Name: Exactly what it says on the fuckin' tin-- Wulan Lestari. Well, okay, so it's not exactly what it says on the tin-- in fact, hardly. The naming culture in Javanese tradition is... well, those overly concerned with being politically correct might say 'unique', but even Wulan will straight up say it's fuckin' stupid. Traditional Javanese names don't have surnames. Just one name. What kind of Einsteinian revelation led to that stroke of genius, Wulan honestly doesn't know (though it must suck to be one of like a billion other poor fucks with the Javanese equivalent of 'John' or some shit), but she did figure that once she immigrated to the States, having just one name woulda probably been a bitch to deal with, so she added 'Lestari' as her surname, for reasons that... well, she'd just say 'I fuckin' felt like it. What's it to you?', but considering she isn't in the habit of hollerin' about how she used to only have one name, it's not like people are always askin' her where the 'Lestari' came from.
Generally? She just goes by Wu. Shorter. More to the point. No bullshit. All that nice shit. Hell, you'd think the name 'Wulan' alone would be short and to the point as it was, but jesus christ, it amazes her how many people in the United States absolutely cannot for the life of them pronounce the name 'Wulan'. For fuck sake, it's 'woo-lan', not 'wuh-lin' or 'wuh-lan'. This shit ain't rocket science. But you'd have to be a real fuckin' imbecile to mispronounce Wu, so at least she's got that.
Age: Wu is thirty two years of age, though goin' by appearances you could easily take her for being more in the realm of her late thirties. This is in large part thanks to the lines creasing her mouth and face, and the patches of grey already emerging amidst the blackness of her hair. But hey, it ain't keepin' her down none, and it's yet to begin wearing away at her in any meaningful way beyond the superficial, so Wu doesn't really give a shit.
Gender: Gender? "Meh." That's the most likely answer you're gonna get, because Wu is rarely in any mood to go into an explanation of her sentiments on gender. Sexually, yeah, whatever, she's female . But that's physical sex. If sex is just a matter of physical differences, and gender is just a reflection of that in society's moulding of you as a person, then who's to say gender is even really a thing? Wu knows she's female, physically, but she's never felt female. Now don't get that wrong-- she's never 'felt' male either. Really, when you get down to it, Wu figures gender is something pretty much irrelevant-- an illusion. In all frankness, though, it's not something she talks about much-- it's not that important to her, and anyway, people are fuckin' stupid. They'd probably think she's tryin' to say she's transsexual or some shit.
Species: About as human as you can get-- a peculiar specimen, by looks and by behaviour, to be sure, but still one hundred per cent human, though there are those who argue Wulan Lestari is in fact the first discovered beef jerky based life form, given she seems to pretty much live on a diet of Slim Jims and protein shakes. Healthy? Probably not. Delicious? Fuck yeah.
Place of Origin: Jakarta - Java - Indonesia
Physical Description:
Wu does not look like the kinda person you wanna file under the 'people I should fuck with' cabinet. Indeed, she looks more like the kind of person stereotypical whitebread soccer moms usher their children over to the other side of the road when they see her approaching-- the kind of person who will, to use the scientific term, 'fuck your shit up' if you decide to start shit with her, and she loves that she makes that impression. If you have any doubt about that, take one look at her. You'll probably have to look up, though, considering Wu comes in at six feet and six inches of height: she's always been particularly tall, and never understood why people thought it was weird or awkward-- shit, she loves standing head and shoulders over everybody else. Of course, just being tall wouldn't cut it-- who the fuck wants to be some towering beanpole who gets to have a face-to-face meeting with the floor whenever a soft breeze rolls by? Not Wulan Lestari, you can be damn sure. Fortunately, that's not a problem, given her wide shoulders, burly, muscular arms, and powerfully built torso, all of which imply the considerable physical strength she wields, generally for the purpose of starting bar brawls with random people when drunk.
