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distantskies
ABOUT YOU
Name: Pur
Are you 18 or over?: Yep!
Other characters played: None.
CHARACTER
Name: Nicholas ‘Nick’ Kontellis
Canon: Teen Power Inc.
Age: No canon age is known, but he’s younger than 16 because that’s the Aussie age for legal driving and no mention is made of his preparing to learn. Since I’ll be taking him from later in the canon, I’m saying he’s 15 verging on 16, which would put him at grades ten or eleven.
History: NOTE: There are thirty books in the series, but I’m only detailing books which Nick narrates and events which explicitly affect Nick in some way, rather than fully summarising every book.
Nick is a normal high-school student from the suburb of Raven Hill. His family is Greek—his parents, Demetrios and Toula, and his father’s best friend all emigrated from overseas. His childhood was an ordinary one. In primary school he became friends with a rather odd group of kids; odd because they weren’t the kind of kids you’d expect to be friends. Their names were Liz Free, Tom Moysten, Sunny Chan and Richelle Brinkley. There was an area of unfettered bush next to Raven Hill’s park, called the Glen, where the gang played. When they reached highschool, they still went there to talk.
One day, when they were all broke, Liz got the idea to create a part-time job agency for the group to earn a little more money. They called themselves Teen Power Inc. Their first job was delivering papers for the local paper in which they advertised, the Pen, which was owned by the father of a classmate, Elmo Zimmer. The Pen was having troubles at the time—a new paper, the Star, had been using underhanded tactics to try and drive the Pen out of business.
As it turned out Shiela Star, the owner of the Star, was being used by a man named Terry Bigge, who owned the Glen and intended to build on it. Except his ownership was a lie—the will leaving the Glen to him had been superseded by a second will secretly held by Elmo’s grandfather, which stated that the Glen should be left as-is and belonged to the people of Raven Hill. Elmo’s grandfather had died when the Pen’s office was broken into, but thanks to Teen Power Inc the new will was discovered in time to prevent the Pen from going bankrupt under Terry’s pressure.
The original Teen Power gang of five asked Elmo to join them, and after that Nick’s life—all of their lives—started to get considerably more interesting. Though many of their jobs were mundane (dog-walking, clipping hedges, painting walls and the like) some of them wound up wrapped in mystery just like the first. They also gained a rival gang, the Work Demons, who were far less talented and conscientious, but charged less and had a habit of using underhanded tactics to keep Teen Power out of the picture. One job was as extras for a chocolate-bar ad, where they were involved in the kidnapping of the main actress; Nick and Richelle were inadvertently present at the time and were able to lead the police on to the culprits, Nick by using his remarkable memory and his video camera. In another, the gang were locked in a basement to die by a man so abused by his father and employers that he was unstable.
Yet another job involved dressing up in giant rabbit suits to hand out leaflets and advertise for the local sweetshop in the mall. There was someone hanging around the mall—The Wolf, a big-time crim whose crimes were known but never proven. The police knew he was passing things through an underground laundering ring, yet didn’t know how. But the Teen Power gang knew the mall, worked the mall, and put the pieces together: The Wolf was using the sweetshop. Sunny managed to stop the owner, Ms Sweet, before she could fake her own death and kill the rest of the gang in a fire. Ms Sweet, and The Wolf, went to jail.
Teen Power’s next big job was for Mr Terzis, Demetrios’s best friend and a wealthy jeweller. Just before a vacation Terzis and his wife planned to take, a sheik’s ransom in uncut emeralds were apparently stolen from his house. Nick and the gang, cleaning the house while the Terzis’ were on holiday, figured out that the thief had lost the emeralds before he left the house due to Mr Terzis’s fighting back. But the thief had snuck back in and was living there, trying to find the emeralds himself. While conducting their own search the gang tricked the thief into running into the police, and Nick figured out that the thief’s mother—the florist from whom Mr Terzis bought flowers for his wife every week—had masterminded the plan. Both thief and mother were arrested while Nick, with his knowledge of the house, found the emeralds in the fishtank.
The gang grew accustomed to some manner of getting into trouble. A horror author, wanting help to type up his new book, used them (without their knowing) as a publicity stunt for the novel and in the process enabled them to solve a fifty-year-old murder. A visit to paint Tom’s dad’s studio had them running up against drug-smugglers in a confrontation which almost killed Tom. They caught a local thief thanks to a job involving a guard dog on death row. Poison pen letters going around the suburb were being blamed on the Pen until the gang discovered the true culprit—and saved her life from a killer she had unknowingly threatened. While working temporarily at a hotel, the gang discovered a man being held, kidnapped, by one of the patrons.
While working to prepare for the renewal of a local fair, a task which seemed doomed once it became clear there wasn’t enough interest, Nick and the gang were caught up in trying to find a missing parrot, Percy. It was only when they found Percy that they discovered his owner, Mary, was the sister of a famous local artist, Selwyn. In exchange for a reward for Percy’s return, Nick got Mary to agree to show Selwyn’s last painting—a novelty which would draw in crowds from all over the city and revitalise the fair. But when the gang came to pick up the painting they discovered it had been replaced by a forgery; Percy’s kidnapping had been intended to distract Mary from discovering the switch. But the thieves were tricked—Mary, an artist herself, had ‘forged’ all her brother’s paintings and kept the originals in a secret room. Nick convinced her to loan the fair the original painting in order to draw out the thief; true to his suspicion, the thief came to see the painting in person and was caught.
A hiking trip in the bush for the school left the Teen Power gang alone to find help when their classmates wound up sick, and the gang accidentally unearthed a pair of poachers working in the reserve. A promotional event by a local toystore to cash in plastic ravens turned out to be a front to find two dozen lost ravens with black pearls hidden inside them. While cleaning a house for two elderly ladies, the gang discovered that the medical centre next door had been trying to drive the ladies off the property so they could use the house as a way-point for illegal activities. Though not the first time the gang had faced a gun, on this occasion Nick was held hostage to ensure the rest of the gang’s cooperation.
Then disaster struck for him. His father Demetrios, always dubious about Nick’s participation in the Teen Power Inc. gang, insisted that he leave the group to work part-time for him instead, so he could learn the family business while earning the money he wanted. Nick convinced Demetrios to wait for just one more job so he didn’t let the gang down, hoping to have time to figure out how to talk his dad into letting him continue. But Nick’s ‘last job’ turned out to be a joke, testing an invention for an inventor always one step behind success—Claude Craze. Thanks to the timing of a series of sabotages, Nick figured out that Claude’s assistant Eric was an extremely successful inventor called Oscar Seely, pretending to be a disadvantaged assistant so he could steal Claude’s secrets. As it happened, Oscar worked closely with Demetrios’s export business to have his inventions made; he sabotaged Claude’s inventions so Teen Power would take the blame, be fired and thus remove the risk of Nick recognising him. With the truth out, Oscar was charged, Claude finally recognised as the genius he was and Demetrios, seeing what the Teen Power jobs were teaching Nick, agreed to let him continue as a member of the gang.
Teen Power’s next major job was for a fashion shop; the shop’s proprietor was an expert conman who tricked people into paying for clothes orders without delivering. After that, Raven Hill was struck by a series of bomb attacks performed by a businessman who wanted to collect the insurance on his shop and tried to hide the evidence by bombing multiple targets. A destitute woman the gang found turned out to be trying to weasel her way into a rich lady’s will by posing as the woman’s long-lost granddaughter. Tom’s attempt to enter an art show got the gang into trouble with a big-time thief who’d faked his own death—and was then photographed by Tom by accident. The gang was hired to act in a pantomime of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ for the reopening of the Raven Hill Playhouse and in the process discovered the owner of the theatre in the next suburb was the arsonist who burned down the Playhouse a year before—killing one of the owners. When Elmo’s great-aunt hired the gang to clean her mansion in the country, they discovered that she was being held hostage by a couple of crims who tried to kill Nick, Liz and Richelle by sealing them inside a well. And when hired to pick apples in a country town, the gang solved a series of thefts as well as discovering who was responsible for perpetuating an unending feud between two professional gardeners.
