☄ ooc | canon information
[Character Name]: Suou Pavlichenko
[Series]: Darker than Black
[Hometown: Vladivostok, Russia
[Nationality]: Russian/Japanese
[Age]: 13
[history]:
Thirteen years ago, two areas of anomalous and chaotic space appeared in Brazil and Tokyo, destroying the 1500 km of the surrounding landscape and snuffing out the stars in the same breath. Given the names Heaven’s Gate and Hell’s Gate, they were inaccessible territories from which originated a myriad of mysterious phenomena and foreign substances.
Within a week of the Gates’ manifestation, came the appearance Contractors and Dolls-- purely rational creatures with supernatural abilities. And for each Contractor appeared a false star in the sky. Originally humans, they manifest powers, both arbitrarily and unexpectedly, in exchange for their emotions. For Contractors are purely rational for the sake of self-interest, capable of disregarding emotions in any given situation. That’s not to say they are truly and utterly emotionless, but rather that their natural and automatic state is that of unmitigated rationality and reason. Emotions are no longer instinctive, so they must actively make the effort to feel. However, the level of emotion they express seems to vary from Contractor to Contractor, some seeming completely emotionless, while others seeming hardly discernible from humans. It is either that experience conditions them to exercise their emotions - like a screaming baby who becomes more conscious and rational as he matures into an adult (except it’s flipped around, pure rationality being the starting point for Contractors) - or it could just be a matter of differences, like how one person’s emotional sensitivity can be the complete opposite of another's. Perhaps that is why the most unemotional of Contractors seem to be children or newly born Contractors. Every Contractor must also pay remuneration: an involuntary action they perform every time they use their powers, such as eating flowers, de-aging, or breaking their own fingers.
Dolls seem to be completely emotionless, unlike the purely rational Contractor. They possess no semblance of a personality unless “programmed” or implanted with the memory and personality of another humans. All dolls have the ability to send observation ghosts to track objects and people, and unlike Contractors they are not required to pay remuneration. However, there are instances where Dolls seem capable of expressing emotions. (i.e: Yin cries at the light of a fake moon), but they seem few and far between.
A war soon erupted soon erupted for control of the Gates, and government and underground agencies quickly found that Contractors were weapons of the future. Quick and effective, “killing machines,” they were sent to the battlegrounds of South America in the fight for control over the Heaven’s Gate. The war eventually ended with the disappearance of Heaven’s Gate, taking with it a chunk of South America.
But even with the end of the war, underground syndicates and government agencies continued with their (mostly illegal) dealings with the remaining gate in Tokyo. And as with the war, Contractors became the agent of choice when it came to obtaining secret information or stealing sensitive Gate material from other agencies or research labs.
More information regarding various aspects of the universe, including information on the first season.
But her own experience with the gate occurred on the night of the failed plan (named the Tokyo Explosion) on a continent away from Tokyo. Perhaps it was both ill luck and irony that a meteor would strike in the area of their camping ground - a meteor that was seems somehow linked to the Gate itself. Though all of them survived the accident, Suou’s twin brother Shion became a contractor. It seemed to be the result of the meteor strike, implying that the meteor itself could somehow be linked to the Gate seven thousand and more kilometers away.
Fast forward two years in the future to Vladivostok, Russia. Considering the event two years ago, she seems like a normal thirteen year-old girl. That’s not to say things are completely normal - her brother remains a Contractor, and though his powers are unknown, his remuneration is revealed to be lower body paralysis. Despite the warnings from her father not to trust Shion, she remains the ever faithful sister, spending time with him even if he’s supposedly lost his heart.
But it takes only a single night for everything to fall apart. During the first episode, Suou realizes that her best friend Tanya has become a Contractor and secretly watches as the Russian government takes her into custody. Things only escalate, as she returns home to see her house being raided by Russia’s Federal Security Service. She appears prepared for this sort of event, as she immediately dives into a hidden underground passage leading to her house. But as she makes her way toward the house, her brother’s voice (telepathy) directs her to change into his clothes, as they would go after her if they realized who she was. Shion himself has disappeared mysteriously. And we see this disguise only brings her more trouble, as the soldiers and Contractor agents (both FSS and some sort of secret agency) seem to be after Shion for some reason yet unrevealed, besides the fact that he has possession of a “meteor core.” Maybe it’s the same meteor core as the one used as the conductor in the blast that made Heaven’s Gate inaccessible and invisible.
Once in the house and changed, she stumbles upon her father’s electrocuted corpse, but she barely has time to look before she is dragged away by a Contractor agent. This agent, April (once disguised as one of the scientists working for her father), momentarily mistakes her for Shion, but takes her along with her as she escapes. To summarize the following events quickly- April is attacked by a Contractor from the FSS and manages to kill him, but only to die by the hands of Hei.