Javanese though she is by heritage, one would be hard-pressed to guess this of Wu purely from physical characteristics-- she lacks the dark, leathery skin typical of the Javanese, and her skin is instead a relatively lighter, tan-brown hue, veritably ironclad in tattoos, scars, and the odd birthmark. One may never see the full extent of her tattoos: even in those precious few cases where she is not armoured in her leather jacket, you'll only ever see the ones that line the robust muscles of her arms, and considering there doesn't seem to be but an inch of skin on either arm not tattooed, you can guess the rest of her is probably similarly armoured in ink. The tattoos on her lower arms seem to depict scenes of nature-- perhaps trees, with ravens vigilantly clinging to the gnarled, perished branches-- however, as you go up to her upper arms and shoulders, the beautiful depictions of nature are replaced with more morbid, macabre fare, such as an inverted pentagram, tattooed in such a way that it looks as though it had been carved violently into the flesh of her left shoulder. The scars, on the other hand, are pretty much the kind of shit you'd expect to find on somebody who grew up as a delinquent on the streets of Jakarta and glories in down'n'dirty brawl fights even to this day-- the most significant one, one she's had for years, is right there on her face, beginning just beneath her right eye, stretching across the bridge of her nose, and terminating below and to the side of her left eye. It's faint, and is clearly very old, but it's there, and she seems to think it's the most badass thing you ever saw in your damn life. All this taken into account, her birthmark-- a splotch of discoloured skin, slightly darker than the rest of her, on the front of her throat-- is hardly even noticeable. Hell, she'd be impressed if you somehow managed to spot 'em.
With regards to facial features, Wu possesses a countenance that appears as though it has been deliberately carved and sculpted by a less than prodigal sculptor-- the features are angular and sharp-edged, and the way they come together is anything but the work of an expert craftsperson. High, pronounced cheekbones carve out an enclave inhabited by a small, slightly pointed nose that has clearly been broken more than once in the past, set over a pair of thin, scarred lips. Beneath a high, wide forehead lie a pair of slender, almond-shaped eyes that tend to really trip people up once you take a single look at 'em-- having been born with a genetic condition known to the medical dictionaries as 'complete heterochromia', and to anyone who asks Wu as 'fucking mismatched', one eye is a surprisingly pleasant forest green-- the other an ugly mottled brown. Those eyes of hers tend to freak people out, which Wu fucking loves doing... er, probably a little too much. Less peculiar a specimen is her wiry, faded black hair, interspersed with speckles of grey, which she's always made a habit of cutting to a short, bristly shave. After all, the last thing she needs is a faceful of her own hair when she's tradin' fists with somebody in the alley behind the bar.
To round out what is undoubtedly, in the eyes of most, the freak show called Wulan Lestari, her attire is no less... uh, out of step with society, to put it charitably? Wu could probably think of a whole bunch of excuses for dressing as outlandishly as she does-- she doesn't want to be uniform (conformity and nonconformity have never really mattered to her), she wants to adhere to the fashion of her favourite music (to be honest punk hardly has a 'fashion' anymore, and if it did Wu wouldn't really give a fuck about it either), she likes that it tends to intimidate the shit outta people (which is true, in a way, but not the full reality). Fact is, Wu just likes the look of it. Generally she's to be found wearing some kind of band t-shirt, with the sleeves shabbily torn off, because Wu's kind of a douche and wants everybody to see her tattoos and muscles in the rare instance that she eschews her jacket. Which is, speaking of which, the veritable pride and joy of her ensemble: an ancient, creased leather jacket, one that is virtually armoured at every inch in 1/2" cone spikes. Used to be that literally the whole thing was covered in spikes; however, recently she removed some of the ones on the back to make way for an acrylic white painting of the Mot?rhead War Pig, replete with chains, skulls, tusks, fangs, and spittle. Her lower body is typically clad in a pair of dark, faded jeans that clearly displays a history of wear and tear, indicating new ones have not been bought since Necrophagist last put out an album, tucked over a pair of harness boots; old bike chains hang from the loops of the jeans, and a belt of rusted copper bullet casings, the kind you can buy at most surplus stores, is slung low down one side of her waist.
Yeah. Punk as fuck, man.
