determined. blunt. brave. resilient. snarky. unpredictable. protective. explosive temper. volatile. loyal. intelligent. stubborn. resourceful.Hollis is a go-getter. She's determined, stubborn and fairly volatile in some curious ways. Hollis' moods can go from zero to fifty in seconds, she is either in an exceptionally good mood and sours, or she's in a horrific mood that just seems to pass quickly. This passes into a lot of her interactions.
Hollis boasts a somewhat above average capability with hand to hand combat; she's versed in boxing, kick boxing and has been taking krav maga lessons for numerous years. She's a regular boxer at her gym and can comfortably punch above her weight bracket. She does have the strength of a normal human who works out and cultivates an inner strength, so she isn't better than any supernatural creature, although she can sometimes hold her own with smarts and skill against an untrained or sloppy vampire.WEAPONS KNOWLEDGE
Trained with basic handguns and shotguns, Hollis does own a gun and carry a permit. She's also skilled with knives, something she grew curious about in high school during a rebellion against 'ladylike hobbies' that her mother wanted her to take up. She's especially fond of curved blades and butterfly knives.CREATIVITY AND STYLE
Hollis has some skill with single sticks and batons, she's interested in upgrading, but lacks the teacher to take that step.
Hollis is a bit of an ingenious worker. As her bounties got more complex, Hollis began working with what she had to make her job more interesting. For this she's got an array of tools, things like road spike tracks, flash bombs, tasers, hollow point rounds, splinter rounds and she's coated two of her knives in pure silver -primarily for subduing any wolf she's been tasked with bringing in. She also has specific handcuffs which, similarly, are reinforced and coated with silver for werewolves.
Growing up in high society tends to be the life of privilege, occasionally the pressure being the only downside. For Hollis it was slightly different. Yes, she had money, and her name could open many doors, could've gotten her into the best schools, could've been the stepping stone to the best life possible. There was just one problem, she was a bastard, and her father denied anything to do with her or her brother.TEENAGE LIFE
Hollis and her older brother, Carter, were born to Diane Lane, the mistress of Franklin Kennedy, third cousin to those Kennedy's. Diane was in no way a secret to those in Franklin's employ, even Franklin's wife knew about Diane, but given the state of the Kennedy family history, she kept quiet and just ignored it all. Diane didn't care how she came by the money she had, so long as it kept coming. Franklin Kennedy had his heir in his legitimate son, John Barry Kennedy, and shortly following Hollis's birth his wife birthed a daughter too, ensuring that neither Hollis nor her brother were threats to the family legacy or continued business in real estate holdings.
Of course, living such a life, with everyone knowing just who and what your life entailed, it could embitter anyone. And Hollis was one such person, turning mean and rude and caustic towards many. She took up numerous bad habits, just in an attempt to sully any reputation that might be connected to her last name. Gradually, she stopped caring to be a stain on her father and started to just do what felt right, what she wanted. She already had a reputation as a tearaway child, and that suited her fine, so she just built on that as she transitioned into teenage life.
Hollis probably calmed down somewhat as high school approached, although she was severely closed off emotionally and very abrasive, her teachers weren't concerned with her falling into the pitfalls of drug use or cutting class. So it looked like she was on track to succeed at something in life.ADULTHOOD
For the most part, she avoided too much fighting, although with her thick skin and free flying fists, any and all mocking regarding her status stopped quickly. Even though she was in the same class as her half-sister, the pair didn't talk or keep the same company and while everyone knew that they were related, people stopped bringing it up as a negative to Hollis or Carter.
By the time Hollis was graduating high school she had very little ideas in the way of what she wanted to do. She got into Columbia but had no idea what she was going to do there. But she was expected to go, so she went.
On the plus side, it was where she figured out that she could totally dig on chicks as much as dudes, she didn't give a fuck about her mother's opinion and her brother wasn't the total price she'd initially thought he was.
