@shrimpnymph HELLO. i spent a while Fermenting This Little Guy so now i can proudly present you with yet another gestalt cast member who i have carefully crafted via several sessions of sleep deprived writing in a google doc that is 7 pages long:
Simas Astrauskaitė!
He was born as Daiva Astrauskaitė (which I’ll be using to refer to him along with she/her up until the point where he transitioned, you’ll see why later) in Lithuania on October ninth, two years before Awakening Night. Both of her parents got, you know, evaporated, so she spent as much of his early childhood as she can remember in the adoption system. That is, up until the age of eight, when she was bought and sent into WW3 as one of the Landsknecht! Yay! Surely spending her formative years as part of a vicious war machine will have no negative effect on her mental state whatsoever
It was very quickly apparent that Daiva was incredibly well-suited for war. She was already scrappy and resourceful, having had to fend for herself her entire life, and if killing the other guys meant it kept her alive, then so be it. Plus, she was already hyperactive before being given the stimulants, so it wasn’t particularly difficult for her to become a killing machine of sorts. Was it shitty? Sure! But she dealt with it! In fact, Daiva slowly but surely conditioned herself to even enjoy the fighting and the feeling of adrenaline (mostly as a way to cope with it). Unfortunately, that also made her even more reckless and trigger-happy than she already was. It was a miracle that she went as long as she did without getting permanently injured or killed.
After ten years of being a soldier, Daiva had allllmost made it to the end of the Unification Wars. Almost. And then, in a cruel twist of fate, she stepped on a landmine and was grievously injured. They had to use cruor to keep her from Straight Up Dying, but her leg had to be completely amputated and she was comatose for a couple of months. By the time she woke up, the war had already completely ended.
Although she was still under contract to be a soldier, the Knights took one look at her in the awful state she was in and decided she was not fit for duty, so she was given an order disguised as a choice - she’d be given full ownership of her own contract, but have to pay off that debt to the Knights. She was not given the option to refuse, and thus Daiva was forcefully removed from the army.
ANYWAY!!! 18-year-old Daiva, now stripped of both her leg and her purpose in life as well as in deep lifelong debt, was enrolled into Vermilion University (mostly against her will) and immediately Hated It. She’d spent the past decade at war, killing anything that moved without hesitation, and now she was expected to sit down and do schoolwork? AND after she’d just been cast out by the closest thing she’d ever had to a home? But she did quickly come to a realization that helped her come around - nobody knew her here. As far as anyone else was concerned, Daiva Astrauskaitė barely existed. So maybe she didn’t have to be Daiva.
Being Landsknecht didn’t leave a whole lot of room for self-reflection, so she’d never had to think about it too hard, but somewhere she had always been certain she was Not A Girl. She just hadn’t had the time to consider that there were alternatives. Within a few months at Vermilion, she fully switched her shit around, and Simas Astrauskaitė was created.
Now, the reason all that was written the way it was is because Simas views Daiva as a whole different person, completely separate from himself. In his mind, he essentially killed her, and it is worth noting that he does not feel any kind of remorse for it. He’d do it again lol
There are still some problems, though, mostly in the realm of “how do i hack biology to make this body into my body” combined with the whole never ending debt thing. He absolutely could not afford surgery of any kind, so he had to figure out some roundabout solutions for certain things.
Boobs? Well, he got some rudimentary first aid training in the army, and he had steady enough hands, so he wound up doing his own top surgery in his dorm living room. He is honestly incredibly lucky it didn’t go extremely wrong, but miraculously, he came out of it having achieved the intended outcome for the small price of some TERRIBLY janky chest scars.
Period? He had a simple solution for that: black market hysterectomy, which he then paid for by selling the organ he’d just had removed. Easy peasy.
HRT? This is where it got tricky. HRT is expensive, difficult to get, and also takes a while to reach its full effects. He does NOT have the money or health insurance to pay for T shots every month, especially when it could take up to eight years for him to be done with it. So what can he do? Well, he knows vaguely how alchemy works, and also knows that there’s a child prodigy alchemy genius who goes to the same school and lives nearby. Bakari.
