Location: Roanoke

Senshi: Sailor Achilles, Graikos Divinitas Senshi of Pride

Name: Megan Olivia Gentry

Meaning:
Megan-- soft and gentle
Olivia-- peace (related to the olive branch)
Gentry-- gentle, well-bred, minor nobility

It was her grandmother's favorite newspaper boy's dead dog's name ... or
something. No, really, this is how Megan's name happened: I'm not terribly
good at naming characters (or anything else, for that matter). I usually
take a while to deliberate on the name, and meanwhile, I assign a temporary
name so that I can get started on the sheet. Hers was Megan Olivia Goddard,
because "Megan" is a bitch name in my mind and I already knew I wanted her
to be one, "Olivia" is pretty and derived from the olive tree-- which is
very Greek, mm?-- and "Goddard" is ... a surname. Once I got her personality
roughed out, I went looking for names to compliment it. Just in case I had
stumbled onto something good, I checked the meanings, and lo and behold, I
caught a whiff of irony. "Goddard" didn't follow the theme, but "Gentry"
did, and is a nice name, so, there we have it.

It was fate! Fate, I tell you!

And, um, her parents liked it. Yeah.

Age: 18

Birthdate: August 4th. Which is also the birthday of Yassir Arafat. Ahem.

Astrological Sign: Leo, ruled by the Sun, with some influence from Uranus.
According to the nifty little astrology guides I've looked through, Leo
makes for arrogant, ambitious, confident, conceited, lazy, and-- in their
own ways-- loyal people. Also, Achilles of legend has a lion theme going,
so Leo is appropriate. According to Nietzsche, the lion is the embodiement
of "I Will," the stage of human understanding in which one lives for oneself
and seeks to impose one's own will on the world. Uranus' influence is
either really good or really bad, depending on who you ask. On the good
side, it provides balance to the strong and obstinate nature of Leo. On the
bad side, it causes inner conflict and undermines the Leo's strength of
will. Fun, eh?

Blood Type: O

Family:

Mother -- Jessica Michelle Gentry, DPM, age 46, podiatrist in private
practice in Statesboro, Georgia. A short, round woman with a dimpled face,
Jessica frightens her daughter by existing-- Megan could grow up to LOOK
like THAT. She's a kindly woman, but was never really sure how to raise a
child once she realized that they're not quite like dolls. She observed her
daughter's life carefully, always there to lend whatever hand Megan wanted,
but never had much in the way of guidance to give. She's cheated on her
husband a few times out of sheer boredom, but she's managed to convince
herself that it wasn't *really* cheating since she's never let him ... put
his ... thing ... inside her ... oh, my. Megan has inherited her mother's
talent with doublethink.

Father -- Robert Paul Gentry, DPM, age 46, podiatrist in private practice in
Statesboro, Georgia. Robert is a very good podiatrist. That's about all
he's good at. He's a dull husband and an easily-manipulated father from a
long line of oblivious men. He's rather popular among the "good ol' boys"
clubs of Statesboro as comic relief, trying to fit in to the genteel redneck
lifestyle and never managing to lose the "Yankee -- Do Not Allow Shotguns,
Drinks His Beer From A Glass" sign tattooed on his forehead. Robert is six
feet tall and Jessica is an even five; Megan splits the difference.

Megan isn't particularly close to her parents, so they're unlikely to play
much of a role in the game. Growing up, they kept her fed and sheltered and
told that she was loved; they bragged about their bright little girl and
trotted her out to public acclaim whenever they could. They send her money,
she doesn't leave any evidence that will hold up in court, and their
relationship remains mostly untroubled by the rocky spots that plague most
families, because most families are at least better at knowing that they're
not at all good with emotions. Maybe it's not just her mother who passed
Megan the inner liar's gene.

Boyfriend -- Daniel Gregory Remington-Ladine, NYU journalism major, age 18,
and not, as far as his cousin who has taken up geneology as a hobby can
find, related to the more famous Remingtons. Daniel is, in reality, a
quiet, retiring, and sometimes obnoxiously know-it-all young man with a fear
of heights and a weakness for John Wayne/Maureen O'hara movies. He's
neither horribly ugly nor notably handsome, with hair that tries its best to
be blond in the summer and eyes that are a lovely light shade of blue when
they're not squinting behind reading glasses. There is *something*, mostly
non-physical, about him that gives the impression of a long-eared and
doleful bloodhound puppy. He *is* rather frightfully intelligent, attending
one of the top universities in the country on an almost-full scholarship (he
has to pay for his textbooks and meal plan). Megan all but worships him.
She has an ornate box of photographs, carefully hidden in her dorm closet,
that makes a servicab!
le shrine. Interestingly enough, he also all but worships her: speaking
rapturously of her to his friends at college, calling her at least three
times a week and writing (real letters, by hand) or sending her presents
*every* *day*, attending to her wants and needs and preening when she's on
his arm in public when they're together. She is his first girlfriend, ever,
and he's convinced that she's the love of his life and a house in the
country with 2.5 children is in the offing. He'll even bear the children as
soon as the mechanics of that get worked out. He's heard not a murmur about
Vince.

