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pixelationP L A Y E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Your Name: Al
OOC Journal:yrbirdcanscene
Under 18? If yes, what is your age?: So over it.
Email + IM: aleecat -at- gmail + yrbirdcanscene @ aim
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Darcy Lewis
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: February Marlene "Rue" Lancaster
Canon: Original Character
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Number: 019 or 085 please!
Setting: Rue's world is otherwise like ours, save for one crucial difference: people with superpowers exist. Society reacts to them with fear. The government forces them to register themselves and their abilities, relegating them to specific neighborhoods (slums) where they can be monitored, supposedly for their own protection. It's fostering an Us vs. Them mentality, with homegrown terrorism on both sides of the divide, and sparking civil unrest that appears to be on the fast track to all out war if something isn't done to ease tensions. Rue herself is a human with superpowers, so her stake in what happens is great.
History: Leap Day 1988, Chicago saw the birth of a baby girl, much like any other. The new parents wanted their baby girl to stand out in a crowd, and so they named her February Marlene Lancaster - Rue among family and friends. Rue's mother saw some success in finding commercial work for her baby girl - she was the poster child for a local diaper service for roughly two years. Perhaps that would set the tenor for the girl in later years. Being named for Marlene Dietrich certainly only fostered the notion of stardom as something she could be destined for. But unlike her middle-namesake, where Dietrich had been blonde and of middling height, Rue had red hair and shot up like a beanpole. She grew up admiring her aunt, who was in the Air Force, and traveled the world. Rue wanted to see the world as well, but knew jumping from planes wasn't quite her style. She spent many long hours babbling away excitedly to her best friend when she would receive a postcard from some exotic location. Though for Rue, Texas felt exotic compared to Chicago.
Years of dabbling in modeling paid off when, at eighteen, Rue was offered a contract that would take her to New York. It was shortly thereafter when she manifested her ability. She can't explain exactly when it happened, or how she knew, but it simply did. It began with little things, like thinking about the next song she wanted to come up on her iPod, and then it would happen. Traffic signals changing the way she wanted them to, when she wanted them to. All things technological suddenly becoming easier. Rue was a technopath.
It wasn't long after the discovery of people with extraordinary abilities that the American government (among others) began attempting to regulate their existence. People with powers were forced to register and carry identification marking them as different. When there was a casting call for models for the pro registration campaign, Rue went out for it, and was offered a job. At first it was a poster here and there, but people began to recognize her as the face of the movement. There were magazine articles, television ads, PSAs, and even a billboard or two. It was a dream come true; she was finally famous. While the nature of her position required her professing to be a proud card-carrying powered human, she didn’t widely advertise what it is she can do, and she was allowed to keep mum about it. Part of the success of the campaign was the idea that she could have any sort of ability, no matter how trivial or immense.
There were "Human Rights" groups whose radicalism ranged from the idea that powered individuals simply needed to be readily and easily identified for the protection of all, and the notion that the only way to protect society is to eradicate them like a disease. These groups were, of course, officially denounced by the government, but as with all such organizations, there are always government officials who not only agree, but also participate. Officially, people were being required to register, their abilities listed clearly on their identification card, and report their whereabouts, their comings and goings, almost as if they were on parole. It was easy to see the injustices being done to people like her, those unprotected by status or wealth, especially. Rue found herself attending rallies, the sort calling for equality and peaceful co-existence. In the early days of her career as the poster girl, it was easier to be a passive observer at these events. As time went on, however, she had to disguise her appearance. Hoodies, sunglasses, sometimes even wigs. It was worth it. She met people who knew that peace isn’t something one barters for, but something that must be fought for. Her life suddenly wasn’t so black and white anymore. She was scouted by leaders of the movement, who would see her conversion as a blow to the government she supported. Rue joined them in secret, and received training that would allow her to defend herself and others like her. Rue wasn’t just a empty-headed model anymore (though it’s a persona she carefully cultivated and maintained on the surface), she had become a freedom fighter.
