Vash Zwingli ~ The Frenchman's Diamond Dog

Character Name: Vash Zwingli

Age: 19

Appearance:

Spoiler:

Vash stands at about 5'5" with a lean, muscular build, dark green eyes and short golden hair. Likes to wear a lot of black, and Vash always wears a black leather collar (even when off-duty or sleeping), the tags serving as his ID and telling anyone to return him to Francis at La Carnaval if found. A tiny diamond is embedded in the collar's tag, earning the well-meant running joke that he is a diamond dog.

What are you doing at this place? Stripper

Sexuality: Bi, but prefers men

Personality:
There is a lot going on behind the dark green eyes and faint, teasing smile Vash presents to the patrons of La Carnaval. Customers see the smirks, the little, lingering touches and how much of a genuine tease the collared teen is, but even the regulars and most of his coworkers don't know very much about him. He keeps it that way on purpose, generally because it's nobody's business and doesn't really matter where he came from or how he came to work there; all that matters is that he's there with the customers and that they have a good time. Vash takes his job very seriously and dedicates himself to being a performer, both for his own satisfaction and for the satisfaction of the club's owners.

Though serious, Vash is generally pretty mellow about things until something gets under his skin; that's when his short temper and abruptness can get the best of him (though almost never with customers since they are his guarantee to work), or when he will subject his bosses to teenage bouts of sulking. Vash is incredibly smart and very hard working, and is more than willing to pick up the slack when the club is shorthanded, or come in early and stay late to set up and clean up, help write out set lists, or go into Francis' office to go over his ledgers and any office work the Frenchman may have neglected to finish. After the scandal with the circus Vash grew up in, he's become much slower to fully trust and has learned to keep an almost militant watch over his money so that he's never taken advantage of or left in a situation like that ever again. Despite this, once he does get to know someone enough to trust them and see them as his friend, they would honestly be hard-pressed to find anyone more loyal or who would go so far out of his own way for you. He is usually pretty direct about what he wants, but can still be very shy and reserved in some aspects and often won't outright say that he cares about someone, even when they already know it. He doesn't tell Francis or Arthur, but he has on more than one occasion lent money to other dancers and waitstaff if they were short for tip-out or in a pinch. He's conservative with the money he makes and often won't spend much on himself beyond his basic needs, keeping his apartment above the club very plain.

While he will pout and say he doesn't, Vash honestly does love La Carnaval and see it as home, Arthur, Francis and Ivan as his family. He adores his bosses and wouldn't trade them for the world, and though he hasn't heard from his real family in years, he hasn't given up on finding them again in the future after he finishes the college courses he completes by mail. Despite his profession and being Francis' pet, Vash has kept his rosary his mother gave him before he left and still holds to being a good Catholic, and is also a vegetarian in order to maintain being slender and energetic enough to contort and dance.


Background:
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Vash Zwingli had been enrolled in gymnastics since he could stand. The tiny child was incredibly limber, and thought it was funny to bend and tie himself in knots to amuse his parents and teacher. While visiting a tiny, privately-operated circus, Vash watched the acrobats and contortionists, pointing to his mother "Maman! I do that, too!" They stayed after the show was done so he could meet the performers. They stayed a lot longer than intended, Vash watching their star contortionist bend herself slowly and Vash do the same for the most part. Josef Cheda, the owner of Zurkus Summervogel, had been watching Nina play with the child, and after a quick debate with his partners approached Mr. and Mrs. Zwingli. It was a bold move, asking Mrs. Zwingli to join the company so that her son could train with them and live up to his full potential. Mr. Zwingli was adamently against his wife and son leaving, but as Josef explained Vash would be completely cared for, as well as get his regular eduation from distance-learning programs from the government and assurance that the money that would be his would go into savings until he was old enough, his family finally agreed and signed the guardianship of their five-year-old to Josef personally.

Josef was true to his word, bringing Vash up like a nephew and the other performers as his family as Summervogel toured the country. Their company was small, never keeping more than fifty performers, and was funded entirely through Josef, Philippe and Johanna Cheda and the profits they made at performances. Training and rehearsals often took up to 18 hours of the day, plus the time he'd spend studying, making the child become very serious and dedicated to what he did and how well he performed, both as an entertainer and as a student. Periodically he would recieve letters from his family in Zurich and reply to them, keeping them and the photos he would get in a small box, and Philippe would occasionally show Vash a ledger with how much money he had in savings.

Over the last few years in Switzerland, however, there has been a national decline in small, privately-run circuses and performance troupes, and the government has begun allowing them fewer and fewer places to perform in as the heads of state don't see circuses as having any cultural benefit. After some batting it around, the Cheda family convinced the performers to start touring France in hopes of better crowds since all of them had given up regular jobs to let this be their only income. The funds weren't there, however, and the Cheda family started paying for things out of the savings accounts of their employees. Once in France, they took everybody's passports and held onto them in their office, insisting that they would handle the working poapers for everybody as well as the new tax information. Because everything was being handled by their office, nobody questioned their tax papers for Switzerland or France until they stopped getting returns that were anywhere near what they should be getting.

Performers began to contribute as much of their pay as possible into keeping themselves funded and performing, until it came to light that not only were they operating in the red, but they were operating illegally as none of them had a visa to be working in France. After a performance in Paris Philippe Cheda was arrested. Before they were also arrested, Josef and Johanna burnt all of the legal papers, passports, taxing information, ledgers and the Vash's guardianship papers. The performers quickly scattered, most of them hitching rides back to Switzerland as fast as possible, others finding other troupes to perform with and started again. A few were left stranded in Paris, including a 14-year-old Vash who, though he knew how to care for himself, had never been homeless or alone.

At first it wasn't so bad. The spring and early summer were nice and full of tourists, and Vash would perform on streets near the more crowded areas, using what he'd make to buy food and sleep in hostels since they were cheapest. As summer progressed Vash found it increasingly difficult to perform and make money from tourists who did their best to ignore the throngs of homeless who lived in tents along the river, forcing him to sell the costumes he'd kept from Summervogel and anything of value until there was nothing left to sell. The summer waned and tourists began to thin out and Vash found himself desperate to find work but constantly turned down due to his age and lack of any legal papers.