WINTER

Winter grew up on a farm with her mother and father in the middle of nowhere. The closest city was nearly an hour away by car, and the family only had one very run down car, it was saved only for the days when the family would go to sell their harvest, some of Winter's only times visiting the city besides her birthday (Which her parents did follow to the detail that it was leap year, meaning only on the true February 29th every 4 years). Most of these birthday visits were going to restaurants or a book store for Winter to choose a few books for her birthday. While the car could have handled more trips, the city they lived by was known for being crime heavy, and her parents were very overprotective, if it didn't matter if the crime was real or a rumor, they would not risk it. Homeschooled and nowhere near civilization, Winter's only friends were her own family, her books, and the animals on the farm. With the little electricity their home had (which basically amounted to lights, a large fridge and a landline phone),sometimes Winter would try to 'prank call' random numbers, but without any real sense of how to 'prank' people, she usually just ended up either hung up on, or in a random conversation with lonely old people.

Eventually when she was 26, Winter decided that she couldn't take the same day on loop anymore, and packed a bag with whatever she could carry that she cared about, left a goodbye note to her parents, and left in the middle of the night to trek all the way to the city. After arriving she immediately began to try and look for a job, or at least to get some cash from someone for a motel room. She walked into practically every store and company she saw, explaining her entire situation everytime and asking if she could work for them. Most of course said no, that wasn't how you'd get hired anywhere these days. Winter hadn't thought her plan through completely, and as the day went on she began to feel more and more defeated, too nervous to walk all the way back and face her parents after suddenly leaving like she did. Eventually though, she was approached by someone late in the day who pointed her toward a nearby company building, telling her who to talk to and what to say, that they would have a job for her. With no real social experience to call back on besides her fantastical books, she naively accepted and the next day did exactly what he said, getting hired by this mysterious company claiming to be doing important research, Winter was excited to be part of something important.

For her job, she was brought onto a large space ship, made to hold lots of things, living or inanimate, lots of security, and a lot of rules. Everyone on ship was responsible for the care and research of various creatures and objects with abnormal or dangerous abilities. People we're told that if they wanted to quit, now was the time. Winter chose to stay, despite feeling like something was off, she had no other job she could go to. The ship from then on was essentially their home and 'neighborhood'. Many people were new, but there were pre-existing employees on the ship as well, including the Team Captain; Roberto. Compared to the rest of the employees, Winter had very little skills, was too skittish for anything dangerous, and wasn't the best communicator. Deciding to go easy on her, Roberto assigned her to the simplest job on the ship, which was an anomalous tv channel that always played no matter where the galaxy it was, and caused sudden aggression in others when in earshot of it, despite aggression however, nobody would end up harmed. The channel consisted mostly of loud static, but occassionally would have random chopped sections of other channels from varying planets saying messages or sound effects, often apocalypse related or explosions/guns. Her job was simply to listen, time, and record down what happened on the channel. Sometimes she was also allowed to borrow a necklace with a jewel similar the yang symbol that made doing other tasks simpler and easier, like easing anxiety, the agreement being that Winter had to tell Roberto whenever she was using the necklace, because it's matching 'yin' counterpart (a bracelet) was also held on the same ship, and they could not both be out at the same time or they could be dangerous.

Eventually after a year there, the former employee who worked the greenhouse had died. With the greenhouse being their main source of food, and seemingly no one else who knew how to handle the plants on board, the crew started becoming worried. Winter told Roberto that she knew how to farm, and while he was frustrated that she'd never brought this up beforehand, he swapped her job from the TV channel to working the greenhouse, but still gave her other odd jobs occassionally. 2 years later, Winter told Roberto ahead of time that she would using the necklace at a certain time tomorrow, which he agreed to. The next day however, Roberto had expected her to still contact him before doing it, when she never did, combined with Roberto being exhausted that day, he took out the yin bracelet without thinking and almost immediately the two pieces of jewelrey gravitated toward the other and once fused, released a dragon that wreaked havoc on the ship.

The ship's systems were breaking now, and thanks to the quick wit of another employee, the ship was steered toward a planet in an attempt to land and it seemed like they would succeed, but it backfired as the ship began to crash instead. Winter and Roberto woke up hours later, Roberto hardly injured beyond some heavy bruising, Winter had it worse with a dislocated arm and several large cuts, luckily none anywhere vital. Roberto had gone looking for survivors, and found Winter first, helping her up as they both continued to search. They found one other person, the ship's nurse, but he was very injured. The two helped him outside and he tried to advise them how to help, and sent Roberto to find a medical kit if possible while he popped Winter's arm back into place. With his guidance Winter and Roberto were able to keep him alive for 2 weeks, but he eventually succumbed to an infection that simply kept getting worse no matter what.

Now being the only 2 left Winter and Roberto were left to figure out how to survive, something that their fallen coworker knew how to do far better than they did. The two were worried that they would not last much longer, while Roberto was convinced they were going to die, Winter kept hope that they could at least find a way to survive, but luck was on their side, and after 2 months of being stranded, another ship landed on the planet. While Roberto was suspicious, Winter ran right over as the strangers came out of the ship; A human girl, two cats, one black and one pink, and a tall black jackal with antlers. She begged that they rescue them and at first the Jackal was insisting 'no', scaring Winter so bad that she just kept begging. Eventually the black cat gave the others an angry look and insisted that they at least brought them back to civilization, and the other human agreed and insisted as well, and so Winter and Roberto were saved, and the others introduced themselves as Mary, Puss in Boots, Hale-Bopp, and "Mitternacht Freischütze". By the time they reached civilization again though, Mary and Puss had gotten attached to Winter's company, and Winter insisted that Roberto stay too, despite his adversity with actually interacting with the group, he didn't try to leave when Winter insisted he stay, and so they did.