Over the years, she watched her friends struggle. It was difficult to feel connected to their suffering, her people's suffering, when she wasn't subject to many of the same hardships. To the world, she was the face of powered registration, and was granted certain securities that others like her would never be afforded. Many in the movement resented her, and most were unaware, by necessity, that she was even on their side at all. She walked freely in the city, and was treated differently, better than most others with powers, but Rue used her connections to learn more about what was planned for people like her. She was every bit the asset her leaders hoped she would be. When she was tapped early for relocation to the first of the neighborhoods to be populated exclusively by those with powers, it was essentially exile; a sign that her duality was now known to the authorities she had been pretending to support. With the support of the movement, she was secreted away from New York and went to ground.
This began Rue's campaign of subversion against the government. In video recordings, she encouraged her people to remain strong, but ultimately safe. Her ability allowed her to upload anonymously and cover her tracks. But Rue would have been nothing without her compatriots to back her. She didn’t have the savvy to lead, nor the courage, but she could make a good face. The shift from government supporter to rebel was a powerful one, and Rue knew there was no coming back from it. Peace would never come in her own lifetime. The best she could hope for is to die a symbol of freedom. If she was going to go out, it would be in a blaze, and it would have meaning.
Her time away from civilization as she knew it was difficult. The movement's headquarters was on an island abandoned decades ago, without electricity or the usual modern amenities most people are accustomed to. They made base in an old castle, and slowly it was populated with refugees. Only those high ranking were generally allowed to keep any electronic device that could possibly send a signal to a cell tower and reveal their location – not that finding a signal on the island was terribly possible anyway. Rue surrendered her own equipment as a show of good faith. Arguably she could do the most harm with the possibility of access to what little electronic infrastructure they maintained, if her alliance were a ruse. It wasn't her leaders she needed to convince, however, it was her fellow refugees. She did everything she could to earn their trust, pitching in with kitchen duty and patrols around the island.
On the mainland, powered citizens were being moved into these "exclusive neighborhoods" for their protection, they were told. At first, it was presented as if they were being relocated as a gift, but it quickly became apparent that these weren't communities, they were essentially internment camps. These areas were fenced off and heavily guarded by the government. People were free to come and go seemingly freely at first, able to go to their jobs and visit their families, but the lockdowns came soon enough. People began to look for a way out, and while many were able to be ferried away by the freedom movement, many more had to remain behind. Moving groups too large was too conspicuous, and having word become too widespread was a liability. The government was looking for them. Anyone resisting relocation was said to be a danger to the public. People were being imprisoned, and many who fought back were killed for their efforts. The facade of it was quickly falling apart: powered people were not just second class citizens, but prisoners of the government's war to control them.
When one of the patrols on the island disappeared, Rue was with the group that found them hanging from the trees. The soldiers that had caught them hadn't taken prisoners. They weren't looking for information, only to send a message. And they hadn't discriminated. Men, women – some of the dead had been younger than Rue's twenty-three years. There was only one survivor, whose ability to harden her skin saved her from a crushed windpipe. Before then, anyone who'd been killed or captured had been an active fighter, spy or saboteur. This marked one of the first open killings of refugees by the government. This caused a schism in the group. Certainly they had fought, but only to defend themselves. Now certain high ranking members of the group wanted to start striking preemptively. Rue had previously taken photos of and around military installations, surveyed with groups and radioed back what they had seen. She dithered about the correct approach, as did others.
For some time, they managed to remain whole, despite the friction that came with how far to take their actions. Rue eventually advocated for more aggression. In her opinion, the government wasn't content for their enclave to stay out of sight and out of mind. The murder of the patrol meant the government now knew where to look for them, and it would only be a matter of time before they would be found. Their current approach felt like burying their collective head in the sand to Rue, so she became part of the faction that would carry guns on a regular basis, and began to consider the fact that she would have to take lives to protect lives. In her one and only gun fight (so far), she had only wounded a soldier. One of her fellows made the kill shot, purposefully helping to relieve some of the burden on her conscience. Things would only grow more tense as the people waited for their hiding place to be discovered. Children cried in the arms of their parents, who'd started to run out of assurances. Rue herself often had trouble sleeping, sharing the fear that many others had each night would be the one they did not wake from.
