• PLEASE BE WARNED: Helena's history involves many a tricky subject, including but not limited to abuse and self injury (images within). Spoilers for Orphan Black are also to follow.

( PLAYER INFO )
Player Name: Mal
Age: 23
Plurk: stagnation
Other characters played at Greyfields: N/A

( CHARACTER INFO )
Name: Helena
Canon: Orphan Black, a live-action television show
Canon Point: Mid-2.06, after she's been arrested.
Age: 30

Appearance:

Powers/Abilities/Physical Limitations:

+ JANIE'S GOT A GUN: Though Helena's biology is largely human and she's constrained to the pros and cons therein, she does have a few skills that rise above and beyond the average, including a keen awareness of a fight. She's accomplished at hand to hand combat, deft with a knife, and even has some casual long-range sniping in her arsenal. She's killed several of her own clones, transcontinentally, without being caught - Katja Obinger's body, in example, was only found due to Sarah's ineptitude.

+ PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT: also some sweet dance moves

+ THE SECOND RULE IS DOUBLE TAP: There's also a small account of Helena's -- good fortune(?), or otherwise. She doesn't seem to die very easily. She survives, in canon, not only a length of rebar jammed pretty directly through her midriff, but also a gunshot wound to the chest. Whether this is (because of a medical condition) due to her backwards organs or just out of pure dumb luck, it's still something worthy of note.

Inventory:

• The clothes on her back:
  • One (1) red t-shirt with a unicorn on it
  • One (1) pair of grey and black striped skinny jeans
  • One (1) dark grey calf-length jacket
  • One (1) pair of brown cowboy boots
• One (1) kitchen knife, stolen
• An entire pocketful of pork rinds

History: Helena @ the Orphan Black wiki

Personality: (aka "this section comes with theme music")

COSIMA: Right. So. What do the cops know?
SARAH: She's a churchy psychopath — duh. It's personal, she's a loner, probably abused as a child.
COSIMA: Okay — the fish reads Christian, and crafted onto a weapon, a personal crusade.
SARAH: Great, a zealot.
COSIMA: You know, when I've seen this branded onto Maggie Chen, I'm thinking she's not a lone warrior. To extreme creationist types, we would be abominations. Like, not God's children, but Satan's.
SARAH: So, they hate us, and she's killing us, even though she's identical to us.
COSIMA: Well, but if you were a messed up abused loner whose faith compelled you to belong, and somebody that you trusted told you that this was the only way to redeem yourself in the eyes of God, I mean...
SARAH: Yeah, I might become an angry angel too.

It's easy to forget that Helena's, loosely speaking, a professional. Sunken eyes, frazzled hair and all, she's at first glance a very bizarre sort of creature. There's something very primitive about her down to her core, from how she eats to how she sits; it's almost converging on childlike. She has a taste for sweets (rewards of some sort, perhaps, an "I have done well" to a poorly constructed idea of 'good' versus 'bad') and a light and curious touch to everything that she does, but that's not to so soon forget she's made up of equal parts sugar and spice.

Helena wasn't necessarily raised a soldier but that's what she was carved into, crafted like a blade under the hands of Tomas and Maggie Chen after she was whisked away from her home in Ukraine at twelve. Maggie had a hand in creating these abominations, and while it's unbeknownst to Helena what changed her mind on the moral nuances of human cloning, it certainly had a hand in doing a number on her. Her and Tomas played a fun game called gaslighting. It was ingrained within her that she was the original of the clones, the "light" to their otherwise wretched natures, and she was systematically constructed into an assassin, adept in the likes of casing her sister targets and then killing them with her weapon of choice.

Her own psychological ailments played no help in the matter. There's definitely something... off about the girl, a few crucial pieces missing. The least that can be mentioned includes her lack of moral center and her disregard for empathetic reasoning. While her sister speaks of the difficulty in killing a person she can identify with on such a biological level, Helena kills her clones ruthlessly, showing no remorse for the "sheep" she has brought to proper pasture, nor much to the troublesome meddlers who might stand in her way. But not the meddling kids. If there's one flaw in that remorselessness, it's Helena's well-meaning demeanor towards children, a love that she doesn't quite understand and has so rarely been given the opportunity to truly know where to begin to express.

