Appearance: She has a dirty-blonde ponytail that reaches to below her collar, tanned skin, and is short, at 5'4" She has dark blue eyes and a permanently tired expression.

Name: Maria Abaroa

Age: 16

Personality: Maria is a manic depressive in the best sense of the word. If she still had coffee, she'd chug it all day long, but instead she stays awake with scrounged caffeine pills and whatever chemicals she's cooked up to keep her awake. Somehow, she's avoided poisoning herself, although it's honestly a matter of time. Benzedrine is a favourite of hers.

She's obsessed with improving the quality of life of the group in any way she can, which mostly ends up in her building everything the group needs, might need, might not need, and probably won't ever need. Whenever she gets inspired, she's off like a shot, fiddling and tinkering until she finishes her project, before heading back to her bunk and crashing and feeling sad.

Biography: Maria calls herself a border hopper born and bred, but she's lived in the US for her whole life. Whilst both her parents were illegals, if she had wished to be, she could have applied for a legitimate citizenship. She never got around to doing so, what with the apocalypse sort of ruining her plans of any normal life.

She grew up in a noisy, messy and pretty dangerous area, and she learnt a lot of things hands on. Her father was a mechanic, her mother a cleaning lady. One taught her metalwork, the other chemicals. She doesn't talk about them much anymore though, or her family, friends, school... Really, she doesn't talk about anything before she met the group. She has her reasons though.

Relationships: They're all dead. All of them. She isn't talking about them though. As she's the most recent inclusion to the group, she hasn't made any meaningful relationships with anyone, but there's plenty of time for that to happen.

What you originally brought:

The JRS (Junker's Rad Suit.) It's a kitbash of diving suit, hazmat equipment and American football armour, minus the power. She constantly tinkers with it and tries to make it better, and most of the time the welder gets pulled out, it's to do something to the JRS. She has a car door shield for it, but rarely uses it and woe betide anyone who touches it. She calls it Jessie. Nobody knows why.

Her machete. Nothing special about it; looks like it comes from an outdoors shop of some kind, although the red ribbon tired around the end isn't standard. It's a good quality steel blade, with a cutting edge that's still sharp and still painful. A bit grimy and a bit dinged about, but it'll cut a mutant to bite-sized-chunks if it needs too, and that's all she needs it to do.

Welding torch and mask: She's rigged it to a car battery to get the power she needs for it. It's the crucial part of her constructs, and she's constantly looking for more juice to hook up to it. Doesn't really work that well, and she has to hand crank the battery constantly, but she'll take what she'll get. Really. The mask is a full-face UV job that prevents serious eye conditions.

Skills:

Now We're Cooking With Gas: She's pretty handy with appliances and the breaking down and reassembling thereof. She has an axe made from a drying machine and a hatchet handle, for example, and has made a bed using parts of a car. She's also constantly tinkering, unless she's being apathetic.

F in Chemistry: A lie. She was good at chemistry. Whilst the really serious stuff is too complex for her, she knows that rust + aluminium filings = explosives, and that you don't want to be caught unprotected when someone lobs a canister of 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile at you. She should know, she has some. Somewhere. She swears. Fuck it, she'll just make some more.

Step *Click* *Boom*: A slightly unhealthy love of explosives and the fact that she can't be everywhere at once means that she's make quite the set of traps. Like, a lot of traps. Landmines especially- she made one out of lego, a couple of shotgun shells and a microphone.

Waifish: She's short, does little physical activity apart from her surface trips, sleeps a lot, and weighs little. She doesn't need as much food as others do, full stop.

Power tools Are Never Dangerous: She's scary good with power tools and other gear you wouldn't expect a 16-year-old girl to be good with. Chainsaws, power drills, concrete cutters, blowtorches, and, of course, her welder. Shame there's so little power.

Fuck Off and Die, I'm Tired: To put it bluntly, she can be a massive asshole sometimes. Especially when she's tired, which is often. Because of this, she ends up swearing a lot, although after the apocalypse, nobody really blames her.

And There Was Much Rejoicing: She's seen too much death to give a shit about someone else loosing someone.Sure, she sympathises, but she's pretty harsh when it comes to death. She has empathy, it's just in a permanent state of torpor.

Waifish: Sure, she needs less food, but she doesn't exactly hit hard. Unless she uses her blowtorch, but then strength doesn't matter, as she gleefully points out. Before blowtorching your face off. Seriously, don't get in the way of that thing.

Sickly: Maria handles chemicals and materials that in a non-apocalyptic world would be used under much better safety precautions. Whilst her JRS has saved her from major radiation poisoning, she has skin and eye issues, as well as a nasty cough that sometimes crops up.

Other:
She has a bad tendency of slipping into Spanish whenever she gets angry, which means that she often speaks in an incomprehensible language (to the rest of the group,) for hours.

