application.
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Carlee/Car
OOC Journal: yourlivewire
Under 18? No.
Email/IM: seemssosurreal@hotmail.com; this pink ribbon @ AIM
Characters Played at Singularity: N/A
Character Information ;
Name: Max Guevara/X5-452
Name of Canon: Canon
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Regular Wiki; Dark Angel Wiki
Canon Point: Mid-2x01 (Designate This), just as she wakes up from being interrogated/unknowingly injected with the retrovirus intended to kill Logan Cale.
Setting:
The Dark Angel universe takes place in a world that's gone to hell. North America has been plunged into a massive economic depression due to an electromagnetic pulse that was set off on the East Coast by a group of terrorists on June 1, 2009, which caused the vast majority of computer and electronic communications to go dead. The United States has gone from "superpower to third-world country overnight", but by the time most of the series takes place, the country is slowly starting to build itself back up, or at least trying to. Those who have money have the power, and those who have the power often abuse it for their own benefit. One man who has money has become sick of seeing people abusing it, and he's set up a network known as Eyes Only to inform the general public when they're getting screwed over, how, and attempting to stop it.
Years before the Pulse happened, there was a covert operation in the works that was taken over by the government with the intent to create the perfect soldier. Embryos were created with DNA from the world's greatest historical figures and strongest, fastest animals, implanted into surrogates, and delivered as children who were almost immediately put into intense military training. On February 12, 2009, there was an escape from the facility involving the fifth group (known as X5) after one of the children was shot to death in front of the rest of the group by the man who'd been in charge of them their entire lives. Twelve survived the escape, and the story of the show revolves around one of the escapees - Max - and her search for the rest of the people like her while trying to keep herself safe and free from the people who'd created her.
Later on, in the second season of the show, it's discovered that Manticore started out as an attempt to create a way to save humanity from a plague that was associated with a comet that was going to pass over the Earth and kill 97% of humanity. The man behind this was known only as Sandeman, and his plan never had a chance to be revealed, but it involved Max being created as the savior of the human race. The second season also features a lot more transgenics on the loose after Max burns the Manticore facilities down and sets everyone free (though at the point I'm taking her from, this has yet to take place) and a new enemy in the form of the Familiars, the breeding cult that's counting on the destruction of the human race so they can rise up and take over the world.
Personality:
Max was born and spent half her life being trained as as soldier, which is something that comes up in her life more often than she'd like to think about it. After escaping, it took her some time to figure out how the world outside worked and how to think and act as an individual - her whole life up until that point had been dictated by Manticore, which had taught her the importance of relying on your unit.
Certain events in her life have shaped her personality - her experience at Manticore, fear of getting recaptured, and her experience with a foster family with an abusive father figure made her distrustful of authority figures and people in general. It's made her believe that it was easier and safer (if not necessarily better) for her to be alone, causing her to develop a hard, caustic personality meant to push people away before they got too close and realized what she was. But being separated from the unit she'd come to know and love as her family ingrained a strong desire for human connection, which led to her feeling incredibly guilty for leaving her foster sister in such a harmful situation and to her determination to find the rest of the X5s that had managed to escape.
She often analyzes people when she first meets them, sizing them up as an opponent, because she never knows who could be working for Manticore or would want to turn her in if they discovered what she was. She judges people quickly and is often unwilling to change her mind once she's made it up, especially if they've done something to harm her or to one of her friends or family.
She prefers not to get too close to people romantically (and for a long time, she closed part of herself off from her friends), not only because she's afraid of being hurt, but because she doesn't want to be turned over to the police or government, or worse, to get the people she cares about hurt or killed.
Despite all this, it's hard for her to break off an emotional connection once one forms - she continued to work with Logan even after they broke up (though after that episode, they were working together against the Familiars and to keep the transgenics safe) and believed that Brin was still the sister she knew despite much evidence to the contrary (Brin was the one who turned Tinga into Renfro) and Lydecker's insistence that she would kill her without a second thought. She inspires fierce loyalty in those she's close with and despite being somewhat abrasive and arrogant, she's incredibly loyal herself and will always help a friend out of a jam.