Soon after that the gang began having major problems with the Work Demons—worse problems than usual, that is. Their usual leader, Bradley Henshaw, had moved away, but a new kid at school, Fox Bevan came in. When Nick and Tom objected to Fox’s joining Teen Power due to their ‘six is enough’ rule, Fox turned nasty. He took over the Work Demons, turning them into an efficient workforce, and set the Teen Power gang to internal warring using rumours and foul play to make them appear unreliable to employers. For a while, it seemed like Teen Power Inc. was finished. Then Nick realised Fox’s gameplan; he forced the gang together for a heart-to-heart which cleared the air and put them all back on proper footing. They turned to plotting against Fox and the Work Demons instead, and realised that Fox was scamming the other Demons by taking a larger cut. They also discovered that the Demons were unknowingly working for a local thief who used the cars checked in at his car-wash to perform burglaries—and the Work Demons’ gossip to know which houses to target, including Nick’s. Fortunately for the gang, Fox’s family moved away soon after the case was solved … but Bradley Henshaw’s came back.
The next major happening involved the Raven Hill library, when a trickster called the Phantom turned apparently nasty—to the point of trying to burn down the library—because of a rivalry between staff. After that the gang found themselves on a hunt all over Raven Hill to find a bushranger’s treasure for an old man near his time. Then the gang was hired for a music video turned disastrous and led them onto a scheme blackmailing celebrities. When one of Sunny’s sisters got married soon after, the gang was hired to help with the wedding; but they had become so accustomed to seeing crime and mystery everywhere that a chance overheard conversation convinced them that Sunny’s future brother-in-law was intending to murder the family. (They were wrong.)
But it had been a while since the Teen Power Inc. agency had begun. It had been a while since they gained a reputation as teenage crime-fighters. And they had made enemies. When minor crimes like vandalism began happening around Raven Hill, all witnesses insisted that members of the Teen Power gang were responsible. Despite their protestations of innocence, there were so many witnesses that even their families and Constable Greta Vortek, the policewoman who had worked with them most closely, began to believe the gang had turned to crime.
And then members of the gang began to disappear, with witnesses claiming to have seen them on buses and trains. In no time at all, Nick was the only one left. Worried and afraid, Nick realised that there was a major motive someone might be targeting them—revenge. The most likely suspect was The Wolf, the crim whose reputation was so fierce that his operatives preferred to fake their own deaths than be seen to fail and be murdered for their failure for real. That night, Nick was kidnapped by The Wolf’s goons—in Elmo’s father’s new car. They took him to a hotel in the middle of nowhere where he managed to escape and discovered that the teens the witnesses had been seeing were imposters. He found the rest of the gang and set them free. They used their doppelgangers as decoys to distract the guards, but weren’t able to escape before The Wolf himself arrived. The gang trapped The Wolf in the basement and soon afterwards the police arrived, having tracked the GPS in Elmo’s dad’s car. The Wolf died of a major heart attack in the ensuing confrontation. Teen Power Inc. was returned, exonerated, to their families.
Point in canon: Post-canon, perhaps a week after the end of the final book, Dead End. The gang is still recovering from being kidnapped and there are serious talks among their parents over whether the Teen Power Inc. agency should be allowed to continue.
Window Location: Somewhere in the Glen, off the beaten track and in a direction angling toward the direction of Nick’s house.
Universe: An entirely normal version of Earth, circa 1996, with assumedly the same world leaders as in real life. Keep in mind the pre-Internet timing; cell phones, for instance, are still considered expensive enough that they’re limited to the wealthy. The same is said for personal computers—Nick is the only one of the Teen Power group who has a computer, and in one book it was a big thing for him to arrange a computer-gaming stall at the local fair.
Although Windows can come out anywhere on the planet, please note that anyone coming to Nick’s area will be coming to Australia. There’s very little canon indication of which state or city Nick lives in and the Raven Hill suburb is entirely fictional. That said, one book implies that Sydney is within driving distance of Tom’s father and Raven Hill is about a half-day’s bus ride from him, and Raven Hill’s seasons are tropical. Thus the most likely location for Nick’s home city is on the coast of New South Wales.
Assuming the setting is in NSW, school is separated in two—primary school, consisting of kindergarten and years one to six, and highschool, which is years seven to twelve. Currency for coins begins at five-cent pieces, up through ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, and one and two dollars; notes begin at five dollars through tens, twenties, fifties and one hundred dollars. Age of majority and legal drinking age are 18. Age of consent is 16. Legal age for driving begins at 16.
Abilities: Nick has displayed evidence of a near-eidetic memory. In one book he was on a truck driven by kidnappers out into the country; when he later escaped to the police he was able to guide them through a series of dirt back-roads, in the dark and with his eyes closed, towards the location the kidnappers chose as their hiding-place. In other books, he displays the ability to quote conversations, texts or number sequences nearly word-for-word despite having only heard or read them briefly.
In general he’s very intelligent and quick to figure out logic puzzles or follow the thought-process others are following, though he does sometimes fixate on one theory to the exclusion of others. He’s also stated to be at the top of most of his classes, described as a ‘star student’. For the most part his specialty lies in the burgeoning area of technology (of the group, he’s the only one with a cell phone and a personal computer, and he enjoys filming things with his video camera).
He’s also very good at obfuscating the truth and charming the pants of grownups—not to mention eavesdropping. Also, he’s apparently got a near-preternatural ability to remain neat and tidy. And if pure curiosity were considered a special ability, he would have it.
Finally, he’s fluent in Greek … with an Australian accent.
Possessions: Sunglasses, cell phone, wallet, house-keys, video camera, knee-brace.
Personality: Nick is an interesting mix of a developed social image and inner values, and the way in which they mesh without one simply being a mask for the other. He’s superior, aloof, smart-mouthed, charming, conscious of his social image, and has a practical business sense. He’s also intensely curious, analytical, cool-headed, enjoys a bit of excitement, craves independence and is surprisingly loyal to his friends.
Quite frequently the one to put together the metaphorical puzzle pieces, Nick has a habit of holding his knowledge over the heads of others just to prove how good he is. He’s expressed the desire for the others in the gang to believe he can handle himself, which encourages his tendency to maintain his air of knowing. This trait isn’t limited to his friends, however—on one occasion he shows up a particularly frustrating and incompetent teacher by using his deductive skills. In one book Tom admits that he doesn’t like sketching Nick because he can’t tell what Nick is thinking, and in another Nick muses that Tom dislikes people like him and Fox Bevan because they make him feel inferior.
To strangers or near strangers Nick’s aloofness seems even more pronounced. He’s not the kind of person who explicitly extends his hand in friendship unless he can get something out of it in return, whether that something is money or reputation. As a ‘rich kid’ he rarely lacks for anything, which does give him the air of near-laziness in terms of how willing he is to extend himself on behalf of others. Although he does listen to authority, Nick is significantly more respectful to authority figures he trusts, such as teachers he likes or police officers he’s worked with in the past. Those he doesn’t he tends to treat with faint disdain even if he obeys them, and behind their backs he will make smart comments.
