[TW: Mild mentions of gore, child experimentation, drug use with the intent to brainwash, mental scarring and issues]
Name: Varuna T. March; will respond to friends calling him "Runey"
Age: Approximately 17 years old.
Birthday: Self-chosen and celebrated as 24 July; he is unaware of his actual date of birth, 11 April.
Gender: Male (He/Him)
Species: Bio-engineered werewolf (Human/Wolf)
Category: Student
Class: High School
Grade: Freshman
Appearance Description:
Clocking in at 5’5’’ (165.1 cm) and 137 lbs (62.1 kg), Varuna doesn’t cut an intimidating figure in any sense of the phrase. He’s more likely to be labeled as a ball of sunshine, in fact. His fluffy blonde hair is left in an easily disheveled shoulder-length bob, though weekly grooming is necessary so the oddly soft locks don’t become too unmanageable. His nails are similar in their fast growth rate and resulting need for trimming. His eyes are a honey gold that radiate the same happy-go-lucky nature that leaves a bounce to his every step—very few are privy to the moments when troubled thoughts darken his eyes to a fathomless, molten amber. His naturally fair skin often sports a healthy flush to it, particularly as he’s made it his business to bask in the warm sunlight as much as possible. As a result, he has a smattering of light freckles across the bridge of his nose and his cheeks, which actually compliments his more boyish, youthful facial features.
He prefers casual clothes, and outside of his school uniform, Varuna is most often spotted in simple shirts and pants with minimalistic patterns that allow him to move easily and freely. He does, however, indulge in comfortable clothing—consisting mainly of fluffy sweaters or scarves—when the whim strikes him.
Personality Description:
It’s deceptively easy to think of yourself as being one of Varuna’s closest friends. He’s an outgoing boy that thrives in the company of others, after all, though he tends to ramble on and can talk a mile a minute. He quite enjoys making new friends and will more often than not persist regardless of whether the person he’s latched onto actually wants a friend or not. He does bounce back quickly in the face of genuine rejection, though, and simply moves on with that sunlight-bright smile of his. And even when he’s seen as a nuisance, Varuna retains his trademark happy-go-lucky, if a tad naive, attitude. For all of his babbling and short, air-headed attention span, Varuna is clearly a good kid, harmless in the long run if annoying at times.
And then, you realize that you don’t know him at all.
Sure, you know that his favorite color is blue, that he absolutely adores anything containing chocolate, that he’s practically dead to the world before 10 in the morning, or that his appetite is seemingly endless despite his lithe build. Beyond such easily-observed surface facts, however, there’s very little he gives away. You don’t know about his life before Manta Carlos, or if he has any family he still talks to. You don’t know what he does in his spare time when he’s not surrounded by his ‘friends’, if he’s a member of any clubs or extracurricular activities. You don’t even know when his birthday is. The idle chatter that he so easily coaxes out of you about what you had for dinner the night before, about the television programs you enjoy, the fact that your older cousin is pregnant and you’re so ecstatic about having a little baby cousin to spoil rotten, is seemingly reciprocated and yet… it isn’t.
Not at all.
Varuna is becoming an expert at charismatic avoidance through the childish facade he’s built up. He can make you feel like the most important person in his life, and yet when the tables are to turn, when it comes to getting to know him, however, he utilizes his bubbly, easily excitable yet ultimately harmless nature to steer the conversation back to you, you, you. As such, no one truly knows how brittle Varuna truly is. Mature beyond his years, self-deprecating, and just a tad sardonic, Varuna keeps everyone at a distance that would be near glacial if it weren’t for how dedicated a friend he generally makes an effort to be. There is, of course, a part of the boy that is genuinely that kind and outgoing, but it's been tempered deeply by what he's gone through.
And as he is now, such relationships are only one-way streets; it is almost physically painful for him to share personal facts, and if it does come to that, then he’ll always brush off anything that’s happened to him or portray it in a milder light. He has an immensely difficult time trusting others even now, and while it’s mellowed out from the previously violent reactions he’d have, he still keeps everyone at arm's length. He is particularly distrustful of adults, especially authority figures, though he keeps this very firmly under wraps considering his current situation as an Academy student.
