Bennett Burner

Bennett Burner is a character played by chillyflakey01.
==General Information==
Bennett Burner is one of the founders of the rooftop community called The Tops. He also runs a summer camp business called Camp Vice.
==Physical Description==
Burner is always seen wearing bright orange clothing, no matter the outfit or occasion. He has curly prematurely grey hair that is usually tucked under a hat. He has a red lipstick tattoo on the right side of his face that he received from his time in the circus.
==Background Information==
Bennett Burner grew up in the Lovely Smooch Circus, acting as a performer and roadie. His entire family was a part of the circus, and he was especially close with his twin sister, Bernadette. The circus wasn't all fun and games, as his family used the traveling show to advance their criminal careers. They were thieves and murders, and Burner and his sister wanted nothing to do with it. When they got old enough, they fled the circus and their family. They were out on the road together, still traveling the country, but just the two of them.
Burner and his sister made a pact: They will never end up like the rest of their family. They would be good people. This was all fine and well for years until Burner caught Bernadette with her gang that she had joined. Angry and scared, Burner left his sister and set off on his own. For the first time in his life, he was by himself in the world.
All alone, Burner decided to keep traveling and see what the world has to offer him. He took classes, tried out different jobs, and eventually found himself being happy in one place. He made friends and had good things going for him. Things always turn sour though, as one day Burner ran into Bernadette who was with one of their cousins. It seemed as though his sister had joined back up with his family and they had tracked him down, and they planned on bringing him home. 
Burner managed to flee, but left everything he had worked for behind. He was out on his own once again. He stayed on the move, staying away from his family who wanted to trap him back in their lives. He looked for somewhere new to stay. Eventually that led him to moving to Los Santos where he hopes to make a new life for himself once again.
==Relationships ==
=== Friends. ===
Burner has made several friends since moving to Los Santos with his friend Rosemary Walsh. He has found his core group of people in the The Tops Rooftop Community, which he helped start. He has become very close with members such as Josiah Dunn, [[
Burner has made several friends since moving to Los Santos. He moved to the city with his friend Rosemary Walsh, who he has known for a couple of years. The first real friend he made since moving here was Yogi Swole, who then introduced him to Carl Wheezer. They became fast friends and eventually met Josiah Dunn, who they tricked and then became enemies with. Eventually though, they all made up and Josiah joined up with them and together they all started the Tops. Burner is very close with Rosemary, Josiah, Yogi, and Carl, and considers them his core friend group.
Burner has become friends with others too, such as Ramona Flowers, Cora Hartley, Ron Chalker, Johnny Rogers, Brandi Lee, and more.
=== Family. ===
Luckily for Burner, none of his actual family have shown up in Los Santos to confront him yet. As far as he knows, they still don't know where he has ended up.
To Burner, he hasn't considered anyone his proper found family yet. The core members of the Tops community come closest, but they feud so often that he hasn't begun to fully see them as family yet, just very close friend. He might consider them family if they all open up to each other more and argue less.
Wombat Stewart claimed Burner has her adoptive nephew and he agreed and always calls her "Aunty Wombat", though he doesn't truly see her has his adoptive aunt. He views it only as a nickname.
=== Enemies. ===
Burner's number one enemy is Bumbo the dog. Burner and Bumbo started on bad terms when Burner seemed frightened of the loud dog and didn't give him food as a treat. He also called him a bad dog, which greatly upset Bumbo. Since then, Bumbo has shown up occasionally to torment Burner. The dog has put him in the hospital several times after attacking him, has humiliated him in front of others, and has even shown up on the rooftops to mess with Burner's personal belongings. On June 18th, the two just began to perhaps get along, but Burner had earlier called animal control, which he forgot to cancel and showed up to chance the dog away. Bumbo now feels betrayed by him, and Burner feels guilty.
=== Romances. ===
Burner has recently developed a crush on Hawke, who is technically Ted "ORK" Hawke, but Ork has dropped the fantasy ork persona and has become a smooth talking normal (perhaps a bit evil) person because he put on Burner's old black t-shirt that gave him a confidence boost. Hawke has told Burner that he is considering going out with him and would like to spend some time with him. However, if Hawke were to ever revert back to normal Ork, Burner would be mortified and the crush would end immediately.
