Echo

"All I know, is what it did take to make this
All I am, is what it will take to break this.
All I know, is what it did take to make this.
All I am is what it will take to break this.
Light it up now, Light it up now."

-Rawkfist, Thousand Foot Krutch [/center]


Name: Echo
Original Name: Serenity “Firefly”
Race: Human
Age: 25
Height: 5’7’’
Weight: 133
Birth place: Ylesia

Appearance:

Without the silly gadgets you see on her.
xxchange.deviantart.com/art/Yours-Forever-125578281
NOT MY ARTWORK.

Echo stands a few inches over average female height. She bears a narrow, rather straight frame and lacks any well defined curves. Where most women have average bosoms, Echo sports very little breast and could easily pass as flat chested in most clothing. She’s lean, her body built for a runner, and in the shape of a soldier obsessed with her physical endurance. If directed to run, Echo would, and she would run fast and long. Her muscles are highly toned and strengthened, but she is not bulky or blocky. Echo is not the strongest of the female assassins; she has extreme flexibility in place of strength and possesses quick reflexes, both of which were exaggerated in her specified training.

It’s Echo’s red-auburn hair that earned her the nickname “Firefly” when she was younger. Her mother had heard stories of little bugs that lit up the night and they were hard to catch. “Firefly” had become a perfect name for young Serenity. The hair is hardly longer than shoulder length, and straight as straight can be. Gray eyes stare from the gently curved features that contract the serious appearance she has developed through her training.

There’s one known and prominent scar from the Dxun survival, on her chest, just under her collar bone.



Personality: As a small toddler, before she became apart of Green Meadows’ “experiment”, she was a trouble maker. She enjoyed making her caretakers and her mother worry over her. They would talk to her though she didn’t understand, and in funny tones, and she found the uproar she could stir utterly amusing. Giggle fits were common as a very young girl, but that’s to be expected. Girls giggled. That is that.

When the chip was implanted, any urges, impulses, and emotions were suppressed. She had no control over them any longer, but another party did. From time to time, during some training exercises and simulations, and later during the real missions after the training, a tiny fragment of a certain emotion would trickle into her mind to make her more effective. And that was what Echo had become accustomed to.

Now the chip was gone. And when the RELIC had been deactivated, the very first thing Echo had felt had been fear. But not fear she had had before. It had been overwhelming. As was every emotion she had begun to experience. There were some she knew and was familiar to at a certain degree. Over the level of what she experiences makes her confused, and in most cases frightened. She battles it, knowing she cannot be frightened with herself while going through the galaxy.

When/if she has control of her emotions, Echo can/will be somewhat of a joker. She likes toying with the male mind especially, prodding at their egos and watching them to rash things to prove her wrong. Most times she can be serious and a rather “take charge” person if no one else will. Her discipline is strong. Her patience is thin.



Profession: Ex-Assassin

Skills: Green Meadows Assassin training, Focused martial arts (otherwise, hand-to-hand)

Equipment:
Civilian clothing
2 Datapad (one slicer programmed, another for various other things)
2 slug pistols
Small knife (basically a little more than a pocket knife)

Attributes:
Physical Strength: 7
Intelligence: 8
Speed: 9
Leadership: 3

Unarmed: 6
Melee Weapons: 4
Ranged Weapons: 4
Specialized Combat Skill: Hand to hand (MMA): 9
Special Non-combat Skill: Slicing: 8

Alignment: + 2

Ship Name: “Deliverance” Coronet-Class Light Freighter (clicky)

Bio:



Ylesia. However many generations of slaves upon slaves had been traded there for spices upon spices. How many generations have the slaves been bred for many a job? Bred for their talents or beauty? Bred for the ugly jobs of working in the deep spice factories? Tortured and worked to death, or shot in the place of their master, or traded for the greed of more money because the bidder bid highest. Many. There were many. Hundreds of slaves for thousands of purposes.

A slave’s life is not something to be looked forward to. The lowest of the low, forced into grueling jobs of some of the most unwanted jobs of the galaxy and for nothing. It’s a life of poverty, and for most, despair, unless their masters are the rare who give their slaves some privileges. That rarely occurred, even if the slaves were personal sometimes. Very personal. Sex slave personal. Some how, some way, the masters, who yelled at those who worked in the factories day in and day out, needed to fulfill their most basic desires.

So, when it is said that Serenity was an accident, understand the full meaning.

