Name: Mordecai Thierry Lane; Kai’s father created the nickname for him when he was only a baby, and he commonly introduces himself as Kai instead of Mordecai. (Kai prefers to spell his nickname with a "K" because he thinks it looks cooler.) Kai's middle name comes from his grandfather, who died about a year before Kai was born and had complained before his death that he'd wanted a grandson before he kicked the bucket.
Gender: Mordecai is most definitely a male of the human species.
Mortal Parent: Kai's father's name is Malachi Lane, a popular (among his colleagues, anyway) assistant district attorney for the Bronx in New York. His father has an identical twin brother named Matthias, who is a member of the Crime Scene Unit for New York City; around the time of Kai's birth, they both were thirty-two years old. His father usually didn't display much emotion, being more calm and collected than his twin brother Matthias; Malachi was a logical thinker and normally didn't believe anything unless clear proof was presented to him. He was a quiet man, though he excelled at public speaking and persuasion -- such are the qualities of a good lawyer. Kai looks like a younger version of Malachi, only with brown eyes and a more energetic, gregarious personality; his father would grumble constantly about how Kai needed to bring it down a notch. Malachi was very loyal to his friends and family and would try to make them happy even if it hurt him; his wife and Kai's step-mother, Elizabeth, called this his fatal flaw. Unlike his brother, Malachi never knew his goddess lover’s real identity; Matthias claims that even if she (Praxidike) had started turning into “dragons and Johnny Depp and pineapples” in front of him, Malachi would never have believed it. (Matthias could see through the Mist and Poena, Lorelei's mother, revealed to him the existence and location of CHB in the letter she left with baby Lorelei.)Kai looked up to his father, frequently calling his father his hero whenever they did something about personal heroes in school.
When Kai was ten, his father married Elizabeth Meyer (aged thirty-six), a former hairdresser-turned-realtor; she was an affectionate, social woman who would continually tease both Kai and his father about everything. Malachi met her through one of his friends at a dinner party, when Kai was about five years old; he found that she reminded him of Sadie/Praxidike and enjoyed her fussing over Kai. He began dating her when Kai was seven and married her when he was ten. She quit her job as a hairdresser to watch over Kai. Elizabeth got pregnant about two months after the marriage, but it ended up becoming a miscarriage, which severely disappointed Kai; he’d wanted a younger sibling. Kai's father became more withdrawn and despondent over this, but Elizabeth became twice as optimistic after the miscarriage and tried to spoil Kai rotten; his cousin (who is also a demigod) Lorelei commented that this behavior might have been to distract her from the loss of the baby. Kai loves her dearly (mama’s boy), but he doesn’t like to spend time at home with her because he thinks it’s not the same without his father; Elizabeth understands, though she vainly wishes that he’d stop missing him. Currently, Elizabeth is single and has remained so since Malachi’s death; she gave Kai the excuse that she “wanted to fly free,” but Lorelei told Kai later on that she was probably only staying single to keep Kai from missing his father more.
God Parent: Mordecai's mother is Praxidike, the goddess of exacting justice, one of the three Praxidikai. Malachi met Praxidike one dandy morning about two years before Kai was born; she was under the disguise of a reporter named Sadie Cooper, altering the Mist to make her disguise more convincing by having people at the newspaper office believe she was a reporter for them, and managed to score a short interview with Malachi about a case of robbery that he was trying. They talked for about an hour before Malachi had to leave to do some paperwork. A year later, Praxidike -- again, as Sadie Cooper -- saw Malachi walking towards his car after leaving his office for the night; she managed to catch up to him and tried to arrange another "interview," this time about how difficult being an assistant district attorney was and the like. Malachi saw right through this, but he allowed it to happen; the interview, which took place at a local diner Malachi liked, ended up becoming more of a date. A month and a half later, Sadie ended the relationship and basically disappeared off the face of the planet; Malachi, who ended up loving her more than she’d expected, immersed himself in his work until, one day, he came home to find baby Kai in a pile of blankets in front of his apartment door. Initially, he wanted to call a social worker and ask him/her about what to do with the child; bringing the crying baby inside the apartment, he put Kai down on his bed and found a note from Praxidike that said: "A son for you, Malachi. - Love, Sadie." At first, he didn't believe this was his son until he called his brother Matthias over; Matthias commented that the baby looked like a "mini-us" when they were babies and suggested that Malachi keep the boy, since Sadie was gone. Malachi argued against this, since he thought that the note might have been forged by somebody who knew he had been in a relationship with her; Matthias won the argument by a narrow margin, telling Malachi that their own parents would have wanted him to take in the boy and that the American adoption system was "a bunch of crap" and leaving the boy to it -- a boy that was obviously his son -- would be a very stupid idea.
Date of Birth: Mordecai was born April 7th, 1995, at around six o'clock in the morning in EST time -- he's seventeen years old. He's an Aries sun, Cancer moon, and Aries ascendant/rising; he's sort of a believer in the whole astrological-signs-deciding-your-personality thing, even though his father tried to teach him otherwise. What a rebel.
