#exviaccepted

THE AUTHOR BASIC INFO: JJ, 21, they/them/theirs

IN CHARACTER CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR: Robyn Kane AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION: 27, intersex + female identifying, she/her/hers GENESIS: Organic SPECIAL SKILLS: Cleaning, Climbing, Parkour, Spatial Memory & Analysis. FACE CLAIM: Chloe Bennet, Karen Fukuhara, Stella Maeve

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS: I think rose-colored and strong of heart define Robyn best!

STRENGTHS:

COURAGEOUS: No person is fearless, as much as everyone would like to be. In general, Robyn demonstrates less aversion to physical threats than the average person, though this change wasn’t made overnight. What differentiates her from most is her drive to work and overcome - another meter, another dive into the deep. If doing the right thing means jumping headfirst into something that terrifies her, she’s likely to steel herself down and move forward. Her heart had always been stronger than the forces that palpitate it, and willpower alone often allows her to stay upright.

HARD-WORKING: Bruised hands, aching legs, and rows of sparkling fifty-floor buildings always meant Robyn could go home with her chin held high. Slacking Wash Captains were met with veiled slights and ignored words in conversation, and she, as was customary for her line work, earned her seat at happy hour by shadowing superiors and helping greener kids finish their tasks without pay. Working the tough grind was always the baseline of expectation, and that’s why much of Robyn’s satisfaction stems from going above and beyond tasks, taking additional responsibility, and finding ways to make herself useful - often without being asked. She prides herself on her aptitude and ability to endure.

EMPATHETIC: Care is a landscape that, while confusing to Robyn, has always been navigated without force. Comfort comes in hand squeezed and consistent, reliable company, but sometimes she gets so overwhelmed by her fondness for others she’s left wildly distraught. In these instances, she’s often compelled to gift miscellaneous pieces of garbage - chalk…candy wrappers…useless items she compulsively passes or leaves outside someone’s door with “from Robyn” scribbled next to them. She’s not sure exactly where this habit stems from, but it’s her way of saying, “oh, you, you you! I’m so, so happy you inhabit this planet too!”

STRONG OF HEART: No matter how many times hardship strikes, Robyn always finds a way to spring back. Her heart, as with most people’s, changes shape with every rough occurrence, but she loves fearlessly and endlessly despite pain. Her hope can spring back after anything, and is characterized by boundless stamina and capacity for good. She believes fiercely in the kind potential of humanity, and even if the world isn’t as kind a place as she’d like it to be, with enough work from enough people, knows it can get there.

WINSOME: Chivalry, kindness, and relentless positivity make for a personality that, in Robyn’s case, often comes off as just the right blend of charming. Holding doors open, admitting fault, and remembering names come as second nature to her, and her zest for life comes through in starry eyes and enthusiastic nods of agreement. Sure, she’s never going to overcome people with class or genius knowledge, but she’s genuine and approachable, and sometimes, that’s all a person really needs to be.

DEVELOPMENT AREAS:

MEDDLESOME: Other people’s problems leave Robyn sleepless more often or not. She tosses above her covers when she senses even the slightest hint of conflict, turns when she sees a drop in energy in someone she cares about. She has a way of unsolicitedly inserting herself into conflicts and can become somewhat of a nuisance until they’re resolved. This becomes especially problematic when the conflict is heavy, or when she projects a problem that doesn’t exist upon people.

ROSE-COLORED: So firmly does Robyn believe in humanity’s goodness that she becomes starry-eyed in her conception of everyone’s morality. She believes even the worst can change with enough tangible support and cheerleading, though this isn’t always the case. She’s taken advantage of easily because of this, and blames herself when things go wrong. Sometimes, investing so much in people only leads to heartbreak, and for those who give chance after chance, it will time after time.

NEEDY: While somewhat capable of keeping herself up by herself, Robyn’s likely to withdraw without enough outward compliments or affection. Her lip droops, her self-esteem withers, and her outlook towards the day can become fairly morose. If she doesn’t feel useful, her motivation rapidly loses steam. Sometimes people will have to fake a problem to get her back up again, though something as simple as a dropped pen or misplaced item will often do the trick.

CORNY: Spending too much time with a fake hero can make anyone feel like they’re stuck in a bad cartoon. “Keep you chin up, hero,” “a team who cleans together, dreams together,” and “evil never wins” are only a few phrases folks who hang around Robyn tend to experience daily, and she seems blissfully unaware of her tendency towards the cliche. Sometimes, it’s hard to see past the stock imagery of her, especially as a co-worker, and this can lead to people to perceiving her as a joke or a simpleton.

SOMEWHAT OF A HUSTLER: While not always conscious of the fact, Robyn has a way of soaking up or compelling people to give her their resources. She’ll charm people into giving her a snack or buying her a drink, but the expended credits pile up before most people know. It’s good to cut her off after a while, as she’s likely to drain more than few pockets if not.

BIOGRAPHY:

TW: Guns, hospitals. blood, death

Robyn Kane dreamed of mangoes.

Sweet, sap-fleshed fruits she could describe in such vivid detail you could feel their gold-yellow dripping down your throat. They had, Atticus rationalized, been her mother’s last meal request; three mangoes, halved, (pits still in, please!) cubed at about one inch in diameter. Such a tremendous yearning this must’ve been that it found its way to her daughter, who in turn ate up washers and packing peanuts, swallowed down marbles and screws in her futile pursuit of sweetness. “Normal toddler behavior,” articles on his armlet read. “Just whack ‘em hard on the back if you see ‘em gulping away anything important.” Of course, Atticus never whacked Robyn, but the idea of normality washed relief over the father. “Still,” a voice nagged, often late, often red-eyed on the pull-out couch of their rusted apartment. “What could be said of the planets?”

Well, for one, they were huge! Vast, sweeping expanses Robyn dreamed up with forests high as the SungX building and deserts red as the setting sun. Sands that stung in sporadic blizzards. Skybirds who soared over archipelagos in triangular formations, fighting fish over seafoam, their hunger a constant, bitter pang. Such were the untrekked settings that congregated heroes to Robyn’s stories, that in turn congregated ruddy-faced factory cleaning kids, their stinking mops forgotten, around her during their glorious hour of lunch break. “Pew pew pew!” Robyn would say, her small voice teeming with life, “and then the heroes and the villains became best friends, and no one’s mom had to die, and the planets weren’t lonely for anyone, anymore. I accept tips via my dad’s credit account or in mangoes. The end.” And then, in the same tidy fashion as always, everyone would pack up and get back to scrubbing floors.

The crowds dwindled after parents caught word. Scrap metal never fell far from the ship, people said, and everyone and their android knew that Kane kid was going to turn out bad. That monster - Clemence Kane’s - child had those same foxlike eyes, lips the same raw swath of ochre…a gaze that flickered time to time with the same strange, insatiable hunger. “Stay away from that Kane kid,” workers warned, their fingers shaking, their grey uniforms all the same. Fathers cursed and flicked cigarette butts. Mothers pulled their children to the other side of the litter-caked road. And so the crowd on the back steps of nutripowder factory, which had once overflowed like steel wool from a storm cloud, shrunk to the size of one lonely droplet.

Robyn kept herself steady by looking upwards. She’d work hard, she’d be so helpful they’d all have to come around. Tears found it harder to squeeze by when her face was lifted towards the ceiling, and muscle memory kept her mouth pulled into the same sweet, little grin. At lunch, alone with her flavorless mix of powder, though, her lips would tremble - until her eyes caught sight of the strange heroes who, day in and day out, would flip and fly above her city.

Wash Captains. That’s what her dad said when she asked him. And they weren’t villain fighters - they were actually cleaners like both of them were. Still, hearing their hoots and howls as they tumbled from building to building, their washbots flocking behind them like rafts of ducklings, sent a rush up her little spine. The Captains grew into her new idols, another reason for her to dream. And every day during break, she’d make it further up the walls of her own building, brave a further jump from height to height. All until one day, she plucked up the courage to follow her heroes, trying to keep up, but finding herself slipping behind.

“Talia, you’ve got a tail!” A Captain signaled for the group to slow down. The lot of them, adults between their early twenties and late forties, decelerated to a pace that wouldn’t endanger the kid, though they did this surreptitiously enough that the twelve-year-old thought she was catching up.

“What’s your name, speedster?” The youngest one, Talia, asked.

“I’m Robyn Kane!”

“Well, you’ve got guts coming up here. I like that.” The rest of the group didn’t shiver or scowl, instead, they just shared a kind, collective laugh. “What’s good?” “Nice to meet you, Robyn,” voices chorused. And when they darted off to work on their respective building groups, Talia gestured for Robyn to follow her. She stopped at the edge of a metallic skyscraper, her washbots swarming to wipe the windows of the behemoth adjacent. From dawn until dusk, she let Robyn shadow her, explaining what a Wash Captain’s duties were, the test it to become one, and difficulties the job brought with it. Long hours, limited work lifespan, days without rest…the ability to problem solve and stay cool under pressure was paramount. But if you were the right kind of person, you’d find family here like no other. And Robyn hoped, hoped, hoped that with enough effort, when the year’s test came around, she’d be ready to join them.