Rosemary Walsh
SoonTM
Yogi Swole
SoonTM
Josiah Dunn
Burner met Josiah after Yarp (Mike Legstrong) had introduced them. He found out that Josiah had come to Los Santos searching for his missing adult son, Robbie. Being a Pet Detective, Burner and Yarp agreed to help. A bit later, their friend Yogi Swole showed up to help. Yogi, being impressionable and having recently taken after some of Burner's gaslighting and scamming, declared that he was in fact Josiah's missing son. Yogi made up the lie of actually being Robbie Dunn, just so that he and the group could scam Josiah out of his money. As the lies got more complicated and for fear of Josiah learning the truth, Burner, Yogi, and Yarp planned to deal with Josiah and send him back to Kentucky where he came from. Burner staged a "picnic" for Josiah. Burner had Yogi go off separately to spend some "father and son" time together, while he and Yarp geared up and went up north to the Zancudo Trail. They planned to have Yogi bring Josiah up to their "picnic" where Yarp, masked up in disguise, would come out and subdue Josiah and throw him in the river so that he could swim back to Kentucky. The plan almost went just like that, until Yarp decided to hit Josiah with a baseball bat, sending him to the hospital. For some time after, Josiah could not remember the event fully, but he slowly gained his memories back. When Josiah couldn't take it anymore and wanted to know the full truth, he hit on Burner's Roof with a knife and waited for Burner to come up to go to sleep. He jumped Burner and demanded him to tell him everything or he would gut him. Burner told the truth that Yarp had been the one who went off script and had attacked him. Instead of killing Burner, Josiah instead beat him up, which led to Burner hitting his head and being sent to the ICU. After all of this, Burner pretended to have memory loss of the event whenever his friends had asked what happened to him. Josiah had warned him not to tell anyone. Eventually, Rosemary suspected the truth of Josiah's attack and got Burner to confess. In order to make sure that Burner didn't have an enemy in Josiah any longer, Burner offered Josiah a job at Camp Vice when it opens. Josiah actually agreed, under the condition that he gets Burner's First paycheck from the first camp session he runs. The two started a blank slate and eventually became friends. Burner took the whole ordeal to heart and decided that he would at least try to become a better person and to not gaslight people as much. Josiah has become a major inspiration for Burner attempting to turn a new leaf. Josiah eventually joined the Rooftop Commune and what would eventually become The Tops, and actually took on a sort of leadership role for the group, offering many ideas to better the group. Recently, Burner convinced Josiah to create a will in the case of his death. After pestering Josiah to tell him what he gets from the will, Josiah eventually told Burner that if he were to die, Burner gets to be the person who will be responsible for deciding the fate of his comatose husband.
Ron Chalker
Burner met Ron inside the clothing store on Hawick Avenue. Ron had just moved to the city and met Burner the day after he had an identity crisis. The two became fast friends immediately as Burner showed Ron around the city and helped him get his driver's license. Eventually, Burner grew paranoid of his friend Ron, as he suspected that he might secretly be a lizard person that was sent to befriend him and kill him (due to Burner's previous paranoia of seeing secret photos of Humane Labs). In order to deal with the potential (nonexistent) threat, Burner tricked Ron into going on a "picnic" with him in Grapeseed, where he actually attempted to kill Ron with a golf club that Carl Wheezer had given him. After the murder attempt, a heartbroken Burner fled to Mount Chiliad to mourn his good friend. After finding out that Ron had survived the attack and that a warrant was out for him, Burner went into hiding. During this time, he reached out to Ron to find out that he has no recollection of the "picnic" and that Ron had no idea why the police would be after him. After some tests of trust, and a short arrest of Burner, the charges were dropped and Ron and Burner were friends again. Ron still has no memories of Burner's murder attempt. Now, Ron has joined the The Tops and has a sleeping bag on the roof with all of Burner's friends.
Mike Legstrong
SoonTM
Carl Wheezer
SoonTM
Wombat Stewart
Burner met Wombat through is friend Yogi. Yogi had mentioned that he had been adopted by Wombat, so Burner was happy to meet her. When they met and hung out a couple of times, Wombat asked Burner if he wanted to be her other adoptive son. Burner always had issues with family and had longed for a new family for some time, but he was not ready to immediately have a new mother and for him to be a son again. Instead, Burner suggested that he become Wombat's nephew, making her his aunt and Yogi his cousin. Wombat then became "Aunty Wombat" to him. Wombat, who sometimes works as a priest, offered to baptize Yogi and Burner, letting them become "new boys" under the religion of the Muppets. Wombat gathered Burner and Yogi as well as all of her friends that answered, and took them to the Los Santos Cemetery. She read out the boys' favorite passages of literature, and in Burner's case it was the lyrics to Miley Cyrus's hit song Best of Both Worlds. Burner and Yogi were dunked under the water and rose as new boys. Since then, Wombat always introduces Burner as her nephew to people.
