Ace Carter

Out of Character (tell us just just a bit about you outside RP)

Name: Sub


In Character

Name: Ace Carter
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Career: Veterinarian


Parents: Sarah and William Carter
Grandparents: Gillian and Edward Carter / Harry and Hailey Masson
Siblings: Samantha Carter
Aunts & Uncles: Vincent Masson and Emma Carter
Nieces & Nephews: None
Cousins: Amy Masson
Children: Cassie (aged 12) and Jackson (aged 14)
Grandkids: None yet


Skin color: Cream/Light Tan
Hair Color: Brown
Hair length: Short
Eye color: Blue
Size: 6’
Build: Lean
Picture:
Celebrity Playby Sharlto Copley


Crushes: None yet
Mates/Spouse: Savannah Cooke
Status: Widower



Personality:
When he’s not at work wearing his white veterinarian’s coat, a lot of people mistake Ace for some combination between a redneck and a rough-and-tumble biker despite his lack of any regional dialect. He loves motorcycles, leather, and denim, and his wallet has a thick, solid chain going from it to one of the belt loops on his jeans. Underneath that ultra-casual, tough guy act is a warm-hearted teddy bear reserved for a very select group of people.

Although Ace enjoys his work as a veterinarian, he hates wearing the uniform. White tends to get dirty far too easily for his taste. He was never one for the formal suit-and-tie gig anyway. Concerned pet parents seemed to be more relaxed, in some situations, when their vet showed up with a down-to-earth air about him. Some have suggested that his refusal to wear uniforms to work or suits to the proper occasions, in addition to his laid-back demeanor are indications that he is lazy. This couldn’t be further from the truth: when not at work he works out, does his own automotive and motorcycle maintenance, takes care of his horses, and frequently chases his kids around the yard in play.

Ace can be described as a man of action. He is highly reactive to the variety of situations he finds himself in, preferring to do something as opposed to sitting around talking about it. Emotion is the driving force behind much of Ace’s interactions with people. In the right company he can be particularly emotive, but he doesn’t cry easily as per his father’s instructions when he was a boy. At work he is gentle and mild-mannered; outside of work he is still that way for the most part, but there is also a considerably tougher side that comes out when it needs to. When it comes to his family he is a moderately strict father, but is that way out of a very deep love for his children. He will defend his family with all of the ferocity of a wounded animal, and may whatever God or Gods have mercy upon the soul that actually succeeds in hurting anyone Ace loves.

While Ace was adamantly against joining the military, his father did teach him how to shoot and how to fight. The man isn’t afraid to do either one if it’s for what he believes to be the right reason, or out of revenge. When it comes to people seen as enemies Ace takes an “eye for an eye” mentality that cannot and will not budge without a considerable amount of persuasion. This isn’t to say that Ace is outright aggressive or violent – just that when Ace gets shoved, he shoves back.



Your Story Please?
Ace Carter was born into a military family in the northeastern United States. His father, William, served as a distinguished Navy man until the day his wife died. With no one else to see to the needs of his nine-year-old son and five-year-old daughter, William was relieved of duty in order to see to the needs of his children.

It had been William’s hope that both of his children would go into the military. The moment the teenaged Ace and his father had a talk about possible enlistment, Ace did everything he could to avoid boot camp. Ace had very different goals on his mind. At first he thought he would go to medical school, learning about and researching the various illnesses of the world and how to treat them. But first he needed money, and a whole lot more than what state and federal aid would provide.

The moment Ace came of the minimum legal working age, he began taking up summer jobs. Some summers found Ace sweating and toiling alongside a local mechanic willing to show him the ropes on how to repair different vehicles. Other years he took an interest in working for a local horse ranch – taking care of and getting to ride the various breeds the owner focused on. Even though he loved cars and working on them Ace eventually started favoring the ranch more and more. It didn’t pay nearly as much but it was a lot more rewarding.

Once he was old enough to drive, Ace took a particularly keen interest in motorcycles. He took all of the necessary tests to get his permit. During the summers thereafter he still took up his old job at the ranch... but every so often he would sneak out to participate in private motorcycle races. Prize money for the winners of these races was pretty good; it would get him into college quicker, provide more money for the household to use, and give him even more change for his pocket. When William got wind of it he wasn’t happy with his son and forbade him to continue racing, but Ace carried on with it anyway. For a while Samantha worried he would get into an accident, but this faded a little more each time Ace came back from the races still in one piece.

