Name: Emery Halstead
Meaning: "Industrious ruler from the manor."
Age: 16
Bloodtype: A
Birthdate: January 30
Zodiac Sign: Aquarius
Gemstone: Garnet
Birthplace: Ottawa Hills, Ohio
Likes: being left alone, origami, reading (sci-fi and fantasy, science journals), astronomy, console RPGs (he bought a PS2 just for Final Fantasy X), math (shudder)
Dislikes: being around lots of people, parties, speaking in front of people, sunlight (he burns easily), arguing with stubborn people (who are convinced they're right even though he can prove them wrong!), people who invade his personal space, jello, violence, ignorance
Strengths: good at schoolwork, intelligent, diligent, skeptical
Weaknesses: antisocial, can't speak up, thinks too much, somewhat indecisive
Fears: his sister, talking to people he doesn't know (especially without backup), rejection, failure, being proven wrong, letting people down
Colors: Gray, navy blue
Theme: actuality, veracity
Affiliation: Dream Senshi

Looks

Emery is cute in a shy, innocent sort of way. He has reddish-blond hair that is somewhat curly and usually messy. His eyes are a peachish-red color, and he rarely smiles without a blush that turns his face a blotchy red. It doesn’t take much to make him blush, and the fact that he is blushing embarrasses him so he turns even redder. He is five feet, four inches tall, and wishes he were taller. He has a slight build, doesn’t eat much, and is rather weak, physically. He still doesn’t need to shave, another source of embarrassment for Emery. He doesn’t dress like the stereotypical nerd, but doesn’t follow styles, either. He has perfect vision, and if one saw him on the street they probably wouldn’t guess that he's a pretty smart guy.

Personality

Emery is shy, even around people he knows well. He is afraid to speak up unless he is sure what he is saying is correct (and that no one is going to get mad at him), because people expect him to always know what he’s talking about. And he usually does, in the area of math and science, with a natural capacity for the physical sciences that even his professors envy. He knows people envy his skill and is very uncomfortable about that, and tries not to talk about science outside of the classroom. He knows that it annoys a lot of people when someone talks about something they don't understand, so a lot of the time he says nothing at all, just to be on the safe side. Yes, this involves some underestimating of "normal" people's intelligence, but it's not so much about arrogance as it is about his desire to be inoffensive.

He was raised in a very wealthy family, but hasn’t had much time with his parents. He’s spent about half of his school career in different boarding schools around the country (and England), and has never really had a close friend. He’s extremely insecure and distrusting, after being the target of a lot of cruel jokes as a child, and very skeptical. He’s very much into knowing things that can be proven, and if something can’t be proven (some sort of philosophical quandary), he will stay awake late at night thinking about it until it makes him ill. In his mind, the universe is a ordered, logical place--it's just a matter of time before we figure out all the rules that make it work.

Emery doesn’t just study because he is expected to, though he did go through a phase when that was the case. He is fascinated with astronomy and wants to spend his life studying the origins of the universe. He is obsessed with knowing the truth, and how things really are, and gets frustrated when things can’t be proven. Though he seems to be mild mannered, he does have a temper, which he usually takes out by kicking walls. Occasionally he gets upset enough to raise his voice at someone, but he's usually the first to back down in an argument.

He's polite without being prudish, if only because he knows when to keep his mouth shut when something offends him. What sort of stuff offends Emery? Blatent sex, violence, and stupidity--mainly the last. As a kid, he didn't watch much TV or many movies, so he isn't as desensitized to violence as most guys his age. Emery respects intelligence, while ignorance bothers him. Seeing people doing things he thinks are stupid--getting drunk, smoking, or otherwise showing a lack of judgement--makes him lose respect for the person. Sometimes it really gets him upset, and guilty for thinking himself "superior." Other times he gets angry, especially when a sitcom character does something really stupid. "But it's not funny, it's just dumb!"

Television often hurts him to watch, and it brings out his violent side. He tries to stay away from it.

His professors sometimes forget that they are speaking to a student and not an adult, but Emery is not really that much more mature than another sixteen year old. He does have sexual thoughts (though he is horribly embarrassed by them due to his puritanical upbringing), and his roommate Mike has converted him into a Simpsons fan (the one show he can watch without wanting to destroy something). He reads a lot--his favorite author is Asimov, but he'll read just about anything futuristic or fantastic.

Emery is the sort of person who would love to be a Jedi Knight, if he lived in the Star Wars galaxy. In his imagination, he's put himself into many other worlds, and dreamed up some futures of his own. He never shares these daydreams with anyone else, though, and although he's got the ideas, he's not much of a writer or an artist.

To sum it all up, he has intelligence and good looks going for him, and he's a nice guy...a good catch, if you really like astronomy! Really, if you got close enough to him, you'd realize he's an interesting person, but his dull facade usually turns people off.

History

Emery was born in Ottawa Hills, a very wealthy suburb in northwestern Ohio. He has an older sister named Holly who was always jealous of the attention her parents gave him, and took it out by beating him up. As a result, Emery is afraid of her, even though they're now too mature to get into physical fights. His absolute terror has turned into uneasiness in her presence and now he just tries to avoid her and let her have her way whenever possible.

In fact, Emery's parents really didn't give either of their children much attention--they were too busy working to afford an Ottawa Hills house and lifestyle. Not so much that they were really neglected, but Emery and Holly spent a lot of time with babysitters when they were little. One of their babysitters would generally just turn on the TV and do her homework--three-year-old Emery would then annoy her with a million questions about what she was doing. To shut him up, she'd tell him in detail, sometimes reading to him from her textbooks, in hope that he'd get bored and go away. Emery continued asking questions. Meanwhile, as his sister learned to read in kindergarden, Emery was always there when Holly was doing her homework and soon he knew how to read letters and numbers. It was fun to him, just like running around outside or playing in the mud was fun.

His parents realized that they had a gifted child on their hands. They had him take an IQ test, and he scored well into the genius range. Thrilled, his parents began pushing him into schools for the gifted. He excelled in his classes, at the cost of friendships and a social life. Schoolwork came easy to him, especially math and science. His parents and babysitter had impressed him with the notion that grades were very, very important, so Emery worked hard even in the subjects he wasn't so comfortable with, and had a reputation of being rather dull.

He wasn't, really--Emery didn't learn merely by rote, but put thought and consideration into what he was learning. He was just too shy to talk about any of it, except when his teachers pushed him to express his opinion. Once in a while they'd catch a glimmer of the beneath-the-surface Emery.

Emery skipped the third grade and eighth grade, when he was accepted to a prestigious boarding school in England. After four years there, he received a full scholarship to study at NYU. He shares a dorm room with Mike, an eighteen-year-old freshman who is hardly ever about (party boy). Emery spends most of his free time studying. He is majoring in astronomy, and all of his professors have high hopes for him and he is afraid to let them down.

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