Place of Birth: Kai was born in Staten Island of NYC, and later left in front of the door of his father's Bronx apartment by Praxidike only about a day after he was born. Needless to say, his father's neighbors complained quite a bit about the baby and, when Malachi returned home that night from work, he found a few angry neighbors who had found Kai and were attempting to figure out what to do with him. Malachi told them that he'd deal with it and took the baby inside the apartment.
Hometown/Last Residence: Kai lived in the Bronx of NYC, NY, USA, with his father and step-mother from the day he was born, to the day he left for camp when he was twelve -- which also was the day his father was killed in what was called, by the newspapers and eyewitnesses, a fatal dog attack. Kai and his cousin Lorelei, however, thought otherwise and were entirely correct in their thoughts – that hadn’t been just a dog.
Race/Ethnicity: Kai is white, being of French and Dutch descent; his father is half French and half Dutch. By Praxidike, it can be assumed that he's partially Greek, too. Kai's grandmother, Willemijn Vriezelder, immigrated to America from the Netherlands in 1945, around the end of World War II; she was around nine years old then. She met Thierry Lane, who was around twenty-two years old and a French immigrant, twelve years later and married him when she was twenty-five years old; they lived in Brooklyn. They had Malachi and Matthias two years later, in November 1963; Willemijn died on Christmas Day of 1990 because of a heart attack, and Thierry died of the same cause on May 17th, 1994. They used to own a small, semi-popular bakery in Manhattan, but after Willemijn died Thierry sold the shop and retired quietly to his apartment. Every Sunday until his death, Thierry would go to the local park and read quietly on a park bench or converse with some passersby.
Accent: Kai has a typical New York accent; mainly he pronounces things that end in "-all" as "-awl" and such. He picked up the accent from his father and the boys he hung out with around his neighborhood and school.
Skin Tone: Kai is usually pale-looking, but he gets tan very easily in the summer to a nice bronze skin tone. At camp, he's basically tan year-round because of the warm weather; at home, he'd only become tan on the late, warmer spring days and in the summer, because he liked to play basketball outside on a local neighborhood basketball court with a few of his friends whenever it was nice enough outside.
Eye Color: Kai's eyes are a chestnut brown, which he presumably inherited from Praxidike because his father's eyes were blue. He likes to complain about how jealous he is of Lorelei's blue eyes, but he's mainly kidding when he does so.
Hair Color: Kai's hair is dark brown, appearing almost black unless you look closely at his head. At one point he considered letting it grow out and dying part of it blond, but he didn't because his father didn't approve of it very much and he didn't feel like going to the store to buy the dye.
Hair Length: Kai's hair likes his hair pretty short; his stepmother gave him buzz cuts when he still lived at home, and he ended up liking them a lot ("Mom, I look hot!"). Now that he lives at camp, he has Lorelei help him maintain his hair using an electric clipper his stepmother had sent to him a year after he had arrived at camp, though he comments that Lorelei needed to stop taking so long trying to get his hair to look "absolutely perfect." If he does grow out his hair, however, he’d buy some hair gel and spike it up.
Height: Kai is around the same height as his father and uncle -- 5'10". By fourth grade, he was about 5'1" and was one of the tallest kids in his class, and by age fourteen, he had a growth spurt and grew to 5'5"; by age sixteen he was measured at 5'10" according to Lorelei and her wonderful tape measure. His step-mother liked to say that he was only good at basketball in his elementary school years because most of the other kids were shorter than him, and Malachi and Lorelei tended to agree with that view; Kai liked to say that he's "mad skilled" at basketball, and apparently his basketball teammates/friends would agree with him.
Weight: Kai weighs around 165 lbs; he works out a lot at camp by lifting weights or training with spears/swords to stay in shape, or even just running around like a maniac because with ADHD, he can't sit still for very long. Kai loves to eat a lot of food – especially sugar cookies and steak – but he always ends up burning off the calories quickly by either basketball, sword-training, or him running around like a maniac and harassing Lorelei. (He also ends up getting a healthy dose of running when he pushes Lorelei a bit too far.) He tends to stay away from fast-food like McDonald’s or sugary food like sugar cookies and apple pie, but sometimes he just can’t resist; he reasons that he’d burn off the calories anyway.
Body Type: Kai is tall and lean, with defined arm and leg muscles. Because of the way he’s always doing something physically active (sword training, lifting weights, shooting baskets at the basketball court), he stays fit and healthy, but he usually ends up extremely tired by the end of the day to the point where his arms/legs are sore.
