Jagers! Feat. Vilka (mine), Mircea (Para’s), and a very unimpressed Tahir (Adi’s). Also known as: That One Time Vilka Pranked Tahir Via Exploding Glitterbomb Letter And Proceeded To Brag.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Para (@ firecoloredwater) is a TERRIBLE ENABLER. Here is my jager OC Vilka in their universe~
(In unrelated news, I am finally using my blog as a blog instead of an arthost)
...This is NOT AT ALL what I intended to spend today writing. And yet. Here we go; several pages of Kai origin story....
(Relevant detail, Kai is very androgynous. Not in dress or intentionally, just you’d prettymuch have to get her naked to tell that she’s female.)
Back in Gyula Kai’s best friend was Ioan, the son of a silversmith. He had been a better son than Kai was a daughter; she spent time in her father’s shop, studying prices and trends and how to lead a customer to buy just one thing more, and she spent time by her mother’s side, learning to sew and cook and mix medicines for the common illnesses her siblings caught. She spent time with her siblings too, of course; teaching them how to write and add and act, ordering them out of whatever mischief they’d started. But she spent no more time there than was necessary.
Ioan loved his father’s forge, and when Kai wasn’t with her family they were usually in it. Ioan watched or helped his father, eyes wide in fascination as the metal changed to match his father’s will, and as he grew he learned how to do the same. He talked about it, usually; as he got older sometimes his father cut him off from sharing details Kai shouldn’t learn. Kai hummed, and nodded, and paid enough attention to respond, and felt her eyes drawn to the fire. She felt nothing tangible, no heat or flame, but nonetheless she watched sparks rise, and felt something burning rising in her breath.
It was strange. She learned that gradually; that other people didn’t gaze at the fire and breath in rhythm with the flames, didn’t feel as if something expanded like her chest every time she inhaled at the sight of sparks dancing into the sky, but never shrunk back down as she exhaled, and only grew. She learned to be grateful that she’d assumed it was common; she’d never felt the need to say a word about what she thought everyone felt, and no one knew.
But it was not common. It was strange, and strong; she called it will, for a while, because that was what she found herself thinking when it rose; I will, I will, I will— It tasted more like threat than promise.
I will what, she thought sometimes when she was half asleep in the dark. I will what?
But what rose felt strange, and powerful, and Kai knew that meant dangerous, so if it held an answer she never let it grow enough to say.
“Storm coming!” her mother, her father, her sisters and brothers; a dozen voices through the years called, cheerful or irritated or worried, and if she was outside Kai always turned to search for the clouds. If the storm was strong enough, the wind would pull at her hair, trying to take it in trade for the scent of water and thunder that it carried, and the burning in Kai would rise to meet it; something vital and unnamed.
A plague caught the town when Kai was thirteen. It was spark-made, but gentle for that; the red fever brought a high fever, a rash, and a slow leak of blood out the eyes. And nausea, vomiting; that was usually what killed, when it did; half the fever’s victims survived, a few died of the fever, but most of the dead were lost to thirst or hunger, unable to keep anything down for far too long.
Kai caught the plague, and her mother, and brother Markus, all on the same day. It started with a cough, innocuous and easily spread, but half the town had caught it earlier and she knew what it became. As soon as they started coughing, Kai took her mother and Markus to a house whose family had already died.
(No one had given them permission to use it, her mother worried; it wasn’t theirs, the family of the dead might object. Kai didn’t care.)
It took two days for recognizable symptoms of the red fever to begin, and Kai’s mother fretted over Markus until then; he was her eldest living son since Kai’s namesake had died as an infant, and among the six children that lived there was only one other boy, born only two months before and still so vulnerable; was she doomed to lose all her sons to illness? The worrying only made Markus cry. It was almost a relief when the fever began.
Kai’s mother tried; with the fever and rash and blood starting to fall from her eyes she cooked the easiest foods she knew to keep down, but it did no good. The plague was sparkwork; gentle food made no difference, and within a day both Kai’s mother and her brother stopped eating; the vomiting was too painful and impossible to avoid.