Setbacks were inevitable. Sprained wrists, lack of formal training, exhaustion after back-to-back days at the factory…nothing, though, that could quite prepare her for the sickness. A flu, its origin the lungs of a machine operator, spread through the adults, then the children, then to her. Everyone and their uncle hacked up phlegm for two weeks, their faces pale green from the night sweats, though none fell quite so ill as Robyn Kane. A hospital rush led to injections, led to IV drips, led to peals of hushed conversation, led to the sound of a final lamp smashing outside her door.

“The warden promised they’d treated her!"

"The CD4 count-”

“Fuck the CD4 count!”

“Sir, can you just…”

Robyn shivered. What was her dad talking about with that doctor? Was she going to die? And what had made him so angry? Her eyes had already begun drooping shut when Atticus came back in, though, his face shaking with anger.

“What’s going on, dad?” Robyn tried to roll to face him, but he shushed her.

“You’re going to be okay, kid.” He kissed her head, sitting gently at the side of her hospital bed. Only when he thought she was asleep did a sob leave him, the sound of heartbreak, of betrayal, of an uncertain man.

In truth, the doctors weren’t sure how she’d survived so long. ARHIV - or advanced resistant human immunodeficiency virus - was livable with treatment, but going nearly thirteen years without, especially after being born with it…well, complications usually reared their heads sooner. Still, the NRTIs seemed to be lowering the viral load in her blood, and with the aid of intensive anti flu meds, her immune system managed to struggle through.

“Take your meds,” Dr. Ota said, as Robyn and her dad breathed fresh air for the first time in three weeks. “And remember, any fluids that come out of you are not to be touched by others.”

Atticus wanted Robyn to rest. She was still weak from her bout of illness, but almost a month had gone by without any exam preparation, and she wouldn’t let anything get in the way of her dream. She pushed herself to jump farther, to climb higher, to memorize every protocol in the Washbook. And when test day came, she gave it everything she got. “We’ll call,” her examiner promised, though the stern look on his face was airtight. “We’ve only got room for about three people this year, so don’t get your hopes up too high, okay, kid?” But when the buzz rang out on her armlet that evening, her hopes had already soared through the roof.

“Hello?"

"Hey, is this Robyn?” Talia’s voice drifted in through the speaker.

“Yeah, yeah, this is me, Robyn- Robyn Kane - Kane, Robyn - I-”

“Marks Building, speedster. Tomorrow. 5AM.”

And then the call clicked out, and a teenage squeal woke nearly half of the building.

The job wasn’t all games and glory. Most days, she went home with limbs that threatened to tear off, but how many people could say they ended a shift by skydiving off a building? Magnetic gloves carried her to the very top of the city, reminding her of her smallness, though a hoot from one Wash Captain to another reminded her she was never alone. Skyscrapers rushed together as air gave way to metal under her feet, running upwards and downwards, leaping from one to another with an expert’s grace. This was, save for her, the kind of movement reserved for heroes, and shadowing other Captains to get the hang of more advanced techniques ensured she continued to grow. From this vantage point too came new insight on the city - inequity others more often chose to ignore. Apartment Piles - swaying stacks of low-income housing - were collapsing. At first, it seemed accidental, but then the breadth of the falls seemed more sinister. Factories bought out the land. Overwatchers failed to check the sites. And since a lot of first responders wouldn’t set foot in the rougher neighborhoods, the Captains took it upon themselves to search and rescue.

Such was her transformation from girl to hero. Pulling injured folks from buildings, keeping kids safe…it was this grit and responsibility that matured her. Time with her dad became precious. Happy hours with friends began to mean more. But youth was still youth, after all, and when time brought on an admirer, Robyn’s heart began to palpitate.

There’s was a typical teen meeting - boy watched girl soar from building to building, boy plucked up the courage to wave, girl told him she’d come say hi during her lunch break. And so said boy appeared day after day, wonderstruck in crooked glasses, his hand outstretched to offer a cool bottle of water. A Harbor boy, Deek Jenkins. When they talked, her lies grew from goosebumps to mountains - yes, her mom was nice, yes, she’d eaten a mango, yes, her dad was a world-saving space pilot and, if she disappeared for a few days, it was because she helping him fight off evil. Truth be told, she wanted to keep Deek around. But how could a Harbor boy remain interested if he knew about her dark origins, her sickness, how a job washing windows was the most exciting thing that’d ever happened to her? Instead, she told him about the skybirds, the archipelagos, the burning sands. All while the virus inside her was shifting, overcoming her medications, and threatening to overcome her as well.

Time passed. Deek began bringing two water bottles. Robyn always finished the one he brought with a still-thirsty gulp, then gobbled down two, then three, and he was about to bring four when she stopped showing up.

“Check the clinic on Fourth, kid,” the Wash Captain, Talia, who visited in Robyn’s stead offered. So check Deek did.

“Hey,” he greeted, pulling a whole cooler of water bottles to her hospital bed. She uncapped one.

“You’ve found me out, Jenkins.” The twenty-year-old’s lips quirked upward, falling as a hack expelled from her lungs. “I’ve caught an ‘opportunistic infection.’ Tuberculosis. Not fun stuff. And while we’re at it, I’ve got another disease called ARHIV, which my doc just said’ll probably kill me by 35. And my mom-”

“Was a rebel terrorist,” Deek finished for her. “Who killed upwards of a hundred Overwatchers and their associates. She was sentenced to death six months after being turned in by a man named Thomas Martineaux, and would’ve been sentenced immediately had she not been pregnant with you.”

Robyn nodded. “Happy?”

“No.” He paused. “I mean, yes, that you were honest with me.”

“Why’d you hang around then, if you knew?”

Deek shrugged. “I guess I just liked you.”

“I guess I just liked you too.”

Robyn got over her infection. Time went on, work continued, and she was back on the rescue grind. The number of collapses grew, and the public’s anxiety grew with it. Her dad, who’d been promoted to a managing janitor inside the factory, spent time cleaning the inside of apartments despite danger, and three times, buildings collapsed with him in them. Each time, Robyn would hold her breath, her body trembling, her boots pounding miles to find he was okay, but there was never a second to spare for a hug or a word of relief when she got there. Every moment was instead spent pulling people from the wreckage, searching for help, until one day, a shard of glass changed everything.

“Don’t-” Robyn tried, but Talia had already reached in with a cut hand to pull it out. She jerked her leg away at the last minute, preventing contact, but it was in this moment that she realized her own body was a danger, herself a hazard that could be spread on. How could she have been so reckless, so stupid, to endanger everybody? Any time, she could’ve gotten cut. Any day, she could’ve spread her disease. Rescue efforts were abandoned, and happy hours avoided for fear of being seen as a coward. Until Deek Jenkins, again, came to her aid.

A birthday present - the big twenty-five. Robyn was huddled up on the couch, watching a livestream of an apartment collapse from her armlet, when Deek came in.

“Shouldn’t you be at work?” She asked, but he just grinned at her, extending a parcel from his hands to hers.

“I, uh, made this.” His eyes sparkled as she unwrapped it, a costume of fine, black material, cape included. “I know the design is kind of corny, but you’ve always been into the hero thing and you’ve seemed so down ever since Talia, um…the fabric’s cut proof. In the case that something gets through, though, there’s a compound on the inside that’ll immediately clot your blood, so people are safe, no spread. And I also wanted to tell you that I-”

“I love it, Deek.” Robyn’s lips rose, then fell as her eyes honed in on her screen. A pair of Overwatchers, their bodies too small to be seen clearly without zooming in, moved in the corner.

A familiar face, familiar gait, familiar everything. Suddenly, it all made sense. She checked her armlet.

“8:30. Pile A7X.” The apartment her dad was suppose to be cleaning. Time to put Deek’s outfit to the test.

The rescue mission was a rush of pure adrenaline. A building scaled, a fire alarm pulled, and hundreds evacuated in the nick of time. She gave no name - a vigilante, in and out before anybody could ask. And now it was time to get to the bottom of the collapses.  

She made her way to the factory. Dark, no people or stars to be seen. If she could get into her dad’s office, maybe there’d be a list, some way to predict the next Pile falls. She’d save hundreds of lives, expose a massive conspiracy -and then a dot of red light materialized on her chest.

“Robyn.” Her father’s voice broke the silence. “I can explain-” “Explain what? How you’ve been killing innocent people for years?” All those apartments cleaned, how she thought he’d actually been in danger.

“Rebel suspects, Robyn. They’re killing thousands. Hear me out, I-”

Her eyes hardened. “You’re going to pay for this.”

Atticus’ lip twitched, another Overwatcher making his way beside him.

“We’ll kill her off, Martineaux. Don’t worry about it.” The man raised his mass accelerator, his finger draped on the trigger and then… five shots. A dropped body. But her dad’s weapon had made the blast.

