G044 - Swift, Mikki [DECEASED]

[Deamon]

DECEASED

Name: Michaeilia "Mikki" Swift
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Grade: 12
School: George Hunter High School
Hobbies and Interests: Music (guitar, composition, remixing, DJ-ing), herpetology, recreational drug use, partying, urban exploration, social media

Appearance: Mikki stands at 5'4", 115lbs, with a thin and wiry frame. Her skin is clear but fair, as she doesn't tend to stay in the sun any more than absolutely necessary. Her hair is shoulder-length and dyed blonde, with her natural brunette hair showing at the roots - she touches it up every couple of weeks. Mikki's face is round, her cheekbones are ever-so-slightly angular, sitting below round blue eyes which themselves sit below long, angular eyebrows, tinted slightly as to not contrast too much with her dyed hair. Her nose is straight but flat, with a ring piercing in her left nostril. She has slightly full lips and a wide mouth, often covered in complimentary lip makeup, like lipstick and lip liner.

While a friendly and outgoing person, Mikki tends to hold herself and her body language as more relaxed and chilled - she's constantly folding her arms or wrapping themselves around her body, but never in an authoritative way. Her stance compliments her dress style, as her fashion sense could also be described as relaxed and chilled, which is how she wants and chooses to present herself. Adidas caps, shirts, shoes and jackets (often one size too large) are all staples of Mikki's wardrobe, as well as assorted pieces from Stussy and Supreme. At the time of the abduction, Mikki was wearing an army green jacket over a black tank top, jean shorts, and white sneakers.

Biography: Mikki was born Michaeilia Swift to Stassi and Hunter Swift in Chattanooga Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga - Stassi originally wanted to name their daughter Michaela, but she began registering her name on the birth certificate only a few hours after her daughter was born, during which she was still feeling the effects of the pain medication and temporarily forgot how to spell the name, and Hunter was in the hospital cafe grabbing muffins and coffee. Many extra i's were added, and thus began a lifetime of teachers attempting to pronounce Michaeilia's name correctly and failing on the first try. To make things easier on everyone else, Michaeilia goes by "Mikki", something her 3rd grade school teacher called her after failing to pronounce her name for the first time - it ended up sticking. The only people who currently call Mikki by her full name are her teachers, parents and closest friends, and her parents and closest friends only call her such they're angry at her or need her attention.

Both Stassi and Hunter met in college while pursuing their masters at the University of Tennessee - Stassi was completing her masters in Art History, while Hunter was completing his masters in Biology. The two dated for several years before marrying and having Mikki, their only daughter and child. Stassi was also a painter on the side, making canvas pieces that she managed to sell for several hundred dollars at most - what she couldn't sell she decorated their home with. Hunter's own personal hobby was raising and caring for various reptiles, mainly skinks and anoles. These also reside within the Swift family home, in a spare room modified with several high-tech terrariums. When Mikki was born, Stassi was an art dealer, while Hunter was working towards achieving tenure as a professor at the University of Tennessee.

While Mikki and her family spent her first few years in a moderately comfortable middle-class neighbourhood, this would change when she was three years old. Hunter and Stassi made a risky house purchase during a slump in the real estate market, acquiring a four bedroom, three bathroom house for less than half of the usual market price, but would not find out until after they moved in that the neighbourhood they had just moved into was one of the more dangerous in the city. Both parents had done insufficient research into crime statistics of their new neighbourhood, and would be faced with a new reality when they returned home from dinner at a new restaurant a month after moving in and their house had been burgled. While they managed to get as much back as they could from insurance, almost everything they got went back into upgrading the house security, from putting smash alarms on all the windows to changing every lock on every outside door into a triple-bolted lock.