Ace teased Samantha occasionally after his sister enrolled in the military and how their father finally talked her into it... or that she would be the first scientist toting around heavy artillery and that that wasn’t something people saw every day. Even though he teased, he had a deep respect for the decision she made to join up.

His medical school dreams altered from something akin to a pathologist to veterinary science. Ace missed working with the horses on the ranch. While he had to maintain a job in addition to taking his college courses, the ranch was an impractical means of income. So it was back to working in mechanics for him.

Ace was returning from a towing job one day when he met a young woman named Savannah Cooke along the roadside. Her car had broken down and her cell phone’s battery had died in the middle of trying to call for help, so she was walking to the nearest gas station. The nearest gas station wasn’t for miles yet so Ace gave her a ride back to her vehicle and towed it to the nearest auto body shop – coincidentally, the one he worked for. He learned she had family in Texas and was up north for her grandparents’ funeral. Ace felt sorry for the woman; he called a cab for her, talked with the driver to find out about how much the fare would be, and paid for half of it himself. Savannah refused the act of kindness, but Ace insisted on it and promised he’d call her the moment he fixed the car up himself.

His supervisor called him crazy for working off the clock on Savannah’s vehicle, and tried to get him to go home. Ace wouldn’t stop, told the supervisor of Savannah’s story, and admitted that it might seem crazy but he might be in love with her. His supervisor let him continue working and stay the night at the garage, under the condition that something like that never happens again and that Ace doesn’t breathe a word of it to anyone. Ace agreed, and worked tirelessly to get Savannah’s car back up and running.

He called her up first thing in the morning the next day with the news. When she arrived to pick up her car, Ace offered to show her around sometime if she planned on staying up north. Savannah paid him for the parts and labor, and told him she’d think about it. Ace hoped against hope that the smile he gave her that day was a flirty one, and that such a smile meant that she would.

Long story short is that Savannah eventually decided to return to her roots and move back to the northeastern states. The art college she wanted to attend was up that way, and there would be more opportunities in her desired line of work on the other side of the Mason-Dixon line. Ace had long forgotten about her until the day she looked him up. It shocked him that she remembered who he was; he did everything he could to rearrange his schedule so he could show her around.

Ace wasn’t sure what life at this time was like for his sister, who was well into her military career by this point. For Ace it was a constant journey of work, school, homework, and now he was dating again. Life was full of long, hard days and good, peaceful nights. He had to take out loans in order to keep going through veterinary school, but eventually he made it through and got his license to practice. He said good-bye to his job as a mechanic, and took up working as a veterinarian in one of the smaller animal hospitals.

With his dream job secured and a relationship still going strong with Savannah, Ace put a rent-to-own payment down on a small ranch-style home with a considerable amount of yard in a semi-rural area of the outskirts of town. He built a small stable on the land and bought a pair of horses. After several dates on horseback, and seeing the horses liked both him and Savannah, Ace asked her to move in with him. A year or two later and Ace found himself standing at an altar and staring as his wife-to-be strode down the aisle, all manner of words or thoughts at a screeching halt in his mind. He got all tongue-tied when reciting his vows, but managed to fake it to all assembled (except Savannah and Samantha) that it was something they had planned to do to bring some lightheartedness to the ceremony.

Time seemed to pass in a blur after that. One moment, Ace can recall waiting for his wife at the altar... and the next moment he’s holding his son for the first time. A few years had passed between then, obviously, but that was how time sometimes felt to him. Two years after Jackson’s birth, a second child came along: a daughter, named Cassie. As his children grew up Ace tended to be moderately strict with them – their mother spoiled them relentlessly – but beneath all of the rules, consequences, and lectures Ace was a teddy bear to those kids. If the kids wanted a pony – the kids got ponies, but along with that they were expected to take care of the animals. If it was Ace’s turn to cook dinner and they wanted a dessert, he’d take them out for ice cream if they promised to help with the dinner preparation and behave during the meal.