Thus begins a long and weird friendship between the two of them <3
Simas explained his whole Grand PlanTM, and even after Bakari went through every individual danger of it with him, he still wanted to go through with it. His options are a) nothing at all and be miserable, b) expensive monthly injections for potentially years, or c) one-time experimental cruor medicine that risks turning him into a weird fucked up beast thing. Given Simas’s impatience and zero self-preservation, the choice seemed pretty clear to him.
Considering that he already had somewhat high cruor toxicity in order to keep him from dying, there were definitely a few odd side effects, but he doesn’t mind those much and they’re easy to keep hidden, so as far as he’s concerned it went perfectly! He also still hangs around Bakari and thinks of them as friends <3
That’s a fairly basic backstory out of the way, so now for an actual description!!
Behold. a dumbass. Simas is about 5’5, with a dancer sort of build - all muscle, but slim and definitely a bit malnourished. He’s got spiky, overgrown dark hair and gray eyes, with thick eyebrows and the barest bones of a beard that does Not look as good as he seems to think it does. As for his leg, he usually wears a prosthetic, but he hardly makes an effort to hide it. The clothes he wears vary, although his collection of awful graphic tees never seems to end, and there are two things you’ll never see him without. The first are his old dog tags from the Landsknecht. He never takes them off. The second is a red beanie, which covers up a pair of small hornlike growths on his head that started growing in after the cruor treatment. His hair is thick enough to hide them, but the beanie helps.
Speaking of cruor side effects, the main changes to his appearance (aside from the Boy Juice) were fairly small, but all contribute to making him look Generally WeirdTM in a way that nobody can seem to place. His teeth are sharper than most people’s, and his hearing is incredibly good. He’s also much more stealthy than one would expect for a guy on one leg. Simas has much thicker body hair than he did before, and he jokes about it being fur, but it genuinely might be. He also has tapetum lucidum, meaning his eyes do that weird glowy thing when they have light pointed at them, like deer or raccoons. My man is a sprained ankle’s worth of cruor away from becoming something that is entirely inhuman, but he doesn’t seem to care in the slightest.
Simas has very little concern for his own safety. He’s trying so hard to be the “cool chill friend,” bless his heart, but unfortunately for him and everyone around him he has the overly energetic and aggressive nature of a jack russell terrier. He’s just a goofy little guy! A little jokester!! Who keeps picking fights with guys three times his size! Simas never really got past the whole “fighting is fun” coping thing that he beat into himself, so he sees violence as just a fun little pastime, a love language even. If he likes you then he’ll beat people up for you (or get beat up, because as skilled as he is, he is also built like a jack russell terrier). He may also attempt to pick fights with the people he likes, but that’s always out of affection. You could break his nose and he’d be like “ah yes we are bonding and i am achieving a Good Grade In Friendship!!!” he also gives nicknames to everyone, forming the holy trinity of einhardt (endearing nicknames) remzi (mean nicknames) and simas (nicknames because he can’t fuckin rember anyone’s name)
He’s not an idiot, exactly, he’s just impulsive and doesn’t seem to understand that the other guy could wreck his shit. Or maybe he does understand it and he’s just into it. That’s also an option, and it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing he’s found attractive tbh. Simas also couldn't care less about rules or guidelines. He has absolutely NO respect for the Knights or their rules and has gotten into trouble Several Times for making pig sounds at them (he will never stop). He thinks it’s especially fun to go walking in the woods way after curfew - sure, it’s dangerous, but you know he keeps that mf thang on him 🔫🔫 so he’ll probably be fine. The second someone with any kind of authority over him starts speaking he Will zone out. On the other hand, when someone he likes needs something, Simas will do it no questions asked. If you can get him to like you (which isn’t hard) then he’d be really easy to manipulate.
He’s also really fucking annoying, both on accident and on purpose. He’s good at figuring out what makes people tick, and he thinks it’s funny to toe the line and see what it takes to make different people snap. If someone is easy to provoke, then he’s going to have a field day with it! If not, then he’ll probably get bored and knock it off pretty quickly. He also generally won’t purposely irritate people he likes that much; there’s always at least some light teasing, but it’s much friendlier. Alas, he also never thinks before he talks, so he regularly says the wrong thing at the wrong time and pisses people off unintentionally. Oh well!