Well, until Sarah bloody Manning came along.

Helena has absolutely no idea that she's a twin - and neither does Sarah when they first meet - but she does feel a magnetism to Sarah, immediate upon discovering she's merely portraying Elizabeth Childs. She becomes a woman possessed, infatuated with this new breed of emotion she finds herself actually feeling for another person. Rather than kill Sarah, she gets to know her - she sifts through her life and gleans what information she can (bouncing on her bed, eating her food, sniffing her boyfriend's clothes, whatever it takes). Rather than kill Sarah, she becomes obsessed with the idea that they have a "connection" that won't allow them to kill each other, asking Sarah if she "feels it" too, only perpetuated by the fact that Sarah lets her go free even when injured - at gunpoint - under the nose of a cop. Rather than kill Sarah? She asks her out to lunch.

With this new attraction comes a whole new seed of doubt sown by Sarah, not necessarily in her mission but in what she's come to understand her whole life: Is she the original or is she not? It's a wavering subject, one on which she waxes and wanes on her uncertainty, generally depending on what Tomas tells her. What Tomas says, she listens to, for the most part. He feeds her, he bathes her, he cares for her, and he's also the one pressing the razor into her hand for her own messy breed of flagellation, penance. They're her angel wings, and she rejoices in the moment she's allowed to cut herself open again. It's her equivalent to love, so far as she's concerned, and all of it makes the Sarah situation a confounding one.

Despite everything, Helena keeps as capable as she can, much as she was trained. She understands humanity on a level enough to barter her way into many a situation - and it's not just the killing, it's grand theft motorbike and stealing her way into nightclubs without being caught, it's imitating her clone well enough to implicate a murder confession. Rudimentary self surgery. She maneuvers people like she would a hit, and all of it is just a game for her to tease and prod and play with. The world should work around her charade, and it's not really naivete but inexperience that leads that charge, maybe that same childishness as aforementioned. She's not suave, she lacks finesse (almost animalistic in her own movements), and she really does play her life almost like a game, with strict rules that she thinks she understands, that she thinks people are meant to follow.

Sheep, you see. She's just the wolf in their clothing.

Samples:

X SAMPLE ONE:

[ LINK ]

X SAMPLE TWO: PROMPT [TWO]

She steals into the mall at dawn before it's even opened, wary of the guards and with her messy (very noticeable) hair tamed beneath a hooded sweatshirt proclaiming a band she's never heard of. The message left behind made it very clear what she'd have to do, and true to her spirit, she has full plans to do it to her best. It's a contest, is it not? And she most certainly wants to come in first place.

It's not the only incentive. She's hungry - starved, in fact, and when her last meal was a can of cat food, she'd do most anything for a chance at something better. Her stomach gurgles unpleasantly as she leans up against one of the partitions in the middle of the aisle. "Soon," she murmurs to herself, a hand flat against her belly, and then she skitters off again, unseen.

She knows exactly where someone is sleeping on this night, if the store is where it's meant to be. They change sometimes, they switch and she can't keep her game plan solid at all times when this happens. That's uncomfortable for her. Luckily, this is one of the times she's comfortable. It's like a child looking into a candy store when she plants her face against the unbarred plane of glass into the store beyond. The fight will surely be difficult, as there are few without combative skills here, and the ones who don't keep companions, but it's a fight she's sure she can win.

They'll be sleeping, but they'll hear her coming. She's wary of the knife in her boot, but it won't be drawn until it's necessary. First, there may be traps, and she will evade as necessary, disable as necessary - this is her plan. They will be hazy from the morning that she's already shaken off, peripheral vision impaired; strike to temporal lobe should do nicely in a pinch. Once on the ground, a choke hold, suppressing the carotid artery until the patient sleeps, he will sleeeeeep very nicely.

Helena's smile spreads as her hands slide off the glass and she moves towards the doors. She's got this.

