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FIFTY-FIVE.

MALE.

JANITOR.

APRIL 13th.

What was once a light brown/blonde in color has given way to silver streaked. Eduard doesn’t cut his hair as much as he should so it is usually quite shaggy and longer than he likes. Texture wise he has wavy curls that have always made his mom jealous.

His eyes are brown. Just plain ol’ brown. Not super dark, but just light enough to see his pupils in regular lighting.

Tall enough to be considered above average but not tall enough to considered “tall”, he stands at about 6’0” even or 182cm.

Seems to be average. Any fat he has is well hidden under pretty baggy clothes and a decent height.

Nothing special. His clothes are on the baggy side, he doesn’t follow fashion trends. Tends to wear old fire department shirts that have grown baggy as his muscle mass has declined. Often wears zip up sweatshirts or jean jackets and a pair of jeans or khaki pants. He never shows much skin.

Right now, his appearance was created in a dollmaker, based on an original design.

Some students like to use the words, “silent but deadly” about the grumpy man that can often be seen vigorously scrubbing graffiti off the walls, but he is hardly silent. Rich kids with too much time on their hands do graffiti too, and sometimes he has to take care of them- it. And yes. He is notoriously quiet. Eduard doesn’t really go out of his way to interact with the students or the teachers. He can be thought of as rude, standoffish, brusk, and downright mean by those who have the misfortune of running into him. Eduard just doesn’t have the time or patience to listen to students babbling about nonsense and things that don’t matter, or teachers complaining about the students who only care about things that don’t matter.
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Eduard doesn’t smile. He used to smile, some say. But it seems like a permanent scowl has forced its way onto a slowly aging face and doesn’t want to let go. He is fine with that. He accepted it a long time ago. There is also the fact that despite his quiet nature, he sometimes seems to mumble to himself, his words often being swears and other nonsense about “these damn kids” or “rich people…” It is clear that unlike his perma-frown, these are things that he has not accepted.
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But like most normal people- even the grumpy ones- there is more to him than just what exists at the surface. In his case, actions speak louder than words, and through his good deeds, he has weirdly gained the respect of many people at the academy, whether he knows it or not. When a girl was going through a rough time that pushed her to her limits, it was “Mr. Winkler the Janitor” that offered her a hand through the darkness. To this day, he doesn’t feel like he’s done anything other than “be a decent human”. She disagrees. Eduard still checks on her, even though she has been out of the academy for a number of years now.
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When a rich vs poor bullying situation got out of hand, Eduard chased the students out of the school building with a filthy mop yelling, “Why don’t you pick on me instead!?” loudly enough that the petrified students ended up tripping into the Firefly Pond and getting quite soaked. As a result, the art student he defended painted him a rather unflattering portrait that even now, he keeps on the wall in the living room of his apartment.
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Eduard is reluctant to admit that his desire to help people is stronger than his desire to avoid them, and this often shows itself in heavy use of sarcasm and a way of stubbornly trying to force people to admit to him when he is right. This stubbornness leaks into most areas of his life, which can lead to him getting easily flustered when things don’t seem to go his way, and at times lashing out at people who try to interfere, even if they are trying to help. But of course- much to his annoyance- if he manages to upset someone more than normal, he gets this annoying thing called a conscience that nags at him until he fixes the issue. This can be anything from a reluctant apology or presenting the person with a small gift.
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But aside from these traits, Eduard is a much simpler person than people would like to think. Much of his bitterness comes as a result of mistakes he has felt he has made over the course of his life, rather than a society he has felt has wronged him. Even if he absolutely SUCKS at showing it.

[break]Misc.

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LIKES
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Animals: Yes, Eduard is one of those “animals are better than people” type of guys.
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Peanut and Jelly: His cats. They were found near a dumpster and he took a liking to them. Peanut is a huge orange tabby with one eye and Jelly is a dilute tortoiseshell with a cute white tail tip. His niece picked the names.
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Helping People: He can’t help himself. Something about people being helpless and struggling when he knows he can help annoys him. He has to fix the problem or else it’ll bug him all damn day.
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Seafood: He loves eating seafood, even if his talents at catching it leaves a bit to be desired.
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Milk: Delicious and healthy. Eduard has at least one glass a day.
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People Watching: People do weird things and boy does he sure get irritated seeing it. Hey, is this a like or a dislike!?
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Pranks: Eduard is surprisingly quite the prankster after years at the fire department. Very few suspect him of being the culprit of many of his hijinks, and he prefers to keep it that way.
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DISLIKES
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Cold Weather: The number one. Cold weather is the bane of his existence and he questions why he continues to live in a place known for being cold. Why!?
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Shopping: Typical to a lot of males in his age range, he doesn’t find himself enjoying going to the store. (Unless it’s to buy books.)
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Technology: ALSO like a lot of males of his age, he really doesn’t have much talent using technology.
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Math: He hates it. When the hell are you ever going to use trigonometry in your everyday life anyway!? Stupid math.
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Most Veggies: He knows it’s bad. You don’t have to tell him. But nothing makes him want to hurl more than a bitter leaf that is supposed to be “good for you”.
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Annoying Kids With Too Much Free Time: Leave him alone.
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HOBBIES & SKILLS
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Fishing: As somewhat of a (self-proclaimed) outdoorsman, Eduard enjoys fishing. Even if he is somewhat lousy at it, due to falling asleep quickly if the fish aren’t biting.
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Alone Time: Eduard values his time alone. He isn’t forced to have conversations he doesn’t want to have about things he doesn’t want to talk about and best of all, he can do whatever he wants.
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Reading: Whether it is news, sports autobiographies, fantasy, shitty romance novels, Eduard will read it. If something is good or bad he doesn’t care, he just enjoys getting lost in other people’s realities, whether they’re real or not.
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First Aid: Eduard is an expert in first aid and hasn’t forgotten his training from his fire department days.
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Sunbathing: He fancies himself somewhat of an outdoorsman and enjoys feeling the sun shine on warm summer days.