Kai burned. She didn’t know what part was fever and what was fire, but she burned, I will I will I will I will, and she kept eating, spent hours drinking water and eating whatever food was there (raw, by the end, as she shook too hard to stand for long, and couldn’t see beyond a haze of red) between vomiting it back up. Her stomach twisted like it was stabbed and her throat felt like it was full of acid, and she twisted the fever and the burning together to pull them into herself and thought I will.
Kai lived.
Kai had always been used to the burning feeling, but she got used to using it; chasing her siblings out of mischief wasn’t the same as taking her mother’s place to care for them, and most days she needed to think I will and find a place that was—not precarious, she couldn’t think of the fire as dangerous to herself any more, but unstable; poised on the edge of flaring into actions Kai couldn’t quite determine but suspected she shouldn’t take. She never let it go too far; she took care of her siblings and made the oldest (Alena and Katarine, ten and seven) help take care of the house, and sometimes helped her father with the shop, and when she needed to she pulled the fire up, straightened to her full (average, thirteen-year-old) height with her (slight) frame and thought I will, and the people whose eyes she met backed down, and she twisted I will into I will not let you control me, and made the fire burn below the surface of her breath, but never further. It felt tempting, when she used it; she wanted to let it go, just to see what she would do if she didn’t hold it back, but it still felt like it could be dangerous to other people. She adjusted, got used to holding it halfway active, and it began to feel less like a breath and more like her heartbeat.
Gyula had probably been invaded once, but it had happened so long ago that no one remembered it. Still, the town belonged to the Heterodynes; there was grumbling, but they were much too near for anything else to be true.
Whether a Heterodyne had created the red fever Kai never knew, but certainly some of the village thought no one else could have, and anger settled in the town as the plague passed. Kai’s father had lost less than many, but he was well known in the town, his shop a center of gossip every time people met and talked in it, and he had been hard hit when the Heterodynes refused to lower Gyula’s tribute despite the loss of population. Kai’s father had always been slow to form grudges, but only fed them once they began; it was no surprise to Kai that when anger became rebellion, her father was at the head of it.
She called him foolish for it, and he called her cold; he said the least she could do for her mother and brother was support those who fought against their murderers. Kai thought of a red haze, of days making herself eat and vomit while her mother and brother lay in bed, of a plague that could be survived, and said nothing. The Heterodynes weren’t known for failing to kill people. Her father held grudges; his mind would not be changed.
The Heterodynes didn’t bother sending anything that could be called an army. A squad of constructs arrived, and Kai led her siblings to a room without windows as soon as she saw them, and sat in front of the door until the shouts and crashes died down. She wasn’t surprised when her father never came back, or that most of the shop’s stock had been taken and some of the shelves smashed along with the door.
The next week was funerals and burials, constant, from one to the next and fitting in her father’s around all the others Kai had to attend. The constructs hung around—jägermonsters, Kai heard them called—but didn’t do much. They harassed the taverns, the baker, anywhere they could get food, but they’d already taken what they wanted from Kai’s shop, so she only saw them watching from alleys or rooftops as she walked between memorials and errands.
It seemed like their eyes followed her most times that she looked. Maybe it was because she walked straight, not ducking her head like most of the townsfolk did; Kai hadn’t been part of the rebellion after all, and the jägers had gotten into and won fights, but hadn’t killed anyone else since it was put down, so she didn’t think they would. Maybe it was because she’d started wearing a cut-down pair of her father’s pants when she went on errands; she didn’t have the time to keep messing with full skirts, and there wasn’t anyone left to tell her no. Maybe it was because some of the townsfolk had politely, apologetically, started avoiding her; bad luck, they said, to stand too close to a girl that had survived a spark’s attempt to kill, and with her father’s actions…. Maybe it was just her imagination. She pulled the fire up and into herself regardless, and straightened under the gaze that might or might not be there.
