InsaneJournal

FIRST IMPRESSIONS Physical Description: With green eyes, Cricket is a little thing topping out at 5'4. She has some healthy curves and is very comfortable with her body, thank you. Her blonde hair is always a bit longer than she prefers, but she rarely feels like getting it trimmed, so she usually braids it or ties it up out of her face. She can be found in jeans and comfy shirts or hoodies, most of the time. She has a small tattoo of a chef's knife on her left wrist, a septum piercing, and several ear piercings.

Family: Crystal (Mother), Jeff (Father), Lennon (Brother)
Hometown: Ft. Walton, FL
Career/Job: Sous Chef in London

Skills: Being a chef, she can turn even the most basic ingredients into something edible. She handles a knife well.

Luggage: Cricket packed one carry-on with a few outfit changes, socks, underwear, toiletries (toothbrush, toothpaste, tampons JIC, deodorant, travel shampoo/conditioner and her makeup, of which there is very little). Hairbrush. Her phone charger.A book (Duma Key by Stephen King), and a second pair of sneakers). She also took her messenger bag on the plane, which contained her wallet, phone, AirPods, chapstick, bandages, and gum.

Cricket has many issues that she doesn't want to deal with, and the best way to do that is to have fun, usually in a somewhat impulsive, reckless way. She loves her job, and it's really the only area of her life that she puts real effort into.

Cricket is not someone you can go to with a serious problem - well, you can, but she'd probably end up driving you crazy either with poorly placed humor or asking questions you might not want to answer. She's always found it fascinating to get underneath someone's skin, to question and push their beliefs. Sometimes, she'll find herself arguing just for the sake of arguing, especially when she doesn't have a firm opinion on the topic. She hates admitting she's wrong, and she really, really hates apologizing.

But when she does have an opinion, you can guarantee she'll tell you what it is. Cricket can be very blunt and sometimes tactless with her honesty, but the truth is the truth, even when it's not sugar-coated. If something major is being decided, thinking it through from every angle is essential. In any case, Cricket is going to make her voice heard. Yes, she is hot-tempered and quick to get angry if pushed or talked down to. She'll respond with sarcasm or vitriol and may or may not feel bad about it later. Working in busy, high-stress kitchens has taught her to speak up, talk back, or buckle down and do the job - whatever she ends up doing usually depends on her mood at the time.

That being said, if Cricket considers you a friend, she is hardcore loyal unless you directly betray her in some sense. You will have a lot of fun with her. She loves trying new things, even if it's stupid. And sure, she may be twenty-eight, but she's never really let her humor mature past the age of fifteen.

STRENGTHS
Strong stomach: Cricket is not bothered at all by blood or gore. She's cut herself more than once while in the kitchen and even lost the tip of her left index finger. Not to mention her love of horror films, especially terrible slasher flicks. So she's become more than a little desensitized to everything icky and gruesome.

Culinary Skills: Cricket has been in the kitchen since she was a kid, taught to cook by her grandmother and father. She began cooking meals for her family when she was nine and has never looked back. She's good at it too. Real good. Cricket considers the kitchen more her home than any other place and she loves feeding people. One of her more impressive skills is taking just about any ingredient and making it into something good.

Brave: Few things scare Cricket. She has her fears, sure, but at the end of the day, she likes to believe she can handle just about anything and anyone. She'll stand up for herself, and other people, without a second thought. No one has ever accused Cricket of being a pushover and she is proud of that.

WEAKNESSES
Blunt: Cricket has zero filter where it comes to her thoughts and opinions and she'll tell you what they are with or without being prompted.

Shit Stirrer: Cricket thrives on chaos. She loves watching shit implode. That doesn't mean she's malicious or wants to hurt people, but she loves getting people to be real with each other and honestly? She'll do whatever it takes to make it happen, especially when she's bored.

Argumentative: Cricket will argue with anyone to make a point. She admires confidence, but she also likes to shake it up a bit and make people think and consider things from a different point of view, even if that point of view is fucked up.

