Raya Loux

[LYourLocalAutist]

Name: Raya Loux
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: Senior
School: Southwest Red Rock High School

Hobbies and Interests: Mechanics, automobiles & driving, gym-going, spending time with her family

Appearance: A light-skinned, diamond-faced caucasian girl standing at 6’1 and weighing in at 172 lbs with a toned, athletic build from the exercise she engages in. She has auburn coloured hair kept in loose, unkempt curls that she never lets go past her shoulders. Her eyes are large, round and strikingly green. She possesses a sharp jawline and a smattering of freckles across the ridge of her slightly upturned nose, all framed by her medium-sized ears.

Her taste in clothes always prioritises pragmatism, not being one for style at all. She’s avid of tank tops, weather jackets, and cargo pants. Her work and school clothes have nearly no distinction, and it’s thus common to see her with some oil stain she missed cleaning somewhere. She does, however, have one particular fashion quirk: a tendency towards sleeveless undershirts, to show off her toned arms.

Her hands are thick with calluses as a result of her mechanic work, and she can be commonly seen with a bruise or a scruff somewhere on her skin from this work.

Biography:
Raya Loux was born and raised in the Skyline Heights area of Las Vegas, marking the start of a difficult home life financially. To raise her, her parents, Jacob and Sophia Loux, worked tirelessly in their local auto mechanic shop, Autovet. This business is held in good esteem by the local community for the honest service it provides, being something of an icon within it. It was started by Raya’s parents after they quit their jobs at the large city-wide mechanic chain Steam-works following a series of workers’ rights strikes in the ‘80s which turned violent. Steam-works is also where they met, grew closer and decided to get married.

While Autovet’s reputation kept the business going and kept food on the table, Raya’s infanthood wasn’t by any means an easy life. It was however a happy one despite this, as she was still lathered in her parents’ love and attention. Especially, she developed a deep attachment to her mother. Sophia didn’t want her daughter to grow distant from her parents because of how much they worked, so she tried to spend as much time with Raya as possible. Sophia would play with her, talk to her, and ingrain in her values such as kindness, determination, and altruism, which her daughter would take to heart. Raya looked up to her mother as her truest role model in the world.

Having spent most of her early life around all manner of machinery and engines and the like in her parents' garage and shop, where they had to have her to keep an eye on her, she gained a great interest in these machines at a very young age. She was infatuated with the clicking, grinding, ever-orderly inner workings of the machines around her, as well as the sheer awe a newly tuned and customized automobile projected. She always wanted to come closer, see, and touch. Despite their bemusement with this interest, her parents never allowed her to come any closer than glancing distance for much of her life, as it is generally considered a bad idea to let an infant interact with heavy machinery. This annoyed the young girl, but she satisfied herself by listening to her parents’ rudimentary explanations of their functions.

Entering preschool and eventually elementary school, Raya proved a markedly active child. She ran and jumped and climbed over whatever she could, and, with a kind heart and good-natured spirit, quickly developed some close childhood friends who she would continue to see throughout her life, especially one Clarissa Shoemaker, with whom she developed a deep bond as 2 daughters of auto mechanics.

After a few years spent raising Raya, Jacob and Sophia agreed they wanted more children, and that they could bear the financial burden as investments in better equipment and advertising for Autovet paid off. When Raya was six, her little brother Jack was born, and 2 years later came another, Ethan. She took to the role of big sister with glee, doting on them during their infant and toddler years as much as her parents did. Despite the family’s financial struggles, which were slowly being alleviated themselves, Raya’s childhood was a good one. She developed into a confident and cheerful girl, her morale sky-high. This, however, wasn’t to last.

When Raya was nine, Sophia began to grow sick. Fatigue, pain in her sides, gradually increasing nausea. Despite repeated expressions of concern from Jacob and Raya, Sophia insisted she was fine, but the symptoms eventually became too severe for the family to ignore. Jacob took her for a diagnosis and received terrible news. Sophia had pancreatic cancer. When they returned, neither had the heart to tell their children that their mother was slowly dying. Even worse news soon arrived when the parents tried to claim their medical insurance: they were denied by the company as they claimed the condition was pre-existing.

With the family lacking the funds to fight a giant corporation in court, Sophia had no choice but to spend the remainder of her days with her family. For a full year, her condition worsened and worsened before her eyes. Despite her sickness, she continued to try to work to support the family, giving all she had left. It was one of the worst periods of Raya’s life as she watched the woman who had worked so diligently to treat her well and give her a good life waste away before her eyes. It came to the point where she didn’t need to be told; she could recognize in front of her that her mother was going to die soon.

The concept confused and terrified her, even as she could comprehend the result. She was the only sibling in the family old enough to wholly understand and register the event. Eventually, Sophia’s symptoms worsened, and she was relegated to her bed, where she stayed. Even then, she tried to keep up a positive attitude and cheer up her family, until the bitter end. Thus, Raya lost her mother at ten years old. The Loux family held a paltry funeral with what little they could give. Raya contemplated how she’d never see her mother again, hear her voice, feel her comfort. It felt like a wretched rot in her stomach and head. A malicious hopelessness began to take root in her, then.

