App for Save the Earth

[detectivetroll]

OOC Information:
Name: Bri
Are you over 15? Yup!
Contact: brbsoulnomming

IC Information:
Name: Nick Burkhardt
Canon: Grimm
Age: 32
Preincarnation Appearance: Image! Nick’s about an inch shy of six foot, and has a muscular, fit build. He also has eyes that refuse to have a color. They might be gray, but tend to shift towards various shades of blue or green depending on what he wears.
Any differences: None!

Preincarnated History: Nick was born and raised in Rhineback, New York. When he was twelve years old, his parents were killed in a car accident. His mother’s sister, Marie, took him in and raised him as if he was her own son. Nick was devastated by his parents’ death, and didn’t exactly handle it very well, even wishing that he’d been in the car with them. This only contributed to his status as something of an outsider in school, and he depended heavily on his aunt. Fortunately, she was everything he could have asked for, and she was the only reason he made it through.

At eighteen, Nick went across the country to Oregon, where he attended college and eventually became a police officer in the city of Portland, Oregon. By the time he was 30, Nick was the lead homicide detective, along with his partner, Hank Griffin, and had a serious relationship with his live-in girlfriend, Juliette Silverton. He knew exactly who he was, and where he was going in life, and he was confident and happy with his current situation. Nick even bought an engagement ring, planning on proposing to Juliette. And if he’d been seeing some strange stuff lately, well, he was just a little stressed from the job, and from the anxiety over his upcoming proposal.

But the next time he went home, he found that his aunt had made an unexpected visit. Nick was thrilled, of course, until he found out one of the reasons that she’d come – Marie was dying of cancer. There was more than that, though; Marie insisted that they needed to talk, and the two of them went for a walk. Marie asked him if he’d been seeing anything unusual, and when Nick admitted that he had, she said that it had happened to her, too, and revealed what she’d kept hidden from Nick: Nick was a Grimm, one of the last descendents of the Grimm brothers, and the creatures they wrote about were actually real.

Before she could explain more, though, they were attacked by a man who – well, who really didn’t look like a man, and was carrying a scythe. Marie called him Hulda, and said that he’d come for her, and then pulled a freaking sword out of her cane and began fighting for her life like a ninja librarian. Nick joined in, and managed to shoot whatever the hell was attacking them, though Marie was gravely injured. Before the ambulance came, Marie gave Nick a strange looking jade key, told him “they” would be looking for it, and to guard it with his life. And then mentioned that his parents hadn’t died in a car crash, they’d been murdered.

Once they arrived at the hospital, Marie told Nick that there were creatures who disguised themselves as humans, but their family had the ability to see them for what they were, for what no one else could see. That the original Grimm brothers were actually hunters and profilers of the supernatural creatures that appeared in the fairy tales they penned down, and their descendents have been hunting the creatures ever since. And apparently this was now passing on to Nick, and it was his job to “hunt down the bad ones.” Which was awesome advice.

Advice that meant when he was working his current case – a girl ripped to shreds by what seemed to be a wolf, except for the fact that there was a boot print found at the crime scene, and another little girl missing, with the same boot print found next to her backpack (not to mention that both girls were wearing red hoodies when they were attacked, guess where this is going) – and he saw a man who lived across from the park where the girl was taken suddenly shift to look distinctly wolfish, Nick had a suspect. And when the guy started to run back into his house, Nick immediately chased him into his house, tackled him down, and pinned him against the bottom of his stairs, demanding to know where the girl was. Because obviously, that was the most reasonable course of action.

When the man – Monroe – didn’t tell him anything, Nick called for backup, handcuffed Monroe, and tossed him in the back of a police car while officers searched his house. And found nothing. After running a thorough background check on Monroe, and finding no priors and nothing suspicious – and despite Nick’s arguing that Monroe fit the profile – they had no reason to keep Monroe, and so Monroe was released.

But Nick was still suspicious, and after a trip to his aunt’s trailer, finding weapons, things he couldn’t even identify, books that weren’t always in a language he could read, and a ton of other stuff that was really weird, Nick went back to the crime scene. And parked himself outside of Monroe’s house like a creeper, watching the guy to see what he’d do. ‘What he’d do’ turned out to be ‘go out into his back yard and pee along his fence’, apparently marking his territory. Or just being a weirdo. Probably a little of both. But Monroe could apparently smell him out there, because after going back inside, he jumped through the window of his own house like a melodramatic diva, and tackled Nick, throwing him against the wall.

