James Lassiter [Capitol] [Fin]

Max Raabe (FC)

Clothes-wise James wears rather extravagant clothes for a District member, looking as well dressed and clean as some people in the Capitol. He constantly keeps his clothes in a neat manner, even when walking through the district. He constantly wears a black trench coat that is soft to the touch and stretches completely down to his ankles, even though he must constantly clean the end of the coat from dust that he kicks on it accidentally. The coat has 3 buttons on the right side and a large inside pocket on the other where he usually keeps his book, right over his heart, which assures that if the book is destroyed, he will go down with it.

He wears a pair of dark pants that are nearly always obscured by his coat. The pants match his coat in color and texture and some people could try to figure out if they were made of the same material, even though the coat is made from a far more fancy fabric. His shoes are dark black and have a shine to them, looking as if they were leather, though leather itself is far out of his price range, so he makes due with keeping his shoes expertly shined. His hands are almost always covered by gloves, so that he may hold his book without getting the oil from his fingers on it. When he is not wearing the coat, which is very rarely, he wears a strap around his chest that he can put the book in in order to still keep it on his heart.

Underneath his outfit, Lassiter has a very thin frame, standing 5'7" tall and 160 pounds, mainly due to him forgetting to eat while preaching, reading the book, or working in the shop, which all leaves very little time for him to eat, and if he does it is a small ration eaten while on the way somewhere.

His entire body is long and very well groomed, most of the blonde hair on his body nearly impossible to see due to how fine his hair grows in. His legs are long and semi-muscular, since he is almost always standing, walking, or running from someplace to another, sometimes standing for hours on end to preach the words of his book. His arms are long and thin, not using them for much except to move small distances when he is working on his devices. His hands are thin and small, his fingers mirroring them by being long and rather thin, able to fit into smaller places than most, allowing him to more easily work on his devices. His grip, however, is rather lacking due to the small surface area of his fingers and palm, making him need help for most tasks, like opening jars.

James' face is rather soft, but a lack of eating and late nights has given him slight dark circles under his eyes, to him a sign of his dedication to his work, but to others it seems to show he simply has problems. His face is circular, having a rounded chin rather than a pointed one. Other than the dark circles from the late nights of work and reading, his face shows other signs of his age, such as a few stray gray hairs, usually dyed blonde to help him try to retain at least a bit of his youth, through the stress of his life. His ears, which stick out due to his hairstyle, have a slight point at the tip, but are otherwise pretty small.

His hair is always slicked back with mostly dark blonde hair, though it appears that it is only dark on his head, as the rest of his body is light. His forehead is slightly broad due to a slightly receded hairline, though not by much more than the average man's of his age. His eyes, a main drawing point of his face, are actually accentuated by the light bags under them due to their light blue color.

James' personality is heavily influenced by some main factors that have occurred in his life. One of the main factors that has determined his personality is a book he found. He has devoted his life to this book and it has had a major shape on him. He is a very holy man, believing that the Capitol is the remnants of an organization that saved the current world of Panem from dealing with the same fate as the old world, extinction. He believes this so much that he goes around in the district preaching to the people of the districts of the glory of the Capitol, calling them saviors who do what is best for everyone.

Another trait of his personality, something else that came from the book, is a diligent work ethic. Whenever he starts on a project, he will not stop until it is done, unless told by the leader of the Capitol or someone representing the Capitol. This stems from a desire to see his creations put into action to fix, modify, and attempt to perfect them, and from a desire to stop anyone else from seeing his designs before they are finished.

Another thing that came with this is his mistrust of people. He trusts very few people, only trusting the President and a few other people. He views everyone as trying to steal his ideas and pass them off for their own, as such most of his projects are done on his own if he can help it, and if he can't he attempts to keep the other party as involved as is only absolutely necessary.

His interactions with people due to these traits are very limited. Most people view him as a raving lunatic due to his love for the Capitol and those who don't have troubles getting to know him as he very rarely lets anyone get close to him. Due to this, he has a unique view on life, seeing everyone else as pawns that can be sacrificed for the greater good. This is one of the mental devices that allows him to worship the Capitol so vehemently. It allows him to view sacrificing the Tributes to find the strongest as a test to find future warriors for the cause.

