firefell | application

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Ren
AGE: 18+
JOURNAL:

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RETURNING: no

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Riley Abel / Angel Knives
CHARACTER AGE: 16
SERIES: The Last of Us
CHRONOLOGY: post-Left Behind
CLASS: Hero
HOUSING: In Heropa, as close to Ellie as possible please

BACKGROUND: The plot and setting of the game can be found here.

In Riley's case, the infection became real for her when her father turned and murdered her mother. Riley was forced to kill him, and after that found herself in the same military school Ellie ended up in. She got along with the people there, found herself a group of friends to blend in with. On the surface she kept with the rules of the military school, but she frequently slipped out at night to try to find the Fireflies and their leader, and sometimes just to blow off steam. She tried to find ways to remind herself of a normal life, one where teenage girls went to the mall and stole liquor and rode horses, but it was impossible to ignore that the Fireflies were trying to change things and she desperately wanted to be a part of that.

When she was finally accepted by Marlene, however, she started to see the downside. She wanted to be with Ellie, and yet she would be sent away by the very people she'd tried so hard to find a place with. Her decision is to see Ellie one last time, and she takes the other girl on what is basically a date, spending nearly the entire outing hoping Ellie will ask her to stay, to give her a reason to.

In the end it isn't needed. Their outing is cut short by an attack by the infected where both girls are bitten and think they're going to die. Rather than take the easy way out and commit suicide, Riley suggests they wait out the infection and lose their minds together. Their story ends on that note, but in the end Riley is the only one to die. Because of her immunity, Ellie walks away and into the events of the Last of Us.

PERSONALITY: In a world that seems desperate to beat the hope and life out of everything, Riley stands out. She plays practical jokes and she hasn't lost her sense of humor, she's friendly and helpful and cares, genuinely, about other people. Everything has gone to shit but Riley still finds ways to look at things differently, to see the light in the darkness and that there can still be hope.

She plays down serious issues in an effort to focus on the positives, whether for herself or to keep people like Ellie going. She's free with her praise when it's deserved, but she has a bit of a jealous streak when it comes to who Ellie hangs out with. It's clear on many occasions that she only wants the best for her best friend and that she's willing to risk everything to make sure that happens.

The Fireflies represent hope for Riley, but once she has a place for them and she knows she'll have to leave Ellie behind, she begins to realize her feelings go beyond feelings of friendship. When she returns to the military school she's desperate for Ellie to want her to stay, to ask her to stay, but still unwilling to put herself out there openly because losing Ellie is unthinkable.

Even after she's bitten, she refuses to just let go of her own life and her time left with Ellie. She'd rather spend her last moments living, making memories, getting every second out of the time she has left. When she dies, it will be because she chose to, not because she took the easy way out.

Throughout the course of Left Behind, Riley shows her wry sense of humor as she teases and jokes with Ellie and in the American Dreams comic, she teases Winston and jokes about stealing his booze. She's a bit of a dork, and a typical teenage girl who is perfectly willing to make funny faces in a photo booth with her best friend and entirely happy to stand around for extended periods of time just listening to bad puns. She swears like a champion, inserting the word fuck nearly every other word, and isn't afraid to voice her opinions.

She shows a willingness to listen to views that don't match up to hers when Ellie berates the Fireflies, but it doesn't shake her convictions. To her the Fireflies represent the way the world has to go, because she can't see it surviving under military rule forever. She isn't afraid to stand up and fight and has killed numerous infected on her own, which is quite a feat for a sixteen year old girl.

POWER: retractible, unbreakable claws: these extend from the back of her hands, Wolverine-style, and are six inches long.

Energy empowerment: for a finishing move, Angel Knives charges her body with energy, allowing her to attack faster and with enough strength to punch hearts out of bodies. Also she can kick heads off.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE: test drive post

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

The very first thing that Riley does once she knows where the fuck she is is get her hands on some gloves. Yeah it's the middle of summer and it's hot as fuck, but there's no way she's about to walk around this town with a big goddamn bite on her hand that practically screams kill me I'm infected! Fuck that.

Beyond that, she has no idea what she's doing. She wanders, she gets the lay of the land, and tries very hard not to think about what comes next. It doesn't work all that well though, because she ends up in a park with the gloves on her lap, staring down at the red, puffy scars on her palm.

The issue here, she knows, is that she didn't expect to ever have a what comes next kind of thought process again. She'd had two options, kill herself or wait out the infection, and she'd gone with the good one. She's waited and she'd turned and that was supposed to be the end, but now here she is, and she's alive. Ellie is here, with that fucking old guy, and she's supposed to find a way to deal with all of it.

It'd be funny if it weren't so fucking sad. She rubs her hands together, wondering if her and Ellie are the only people who know what a healed up bite from an infected feels like. It's rough against the pad of her thumb, it hurts to push, but it doesn't burn anymore. It's just a set of teeth marks and some weird bumpy parts that she assumes are spores that are living under her skin now with no place to go.

When it comes right down to it, this is the first time Riley has never had an immediate plan since her parents died. Everything had narrowed into stay with Ellie and then they'd... well, she'd thought they were both dead. Now they're both here. They both have their entire lives ahead of them, and that's...

Well, that's pretty fucking cool. With a short laugh, Riley pushes herself up off the grass and shoves the gloves into her pocket. Maybe she'll want them another time, because she's bound to feel self-conscious about the bite at one point, but right now? Right now, she feels pretty good.