He backed off immediately when Nick went for his gun, though, and then invited him inside for a beer. Nick went, a little stunned, and there he found out that Monroe was a Blutbad (the technical term for ‘big bad wolf,’ apparently), and that all creatures – or Wesen, as Monroe called them – knew about Grimms, though most had never seen one. Grimms were bogeymen to them, the monster under the bed, the evil things that parents told kids bedtime stories of to make them behave. Monroe himself insisted that he wasn’t that big, and he was done with the bad thing. He was a Weider Blutbad, one who’d given up the wild, man-eating lifestyle, and stayed good with a strict regimen of diet, drugs, and exercise.

But Nick knew that Monroe had been marking his territory out there, which meant that there were other Blutbaden around, and also meant that Monroe could probably lead him to whoever had taken the little girl. Monroe refused to help at first, even warning Nick not to threaten him, but Nick didn’t listen to him, and threatened him anyway, along with a little bit of pleading. Monroe caved, and tracked the other Blutbad by scent, sticking his head out the window of the car and following the trail, which Nick would have found a lot more amusing if Monroe hadn’t insisted on driving. Monroe got him to the Blutbad’s cabin, though, and even gave him some wolfsbane, which would mask their scent so the Blutbad wouldn’t smell them coming. But the closer they got to the cabin, the more difficulty Monroe had staying in control. Finally, he had to flee, out of fear of losing control, not knowing which side he’d be on, or even going after the girl.

With Monroe gone, Nick called Hank, and the two detectives searched the Blutbad’s house, at first finding nothing, but then discovering a hidden cellar, where the little girl was being kept. The Blutbad attacked Hank, who shot him, all without seeing what the Blutbad really was, and the case was solved, the day saved. When Nick went back to the hospital, though, he discovered that his aunt had slipped into a coma. As he sat by her side, a blonde woman dressed as a nurse came in with a syringe. Nick recognized her immediately as a lawyer he’d passed by on the street, one who was a Wesen, and stopped her from putting whatever was in the syringe in his aunt’s IV. She stuck him with the syringe instead, and fled while he was unconscious.

When he woke up, he was informed he’d been injected with spider toxin, and that any more, and he’d have been dead. In better news, his aunt had woken up, and was being watched by police officers, in case of another attack. Marie told him that the Wesen who’d attacked her, and who Nick had killed, was a Reaper, a member of a secret organization dedicated to hunting down and killing Grimms, that more would be coming, and that Nick couldn’t let them find the trailer. But her condition was too unstable to continue talking, so Nick reluctantly left, and focused on his current case. Which ended up involving yet another Wesen, and so Nick went back to Monroe’s house to try to get information out of him. Monroe bitched, but he told Nick what he was dealing with, and even gave him coffee and made him a bagel.

While Nick was working the case, though – and having weird, apparently slightly prophetic dreams – his captain informed him that the officers guarding his aunt were being removed, as there was no evidence of another attack. In a panic, Nick turned to Monroe, asking him to guard Marie against a future attack until Nick could figure out something else. Monroe absolutely didn’t want to protect Marie – who Monroe had heard of, actually, and was apparently terrified of – but Nick told him he trusted him, and Monroe, again, caved. Nick wasn’t exactly sure why he trusted Monroe enough to ask him to protect the life of the only family he had left, the most important person in the world to him, but he did. Some kind of instinct, maybe.

In any case, Monroe came through, and when another attack was made on Marie while Nick was off solving his case, Monroe chased the attackers off. And accidentally ripped off one of the attacker’s arms, when the two attacked him instead, but Nick wasn’t particularly concerned about that. If the guy didn’t want to get his arm ripped off, he shouldn’t have tried to kill Nick’s aunt or beat up Nick’s friend. Monroe had to leave, though, before things got too complicated, so Nick high tailed it to the hospital. And arrived just in time to find Marie fighting a third attacker. She killed him, but it proved too much for her, and she collapsed into Nick’s arms. Just before she died, she told him to trust his instincts, and nothing else.