In complete fairness to Simas, he’s not a bad person. He won’t actually hurt someone unless he’s been given good reason to, and he does actually have pretty strong morals that he won’t go against. Violence and rule-breaking just simply are not at all against those morals. He fully believes in helping those in need, even if that help requires extreme violence against the problem, and he’s loyal like a dog if he decides someone’s earned it! He may be loud and annoying and violent and kind of an idiot but he’s also a genuinely kind person when he needs to be.
ANYWAY! that’s enough reflection for today, here’s wonderwall AKA how he’d be involved in Katrin’s story!
Their first few meetings would likely be some of the many times he’s hanging around Bakari! Probably just small conversations in passing ft. some mildly obnoxious joke-flirting from Simas that goes way over her head before he leaves and lets her be alone with Bakari. For the first major arc he’s really just kind of a weird side character? Just. Some GuyTM who happens to be friends with Bakari. Are there odd things about him that would catch Katrin’s eye? Probably, but between school, learning to Be A Person, and all the demon dream realm stuff, Simas is un-suspicious enough to fly under Katrin’s radar for a bit.
Then comes the Fall Dance that gets crashed by a bunch of shotgun-wielding Convoluted! Uh-oh! Simas still doesn’t play a huge role here, but it’s difficult for Katrin not to notice how efficient he is in combat, and also that he just carries both a pistol and several knives on his person at all times. Like seriously where did he even get those why does he have them on campus what
It's also somewhat freaky that he seems to be genuinely enjoying the fighting, instead of being scared. Huh! Still, there are once again more pressing issues, and by the time Katrin is able to speak to him, she very quickly learns that he is Not an easy person to find!
Simas isn’t antisocial, really, he just doesn’t have many friends aside from Bakari and he very rarely stays in the same place on campus for longer than a few minutes just because he gets bored quickly. As previously stated, he’s also Super StealthyTM without meaning to be. Around Vermilion, he’s one of those people who everyone seems to know of but nobody actually knows. The only reasons anyone Does know of him are because he keeps picking fights with literally everyone, plus there are the not entirely unfounded rumors that he’s an addict/criminal/fag/many other things! She keeps seeing him around here and there, but he just vanishes every time she tries to actually talk to him. And the most irritating part is that he’s not even doing it on purpose! He has no idea that she has any interest in his bullshit, he’s just a really inconsistent person with the attention span of a yappy little dog.
Then, through a mix of detective work and sheer luck, she manages to catch him on his way into the woods just before curfew.
It should be noted that Simas is not at all important to Wands, or to any of the other Aces. He knew Roxanne back when they were both Landsknecht, but they weren’t close, and he looks vaguely familiar to her but she doesn’t recognize him because. Well.
It’s funny how experimenting with cruor can do that to a guy! But he is of no importance whatsoever to any of the secret organization conspiracy things happening. He’s just A Guy who happens to be really weird for entirely different reasons. It’s okay he’ll get plot importance later as a treat.
ANYWAY. Our beloved Katrin follows him just a little ways into the woods before he hears her and turns around, gun in hand, fully expecting her to be some Convoluted trying to ambush him. You can imagine the surprise when instead he finds that weird cute American rich girl that hangs out with Bakari a lot! He does warn her that it’s dangerous to be out here so late, to which she responds that he’s out here, and he can’t really argue with that. He’s just out having a late-night smoke, so he offers to share a cigarette with her and hang out for a bit! He has no idea that she was following him, so they chill together and she’s able to subtly get all the answers to the questions that have been bothering her. It’s not even particularly difficult! Simas is an open book; he doesn’t go around advertising his personal shit, but he has no issues telling people things when prompted. Aside from the whole freaky cruor transition thing. That’s the only secret he’ll keep about himself, but it’s also not something anyone would think to ask him about, so it’s never been an issue.
