#fh:r

Ref: Batman #137 - Jorge Jimenez

I could do more but ion wanna so here she is + little sneak peek at her ranger suit design ooo are you at the edge of your seat yet...

the rendering took me ten tries and I still have thoughts on how to fix it but at this point. whatever I'll post her again if the mood to keep torturing myself strikes me. she is so shiny

When Julia (Esperanza Maria García) Ortega was born, the universe lined up, the perfect mix of daring and luck, with just enough common sense to be a success and a dash of looks for good measure.

 When her twin brother Ricardo was born minutes later, the universe twisted in on itself and became a parody of logic and collectively decided his life would be some long inside joke it had with the stars.

Or at least that's how he felt sometimes.

While he was the cause of many of his mother's grey hairs and his father’s wrinkles, Julia was the cause of their smiles and beaming looks of joy. 

Or at least for their father, and considering he was a joyless bastard half the time, he figured it made Julia a valid candidate for canonization. 

Julia was always the better child, more responsible, pulling her younger brother out of the fire when his antics caught up to him, the perfect older sister in comparison to him, at least in the eyes of their father. He personally thought he was still their mom’s favorite child and clung to that belief out of sheer shielding arrogance.

But despite everything, or maybe because of it she was also his best friend. Someone to help cover for him when he snuck away, to distract their father or mother when he slunk back in just like he would do for her. And someone to join him on his death-defying stunts with his friends. Especially if it was their last one.

“Julia, you have to come along. You're shipping out soon; come on one last jump.” ok her enlisting wasn’t any surprise to him, but it still stung, especially when he found out. Their father had ‘made an announcement’ at the last big family dinner. 

His eldest child, his pride and joy, was following in his footsteps. Her burning face and embarrassment almost made up for it, but the dinner tasted like ash in his mouth the whole night. The unsaid things heard loud and clear, not his son, not Ricardo

“It’s not like that, flaco.” She snapped a rubber band over her wrapped-up braid, safer than using pins for a bun. “There’ll be leaves and training before I ship out” “All I'm hearing is whining. Come on, this is Hollywood Hill. Aka The Jump of the decade. And who better than the Ortega Twins to make history?”- before there weren't any more Twins doing jumps and stunts up and down the west.

 A final hurrah for them, before she left.

“Fine, stop trying to manipulate me. You’re terrible at it.” She smiled at him as they drove out to meet Marek and the others,

Maybe this would be a nice memory, secure them their five minutes of fame on the web, something to look back on years later.

Till it all went sideways.

“I didn’t ask you to save me!” “That's what older sisters do Ricardo!”

Their mother had thanked god they didn’t die, but as Ricardo laid in the hospital bed, he almost wished that he did. And he’s sure as hell wished Julia didn’t jump after him. What did she even hope to accomplish, cushion his fall, have them both die together. Try to prove she could save him one last time. Bullshit.

His spine was hanging on by a thread, her bones smashed, both fucked up, brain damaged. Dragging her down with him, just like their father always said he would. Not that he said a word to Ricardo since then, since he woke up and he said he would handle it. He still wasnt sure if their father was speaking to both of them, or just Julia.

C-571.890 and C-306.875 were special, even in the program. One embryo, split into two, grown together in the same cocktails of drugs at every stage; they even took their first breaths together when they first got decanted. 

Two perfect mirror images of cuckoos that survived the experiments and the training; truly, the odds were astronomical. And were connected in ways beyond normal twins. An innate telepathic connection, sensory and cognizant as the drugs morphed their brains in development.

 Something even the dampeners couldn't fully block: some of the scientists thought it was maybe not telepathy but a double boost, replication perhaps. Although this was disproven through exacting tests and means to see which was the original. And while it meant they were never truly alone, it was both their greatest weakness and strength.

If one didn’t comply, you could punish the other, the perfect team and collateral for obedience on the field.

A leash that couldn’t be slipped.

But they did differ in small, minute ways that could almost be called a personality if their handlers ever mistakenly viewed them as human.

 CB-571.890 was less subtle than C-306.875, far more daring, bold, and painfully obvious, while CB-306.875 was far more gentle, soft, a weakness that couldn’t be trained out of her despite the Farm’s best efforts. 

It was always a risk to send them on the same mission; they were more effective, but far more volatile, independent of handlers. 

And when things inevitably went wrong, a sudden aneurysm of CB-571.890’s handler just as they were packing up, leaving them with a chance as CB-571.890 dragged her clone, her twin, with her through the maze of streets and people to disappear in the Human masses. The gun helped clear the other Handler.

As they camped out in an abandoned gas station, with magazines from before The Big One coated in dust and a few shared cans of tinned fruit, some old beer, and a small fire as they danced and felt sheer joy to cover the fear of the unknown.

their villain name is Rat King, which is once again another great example of me not knowing what the hell I'm getting myself into. I didn't realize the rat king targeting system would become kind of its own character in of itself if you lean into it (which I love), but I really liked the idea of my ss embracing the telepathy help as much as possible and kind of seeing himself as the leader of the rats. so anyways Rat King lives in the sewers and embezzles money from the rich.

their puppet is Eve. I saw Eden as an option and jumped to Eve instead and liked the idea of the Adam/Eve contrast.