Actually, smart comments are to be expected from him about almost anyone—respected authority figures and people with weapons notwithstanding. Nick’s usually sarcastic to various degrees even to the gang; Tom and ‘bleeding-heart’ Liz, especially, bear the brunt of his sometimes cruel remarks. In some ways this is a form of brutal honesty; for instance, Nick doesn’t think much of the Pen and doesn’t hide that fact, and indeed teases Elmo about it regularly. That said, quite often Nick’s remarks, while truthful, aren’t much more than posturing; Nick may not like the Pen, but that doesn’t stop him from caring about Elmo.
As far as his social image goes, Nick always makes sure he looks neat and wears very nice clothes; even Richelle, the fashion queen, is sometimes envious at how he manages to stay near despite various circumstances. Nick’s also allergic to embarrassing situations, and tends to pretend not to know others of the gang (especially Tom) or is explicitly disdainful of them when they’re being fools in public. When Fox Bevan arrives at school and is instantly popular, Nick dislikes him on sight, perhaps viewing him as competition (despite his assertions to the contrary).
In terms of his Greek heritage with regard to his social image, Nick seemed to simultaneously care about it while pretending not to or ignoring it as an important facet of himself in order to compete with other, ‘more Australian’ people. On one occasion, when his father uses his full name and wants to Talk, Nick lists ‘we need to speak Greek at home more’ as a possible subject to be concerned about having to face. When the gang is individually assigned to older people to help them around their homes, he complains that the Greek grandmother to whom he’s been assigned will spend all her time correcting his grammar and lecturing him on his Australian accent. At yet another time he is outright ignored by a wealthy resident of Raven Hill, who goes on to gush over the rest of the gang’s parents and grandparents; at the time Nick hides his bitterness over the fact, but later reveals traces of it in conversation.
For Nick, reputation is at least partly tied to business and putting himself—and the gang—out there as trustworthy and reliable people. When Teen Power forgets to ring back about a leaflet job for a cinema due to filming in the chocolate-bar ad, Nick pays the cinema owner a visit and—by namedropping the actress they’re working with—manages to charm the man out of his irritation and back onto the ‘possible employer’ list. This is a decently common thing; thanks to his awareness of his image, Nick manages to present himself as reasonable, charming and older than he is, and adults often like him if he puts effort into making them. He’s forever complaining that their rates are too low and that, as a group, Teen Power needs to be more business-like, though after the debacle with the Work Demons he eases off a bit on that score.
All those traits, while accurate, are ones that Nick deliberately perpetuates. The following core ones arise unaffected by or in spite of his social image, sometimes to the surprise of his friends; they consistently comment in narration when Nick is hurt by their comments, shows overt support for them and is less ruthless or more reliable on a job than they expect him to be. Despite the fact that few people are aware of where his values lie, Nick doesn’t seem to deliberately obfuscate said values. Indeed, sometimes he seems unaware of exactly how the gang perceives him, particularly with regard to his affection for them.
Nick’s most obvious trait not related to his social image would be his curiosity. When it comes to dragging the gang into trouble, regardless of who is narrating, it is nearly always Nick’s curiosity which keeps the gang involved with the mystery at one stage or another—either because he wants to eavesdrop, or follow that secret passage to the end, or wants to know whose voice they heard or what’s up with this or that person. He simply likes knowing things to an extent which goes beyond the level of gossip. In fact, despite the danger he’s been put in over the course of the series he seems just as eager to continue the gang’s activities—and has to a certain extent gotten used to being in such situations.
This, of course, is helped greatly by the fact that he doesn’t just want to know, but also to figure things out. He enjoys the excitement of solving the puzzle and the satisfaction of doing so, not simply the superiority of having knowledge over someone else. Being able to work things through like they’re a puzzle also helps him keep his head when the gang is in danger. There are several occasions—such as when he, Liz and Richelle are locked in the well—in which, after the initial terror, he manages to respond with calm logic. In the final book he even displays a streak of ruthlessness while using his doppelganger as bait to lure in some guards so he and his friends can escape, a legacy of all he’s been through; he knows the stakes and knew what might be necessary without lowering himself to The Wolf’s level.
All this is also related to his liking for excitement. Of all the gang, Nick is possibly the one who is least regretful of the trouble in which they find themselves. He outright states that the allure of the Teen Power gang is because they get themselves into ‘interesting situations’ and get to ‘meet interesting people’. He resists his father’s attempts to get him to work for the family business because he enjoys having the independence of money he’s earned himself, from employers he’s found himself. Essentially, Nick has a desire to experience things which leads him to not regret most of the trouble they’ve found themselves in—and even seek it out despite prior experience telling him he should be more prudent.
Nick’s most hidden trait, and also possibly the one which drives him the most other than his desire to experience, is the fact that he genuinely cares about his people. He admits that while he might withhold or bend the truth to his parents, he respects them too much to lie outright. He also rarely seems to lie to the gang, even though there are times when he withholds the truth. He takes his mother’s, well, mothering in stride, and in fact doesn’t seem afraid of showing her affection. Similarly, although he and his father have their sources of contention, Nick doesn’t hold any resentment for him.
As for the Teen Power gang, well. When faced with the prospect of having to leave Teen Power, Nick was aghast and didn’t even consider not trying to talk his father out of making him quit. Although they all annoy him to various degrees, he acknowledged that the Teen Power members have a bond and he wants to keep it—not just as the people he hangs out with in-between school and work, but as people he can spend his life being best friends with. During one particularly humiliating job playing mermaids for a music clip, Nick initially refused to work beyond the prerequisite day before turning up on subsequent days anyway, simply because it felt wrong not to be there with the others. In the final book, when Nick believed the rest of the gang had run away and he alone had been kidnapped, he felt relieved they were safe despite the betrayal he had previously felt when he thought they’d simply left him. Basically, if it came down to ‘bail a friend out of jail or be in jail with a friend’, he’d rather they all be in jail together … even while he complains about what got them put in there and whose fault it is.
Thread Sample: Actionspam: Nick gets spelled.
Prose Sample: Nick couldn’t have said when, exactly, he dropped off to sleep. It was hard to tell in the darkness of the police van, and after Zim’s news about The Wolf’s death it felt as if all the energy had drained out of the space. None of them spoke. There was just darkness, the sound of wheels on the road, breathing and the sway of limbs occasionally flickered with some kind of light through the windows in the doors
It was kind of comforting, in a strange sort of way. After having been so alone, having everyone together and on the same level felt good.
So Nick fell asleep, and probably wasn’t the only one. He didn’t dream. It was only when there was a sharp jolt in which he felt like he was falling that he started to wake up again. Someone stirred beside him, and a weight leaning against his side moved away. There were voices, but he couldn’t quite register the words.
His head hurt and he felt sick.
“Nick?” someone whispered. Nick thought it might’ve been Liz.
“I’m awake,” he mumbled, and tried to pry his eyes open, but at that moment someone flung open the doors at the back of the van and he hissed, lifting a hand to block the sudden light.
“Dad? Where are we?” he heard Elmo ask, and then the shuffle as the rest of the gang started moving out of the back.
“The hospital,” was Zim’s answer, heard through the throb in Nick’s head. The teen leaned down and breathed deeply, trying to keep his stomach where it should be. “We’ve got to get all of you checked out.”
“Food,” Tom moaned. “Even hospital food is manna from heaven after bread and water. Let me at it.”
“What about our parents?” Richelle asked in a small, tired voice.
“They’ll be here,” Zim assured her kindly. “I called them in the van. We just came in by the ambulance entrance; it was the only one that had room. Come on, everyone.”
“Zim, I think something’s really wrong with Nick,” Liz said from right over Nick’s head, and her voice was smaller than even Richelle’s. He realised dimly that the weights he could feel on his shoulders must be her hands. But then what was that moving over his head?
“He’s got blood in his hair,” Sunny said a moment later, and the second set of weights lifted. Oh. That’s what it was. “They must have hit him over the head.”