Then the funerals were over, and Kai was standing in a broken shop with not enough stock to sell, and three sisters and a baby brother to care for. She had no family to go to; her mother’s parents had been traders before they settled in Gyula, their relatives much too far away for Kai to reach, and her mother’s siblings long gone back to their family’s original home. Her father’s mother was closer, a minor noble’s wife; but her father’s father was some cavalry officer, and his mother’s husband had banned Kai’s father from the estate as soon as he was an adult. Kai didn’t expect her uncle who had inherited would be any more eager to welcome her father’s children.
The shop was lost. It would cost more to fix and restock than Kai had or could get. Alena seemed to have realized, standing beside Kai as they looked over the hastily cleaned up destruction. “How are we going to live now?”
“Go pack,” Kai said.
If it was a decision, it wasn’t a conscious one, but her siblings were scared and lost, and they fell in line without Kai even needing to stare them down. She traded the broken shop for a horse and cart and money, and left Gyula before the jägers did. The Heterodynes were dangerous, but they were least dangerous the closer you were to them. Katarine threw a fit when she realized what town Kai had taken them to, and that set off the rest, but Kai just stopped long enough to make them be quiet before driving up to the gates.
There weren’t even guards, properly; there were soldiers scattered on the walls above, who grinned down at her like the jägers had, like anticipatory predators. But there was no one on the ground, no one who said stop or what is your business here, so Kai went right through.
She sold the horse and cart as soon as she found an old, small house she could afford to buy, only a little bit so that Alena wouldn’t try taking them and leaving with the others. The sun was setting by then, so Kai got them all food from a stand at a nearby road. (The woman running it had the same predatory grin as the soldiers as soon as Kai talked, and lost it as Kai failed to react.) She took them back to—to the place that would be home, anyway, and got them to sleep, and lay in bed trying to remember what fire looked like, thinking I will, I will, I will, but how?
She left Alena in charge in the morning—no one would be allowed out of the house, most likely, but that was fine; Kai didn’t trust those predatory grins. She wore the pants she’d cut down again, braided her hair and twisted it up underneath an old cap of her father’s for the same reason.
The shops she found didn’t need assistants; there was a tailor that did, but Kai’s sewing wasn’t halfway neat enough. She kept looking.
It was noon when Kai wandered onto a street with barracks all along one side. The shops on the other side didn’t need help any more than the rest of the shops in town, and Kai stared thoughtfully at the barracks. She couldn’t cook or sew or treat wounds well enough to be a cook or tailor or doctor, but—
The first barracks she poked her head into got her glares, sneers, and curt directions to the recruitment office.
Kai saw the gold and medals on the uniform of the man at the desk in the recruitment office, and ignored them. She didn’t know what they meant anyway. She stopped in front of the desk and folded her arms, staring at him and holding onto fire in her mind. “My father died and I’ve got four sisters and brothers to feed. What job’ve you got that’ll pay for that?”
The man didn’t look impressed, but he did look like he was taking her seriously, and that was good enough. “What’re you good at?”
Kai shrugged without unfolding her arms. “My father owned a shop. I can learn.”
He snorted, reached under the desk, and pulled out a piece of paper. “Sign here, then.”
Kai skimmed it, saw infantry, and thought huh. Cooking and washing must not pay enough, or maybe he didn’t know how much money could be stretched. She signed.
“Be here at dawn tomorrow,” he said. “And try to bring a weapon, the free ones ain’t much good.”
There was a weapons shop across the street, and the man running it was the owner’s son. He was enthusiastic until Kai spoke, and then condescending; you think you can keep up with Mechanicsburgers? he asked. But he helped Kai find a sword he said wouldn’t be too heavy for her to use, and a knife that wasn’t too expensive. (He charged her too much, she thought, but only a little, and she was lost in thought and fire and trying not to let her hands shake, so she let it go.)
Katarine screamed and stormed out of the room when Kai got home. Alena kept yelling for ten minutes while Leni and Viktor cried. Kai waited them out, spent the afternoon cutting another old pair of her father’s pants down so she could wear them, and only cut her hair off once they were asleep. It would have gotten in the way if she’d left it.