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Kindling[break]
Eduard Winkler grew up in a lower class home. His father walked out on his mother when he was fairly young, which left him and his two sisters and two brothers to be raised on a single income.
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In school, Eduard was the shy reserved type, with a very small friend group that pretty much didn’t change the time he was there. He wasn’t the type to bully or be bullied and in fact most of his days were as mundane as his grades.
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As the eldest child in the family, he took on the responsibility to help raise his siblings and as a result, didn’t have much time to spend on himself or his hobbies. But that didn’t matter to young Eduard. His one interest, his love, his dream, was to fight fires. In his free time, he would run to the nearby library and grab up every book he could find about firefighters and firetrucks and read them cover to cover obsessively. Every Halloween, while other children switched their costumes out, Eduard wore the same one. Every Christmas his mom would ensure Eduard got a new collectible toy fire truck. This obsession of his that started in elementary school died down as he got older, however, the dream never died.
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Sparks[break]
But unlike most kids with childhood obsessions, by the time Eduard came of age, his dream was realized. Shortly after he graduated high school, he joined the fire department and spent a good twenty or so years on the force, even moving up in the ranks a few times, and commanding a small workforce of other firefighters. It was here, through his comradery with his fellow firefighters that Eduard was able to open up as a person and learned a love for playing jokes on his people, and a more sarcastic side of himself seemed to be born (One that never went away.)
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In fact, it was diligence in his job that left his love life pretty lacking throughout his life. Most of the relationships he ever found himself in were short-lived and lacking any real connection. That didn’t (and doesn’t) stop him from eyeballing attractive women, even if he isn’t the type to make a move. But because of this nature, Eduard never got married or had any kids. He has never given up hope in trying to find the right women, but he’d never say that bit out loud.
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Being in the fire department for so long wasn’t all fun and games however. Eduard has seen more than his fair share of things that affected him more than he could even begin to describe. Sights that kept him up at night, and continue to do so to this day. Even now that he is no longer in the fire department, he keeps a lot of the horrors he has seen close to his heart, which may play a role in his current state of mind.
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Flames[break]
Despite how good he was at his job, it didn’t stop Eduard from making one of the stupidest decisions he ever made while working there. At the time, he lived next to a large family of people that did a lot of things that he found odd and questionable, but Eduard liked them alright. Sometimes they made a lot of noise when he was trying to sleep, but they always invited him to their large gatherings. Of course he always turned them down, but it was the thought that caused them to endear themselves to him.
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So it was almost ironic when one night, he awoke to his neighbor pounding on his door to tell him their house had caught ablaze. The neighbor told him quite frantically that her husband was still trapped inside, and asked him if he could do anything to help because he was a firefighter. Despite knowing that his own home could be in danger, and that he had no gear, Eduard ran into the flaming house to try and get the husband out.
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Stupid.
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He did this despite knowing that his brethren in the fire department would be there at any moment. He knew they would have the proper gear. To this day, he still can’t describe what it was that drove him to step foot into that flaming house, maybe it was his way of showing gratitude? Maybe it was his uncontrollable drive to help the helpless, he can’t say. But he made the dumb choice to disregard his training and attempt to save a person.
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Eduard stumbled around the darkened home, calling out for someone to answer. But before he ever found out whether the father had found a way out, a misstep led him through an open door and tumbling down a stairway and into the basement.
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He didn’t remember anything that happened afterward, but by the time he woke up he was laid out in a hospital bed. The injuries he sustained were bad enough, but worst of all, the winds had carried the fire to his home, and a seasonal drought had allowed it to spread quickly.
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His house was unsalvageable and he had crushed more than a few bones in his legs when his neighbor’s house caved in on top of him. “He was lucky to survive”. He didn’t feel that way. Maybe he should have died.
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Ashes[break]
After the accident and many many months of healing and surgeries, his superiors tried to help him by relocating him to another department, but Eduard’s heart just wasn’t in it. Instead of continuing his work there, he retired from his firefighter job and eventually, once his legs healed up enough he ended up at Panacea Academy. He still feels rather lost in life and still regrets his dumb decision, but for the most part he has grown fairly used to his new lot in life. But at times the mundanity of it all drives him absolutely nuts.

Chilly

Depends, work likes to suck out my energy but I try not to take more than two days to a week replying to threads.

N/A