(no subject)

[20poundsofcrazy]

About You - The Player
Name: Christina
Age: 33
Contact: lollobrigida [gmail.com]
Past Role Playing Experience: Various games on LJ/DW/GJ/IJ and currently in BtR.

The Character
Name: Parker
Age/Birthdate: 26
Species: Human
*Type: Wanderer
Canon: Leverage
*Pre-existing powers:

Lock-Picking, Harness/Wire work and construction, ability to fit into small spaces, high level math, diagramming and spatial reasoning skills. Car jacking and get-away driving. Vault entry. Gymnastics, laser grid clearance and item retrieval. She can perform difficult math equations in her head and is capable of sorting out complicated algorithms that are needed for getting around security systems. She also has an encyclopedic knowledge of vaults and security systems. She’s also capable of a certain form of echolocation, where she can sound off, echo, and know how far underground she is.

*Rift Change, if applicable: Parker will be taking on the physicality of an elf. More specifically an Elf from Lord of the Rings. Her appearance will remain the same, but she’ll take on all the attributes that they have.

The LotR Wiki lists these things as being part of being an elf: Slender, graceful but strong and resistant to the extremes of nature. Their senses, especially of hearing and sight, were much keener than those of men. Elves apparently did not sleep, but rested their minds in waking dreams or by looking at beautiful things.

I am removing any of the mentally communicating parts (which have been excluded from that list), and just giving her the physical parts, which a lot of them she already has - they’ll just be enhanced. Her body weight will also be lessened - in the films, Legolas was seen walking on top of the snow. I'm also giving her that no need to sleep with her resting of her mind. So everything for an elf, except... ears and mentally communicating.

I wanted to give her something that would help her but would also make her rethink everything she’s ever learned. All of her harness work will have to be re-calibrated for her new body weight and she’ll be able to be more daring and not worry about the weather. It should be fun and something she’ll notice right away - unlike the rest of my Rift changes that I’ve done where they take time to notice them.

Livejournal: 20poundsofcrazy (both at DW and LJ)
Played By: Beth Riesgraf
Icon:

Appearance:

Parker is a slender blonde standing at 5’7”. She has a very slender muscular build to her, that of a gymnast because she does have to fit into small ventilation ducts and be light enough to do difficult wire/harness work. (see also: pressure sensitive flooring). She is not a very girly-girl and while she does know how to wear make-up, in general she goes for a natural look. She often layers her clothing, but for the job she’s more comfortable in skintight black clothing. Her hair is below her shoulders with bangs that are always kept trimmed, to keep them out of her eyes. She has no problem tying her hair up, or wearing it all in a hat to keep it out of her way during a job. She has the ability to dress for any occasion and will blend into a crowd so easily that you might even think that she’s vanished.

Personality:

Parker can be described in about a million different ways, but the only thing that won't be falling into her 'three words that describe me' is normal. In fact that's one of her few fears, is that she isn't fitting in with everyone else. Being a thief, she needs to be able to hide herself in the crowd, but due to everything else about Parker, she doesn't always pull that off.

She's a thief. Deep down, she doesn't even steal things for the actual item, but for either the value or the challenge. However, hardly anything is considered a challenge for Parker. She's been training to be a thief since she was a child, rewarded with ice cream sundaes when she passed through a laser grid. The thrill of the job is in how to get to the item. High ceilings, ventilation shafts, harnesses and wire work, huge vaults with pressure sensitive floors -- all of those things are just a part of the equation to Parker and she is usually very quick at figuring out how to solve the problem.

Parker is a visual thinker too. She needs to see something laid out, preferring to draw it out herself than to rely on computers to map it out for her, before she can figure out how to work the problem. She's also extremely good at figuring out spatial dynamics and can do most math in her head. It's something that she's just naturally good at doing.

Because she's intelligent and thinks about things differently, she doesn't always understand the more basic-everyman type comments. She's a quick learner though and even though there are a lot of things that she doesn't "get" the more she is exposed to these situations the quicker she can sort them out herself. In "The Studio Job" she wasn't sure what the "Fiddle" they were selling was. Even after she'd been told directly that the Fiddle had just walked in, timed to Eliot walking in, it took her until later in the episode to finally make the connection. Extremely pleased with her discovery, she calls out to the team, from the other room, "OH! I get it! Eliot's the fiddle!"

