She’s handy with a 9mm and she isn’t too bad with improvisational weaponry either. Rumor is she once decapitated a man by wrapping a guitar string around his neck and pushing all her body weight off his shoulder blades after riding him about the room howling like an idiot. Her true life passion culminates in a big bang; semtex to bouncing bombs, petrol to pipe, smoke to Molotov, she dabbled in them all. Lawfully inept. While she isn’t necessarily loyal, she is dependent…and dependency is much more dependable. Boosted physicality and multiple limitations expanded on below. She is well connected and well protected within the deep confines of Forest, on a lower floor of the Towers, a sordid place where B.B. Woolfe himself is rumored to reside...along with other terrifying denizens of Forest used to keep kids praying at night.

There are 3 levels of Red’s personality. With the assistance of the drug, from which she loaned her name, RED she can be calm, low key and almost sweet. She is most likely to not remember occurrences outside of this state. Another downfall at initial dose is an almost Xanax like Zen, which is inappropriate in the Forest. The in between stage is house trained. Conniving, manipulative, with her true business savvy shinning threw. This phase can be susceptible to paranoia and drastic mood swings. The last of her personalities is vicious, cruel and imaginative in all the wrong fields. Self-control isn’t apparent and most memory blocks occur during this time. She also becomes susceptible to hallucinations. Her personality always contains an undercurrent of righteousness. She believes she is one of the evils required to eliminate the rest and allow the marginalized to flourish.

The older people recalled a time when the neighborhood of Forest Trails was thriving and beautiful. The shop windows didn’t require thick metal bars and the landscaping didn’t consist of discarded condoms, needles, and broken 40 oz. bottles. The high rises had attendees and cops didn’t mind stopping to help out a lost kid, but the cops rarely came this way anymore and the high rises had officially been deemed section 8. If there was any order left it came down from the Wolves, run by B.B. Woolfe, or from the rebellious goody goodies that operated out of the Sherwood building.

So I guess Red’s story started there, but then again, this story really starts with Grandma. Grandma wasn’t really anyone’s Grandma, as far as Red knew anyways. She was just an older lady that accepted a bit of cash to watch the younger children whose parents couldn’t be bothered with such things. Grandma didn’t bother too much either, but she was present physically and that seemed to count for something. It counted for the government checks.

You’d think growing up in this kind of environment would make a young girl hyper aware, but Manya wasn’t much for details. She seemed to wander about with her head in the clouds. Little Manya. Sweet little thing. Cute as a button. She played hopscotch over the homeless, whistling sweet tunes as she brought Grandma’s prescription. You see, Grandma rarely left the house. She padlocked the door, drew the shades, departed her mind with the help of a little crystal and relied on the children in her care to do her bidding. But Grandma wasn’t a bad person, per say. She could be a little rude and little distant, but Manya didn’t think she deserved to die. Manya was actually quite fond of the elderly lady.

But Manya was too young to understand the complex relationships that dwelled in the darkness of Forest, which bred in Forest. No one talks about it, so it’s hard to say when Grandma’s selective blindness began to cover the teeth and claws sneaking about little Manya. The Wolves no longer counted on Grandma to pay her heavy debts, but put the weight between the thighs of a girl whom grew more and more divided with every passing day. For years the girl lived in a dark hell, where the safety of home at times reeked of crystal and the sweat of wolves, with a caregiver occasionally baking cookies and helping with macaroni art and then Grandma would cower away and the Wolves would come. Manya learned to change too. Her mind twisted about her environment inserting seeds of a fairytale. The Wolves were her home. Later, in the institute, they would try and tell her that these men were bad. What did they know? The cops who took her away---they were bad. The Judge that sentenced her, he was bad. The Wolves were her family, but I get ahead of myself.

No one had to talk about that day 7 years ago to remember it. When the good hunter of the Arcadia law enforcement arrived to respond to the call of a young girl, there was no one in the house with enough humanity left to save. He removed the body of young Red, but it wasn’t Manya anymore. There had been a snap, an awakening, a birth and a death. Multiple deaths actually, and only one of them was metaphorical. Grandma’s head was bent upward, eyes large in surprise. A resinated glass pipe was broken into her jaw where little shards twinkled from her gums giving the appearance of rather large canines. The bodies of two wolves were originally thought to be hacked apart, but the Autopsy revealed that death had occurred after multiple gunshot wounds and the fire axe wounds transpired post mortem.

The state ruled the child mentally unfit, but they didn’t call it a sentence, they simply placed her in the care of the L. Carroll Psychiatric Institute. Initially they diagnosed her with dissociative amnesia. At times it seemed the little girl didn’t remember any of the accident and she asked after Grandma. Other times she clearly understood that she had slaughtered Grandma and showed no remorse, nor even any consideration for the emotion. On a few instances she was incoherent and violent. The amnesia seemed to have no pattern of existence and talking about the event immediately triggered a change in incarnation of Manya. They eventually diagnosed it as Dissociative Identity Disorder and prescribed her pills that made her only two steps from catatonia. Her release at the age of 15 went mostly unnoticed by the good citizens as she slipped back into the hands of the Wolves. The whole situation wasn’t necessarily legal, but then again, they couldn’t just keep her sedated forever.