Hypocritical, perhaps, but at this point, Varuna doesn’t quite care about letting others see who he truly is. Of course, he’s had his slip ups because he’s really only 17, but… who could possibly believe that lurking beneath this bouncy, hyperactive airhead was an affection-deprived child still struggling to put the broken shards of himself back together? He would rather be called a hypocrite than allow someone to see that particular mess.
Active Abilities:
Unlike some other werewolf breeds, he also retains his human mind and logic, if altered to work harmoniously with the wolf instincts that are strongest in this form, and does not have the same weakness to silver/blessed silver objects, though he is mildly irritated by direct skin contact to such metals akin to an allergy.
Passive Abilities:
Weaknesses:
Common Magical Items: N/A
Biography: Had it not been for his parents’ bad luck, Varuna would have been born a normal child with a normal life. He would have grown up in a loving family, gone to school, had friends, and had a decent chance at a stable, happy life from the very start.
Instead, he was born to a desperate couple that wanted children with every fiber of their beings, but feared greatly for the mother’s and child’s chances—the wife came from a family that had a rough history of high mother/child mortality rates during labor, and had been advised by doctors not to even attempt it. By a stroke of luck, however, the couple had seen an advertisement in the paper for some clinical trial that would follow their unborn child’s development to ‘test run’ several new drugs that supposedly decreased the risk to both mother and child at a considerable rate. Once they called in with questions, there had been many, many reassurances that the drugs had already tested to be completely and utterly without side effects or negative impacts, that this trial was only necessary to give the drugs the publicity needed to make a good standing on the market and all of the ‘actual’ tests had been done before and yielded 98% positive, safe results. The couple grasped the spider’s thread dangling in front of them and started climbing without a thought, taking the miracle that it appeared to be and praying with all that they had.
Once the wife became pregnant and began the trial, she was required to go in for bi-weekly check-ups with the head doctor of the team running the whole thing, the visits becoming much closer together the further along she was. According to the doctor, both she and the baby were perfectly healthy and there were no complications so far. Just in case, they were running several ‘tests’ that wouldn’t normally be done. The wife always had an odd, overpowering craving for rare meat after each test, and while she was initially concerned, she was quickly reassured and told to take it as the weird food craving stage upon confronting the doctors about it.
Nine months later, Varuna was born a hearty and happy baby boy. His mother’s health was also perfectly stable, which made the couple overjoyed to be safely with their newborn son. Unfortunately for all three of them, the company that was carrying out the so-called clinical trial had ulterior motives. After discreetly… taking care of the parents, Varuna, now an orphan, was given time to be lost in the system before being taken in by the company. He was then subjected to a life as an experiment, the doctors poking and prodding at the boy.
You see, the original drug that was given to Varuna’s mother contained the DNA of a werewolf mixed with an altered strain of what had been researched—covertly and in the utmost of secret projects—to actually transmit the lycanthropy ‘curse’ of the breed of werewolves they had chosen on testing, as well as several enhancing and supportive drugs. It was no coincidence that Varuna’s parents, as desperate as they were for a solution to their desire for a child, found the clinical trial offer just as that overwhelming desire was rekindled, after all. No, it was all a set up by a secret organization-run company that wanted to create the first ‘human-tamed werewolf’. These weres would then be put through a rigorous educational system and would be trained as soldiers.
Previous experiments had only yielded werewolves that were too feral and more wolf than werewolf, or humans that only gained a fraction of a wolf’s natural strength, speed, and agility. Within both of the aforementioned groups, as well as another round of experiments that centered around breeding werewolves under controlled circumstances, a majority retained enough free will and a wolf’s natural predilection towards freedom to eventually rebel. By the time Varuna ended up in their hands, however, the scientists were confident that this batch of subjects would turn out favorably. And so, Varuna was ‘engineered’ under the careful scrutiny of the doctors, which went completely unseen by Varuna’s desperate parents.
Fast-forward about 9 years.