Marie’s death was almost worse than his parents. Now, not only did he have no one left to depend on, he was stuck in this new world, filled with things he didn’t understand and with abilities he didn’t know how to handle. Nick chose to do what he did best: ignore it, and only deal with it when it came up on his cases. Nick threw himself into his detective work, and Grimm work, when it came up – which it did, quite frequently. He found himself withdrawing from Juliette a bit, having to lie to her, to keep himself hidden from her. She couldn’t understand the depth of his grief for his aunt, and what he was going through now. Nick had to lie to Hank, too, to everyone in his life, and it didn’t exactly sit well with him. He’d never felt the need to lie about any aspect of himself, and now he had to lie about everything.

Nick found himself turning to Monroe for information on the Wesen world. Sure, he could have looked in the books – and he did, more and more as time went on – but Nick was used to having a partner, someone to bounce ideas off of and talk things over with. He found that in Monroe, first bribing Monroe to help him with bottles of wine and paying for the bar tab when asking him to go undercover, but gradually Monroe began helping just because he wanted to. Through a number of cases that ended up being Wesen related (a Mellifer killing Hexenbiests, one Nick struggled with, as the next Hexenbiest on the list turned out to be the same woman who’d tried to kill his aunt; a Zeigevolk preying on women; a Reinigan being framed for murder; a Blutbad girl missing in the woods; even a Siegbarste out for revenge on Hank and a Bauerschwein killing Blutbaden, one of whom happening to be Monroe’s friend), Monroe and Nick moved from ‘tentative allies’ to ‘tentative friends.’

This came to a head when the Wesen community, having heard about Monroe helping Nick, decided to send Monroe a warning, and two Wesen lured him out and beat the crap out of him, leaving a scythe drawn on the hood of his car in blood as a warning. Nick wanted to track them down, but Monroe vetoed that, so Nick backed off, saying he wouldn’t come to Monroe for help anymore, to keep him safe. But Monroe vetoed that as well, saying that while what they were doing would upset the status quo, Monroe wasn’t a status quo kind of guy, and Nick should come to help for all the help he needed. And again, sometime later, when Wesen who were running caged death matches called the Lowen Games – by kidnapping Wesen off the street and forcing them to fight to the death, because that’s real entertainment – captured Monroe to be the next fighter. Nick managed to arrive just in time to stop the Wesen running it from giving a defeated Monroe a death sentence, and offered to jump into the ring himself, fighting for both his life and Monroe’s. Which was probably not the best idea, considering he couldn’t bring in his gun, but fortunately for the both of them, Nick ended up not sucking with the medieval weapons available. Nick defeated the other Wesen, and both he and Monroe made it out alive, which is always a bonus.

Soon after this, Nick’s world was rocked a little when he met a Steinadler – or an eagle-type Wesen – named Farley Kolt, who not only knew Marie, but was once engaged to her, until she had to leave to raise her nephew. Kolt told Nick about the coins involved in his latest case, three coins that had existed for a very long time, that gave the person who had the coins incredible power, before ultimately causing their demise. They also had the added benefit of causing anyone who touched them to constantly lust after them, to be willing to die to get them – except for Grimms, who were stronger than most and resistant to them. Which is why the coins had been in the possession of the Grimms, until the last Grimm who had them was murdered, and the coins disappeared. This Grimm was Nick’s mother, and those who had been involved in Nick’s parents’ deaths were likely the same ones after the coins now. Of course, it eventually turned out that Kolt himself had handled the coins, while working for the Office of Strategic Services, and therefore was ultimately after them himself, but that didn’t make what he said any less true.

While still trying to process this – and with the coins safely in his trailer – Nick’s attempt at keeping his Grimm life separate from his home life became a hell of a lot less successful when a Damonfeuer involved with one of Nick’s cases kidnapped Juliette, dragging her to their lair to force Nick to come rescue her. With Monroe’s help, Nick managed to save her, and Juliette didn’t suspect anything but that a crazy woman involved in Nick’s case had gotten too interested in his life. But that didn’t change the fact that Juliette had gotten kidnapped because of Nick’s work as a cop and a Grimm, and when he said he couldn’t promise that things would get better, she said she didn’t know if she could handle it. But she didn’t want to make a decision that night, and so put it off for later.