Boytoy -- Ugo Vincenzo "Vince" Celini, UVA accounting major, age 21. 6'1",
dark-haired, dark-eyed Italian stallion, heavily muscled but not grossly so.
A third-generation American, Antonio does his best to play up to every
Italian stereotype he can and ignore the fact that his mother named him
"Ugo." He's the bad-boy mobster, the hot-headed white knight, the
raised-on-the-mean-streets mobster (from a quiet suburban home with--
literally-- a white picket fence and a dog. Not even a bulldog. A Sharpei
name Lola. This is what watching too much t.v. as a child does.). He and
Megan have been dating/screwing since she met him at a party the first
weekend of college. There's more than a touch of chauvinism in him, but no
misogyny. Defending his woman is simply his job, as it's her job to be
pretty and flowery. He loves women despite his rather narrow ideas about
them. To supplement the allowance his parents give him and support his
expensive taste in women, he deals drugs!
small-time. Totally against her indoctrination as an independent woman of
the world, Megan gets a not-so-secret thrill when he ensures that someone
"properly respects" her. He's pretty, he's chivalrous, and he's great in
bed. And he doesn't know about Daniel.

Roommate -- Stephani Glass, undecided major, age 18. A weak, easily-led
girl, Bobbi is someone Megan puts up with because it could be worse. The
Gentrys have promised their daughter her own apartment off-campus after her
freshman year, and Bobbi is someone Megan can easily dominate for that long.
Bobbi is at Hollins not because of its commitment to educating strong and
capable women, but because she feels that she really couldn't compete with
males. I'm not sure just *how* she got in, except that she's evidently
scary-smart when it comes to certain types of "booklearning." Her best
friend is a gay guy whom she desperately wants to will into straightness;
Megan would ban him from the room except that allowing him in means that she
doesn't get any guff when she has Vince over.

School: Freshman, Hollins University, pre-med major

Skills:

-- various forms of dance, including cloogging, jazz, tap, ballet, pointe,
and your general club-style dancing, though no experience in "modern dance"
per say, advanced amateur level (dropping rapidly for lack of practice)
-- makeovers (When she feels like takingg pity on ugly people.)
-- browbeating
-- first aid (Red Cross certified-- her  parents insisted, and she didn't
argue.)
-- making puppets (see Hobbies)

Likes:

-- ferrets. She has two females, Winkin  and Blinkin, at home. She got them
when she was ten, young enough to still name pets Winkin and Blinkin.
They're geriatric for ferrets, so she'll never bring them to Roanoke, but
she wants to get a couple more when she finally gets to live off-campus.
-- rats. Yes, rats. She's got a thing foor small and fuzzy, though she
wasn't allowed to have these as pets at home. These are also on the "when I
get my own apartment ..." list. She'd have one now, and to hell with the
dorm rules, but she doesn't trust her roommate to keep quiet.
-- watching other people spend money on  her
-- alcohol. Far too much.
-- being envied
-- the first five seasons of "Designing  Women." One word: Suzanne.
-- "Moulin Rouge" (favorite movie), "Cassablanca" (second favorite movie)
-- medical and legal thriller novels (Grrisham, Cricton, etc.)



Dislikes:
-- thrift stores
-- science fiction in general. The nail  in the coffin was a boyfriend taking
her to see "Star Trek: Insurrection." She broke up with him on his parents'
answering machine that night.
-- weak people. They're fair game; if thhey want to be treated well, they
can get stronger.
-- disorganization and impromptness
-- small children. Especially the stickyy variety-- not that I blame her.
It has something to do with their breakability, in addition to their
smelliness. Megan doesn't deal well with fragile beings. They scare her,
deep down. She either avoids them or, when she can't avoid them, attacks
them physically, emotionally, or socially. Better to break them on purpose
than on accident.
-- high heels. She wears them because shhe looks good in them. She just
doesn't like them.
-- ladybugs. She doesn't particularly *llike* any sort of insect or
arachnid, but ladybugs are the only ones that will make her run shrieking
like a school girl in a short skirt in a high wind on Tuesday. When she was
about 11 years old, she was out on a school picnic and bit into an oddly
crunch pimiento cheese sandwich. Opening it up, she found that a group of
ladybugs had found their way in, and were the source of the crunch.
Personally, I'll bet that someone put them there on purpose to get at her,
but she was too busy vomiting at the time to figure it out. I don't know
what her problem was-- she could use the extra protein. Some people are
just weird.
-- lesbians. She has no opinion on gay mmen that's any different from her
opinion of straight men; two pretty men kissing is kinda hot, in fact. She
understands girls who pretend to be into other girls to get the attention of
their boyfriends. But girls who really like other girls? For real? They
might -- hit on *her*. On her! And that would mean that she must look like
a lesbian (albeit a very attractive one, and thank you for the compliment,
yes I deserve it, now get out of my face, dyke), and that would be *ick*.
Um ... maybe I should put "double standards" on the "likes" list.

