[App] mercurycitysupers

[savesherself]

Player Info
Player Name: Aubrey
Over 18?: Yes
Contact: mortalcity
Timezone: Central (GMT -6)
Characters already in game: N/A


Character Info
Name: Carissa Park
Alias: formerly Sundog
Age and birthdate: 33, 06/21/1991
Home city: Mercury City
Type: Retired hero
Occupation: Police sergeant (K-9 officer)
Appearance:

Carissa is Korean, with dark brown eyes and long brown hair that curls. She's 5'6" and slender and cute, and, at first glance, generally does not look like someone who could take a grown man down in 2.5 seconds. Really look at her for any length of time and you realize she's actually pretty damn muscular, it's just not apparent at first glance.

Personality:

Carissa's the same person she always was at her core, the same girl who chose to risk her life as a hero daily at seventeen. She wants to do good things in the world, to help and protect people; she needs a purpose and is no good at sitting still, and she's more than a bit of an adrenaline junkie. These days, all of that may be a bit harder to see - she's older, more cautious and less idealistic, and rather jaded to the idea of costumed heroes as a whole - but it's all still there, not even far below the surface.

She tends to be serious and a little brusque on first meeting, and for a while afterwards - not actively unfriendly, but she has a hard time opening up to people on even a superficial level, telling people little things about herself or letting down her guard enough to crack a real smile. Emotional intimacy terrifies her, and she doesn't trust hardly anyone in any real way.

However, she is also extremely kind and empathetic, especially gentle with children or anyone who seems particularly fragile. She thinks of other people before herself, and if she sees someone who needs help, she'll almost always step in to give it, in the quietest possible way that draws the least attention to herself. When she does finally open up to people (rare, but it happens), she's still often quiet, but she warms up, her usual dryly sardonic sense of humor giving way to fond teasing and subtle mischief.

Carissa doesn't believe that most people are bad people - she does think a great many are self-absorbed, unwilling or afraid to go out of their way to help others, oblivious to the damage they do to others, and she tries as much as she can to be the opposite of that. She has a slightly less charitable attitude toward costumed heroes, these days - in her eyes, it's a form of selfishness and arrogance, putting themselves above the law and above most of humanity for the sake of attention and their ego. She recognizes that a good many of them have good intentions... but good intentions aren't enough, especially in the absence of proper training or oversight. She trusts superheroes even less than she does the average person, and when she sees them stepping over the line, she may well go out of her way to pull them back... because who else is going to?

Personal history:

Carissa was born and grew up in New Amsterdam, the youngest of three, and had a fairly normal, somewhat privileged childhood. She always excelled at dance and sports, but didn't notice she had any special talent until 8th grade, when she tried karate and found she could imitate the most complex kata right off the bat. To be honest, it kind of freaked everyone out, and, not wanting to make a scene, she made an effort to downplay her abilities and pretend to learn things slower after the first couple times.

Her interest in martial arts was a casual hobby until she met a boy who saw exactly what she was doing, what she was capable of and that she was hiding it, and called her on it. As it turned out, he was a hero, the chosen warrior of an ancient order meant to protect the world from mystical threats, a skilled fighter with spiritual abilities who had been training from a very young age - all very impressive to a seventeen-year-old who had no idea what to do with her own abilities and wanted desperately to find a purpose in her own life. They became friends, as he taught her his fighting style and how to move around the city the way he did, then they became partners as they fought his enemies as well as petty criminals together, and then they started dating.

When she turned eighteen, she moved out of her parents' house and moved in with him, and heroing became basically a full-time job for both of them. Look, teenagers make dumb choices, okay? So she was fairly isolated from everyone except him, basically living in a war zone 24/7, and over time their enemies just kept getting more numerous and more persistent. The more stressed he got, the more abusive Carissa's partner became - mostly emotional, though not always, and it went on for years. They'd been working together for four years when she realized how bad and screwed up things had become, and found the strength to get the hell away, quitting heroing entirely.

She joined the military almost immediately after, and when she got out, she became a police officer. She moved to Mercury City, started a new life, and generally tries to forget about her past - it was ten years ago, she's a different person now, and she doesn't much want to go back.

Powers:

Adoptive muscle memory. She can physically duplicate any movement or action after observing it. It only works with physical movements, so anything requiring an actual superpower is out, and it doesn't give her the necessary strength/flexibility/endurance to perform it, so if it's not something her body can physically accomplish, she can (and has) hurt herself. Her ability to perform observed actions fades a few days after observing them, but she can practice the action and basically teach it to herself so it stays in her repertoire.

Skills:

Almost entirely learned through her power, but they're hers now. Extremely profiencient in in karate, muay thai, aikido, krav maga, jujitsu and MCMAP, with most guns, and with swords and staves. Can parkour without dying, pretty good at most styles of ballroom dance. She's pretty damn strong for someone her size, as well as very flexible and very in shape, because there's only so many times you can seriously hurt yourself trying to do something your body's not ready for before you put some serious effort into making your body ready for whatever you need to do.