The organization was disappointed to see that Varuna didn’t quite cross off each desired trait. Despite gaining enhanced senses and skills in his wolf form, he would never truly be able to compare to the genuine thing. Even the enhanced healing ability they tried to manipulate ended up working a bit too well sometimes, causing the boy immense, debilitating pain as his body tried to expel the sudden, sky-rocketing excess of cells. His mindless obedience to the scientists, however, more than made up for those drawbacks. Through the daily introduction of several manufactured drugs, including a synthetic pheromone that had Varuna’s wolf instincts labeling the head doctor as his alpha, the boy remained none the wiser and utterly devoted to his handlers, accepting their spoon-fed excuses as to why he had to go through weekly physical tests, or why he had to be isolated when he wasn’t being accompanied by a guard, or that suffering through every moment of pain would be worth it in the end, we promise.
And then, a little after Varuna’s 9th birthday, one of the scientists that had been assigned to the boy took exception to the step-up in the rigorous physical exams that put every single one of the boy’s enhanced abilities to the test, and well beyond even that. Varuna’s healing ability was strained to the limits as well, and resulted in many a sleepless night as the boy’s body struggled under the cell growth. The woman had only been hired for this round of experiments, and while she’d previously managed to separate herself from the mounting guilt, everyone had their breaking point and Emilia hit hers then.
It took a year of careful planning that left the woman with an ever-growing sense of paranoia, but once Varuna was 10, the scientist made her escape with two of the test subjects—Varuna and another boy his age named Riah. What came next was a nerve-wracking handful of years on the run while Emilia juggled weaning the two boys off of the cocktail of drugs they been exposed to regularly for their whole lives to keep them compliant to the scientists’ desires and keeping them off the organization’s radar.
It wasn’t until the two boys were approximately 12 that Emilia felt safe enough to settle somewhat permanently in a small mountain town. By this point, the two were more or less recovered from the drug withdrawal, but the mental scars were of a much more deep-seated variety. Riah would suffer from relapses into the blindly obedient puppy he’d once been, while Varuna’s problems were on the opposite side of the spectrum and consisted of a near-violent distrust of others.
The next three years consisted of Emilia earning a living to support the trio while continuing to work on the boys’ issues, as well as widen their educational experience beyond the more combat-oriented curriculum the organization had seen fit to indoctrinate them into. Both Varuna and Riah were intelligent boys and soaked up what knowledge Emilia taught them, but their more personal issues were, understandably, making slow progress.
Varuna ended up leagues better off than his ‘brother’, though, as one night, Riah escaped the little farce of a life they’d built up. His instincts still yearned for the fabricated comfort and care of the scientists, and though he tried for his emotionally bruised and battered ‘brother’ and pseudo-mother/guardian, it ultimately wasn’t enough.
Emilia fled with Varuna and started up their town-hopping despite Varuna’s adamant insistence that ’but he’s pack, we have to go after him!, the woman knowing just where Riah had left to and rightly fearing that it would be sooner rather than later that the organization would catch up to them. They managed for two more months, however, before they were cornered. Varuna escaped once more by the skin of his teeth, barely surviving the injuries he sustained while Emilia sacrificed herself to buy him time and the resulting stress his body was put under as it healed itself in the following weeks.
Approximately 16 and completely alone, Varuna utilized the skills he learned throughout the years—not only the survival and combat skills from his time as an experiment, but also those that Emilia taught him, like how to blend in with normal people and look like a plain old human—to live on the streets of a large city. Some of his worst habits resurfaced during this time, Riah’s betrayal and Emilia’s death having sent him into a downward spiral that seemed neverending.
Varuna hadn’t survived that long by letting himself wallow in pity, however, so he forced himself through sheer bullheadedness to continue living day in and day out, scrounging whatever food and shelter he could manage. A particular breakthrough was when he realized that small—normal, his bitter mind supplied—children were often coddled. With that fact becoming further apparent the more he observed the families that went about their daily lives, Varuna made the decision to craft the facade that most see nowadays.