The death of Sophia left Jacob a single father and equally distraught, and he lamented his lack of financial ability to treat his own wife’s deathly illness. With the death of his wife, there was one less person to work the shop— but also one less mouth to feed, meaning the loss wouldn’t stretch them too tight financially. He could’ve easily fallen into a deep and disdainful despondency, if it weren’t for his wife’s parting words to him, making him promise to remain a good father figure and support the family they had built. He resolved to stay determined despite the impact of loss and work harder than ever before for his children, to honour his wife’s last wishes. The first step was helping his children handle it.

Ethan felt confusion and distress. He could notice how his mother wasn’t around anymore, but couldn’t understand what had happened to her, how one of his caregivers had up and disappeared. He became very clingy towards Jacob as his remaining parent at that time, and he tried his best to alleviate his stress through physical comfort. Jack, on the other hand, had more capacity to properly process that she wasn’t there anymore. For a while, he couldn’t grasp the permanence of it, pressing his father with questions of when mom would come back, and why he couldn’t see her anymore. When the loss properly set in, he began to act out and cry much more often, needing constant reassurance from Jacob that he was cared for and safe.

But out of all the siblings, Raya was hit the hardest by the loss of Sophia. She right away comprehended that her mother was simply gone, forever. She felt like nothing in the world was worth doing anymore in the face of this event. She grappled with the existential implications of the fact that this could happen to her, to her friends, to anyone she loved, and she couldn’t stop it. The acute awareness of mortality she gained terrified her. Unable to properly cope with these new feelings and the fact that her mother whom she had looked up to for so long was never coming back, for nearly a year her attitude underwent a complete change. She became much more withdrawn and emotional, barely talking or eating, crying openly.

Her friends and siblings tried to pull her out of it through simple affection and conversation, but these actions had little effect. Jacob especially was heartbroken seeing his daughter in this state, a depression he very much understood. So, determined to bring his daughter back up from her slump, he decided to begin putting much more active effort into supporting her through her grief.

It began with Jacob beginning to teach her how to work the cars she'd constantly seen in his shop. To give her a sense of security and routine, and in an attempt to take her mind off the constant darkness of loss, he’d bring her out to his garage every day after hours and teach her how the simpler machinations worked. Being an active participant there brought her better memories besides the grief, and her attachment to mechanics deepened. He’d also take the opportunity to openly communicate with her despite her social withdrawal, encouraging her to express how she felt to him. This in and of itself worked wonders; Raya felt herself slowly lifted out of an emotional pit and thus began a gradual process of healing.

During their sessions, Jacob would remind Raya of the values her mother taught her. Confidence and kindness, the ability to push forward and do the right thing. With his encouragement, she began to reach out to her siblings and friends once more. She began to take on a role of greater responsibility within the household, especially with her brothers. Taking care of them and seeing how they looked up to her now helped her relieve her grief.

Reaching out to her friends also helped massively. Just like with her father, being able to vent and express how she felt to them, and hearing and feeling their direct support acted as great motivation. She was inspired by them, and their help deeply instilled within her values of camaraderie and being there for others when they were down.

With the combined support of her friends and family, and the ability to indulge in her longtime fascination, Raya was eventually able to put herself at peace with her mother’s death, motivated to act in a way the late Sophia would be proud of. However, she was left with a mark on her mental state that would never fade. An innate, latent fear of anyone close to her being taken before their time like her mother was. A sense of overprotectiveness began to burgeon deeply within her.

Throughout middle school, she developed her skill in mechanics under Jacob’s tutelage, gradually moving up to more complicated aspects as Jacob deemed her ready, and them safe enough for her to interact with. She had a knack for tinkering and working with metal, engineering and metalworking becoming almost coping mechanisms alongside hobbies, making her feel safe and at home.

This was also the time around which she began to work out. She saw it as a way for her to become more efficient at what she wanted to be her future trade. She’d accompany her father to his rudimentary home gym and he’d show her strength-building exercises, the proper way to lift weights, and the like. Puberty was already making her taller than average, and the muscles she built up served to give her a toned and slightly intimidating body type.

Jacob continued to raise her the way he saw fit through middle school, and Raya began to come into her own. She returned to her strong, confident self, unafraid to speak her mind and being a warm, jolly, comforting spirit to those around her. She had a penchant for attempting to reach out to classmates who seemed depressed and downtrodden and help them as her Father had helped her all that time ago.

Her developing protectiveness began to properly shine as she came back into the social scene and her new role of responsibility at home. At home, she’d become ever closer to her brothers as she took on a position of role model to them. She’d take care of them, listen to their problems, and be there for them as her mom used to be. Despite the new workload this role brought, Raya approached it with utmost optimism, truly desiring to be there for her brothers whenever possible. Jacob supported her through this as best he could, and Jack and Ethan did come to see her as a role model similar to the one she once saw her mother as.