She was placed in the care of some older Wolves. They were not relevant. Everything they did was just orders handed down from above and they cared as little for her as she for them. But they switched her medication to RED, and for that she was as grateful as the tormented little thing could be. They trained her to defend herself, but soon she wanted more. She wanted her people to have an option for safety, but if not, then she wanted everyone to stare out fearful from bared windows. Maybe then they would care about the woes of the Forest. Only then would they care. B.B. took this seed of goodness and blossomed it into a Freedom Fighter ideal. He had always had a knack for blowing houses down and why shouldn’t he pass this on? She learned how to build bombs, minor at first. Even a firecracker could be beautiful and destructive, when well placed…but soon she had surpassed even B.B. and was acquiring contacts in an array of fields from EMPS to radioactive materials. The latter was still a touchy subject of which she was exceedingly secretive. It is rumored that she is only studying the dirty bomb ideals and has yet to actually cross that governmental line that may put her on Most Wanted.

The acquisition of the surname Hood can be entirely blamed on the all-around Captain Save A Hoe personality of Mr. Robert “Rob” N. Hood. They met in court mandated N.A., Red later realizing that Rob attended the meeting as community outreach and not as an actual member. He said things like “make love” and brought her pancakes in bed. They were young. Reckless. Married at the Enchanted Forest Inn and divorced at the civil works Sherwood building all inside a year. Red believed that B.B. Woolfe had threatened Rob and perhaps he had; but it was deflective of her to ignore the deep rooted issues she carried around like a basket. The place where they divorced became the real beginning for Rob, he practically runs the place now; fighting a by any means necessary war against civil issues. In the end, they were just different types of rebels.

She kept the last name but otherwise moved on. She found plenty to keep busy. She accepted a full time position amongst the Wolves. If you rely on someone for sanity; better a willing servant than a chained slave. Weapons, sex, homicide; doing and selling. She rose in ranks, gaining turf and minions within the Wolves. B.B. liked her. She was forever chained to the RED, and he held the leash, so what was not to like? Plus, there was something that twinkled behind her sweet façade, a secret that he felt was like only he knew. Of course, Rob Hood had seen the same glimmer…and so had Grandma….and perhaps even the Fox.

Common use is a hallucinogenic, though it was initially intended for use as an antipsychotic. Its side effects include heightened metabolic and muscle development, as well as isolated surges in certain senses. Either increasing or persistent gaps in memory. One dose usually lasts for a period of 24-48 hours, though dosage is dependent on desired effect and user.

Robert is probably one of the highest educated residents of the Forest, though the competition is not very steep. He has a knack for exploiting the law and finding loopholes, trained to defend the rich, and spinning it about on its head to achieve the opposite. His focus is usually large claims against corporations and government entities. Initially he focused on life insurance companies unwilling to pay up, but he will hear out the people of the Forest and do his best to meet their needs. Little known skills include lock picking and corporate espionage. Like most lawyers he has a knack for lying through the sweetest and most endearing smile. People like Rob N. People trust Rob N.

Almost everyone believes that there MUST be some covert mission behind the honest integrity that exudes from Rob. Where is his gain? Who is he secretly screwing over? But sometimes the truth is the hardest thing to believe. Rob really does believe in people. He believes in giving them hope, giving them a chance and giving them a bit of money here and there. His kindness should never be taken as nativity. Rob is far from stupid. In fact he is one of the most sought out lawyer for the poor seeking claims. He has a strong detest for the flippantly rich from which he sprung. While he believes entirely in a nonviolent approach, he does occasionally *bend* the law.

Robert, unlike most of the Forest residents, was not born in this squalor. His parents were wealthy and he’d grown up lacking nothing. He went through school thinking of his privileged life as the norm. He graduated high school early and attended college. Afterwards he went into Law School, as his father had and his father before him, and so on and so on. It was the perfectly planned life. When he exited Law School he gained a job working as a prosecutor for the great courts of Arcadia. And this is when his life, as his peers saw it anyways, went completely awry.

Within the year he had grown disillusioned and disgusted watching as the corruption released the rich from justice and seemed to double penalize the poor as reparations. He turned to drink and one night he found himself stumbling down a wrong street and walking about the Forest at night. A twinkling light from a church beckoned him and soon he was sitting down for some coffee with a rather large Friar whose given name was Tucker, but insisted that Rob called him Tuck. Tuck and Rob became fast friends, discussing the poverty of the Forest and the goodness suffocated and striped from these people through poverty.

Initially Rob continued to work for the rich, taking as much of his earnings as he could and donating them to Tuck and other community outreach programs. He sold his Condo in Uptown and moved into the Forest. His mother cried and his Father, well his Father spoke often of this do-gooder phase that infected their children, probably something he caught from the liberals who somehow leaked into the colleges no matter their cost. Rob rolled his eyes and let his parents say as they wished. It mattered little now.

When he first met Manya he fell head over heels. She was outspoken, quirky, rebellious. She supported him when none of his family or old compatriots would. She was something different and new, and no one can resist these qualities in young love. They were married and Manya moved in with him, but soon life pressure got to them. She hated that he even consorted with the upper echelons. He was torn. His family made this easier by completely disowning their son. He had lost his mind. They would have attempted to have him commited, if it wouldn’t have caused bad press for them. Instead they simply erased him from their vocabulary. So his family was gone and Manya was increasingly unstable. He wouldn’t see her for days. When they finally decided to divorce it wasn’t a surprise to anyone, especially Rob. He was crushed, to be sure, but more because he felt failure as a husband. He questioned himself. If he couldn’t save her….how could he save the rest of the Forest?

As they entered the Sherwood building to file for a civil divorce, Rob knew he had to embrace something or lose all his ideals. He quit his job and took one working as an –almost- pro-bono lawyer. He buried himself in the woes of others. He wrote lengthy letters petitioning for funding from people who were once steeped in jealousy for his inheritance, but he had a way with words and Sherwood boomed. They hired more staff. Among them was Little John, a huge man whose title was ironic, with a penchant for collecting “truthful” testimonials in creative ways. Rob and John became quick friends and Rob began to smile again.