Survival Of The Fittest

Name: Gabriel ‘Gabe' Vasconcelos
Gender: Male
Age: 17
Grade: 12
School: Aurora High School
Hobbies And Interests: Video games, music, reading, working out, running, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, writing, and speech exercises

Appearance: Gabriel seems to constantly have a tan complexion, regardless of whether it is summer, winter, fall or spring. The first thing most people notice are his wide amber eyes; they seem to see everything around him, and would probably be his best feature if he was a little more social. He has a curved, slightly crooked nose, and dimples when he smiles, a call back to his chubbier days. Unfortunately, he doesn't smile often, and his most commonly seen expression is a tight lipped grimace. He has jet black hair cropped short in the front and slightly longer in the back, as well as a scruffy beard that he keeps just barely above homeless status. Despite the beard, his other features combined together provide him with a handsome, rough look.

Gabriel stands at 5'11, weighing in at 168. He's not skinny by any means, but he is very lean. His body is essentially like looking at the human version of a taut, tightly wound iron cable. This is both because of the muscular but lithe body he has built up through years of training, as well as the fact that his body seems to be in a constant state of tension. He is toned, but he has the body not of someone who was born with the natural genetics but of someone who had to build his definition through hard work. Through his training for Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, he also has a very strong core, and it shows when he's shirtless. Gabriel is also not too concerned with fashion, and it shows. His most common attire, regardless of the season, is a white T-shirt, flannel, or white T-shirt and flannel with jeans. Occasionally in the winter, if it gets too cold, he'll throw on a sweatshirt or coat over that. The only thing close to fashionable he seems to wear is a silver necklace around his neck, with a dog tag at the end of it. Inscribed on the dog tag is a quote from one of his favorite writers of all time, Paulo Coelho. It reads "You drown not by falling in a river, but by staying submerged in it."

Biography: Gabriel was born on May 17, 1994 to Natalia and Hector Vasconcelos. Natalia was a fiery woman, full of passion and fun, traits she still had to this day. Hector was the opposite, rational and conservative, always carefully considering his next course of action. It didn't make him the most social person in the world, but it took him far in business.

They had met at the Chicago Graduate School of Business. Natalia and Hector had both had a vision then of becoming executives, just two smart young teens from Brazil, filled with ambition and hope. After Natalia met Hector, and began to get to know him, her vision changed. She wanted to be a wife. She wanted to be a mother. A dream of riding the saddle of the corporate world paled in comparison to being with the man you loved. As it was, they were married in their senior year of graduate school, and about two months later Hector was offered an entry level job at an investment bank in Seattle. He took it.

Hector was a hard worker, a smart man, and a great manager of people, and he worked his way through the ranks quickly. It was promotion after promotion, raise after raise and opportunity after opportunity. Natalia tried various other passions while her husband was busy working his way up to the top of the corporate pyramid. Writing, art, entrepreneurship, fashion design, music… anything that she could do she tried. It wasn't a complete waste of time- she had a few little successes here and there, although she never broke out big in any of the various things she did. But this didn't matter to her. She loved Hector, and Hector loved her. They were filled with the happiness and exuberance for life that one only really sees from a young couple that envisions a world of possibilities stretching before them.

It wasn't until they finally started to have children that the problems started. They didn't even notice it for awhile; their minds were on how great their life was going otherwise. But eventually, as attempt after attempt came to nothing and the weeks and eventually months piled up, they were forced to go to seek medical advice.  It was bad news for the young couple; the doctor explained that due to a hormonal issue with Natalia, it would be very difficult for her to first become pregnant and then, if she was able to become pregnant, to bring the child to term. The doctor strongly advised both of them to consider adoption, warning them that attempting to have a child would be very difficult.