“They hit all of us over the head,” Tom grumbled, and Nick would have really liked to respond, but thought it would be a better idea to keep his mouth shut in case it made him actually be sick instead of just feeling it.
“Not me,” Richelle said; Nick imagined her tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“Well, they hit me over the head—”
“Excuse me, son.” For a moment the unfamiliar voice confused Nick, but then he heard someone coming into the van’s back and realised it must be a paramedic. In the distance there were other voices, the sound of bustling and wheels on concrete. “Give us some room, there, luvs—that’s it. Were either of you knocked over the head, then?”
It took Nick a moment to realise the man was talking to Liz and Sunny, and then he was more focussed on the hands, larger than either of the girls’, trying to make him sit up. He resisted with a slight groan.
“Not me,” Liz said, her voice a bit teary but controlled for all that.
“I was,” Sunny said, and although her tone was calm there was an undercurrent of tension. “I was unconscious for a while, in the car, but there wasn’t anywhere to go after we were locked in the basement. Tom and I took turns sleeping and waking each other up to make sure we were okay. That was a few days ago, and Tom was there by himself for a while before that.”
“Okay, we’ll have to get you both checked out for that. What about you, son? You were knocked out?”
Nick took as deep a breath as he could manage and obeyed the hands trying to push him back. He kept his eyes shut, but still felt the blood drain from his face and the world turn around him. “Yes,” he said, pleased to hear that his voice sounded almost as calm as Sunny’s. “Tonight. A few hours ago. My head hurt afterward but I was too busy to notice.”
“Yeah? Busy doing what?” He felt fingers on his face and the back of his head, and the teen let out an involuntary cry of pain at the sudden intense ache when the paramedic found the knot on the back of his head. Someone gripped one of his hands—Liz, probably, he thought a bit dizzily as he caught his breath.
“Escaping,” he said after a moment, then realised he was gripping Liz’s hand as tightly as she had his and released it. “I had to get the others out of the basement and then we made sure the crims who had us couldn’t follow until the police came.”
The hands left his head and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, son. Any other injuries?”
“He was limping when he found us,” Liz volunteered for him, and that reminded Nick of his leg. He’d stopped noticing that, too, once the adrenaline had kicked in. Automatically the teen shifted, then bit back a hiss at the second, equally intense ache in his thigh and around his knee.
“Hurt my leg,” he muttered. He probably shouldn’t mention that that was Zim’s fault. It was just a misunderstanding, anyway, and it’d be embarrassing for the others to know Zim had startled him so much.
“Alright. Feel up to moving now?”
Nick took stock of himself, peeling his eyes open and wincing at the light, and then carefully nodded. The paramedic, a lanky man with a buzz-cut, was in front of him. Liz’s worried face swam into view beside him; she smiled at Nick, wanly but encouragingly. Over their shoulders Sunny was standing back near the doors, and as soon as she saw Nick was looking she nodded to him and turned to clamber out of the van, where she was met by a nurse.
Behind her Nick saw Elmo sitting on a stretcher with Zim’s arm tight over his shoulder, his freckles standing out on his pale face. Richelle was sitting next to him, a bit closer than she would have under any other circumstance, and from the movement of her mouth and the way she was pointing at her wrists and elbows she was cataloguing her injuries for the nurse in front of her. Tom was just in view, lying blissfully on a stretcher with his eyes closed, one arm outstretched so another nurse could check his vitals. In the stark brightness of the hospital lights he looked gaunt and black-eyed; Tom had been imprisoned for the longest, after all.
But they were safe. They were all safe. Before, they had still been high on adrenaline, and now they were too exhausted to worry. Afterward they might start getting scared again.
Not now, though. For the moment, everything was pretty okay, despite their aches and pains.
“Come on, son.” Liz scrambled out of ahead of them and Nick submitted to the paramedic’s help, leaning on the man as they moved for the van’s doors.
Plans: No definite plans, but some general ones! Nick’s used to solving local mysteries, but any ‘supernatural’ happenings in his canon have always been explained away by logic, so I’d love for him to have the chance to see and accept the things that are really out there. He’s hard-working as long as the pay-off is good or he feels responsible, so I’d also like to see him doing some jobs. Also, the tech. He will love catching up on all the technology.
Notes: Can the Window to Nick’s world be lost for a couple of weeks to a month, please? Given that he was so recently kidnapped, when he gets back home his mum is going to go spare and I’d like him to have enough weight behind his other-world experiences to want to leave home despite his mother’s worry.
Also, I’d like to add a disclaimer for Nick’s history. The final half-dozen books of the series are crazy hard to find and I’m missing a few of them. None of them are books that Nick narrates, but they might still possess details that I just can’t get (eg, Nick has a minor phobia of rats which only came to light in a book narrated by someone else). If I do happen to get them later, I’ll incorporate them as best as I can.
DÆMON
Name: Toula. Because it’s his mother’s name, and he’s a mama’s boy.
Sex: Female
Form: Nick’s daemon has a propensity for the shape of a dhole, but still rarely shifts into a golden or black-backed jackal or a wedge-tailed eagle.
Additional notes: Although Nick is a very mature teen and has been through a lot, I felt that his daemon wasn’t quite ready to settle due to his identity as revolving around the Teen Power group. The final paragraphs of the final book, narrated by Nick himself, state his belief that they will be best friends their whole lives. In contrast, when he speaks of his own future as a businessman, there is a definite ‘maybe’ attached, indicating that he doesn’t know who he is outside of the group. Similarly, there is his social image and the fact he continues to perpetuate it to a degree which makes even his own friends misjudge him—and particularly the fact that he seems unaware that they misjudge him in such a fashion.
The only thing certain about Nick’s identity is his place in Teen Power Inc. Who he is as an individual is still undetermined despite his inclinations. Given that he does express a definite desire to be independent, the difference between his identity as part of the group and as an individual is a minor but important conflict I thought should be resolved before Toula settles.
It’s entirely likely Toula’s form will end up settling during the course of the game, in which case I will be asking for permission to do so beforehand and will want to make it a logged event.
Why this form: In canon Nick is perceived as being aloof from others, but the books narrated from his perspective always display his appreciation for his friends—which is usually hidden. So I thought that Nick’s daemon would be a pack- or herd-orientated animal to show what people don’t normally see. Because of Nick’s propensity to pursue business opportunities and mysteries aggressively, a predator or scavenger suited him better than a grazer.
I chose dholes because their pack hierarchy isn’t as dominance-related as most wild canines, which reflects Nick’s relationship to the Teen Power Inc. gang; they share their responsibilities and hardships equally, pooling their individual abilities to great effect. At the same time, dholes are intelligent and cunning, using generations of learned hunting techniques rather than instinctive ones. Dholes are canines, which in HDM lore would make Nick a servant of some kind and would fit somewhat with the fact that he tends to help people, whether he wants to or not, or that he tends to submit to preserving his social image just a little too much. At the same time, dholes are entirely wild; unlike most wild canines, they can’t even be domesticated. That cancels out the implications of subservience and fits Nick’s propensity towards superiority and independence.
As for Toula’s alternate forms, they are essentially the kind of person Nick may still become. Jackals are more representative of cunning and have more hostile and dominance-governed interpack relationships than dholes. Nuances between the golden and the black-backed jackals aside, this form would represent a slide in values away from the Teen Power group and towards self-sufficient intelligence, while still valuing interpersonal relationships highly. Wedge-tailed eagles symbolise soaring ambition while maintaining the willingness to work in packs, as they are among the few raptors of such size which do; however, they only do so at great need when hunting. This form would indicate Nick’s choice to let go of his friendships and place his ambitions ahead of even them. It is less likely than the jackal, but still possible given he may be separated from the group for long periods.