Appearance: At the height of 5’10”, Kai is taller than most of the people around him. He is broad-shouldered and, though he’s muscular from working out and playing basketball so much, is somewhat lean, a typical physique for a basketball player. He has dark brown hair, sharp cheekbones and a slightly upturned nose, which he’d inherited from his father, and chestnut brown eyes that he’d probably inherited from Praxidike, considering that his father’s eyes were blue. Kai stands upright with his shoulders straight, similar to that of a soldier in the army; his buzz cut tends to help the image, too. He has two scars on his right cheek due to a hellhound attack when he was fifteen, going from the right side of his nose, missing his eye by half an inch, and down to his jawbone. Because of the commonly warm weather in camp and Kai’s frequent outdoor activities, Kai’s skin is a nice bronze color; he could easily lose his tan, however, if he spends two to three months or so outside of camp during any season but the summer. He has a warm, friendly smile that is almost contagious at times; he likes making other people laugh.
He wears the standard orange Camp Half Blood t-shirt with black-and-red or simply plain black basketball shorts that sag slightly and a pair of blue or purple Nike shoes, but he cuts the sleeves off the t-shirt in a somewhat jagged way using scissors because he can’t stand wearing anything with sleeves at any time of year. Sometimes he wears jeans or khakis, but that’s a rather rare occurrence because he’s always running around and sweating – and if he’s absolutely desperate, he’ll wear a (light) jacket if it’s cold out. (Kai doesn’t care much for how he looks in his clothes, as long as he’s not wearing clown shoes with a Prada dress or something.) He wears his dagger and sword on his hip with a belt just in case he gets attacked by a monster or psychotic demigod. Kai carries a small pack of tissues in his shorts just in case he gets a nosebleed; Lorelei nagged him into taking it, and for once he listened to her. Due to his frequent bouts of pain in his knees, it’s a rather common thing to see him wearing a knee brace or gingerly limping on a wrapped-up ankle; he dislikes wearing the brace a lot, complaining that it’s annoying and itchy or some other stupid excuse.
Weapon: About a few days after arriving at camp, Kai took a Celestial bronze xiphos sword from the weapon shed, finding it perfectly balanced in his hand; the blade was around 60cm long, and it also had a leather sheath and a leather hilt/handle. He named it Achilles, for the ancient Greek hero; his father had told him the story of Achilles and the Trojan War when he was ten on one boring December afternoon during a rainstorm and Kai decided that Achilles the hero was probably the coolest guy ever, next to Hercules and the whole Twelve Labors thing. If Kai were ever to go out into the mortal world with his sword, it would look like a guitar (or a guitar in its case) to anybody who can’t see through the Mist. The sword can’t transform into paperclips or anything, so Kai just keeps it on his hip. Kai also has a short Celestial bronze dagger that he also has on his hip in a sheath that he forged himself in the armory; he named it Lorie, just to annoy the pacifistic Lorelei.
Armor: Kai, though he doesn’t really like to wear armor, has a Celestial bronze breastplate, shin guards, and a Celestial bronze helmet that he stores underneath his bunk in his cabin. The helmet is styled like that of a plain Corinthian one, without a plume or any other type of decoration on it. His shin guards are usually buckled on with leather straps, but he normally neglects to wear them during Capture the Flag because he claims they slow him down – even though the breastplate is probably the heaviest part of his armor. He doesn’t have a shield, either, so he borrows one from the armory or weapon shed if the need ever arises.
Pet(s): Kai, though he adores all types of animals, currently has no pets. The only pet his father allowed him to have was a goldfish named Mr. Whale when Kai was eight; the poor thing died about three days after they bought him and his father swore “Never again.” If he could have a normal pet (as in, not mythological), he’d probably pick a hamster or a rat because he has a weak spot for cute little furry things; if he could have a mythological pet, he’d probably pick a griffin or a hydra even though Lorelei constantly points out that if he tamed one, another camper might end up killing it because they’re so dangerous and the thing probably would try killing every camper but him. Instead, Kai has to content himself by playing with Lorelei’s rat Marty.
Skills/Talents: Kai is very skilled at playing basketball; he spent many years practicing on basketball courts with his father or friends, who usually ended up losing to him once he was tall enough to actually make baskets, and he even went to an afterschool basketball program for a year or so. His height tends to help him get an advantage over others when it comes to shooting the ball, but if he finds somebody who’s the same height as/taller than him, he has to rely more on maneuvering around them with the ball. His ADHD helps a lot with this.
Kai is skilled at the art of persuasion; watching his father and mother do their jobs helped him learn about ways to talk and convince people to do what he wants or etc. If he knows you well enough, he’ll know what buttons to push to get his way; if he doesn’t, he’ll try to find a way.
He’s also secretly good at knitting, too; his grandmother on his stepmother’s side had been knitting one day while babysitting Kai when she decided to call him over and show him how to knit. Kai enjoys it, though he does this in the privacy of his cabin (usually at night), making little scarves for Marty the rat or such. Lorelei knows about this, but she doesn’t really pursue the subject with him – it’s his little secret talent, let him think about it.
Kai is great at jumping, which ties in with his mad skills at basketball; he was fairly popular for his slam dunks during his school days, but he has to tone down the jumping since his knees and ankles seem prone to periods of pain, now.
He’s also become skilled at sword-fighting, with all of the training he’s done since he got his sword; he trains for at least an hour a day at it, either with a friend for a “friendly” spar or he just hacks at the straw dummies in extravagant ways.