A lot later, apparently, as the next time she brought up the subject of their relationship and Nick thought she was going to break up with him, it turned out she just wanted to learn how to shoot a gun. And so their relationship slipped back into routine, something normal and safe for Nick to cling to. Until, in a last ditch effort to get their relationship back on track, Nick brought Juliette to a cabin out in the woods for a romantic getaway. Which was of course interrupted by Grimm stuff, because Nick’s life was awesome that way. But Nick decided it was now or never, and when the case was wrapped up, proposed to Juliette anyway. Juliette refused, saying that while she loved him, she couldn’t marry him. And it wasn’t about his job as a cop, it was him, that he had been pulling away from her, keeping himself distant and not telling her things, and she couldn’t marry him until he let her in.

So yeah, that was pretty much the worst romantic vacation ever. Juliette didn’t want to break up, though, and slid right back into their relationship like nothing had happened, and Nick didn’t want to let her go – despite the fact that Marie had told him on her death bed that he should break up with her, whoops – so Nick dealt with it the way he’d been dealing with everything lately: by not dealing with it at all. It was made even worse when, pretty much right after it, Hank called to arrange a double date with his new girlfriend, who turned out to be Adalind, the Hexenbiest who’d tried to kill Nick’s aunt.

Nick tried to separate them, but Hank was under a spell that made him head over heels in love with her, which was just the best, really. With the help of Rosalee, another friendly Wesen, Nick and Monroe managed to get a cure for the spell – that turned out to be completely useless, since Hank had sex with her and fell into a coma. Adalind called Nick and told him Hank would be dead unless she got the key that his aunt gave him. Fortunately, they figured out another way to break the spell – by killing the Hexenbiest who cast it. More specifically, using the blood of a Grimm to kill her, which Nick hadn’t even been aware that he could do, but hey, why not. So they fought, Nick kissed her, she bit him and swallowed some of his blood, and viola, dead Hexenbiest!

Except for the part where she sat back up. Apparently Nick killed the Hexenbiest out of her, but nothing else. Adalind was now a powerless human. Nick was pretty much in shock, and didn’t do anything when she walked off. But at least Hank was alive, awake, and out from under Adalind’s spell. After that, Nick had a look at the key his aunt had given him, and while he couldn’t find anything that it opened, he did discover that there was actually a map on it.

Then came more confusion, involving a resistance fighter from Europe – apparently there was an organization called the Verrat, which was somehow related to the Seven Houses of Royals, who formed an oppressive regime over Wesen in Europe. Ian was an old boyfriend of Rosalee’s, as well as being on the run from a killer. Nick also found out that apparently some Grimms had started working with the Verrat, but he wasn’t going to be one of them, so he helped Ian avoid being killed by the Hungjager sent by the Verrat. And then Ian went ahead and killed the Hungjager, saying that if Nick arrested the Hungjager and he went to trial, the Verrat would only send more, and then Rosalee and anyone who helped him would be in danger.

Nick arrested Ian, but only under pretense, and instead of taking him to the station, drove him to the bus station with a new passport and some money, letting him go. He knew that what Ian had said about the Hungjager was true for Ian himself, that if Ian stayed and went through trial, Monroe would be in danger as well. So he had Monroe move the body and stage a crime scene, for the first time being more Grimm than cop, in order to protect his friends. The second time came when Nick was coming to the defense of a group of Eisbibers, who were being bullied by a Hasslich. The Hasslich had killed one of them, another one had witnessed it, and Nick was trying to rally them to stand up for themselves, for the witness to come forward. At first, they were too afraid, but with a few additional words from Nick’s friends in the Eisbiber community, the witness stepped forward to identify the Hasslich. The Hasslich who apparently had an uncle who was a Reaper, and therefore knew how to call in Reapers and send them after the Grimm in his way.

Fortunately, Nick had started being more proactive about his Grimm side, including training a bit with Monroe, and was bringing out more of his abilities. Which meant when two Reapers came after him at the Eisbiber lodge, Nick kicked their asses, performing martial arts moves he hadn’t thought himself capable of before and killing both of them. He called Monroe to help him deal with the bodies, and to figure out how to send a message to the other Reapers. Monroe came up with a plan to send them the two Reapers’ heads, and so it was done.

