Saber Kismet, District Two

To the untrained eye, Saber doesn't look that frightening. She doesn't look particularly impressive, or like anyone you would need to take note of. Indeed, her smile is particularly disarming, and she has an almost innocent look to her face when she isn't focusing on something, or isn't training. Quite a few young men have gotten their faces kicked in for falling for that innocent look on her face - believe you me, Saber's body has never been, and most likely will never have the chance to be, innocent, soft, or sweet.

Beneath her soft skin lie steel muscles that have been carefully cultivated by her parents since the day she could stand on her own two feet - and it's questionable that she was even ready to stand when she did, or if her parents somehow rigged something up to teach her to stand before she was ready. It wouldn't surprise this girl, though, because that's what her whole life as been: a physical attack on her body, to turn her into a weapon all on her own.

If she's that deadly - and believe me, she's spent enough time creating herself, she is that deadly - then why would anyone manage to fall for her innocent face? Perhaps it's the way she keeps her hair, just as simple as could be, usually left alone and falling down her back in red waves, sometimes put up in braids. It's only ever really pulled away from her face when she trains, and then it's held back in a tight bun so that none of her hair can distract her or get in the way in some way.

If it isn't that, though, and I'm sure that's enough for some people, then it would have to be her face. Those almost rare green eyes, the light dusting of freckles over the her nose and cheeks, and even her lips, and the slight upward tilt that her lips have naturally. Sure, she scowls and frowns enough to try to combat the natural smile, but there's no real way to get around it; the girls lips smile naturally, and if she isn't talking to someone or thinking about training, well then she forgets to fight her lips natural inclination to tilt upwards.

Everything else about her is simply...unassuming. Yes, she's tall - taller than most girls, standing at 5'11" - but she still manages to fit into a crowd, and her incredibly light build makes her someone that you would simply brush past. She has no true curves to speak of, she's been teased for having 'mosquito bites' before - you can bet they got beat up for that comment - and multiple times she's been told that if she just turned to the side, she would disappear. It's no secret this girl is as thin as a stick, but not too many people know how strong that stick just so happens to be.

Of course, this is just a quick glance at Saber, and a closer look will reveal many more things. Like the very unfeminine thickness around her upper arms, denoting someone who has been physically exerting themselves for quite some time. And her complexion, while annoyingly pale at first glance, is often revealed to have patches of sun burns littering what visible skin she has - these burns are as constant a part of her as her eye color is, as she's always training outside, and not always careful with her skin. What walks hand and hand with burns, though? Peeling skin. It's not very attractive; at least, I hope it isn't, because then there might be cause to worry about you. To make matters worse for her, though, she's incredibly impatient with her healing skin, and is always picking the dead skin off it, usually picking at her good skin too, simply serving to damage it even more than if she'd simply left it alone. Oh, and let's not forget about her hair, shall we? While at first glance it appeared luxurious and fabulous - long red waves that could certainly be the envy of any girl in her district - upon closer inspection you find that her hair is not quite as wonderful as it looked when you were just glancing at her. No, indeed. She doesn't take care of it, that's why. Unless she's dragged, by her mother, in the bathroom and scrubbed down by her, it isn't likely she'll be getting a daily bath. Usually, she just wipes herself down with a cloth and some soap in the morning - it's faster, and she doesn't particularly care enough to bathe. So her hair is often greasy and tangled up in itself. She doesn't notice, but that doesn't mean that everyone else in the world turns a blind eye to it.

If anyone in the world was ever hard to read, Saber would definitely be that one person. She stalks around her district with an ice cold expression on her face, her eyes always pointed straight ahead, and her muscles kept rigid so that not one emotion could make it's way through her. The only thing that just might give away what Saber is feeling would be her hands - she has a tendency to clench and unclench them when she's attempting to keep control of herself, or regain control.

Even when she's training, Saber is focused, cold, and calculating. She does what her father says the moment he says it, and she keeps her face a mask the entire time. When she's in pain, she keeps her mask. When she's insulted...it's a little harder for her. She usually does manage to keep that mask though - she does kick and punch and hit you, though, but she does it with a straight, immovable face. And then she walks away from you.

Don't mistake this emotionless mask for certainty that Saber is emotionless. She isn't, by any means. Saber, truly, suffers from an incredibly hard to control temper, and that, paired with an unfortunate ego and belief that she's truly above everyone, makes her day to day life hell. How hard do you think it is to control yourself when you really want to cut everyone you can see? When every word, every look, every breath drawn is an insult to your very person, how would you keep yourself in check? Her palms bear scars in the shape of half moons - testimony to just how hard it is for her to keep herself under control. These scars are very seldom that pretty white mark of long since healed wounds; she's pissed every moment at everyone, she reopens them all the time and seldom lets them heal or even completely scab over.

