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Post by April-Mae Rattenbury on Nov 15, 2021 8:53:42 GMT -5
 Name: April-Mae Rattenbury Age: 21 Birthday: January 23rd Gender: Female Hometown: Lumen City (Estate District) Occupation: Engeineering Company Heiress Orientation: Bisexual Class: Civillian Digivice: N/A Digisoul: Gentle waves that stretch out from her core in hues of soft blue, they sweep over one another without much ruckuss, however the waves seem the be speckled in black and white grains, much like old and frail film.
 Appearance:
April-Mae has always been petite, standing at 4'9" despite her now adult age, she tries her best to appear older, mostly for her family image and to avoid being called a child by those around her. Her hair is naturally very fuzzy, and as such it takes a lot to tame the light brown locks. Her eyes are a milk-tea colour, and more often than not emphasized with eyelier and shadow. Makeup for April-mae is a neccesity, so much so that she owns the latest and greater auto-applicators so she doesn't have to stress about struggling to get her wing just right.
When not at an event or gathering, April-Mae wear very refined, yet comfortable outfits, expensive woolen coats and turtlenecks, long silk skirts. When outside of her home, she also wears contacts. When at home, she wears glasses, as she has poor vision.
When she was younger, before she became an adult, she let her hair remain fluffy and never used to wear makeup. Her birthmark, three small dots under her left eye, remainds uncovered- however now it is always covered in at the very least foundation.
Personality:
April-Mae is, to the press, a polite and sincere girl with a big heart and the honer of many, many talents. To her old classmates, she's an unruly spitfire who giggled at every little thing and would stand up for what she saw as right. However, April-Mae, to herself, is anything but these things. Calculated and cautious, she's spent years harnessing the perfect image for herself to avoid the worst. To avoid being picked on at school, she became a girl who they wouldn't dare approach with a 'kind streak' if she ever were to be brought up in future interviews, while to the press and at events she played the part of a perfect Rattenbury.
She's long forgotten who she was. Being taught from a young age to hide who you are does that to people. She has many inner-turmoils, most of which she doesn't like to utter outloud. She knows what she likes, what she doesn't like, and if she squints perhaps they make up part of who she really is. Late night crime shows, hologames and her aunts meat pies. Whiskey and weighted blankets. They're things she can associate with herself.
April-Mae is still trying to discover the real her, to figure out who she is while she has the small gap in her current life. She's somebody who, despite what she has gone through, is hopeful. She's somebody who cares deeply for her younger siblings, and who, when told to, would do anything to keep them safe. She, if told to describe herself honestly, would say she's somebody who favours safety over stability and who is working on herself so she doesn't fall into a state of watching herself continue to perform her life away.
Images used for April-Mae, with credit, can be found here.
History:
April showers bring May flowers, but January snow births a child who’ll forever struggle to grow. April-Mae was born prematurely, however her wealthy family of engineers and entrepreneurs ensured that she was the healthiest baby girl to ever exist in that given moment. The middle child of the prestigious Rattenbury name. She was showered in prestigious gifts, showcased to the world as a darling precious gem, from the moment she could babble miss April-Mae had very high expectations surrounding her, her father, Sir Damian Rattenbury, made this very clear. The Rattenbury household was no full of love, but rather of competition.
When April-Mae said her first words, it was bragged about that another sibling was more advanced because they had spoken their first words months earlier, when she learned to crawl infront of her older sister the older sister refused to tell anybody, knowing her sister was earlier than her and not wanting another strike to her name in the eyes of her family.
Though too young to understand, one of her first memories is being witness to a family fight where rumours that had been spreading for years came to surface about a siblings secret playboy partner, which ended in explosive words between a whole dinner table, all while tiny April-Mae sat, high on her chair, a newborn in the chair besides her, weeping loudly. And April-Mae, when she opened her mouth to speak, to say something, to cry, found her mouth being pressed shut by the manicured hand of her mother.
Had yelling out at the moment when she was a mere toddler had made a difference in such a situation? Would speaking out about things that shouldn’t be the norm end so badly that a tiny girl should be forced to stay quiet on the matter? These are things she can look back on and criticise now, see her normal wasn’t healthy at all.