Mikki was adventurous and inquisitive as a child - while she was not allowed to play with any of the other kids on her street, due to the neighbourhood not being the safest in her parent's eyes, this did nothing to deter her outgoing nature, and as such she was always asking questions to her various babysitters and carers who looked after her during the day while her parents were at work. She socially blossomed when she finally entered school - she was only an above average student academically, but she made friends much easier than her average classmate. Mikki worked hard to maintain her friendships, always quick to remember things her friends had told her weeks ago, and attempting to fix any relationship that involved the other party not particularly liking her. While she couldn't be friends with everyone, she always at least tried first, and she maintained her excellent social skills all throughout her schooling life. She was always interested in what other people had to say, and quick to contribute to a conversation herself, which lent well to an environment such as school where she believed nearly everyone sought to stand out.

Academically, Mikki's main interests were always music and science. Her science passion stemmed from being around her father's lizards, as she was almost as dedicated to their wellbeing as Hunter was, while Mikki's love of music stemmed from a variety of sources - she often connected songs to happy moments throughout her childhood and growing up, such as when her mother would play Depeche Mode, Daft Punk, or The Chemical Brothers while cooking or painting with Mikki around; she was also just fascinated by how the music was made, often playing around with a toy xylophone or differently leveled glasses of water in order to make notes or recreate tunes her mother played. Her greatest accomplishment as an untrained child musician before she was seven years old was managing to recreate the melody of Daft Punk's ‘One More Time' by ear with ten glasses of water and a toy xylophone with only seven keys, which she performed to her parents and greatly impressed them. By that point, aware of Mikki's innate talent, they had already begun discussing getting Mikki private music lessons, and after introducing her to a variety of different musical instruments from a number of music tutors and classes, Mikki eventually settled on learning how to play the guitar. While vastly different from the glasses and toy xylophone, Mikki managed to grasp the basics of the guitar far quicker than she figured out the variety of other instruments she had tried beforehand (including every member of the woodwind instrument family, a number of brass instruments, and the piano), and from that point on, Mikki learned and practiced every day she could to become better.

As Mikki became older, her parent's relationship began to strain. While they had initially remained stable and communicative, Stassi began to want to assign blame to things she saw as going wrong with their lives, and as Hunter had been slightly more insistent on their home purchase than herself, Stassi would begin to use this in arguments as ammunition against most of what Hunter had to say, which built up a lot of resentment within their previously happy marriage. Other occurrences, such as both houses either side of theirs being busted by police for housing grow-ops, a woman across the street being arrested in the middle of the night for what Hunter and Stassi strongly assumed was prostitution, and Hunter eventually failing to achieve tenure at UT putting him out of a job in the middle of an employment recession, only gave Stassi more ammunition for future fights, sometimes arguing that by even living in their neighbourhood they were putting Mikki in danger or that Hunter lost his job on purpose. They thought about moving out of the neighbourhood, but despite what they had invested into home security and presentation, it would be far too difficult to make back as much as they'd put into the home, and that was before even taking into account they still had roughly 15 years left on their mortgage. Instead of focusing on fixing their marriage, they instead tried to make the best of what they had, working out solutions to what they saw as embarrassing situations, such as having to have their college friends or the parents of any of Mikki's friends over - they would work as best they could to have themselves visit their friends rather than the other way around, and when unable to, make up excuses as to why they couldn't have them over. They also did what they could to keep their daughter safe at home by drilling into her the importance of closing her windows at night and making sure the door was locked whenever she left the house, as well as keeping her well informed of Stranger Danger.

After losing tenure, Hunter spent most of Mikki's early teenage years without a stable income or salary. While he had much experience in teaching and science, many of the non-teaching positions he applied for in his search for employment saw him as overqualified, and other permanent teaching positions he applied for always went to another candidate. He picked up occasional substitute science teacher positions at nearby high schools, and once Uber entered the public consciousness he picked up occasional work four nights a week taxiing people around Chattanooga in the family car. However, none of this could compare to his previous work at UT, or even to his wife's art dealership, which only served to make Hunter feel emasculated in all aspects of his life. The only way he could make up for his lack of contribution to the family in his eyes was to spend more time with his daughter, and over her teenage years they formed a tight bond. There were times throughout Mikki's life where she thought of her father more as an older brother, and she could always come to him for help when she was too afraid of asking her mother.