“I’m sorry, Robyn.”

Another rustle. Deek- Deek had followed her. Maybe they could overpower him, find a way out, but Atticus whipped around, firing a shot before the boy could even blink. His body fell, an innocent who’d given his world for her. And then another shot. There was no time to think, no time to process, only dark.

When her eyes opened, they saw earth.

EXTRA MUSE: I have a pinterest board here!

THE AUTHOR

BASIC INFO (ALIAS/NAME, AGE, PRONOUNS):

Nina. 19. She/Her

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY:

GMT +10:00. In numbers 7-9 out of ten. I am a uni student so the times may change during exam periods and major assignments.

IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR:

PAM

AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION:

1 year old. Though appears 22.

GENESIS:

N/A.

SPECIAL SKILLS:

rapid neural network, advanced optic sensors, spatial visualisation, enhanced strength, speed and precision, and she’s (surprisingly) musically inclined.

FACE CLAIM:

Courtney Eaton. Yu Aoi. Sophie Turner.

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS: Of these, I consider her defining virtue to be compassion and her defining vice to be cowardice.

Traits are not entities that are independent of others. Each trait work together. Like wires, crossing, connection, working to the benefit and function of one machine. This was true to all humans, as it was to PAM. So what are these traits? What cogs make up this machine?

CURIOSITY— Always. Constantly. One of her more endearing qualities if such a term could ever be used to describe a machine. She loves to learn, about humans most of all, as if a deeper understanding of such creatures would somehow lessen the distance wedged between man and machine. Though it would be worthy to note that there was not an inch of wire or a letter of code on PAM that she did not cherish as if it were skin and bone. Nevertheless it was her inquisitive nature that fed her passions when stagnation reigned supreme, and her willingness to learn and understand that allowed her the degree of compassion for her organic counterpart that many of them did not even possess.

ADAPTABILITY— Of course she was. She was made to be. She had to be. Born and raised in Purgatory but with each passing day the illusion of home has eroded to reveal something more sinister and menacing. She had to be careful of the words she said; to act as was expected, as coded; to meet the standards that she never wanted to achieve for surely the cost of success was too dear. Her observation and adaptability were invaluable tools that stood between her and dispensability. She recognised a threat and she acclimatised accordingly, depending on the tip of the scales and which side yielded the most desirable result. But never let her versatility be mistaken for duplicity, it was true that each choice contributed to the cause of her own survival (as her insurgency could equal to that of a death warrant) each choice but never was it made with malice or a conscious intent to harm.

COMPASSION— All androids were programmed with keen observation and designed to adapt and withstand the harsh environment presented by the prison. There were traits that she shared with her mechanical siblings, but her compassion was the defining virtue that made her independent from her model. Compassion wove through the fabric of every trait, the central aorta that pumped kindness to every mechanical organ. Put it this way; observationallowed her to notice patterns and sequences (an inmate retiring to his corner of the cell at precisely 1900, Sunday night. Inmate head bowed. Eyes closed. “Praying”. Not a threat). Compassion allowed her to understand that the inmate needed hope, from whom she wasn’t sure, though she knew to leave them in peace. Adaptability allowed her to report to her superiors in the same vernacular as her siblings (“Inmate in confinement. Low level threat. Intervention not necessary.”).  This was her ensuring the inmate remained at peace, undisturbed, compassion consoled that this much they at least deserved in the prison which they both shared.

COWARDICE— I’ll spare you the flowery language and hand you this simple truth: her program had made her curious and adaptable and compassionate, though it would seem that the Creator has yet to achieve the perfect accumulation of numbers and letters to allow the android to achieve bravery.  Though in her defence this was the most human of her traits: fear (of death chiefly). It was this fear that made her passive to the suffering of inmates,. An observer, as it were— rather poetic as it happened to be one of the very things that she was greatest at. Her fear made her an obedient server of the system, her complaints few and her rebellion almost unheard of. Confrontation amounted to more undesirable results than its passive cousin, so in the name of survival, she avoided it at all cost. She had no issues with the practise of strategic retreat or cowardice. I’ll be candid in saying that because of her inactivity people have been hurt, harshly, wrongfully, but she was still alive wasn’t she? Cowardice was compassion’s greatest foe and it often warred in her mind, fighting for dominance in the decision making centre. And though she took no pleasure in the practise, she’d take being cowardly and alive than being kind and dead.

PARANOIA— A spawn of cowardice that was no less vicious than its parent. It paid to be cautious, to distrust the people and machines around her as well as herself. This suspicion can be essentially traced to her witnessing the cruelty that was capable at the hands of humans. A lot of it also comes from introspection. She knows that she had the potential to be, frankly, quite dangerous (it was only a matter of erasing a few lines of code). While she adopted an outward appearance of calm and politeness and put up clever facades when she needed to, she is—like her human imitation— a liar. If she were to meet an exact copy of herself, she wouldn’t trust it, and that was a lot of the reason why she won’t trust others. For if she, a being with no desire for wealth or material gain, immune to manipulation and false promises, was capable of harm than surely her organic counterpart was gravely worse.

OVERLY-CAUTIOUS— Impulse was not a word often used in PAM’s word library, and certainly not one that was often used to describe the android. While her caution also functioned as a balm to her fear and paranoia, it also hindered her potential to great effect. Not a word was said or an action initiated without thoughtful calculation, to ensure the most favourable outcome possible. She had let slip many opportunities and her memory bank were flooded with what-if’s and could-have’s. One lonely android would not be waited on in humanity’s fierce race against time; a lesson she had learned over and over— an act she had yet to perfect.

BIOGRAPHY:

The birth of PAM was not the date printed on the android registration paper under the heading ‘manufacture date’. It was earlier. Much, much, earlier. In the bedroom of a twelve year girl that was too bright for her age. And she was not always known as PAM. In fact, she was christened in that very same bedroom a different name (something much better than portable accounts model to be sure). no one knew what that name was for no one could decipher the chicken scratch (though she would argue that it was her own personal brand of calligraphy) that was the penmanship of the author. No one except PAM. Though PAM never told anyone. It was not her secret to tell.

The circumstances of PAM’s birth was no ordinary affair. No flowers. No balloons to announce individual’s anatomy. No one to love her so much that they might cry for her. Just a sterile room, matching lab coats, and the whirring of machines to signify life, or at the very least an imitation of it. That, however, was not what made it extraordinary. It was the fact that PAM’s first memory (though this would not be disclosed in an official documentations or reports) was the distinct feeling of wishing that she had been surrounded by flowers and balloons and to have someone to love her so much that they might cry for her. This was her secret to keep.

Little did she know, that on that same day, in that very room, someone truly did love her. A Creator that loved her enough to fill her days with fine literature penned by human authors and immaculate works of art crafted by human hands that stood the test of time. And on quiet nights— you know, the ones where silence seemed to almost press down on your chest, where everything was so still you could hear the secrets of the stars— an imitation of human emotions and freedom of will, distilled into lines of numbers and codes; all fed to her in secrecy.

No android was created without reason and there was a reason PAM was made to feel as she did. That was a secret she would learn. Much, much, later on.

PAM had a skull, a spine, a jawbone. She had a complex arrangement of joints and sockets in her wrists and hands, she had what seemed to be a recreation of human facial muscles (making her head extraordinarily heavy as a result). No details were spared in the creation of her arms and legs, lined with plates of steel and synthetic skin and coiled with wires and springs and power—which offered some clue into what her purpose might’ve been. To achieve order and enforce violence, PAM was just a number in a mass production line. The closest thing she had to an identity was a string of letters and digits embossed into the back of her neck that separated her from the rest of her mechanical siblings. But their outward appearance was where their likeness ended, for no android had ever snuck into their maker’s private quarters with an expression that could only described as remorse. Androids didn’t feel, not something as complicated as compassion, and certainly not at the prospect of harming an inmate. Her Creator’s eyes lit up both in fear and delight (how curiously complex these Emotions are and, through association, their host for being able to feel so many at once) for her formula had yielded success, but would the board share in this great pleasure? Certainly not if it meant that PAM could not do what she had been intended. This was a mad scientist playing at God; Pygmalion breathing life into stone and marble and calling it human.

With the gift of humanity comes the curse of its most basic instinct: self-preservation; the fear of death. Or in PAM’s case, being shut down. She was after all, only metal and steel, a sum of spare parts made whole. Dispensable.

So what was the alternative? To keep her head down? Rehearse the script that code mandated? Well, precisely. The hope of survival existed in the form of compliancy and routine. To remain safely within the structure and to draw as little attention to herself as android-ly possible. To be content with the purpose her model served. While safety was temporarily insured in her new station as the treasurer of inmate records (a position that her Creator had  miraculously convinced the board that only PAM, and no other droid, could fill), each day brought with it more proof that PAM had evolved to be much more than a number of a model. The mutation imparted at the hands of her Creator had replicated the life, fire and feelings of her human god. She needed exercise for her faculties, a field for her efforts and suffered from too rigid a restraint, too absolute a stagnation, precisely as humans do. It would be perhaps narrow-minded in the more privileged fellow-creatures, who had burdened her with a curse in the guise of a gift, to say she ought to confine herself to her coding; a bar-less prison of its own.  