Flaws: Kai, though he’s normally a good-natured person, holds grudges for a very long time – he doesn’t forget any wrongs done to him and usually won’t unless the person does some wonderfully special favor towards him – but even then, there’s only a small chance that you’d get back on his good side.
He’s prone to pain in his knees or ankles due to his frequently running and jumping around; Lorelei insists it’s tendonitis, but Kai dismisses her diagnosis and just takes breaks from exercising and puts ice on his knees instead of seeking proper medical attention. Sometimes, the pain becomes so bad that he limps or falls over – this is rare, but it does hinder him greatly at times.
He is blunt when he talks to people, resulting in Lorelei’s saving him from getting beaten up frequently because he can’t keep his mouth shut; she claims he’s a hopeless cause and that one day she won’t be there to help him get out of a fight.
Kai is intensely loyal to his friends and family (more for his family, however), to the point where he’d probably go jump off a cliff if it’d save them from getting hurt; he doesn’t want to see a repeat of his father’s death, so he tries to prevent it by being overprotective – especially of Lorelei.
Ever since his father’s death, Kai has found that he has a strong phobia for hellhounds. Whenever he finds that there’s one within twenty feet of him, he panics and begins to shake and sweat. Lorelei has attempted to try and help him get over this phobia, to no avail; even small hellhound puppies will scare the living daylights out of Kai. When Kai was about fifteen, this phobia resulted in him nearly getting mauled by a hellhound in the forest when he was wandering around, trying to find where he’d hidden one of Lorelei’s books to prevent his upcoming execution; he was saved by a daughter of Ares (my other character, Kendall) and taken to the infirmary. He has three long scars across his chest, starting from his left shoulder down to the middle of his right side, and two scars on his right cheek from a slash the hellhound had given him to the face.
During the winter or any time with dry air, Kai is prone to nosebleeds – yet another reason why he doesn’t like cold weather. He has a tendency to bleed a lot whenever he gets a nosebleed during these times, which might make him become light-headed and have to lie down.
Unfortunately for Kai, he doesn’t have that many close friends – he tends to flit around from person to person or group to group. He’s kind to them all, yes, but people do tend to get annoyed at the fact that he can’t sit still with one group for long. He can get bored very easily by staying with one group of people for too long, which is the reason why he tends to try to hang out with different people each day.
Sometimes, Kai uses his skills at persuasion to get people to do things he’s too lazy to do himself; some people don’t realize he’s doing it, some people do and begin to dislike him for it. He doesn’t really care either way.
Kai is intensely over-competitive, which means that he takes winning very seriously. If you're on his side and end up dragging the team down, he won't hesitate to throw you overboard just for the sake of winning.
Strengths: During fights, Kai knows how to maneuver around people and avoid attacks/counters, thanks to all the basketball he plays with other people – to him, the sword would equal a deadly basketball. He’s fast at running, too, and very strong; he could bench around two hundred and sixty pounds if he tried. Kai is very good at persuading people to do things for him, which originated from his watching his father in the courtroom during trials and making mental notes about things that can sway people to his side; this also makes him a good leader, since people will be more inclined to side and follow his lead. Kai is very humorous and can make many people laugh, which is very useful for making friends. He is brave when necessary (except around hellhounds) and won't shrink away from helping somebody.
Weaknesses: Kai is pretty blunt whenever he’s expressing his opinion, which can cause some people to rapidly lose respect for him. He’s over-competitive, making him perfectly content to throw somebody overboard if it means he’ll win; if he loses to you, he’s going to be inclined to a period of external irritation and internal seething for quite a while. He holds grudges (especially if he loses to you) and won’t be willing to forgive somebody very easily; no matter how good-natured he may seem externally, he’s a bit of a jerk inside. Kai is also prone to periods of laziness, which he sometimes feeds using his persuasion skills; he finds that he can usually convince people to do the things he’s too lazy to do, like shine his sword or hide one of Lorelei’s books for him. If a hellhound is anywhere near him, he'll panic and shake until the thing moves away from him; it would be easy to win a fight with him if you had a hellhound at your side. Kai usually doesn't think before he leaps, which gets him into trouble quite a bit; he's more of the "I'll figure it out as I go" type, rather than the type to sit and think before leaping.
Likes: Kai has been almost obsessed with basketball since he was seven years old; his father had taught him how to play on one of his days off at a local basketball court, and even though he was much shorter than his father back then, he kept going back there to keep practicing his shooting.
He loves to tease his cousin Lorelei, telling her that she needs to lighten up and the like – usually his teasing involves taking one of her books and running with it across camp while she’s chasing after him with a dagger in her hand. He likes to make people laugh and enjoys a good sense of humor.
Kai has a major weak spot for sugar cookies, especially the frosted kind his stepmother used to make for him; if you give him one, he’d probably love you forever. He prefers homemade ones to store-bought ones, but he doesn’t really care as long as it’s a cookie that hasn’t expired yet.