Fear isn't something that Parker has. In fact she's so fearless, that she's an adrenaline junkie. She creates her own riggings, harnesses and would prefer to sail over a railing down on a line than try to actually take the stairs. She's more comfortable on rooftops, high places, or in a harness hovering over a pressure sensitive floor. She doesn't take unneeded risks, because she'll make sure to plan everything out first if possible. She's no stranger to thinking on the fly though and can adjust her plan accordingly, quickly and with a pretty good result.

Another thing Parker is lacking is shame. It comes hand in hand with her lack of fear and joins alongside that lack of social knowing what is socially acceptable. She'll strip down in a room with other people, bluntly express exactly what is on her mind regardless of the reaction she'll get. In fact most times she's shocked at the reaction she gets. During "The Wedding Job" she plainly tells the bridesmaid that she's gained weight, wondering how the girl could assume that letting the dress out could mean she'd lost weight. When trying to frame a politician, she removes her dress without even being prompted, assuming that since they're dealing with a sex scandal that they'll need that sort of picture as well. Even with Hardison in the room, she just drops it to the ground, without even a second thought.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, where Parker is not so successful in execution would be her social skills. Shuffled through foster care, some of them not exactly the best of people, Parker's coping mechanisms were often categorized as extremely odd. Her fear of the dark was solved by being buried alive, which is not normal at all. She was training to be a cat burglar at age nine, a getaway driver at 11 and a car thief at 12. Because of these things, the usual things that children learn growing up - manners, how to make friends -- the usual kid things, just didn't happen for her. Even when she was training with Archie, she wasn't part of his family, but an apprentice that was kept away from that sort of life. That isolation and motivation to just succeed at her skills as a thief shaped her into the unstoppable, referred to as insane, thief that she was.

I say was because she's had over three years with a team (with 5 seasons and most finales ending and the premieres picking up quickly after the end, I figured 3 years was a safe guess), with a family-like environment that is helping to shape her. She has leadership from Nate and female support from Sophie, which is something she never had before. Because of this new family-like environment, she's able to take a look back at the path she took to get where she is and she can attempt to try and help out people that were in the situations she was in. In "The Stork Job" she tries to save the children in the orphanage, because she knows what it's like to just want a home and to do whatever it took to be wanted. In "The Boost Job" she recognizes 'Shorty' as being in the exact same situation that she was in when she was a kid. Where she got left behind, Parker tries to help her make a better choice than she did, and warns her to get away from the job the next day. These little choices, trying to do the right thing because that's what their team does, shows that she's grown up from the thief she was into the good person she is now.

She's getting better at dealing with social situations too. She doesn't understand all the social situations she's in, or the emotions that they bring up in her, but she is trying to adapt. Which, thankfully, is something she's good at. In "The Double Blind Job" when Hardison bonds with the female client, spending more time with her, Parker becomes jealous of that connection. She doesn't directly understand that it is jealousy, nor does she understand why she's jealous, not really. However, through the course of the episode, she learns that she has to confront the feelings and decide what to do with them. She starts to explain it to Hardison, but that sort of open trust that admitting that she wants that sort of relationship isn't something she's prepared for and she backs down at the last moment.

In some cases, Parker has the same adaptation technique that Sophie does. Sophie is a horrible actress on stage, but on the job she's flawless. Parker, while she's not perfect on the job, there is a certain level of grace and adaptive behavior that she can rely on. In "The Studio Job" she twirls and spins with grace and elegance through the room, lifting tickets and barely being noticed, but in "The Reunion Job" when Hardison asks her for a dance, she barely moves (granted, she's on a harness, but she could've actually danced, instead of being turned around on the wire by Hardison). In "The Juror #6 Job" she's put into a group peer setting and has to deal with being able to convince everyone to side with her. It takes her some time, but she becomes "Alice" and actually makes a few friends.

Parker is a very unique person. She has an interesting point of view on things, even if at often times that perspective isn't one that anyone else wants to hear. It's the blunt thing again. She is learning though and being exposed to more situations that she can plainly see as 'wrong' only pushes her harder and faster toward ensuring that they do the right thing, her included.

History: http://leverage.wikia.com/wiki/Parker

Events:

Event 1: The first event that shapes who Parker is her childhood. Being a child that was shuffled through the system and not given all of those great stories is something that Parker thinks about a lot. During a job where a child is going to be put through the system Hardison tries to relate to her and expresses that he turned out fine and he went through the system, but Parker insists that they might turn out like her. She knows that there’s something off about herself, and that it stems from the situations she encountered as a child. She doesn’t talk about it very often and given the situations that happened to her as a child, no one should blame her. From a brother dying at a young age in front of her, to the various times she was verbally abused, Parker has definitely grown up away from the environment she was put in. The best influence that ever existed for her was Archie and even that wasn’t a complete family ideal. Parker was practically hidden away from Archie’s real family and it put a different light on how she grew up. All of the things in her childhood didn’t make her withdrawn or antisocial, but instead they seemed to give her a different method of coping with stress and situations she wasn’t comfortable with.