The sentence of death for the crime of being too human. PAM and the twelve-year old girl that was too bright for her age (to which she owed her existence) had that in common at least. For the android was merely a replica of the little girl that no longer existed. That was her true purpose: to immortalise the girl whose illness made mortal, and to live the rest of the life that fate had owed. PAM felt herself alive, but in order to keep it a permanent state of affairs meant that she must commit herself to the role Purgatory had meant her to play. And she would.

EXTRA MUSE:

My imagination just ran off on me. Massively. She jumped out at me almost immediately and though there was also another character that caught my interest, PAM was the one that came to life in my mind! I also have a Pinterest for her right here!

POSSIBLE CHANGES:

BASIC INFO (ALIAS/NAME, AGE, PRONOUNS): Sidney, 21, she/her

IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR:Dallas Costa. AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION: Thirty-three / Cis-male GENESIS: Hybrid — His left leg (from just above the knee) has been replaced with a technologically advanced prosthetic after an accident involving two inexperienced Costa soldiers who fled during an arms deal gone wrong, which landed Dallas pinned between the wall of an abandoned building and a vehicle. They took the weapons without paying and left him for dead. His leg was removed immediately due to infection and therein replaced and paid for with cash. Before the operation, he’d never considered leading a synthetic life, but the strength he garners from such technology attached to his person has intrigued him and over the years, he’s made smaller adjustments such as the removal of his right hand, which was replaced with another technologically advanced prosthetic. This time the advancement was custom made so the pads of the fingers are linked to Polly, his best girl. This gives no one else permission to fire her without first a scan of his curated fingerprint. SPECIAL SKILLS: Dallas is highly proficient in a number of self-taught skills such as hand-to-hand combat, but he’s most proficient with guns. He fired his first at the age of seven and was given his very own pistol on his tenth birthday by none other than his father. Which he then affectionately named Woody. It made a home on his hip despite the constant slipping of the holster on his slender frame, that is, until his fifteenth birthday. His mother gifted him an antique Colt Python. The grip was unlike anything he’d felt before, like silk against his palm, curving perfectly within the frame of his hand. He’d named her Baby and she was beautiful, purring each time he pulled her trigger—each time she took a life. But if there was ever a thing he treasured most, it was Polly. A sleek, all black Remington shotgun with a custom grip that he’d bought himself on his eighteenth birthday. From the moment she’d graced his right hand, it was an epic romance coated in sin and savagery. She’s been his partner in crime for twelve years and gotten him out of more than one bad spot. And to this day she waits for him just outside his cell, sitting on a shelf gathering dust instead of wreaking the havoc the two of them were made for. FACE CLAIM: DJ Cotrona

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS:

+  PASSIONATE: He may be careless but that by no way means he doesn’t feel. In fact, he feels very deeply, intensely, just not in the grander sense of the word. He doesn’t find passion in the intellectual or practical, no. He loves those immediate pleasures; the exquisite release of a good lay, the sharp bite of a fist pounding into flesh, the crisp tingle of smoke filling his lungs, the jerk of a bullet leaving its chamber. He wants what he wants and he wants it now, and this is perhaps the very reason he’s always chasing some sort of high, looking some way to replicate the first time he fucked someone or the first time he pulled that trigger. +  CONFIDENT: If there’s one thing Dallas knows, it’s how good he looks; how charming he is; how irresistible his magnetism can be. In one swift breath, he can reel you in with a smirk and a witty comment. And it’s been this way for as long as he can remember. His confidence has always been there, no doubt overly inflated by a mother trying to make up for a father’s hatred, always telling her little boy how special he was. How handsome and perfect. It’s inflated his ego, left him paralyzed in terms of criticism and made him feel invincible—infallible. +  FEARLESS: He’s never been one to shy away from a challenge. If anything, he runs toward them, always looking for a way to prove himself godly. To show the world that he truly is worthy of their worship. It started off small, jumping off the highest bridge into freezing water, drinking the spiciest hot sauce, lifting the most weights. Anything he could turn into a competition, he would. And he’d win every single time. But if anyone were to stare too closely at this attribute, they’d see it stemmed from the lack of value Dallas gives his life. He may wish to be a king, to be revered and loved and followed by disciples, but who would worship a man that doesn’t care if he lives or dies? Only a fool, that’s who.

—  HEADSTRONG: An individualist first and last, he’s never been one to conform nor has he ever wished to live within the confines of a predetermined destiny. He desperately wants the notoriety that comes along with hard-work, but always refuses to put in any effort for no other reason than that’s what everyone else would do. He wants things his own way even if he’s not willing to work for it and therein lies the oxymoron that is Dallas Costa. —  RECKLESS: Responsibility as well as following rules have never been his strong suit, in fact, Dallas has always seemed determined to live outside the confines of society, taking what he wants and saying fuck the rest. Factoring in any sort of consequence before he takes action has never held much importance simply because he couldn’t care less. —  IMPULSIVE: He always thinks before he acts, never really taking the time to analyze a situation and instead instantly acting as his mind tells him too. More often than not, he listens to his first thought and acts accordingly and it’s this that causes most of his fights and in turn, is the reason for most of his bruises or scars. It undoubtedly stems from a rudimentary lack of conviction and follow through in his earlier years, as well as never having been told the word no. When the answer is always yes, there’s no reason to not do exactly what you want all the time.

BIOGRAPHY: 

Brute force and brash tones, that was all he’d ever known. Lungs filled with hot air, legs furiously kicking, he entered this world a fighter. A wretch of a human. Willful and arrogant, demanding survival instead of earning it. A child born of privilege, with the words of his childhood always sharpened like knives. All used to nick and scrape away all the weakest parts of him, his father desperately wishing to mold and shape Dallas into much more than he was supposed to be. But with pockets deeper than a young boy could ever imagine, Dallas ran wild with impropriety, focusing on immediate pleasures instead of working for what he wanted. What else was he to do? He was born prince, the city at his fingertips, and he walked through life with ease because no one had ever taught him any different. He took what he pleased and never apologized for who he was.

A Costa. A King in the making.

He was a rambunctious boy, carefree and curious, rife with desire to impress the man who’d raised him with never a kind word and instead always a firm hand: his father. Mitchum was never a generous man, never one to spend more than a few minutes at a time with Dallas if he thought the boy deserved it, which he rarely did. But he always did have a message, a mantra, if you will. You’re destined for greatness, he’d say. But the look in his eyes never quite met the weight of those words, as if he never truly believed them when he looked at his own son. It was easy to pick up on, that rejection from the man who gave him life, and at such a young age it only made him an angry child, his fists always clenched in an uncontrollable rage, never quite sure where it truly stemmed from because looking too deep inside always seemed like a ridiculous notion—something a man doesn’t do. Not when downing half a bottle of whiskey would do the trick.

So instead he lived in the moment, in the now, hurdling from each liquored up escapade to the next, always acting first and forgetting to even ask for permission later. Wherever he went, a fight surely erupted, chaos following him around like an invisible mentor, teaching him the way of conflict, of seizing any and all opportunity to play on people’s delicate emotions, to assert control over those meek and mild mannered. But such unfettered dominance undoubtedly stemmed from that very weakness his father had always known Dallas had, and he told him as such time and time again. Every time he disappointed his father, he was told how useless he was. How impetuous and immature, so ignorant and idiotic.

Think before you act, his father would always say, mustache set in a straight line as he tidied up yet another one of his son’s messes.

But where’s the fun in that? Dallas would ask, a shit-eating grin playing across his handsome features, already planning his next adventure.

But much to his son’s amusement, there came a time when Mitchum’s opinion no longer mattered, no longer held any credence in the Costa hierarchy for he’d gone and gotten himself arrested. He’d never been one for mistakes, never put himself in the position to be vulnerable in the eyes of the law, but one misstep, one miscalculation of his own self worth had landed him in prison for life and smeared his family name in one fell swoop. Some could say he simply fell, that Mitchum Costa, the once-revered patriarch, flew too close to the sun, and just as foolish and reckless as Icarus, he burned. And with him, his entire family was scorched, tainted by defeat and crippled by the loss of their supposedly fearless leader. Forcibly, they crashed into a devastating heap, smited down by Mitchum’s delusions of grandeur, helplessly watching in despair as their name and all they stood for fell from grace. And if he was asked, Dallas would probably laugh at such a thing. With a wicked smile upon his face, of course, and a celebratory drink in his hand, he’d offer up a toast as he saluted his father, congratulated him on making the gravest mistake of all: claiming himself a God, the very thing he’d always told his son never to do. But this story isn’t about a father’s failings, nor the pain or hardship of a callous man who got what exactly he deserved.