Personality Description:
Wulan is... well, Wulan is an asshole. A god-given, dictionary-definition, textbook-example, bona-fide, true-to-life, genuine asshole. You know that guy who said "If you have nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all"? Wu called that guy a faggot and then probably headbutted him for good measure. At her best, Wu is rough, fierce, and stubborn-- she's somewhat conversational, she occasionally smiles, she cracks jokes of a less abrasive nature than usual, she can even be kind at times, if all the planets are properly aligned and seventy pop punk fans are sacrificed at the full moon. Most of the time, however, she's not at her best, and it's not hard for Wu to take a turn for her worst-- at which point she becomes cruel, callous, and violent, towards inanimate objects, towards people around her, and towards herself. She's a veritable machine of ruthless invective, pumping out the most horrific blasphemies and obscenities just because she can, she insults and puts down everybody around her for lack of anything better to do or say, and she has anger issues that would have even the Incredible Hulk goin' 'Dude, chill the fuck out'. Her caustic nature is only worsened by a very deadpan, mordant sense of humour-- sarcastic, pessimistic, angry, profane, an obsessive control freak who absolutely needs to hold all the power in every situation and absolutely has to feel like she's bigger and stronger than everyone around her (which usually is the case, to be fair), not to mention a born fighter whose first impulse in any situation is violence: it's no wonder nobody really wants to be around Wu.
Now I'm not going to say that deep down Wulan is actually a saint, or some broken, misunderstood soul-- fuck no she's not, and to an extent she will always be abrasive and aggressive no matter how well you get to know her-- you could be her best damn friend, or the closest thing she'll ever have to a friend, and she'll still call you a shithead, punch you hard enough to bruise for pretty much no reason, and in general be an asshole. On the other hand, there's much more that most people simply will never see of her-- an innate gruff but genuine kindness, a propensity for remarkable loyalty to the people she thinks care about her, the people she herself cares about, even selflessness for such people. But it's not so evident 'cause no matter how selfless she is, Wu still manages to be an asshole about it-- so much so that most of the time, you can't even tell she's actually being selfless. And she's not used to consciously showing that 'side' of her, to venture the cliche, because Wu has had it ingrained into her very psyche that to show such kindness and humanity is a weakness. After all, she had somebody who knew that side of her, and that person's long gone... which shows what good it does for her to make a fool of herself bein' nice to people when they're never long for this world.
She deals with the psychological fallout of that absolute guardedness by abusing alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs, immersing herself constantly in her music and her books, and throwing herself into fights and other violent situations, though by this point those methods are becoming less and less effective. It seems those mental and emotional torments only worsen every day, while those few ways she knows of dealing with them just aren't working anymore. She's headed straight for self-destruction, decay, and collapse, and knows it; somehow, though, she just can't stop. Maybe it's pathological-- maybe she's got some kind of disorder, something that makes her unable to display without fear any emotions besides vehemence, something that renders her incapable of normal human interaction. Or maybe she just grew up in a world where everybody was an enemy and everybody wanted to hurt her, and she took that lesson too close to heart, splitting her between the 'look out for number one' mindset she learned as a street rat in Jakarta, and the innate loneliness she may not even recognise, a loneliness that has consumed her ever since the one person she shared it with left her. Either way, it's a pathos Wu neither understands nor thinks much about-- after all, why fuck around trying to understand herself? She knows herself too well to think it's worth bothering to try understanding herself.
History:
Picture it now-- Indonesia. Jakarta. The 1980s.
Did you picture it? Okay, probably not-- frankly, it's somewhat impressive when your average Westerner even knows Jakarta exists, much less where and how. For those of you understandably less privy to the geography of Australasia, allow me to paint the picture for you, and know this: it ain't a pretty one. The Jakarta of the late twentieth century could unfavourably be be compared to The Bronx back in the 70s, when 'The Bronx is burning' was the place's goddamn catchphrase and you were goddamn royalty if you managed to snag an apartment with more than one room total. 1980s Jakarta was a hellhole-- crime-ridden, miserable, poverty-raked.