Wombat truly became a very important and trustworthy person in Burner's life when she helped him hide from the police after he had attacked his friend Ron Chalker and had a warrant out for his arrest. Wombat was the first person Burner called after the attack, believing that she would be able to help him and keep it secret. Wombat helped find information about and confirm Burner's wanted status through her friends that worked as police dispatch. She helped him by meeting with Ron to find out if he remembered anything from the event, and she let Burner hide out in her room at the Roach Motel. While Burner didn't truly see her as his aunt before this, he now views her as a properly family now.
== Notable Events ==
Moving to Los Santos
Burner arrived in Los Santos on December 9th, 2023, the same day the city reopened to the population after being closed for seven years after the Nuclear Event.
Burner got off the plane at the Sandy Shores Airfield wearing very shorts and an orange tank top. He was given a ride by a taxi driver down into the city and to the DMV where he was told to exit the building for his shorts being too short. He proceeded to go to the clothing store where a stylist provided him with some better suiting pants, which Burner kept the tags on so that he could return them afterwards. He was then successful in getting his driver's license.
Having a background in cleaning, Burner immediately went out to find a job, not as a way to make an income but to start meeting people. After making his way back up north, he applied as a janitor for Sandy Shores Medical Center where Doctor Quimbley Hayabusa gave him the job. For the next couple of weeks, Burner would clean the hospital and sleep in the dumpster behind the building.
Starting Lost and Found
After meeting Yogi Swole, Carl Wheezer, Yarp (Mike Legstrong), and having his old friend Rosemary Walsh move to Los Santos, Burner got the group together and started an unofficial Pet Detective Agency.
The Pet Detective agency focused on locating any missing animal, item, or person, as long as it was not related to crime and the police. When Lost and found first began, the unofficial business received many calls and the detectives were hired to solve many cases. From finding missing wallets, to missing cars, to missing people, the detectives could find it. One of the biggest cases the company received was to find another "ball" for Ray Valentine aka One Pac. One Pac had an accident years back and lost a testicle, and now his wished to have a new one. Burner called his friend George Costanzo and got him to kill a deer while hunting and to bring the organ back to him. They offered the organ to One Pac and he was beyond delighted and soon after had surgery to apply it.
Burner hired Bryce Miller and his colleague Calvin Cameron with their company Miller Media to film a commercial for Lost and Found which featured Burner, Rosemary, and Yogi advertising their skills. This commercial also created Burner's detective catchphrase "I'ma Find It!" The company name, Lost and Found, had not been fully established when the commercial was made, so Bryce and Calvin dubbed the company Bernie's Finders instead for the time being.
Currently, Lost and Found has been put on hold, as Burner has moved on to working towards Camp Vice as his officially pursued business in the city. Though, the group wishes to eventually return to the pet detective job as a hobby in the future.
Starting Camp Vice
SoonTM.
On March 15th, 2024, Camp Vice was approved to be an operating business.
The Dream
On the night of June 14th, 2024, Burner experienced a dream similar to the story of "A Christmas Carol" (even though he claims to not know what that movie is, only that he watched a random Muppet movie before going to sleep that night). 
In the dream, Burner was taken on a journey through past, present and future, where ghostly figures in the form of people he knows guides him along. In the past, Rosemary Walsh, his sister Burnadette, and other members of the Burner family showed his his life before moving to Los Santos. In the present, he was haunted by all of his friends in the Tops Rooftop Community, along with other friends like Ramona Flowers, Cora Hartley, and more. The dreams of the present turned grim when ghostly figures of his friend Ron Chalker and other various people that Burner has hurt in some way began to haunt and taunt him, asking him why he would hurt them. Finally, the future was guided by a form of Josiah Dunn, who appeared in a ghostly black cloak with a scythe. Josiah showed him the grave of Bennett Burner, and how everyone else in his life was getting on very well without him in the world.
