Arin Mallory

Arin Mallory works as a freelance soloist for the most high class restaurants, lounges and bars in New York City. They spend their free time as a stylist for their friends, as their love of fashion, makeup, and especially interesting hair tends to take up all their spare money as well. If someone lets them, Arin will give them a complete makeover, which some of their friends sometimes even pay for. (Though Arin is willing to do it for free.) They even have an in-home set up for dying hair and washing it in one of those nice sinks with the lay back chair. Other than that, they just do normal things, go out for a drink, flirt around, watch some movies, you know… normal stuff.

Arin doesn’t talk much about their detective past anymore, but perhaps that’s to keep others off their trail as they continue their mystery solving work. Having encountered a few instances of magic in a world that is supposedly not like the fictional stories found in books, Arin knows that there has to be a larger network of magical and mystical creatures somewhere. They have found clues even that such might even intertwine with their parents, or at least they suspect so based on just how much information is missing about their family and why they disappeared. This search of information had been put on pause for a while, when Arin became engaged with Manny… But soon they found that he too was wrapped up in some form of magickal weirdness, and ended up leaving them out of fear of harming them further by staying close. Now with even more of their life missing due to whatever secrets are hiding from the public human eye, Arin is more intent than ever to find the man that had messed with her head in the past and figure out just what the fuck is going on.

✦ A backstory that ended up longer than I intended to write for this

Arin grew up never knowing a lot about their family. They had no memories of their parents, though they do remember being driven to go live with their “Aunt” after something happened to them. While something tells Arin that there’s more to the story than they’ll ever know, their childhood was a good one. When Arin finished highschool early though, they decided to take a year to live downtown Manhattan and try to live on their own before starting college. During that time, after a night out at the bar, they ran into a man who told them he knew about their parents, and would be willing to trade the information… if Arin just followed him into this sketchy alley. Instead she tried to pin him down for the information, and when that didn’t work, stole his wallet and fled. With this information in hand, she would start her quest to find her background… by becoming law enforcement.

Arin got into school for the detective division, and actually quickly fell in love with it. Not only did the work provide Arin with the perfect challenges to keep themselves engaged and interested in it, but it also gave them access to a whole network of secrets. They started finding not just regular illegal works throughout their beloved city that the public tends to turn a blind eye to… but a more interesting magical undertone, one they were hellbent on exploring. Halfway through their schooling though, a distraction came about, in the form of an attractive, and also failing in his studies, student, Manuel Richards.

Between Manny’s obviousness of a crush and Arin’s no-nonsense way of pursuing those they have interest in, the two started dating instantly. And for a long while, things were great: They’d work on cases together, even if not officially the two could exchange ideas and findings over dinner, and around work Manny easily fell into whatever Arin was interested in. Within the year, Arin ended up proposing to him, which he had been planning to do but was undecided on the ring. (Arin just used one from a candy machine in the grocery mart they picked up 10 minutes before proposing.) They ended up getting custom rings made together and continued with what felt like the perfect life. Until Arin met that man again, who tried to talk with them all those years ago. Arin hadn’t even remembered to continue looking for him once getting together with Manny, but apparently they didn’t need to.

But when Arin approached him, the man acted as if he had never seen them in his life. Pressing for information didn’t work, and Arin was only calmed down by Manny running over to their side. But at that point, the other man became verbally hostile without warning… and yet, simply stormed off. Manny and Arin both decided that he wasn’t worth the trouble, and that the next time they saw him, they’d be the ones not ‘remembering’ him.

Things from there started to get weird though, not with Arin, but around them. Manny suddenly was becoming more and more tired, drained, harmed…? And wouldn’t open up to Arin why. There wasn’t any other explanation for this based on everything they had been through together, so once night they confronted him, wondering if he had started to investigate the weird man himself. Instead, they got their answer, when the two were pulled into another world. After what felt like a year, but ended up only being a few moments, stuck in an alien world, as Manny freaked out having never ‘brought anyone with him’ and Arin freaked out cause what the fuck, the two eventually fell back into their apartment… Arin was missing a hand though, and had multiple broken bones. Manny was doing only slightly better, physically… but mentally he had hit the breaking point, as he watched his fiance give up their hand and possibly their life to save a child that ended up dying anyways.