Being born into a place like that was liable to suck ass-- you'd think it couldn't be much worse, except for being born to a single parent with little financial means in Tanjung Priok, which was (and probably still is) the Jakarta equivalent of Compton. Maybe that was why Wu's first thought upon being born was something alone the lines of 'Oh, come the fuck on. Really? This is the kind of shit luck I have right from the get-go? Typical.' Her father? Her father was never really in the picture. Her mother never really talked about him, and Wulan never really cared-- if anything, the only thing her father's absence made her realise was that before she had even even born, someone had abandoned her, one way or another.
But she wasn't alone. Shortly after Wu emerged, a second daughter followed meekly after-- an identical twin. This hadn't been foreseen, and it was just another bit of shit luck for a single parent who now had three mouths to feed instead of just two. For Wu, though, it was a stroke of unexpected fortune not to be born alone, as she almost certainly would not have found much companionship if not for her twin sister Lestari.
From the womb, Wulan and Lestari grew up living the life of Jakartan street rats, and they learned very quickly that the only people they could count on were one another. The slums of Jakarta are a realm governed purely by cutthroat laws-- namely, look out for number one. Wulan and her sister did not let themselves get cheated, deceived, stolen from, and hurt more times than they needed to before they realised that fundamental way of things, and at that point, they stopped being the naive fools they felt they had been until that point, and became cut-throats themselves. After several years of hearing friends they'd seen just yesterday had been killed in gang shoot-outs or had left for a better life that the twins were too poor to achieve themselves, the sisters stopped trying to create connections with other people, having come to understand that such connections are a weakness-- a liability, a fragile, sensitive thing all too easily shattered. Once they figured out that there was no reason to try and relate to other people who were inevitably either liars and deceivers, or destined to die or leave the two behind, Wulan and Lestari changed.
There had been a time when she had been a person so wholly removed from what she is now that many today would be hard-pressed to believe it to be true-- that Wulan Lestari had once been a bright, vivacious child, with hardly a violent bone in her skinny little body. That person didn't last long, though. Kind, vivacious Wulan became aggressive, violent Wu, just as shy, bashful Lestari became cold and aloof, hardly speaking to anybody but her sister-- they kinda had to change, to avoid being steam-rolled by the merciless predatory organism that was slumland Jakarta. The twins, and Wu in particular, became fighters, privy to the way of life in the Jakarta slums, a way of life Wulan could not change even if she had tried: she could only be consumed by it, and allow herself to be consumed by it whole-heartedly-- a predator in her own right, accustomed to responding to the barest slight with violence, as that was the only way you won respect and fear. Who the hell had any respect for the jackass who 'turned the other cheek'? Who the fuck feared the idiot who sought a peaceful resolution to the conflict? Fucking nobody. Wu knew this. She knew being hard and strong was the only way to survive the slums.
Thus, Wulan and Lestari became the world to one another-- unable and unwilling to trust others, not even their mother could manage access to the tight-knit emotional bond they quickly developed. Sayin' they were like peas to a pod would have been the understatement of the century: though to the outside observer, bellicose Wu was a far cry from stoic, unflappable Lestari, in nearly all other respects they were twins in more than just a physical sense. They liked the same kinds of cigarettes, the same booze, they had an identically devastating right hook, they came to love the same kind of music-- hell, their mother sometimes swore she heard them snoring simultaneously some nights. The one thing Wulan and Lestari ever really differed on was religion-- Wu never bought into any of that crap, and remained throughout life a staunch atheist, figuring only a complete moron could possibly disregard the blaring logical fallacies inherent in the argument for the existence of a god. Which kinda flew in the face of Lestari, who, though by no means a radical fundamentalist, did profess a belief in God and could have been considered a very, very casual Muslim-- enough of one to quickly run through her own little fajr (morning prayer) upon awakening each day, not nearly enough of one to walk around wrapped up in a blanket. If anything, the most significant symbol of her faith was a small hamsa she was never to be seen leaving home without-- a palm-shaped amulet, not remotely as ornate as other specimens, but vital to Lestari not only in that it represented a sign of her faith and a symbol of protection, but also in that it was, she claimed, the only remnant of the twins' father, given to her by her mother. Wulan really didn't give a fuck about that-- it just made it that much more amusing to snatch the thing away from her sister and keep it until Lestari inevitably beat Wu into submission and took it back.