She never expected to wake up on board a ship in space, so far away from her home and her fight.
Personality:
Back home, Rue is known for her bubbly personality – a ray of sunshine in otherwise drab surroundings. Without her metaphorical troops around her, and morale to maintain, Rue is much quieter and more disciplined. In her mind, she was given two choices: grow up quickly and fight, or remain an ignorant and complacent child. Choosing the former was an easy call, though a much more difficult path. Rue plays at being an open book, able to hold her own when it comes to small talk, and laughing easily, but she generally offers little about herself. She often hid behind the anonymity of the internet as people frequently do. It was perhaps much easier for her to do than most, given her ability to interface with computers. All the same, she knows how easy it is to discover someone's true identity with a little bit of digging and know-how. It's made her cautious.
Acting has always been a skill in Rue's wheelhouse. Whether it was a local commercial, school play, or pretending to be in full support of registration, Rue's adept at it. That isn't to say that it was easy living what essentially amounted to a dual life for most of her young adult years. It's exhausting to keep up that sort of facade, but it's left Rue capable of smiling through situations she finds objectionable, or even disgusting. There was a period of time where she had difficulty looking at herself in the mirror. In her youth, she had kept clippings from every ad she had appeared in. As an adult, she was tearing pro-registration propaganda out of magazines, crumpling the image of her face and throwing it in the bin or burning it in a dish. She had taken the job because it had looked fun, glamorous even. She was in the know! The reality of it had been seedier. She has to remind herself that the girl in the magazine doesn't exist. She's just a role she's played as a means to an end. That sort of self-hatred is something Rue had to work through for a very long time, and only after she began to rebel openly did she finally start to feel comfortable in her own skin again. Still, sometimes the idea that she made people feel safe enough to register and essentially sign their freedom away makes her stomach churn. It's something she'll always have to battle with.
Though she tries to remain detached, Rue actually craves companionship and someone to confide in. This is a facet of her personality that she admonishes herself for, feeling it's a weakness. She believes that recognizing and using others' strengths is certainly a necessity if her movement is to succeed, but that being reliant on others in any other way is a personal failing. All that said, she wants to be needed (which is certainly at odds with what she expects from herself), and that makes her feel worthy. On the outside, she tries to act as if she makes tough decisions, and doesn't care what people think of her for it, because somebody had to make them. Inside, she cares deeply and seeks approval for her actions.
The deaths of the missing patrol on the island occupied by the movement shook Rue profoundly, leaving her to question if it was right of them to fight. The people who had been murdered by and large had not been fighters. They'd been people who just wanted to survive, and be treated like anybody else. Was what they were doing causing more harm than good? Was the reason the government was escalating because they had dared to challenge them? Was it better for them all to give themselves up and live in the camps? It's hard to remain an idealist when upholding those ideals has catastrophic consequences. Ultimately, Rue knows anyone who turned themselves in would be considered guilty of treason, and that injustice is enough to remind her why they fight. While she will always be haunted by the ghosts of people she had shared quarters with, broken bread with, and learned to survive alongside, and feel she has failed them, she will never again question that the fight is right.
The thought that Rue may not know who she is anymore without that fight is a frightening one. This new setting should provide her with a reasonable surrogate, however, delaying the need to find out if she needs an outside purpose to carry on or not.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Technopathy: As a technopath, Rue can integrate with technology around her just as sure as if she were to be having a conversation with another human being. The easiest tasks are things like having her thoughts appear on screen just as sure as if she had typed them up on the keyboard, or sorting through her music library or personal documents. Anything complex, like hacking, requires much more concentration. She appears to zone out, eyes unfocused while she "sees into" the computer (or whatever construct), as she describes it. Depending upon how intensive what she is doing can be, this can leave her entirely open and vulnerable as she enters something like a trance. She can be broken out of this trance by people around her, but it can require being physically jostled from her concentration.