Fav. Food: A bacon double cheeseburger (American, provolone, and muenster),
dripping with mayonnaise, dressed with a thin slice of smoked ham, lettuce,
tomato, onions, pickled jalepeno slices, Dell Dixie dill pickles (has to be
Dell Dixie), a touch of ketchup (but no mustard), on a toasted sesame seed
bun. The greasier the better, and ditto for the side item, be it fries,
tots, hash browns or onion rings. Just don't tell anybody, 'k?

Hated Food: Doughnuts. They're just ... blah. If you're going to eat
cake, eat cake, not chunks of grease-soaked dough. They don't even come
with the good kind of frosting, the buttercream stuff you get on wedding
cakes.

Fav. Subject: Any dance class. Anatomy.

Hated Subject: Any dance class. British Literature. Not that fond of
American Lit, either, to tell the truth. Or African ... American Indian ...
Chinese ... literary criticism in general bores her to tears.

Color: Bronze

Hobbies:

-- Making stuffed animals and puppets. SShe learned the former from her
grandmother one long, dull summer in Wisconsin, and the latter from Sesame
Street and experimentation. Her parents are involved with a local charity
that gives toys and security blankets to children who are chronically ill or
undergoing surgery or therapy. They encouraged her to make toys for
donation, which she did willingly, not having room for all that she produced
in really productive periods, though once she got old enough that liking
dollies was beneath her dignity, she pouted until they swore to keep the
source of the fuzzy teddies top-secret. Which they do. Mostly. In that
parental sort of way. She's pretty good, though outside of this one
particular field she's hopeless at sewing and not much interested in
sculpture or painting.

-- Skipping stones. It doesn't sound likke much of a hobby, and it's
definitely not one she listed on her college apps, but she can entertain
herself for hours with a quiet pond and some flat rocks.

-- Swimming. She's a strong swimmer, thoough not a competitor. She also
loves the way she looks tanned and in her favorite string bikini, though she
also has a somewhat more practical suit for when she plans to do more
swimming than sunning and socializing. She actually prefers swimming in
ponds and creeks to swimming in pools, since the latter tend to have too
much chlorine and not enough shade, as well as often tepid water. Public
pools, of course, are absolutely out.


Aspirations: Right now, she's really not sure what she aspires to be or do.
She wanted to dance. She doesn't want that anymore. She might like to
marry some day, but she wants to have fun first. Basically, she's got the
standard set of confused young college student aspirations.


Gemstone: diamond


History

Megan is the doted-upon only child of Robert and Jessica Gentry, two
podiatrists who met during school at Johns Hopkins. (If asked about her
parents' occupations, Megan will answer, "They're doctors.") They dated,
married, got their degrees, and did married-person things for a while. Megan
was born in Maryland, but she doesn't remember living there. When she was
about a year and a half old, the family settled in Statesboro, Georgia to
open a joint practice. Podiatry is a limited field and one of the limiting
factors is that podiatrists tend to _stay_ in the field all their lives;
one of the main reasons Jess and Rob moved to Statesboro was that the most
prominent podiatrist in town had recently died, so they got in while the
getting was good.

The initial overhead of opening an office was inconvenient, but the young
couple almost immediately began to make a good income that would bring them
out of debt swiftly, and neither had come from a family of small means.
Therefore, they saw nothing amiss with pampering their daughter in any way
that struck their fancy. She attended private school from preschool onward,
first through twelfth grade being taken at Saint Beatrice's, a local
Catholic school. The Gentrys weren't Catholic, or more than vaguely
religious at all (Christmas, Easter, and wedding/baptism/funeral
church-goers), but it was the best school in the area and tolerant of other
faiths as long as the children were well-behaved or the parents prosperous.
In general she did well enough, steadily managing to be average all twelve
years.

Her parents enrolled her in another type of school as well: she began taking
dance lessons at age three. The lessons in the first few years barely
deserve the name "dance," of course. They were primarily introductions to
rhythm, exercises to accelerate the development of balance and gross motor
control, and a little shuffling of the feet and waving of the hands while
singing along to the simple, happy tunes. She followed the dance school's
usual curriculum for someone who entered at her age: began in tap, added
ballet at seven, clogging at 9, jazz at eleven, lyrical and pre-pointe at
thirteen, and graduated to pointe a year later once her instructors were
satisfied that her ankles were strong enough. Megan excelled in every
class, especially clogging, which was the school's pride. Their senior team
had a reputation for winning in every competition they attended. Megan
auditioned for the sub-junior team at 10, the junior team at 12, captained
it at 13, and moved to the !
senior team at 14 where she was co-captain by 16. They did indeed win
first in their class at every competition they attended, and best in show at
most of them. On the home front, Megan was a darling to all the
instructors, an unpaid assistant teacher for younger classes by age 14, and
a regular winner of personality and student of the year awards. It was
pretty spiffy. For her, at least.