Ultimately, though? The whole faith thing really didn't matter except for the occasional sarcastic ribbing from Wulan. The two were thick as thieves, and never to be seen apart from one another. Secrets did not exist between them: though there was an emotional wall thicker and more guarded than the Great Wall Of China at the height of the Hun threat between them and anybody else, amongst themselves the twins shared everything. And it wasn't just emotions-- they shared smokes, they shared booze, they shared the precious scraps of exercise and work-out magazines they eventually began hoarding and following religiously-- and, once they discovered it, they shared music.
It was the defining moment of both their lives up until that point, and, as could be expected, it came about after a fight. It was a rare moment in which Wu and Lestari were separated, and Wu, fifteen years old, had just beat the ever loving shit out of some random jackass for... well, fuck all if she can remember at this point. He did something to piss her off, she made him hurt for it, and then, figuring she'd piss all over his prospects while she was at it (she was, believe it or not, even more of an asshole back then) she rifled around for any spare cash he had, figuring she'd buy herself and Lestari some booze or smokes. What she found was even more valuable-- a cassette case, the tape contained within like a treasure within a chest, the label on the side scribbled with the words 'Minor Threat'-- that was it. Minor Threat. Wu had no fucking idea what that was supposed to mean-- shit, she didn't even know what a cassette tape was, so she figured the thing was probably like some top secret government shit or whatever. Having decided that, she did the perfectly logical thing, which was to take it home with her and show it to her sister (after giving the little shithead she'd just beaten up another kick to the stomach for good measure).
In retrospect, she owes that dude a hell of a lot. At the time, she didn't realise it-- the tape was just some weird, foreign object until she brought it home to her sister. They stared at it, poked it, sniffed it, and at one point dove out the window hollering about a bomb when they thought the thing had started ticking only to realise it was just the microwave beeping in the next room. At length, the twins decided to do something they hadn't done in a long, long time: they talked to their mother about it, who informed them it was a cassette tape-- it played music. "How the fuck do I get it to make music?" Wu queried with a frown, looking at the odd little thing, which sure as hell hadn't produced no fuckin' music since she'd found it. "You use a cassette player, you moron," her mother informed her irascibly. That, of course, fired them off on another huge verbal altercation until finally, in exasperation, her mother said, "Look, I know where you can probably get a player if you're willing to waste money on it. If it'll make you two shut up, go there, shell out your precious money on the damn thing, pop that tape in, and then realise the waste of time and money you just subjected yourselves to." Well, y'know what? Fuck that. Wu decided she was gonna go and blow who the fuck knew how many rupiahs on the player, just to spite her mother, and Lestari, just curious enough about this peculiar contraption to play along, followed. So they went and bought it-- split the costs evenly between 'em. Set 'em back a shit ton of money that would otherwise have been blown on smokes and alcohol, but they-- or rather, Wu-- figured it was worth it to piss their old lady off. And sure, she was a little curious about this 'Minor Threat' shit. Who knew, maybe it'd be worth listening to. The two sisters brought the player home, huddled around it in their room, pulled out the cassette, popped it into the player, hit play... and, well, the rest is history.
The twins were blown the fuck away. From the second 'I Don't Wanna Hear It' fired off on all cylinders and Ian MacKaye began howling furiously, hurling his bitter invective at society and everything it represented-- they were both blown away. Music had never been very interesting to either of the twins-- their exposure to music had been limited to shit like gamelan or angklung music, the traditional music of Java and Indonesia on the whole, and frankly, none of that had ever made Lestari feel a damn thing, much less Wu, who found such music infuriating and grating upon her ears. But this... this was primal. This was angry. This was passionate. Violent, disgusted, unhappy with the way things were, unwilling to relent-- it was just like Wulan, but in an aural form, and Wu loved every damn second of it. "Hey, fuck you, mom," she wanted to say with a cocky grin (or rather, did say with a cocky grin, once she was done listening to the tape about fifty times over). "That was the best expenditure of money since... uh... well, it was just a fucking good expenditure of money, leave me the fuck alone."
