BASIC INFORMATION:
NAME: Bang Ara. AGE: 27. PLACE OF BIRTH: Launceston, Massachusetts, United States. AFFILIATION: The Emerson Saints. The Russian Mob. OCCUPATION: Assassin. FACE CLAIM: Han So-hee. AVAILABILITY: OPEN.
BIOGRAPHY:
They looked at her as though she was a child.
Of course, she could hardly blame them. For all the complaining about the hardships that had been thrown their way by a city infamous for offering many, they quickly overlooked the little privileges: like understanding what the fuck a normal childhood was supposed to look like in the first place. It was a hard debate, really…had she shed her pure little cinnamon roll status when her father had been shot in the face just after her fifth birthday, or when she’d watched her mother beat her sister unconscious a few years later?
Yeah, yeah, the Russians had it so rough.
Too bad they didn’t have a kick in the fucking head from North Anderson to toughen them up.
Sometimes Ara wonders whether not taking advantage of her intelligence—and the ultra rare trait of actually giving a shit about showing up to school—was a mistake. Sure, her part of the city wasn’t afforded the quality of education that could’ve gotten her anywhere near a decent college, but maybe, just maybe, she could have been something other than a Saint. Did she resent the idea of a gang culture so engrained in their slice of Little Korea that it was normality? Not exactly. But as quickly as she jumped in head-first, just like all three of the siblings who came before her, she questioned whether it was all just a little bit fucking pointless.
People were still so bitter about what they’d done, it was all they talked about: The Korean blood that stained the St. Clair hands.
But that was the funny thing about loss, she’d learned. When the Irish had taken her father, that’d hurt. Ara had cried and begged for him to come back. Then they’d taken her eldest brother, Jiyong. It hadn’t compounded the pain like one might’ve expected. It’d hurt less. Jaehyun had fallen to the French a few years later, and even though she was old enough to understand the lifestyle they’d involved themselves with by that point, it’d been more of a disappointing inevitability than pain. Then, when Sunny finally aggravated the Irish enough to end up having her corpse dumped in the fucking river, Ara had blamed her for provoking them in the first place.
Murdering her own abusive piece of shit mother had gotten a silent chuckle out of the teenager. At least she’d completed the set.
The Saints really were a different breed, and Launceston didn’t know how to appreciate it.
They fought as youngsters to survive, but they fought as adults because they didn’t know what else to do. People like them didn’t get other opportunities. Ara had been initiated into the gang—requiring murder; a pittance of an offering given how easily bloodshed seemed to come to them—when she was fifteen years old. Pretty average age, though she’d sure taken an above average number of beatings up until that point for her big fucking mouth. The idiot had been French, and she still remembers his face vividly enough that she can’t help but wonder whether killing was a bit like losing. They all came a little easier after that; blurred into one ugly string of violence that seemed uncharacteristic only to those who didn’t know what kind of a person North Anderson cultivated.
Though her family had never really been much of a support system, she couldn’t deny that she’d stuck with the Saints because they were exactly that even when she so rarely needed them to be. Perhaps that was why when the gang violently split into two, it’d been the first loss in over a decade that had meant anything to her at all. The older members seemed too scared to oppose the French because they remembered what the St. Clairs had done to them the first they’d tried. The younger members wanted freedom from their rule, and had sought out their Russian enemies as a means to achieve it. The division was immediate. Disappointingly, much of the bloodshed had come from the pro-Russian side of the gang. They felt betrayed.
Ara didn’t care. She understood both sides. Unfortunate that the few voices calm enough to call for unity—just like hers—went unheard until too many lines had been crossed to ever hope to return.
She’d lost her boyfriend. Her best friend. One of her colleagues had tried to beat her head in with a crowbar because she still met with the pro-Russians members when much of her own social circle had sided with the French. It was insanity, and whilst on many occasions she would have revelled in the absolute turmoil, this time, it sparked the rarest emotion in her of them all: anger.
Neither side felt like the right option. Whilst she could appreciate using the French for work and enjoying their protection, she also understood why the younger generations didn’t want to be reduced to servitude. But did that make either of them right?
It’d been one of her pro-Russian contacts that’d first introduced her to the Vorshevsky family, and as ridiculous as it seems to her now, she’d almost said no. Apparently, Ara had already been on their radar since they’d associated her with a couple of Russian loyalists she’d shut in a dumpster and subsequently set on fire. Whilst she’d immediately assumed it was a set up (maybe her time to join the rest of her family of corpses?) Jiyoon assured her that in fact, said reputation was exactly why the Russians wanted her to join them. Ara was cold, uninhibited, calculated, intelligent… Her friend had sung her fucking praises, and hilariously, it wound up with her in the back pocket of their best assassin.
Life sure did have a way of keeping her on her fucking toes.
The Saints were good at murder—particularly ones like her, who had more than two brain cells to rub together—but the Russian made it look like an art, and she sure did appreciate it. Apparently, the woman who had taken the Korean under her wing was planning on stepping back from the mob, and they needed a solid replacement. No matter how many people she attempted to recruit to fill the void, none of them seemed to measure up. Until Ara. Who knew she had it in her?
Though the learning process is a long and arduous one, she embraces it fully. There is no arrogance, no ego, because why the fuck would she pretend she’s anything other than North Anderson scum? Whilst Ara doesn’t consider herself a Russian loyalist, she does appreciate that they not only gave her a second chance to live the only life she knows, but they are also giving her the means to absolutely excel at it. Even though she once wouldn’t ever have imagined herself leaving Launceston, now that Konstantin has given her the go-ahead to join his family in London, she can’t help but find a little relief in the distance from the people she once called family.
They weren’t a family anymore.
She didn’t have it in her to blame the Russians or the French for it.
The Emerson Saints had ended themselves, and that, she promised herself, would be the only loss she would ever hurt over again.
SOCIAL CONNECTIONS:
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single. FAMILY: Bang ‘Sunny’ Sunhi (sister, deceased), Bang Jiyong, Jaehyun (brothers, deceased) CONNECTIONS:
Arkady Kurylenko: Boss. Given that she stays detached from the Russian loyalists for the most part, preferring anonymity in her line of work, Arkady is really the only person she’s had much contact with in London thus far, and even that was only through Eva’s introduction. The old man takes no shit, and she absolutely appreciates that he isn’t about to let anybody stand in his way. If she has to take orders, they will only come from him.
Aviv Kasyanenko: Acquaintance. Ara met him once. After she heard that he was one of the (many) prominent members talking shit about her affiliations and skills behind her back, she’d intruded on a night out he’d been enjoying with his friends. Ara reached into her bag, pulled the severed head of a French commandant out by its hair, before rolling it toward his table with a smile. First she gave him the middle finger, and then she flicked the Commandant’s ring his way. She never heard her name from his mouth again.
Eva Giroud: Mentor. Ara has a lot of respect for the woman, and even though they see each other infrequently since she’s taken a less-involved position within the mob, she tries to use every moment in her company to better herself. There are few more impressive to learn from. Ara has never really enjoyed much in the way of achievements in her life (beyond her impressive Saints kill count) but for the first time since school, she can feel herself wanting to do better.