Hector and Natalia didn't listen. They tried to conceive for over a year and a half, and even when they'd become discouraged and frustrated, they refused to give up. And a few weeks after a seemingly normal night, Natalia discovered she was pregnant. They were overjoyed- their doctor, on the other hand, was not as happy and hopeful as Hector and Natalia were. He pulled Hector aside when he told them the news, and told him that it was his own advice that he should convince his wife to get an abortion. He told Hector that the chances of the child being born with no disabilities was slim to none, and that was on the unlikely chance that the child was born at all. Better to adopt a kid, and spare his wife the pain of a stillbirth.

Hector was enraged. For the first time in his adult life, something had made him really and truly angry. This wasn't frustration, or anger, or annoyance. This was pure and simply rage, and he assaulted the doctor. It took three other people to pull him off, and Natalia and he never went back to the doctor. He never told her what the doctor had said, the reason behind the fight. All he said was that her doctor had offended him, had insulted him more than he'd ever been insulted before, and they never went to that doctor again.

The pregnancy went on without problems. Well, not without problems- there were various arguments, and nights where Hector would spend hours just holding Natalia as she cried. But no life threatening problems, nothing that threatened her or the baby. So they passed the time of the pregnancy, sometimes angry, sometimes sad, sometimes scared out of their minds, but most of the time positive and optimistic. A month earlier than expected, her water broke. Hector was at home at the time, and rushed her to the hospital immediately.

He drove quickly, bypassing quite a few traffic laws on the way to the hospital. He didn't like it all- didn't like the look on her face, didn't like the fact that it was a month early. He waited outside of the room for hours, and the words of the doctor hung in his head. So when he finally entered the room, to find his wife holding a beautiful baby boy, he sighed in relief.

The boy grew up fine, at first. Healthy boy, and very active, and it seemed like he was also very smart. The problems started at the time when he should have begun developing speech. It happened a lot later than they expected, particularly for how quickly he had gone through the other stages of maturation and development, and when he did speak, it was a stunted speech. Hector and Natalia, worried about him, took him to a doctor for an evaluation, fearing the worst. The doctor's results shocked them. He was not deficient mentally at all; their son Gabriel, as a matter of fact, was a genius. The problem was that he had a speech impediment. He understood the speech perfectly; he was just having trouble vocalizing. The doctor's advice was to just wait it out, saying the problem would almost certainly correct itself. If it didn't correct itself before Gabriel went to school, he would recommend a speech therapist to Hector and Natalia.

So they waited, and a few months after their conversation with the doctor, Natalia told Hector that she wanted to have another child. Hector remembered the words of her old doctor, the words when they'd first wanted to have a child and then when she had been pregnant. But all he said to his wife, who Hector always had trouble saying no to, was that they'd do it.

This conception took less time than Gabriel's had: only a year this time. Gabriel, in the meantime, was advancing and learning quickly. He had not even entered school yet, his parents deciding to bypass kindergarten, but he was already doing math and reading at levels far past his age. He was a bright young boy, and what's more, he loved to learn. The only issue at this moment was the stutter, which still hadn't seemed to have taken care of itself. But there was time left; there was another year before he was going to school. And besides, even as young as he was, it was obvious that Gabriel was looking forward to having a younger brother.

On March 17th, 1999, two months before Gabriel's birthday, Gabriel's as of yet unborn brother was named Lucas Vasconcelos. On May 10th, 1999, one week before Gabriel's birthday, Lucas Vasconcelos died. He was a stillbirth, and it crushed Natalia and Hector. Natalia was driven into depression over her son's death, and Hector, for about a year and half after Lucas's death, was forced to do everything he could to keep her alive. There were moments when she was close to suicidal, and there were moments where Hector was pretty sure she was suicidal; but through all of it, he loved her, and he kept her with him.

And while Natalia struggled with her depression, and Hector struggled with his work and with looking after Natalia, they forgot to keep a close look on Gabriel. He was fed, he was going to school, all of his teachers loved him, and this was what Hector knew, and it was what he cared about. Natalia was too out of it to care, except for rare moments here in there in those first years. And both of them had forgotten what the doctor had said about Gabriel's speech problems.

