| Mason Starkey | |
| Biographical Information | |
|---|---|
| Full name: | Mason Michael Starkey |
| Age: | 16 |
| Status: | Deceased |
| Cause of Death: | Strangulation |
| Alias: |
|
| Nickname/s: |
Storky |
| Gender: | Male |
| Affiliation | |
| Unwind Standing: |
AWOL |
| Allegiance: |
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| Family: |
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| Character Information | |
| Appears in: | |
Mason Michael Starkey is a storked AWOL who rebelled against Connor Lassiter and the others in the Graveyard with his Stork Club.
Biography
Mason was a child of uncertain race storked in Southern California, to a sienna family. Mason, once an intelligent child, grew up feeling unwanted, and Mason acted up because of it—fights, drugs, and even stealing a car at one point. He was constantly bullied by kids at school who called him "Storky", a nickname which sets him off and causes him throw a fit or lash out violently.
When he was three, his mother, all doped up on pain medication from his sister's cesarean, took him to a fire station and begged them to take him away and make him a ward of the state.
When he was a sixteen-year-old sophomore, Starkey had just gotten expelled from another school after getting into a physical fight with another student. Fed up with putting up with him, his parents finally decided to have him unwound. While his sister Jenna stood up for him, he was ultimately still sent away, but not before revealing his father's infidelity.
The two Juvey-rounders, Mouthpiece and Lady-Lips, as Starkey nicknames them, take him to the county jail, but not before stopping at an In-N-Out to Starkey's request. However, the Juvie-cops only order for themselves. In the window, the girl that gives them their food is a girl Starkey knew from his last school. Instead of hiding, Starkey jokingly asks her to prom, but she takes it seriously and rejects him without knowing he is to be unwound. She later figures it out and says sorry, but Starkey knows it's only pity.
Afterwards, they arrive at the county jail, where Starkey would be imprisoned and later taken for unwinding, but skilled in sleight-of-hand, he has already escaped from his handcuffs. He has the penknife he keeps in his left shoe, and he slashes it across Lady-Lips's face, and then runs. Mouthpiece catches him, but after Mouthpiece calls Starkey "Storky", Starkey grabs Mouthpieces gun in fury and they wrestle for it. Starkey wins and the gun fires, but it's real bullets, and Mouthpiece is dead before he even falls to the ground. This would be only the first in a series of similar events.
Starkey, while on the run, does a number of things: he dyes his hair red, turns an AWOL that insulted storks into the Juvenile Authority, and begins his hunt for the Anti-Divisional Resistance (ADR). While looking, he pick-pockets a drunk man coming from a bar, taking his wallet. Once the man has gone and Starkey opens the wallet, it stuns him and leaves him only semi-conscious on the ground. To his surprise, the less-drunk-than-he-thought man wasn't one of the Parts pirates he had heard about from the kid he turned in, but was a member of the ADR, and he rescues Starkey.
Starkey ends up at an ADR safe house and quickly gains popularity with his charm and charisma. He and the other AWOLs there are transfered around the safe houses until one day they must board a plane in the least conspicuous way: coffins. Starkey gets inside one with a girl that is clearly infatuated with him. When they land, Hayden Upchurch opens their coffin. Starkey, the girl, and all the others exit the plane, and they all realize they're in a desert filled with airplanes. We know it as the Graveyard. An "unremarkable teen" steps out from a Jeep and gives a speech, all the while people theorize about him being "Akron AWOL". During the speech, the teen reveals this to be true.
Mason had grown to admire the Akron AWOL and based his decisions on what he saw as the Akron AWOL's act of bravery. However, upon finally meeting him, Mason was gravely disappointed, even more so upon learning that he was supposed to follow the boy's instructions.
Mason grew even more dissatisfied with Connor's authority as time went by, and he began plotting his own rise to power with his fellow storks.
In UnDivided, his lust for power, ego, and willingness to give up his Storks to save his own skin would later lead to his being deposed by Bam and Jeevan.
Later, Starkey was taken to Divan Umarov's harvest camp, the Lady Lucrezia, where he was to be unwound and sold to auctioneers. Starkey would be the fourth unwind—considered the main event, with three Unwinds auctioned before him to warm up the auctioneers. Connor found him just as he was about to be put into the unwinding chamber. Starkey pleaded for Connor to save him, but it was too late and Starkey was tightly bound to his bed so, instead, he went on to beg Connor to kill him so he does not become unwound. Connor finally agreed after some convincing from Starkey, who reminded him of all the things he did, and strangled Starkey to death. While his body was still harvested, Starkey had died and would not have felt his unwinding.
Physical description
Mason is described as having straggly brown hair and an olive complexion, being a "genetic hodgepodge" who could could pass for any ethnicity. After kicking AWOL, Mason has since dyed his brown hair red and blond. He is short for his age.
Personality
Mason Starkey is extremely arrogant, manipulative, egotistical, violent, even murderous, and selfish. He thinks of himself as a hero, and usually overdoes what he sees as his own achievements.
He has always lived in a kind of protective paranoia. He is very distrustful of people, and tends to be self-confident while being unimpressed of others whom he sees as inferior to him. Unlike Connor, he brags about his deeds and even exaggerates them. He is said to be a natural born leader among sketchy outcasts and borderline personalities, building for himself a cult of personality status among other storks, which he takes great pride in, seeing himself as the savior of storks. Hayden has referred to him as "The Stork Lord" behind his back.
Trivia
- Since they could not figure out when he was born, the date he was left on his foster family's doormat was used as his official birthday.
- Mason, once an aspiring magician, is capable of performing magic tricks. He would use this skill to escape from his handcuffs when he went AWOL.