ownperson | duplicity re-app

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Name: Blue
Age: 26
Contact:

bluecitrine
Timezone: BST or GMT depending
Other Characters: South's previous acceptance + Val Romanyszyn

« « « IC INFORMATION

Name: Agent South Dakota
Door: Dominant, re-app. Previous Acceptance.

Canon: Red vs. Blue
Canon Point: RvB6x06, her death + Piper90 CRAU and Duplicity memories

Age: Unknown, estimated 34 with game time
Appearance: One, Two. South's 6'6", white, blonde with purple bangs, and blue eyes. She's muscular from years as a soldier and rigorous training. She has various scars, including a particularly gnarly one around her left knee.

History:

South was one of 50-odd agents enlisted into Project Freelancer, an experimental military program that was meant to help find a "magic bullet" to end humanity's 20+ year intergalactic war with an alien force known as the Covenant. The program was intended to test the combat application of military AI partnered with individual soldiers—originally. Only one AI was granted for this purpose, but the Director of the program found a way to make more—this involved torturing the AI to make it split off pieces of itself, an action which violated laws surrounding the handling of sensitive data about humanity during the war. This was one of the Project's many crimes.

South (and her brother North) climb the ranks of Project Freelancer to sit in the top 10. For a while, South is ranked above her brother by one place—4th, whilst he’s 5th—until a mission at Bjorndal Cryogenics. Working together, North’s attempts at guidance throw South off her game and she’s discovered. In the aftermath, South’s rank is dropped and she never regains it. South is shafted by the Project at every turn. She’s denied a place on an important mission, has her rank repeatedly dropped, and she's eventually denied an AI whilst her brother is set to be granted one. This is a part of an ‘experiment’ by the Project’s leadership, designed to observe the effects of giving one twin an AI and the other nothing.

Eventually, Agent Connecticut—one of South's teammates and friends—defects from the Project to seemingly side with the enemy, and no one knows why. Relationships in the top ranks grow tenser than ever.

North is assigned his AI, Theta, a childlike fragment who seeks reassurance from North and soon takes up much of his attention. South grows to resent Theta quickly, both because she is becoming sure she herself will never get an AI and because she sees North as playing happy families with him whilst ignoring their deteriorating relationship.

Information Connecticut left behind eventually makes its way to Agent Texas, who recruits Agent York and North to help her break-in to rescue the Alpha AI. During this break-in, South confronts Agent Texas with a Missile Pod and could have stood a chance at beating her, if not for North intervening. After this, the odds turn against South. With an AI, an experimental shield unit and two sniper rifles, North handily defeats South by shooting her in the leg, then carries her off the ship, essentially forcing her defection.

Sometime soon after their defection, South receives and accepts an offer from Command to ‘find, monitor and retrieve’ North and his AI; in exchange, she gets them to promise her an AI of her own. As Recovery Two, South lies to both her brother and Command. She never turns North in, but she continues to try and get him to give Theta up, especially once they realise that it’s possible they’re being tracked by something else—an ex-teammate now being controlled by his rogue AI fragment and hunting down other agents with AI, known as the Meta.

South had grown to resent North and Theta's relationship more and more over the time they spent on the run together, and ultimately, when the Meta attacked and targeted her brother, she did not interfere until it was too late, not willing to risk her own life to save his. North dies, South watches, and the Meta knocks her out. She wakes up a while later, receives orders from Command, and then fakes unconsciousness until Agent Washington arrives. She lets him fake her death, follows through on her orders, acting the part of an unaware ally, and then ‘kills’ Wash (she shot him in the back and he later recovered) to give herself an opportunity to escape.

CR AU (Optional):

Piper 90: South woke up in the gone-away world after another night spent alone on the run and, like every New Hire before her, was implanted with a shock collar, interrogated, and forcefully inducted into Jorgmund's workforce aboard the rig. New Hires were expected to complete missions on Jorgmund's behalf out in the hostile, ever-changing world left behind by the Go-Away War—a war that used anti-matter bombs that stripped matter down to something called Stuff, a substance that could take the shape of anything you could imagine. Usually the worst things.

Unfortunately for her, she wasn't the only person from her world aboard the rig—Agent Washington, who she'd recently shot in the back and left for dead, greeted her with a fight that was only broken up by her twin brother, also recently betrayed. Not long after, Agent York arrived, and she instantly poisoned that relationship by refusing to give him his AI back after a quirk of their timelines meant she arrived with Delta instead of York. This set the tone for her first few months on the rig.

South was initially resistant to admitting she'd done anything wrong, and had multiple altercations with Washington, falling outs with her brother, and confrontations with York. Things with North got better for a time after she found out about the psychological experiment done on them by the Project, designed to see how their relationship would buckle under uneven treatment, and this repaired relationship was her motivation for starting to become a better person and admitting her regrets.