Weaknesses:

She's a squishy human, just as easy to hurt or kill as anyone else. Her right knee occasionally acts up because of an old injury - it's usually okay with normal use (which for her includes lots of walking and sparring), but sometimes it decides to protest and she has to go easy on it so she doesn't make it worse. She's a small person, and though she's put a lot of effort into strength training, a lot of people can still overpower her.
She has PTSD and depression, is deeply uncomfortable with and sometimes triggered by physical contact, has trouble trusting or getting close to people, and is basically incapable of asking for help.

RP Goals:

I'm interested in having Carissa figure out her place in this new wave of heroes - she's extremely unlikely to jump on the bandwagon and put on a mask again (though I can't say never), but her personality doesn't really allow her to sit on the sidelines either. I'd like to see her maybe mentoring some younger heroes (possibly reluctantly), running into older heroes or villains she knew in the past, clashing with heroes where her ideas of acceptable use of power and anonymity don't match theirs...

I don't want to fix her mental health issues, but I would like to bring her to a place where she has better coping mechanisms than ignoring everything, and build her a support system that she doesn't really have now.

Also as a functional character in an RP environment, it can't hurt to have someone who's in law enforcement when you need the cops around, or to get the cops off your back. So there's that.

Third person sample:

Carissa narrowed her eyes at the sun as she stepped out of the station. Her lip may have curled into a half-hearted snarl too - she couldn't be sure about that one, but she'd always been nocturnal by nature and preference, and it was times like this, walking out after a long night to find the sun smacking her in the face, that she missed New Amsterdam. The sun usually at least had the courtesy to stay behind clouds in winter, there.

As usual, Argos didn't seem the least bit tired despite her exhaustion, and maybe that was how he noticed the kid approaching her before she did. What she noticed was the dog's head snapping up, ears swiveling forward, and the cautious tail wag. Carissa shook herself out of the exhausted fog where the only thing that mattered was getting to her car and home, and followed his gaze to the uniform moving to intercept them. She stopped. Argos stopped with her. The kid kept coming.

She recognized his face, but couldn't remember his name - one of the newer officers, his uniform barely broken in, and she found her shoulders tightening in tense anticipation even before he reached her. Every year, one or two of the new kids asked the damn question; she was half-convinced some of the veterans encouraged it (she hadn't been that well-known), and when she found out who they were, she was going to sic Argos on them.

"Excuse me, um... Sergeant Park?"

Carissa sucked in a breath, let it out, and arched an eyebrow. She could be patient, but that didn't mean she had to be nice when she just wanted to go home.

"You're a hero, aren't you?"

There they went. "No." She nudged Argos gently with her knee and started for the car again, intending to shoulder past the kid, but he backpedaled to keep pace with her and held out a hand to stop her. She stopped again before he actually made contact, fixing him with a steady look that invited him to reevaluate his life choices. He dropped the hand quickly but, disappointingly, did not leave her alone.

"No, but... I recognize you. You're Sundog."

She went still, a lump of ice forming in her gut. No one had called her specifically by that name in... half a decade, at least. The mask meant hardly anyone actually knew her face, especially after such a long time, but there had always been slip-ups, the odd picture that ended up on the internet - that and superhero fans were the two things guaranteed never to forget. Her skin felt hot and prickly and too tight, exhaustion swept away in a tide of adrenaline and nervous energy, rising anger...

Argos felt her sudden tension and leaned his shoulder against her knee, looking up in concern. His warm weight dragged her back down to earth; the vibrating edge of panic didn't go away, but it blunted a little. Her voice was quiet and low, almost none of the tension or anger she'd expected to hear when she opened her mouth. "Do I look like I'm wearing a costume to you?"

In Character Responses
The greater good is: Whatever keeps the greatest number of people safe. Worth risking a few lives to keep the majority happy, healthy, able to live their lives well. It's obviously preferable when those few are volunteers - that's why we have cops, and militaries.

Your greatest strengths are: Focus and determination. I do my job and I don't let anything interfere.

Killing is: A last resort, and usually only necessary because someone screwed up. There's always an opportunity to save the situation, make a different call, stop things before they escalate to that level... but sometimes you screw up. And sometimes it is necessary.

Teachers and mentor figures would say you are: Gifted. That's always been the word, gifted. I guess I am, the way things come to me - I never had to work for them the way most people do.

Sacrifice is: Putting something that matters before yourself. It gets to be a habit, after a while.

When you were younger you: I was naive, and trusting. I thought the good guys were one way, the bad guys another, and the lines were clear. I thought everyone was in it for the same reason I was, and I was wrong. Smart enough to get out, though, eventually.