Noah Ripley // 4

Name: Noah Ripley
Age: 15
Gender: Male
District/Area: District 4
Appearance:

With a face ready for a smile, there always seems to be a little bit of a smirk on Noah's face. That smirk can easily turn into a grin or into a sneer, and you won't always know which you're going to get. If you aren't careful, it will be the latter, and you'll understand just how shape-able a face can be. He has deep dimples in both of his cheeks, but for goodness sake, don't let that cute look fool you! His eyes may look brown, but really, they're green! Oh yes, Noah's look is deceptively sweet, but you'd better watch out, because there is quite a bit of bite to him too!

In Noah's line of work, muscles are required, and though he is naturally quite slim, he has the curve of muscles in his chest and arms from carrying heavy loads for long distances whenever necessary. His arms in particular are well developed, but there is a good look to his chest as well and his back is just as well muscled. But the muscles come from hardship and not from working out, as one might expect.

It's the same hardship that has made Noah's hands rough from work. He's handled ropes and carcasses for so long that there are callouses on his hand and on his feet and wrists as well. The only smooth skin on his body is on his face, and there the skin is flawless and pale, accenting the depth of his brown eyes and the beauty of his white teeth. Longish black hair tops off his look, usually messy or looking windswept, which is natural for the southern, seafaring District 4. The winds are often high and his hair is the only sign that he's roughed it that way.

Personality:

Noah's right at that age. You know the age, when the entire world falls apart because of something small. For some girls it might be a broken nail. For certain boys it's a bad grade. For Noah, it's scorn. Whether it's his brothers or their parents, a friend from school or a potential future workmate, Noah's world is at odds with his entire person whenever someone looks down on him or takes from him what he believes is rightly his. And as far as he's concerned, everything is rightly his. That girl he's danced with once outside the school on a warm day? His. The coins he stole from the pocket of a body he found in the alley? His. The tools he needs to do his work? His. And if you dare touch any of it, expect to be met with the most inexplicable rage you've ever experienced from a fifteen year-old boy. It's his and he's more than happy to fight you for it. If it's yours, he's still eager for the fight.

In fact, Noah is one of those natural brawlers that you only find once in a very blue moon. He's not the type to go straight for a weapon, but he's a huge fan of hand to hand combat, and he's learned to use it well, whether he's fighting for the rights to a girl (or occasionally a boy) or fighting for the sake of fighting. He's destructive and enjoys watching things bleed. Besides, the dead have things that he and his brothers want, and if he lays someone out, he can take what used to belong to them (and now which belongs to him). It almost makes the Hunger Games an attractive proposition. At least that would give him an outlet to fight and kill without remorse or consequence. It would be an outlet for his rage.

But it wouldn't take much to convince Noah otherwise. All it takes is a pretty girl catching his eye (or occasionally, a pretty boy) and his attention is snagged. He'll fix his whole focus on that person and it's as though there's nothing that they can do wrong. A soft touch, a stroke, the right words are enough to boost his ordinarily fragile male ego into the stratosphere and he turns smug in opposition to his typical teen male insecurities.

History:

Noah has been robbing graves for as long as he can remember. If there was ever a time that he didn't, he's forgotten it. As best as his memory serves him, he's been doing it since he was old enough to walk, following along behind Nino and his other older brothers to dig through the pockets of the dead, rooting in their coffins to come up with the trappings of death. Everything was fair game, from eyeglasses to clothing and shoes and of course jewelry that could be sold off to whoever was able to pay for it. It never made them wealthy (at least not in Noah's mind), but it was a living that paid for itself and which also kept him strong, both due to the hard physical labor of digging out the graves and due to the food that the trade provided for him and for his three brothers.

Three years ago the reality of a personal death was brought home to Noah when his friend (a girl he considered his girlfriend) died of a disease that should have been treatable but for which the medicine she needed wasn't provided.. She was only twelve years old and the injustice of it all infuriated Noah to the point that he lashed out at everybody in sight as though in his own personal battle against injustice. Perhaps that was where his anger started, maybe it was the basis of his rage and his tendency to lash out at anything and everything. Maybe that is why he's always picking fights. In so doing, perhaps he fulfills his desire for justice that she didn't receive when she most needed it. And in so doing, he prepares himself for the possibility of his own fight for survival.

Bitterness doesn't sit well with Noah, however, and it doesn't take a whole lot to coax him out of it. He's spent the past two years looking for the "new love of his life" and avoiding the Games by any means necessary so that he can continue to work with his family. Because if he's honest, he loves the grave robbing. Whatever the reason, whether it's his parents constant assurances or the thrill and adrenalin rush of the act itself, Noah loves what he and his brothers do.

Codeword: <img src="http://i41.tinypic.com/16h2ibt.png">
Comments/Other:

Oh for the love of Pete I'm not repeating this! For Lalia's Pirate Graverobbers plot!