So he went to school, and he stuttered. He couldn't speak to his classmates, and although they were not yet at the point of the insults and remarks about Gabriel (although that time would come), they just didn't have the same interest in someone who they couldn't speak with. Gabriel didn't understand what the problem was; and worse, he didn't know what to do. He had no one to talk to about it with either, with his parents immersed in their own personal tragedy. He didn't feel it in the same way they did, not with the same level of emotion, but he was a smart kid. Smart enough to know what pain was, and to be able to see it in his parent's eyes.

By the time Natalia was finally past the worst of her reaction to Lucas's death (she'd never be past Lucas's death entirely; neither her nor Hector ever would), Gabriel had become a chubby, awkward, and sad child. He was entering the third grade, and Natalia and Hector finally realized something that they should have seen a long time ago; the problem with his speech was still there, even worse than it had been before, and it was clearly having an effect on Gabriel. When he was 8, Gabriel began to work with Jonathan Masters, a speech therapist Hector had been able to get into contact with through one of his old college friends. Gabriel, after initial reluctance and anger directed towards the therapist, began to work with him on the stutter. It began him on a slow but steady process of removing his stutter and stammer, but it did little to help him to fix the other issues that had came across a result of his speech impediment.

He was stuck. He could talk to other children, but his stutter prevented him from actually having a conversation with them, one that would hold their interest. The same problem he'd always had, now even more compounded by the children who had found their new interest was bullying. He was an easy target, and he got picked on. So he avoided interactions as much as he could, and he read more books and studied hard, and threw in bigger meals and more snacks. Food, TV, literature, and video games were his companions, and it did not matter to them what size he was or whether or not he could talk back to them. Natalia saw the steady self destructive path Gabriel was on, and she was worried. But for years, she couldn't think of what to do to stop it; she was fixing his stutter, and Mr. Masters was providing the best care money could buy, but this wasn't helping his confidence.

It took a conversation back to her brother one day, when Gabriel was 11, to show her what she could do. It was a normal talk between two family members, and somewhere in the conversation Natalia happened to mention the problems Gabriel was having. Her brother remarked that he didn't know if Natalia remembered, but he had the same kind of problems when he was younger. Natalia hadn't remembered, not until he had mentioned it- her brother was one of the most confident, sociable people she knew, and she was shocked to recall the way he had used to be. He told her his secret; Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, a martial art that had allowed him to build confidence and self esteem. With a little leg work he did at his local gym, he was able to give Natalia the name of a highly respected BJJ coach in the area.

Gabriel, who always tried to please his mother, tried out this new martial arts when it was suggested to him by her, despite his own misgivings about it. He didn't like it at all, and he was afraid of it. He knew how good of shape he was in, and he was afraid of fighting. The coach saw this, and saw all of the problems, or at least the basic outlines of them, from the first time Gabriel came into his gym. He was not like the speech therapist, and he was not like Gabriel's parents. He did not console Gabriel; instead, he pushed him. He pushed him hard, and he got Gabriel to respond. There were quite a few initial difficulties, and some very hard times for Gabriel, but in the end, it worked for Gabriel.

He worked hard at BJJ. He spent hours each week working out and training for it, honing his body to the physical rigors and demands of the art. He sparred, with anyone and everyone who would. As he got older and more proficient, he fought in tournaments; never underground, he would never disrespect his coach like that, but a sanctioned tournament was different. He learned to take hits, and he learned to give out blows, and he learned to build his body into a machine. And as he worked and he trained, his body and mind both changed. They both went through the same change; they were both sharpened and toned from his pursuit of the art.

When Gabriel was 14, and finally entering high school, was the year that people really noticed the change he had made in himself. He had been changing the whole time, but up until then most people had only seen the cosmetic change, the way the weight had gone off his body and been replaced by muscle. They should have guessed at the inner change, but some people, especially the ones who had bullied him before, did not see the change. They went to Gabriel, and they tried to push him around the way they always had. Except that that year, for the first time, Gabriel pushed back. He got in quite a few fights, early on in that year. Some trouble with the administrators, and a few trips to the school psychologist. They were all worried; he had been a perfect student before this, what was all this about now? Gabriel did what he was best at; he said very little.