What she does is intuitive to her, and explaining it to someone else has always been difficult to her. How does one explain how to hold their balance as they stand still, or move forward? It's simply something they do by instinct. Proximity to the object she is manipulating helps, though she doesn't need to "wire in" to a system. Her strongest bond aboard the Tranquility would be with her communications device. She talks of the systems she interacts with as if they were people.
While she can essentially download information from a system into her own brain, it's functionally no different than having read it from a book. It's not stored there indefinitely, and her ability to recall what she's learned is only as reliable as her own memory. Trying to access too much information too quickly leads to confusing what she's learned and how it correlates. It jumbles up like Mad Libs.
NOTE: Whether Rue's ability functions well or at all in this setting I leave entirely up to the mods. I expect that she would find it nearly impossible to hack into systems that require nanites she does not have, and I think it would be an interesting frustration for her to face personally, being otherwise used to all things technological being an open book.
Survival Training: While living away from technology is literally like being cut off from a part of herself, Rue has learned to survive without it, thanks to the freedom fighting movement that took her in. She knows how to find shelter, what vegetation is and isn't safe to eat, and how to hunt. By extension, Rue has been taught to defend herself. Hand to hand combat is not her strong suit, but she is an excellent shot with a rifle. She can use a pistol at closer range in a pinch, but it's not her favored way to fight.
Dance: Everybody needs a hobby and an exercise routine, and Rue's is ballet. She's never be a prima ballerina, but she'll have fun playing at it. Not that she's going to admit to her fondness for dance. Ignore those shoes.
Weaknesses: Rue is not particularly physically formidable. It's easy enough for her to become overwhelmed in close quarters combat. She's also a passionate person, and easily blinded by emotions like rage or grief. They can cause her to act impulsively in the heat of the moment, and make terrible mistakes with catastrophic consequences.
Inventory:
A pair of silver pointe shoes with fraying ribbons
Length of rope spotted with blood
Oversized military surplus jacket
A pair of combat boots
Black tanktop
Khaki cargo shorts
A package of hair ties and bobby pins, most broken or bent out of shape
Slouchy orange-red dress with earrings to match
Pale pink legwarmers
A well-used make-up kit
Book of matches
Appearance: Rue is tall and lean, very much built in classic model proportions. She has naturally ginger hair that curls when left to its own devices, a freckled and heart-shaped face, blue eyes, and a mouth that's slightly lopsided. She favors practical clothing in bright colors whenever possible, and often seems to lose herself in thought.
Age: 27
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
The shipping container against her back is cold and unyielding, but unyielding is precisely what Rue needs right now. She needs cover that won't bend against her weight, won't rustle and give her away. She swears the pounding of her heart could do that for her. Screwing her eyes shut, she tightens her grip on the camera around her neck. There have been excellent pictures this evening, but the twilight has overtaken her surroundings and there's nothing left to be captured by her lens. Rue is no photographer, despite what the false press pass tucked into her olive drab coat says, but she knows how to adjust the lens to bring a picture into focus, and she knows what looks interesting and what looks mundane enough to be important.
Footsteps approach and she has to fight her instincts to keep her eyes shut. Her jaw quivers and she holds her breath, watching the space to her left from the corner of her eye. Turn away. Just turn around and go back the other way. The gun in her pocket is a last resort. The soldier that appears from around the edge of the container doesn't spot her immediately. Maybe he won't spot her at all. Maybe he'll keep right on walking, not glance to his right, and never know she was standing there.
Rue reaches out with her senses – the ones that most humans aren't born with – and searches for a signal, something she can latch onto and create a distraction. She finds a circuit board in charge of the lighting not twenty feet away, and mentally flips a switch to plunge the construction site into darkness. The soldier curses and hurries forward to where others from his team are clustered. With the crunch of his rushed footfalls able to mask the even pace of her own, she calmly makes her way back to where her team waits for her to rendezvous.
Comms Sample:
Interesting. These devices are a lot like mobiles back home, but not quite. And what is this programming language?
Sorry, I'm nerding out. I'm a new passenger aboard this ship, and I'm going through the archives right now. There's an awful lot to sort through. I can see I'm in for a wild ride. Anyone want to suggest the highlights?