Then there was more cop and Grimm work, and finally an incredibly close call with a couple of Wesen, who, like Monroe, were refusing to give in to their animal side and be killers. Unlike Monroe, they sought an easy out in the form of a drug that at first took away their urges, but ultimately left them trapped in a half-transformed state, visible to all. Which was bad, because human minds couldn’t handle seeing Wesen as their true selves, and most often their brains pretty much turned to mush. Fortunately, they were able to stop what was going on and explain it away with drugs, and maybe a mask or two. Unfortunately, Hank saw not only Monroe as a Blutbad – granted, after he’d been hit, so blurry and out of focus – but another Wesen entirely in his half-transformed state. And, uh. Hank wasn’t doing so well. Mental breakdown seemed right around the corner, but Nick had absolutely no idea what to do.

And then things were made worse when Adalind returned to put Juliette into a coma (but not before Nick attempted to explain being a Grimm to her, failed miserably, and made her think he was crazy), and his mom showed up to tell him that actually, she wasn't dead. She'd been the guardian of the coins, and when the people after them had launched an attack that left Nick's dad and one of her best friends dead, his mom let everyone believe that she was dead as well, to protect Nick and to keep the coins safer. After working together on a case, his mom left once more, taking the coins with her.

Eventually, as Nick settled more into his role as a Grimm, Hank had to be brought into the fold. Juliette woke up from her coma, with minimal memory loss. Unfortunately, the only thing she didn't remember was Nick himself, which obviously caused a lot of tension. Nick struggled to hold on to the pieces of his life, until he found out that Juliette had kissed another man. To give them both space, he moved out, staying with Monroe. His life as a Grimm wasn't exactly stable, either, having to deal with Adalind coming back yet again, finding out that his captain was a lot more involved in the Wesen world than he thought, figuring out more about the Royals, and trying to sort his relationship with Juliette out as they dealt with compulsions and the potential of her memories returning.

For a more in depth look at season two, the wiki link is here.

Reincarnated History: Nick was born in Portland, Oregon. Nick was an only child, and very close to both of his parents. So when Nick's parents were killed in a car accident when he was twelve years old, Nick took it extremely hard. He was reluctant to admit it, but he suffered heavily from survivor's guilt, even going so far as to wish he'd been in the car with them.

After his parents' death, Nick was taken in by his aunt and uncle. They were nice people, and Nick loved both of them, but neither of them knew how to deal with the depth of his grief for his parents. It was obvious that his aunt and uncle were worried about him, and he overheard them talking about sending him somewhere, or to someone. That was the last thing that Nick wanted. So he buried his grief, pretending everything was fine, and went on with his life. He was just a normal kid living a normal life with no hidden trauma, and maybe if everyone else believed that, then so would he. Eventually, it worked, at least on the surface.

Nick continued through middle and high school, a popular, outgoing boy who participated in everything from football to drama to music. He was one of those people who was constantly busy, always with something to do or someplace to go. Because of this, although Nick had many acquaintances and was very well-liked, he never had any real friends. Nick never saw anything wrong with this, though. In fact, he preferred not to get too close to people. He didn't want to open up to anyone and risk them reacting the way his aunt and uncle did, and he didn't want to risk losing someone like he had his mom and dad.

This continued as Nick graduated high school and went into college. He majored in criminal justice, was popular and active, and had a string of relationships that never lasted longer than a couple of months. Nick gained a small reputation as a bit of a player, but it never really took off because he was rarely the one to break up with his significant other. Nick was a sweetheart, apparently, he was kind, loyal, funny, intelligent, but he wasn't "emotionally available." If part of Nick worried about that, or wondered what it meant for his future, he ignored it like he did most such things, in favor of pursuing his degree.

After college graduation, Nick easily landed a job in the Portland police department. There he continued exactly as he had in college. Slowly he got more and more wrapped up in work, devoting the vast majority of his time to his cases as a homicide detective. This was only exacerbated when his aunt and uncle retired, and moved to Florida. With no significant other in his life, no close friends, and his only close family living far away, Nick didn't really have anything but his cases.

Eventually, Nick felt as though he needed a change of pace. He loved Portland, but there was nothing tying him there save for the city itself. He put in for a transfer, and ended up in Locke City. Nick's been there for a few years now, long enough to put down some roots, but still not breaking out of his old patterns.