Capitalizing on his smaller, slender size and naturally boyish features, he began working on the image of an airheaded, talkative, and energetic boy that would skip down the sidewalk beside you and chatter on a mile a minute, smiling sweetly while you contemplated treating him to a bit of a snack at the diner. It helped him land enough food to survive when his pickpocketing skills weren’t enough, and even got a police officer or two off of his back when they caught him napping in a local park late at night. It was perfect for keeping people from digging too deeply into details he’d rather keep hidden, parts of himself that he deemed too broken—ugly, ugly, ugly—to show to anyone else.
It was only an unlucky—or perhaps, lucky?—slip when Varuna was spotted shifting into his wolf form to capitalize on the wolf’s warmer, thicker pelt one cold evening. Rumors of a wolf boy began circulating, and while Varuna did his best to keep a low profile, it was a week later that he was approached by a faculty member of Starlight Academy that had happened to be in the area.
A new arrival to Manta Carlos, Varuna has made it his mission to keep people at arms’ length. He’s only an orphaned werewolf, he promises. He’s not quite sure how he’s going to trick the professional therapists he’s been made to agree to see—any amount of time spent on the streets would’ve had its effects on a child—, but so as long as no one thinks to look beneath the facade of a sunny, happy-go-lucky boy who suffers from a short attention-span despite having the best of intentions, then Varuna knows he’ll be fine.
Resources: Varuna is broke, plain and simple. Being taken in as a ward of the Academy has allowed him access to the resources allotted to him as such, but he has nothing from his life before.
Additional Information: N/A
Name: Varuna T. March; will respond to friends calling him "Runey"
Age: Approximately 17 years old.
Birthday: Self-chosen and celebrated as 24 July; he is unaware of his actual date of birth, 11 April.
Gender: Male (He/Him)
Species: Bio-engineered werewolf (Human/Wolf)
Category: Student
Class: High School
Grade: Freshman
Appearance Description:
He prefers casual clothes, and outside of his school uniform, Varuna is most often spotted in simple shirts and pants with minimalistic patterns that allow him to move easily and freely. He does, however, indulge in comfortable clothing—consisting mainly of fluffy sweaters or scarves—when the whim strikes him.
Personality Description:
It’s deceptively easy to think of yourself as being one of Varuna’s closest friends. He’s an outgoing boy that thrives in the company of others, after all, though he tends to ramble on and can talk a mile a minute. He quite enjoys making new friends and will more often than not persist regardless of whether the person he’s latched onto actually wants a friend or not. He does bounce back quickly in the face of genuine rejection, though, and simply moves on with that sunlight-bright smile of his. And even when he’s seen as a nuisance, Varuna retains his trademark happy-go-lucky, if a tad naive, attitude. For all of his babbling and short, air-headed attention span, Varuna is clearly a good kid, harmless in the long run if annoying at times.
And then, you realize that you don’t know him at all.
Sure, you know that his favorite color is blue, that he absolutely adores anything containing chocolate, that he’s practically dead to the world before 10 in the morning, or that his appetite is seemingly endless despite his lithe build. Beyond such easily-observed surface facts, however, there’s very little he gives away. You don’t know about his life before Manta Carlos, or if he has any family he still talks to. You don’t know what he does in his spare time when he’s not surrounded by his ‘friends’, if he’s a member of any clubs or extracurricular activities. You don’t even know when his birthday is. The idle chatter that he so easily coaxes out of you about what you had for dinner the night before, about the television programs you enjoy, the fact that your older cousin is pregnant and you’re so ecstatic about having a little baby cousin to spoil rotten, is seemingly reciprocated and yet… it isn’t.
Not at all.
Varuna is becoming an expert at charismatic avoidance through the childish facade he’s built up. He can make you feel like the most important person in his life, and yet when the tables are to turn, when it comes to getting to know him, however, he utilizes his bubbly, easily excitable yet ultimately harmless nature to steer the conversation back to you, you, you. As such, no one truly knows how brittle Varuna truly is. Mature beyond his years, self-deprecating, and just a tad sardonic, Varuna keeps everyone at a distance that would be near glacial if it weren’t for how dedicated a friend he generally makes an effort to be. There is, of course, a part of the boy that is genuinely that kind and outgoing, but it's been tempered deeply by what he's gone through.