Joining the Heterodyne army was hard. Kai was used to moving most of the day, but walking around a shop was different from learning to fight in the sun. Her size didn’t help; most of the other new recruits were older, bigger, and stronger, and none of them felt the need to go easy on a new kid from the wrong town.
Good, Kai thought as sweat dripped in her eyes and metal clashed nearby. Good, I’ll learn better and faster than any of you.
She had to sleep in the barracks, so she went home in the evening while the rest went out to drink. A few had tried inviting her, once or twice, but when she explained about her siblings they accepted it. Then they tried to go easy on her, or told others to leave the new kid alone a bit, and Kai taunted them until they stopped. You lookin’ for an excuse to lose?
Alena was still doing her best to not speak to Kai unless she had to when Kai and the other new recruits were sent out to fight. But they had enough money to eat and she’d seen Katarine talking to a neighbor a few times, so Kai wasn’t very worried. Alena would manage, and if she couldn’t, probably someone would step in until Kai got back.
A lot of the recruits died, in the first few battles, or lost limbs and movement. Kai almost did, found herself fighting a construct twice her size with a huge mace and armor for half his skin, dodged and deflected and knew she couldn’t keep it up for long, and—
—and she was far from home, far from her family; what did she care if she was dangerous now? She started laughing, wild, it felt like the fire was burning up all the breath she had, it felt like she was soaring, and the construct was backing away. She lunged at it, grabbed its own armor to pull herself up so she could cut its throat.
It landed on her legs when it fell, but the battle was almost over then anyway. Kai was still giggling and working her legs out from under the body when a Heterodyne soldier in a battle clank came over and lifted it easily. He grinned down at her as she climbed back to her feet, testing them—one ankle hurt, but she bet it would heal on its own, it wasn’t that bad. “New, are ya?”
“Oh, yah.” There was mud all over Kai, almost as much of the construct’s bluish blood and a little of her own from an earlier fight, and she grinned up at the soldier, too breathless and wild to stop. “This’s my first battle.”
He grinned back, predatory, but now it felt like sharing. “Welcome to the Heterodyne army, kid. Go grab a body and take it back, the Lord wants parts to work with.”
Kai did. She dragged three bodies in from the battlefield—a human, and two smaller-than-human constructs; she didn’t know which side any of them had been on, and didn’t care. She left them in piles with the rest of the material, and all the while she felt like any step would send her flying, or fire erupting beneath her feet.
Kai liked fighting.
She felt a little bad about it, but—
Kai liked fighting a lot.
She didn’t stop being the new kid then, or the one from out of town, but in ones and twos and fives people learned it didn’t matter. They didn’t have much choice; out at war Kai couldn’t go home, so she sat around fires and in the beer tents with the rest of them, and if someone ignored her she ignored them, but if someone sniped at her she sniped back until a fight started. (She didn’t win, usually, but she didn’t usually lose either, and that was a win in its own way.) She did make a point of adjusting her accent a little closer to Mechanicsburg; there wasn’t that much difference, anyway.
Kai never really made friends, quite, but before too long there were men she knew well enough to seek out and talk with. Never women; once or twice she caught a glimpse of someone that might have been another woman, but only at a distance, and never anyone she was sure of. It was strange.
Toma was too drunk to realize Cosmin was fishing for ways to flirt with his sister when he shared “yah, she r'ly—r'ly wanted t'be in the army, but I know ’er, I'd catch her.”
“Catch her?” Kai asked.
“Yah! Y'know, if she dis—dish-guysed herself to get in.”
It was obviously another moment when Kai wasn't from Mechanicsburg. “Why would she?” Kai hadn't disguised herself at all and it hadn't been a problem. Maybe if she'd developed the sort of body that men liked, but she couldn't think how she could have disguised that anyway….
“Some girls want to fight.” Cosmin shrugged. “’S why there're lady jägers. But they ain't supposed to, so if they get caught….” He shuddered tellingly.