Mikki's interest in music only grew as she went through her education. While a lot of her initial taste was forged by what her parents listened to and what she picked up residually, by the time she became adept at the guitar she'd decided on her own taste. In addition to the EDM she grew up on and the acoustic folk music she'd practiced and perfected herself on through her guitar, Mikki also picked up an affinity for house, synth-pop, and Hi-NRG music, due to them vibing well with her and bringing out her words and emotions better. By the time she reached middle school she not only enjoyed playing and performing, but also composing her own tunes. While no inate prodigy in composition, she found great joy in fiddling around with guitar chords to make her own melodies, and when she was 13-years-old Stassi bought Mikki her own Macbook, specifically for the Garageband music composition application. Alongside her guitar practice, Mikki spent many nights pulling together different instruments and sounds to play the different aspects of the song, and while by her own standards she only made a handful of listenable songs, all of which were less than a minute long, it set the stage for the rest of Mikki's time in high school - by the time she reached high school and finished her first song over three minutes long, Mikki wanted to make music for the rest of her life.

However, at that same time, Mikki was stretching herself thin socially. In her years of enthusiasm to make friends and being on good terms with everyone, she'd robbed herself of a solid group of friends with which to hang out with - put simply, she didn't have a single best friend. She had friends and acquaintances, but Mikki still felt like she was missing out. Starting from the day she entered George Hunter High School, Mikki started to focus more on finding the people she truly had a lot in common with, at the cost of leaving a lot of her past friendships to wilt. She eventually became best friends with Charelle Chernyshyova and Forrest Quin, due to their combined interests in music and animals, as well as similar personalities and tastes, and the three became almost inseparable from that point onward - there are times where it almost feels like they've been best friends from long before high school.

With Forrest's introduction as a mainstay in her life also came Mikki's eventual driving interest in DJ-ing and partying, which went in hand with her interest in making music. Mikki saw music not only as a way to express herself or tell a story, but also as a way to get people pumped up and emotional in all sorts of ways, especially at a party. When she started going to high school parties, she would see the way that, in her eyes, the people who controlled the music controlled the party and how everyone felt, and that fed into her reasons for making music in the first place. Over a few weeks, Forrest taught Mikki the basics of DJ-ing, after which Mikki quickly learned how to play and mix in a way that suited her music tastes, and taught herself as much as she could from the internet and through experimentation. She quickly became a natural at mixing music live, and alongside Charelle and Forrest formed a DJ collective that lasted throughout the rest of high school.

As well as becoming an enthused and experienced DJ, Mikki also became a mainstay at many of the parties that happened among the students of George Hunter High School, not just as a DJ but also as a participant. She often treated partying as an escape from the responsibility of her life, as well as a place she could be vulnerable outside of her closest friends. Most of her life was spent practicing, studying, dealing with her parents marital problems and trying to be the best she could be at everything she chose to put her mind to, and partying offered a release from all of that, if only for a few hours. It was also through partying that she discovered her affinity for recreational party drugs, the first experience of which was a joint she partook in from a group of senior boys while she was a sophomore. Her parents quickly found out about her partying and drug use when she was dropped home that same night still under its effects, upon which she was immediately grounded for both not telling them about the party she was going to and for clearly being under the influence of drugs. Mikki fought long and hard with her parents about her boundaries over the next week, trying to convince them that she was capable of making her own decisions with regards to both drugs and parties, which wasn't a concern of theirs at all - both Stassi and Hunter were more concerned about her safety, and taking drugs from strangers at a party hosted by a kid neither of them knew was not safe behaviour. Mikki eventually understood her parent's concerns. While she never promised to never take drugs or party again, she did promise to be more careful in the future, to let them know everything about the party, with regards to location, neighbourhood, safety, and whether or not alcohol would be there, just in case there was an emergency on either end and Mikki needed immediate extraction. Mikki also made promises to herself, having understood her parents concerns - from that point on, she only participated in drug use when she received said drugs from people she was well acquainted with, and always in a safe space.