First Echo: Nick found a small green key in an antique shop. It brought back the memory of his aunt giving a similar key to him - although this one was a jade pendant that could be twisted to turn into a key - and telling him to guard it with his life.

Preincarnation Personality: In general, Nick is a very confident person. He’s gone through a number of trials and been a bit of an outsider as a teenager, but since then, he’d settled into his life and into who he was. Rather than making Nick arrogant, this manifests as Nick being pretty laid back. It takes a lot to shake Nick’s confidence. Mistake him and his partner for a gay couple? Nick just laughs and calls him honey. Snark at him insultingly? Nick just grins and snarks back. This falls right in line with his sense of humor. Nick loves sarcasm, and is pretty much a huge troll. He’s the kind of guy who will call a werewolf “good boy,” will make bad puns about people getting angry and losing their heads after cutting off said heads, and joke about someone not being able to hold their liquor after they drop a bottle of alcohol in fear. For the most part, Nick does know when to hold this back, and generally only does it with friends. Or suspects who can get offended if they damn well want to, Nick doesn’t care.

Nick’s current main source of insecurity comes from his new found status as a Grimm. This is something he has to hide from nearly everyone in his life, and it’s pretty much torn his relationship apart, because he’s not sure he can ever actually tell Juliette who he is. It’s hit him hard, because at his core, Nick is a very honest person, and he doesn’t know what to do now that he has to keep such a huge part of himself from the people he cares about. It’s also causing complications in his job, as he’s learning there are different rules for the Wesen community, and sometimes this goes against his duty as a cop, what he’s always thought was right. For the most part, Nick still holds his duty as a cop above all else, preferring to arrest the Wesen on his cases whenever possible, but there’s been times where he’s stepped outside of being a cop to actually be a Grimm. The longer he's been a Grimm, the more this behavior has come out, even to staging a crime scene, covering up the bodies of Reapers he's killed, and flat out lying to FBI agents when under investigation, which is pretty bad cop behavior. He’s mostly done this in order to protect the people he cares about.

This is because Nick is extremely protective of – and self-sacrificing for – his family and friends. He will do whatever it takes to protect them, whether that means bending the law, aggressively threatening people, or sacrificing his own life for them. If someone hurts one of them, or even attempts to hurt one, Nick is definitely the type to hold a grudge. And to make sure the other person is well aware of that grudge, even if that other person happens to be someone he’s supposed to be protecting. Although this is at its most evident with those close to him, Nick is also fairly protective in general. There’s a reason Nick became a cop, aside from it apparently being in his nature as a Grimm, and that’s because he wants to help people. All people, whether they be human or Wesen, which is apparently a concept that is hard for Wesen to accept from a Grimm.

Nick’s always been a good guy, and sometimes it’s frustrating, that people he’s only trying to help fear and mistrust him, because of who his ancestors were and what they did. Of course, this has only made him more determined to never be like the Grimms that the Wesen community fears. But he also isn’t above using this fear when it can help him – or, more accurately, when it can help him help someone else. Nick’s generally not aggressive at all, but he can be when he needs to, especially when someone else’s life is at stake, whether it be the life of a friend, or someone’s life on a case. This is especially true in cases concerning kids; Nick has a huge protective streak for teenagers and kids who are going through tough times or are outcasts, like he was, and cases involving them hit Nick very hard.

This seems to be part of his abilities as a Grimm, but even before that, Nick has always had excellent instincts. He’s good at reading body language, and often unconsciously uses that to better relate to, and to better understand people. His attention to detail is very high, as is suiting a detective, and the observations he makes about other people from these also help him when trying to relate to people. Part of what makes him good at this, though, is that Nick is generally incredibly genuine – and his earnest eyes probably don’t hurt, either – and when he’s trying to help someone, he really does want to do everything in his power to help them, and he usually knows what to do to make it happen. Because of this, Nick tends to find himself the leader in stressful situations, although if there’s someone there who knows more than him, Nick is more than willing to listen to them. He prefers to work with others, and works better when he can bounce ideas off other people and talk things out. Overall, Nick is generally a social person, and doesn’t shy away from displaying this, including often being physically affectionate.