Name: Pur
Are you 18 or over?: Yep!
Other characters played: None.
CHARACTER
Name: Nicholas ‘Nick’ Kontellis
Canon: Teen Power Inc.
Age: No canon age is known, but he’s younger than 16 because that’s the Aussie age for legal driving and no mention is made of his preparing to learn. Since I’ll be taking him from later in the canon, I’m saying he’s 15 verging on 16, which would put him at grades ten or eleven.
History: NOTE: There are thirty books in the series, but I’m only detailing books which Nick narrates and events which explicitly affect Nick in some way, rather than fully summarising every book.
Nick is a normal high-school student from the suburb of Raven Hill. His family is Greek—his parents, Demetrios and Toula, and his father’s best friend all emigrated from overseas. His childhood was an ordinary one. In primary school he became friends with a rather odd group of kids; odd because they weren’t the kind of kids you’d expect to be friends. Their names were Liz Free, Tom Moysten, Sunny Chan and Richelle Brinkley. There was an area of unfettered bush next to Raven Hill’s park, called the Glen, where the gang played. When they reached highschool, they still went there to talk.
One day, when they were all broke, Liz got the idea to create a part-time job agency for the group to earn a little more money. They called themselves Teen Power Inc. Their first job was delivering papers for the local paper in which they advertised, the Pen, which was owned by the father of a classmate, Elmo Zimmer. The Pen was having troubles at the time—a new paper, the Star, had been using underhanded tactics to try and drive the Pen out of business.
As it turned out Shiela Star, the owner of the Star, was being used by a man named Terry Bigge, who owned the Glen and intended to build on it. Except his ownership was a lie—the will leaving the Glen to him had been superseded by a second will secretly held by Elmo’s grandfather, which stated that the Glen should be left as-is and belonged to the people of Raven Hill. Elmo’s grandfather had died when the Pen’s office was broken into, but thanks to Teen Power Inc the new will was discovered in time to prevent the Pen from going bankrupt under Terry’s pressure.
The original Teen Power gang of five asked Elmo to join them, and after that Nick’s life—all of their lives—started to get considerably more interesting. Though many of their jobs were mundane (dog-walking, clipping hedges, painting walls and the like) some of them wound up wrapped in mystery just like the first. They also gained a rival gang, the Work Demons, who were far less talented and conscientious, but charged less and had a habit of using underhanded tactics to keep Teen Power out of the picture. One job was as extras for a chocolate-bar ad, where they were involved in the kidnapping of the main actress; Nick and Richelle were inadvertently present at the time and were able to lead the police on to the culprits, Nick by using his remarkable memory and his video camera. In another, the gang were locked in a basement to die by a man so abused by his father and employers that he was unstable.
Yet another job involved dressing up in giant rabbit suits to hand out leaflets and advertise for the local sweetshop in the mall. There was someone hanging around the mall—The Wolf, a big-time crim whose crimes were known but never proven. The police knew he was passing things through an underground laundering ring, yet didn’t know how. But the Teen Power gang knew the mall, worked the mall, and put the pieces together: The Wolf was using the sweetshop. Sunny managed to stop the owner, Ms Sweet, before she could fake her own death and kill the rest of the gang in a fire. Ms Sweet, and The Wolf, went to jail.
Teen Power’s next big job was for Mr Terzis, Demetrios’s best friend and a wealthy jeweller. Just before a vacation Terzis and his wife planned to take, a sheik’s ransom in uncut emeralds were apparently stolen from his house. Nick and the gang, cleaning the house while the Terzis’ were on holiday, figured out that the thief had lost the emeralds before he left the house due to Mr Terzis’s fighting back. But the thief had snuck back in and was living there, trying to find the emeralds himself. While conducting their own search the gang tricked the thief into running into the police, and Nick figured out that the thief’s mother—the florist from whom Mr Terzis bought flowers for his wife every week—had masterminded the plan. Both thief and mother were arrested while Nick, with his knowledge of the house, found the emeralds in the fishtank.
The gang grew accustomed to some manner of getting into trouble. A horror author, wanting help to type up his new book, used them (without their knowing) as a publicity stunt for the novel and in the process enabled them to solve a fifty-year-old murder. A visit to paint Tom’s dad’s studio had them running up against drug-smugglers in a confrontation which almost killed Tom. They caught a local thief thanks to a job involving a guard dog on death row. Poison pen letters going around the suburb were being blamed on the Pen until the gang discovered the true culprit—and saved her life from a killer she had unknowingly threatened. While working temporarily at a hotel, the gang discovered a man being held, kidnapped, by one of the patrons.
While working to prepare for the renewal of a local fair, a task which seemed doomed once it became clear there wasn’t enough interest, Nick and the gang were caught up in trying to find a missing parrot, Percy. It was only when they found Percy that they discovered his owner, Mary, was the sister of a famous local artist, Selwyn. In exchange for a reward for Percy’s return, Nick got Mary to agree to show Selwyn’s last painting—a novelty which would draw in crowds from all over the city and revitalise the fair. But when the gang came to pick up the painting they discovered it had been replaced by a forgery; Percy’s kidnapping had been intended to distract Mary from discovering the switch. But the thieves were tricked—Mary, an artist herself, had ‘forged’ all her brother’s paintings and kept the originals in a secret room. Nick convinced her to loan the fair the original painting in order to draw out the thief; true to his suspicion, the thief came to see the painting in person and was caught.
A hiking trip in the bush for the school left the Teen Power gang alone to find help when their classmates wound up sick, and the gang accidentally unearthed a pair of poachers working in the reserve. A promotional event by a local toystore to cash in plastic ravens turned out to be a front to find two dozen lost ravens with black pearls hidden inside them. While cleaning a house for two elderly ladies, the gang discovered that the medical centre next door had been trying to drive the ladies off the property so they could use the house as a way-point for illegal activities. Though not the first time the gang had faced a gun, on this occasion Nick was held hostage to ensure the rest of the gang’s cooperation.
Then disaster struck for him. His father Demetrios, always dubious about Nick’s participation in the Teen Power Inc. gang, insisted that he leave the group to work part-time for him instead, so he could learn the family business while earning the money he wanted. Nick convinced Demetrios to wait for just one more job so he didn’t let the gang down, hoping to have time to figure out how to talk his dad into letting him continue. But Nick’s ‘last job’ turned out to be a joke, testing an invention for an inventor always one step behind success—Claude Craze. Thanks to the timing of a series of sabotages, Nick figured out that Claude’s assistant Eric was an extremely successful inventor called Oscar Seely, pretending to be a disadvantaged assistant so he could steal Claude’s secrets. As it happened, Oscar worked closely with Demetrios’s export business to have his inventions made; he sabotaged Claude’s inventions so Teen Power would take the blame, be fired and thus remove the risk of Nick recognising him. With the truth out, Oscar was charged, Claude finally recognised as the genius he was and Demetrios, seeing what the Teen Power jobs were teaching Nick, agreed to let him continue as a member of the gang.
Teen Power’s next major job was for a fashion shop; the shop’s proprietor was an expert conman who tricked people into paying for clothes orders without delivering. After that, Raven Hill was struck by a series of bomb attacks performed by a businessman who wanted to collect the insurance on his shop and tried to hide the evidence by bombing multiple targets. A destitute woman the gang found turned out to be trying to weasel her way into a rich lady’s will by posing as the woman’s long-lost granddaughter. Tom’s attempt to enter an art show got the gang into trouble with a big-time thief who’d faked his own death—and was then photographed by Tom by accident. The gang was hired to act in a pantomime of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ for the reopening of the Raven Hill Playhouse and in the process discovered the owner of the theatre in the next suburb was the arsonist who burned down the Playhouse a year before—killing one of the owners. When Elmo’s great-aunt hired the gang to clean her mansion in the country, they discovered that she was being held hostage by a couple of crims who tried to kill Nick, Liz and Richelle by sealing them inside a well. And when hired to pick apples in a country town, the gang solved a series of thefts as well as discovering who was responsible for perpetuating an unending feud between two professional gardeners.