Event 2: The other event in Parker’s life that’s important isn’t so much a single event but a series of events that happen over the course of all the episodes of Leverage. It’s the fact that through all of these jobs and all of the situations that she gets put into she has been building up the ability to rely on someone other than herself. This comes to a head when she’s trapped on a roof and has no exit strategy and she realizes that she’s stuck. Hardison tells her that he’s got her and she has to realize that she can’t just rely on herself anymore - even if it’s the only thing that she’s counted on for years. Knowing that she can trust someone else for her own safety and her own exit strategy is a huge thing for her and it’s something that she definitely never considered before. Even through all the episodes where she’s trying to handle being a part of a team and how she interacts with them, she still always has her own ass covered (so to speak) above and beyond what the team has prepared for her as part of the plan. There’s also a large part of herself that will protect the team along with herself, even if she doesn’t trust them to have her back, she will always extend herself out to them. She’s got their exits and their next move if she can provide them.


Writing Sample:

It clung to her sides, pulling taut around her inner thighs and across her hips. The slight pull of the lead-line giving her a comfortable spot to settle in for a moment as she let her body sway just a bit. A slight chill wind snaked across the back of her neck, raising the hairs that hadn’t been long enough to tuck into her hat. Shutting her eyes, she focused on the task at hand. Fingertips sliding out of black gloves, leaving them exposed to the high winds as she was still hanging upside down in front of the large mirrored glass window. Skilled fingers tugged at the zipper of the pocket over her breast. The laser cutter being withdrawn and turned upside down to fit to her hand. One fluid motion created the circular burn pattern in the glass, her fingertip pressing to the side to tip it toward herself before just letting it carelessly fall to the ground below.

A part of her wondered if it would hurt someone, but she knew that at this time of night the chances were greatly reduced that anyone would be on this side of the building. The security guards wouldn’t make their rounds for another twenty minutes. Those shards of glass would just crunch under their feet and they wouldn’t think to look up for her.

She wouldn’t be there anyway.

Her body tipped forward, letting her legs push in through the opening first, settling on the ground as she loosened her lead before bringing her head back into the office itself. Metal fasteners were unclasped, leaving the lead to hang in the breeze outside. A press of a button on her phone and the lead zipped up quickly. The release on the motor perched on the roof removed, it simply wound up and back to out of the way.

The black glove was pulled from her belt, sliding her fingers back into the warmth and promise of leaving no fingerprints behind. Light footsteps moved through the office, the safe was mounted on the wall, behind the odd abstract painting that wasn’t worth the canvas it had been painted on.

She had checked.

The painting came off the wall easily, set to the ground where it leaned to the wall. There had been a noise in the hall, Parker let her breath hold into her lungs giving her that light-headedness that came with trying to be perfectly still. When nothing came of it, she exhaled slowly through parted lips. The warm breath being pushed through in one calming effort.

It was a work of art. Four inch reinforced steel, three-bolt locking mechanism with a decoy latch. Six-digit passcode with a rotating integer that changed every other day. The keypad itself was wired to only open with the fingerprint of the safe owner itself, which had proven to be quite the interesting thing to get. Thankfully, Parker could still buy a guy a beer.

***

”Oh my God! Wait. I know you! Steven? Steven Carter? From that big convention last fall? Remember me?”

Moving with a slight wobble, she tries to play off the drunk aspect a bit. Just enough to lean against him when she finally reaches his side. He laughs, not enough to cover up the fact that his hand just grabbed her ass. For stability. She is practically falling all over him. That’s what he’ll reason it with. She knows this.

“Nooo... I know you!”

She restates it, despite his protests that he’s never met her, that he’d remember her if he had met her. She just nods, smiling brightly. Leaning in closer, her voice dropping to a whisper because it gives the impression of something more intimate when it’s hot breath against cooler skin. “Lemme buy you a beer. Maybe you’ll remember better.”

The bottle will be chilled, and his hand will be all over it. If she could’ve only gotten his prints off of the back pocket of her jeans - she could’ve been gone already.

***

Her glove tugged off with her teeth, the taste of leather pressing to the tip of her tongue. The slip of silicone is retrieved from the plastic case. Small, lightweight and pliable it fit over the pad of her fingertip and was pressed lightly to the pleasant sound of metal clicking into place. With the first barrier down she smirked, pleased that it had been so simple.

