WAY OVERDUE CHARACTER INTRODUCTIONS!!!
I said some time ago that I'd do this before working on chapter 3. So here it is; the first batch of character information/introductions/backgrounds!
Car: 2013 Scion FR-S / Toyota GT86 (ZN6)
Nativity: Sonoma County, California
Thomas is 17 years old and out of his 3rd year in high school, who would much prefer to ride a bike than race a car fast at night. But it's how he helps to keel his old man's home business afloat after bowing out of the racing scene for the moment.
When he's not slinging it out on the asphalt at night, he's reading his favorite books or playing videogames at home or hanging around with his best friend Robbie, and they're (barely) tearin' it up at their car wash job and later hangin' out at Larsson's with Cole and Kenneth, and they somehow get away with that.
He also knows this one chick from school that he may or may not have a thing for. :3
Nativity: Sonoma County, California
Whatever his best friend Thomas is, Robbie is quite literally the opposite. In contrast to Thomas's relative introversion, Robbie is very much a people person. They both know Cole and Kenneth from middle school even though those two're a year or two older. Aside from that, auto racing to him is part of his holy trinity of favorite things. He strives to get a cool car, not his Dad's crappy Camfy Solara or the grocery getter Prius, but more like Cole and Kenneth's 300ZXs, only he wants the Toyota version of that (not a rebadge). One thing's for sure, he believes joining their racing team will be his plan towards coolness.
Kenneth Barlow (L) & Cole Ives (R)
Nativity: Sonoma County, California
Cars: Nissan 300ZX (Z31 [Kenneth], Z32 [Cole]
Cole and Kenneth have been inseparable since that one time in middle school when Kenneth was looking at cars and Cole popped in. The rest is history (kinda). The two formed a racing team with some other friends of theirs from high school called the Sonoma Speeds Stars (because Cole is a big auto racing fanboy that he nabbed the name from Initial D). That team's been been around for a few years, like 1-2, and they mainly do what they do for leisure.
Kenneth is practically an older version of Thomas, but darker-skinned and nerdy; about cars and any fictional media having to do with American superheroes, Japanese stuff, or any web-based things in general. Initial D happened to drag him in the hardest when he met Cole.
Cole is the older version of Robbie, but level-headed and less concerned about looking cool, but he has his moments. He works with Robbie and Thomas at a gas station car wash, and later hangs out with them and Kenneth at Larsson's where they all know an upperclassmen from their school. He's an avid racing fan mostly because of his dad havingI MSA on his laptop all the time, and just so happened to come across Initial D when he was 12 years old and fell hard for Iketani's green-grey two-tone S13 Silvia. That anime was such a big influence on him that he got Kenneth's geeky ass into it and now they have the same car model with different chassis codes.