Post by Tobey on Jan 29, 2006 12:32:49 GMT -5
Name: Jordan Gabriels (but prefers to go by Echo)
Age: 18 (but can appear to be any age, depending on who's body she's in)
Gender: (or should we say /preferred/ gender) Female
Birthday: December 8, 1988
Place of origin: Salem, West Virginia
Lab: Camp Sunshine
Age at time of capture: 16
Age at time of escape: 16 (she spent four months in the lab)
Relationship status: She'd really like to be in a relationship, but because of her experimentation, she doesn't have a lot of options. If your character's a lesbian, or is a male willing to have a relationship involving no physical contact, PM me.
Type of experimentation performed: Genetic destabilization. In other words, she absorbs the DNA of anyone she touches, and becomes them. She has no control over it, but fortunately it only works on anything that has some small amount of human DNA. The scientists never figured out why. Also, she replicates any injuries (such as Repete's missing eye, for example), and again, the scientists don't know why. She also gets any powers (like Zepher's TK, or Adrian's shadow powers), and she often gets random bits of memory or personality (if she touches your character, please post or PM me what memories/personality bits you want her to get. If you PM me, it would be helpful if you add whether you'd like me to copy and paste or paraphrase any memories you send that I end up using. If you don't say anything, I will copy and paste, because I'd much rather do that than paraphrase. If I paraphrased, I'd worry that I was selling the author short. Also, I prefer PMs to posts, but that is the author's choice). Since the "mind-stuff" she gets is random, she usually tends to get different memories/personality each time she touches someone, even if it's the same person. For whatever reason, this doesn't happen when she's touching a person whose body she's already in, only when she actually transforms. As I said, she gets the abilities of people she touches, but she may or may not know how to use them, depending on whether the ability is just instinctive, or whether your character had to actually learn how to use it. If it's the first one, she will know how to use the ability, if the second, she'll only know how to use it if she gets a memory of learning to use it. Finally, it needs to be mentioned that she also copies the voices of those she turns into.
Finally finally, I'm going to try a little something new here. Since figuring out who's body Echo is in when is often a problem, I think I'll choose which body she's in from any she's been in at some point before. It makes sense; all she would have to do is pull out a strand of her hair while she is whichever person, and she can then just touch the hair later to become that person again. Thus, I will list the people she has been long enough for her to do this with; Zepher, Buffy, Tarr.
Physical description: Obviously, it varies. However, she always tends to wear earthy-toned, somewhat tight-fitting clothes, and often wears t-shirts. I should also describe what she used to look like (especially now that, with Tarr's help, she can actually return to her natural body, in a way). She had long, dusky brown hair, and moderately dark, slightly greenish brown eyes (although when she's in Tarr's form, her eyes are the same pale shade as his. Thus, she's experimenting with colored contacts to bring back her former eye color). Her face looked just a little like Anna Paquin's (the actor who plays Rogue in the X-men movies), but more tomboyish. Not too much so, though; not enough that anyone would really call her a tomboy. She also had the look of a leader, even though she wasn't that much of a leader; it's just that she wasn't a follower, either.
Personality: Jordan always had a strong personality, and believed in being herself and no one else. She also never had many friends, because she always had such an independent personality. However, the friends she did have, she was fiercely loyal to. She also always had a sort of perpetual defiance; she wasn't going to let anyone boss her around, unless there was good reason for it.
She never really tended to mind if someone didn't like her; everyone's entitled to their opinion, after all. Not that she didn't care what they thought; it just didn't usually bother her. And if it did, she would change it. She will, however, quickly lose patience with someone who seems to not like her for no reason.
Her motto is "It's better to live your own life than to spend it wishing for someone else," and she lives by it. Or tries to. Sometimes it's hard not to be jealous of other people; she misses having her own body, and being different from everyone else. And absorbing the personalities of others doesn't help in that respect. During her experimentation, she was right at the age where most people are still discovering who they really are, so she's developed more of a sense of urgency about it, as if she's afraid of losing herself forever. Because of all this, even though she's fairly good at "keeping it all together," deep down, there's quite a bit of turmoil and confusion.