“Huh. Really?” Well that could be a problem. Had they actually not noticed that Kai was a girl? She’d been told, sometimes, that she looked like a boy, but this seemed excessive. Was it just a joke?
“What, you thought we’d let girls fight?” Cosmin said. Toma laughed at the comment, drunk and loud.
Kai shrugged. “I didn’t think the Heterodynes would care.” She had, actually; she’d been surprised to be told to fight, but—well. It was the Heterodynes, and it was Mechanicsburg. It wasn’t the strangest thing that had happened. But if they didn’t know….
“Eh.” Cosmin shrugged. “All the next soldiers have to come from somewhere, don’t they? Can’t have the girls getting killed first.”
That made far more sense than Kai had learned to expect from anything connected to Heterodynes, so she wasn’t really convinced it was the reason. She didn’t need to know why though; it didn’t seem like a joke. She would have to be more careful. Apparently no one had noticed yet, but still. It didn’t sound like there would be a second chance if someone did.
Kai saw the jägers, but didn’t really interact with them; they were in different units, with only the few humans that demanded to be let into those units and pushed into their tables regularly having much to do with them. Kai was content with that, but jägers were still eye catching; strange colors, strange shapes, often larger and louder than humans, with spikes and claws, scales and fur and feathers. It was hard not to watch them for a moment as they walked by.
A few looked a bit more familiar than others, and Kai watched them absently when they were nearby. Some she learned to recognize because they stood out—she doubted more than one jäger had two-foot-tall vertical horns. But others blended in, at least not among other jägers, and she wondered. Had she seen them first?
“Thinkin’ about joinin’ them, Kai?” Ionel asked as she idly watched a gray-green jäger pass.
“Nah. Thinkin' I might recognize him.”
Ionel didn't seem to be interested in that option. “I'm gonna join 'em, soon,” he said as if it were something to brag about.
Kai kept watching as the jäger reached several others, and punched one in the shoulder. “Why?”
“'Cause they're the best!” Ionel said. “So I'm gonna be one.”
“They are?” The jägers were faster, stronger, fiercer, and harder to kill than any human, but they always seemed disorganized, undisciplined and reckless. Which were traits of the entire army, to a degree, but the jägers took it to an extreme.
“Of course! The Heterodynes only accept the very best to take the brau.”
The best. “Huh.”
Kai watched the gray-green jäger, and thought those claws might have killed my father.
She watched the whole group of them, laughing and jostling each other without a thought paid to the rest of the tent or the ring of hopeful, envious eyes around them, and thought the best.
She felt like she was on fire in a far better way than was actually possible, embers dancing before her eyes even though they weren't real, and thought I will.
I sort of want to make like. A standard list of Events In Jager Life, and then try to get everyone to write them all for every OC and collect the links. (First Time Seeing/Meeting A Jager, When They Decided to Be A Jager, Actually Becoming A Jager, When They Heard of Agatha’s Existence, The Discovery That Bugs Taste Good Now, etc.)
Except I already have three fics and one of them is trying to split into a fourth and noooo I do not have time.
Okay! Now that I’ve been reminded, two more former-dragonrider-now-jager OCs. Who will be twins, because they used to be one character and then eventually diverged enough to split.
And I’ve learned how to make the read more thing! This is very good, because this is long.
The first one--let’s call him Toma, because his previous names (Rekima and/or Ryan) don’t really work with the setting. Toma is my original peacock boy; he puts way too much effort into his appearance. He will occasionally justify it as he is influencing how people view and react to him. Which is often true! But also he just really likes pretty things and wants to look nice. He is also typically very political--he is usually the son of some lord or equivalent, and... well, I don’t remember if it was literally his first thread (he was a forum RP character), but he did not waste any time in his first world deciding that the current queen (equivalent) was not an ideal ruler, and beginning to plan how to take over or at least control and rule through her. (Along with the only other character who could rival him for peacockness, of course. Why have one ridiculous peacock man plotting to overthrow his queen when you could have two?)