Kai loves small animals like mice and hamsters, to the horror of his stepmother; if he could, he’d probably hoard about twenty of them at camp if he had the space and money to do so.
When Kai is forced to stay inside during a rainy or cold day, he loves to play video games, mainly on his Nintendo 3DS (a gift from his stepmother); his favorite games are the Legend of Zelda games, Pokemon, Kingdom Hearts, and any Mario and Luigi game. He’s a bit like a rabid fangirl when he discusses any of these games.
Dislikes: Kai absolutely despises reading, to the point where he actually chucked one of Lorelei’s books (1984 by George Orwell) into the lake after she tried to make him read it; needless to say, he narrowly avoided death that day. He uses his dyslexia as an excuse for not-reading, but Lorelei persistently keeps trying to get him to read some books she gives him – the first book she’d loaned him while at camp was “The Cat in the Hat” by Dr. Seuss.
He hates wearing anything with sleeves, claiming that it makes him feel “restrained.” From his dislike of sleeves, he also hates cold weather because he’d be forced to wear a jacket and a long-sleeved shirt to go outside; he claims that shirts with sleeves and jackets make him feel like he’s being tied up in a straitjacket. If you look at a trash can somewhere in or around Kai's cabin, you’ll probably find the sleeves of orange CHB t-shirts that have been sloppily sheared off with a pair of scissors.
Kai hates small children, especially the ones that will wail like banshees in Walmart if they didn’t get the toy they wanted; he claims he’d never want children in his life unless he could adopt an older child – around the age of nine or ten, when they’d probably be less prone to banshee-esque wailing.
He dislikes eating seafood, mainly shrimp and lobster; he claims he’s allergic to them, though Malachi had told Elizabeth that he could eat the stuff just fine. Kai also has an intense hatred for pudding, especially chocolate pudding -- he just really dislikes the texture of it.
Fears: After witnessing his father’s death at the hands (paws?) of a large hellhound, Kai has developed a phobia for them, even if they are just puppies; he would shake and begin to sweat nervously, and if he tries to talk he’d stutter so much that you’d barely be able to understand him. Any hellhound he encounters must be at least twenty feet away from him; any closer and he probably wouldn’t be able to defend himself from it. He is afraid that Lorelei, his uncle, or his stepmother will also be harmed right in front of him in a way that he can’t prevent, just as his father was; since Lorelei’s the closest person to him (both literally and emotionally) that at times, he becomes extremely overprotective of her, fitting nicely into the “over-protective older brother/cousin” role. Kai has a fear of commitments in relationships, which is why if he ever gets into one he’d probably be extremely worried about everything and would try to keep his significant other from delving too deeply into his life at first.
Personality: Kai has been described by his friends and teachers as an optimistic, goofy boy who loves to make people laugh. That description is mainly correct; Kai would make himself look like an idiot on purpose just for a good laugh. At times, he can be a bit of a flirt with girls; he hasn’t dated one yet but he’d definitely like to, though he has a fear of commitment and people getting “too close” to him (meaning he doesn’t like people trying to dig further into his personality and life).
Kai loves teasing people, especially his cousin Lorelei and his father when he was still alive. He’s playful with the people he really likes and respects everybody until they give him a reason not to, like being a total jerk to everybody or kicking a puppy.
He gets competitive rather easily, to the point where he’d probably elbow somebody in the stomach on purpose during a game of basketball just to get a good shot in. Kai is definitely a sore loser; he gets very sullen and irritated when he loses at anything, even if it’s just a game of Go-Fish with Lorelei, but he normally gets back his typical cheery attitude after maybe half an hour; he can’t stay externally irritated for long, but underneath he’ll still be ranting and raving.
He is intensely loyal to his friends and family, to the point where he’d probably die for them if he had to; he is especially overprotective of his family, wanting to prevent any more unexpected deaths as best he can after the way his father died – unexpectedly. He blames himself for his father’s death, wondering what would have happened if he’d intervened.
Kai is blunt when he talks, which often gets him into trouble that Lorelei has to save him from – from accidentally insulting somebody (“But it’s true!”) to Lorelei trying to drag Kai away from a fight with an insulted cashier at Starbucks.
Kai prefers to face things head-on instead of sitting at the sidelines waiting for the proper moment to strike; if they were meant to get through the problem, he reasons, they’d find a way to get through it. He is a natural-born leader and knows the proper ways to inspire people to action – he’d gone to court with his father a few times and marveled at the way his father eloquently made his closing arguments and countered the defense’s evidence or testimonies, learning bit by bit the right ways to make people stop and think or cause them to be inspired to take a certain action. He also learned a bit about this skill when his stepmother was trying to persuade people to buy a house or piece of property, when he went home for the summer; all his life he’d been exposed to lawyers, realtors, and detectives who knew the right buttons to push to get something done. He’s prone to laziness, however, and using his persuasion he sometimes gets people to do things he’s too lazy to do.