Soon after that the gang began having major problems with the Work Demons—worse problems than usual, that is. Their usual leader, Bradley Henshaw, had moved away, but a new kid at school, Fox Bevan came in. When Nick and Tom objected to Fox’s joining Teen Power due to their ‘six is enough’ rule, Fox turned nasty. He took over the Work Demons, turning them into an efficient workforce, and set the Teen Power gang to internal warring using rumours and foul play to make them appear unreliable to employers. For a while, it seemed like Teen Power Inc. was finished. Then Nick realised Fox’s gameplan; he forced the gang together for a heart-to-heart which cleared the air and put them all back on proper footing. They turned to plotting against Fox and the Work Demons instead, and realised that Fox was scamming the other Demons by taking a larger cut. They also discovered that the Demons were unknowingly working for a local thief who used the cars checked in at his car-wash to perform burglaries—and the Work Demons’ gossip to know which houses to target, including Nick’s. Fortunately for the gang, Fox’s family moved away soon after the case was solved … but Bradley Henshaw’s came back.
The next major happening involved the Raven Hill library, when a trickster called the Phantom turned apparently nasty—to the point of trying to burn down the library—because of a rivalry between staff. After that the gang found themselves on a hunt all over Raven Hill to find a bushranger’s treasure for an old man near his time. Then the gang was hired for a music video turned disastrous and led them onto a scheme blackmailing celebrities. When one of Sunny’s sisters got married soon after, the gang was hired to help with the wedding; but they had become so accustomed to seeing crime and mystery everywhere that a chance overheard conversation convinced them that Sunny’s future brother-in-law was intending to murder the family. (They were wrong.)
But it had been a while since the Teen Power Inc. agency had begun. It had been a while since they gained a reputation as teenage crime-fighters. And they had made enemies. When minor crimes like vandalism began happening around Raven Hill, all witnesses insisted that members of the Teen Power gang were responsible. Despite their protestations of innocence, there were so many witnesses that even their families and Constable Greta Vortek, the policewoman who had worked with them most closely, began to believe the gang had turned to crime.
And then members of the gang began to disappear, with witnesses claiming to have seen them on buses and trains. In no time at all, Nick was the only one left. Worried and afraid, Nick realised that there was a major motive someone might be targeting them—revenge. The most likely suspect was The Wolf, the crim whose reputation was so fierce that his operatives preferred to fake their own deaths than be seen to fail and be murdered for their failure for real. That night, Nick was kidnapped by The Wolf’s goons—in Elmo’s father’s new car. They took him to a hotel in the middle of nowhere where he managed to escape and discovered that the teens the witnesses had been seeing were imposters. He found the rest of the gang and set them free. They used their doppelgangers as decoys to distract the guards, but weren’t able to escape before The Wolf himself arrived. The gang trapped The Wolf in the basement and soon afterwards the police arrived, having tracked the GPS in Elmo’s dad’s car. The Wolf died of a major heart attack in the ensuing confrontation. Teen Power Inc. was returned, exonerated, to their families.
Point in canon: Post-canon, perhaps a week after the end of the final book, Dead End. The gang is still recovering from being kidnapped and there are serious talks among their parents over whether the Teen Power Inc. agency should be allowed to continue.
Window Location: Somewhere in the Glen, off the beaten track and in a direction angling toward the direction of Nick’s house.
Universe: An entirely normal version of Earth, circa 1996, with assumedly the same world leaders as in real life. Keep in mind the pre-Internet timing; cell phones, for instance, are still considered expensive enough that they’re limited to the wealthy. The same is said for personal computers—Nick is the only one of the Teen Power group who has a computer, and in one book it was a big thing for him to arrange a computer-gaming stall at the local fair.
Although Windows can come out anywhere on the planet, please note that anyone coming to Nick’s area will be coming to Australia. There’s very little canon indication of which state or city Nick lives in and the Raven Hill suburb is entirely fictional. That said, one book implies that Sydney is within driving distance of Tom’s father and Raven Hill is about a half-day’s bus ride from him, and Raven Hill’s seasons are tropical. Thus the most likely location for Nick’s home city is on the coast of New South Wales.
Assuming the setting is in NSW, school is separated in two—primary school, consisting of kindergarten and years one to six, and highschool, which is years seven to twelve. Currency for coins begins at five-cent pieces, up through ten-cent, twenty-cent, fifty-cent, and one and two dollars; notes begin at five dollars through tens, twenties, fifties and one hundred dollars. Age of majority and legal drinking age are 18. Age of consent is 16. Legal age for driving begins at 16.
Abilities: Nick has displayed evidence of a near-eidetic memory. In one book he was on a truck driven by kidnappers out into the country; when he later escaped to the police he was able to guide them through a series of dirt back-roads, in the dark and with his eyes closed, towards the location the kidnappers chose as their hiding-place. In other books, he displays the ability to quote conversations, texts or number sequences nearly word-for-word despite having only heard or read them briefly.
In general he’s very intelligent and quick to figure out logic puzzles or follow the thought-process others are following, though he does sometimes fixate on one theory to the exclusion of others. He’s also stated to be at the top of most of his classes, described as a ‘star student’. For the most part his specialty lies in the burgeoning area of technology (of the group, he’s the only one with a cell phone and a personal computer, and he enjoys filming things with his video camera).
He’s also very good at obfuscating the truth and charming the pants of grownups—not to mention eavesdropping. Also, he’s apparently got a near-preternatural ability to remain neat and tidy. And if pure curiosity were considered a special ability, he would have it.
Finally, he’s fluent in Greek … with an Australian accent.
Possessions: Sunglasses, cell phone, wallet, house-keys, video camera, knee-brace.
Personality: Nick is an interesting mix of a developed social image and inner values, and the way in which they mesh without one simply being a mask for the other. He’s superior, aloof, smart-mouthed, charming, conscious of his social image, and has a practical business sense. He’s also intensely curious, analytical, cool-headed, enjoys a bit of excitement, craves independence and is surprisingly loyal to his friends.
Quite frequently the one to put together the metaphorical puzzle pieces, Nick has a habit of holding his knowledge over the heads of others just to prove how good he is. He’s expressed the desire for the others in the gang to believe he can handle himself, which encourages his tendency to maintain his air of knowing. This trait isn’t limited to his friends, however—on one occasion he shows up a particularly frustrating and incompetent teacher by using his deductive skills. In one book Tom admits that he doesn’t like sketching Nick because he can’t tell what Nick is thinking, and in another Nick muses that Tom dislikes people like him and Fox Bevan because they make him feel inferior.
To strangers or near strangers Nick’s aloofness seems even more pronounced. He’s not the kind of person who explicitly extends his hand in friendship unless he can get something out of it in return, whether that something is money or reputation. As a ‘rich kid’ he rarely lacks for anything, which does give him the air of near-laziness in terms of how willing he is to extend himself on behalf of others. Although he does listen to authority, Nick is significantly more respectful to authority figures he trusts, such as teachers he likes or police officers he’s worked with in the past. Those he doesn’t he tends to treat with faint disdain even if he obeys them, and behind their backs he will make smart comments.