She often acts on instinct and doesn't consider every possibility of what could go wrong in a situation. A prime example of this is her letting every transgenic out of Manticore - her intentions were good, but the idea of the less-human looking ones being hunted down and killed and not knowing how to behave in the outside world had never occurred to her. She does not handle emotional pain very well, preferring to hide it or to lash out at or stay away from whoever's causing it rather than working through it or talking about it. She's very stubborn and unwilling to admit when she's wrong, especially when she believes she's doing or has done the right thing for herself or the people her actions concern.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions:
Max is genetically engineered, and the best way I can think of to describe her abilities is 'enhanced'. She's been built to be stronger, faster, and more durable than the average human (though she is by no means invincible), and animal DNA affords her the agility of a feline, the eyesight of a hawk, and the hearing of a bat. Her body's been enhanced in other ways as well: her blood contains a massive amount of stem cells, which means that her body can heal rapidly from injuries, and an enhanced immune system, which means she's immune to most diseases. She has been in intense military training since she was a very young child (and then was forced back into it at the age of 20), so she has knowledge of how to use various weapons (guns, grenades, bombs), is fluent in multiple languages, has been trained in various forms of hand-to-hand combat and endurance (a scene early on in the series shows a training exercise where she and the other X5s are forced to hold their breaths while being chained underwater; this exercise serves her well when she's forced to stay underwater as Manticore agents search for her after she escapes), and, though we don't see an example of this in the series, can probably operate a tank or a helicopter.
She also has a very high IQ and an eidetic memory, meaning that she is able to recall images, sounds, or objects in memory with extreme accuracy and in abundant volume, and in addition to her genetically engineered abilities, she is also a skilled cat burglar. It's also worth mentioning that she was engineered with no 'junk DNA', meaning that all of her gene sequences were engineered for a specific purpose, she just doesn't know what it is yet. There is a scene in episode 2x21 (Freak Nation) where the Familiars are closing in on the transgenics' location and she somehow knows that they're arriving. According to the commentary in episode, she was supposed to be hearing detached thoughts of the Familiars. It's been theorized that she would have developed other abilities that were seen in season two like telecoersion (seen in episode 2x15 (Fuhgeddaboudit)) - which is persuasion by voice, and telekinesis. At the point in canon I'm taking her from, she's not aware of any of this yet, but it may come up in the future, depending on if I canon-bump her and when I canon-bump her to.
As far as weaknesses go, she refuses to ever use a gun, which even with her abilities gives her a disadvantage in a fight unless she disarms her opponent. She has a fear of them that's related to her sister being shot and killed in front of her at the age of nine and an uneasiness around water that's related to being forced to hide underwater and chained to the bottom of a pool as part of her training. Another fear includes doctors, which is due to being injected with different diseases to see if she was immune, having her bones broken to see how fast they would heal, and to seeing her brother being autopsied after he died due to complications of the seizures all of the X5s suffered from (at the point in time I would be taking her from, she no longer suffers from them). Her genetic makeup includes feline DNA, which helps with her agility, but also causes her to go into heat two to three times a year. Something else worth mentioning is that she is the carrier of a virus that's genetically encoded to kill its target through physical contact - this wouldn't effect anyone but that person, but it would show up in a blood test.
When it comes to limiting her powers, my thoughts are that it would be very subtle. She would maybe realize that she was moving slower and couldn't hear or see things quite as well as she normally could, but it wouldn't hit her until she tried to use the abilities she typically relies on in dangerous situations (agility, speed, strength, and enhanced vision and hearing). She would still be genetically enhanced, and therefore, stronger than a typical human being would be, but capable of getting sick and it would take longer for the scar from the heart transplant she received at the end of season one to heal.
Inventory: Her Manticore uniform (weird picture, I know, but it was the only one I could find out of my collection of screencaps that showed the full uniform), consisting of a gray t-shirt, gray camouflage-print fatigue pants, and black boots, and standard-issue underwear, sports bra, and socks. So essentially, just the clothes on her back.
Appearance: She stands at about 5'6 and is on the thin side (recovering from heart transplant surgery and being forced back into training has caused her to lose a significant amount of weight), but with muscle tone. She has long, straight brown hair, wide brown eyes, full lips, and a light olive skin tone. (1; 2). She also has what appears to be a barcode tattoo on the back of her neck; this is actually her Manticore designation and it is encoded into her DNA, meaning it can't be removed permanently (and yes, she has tried to have it done).
Age: She's unaware of her official birthdate, but estimates that she is about 20/21 years old.