One big reason she seems much better at keeping it all together than she really is, is because she tends to try to get over things before she's really given herself a chance to heal. She tends to just shove things out of her mind, and pretend that they don't bother her anymore. Like Kelly's death, for example, or even Camp Sunshine in general. Or Echo's life before the lab; that's why she never goes by the name 'Jordan,' because she tries to pretend that that's all behind her now. It's part of her "It's better to live your own life than to spend it wishing for someone else's" thing. It's just that she goes about it the wrong way; by trying to ignore the parts of her life she doesn't like.
History: Jordan ran away from home when she was 16, because of a long series of disagreements with her parents. Perhaps she overreacted, but she wasn't about to let anyone make her decisions for her. She was very adamant about that. Anyway, after a month or so on her own, she made the mistake of sleeping on a bench that was a little too near a genetics lab, and they gave her a tranquilizer without even waking her up, and she got a nasty surprise when she woke up that morning . . .
Jordan woke up in a cage, and immediately began cursing and shouting at the top of her lungs. When she found it annoyed the scientists, she said that she wouldn't stop until they let her go. No, of course that wasn't going to work. Instead, as punishment, after an analysis of her personality, they selected her for the one experiment they knew she would hate the most.
One of the experiments (a skunk experiment who decided to call herself Flower) was one of those people who insisted on coming up with nicknames for everyone. That's how Echo got her name. Nobody minded the nicknames; they knew that everyone needed a way to keep themselves entertained, and Flower's was making up nicknames. Echo decided to keep her nickname after she left the lab, because she was trying not to think about her life before the lab, but instead to start over again. Flower even came up with a name for the lab itself; she called it Camp Sunshine when she first arrived there about ten years ago, and the name stuck.
She was only at the lab for four or five months, but that was enough time to complete her experimentation. She was kept in a rather crowded cage, so she learned to have quick reflexes so they wouldn't touch her all the time. She liked a little stability in her appearance, you know? Also, since the cagemates often got mixed up (the scientists didn't seem to care who went in which cage, so they would just put whichever experiment in whichever cage happened to be closest whenever they brought experiments back from the testing rooms), Echo was often housed with people she barely knew; and Echo preferred to know who she was turning into. The only person Echo would've called a friend at Camp Sunshine was a firefly experiment named Kelly; who, unfortunately, was later a victim of Christina's crackdown on experiment escapes. Kelly was younger than Echo, and easily persuaded; she had been talked into joining an escape attempt by some older experiments, only to be brought back and given an overdose of the Blood-Red Serum, killing her. This was the one time that Echo was grateful for the chaos at Camp Sunshine, which had prevented her from making any close friendships, and allowed her to get past Kelly's death.
Echo was one of the few experiments who refused to be "broken." She wouldn't ever give up, and just sit there idly in her cage. No, not her. Not even when Christina started working at her lab, about two months after Echo arrived there. Not even when Kelly was killed; this only strengthened her resolve. She even learned how to hide the pain from Christina's pain serum, to make it seem like she didn't feel anything. Well, almost. She never could completely hide it; no one could. But oh, even to come close to hiding it annoyed Christina, and that was why Echo did it.
She actually planned out her escape long before it happened. She was inspired by the legend of Guadalupe, which had been spread around in her lab before Christina came. When Christina came, however, she would severely punish anyone who so much as mentioned the name "Guadalupe." She wanted her subjects to have no hope of escape. And it worked . . . for most of them. Echo, however, wouldn't give up that easily. Then came the moment she was waiting for; a single strand of Christina's hair fell from her, within reach of Echo's cage. She waited for Christina to leave, and picked up the hair, immediately shifting into a copy of Christina. From that point, she was able to convince one of the other scientists that she /was/ Christina, and had been locked in the cage while she was giving the experiments their injections. He set her free, fearing Christina's wrath. After he'd left, she set to freeing the other experiments, hoping to start a revolution as Guadalupe had. She was sadly disappointed. Only about half a dozen experiments were even willing to escape, let alone revolt. They were so afraid of what Christina would do to them if they were caught that they decided that just staying in their cages would be better. Echo tried her best to persuade them, but there was nothing she could do. After they escaped, she and the other escapees parted ways, and from there, Echo managed to find her way to the House. The only thing she brought with her was a slightly wrinkled picture of what she looked like, before the experimentation. It shows her from the shoulders up, and she looks maybe 15 or 16 in the picture. It makes her sad, because she can never return to her natural body again.