And all of the high school's faculty breathed a sigh of relief when it turned out that it really had just been a temporary phase. Gabriel had made his point, and the bullies had left him alone. The ones who had picked on him left alone. Most people left him alone, now. He had built up a reputation now; not many people had paid attention to him, or known much about him, when he was the chubby smart boy who didn't talk. Now he had the reputation of a bad boy, a rough guy who you'd definitely not want to pick a fight with. His lack of speech wasn't weird anymore; it was mysterious, and enigmatic.  He was a strong minded, independent person, and he didn't care what other people said and he didn't talk to other people because he didn't care what they thought. At least, that was the reputation he had now.

Gabriel, in a way, had what he had wanted. It was exactly the reputation he had gone out to attain at the start of high school. For one thing, it meant that all the people who had used to pick on him would stop it now. For another, it gave him a reason not to talk to other people; it is a lot more acceptable to not talk to other people because you're a nonconformist and you don't care what they think than it is to not talk to them because you have a speech impediment and you're awkward and nervous. And also, for the first time in his life, he had a reputation. People knew him. Even if he wasn't talking to them, people were talking about him, and it felt good. For the boy that had been used to being invisible unless people decided to pick on him, recognition was great.

But too late did he realize that what he had planned to get, and what he had succeeded at getting, was not what he wanted at all. He wanted friends. He wanted people to talk to. He was stuck in a bind, because of his stutter and his own reputation. To go looking for friends, to reveal the stutter, to reveal his nervousness about that, his nervousness about basically everything, to call their minds back to the person Gabriel Vasconcelos had been… most of them, it was too big of a risk for Gabriel. This is not to say that he has no friends. Over the years, even before he went into high school, he made a few close friends. But they are few and far between, and it is only people Gabriel trusts intimately. Only people that he really believes he could trust with the truth about himself.

It's not just the reputation, though. That's a convenient excuse for Gabriel, but that's not even the main reason. It is the fear that Gabriel has, a fear that he doesn't even want to admit to himself, of what their reaction will be if he can converse with them. If he can get past his stutter, and if they can get past the reputation. The fear that when he opens up, and he actually shows them the person that he really is, that they will turn him down. That they won't care for the person that Gabriel really is on the inside, and that they will just walk away.

At this point in his life, Gabriel just wants three things from his life. One, he wants to make sure he goes to a good college, and makes his parents proud. Two, he wants to be able to open up there, and show people the person who he truly is on the inside, the real Gabriel. The one only a few people have ever gotten to see. He wants to be able to open up, and he wants to not be afraid to do it. And three… he wants to kiss a girl. He wants to be in love, he wants to have a girlfriend, but he understands a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. So right now, all he wants is a single kiss.

Advantages: Gabriel is a very intelligent teenager, and this could serve him in two main helpful ways. One, he is adept at dealing with new situations, solving unconventional problems, and thinking on the fly as well as under pressure. Furthermore, because of his intelligence and a curiosity for learning, he has, and could remember, basic knowledge about survival tactics as well as how to handle, take care of, and fire a gun. He also has more advanced knowledge of medicine, infections, treating wounds and home remedies. Also, because of his rigorous training, he is in very good shape, as well as agile, fast and strong. On top of this, due to his Brazilian Jiu Jitsu he is quite skilled in hand to hand combat.
Disadvantages: Gabriel is not used to being on his own- he relies on a support network made of his parents, his therapist, and his sensei. Whenever a problem becomes too much for him, and he needs someone to talk to about it, he goes to them, and it will be very tough for Gabriel to deal with these things on his own. And despite his intelligence, Gabriel is still very awkward when it comes to social situations. His stutter is the most immediate impediment to socialization, and it only becomes worse when he is stressed. But asides from that, he doesn't know how to act around new people, or what to say to them. He has a hard time with words even when he can speak, and his personality, even when conveyed correctly, is still abrasive.