Tea parties and French braids, chore robots and stress-fuelled meltdowns. Her primitive years, as she grew into a young girl, were full of comprehension issues and struggling to stay afloat in a world full of sharks. Older siblings would mock and ridicule the young girl at every turn, for playing with dolls, for following them around like a lost puppy, for speaking up when it wasn’t her time to speak. It was a lot for such a young girl.
The one thing she knew then, is that she would never treat her siblings in the same manner, she wouldn’t dare. Before her first big party, where she would make her official debut as a young six year old Heiress, her mother had sat her down, hand in hand, and she had explained that image was the most important thing in their life. If the world were to see her as anything but one of her fathers gorgeous, perfect, prestigious children, nobody would let it go, and she would ruin not just her family, but their generations to come- it would be like kicking a delivery bot and refusing to help it back up as it beeps helplessly at you on the street.
She rehearsed with her mother many times before she was to face the world, phrases only the most polite of ladies would say, how to bat her eyes and what makeup could correct the thinning of her lips, what dress made her look slimmest and what walk made her look adorable to the world around her. If she ever were to muck up, she was just reminded of the gravity of what was at stake, she was reminded of what her siblings would say and do- and the tiny child, still too small for her age, had no choice but to act the part she was given. And she did it perfectly.
School, for a girl who spent more time playing with her dolls than focusing on her grades, was difficult. She struggled with the basics, struggled understanding the private tutors and the fancy languages spoken, and her older siblings let her know how much she was a failure, how she could never live up to her role in the future. Her younger siblings, the three of them, were much more understanding, much more caring, and much more emotional. Like April-Mae, they struggled with living in the household they were born into, they were seen as cute faces and not much else. Their oldest siblings always let them know it.
April-Mae, though she was young, felt responsible for her younger siblings in some ways, so before they could go through their debut, before they were formally introduced to the world, she tried to help them, teaching them through tea parties and dress up, through playing princess and watching interactive movies.
Perhaps she was thankful when the teasing became central on her, on her for being school-age and still playing with younger children, her who failed her private school tests and struggled to keep her attention on the long words the tutors tried to teach her. She who was the joke of her small class, the pity and disappointment of the Rattenbury’s.
Fortunate for her, that what she lacked in her academics, she made up for her social skills. She became skills at talking her way out of situations, and keeping herself kind and sweet, even in the face of rudeness and judgement. She was her mothers pride and joy, a feminine beauty with drank with her pinkie out and showed gentle empathy to those younger than her.
Unlike her siblings, who were the academic prowess of the family, April-Mae became the cornerstone for big events and interviews, able to hold a conversation and chat up guests. Her father had congratulated her once, at age eight, for her capabilities in keeping others captivated, and for that month she watched as the older siblings who had once belittled her and bullied her envied her instead, wishing for their father to look their way.
Private school was still difficult as she got older, the classmates were rude, and she often was picked on for her incomprehension of classwork, mocked. They claimed she had paid her way to such an education and didn’t deserve it- and yet she smiled at them, straightened her back, and played the role she was given.
That didn’t mean the words didn’t hurt. Her mother could see past her pristine smile and clouded eyes, and had taken her aside one night, she told her than the acting did not just apply to the fake persona of a Rattenbury, but also can be adjusted to benefit herself in situations outside of her family. She was encouraged to create a new ‘character’ for herself, somebody who schoolmates wouldn’t bother and approach, somebody who still was a positive person, but who also wasn’t to be walked over.
She based her ‘school character’ on a girl from a childrens show she watched with her younger siblings, about an android who had magic powers and was a hero. A loud girl who laughed a lot and would speak up when she had trouble. And though it was strange, and a scary idea at first, slowly this became a part of who April-Mae was.
She would be tough and loud at school would laugh at things said at her expensive and stand up to people who got picked on. She’d ask for help and barely pass class, but this change of pace, this drastic difference from the role she was so used to playing and the new options it opened up really kept her on her toes.