Unbeknownst to Mikki, Stassi and Hunter's marriage had fallen completely off the rails. The two had both fallen out of love with each other due to a number of issues, but had been hesitant in calling the marriage off completely due to Mikki, who was only partially aware of how badly things had been going. They both loved her more than they'd loved anything else in their lives, and when Mikki was sixteen and hanging out with Charelle and Forrest one weekend, the two talked things over and decided to stay together until Mikki graduated high school, after which they would divorce as amicably as possible. They knew Mikki would be strong enough to not be irreparably affected by the divorce, but they both just wanted to be sure..

By the time Mikki reached her sophomore year of high school, she was as fully invested in what she saw as her future career as she would ever be. Having shared Forrest's equipment between the three of them for all of their freshman year, Mikki and Charelle eventually acquired their own gear, Mikki having saved up since November the previous year. It was after this that Mikki finally had enough time to move onto what she saw as the next big step in what she saw as her music career - learning to remix. She started simple, splicing existing clips into similarly existing music, but the more she learned and practiced, the more confident she became, and soon she was taking cues from her years of guitar and adding her own flairs to existing songs. They weren't all the best, some of them weren't even half listenable, but she kept practicing until she felt comfortable enough to start putting her own remixes into party mixes for parties she DJ'd at.

When Mikki entered her junior year of high school, she'd become convinced beyond all doubt that the music industry was where she belonged, and she believed herself to have achieved excellence enough in her abilities to truly make a career out of her passion. However, she realized that just playing at parties for friends and mixing for fun in her friends' basement wasn't enough - she had to put herself out there on the internet, heighten the chances she would be recognized and make a true name for herself outside of high school. To that end, she began learning the ins and outs of social networking, starting her own Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Reddit, opening accounts anywhere she could post her work. She used the name she'd come up with for herself on a lazy afternoon with her friends as the beginning of her brand - DJ TAIPAN, a name she'd used for years amongst her DJ collective, stemming from her own continuing love of lizards and snakes, and continuing with her friends theme of animal-themed DJ names. While she didn't expect the harshness of the internet to hit her so quickly, with her Reddit posts promoting her Soundcloud achieving a handful of personal disparaging remarks, Mikki toughened her skin rather than let it affect her, and persisted. Ultimately, people liked what she had to offer, and her social media following, under her DJ name, became larger than most of the students at her high school.

During a slow, boring evening, Mikki was perusing Instagram and came across the urban exploration tag while looking through the hashtags of a mutual follow. Instantly smitten, she looked through the tag for hours, taking in hundreds of beautifully taken photos of man-made structures and ruins. Over the next few weeks, Mikki started seeing buildings in a different light, and one day took the opportunity to explore a poorly guarded abandoned one. It was mostly unsafe, she accidentally fell through a crumbling hollow drywall at one point, and she twisted her ankle on the way out, but by the end of it she had an amazing array of photos that she started uploading intermittently to the Urban Exploration subreddit and her Instagram account, breaking up the uninterrupted flow of selfies and song/remix samples. The next time she went exploring, she went with friends, and to a much safer location in abandoned farmland outside of the city, but still managed to get some equally good, if not better, photos. This eventually evolved into a frequent hobby for Mikki, even if it became less than frequent during her senior year due to her school and music workload. She hopes to eventually find a location in her exploration that can combine her interests, a place suitable enough and safe enough to hold a huge event or party, with her and the rest of her friends as hosts and DJs. The hobby itself is rather risky; the buildings and locations she visits are often dilapidated and unsafe, and some of them were often patrolled by security guards. To this end, Mikki took safety precautions whenever she went exploring; she learned to recognize the signs of weak floors, weak walls, and other dangers, she took notice of guard patrol timing and patterns, and, in order to reduce risk, she started some light cardio exercise in order to help her endurance should she need to make a quick escape. She's had several missteps - her aforementioned wall fall and twisted ankle, and one time she was intercepted by security before she even made it onto the site - but those only strengthened Mikki's desire to become better.