At school, meanwhile, she’d act markedly fierce toward anyone in the student body who’d mistreated her friends, going to great lengths to stop them. She could usually intimidate these bullies with her strength. When it came to physical abuse towards her friends or herself for her intervention, she’d put that strength to practical use and fight back.

She usually had the upper hand in these fights due to this strength and made a point of never turning away from one. She rigorously stuck to the principles of determination she’d been taught, leading her to put herself even in situations where she was clearly disadvantaged, such as being outnumbered. She didn’t mind and kept going, fueled by a deep single-minded desire to protect those close to her.

However, these events were not without consequence. Though most were situated outside of school grounds, a few occurred inside, and the school would take disciplinary action. She received detentions and even a suspension, but none of it deterred her. However, at home, her father, albeit initially proud of her tendency towards justice, started to get worried. She came home with bruises and bloody noses too many times and she was getting too close to expulsion for him to ignore as a father. The suspension was the last straw for him.

He began to sternly talk to her about these concerns, trying to encourage her to stay from actually fighting, for her personal and academic sake. He had a latent fear she’d grow too attached to the violence in and of itself. Additionally, he wanted her to be able to continue an academic career at least until graduating from high school. These heart-to-hearts stuck with Raya, and she would begin to try and employ fighting, within the school at least, as purely a last resort even against the physical abuse of her classmates. She still employed her sheer confidence and ability to intimidate to stave bullies off.

Life thus went on mostly the same, and Raya eventually entered high school. Her graduation was marked by her father giving her an official position as an apprentice in Autovet. Instead of simply tinkering and shadowing her father, she could finally engage in some practical work, albeit with his supervision at his discretion. She gained much more experience and enjoyment of her passion as she could now engage in its practical application, assistance turning into the active taking of jobs herself as she aged.

Her desire to strive for self-improvement also surfaced as she indulged in the gym facilities of her new school, Southwest Red Rock. It became her regular workout spot, and as she grew further, her muscle density increased. Alongside her practical reasons for working out, she gained a sense of pride at her own appearance, subconsciously showing off her toned arms with sleeveless clothing.

As for her social standing, the increasing age of the people around her added a new facet to it. Having an already established reputation as a mechanic, she began to be approached by the vehicle-toting students of all social circles of Red Rock, with queries for touch-ups and tuning. Eager to interact with all manner of her fellow students, she’d gladly direct them to Autovet, where she’d work on their requests personally.

This not only gave her a much more positive reputation at the school besides her intimidating, anti-bullying stance, but also redoubled her interest in automobiles and their culture as a specific aspect of mechanics. As her experience with mechanics and vehicle customization increased with every new vehicle she interacted with, so did her interest. More than the orderly machinations of the machinery itself, and her attachment to it as a hobby of comfort, she found herself attached to the expression that could be presented through vehicles. She began to grow attached to magazines about cars, and specific aspects of their customization, paint jobs and the like. As soon as she got her license, she’d make passion projects of derelict vehicles which fell into Autovet’s possession, tuning them back up to working condition, restoring them over months and customizing them in any style she saw fit. She’d take them out for both casual drives, alone or with her friends, or out on proper business, picking up her younger siblings, getting groceries, and the like. Restoration on this scale, though, takes time and money; she as of now only has two successful and usable instances: a refurbished Mustang Boss 429 for herself, and a 1970 Ford Maverick she works on with Clarissa, belonging to classmate Claude O'Neil Porter.

Meeting new people in high school also contributed to her discovery of her sexuality. Interacting with folks of all genders from all cliques, she found there really wasn’t a limit as to who she found attractive, whether masculine or feminine. She went a year or so believing this to be the default human experience before a sexual encounter with a fellow female classmate ended with her having to explain bisexuality as a concept to Raya. She, and her father, whom she shortly after came out to, took this in a resounding stride. She holds a very casual attitude to this facet of herself and doesn’t see the need to elaborate on this part of herself to people unless she actively desires them.

As she stands today, besides her general hate of bullies, she has a positive reputation at school, keeping close with old and new friends alike. She holds little interest in any school subject, maintaining average grades, save for mathematics, which she holds in high regard for its importance in mechanics. She’s as close as ever to her family as well. She still mourns her mother with a monthly visit to her grave every first Friday. Her plan for graduation is the same as it’s been most of her life: to take over the family business, Autovet. She holds a marked excitement towards this, and has her dad’s total support for it.

Advantages: Raya is skilled in metalworking and engineering, with a talent for improvising tools from unconventional materials. Her work with machinery and gym training has made her strong and enduring.
Disadvantages: Raya's confidence and protectiveness can lead her into situations beyond her ability, often ignoring advice once she has her mind set on a specific goal, most likely to her detriment.