Age: 18 (but can appear to be any age, depending on who's body she's in)
Gender: (or should we say /preferred/ gender) Female
Birthday: December 8, 1988
Place of origin: Salem, West Virginia
Lab: Camp Sunshine
Age at time of capture: 16
Age at time of escape: 16 (she spent four months in the lab)
Relationship status: She'd really like to be in a relationship, but because of her experimentation, she doesn't have a lot of options. If your character's a lesbian, or is a male willing to have a relationship involving no physical contact, PM me.
Type of experimentation performed: Genetic destabilization. In other words, she absorbs the DNA of anyone she touches, and becomes them. She has no control over it, but fortunately it only works on anything that has some small amount of human DNA. The scientists never figured out why. Also, she replicates any injuries (such as Repete's missing eye, for example), and again, the scientists don't know why. She also gets any powers (like Zepher's TK, or Adrian's shadow powers), and she often gets random bits of memory or personality (if she touches your character, please post or PM me what memories/personality bits you want her to get. If you PM me, it would be helpful if you add whether you'd like me to copy and paste or paraphrase any memories you send that I end up using. If you don't say anything, I will copy and paste, because I'd much rather do that than paraphrase. If I paraphrased, I'd worry that I was selling the author short. Also, I prefer PMs to posts, but that is the author's choice). Since the "mind-stuff" she gets is random, she usually tends to get different memories/personality each time she touches someone, even if it's the same person. For whatever reason, this doesn't happen when she's touching a person whose body she's already in, only when she actually transforms. As I said, she gets the abilities of people she touches, but she may or may not know how to use them, depending on whether the ability is just instinctive, or whether your character had to actually learn how to use it. If it's the first one, she will know how to use the ability, if the second, she'll only know how to use it if she gets a memory of learning to use it. Finally, it needs to be mentioned that she also copies the voices of those she turns into.
Finally finally, I'm going to try a little something new here. Since figuring out who's body Echo is in when is often a problem, I think I'll choose which body she's in from any she's been in at some point before. It makes sense; all she would have to do is pull out a strand of her hair while she is whichever person, and she can then just touch the hair later to become that person again. Thus, I will list the people she has been long enough for her to do this with; Zepher, Buffy, Tarr.
Physical description: Obviously, it varies. However, she always tends to wear earthy-toned, somewhat tight-fitting clothes, and often wears t-shirts. I should also describe what she used to look like (especially now that, with Tarr's help, she can actually return to her natural body, in a way). She had long, dusky brown hair, and moderately dark, slightly greenish brown eyes (although when she's in Tarr's form, her eyes are the same pale shade as his. Thus, she's experimenting with colored contacts to bring back her former eye color). Her face looked just a little like Anna Paquin's (the actor who plays Rogue in the X-men movies), but more tomboyish. Not too much so, though; not enough that anyone would really call her a tomboy. She also had the look of a leader, even though she wasn't that much of a leader; it's just that she wasn't a follower, either.
Personality: Jordan always had a strong personality, and believed in being herself and no one else. She also never had many friends, because she always had such an independent personality. However, the friends she did have, she was fiercely loyal to. She also always had a sort of perpetual defiance; she wasn't going to let anyone boss her around, unless there was good reason for it.
She never really tended to mind if someone didn't like her; everyone's entitled to their opinion, after all. Not that she didn't care what they thought; it just didn't usually bother her. And if it did, she would change it. She will, however, quickly lose patience with someone who seems to not like her for no reason.
Her motto is "It's better to live your own life than to spend it wishing for someone else," and she lives by it. Or tries to. Sometimes it's hard not to be jealous of other people; she misses having her own body, and being different from everyone else. And absorbing the personalities of others doesn't help in that respect. During her experimentation, she was right at the age where most people are still discovering who they really are, so she's developed more of a sense of urgency about it, as if she's afraid of losing herself forever. Because of all this, even though she's fairly good at "keeping it all together," deep down, there's quite a bit of turmoil and confusion.
