Name: Mackenzie âMacâ Hunter
Age: 21 (21)
Location: Ever After
Job: Police Officer, Fableton Police Department
Story: N/A
Character: Original Character
Faceclaim: Lucy Hale
Status: Closed
+ intelligent, ambitious, determined
- sassy, myopic, idealistic/naĂŻve
Growing up in a small town was a lot less glamorous than they made it seem in movies. Or that was the case as far as Mackenzie Hunter was concerned. The whole âeveryone knows everyoneâ thing really only came in handy on one or two occasions. The rest of the time, it was just nosy, loose-lipped neighbors and the old lady at church that liked to touch your hair when she told you how lucky you were going to make a man one day. But Macâs dreams were bigger than the three-thousand population town and it caused her grief until the day she made it out. Being a girl of small stature and good breeding in a small town in Bible Belt, USA meant you were destined for a spot on the front pew, herding children and baking pies with a plastic smile and a big ole heart for Jesus. None of that had ever sounded appealing to Mac and from a young age, sheâd been incorrigibly interested in police and detective work. She had a thirst for justice and a belief that everyone deserved to reap what they sowed.
It got her into trouble more often than it didnât. There was a terribly unjust lean with the football players of her high school who could probably literally get away with murder and Mac couldnât leave it alone. A girl from her school was killed in a hit and run accident when she was a senior in high school. When the finger of blame had been pointed at her only real friend, Mac had worked undercover (and it was honestly exhilarating) to obtain irrefutable evidence that theyâd thrown the book at the wrong guy. While, in the end, it had been successful and the boys lost more than just their starting lineups, her peers were not forgiving. Her locker was trashed, her car was graffitied, and her life was threatened with anonymous notes that were made out of letters cut from a magazine. And instead of receiving support from her parents, they forbade her from pursuing her on-the-side âpolice workâ, and basically all but chained her door and locked her in a tower. She still wasnât deterred. Once she graduated, she immediately enrolled in the police academy, determined to prove everyone wrong. And while she didnât entirely excel, she passed with a little something to brag about. When she returned home she certainly hadnât expected a parade in her honor, but she found herself completely unsupported, even by her own parents. (The living situation never stopped being awkward.)
It did not become obvious to Mac until after sheâd been hired by the Ozark Police Department that the sheriff was in the back pocket of Ryan Jessup, father of Brent Jessup, the starting quarterback that had lost his entire scholarship because of her. Determined to stick it out anyway in her takes-no-shit way, Mac lived a full year under the torture of Sheriff Wilde and the rest of the department. She was ridiculed and mocked and found herself the subject of regular âoffice pranksâ which included but were not limited to: her FTO sending her out on a solo call three weeks into her career that, at first, felt like her big break, only to be left stranded for six hours in the middle of nowhere. It probably would have been longer, too, had she not managed to find her way back on her own.
It wasnât until she was assaulted at three in the morning outside her car after the longest particularly long shift in a series of particularly long shifts that she knew it was time to move on. Two men with masks pulled over their faces had seemingly sprung from nowhere and were on her immediately, tugging hard at her arms and clothes and flinging her around like a rag doll. Itâd lasted not even a minute as they grabbed her and passed her around between the two of them like a canary between two hungry cats before they were laughing and pulling off their masks to reveal they were just from the precinct and to reinstate their doubtsâ loudly and without restraintâ at how someone at only five foot two and weak as she was could ever hope to be a police officer.
She was gone the next day. With three bags and a car to her name, she headed for New York to stay with a cousin sheâd only met in person less than ten times but had been a really good Facebook messenger confidant over the years. It would only be until she could get on her feet, sheâd promised. And it was. She found herself drawn to Fableton almost immediately. There was something mystically charming in the air, an electricity within the town that she couldnât ignore. The pieces had easily fallen together from there. It was only a thirty minute commute from her cousinâs place while she looked for an apartment. There had been an immediate (albeit disappointing) opening at the police departmentâ a simple downtown patrol and not anything fun, sure, but it could afford her a nice little place of her own. It hadnât even been a full three weeks before sheâd been completely settled in to the strange little town, feeling more at home in the unfamiliar place than she ever had back in Arkansas.
Marian Knight-Locksley:Â She looks up to the woman, admires that sheâs taken seriously. Marian gives her a glimmer of hope.
