about Cam and about what no one else knew; that she too was a meta, a mimic as far as he could tell.

Cam had gotten out of the hospital ward but she still wasn't doing well in juvi. So, when a representative from Hammel showed up and offered her a way out, she jumped at the chance. It was all handled within a week. Her case was transferred to the Vermont parole board and she was set up with a work-release that had all the usual conditions of parole (no leaving the state, regular parole meetings, going to AA and MA meetings, no associating with known criminals, obviously no criminal activity, etc.) as well as the provisos that she maintain passing grades as a student at Hammel and work at least 20 hours a week in the school library. Breaking any school rules would also be a parole violation and Cam was held to the curfew standards of the younger students rather than those her age. It was still a thousand times better than prison though, even with the embarrassment of how far behind she was educationally, causing her to constantly struggle and placing her in several remedial courses.

So far, she's actually been doing alright with it. Cam really doesn't want to go back to juvi. She's been going to her meetings, keeping her grades up (even if just barely and through a great deal of struggling) and hasn't been late to her library assistant position once. She keeps busy with schoolwork and power training and library work and meetings and even a self-defense club she joined after realizing in juvi that being a schoolyard bully definitely didn't mean she could hold her own; its helped Cam to stay out of trouble.

Ocean to her left and shops to her right; Sarah strolled along a more consumer-oriented segment of the boardwalk, for all the world like any other relaxed citizen. Physical skills always came easier for her than more mental ones. It wasn't that she was stupid, you didn't have a team of scientists play a major role in raising you without picking up some intellectual talents, but effecting the casual rolling gate of civilian movement certainly required less effort than attempting to blend in when actually interacting verbally. Granted, most of the other women were wearing considerably less than Sarah but they didn't have firearms to conceal; at least she'd gained a healthy appreciation for the benefits of an appropriate degree of cleavage.

Sarah had come to spend much of her free time on the boardwalk over the past few years. Since graduating from her cadet training, it and the beach were the public places she found she could most naturally assimilate herself. Despite her great patience on stakeouts, she'd nearly gone mad trying to sit still through an entire film at the theater. As for the rest of the town, well it didn't really have much to offer someone whose day-to-day needs were provided for within her quarters at Division. But she was at least really a little bit woman because she did find shopping cathartic.

As her gaze roved past various shop-front window displays, Sarah's attention was diverted from the pleasantly-distracting trivialities of accessories and shirts by the more neon sign of a bar. She paused mid-stride and pursed her lips contemplatively. When she'd turned twenty-one, several of the other soldiers had been very insistent on taking her out for drinks. Never having partaken before and knowing little more about alcohol than the cautionary science of inebriation's effect on judgment, Sarah had been hesitant, understandably so she felt. However, she'd been saved from potential workplace strife by an out-of-state mission that had taken her away for several weeks. Between her missions and theirs, the subject hadn't come up with her peers since.

However, with her devoid of any current imminent missions and everyone being kept closer to home recently, no doubt as a result of increased movements from Plague; it seemed probable to be addressed again sooner rather than later. Preparation had been a foundation of every aspect and branch of Sarah's training, throughout her life. She saw no reason to treat this any differently. If her coworkers were likely to insist upon drinking with her, it would be logical for her to do a little reconnaissance of what exactly she'd be up against.

Mind made up, Sarah started towards the door to the bar before hesitating once again. A dimple appeared in the center of her brow as the instantaneous knowledge that her power sensing granted her blossomed within her mind. There was a gifted within: superhuman strength, invulnerability and... and an ability she'd never encountered nor read any files on before. The best term she could apply would be "summoning" as it involved transferring objects and creatures from some kind of extra-dimensional plane. Seemed a little scifi to Sarah, even in her line of work, but the R&D team would likely be able to make more sense of it.

Proceeding with greater caution, Sarah entered the establishment and found her gaze immediately drawn to the bartender. It was him. She relaxed a little; his face didn't set off any alarms and she doubted he'd be doing anything behind the counter that would tip him off to the fact that his powers were no longer active. Unless he had some otherworldly liquor back there that would probably vanish with Sarah's proximity, that is. At any rate, it looked as though she'd be doing a much different kind of reconnaissance here than she initially intended to.

"What is your name?" She asked baldly, sitting straight-backed on one of the bar seats. Pulling out her phone, she thanked the promiscuity with which civilians seemed to text as she used it as a cover to pull up a Division server in which to input his name. He couldn't be a priority target of any sort or she'd have recognized him but, in the interests of being thorough, she aught to at least run his name through the system and see if anything came up.

Name: Tri (TriSnakeYinYang on Chatango)
Age: 21
Experience: 4 years
How Did You Find Us? RPG-D
Ready To Play? Nope! =P