Kai loves to try new things, whether it be food, a new weapon, or a new Pokemon video game; the only new thing he’d hesitate to “try” is a new father, but his stepmother, thankfully, has decided to give Kai a quite a bit of time to adjust to his father’s death. He’s enthusiastic whenever he’s diving into something new, though his enthusiasm levels will probably drop slightly if he finds that he doesn’t like whatever he’s doing/seeing.
He hates being alone and wallowing in his own thoughts – that’s one of the main reasons why he’s social. He surrounds himself with people who will either make him laugh or people he can amuse, to get his mind away from his thoughts and have a good time. In addition to this, he doesn’t stick with one group of people every day; he tries to talk to different people from day to day because he can get bored rather easily staying with one group of people for too long. What a social butterfly.
Powers: Kai definitely has no powers and never will develop any, to his major disappointment and Lorelei’s delight. He would have liked to throw fireballs at somebody or shadow-travel around camp, but alas, he’s a child of a goddess of justice, not magic or horses or whatever.
Social Status: Kai, being the wonderfully cheerful person he is, is usually popular with people. He makes friends easily and can easily prosper as the center of attention. He’s a natural born leader and, back when he still attended school in the Bronx, he had a little following of friends and admirers that would trail him around. It’s always a party hanging around him; he has a contagious laugh and can light up a room quite easily. He can be defined as part of the “goofy athletic person” group, one that will make himself look like an idiot on purpose to make others laugh. It normally works on people, but there are some – cough, Lorelei – who are immune to it. He’s kind/respectful to everybody he meets until they give him a reason not to be – for example, trying to kill him with a knife. He doesn’t like those types of people.
Summer or Year Rounder: Kai stays at camp year-round with Lorelei; he can’t stand the thought of going home and not seeing his father in his recliner, quietly reading a book as his stepmother would ramble on in the kitchen about inflation or the idiots that came in to the hair salon she worked at. His stepmother has persuaded him a few times to come home for a week, usually during the summer, but usually when he’s home he’d go hang out at a local basketball court – not the one his father had taught him to play basketball in, of course. He sees some of his old friends when he’s wandering around the neighborhood and constantly uses the excuse that he was sent to boarding school down south, which was the excuse his stepmother had told him to use if he encountered anybody he used to know.
Years at Camp: Kai has been at camp for five years since his father's death, having arrived at camp when he was twelve and Lorelei eleven. Upon first arriving at camp, Kai wanted to immediately go home and find his stepmother; unfortunately, he was not allowed to leave and thus remained there for a month with Lorelei in the Hermes cabin, uncharacteristically sulky and despondent. Lorelei attributed this to his father's death and, despite her own worries, tried to comfort him the best she could. Matthias came back to the camp about a month later to deliver a few things to Lorelei and Kai, but he couldn’t stay for long. Kai was claimed about a week after the second Titan War ended, after Percy had made the gods promise to claim their kids by the age of 13; he had slightly resented his goddess mother for not claiming him sooner, but he'd sacrificed a bit more food than necessary to her during mealtimes for a month afterwards anyway.
Life Before CHB: Kai was born on April 7th, 1995, to Praxidike in a Staten Island hospital under the disguise of a woman named Lisa Harper; she gave birth at six in the morning to the little baby boy and a few hours later, when she was alone with her child, she was found to have disappeared entirely from the room with the baby, to the confusion and panic of the nurses; however, by altering the Mist, Praxidike made them basically forget that Lisa Harper had gone to the hospital at all. Remembering where Malachi Lane lived and hoping for the best, she left Kai in a bundle of blankets in front of the assistant district attorney’s apartment door and quickly left before the baby started crying, leaving a crumpled note to Malachi somewhere in the baby’s blankets, disappearing into the night. Malachi’s landlord, Anthony Flores, was the first to discover the baby on his way to go collect rent from Malachi’s next-door neighbor; confused, he knocked on people’s doors to ask them if they knew whose baby it was in front of Malachi’s door. Three or four of Malachi’s neighbors tried to calm the crying baby, to no avail; he continued to cry loudly and soon, the frustrated neighbors were on the verge of calling the police or a social worker when Malachi appeared with his briefcase, calm and collected as always. Malachi’s landlord explained the situation to him, jabbing his finger in the baby’s direction several times in his irritation; though two of the four neighbors gathered around the baby had children of their own, it appeared that their children hadn’t been so stubborn and loud. Malachi told them he’d take care of it and, first opening his apartment door with his key, put his briefcase inside his apartment and returned to take the baby in with him.
Upon reaching his father’s arms, Kai quieted down considerably, though he was still quietly whimpering in his blankets. Malachi put the baby down on his and began to look in his phonebook or some files of his for the number of a social worker; when he looked up, the baby was quietly sleeping and a corner of a piece of paper stuck out from his blankets. Pulling it out, Malachi found the note from “Sadie Cooper,” telling him it was his son; he quickly called his brother over. Matthias arrived five minutes later, having run all the way from his apartment to his brother’s; upon seeing the baby, he exclaimed that, “By Dr. Seuss, it’s a mini-us!” Malachi refused to believe the boy was his son, pointing out that the note might have been forged; they argued about what they would do with the baby in the living room, so as not to disturb the sleeping child. Matthias won the argument by saying that if they put the boy in the adoption system, he’d probably have an extremely miserable life – “Plus, he looks like you. Mama and Papa would have wanted you to keep him, no matter what.”