Mikki has been dating ever since her later years of middle school - her relationships started out just like any normal friendship, except exclusive and with a boy, but after a while they would end due to various reasons. The first and foremost always seemed to be Mikki not seeming to be putting enough effort in. This was during the period when a lot of her friendships were surface-level and superficial, rather than close and meaningful, and she still didn't have a best friend - she treated all of her boyfriends nearly the same way; with surface-level affection and superficial closeness, never really opening up in a meaningful way. She always attempted to remain friends with her exes, with varying success. Her dating dynamic changed once she entered high school, as she was now more committed to her close interpersonal relationships - she would even run her potential boyfriends past her best friends for their thoughts or approval, and actually hanging out with them outside of school. However, due to the mounting responsibilities in her schoolwork and music work, Mikki was often too busy and overwhelmed make these relationships work too much longer than they had before. It wasn't until her senior year that she finally managed to balance the busiest aspects of her life, upon which she finally committed to a relationship with her boyfriend at the time - thanks to her emotional availability and the desire to make things work, they have been dating since.

Socially, Mikki is just as outgoing and friendly as she was when she first entered school, although her true friends are a small group of people - generally, everyone outside of this group falls into the acquaintances category. However, this doesn't mean she treats people outside of her friend group badly; she always likes discussion and talking common interests with people she's only just recently met, and she engages in these with lots of passion. However, she is somewhat unaware of how exclusionary she comes off at times - she never sits with anyone but her friends at lunch or in class if she can help it, which tends to give off an unapproachable air about her, although this does not prevent her from being friendly with people she only sort of knows.

Mikki's classes as of her senior year are varied, but suited to her interests. Her favourite subjects are music and biology, both of which she manages to get high grades in, while she gets low Bs and high Cs in literary analysis, marketing and sociology. Her least favourite subject is gym, a class she took only so she could get fitter and hang out with her friends. She is also a member of George Hunter High School's Music Appreciation Club, a fairly low-attendance club but one she still attends diligently whenever she's not busy with her schoolwork or other responsibilities. She also takes AP Music classes, even though she has no plans to attend college or university once she leaves high school - she just wants to learn everything school can teach her about music before she leaves high school.

Mikki intends to move to Los Angeles, California, where one of her closest cousins, Mattie, on her mom's side has a room available in her place in West Hollywood, and begin marketing herself as an artist and DJ while working minimum wage. She doesn't expect to become world famous immediately, but she fully intends to work as much as she can on her art in order to become well-known in the industry, even if it means just starting out playing at friends parties for little or no pay. She wants to take Calvin, one of her skinks that her dad gave her on her 16th birthday, with her when she moves; Mattie's lease forbids pets, however, which is one of the sacrifices Mikki believes she'll have to make along the way to being a success.

Advantages: Mikki's biggest advantage is her passion and her headstrong nature - when she tells herself she can do something, she fully dedicates herself to it, and as such she is unlikely to give up or surrender in the SOTF environment. She is also known around school for being friendly, and even has a strong pre-existing friend group, both of which she could use to keep herself insulated and safe from island threats. Her urban exploration hobby may also come in handy on an abandoned island - having evaded security guards in her exploits, she knows how to find quick hiding spots in a pinch, as well as finding the quickest way out of a room or building should something bad happen.
Disadvantages: Mikki's biggest advantage is also her biggest disadvantage - Mikki's passion and her headstrong nature mean it's extremely difficult to dissuade her from believing she can do something, even if it seems unlikely or dangerous, which can be a hindrance in an environment where the consequence for failure is death or worse. She has also let a lot of close relationships fall to the wayside over the years, meaning that even though people may know who she is, she has a very limited group of people whom she feels she can trust. Mikki's small stature and frame mean that, while she has some degree of fitness, she can be easily overpowered by anyone bigger than her.

Designated Number: Female student No. 044

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Designated Weapon: Thomet MP9

Conclusion: I think tha-wait Michaeilia? Ahahahahaha. Sorry, I had something else, but yeah...Michaeilia. - Josie Knight

DECEASED