Adam character build out:

tactician, but still somehow always makes the worst moves in combat and comes out with grievous injuries every time

suit is stealth appearance, plus cape, telepathic boosters, and jump jets. high spooky factor with little rat claws, mostly black although I like to imagine just the tiniest, tiniest details in a very dark, muted version of that sidestep teal or whatever you call that color.

hazel eyes, dark wavy hair that's very messy and somewhat short. I mostly picture him white/some hispanic. he is supposed to look extremely forgettable in los diablos on purpose, and not really stand out. ftm post escape from farm, but I think on kind of a longer timescale than you might guess.

high subtle manipulations, high obscurity, high-ish anonymity and high empathy. kind of 50/50 daring/cautious but he thinks he's very cautious. he's leaning way too much on his telepathy to get him out of every situation and even though it's not drawing as much media attention, he is risking Farm attention.

sugar addiction. my hc is the Farm never really ever supplied enough sugar/raw calories for his telepathy to ever be at full strength. I imagine he lived on MRE style granola bar meal replacements that tasted like shit and were not filling pre-escape, and still struggles to understand "meals" as a general concept. he's mostly worried about intaking enough sugar to power his brain never actually sleeping because he's puppeting Eve at night.

romancing male ortega, and doing it in the most toxic way (pushing ortega away in person and then flirting with him through Eve). also still flirts with anyone and everyone both as self and as puppet. I think this is ingrained into him through training and a really hard habit to shake.

grungy, military surplus outfits. lots of baggy, thick layers, but also still wears a really old sidestep skinsuit that they stashed in some abandoned building somewhere. that keeps their scars and tattoos covered.

truly believes that everything he's doing is just inevitable and his fate. cannot picture another way to do any of this. a lot of his vibes are sorta Resignation to the nth degree.

really like the chen/ss enemies to tentative friends. strangely, chen is the only person that Adam actually breaks down in front of in retribution. I think it has to do something with the fact that despite everything, Adam does kind of trust chen (trusts chen to hate him either way, and then is kind of surprised by when chen is kinda nice sometimes) and a little bit wants to prove chen right (prove chen's suspicion of him)

Eve character build out:

very tall, brown hair brown eyes. kind of Camille Belle in Push (2009) if she had beauty marks (im obsessed with this movie. for reasons). beautiful in a way that Adam maybe used to be but no longer is, because he picked her to be a tool like he was. to get what he wants. and no he hasn't thought very deeply about that.

aikido training absolutely my number 1 pick every single time. whats better than a beautiful woman who can toss you over her shoulder.

relatively high independence, but Adam is oblivious to some of her precog abilities. Adam is continually surprised and confused by how different everything feels when puppeting Eve. this is partly I think like crazy dissociation from his side of the connection and also her not being as empty as she's supposed to be obviously.

other stuff:

being devastatingly injured at the diner meeting is a canon event to me. I <3 having terrible wounds on your back and then getting a tender hug from an old crush and having to freeze up so you don't accidentally reveal you're injured.

type of guy in general to do everything in his power to ignore injuries until he's alone and no one is looking at him. he WILL make injuries worse by refusing to limp or favor an injured limb. this is farm training at its finest. Never Show Weakness or Perish type attitude.

during vigilante career with rangers, ss tried to make himself look androgynous "for anonymity" (heavy scarequotes here) before realizing he wanted to actually just straight up transition. it took a while for him to wrap his head around, and he's kind of still doing it. puppeting Eve for a bit really made him question things all over again.

only kissed ortega once in his days as sidestep. the psychopathor fight was a spur of the moment thing, and Adam was scared of getting close to anyone. he kinda awkwardly went back to doing their little flirtatious quips but always ducked out of it when it got too intense.

ended retribution stuck in puppet and crashed. kind of a hilarious nightmare to pick a puppet whos a pretty lady like you used to have to be, and then nightmare ending you get stuck in the pretty lady body you tried so hard to escape from. also me when i get too comfortable in my puppet and then my puppet gets the chance to be comfortable in me. :)

I do like the herald/ss/ortega threeway shit going on. kind of hilarious to be in an ot3 that's me, my peepaw, and my weird son. I'm not sure if it's a fit for Adam though. he's too distrusting and was scared that sparring with herald would out him as the villain. he's really stayed distant and vaguely horrified by herald's whole attitude for everything wrt to sidestep.

I haven't played any of the game 3 demos because I don't like getting spoiled and I don't like like playing early access anyways. however. I really am praying for a jakey romance for Eve or myself kinda. I want to crush this man like little grape tomato...

i really hope game 3 is still playable with the ending i did for game 2. like there's just no way in rp hell that Adam who has been desperately trying to preserve his anonymity for all of the time that he has been out of the farm, would ever show up to the meeting with Hollow Ground with no armor, no puppet, just rawdogging this mysterious meeting for no reason, no incentive. but a big fear of mine is that I'll just be like. crazy out of the loop for game 3.... we will see.....