NOTE: I haven't completely settled on my PB yet. Please stand by!
Your Name: Al
OOC Journal:
yrbirdcansceneUnder 18? If yes, what is your age?: So over it.
Email + IM: aleecat -at- gmail + yrbirdcanscene @ aim
Characters Played at Ataraxion: Darcy Lewis
C H A R A C T E R I N F O R M A T I O N
Name: February Marlene "Rue" Lancaster
Canon: Original Character
Original or Alternate Universe: N/A
Number: 019 or 085 please!
Setting: Rue's world is otherwise like ours, save for one crucial difference: people with superpowers exist. Society reacts to them with fear. The government forces them to register themselves and their abilities, relegating them to specific neighborhoods (slums) where they can be monitored, supposedly for their own protection. It's fostering an Us vs. Them mentality, with homegrown terrorism on both sides of the divide, and sparking civil unrest that appears to be on the fast track to all out war if something isn't done to ease tensions. Rue herself is a human with superpowers, so her stake in what happens is great.
History: Leap Day 1988, Chicago saw the birth of a baby girl, much like any other. The new parents wanted their baby girl to stand out in a crowd, and so they named her February Marlene Lancaster - Rue among family and friends. Rue's mother saw some success in finding commercial work for her baby girl - she was the poster child for a local diaper service for roughly two years. Perhaps that would set the tenor for the girl in later years. Being named for Marlene Dietrich certainly only fostered the notion of stardom as something she could be destined for. But unlike her middle-namesake, where Dietrich had been blonde and of middling height, Rue had red hair and shot up like a beanpole. She grew up admiring her aunt, who was in the Air Force, and traveled the world. Rue wanted to see the world as well, but knew jumping from planes wasn't quite her style. She spent many long hours babbling away excitedly to her best friend when she would receive a postcard from some exotic location. Though for Rue, Texas felt exotic compared to Chicago.
Years of dabbling in modeling paid off when, at eighteen, Rue was offered a contract that would take her to New York. It was shortly thereafter when she manifested her ability. She can't explain exactly when it happened, or how she knew, but it simply did. It began with little things, like thinking about the next song she wanted to come up on her iPod, and then it would happen. Traffic signals changing the way she wanted them to, when she wanted them to. All things technological suddenly becoming easier. Rue was a technopath.
It wasn't long after the discovery of people with extraordinary abilities that the American government (among others) began attempting to regulate their existence. People with powers were forced to register and carry identification marking them as different. When there was a casting call for models for the pro registration campaign, Rue went out for it, and was offered a job. At first it was a poster here and there, but people began to recognize her as the face of the movement. There were magazine articles, television ads, PSAs, and even a billboard or two. It was a dream come true; she was finally famous. While the nature of her position required her professing to be a proud card-carrying powered human, she didn’t widely advertise what it is she can do, and she was allowed to keep mum about it. Part of the success of the campaign was the idea that she could have any sort of ability, no matter how trivial or immense.
There were "Human Rights" groups whose radicalism ranged from the idea that powered individuals simply needed to be readily and easily identified for the protection of all, and the notion that the only way to protect society is to eradicate them like a disease. These groups were, of course, officially denounced by the government, but as with all such organizations, there are always government officials who not only agree, but also participate. Officially, people were being required to register, their abilities listed clearly on their identification card, and report their whereabouts, their comings and goings, almost as if they were on parole. It was easy to see the injustices being done to people like her, those unprotected by status or wealth, especially. Rue found herself attending rallies, the sort calling for equality and peaceful co-existence. In the early days of her career as the poster girl, it was easier to be a passive observer at these events. As time went on, however, she had to disguise her appearance. Hoodies, sunglasses, sometimes even wigs. It was worth it. She met people who knew that peace isn’t something one barters for, but something that must be fought for. Her life suddenly wasn’t so black and white anymore. She was scouted by leaders of the movement, who would see her conversion as a blow to the government she supported. Rue joined them in secret, and received training that would allow her to defend herself and others like her. Rue wasn’t just a empty-headed model anymore (though it’s a persona she carefully cultivated and maintained on the surface), she had become a freedom fighter.