Unfortunately it didn't last. One mission saw the group forced into sitcom roles in a town turned into a black-and-white sitcom community by an entity and Stuff; here, South was assigned as Washington's 'wife' and the two barely resisted coming to blows. They ultimately made an uneasy truce, knowing that this level of hostility was unsustainable, and agreed to rein it in to verbal jabs. North, who didn't know about this agreement, reacted poorly to Washington 'threatening' his sister and it was revealed he'd neither forgiven Washington for killing South (in her future) or actually forgiven South.

Not long after, a memory sharing event forced her to show York and Wash what happened when she betrayed her brother, and she forced North to confront what she'd done for real, this time. In the aftermath, she returned York's AI and started working on herself more seriously. This ultimately led to her taking up a position as a double agent to the corporation, hoping to get inside information she could use to help the other New Hires. She and Washington, who was already in a similar position, lashed out at each other thinking the other was a traitor only to realise they must be both doing the same thing and agreeing to work together.

When her best friend on the rig, Brand, had his life partner go home unexpectedly, she comforted him and let him move into her room as her brother had moved out. He would go on to comfort her in return when North made it clear he had yet to forgive her, and may never do so, and was the first person not from her world who didn't drop her like a stone when she told him what she'd done to sour her relationship with North.

Eventually, the group decided to make a move towards breaking themselves free; South was part of a small team who infiltrated secure areas of the rig and managed to acquire important documents, blackmail material, and an unimplanted shock collar. At the same time, other members of the group killed the rig's abusive trainer and made it look like natural causes—however, the executives were not convinced, and later used his murder as an excuse to publicly execute a well-known and well-liked member of the group who was responsible for the encrypted network the New Hires used to subvert Jorgmund control.

South jumped into action alongside everyone else. She offered Carolina back-up when she made the bold play of confronting an executive, that ultimately paid off. She defended innocents on the rig from Liquidation Squads that were set on them after another of the corp's crimes was revealed to the masses, and had probably too much fun getting to beat some people up again. When, finally, they broke free and were able to go home, Carolina and Washington offered to take her onto their team.

Previous Duplicity Memories: When South first arrived in Duplicity in September 2021, she walked right into familiar drama with old friends from home. She managed to convince them all she had changed from her worst days, but her first few months were still characterised by emotionally fraught arguments with her brother, North, and other issues with the other Freelancers. After an city-wide effect that caused LIERs to believe they were natives to the city, she made peace with Agent Washington, specifically, despite their messy history. She was briefly contracted to Agent Carolina, before she vanished, followed in quick succession by both North and York, leaving her and Wash as the last Freelancers standing, a relationship that's become load bearing for the both of them in the time since.

Knowing that at home she's dead, and technically being more free in Duplicity than on the rig, she settled into Duplicity with not exactly ease, but minimal issue. She became close to a handful of people, most notably Ducky who she fell in love with and briefly contracted before she vanished, and Sombra, who she first met as a result of her trying to break into her work and them both getting hit by aphro. Sombra technically blackmailed them into their Contract, when South was in jail for failing to make one in time, but they quickly became close and eventually also fell in love. They were planning to renew their contract to Permanent before South was briefly sent home.

Largely, being in Duplicity meant South learning how to live a more civilian life with people she actually cared about, whilst dealing with the unique problems posed by living in the city.

Personality:

Positive Trait: DEVOTED - This may seem like a contradiction, considering her repeated instances of backstabbing, but the thing about South is that whilst she's not always good at showing it, and when she does she always doesn't do so in a typical way, she does care deeply about those she considers 'her people'. Before things really fell apart at Project Freelancer she never failed to have her teammates' backs in the field; she showed concern for York when he was injured, for CT when she was acting strangely, and rushed to her brother's aid when he got himself shot protecting her. Before she betrayed her brother, she deliberately didn't report his location to the Project so as to try and buy more time to get him to abandon Theta and escape with her. Aboard the rig, she was fully prepared to risk her own capture and death to play double agent and infiltrate the organisation to try and break them free. Here in Duplicity, she would do just about anything for those closest to her, whether that's having their back, bracing to get into a fight for them, making them talk about their problems, or just buying Sombra anything she could ever want.

It's only when she, herself, feels betrayed, or when her selfish need to survive takes over, that her devotion finally breaks under the pressure. So long as you keep South's loyalty, she can become the kind of person who'd set the world on fire to keep you both warm.

Negative Trait: SELFISH - South has always been a selfish person. Her own needs and particularly her survival have, typically, ranked above everything else—even her own brother's life. This selfishness developed, in part, because her brother was the opposite. Everyone saw the twins as a unit, rather than individuals, and she rebelled against that perception by trying to be as distinct from her brother as possible; for every person that expected her to be more like him, or saw her as nothing but an extension of him, she grew more resentful.