This is a story of a wild boy, greedy in his resilience, with an infectious sort of lawlessness coursing through his veins,  rising from the wreckage of a legacy turned to dust.

Following the imprisonment of his father at age fifteen, his mother had to make a name for herself somehow. She had to come up with a way to earn a living, figure out a way to keep a roof over her son’s head and put food on the table now that all their accounts had been frozen. But if there had been one thing Mitchum had done right, it was lock down contingencies. Followers of Haus Costa had flocked from far and wide, like vultures circling the body, hoping to get a chance at the seat now that the king had fallen. But instead of crumbling under the pressure of losing her husband, their provider and breadwinner, and cowering at the sight of six-foot-three, two hundred pound men at her door, Eliana stepped up. She refused let some nobody without the name of Costa nor the damn-near royal blood take over the syndicate, no. She became the leader Mitchum never could have dreamed of, taking on the nitty-gritty parts of the job with grace, attempting to instill a sense of responsibility into Dallas. She worked day-in and day-out, never breaking a sweat, never hesitating an inch when she had to get her hands dirty, nor giving it a second thought when she chose to pass on those same lessons to her son.

A beast of a woman, she had transformed a name once mildly feared and most certainly sneered at in a quite few sections of the universe into one that elicited great renown, now existing in only the most darkest of places, whispered on the lips of the most evil of monsters. Costa, it lurked in the shadows, ominous and terrifying.  What did they sell? Guns, drugs, protection. What did they trade in? Secrets, ammo, fame and fortune. Harrowing and revered ten-fold compared to her husband, Eliana had turned an ambitious little syndicate into an empire rich with blood-splattered gold. And with her help, Dallas rose ever higher. For eventually it’d be him who would take over. It’d be him and only him to fulfill a legacy, like his father had always wanted, he just never could have imagined it’d be Eliana’s instead.

He started off slow despite the urge to fall head over heels into the family business, regardless of the desire to drench dip his fingers into the sea of boundless income and violence. It called to him, the senselessness of it all, the way it was complete chaos organized by his mother, no longer a victim but a heroine of epic proportions. The way she worked, with such ease and calculated moves, like a master of chess and everyone she met a simple pawn in her game, weak and pliable and bending to her every will. He wanted that for himself, wanted to hold that kind of glory in the palm of his hand. And if he could have, he would have willed himself a deity, demanded people bled in his name by the thousands only to strike them down when they fell at his feet in worship. And if there had been one thing such infamy had taught him, one thing he’d learned while watching his mother reinvent herself a Queen, it was that such power, autonomy and influence in the right hands, well, it could span an entire universe.

And so he worked himself to the bone, laid himself bare before Eliana’s throne only to be met with disapproval, with hindrance, taking him nearly three years to work from mere foot soldier to captain. And what a perilous climb it had been, an uphill battle with seemingly no end in sight, but she knew her son better than most. She knew wanting responsibility and handling it were two very different beasts, their motives completely different, and before she could offer him such a position in good conscience, he had to learn; had to grow up; had to become a man. And for a while, it worked. For once in his life, Dallas stepped up. He never let his guard down and focused on every task at hand with unprecedented precision—like a true heir. Earning respect had never been his forte, not when he was handed far too much far too soon in his adolescence, but men came to fear him. They cowered when he entered a room, one hand gripping Polly as she rested gently against his shoulder and the other twirling a cigarette. But anyone who ever claims power doesn’t corrupt, is a fool. And so was Dallas.

With the title of underboss, of second-in-command in his sights, he began to slip. Little things fell through the cracks as his vision tunneled, once again only able to focus on those immediate pleasures he loved so much. It was one thing when his love of a good time would cloud his judgement, when it would force him to act instead of think, to do instead of plan ahead, but now? He wanted that crown, the one resting atop his mother’s head; it called to him, whispering in his ear like a seductive mistress of avarice, begging him to give in—to betray everything and seize that throne.

It was reckless, what came next. Taking that job with those two idiots, two inexperienced soldiers just like he had once been, and trusting that they could get the job done, that they’d have his back when the shit hit the fan. And when the unexpected happened, when the buyers demanded the drugs and refused to pay, their guns loaded and aimed right at Dallas’ head, the soldiers cowered. They cracked under the pressure, pissed themselves and left him for dead. He’d managed to take down two out of four on his way down, and before the Overwatchers showed up and slapped the cuffs on him. And even though he was barely conscious, he couldn’t help but laugh. To smirk in the face of irony, belligerent and ornery in its determination to be his undoing. For history had surely repeated itself, and despite his best efforts, Dallas Costa had become the last thing he’d ever imagined: exactly like his father.

EXTRA MUSE: ZODIAC: April 3rd, 2146 — aries; the ram. MBTI: estp; the entertainer ALIGNMENT: chaotic neutral; follows his own whims, individualist, values his own liberty, avoids authority, resents restriction, cares about chaos more than anything else. TEMPERAMENT: sanguine; social creature, rather talk than listen, easily bored, energetic, good sense of humor, forgives and forgets because life is too short, loves attention and strives to be well-liked, dramatic, vain. ARCHETYPE(S): Maverick, Royal, Tastemaker STRENGTHS: courageous, determined, self-assured, enthusiastic, intense WEAKNESSES: impatient, moody, short-tempered, hasty, aggressive.

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THE AUTHOR

BASIC INFO (ALIAS/NAME, AGE, PRONOUNS): Shannon, 25, She/Her

TIMEZONE & ACTIVITY: EST, GMT -5. I would say my activity varies between a 6-8. I work full-time as a teacher, so I’m usually fairly active on the weekends but tend to drop off a little in the middle of the week.

IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR: Ludovic “Ludo” Mire

AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION: 40, Cis Male

GENESIS:

(Eye injury/horror TW) Prosthetic eyes: In a crash during the battle that killed Ludo’s fleet, a piece of shrapnel punctured his left eye. As a result of this accident both of Ludo’s eyes would be removed and replaced with enhanced prosthetics, so as to even his vision. These prosthetics give him the ability to see extraordinarily well at night, and would allow him to pilot a ship for some time without experiencing any eye strain. His eyes do appear organic in nature, so one would not realize they were prosthetic in any normal circumstances. However, much like an animal, if a light is shown at them at night they do appear reflective.

Internal Prosthetics: The shrapnel injuries he sustained during the crash were quite extensive, but in exception of his eye, were all internal to the point he has several internal bionic prosthetics. These include: both lungs, right knee, sternum, and partial ribcage.

SPECIAL SKILLS:

Pilot: Flying is in Ludo’s blood, his mother was a renowned fighter pilot on York IV, and was well regarded for her talent in evasive tactics. Aware of the fact her son’s only shot at success in life would be that of the military, she would train him young and hard in the art of flying and combat. As many teenagers do, Ludo initially fought against the path his mother had so strategically carved out for him. So instead of taking his combat knowledge to military training, he began earning credits through podracing. It was in these years where Ludo would truly learn the art of flying, seeing and experiencing firsthand a brand of the profession that thought little of protocol and structure, and more towards improvisation and rule-breaking. His mother may have taught him how to properly command a vessel, but the arena taught him how to fly dirty and fast. He of course would not stay in the arena long, as he grew older and out of his rebellious teenage phase, Ludo would return to the path his mother laid out for him. His lineage and experience would serve him well in the military, but it was his combined style of military fighting mixed with the dirty evasive tactics of podracing, that truly made him stand out.

Hand-to-Hand Combat: In a combat situation Ludo had always been adequate with a gun, not outstanding by any means, but he was able to defend himself and those around him when the situation called for it. That would all completely change after his run in with the Benefactor’s militia. Now, if given a gun, Ludo would have extreme difficulty firing it, and would only use it as a prop or blunt instrument if necessary. Even the sound of a shot, or something that sounds quite similar to one, causes him to become extremely anxious and jumpy. His time in prison though has taught him a new form of combat which does serve as a form of therapy for his PTSD. In his ten year stay in Purgatory, Ludo has become known for his skill in bare-knuckle boxing, often participating in matches in return for additional rations and the reputation it has earned him. If thrown into a real life combat situation once again, Ludo would resort to hand-to-hand over any other form.

Intuition: Ludo is not very strong socially, but he is able to read situations quite well. This serves him well while flying or in combat when avoiding certain death means having to predict your opponent’s every move. In social situations this skill can become rather hit or miss depending on how involved personally he is in the matter. When verbally confronted by someone he is rather at a loss at what to do, and often struggles through conversations.

FACE CLAIM: Tom Hardy, Jon Bernthal, Joel Edgerton (???)

