Jake Mordetsky

[Aura]

Name: Jake Mordetsky
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies and Interests: Robot Wars, cartoons, drawing, building robots.

Appearance: Jake is not physically impressive by any standards.  He is 5'5" and weighs 115 pounds.  He has a very scrawny frame, with very little muscle mass.  He has pale Caucasian skin due to spending so much time indoors.  He has messy brown hair and very expressive brown eyes.  His facial features are plain, with an average-sized nose, weak cheekbones, and slightly small ears.  His face is very telling of his emotions, so it is easy to tell how he is feeling.

Jake's usual outfit consists of a yellow Robot Wars T-shirt, black cargo shorts, and red sneakers.

Biography: Jake has always sort of lived in the background.  His mother Carol is the heiress to a large resort empire, his father Bryan is a world-famous chef with a local restaurant called "Bryan's Steakhouse", and his sister is Stacey May-Mordetsky, budding model and member of the popular clique in school.  Jake is just a nerd with self-esteem issues.

Jake's family was always very rich, living in large mansions and able to afford anything the kids wished for.  While his sister asked for everything that she laid her eyes on, Jake was much more humble, never really asking for much.  He just appreciated the fact that his family was financially stable, and they wouldn't have to worry about going broke.  His mother occasionally stayed home with them while their father worked, but she usually just called a nanny to watch over the kids while she took a spa day.  Jake didn't mind too much, he would just sit alone with some crayons or building blocks and entertain himself for hours.

Jake struggled to get his mother's attention all throughout his childhood.  He would always be drawing or coloring, but whenever he went to show her what he made, she would always be talking to her friends about something that Stacey did, or a pageant that she won.  Even as Jake grew older, and brought home perfect test scores, his mother was still too busy gushing over his sister to pay him any mind.  She would acknowledge him on occasion, but only briefly before going back to Stacey.  This constant treatment caused him to have a very low opinion of himself, believing that he would never be good enough for her to notice him.

His situation was not helped by Stacey's incredibly poor treatment of him, either.  Stacey always felt embarrassed to be related to him because of his poor social skills and lack of popularity with their peers.  Stacey always told him that he would never be successful because he didn't have any talents that people cared about.  Jake believed every word that she said.  It provided a perfect explanation as to why his own mother ignored him in favor of Stacey.  After all, she was the pretty, popular, successful one, while he didn't have any of those qualities.  This caused him to develop a fairly large inferiority complex, a problem that he still struggles with to this day.

His father is very worried about him, taking notice of how much time Jake spends alone, as well as Stacey's caustic treatment of him.  He has made many attempts to bring the family closer together, by bringing them on family vacations and road trips, but they always tend to end the same way, with Jake off in his own room while Stacey went on a shopping spree in town.  Jake appreciates his dad's attempts to help him, but he doesn't think that his issues can be easily fixed.  One thing that Jake absolutely loves about his father, however, is his cooking.  Jake will tell anyone that his dad's barbequed brisket is the best thing that he's ever tasted, and he tries to go to Bryan's Steakhouse at least once a week.

Contrary to what he thinks, Jake is actually a very talented young man.  He was  incredibly bright as a child, and was always able to read and do work at higher grade levels.  After ninth grade, he took a test in order to skip tenth grade and go directly to junior year.  He takes a couple extra classes, but it doesn't bother him too much.  In addition, he also has a very good memory, which has served him well in various tests over the years.  He is also very creative, always doodling in his notebooks after class, and thinking up new ideas constantly.  His love for drawing has remained over the years, and he keeps a collection of his drawings in his room.  Academically, he is extremely talented.  Unfortunately, his athletic ability is pretty much a complete inversion of his academic ability.  Jake isn't strong, he isn't tough, and he doesn't have a lot of stamina.  His poor athletic performance has led to a lot of teasing throughout his school days.

Jake did find solace in television.  The world of cartoons allowed him to escape from his depressing life.  He will watch comedy cartoons from the 90's as well as superhero cartoons from recent years.  His favorite cartoons would probably be Hey Arnold and Teen Titans.  His feelings of sadness and neglect seemed to wash away when he would watch his favorite superheroes figure out some amazing plan to beat a supposedly unbeatable villain, or a bumbling everyman try to get through some wacky adventure.  The only thing that he loved more than cartoons was Robot Wars, a British TV show from the early 2000s that featured homemade robots fighting in an arena.  He loved the action of the fights and the ingenuity of the robots involved.  The show eventually inspired him to create a robot of his own.  After six months of work, Jake completed his robot, a wedge on four wheels armed with a flipping weapon on the front.  He named his robot Tadakatsu, after a robotic character from Sengoku Basara.  Seeing how happy Jake was when he built his robots made his father proud, and he is always willing to support Jake in his hobby.  Completing Tadakatsu and taking him for a test drive was the happiest moment of Jake's life.

In school, Jake doesn't make much more of an impact than he does at home.  He is pretty quiet and secluded compared to most other students, and is near the bottom of the popularity ladder, despite his sister being at the top.  He gets good grades, but he doesn't make many friends, mostly due to extreme shyness that built up as a result of his low self-esteem.  He has actually convinced himself that the other kids will reject him for all his eccentricities, and not even try to get to know him.  He is particularly nervous around girls.  While he has had a couple crushes over the years, he was always too afraid to talk to the girl he had a crush on, and ended up missing his opportunity.  This has made trying to make friends very difficult for him, and has prevented him from joining any clubs as well.

One day, Jake hopes to design robots as a career.  He hasn't decided how he's going to do it yet, but he's very determined.  If only he could get the confidence to finally believe in himself, then he might be able to pull it off.

Advantages: Jake is extremely smart, and would be a very good strategist.  He is very good at building things, which could help with creating impromptu weapons.
Disadvantages: Jake is physically weak in every sense of the term.  He isn't strong at all, he can't take much of a beating, and he doesn't have the stamina to outlast most people.  He is very shy and nervous around other students, especially girls.  In addition, his low self-esteem could cause him to doubt himself, and in SOTF, one moment of hesitation could mean the difference between life and death.