Impulsive: Thinking things through isn't really Cricket's cup of tea. She loves living life and diving headfirst into things (except water) and rarely considers the consequences until well after the fact. While this has brought her many fun adventures, it's also gotten her into trouble.

Religion: It's fine if you want to believe in a fairy tale, but please don't talk about it around Cricket, or she's going to roll her eyes. Or argue with you. Or cut you down. It just depends. She knows what others believe shouldn't bother her, but religion in any sense has soured her views on it, and the people who cling to it. Prayer alone tends to trigger bad memories, and bad memories piss her off.

POWERS Fire manipulation! Cricket can generate, shape, and manipulate fire, the rapid oxidation of a material in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products, flame being the visible portion of the fire. Depending on the substances alight, and any impurities outside, the color of the flame and the fire's intensity will be different.

Cricket can also completely control the temperature of the fire at will. Drawbacks include her power being influenced by her emotions. Cricket's temper and impulsiveness can lead to reckless use, which, of course, can be harmful to those around her. Her power does not work against fireproof materials. She has some fire immunity in that she can feel the heat of fire, but she cannot burn herself. She *can* suffer from side effects, such as smoke inhalation.

If you were to ask Cricket about her childhood, she would probably say she suffers from amnesia and has no memory of her life before being adopted by Jeff and Crystal Marx. The truth is, she was taken from her addict of a mother when she was nine years old and then thrown into the foster system, where she ended up with Greg and Debra Martin, two Evangelists who liked to call her Carrie while they paraded her around their church like she was a charity case they had taken up.

If she learned nothing else from living with them, Cricket learned religion was horrible. The clothing was hideous and itchy; the songs were boring, and punishment for questioning the Bible or not following the rules was being hit with a wooden rod or being sent to her room and locked in for two days with one meal consisting of tomato soup. Greg and Debra did their best to beat the fear of God into Cricket, both mentally and physically. She was an impressionable child and for a long time, she was convinced she was going to Hell because her mother had been a drug addict - and Cricket came from that bad blood. She was doomed.

Cricket had to listen to the damaging rhetoric for four years. She never got the impression that they actually wanted to adopt her, which was both depressing and yet, a relief. Cricket realized later that she was just a prop—a way to be praised by Greg and Debra's church. Not to mention the monthly government check. Cricket was probably too young to understand that it wasn't a very healthy household, but she would realize it later.

When Cricket was twelve, the best thing happened. Debra suffered a severe stroke and passed away. She stayed with Greg for a month or two after the funeral, but it is evident that he had no desire to raise Cricket on his own, so Cricket was sent to live with Crystal and Jeff Marx. They already had an older child, one they had adopted a few years before taking in Cricket, so she had a pseudo-sibling now, too, after years of being alone. Despite having no real love for her former foster parents, she had spent four years with them, listening to their religious nonsense and being beaten when and if she did something wrong. She fully expected Jeff and Crystal to be the same way, so it took some time to adjust to the new home.

Things began to turn around when Crystal took her shopping to buy some non-itchy, non-ugly clothes. She didn't have to wear dresses and tights anymore, pin her hair up with a big ass bow, or wear uncomfortable black shoes. Her new foster mother let her buy jeans, and t-shirts with graphics on them. Cricket even got her very first bra in the Marx house. After a few months, she started to feel more comfortable with them. They called her Cricket, not Carrie, and she was allowed to read books other than the Bible. They barely brought up God, actually. She had a feeling they were believers, but they didn't act the way Greg and Debra had. They didn't even go to church. It was... wonderful.

When Cricket turned thirteen, she began to hang out in the kitchen more, whenever Crystal would cook dinner. Eventually, Crystal began to ask for some help, and that was when Cricket found her calling. She loved cooking. She loved food! She loved making meals for her foster parents and siblings. Sensing her excitement, Jeff and Crystal would promise Cricket various kitchen gadgets or cooking classes if she came home with a good report card. Incentives helped tremendously, and she began to thrive in school. She even made some friends. That same year, Jeff and Crystal asked Cricket if she would like to be adopted. Obviously, Cricket said yes. She was thrilled.