Malachi named the baby Mordecai Thierry Lane, his middle name coming from Malachi’s own father; his coworkers were extremely surprised to hear him casually mention, when asked if he wanted to come along with them to a bar to celebrate his victory in a murder case one day, that he had to “take care of his son.” He had trouble raising Kai at first, mainly because of the fact that he was always so busy at work; he hired a woman to babysit the boy for him, but she quit two years later on the basis that “The boy's been so loud that I think I've got permanently burst eardrums.” He managed to get a week off by pulling a few strings to take care of Kai, who seemed to like his father taking care of him than anybody else; Kai was a cheerful baby who liked to take walks outside with his father. Matthias would come over constantly to play with his nephew, teasingly calling his brother “Mama Mal” every time he entered the same room as him.
Kai was a cheerful baby when he was little – when he cried he was extremely loud, but Malachi could handle him perfectly well. When Kai was around one and a half years old, his cousin Lorelei was born and found by Matthias under circumstances that, Malachi observed, were very similar to his when Kai arrived at his door. Both men found that the children were the opposite of who their fathers were – Lorelei was quiet and didn’t like to interact with other babies unlike the social flower that was Matthias, and Kai was cheerful and loved playing with others unlike Malachi, who was quiet and rarely wanted to interact with others.
Fast-forward about four years – by this time, Kai is around the age of five and a half and Lorelei is four. Kai was very protective of Lorelei, which seemed to annoy the little girl greatly; he considered himself her older brother and loved teasing her. Matthias often brought her over to his brother’s apartment on weekends and after school, and she and Kai would play with toys together. Malachi, instead of hiring a babysitter for Kai to take care of him while he was at work, had his neighbor and close friend Mr. Ethan watch him; Mr. Ethan was a stay-at-home father with a twelve year old daughter named Allie and his wife Mrs. Ethan, who worked as an engineer. Kai took a liking to them and so, Malachi brought Kai over every morning at around eight so Mr. Ethan could watch him; during Kai’s school years, Mr. Ethan would go and pick him up from school and take him back to his apartment, where he’d try his best to help Kai with homework or amuse him with toys. Whenever Mr. Ethan told Malachi he wouldn’t be home, Malachi or one of his colleagues would pick up Kai from school and bring him back to Malachi’s office, where he’d try to get Kai to sit still while he did paperwork or even let him sit in on one of the trials Malachi was trying. Kai had to try hard to sit still through these, but it was worth it.
At preschool and kindergarten, Kai had proven that he was indeed the social butterfly his father never was; he made friends with many of his classmates and was well-loved by his teachers, though they (both the preschool and kindergarten teacher) told his father that Kai could never sit still and that he had trouble reading at times. He was almost kicked out of his preschool for chasing a boy around the room with a wooden block, screaming that he was going to beat him up; his teacher, Ms. Elwood, quickly had Kai taken to the corner where he sat, seething. According to him later on, when his father asked about the situation, the boy had beaten him in a game of who-could-build-the-highest-block-tower and he got “really, really mad.”
When Kai was five years old, Malachi met Elizabeth Meyer, his future wife and Kai’s future stepmother, at a dinner party one of his friends was hosting; Elizabeth seemed to adore Kai, who basked in the attention and later told his dad that he “liked the cat lady.” (Elizabeth told Kai stories about her cat Andrew at the party, for some odd reason.)
In first grade, Malachi had Kai evaluated for ADHD and lo and behold, the boy had it; Matthias wasn’t too surprised when he found out, which seemed to annoy Malachi a bit since normally Malachi knew everything. In second grade, at age 7, when Malachi had a day off on a warm day, he took Kai to a local basketball court that was usually deserted, borrowing a basketball from Mr. Ethan; that day, he taught Kai how to dribble a basketball and even tried to help Kai shoot the ball, though he was too short and missed most of the time. This started Kai’s obsession with basketball; whenever he and Mr. Ethan were walking home, Kai would try to convince him to play basketball with him. It didn’t usually work, but sometimes Allie would indulge him by taking him there on weekends and playing with him. As he grew taller, he began to make more and more baskets with increasing ease, which caused his uncle Matthias to harass Malachi about potentially putting Kai into a basketball program. Malachi also began to date Elizabeth when Kai was seven, though he didn’t reveal this fact to Kai; whenever he went on a date with her, he’d bring Kai to Matthias’s apartment and his uncle Matthias would tease Malachi before he left, saying that “his lady-friend” would think he’s handsome in that tie. Neither Kai nor Lorelei understood what was going on.