She was born into the not so lucky environment as natural as births were. No cushions of comfort, no nice cloths to wipe her clean, no softness to nuzzle into, and no plush bed to lay in. There were no doctors, no nurses, and no father to greet her. The first person to touch her was one of the other women the man kept for his personal pleasures. From scratchy and almost intolerable cloths and to her mother’s arms she went. The mother, Helen, had not been to proud of the fact she had been pregnant. She had not enjoyed it much at all, from knowing to the birth. But she saw she had a daughter. Had this been a boy, Helen might not have changed her opinion on the infant.

Helen had sworn she would hate the child. He would have the blood of her master, the sole man who tormented her and the other women he held. And most times a son grew to be directly like their fathers, or so many of the slaves believed. And the woman had believed she would have a son, following what little intellect and what beliefs she had. The child had simply kicked and kicked and played active in the womb, which the other women believed meant were the sure signs of a son.

But this was a daughter, much to the surprise of the women and Helen. And right there, Helen’s heart changed. A daughter was better. A daughter could inherit more of the motherly things. She had half the blood, when the slaves were believing that sons carried the full blood of their fathers. Daughters were hybrids. Daughters could be taught right from wrong better. Daughters would listen to mothers, surely. The fact she had a daughter made the woman much, much happier. And for a while she didn’t think of a name, but after staring down at a quiet and sleeping face, Helen called her, “Serenity”. The other women figured that was the child’s name, and started calling the small infant Serenity as well. Another belief: Once heard their name as infants, it was stuck to memory for the rest of their lives.

Serenity claimed a lot of attention, especially after the slave master had the rest of his women made permanently sterile, not wanting another “crying and squalling thing writhing in his slave chambers”. The women would take turns watching the baby, playing with it, trying to keep it amused, trying to help her grow to be strong. There were times a baby might not make it past their first few months. Helen and her friends started doing the best they could. When Serenity grew ill, they wrapped her tightly and hugged and murmured and rocked her, trying to make the child sleep as much as possible. Sleep cured illness around there, unless given medicine. The master wasn’t going to give them medicine for Serenity, they figured. They’d seen his dislike for the baby girl, and so they didn’t think to bring it to his attention. Sometimes though, if it appeared bad enough, one of the women would fake and get the medicine from the master. The master would give the medicine to his direct pleasure slaves, and then the women would turn around and give it to Serenity.

As little Serenity grew older the women started putting her through small “trials”. One of such happened when she began holding her head up on her own more often, they’d flip Serenity on the stomach and lay her on a cloth of some kind. How UNFAIR this was to Serenity! She screamed and howled and protested with all her might, lifting up a head and moving it so often only for it to fall back down on the ground. But the ladies never came and returned her to the comfort of her back. But they hid in the corners of the room, watching and waiting for the child to prove herself strong enough to turn herself over. They could not help the child; it would be unfair to the little baby. When the fussing refused to gain any help, Serenity began taking matters into her own hands and pushed and kicked and grunted, trying to turn herself over. It took a long while the first time, but she got it. And then those ladies came back out and flipped her on her tummy again! How dreadfully rude! This was a reoccurring act, the turning onto back, the flipping to the stomach. But the more it happened, the less fuss Serenity began to make of it.

After much of quitting the fuss and lifting her head and looking around on her own, Serenity found she liked it actually. It was a discovery, able to look around on her own actions. Then next step from being able to hold her torso up was rocking onto her knees; and from there only showed her potential to learn crawling, which the ladies were squealing over. This was taking weeks, but Serenity appeared as if she would survive living in the conditions the rest of them were in with each attempt and success the little girl did. Indeed, they were good signs, especially when baby Serenity would fall on her tummy and whimper a few cries before rising on her knees to try crawling once over.

And when the crawling began, so did the climb of hectic activity. Serenity had to be watched more and there was a frantic fluster whenever one could not find the baby. Serenity was hiding at an early age without meaning too under piles of clothes or anything big enough she could sit behind. Little toys, like ragdolls, were created for her by now, keeping her rather amused for extended periods of time.

And then, as she grew older and stronger still, those ladies tried making her stand! They’d hold her small wrists and coo things at her. Big eyes stared with the beginning of the trial, and she’d stand there and stare at the women who acted in all manners to prompt the toddler to walk.

Once Serenity learned to walk, she learned to run. She learned to run well. Between the running away and hiding and becoming bored with her toys, she was quickly turning into a nightmare for the busy and simple minded slave women. It became more disturbing when she grew to two years of age and dragged lightweight things, such as baskets, managed to flip them over so she may open doors, standing on sad upturned baskets. When Serenity managed to get out of sight, there was simply a panic. It grew worse the older she progressed and her speed was underestimated often for a three year old. Enough she drove the slave master angry. He became angry enough that he took the girl and threw her out into the market to sell, much to the distress of Helen and her concubine friends.