That set the twins off on a journey of discovery-- a veritable mission to find more of this sound, this noise that they both found so appealing on a primal level. Needless to say, music is none too common a commodity in the slums of Jakarta, and it took quite a lot of 'research' on the subject, necessitating that the sisters step foot for the first time in just about the only local library, where they, in the process of leafing through books looking for some kind of information about this weird new sound they had discovered and fallen in love with, realised that reading, something they had always considered a chore, could actually be tolerable if they were reading something they had chosen themselves. Lestari, for example, found herself entranced by a copy of Tolkien's Silmarillion. Wu took one look at it, called her sister a dreamy dumbass, and turned back to the Dostoyevsky novel she had found herself unable to put down after the first page. Lestari came to delight in tales of the fantastic ranging from the works of Lovecraft, Wells, and Herbert to the novels of Asimov, Tolkien, and Antony; Wu had no patience for 'irrelevant shit about laser guns and hippy elves or whatever', preferring stories rooted in realistic, often modern settings, works by such literary giants as Dostoyevsky, Steinbeck, Orwell, Murakami, and Kerouac.
But they didn't lose sight of the goal, which was finding out about the music on the cassette-- and it wasn't exactly going to be easy, considering all they had to go off was a cassette tape that played pissed off, raw music, called 'Minor Threat'. It was probably the same streak of fortune that had led them to find that tape that put the answer in Lestari's hands: Minor Threat. Hardcore punk. The book in question was a history of 'rock music', which initially struck Wu as kind of weird (who knew rocks had their own music?)-- it was a kind of inherently aggressive music that had branched out into other genres such as metal, hard rock, and punk, each of which had spawned subgenres like death metal, progressive rock, and crust, some of which had led to even more specific styles. As for this sound they'd been pursuing, that fell under punk-- hardcore punk, to be exact. The book characterised hardcore punk as fast, hard-edged, raw, and bitter-- in other words, all the things they loved about this 'Minor Threat' cassette of theirs. And it was said that this style of music had been born in Great Britain (which was some place across the ocean), but its spirit had been carried on in the United States (which was also some place across the ocean), where hardcore punk bands like Minor Threat had originated. In fact, it was said that there, in the United States, the punk scene continued to flourish-- well, at the very least, it was doing better than it was elsewhere. In other words, if there was a place to go to to hear more of this, the United States was it.
They spent months seeking out more punk rock where they could find it, but there was, needless to say, a paucity of punk music in the slums of Jakarta. After a while, the inevitable topic was breached: leavin' Indonesia for the United States.
The music wasn't the sole factor in that decision. After all, they'd heard about the US-- heard that it was pretty much universally better than life here in the slums of Jakarta, heard it talked about like it was fucking heaven or some shit. That 'heaven' apparently was also the home of the music they loved, even though they had only a few dingy cassette tapes to show for it, and that alone was reason enough.
You may, of course, ask where their mother was throughout all this. And to be fair and true, she was certainly always there-- just always in the background. Though she never outright hated her daughters, it was always understood that there was a definite resentment there-- always the understanding that she would have had a much, much better life without two kids to feed and clothe. The twins knew it just as well as their mom knew it. And sure, she worked her ass off day after day, slaving away so that the two kids wouldn't fucking starve to death, but that didn't mean she also had to be nice to 'em. And therefore, for as long as Wu can remember, her mother was never a big part of their life. She never thought much of how her mother was providing for her-- never really thought much about her at all. Whilst her daughters were out in the streets picking fights, or huddled away in the library, she was at work, slaving away at an arduous job, making a thankless effort for which there would be no pay off except that she wouldn't have two starving kids on her conscience.