He was very active in the kids’ school’s parent-teacher association. Although he had the smarts and potential to show up to PTA meetings in business casual attire, he always bucked the system showing up in faded jeans, loose-fitting t-shirt, and a denim jacket with American Flag patches on both shoulders – some combination of the stereotyped southeastern states redneck and a rough-and-tumble biker. When his little girl turned up home from school with a bloody nose gifted to her by a bully, he ran up one side of the principal and down the other for having done next to nothing to stop things like that from happening again. He swore he would teach his kids how to fight, and if they ever got in a scuffle the school would not be holding his kids accountable for whatever might transpire. Ace quickly became unpopular with the school’s staff, but he didn’t care so long as they took it out on him and not his kids.

Ace and Savannah prepared for the Y2K scare, and even though nothing happened were glad they had done it anyway. They stood by each other during 9/11, when one of Savannah’s brothers – some bigshot in commerce living and working near ground zero – was identified amongst one of the many dead. Needless to say, when it came to potential disaster, these two were prepared and knew they had each other to support them and the children through whatever life wanted to throw their way. It went without saying that when William called to tell Ace that he was dying of cancer, Savannah and Ace knew they would get through it just like everything else they had shouldered in life. It was a tearful phone call, and Ace wasn’t ready to say good-bye. It wasn’t long after that that William’s doctors called to inform him that it wasn’t the cancer that had killed his father; it was a virus. Ace was dumbstruck that something like a virus – the same thing that caused the miserable but non-threatening common cold – had killed a man that had been so strong for as long as Ace could remember.

Not long after that, Savannah, Cassie, and Jackson all fell terribly ill. Ace was under a lot of stress trying to keep in touch with his father despite being all the way down in Virginia, while also trying to tend to his sick kids and wife, and trying to maintain the appearance of his own good health. Ace was positive that with the rest of his family being sick, it would only be a matter of time before his immune system would also succumb.

Then he started seeing more and more animals turning up at animal shelters. Ace looked into it, and learned that they were there because their owners had died. A bit more investigation and he discovered that these people had died from the flu, or something very flu-like; the stories varied from source to source, and got more and more muddied as the death toll kept climbing. Ace was scared for his family, especially the kids; part of him was afraid for his own life if he got sick, too. He didn’t want to scare Savannah, so he took his worry and greatest fears to his sister instead. The world was starting to get crazy. Samantha told him that if the worst should happen he should take his family and get to the house where they grew up; she would find them and get them all to safety.

That was the last time he heard from his sister. There was no electricity, no water, none of the modern comforts he and his family were used to. Savannah’s health was getting worse, and Ace started to fear the worst. He did everything he could to make his wife and children comfortable in the increasingly bleak situation they found themselves in. Savannah started having difficulty breathing even with the prescription medicine Ace dutifully searched pharmacy after pharmacy for, forsaking his own health and safety and fighting off the bands of armed individuals hoarding the medicine for themselves. It got to the point that the only way Savannah could breathe was if Ace found a way to prop her up on an angle. Wife, husband, and children were all frightened. Ace couldn’t comfort all of them at once. He spent that night with Savannah propped up securely in his arms. At Savannah’s last breath Ace startled awake and held her hand tightly as the last bit of light left her eyes.

He buried his wife as his children slept, and hastily gathered supplies. He loaded up Savannah’s horse with food, water, blankets, and other necessities within a reasonable amount for it to carry. His own horse was similarly outfitted with a few crucial items and a saddle so he could ride it. Ace wanted to take his motorcycle, but he knew gasoline would be increasingly hard to come by and there wasn’t enough room for the kids. The ponies belonging to Cassie and Jackson were swiftly saddled up and had small packs of favorite toys and things for each child. He woke up the kids and told them they were heading north to find Aunt Sam.

It was a long journey by horse, fraught with danger, but Ace let out a huge sigh of relief and all manner of thankful prayers as Cassie and Jackson started recovering from their illness. Whatever they had, they either developed immunity or it wasn’t the same virus that seemed to have totaled most of the population.

At long last, Ace and his kids finally rode into the little town where he and his sister grew up. Now all they had to do was find her...


Weakness:
Tends to either be too trusting or doesn’t trust people enough; it varies
Reacts without thinking
Daredevil
Impulsive
Blunt

Strengths:
Good with kids and animals
Medical knowledge
Hardworking
Brave
Kind

Favorite Color: Sienna
Theme song: Never Gonna Be Alone by Nickelback