In university, Hollis met Lucy. She was fun, flirty and full of life, she was the polar opposite of Hollis, and that was part of the draw. They dated all the way through their freshman year, living in the dorms close by, although not sharing a dorm. Lucy was able to draw a more lighthearted approach to people out of Hollis and sparked the growth of Hollis' social circle just slightly.
In the summer between Freshman and Sophomore year, Lucy and Hollis were coming back from a party, heading to the apartment that Lucy was renting during the break, when they were jumped by a masked assailant. Hollis took a blow to the head from the assailant, the butt of his gun striking her above the eye on the temple. Lucy, meanwhile, was punched in the face and kicked in the ribs when she went down. He demanded all of their money and some jewellery he could see.
The attack shook both of them up, Hollis needed stitches in her head, Lucy had broken two ribs and her jaw was fractured, she also developed severe PTSD and depression following the attack. For once, and primarily because there was media attention on two affluent girls from Columbia being robbed, Hollis' father actually stepped in to do something about his daughter's attack.
The police were pushed and pushed and pushed to get their asses in gear, but were held up by red tape and no reliable eye witnesses (because Hollis took a head injury, so obviously she didn't know what she was saying), so very little headway was made in the case.
Lucy dropped out of school and moved back home to Illinois, claiming that she needed time to adjust and get herself back together. Hollis was upset, but ultimately understood that Lucy was having a panic attack almost daily due to college in general triggering her PTSD.
They broke up, Hollis started to withdraw until Carter pushed her to maintain the friends she shared with Lucy and then her father appeared at her dorm with two things; the keys to an apartment off campus with a door man and CCTV around the building, and a flyer for self-defence classes.
When a year passed, with new information on the attack, but a spate of similar attacks over the months in the same general area, Carter pushed for their father to hire a PI to deal with this, find the perpetrator and bring them to justice. So he did, attempting to provide some kind of fatherly presence to Hollis' life. The PI that was hired spent two months looking into things, tracing back the attacks before he provided three names to Kennedy, emphasising that the police would need to get involved with the evidence he'd collected.
The police did get involved, getting warrants for each man's arrest before finding out that they worked as a team. Questioning revealed that the particular perp who attacked Hollis had fled the state three weeks prior, effectively making him a fugitive and the police could do little to track him.
Hollis didn't take the news well, her anger building. She burnt a lot of it at the gym and the classes she'd been taking. Annoyed that someone who'd effectively ruined a period of her life was getting away with it and free to terrorise others. It almost derailed her education, although Hollis was barely bothered by it at all. The other two men were prosecuted for their crimes and sent to prison, but it wasn't enough to properly appease Hollis.
At 21, angry and volatile, Hollis met Ryan Lex. Ryan was a teacher at the gym, he was also an amatuer boxer and a promising crime reporter. Hollis was in no way in the right place to be starting a relationship, so they were purely physical at first, boxing lessons turning far more close than strictly necessary, leading to 'private lessons' and home calls. Until Ryan found out about Hollis' attack.
Hollis graduated college in a steady middle ground. Given the crap she'd been through she was happy with that. She'd ended up studying psychology with an emphasis in the criminal mind and audited a class in criminal law. Ryan was there to see her graduate.
Casual hookups led to a slow burn relationship that crept up on Ryan and Hollis until suddenly they were living together. Ryan had secretly been looking into Hollis' attack ever since he found out, trying to track down the assailant who'd fled. Ryan finally hit paydirt two years later, when he'd contacted a bounty hunter in New York who'd found the guy on a bail jump for a different crime.
Ultimately, he was sent back to face charges for Hollis' attack and subsequently sentenced to fifteen years for two counts of grievous bodily harm, robbery and possession of a stolen firearm.
Three nights after the sentencing, Ryan proposed. Hollis surprised herself by saying yes.
Diane wanted a big event, John Kennedy wanted it kept hushed and out of the media, Hollis got sick of the meddling really quick and Ryan didn't care how they got married, just so long as they did it. Within a year, they'd eloped in Vegas, told everyone to butt out and moved from Hollis' apartment to their own shared space as husband and wife.
