Jupiter Cochran
She/Her
27 years old
Violent
80 kg
Personality
What's in a name? When she was at school some bully once made the connection between Jupiter's surname, Cochran, and cockroach. Cochran became Cockroach which became Roach. The nickname stuck, especially after a rumor started up that she always smoked joints down to the roach. Whatever. Jupiter leans into it. Why? She'd tell you that it's because she's unkillable, tenacious, and that she turns up in places where people would rather she didn't.
Jupiter is a sassy young woman with some thinly veiled abandonment issues. She's sarcastic, defensive, and heaven help you if you dare to imply that she's weak. She doesn't keep to herself but views the world and relationships as transactional. Still, when she does make friends she's loyal to a fault. She wants to do better than all the people who abandoned her; her mum, her dad, her cousins, and all the people over the years she's trusted and who have let her down. She'd never abandon anyone who was counting on her, even if she's certain they'd do it to her.
Growing up under a federal remnant, she learned that some people (cops, guards, etc) are allowed to use violence to solve problems. So why can't she? Obviously, you gotta be smart about it, but if people don't or won't love you, the only other way to stop them from hurting you is to make them fear you.
The way she sees it, you've got important rules like 'don't murder', 'don't steal', and then you've got silly little things like 'curfews' and restrictions on drinking and smoking and the like. For Jupiter, the entire purpose of declaring something 'contraband' seems to be just to restrict access to something and to create a valuable commodity. As an opportunist, she's all for that. No restrictions? No market. Aside from that, Jupiter's worldview has three immutable rules: 1. Talk shit get hit. 2. Don't get caught. 3. People will abandon you.
Appearance
Wiry and petite, Jupiter 'Roach' Cochran is a usually cheery looking freckle faced and blue-eyed ginger. She typically doesn't style her wavy red hair at all, at best managing to remember to run comb through it or perhaps to tie it back so it doesn't get in the way. Her features are youthful but her posture is confident and her smile is sharp, if not outright wolfish. The day that she's found without a cigarette would be shocking indeed, considering she's almost always got one behind her left ear. She's a bit of a tomboy. Roach almost always chooses to go 'boymode' and wear loose fitting, masculine clothing. Dark colored band t-shirts are a plus. She usually lives in track pants and sneakers.
Background
Jupiter Cochran was the daughter of Constance 'Connie' Cochran and grew up in the Dixie Trailer Park just outside of Muldraugh. She never knew her father. Jupiter and Connie made do.
Jupiter grew up with the sort of independence that came from necessity, as her mom was busy trying to make ends meet at the local diner. She’s always been good with her hands and was taking things apart from an early age. Fixing them after was another matter. She got her first synth at the age of 10 and a half, a beat-up piece of trash salvaged from a junkyard. Her mum helped her fix it, and then she taught her how to play. She picked up a part time job at the diner where her mom worked at 13 years old, mostly doing the dishes but sometimes helping out in the kitchen with prep.
From the ages of 10 to 14, it became clear that Jupiter was, broadly speaking, struggling academically.
She did well in more practical, hands-on subjects like woodshop and auto repair. It wasn’t that she was academically incapable or 'stupid'; she understood everything as long as she didn't have to read it. Undiagnosed dyslexia, a rigid education system, and poor attendance didn’t help. The one area she did excel was in the school's music program. If she wasn't with her friends, smoking cigarettes, you'd find Jupiter Cochran in the school's barely funded music department jamming on the keys or guitar.
A couple of things happened in the months leading up to the outbreak. Jupiter started to get a bad reputation as a bit of a pothead. Considering she was barely 14, it wasn't really a fair reputation, but rather one borne out of the company she was keeping. Her new friends that she hung out with were all older than her and focused on smoking weed and listening to music. Jupiter also ended up in trouble at school and frustrating her mother. To Connie, 'talk shit and get hit' was entirely reasonable, but Jupiter needed to learn where to draw the line. It's not so much that beating the shit out of someone was /wrong/, it was that she got caught.
When the daisy infection tore through the region, Jupiter’s mom, Connie, believed she’d been exposed. Panic got the better of her and Connie OD’d in their trailer one night. This left her 14 year old daughter alone with the responsibility to bury her in the lot behind the laundromat. And that? That was the last lesson that Connie Cochran ever taught her daughter. Connie had said it before, when young Jupiter had asked why she didn’t have a daddy like most of the other kids at school, or why her cousins had stopped visiting: ‘That’s just what people do, Jupiter. They abandon you.’
As the full threat of the outbreak became apparent, most people in the areas surrounding the Knox Quarantine Zone (KQZ) were forcefully evicted from their homes and made to join the QZ. Dixie Trailer Park was no exception. Leaving the trailer park with little more than the clothes on her back and her precious salvaged synth keyboard was bittersweet for Jupiter. It came weeks too late to save her mother. While joining the QZ wasn't really a choice, Jupiter and her neighbors were only poor; not stupid. Everyone knew someone who'd been infected and who had turned. And her mother’s grave had just sprouted daisies. Yeah. Jupiter complied with the orders to evacuate.
For the next 10 years, KQZ became Jupiter’s home. Jupiter made ends meet with wiring work, generator repairs, and sometimes by dealing pot and other contraband under the table.
Just, uh, don’t tell anyone about that last bit.
Jupiter didn’t stay within the walls the entire time. She made trips out to salvage, and if anyone ever asked she'd swear to God that was the only reason she ever left the QZ. For the most part, Jupiter did her best to keep her head down and get on with it. She mostly stuck to what she knew, but perhaps to the surprise of those around her if there was an opportunity to learn something useful (as long as it didn't require reading anything), she'd turn up to learn it. That's how she ended up volunteering at the clinic, providing basic first aid and triage to the injured and sick before the real doctors could help.
Though there were certainly times where her anger threatened to get the better of her, she mostly kept it in check by channelling it into work, music, or when all else failed by storming out of the QZ and going on a 'salvage run.' It’s really only recently that any real 'negative' rumors have started up about Jupiter. Rumors about her temper. Rumors about her being a drug dealer. Nothing concrete, nothing provable. Really, the biggest rumor persisting about the young woman is that when she disappears for weeks on end that she's probably off on a drug and or alcohol fueled bender.
It'd surprise nobody to learn that wasn't mere rumor, at least not prior to the events that occurred at the Knox Quarantine Zone. It's the genuine truth of Jupiter's absence from the events that took place there. She was out on a drug-fueled bender.