And as he is now, such relationships are only one-way streets; it is almost physically painful for him to share personal facts, and if it does come to that, then he’ll always brush off anything that’s happened to him or portray it in a milder light. He has an immensely difficult time trusting others even now, and while it’s mellowed out from the previously violent reactions he’d have, he still keeps everyone at arm's length. He is particularly distrustful of adults, especially authority figures, though he keeps this very firmly under wraps considering his current situation as an Academy student.
Hypocritical, perhaps, but at this point, Varuna doesn’t quite care about letting others see who he truly is. Of course, he’s had his slip ups because he’s really only 17, but… who could possibly believe that lurking beneath this bouncy, hyperactive airhead was an affection-deprived child still struggling to put the broken shards of himself back together? He would rather be called a hypocrite than allow someone to see that particular mess.
Active Abilities:
Wolf Shifting
Varuna is able to shift at will into a wolf form. His wolf remains proportional to his human size, leaving the honey-brown wolf considerably smaller than other werewolves. In this form, his strength, agility, speed, stamina, and senses are enhanced beyond that of a normal human—he can move around via ramming or other force-based motions about the same amount of weight as a medium-level weightlifter, travel a little over 40 miles (0.04 km) at a steady trot or sprint 40 mph (64.4 kmh) in short bursts, and sense other creatures via hearing or scent a little over one and three quarters the radius of a normal human. However, his abilities will always be fractionally less potent than a true werewolf.Unlike some other werewolf breeds, he also retains his human mind and logic, if altered to work harmoniously with the wolf instincts that are strongest in this form, and does not have the same weakness to silver/blessed silver objects, though he is mildly irritated by direct skin contact to such metals akin to an allergy.
Passive Abilities:
Enhanced Healing
In both human and wolf form, Varuna’s healing ability is about twice as better as a human’s. He cannot regrow limbs, internal organs, or bones if they’ve been damaged beyond a certain point or are nonexistent, but cuts, stab wounds, bone fractures, and other injuries of the like will heal twice as fast than the average human. If the severity of his injuries is greater than his healing ability can handle, then there is the very real risk of death.Enhanced Stamina
In both human and wolf form, Varuna’s stamina levels are about half as better as a human’s. Similarly, his metabolism is ridiculously fast and allows him to inhale amounts of food that shouldn't be able to fit in a build as lithe as his. Like a human, however, he needs to work to stay in shape, otherwise the benefits of this passive ability are neutralized.Weaknesses:
Enhanced Healing
Once Varuna’s enhanced healing ability is triggered, it goes haywire as his body can’t regulate it once it senses that the trigger injuries have been taken care of. This generally manifests itself as Varuna vomiting excess blood or bits of flesh as his cells work overtime to multiply at a faster rate, as well as pain throughout his whole body that feels like his body is simultaneously too large for his skin and just about to implode. The severity of these symptoms is generally proportional to how much healing his ability had to handle; a paper cut is healed within ten minutes and gives him an itching sensation that abates after an hour, but if he were to be healing from multiple stab wounds, then the resulting shock would leave him bedridden for about as many days as it took to heal.Human Senses
Though his senses in his wolf form are impeccable, Varuna’s human senses have suffered as a result of the mixture of drugs he’d been on for years and then weaned off of in only a fraction of that time. The worst of it is his sense of smell, which in turn affects his sense of taste, and is at about 65% working capacity compared to a normal human's. Being part of a creature that survives and socializes on scent leaves him jittery in his worst moments, though he often passes this off as his short attention span. His sight, hearing, and sense of touch have remained generally the same, though it’s likely that he’ll need glasses within the coming years.Common Magical Items: N/A
Biography: Had it not been for his parents’ bad luck, Varuna would have been born a normal child with a normal life. He would have grown up in a loving family, gone to school, had friends, and had a decent chance at a stable, happy life from the very start.
