Hayden Hikaru O'Connor

"People are so much more of an open book than you'd think! Your drug history is in the strands of your hair, your dental records identify you, the calluses on your hands reveal all your secrets. You can tell so much about a person if you know where to look."

• Bio
• Stats
• Personality
• History
• Etc
• RP hooks

BASIC INFO

Name: Hayden Hikaru O'Connor
Gender: Female
Age: 31
DOB: March 30th
Height: 5'9"
Ethnicity: Japanese-Australian
Languages: Japanese, English, French, German

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Stats

Rank: Senior Investigator

STR | ★★★☆ 3
INT | ★★☆☆ 2
MAG | ☆☆☆☆ 0
CON | ☆☆☆☆ 0
DEX | ☆☆☆☆ -1
CHA | ★★★★ 4

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Personality

+ Adaptable | Charismatic | Daring | Gallant | Independent | Meticulous | Dutiful
= Casual | Impersonal | Sarcastic | Whimsical | Enigmatic | Observant | Vigilant
- Arrogant | Cynical | Stubborn | Prideful | Escapist | Self-centered | Paranoid

How does one even begin to describe Hayden as a person? A wildcard, the joker, a compulsive liar. As someone who's worked up close and personal with death, Hayden is naturally eccentric with a funny bone for the macabre. She can be overdramatic and a thrill seeker, playing herself up with theatrics. Hayden speaks highly about herself yet never actually talks about herself. Things like "you can always count on me to get the job done" or "you needn't worry about a thing." She has a certain way with words that you can call manipulative, a way that can lull you into a false sense of security and misplaced trust in her if you're not too careful. This isn't to say she's deceitful, but she has a tendency to go off on her own and do things her way. She parades around like the walking definition of a god complex, functioning on her own whims. Hayden views the world in the lens of a nihilist who's figured out the trick to life is to play it like a game that she's here to win. She has an odd way of being helpful, whether it's out of the goodness of her heart or just to stroke her own ego, it's hard to tell. If you asked her why she became a forensic pathologist, she'd tell you it's to give others peace of mind by exposing the truth. A messiah complex too? It's more likely than you think!But of course, this woman is just overcompensating. Never really receiving praise from her parents as a child led her to seek validation elsewhere. Hayden's always doing the most to impress. But she always blames her mistakes and shortcomings on outside forces, never taking full responsibility for her failings, she's too prideful for that. Hayden is serious about not taking those kinds of inconveniences seriously. You cheat death once and suddenly you got things figured out, that's how it works, right? You pick up and restart again. In truth, Hayden is highly paranoid and goes through great lengths to distance herself from others on a personal level. She's the sort of person who will talk to others but never opens up about herself, and when she does, it's like a game of two truths and a lie. She's two faced and insecure but if anyone pointed that out, she'd merely laugh it off."Haha! Ooh, you got me!"But just because she has a seemingly lax personality doesn't mean she isn't serious in the workplace. In fact, she's quite meticulous when it comes to small details about anyone, alive or deceased even. Because of this heavy attention to detail, however, Hayden often overthinks things. She has a need to be right and therefore has to consider all her options after all! There's no room for error if there are people who rely on your work. She's dutiful when it matters most and goes all in with her stubbornness to prove herself.

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History

TL;DR: Daddy Issues: The Mental Illness? Military Brat gets stabbed by the ghost of her Dead Dad?? Doctors hate her because she refuses to believe it was a psychotic breakdown. Shit sucks but a woman still needs some answers as to wtf happened though! Could it have been an anomaly???

Hayden was born into a cozy military background. Her parents met at a US naval base in Japan. Her father was a high ranking Australian naval pilot and her mother was a civilian pathologist. The two were quite busy and Hayden was mostly in the care of her grandparents. Despite being the only child within her immediate family, she had the company of a good handful of cousins during her childhood. The notorious lot of kids would oftentimes compete with one another, antagonize each other, scare the crap out of each other, and what have you. Hayden's favorite pastime was probably creeping her cousins out with stories of spooky happenings her mother would tell her while she was working around the hospital.Growing up, Hayden took an interest in a number of things to seem cooler or more knowledgeable. Back when being smart was the cool thing amongst children, Hayden would read quite a bit and took favor into things dealing with space, dinosaurs, mythology, anomalies, and other paranormal mysteries, the usual things most kids would gobble up to fuel their ever-growing, active imaginations. But by the time she reached the age when being well read was lame amongst her peers, Hayden simply went with the flow and got into other things like sports or whatever seemed cool at the time, she had a knack for acting as well. But Hayden remained studious when it came to grades, keeping herself in good light with her parents and adults in her family. In short, Hayden was always a bit of a show off during her younger years.Over time, her father became a bit more of a presence in her life than in her childhood, being around the house a bit more often than before. Her father was always a rather ominous figure to Hayden, he was never really there but the thought of him was always rather daunting. When he was around, he was strict and critical, often criticizing any sort of mistakes Hayden would make. But in time he taught her outdoorsy things like hunting, fishing, and a few other life handy tricks and techniques. Then suddenly, there came a time when her father just vanished.Hayden's father was aboard a flight to a base overseas when the aircraft spun out of control and communications were lost. He was deemed missing and although a search party was carried out, her father was presumed dead after no wreckage was found. Because of the whole fiasco, Hayden and her mother packed up their things to America in an attempt to move on. It was a lot for Hayden to fully absorb, she was still in high school at the time after all. A lot of questions went through her mind, but she had to get her shit together as she was nearing adulthood. It was strange, she was never particularly close to her father but she couldn't help but wonder what actually happened to him. Missing just seemed too convenient, was he really dead? Was it a cover up? The search party seemed way too short and they never found anything. Dead or alive, she couldn't help but feel like the people in charge could've done something more. But all this wondering led her to wanting to retrace his footsteps in an attempt to figure things out herself.Much like her father, she joined the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in hopes to rise up the ranks faster while studying forensic science like her mother. Hayden really was a product of her parents' design and for the most part, things were going well. But she couldn't help but wonder, would he be proud of her? During her military career, she was in reserve and mostly saw action in the medical labs or hospitals. Romance bloomed for her in the workplace as she was hitting it off pretty well with a civilian nurse. Life was well, she graduated med school, and Hayden's mother was relieved her daughter seemed to be able to stand on her own two feet now. Steadily, Hayden was enroute to becoming certified, even planning to surprise her mother by marrying her fiancée after she was done with her residency.Then, of course, like a Divine Comedy, Hayden's life flipped on itself once again. During a graveyard shift, Hayden was at the morgue, busy preparing a corpse up for an autopsy. As she made the first Y incision, Hayden noticed a foul smell the more she cut back skin. Of course, there were always going to be foul odors when dealing with decaying bodies, it was never a pretty sight or a job half as glamorous as TV shows made it out to be. After some time, the scent grew stronger, to the point where it started to sting her eyes even through her protective gear. It became increasingly harder to concentrate as every noise in the room became alarmingly louder. She then noticed an unfamiliar substance ooze out from the cavity and her heart rate increased, even the tiniest scrape of metal against bone sounded like nails on a chalkboard, her vision becoming spotty. Stricken with fear and paranoia, Hayden turned towards the door to report something was off, but came face to face with an intruder, what appeared to be her father, a distortion of him even as her mind completely spiraled, her surroundings almost melting before her. She was easily overpowered by her eerily familiar assailant, stunned with shock and confusion as her father had been presumed dead this entire time. There was no time to figure out what was happening, all she could feel was pain in her left eye and blood starting to pool.