Maybe that was why their mother never heard of Wu and Lestari's plans to blow outta town and head across the ocean. By that time, Wu'd figured that Jakarta held no fortune for her or her sister-- here, they'd only ever keep living as they always had, grow up mired in violence and alcohol, and probably both die before the age of twenty. And that was not, needless to say, something Wu figured was in their favour. They started contemplating it, mulling over and planning it out at fifteen, but by no means were they ready to just get up and go at fifteen. But they were ready to work and meticulously hoard every penny they earned to get the hell outta Jakarta, a city with almost no good memories and countless bad ones for the two, a city that had known them when they had both been naive idiots. Wulan and Lestari wished, honestly and earnestly wished, to leave it behind forever, go somewhere where nobody knew them, and forge a marginally better life there, with the music they loved, with nobody but each other.
That was the plan for two years, during which they worked harder than they ever had, and forced themselves not to spend (as much) money on the usual booze and smokes. But unfortunately, life just loves to shit on hopes and dreams, and when life saw the twins with their anticipation for the future, for the better things to come, it just couldn't resist shitting all over that. They were on the cusp-- all but ready to just get up and go at last. That particular day, Lestari wasn't able to leave home-- she'd caught a fleeting case of the flu, and was hard-pressed to take so much as a step without vomiting. Wu mocked her sister some for her condition, and then mentioned that she was gonna go out and maybe stop by the library-- asked if Lestari wanted her to grab a book about orcs or wizards or some shit like that. Lestari merely shrugged, and then fixed her sister with a weird gaze. Slowly, she reached to the bedside, took hold of the hamsa that had not for nearly ten years left her sight and body, and held it out to Wu, asking her sister to take it, because she was uneasy and felt Wu may have needed its protection.
"You do realise," Wu retorted, after mocking her sister senseless for thinking a piece of metal could protect her just by being there. "That you've totally jinxed it now, right? I'm gonna take it and come back and find you murdered or some shit."
"Just take it," Lestari replied coldly in her characteristically laconic manner, and then she would have no further discussion on it.
Well, fuck it. Wu figured she'd take it, and then taunt her sister with not giving it back while Lestari was too weak to really do anything about it. Whistling a jaunty little tune (in specific, Black Flag's My War, a perennial favourite of hers), replying to her mother's demand to know where she was going with "Outta here, asshole", and in general figuring things were lookin' pretty up now that the time for the sisters to leave Indonesia was rapidly approaching, Wu stepped across the threshold of their house for the last time, the hamsa shoved in one of her pockets haphazardly.
Nobody could say for sure just how the fire started-- it seemed like a true bolt from the blue, a sudden blaze that quickly engulfed almost the entire block. Some thought it was an act of deliberate arson-- none too uncommon in those days. Others hypothesised it had been caused by negligence on the part of one of the neighbours. Wu didn't give a flying fuck. When she came back and saw what had happened, she only had one question, burning fervently in her heart, mind and soul, tearing at every fibre of her body-- and the answer to that question was a hard, final, resounding no.
She never saw-- nor wanted to see-- the corpse. At that moment, all she wanted to do was rage-- she became engulfed with a despair and a fury that made the blaze that had just shattered her life look like a fucking campfire. Suddenly, nothing actually mattered worth a shit, because she'd eschewed universally all human contact and connection in favour of having one bond with just one person-- a bond she'd thought bullet, fire, and shatter-proof, and now she had nobody. Now there wouldn't be any huddling up together with the latest discovery being slipped into the cassette player by strong hands shaking with anticipation-- no more walkin' the streets just talking, Wu laughing a booming, raucous laugh and Lestari permitting a minuscule smile to emerge. No more wiling away the days in the library, mocking one another over their choice of reading materiel. There wouldn't be any more of that, because Lestari was fucking dead-- gone, forever.
Wu wanted to hurl the hamsa at the burnt-out carcass of what had once been her home, throw it at the ground before the charred corpse of her sister, and scream, "Why the fuck did you give me this stupid fucking piece of shit? I didn't fucking need it. You did." Of course, she never for a second actually believed the damn thing had had any effect-- but it was so much easier to blame this senseless reduction of Wu's life to nothing, to worthlessness, on a hunk of metal, for her rage to have direction and focus, rather than to be forced to dwell on the fact that she was now alone.