Over the years, she watched her friends struggle. It was difficult to feel connected to their suffering, her people's suffering, when she wasn't subject to many of the same hardships. To the world, she was the face of powered registration, and was granted certain securities that others like her would never be afforded. Many in the movement resented her, and most were unaware, by necessity, that she was even on their side at all. She walked freely in the city, and was treated differently, better than most others with powers, but Rue used her connections to learn more about what was planned for people like her. She was every bit the asset her leaders hoped she would be. When she was tapped early for relocation to the first of the neighborhoods to be populated exclusively by those with powers, it was essentially exile; a sign that her duality was now known to the authorities she had been pretending to support. With the support of the movement, she was secreted away from New York and went to ground.
This began Rue's campaign of subversion against the government. In video recordings, she encouraged her people to remain strong, but ultimately safe. Her ability allowed her to upload anonymously and cover her tracks. But Rue would have been nothing without her compatriots to back her. She didn’t have the savvy to lead, nor the courage, but she could make a good face. The shift from government supporter to rebel was a powerful one, and Rue knew there was no coming back from it. Peace would never come in her own lifetime. The best she could hope for is to die a symbol of freedom. If she was going to go out, it would be in a blaze, and it would have meaning.
Her time away from civilization as she knew it was difficult. The movement's headquarters was on an island abandoned decades ago, without electricity or the usual modern amenities most people are accustomed to. They made base in an old castle, and slowly it was populated with refugees. Only those high ranking were generally allowed to keep any electronic device that could possibly send a signal to a cell tower and reveal their location – not that finding a signal on the island was terribly possible anyway. Rue surrendered her own equipment as a show of good faith. Arguably she could do the most harm with the possibility of access to what little electronic infrastructure they maintained, if her alliance were a ruse. It wasn't her leaders she needed to convince, however, it was her fellow refugees. She did everything she could to earn their trust, pitching in with kitchen duty and patrols around the island.
On the mainland, powered citizens were being moved into these "exclusive neighborhoods" for their protection, they were told. At first, it was presented as if they were being relocated as a gift, but it quickly became apparent that these weren't communities, they were essentially internment camps. These areas were fenced off and heavily guarded by the government. People were free to come and go seemingly freely at first, able to go to their jobs and visit their families, but the lockdowns came soon enough. People began to look for a way out, and while many were able to be ferried away by the freedom movement, many more had to remain behind. Moving groups too large was too conspicuous, and having word become too widespread was a liability. The government was looking for them. Anyone resisting relocation was said to be a danger to the public. People were being imprisoned, and many who fought back were killed for their efforts. The facade of it was quickly falling apart: powered people were not just second class citizens, but prisoners of the government's war to control them.
When one of the patrols on the island disappeared, Rue was with the group that found them hanging from the trees. The soldiers that had caught them hadn't taken prisoners. They weren't looking for information, only to send a message. And they hadn't discriminated. Men, women – some of the dead had been younger than Rue's twenty-three years. There was only one survivor, whose ability to harden her skin saved her from a crushed windpipe. Before then, anyone who'd been killed or captured had been an active fighter, spy or saboteur. This marked one of the first open killings of refugees by the government. This caused a schism in the group. Certainly they had fought, but only to defend themselves. Now certain high ranking members of the group wanted to start striking preemptively. Rue had previously taken photos of and around military installations, surveyed with groups and radioed back what they had seen. She dithered about the correct approach, as did others.
For some time, they managed to remain whole, despite the friction that came with how far to take their actions. Rue eventually advocated for more aggression. In her opinion, the government wasn't content for their enclave to stay out of sight and out of mind. The murder of the patrol meant the government now knew where to look for them, and it would only be a matter of time before they would be found. Their current approach felt like burying their collective head in the sand to Rue, so she became part of the faction that would carry guns on a regular basis, and began to consider the fact that she would have to take lives to protect lives. In her one and only gun fight (so far), she had only wounded a soldier. One of her fellows made the kill shot, purposefully helping to relieve some of the burden on her conscience. Things would only grow more tense as the people waited for their hiding place to be discovered. Children cried in the arms of their parents, who'd started to run out of assurances. Rue herself often had trouble sleeping, sharing the fear that many others had each night would be the one they did not wake from.