Hei mistakes Suou for Shion, and demands her to hand over the meteor core. Managing to blind him with the flash of her camera, she escapes and runs off to hide with a friend. But the only friend who has yet to have his memory erased is her friend Nika, who had managed to escape from the government agent. (As he was also the boyfriend of the Contractor taken into custody.)
After hiding with Nika, she decides to draw out Hei by posting the picture taken during the flash diversion upon fences across the town. It’s a foolhardy move, but for Suou, finding her brother is the only thought on her mind. Hei tracks her down, only then realizing that she was never Shion. Of course, providence says Russian soldiers must suddenly rush into the scene minutes later to capture Shion (aka, Suou). Hei takes Suou with him as he runs away, stopping short as Contractors from another agency (M16) also join in on the attack. As he tries to kill one of them, Suou rushes into the scene and yells at him to stop. And in the process, she is caught in the crossfire of an attack against Hei. The attack traps both Hei and the girl in a force field, shocking Hei in a current of power, but leaving Suou seemingly unscathed. She rushes forth in a daze and pushes Hei out of the way and into the bordering ocean.
She somehow (she doesn’t remember herself) drags him from the water to Nika’s hideout. (Nika had already left to search for Tanya, leaving Hei and the girl alone). Upon waking up, Hei repays her kindness by tying her up and taking her captive. The next day, she finds a note left by her brother Shion in one of her photobooks which hints to his new location - Ikebukuro, Japan.
Hei tells his captive that he’ll take her there, and that’s where our story begins.
[character abilities]:
She’s is quick to understand new information and connect the dots. By virtue of being a Gate researcher’s daughter and a Contractor’s brother, she possesses more knowledge than the average person about Hell’s Gate and Contractors. For instance, she’s able to give the exact term for the synchrotron light that surrounds a Contractor when she uses her powers. She’s also able to know exactly why and by what method her friends’ memories have been erased.
At the end of episode three, she becomes a Contractor or at least she acquires the ability of one. She is able to summon a PTRD-41 rifle from thin air and to use it like a pro, even though it’s two time the size of her. Whether this is actually the true nature of her power or not is still unknown, as her shift into a Contractor is a mystery in itself.
Hei has also begun training her in hand-to-hand combat.
She is also a budding photographer.
[third person / log sample]:
She breathes, each exhale strung thin over long seconds as her heartbeat drops with a slow and heavy tap. This time she can do it, she can curl her fingers against the metal, brush them against the curve of the trigger in a single swoop. It’s so simple, so effortless; her heart drops another beat. Those aren’t her hands shaking; they’ve only just paused
She can see them nestled together, heads tucked into the water with single long, thin legs raised against their sides. They’re already got red splattered against their necks, their wings tipped with black and their chest packed with white plume feathers. Are they lovers, standing as a pair like that? Friends? A sister and a brother.
But she could do it this time.
Last time she had hesitated, her fingers had trembled slightly against the trigger. How easy her father had made it! Given her the coordinates and everything, but all she could do was stare forever long- the black eyes pulling at her heart until it finally moved. But in the end, she couldn’t fire- she had completely missing the target on purpose. It moved, dashing away the moment it heard her shot.
She couldn’t fire then. But now, now she could- her heart wouldn't move anymore, nothing would tighten up the strings or the beats because Contractors didn’t have hearts. They… she could not feel anymore, for they had thrown their emotions into the pile of junk where they had tumbled down into the pile of teeth, venom, and claws.
“Down a little…”
She hated his voice. She despised him; that man who had killed her father. The Contractor. He was like the rest of them, beings that could kill without a moment’s hesitation. They were monsters that deserved to be destroyed. And how easy she could do it! The rifle was twice her height, but felt only natural in her hands as if the metal had always known her fingers. She could turn around, point the barrel at his head and fire a shot that could decimate a tank.
But she wouldn’t kill him. She couldn’t kill him because she had said before she couldn’t. But I would rather die than kill someone. She would never get used to it. And as a Contractor, she could only be rational and her rationality told her that killing the man who could bring her to Shion was pointless. How else would she find him? She had only dreamed of going to Japan before, to find finally find her mother, but now…
This time she could do it. A flash of light and it’d be all over, and that’s all it would take-
A shot like a clap of thunder hits the air and misses the target.
“The alignment was off.”
“You could prepare a better lie if you are a Contractor.”
☄ taken from the beginning of episode 3; the morning she wakes up after rescuing hei