Socially, Megan was equally successful. Adults tended to get a first
impression of a bright, outgoing, somewhat chatty child. People her own age
usually put her into one of three categories: someone to respect, someone to
fear, or someone to befriend. To those 'below' her, in age, size, social
class, or self-confidence, she was oftentimes a bully. She never beat
anyone up on the playground; instead, she lead campaigns of harassment,
emotional bullying, and a few well-timed group beatings in the locker room.
Rarely did she ever get caught, and when she did it was because of
inexperience or cockiness. Her parents, naturally, didn't believe that
their little girl could do any such thing. Those other children had to be
at fault. As there was rarely any evidence, eye-witnesses were either
Megan's cronies or intimidated to silence, and the school wasn't interested
in rocking the boat by antagonizing one of the more popular and respected
"new" families in town, she was neve!
r given anything more than a slap on the wrist.

In sixth grade, one of her frequent victims had enough and jumped her at
lunch. Oddly, none of her fellow students came to her aid; the fight was
broken up by five teachers after a minute or two. Both Megan and her
attacker required a trip to the hospital for stitches. (At Megan's
insistence, she was x-rayed, but had nothing worse than a split lip and a
few matching knuckles.) The other student was expelled. Megan's parents took
her to her favorite cosmetics shop for make-up to cover the bruises and
abrasions and kept her home the next day to recuperate from the trauma.

She discovered the dating game in fourth grade, inasmuch as a fourth-grader
can understand dating. It's cute, really. It was trendy for people in her
grade to "go out." Going out generally involved blushing at one another
across the table at lunch and during chapel, talking on the phone after
homework and before bedtime, and having an angsty break-up after a week or
two, with particularly good ones being added to the school gossip circuits.
Rinse, repeat. That became uncool in fifth grade-- it was something little
fourth-graders did-- so there was a year of quiet before sixth grade came in
with a bang. It was in sixth grade that some of Megan's peers began trying
out many of the bad things that they'd learned in catechism and on
television (in great detail) that they shouldn't do. Megan listened avidly
to the stories and made up a few of her own eventually, but didn't actually
participate in those kinds of extracurriculars. The idea of sex, drugs, and
grown-up partie!
s scared her. She wasn't sure she'd know what to do, or that she'd like it
if she did it, and there's little Megan hates more than not knowing what to
do in any given situation. Her first real-life, going-out boyfriend came
and went between the end of 8th grade and the beginning of 9th, and after
that it was a headlong pitch into "real" dating.

Her senior year of school was taken up with the general hustle and bustle of
that time. She tried marijuana twice that year and came to an unpleasant
(for her-- I think it's funny) conclusion: it does nothing for her. The
first attempt was a joint passed between friends, the second a few
not-particularly-tasty magic brownies. Nothing. Not a bee's wing of a
buzz. Her companions spent the evening giggling at moths and doodling in
notebooks; she knocked two of them off the couch and read a Grisham novel.
That Thanksgiving, her clogging team went to competition in New York City
where they took third in division and most congenial overall, which turned
Megan into an absolutely horrible person until Christmas. She blamed her
teammates for the loss and determined that they would work *harder*, God
damn it. Several of them were planning an only-slightly-bloody coup for
lack of any other way to get rid of their captain-turned-drill-sergeant; a
Christmas spent with her mother'!
s parents outside of Miami and plenty of tangible reminders of her status
as Favorite Grandchild brought a manageable Megan back, and revolution was
averted.

When not busy with choreography and relationships, Megan was busy looking to
the future. She had a lucky list of thirteen top-flight dance programs and
academies -- several of them abroad-- that she kept by her bed and gloated
over every night. Her applications went to them and them alone, and she
demonstrated some impressive math skills by scheduling auditions for each of
them that fit her family's schedule. She spent more time on an airplane
that year than she had in her entire life to that date, traveling to
appointments on weekends and holidays and days finagled from the principal.
By February, she was resting on her laurels at home, waiting for letters to
arrive.

Arrive they did, thirteen slim envelopes within a week of each other, every
single one a rejection. (All but number seven, a wait-listing.) Every
single one of them rejected her. It turned out that her dance school, while
pretty hot stuff for Statesboro, was somewhat less nationally acclaimed than
the owner made it out to be, and Megan discovered to her shock that
captaining the clogging team didn't impress the admissions office of
Juliard. The Gentry home had central heating, but Megan lit a veritable
bonfire in the fireplace and stoked it higher with stationary and envelopes.
Number seven was torn into thin strips before meeting its fate.

At an emergency consultation with her parents, in which Megan informed them
that she had decided to give up her artistic aspirations in order to achieve
her academic potential, Hollins was suggested as one of several appropriate
colleges and universities to which she could apply quickly, and aunt having
gone there and subsequently stayed on friendly terms with several long-term
members of the administration. *Those* applications went out via express
mail, and Hollins was the first to respond. Not waiting for the others--
which could be more rejections-- she confirmed her place at Hollins at once
and wrote letters of regret to the other institutions. She wrestled with
her first impulse that said to quit dance lessons immediately, but concluded
that doing so would draw attention to her disgrace. She forced herself
through the rest of the semester's lessons, but her performance was
noticeably lackluster, and she was only mildly surprised and moderately
gut-punched when she !
lost the personality award to another graduating senior at their final
recital.