Burner awoke in the middle of the night full of guilt and anxiety. For the first time in a while, Burner felt properly guilty for the people he had used... For context, the previous couple days, Burner had lied and gaslit some of his friends to give him money, such as Cora Hartley, Wombat Stewart, Perry Nook, and Katie St. Clair. He lied to them in various ways, made them feel bad for him. For Cora, he told her that a dog was hurt and that he needed money to pay for the vet bills. For Perry, he promised him a special trip designed just for him. For Katie and Wombat, he exaggerated the need for money so that he could buy food. Burner had spent the day tricking his friends, and the guilt finally got to him in the dream that night.
The next day, Burner decided that he wanted to change. One of his biggest fears is breaking the promise he and his sister made (that his sister also broke) and to become cruel like their family. Burner knew he had gone too far, and decided to spend the day making amends. He talked to his friends about it, and Rosemary and Josiah agreed to come along with him on his apology parade to back him up and keep him from messing it up. 
First, they visited Cora at her RV. Rosemary and Josiah hung back, listening, while Burner went forward to speak with her. He admitted the lies he told out the nonexistent hurt dog and asked for forgiveness. The conversation turned into arguments and led to both of them going back and forth between yelling and crying. During the conflict, Burner took out his golf club named Clubby, and threatened Cora. By the end, Cora forgave Burner, only under the condition that he gave her Clubby so he could not use it against anyone else.
Next up was Perry, who he had promised the special trip to. Burner told him that he had no intentions of ever taking him on a special trip, that it was a false promise. He also made a comment that they haven't known each other long, so they probably aren't even friends. Perry ended up sad from the encounter, and didn't accept Burner's apology. This made Burner very angry, because the thought that everyone would accept his apologies. Perry ran off during the middle of the conversation, then Burner sent him angry texts stating that he had to forgive him. Completely unrelated, Brandi Lee texted Burner that Perry had a "naughty dream" about Bryce Miller, so in his anger, Burner used that secret against Perry, and told him that he knew of it. Perry told him to never speak to him again.
The apology to Wombat went really well. She accepted it and taught him breathing techniques to control his anger. With Katie, she stated that she was disappointed but glad that Burner was willing to work on his anger. She offered him a job as her personal assistant so that he can stay out of trouble for a while.
For the next couple of days, Burner felt like he was losing his mind. On one hand, he felt like he should change and become a nicer and better person, never being mean to anyone ever again. On the other hand, he wondered if any of it really mattered, and that his anger was valid because people were "stupid and irritating." He thought that maybe he should double down and not care what anyone thinks about him, and to use people as he sees it. 
Burner ended up having a private conversation with Perry a couple days later (totally secret, with no one listening in). Burner truly tried to open his heart up and to apology the best he could. He mentioned that Perry is one of the only people in Los Santos that he truly felt guilty for hurting. For Burner, Perry really reminds him of someone he used to know before coming to Los Santos, someone that he also hurt and ended up on bad terms. He felt like he was living that part of life over again, and so the guilt felt heavy. Perry ended up forgiving him in the end, and Burner gave him a backpack full of Snickers bars, his favorite candy bar.
Burner was just beginning to start on this new path of being a nicer person, Most people told him that he really should change for the better, while people like Yogi Swole and Ted "ORK" Hawke told him to not care and to let the anger guide him. Burner had a one-on-one with Ork, who at this point was just "Hawke" (Ork was no longer wearing his normal mask, and instead became a normal person, if not a bit evil). Hawke taught him the ways to be subtle about his gaslighting, about how to let people think he was nicer, but to use that to his advantage. For a bit, he considered going down that route of gaslighting, but Carl Wheezer had a heart to heart with Burner, and told him that neither way might not be correct. He suggested that maybe he shouldn't fully change to be nice, and he shouldn't double down and become angrier. Carl told him that he should perhaps have a good balance, that he should pick his battles and choose when he needs to be angry and lie. Burner slept on the idea for a couple of nights and thought about it.
Currently, Burner has been trying the way of having balance between nice and mean, to pick his battles, be nice to those who deserve it, and save the lies and anger for those who hurt him and his friends. Whether he succeeds in that balance is yet to be seen...
== Trivia ==
* Burner's favorite color is orange.
* Burner claims that he lost his virginity on a trapeze swing back in the circus.
* His favorite Muppet is Gonzo.
* First contestant voted off in The Ultimate Liverer: Season 2.
* Won a wrestling cage match against Eddie Concord after Eddie stole Andy The Ant. Afterwards, Eddie had to return Andy.
== Quotes ==
* "Peace, love, and pixie dust." - Burner's way of saying goodbye to someone.
==Gallery ==
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