One big reason she seems much better at keeping it all together than she really is, is because she tends to try to get over things before she's really given herself a chance to heal. She tends to just shove things out of her mind, and pretend that they don't bother her anymore. Like Kelly's death, for example, or even Camp Sunshine in general. Or Echo's life before the lab; that's why she never goes by the name 'Jordan,' because she tries to pretend that that's all behind her now. It's part of her "It's better to live your own life than to spend it wishing for someone else's" thing. It's just that she goes about it the wrong way; by trying to ignore the parts of her life she doesn't like.
History: Jordan ran away from home when she was 16, because of a long series of disagreements with her parents. Perhaps she overreacted, but she wasn't about to let anyone make her decisions for her. She was very adamant about that. Anyway, after a month or so on her own, she made the mistake of sleeping on a bench that was a little too near a genetics lab, and they gave her a tranquilizer without even waking her up, and she got a nasty surprise when she woke up that morning . . .
Jordan woke up in a cage, and immediately began cursing and shouting at the top of her lungs. When she found it annoyed the scientists, she said that she wouldn't stop until they let her go. No, of course that wasn't going to work. Instead, as punishment, after an analysis of her personality, they selected her for the one experiment they knew she would hate the most.
One of the experiments (a skunk experiment who decided to call herself Flower) was one of those people who insisted on coming up with nicknames for everyone. That's how Echo got her name. Nobody minded the nicknames; they knew that everyone needed a way to keep themselves entertained, and Flower's was making up nicknames. Echo decided to keep her nickname after she left the lab, because she was trying not to think about her life before the lab, but instead to start over again. Flower even came up with a name for the lab itself; she called it Camp Sunshine when she first arrived there about ten years ago, and the name stuck.
She was only at the lab for four or five months, but that was enough time to complete her experimentation. She was kept in a rather crowded cage, so she learned to have quick reflexes so they wouldn't touch her all the time. She liked a little stability in her appearance, you know? Also, since the cagemates often got mixed up (the scientists didn't seem to care who went in which cage, so they would just put whichever experiment in whichever cage happened to be closest whenever they brought experiments back from the testing rooms), Echo was often housed with people she barely knew; and Echo preferred to know who she was turning into. The only person Echo would've called a friend at Camp Sunshine was a firefly experiment named Kelly; who, unfortunately, was later a victim of Christina's crackdown on experiment escapes. Kelly was younger than Echo, and easily persuaded; she had been talked into joining an escape attempt by some older experiments, only to be brought back and given an overdose of the Blood-Red Serum, killing her. This was the one time that Echo was grateful for the chaos at Camp Sunshine, which had prevented her from making any close friendships, and allowed her to get past Kelly's death.
Echo was one of the few experiments who refused to be "broken." She wouldn't ever give up, and just sit there idly in her cage. No, not her. Not even when Christina started working at her lab, about two months after Echo arrived there. Not even when Kelly was killed; this only strengthened her resolve. She even learned how to hide the pain from Christina's pain serum, to make it seem like she didn't feel anything. Well, almost. She never could completely hide it; no one could. But oh, even to come close to hiding it annoyed Christina, and that was why Echo did it.
She actually planned out her escape long before it happened. She was inspired by the legend of Guadalupe, which had been spread around in her lab before Christina came. When Christina came, however, she would severely punish anyone who so much as mentioned the name "Guadalupe." She wanted her subjects to have no hope of escape. And it worked . . . for most of them. Echo, however, wouldn't give up that easily. Then came the moment she was waiting for; a single strand of Christina's hair fell from her, within reach of Echo's cage. She waited for Christina to leave, and picked up the hair, immediately shifting into a copy of Christina. From that point, she was able to convince one of the other scientists that she /was/ Christina, and had been locked in the cage while she was giving the experiments their injections. He set her free, fearing Christina's wrath. After he'd left, she set to freeing the other experiments, hoping to start a revolution as Guadalupe had. She was sadly disappointed. Only about half a dozen experiments were even willing to escape, let alone revolt. They were so afraid of what Christina would do to them if they were caught that they decided that just staying in their cages would be better. Echo tried her best to persuade them, but there was nothing she could do. After they escaped, she and the other escapees parted ways, and from there, Echo managed to find her way to the House. The only thing she brought with her was a slightly wrinkled picture of what she looked like, before the experimentation. It shows her from the shoulders up, and she looks maybe 15 or 16 in the picture. It makes her sad, because she can never return to her natural body again.