HUMAN, elliot kataja

As far as Elliot's concerned, he was born into a gilded cage. His parents were old money, very old money, and thus from the sort of lineages that didn't like to take risks. So his childhood was a smothered one, as he was constantly told that he couldn't do this or that. Proper boys didn't go gallivanting through the woods or disappear for days on end to go on 'adventures'. Of course, what this taught Elliot growing up was that if he wanted to do something, he had to learn to be sneaky about it or otherwise extremely stubborn. His parents operated on the logic that eventually he would give up, stop sneaking out to go do this or that, and so they simply kept getting more and more strict, waiting for the boy to be dissuaded from his rebellious ways.

But Elliot only kept on. He learned how to pick the lock on his windows and how to grapple and shimmy his way down to the ground below. When he'd come home with bruises and cuts his mother would howl at him and cry and ask why he'd do this to himself. Really, all very melodramatic stuff. He never understood what the big deal was, didn't really get why coming home with bruises was a bad thing--it wasn't like he was getting beat up, the marks were testaments to his accomplishments. The fact that he had climbed that huge tree out behind their house, or that he managed to wiggle between a rock outcropping and catch that frog.

Naturally his predisposition of doing the exact opposite of what his parents wished only grew worse as he entered his teenage years. His father often lectured him on how he had to become an adult, how he had to stop pushing boundaries. It was time to buckle in and settle down for 'real' life. That went about well as expected. He dated girls. He dated boys. He dated boys who liked to dress up like girls on the weekend. Really, he ran the gamut and wore that 'boundary' right into the ground. And he probably would have continued on that path if something hadn't...changed.

It was gradual, at first. He was prescribed glasses and contacts. But it only got worse as time passed, which lead to his parents trying to crack down on him even more. This time he couldn't really escape their clutches, they kept a stern eye on him and essentially locked him down. He was submitted to a battery of tests and soon was spending more time at the hospital than at school or hanging out with friends. Turned out he had inherited the right combination of recessive genes and their mutations to develop a rare case of juvenile onset macular degeneration. In short, he was going to lose his sight.

After it sank in, Elliot took it rather well. Of course it got him down at first, but really. He could've had cancer, or something, which would've been much worse, right? It wasn't like he was dying. It just meant now he had to learn how to live without being able to see, because losing the sense was inevitable. Time to brush up on his ninja skills.

By the time he was seventeen, the end had unfortunately come. His parents weren't willing to accept it though and so they had pulled their resources to try a few experimental procedures that would stave off the effects of the disease. This meant he was shackled up in the hospital for a long time while they tried this or that. Elliot, of course, was unwilling to simply sit around and submit to all of this, and so developed the habit of wandering around the establishment. One afternoon he found himself in a room that sounded empty at first, and so he ducked into it. After a little while, he noticed the sound of breathing as well as the beeping of machines, and felt his way over to the bedside.

When he asked, one of the nurses told him that the inhabitant of the bed was in a coma. On a whim, Elliot decided to start keeping him company. He memorized the path from his room to the stranger's room and started visiting whenever he had free time. Their one-sided conversations covered everything. How much his parents sucked, how bored he was, were natural first topics of course...But eventually he simply started rambling about his hopes and dreams, what he wanted to do after he got out of the hospital, how he wanted to travel the world and experience everything he could, even if he couldn't see anymore. Imagine his surprise when one day the guy woke up. And soon their one-sided friendship became a real one.

Eventually they were both released, and he ended up attending Arden Academy. Despite being twenty, he had missed so much school and tutoring he had a lot to catch up on, so he enrolled as a senior. Plus it allowed him to stay with Malakai, and continue their friendship.

student
part-time book store clerk (braille specialty)

★ Likes
+ Being read to / voices
+ Chatting with friends over coffee
+ Everything soft, esp. scarves
+ Holding hands
+ Touching his friends' faces, feeling their expression, tactile sensations in general

★ Dislikes
- Hospitals & medical procedures
- Stifling rules
- Silence
- Too much sleep (it's a waste of time)
- Waiting & sitting still

★ Fears
- There's not much that Elliot won't embrace head on, really. Fear is the mindkiller and all. However, he does kind of fear living a boring life and not accomplishing anything memorable.

★ Extras
Heightened senses - thanks to losing his sight, the rest of his senses have jumped into overdrive to compensate. His sense of touch is exceptional and so is his hearing. He's developed a bit of an tactile and aural fixation do this.

SNAKE of 999 as elliot kataja,
played by MURA