Parker let her hand smooth down the front of her jacket. Her eyes watched over the keypad as it slide up from its enclosure. Her fingers, still pressed close to her sternum, wiggled a bit, almost a silent hello to the puzzle that awaited her. The math she could do in her head. Even a rotating integer was based off of a formula and she knew this formula like the back of her hand. Pulling her palm away from the tight black of her jacket, she slid her glove back on and moved fingertips to lightly skirt over the buttons. It wasn’t as if she knew what the code would be, but she could sense which buttons had been jammed more than a few times. The final digit would be different, but there was still a starting point. The uneven edge of a three, still half-stuck into the casing. The worn corner of a two that was pressed on the way to the six. Parker let the keypad tell her which buttons had been pushed, which ones had been avoided for months, save for the integer that would roll around to them every so often.

Her tongue slid across her bottom row of teeth, tucked beneath her lip. That build up of anticipation of figuring out that code without having to do months of research into his favorite team or the name of his guinea pig growing up. No birthdays to memorize or stock prices that made him his first million.

Just pattern and repetition. Something this man had done to these numbers more than a few times a week. Parker assumed he was a watcher. Open the safe; let the items breathe. just sitting across the room from them, knowing they were there wasn’t enough. He had to see them. This safe was opened at least three times a week. An almost perverse habit that fueled his own ego. The next time he opened it would be to try and reassure himself that he’d made the right choice in keeping it locked up here. After all, how could anyone have gotten in? All of his high-tech security should’ve made it impossible.

Nothing is impossible. Fun? Sure. Impossible, not quite.

Parker let her fingers run over the numbers one more time before she pressed those first five keys. It flowed through her, nearly so fluid that one might have thought she’d programmed the safe herself. The last digit took her only a few moments more before there was the ever present sound of bolts being popped back into the casing. The soft hiss of pressurized air being released was like a soft chorus of victory.

Her feet stayed positioned the same, just a slight lean of her back and shoulders to allow the safe door to swing open, her head moving out of the way, all in one rock of her upper torso. Parker took in a deep breath, taking in the smell of steel and old leather. Reaching into the safe, she moves the small plastic case out of the way. She wasn’t interested in the small keepsakes that he had tucked away. Moments of his childhood that were near and dear to him. She wanted only what she came for.

The dark edges of the leather came from years of fingers settling against the edges. Natural oils from countless hands made the binding worn-in but not worn-out. He should’ve put it in something safer. Something less exposed to the elements, but he was just a thief, just like the rest of them and he wanted to make sure that he could keep an eye on his prize. The older paper of the pages within the binding wasn’t something to disregard, but Parker had come prepared. Unzipping her jacket, she pulled out her messenger bag. She’d custom prepped it exactly for the size and shape of the book, sliding it into the static free bag first, then into the bag itself. Ensuring those reinforced edges wouldn’t push the corners of the book into any odd bends.

Her prize tucked away safely, she shut the safe. Locking it back up before she took a moment to celebrate her victory, Parker was more than just pleased with her accomplishment. Glancing to the clock she moved back to the window where she’d opened the hole in the glass. Dropping to the floor, she pulled the secondary bolt from her harness and a pocket drill from a second pocket. A few minutes more and she had drilled the bolt into the floor, her new lead line being fastened into place. Moving to the desk, her arms reached over her head to secure the secondary pulley closer to the edge of the window. She didn’t need her rope actually breaking the rest of the window when she moved down the side of the building. With both parts in place, she threaded her line and tested her weight on it. Confident in her rigging, she moved up the rope before flicking the end out the window and starting to progress down and out the opening. Within a few minutes her toes were touching to pavement, kicking the shards of glass out of the way and up against the building. Another release came to the bolt in the floor when she triggered it with another push of a button on her phone. The line coming off the pulley and pooling around her feet in a loose coil.

She scooped it up and moved back out the way she came, the slight rush of adrenalin pumping through her body and making her skin feel a bit flush. She couldn’t help but grin as she moved back to her car the two miles up the road. She’d change her clothing in the front seat. Stripping the tight black off of her skin and sliding into jeans and a layered look of a tank top and button down shirt. Another hour would pass before she’d start the car, pulling out of the parking garage and onto the street to head to the warehouse that she considered her home. The book itself would sit on her shelf, tempting someone to try and steal it back from her. Besides, it wasn’t as if John James Audubon was going to come looking for it.