During the stress of those months, she went through three boyfriends in
rapid succession. The first (whom she had been dating since late November)
she argued with until one particularly vicious argument ended it, the second
couldn't stand her and dumped her before she could realize what was
happening and dump him, and the third was an idiot who wasn't even fun to
take her frustrations out on. Then she met Daniel, who was sweet and tender
and knew when to keep his mouth shut. Their relationship has lasted through
the summer and into college, she in Roanoke, he in New York City.

'Lasted' is a debatable term, of course. She moved on-campus on a Thursday.
The following Sunday, returning students held a not-very-far-off-campus
freshman corruption party to welcome in the new meat with copious amounts of
alcohol and local boys to make sure that the new girls knew that a term at
Hollins wasn't a sentence to four years of deprivation. That's where Megan,
in the process of getting shit-faced, met Vince. Talked with Vince. Went
into a back room with Vince. She and Vince have been together since then,
in a relationship based on passion of the mainly physical variety. Vince is
a brazier of smoldering embers to Daniel's soothing water, and Megan's
resolutely keeping her mind away from what happens when fire and water meet.


Personality

Never more than an indifferent learner in most subjects, Megan is
intelligent enough to safely avoid being stupid, but it's not the kind of
intelligence that's going to win school prizes. She has a kind of animal
cunning geared toward accomplishing what she wants, not necessarily what she
needs. Often, she does as much harm to herself as she does to others
because she is all but incapable of favoring practicality over willfulness
unless practicality coincides with her own wishes. It would have been
*practical* to perhaps apply to one or two good dance schools that weren't
necessarily vying for 'best in the world,' but she wanted the very best.
And when she did not get the best, she gave up. Something not done right
the first time is obviously flawed and not worth doing.

The rejections weren't just a disappointment; they went against her entire
plan for the next few years of her life, completely. Megan is the kind of
person who goes over and over hypothetical situations and conversations in
her head, working out every action she'll take, every reaction others will
have. The scripts she writes are promptly forgotten as soon as she needs
them, or fall apart as soon as other people-- or the physical laws of the
Universe-- don't comply to her mental puppeteering. Attempts at long-term
planning are most successful when she sits down, writes out The Plan, tapes
The Plan to a wall, and every day makes herself look at The Plan and not
tear it down and rework it. This is how she handled the first round of
college apps. We see how well *that* worked out, but at least it all went
to Hell on schedule!

Megan's obsessive tendencies stop just short of being an actual disorder.
She's not afraid of dirt, but everything that is in her domain must be
*organized* or her wrath will be felt. Bobbi leaves socks on the floor ...
this is a bad thing. When bored or stressed, she will haul everything out
of her closet, her drawers, and her makeup and jewelry collections and
reorder them for maximum efficiency. Then do it again. With Significant
Others, she tends to become very controlling after a time, not usually out
of jealousy so much as a wish to know where her valuable possessions
(including people) are at all times. If she were ever to marry, this could
*easily* lead to her abusing her spouse out of 'love' gone too far.

The two exceptions to this rule are Vince and Daniel. Vince loves seeing
her always unsuccessful attempts to dominate him-- "I like a girl with
spirit"-- and Megan *really* loves losing to him. Though she will never say
it even when drunk-- she's not a chatty drunk, at least not that she
remembers in the morning-- she likes being both dominated and cared for, her
life otherwise being spent as the one out in front, giving orders. Or
trying to, anyhow. She's pretty good at finding people who will follow her.
Daniel she does not *have* to intimidate or overpower: in her presence, he
does a fair approximation of living to make her happy. She began to pay
attention to him at the upswing from the most emotionally vulnerable time in
her life and now subconsciously associates him with any feeling of
self-confidence or clarity. Her nonstandard and dishonest relationship with
these two men is justified in her mind by the fact that she fulfills very
different needs with the two !
of them, and her ability to make the two of them happy is not at all (she
thinks) harmed by there being two of them. What they don't know can't
possibly rise up to hurt her. Or them-- she means them.

She's never slept with Daniel -- he's halfway convinced himself that she's a
*virgin* goddess-- and she's never told Vince she loves him. Which she
doesn't. She doesn't love Daniel, either, not really. She *thinks* she
does. She tries her best to do so. Megan has never loved another person.
She is not cold, though she is haughty, but she has been too long
passionately in love with herself, her future, and her possessions, with
little to spare for her past, her present, or other people-- except as
possessions. None of this is too surprising in someone who is young,
privileged, naturally vain, and against introspection at any cost. It's
going to hurt her, worse than it has. It's always hurt other people, and
some day it's going to hurt those she might not love, but does care for.
She tells herself this won't happen; Megan tells herself many such stories
and finds herself a credulous audience.

In his own time, Achilles was an amazing leader. He walked around looking
pretty and telling people that they should follow him 'cause he was prettier
than they were. And they did. 'cause he was. Plus he had Odysseus to
think for him. Evidently that all worked out among Myceneans. In modern
times, however ... please. Someone. A Deus. Thrash her. That kind of
"leadership" just doesn't work, and we'll all be better off if Achilles is
introduced to the pecking order as soon as possible.