Her younger siblings, who adored her, began doing similar things. She’d pass down what her mother taught her, and the cycle of pretending continued. She grew up, and upon graduating middle school, in a twist of events petitioned to her father in a rare meeting that she should join a public school, as it would benefit not just the family name and make them seem more available to investors that aren’t as high class and to start ups, as well as seem more socialised and less like unreachable tools.
And, of course, he would do anything for his darling April-Mae, the social piranha of the Rattenbury siblings, who was showcasing to the world a new side of the Rattenbury’s, though still as fake as the side they were familiar with.
She retained her character for public school, though gaining many friends and becoming somewhat of a socialite, April-Mae was everybodies precious friend. Sure, she wasn’t the best at understanding schoolwork, but if you needed advice or a listening ear, she was right there, and if you needed her to confront somebody for you she’d do It gladly.
Her older siblings tried to knock her down at every chance they got, from attemptings to spread rumours about things she’d done at public school to try get her in trouble with her father to speaking to possible future investors in the company and tarnishing the socialites name- but in April-Mae fashion she stood firm.
Until it all came crashing down. One heated event turned expose, second wife of Damian Rattenbury, Lyria Rattenbury, April-Mae’s mother, was exposed not just for cheating on her husband with several men who held their hands in the big media pot of the city, but also for manipulating and pushing her children against each other for years taking them aside one by one on a daily basis and sewing the seeds of doubt, of fear and anguish, creating perfect puppets to try take down the Rattenbury’s from the inside.
This scandal momentarily tarnished the names of April-Mae, her youngest siblings, and one of her older siblings. Her father however turned the story quickly, spun it to make the young children out as victims, and with the help of the youngest children acting up the hurt and the pain, as once taught by a mother who had only had them for personal motive and to use as nothing more than puppets, the world was on their side.
Her father had begun seeking out a way to take the media’s attention off him, and upon learning of a competition some of his older children were taking a part in, he began to scout out from that talent pool- and specifically too a particular interest in an attendant at April-Mae’s own school, a girl of which she had never heard of before.
Rosemary Quinn, an unfortunate teen who wasn’t even on April-Mae’s social radar, and she was in the girls own class! He advised April-Mae to learn more about the girl, as she could be a potential scout for the companies future, and so many of her days were spent seeking out the girl, trying to figure out who she was, attempting to make small talk only for the girl to assume she wasn’t talking to her and walking away.
It, in a way became a new test for April-Mae, she would change herself up slightly, slip into a new role and see if the girl would look her way, and yet nothing worked. Not until an opportunity arose- not until she heard rumours about Rosemary in her social group. An opportunity that April-Mae couldn’t pass up.
It began with quelling the rumours in her immediate friendgroup, then turned to loudly yelling at people and trying her hardest to make it known to Rosemary that April-Mae was indeed sticking up for her- and when, one day, amidst snickers that April-Mae was quick to cut off, that she finally caught Rosemary’s eye.
The aristocat catches the doormouse.
From there, it was easy. April-Mae was already intrigued by the girl, and made that very known, she would spent a lot of time with Rosemary, at first perhaps inserting herself as an annoying presence but then disguising it as protecting the girl from harms way.
That soon… quickly developed. April-Mae’s interest turned into adoration, at how capable this young girl was, at her intellect and ability. She was able to do so much that April-Mae struggled with, and she didn’t put anybody down to achieve such a feat. She’d brag about Rosemary to her siblings, elated with her new friend.
...Friend... to the public eye.
Nights were spent where Rosemary was welcomed into April-Mae’s home, the girl lead around the insane mansion full of technological wonders and neverending halls, and April-Mae would marvel at the girl as she spoke of utelising technology April-Mae had never heard of. Her dreams and passions were unique, they were her own, she had a life waiting for her, a lovely life.
Studying turned into meetups at coffee shops and arcades, which turned into shared laughter and warm embraces. A secret kept between them, promises of the future, of assertions of April-Mae being the sweetest thing that ever happened to Rosemary’s fucked up world.