Wu had pictured her and her sister stepping onto that plane, destined for New York City, vibrant with anticipation and anxiously high hopes-- maybe she'd even see her sister laugh for the first time, let herself show uninhibited joy as their new home approached on the horizon. Instead, Wu boarded the plane alone, dejected, torn up inside, the hamsa shoved away in her pocket. She reached New York City alone, armed with little knowledge of the English language and, once she got through foreign currency exchange, a wad of dollar bills of varying values in her pockets.
And frankly, none of that mattered.
To the outside world, she'd never changed-- she was the same bellicose, sarcastic, swaggering fighter she'd always been, even as she was still reeling from her twin sister's death. The only thing that changed was that now she was the one who never left behind that hamsa. She honestly couldn't tell you why if you asked-- she still didn't believe the damn thing did jack shit, and it was just a reminder of the day everything was fucked up for good, so why the fuck keep the thing around? Well, maybe, if you happened to be one of those idiots who's gotta see some profound shit in every little thing, you'd guess it was so she could always carry around a remnant of her sister with her. Wu merely thought of it this way-- her sister had asked her to take it. She'd never asked for it back. And that meant Wu got to carry it around with her, until her sister asked for it back, or until she died too, one or the other.
Though it was supposed to have been a milestone in her life, moving across continents to a new home, in New York nothing much really changed for Wu. She quickly picked up on English and became quite proficient with it, but otherwise, she just kept reading, kept listening to music, kept blowing most of her money on smokes and booze. Eventually, she bought a subscription to a local gym that also offered martial arts classes like boxing, where, as you can imagine, Wu excelled, having learnt many of those principles of fighting through street fights herself and having a shitload of rage and pent-up anger to vent through that medium; however, with those boxing classes, she polished that street smart knowledge and furious energy into a damn science, and at the gym she honed her work out regime.
Her source of income was a record shop nearby the little apartment Wu settled down in-- she took up work there pretty much from day one, and it pretty much became home to her-- a place where she could spend hours a day just listening to music (and occasionally actually doing her job), and getting paid for it. She dove straight into the 'punk' section like a kid at Disneyland-- just started grabbin' every damn cassette, CD, and vinyl in the place and put it on its respective music player, and hit play. Black Flag, Antischism, D.O.A., Spitboy, Nausea, Discharge, Government Issue-- it had that same primal, raw fury as that very first Minor Threat cassette, the little tape she had moved across entire continents pursuing the sound of, and she fucking loved it. She spent pretty much all day at the record shop, even when she wasn't actually working, listening to music. Leafing through some of the magazines lying around the record store-- and, later, using the burgeoning wonder of the internet-- led Wu to also discover some of the 'fashion' of punk-- you know, leather, denim, spikes, bullets, the whole shebang. Wu ate that shit up-- loved the dirty, angry look of it. She redirected some of her money flow from books, CDs, and drugs into clothes and accessories-- boots, chains, a leather jacket, spikes to decorate it with, a bullet belt, all gradually accrued over the years.
Now, I could start writing some shit about how her sister's death somehow motivated Wu to pursue an education after dropping out of high school, about how she went, got a high school diploma, pursued a higher degree in university in some field she'd grown passionate in, settled down with somebody she loved, made new friends, and in general rebuilt her life... except then I'd be a liar, and Wu would probably headbutt me, because she fuckin' hates liars. None of that shit even came close to happening. Wu's spent the past fifteen or so years living pretty much the same life she did back in Jakarta-- drinking, smoking, fighting, all that shit. The only difference is, now she hasn't got anybody else to do it with. She's still abjectly miserable, distracting herself from her loneliness with her various vices, seeking to distract herself from the fact that she's now utterly alone. Just her, and that damn hamsa-- a reminder of her sister's death, an object she reviles and loathes with all her being, but cannot bring herself to dispose of.
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Educational games to make learning more engaging for students are nothing new, but Labster, a bio-tech education startup founded back in 2011 and just now coming out of stealth, has gone further than most by creating an entire virtualised laboratory for teaching bio-tech students without the need to purchase expensive lab equipment or conduct potentially hazardous experiments for real.
