» Andorus

I have a very, very strong emotional attachment to her. She's the character I really pour my heart and soul into. I depend on her to serve as an outlet for my emotions and thoughts and desires, and I'll often sketch her as a way to let out emotions I can't talk to other people about or that I can't properly articulate.

Andy (a nickname that friends and fellow authors came up with) is pretty much a fictional representation of me--but with Jedi powers (I've written "AU versions" of her story that give her similar powers that don't violate any copyrights) and a bit of physical refinement. She's about 5'9", Indian, with shoulder-blade-length thick black hair, caramel skin, a medium frame, and a generally serious demeanor.

She discovered her powers when she was about 9 years old--she and her family were at some outdoor bazaar next to a construction site, and there was an accident involving a steel girder slipping and falling towards the bazaar, and she managed to use her powers to push it out of harm's way. Of course, nobody was particularly grateful, and they all became very afraid of her--but before anybody could really do anything, another Jedi, a grown man named Adrian MacIntyre who'd witnessed the scene, came forward and got her out of there--he eventually took her on as his apprentice, and became a sort of third parent for her, one who completely understood her powers and could advise her on this new facet of her identity.

Early on in high school, she met another group of people who had their own powers (this is deriving from the stories I wrote online around the same time, where the authors put themselves into the stories and had their own sets of powers), and they all became fast friends and a band of allies against the evil forces lurking in the shadows and all that. ;o) But during one particular encounter, she was captured and made to wear a set of dark armor, the Kuroi no Yoroi (Armor of Darkness), which turned its bearer evil, forcing her to turn on her friends. They got her out, but the villains captured her again and forced it on her. This time her Master came to try and break her free--this resulted in her, under the influence of the yoroi, murdering him, slicing him in half with her lightsaber, reminiscent of how Vader murdered Obi-Wan. And the flash of horror and betrayal in his eyes just before he died never left her.

After she realized what she'd done, her friends were able to get her out again, this time for good, but she was severely scarred by what she'd done, and tried to start her training over from scratch to put this all behind her, in another life. Her request was denied, and she instead took several months off (conveniently coinciding with summer vacation from school) just to think things through and to pull herself back together.

When she came back, she had built up a resolve to go on and to make sure nothing like this would ever happen to her again, or to anybody else around her. The raw emotions surrounding her still-fresh memories of the murder never left her, and they've made her much more serious and sometimes brooding. But she has moved on--after mourning her master's death for a long time, though she has silently mourned for him every day since--and she finished high school, and went on to major in Computer Science at Georgia Tech, rooming with her best friend Leila (my best friend Jenn's persona). She was CS for two years before, like me, she followed her heart and switched majors into media, which is where she is now. ;o)

» Lucas

He's one of my "oldest" characters--I created him in a novel I wrote the summer before 9th grade, but I've held onto him and evolved his persona over the years. He's a 24-year-old Georgia Tech grad student, a violist, psychic and telepathic, a master swordfighter, and Andorus's love interest. He's about 6 feet tall, with chestnut brown hair and startlingly dark blue eyes, and has a sister named Leah who goes to MIT (who's also shown up in a few of my stories).

Lucas is originally from San Francisco. He's had his psychic and telepathy powers for many years, and only his sister and best friend David (another of my characters, but not one I use very often) knew about them, and both had powers/mental abilities of their own, though David's didn't come to light till after he was in college.

When they were in high school, Lucas's family was in the car and on their way somewhere on a particularly foggy day. Someone totally blindsided them, slamming into the rear passenger side--where he was sitting. His parents were unharmed, and Leah was really bruised from the debris but otherwise unhurt, but Lucas had to be rushed to the emergency room, because they thought he'd broken his neck.

He ended up being paralyzed from the waist down, with a very slim chance that he would be able to walk again some day. He decided to grab onto that chance, and after months and months of grueling physical therapy, he was able to walk again, and with constant effort, he was able to do so effortlessly. He used his swordplay practice to help him build up his muscle endurance as well. They had to put a steel bar in his spine to align it, though, because even though he hadn't broken it, he'd come much too close for anybody's liking.

He and David both opted to go to Georgia Tech, and roomed together the whole time. During his third year, he happened to be passing through the student center bookstore mall at the same time Andorus was sitting alone in the cyber-café there, one of the only people sitting by herself, looking particularly depressed. He sensed something about her, and knew then that she possessed some kind of power of her own, and went over to her and asked if he could sit with her, and struck up a conversation. The two became close friends very quickly.