What an odd day that was for Serenity. For extra measures she was bound (to keep her from running away) and taken from her caretakers and mother. The girl didn’t know she wouldn’t see her mother again. She pranced off behind her already aggravated master, who later became her ex-master as she was handed off to another. This person brought her too a strange place, where large objects made loud whirring noises and jumped into the air. It was when she was being led onto one of those objects did Serenity understand something was truly going on, and it felt bad. She began to feel afraid as they put her off into a small room, and huddling in a corner, Serenity cried. There was a boy there with her, a boy who answered to the calling of “Jahn”, who told her, “It okay. Be okay.”

And she believed him.



Echo had no memories. She had neither family nor friends. She was here. There was nothing. She was nothing. At three years of age, she was nothing. Nothing. With an implanted microchip and a memory wipe, she became nothing. It was being born again for the sake of experimenting and rebuilding. She would be rebuilt into a creation someone else desired. She could and would be someone’s test subject. She would become Echo.

And to begin was to break down old habits still ingrained in her. There would be no emotion behind mindless habits. But picking of the nose and ears had to be taken care of, and it was. There was a harsh edge to everything. Nothing was warm, everything was bright, and shiny, and new, just like Echo. Growing up, basic life skills were implanted and young knowledge was pushed with simple puzzles that appeared almost mind boggling to a three/four year old. And because Echo ran a lot when given the space, the people began to set up goals for her running abilities. Four and a half proved further of Echo’s daredevil way of thinking, no longer causing havoc for others but more of trying things she necessarily sometimes shouldn’t. While being caught attempting to flip off from the lunch room table had cost her half her dinner and breakfast, it gave future trainers something to work with.

Five is when training began taking full-time status. It was obviously Echo was light and fast on her feet, already a runner, and already a sprinter. Out on the playground the children were put on and told to play “Tag”, if Echo didn’t want to be caught, she never was. So, the trainers decided to test speed differently. Being a flexible little girl, a thinker, and being speedy wound her up in martial arts training. Karate, to be precise, to begin with basics and her still very immature mind could wrap around.

This was accompanied by full team physical training. A routine was established. There was revelry (rudely prodding from bed those first few days), followed by the physical exercise of push-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, etc, etc and the dawn jog. Classes were established, beginning with basic math skills, history, and language. There were breaks for eating. There was even playground time, but more rules filled in empty spaces that had appeared from no where. Playgrounds became a jungle gym designed to test the ability of the children. Many times, if all the children were together, there’d be groups competing with other groups. And other times, with a handful of children, it would be one on one competition. Winners had prizes. Losers had punishments. It was through such exercises that Echo began to learn losing was not an option. Winning was all that mattered.

Her training progressed. Math skills advanced, language advanced, and other basic principals to being an assassin were included. These included the basics in medical knowledge and engineering, as well as how to operate a weapon. Slicing and hacking became a looked into skill for Echo, and soon became another focus point. The trainers increased her through karate quickly, drilling far more than basics now. Some Aikido training was interlaced.

By nine, Echo’s training was coming along nicely. Her solo skills were sharp. Her group cooperation was still slightly unstable. And partnered she did nicely with as long as someone didn’t get in her way, which would have to be changed. So far, her greatest cooperation skills were with Delta, who was growing into a small rifle expert for his age. Definite sharpness from the training was shining through. She was, so far, a success. It was planned to keep her this way.

There were far more dangerous trials to face.



These scientists, so to say, wanted these twenty-six children advanced, and advanced fast. It was planned out for puberty to be early and finish early, to promote the body faster. Nine from fifteen was the schedule, and nine to fifteen it was. If it hadn’t been for her chip, Echo would’ve been a miserable girl. Puberty was the time hormones got the best of many young girls. They became irritable and terribly moody with wild mood swings. Several girls became unpredictable. With the chip, it suppressed her emotions, thus disabling her from feeling her mood swings as a normal young girl would. The worst Echo had to deal with was the beginning of menstrual periods.

Her growth spurt smacked her in the face, and Echo found herself swiftly growing past most of the boys for the first couple of years. Definite changes took hold of her. Her face shape changed, her hips fledged out, and her breasts came to notice. By the time she was twelve, she appeared as if she was fifteen from the advancement. And when she was fifteen, puberty curved off.

And then came more hell for Echo’s body to go through. The freak scientists added more advancements, and forcing Echo to undergo some surgery. She underwent eye implants, a lenses placed into her eye to allow her see clearer, better, over par to the average human being. Though slightly sensitive at first, Echo found herself noticing more, the details of her vision sharper. She could see better out of the corner of her eyes and it had saved her from getting injured seriously during her intense martial arts training.

