Katrina Sykes D4 --Resub-- (Ready}

When a girl is six foot one and every inch a career, people tend to notice. Katrina’s angular features give her face a drawn out look, gracing her visage with a look of perpetual annoyance. She keeps her dark sienna hair short in order to stop the wind from whipping it into her face when she’s sailing. Sharp eyebrows curl above deep chocolate brown eyes; eyes that often lose focus and stare off into the distance when she gets lost in thought. But her eyebrows aren’t the only thing about her that is sharp. Her ears and nose taper off to noticeable points at the tips, the same as her chin, and as some would say, her tongue and wit.

She’s a powerful, proficient and prominent swimmer and while her legs make up most of her height, all of her is lean and muscular, including her arms. When she’s not in her bathing suit swimming, she usually wears flannel shirts with her jeans, preferring practical, well-fitting clothing to things that look nice but serve no function other than to be eye catching. It’s for this reason that her favorite footwear is a strong pair of steel-toed boots that used to belong to her father. In her opinion it doesn’t get much better than shoes that can double as brass knuckles for your feet in a pinch, and considering that she picks fights on a regular basis, it’s a smart wardrobe choice.

While the person that initiates the fight is usually Katrina herself, she’d tell you that she was provoked by someone’s stupidity or other nonsense. She has a tendency to be blunt, and completely so. In her mind, honesty and nothing but the truth is the best and only policy as it negates the possibility of any misunderstanding. If an uncensored truth winds up hurting another person’s feelings, she just shakes her head and moves forward unapologetically. She feels it dumb to sugarcoat things and dumber still to not speak plainly. If she has a problem with someone, she’d rather stab them in the face so they where they stand with her, rather than pretending to tolerate them and then stabbing them in the back like she sees many other people do.

This had made it difficult to form lasting relationships of any kind but that’s not something that bothers her. She doesn’t need friends and she doesn’t have the time for romance. The only thing that matters is honing her skills. Besides, if someone were to actually get past her gruff, brash exterior, they’d be close enough to stab her in the back before leaving, and that’s not something Katrina’s willing to let happen. It’s become a goal in her life not to let anyone compromise who she is. Her unwillingness to bend coupled with her refusal to break has landed her in hot water more than once, though she always holds her own. It’s common for her to come home covered in bruises with a split lip leaking blood, holding her side with a grin while declaring that her sisters should see what the other career looks like.

As for her younger sisters, she’d do anything for them; she’s fiercely protective of her family, a trait passed down to her from her deceased brother. She’d defend them no matter what, unless of course, they messed with her coracle for any reason. That action would earn them an express ticket into the ocean. The small boat is her one prized possession, something she built with her own two hands. It’s a daydream of hers to own a full on sailboat; and to be a pirate like the legends of old, to attack other ships and plunder them for riches. In lieu of that however, she makes do with beating up kids for their lunch money and then handing it off to her sisters as a present; a sort of allowance since the money she makes working down at the docks goes towards helping their parents with the bills.

It was something she had to do ever since her older brother Branden died. When she was just a kid, a rich district four family had held a wedding on a small island off the coast of district four; the isle of Piscatus. Her brother had been one of the people invited, and attending had proved to be a fatal mistake. The official story was that the boat carrying the guests had capsized on the way back from the festivities, but Katrina had met one of the few survivors from the wedding and had learned that a serial killer had cut a bloody swath through the party guests, her brother included. Him supposedly being lost at sea had already affected Katrina and her sisters negatively, causing one to withdraw within herself and the other to seek fulfillment in partying, but learning the truth about his demise hardened Katrina more than she had already been.

And so she threw herself into the career lifestyle, determined to become the strongest person in their family in order to protect them in Branden’s absence. Honing her body and her mind. Eventually, she showed a particular aptitude for the javelin, but became well versed in a variety of weapons, favoring those with a good mix of speed and stopping power over anything too bulky or slow. She also found that swimming to be a strength as she was able to hold her breath longer, swim faster and last longer in the water than either of her sisters and a good number of the people she trained with.

She has no fear of the annual games, and would tell you straight off that it’s just a tool. A means to provide for one’s family, and if twenty-three other tributes have to die for that, it’s just the way it goes. She knows how to take care of herself and feels that if she had to kill someone to survive, it wouldn’t be that hard. When entertaining thoughts like that, she’s usually training, sometimes in District Four’s career center and at other times, on the beach away from prying eyes. The career center has become something of a second home to her, a place to vent, a place to be strong, filled with plenty of people for her to punch with no penalty. It's by no means an easy life, but she makes it work.