She never expected to wake up on board a ship in space, so far away from her home and her fight.
Personality:
Back home, Rue is known for her bubbly personality – a ray of sunshine in otherwise drab surroundings. Without her metaphorical troops around her, and morale to maintain, Rue is much quieter and more disciplined. In her mind, she was given two choices: grow up quickly and fight, or remain an ignorant and complacent child. Choosing the former was an easy call, though a much more difficult path. Rue plays at being an open book, able to hold her own when it comes to small talk, and laughing easily, but she generally offers little about herself. She often hid behind the anonymity of the internet as people frequently do. It was perhaps much easier for her to do than most, given her ability to interface with computers. All the same, she knows how easy it is to discover someone's true identity with a little bit of digging and know-how. It's made her cautious.
Acting has always been a skill in Rue's wheelhouse. Whether it was a local commercial, school play, or pretending to be in full support of registration, Rue's adept at it. That isn't to say that it was easy living what essentially amounted to a dual life for most of her young adult years. It's exhausting to keep up that sort of facade, but it's left Rue capable of smiling through situations she finds objectionable, or even disgusting. There was a period of time where she had difficulty looking at herself in the mirror. In her youth, she had kept clippings from every ad she had appeared in. As an adult, she was tearing pro-registration propaganda out of magazines, crumpling the image of her face and throwing it in the bin or burning it in a dish. She had taken the job because it had looked fun, glamorous even. She was in the know! The reality of it had been seedier. She has to remind herself that the girl in the magazine doesn't exist. She's just a role she's played as a means to an end. That sort of self-hatred is something Rue had to work through for a very long time, and only after she began to rebel openly did she finally start to feel comfortable in her own skin again. Still, sometimes the idea that she made people feel safe enough to register and essentially sign their freedom away makes her stomach churn. It's something she'll always have to battle with.
Though she tries to remain detached, Rue actually craves companionship and someone to confide in. This is a facet of her personality that she admonishes herself for, feeling it's a weakness. She believes that recognizing and using others' strengths is certainly a necessity if her movement is to succeed, but that being reliant on others in any other way is a personal failing. All that said, she wants to be needed (which is certainly at odds with what she expects from herself), and that makes her feel worthy. On the outside, she tries to act as if she makes tough decisions, and doesn't care what people think of her for it, because somebody had to make them. Inside, she cares deeply and seeks approval for her actions.
The deaths of the missing patrol on the island occupied by the movement shook Rue profoundly, leaving her to question if it was right of them to fight. The people who had been murdered by and large had not been fighters. They'd been people who just wanted to survive, and be treated like anybody else. Was what they were doing causing more harm than good? Was the reason the government was escalating because they had dared to challenge them? Was it better for them all to give themselves up and live in the camps? It's hard to remain an idealist when upholding those ideals has catastrophic consequences. Ultimately, Rue knows anyone who turned themselves in would be considered guilty of treason, and that injustice is enough to remind her why they fight. While she will always be haunted by the ghosts of people she had shared quarters with, broken bread with, and learned to survive alongside, and feel she has failed them, she will never again question that the fight is right.
The thought that Rue may not know who she is anymore without that fight is a frightening one. This new setting should provide her with a reasonable surrogate, however, delaying the need to find out if she needs an outside purpose to carry on or not.
Abilities, Weaknesses and Power Limitations:
Technopathy: As a technopath, Rue can integrate with technology around her just as sure as if she were to be having a conversation with another human being. The easiest tasks are things like having her thoughts appear on screen just as sure as if she had typed them up on the keyboard, or sorting through her music library or personal documents. Anything complex, like hacking, requires much more concentration. She appears to zone out, eyes unfocused while she "sees into" the computer (or whatever construct), as she describes it. Depending upon how intensive what she is doing can be, this can leave her entirely open and vulnerable as she enters something like a trance. She can be broken out of this trance by people around her, but it can require being physically jostled from her concentration.
