Kira Burke
Kira Emily Burke
Kira has wanted to fight vampires ever since one of the far too many blind dates her mother brought home used his invitation into their house to try and kill both Kira and her mother. Finding out the world of vampires and hunters wasn't just fiction fascinated her, and she's spent the past several years learning everything she can about them, and found a way to enter the secretive hunter community most humans never know exists. Her profound deafness kept her from being accepted as an active hunter, but she was one of the foremost vampire researchers for Chimera. When the Coven Wars began, and Chimera started losing hunters faster than they could be replaced, she volunteered and was finally accepted for a field position.
In addition to being a skilled vampire hunter, Kira is also one of Chimera's most groundbreaking scientists. Her work on a prediction modeling software has helped teams track dangerous vampires more accurately, and in the field she's a skilled materials analyst, studying vampire saliva contamination in blood samples, home earth residues, and more to create the most comprehensive possible profiles of the city's wanted vampires. Her work on analysis that would allow vampire strain to be detected not only by their powers but by genetic markers in saliva has caught the attention of the entire hunter community, and has her well on the track to winning the Van Helsing Medal, the highest award for scientific achievement in the hunter community.
Physical Description
General Physical Condition
Kira is fit and agile. While her primary function is laboratory scientist, she also maintains field status physical qualifications, and the levels of strength and dexterity she developed while teaching herself parkour as a teenager.
Identifying Characteristics
Kira has a single tattoo, a sunflower in color on the back of her neck. She tends to rub it when she's nervous.
Physical quirks
Kira most often wears her long, curly hair in a loose bun to keep it out of the way of her work.
Apparel & Accessories
Kira wears a hearing aid that doubles as a communication unit for field operations. She's refined and redesigned it to function reasonably well at separating conversation from background noise.
Specialized Equipment
Kira thinks in the language she's grown up with, which means she's having a strong spatial, visual, three dimensional awareness of her world.
Mental characteristics
Personal history
Kira grew up with her single mother, who went through a series of disastrous temporary relationships. When Kira was seventeen, her mother brought a blind date home for a one-night stand who turned out to be a vampire. He attacked both her and Kira as soon as he was invited through the door. Kira fought him off with the closest thing she could find, an old serving fork from the silverware drawer. When she stabbed him in the arm with it and his arm began smoking, she was just suspicious enough that when she and her mother escaped, she insisted the neighbor they stayed with not open the door to anyone and not invite anyone in.
In the morning, her mother believed everything she'd seen was simply a side effect of having been extremely drunk the night before. However, Kira knew she'd been sober, and she knew what she saw. She began researching vampires and found her way to the corners of the dark web where their existence, and the locations of some of their clubs, was advertised. Armed with a basic knowledge of how to fight them and a pocket full of homemade stakes, she took to the streets trying to find and kill the vampire she was sure would be coming back for her and her mother. She was certain he would be unwilling to leave any witnesses.
For approximately two months, Kira acted as a vigilante hunter in the L.A. streets. While she was unable to track down the vampire who attacked her family, she did find and kill several other rogue vampires attempting to prey on humans. By the time she crossed paths with a team of Chimera hunters raiding a vampire club, she'd built a reputation as the "Shadow". When she was taken in by the hunters, she was offered the options of either joining the agency as a legitimate, legal hunter, or 'disappearing' to one of the off the books hunter prisons thanks to the fact that she knew too much about Nightlife activities. She chose to become a hunter and was immediately recruited to the Academy.
Education
Through her elementary and middle school years, Kira attended a residential school for the Deaf in Oregon. She excelled in both her academics and in the cross country team, which she joined when she was 11 and ran on until her mother moved and she left the school at 14.
After her family relocated to Los Angeles, Kira was placed in a 'mainstream' school for her high school years. She was most proficient in her high school biology and chemistry courses. When she joined the Chimera Hunter Academy, she graduated top of her class in research and development fields.
Employment
Kira was hired by the Chimera agency after crossing paths with some of its hunters. Given the options of being put under arrest for illegal involvement with the Nightlife, or joining Chimera, she chose to join the agency.
Intellectual Characteristics
Kira is highly intelligent and a problem solver. She searches for solutions to problems using a combination of her grasp of science and practical applications. She's primarily a thinker, but that doesn't stop her from getting hands on to fix whatever is wrong, as demonstrated by her early days as a vampire hunting vigilante.
Taboos
The fastest way to make Kira decide she doesn't like someone is for them to talk over her as if she isn't there or treat her like deafness makes her stupid. She doesn't like it when people assume that just because she can't hear, she's basically no more important than a piece of furniture.
Personality Characteristics
Motivation
Kira wants to make the world a safer place for people like her and her mother. She wants to protect the unsuspecting public from rogue vampires, and she also wants to create better technologies, both for working with vampires and for deaf people. She believes that the more people understand about vampires, the more equipped they will be to deal with situations. She's the sort of person who asks a question and doesn't give up until she finds an answer to it.
Likes & Dislikes
Likes: Working in the lab, music with a heavy bass beat, spicy Thai food
Dislikes: Crowded spaces, oranges, trying to read people's lips when they have facial hair
Social
Mannerisms
Kira almost exclusively uses ASL to communicate when not on an active hunt where having her communication aid is essential.
Hobbies & Pets
Kira is a very talented ping-pong player. She enjoyed challenging unsuspecting fellow cadets in the Academy to a game in the dorm.
Speech
Kira's verbal speech is somewhat stilted and certain letters are difficult for her to pronounce because she is deaf.
Current Location
Species
Conditions
Ethnicity
Date of Birth
May 15
Year of Birth
1991
20 Years old
Birthplace
Portland, Oregon
Children
Current Residence
Los Angeles
Gender
female
Eyes
Hazel
Hair
Long, curly, black
Skin Tone/Pigmentation
Medium brown
Height
5'4"
Aligned Organization
Other Affiliations
Appears in...
- Good Causes - Kira Burke, Robin, John Stoker
- Jacket - Robin, John Stoker, Kira Burke
- Numb - Kira Burke
- Picnic - Robin, John Stoker, Kira Burke, Cody Dayton
- Proving Ground - Kira Burke
- Run Away - Kira Burke
- Silver Screens - Robin, John Stoker, Kira Burke, Cody Dayton, Emma Cole
- Woven - Robin, John Stoker, Kira Burke, Cody Dayton
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