However, Nick can be something of a workaholic. When he's on a case, particularly one that draws him in some personal capacity (like kids or a case involving Grimm stuff), he can be pretty single-minded. While he does his best to leave his work aside when he gets home, it still seeps in, sometimes bad enough for him to miss such important things as anniversary dinners. Granted, that was mostly because one of his closest friends had been kidnapped and was in very life-threatening danger, but it still happens. Even so, Nick is definitely a romantic. He's the kind of guy who remembers what they had for dinner on their first date, learns how to cook it, and makes it later. Nick likes big, romantic gestures like weekend getaways and planning the perfect proposal, but he doesn't shy away from smaller details like flirting in the grocery store or hand-holding.

Finally, Nick doesn’t particularly react well to death, or the loss of loved ones. He was devastated after his parents’ death, and has admitted that the only reason that he survived was because of his aunt. Nick tends to cling to what he does have left when this happens – in the case of his parents’ death, it was his aunt, and after his aunt’s death, he threw himself into detective and Grimm work. He has a tendency to deal with things by not dealing with them, and he’s very good at closing off and pretending everything is fine. In cases like this, Nick can definitely be a bit selfish. He knows Juliette would be safer if she wasn’t in his life, and he knows it isn’t fair that he keeps lying to her, or even that he’s staying with her at all, when – after her refusal of his proposal – there's been times he was pretty sure a break up is inevitable, but he can’t bring himself to be the one to end things. Nick still wants to pretend that he can have at least a partially normal life.

Any differences: The first major difference is in sociability. Although Nick can be charming and kind, he's not a people person. He's never had any close friends, and he prefers to be alone, and to work alone, rather than with others. Because his aunt wasn't a Grimm, she wasn't able to understand his grief as a child, and couldn't help him work through it. As a result, Nick grew up with his grief buried, and learned to close himself off from anyone who might get too deep. He's too afraid to get close to people for fear they'll leave him like his parents, and to let them get close for fear they'll turn away like his aunt and uncle. Nick never really trusts people, because of his experiences with his parents and aunt, and because he no longer has the instincts that helped him be such a good judge of character.

Without any long-term relationships or significant friendships, Nick is the definition of a workaholic. He's lost track of whatever hobbies he picked up in college, and he's pretty much devoted only to the job. He doesn't really understand the whole 'leaving your work behind when you get home' thing. But as far as he's concerned, there was never any reason to, since he never had anyone at home to complain. Reincarnated Nick has no real idea how to be in a relationship. Sure, he likes the idea of being romantic, but in practice, well. He's never been very good at it.

Another major difference is how Nick approaches his job. Not only is he a workaholic, but he's a one hundred percent by the books cop. As far as he's concerned, there's no room for gray area. Nick's never had to deal with the whole Grimm thing making his work more confusing, and he's never had to try to figure out what was right on his own. He trusts the justice system implicitly, and doesn't think anyone should be an exception. This means that, unlike pre-reincarnation Nick, he would make little allowances for situation, and no allowances for friendship. He's never had a strong enough relationship with someone that would lead him to even think of not turning them in if they did something illegal.

Finally, although Nick is confident, it's not the confidence born of someone who knows and is okay with who he is. It's the cocky, almost arrogant confidence of someone trying to have something to hide behind. Nick's sarcasm can have a meaner edge to it, because he lacks the quality of genuine-ness that he had in his previous life. Although he'd never think of himself this way, because Nick does want to help people and is absolutely devoted to making sure justice happens for those who need it, Nick can definitely be a jerk.

Abilities: Because Nick is a Grimm, he has the ability to see when someone isn’t human. In his world, this manifests as an ability to see the true selves that the Wesen hide from the rest of the world. This ability works through video as well as actually in person, but he can’t tell anything from a photograph. However, the Wesen are also able to tell what he is, although it's never fully explained how.

He has a heightened mental acuity, giving him a resistance to most forms of mind control, something of a eidetic memory, enabling him to perfectly recall people, objects, and places, (enough to replicate them in drawing after seeing them once), and instincts – jokingly referred to as ‘Grimmstincts’ – that have always made him an extremely good judge of character, and more recently seem to help him sense when there’s something not right.