Actually, smart comments are to be expected from him about almost anyone—respected authority figures and people with weapons notwithstanding. Nick’s usually sarcastic to various degrees even to the gang; Tom and ‘bleeding-heart’ Liz, especially, bear the brunt of his sometimes cruel remarks. In some ways this is a form of brutal honesty; for instance, Nick doesn’t think much of the Pen and doesn’t hide that fact, and indeed teases Elmo about it regularly. That said, quite often Nick’s remarks, while truthful, aren’t much more than posturing; Nick may not like the Pen, but that doesn’t stop him from caring about Elmo.
As far as his social image goes, Nick always makes sure he looks neat and wears very nice clothes; even Richelle, the fashion queen, is sometimes envious at how he manages to stay near despite various circumstances. Nick’s also allergic to embarrassing situations, and tends to pretend not to know others of the gang (especially Tom) or is explicitly disdainful of them when they’re being fools in public. When Fox Bevan arrives at school and is instantly popular, Nick dislikes him on sight, perhaps viewing him as competition (despite his assertions to the contrary).
In terms of his Greek heritage with regard to his social image, Nick seemed to simultaneously care about it while pretending not to or ignoring it as an important facet of himself in order to compete with other, ‘more Australian’ people. On one occasion, when his father uses his full name and wants to Talk, Nick lists ‘we need to speak Greek at home more’ as a possible subject to be concerned about having to face. When the gang is individually assigned to older people to help them around their homes, he complains that the Greek grandmother to whom he’s been assigned will spend all her time correcting his grammar and lecturing him on his Australian accent. At yet another time he is outright ignored by a wealthy resident of Raven Hill, who goes on to gush over the rest of the gang’s parents and grandparents; at the time Nick hides his bitterness over the fact, but later reveals traces of it in conversation.
For Nick, reputation is at least partly tied to business and putting himself—and the gang—out there as trustworthy and reliable people. When Teen Power forgets to ring back about a leaflet job for a cinema due to filming in the chocolate-bar ad, Nick pays the cinema owner a visit and—by namedropping the actress they’re working with—manages to charm the man out of his irritation and back onto the ‘possible employer’ list. This is a decently common thing; thanks to his awareness of his image, Nick manages to present himself as reasonable, charming and older than he is, and adults often like him if he puts effort into making them. He’s forever complaining that their rates are too low and that, as a group, Teen Power needs to be more business-like, though after the debacle with the Work Demons he eases off a bit on that score.
All those traits, while accurate, are ones that Nick deliberately perpetuates. The following core ones arise unaffected by or in spite of his social image, sometimes to the surprise of his friends; they consistently comment in narration when Nick is hurt by their comments, shows overt support for them and is less ruthless or more reliable on a job than they expect him to be. Despite the fact that few people are aware of where his values lie, Nick doesn’t seem to deliberately obfuscate said values. Indeed, sometimes he seems unaware of exactly how the gang perceives him, particularly with regard to his affection for them.
Nick’s most obvious trait not related to his social image would be his curiosity. When it comes to dragging the gang into trouble, regardless of who is narrating, it is nearly always Nick’s curiosity which keeps the gang involved with the mystery at one stage or another—either because he wants to eavesdrop, or follow that secret passage to the end, or wants to know whose voice they heard or what’s up with this or that person. He simply likes knowing things to an extent which goes beyond the level of gossip. In fact, despite the danger he’s been put in over the course of the series he seems just as eager to continue the gang’s activities—and has to a certain extent gotten used to being in such situations.
This, of course, is helped greatly by the fact that he doesn’t just want to know, but also to figure things out. He enjoys the excitement of solving the puzzle and the satisfaction of doing so, not simply the superiority of having knowledge over someone else. Being able to work things through like they’re a puzzle also helps him keep his head when the gang is in danger. There are several occasions—such as when he, Liz and Richelle are locked in the well—in which, after the initial terror, he manages to respond with calm logic. In the final book he even displays a streak of ruthlessness while using his doppelganger as bait to lure in some guards so he and his friends can escape, a legacy of all he’s been through; he knows the stakes and knew what might be necessary without lowering himself to The Wolf’s level.
All this is also related to his liking for excitement. Of all the gang, Nick is possibly the one who is least regretful of the trouble in which they find themselves. He outright states that the allure of the Teen Power gang is because they get themselves into ‘interesting situations’ and get to ‘meet interesting people’. He resists his father’s attempts to get him to work for the family business because he enjoys having the independence of money he’s earned himself, from employers he’s found himself. Essentially, Nick has a desire to experience things which leads him to not regret most of the trouble they’ve found themselves in—and even seek it out despite prior experience telling him he should be more prudent.
Nick’s most hidden trait, and also possibly the one which drives him the most other than his desire to experience, is the fact that he genuinely cares about his people. He admits that while he might withhold or bend the truth to his parents, he respects them too much to lie outright. He also rarely seems to lie to the gang, even though there are times when he withholds the truth. He takes his mother’s, well, mothering in stride, and in fact doesn’t seem afraid of showing her affection. Similarly, although he and his father have their sources of contention, Nick doesn’t hold any resentment for him.
As for the Teen Power gang, well. When faced with the prospect of having to leave Teen Power, Nick was aghast and didn’t even consider not trying to talk his father out of making him quit. Although they all annoy him to various degrees, he acknowledged that the Teen Power members have a bond and he wants to keep it—not just as the people he hangs out with in-between school and work, but as people he can spend his life being best friends with. During one particularly humiliating job playing mermaids for a music clip, Nick initially refused to work beyond the prerequisite day before turning up on subsequent days anyway, simply because it felt wrong not to be there with the others. In the final book, when Nick believed the rest of the gang had run away and he alone had been kidnapped, he felt relieved they were safe despite the betrayal he had previously felt when he thought they’d simply left him. Basically, if it came down to ‘bail a friend out of jail or be in jail with a friend’, he’d rather they all be in jail together … even while he complains about what got them put in there and whose fault it is.
Thread Sample: Actionspam: Nick gets spelled.
Prose Sample: Nick couldn’t have said when, exactly, he dropped off to sleep. It was hard to tell in the darkness of the police van, and after Zim’s news about The Wolf’s death it felt as if all the energy had drained out of the space. None of them spoke. There was just darkness, the sound of wheels on the road, breathing and the sway of limbs occasionally flickered with some kind of light through the windows in the doors
It was kind of comforting, in a strange sort of way. After having been so alone, having everyone together and on the same level felt good.
So Nick fell asleep, and probably wasn’t the only one. He didn’t dream. It was only when there was a sharp jolt in which he felt like he was falling that he started to wake up again. Someone stirred beside him, and a weight leaning against his side moved away. There were voices, but he couldn’t quite register the words.
His head hurt and he felt sick.
“Nick?” someone whispered. Nick thought it might’ve been Liz.
“I’m awake,” he mumbled, and tried to pry his eyes open, but at that moment someone flung open the doors at the back of the van and he hissed, lifting a hand to block the sudden light.
“Dad? Where are we?” he heard Elmo ask, and then the shuffle as the rest of the gang started moving out of the back.
“The hospital,” was Zim’s answer, heard through the throb in Nick’s head. The teen leaned down and breathed deeply, trying to keep his stomach where it should be. “We’ve got to get all of you checked out.”
“Food,” Tom moaned. “Even hospital food is manna from heaven after bread and water. Let me at it.”
“What about our parents?” Richelle asked in a small, tired voice.
“They’ll be here,” Zim assured her kindly. “I called them in the van. We just came in by the ambulance entrance; it was the only one that had room. Come on, everyone.”
“Zim, I think something’s really wrong with Nick,” Liz said from right over Nick’s head, and her voice was smaller than even Richelle’s. He realised dimly that the weights he could feel on his shoulders must be her hands. But then what was that moving over his head?
“He’s got blood in his hair,” Sunny said a moment later, and the second set of weights lifted. Oh. That’s what it was. “They must have hit him over the head.”