That's not to say Cricket was the perfect child. As she entered her teenage years, she began to pull away from her new parents. It wasn't that she didn't love them, but she had her own stuff going on now. Hormones. Puberty. All that fun stuff that convinced a teenager girl she knew more than anyone. She was pretty enough to get attention from boys, which she enjoyed. She liked going out and experiencing new things. She tried pot, she smoked cigarettes for a while, and she found a group of friends who enjoyed being stupid as much as she did. Cricket was young and invincible! She was too cool to hang out with her family. She liked to challenge them, questioning them on their beliefs, trying to push their buttons to see how far she could take things. She got grounded on occasion, but they never raised a hand to her. Deep down, Cricket knew they wouldn't, but maybe being abandoned by her birth mother and being forced to live with Judas and his wife for four years fucked her up in ways she couldn't quite comprehend yet.

It didn't help that when she was sixteen, her parents took in Lennon, a new foster kid Cricket didn't like him. He was mouthy and annoying, and she didn't want another sibling. On the other hand, he took some attention away from Cricket, which made it easier to get away with stuff she may not have if she had remained the "youngest".

But when she did get into trouble, she pushed back, tested them to see if they would somehow turn into Greg and Debra, and dared them to throw her out. They never did. Jeff and Crystal were patient. Maybe they knew it was just a phase. And it was. Mostly. Cricket eventually grew out of her obnoxious, rebellious phase. She even came to love Lennon as a real brother, even if he was still annoying sometimes.

After graduation, Cricket took a gap year to get a job and save up some cash. It was then she decided to forgo a traditional college and enter culinary school instead. She still loved to cook. It was her passion, and she was damn good at it. She was accepted into a culinary school in Colorado and left Florida that fall.

In Colorado, Cricket thrived. She found her calling, her people. It could be tough and frustrating, not to mention painful, with how many knife cuts she suffered, but she learned and grew as a chef. She did her best to stay in touch with her family, calling often and returning home during breaks and holidays. While she was gone, she got a new sibling, a younger kid her parents took in. Cricket felt bad she couldn't be home to get to know them properly, and it was hard to connect with them emotionally, but she still considered them family.

After she graduated, Cricket moved to New York, where she got a job as a prep cook at a fine dining restaurant. From there, Cricket focused on her career, determined to learn enough and become good enough to open a restaurant of her own one day. She had a few relationships here and there, with only one long-term boyfriend when she was twenty-four. That thirteen-month relationship ended when he proposed. Marriage was not a part of Cricket's fifteen-year plan.

Cricket refocused on her career and worked her way down the food chain - bouncing from a couple of restaurants until she was taken under the wing of Brett Taylor, a prestigious, well-known chef in Manhattan. He was an incredible mentor, and Cricket eventually became his sous chef. It was Brett who introduced Cricket to Charles Ackley, the owner of a fine dining establishment in London. Impressed with Cricket's talent, Ackley offered her a job in his restaurant. The possibility of moving to London and working in Ackley's restaurant was a dream come true. It was difficult leaving the country, knowing it meant she wouldn't be able to visit her family as much, but they were supportive.

Cricket moved to London at age twenty-seven and became Ackley's youngest sous chef. Living in another country took some adjusting, but she managed, even if she didn't make a ton of money. She was often homesick but stuck with it, aware that this job could eventually lead to her reaching her goal of becoming an executive chef and then someday having her own restaurant.

Recently, in September of this year, Lennon came out to visit her with the plan that he would stay a week, and then Cricket would fly home with him to celebrate their mother's birthday. Cricket liked having Lennon in London with her, showing him around, and introducing him to her friends. It was a good time! But the day they were scheduled to leave Heathrow and fly into Tampa, nothing worked out how it was meant to. There was an issue with the flight crew, blah, blah, blah, and Cricket and Lennon were shunted off to another flight with another airline. Cranky, hungry, and overtired, Cricket found herself on Air Griffin. Flight 921. She and Lennon would have to fly into Atlanta and then take a short flight from Atlanta to Florida. There was so much inconvenience and frustration, but it was what it was. Cricket just wanted to get home and see her parents. She popped and pill and chased it with a crappy cup of wine before falling asleep.