Name: Elijah McDonnell
Nicknames: Eli, Mac, Jesus, The Director
Age: 29
Personality: Eli is very creative, but nobody needs a creative writer in the apocalypse. He tries to be humble and sensitive and generous, but can be pushed into a rage by inconsiderate or selfish people. He has a certain self-hating thing going on, but also comes off as aloof to the point of conceited. However, that's mainly because he's so introverted and spends all of his time in his head.

Biography: Eli was in the military for 4 years and at the same time, he also tried his hand at filmmaking; his co-workers dubbed him The Director. He didn't like it but it was better than the usual nicknames. His parents always knew the end of the world was coming so they had basically made a compound where they stored food and stuff. Unfortunately, when the shit hit the fan, he was in NY visiting his sister. Now, he just wants to get back home to his parents and other siblings.

Relationships: TBD
What you originally brought: 9mm Beretta handgun, pocket knife, towel (don't panic... XD )

Skills/Abilities: Self-Defense (in the form of Israeli Defense Force martial arts and US Army training); psychology (whether you call it intuition, empathy, people-reading etc. he knows how to deal with individuals); driving (like, stupid-good. not The Transporter good, but still...maybe Drive good); leadership (mostly due to his military experience and knowledge of psychology, but also because he doesn't panic as much as most people do during conflict or stressful situations); inventory (did it for over 10 years).

Weaknesses: Although great at reading people and handling individuals, he is terrible with groups or strangers who are overly aggressive; doesn't like conflict, verbal or physical; can get irritated or even very angry at people for being inconsiderate or selfish; overly nice and generous, even to his own detriment; a bit conceited; lazy when it comes to physical labor; is not very physically strong or fit; not a good runner; most of his five senses including sight and hearing are below average.

Other: Eli knows where his stash of real survival equipment is: NC. He has no idea how he's gonna get there.

Appearance:

Name: Colette Mistly

Age: 14

Personality: Colette has spent her life thus far learning one simple fact: Dishonesty is the strongest shield.

Biography: Colette only has a few memories from before the world was reduced to ruins. A trip to a beautiful lake with parents who argued for their entire stay. Being given a Barbie doll that would be her only companion for many long nights. Those times were, and then they were not. Just like everything else.

Her mother was the first to go in the aftermath. Colette couldn't remember the details. For a few weeks, she would disappear every other day. One day, she didn't come back. Her father never mentioned her again.

For a short while, father and daughter existed alone, in darkness, but not hunger. Colette never thought to ask her father where he got his food from. She would complain that it was not good, that she missed her mother, but she was told that, going forward, they would only have poorly cooked canned food to eat. In truth, even that had not lasted.

Once it was gone, they had left their cellar, hand-in-hand, and walked. They walked through ruined buildings and slept in scary caves. And there were other people. At first, they drifted path the strangers, but before long, her father explained that, in order to survive, they would have to find others to settle down with. By then, Colette had given up on arguing. When she was afraid, she would cling to her father's hand, and he would ruffle her hair. The world kept moving.

Eventually, Colette found herself in a network of tunnels, living with angry people she didn't know. Few of their faces ever became more than blurs, but there was an old lady named Pam who would smile at her, call her a kitten, and tell her stories of other places. Those stories faded as quickly as the other's faces. She recalled them only as kind sounds no truer than the lake she could barely remember.

Her father left her with Pam a lot. He insisted that she never accompany him or any of the others to the surface. Instead, Pam taught her how to do useful little things. Patch a hole in a sweater, build a fire, read the few books they had in their little hovel. She told Colette to always smile, to do small things for people, and slowly, the others around her would smile back. That was when she began to understand.

In time, her father vanished, and Pam died, leaving a ten year old Colette with the other members of her group. Like her father, they never asked her to go to the surface. She would cook for them, make them clothing, even teach them how to do small things for themselves. But only small things. That was the key.

One by one, all the others also stopped returning, and one day, Colette was alone. That was when she finally left. Saw those awful things. Learned that the darkness was safest.

As soon as she could, she found another group. They, too, would disappear. But not her. Never her.

Relationships: None yet

What you originally brought:
1. Her sewing kit
2. A knife
3. The journal of one man she used to live with

Skills/Abilities:
1. Sewing: Colettte can mend, and with sufficient materials, make, serviceable clothing.
2. Intellect: Colette is extremely good at recognizing patterns and picking up new skills.
3. Cooking: Colette can make food good enough that people actually want to eat it.
4. Social intuition: Colette is very perceptive of visual and verbal cues hinting at the emotions of others.
5. Faking: Over the years, Colette has realized that her own emotions were the enemy and has learned to hide them from others and project fake ones instead.

Weaknesses:
1. Inauthenticity: Those who get too close to Colette are likely to sense the disparity between the ways she speaks and acts and how she actually views things. Despite her skill at mimicking the surface-level emotions of others, she lacks their passion.
2. Physical weakness: Colette can't run fast, nor far, nor can she hold her own in a fight. She is thin and somewhat malnourished. She relies almost entirely on others for protection.
3. Paranoia: Colette feels she is, at all times, putting on a show, and as a result, tends to jump to conclusions when others behave strangely around her.