Appearance

Megan is not beautiful, but men seldom ...

Damn, I hate that book. And the parody, too. Okay, let's try again:

Megan is built as befits a dancer: small and light, though maybe not as
light as she was a few months ago. She's only 5'5" tall, most of it in her
legs. Those legs are strong, though she doesn't exercise them nearly as
much as she used to and they've lost definition-- a kick from Megan will
still make an ouchie, and getting thrown head-first into a war will probably
get her back on the exercise wagon. Her upper body is tight but relatively
weak and she'll need to build up some strength in it quickly, if she's to
survive long as Achilles. She wears a bra mostly for formality's sake and
because Victoria's Secret carries the cutest little lacey things. She's a
couple of strategically-placed grams of fat away from being flat as a board.
Think ... Gwyneth Paltrow (though if Megan is ever caught in that godawful
pink dress, I'll kill her myself). She refuses to wear a padded bra, instead
favoring clothing that flatters the less-than-busty (well, and favoring
officially renami!
ng most chicks with sizeable breasts "Elsie" or just plain "Cow," but
that's Megan for you).

Her face is rather long and narrow except for her chin, which is square and
mannish and generally the bane of her existence. Delicate-looking ears are
decorated with three piercings each, two in the lobe, one in the cartilage.
The cartilage piercing and the second in the lobe are new, acquired on a
whim. One conventional piercing was all that he dance team's regulations
allowed; they were scored on uniformity of appearance, and besides it wasn't
a good idea to risk snagging piercings that could tear. Newer still is the
tattoo in the small of her back, a colorful dragonfly three inches long. A
third major change she's made to her appearance since high school is her
hair. For most of her life worn to mid-back, a convenient length for
styling into competition spec without having to worry about extensions, it's
now cut into a stylish bob that frames her face and brushes her chin. The
color is also slightly different, blond highlights gracing the natural light
brown thanks!
to some excellent work at a salon she found downtown.

Her eyes are small and slightly angular in their set, widening when she's
being beguiling and narrowing when she's in a Mood. They're a dark brownish
green or greenish brown and are quite interesting now, though they'll turn
to mud as she ages. Her face tends to freckle before it tans, so she's
learned to time sessions in the tanning booth well to wash over those
unsightly blotches with a nice, uniform bronze. (You know, it's a good
thing that she likely won't live long enough to develop skin cancer.) Her
fingernails are manicured -- at the same place that does her hair; it's
gained a loyal customer in Megan-- though kept fairly short for sanitation
and to lessen the chance of breaking one. She favors earthy tones for
make-up, including nail polish, probably because of the garish stuff she had
to lather on for stage performances.

Her hands are one thing; her feet are quite another. As her dance
instructor told her, "If your feet aren't ugly, you aren't a dancer." If
that's true, then Megan walks around on some serious credentials. They're
formed in a generally foot-shaped way, but they've got battle-scars. Her
toes are squashed-looking, partly by nature and partly from work. She's
broken the left big toe twice and the right big and little ones once each;
thanks to her parents, they healed straight and strong, but they ache
sometimes when her feet get cold. Her ankles are thick and strong with
knobby bones. The soles of her feet as well as the bottom and tops of the
toes are thickly calloused-- Megan doesn't have the courage to even start
trying to sand those off, and I can't blame her. She doesn't have any
blisters anymore, since it's been months since she danced, but she's got
scars from blisters, cuts, ripped toenails and other nasty side-effects of
loving an art. More of it will clear up !
in time-- though come to think of it, not much more, since senshi-ing's
gotta be hard on the feet, too, unless you cheat like Hephaestos. Suffice
it to say that she doesn't often wear sandals.

Guardian

None. I was tempted to give her Patroclus as a Guardian, but that would've
turned gone all freaky.


Fuku

Achilles' fuku is basically ancient Greek armor, the kind you see on vases
or in cast-of-thousands movies from the 50s. It's made of some magical
senshi armor-making element, though it looks like bright bronze, leather,
and fabric-- a senshi trying to fight in honest to Zeus bronze would be in a
heap of trouble, since it's heavy and one good poke from a magical poking
stick would go right through it. The armor's not unbreakable, just really
strong.

The topmost feature is the bronze Corinthian helmet, topped by a panache of
dull, dark red-brown horsehair running front-to-back along the top. The
helmet shields the entire head and face, save for a Y-shaped space for eyes,
nose, and mouth in front. It gives Achilles a cold, inhuman look, which is
half the fun. Not held on by any visible means such as a chin strap, it
just kinda stays there. Magic. It could be knocked off by a hard enough
blow, I suppose. That would probably tick her off something fierce.