Instead, he was born to a desperate couple that wanted children with every fiber of their beings, but feared greatly for the mother’s and child’s chances—the wife came from a family that had a rough history of high mother/child mortality rates during labor, and had been advised by doctors not to even attempt it. By a stroke of luck, however, the couple had seen an advertisement in the paper for some clinical trial that would follow their unborn child’s development to ‘test run’ several new drugs that supposedly decreased the risk to both mother and child at a considerable rate. Once they called in with questions, there had been many, many reassurances that the drugs had already tested to be completely and utterly without side effects or negative impacts, that this trial was only necessary to give the drugs the publicity needed to make a good standing on the market and all of the ‘actual’ tests had been done before and yielded 98% positive, safe results. The couple grasped the spider’s thread dangling in front of them and started climbing without a thought, taking the miracle that it appeared to be and praying with all that they had.
Once the wife became pregnant and began the trial, she was required to go in for bi-weekly check-ups with the head doctor of the team running the whole thing, the visits becoming much closer together the further along she was. According to the doctor, both she and the baby were perfectly healthy and there were no complications so far. Just in case, they were running several ‘tests’ that wouldn’t normally be done. The wife always had an odd, overpowering craving for rare meat after each test, and while she was initially concerned, she was quickly reassured and told to take it as the weird food craving stage upon confronting the doctors about it.
Nine months later, Varuna was born a hearty and happy baby boy. His mother’s health was also perfectly stable, which made the couple overjoyed to be safely with their newborn son. Unfortunately for all three of them, the company that was carrying out the so-called clinical trial had ulterior motives. After discreetly… taking care of the parents, Varuna, now an orphan, was given time to be lost in the system before being taken in by the company. He was then subjected to a life as an experiment, the doctors poking and prodding at the boy.
You see, the original drug that was given to Varuna’s mother contained the DNA of a werewolf mixed with an altered strain of what had been researched—covertly and in the utmost of secret projects—to actually transmit the lycanthropy ‘curse’ of the breed of werewolves they had chosen on testing, as well as several enhancing and supportive drugs. It was no coincidence that Varuna’s parents, as desperate as they were for a solution to their desire for a child, found the clinical trial offer just as that overwhelming desire was rekindled, after all. No, it was all a set up by a secret organization-run company that wanted to create the first ‘human-tamed werewolf’. These weres would then be put through a rigorous educational system and would be trained as soldiers.
Previous experiments had only yielded werewolves that were too feral and more wolf than werewolf, or humans that only gained a fraction of a wolf’s natural strength, speed, and agility. Within both of the aforementioned groups, as well as another round of experiments that centered around breeding werewolves under controlled circumstances, a majority retained enough free will and a wolf’s natural predilection towards freedom to eventually rebel. By the time Varuna ended up in their hands, however, the scientists were confident that this batch of subjects would turn out favorably. And so, Varuna was ‘engineered’ under the careful scrutiny of the doctors, which went completely unseen by Varuna’s desperate parents.
Fast-forward about 9 years.
The organization was disappointed to see that Varuna didn’t quite cross off each desired trait. Despite gaining enhanced senses and skills in his wolf form, he would never truly be able to compare to the genuine thing. Even the enhanced healing ability they tried to manipulate ended up working a bit too well sometimes, causing the boy immense, debilitating pain as his body tried to expel the sudden, sky-rocketing excess of cells. His mindless obedience to the scientists, however, more than made up for those drawbacks. Through the daily introduction of several manufactured drugs, including a synthetic pheromone that had Varuna’s wolf instincts labeling the head doctor as his alpha, the boy remained none the wiser and utterly devoted to his handlers, accepting their spoon-fed excuses as to why he had to go through weekly physical tests, or why he had to be isolated when he wasn’t being accompanied by a guard, or that suffering through every moment of pain would be worth it in the end, we promise.
And then, a little after Varuna’s 9th birthday, one of the scientists that had been assigned to the boy took exception to the step-up in the rigorous physical exams that put every single one of the boy’s enhanced abilities to the test, and well beyond even that. Varuna’s healing ability was strained to the limits as well, and resulted in many a sleepless night as the boy’s body struggled under the cell growth. The woman had only been hired for this round of experiments, and while she’d previously managed to separate herself from the mounting guilt, everyone had their breaking point and Emilia hit hers then.