OC/AU Justification ;
If AU, How is Your Version Different From Canon, and How Will That Come Across?
If OC, Did You Run Your Character Through a Mary-Sue Litmus Test?
And What Did You Score?
Samples ;
Log Sample:
Everything Renfro was doing to try to break her was only making Max more determined to escape.
There wasn't much she had been able to do to her at first - she'd still been healing - but what she'd managed was effective enough. Renfro would leave her alone for hours, the volume of her heart monitor cranked up, so she could listen to her own heartbeat and remember that Zack had given up his own life so she could keep hers. And once she'd gotten well enough to go through physical training, things got a whole lot worse. She'd been deprived of food and water, kept in solitary for days, put through the same brutal testing she'd been forced through as a child.
All of that, she could handle. She'd been through it before and it hadn't gotten any easier to endure during the time she'd been away. But these last few things were what had really pushed her to find a way out, once and for all.
First, Renfro had shown Max Zack's body, which was somehow being kept alive in a tank, and then showed her pictures of Ben and Tinga and threatened Logan's life, telling her she was poison, that she destroyed everyone she loved. And then, as if to drive the point home, they'd assigned 494 as her breeding partner.
The whole idea of breeding partners, of forced mating, had been disgusting enough. But them assigning her someone who was a clone of someone who'd been part of her unit, someone who'd been her brother, made her stomach turn. Maybe 494 wasn't aware of Max's connection to his twin, but Max knew it couldn't have been a coincidence. They'd found his body, they would have been able to tell they'd been in a fight, that she'd been the one to kill him. So him being assigned as her breeding partner was just another cheap ploy at her emotions, another way they were trying to get her to break.
It wouldn't work. Maybe it had with Brin, but she refused to let them win. Ever since escaping the first time, she'd spent her entire life fighting Manticore, fighting for her freedom. Zack had died so she could have it. He wanted her to keep fighting them. And she refused to let him down.
The guards left, the lights went out, and she got off of her bunk, folded it up and attached it to the wall. She pulled out the file she'd been sawing through the bricks with and went back to work, ignoring the metal biting into her palm and the scratches on her knuckles. Her muscles still ached from that day's training exercises, every fiber of her screamed out for rest, for time to recuperate. But she ignored it, pushed through it, steeled herself. Reminded herself of who and what was waiting for her on the outside.
Logan and Original Cindy. The Space Needle and the market and her motorcycle and dinners cooked by Logan in his apartment and nights spent at Crash after work. Hell, she even missed Normal and Jam Pony, missed rude customers and lousy tips. Her life on the outside hadn't always been easy or fun, but it had been hers and she wanted it back.
Everyone here called her 452, and after some time she'd accepted it, started answering to it, because to not do so meant more torture and more time on the inside. But just because she answered Renfro with "yes ma'am" didn't mean she'd forgotten, or would ever forget.
"Max. My name is Max."
Network Sample:
[ the feed opens to show a young, brunette woman focusing intently on her bracelet, an expression of grim determination on her face as she toys with the functions. close observers may notice that she's wearing fatigues that could be associated with the military and that there's a thin sheen of sweat on her face, which looks considerably paler than it should. the feed sways a little, and the woman swallows hard as she steadies herself. once she's less uneasy and satisfied that she knows the functions well enough to move on, she addresses the public - whoever they may be - at large. ]
Not that I don't appreciate the vacation, but it really wasn't the best time to get picked up and dropped off in outer space of all places. [ her tone is very clearly skeptical - where she's from, the space program has been dead in the water for over a decade and was nowhere near the kind of progress that would allow humans to inhabit other planets when it was still active. ] I've got places to go and people to see, so if anyone's got any plans on getting out of here, sooner rather than later, I want in on them. [ pause. ] It'd also be good to know what I can really expect from this place, because I have a feeling they didn't tell me everything in the brochure.
[ a pause, and in that time some worry bleeds into her expression and tone. ]
And if there's anyone who knows what - [ she stops, then starts over. ] Can anyone tell me -
[ there's another pause, a longer one this time, and she shakes her head, eyes squeezing shut as she draws in a breath. she can't figure out how to word her question, and she doesn't know what she'd do if she knew the answer. so instead of asking, she takes a few more seconds to compose herself, then her eyes reopen as the breath is let out. ]
Forget it. Just, anyone who can tell me about either of the first two things, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks.