Joined: 25 Jun 2005
Posts: 263
Location: England
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OOC Information:
Name: Nic
E-mail: panda_pull2006(@)hotmail.co.uk (remove brackets when emailing)
Preferred Messenger: MSN --same address as above
AIM: StupidGrrl05
Key: Confirmed
Other: N/A
Character Information:
Name: Leodora Walker--often referred to as 'Dora' inside the Institute, or occasionally, 'Leo'.
Alias: Phase
Occupation: Operative for the Olympus Project, Echo Institute.
Age: 24
Height: 5'5
Build: At 130lbs, she is easily described as masculine, having only subtle curves.
Hair color/style: Leodora opts for a simple cut for her dark brown hair. It hangs down just beyond her shoulder blades, board-straight. It is shaped at the front but kept long enough so that all her hair may be swept away from her face (important in her line of work).
Eye color: Light Green.
Detailed personal description: Everything about Leodora looks carefully thought out. From the straight cut of her hair to the shape of her body, she is streamlined for her profession. To this end, there is nothing particularly striking about her. She has just one inch on the average female's height and her hair is kept looking very generic; deliberately opting for a haircut that is plain and no-nonsense as well as being common enough not to let her stand out.
Her build is well equipped for the workout it receives on a daily basis. However, that is not to say she is bulky; instead her limbs are packed with lean muscle. Her smile is crooked; rarely flashing her teeth and her laughter (when it occurs) is rarely genuine. Her face is what you would call, 'heart shaped', with a broad forehead and this helps to soften her appearance and add femininity to her look. Being void of sharp features or hard expressions help to make Leodora seem like less of a threat than she is. A small nose and a large, full mouth complete this misconception.
Leodora only wears one item of jewellery--if you can call it that--a thin black cuff on her wrist that is designed to stop her vanishing at will. It isn't always worn--only when she is in the Institute and not training. Aside from this, her clothing is always nondescript. Jeans, t-shrits or jumpers, suits where appropriate, or any fashion that is popular (but not up to the minute) with young women at high-street prices. She does not seek individuality, but instead to blend in. Her elected colours are always neutral, avoid bright colours or patterns that would make her stand out. However, she is a big fan of sweatpants—they are both comfortable and make no noise when she moves. If a job requires her to take on a role, she is always provided with the necessary clothing, which she will wear without question.
She holds herself straight-backed and she is graceful without effort. She is never noisy when she moves unless she means to be. It is also worth noting that as a result of training day in, day out, her reflexes are outstanding (albeit human.)
Family: Mother: Sylvia; 58, Father: Kenneth; 57, Sister: Amelia; 31.
Ability/Mutation: Simply put, Leodora has the ability to become invisible at will. This is achieved through the bending of light in her immediate vicinity. Years of relentless training have worked out the kinks from her mutation, allowing her to bend light around objects (say, something she is carrying) or another person (provided she is in physical contact with them and remains so). It also means that she is able to retain this transparent form without tell-tale visible-distortion.
Because of this, Leodora does not have to wear a specialised suit in order to achieve invisibility, nor does she have to strip down. Unfortunately, however, her mutation doesn't prevent her giving off a heat signature.
Her invisibility does not make her intangible, so if she is marked with a coloured liquid or powder, she would have to come out of her invisible state, then return to it in order to conceal the mark.
Weaknesses: Leodora has all the typical human weaknesses, she also sleep-walks frequently.
Personality: There are two kinds of cynics in this life. Those who become unbearable through their need to crush everyone else's spirit, and those who wear it as an accessory--a touch of realism to the big picture. Leodora is the latter of the two and she finds it hard not to take the glass half empty approach in her lifestyle because when she is handed a brief, it is bound to be a very bad day for someone else. Because of this, she has developed a dark sense of humour and has been known to make jokes in bad taste (although joking in general is not her forte). Her line of work draws a very fine line between, 'hit-man' and, 'assassin' and as such, she cannot always do a job without talking to someone along the way. As a result, her personality has chameleon-type qualities. She can adapt her speech, her manner and her approach to ensure that she is liked, but easily forgotten afterwards.
In many ways, you could describe her as 'bland'. She volunteers little about herself unless asked, and often what she serves up is a fabrication (unless talking to someone from the Project). However, she is very passionate about her work and once she starts talking about it, she will pour over stories, or the pros and cons with enthusiasm that is rarely seen when talking about any other topic.
She's what you would call her own worst critic. A burning need to get it right first time is something she developed as a direct result of Echo Institute. She is constantly pushing herself to do better and can almost always see error where everyone else sees success. This makes her a difficult addition to a team, even when team work is essential. Early on, she showed signs of a dominating personality; a need to do better than everyone else, even if that meant savagely batting them down. It is not uncommon for Leodora to 'bully' others in order to gain control of a situation. She doesn't do it to feel better about herself, but simply because she doesn't trust other people to do the job properly.
History: Leodora Walker was the second addition to an already happy family. Sylvia worked as an accountant and Kenneth, for a pharmaceutical company. Sylvia's first pregnancy with Amelia, was done naturally, with not so much as an aspirin for the delivery. However, Amelia was born anemic; a condition which, while treatable, the whole family was effected by. So when they felt it was time to add to the family, Kenneth did his research, encouraging his wife to sign up for a testing panel that researched child development—more importantly, ways of boosting a child’s immune system while still in the womb. It would be a long series of drug tests and physicals throughout the pregnancy, but the end result promised to help weed out disorders such as their first born carried.
Leodora Walker was born nine months later--a baby girl in perfect health. Kenneth and Sylvia heard nothing from the testing panel after that—they seemed to simply vanish. However, as lives do, they were snowed under with looking after their daughters and working hard, so there was little time left over to wonder whatever happened to those researchers. That suited the needs of the Project perfectly, meaning they were able to monitor Leodora's development with little worry of being caught out.
Leodora showed no signs of being different until she was almost three. Kenneth had taken his two children to the supermarket after Amelia got out of school, and his youngest simply…vanished. One moment she was being minded by her sister and the next, she was nowhere to be seen. After ransacking the supermarket, Kenneth had no choice but to call the police, then his wife and tell her what had happened. She arrived on the scene hysterical, accusing her husband of neglecting their child. When the police arrived on the scene, they uncovered Leodora an hour later, running through the aisles in floods of tears. This event caused an uncomfortable rift between Sylvia and Kenneth, one that only widened as time went by.
The event did not go by unnoticed by the Project; an agent on site witnessed the disappearance and was able to stay throughout the ordeal as a 'curious bystander' (along with dozens of other people). With the child's manifestation on record, the Project dispatched a team to pick her up. They wouldn't waste time as they had with one Adrian Marcato, they would take her as soon as possible. So, on a sunny afternoon in July, Leodora went missing from her back garden, her father turning away from the kitchen window, just for a second while he was on the phone.
Leodora has no memories of her parents, beyond silhouettes in dreams that she puts no stock in. She has no idea what they look like, nor that after a year of struggling with the loss of their youngest daughter, they divorced.
Leodora's only paternal figure is one Mark Silverstein, a doctor who has coached Leodora through her life with the Olympus Project. Her whole life from that point onwards was relentless training mixed in with the usual curriculum. A large amount of emphasis was placed on learning to control her ability and soon, the Institutes need to get things spot-on, rubbed off on her. She trained harder, focused more, and was never satisfied with the end result. It could always be better; she could always do it faster. By the time your average child with an X-Gene manifests, Leodora had a good grip in her abilities.
When she was old enough, her training was stepped up. First physical combat training, for exercise, as well as arduous bouts of meditation. This, Dr. Silverstein explained, helped her to concentrate and that one of the most important aspects of her job was patience. From here, she underwent myriad of combat training and Silverstein believed she had to learn to make the best of what was made available. If the job called for a gun, she needed to learn where to hit a man so he would die from a single shot, as well as where to hit him to simply disable him. If the job required a blade, she would need to know where was the most vulnerable place to strike. She was being meticulously carved into a war-machine, and second-rate skills would not make the cut.
Years later, she was transferred from Echo in Philadelphia, over to Olympus headquarters in Baltimore where she was given her ‘final’ training (although with techniques always evolving, no training is ever really final) and mixed in with mutants from other branches of the project. Even as an adult, she found it hard not to take charge and locked horns on occasion during training with team mates. They continued to try and mix her in with the others, but she only seemed happiest when either in control, or things went smoothly.
With her final training under her belt, she was given her first mission out in the field with a minder at her side and a chip in her arm. Her hit was an employee of Olympus who was attempting to blackmail his superior, threatening to take his stories to the newspapers. The consensus was, if Leodora failed, her minder would make a clean job of finishing it off. He didn’t have to, however. With paper strapped to her feet and a length of wire in her hands, Leodora got her first taste of death. The idea of controlling whether a man lives or dies was power that scared her. Feeling the life drain out of him as she dashed open his throat with the wire was as horrifying as it was beautiful but Leodora had to remind herself that it was just the job. Unfortunately, when you live and breathe the killing business, it's hard not to find pleasure in your work.
It continued from there, some kills higher profile than others, but she has yet to get her legendary hit. Each mark tried her more, pushed her limits. She learned from each, and after each, followed a session with Dr. Silverstein that would sometimes last half a day, especially in the early stages. He would talk to her about how it felt, about what she was prepared to do, and did his best every session to try and dig out of her any hint that she was enjoying it on an unnatural level. They couldn't afford to slip up when they were training people to be little more than weapons.
A few days after her first kill, Leodora started to sleep walk. She got out of her cell the first night, and set off alarm bells when she tried to wander out through the front door. To this day, when she sleeps, a perimeter of locked doors is set up, so they can monitor her movements, but keep her secure. When asked about her dreams, Leodora could remember very little--shapes and voices mostly, but it related to the kill she'd made. They put it down to her being shaken up, but they put her out into the field at every opportunity to get her used to it. Her sessions intensified, she spent several weeks hooked up to machines while she slept, but they have yet to find a way to treat it. Because she shows no signs of tension or distress at doing her job, so she is allowed to keep it up.
The more jobs she took on, the more leash she was given. She behaved on her first over-night trial, returning to the pick-up spot ahead of schedule and waiting for her lift back. Then she'd be gone for two days, sometimes three, and always she'd come back once it was over. However, after catching wind of not one, but three escapees from the Olympus Project, a long-term job came her way. Not a hit mission, but a tracking one. Given her experience in the field, arrangements were made for her to take a trip to New York, and track down Adrian Marcato and Jonathan Peters. She is to keep in contact with the Project on a regular basis, as well as check in with her 'nanny'--a human (as far as she knows) operative for the Project, who in turn, is keeping tabs on her movements.
Other: Permission has been got from the players of all played characters mentioned in this application.
The wrist band tidbit was something that came up when discussing the Institute with Melissa, so credit for that goes to she!
Direct mention of Evans has been left out deliberately because it isn’t yet necessary to bring him into the application. Martin was PMed with questions pertaining to future interactions with Evans, but none of that is necessary for the bio as-is, unless someone thinks otherwise ^-^.
Also having this weird feeling of leaving something out, but I’ve been through it three times, and can’t remember. XD.
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Grace Gordon | Marinda Nightingale | Leodora Walker
Last edited by Stupid Girl on Wed Nov 28, 2007 6:02 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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