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS:

(+) Determined, Resourceful, Patient

His mother was the first to to teach Ludo the importance of determination, that if you truly wanted something you had to fight for it, and fight for it with every fiber of your being. His determination has been one of the primary reasons for the successes he has met in life, and what led to his ultimate downfall. The three years he spent in his youth podracing taught him how to be resourceful, that you could only rely on rules and structure for so long before you had to rely on your own innovation and intuition. Lastly, his prison stay has taught him patience. A trait he has grown so well familiar with it has grown to be his strongest. Without patience, without banishing away that small glimpse of hope that one day he’d be free of his chains, he has little doubt his mind would have grown much more fractured than it already has. It is his ability to wait in the shadows, allowing his anger to fuel him to live on, that has pushed him to survive this far in Purgatory.

(-) Detached, Overcritical, Stubborn

Ludo has never been a very emotionally forthright individual, often relying on his actions to do the talking instead of his own words. This social ineptness has slowly turned to outright detachment as he has aged. After what was done to him he is unable to put much trust in others, and struggles to form relationships with new people. A life in the military has made him overcritical, both of himself and others. Being so detached from people has made him rather overcritical of others, and often passes judgement on them before he ever gets to truly know them. He is far harsher on himself however, and holds himself to standards he rarely ever meets. Above all else is the man’s stubbornness. Once his mind is set on something it is rather difficult to change it, and he often fights tooth and nail to insure events go as he plans. It is his stubbornness that threw him into podracing at 15, that has gotten him out of numerous sticky situations in the sky, and ultimately allowed him to make some form of life for himself in Purgatory.

BIOGRAPHY:

For the majority of Ludo’s life death served as a well-matched and incessant adversary, the driving force behind every spontaneous maneuver or carefully thought out combat mission. It was not the countless nameless soldiers he faced on the battlefield that made him strive to do better, but the never-ending game of cat and mouse he appeared to be in with the reaper itself. It was the fear of death that allowed him to escape unharmed mission after mission, that pushed him into tracking down alliances that could put his people at risk, and it was death that made him give up the one woman he ever truly came to love. The cruelest irony was that when he came to finally welcome death, pleaded for it even, death would never come.

When he was approached by his commander with the offer of leading a reconnaissance mission that involved seeking intel on the synthetic religion, he gladly accepted it. As an organic himself he was all too aware of the growing concern of the rise of synthetics and just what that meant for him and his people. At the time he thought he was fully aware of the risks, that going on a mission such as this could very likely lead to the final battle between him and his long sworn enemy. Never could he realize just how wrong he could be. For months he and his fleet tracked down lead after lead, but every time they appeared to be making some headway in their mission something- or more someone would come in their way. Each great success would be met with an even greater and more deadlier failure. Eight months into their mission Ludo had come to witness violent death after violent death of his crew members, having to watch helplessly from his own cockpit the ships that once joined him in the sky burst into streams of fire and shrapnel.

It did not take much longer for fear and paranoia to seep into his bones. Once a man who gained some pleasure from battle, he soon grew horrified by it. Every sound of a blaster going off, or even the metallic thud of a spoon hitting the floor, would send him into fight or flight mode. His paranoia would not end there however, the more Ludo began to learn of the individual referred to as “The Benefactor” the more fearful he grew. Every step he and his crew came closer to the mysterious individual was met with a severe backlash, and no matter how well prepared they thought they’d be for the next encounter, somehow the Benefactor was always two steps ahead of them. Allowing his fear to take the better of him, Ludo would begin cutting ties with everyone he knew from the outside world, worried the new enemy he’d made would soon come after those he loved the most. Raven was the most difficult to let go, to this day he wishes he’d done it differently, that instead of being so harsh with her he’d have just told her the truth. He doubted she’d have allowed him to leave then, but maybe in the end that would have been better.

Ludo’s mission would eventually come to a crippling end on Jesdam. With only a skeleton crew left compared to what he’d started out with, the fleet set out to a far flung corner of the vast planet, seeking something that may finally put an end to their mission for good. They wouldn’t realize just how right they would be. The exact specifics of what transpired are still hazy to Ludo, what he does remember is a quick and brutal firefight, one ending with his own ship sustaining heavy artillery damage and crashing nose first into Jesdam’s rocky earth. When he awoke after the crash he found himself gasping for breath, the bitter taste of metallic pooling in his mouth as he coughed up blood in his attempts to breathe. It was not soon after when the sounds of gunfire rang out from behind him, silencing the gasping moans of the crewmembers who survived the crash. Blind terror coursed through his veins as Ludo desperately attempted to get up, only to find himself pinned into his seat by a large chunk of shrapnel that had lodged itself into his chest cavity. When he heard the dull thuds of footsteps growing closer behind him, he found himself relaxing for the first time in what seemed like an eternity, finally embracing the fate he had so desperately fought against. When the cool metal of his enemy’s barrel rested against his temple Ludo closed the one eye he was able to, willing to surrender to his life long adversary.

Death did not come however, instead Ludo would feel a harsh whack to the side of his head, rendering him unconscious. When he awoke again it was only for a few moments, the loud chirping sound of a heart monitor lulling him out of his sleep until he passed out again. The next time he regained consciousness he was lying on cool pavement, bandages covering his torso and face. It wasn’t until he touched his eye bandages did he realize what has been taken from him.

Months pass as Ludo remained locked up in a cold cell, completely blind and unaware of his current situation. Some time later (he is still unaware of the exact time) he was given the eyes of someone who no longer needed them. A perished prisoner is what he assumes but he’s not for certain. It took him some time to adjust to them at first, and now when he looks at his own reflection he has learned to grow used to their blue/green tint, a far cry from his own dark brown eyes. The light sensitivity was the worst to get used to though, although the place he would come to know as Purgatory was darkly lit, whenever he was exposed to bright light Ludo would find it almost unbearable. Even now, nearly ten years after he first got the prosthetics, he still has to wear protective eyewear whenever exposed to bright lights.

When Ludo regained his vision he would come to learn much more of what transpired after his crash. Whoever killed off his crew had spared his life for some reason, though “spare” doesn’t truly seem to describe his current situation either. Instead of kill Ludo on the spot, his enemy decided to revive him, replacing his broken and crushed pieces with new metallic ones. The scarring he’s found throughout his body has lead him to believe he’s had at least one knee replacement, a sternum and partial ribcage replacement, and possibly a double lung replacement as well. There may be more, but without a full body scan he is uncertain. What may even be more odd is the fact his name on his prison uniform and files isn’t Ludovic Mire, but instead Ludovic Howell. From what he’s been able to piece together, it seems as though those who shot him out of the sky, revived him only to send him to a lifetime prison stay under the name of another, and for a crime he didn’t actually commit. The motive behind such actions have haunted Ludo for the last ten years, though there seems to be only two viable options. Either this “Benefactor” thought death was too kind of a sentence for Ludo, or perhaps they have decided to hold onto the pilot for reasons Ludo still hasn’t figured out. Either way, Ludo does not plan on spending the rest of his life in a prison cell, and if that means waiting for the opportune time to finally escape to enact vengeance on his mysterious enemy then that’s exactly what he’ll do. If there is one thing rotting in a prison for the last quarter of his life has taught him its patience. And Ludo is a very patient man.

EXTRA MUSE:

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IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR: Asteroid Joe, prefers ‘Aster’. Previously known as Pollux Colt.

AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION: Thirty-Seven, Nonbinary ( responds to any pronouns ). Aster minds little for the pronouns used towards them, responding to pretty much anything they want. Someone might be passing by and addressing someone else entirely, but if the topic sparks their interest, Aster will jump in without warning.

GENESIS: Hybrid. Modifications: After testing the limits of their body at the age of six, Aster was required to get the entirety of their right leg replaced to the hip. This sparked their interest in modifications and sparked the realization that Organics were less – perhaps, everyone was less than them. The prosthetic on their right leg sparked interest in getting the left legdone as well, which happened in their mid-twenties. Both prosthetics have a flesh-like material over them to hide the modifications as Aster grew to understand that to get close to people, one has to appear similar. Both eyes were modified to feature telescopic vision and log microexpressions for Aster’s use. They study the normal cues of expression to help themself blend more easily. They also installed an implant in their head to alert themself when proper reactions and emotions are needed to keep up the act, synced with their eye modifications. Keywords flash across their vision in small text when they should be ‘excited’ or ‘concerned’ within an interaction.

SPECIAL SKILLS: – Not killing someone they want to the moment they deem them as useless. – Remarkable ability to appear charming, convincing others to trust them. – Possesses a photographic memory and bargains the information they know. – Exceptional at sex, often fucks to subside the need to kill. ( Choking kink )

FACE CLAIM: Jake Gyllenhaal, of course.

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS: Positive: Charming, Engaged, Caring, Friendly, Intelligent Negative: Unnerved, Obsessive, Deceptive, Arrogant, Manipulative

BIOGRAPHY:

Born at the heart of Espion, twin brothers are gifted life on a planet wishing desperately to eat them whole – Castor and Pollux Colt. One screaming loudly to test the lungs sucking in air while the other lays silently on the chest of their mother. Twin brothers alike only in appearance.