She's subject to the same emotions as you - maybe, no one's exactly certain that she feels love or adoration, or even true loyalty, or that she's capable of humor...alright, perhaps she isn't the same as you or me. She's different, she's been trained to be different, she's been taught that emotions are weaknesses, and so they are shoved deep down inside her for as long as she can keep them there. Anger is the only emotion she can't keep bottled up, anger is the only emotion she treats as acceptable. Because anger is her tool, her weapon when her parents confiscate the illegal ones they provide her with for training. Anger is her friend, and in secret she cultivates it despite how hard she tries to contain it in private.

There's one thing about her that Saber tries desperately to hide, and that would have to be her moral compass. Unlike her parents, she has a sense of right and wrong, a belief that each citizen - while they might not be her equal - deserved to be treated fairly. She tries desperately not to notice when her parents beat someone, or when they cheat the system for her and get her out of trouble for something such as fighting; usually, though, she can't manage it. She hunts down the victim of her parents cruel nature and gives them food, medicine, anything she can to quiet the voice inside her that tells her it's wrong. wrong, wrong. The people she helps, they always seem to know that they shouldn't say anything about it later, shouldn't act as if they know her, but for a brief moment they can at least claim they saw true decency in the world. For a little bit. Saber does her very best to hide this side of her from her family, and so far she's suceeded. But her brothers are starting to follow in her parents footsteps in the way they treat people, and she doesn't know if she can handle seeing that, she's not sure she can keep quiet about how wrong it is until they go away.

It was a during a thunderstorm when Saber entered the world, almost murdering her mother in the process. She wasn't the firstborn, and neither was she the last, but she was different from her siblings. It wasn't evident at birth, but it showed itself soon into her life, and her parents had a hard time not recognizing it. They treated her just like they had treated the three sons before her, and just like they would treat the daughter and son that came after her - pressuring her to grow up, forcing her into situations that a normal toddler couldn't handle, that a normal child shouldn't have been able to handle. Saber grew up trained to be a killer, taught to be deadly, enforced with the idea that she was a weapon.

But what was she trained for? Unlike her siblings, Saber hasn't gotten a single bit of tessera, her name has only been entered once a year. And believe you me, they don't get that because they need it, they get it because they want their names entered even more, so that they have a better chance of getting called in the reaping. In fact, her parents forbade it. It's not because she's a girl, we're certain of that, because they've given her training almost completely the same as her brothers - the only difference? They focused on differing weapons even more, rather than the specializing that her brothers had gotten to do. Of course, she had her favorite weapons - first, the bow and arrows, then throwing daggers, and after that would be a rapier. And she excelled at those three, with average skills in the other weapons.

How could they possibly train their children with such weapons, though? Especially in a district thriving with peacekeepers, a district that breeds peacekeepers? Well, the answer to that question, my dear reader, is quite simple indeed. Her parents were peacekeepers. The weapons were either created illegally for them, or confiscated and just never made their way to their final destination. Oh, yes, corrupt peacekeepers can exist, they're human just like anyone else, you just have to know how to tell.

That's beside the point, though. Her parents corrupt businesses and whatever punishment they will get for it is their story, not Saber's. Recall, though, what was mentioned about this district and the peacekeepers. Bred. Created. Saber was always meant to be a peacekeeper, someone who ruled with an iron fist and didn't let anyone in whatever district she was assigned to walk over her. Designed. That's the word her parents used for her. She was always going to be different from her brothers. Always going to be the oddball - but then again, wasn't she different from the moment she was born? She was the child that had to be dragged off another child at school, she was the trouble making child that screamed at her teachers, she was the kid that couldn't be counted on to stay quiet and know when to disappear. Her parents had to pay off teacher after teacher, family after family, simply to keep this information about Saber away from those that would do something about it. And for a little while, this is how it went on. She fought everyone, she demeaned and yelled at everyone, and then her parents had enough of it. They beat her so bad, for an entire week, that she couldn't get out of bed. The next time something foul came out of her mouth, her father backhanded her so hard so flew into the wall. That was around the time that Saber put two and two together and figured out that she was, as of right then, an undesirable member of the family. So she shoved everything as far down as she could, and tried to mold herself into what she believed they wanted her to be. Her temper still flares up now and again, impossible to control, never truly capable of ignoring it, and her parents have to do the same old dance for her. Pay the families, beat the daughter. Pray she learns her lesson. I'm sure they regretted teaching her all the things they did.

She was their peacekeeper in training, though, and as she grew she got better at hiding herself in front of them and dealing with the consequences of her actions on her own so she wouldn't have to receive their beating. She got so good at this, that they actually started to think she could be like them, a peacekeeper. Why then, if she were to be a peacekeeper, would she need to know everything she knows? Maybe it's because she's still in a career district, and her parents didn't want her to be unprepared if her name were to be drawn before she turned nineteen. Maybe it's because they predicted she would end up just like them, and might need those skills outside of the district, when a gun wasn't available, when an ally turned dangerous and had to be controlled. Who knows why they taught her what they taught her.

The point is, they created a weapon when they created their first daughter. Let's just hope she makes it to twenty before she loses her humanity. No one pays attention to a peacekeepers humanity.