His personality to other Capitolites is very similar to his views towards members of the District. He views them as a necessary evil in order to benefit the greater good of the Capitol, but other than that he views them as pawns to be used as needed.

In most situations, whenever James is stuck, he first turns to his book, looking through it for guidance. If that fails, he turns the problem into a "machine." He first deconstructs the problem mentally, figuring out each part to it and how to deal with each part, then he figures out how to put it all back together in place. He deals with everything like a technology problem.

A great fear for James, however deep in his mind it is buried, is that his world is a lie. Deep down, he still has doubts that he cannot crush and he must live with, usually he just forgets about them and continues working, but many times he has been unable to get a good nights rest out of fear.

James and his twin brother, Craven, were born to Frank and Lily Lassiter, a pair of middle class factory works. After their birth, Frank went to work at the factory nearly full time in order to pay the expenses of the two children and his wife. By the age of 5, the twins had already discovered they had a knack for tinkering with the machines of District 3 and of other districts. They were outgoing and would almost always find a new "toy" to play with. They would help repair small things around the neighborhood and just generally do their best to make everyone around them happy.The two brothers were exact opposites in their ideas of "playing" with the machines though. James had a knack for taking things apart and understanding everything about their inner workings, whereas his brother had a talent for putting them together and figuring out what the machines did when they were put together and anything that was wrong with it. This is something they both had to work at though, since, even though they were great at one or the other, it took them quite a bit of time to do the other one.

As they grew older, their mothers health began to deteriorate, mainly due to the factories smoke and due to having a weak constitution to begin with. As her condition escalated, the twins stopped paying attention to the community, heavily focusing on their own home and how to make things easier for their mother. All of this was in vain, proving to the twins that not everything could be solved by hard work. Lily died in her sleep and not long after Frank died of exhaustion and mental breakdowns, though he kept working till his last breathe, dying, like Lily, in his sleep. At this point, the house was abandoned and two different neighbors took in the children, no neighbors wanting the burden of two children. The separation, so soon after their mothers death, caused an even greater gap to open in each of their hearts. Craven slowly overcame this, bonding with his new family and trying to forget the past. James, however, was not so lucky. The weight of his families death and his separation from his brother, coupled with his brother's shunning of the past, causes James to crack. His mental state grew gradually worse as he tried to keep himself from thinking why something so cruel chose to happen to him. Shortly afterwards, both the brothers had their 10th birthday. This was the start of their next stage of life.

After his 10th birthday, James went out on his own. The District was still rather unmaintained at the time, a few places not having much Peacekeeper control. James used this to his advantage. He would do odd jobs in order to make the money for his provisions, then he would head off, making use of the stuff that the Peacekeepers didn't pay much attention to. A slice of bread here, a few seeds to plant some of his own vegetables. He used every means of survival he could, most of which he learned from books since no one in District 3 had much use for survival techniques. He made sure to come back occasionally, to check on his brother and to make sure the families, the ones that took the two twins in, were still doing okay. Every time he would come back, for the next year and a half, his brother would tell him another reason to hate the Capitol. At the time, James agreed. It was the Capital's fault for the smog and death in the districts. For what? Just to make more weapons to subjugate the people to the tyrannical president's iron will and lust for power. Upon leaving again though, James went further than usual, to the part of the District no one went to, not out of fear, but out of necessity. This part of the District was still new, relatively. (This is back during the 20th Hunger Games, when the games were still pretty new.) James went further into this area than he should have, past the poisonous vines and little food-stealing rats. James tripped and fell onto a metal door in the ground.

The door creaked slowly and then, it fell in. James fell down a short tunnel, hitting his leg off of the bottom. Inside he found nothing but a lock box and some old T.V. Monitors. The box was strong, but the lock itself was pretty crude and James beat it off, curious what was inside. Inside he found something that changed his entire life. It was a book called "The Book of Ages." James looked at it and saw in it a story, a world like his, only a bit more land and a bit less water. James viewed this as the Old World, the world before there were districts. Inside the book were many drawings of weapons, a few used by the warrior priests in the book, though these weapons looked a bit awkward and didn't seem as though they could exist. Some of the other drawings in the book, however, were things that could be built. James figured these were tools meant to be used by the Warrior-Priests in the future, the now.