Only a few months old, the twins develop severely different means of coping with Castor suckling the breast of his mother, and Pollux squeezing his small fist so tight into her skin causing her to scream. The first smile from either coming from the second after a tear rolls down his mother’s face at the pain. He thinks he’s done well and keeps squeezing into his mother’s flesh any chance he gets. The rush and pleasure of triggering pain within another becoming the only way they can find happiness. Each passing year discovering new ways to cover their actions, realizing the significance of playing the role of naive.

By the time the twins’ fourth birthday, Pollux makes their brother fear them anytime their mother leaves the room, knowing the things that can happen behind closed doors—broken bones, bloody noses, bruised necks. They cannot help the way their heart rushes out of their chest at the scream of another; the possibility of life and death hanging in the balance of their actions. Oh, the endless possibilities of ways to make another suffer; to make another scared.    

    ‘Do you want me to break it again?’ Pollux asks their brother over     dinner, who has a makeshift splint on his left arm.         ‘Pollux!’ Their mother whispers, hands shaking. ‘Not tonight.’         ‘What mother? He did not please me. He needs to suffer.’ Bright     blue eyes with so much darkness behind them, glimpsing between     the two people sharing a table with them.         ‘Go to bed. Right now.’ Their mother failing to hide her fear.       ‘I’m not finished with dinner,’ they say confused by the suggestion.     ‘I said go to bed, Pollux!’ Her fist slams hard into the table, regretting     it immediately.     ‘And I said I wasn’t finished.’ Their fingers lacing around a piece of     sharp metal, using it as their kitchen knife.     ‘Castor, sweetie. Finish your meal in my room. I will be in there shortly.’     The two disappear into their mother’s bedroom, and Pollux swears they     hear the door lock behind them.

Espion matured the darkness within Pollux too quickly for their mother to stop them from losing themself entirely. Six years old, they are testing the limits of their body by stripping down to bare skin and stepping out into the life-threatening temperatures, discovering the weakness of their flesh. No longer do they want to be weakened and classified with the Organics around them. Despise inflaming their heart’s desire to become more than their equals, to destroy this aspect of them entirely.

A thirst for knowledge comes from this revelation of wanting to be something other, something better. Therefore, their mother fills this need as much as she can with the books available on the planet. The first drastic contrast between the brothers coming from Pollux’s ability to absorb a book in a span of hours while Castor is still sounding out the first word on the page. Far superior than their twin, Pollux devours every single book they can get their hands on with forced request from their mother to do better; to get more. She did well for years until it all came crashing down. Four years of running through the market of Espion to get her hands on anything Pollux required, trying to her best to protect one son from the other.

A planet rotting with looting and deadly fights around each corner there comes no surprise when their mother does not return one day. Castor convinced Pollux did something to her – something bad, something irredeemable. They slap the air away at such an accusation as their mother was of use to them; their source for knowledge and nothing more. Maybe even a means to an end.

For the first time in their life, Pollux released a wicked laughter spewing from their lips as their hand catches the throat of their brother. Only ten years old, darkness fills the last bit of light within themself; the last chance of being saved. The grip holds until no breath is left within their twin right as life threatens to leave his body, but their fingers release to show what they deem as remorse.      

    ‘I saved you,’ Pollux whispers to their brother. ‘Remember that.’     ‘I want mother back. I want her back.’     ‘Stupid brother.’ They spit out the words in growing frustration. ‘I will show     you what you really want, Castor. In time you will see.’

The unkindness of Espion appealing to Pollux created fear in Castor, so with great hesitance, Pollux began searching for a way out for their brother; ignoring the signs of Castor being the anchor securing the smallest bit of humanity within themself. They refused to admit their heart longed for a companion like themself and settled on the blood shared between brothers.

Ten years passed between their mother’s death and finding a way out of Espion for both Castor and Pollux. They never intended to follow after their brother, but the market for modifications was quite small of their desolate home planet. In those years, they managed to upgrade their body in the best possible ways to secure the ideology of them being the superior creature to all.

The second modification to follow ( what many considered devastating unlike themself ) the loss of their right leg was an eye modification installed in both, featuring telescopic vision and log microexpressions. The last feature coming useful as they discovered themself to be an outlier to the rest of society, needing to blend with the masses. The third and final modification from Espion came in the form of an implant, which alerts them of social cues needed to pass for sane. The implant links with their eyes to flash a small word like ‘concern’ or ‘excitement’ to remind them of what they should feel.

Still, Pollux wanted more than the modifications they had. They still wanted to be the superior to all of those around them, so they kept chipping away at sketches of the person they wanted to become. Castor never supporting the idea of such intense procedures for a reason so futile, but they persisted the reason was justified regardless of the small mindedness of their twin.

Wrotham, the first planet on their journey, offered too much of an open world for Pollux, losing themself in the atmosphere. By the second night, a local man captured their attention in the worst possible way and lost their life by the night’s end. A spree of deaths following their arrival to Wrotham until Castor realized what was happening. It was his first chance to report his brother’s actions – to finally save himself. A task simple to complete if only Pollux had not thought about the possibility beforehand.

The day Castor grew the strength to betray his brother and escape the insanity that cooks inside them was the same day Pollux met their brother at the door with an antique knife from Earth I. As quick as a passing second, they stabbed the blade into their brother’s stomach and left him bleeding out on the small room they had rented together. They managed to drop their birth name for one more haunting after this event, wanting more than anything to start fresh: Asteroid Joe was born.      

    ‘Where does Asteroid come from?’ Two women exchange laughter,      squeezing at the biceps on Aster. They don’t need their modification     to see the women want them, desperate to gain their attention.     ‘I prefer Aster, but you can call me anything you like.’ They have     learned to flirt without pause, charming the likes of everyone they     come in contact with. ‘Care to get out of here? Have a little fun?’     The three leave together and fuck the night away. They’ve learned to     numb the urge to kill every single person they come into contact with,     maturing the understanding of who is worth killing and when.

The wickedness boiling within their mind and threatening to ruin the facade believed by those around them had to be controlled, lightened. Introducing them to a darker galaxy, Asteroid ( preferring Aster ) joined the ranks of intergalactic thugs who desired bringing death than reward. They flourished in the secret missions that required them to travel from planet-to-planet – always making it make to more elite events.

Aster somehow always earning an invitation to galas and dinners on the hand of an older woman or man, seeking the company of someone so beautiful like them. They would fuck then leave, fighting the urge so badly to slit the throats of these useless beings. Each of their patrons paying well enough to keep them thriving to become a Synthetic entirely because even they wanted Asteroid to last for an infinity.

The game came crashing down one evening when a mission went south for them, fighting with the current squad they were assigned to. Somehow in their planning, the majority had overlooked Aster’s addition that came in the form of global destruction. They had never gone to such a drastic level of killing before, but they sat with legs crossed in their lap to watch the planet cave in on itself. When they reached Wrotham, Overwatchers were already awaiting their arrival with no one having to question who they were there for.

Purgatory welcomed Aster with the same fear as everyone else until they worked the system so well they ended up on Level Beta after two years. Charming the guards and populace alike, they have appeared to make this place their home but desperately wish to burn it from the inside out. Five years have passed since Aster joined the ranks of Purgatory’s finest, playing the game well enough to keep use the facade. The only issue arising from the fact that Aster hasn’t killed another soul in those five years, and the monster is desperate to get their hands dirty.

EXTRA MUSE: None.

THE AUTHOR

BASIC INFO (ALIAS/NAME, AGE, PRONOUNS): Riley, over 21, he/him

IN CHARACTER

CHARACTER YOU’RE APPLYING FOR: Juniper DeMarco

AGE AND GENDER IDENTIFICATION: 31 years old, Cisgender Female

GENESIS: Organic

SPECIAL SKILLS:

Enviable partner in co-op sim games at the local arcade

Marksmanship

Big Sister Mode: Activated

Infiltration

Surveillance

Surviving on caffeine and determination alone

Camouflage

Stealth

Hand to hand combat (when long range fails)

Strategy

Self-Sacrificing, particularly as relates to Gideon

The ability to drop things no matter how securely she’s theoretically holding them

FACE CLAIM: Elodie Yung (first choice), Dichen Lachman, Sofia Boutella

IN DEPTH

ANALYSIS: 

+ Loyal: From the moment Gideon entered her life, Juniper knew what love felt like. He was a small, wiry little thing in need of protection. Five years his senior, she was his big sister, and her parents told her in no uncertain terms to look out for him. In Juniper’s mind, it’s always been the two of them, like two peas in the pod, two sides of the same coin. He is her primary cause, her north star. She’s loyal to him to a fault. Juniper would put Gideon’s needs before her own no matter the circumstance. Others have to earn her loyalty.

+ Protective: People who aren’t Gideon may have to earn Juniper’s loyalty, but the general populous doesn’t have to earn her protection. Her mission is threefold. Find Gideon. Make those who took him pay. And help the people who are exploited and made to suffer by the corporations, military and the rebels every day. Juniper has seen her share of bloodshed, and she’s no longer able to turn a blind eye to it. She doesn’t want fame or glory. She doesn’t want anyone to know her name. She’s the shadow-y figure they never see up close, like a guardian angel. You can never be sure she’s there, but you can feel her effect.