Things were good for a while; Ryan's family thought Hollis was a little blunt and argumentative, but Ryan was smitten and she was clearly in love with him, so they weren't difficult. Hollis' family, outside of her brother, were barely involved in her life at all. Hollis took up working with a group that dealt with survivors of street violence while also working part time as a secretary in a therapist's office while Ryan continued building up his crime reporting career and keeping up with his boxing where possible.
It was after just two years of marriage, when Ryan was 27 and Hollis was 27 that life changed dramatically again. During a boxing event, Ryan ended up giving an interview to a woman named Amara, a beautiful and enchanting woman who took a liking to him very quickly. Over the course of a weekend event Amara ended up in Ryan's company numerous times until the night before he was due to come home when he basically dropped off the map and no one could reach him.
Hollis flipped out. The event organisers couldn't track down Ryan, the police couldn't find him and the phone company stated that his phone was off, but they could give the police information on his last location. Hollis was never given information about the last place Ryan had been, but it had basically been a bloody, destroyed hotel room with Ryan's blood all over the bedsheets.
Three months with no information, nothing to find out, Ryan was presumed to have either ran off with a mistress, or been killed.
After five months it was proven that one of those were half true. Ryan showed up on Hollis' doorstep in the middle of the night, wrung out, shaking and looking like death. It took just thirty minutes for Ryan to explain that he'd been attacked and changed by a vampire.
The temper, blood lust and having Amara prancing in and out of their lives, because she was Ryan's maker and as such had a bond with him, one that meant she was there to teach him how to handle the life she'd forced him into. Hollis barely held herself in check around the woman, but tried to cope with it just to have Ryan back in her life and know that he was okay -in a sense.
Ryan's aversion to feeding on people meant he was constantly weak, Amara pushing at him to feed and trying to get him to go with her to vampire clubs -clubs that Hollis would not enter. After a series of weeks, where Amara was pushing numerous buttons trying to get Hollis wound up with jealous and Ryan itching to feed, a damn broke between Ryan and Hollis, resulting in some fairly robust sex which ended with Ryan feeding from Hollis.
It became a somewhat complex thing between them, even more so when Ryan discovered that while he'd been missing Hollis had signed on with an agency to become a bounty hunter, leaving her job at the therapists office and resigning her position with the survivor group. Each argument seemed to result in sex and feeding, one such time being a little too much for Hollis to handle, as Ryan started to lose his control and almost drained too much from Hollis.
Ryan called Carter to meet him at the hospital after taking Hollis in, explaining she had lost a lot of blood and then leaving once Carter showed up. Hollis was in hospital for three days, when she went home, Ryan had removed all of his things from the apartment. It took another week for Hollis to file for divorce, she sent the paperwork to his mother, sure that she'd at least have contact with Ryan. Six months later the divorce was finalised and Hollis sold her apartment, bought a motorbike and took her bounty hunting on the road.
It turned into a form of therapy, but at the same time it was a terrible coping method. Hollis would move to a city, collect some bounties, get money and then move onwards to the next one. She started to look for challenges in the cases, tracking people more and more dangerous, drug dealers, killers, she took on a case with one wolf who had jumped bail on the mauling of joggers but no one wanted to go on after him. Hollis took it on with a silver tipped dagger and a tranquilizer gun. She turned in the wolf, a little worse for wear after a rough trip through the forests, and felt a rush that she'd thought was gone from her life.
It certainly wasn't easy, and sometimes she had to take extended breaks from work just to let her body heal. She's added to her scars significantly, and her hospital records are far more extensive than they should be, but sometimes, hunting is the only thing that keeps Hollis feeling alive.
Working with one of the agencies other hunters, Hollis was asked to help out with a biker gang just outside of Los Angeles. After splitting that reward, Hollis decided to stick around LA for a while to see what else might come up and let her fractured arm heal.