AniRoleplay.com

History Born to a rather comfortable life in San Francisco, Jerikai Haynes was a boy like any other. His childhood was spent exploring his home, getting on the nerves of his sisters, talking to his imaginary friends. And up until the age of around ten this was mostly ignored by his family as something of a harmless quirk. After all, what child didn't occasionally speak to people who weren't there?

But while most children had active imaginations for a while and these matters change with time, the boy's connection to those that others could not see remained a persistant element. It was not until his sister Heather asked him who he was speaking to that matters grew of concern to the family. It was one thing to have an imaginary friend, and quite another to tell your family about the woman in the rafters with the crooked neck who won't stop crying.

As he aged, the boy started to grow somewhat distant. He had difficulty making friends in school due in no small part to his difficult determining which people were actually there and which weren't. Others avoided him for his habit of holding discussions with seemingly no one, and in time, he found it simply easier to not attempt to communicate unless spoken to first. In time, this grew into not leaving his room unless absolutely required to.

Despite his isolationist ways Jerikai was an inquisitive soul, and found something of a bastion within the digital medium of the internet. It was a freeing experience, allowing him to communicate with others and learn new things without the risk of being gazed upon like a loon. He was a natural with technology, and in time he grew to dabble into online gaming under the screen name 'Brindle', which he managed to leverage into a small amount of money, and the occasional spot of hacking, which he was able to leverage into quite a bit more money. Needless to say his elder sister, who had become a police officer by this time, was not pleased.

Thinking it best for the teen to get him out of the house, his family packed him up and sent him (quite against his will) to a small town in the middle of the desert called Cactus Forest. There he met his uncle Jeb for the first time. A grizzled old man, missing a leg and seeming to have a paranoid distrust for anything outside the confines of the town, Jeb nonetheless took the boy in. To say their relationship was a rocky one was an understatement, and within the first day they had already come to blows, with Jeb thinking that the boy had no clue how the world worked. 'Brindle', as he was calling himself full time now, at the age of sixteen of course thought himself far wiser than anyone in the entirety of the backwater desert town. Jeb's demands to now wander out into the night were not heeded. After all, what could the desert possibly hold that was so dangerous?

Less than an hour later 'Brindle' was being dragged out of a car he had hotwired by a creature that seemed to have stepped directly out of legend. A beast of fur and claw, that walked like a man and hungered for blood. Were it not for Jeb's arrival in the nick of time, shotgun in hand, the boy would likely have never made it back from the desert.

Once back in the relative safety of his uncle's home, 'Brindle', rightful shaken up, demanded to know what the thing that attacked him was. At first Jeb denied any knowledge of what he was speaking of, but after realizing the boy was persistant, he finally told him the truth. "Monsters've been real for as long as folk been stumblin' about," he told the boy. He explained that if there was a myth or a legend ever told about a thing that stalked the night, be it ghosts, shapeshifters, demons or the like, then yes, it was probably true.

This was a lot to take in, of course, but it opened the boy's eyes. It certainly explained the people he could see that others couldn't. After all, seeing the dead couldn't possibly be a common trait. Still, though, it left the question of how Jeb knew all this. The old man explained that he was a hunter, or at least that was what he called it. he protected people where he could from things that aren't supposed to exist. It wasn't the kind of life you told people about, for fear for their safety. And now, Brindle was a part of it. Jeb couldn't change that, but he could teach him how to survive it.

Over the course of the summer, a time period that would come to be known as the 'Summer of Fangs' by certain residents of Cactus Forest due in large part to a fairly bold incursion of vampires that was eventually quelled by the local hunters, Jeb taught his nephew the ways of the hunter as best he could while trying to keep him safe. It was a hit or miss process, but the boy showed something of a talent for the use of a pistol and quick thinking in emergencies despite his antisocial ways. Sending the boy home, Jeb advised him against following the life of a hunter, and that he was only teaching him these things for self defense. Brindle confirmed that he understood and they parted ways, civil in the very least.

Present Day In the two years that have passed, of course the boy went directly into preparing for his future as a hunter. He had seen the world for what it really was, and he knew that despite his claims to not care about anyone but himself he could not in good conscience let others suffer when he could be preventing it.

First step was training. Simple steps, getting out more, learning to socialize, developing sociopathy. Who the people were didn't matter to him. The fact that he could speak to them, get information, learn new things, these were key. But it wasn't enough.The next step was harder... He needed to learn to better defend himself if he was going to protect others. A fake idea was easy enough to get; One of his sisters had given him one to aid an abet drinking as a passtime while in Cactus Forest. With it as a base, and a bit of practice, it was not hard to make others of passing quality. Learning his officer sister's handwriting was another matter of ease. Recommendations letter and identification firmly in hand, Jerikai entered the police academy's training program and from all accounts made fairly high marks, acing his tests and showing himself to be something of a savant on the pistol range.

When his sister found out, of course, it all came crumbling down. Banned from ever holding a badge and having his relationship with his sister further strained, 'Brindle' fell into a mood that was equal parts sincere depression and calculated choice to alienate others. Under the guise of an 'emo phase, the boy grew his hair out to conceal his face to degree, and took to skulking around town in an effort to avoid his family, taking to picking pockets rather than ask for money. After all, he was still serious about going into the life of a hunter; the fewer people he kept around the safer it would be on everyone.

Content to follow this pattern until an opportunity arose, an unexpected boon came in the form of an early birthday present from delivered by a friend of his uncle Jeb; A Winnebago recreational vehicle ('For the shut-in on the go'as the enclosed note so quaintly put it). Seeing this as his only chance, the teen snuck home, grabbed his backpack, his laptop, and a sellection of forged identification papers. Passing his elder sister's door on the way out, fortune smiled once more as he found it unlocked. Now in the possession of a taser and a stolen pistol, Jerikai 'Brindle' Haynes made his way back to Cactus Forest to meet up with Jeb and start his life as a hunter.

Unfortunately, by the time he made it into town all he was met with was a roaring fire as the remains of his uncle's home lit up the night sky. Firefighters were able to eventually quell the blaze, but a one legged body pulled from the ashes confirmed the worst. As much as the boy feigned distaste for Jeb, the loss hit him hard, and denial quickly set in, making Jeb's death something of a touchy topic for the teen. Though he could likely easily communicate with Jeb's spirit, he seems to intentionally avoid trying to do so out of refusal to accept the loss. Now, without a mentor or any true direction, the young hunter has set his sights on learning and writing down as much as he can about the paranormal to better protect people. Bitter, generally antisocial, and very much following in Jeb's footstep.