After a short talk/smoke break, Katrin is mostly satisfied with what information she’s gained - he’s good at fighting because he used to be a soldier, he got out of being a soldier by getting his leg blown up but now he’s in a stupid amount of debt, and he knows Bakari because he helped him with something a couple years ago. He will not go into details about the something, which is a bright red flag in Katrin’s information seeker brain, but at least he’s marginally less suspicious now! But she has still made at least some connection with him now, and it seems like he’s decided he likes her - especially since he asks her if she wants to join him in the woods more often! Oh boy! At this point he’s not really directly flirting so much as like. Doing some kind of weird intricate bird dance mating ritual that only makes sense to him (including bringing her random shiny things he finds because she likes them. crow gifts.) Schrodinger’s flirt, both genuine and joking depending entirely on her response.
Meanwhile. Roxanne is becoming increasingly suspicious of this weird looking dude, especially since he’s started showing up at the door to their dorm building every now and then. She recognizes him from somewhere. He looks so familiar. It’s in a conversation with Demetri where she finds out that he used to be called Daiva a long time ago, and then she knows EXACTLY where she’s seen him before. and she’s kinda really pissed off about it. The next time he shows up to chat up Katrin, she is Instantly in his face yelling at him. Nobody else knows what they’re talking about. Simas is also smiling while he’s getting shouted at and threatened? What a freak lol ANYWAY. At Simas’s own suggestion, they wind up fighting each other in the parking lot of some little diner near the school. It is not a random thing, they fully scheduled it and now the whole gang is here to watch
After a long and very violent fight, Roxanne fully wrecks Simas’s shit, but he seems to be like. enjoying it?? he is Actively encouraging her to kick his ass, which only pisses her off more. after the fight finally ends, he tells her - and the whole Wands gang by proxy - about the whole cruor thing. He doesn’t bring up the weird side effects (although he does tell Katrin about them later) because. well. as much as he enjoys fighting you can never be too careful as to who will genuinely kill you because you’re freaky and mutated. <3
After the fight, though, he does ask Katrin to go out with him when the others aren’t within earshot! And thus he is officially added to her reverse harem.
And then he gains relevance entirely by accident! He had absolutely no clue about Wands or that Katrin and her friend group were apart of it. Not even a vague suspicion. A few weeks after he starts dating Katrin, he accidentally left his hat in her dorm room one night. The next morning, he realized it was gone, and. well. he kinda needs it to cover up his lil cruor horns. There’s a reason he doesn’t go anywhere without it.
But he doesn’t want to interrupt her and the others, either! They’re probably busy with something and he doesn’t feel like getting his ass kicked by Roxanne this early in the morning. Plus, as previously mentioned, they were Not Told about his mutation things. So, in order to avoid that whole mess, he snuck in through a window, grabbed his hat, and was just about to leave when he overhears some things that he Should Not Have, about Wands, Frederica, etc etc. He should’ve walked away, but he is unfortunately nosy as hell, so he stayed and listened for at least a few minutes before Einhardt saw him hanging out in the doorway looking like that one tails gets trolled comic
He did NOT intend to spy on them or find any of this shit out. He just wanted to get his hat man :( BUT hey! All things considered (once he gets escorted down to the Wands base Very Roughly) he’s pretty chill about the whole situation, as per usual. Being good at the mildly suspicious bullshit that he is, Simas would actually make for a very valuable asset to Wands. He helps Katrin and the gang in espionage and information collection, and as compensation, he gets his massive debt to the Knights paid off by an “anonymous benefactor.” Neat!
And of course, he does find out that he’s not Katrin’s only boyfriend, but he doesn’t actually have any problem with it. His reaction is mostly just making a few jokes and admitting that that’s “actually kind of hot.” Simas also takes it upon himself to flirt with all of Katrin’s other boyfriends (to varying degrees of success). If she’s banging other guys then as far as he’s concerned that just means he is also allowed to bang the same other guys. Or attempt to, because some of them genuinely hate him lol
ANYWAY!! that’s his timeline for very early gestalt- I will maybe write more actual story stuff for him later but. Yippie!