When she came to, she awoke in a hospital bed, the doctor telling her she had a psychotic breakdown and tried removing her own eye with a scalpel. The entire time she was in the psych ward for observation, her brain just went on autopilot. That can't be right. Psychosis? There was never a history of that in her family. She knows what she saw was real, it couldn't have been trauma or stress messing with her head. Right? It couldn't have been all those long, grueling hours handling dead bodies or extremely violent cases finally getting to her. Hayden prided herself in being able to do her job without even the worst cases affecting her. She refused to believe what the doctors had told her, she knows she isn't crazy. But the investigation was shut and closed when security footage showed her in the act of self-mutilation. At this point, what are you supposed to believe anymore? You know what you saw but everyone keeps telling you otherwise. Hayden's mentor told her to take some time off from work to collect herself. But it was hard to bounce back after all of that, life altering both physically and mentally, and Hayden was eventually discharged from the military. She got compensation, but it was like slapping a bandaid on a comically larger problem.Hayden pretty much lost everything after that, her job, fiancée, her grip on reality. But when the going gets tough, the tough get going. Just like before, she packed up her things in an attempt to move on once again, she needed a mental break from the cage she might've put herself in. Hayden booked it to Vegas, the hustle and bustle of the city taking her mind away from things as she worked as a bartender at a casino. She couldn't really go back to real work at another facility, everything was still fresh after all. Sure, the unholy matrimony of gambling and alcoholism made itself a staple in Hayden's newfound life, but it was relatively stress free minus the other bad choices along the way. Life wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. Instead, she took an interest in other folk that graced her during the job, listening to wild tales, drunken sob stories, stopping bar fights. It was wildly different from the sterile lab she used to be in but she was, in a way, still helping people. But what was she doing to help herself? Life wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. It was empty. She had no peace of mind.

She had heard about LQCC in passing and on the news a couple of times but never really looked into it until seeing the establishment was hiring recruits. Oh yeah, she does have some legit credentials, doesn't she? And what was she doing? Wasting time. She just turned 30 earlier this year! Hayden needed to get her head back in the game and so she put some serious thought into it. She didn't want to be directly tied to the military again after everything that happened, but there were some unanswered questions that still rattled Hayden and kept her up at night. Hayden was always packing up her things to move on but has she ever actually unpacked anything?Just what the fuck happened to her and her dad? Was it really mental illness messing with her? Could it have been some kind of anomaly? Government cover up? She did work at a military facility, even though deaths by anomalies are slim, there's a possibility that the case she was working on that night might've slipped past the radar and initial screening. After all, there was never a thorough investigation on the matter because of the security footage. Hayden was even taken off the case after the incident, the initial reports of the strange substance she encountered were even missing from the court documents. It made her sick, that evidence could've been hazardous. Wasn't it their civic duty as forensic scientists to report on all their findings? After all, the number one rule in forensics: the body never lies. Was she just the sacrificial lamb in order to sweep mistakes under the rug? She wanted to know the truth but perhaps she was just barking up the wrong tree this entire time? Picking up where she left off, maybe private investigator suits her more? Besides, if it were an anomaly, what better way to dip your toes into the water than in the vast ocean of them in Meteor City?

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Extra

Trivia

Zodiac: Aries ☀️ | Libra 🌙 | Capricorn ⬆️
MBTI: ENTJ
Alignment: Chaotic neutral
Temperament: Choleric
Enneagram: Type 5w4
Tarot: Tower
Sin: Pride
Virtue: Charity
Blood Type: AB+

Gallery

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RP hooks

If you'd like to interact with Hayden in any way/shape/form, here are a few openers I have rattling in my brain. I'm pretty much open to any sort of dynamic though so if you have anything else in mind, feel free to COME AT ME 🤼

> "50 bucks he'll break under pressure."
> "Betcha can't outrun me!"
> "Bet you won't even make it outta this one in one piece!"
>> So what'll it be? Wanna live the high roller life with her or are you just unwillingly swept into her antics?

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