It took a year of careful planning that left the woman with an ever-growing sense of paranoia, but once Varuna was 10, the scientist made her escape with two of the test subjects—Varuna and another boy his age named Riah. What came next was a nerve-wracking handful of years on the run while Emilia juggled weaning the two boys off of the cocktail of drugs they been exposed to regularly for their whole lives to keep them compliant to the scientists’ desires and keeping them off the organization’s radar.
It wasn’t until the two boys were approximately 12 that Emilia felt safe enough to settle somewhat permanently in a small mountain town. By this point, the two were more or less recovered from the drug withdrawal, but the mental scars were of a much more deep-seated variety. Riah would suffer from relapses into the blindly obedient puppy he’d once been, while Varuna’s problems were on the opposite side of the spectrum and consisted of a near-violent distrust of others.
The next three years consisted of Emilia earning a living to support the trio while continuing to work on the boys’ issues, as well as widen their educational experience beyond the more combat-oriented curriculum the organization had seen fit to indoctrinate them into. Both Varuna and Riah were intelligent boys and soaked up what knowledge Emilia taught them, but their more personal issues were, understandably, making slow progress.
Varuna ended up leagues better off than his ‘brother’, though, as one night, Riah escaped the little farce of a life they’d built up. His instincts still yearned for the fabricated comfort and care of the scientists, and though he tried for his emotionally bruised and battered ‘brother’ and pseudo-mother/guardian, it ultimately wasn’t enough.
Emilia fled with Varuna and started up their town-hopping despite Varuna’s adamant insistence that ’but he’s pack, we have to go after him!, the woman knowing just where Riah had left to and rightly fearing that it would be sooner rather than later that the organization would catch up to them. They managed for two more months, however, before they were cornered. Varuna escaped once more by the skin of his teeth, barely surviving the injuries he sustained while Emilia sacrificed herself to buy him time and the resulting stress his body was put under as it healed itself in the following weeks.
Approximately 16 and completely alone, Varuna utilized the skills he learned throughout the years—not only the survival and combat skills from his time as an experiment, but also those that Emilia taught him, like how to blend in with normal people and look like a plain old human—to live on the streets of a large city. Some of his worst habits resurfaced during this time, Riah’s betrayal and Emilia’s death having sent him into a downward spiral that seemed neverending.
Varuna hadn’t survived that long by letting himself wallow in pity, however, so he forced himself through sheer bullheadedness to continue living day in and day out, scrounging whatever food and shelter he could manage. A particular breakthrough was when he realized that small—normal, his bitter mind supplied—children were often coddled. With that fact becoming further apparent the more he observed the families that went about their daily lives, Varuna made the decision to craft the facade that most see nowadays.
Capitalizing on his smaller, slender size and naturally boyish features, he began working on the image of an airheaded, talkative, and energetic boy that would skip down the sidewalk beside you and chatter on a mile a minute, smiling sweetly while you contemplated treating him to a bit of a snack at the diner. It helped him land enough food to survive when his pickpocketing skills weren’t enough, and even got a police officer or two off of his back when they caught him napping in a local park late at night. It was perfect for keeping people from digging too deeply into details he’d rather keep hidden, parts of himself that he deemed too broken—ugly, ugly, ugly—to show to anyone else.
It was only an unlucky—or perhaps, lucky?—slip when Varuna was spotted shifting into his wolf form to capitalize on the wolf’s warmer, thicker pelt one cold evening. Rumors of a wolf boy began circulating, and while Varuna did his best to keep a low profile, it was a week later that he was approached by a faculty member of Starlight Academy that had happened to be in the area.
A new arrival to Manta Carlos, Varuna has made it his mission to keep people at arms’ length. He’s only an orphaned werewolf, he promises. He’s not quite sure how he’s going to trick the professional therapists he’s been made to agree to see—any amount of time spent on the streets would’ve had its effects on a child—, but so as long as no one thinks to look beneath the facade of a sunny, happy-go-lucky boy who suffers from a short attention-span despite having the best of intentions, then Varuna knows he’ll be fine.
Resources: Varuna is broke, plain and simple. Being taken in as a ward of the Academy has allowed him access to the resources allotted to him as such, but he has nothing from his life before.
Additional Information: N/A
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