“They hit all of us over the head,” Tom grumbled, and Nick would have really liked to respond, but thought it would be a better idea to keep his mouth shut in case it made him actually be sick instead of just feeling it.
“Not me,” Richelle said; Nick imagined her tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“Well, they hit me over the head—”
“Excuse me, son.” For a moment the unfamiliar voice confused Nick, but then he heard someone coming into the van’s back and realised it must be a paramedic. In the distance there were other voices, the sound of bustling and wheels on concrete. “Give us some room, there, luvs—that’s it. Were either of you knocked over the head, then?”
It took Nick a moment to realise the man was talking to Liz and Sunny, and then he was more focussed on the hands, larger than either of the girls’, trying to make him sit up. He resisted with a slight groan.
“Not me,” Liz said, her voice a bit teary but controlled for all that.
“I was,” Sunny said, and although her tone was calm there was an undercurrent of tension. “I was unconscious for a while, in the car, but there wasn’t anywhere to go after we were locked in the basement. Tom and I took turns sleeping and waking each other up to make sure we were okay. That was a few days ago, and Tom was there by himself for a while before that.”
“Okay, we’ll have to get you both checked out for that. What about you, son? You were knocked out?”
Nick took as deep a breath as he could manage and obeyed the hands trying to push him back. He kept his eyes shut, but still felt the blood drain from his face and the world turn around him. “Yes,” he said, pleased to hear that his voice sounded almost as calm as Sunny’s. “Tonight. A few hours ago. My head hurt afterward but I was too busy to notice.”
“Yeah? Busy doing what?” He felt fingers on his face and the back of his head, and the teen let out an involuntary cry of pain at the sudden intense ache when the paramedic found the knot on the back of his head. Someone gripped one of his hands—Liz, probably, he thought a bit dizzily as he caught his breath.
“Escaping,” he said after a moment, then realised he was gripping Liz’s hand as tightly as she had his and released it. “I had to get the others out of the basement and then we made sure the crims who had us couldn’t follow until the police came.”
The hands left his head and he breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, son. Any other injuries?”
“He was limping when he found us,” Liz volunteered for him, and that reminded Nick of his leg. He’d stopped noticing that, too, once the adrenaline had kicked in. Automatically the teen shifted, then bit back a hiss at the second, equally intense ache in his thigh and around his knee.
“Hurt my leg,” he muttered. He probably shouldn’t mention that that was Zim’s fault. It was just a misunderstanding, anyway, and it’d be embarrassing for the others to know Zim had startled him so much.
“Alright. Feel up to moving now?”
Nick took stock of himself, peeling his eyes open and wincing at the light, and then carefully nodded. The paramedic, a lanky man with a buzz-cut, was in front of him. Liz’s worried face swam into view beside him; she smiled at Nick, wanly but encouragingly. Over their shoulders Sunny was standing back near the doors, and as soon as she saw Nick was looking she nodded to him and turned to clamber out of the van, where she was met by a nurse.
Behind her Nick saw Elmo sitting on a stretcher with Zim’s arm tight over his shoulder, his freckles standing out on his pale face. Richelle was sitting next to him, a bit closer than she would have under any other circumstance, and from the movement of her mouth and the way she was pointing at her wrists and elbows she was cataloguing her injuries for the nurse in front of her. Tom was just in view, lying blissfully on a stretcher with his eyes closed, one arm outstretched so another nurse could check his vitals. In the stark brightness of the hospital lights he looked gaunt and black-eyed; Tom had been imprisoned for the longest, after all.
But they were safe. They were all safe. Before, they had still been high on adrenaline, and now they were too exhausted to worry. Afterward they might start getting scared again.
Not now, though. For the moment, everything was pretty okay, despite their aches and pains.
“Come on, son.” Liz scrambled out of ahead of them and Nick submitted to the paramedic’s help, leaning on the man as they moved for the van’s doors.
Plans: No definite plans, but some general ones! Nick’s used to solving local mysteries, but any ‘supernatural’ happenings in his canon have always been explained away by logic, so I’d love for him to have the chance to see and accept the things that are really out there. He’s hard-working as long as the pay-off is good or he feels responsible, so I’d also like to see him doing some jobs. Also, the tech. He will love catching up on all the technology.
Notes: Can the Window to Nick’s world be lost for a couple of weeks to a month, please? Given that he was so recently kidnapped, when he gets back home his mum is going to go spare and I’d like him to have enough weight behind his other-world experiences to want to leave home despite his mother’s worry.
Also, I’d like to add a disclaimer for Nick’s history. The final half-dozen books of the series are crazy hard to find and I’m missing a few of them. None of them are books that Nick narrates, but they might still possess details that I just can’t get (eg, Nick has a minor phobia of rats which only came to light in a book narrated by someone else). If I do happen to get them later, I’ll incorporate them as best as I can.
DÆMON
Name: Toula. Because it’s his mother’s name, and he’s a mama’s boy.
Sex: Female
Form: Nick’s daemon has a propensity for the shape of a dhole, but still rarely shifts into a golden or black-backed jackal or a wedge-tailed eagle.
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Additional notes: Although Nick is a very mature teen and has been through a lot, I felt that his daemon wasn’t quite ready to settle due to his identity as revolving around the Teen Power group. The final paragraphs of the final book, narrated by Nick himself, state his belief that they will be best friends their whole lives. In contrast, when he speaks of his own future as a businessman, there is a definite ‘maybe’ attached, indicating that he doesn’t know who he is outside of the group. Similarly, there is his social image and the fact he continues to perpetuate it to a degree which makes even his own friends misjudge him—and particularly the fact that he seems unaware that they misjudge him in such a fashion.
The only thing certain about Nick’s identity is his place in Teen Power Inc. Who he is as an individual is still undetermined despite his inclinations. Given that he does express a definite desire to be independent, the difference between his identity as part of the group and as an individual is a minor but important conflict I thought should be resolved before Toula settles.
It’s entirely likely Toula’s form will end up settling during the course of the game, in which case I will be asking for permission to do so beforehand and will want to make it a logged event.
Why this form: In canon Nick is perceived as being aloof from others, but the books narrated from his perspective always display his appreciation for his friends—which is usually hidden. So I thought that Nick’s daemon would be a pack- or herd-orientated animal to show what people don’t normally see. Because of Nick’s propensity to pursue business opportunities and mysteries aggressively, a predator or scavenger suited him better than a grazer.
I chose dholes because their pack hierarchy isn’t as dominance-related as most wild canines, which reflects Nick’s relationship to the Teen Power Inc. gang; they share their responsibilities and hardships equally, pooling their individual abilities to great effect. At the same time, dholes are intelligent and cunning, using generations of learned hunting techniques rather than instinctive ones. Dholes are canines, which in HDM lore would make Nick a servant of some kind and would fit somewhat with the fact that he tends to help people, whether he wants to or not, or that he tends to submit to preserving his social image just a little too much. At the same time, dholes are entirely wild; unlike most wild canines, they can’t even be domesticated. That cancels out the implications of subservience and fits Nick’s propensity towards superiority and independence.
As for Toula’s alternate forms, they are essentially the kind of person Nick may still become. Jackals are more representative of cunning and have more hostile and dominance-governed interpack relationships than dholes. Nuances between the golden and the black-backed jackals aside, this form would represent a slide in values away from the Teen Power group and towards self-sufficient intelligence, while still valuing interpersonal relationships highly. Wedge-tailed eagles symbolise soaring ambition while maintaining the willingness to work in packs, as they are among the few raptors of such size which do; however, they only do so at great need when hunting. This form would indicate Nick’s choice to let go of his friendships and place his ambitions ahead of even them. It is less likely than the jackal, but still possible given he may be separated from the group for long periods.