So basically we’ve got jager Tarvek here, is what I’m saying.
To be fair to him Toma doesn’t really want power. Or at least, he doesn’t want it more than he wants to avoid the duties that come with it. He wants the sort of things that go with power, or at least with money; nice clothes and food and getting to go to parties and flirt with people to make them smile. But he won’t actually chase power unless he thinks whoever is currently in power is doing a bad job of it. He’s just really picky about what he considers to be a good enough job, and tends to view it as his responsibility to take over if he thinks he could do better. This is most of the time. (Humility: not Toma’s strong suit.) On the other hand, considering jager culture he might not actually think the Generals are doing badly (and really can’t take over anywhere else as a jager), so he might actually not start plotting conspiracies for once this time. Also, Toma is pretty open to learning from his mistakes; if he screws up once, he will make very sure to not do it again, whatever it takes to make that happen.
And now the other! Originally named Sieren, but that’s also a made up fantasy name and Sorin is already taken in this fandom, so let’s call him Stefan. Stefan is what happened when I stripped the political/power side of Toma out, and replaced it with absurdity and glitter.
No, literally. His last incarnation was part Madagascan Sunset Moth with minor regeneration magic, so that he could constantly shed butterfly (well, moth) scales like rainbow glitter everywhere he went. (This... was a little absurd even by the site standards, but that is what happens when you encourage me to be ridiculous.) And he wants to keep doing it as a jager. Which... seems technically possible, but also like something I Should Not Do. So he gets to exist only if I ever write a crackfic that reaches the heights of glittery jagers, I guess.
For personality, Stefan is generally obsessed with something creative; it can range from cooking to glasswork, but it will be some form of creating things that are for the purpose of enjoyment, not practicality. As a cook, he makes desserts and candies; as a smith, he makes jewelry. For GGverse... hm, let’s go with a tailor. He is, of course, likely to spend just as much time as Toma on his appearance, but he is less practical about it. Stefan is the type to go to war in the winter forest and still be wearing lots of brightly colored flowy shirts. (See again: reasons why Stefan Should Not Be A Jager.) He’s not incapable of dressing practically, but he will absolutely whine about it. A lot.
Now for backstory! I’m thinking Toma, or Toma and Stefan if in crackficland, was a younger von Mekkhan son, or a younger son from a similarly old and respected (but not Heterodyne) Mechanicsburg family. Since I know of no others, I’m going with von Mekkhan. His/their older brother would have been the future seneschal, so he/they got to figure out his/their own career. “Well then I’ll join the army” is... prettymuch exactly what Toma would do, he doesn’t really need any extra reason. Stefan probably A: thought the uniforms looked cool and B: was following Toma (because, hey, twins and best friends). He wouldn’t have really been opposed to fighting, but it wouldn’t be why he joined.
From there, Toma would probably get a pretty standard jager backstory. He was in the army, he fought, he killed a bunch of things, he eventually got the Heterodyne’s attention (it helps if you start out with his attention because he’s friends with your father and brother), became a jager. He probably is pretty high ranked for his age, since his sense of responsibility isn’t exactly hidden, and he is pretty intelligent (although with occasional blind spots, most of which are the result of having grown up with lots of money). So he seems like a likely candidate for the Generals (or whoever is in charge of promotions) to drag into leadership even if he isn’t actively trying for it. (Which he probably wouldn’t be, unless the previous officers were really bad at their jobs, but that seems unlikely.) He might complain about bad decisions/try yelling at his superiors for doing stupid things which, again, is not helping him to stay out of leadership himself. (It probably also gets him punched a lot while young, but still.)