Another surgery taken place was removing a set of her ribs. Joints were removed and replaced with more durable material than just cartilage. Echo, already very flexible before the surgery, found the range of motion appealing. In training, her flexibility in her style proved important. She had turned into a blur of nimbler limbs.

And lastly minerals and vitamins were added to her diet. Her muscle strength increased. Sparring and practicing her skills in judo and jujitsu started having heavier and taller targets with thick, almost impenetrable armor. As her strength grew it became easier to handle those targets, twisting their joints around and breaking them even through armor if jerked the correct way. The targets may have had a weight advantage over her, but Echo was faster and more flexible out of her armor, and sometimes she had a strength advantage.



For the most part, after the enhancements, the training schedule resumed. They still ran in the mornings, ate at lunch time, practiced their specialties, classrooms, weapons training/practice, and there was sleep. It was the same, except for bigger and greater, more challenging for the young assassins. Echo’s slicing skills were superb, though her trainers never told her so. Everything was less than acceptable. Everything had to be better. Better, better, better. That was all it was.

As an individual, she could hold her own and complete the simulated missions in record time. As a group, she cooperated well enough the trainers called it a pass. And by now, those who did well with partners had an assigned partner. For partner simulations, Echo was still at Delta’s side. Echo did best when she did not have to worry about others so much, hence while her group simulations were not as superb as her individual and partnered simulations.

At sixteen came the major and final challenges, the make or break challenges. Surviving Dxun had been one of those final challenges. It would determine their ability to survive. If one didn’t survive then they would be dead. Dxun. It was a dangerous jungle moon, dense and full of predators. Even the prey was considered menacing and difficult to kill and ward off. Dxun was certainly a bit of a challenge for teenagers.

Plucked from their comfortable training facility, the twenty-six little assassin creatures were dropped onto the Dxun moon. The instructions were to survive for nearly a month. Live or die, was the first thing Echo had though upon being left by herself. It was bad to be by herself. She had a knife and rope. That was it. And she wasn’t happy with it. The first thing Echo did was not getting eaten. There was no way she was fighting some creature off with a knife and animals were slightly more predictable, and very different, from human beings. And what was she going to do with a rope? Beat the creature’s nose with it? No, so, Echo took her chances and ran, getting tactical and outsmarting the creature to save her skin from getting eaten. And from there took great care as she walked through the jungle and eventually meeting up with Delta, who she believed was going to shoot him with the bow he had made. Thankfully he didn’t.

The two stuck together on the moon, establishing a sort of camp and sticking with it. Delta would take that bow of his and shoot the smaller more defenseless critters of the jungle. Echo, from time to time, scouted more of the natural foods. She would climb tree like it was cool and cut down some sort of odd fruit. When building shelter, or rebuilding (rains and mudslides and predator attacks), she would climb up to find a few finer more vines or wood to use because she was picky sometimes.

In fact, being among the trees is how she got her scar. If she hadn’t been so stupid and oblivious, she might’ve avoided the giant animal leaping from some hidden branch and colliding into her. There was a terrible writhing between the two, human and beast. Echo did her best to disentangle herself from the beast and get away but Delta in the end made use of the single knife they were allowed to carry and killed the maalraas. Bleeding from the chest, where a failed attempt at clawing out her throat had occurred, Echo resigned to lying on the ground for a moment, her body unwilling to move for a moment or two. Her wound was later dressed and healed into the scar she has now.

For the most part surviving wasn’t much a problem. They were there. They ate. They survived. They lived to see another day as they were picked up from their month long survival test and taken back the Green Meadows.



Echo’s assignments were matching to her talents, as any smart mission controller would make them. Echo’s record was filled of her success rates and soon on the speed of which she completed her tasks. She was a go-go girl. Once in somewhere, she rarely seemed to stop or slow down too much. She was in quick and almost doubles the speed heading out. She could be sneaky, she could be loud, she could be as discreet as needed, or draw the right amount of attention to herself. Echo, just as the other twenty-five around her, was, indeed, one of the best assassins ever trained.

Legends. Every last one of the assassins did enough to be considered as one. They were faster and stronger and smarter than the average human, sometimes over the average assassin and bounty hunter. And they lacked one thing that could make them above average: no emotion.

Delta and Echo remained partners, their skills simply falling into place to cover each others’ weak spots. Unlike the simulations, however, this was real life where they were in danger of potentially being killed. This is where their partnership was put more to the test: the real field. Delta always took care of the long range problems, or blowing a hole in the door. She never had to worry about being shot from behind in any of their missions.