Through some guess-work and some imagination, James made the connection between this book and the current world. The old Warrior-Priests had settled down and were now the Capitol. This book had a profound impact on James' giving him something that filled in the missing spots of his life. It gave him a reason why the Capitol would do this work and why things happened. It made his life worth living and gave him a purpose. He was too design the weapons for the Warrior-Priests and give them back to them.

When he made his way back, he walked with the book near him at all times. He made it back and stopped his brother before he even started his tirade, saying that his brother didn't understand what the Capitol had to do this for. What they had to suffer through in order to get ready for the coming war, then he told his brother the story he had learned, though his brother said it was gibberish, James said that if Craven said anymore about the Capitol, he would turn them in to the peace keepers.

From age 12 to age 18, James began to do odd jobs for the peacekeepers during the time he wasn't working at a factor. James had a lot of free time, about half was spent reading his book, and the other half was spent helping the peacekeepers in any way he could. This ranged from shining their boots to cleaning their guns. Though he idolized the Capitol, the Peacekeepers weren't the highest people on his list to idolize, and on top of that he figured they would get rather annoyed if he praised them too much, so he would just utter the occasional congratulations and "Thank you for the hard work." One thing he tried to do is often as possible, was hold small parties for the Peacekeepers, usually after someone got a promotion or when a new batch of recruits came in. This was his life for most of his time, 12-18. He was unusually calm during the Reaping as well, feeling that he was immune to it because of the hand that fate dealt him. His destiny was to make the weapons and spread the Capitol's gospel, not to become one of their fighters. By sheer luck, however, he was right. He made it to his 18th birthday un-reaped.

On his 18th Birthday, the exact day, James signed up to be a Peacekeeper, memorizing every law they had by his 3rd month. His main trait for passing the training was his desire to uphold the Capitols laws and to work solely for them. After he got done with training, he went to the Peacekeepers of D3 and offered a nice deal. Instead of doing the street work, he could do technical details instead, cleaning weapons, modifying them for each Peacekeeper, making sure their armor was sturdy. For the Peacekeepers, this was a good deal. They got out of doing routine weapon maintenance for free, had their armor constantly fixed, and slight modifications were still within the rules, though usually it was more expensive.

At about 25, he started doing more secretive work for the Peacekeepers. At the time, James still looked like the typical D3 resident, not wearing his Peacekeeper uniform ever since he was never doing field work and he was very fragile looking. All in all, he did not look like Peacekeeper material. This made it easy for him to sneak into places and record people "blaspheming" the Capitol and even some Peacekeepers. This was a good deal for the Peacekeepers, it allowed them to accuse people who had money and take it in the name of the Capitol, though this corruption was kept a bit secret from James and he was told they were simply blasphemers. One thing that sealed the faith of the Peacekeepers in James was one of the blasphemers. This was for turning in his brother, Craven, for blaspheming.

The year James turned 28, he figured it was about time. He went to the Captain of the Peacekeepers and told them about one of his weapons designs, a lightning gauntlet. This was something that he couldn't make, even with the District 3 technology, so the Captain saw no real reason to force him to stay incarcerated. He really saw no threat since he couldn't do anything with these designs. Over two years passed before James heard any word back from the Capitol. They had asked for him to be sent to the Capitol to meet some of the scientists. After he got there, he was injected with a slight mind control dosage, using various poisons to try to distort some of his memories. This, however, was rather unnecessary as his love towards the Capitol already far exceeded what anyone there could imagine.

After he made it past the "test" he was put to work for the "lab rats" section of the Capitol. During this time, he learned almost every piece of technology at the disposal of the Capitol and he learned how to make the pictures in his book come to life. After about 5 years, James was given his own R&D sections and ever since he has been working tirelessly to create and perfect the tools in the book for the Capitol. Any chance he gets, however, he returns to the Districts, usually to Preach about the joys and wonders of the Capitol.