On her body, the first layer is soft, thick, quilted fabric padding. Armor
without padding ain't nothin' nice. It's the same ugly clay-mud color as
her crest and fits her like a snug, thick t-shirt, covering her entire torso
as well as her upper arms and flaring out down to mid-thigh. Over the
padding is her actual armor, composed mainly of two sculpted bronze plates
covering her front and back, shaped exactly along the lines of her body.
They're joined at the sides by broad leather straps of that red-brown color,
though here the color is more clearly that of old, dried blood. The straps
are studded with bronze, and similar straps go over her shoulders. Strips
of the same leather, narrower and pointed at the bottom, make up the "skirt"
which ends a couple of inches above the undershirt, showing the geometric
trim on the hem of the latter. On the front of the breastplate is Achilles'
symbol: the roaring head of a male lion.

Her legs are protected from knee to ankle by bronze greaves. They leave a
small, unprotected gap down the back of the leg, including the Achilles
tendon. You'd think once would be enough ... Moving on. Her feet are
protected by cool strappy Greek sandal things. (Marvel at my footwear
vocabulary! Amazarak and Achilles wear entirely different kinds of shoes,
and yet I sum them *both* up as "sandal things.") Her forearms from the
wrist to just before the elbow are encased in bronze bracers with a layer of
the red padding underneath.

Achilles carries a sword made of a single piece of metal (which, just like
her armor, looks like bronze but isn't), with a hilt consisting of a tang
sandwiched between rough-textured wooden grips. Upward-curving extensions
to the hilt shield Achilles' hand from the blade. The blade is about 24
inches long, double-edged and narrowing very gradually until a few inches
before the tip, where it narrows more rapidly down to a very, very sharp
thrusting tip. It lacks a fuller (a "blood-channel," which is no such
thing) because weight is not really an object in its construction. Despite
the flashiness with which Achilles wields it, the weapon is unadorned, even
ugly, made for killing and nothing else. The scabbard is likewise plain,
hard leather, with a carry-strap attached to the bottom and top of one side
so that she can sling it over her back. The sword and armor are both
breakable, though not easily so; if they're damaged, they'll be repaired the
next time she transforms,!
but she's S.O.L. til then.

I debated giving her a shield, as the shield of Achilles is an important
part of the legend. I finally decided that it's just too much for a
Divinitas just starting out, and the fuku desc would be godawful long with
it. She did need a weapon of some sort, though, and while I know swords are
terribly cliched by now ... she's Achilles. It's either a sword or a spear,
and I don't think the spear is much more original. I'll give the next one
scrunchies of doom or something.


Transformation

Megan draws herself up tall and straight, feet together, hands at her sides,
lifting her chin haughtily. Loudly, she calls out, "Achilles--" her feet
slide apart to shoulder width, "Divinitas--" she clasps her hands together
into a double-fist, "POWER--" the word is extra-loud and slightly elongated
as she raises her clasped hands over her head, "Shine!" The roar of a
particularly well-grown and pissed off lion drowns out the last word. She
tears her hands apart and brings her arms swooping down like the first
stroke of wings. There's a dazzling flash of light-- bright enough to be
painful to onlookers, as the roar is loud enough to set ears ringing-- and
Sailor Achilles stands in her fuku, right hand on her hip, left arm
outstretched to present her sheathed sword grasped midway down the scabbard.
A few sparklies linger around her for about five seconds before winking out.


Powers

As Achilles, Megan is herself, only more confident, more bloodthirsty, and
even more of an attention-whore. She likes fighting-- more specifically,
she likes trouncing other people-- and she's not going to be a senshi who
balks at killing. Not in theory, anyhow. She has no real offensive powers,
so in a fight, it behooves her to move to close range and physically attack
her enemy. She's a brawler, and she's got a knack for it. What she doesn't
have a knack for is strategy. Achilles of legend tended to break skulls and
leave the planning to Odysseus; Achilles of Roanoke is much the same way.
Someone else can figure out how to *win* the war while she's busy fighting
it.

Her first power is simply a property of being Achilles: her panache. It
begins as soon as she transforms and lasts until she detransforms.
Everything she does is done with flair and seems to be one of the neatest,
bravest, most utterly awesome things that anyone has done, ever. She can
swing her sword, do a backflip, or pick her nose, and her audience will feel
admiration and awe. Her armor seems more polished, her body more beautiful,
her movements more powerful than everyone else's. The effect is strongest on
non-senshi: civilians can, unless they're of a particularly cynical mindset,
be hypnotized by how great Achilles appears. Senshi, unless they're
particularly gullible or vulnerable to mind attacks, will merely be
distracted. It affects her teammates as well as her enemies, and will
probably be annoying as all get-out-- would YOU like to have to spend time
around someone whose every action is just so splendiferous that you feel
like applauding?

Besides having the capacity to sicken people with how perfect she is, this
power is also a potentially severe power drain. Looking that awesome cuts
into her stamina, and the bigger an audience she has, the more quickly she's
going to tired. Just how badly it affects her will depend on what shape
she's in to start, how many people are looking, how long she's transformed,
and how hard she's working. Patrolling back alleys alone at night won't
affect her; having a knock-down, drag-out fight at a busy intersection at
noon will leave her exhausted in short order. If the Senshi of Cynicism
shows up, he or she will be completely immune to this power.


Motivation: Achilles lays her hand on a senshi in a friendly, comforting
manner, smiles, and says, "Be a hero."