Toma’s appearance... well, he’d be determined to wear fine clothes no matter what, and of course have a suitably fancy hat. I want to give him tusks too; probably not as large as have been seen since he’d have a relatively human-shaped mouth, but definitely tusks and not teeth. Maybe he could have some snake-like scales (green, or blue-green? regardless he keeps them nice and shiny), either all over or just in patches (knees, back of hands and feet, elbows, probably most of his forearms, back--maybe the scales develop where he gets hit a lot?). He gets to have hair, because he is entirely too vain about it and if I said nope sorry you have scales everywhere you’re bald now he would throw such a tantrum. It’ll probably be shoulder lengthish or a bit longer, always brushed and neat and so on. He... probably won’t wear bells in it this time, but who knows what color it’ll be. Green, maybe? A mix of greens would be fun.
Toma (like all my characters, really) is asexual, but much more open to sex than Kai or Mircea is. (To be fair, Mircea runs screaming, so everyone is more open to it than he is.) Sex isn’t really Toma’s aim when flirting--his aim is to make people happy and enjoy the game--but he doesn’t really mind if it gets there either. He won’t go out of his way to find sex but will enjoy it if it happens, prettymuch. He’s probably panromantic, he’s certainly happy to flirt with everyone over the age of fifteen.
If Stefan exists, he probably only changes Toma’s story in that the two of them know each other very well, and therefore can work and fight together very well, which could be involved in them getting Heterodyne attention (as opposed to some other incident/s). Once a jager, Stefan... well, gains the ability to shed glitter everywhere he goes. (Which is actually somewhat painful, as “shed glitter” actually means “have tiny shiny scales torn out of your skin every time you touch something,” but he’s a jager, he’ll deal.) This would mean his skin is covered in similar (although maybe slightly larger) scales to butterfly wings; very colorful and shiny. (For reference: the Madagascan Sunset Moth.) I’d probably make him sort of... stick-shaped, too; long limbs and skinny, maybe insectish eyes, though I’d need to figure out exactly what the result of that would be. Probably just human-shaped, but solid black and faceted, and maybe able to see some additional colors. (That will have some fun effects on his fashion....)
Stefan has none whatsoever of Toma’s sense of responsibility (or at least, no more than the typical Mechanicsburger, and “but I don’t want to” pretty consistently wins out) so he’s definitely not getting promoted anywhere. He just gets to run around shedding glitter everywhere. Stefan is also asexual and shares Toma’s “won’t chase it but will enjoy it” approach to sex, as well as his tendency to flirt with everyone alive (it makes them smile! Don’t you think it’s good when people smile?) but I have no idea about his romantic orientation. He has yet to actually stop babbling about pretty things long enough to tell me. Either panromantic or aromantic seem the most likely.
I’m actually going to need a whole bunch of OC jagers to show up in... most of the rest of the fic, really. Which I can make up myself, but I figured I’d ask if there’s anyone who has jager OCs (or canon jagers for that matter) they’d like to see included, or something else like “I want to see a jager with scales instead of fur” or something.
Prettymuch any jager that was detached should be fair game, as well as any jager that was with the Baron and can get themselves injured and sneak away pretending they got sent to Mamma Gkika’s, so... really any jager that isn’t a general.
Not the character I was planning to write up next, but hey! Here he is. The absurdity twins can come next.
This character has been through so many names I swear. It’s not just that he gets a new one every new version, he gets a new two. It’s ridiculous.
So! There is a joke in this name. He’s a jager, and according to behindthename its meaning seems to be something along the lines of “world peace.” Which is actually not a bad name for him, except, jager.
I’ll skip Mircea’s old forms/experiences/behavior, because it can mostly be summarized as “the more I like a character, the more miserable I make him,” “this is my favorite character” and “the LEAST SUITED to being a jager ever I swear.”
So! Mircea was born in Mechanicsburg, and of course adored the Heterodynes as all Mechanicsburgers do. (He probably also felt very very sorry for the Heterodynes’ enemies, but instead of “maybe the Heterodynes shouldn’t attack people” that feeling became “it’s such a shame that anyone has to be born anywhere that isn’t Mechanicsburg.”) Wanting to serve the Heterodynes did not extend to wanting to be part of their army, in Mircea’s case, because he is totally unsuited to the army. Any army. He is physically weak--not sick, just not strong; he doesn’t work out and even if he did it would hardly help. And he is far too empathetic, the tiniest little bit of pain of any sort from anyone, enemies included, and Mircea will be feeling it too and wanting to fix it.