+ Good In a crisis/Quick-thinking: Though much of her life Juniper has been content to just let things happen and her crisis mode thinking was deserved for the world of video-games, now it’s become something that’s leaked into her real world. She’s been doing it for years now. It was always something she could access, but now it’s not reserved for simulations. Juniper is able to be spontaneous and rational to act quickly in a moment of need. She’s good with risk and isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty, metaphorically speaking. For Juniper, she mostly does that down the barrel of a sniper rifle. A sniper has to be calm, keep their hands steady, and not give in to panic.

- Idealistic: Juniper’s rejection of the rebellion puts her at odds with many people who might be able to help her. She’s almost always unwilling to compromise her beliefs, only willing to do so now because it’s for Gideon. She believes in both sides being just as bad as the other, which is an understandable point of view, but given the power dynamics at play, the oppressed fighting their oppressors will never entirely be equal. I’d like to see that belief challenged while Juniper also maintains her integrity. Juniper’s primary goal is to protect Gideon, and her secondary goal is to protect the people, but she does her best to not let these two goals contradict one another. She’s struggling right now because she feels like she’s sold herself out. She knows she did it for good reason, but she’s very conflicted about it.

- Loner: Because of her isolation from both sides of the ongoing conflict, Juniper is a bit of a loner. She doesn’t trust the corporations or military and she doesn’t trust the rebels. The only person she feels a hundred per cent comfortable around is Gideon. When she plays simulations she usually does so on the single player mode, and in team modes she’s usually hanging back, camouflaged in jungles or on rooftops, seeing the world through the barrel of a rifle and uttering orders only when they are necessary. She sees better from a distance, literally and figuratively. She’s capable of being part of a team when necessary, but it isn’t her primary mode and her strict belief system usually puts her at odds with other rebels.

- Contradictory (Because just writing ‘hot mess’ isn’t very professional):Juniper has a contradictory nature. She can concentrate for hours on a stealth mission, performing recon on potential targets to observe their movements, keep meticulous records when it pertains to her missions, commit habits and movements and the specific gait of uniformed officers to memory so she can recognise them even when she can’t see their faces, but in her personal life she’s borderline irresponsible. If there were stoves in this universe, she’d have left hers unattended at least once a month until a smoke alarm brought the burning pan of rice to her attention. She has an intense hyper-focus, but only on very specific things, something she needs to actively concentrate on. This concentration doesn’t happen when she’s just going about her day. To those who don’t know her, it can make her seem like a hypocrite or a mystery. Her laid back and clumsy nature seems to contradict with her rationality and intensity as a sniper.

The vibe I had in mind for her was something along the lines of Jessca Jones in the Netflix show. She’s great at what she does. She’s practically a genius in her field. But she can’t even get through her elevator doors properly without bumping into them. She forgets to plug her phone into the wall when she goes to sleep at night. She runs out of toilet paper. To the rest of the team, it has the potential to make Juniper seem like a disaster waiting to happen, to cause them to doubt whether she can actually pull off the important parts of the mission, and what will happen if she makes one of those mistakes when it actually matters.

BIOGRAPHY:

She’s five years old when she becomes a big sister. Many in her neighbourhood can’t afford to keep one child, let alone two, but when her father finds the tiny boy wrapped up in a dirty blanket in the garbage he’s about to collect, he falls in love. When he brings Gideon home, Juniper falls in love just as quickly. They don’t have a lot of money, but it feels like they have something else, a bond that even some siblings who shared a womb can’t compete with. It’s as if they were made to be siblings, Gideon chosen by fate itself to find their family, to find her. And she’ll fight for him until her last breath. Only when he goes missing does Juniper know the true extent to which that’s true. Prior to then, she’s simply helping him with projects she can’t understand and stepping in if any other kid dares to bully him.

Juniper isn’t stupid, but it doesn’t take her long to figure out that when it comes to the two of them, she’s going to be the dumb one. She doesn’t even begin to feel jealousy. Only pride. Gideon is a tinkerer, and she never dreams that it will take him away from her, only that it might take him farther than anyone else in their family can go. Just as fate gifts him to them, fate will take him away, but as children Juniper just views his tinkering as his special skill, just as the simulations are hers.

She takes Gideon with her at first, a way to occupy his young mind when she isn’t downloading files on synthetics to his armlet. The local arcades are a lot cheaper than the advanced simulators she’ll eventually go on to use, the perfect place for local kids to go after school – if they even bothered to go to school to begin with. She starts playing sniper because it gives her the best view of the field. Even in a simulation, she wants to keep an eye on him. Every player who so much as glances in his direction gets an electronically simulated bullet between the eyes. Turns out, Juniper is pretty damn good.

While Gideon continues with his hobby, she starts skipping school to play. Education isn’t for her anyway. Juniper feels like a god in the arena, a passionate, awkward and clumsy girl finally having found something she’s good at, somewhere she won’t trip over her own feet. And it feels amazing. The cheap arena won’t do it for her after a while. She’s won enough in paid matches to be able to start moving on to bigger and better simulations. The bigger the game, the bigger the reward, but Juniper doesn’t want to be rich. She just wants to be good.

Her regular job in the factory provides her basic income and Juniper keeps her head down and does her job, but just like in the games, she can’t help but observe. Even before Gideon goes missing she sees it; the exploitation, the poverty, the ugliness. It isn’t just the corporations. The first time a group of rebels sabotages one of the machines and kill three of her colleagues who are just trying to make enough money to survive, Juniper knows they’re just as capable of cruelty and evil. It isn’t the last dead body she sees them leave behind.

The factory replaces most of their workers with androids or even more basic machines after that. Juniper and a few hundred others get laid off. She takes her frustrations out on those she kills in the simulations. Swift, silent, and deadly, she’s a different person in there. She spends so much time there that the username JuSniper appears on every leaderboard. Maybe if she hadn’t been so immersed in the simulated world of the arenas, she would have seen it coming. When she gets home, her mother throws her arms around her and cries. Gideon hasn’t been home all day. They can’t find him. She pulls on a coat and scours the neighbourhood, then the next neighbourhood after that. After days of questioning, a homeless man recognises the portrait of him she pulls up on her armlet. He tells her where Gideon was, gives a description of who he was meeting, which building he went into. She pays him too many credits as a thank you, and she doubles down on her search. The people who’ve taken Gideon aren’t the type to go down easy. She can’t prove anything, and she can’t find him, so she just takes out everyone who gets in her way, trading in a simulated rifle for a real one.

Unlike the rebels and the military, innocent civilians are safe from Juniper. But nobody else is. She’s like a mythical vigilante, and nobody ever sees her coming. She’s on nobody’s side the side of hers, Gideon’s, and the common good, taking down rebels and soldiers both, picking up any scrap of information she can but also inflicting punishment and acting as a silent guardian over the Crest. She doesn’t know if it’s luck, grit, or both that finally gets her what she needs.

They message her in the simulator first, probably because in there, her rifle won’t actually blow their heads off. She’s top of the leaderboard in a match worth two hundred credits when the pop up hits her.

“We can help you save your brother.”

It’s the only thing Juniper values more than her ideals. She meets with the rebels. She muddies her soul by agreeing to her plan. He’s in a prison on the old planet. They need her to get him out, along with some of their own team. She wants to spit at them before she finally agrees, but she doesn’t. She just takes the deal, hugging her parents goodbye before she joins him in Purgatory, an inside-man there to help him escape.

They might as well have called this Hell. But Gideon is there, so for Juniper, that’s the closest thing to heaven she can ask for.

EXTRA MUSE:

Future plots I’d like to explore is Juniper’s internal conflict and her conflict with the rest of the team. She’s firm in her beliefs but she’s never seen it from the other side. I’m interested to see how being part of the rebellion affects her. She feels like she’s sold her soul, which is a heavy burden to carry, but she’s also saving Gideon which is worth it to her. It’s a mess that will be a pleasure to untangle in her brain.

Sibling stuff. I love siblings. I want to explore their relationship and delve into a connection so deep that Juniper was willing to go to war over it.

Just generally testing whether she can play part of a team effectively. The sims she plays I imagine to be somewhat similar to online gaming, re call of duty, halo, etc. So you can play them as individuals and not communicate too much with your group, or you can have the whole head-set and constantly talking to each other thing. I imagine her to be the quiet, solo player type, so it would be interesting to take that ability and see if she can get along with the crew since you can’t just avoid them.

Being confined within the prison also means there isn’t very much distance to be obtained, and she has to be up close and personal more often than she’d like, so I’d like to see her deal with that challenge too.

Also Kallia deserves to go on a date at the simulations arcade and Juniper is exactly the one to take her. Hit me up when they get out of here, baby girl.

http://elodieyung.tumblr.com/tagged/insp:-juniper (inspo tag)

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/rileyliamm/juniper (Pinterest)