Intertwined bodies, and making constellations out of each others freckles. It was something sweet, a clash of worlds that could never last.
Because one world was always destined to consume the other whole.
It started with a rumour, a simple fleeting whisper in the Rattenbury halls. An older sibling who had seen something they shouldn’t. It continued into threats, by other siblings, of using their stakes in the Rattenbury company to ruin the life of somebody who had already been taken down by the world while ruining April-Mae with it.
That didn’t phase her.
What phased her was the threats on her younger siblings, the idea that April-Mae would be associated with her mother in some way or another and how it’d reflect on her younger siblings. April-Mae could combat this.
And then they began framing her siblings for things in school, they forged things online, hacked into the siblings phones and ruined their friendships. They began publically outing their youngest siblings to the press. Their father, Damian, publicly made his disappointment known, in one of the most rage-fuelled dinners April-Mae had ever taken part in.
One night, she was corned in her room, two older siblings who had delved more into Rosemary’s past and her works. They promised to leave the siblings alone, to make their lives easier and keep their role as a heir/heiress afloat in the company, if only April-Mae get a hold of Rosemary’s work to utelise in the company.
April-Mae didn’t have a choice. A night shared with Rosemary turned to taking scans of her blueprints, a quick send off to her siblings- and that was everything sorted, that was everything fine, though she began to question a lot of things, she began to distance herself slowly from Rosemary, knowing that her status and the very family she was raised in would harm Rosemary and her dreams rather than raise her up.
She didn’t know that those designs were used by her father in the company and advertised as the future of the Rattenbury name. She didn’t understand half of it, or know what copyright was. So when Rosemary came to her, in shambles accusing her of stealing her work for her families own gain, she paused.
And she remembered her mother, she remembered what she was taught.
And she put on a new persona.
She lied.
Life was a blur after that, all muddled and twisted, once she’d graduated she found herself the star of parties and being pushed between celebreties and forced to intermingle. Her high school persona was gone, left with the cafeteria and the overpriced handbags. All she knew was makeup, travelling from business to business seek investors and using a new façade to lull them into the company.
She was the Rattenbury Socialite, the tiny representative who said everything you wanted to hear.
But at home, she was slowly unravelling, her younger siblings, bless their hearts, were the kindest people to exist, they bathed her in affection she lacked, hyping her up and acting as a support system, people who knew the real her and what she’d done to protect them.
She struggled a lot with her identity, now having much more time to ponder her life, she would visit her mum sometimes, who lived with a boyfriend of hers, and her mum would simply smile and bat her eyes, claiming that April-Mae truly was so much like her.
But who was her mother? A woman who hated Damian so much she married him and ruined her childrens lives in the hopes of causing a family revolt? A wicked mastermind? A dreadful woman? Or a woman who wanted out of a life she was destined to live?
April-Mae’s life was stagnant, a repeat day after day of faking a smile and then breaking down, of understanding that her unfortunate life will always scar her and not having the faintest hint on to how to find out who she is behind the makeup and the sweet talking.
She’d like to start discovering herself, the real her, but with the way life is, she isn’t sure where to even begin.
Notes:
The Rattenbury buisness is a multimillion dollar company, under the title of 'Rattenbury Enterprises'. It's an old company that's been around for generations, and went from being created years and years ago to create microships to become a huge engineering and new technologies manufacturer, creating new inventions left and right. There are a lot of various sectors that the Rattenbury's focus on, so they can get the most profit.
April-Mae has three older, and three younger siblings:
Peyton Rattenbury (15)
Sterling Rattenbury (18)
Cashmere Rattenbury (20)
Earla-Ann Rattenbury (23) Vermont Rattenbury (25)
Angelica Rattenbury (26)
Goals:
Discover who she really is (personality wise).
Keep her younger siblings safe from both public scrutinty and from her older siblings.
Do something for herself rather than for others.
OOC Name: Overlordie (Lordie) OOC Pronouns: She/Her Preferred Method of Contact: Discord Faceclaim Information: Ickikawa Hinana (Idolmaster)
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