With his Grimm heritage comes an innate ability with weapons, particularly medieval ones. He's shown to use things like a kanabo, a sword, and a shield with some skill, despite having never touched one before, and expertly shoot a double-barreled crossbow on the first try. (Although for the record, Nick become a police officer before he started getting his Grimm abilities, so his skill with a handgun is mostly the result of training.) This also seems to be true for fighting styles as well, as though Nick is trained in hand-to-hand combat, he displays the capability to perform moves more worthy of a martial artist in battle, such as mid-air flips and kicks.

Nick also has above human speed, strength, endurance, healing, and agility, giving him the ability to do things like keep up with Wesen who have enhanced speed, survive brutal attacks by powerful Wesen with – relatively speaking – minimal injuries, heal from injuries such as a concussion, bruised ribs, and a dislocated shoulder in less than a week, and perform mid-air, acrobatic flips.

Finally, Nick’s blood has can take away supernatural abilities. If someone who isn’t human gets his blood into their system, it “kills” the magical or supernatural part of them, leaving them entirely human. (This was done in canon by a Wesen biting Nick and ingesting some of his blood, resulting in her losing her powers and becoming human.)

For more detail on each individual ability, as well as episode tags where the ability is shown, there is an ability section towards the bottom of Nick's wiki.

Roleplay Sample – Third Person: Nick had been finding himself at the trailer a lot, lately. When this whole mess had first started, Nick had only come out here when he needed to, for a case, or something else important. But he’d been spending more and more time in here, doing research, trying to figure out some way to take control of his life again, trying to actually prepare himself ahead of time, instead of just reacting. And also, all right, sometimes avoiding other things.

He knew he shouldn’t be hiding out here. Really, what Nick should be doing was talking to Hank, trying to figure out just how bad things were, and just how messed up Hank was. And how Nick was going to fix it. But that was the problem, Nick had no idea what the hell to do in order to fix it. What was he supposed to say? ‘Oh, yeah, Hank, I saw that guy’s face change, too, and by the way, I’ve been seeing things like that for months now. It turns out my ancestors are actual monster hunters, and I’ve been hunting down and killing the ones we can’t arrest on our cases, just like them. You don’t mind not saying anything about this to the captain, do you? Thanks, that’d be great.’

Nick knew exactly how crazy that sounded. And if he said anything like that, he knew very well that no matter Hank’s current mental condition, Hank would definitely be recommending some time off with the police psychologist. Probably for the both of them. So he was just going to avoid it, until he knew what the hell he was supposed to say.

But at the very least, Nick should go home. His relationship with Juliette was already suffering because of the Grimm stuff – because he couldn’t tell her, not with what’d happened when Hank saw what he saw, and Hank had already started being suspicious – he didn’t need to make it worse by continuing to hide in the trailer. And he should call Monroe, see if he was okay, how he was doing with everything.

With a sigh, Nick pushed himself up from the desk, shoving the book he’d been reading into the duffel bag of Grimm stuff he’d been carrying around, and switched off the light, heading out of the trailer. He couldn’t avoid everything forever.

Roleplay Sample - Network:
[The numbers had been in his head since he'd found that key, or whatever it is. The one that's tucked safely in the far corner of his nightstand, because he can't bring himself to get rid of it. Even if what he saw - it can't mean anything other than that maybe he's too tired. At first he wonders if it's his subconscious or something, even if he doesn't believe in that kind of stuff, and he checks the number against all of his case numbers, past and present. But of course, there isn't a match.

When he finally writes them down, it's not really intentional. He's rereading his notes on a case, and looking over the small sketches he'd done of the crime scene, when his mind wanders. Nick finds himself doodling in the next blank page of his journal, something he hasn't done since college, and with the numbers still on his brain, they end up on the page.

And then Nick has a lot more to think about than keys and his subconscious. He tries to read through everything he can suddenly see, because he can't figure out what the hell this is without looking at all the possible evidence, but there's so much of it that his head starts to hurt. Eventually, he decides to go the route of testing it.]

So. If this isn't a huge, excellently done but extremely nonsensical joke - or a delusion - and people can actually read whatever's written here, what's to stop them from reading things that were written before? If I'd known I was giving a bunch of potentially crazy people an all access pass to something just by writing some numbers, I might have chosen more carefully.

Any Questions? None!