Mircea winds up in the army anyway, because he is a boy in Mechanicsburg and “some of my people might not want to fight” is... not really an idea that I think Heterodynes are very good at. Or maybe this was just after the Heterodynes suffered some horrible defeat and lost a lot of their army and had to build it back up, so Mircea felt obligated to join even if he didn’t want to. (Someone may or may not have dared him as well.) Regardless: Mircea is in the army, even though he isn’t suited to it and does not want to be.
...Which is when it is discovered that Mircea is weak and sensitive, and also his aim is terrifying. It doesn’t matter what you give him; if it’s a projectile, it will go where he wants it to. (If it’s not he’ll probably drop it on his own foot in ten minutes, but that’s another issue.) He may or may not trip over a tree root immediately after, but anything he throws or shoots is going to end up where it’s supposed to be.
Eventually “terrifying sniper” catches the current Heterodyne’s attention, and Mircea is offered the jagerbrau. And what exactly is he going to say, “actually, Lord Heterodyne, I’d rather die in a few years than be one of your immortal servants”? “Actually, Lord (SPARK) Heterodyne, I’m pretty sure that thing you just made for me will kill me, so I’d rather not take it”? “Everyone takes it willingly” is a very wonderful principle, and Mircea isn’t forced to take it by anyone else (and to be fair, he has no objections to the swearing loyalty part), but he is 200% a coward when it comes to other peoples’ feelings and worships the Heterodynes above all on top of that. So he agrees, takes the oath and brau, totally sure it’s going to kill him.
It does not. Of course. He probably spends a while swearing about this and/or getting drunk when he wakes up. Mostly out of shock rather than being upset he survived, but nonetheless: swearing.
So now Mircea is a jager! I have no idea what he looks like, other than probably fairly small and androgynous (and presumably some weird color and with fangs). He is also stronger and more coordinated than he was! Buuuut still quite likely the weakest jager there is. He makes up for it with speed, agility and flexibility, but still tries not to get into too many fights with his brothers, because he will lose. “I can shoot you in the eye from a block away” doesn’t really have a place in friendly fights and that’s mostly what Mircea is good at. He’s... not actually less sensitive, but the extra centuries of experience at least means he’s better at coping with it. And has learned not to make friends with humans. They have a habit of dying. (The realization that he would now have to watch his little siblings die was not a good one. It probably would have been enough for him to refuse the brau, if he’d thought of it in time.)
He probably started out with a bow and arrows and throwing knives; the bow may or may not have been switched out for a (probably very expensive and well made) gun relatively recently. Or he might just carry all of them, it’s not like Mircea is supposed to be getting into fist fights like the others so he wouldn’t be bothered about carrying extra things that might get in the way. Whichever weapons Mircea has, he is nearly as protective as them as he is of his hat.
I’m not sure what Mircea is doing now; the empathy thing might have led to him volunteering to be detached. If so he probably spends a lot of time rescuing whichever jagers he’s with via some combination of sniping and running away, and trying to yell sense into their heads after. Beating it in unfortunately doesn’t work. (He tried, except then they just punched back and Mircea lost again and they learned nothing. Ugh.)
Mircea is 100% as gleefully ignorant of anything that could be learned from books as any other jager. He has probably learned more first aid/medical things than average, though, since he wants to be able to fix everyone, and also is the most likely to come out of any given fight without being injured himself. He is very, very slowly picking up the jager idea of fun, and being torn between it and “but that’s a terrible idea” most of the time. He will usually end up stubbornly sticking to and arguing for whichever side disagrees with the most nearby voices, and is totally oblivious to this pattern. To be fair to him, 99% of the time that means he’s arguing for “terrible idea.” It makes him a little weird by jager standards, but he would be anyway.
...I could keep rambling but this is prooobably enough. I think I should just assume these are going to be textwalls now.