((The following was provided by Dire Wolf))
A few years later Delta and Echo were assigned to terminate a hutt who had decided to short change a rival criminal organization for drug money. He elected that it was a good idea to go back on the deal... after credits changed hands. The other organization didn't like this one bit, so they hired a team of one of the 26 assassin's to take care of the loathsome gas bag. While they may have been expensive, the success rate of nearly 99% was well worth the price... especially considering that anyone else would simply crash and burn before they could even hope to approach the hutt's complex.

Delta and Echo infiltrated the hutt's palace on Nal Hutta easy enough, all that it really took was someone who had an uncanny ability in hacking, which Delta's companion just “happened” to have. The two swept through the palace like shadows in the night, silently killing all of the hutt's hired help in the way or deactivating the security systems that were in place. The entire operation was smooth sailing... until they came up to the slug's throne room. Well, that was smooth sailing as well. All that it took was for Delta to slink up close to the giant thing and slit his massive throat with his combat knife... the two were out of the palace before anyone discovered what was going on.
((Dire Wolf’s credit ends here. ))




At age twenty-three, reality caught up with Echo. A woman by the name of Myri worked at the Green Meadows, but figured there was something quite suspicious on its works. One day she met a pair of assassins, and realized they were emotionless. When she finds out more, she decides to aid her own guilt in her involvement and hacked her way in the mainframe and deactivating six chips. One of those chips belonged to Echo, and yet another to Delta.

It had been a rather rude wakening for Echo. She hadn’t felt much of any emotions, and when there finally was one, she was overwhelmed by it. She didn’t know about it, and that’s when her fear of it kicked in, and the switch to fear was just as numbingly overwhelming. With Delta and another couple of other assassins, she made her getaway. Echo remained with Delta, however, as they took possession of a ship and ran away.

From here, life will bring the rain.


Password: Vornskr

RP Sample:

There was no sleep. Sleep didn’t evade her. Sleep never came to her. Sleep didn’t exist. Dreams didn’t exist. Simply a life she didn’t want. A life she would never dream of having. It existed against her will. She couldn’t control it. This isn’t what she wanted! She didn’t try so hard to have her life be so dark. For life to be such a menace, to have men half-dead follow her footsteps, seeming to never being left behind no matter how fast or how hard she ran. She felt almost sluggish as she ran. Her feet could pound the ground as much as she willed, but it felt slow. She thought there was resistance. NO! They were getting closer!

Miserable looking men, sickly and twisted, bloody and thin so much she could see their bones against the evil bright green lighting that flashed around her. They were fear striking, lurching like they were zombies freshly arisen from the dead. Her heart pounded in her throat, eyes widened as they clawed up to her, just barely at her heels. They weren’t fast! She was fast! She knew she was fast! Why wasn’t she being so? Any progress they made was slower than molasses. She was quick; she remembered being called “cheetah” because of her speed. Why wasn’t she being speedy now, when she needed it the most?

One of the horrors snagged her by her clothing and she felt something clutch at her ankle. And another hideous thing grasped her wrist. Echo screamed. The fear was too powerful. She screamed herself into the wakeful world. The world she truly lived in. The screech stopped short. She was able to run now. From the bed she leaped, stumbling into a wall. Her breath came quick and she scrambled to open the door and trip down the hall, leaving the darkness behind. Almost blindly down the hall she went, getting away, running from it, until she came into the cockpit. Echo paused for a moment, panting heavily as she stared at the swirl of stars before her. Her fingers gripped at the sides of the doorway as her eyes wandered the blinking lights across the controls.

Echo turned, dashing down the other side of the hallway and making way for the living area as if she were mad. Hands thrashing, she ran into the table and fell into the seat she had been looking for. Crawling forward while feeling with her hands, she found the corner and drew herself into it, the tears coming slowly down her face by now. She huddled into herself, knees to chest and arms around her coiled legs. Echo pressed her face to her knees and shut her eyes tight, only to open those again upon seeing the nightmare replayed behind closed eyelids. They wandered the darkened room, fixing to one place at one point. She didn’t see Delta enter the living space, not until he was almost right beside her. He stooped to wrap his arms around her. At first Echo made a move to stop him, but then just allowed him to embrace her.

“Don’t let it get me…”

“Its okay, it will be alright. Nothing will hurt you. You're safe.”

“Safe…” she murmured back at him, her hand resting on his arm and her head resting lightly on his shoulder as she sucked in a shaky breath. “I can’t… can’t fight illusions…” And this was so very, very true.

“The dream world is my greatest enemy.”