What she does is intuitive to her, and explaining it to someone else has always been difficult to her. How does one explain how to hold their balance as they stand still, or move forward? It's simply something they do by instinct. Proximity to the object she is manipulating helps, though she doesn't need to "wire in" to a system. Her strongest bond aboard the Tranquility would be with her communications device. She talks of the systems she interacts with as if they were people.
While she can essentially download information from a system into her own brain, it's functionally no different than having read it from a book. It's not stored there indefinitely, and her ability to recall what she's learned is only as reliable as her own memory. Trying to access too much information too quickly leads to confusing what she's learned and how it correlates. It jumbles up like Mad Libs.
NOTE: Whether Rue's ability functions well or at all in this setting I leave entirely up to the mods. I expect that she would find it nearly impossible to hack into systems that require nanites she does not have, and I think it would be an interesting frustration for her to face personally, being otherwise used to all things technological being an open book.
Survival Training: While living away from technology is literally like being cut off from a part of herself, Rue has learned to survive without it, thanks to the freedom fighting movement that took her in. She knows how to find shelter, what vegetation is and isn't safe to eat, and how to hunt. By extension, Rue has been taught to defend herself. Hand to hand combat is not her strong suit, but she is an excellent shot with a rifle. She can use a pistol at closer range in a pinch, but it's not her favored way to fight.
Dance: Everybody needs a hobby and an exercise routine, and Rue's is ballet. She's never be a prima ballerina, but she'll have fun playing at it. Not that she's going to admit to her fondness for dance. Ignore those shoes.
Weaknesses: Rue is not particularly physically formidable. It's easy enough for her to become overwhelmed in close quarters combat. She's also a passionate person, and easily blinded by emotions like rage or grief. They can cause her to act impulsively in the heat of the moment, and make terrible mistakes with catastrophic consequences.
Inventory:
Appearance: Rue is tall and lean, very much built in classic model proportions. She has naturally ginger hair that curls when left to its own devices, a freckled and heart-shaped face, blue eyes, and a mouth that's slightly lopsided. She favors practical clothing in bright colors whenever possible, and often seems to lose herself in thought.
Age: 27
S A M P L E S
Log Sample:
The shipping container against her back is cold and unyielding, but unyielding is precisely what Rue needs right now. She needs cover that won't bend against her weight, won't rustle and give her away. She swears the pounding of her heart could do that for her. Screwing her eyes shut, she tightens her grip on the camera around her neck. There have been excellent pictures this evening, but the twilight has overtaken her surroundings and there's nothing left to be captured by her lens. Rue is no photographer, despite what the false press pass tucked into her olive drab coat says, but she knows how to adjust the lens to bring a picture into focus, and she knows what looks interesting and what looks mundane enough to be important.
Footsteps approach and she has to fight her instincts to keep her eyes shut. Her jaw quivers and she holds her breath, watching the space to her left from the corner of her eye. Turn away. Just turn around and go back the other way. The gun in her pocket is a last resort. The soldier that appears from around the edge of the container doesn't spot her immediately. Maybe he won't spot her at all. Maybe he'll keep right on walking, not glance to his right, and never know she was standing there.
Rue reaches out with her senses – the ones that most humans aren't born with – and searches for a signal, something she can latch onto and create a distraction. She finds a circuit board in charge of the lighting not twenty feet away, and mentally flips a switch to plunge the construction site into darkness. The soldier curses and hurries forward to where others from his team are clustered. With the crunch of his rushed footfalls able to mask the even pace of her own, she calmly makes her way back to where her team waits for her to rendezvous.
Comms Sample:
Interesting. These devices are a lot like mobiles back home, but not quite. And what is this programming language?
Sorry, I'm nerding out. I'm a new passenger aboard this ship, and I'm going through the archives right now. There's an awful lot to sort through. I can see I'm in for a wild ride. Anyone want to suggest the highlights?
NOTE: I haven't completely settled on my PB yet. Please stand by!