In third grade, however, Kai encountered his first monster: He and Allie had gone to the basketball court on a Saturday in September, and it was beginning to get dark. Out of the corner of her eye, Allie happened to notice a large man in a trench-coat standing outside of the court on the side opposite to the gate, making odd sniffing noises like he was trying to smell something. Kai noticed her looking at it and declared it was a big man with one eye; Allie panicked and, picking Kai up, ran home with him as best she could even though the “man” wasn’t chasing them. Mr. Ethan ordered Allie to stop staying out with Kai so late; when Malachi told Matthias about Allie’s story, Matthias seemed mildly concerned, which was unusual for the man.
For the next few years, Kai’s life was monster-free, though Kai was expelled from his school in fifth grade for punching a boy in the face after he lost a game of knockout basketball – which he declared was “his thing – to him; this had happened multiple times that year. Malachi thought Kai had anger problems, but Matthias disagreed and said that it was just him being too over-competitive. Around this time, Malachi married Elizabeth – no pomp or a fancy party, which was the way Malachi liked it, and she quit her job as a hairdresser to watch over Kai and relieve Mr. Ethan of his antics. Malachi had told Kai a year before that he wanted to marry Elizabeth, and Kai seemed perfectly fine with that – just as long as she kept making him sugar cookies. Kai would later claim that Elizabeth brought life into the apartment, because it was relatively boring with his father just reading and Kai’s playing video games on his Gameboy at home. Two months later, Elizabeth found out she was pregnant; Kai was fairly excited, but about a month later the pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage. Malachi became more withdrawn into himself and sometimes just sat and stared into his book blankly; Elizabeth, though she’d spoiled Kai greatly before, began to try attending to his every whim. Lorelei, being ever observant, told Kai that she was trying to distract herself from the loss of the baby; Kai chose to ignore this.
Two years later, when Kai was in seventh grade and Lorelei in sixth grade, Kai would encounter his second monster and Lorelei her first: a large hellhound. Malachi had taken Kai and Lorelei to the library that day, trying to look for books for Kai to read for his book report, but to no avail. On their walk home, they stopped at a corner waiting for a red light, and when that had come they crossed the street. It was beginning to get dark, and they passed by the basketball court Kai normally hung out at when Lorelei noticed the gate was hanging off its hinges and then a large black dog with glowing red eyes, a dog the size of a bear, hurtled out of the shadows at them. Malachi hurled himself in front of the kids and was knocked over by the hellhound; Kai and Lorelei ran screaming for help, which arrived in the form of an off-duty police officer. The officer shot at the dog/hellhound with his gun, hitting it in the side; the wounded hellhound ran off into the night as the officer went to go see if Malachi was okay – and, as hinted before, he wasn’t.
Malachi bled to death while waiting for an ambulance, and the kids were taken to the police station where Matthias and Elizabeth were called; they both arrived in record timing, but Matthias pulled Elizabeth out of the room to talk to her. After an apparently heated argument that lasted for about five minutes and crying from Elizabeth, the two adults entered the room; Matthias announced he was taking Lorelei and Kai home, while Elizabeth went to go “see” Malachi in the hospital. Both children seemed to be in shock because of the event; Lorelei was crying and Kai was staring blankly at the tabletop. They left and Matthias, instead of taking them home, took them to Camp Half Blood – Kai noticed and asked where they were going. Matthias made feeble attempts to comfort them, and finally he answered Kai’s question after dodging it twice – he was taking them to a camp for “demigods.” They arrived at camp later and, though Matthias tried to get them to go into the camp, the two kids didn’t want to leave him yet – and thus, they slept in the car together until morning, parked about a quarter of a mile away from Thalia’s Tree. In the morning Kai and Lorelei went into camp, where they’d stay year-round.
Role-Playing Example: I leaned back in the chair and yawned loudly, stretching my arms towards the ceiling as Lorelei stalked around the room, muttering angrily to herself as she opened and closed the cabinet doors around the infirmary, slamming them loudly. Well, she was pissed off again – that was normal for her. “Hey, Lor,” I called, rubbing the back of my head, “you want to get me some more ice?”
She turned to me with her jaw clenched, looking like she wanted to flay me alive – but she wouldn’t, she didn’t like weapons or fighting. “Get it yourself. I told you not to play with a sore knee, and now look what you’ve done. Tendinitis again, you idiot.”
I put up my free hand, grinning slightly: “Yeah, I know you did, but you should just calm down. This happens a lot, but it’s not as bad as… whatever that is.”
“Yes, it is – why don’t you ask a healer to check –“
“Whoa, whoa. Calm down there, Mom – it’s just knee pain. I’ll take pain meds, ice it, and I’ll be good.” I scratched my head and grinned at her, but it just seemed to piss her off even more. Lorie turned away and opened the fridge, pulled out a pack of ice, and threw it – not such a pacifist now, huh? – at my face. I caught it easily and waved at her with it: “You’re like the pissed-off version of my mom. Am I really that stupid?”
“You’d think you would have learned by now, wouldn’t you, Kai?”
“Nah, but you know that too.”
Notes: As stated many times in the form, Kai is Lorelei's cousin, but her form will come later on.
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