The target feels uplifted, energized, proud. The effect can be very
dramatic, giving an exhausted or demoralized senshi the motivation to get up
and fight. It doesn't heal damage, but it can let the target ignore a
non-crippling injury: it won't let someone run on a snapped leg, but it
makes it possible to ignore pain. Per day, Achilles can affect two targets
strongly and three weakly. The weak effect feels like a combination of a
much-needed hug at just the right time and a jolt of straight caffeine. The
effect lasts two minutes; after that, they're on their own, though they
might've regained confidence or an adrenaline rush in the interim. Achilles
can't use it on herself or on a regular human, but it should work for any
other senshi-- even when the target isn't transformed, though Achilles must
be-- or guardian.



Explanation


Achilles was the greatest hero of the Illiad. The son of the minor goddess
Thetis and her mortal husband-for-a-year, Peleus, he was almost immortal.
Thetis managed to miss a spot while dunking him in the Styx, and so his heel
was left vulnerable. ("You mean my name is Achilles, _and_ I have an
Achilles' heel? Thanks, Mum.") Yaoi-bait all his life, he spent much of his
youth disguised as a girl because his mother had foreseen that he would die
if he went to war at Troy. An attempt to work the crossdressing into
Megan's background turned out lamer than a three-legged goat, so you'll have
to bear with me and think happy thoughts of boys in dresses and girls in
suits to fill the gap. The trickster Odysseus, who was evidently
considerably brighter than Achilles, sussed him out and recruited him for
the Achaean army that besieged the city. During the 10 years of war,
Achilles distinguished himself as fearless and unbeatable while getting up
to some slashy hijinks with his!
"special friend," Patroclus.

An inveterate grudge-bearer, his own pride caused his death. Agamemnon
stole his favorite woman, Briseis, and Achilles fell into a sulk of epic
proportions. Too proud to accept any reluctant apologies from Agamemnon, he
stayed in his tent and simmered while the Greek army fractured. Patroclus
begged him to come out, and when that failed, asked to borrow his armor.
Patroclus died rallying the troops while pretending to be Achilles, and
Achilles snapped, killed the Trojan hero Hector, dragged his body around the
city behind a chariot, and generally went batshit. He sobered up long
enough to return Hector's mangled corpse to Priam and died when Apollo
helped a Trojan shoot an arrow into his vulnerable heel. I'd be amused to
see an Apollo senshi show up, I really would.

Why I picked it ... honestly, my western intellectual development class
spent a couple of weeks on the Illiad, and the idea of Achilles' powers came
to me then. I started to write up Ancelin as Achilles, but her personality
quickly became more suited to Amazarak, and I shelved the idea until I was
done with her. Between then and now, I spent a weekend at home and watched
the premiere local dance school do an show. Megan's core traits gelled in
my head then, and this is the result. She's a jerk, he's a jerk, and thus
there is symmetry. I tried to work in the cross-dressing, really I did, but
it kept coming up silly.

Her powers are linked, of course, to different ways of expressing pride (or
hubris, as the case may be). Her version of panache is pride by way of
showing off and showing everyone else up, much the way she did in dance
lessons; it's also inspired by the way the Illiad describes Achilles' every
action as being super awesome. Motivation is a more positive form of pride:
self-confidence and being proud of others. The lion is a symbol of pride
(and the obvious pun) and might, and, unsurprisingly, leonine metaphors are
often used for Achilles in the Illiad (at least they are in the Fagles
translation).

I wrote out her fuku during an archaeology lecture on the subject of
ancient/archaic/classical Greek pottery. Achilles showed up on a *lot* of
slides, so I took it as a sign. The fuku's about 4/9 vase painting, 4/9 Rex
Harrison's armor in "Cleopatra" (which isn't even supposed to be Greek, I
know), and 1/9 poking around the 'net for pictures of artifacts. Her sword
is just a plain sword of appropriate style, included because she really
wouldn't have much hope in a fight without something sharp to swing.

Diamond is pure carbon subjected to high pressure and heat for a very long
time (yay specifics?). Impurities result in often lovely coloration. It's
the hardest known element, making it highly useful in industry. It's not
really as rare as the hype or the price suggest; the supply is restricted
and the price kept high because a few corporations, DeBiers foremost among
them, have a monopoly on almost all of the diamond mines on Earth. The
mines and cutting factories are often operated by virtual slave labor under
horrible conditions. Wars are fought over and funded by so-called "blood
diamonds."

Sorry. Touchy human rights rant. Suffice it to say that I'm not fond of
Megan's favorite jewelry. http://www.un.org/peace/africa/Diamond.html

Writing Sample
skip


Questionnaire

Your Name: Deanna

Email: fishypoo@ureach.com

Killable Senshi: make baby Jesus laugh. I'm expecting her to get herself
waxed sooner or later. A Divinitas, especially one who relies on close
combat, doesn't have much of a chance in an all-out Senshi battle, and Megan
isn't really smart enough to make it on wits alone. I do want to get a few
stories out of her, first, since this sheet was a bitch to write, but after
a while, I'll care less about tossing her to the wolves.

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