Further manipulated by the Project through an experiment that deliberately treated her as the less worthy twin—North was given an AI, whilst South was not only never going to receive her own but was also given totally disparate treatment—she became more and more selfish. After Carolina was seriously injured, she petitioned for her AI should Carolina die. She spent two years lying to her brother by omission about working for Command, eventually putting him the position that got him killed. Her shooting Washington in the back came from the same place of self-preservation to a fault.

It's a tendency that has been reduced somewhat over her time in p90 and Duplicity, as the people around her nudged her towards being a better person. She learned to put the needs of certain others above her own, such as by sacrificing her relationship with her brother so that he'd process the trauma of her betrayal and putting herself at risk for the group on a few occasions in p90, whilst in Duplicity she's always tried to look out for those close to her. However, it's a tendency she is constantly fighting and selflessness still doesn't come naturally, especially outside of her limited circle of close confidants.

Negative Trait: ANGRY - South feels and expresses most of her emotions with a notable intensity that is no clearer than it is in her expressions of anger. South has been known to physically lash out at her environment when something has driven her to rage, striking things such as lockers or electronic panels, and kicking over a bench during different outbursts—but never at people, or at least, not at friendlies. It doesn't take a lot to provoke her to anger, it's her default response to most minor frustrations and bad situations in place of other negative emotions, but nothing makes her angrier than feeling as if she's been wronged; she is aware of when she is being treated unfairly and does not let it slide without rebuke.

Usually, her anger is explosive and obvious—but not always, especially towards the end of the Project and beyond. She's capable of holding grudges and brewing in resentment over the course of months or years, before finally snapping—seen, once again, in her frustration with her brother. With South, the anger you should be scared of is the cold, slow-burning type, because it's this anger that has led to actual casualties.

She has, in the course of her time at p90, become less adept at converting other negative emotions to anger and better at controlling her urge to lash out, but this progress is tenuous and her inclination towards rage remains something she struggles with. In Duplicity, particularly stressful events or people close to her vanishing from the city have still led to her snapping; when her traitorous history was revealed where people who didn't know could see, she had to be stopped from attacking the culprit, and when her lover Ducky vanished, she lashed out at Sombra to try and push her away.

Negative Trait: ABRASIVE - South is, generally, a pretty brash, loud, and quite often rude person who isn't afraid to say what she thinks. Even when she's not angry, she's kind of an asshole; when she's not being an asshole, she's still rather blunt and rough around the edges. She swears like a sailor. She uses insults, bickering and snark as a method of communication, which some people respond well to but more people don't, and she doesn't always know when she's crossing a line. Jabs can easily cross from teasing to hurtful, sometimes on purpose sometimes not; she was known to pick on lower-ranked agents during her time in the Project. She expects most people to just handle it, and considers it to be on them if they don't. This hasn't really changed much over time, it's not the negative trait of hers she really sees as needing to change.

Powers and Abilities:

South was one of the top agents in an elite squad of special operations soldiers; she’s an extremely skilled and brutal hand-to-hand combatant, as well as good with guns of various kinds (from rifles, to SMGs, to shotguns). As a result of her time in the Project, she’s also become begrudgingly good at stealth operations, so long as you don’t rush her, but actually excels at smash and grab above all else.

South’s also surprisingly good at lying and playing the long game. She successfully lied to her brother, Command, and Agent Washington over the course of her time as Recovery Two and came out the other side with none having suspected her until it was too late.

CRAU Powers: Upon arriving in her previous game, South was exposed to a substance known only as ‘Stuff’—it’s what’s left behind after an anti-reality/anti-matter bomb strips matter of all its information and reduces it to formless, changeable matter that still wants to be something. It takes inspiration from human imagination and subconscious and, when touched by Stuff, you can end up changed—for South, this meant receiving powers based on some of her ingrained fears and insecurities about not being seen as her own person.

Perception-based Invisibility: When she is within a 10ft radius of someone else (or a 15ft radius, in the case of her brother) she’s able to force people’s eyes/attention to sort of ‘skip over’ her. She doesn’t become invisible, people just don’t perceive that she’s there. Once she leaves this radius, the effect only lingers for 30-60 seconds (or 45-90, when her brother is used). It cannot be immediately reactivated, and its effect doesn't work as well on live feed cameras and doesn't work at all on recordings watched after the fact.

Voice Change: South can change her voice to mimic that of someone else. To be able to do so, she has to have heard the person in question talk for at least a full minute.

Inventory:

- Her set of purple Freelancer power armour.
- Her Bubble Shield armour unit, which projects a hardlight protective dome that's impenetrable from the inside or outside when up.
- Pistol.

Samples:

Log Sample
Network Sample