X SAMPLE THREE: PROMPT [ONE]

[ It's not in her nature to trust, and when she hears the voices trying to assuage her, she can feel every hair on her arms stand up.

She's still not quite awake yet; everything is hazed, confusing, she hears screams, she smells smoke and copper. What is happening? What is happening to me? She's on all fours still, trying to gain her bearings in whatever situation it is that she has on her. She's hyper aware of how unarmed she is, how unequipped she likely is with what's to come next. Hell, her hands are still handcuffed. ]

No - No, please - [ With a wave of her hands towards the barrier of tables, she gives a sloppy head shake, stumbling to her feet and looking out the windows of the store instead. Eyes wide, eyes ghostly wide. Her voice grows softer. ]

No, thank you.

• PLEASE BE WARNED: Helena's history involves many a tricky subject, including but not limited to self injury (images within). Spoilers for Orphan Black are also to follow.

PLAYER INFO.
✖ Handle: Mal
✖ Contact:

• AIM: cognitiverecalibration
• EMAIL: deanpants@gmail.com
• PLURK: stagnation

✖ Are You Over 16: Y
✖ Other Characters Played in Consignment: N/A, also applying as Stiles from Teen Wolf.

CHARACTER INFO.
✖ Character Name: Helena
✖ Canon: Orphan Black - Post 1.07; "Parts Developed in an Unusual Manner"
✖ Character Appearance:

✖ Character Age: 30
✖ Pick A Number: 001, 002, 777, or a random number will suit just fine if they're taken!

✖ Canon Setting:

MRS. S: There were rumors that some of the kids we were hiding, the ones that came in Carlton's pipeline, like you, children in the black.
SARAH: What do you mean, exactly, "in the black"?
MRS. S: You know, undocumented. Outside the system. The rumor was these kids were the subject of medical experiments.

Orphan Black takes place in the modern day, in Toronto (or thereabouts). It's got its booze, it's got its drugs, it's bustling like any other cityscape-type setting, but it's also got its bizarre genetic experimentation to speak of, and maybe that's a little out of the ordinary.

Human cloning is still illegal in this world, but when several woman were approached around 1984 under the guise of parents looking for a surrogate mother, this debacle ultimately found a way to worm itself into life. Plenty is unknown about what brought this experiment into fruition, up to and including whoever it is that's solely responsible.

So far, eleven clones are known and accounted for, in varying countries of origin. Each has been outfitted with a "monitor", a watcher of sorts who not only poses as a friend or a significant other to the subject but delivers details to their higher-ups about their target - environment, important details, mental health, anything and everything that helps a better authority keep tabs on the 'nurture' half of the 'versus nature' question. The monitors are kept in the dark. They don't know that who they're observing is a clone initially, and they're generally blackmailed into the job. Up the food chain lies the Dyad Institute, where the boundaries of science are pushed (sometimes legally and ethically).

It's possible something called Project LEDA is heavily involved in this entire experiment, but as the story is still unfolding, secrets remain largely buried for the time being.

What is known is that somebody is killing off the subjects one by one, a practice that originated in Europe and seems to be spreading to Canada and other neighboring countries. Here's where Helena really comes in. Helena too is a product of this human cloning trial, lucky(?) enough to have a keen mother, one who realized her child(ren) was/were special, that something else was afoot with this situation. To hide them, twins were abandoned, one to the state and one to the church - specifically, a convent in Ukraine.

There's a sect of Christian extremists who refer to themselves as the Proletheans; all within believe that synthetic biology is an affront to God. It's unknown how exactly it is that Helena came to be within Tomas' and Maggie Chen's care, but after she was taken from Ukraine, she had her mental illness used against her favor. She was bridled to be a killer of her own clones, after years of preparation and heavy insinuation that she was the original of them all (a probable lie), but more on the story is to come later.

✖ Character History: Helena @ the Orphan Black wiki

✖ Character Personality: (aka "okay it's later") (aka "this section comes with theme music")

HELENA: She was just one of a few, unfit for family. Horse glue.

It's easy to forget that Helena's, loosely speaking, a professional. Sunken eyes, frazzled hair and all, she's at first glance a very bizarre sort of creature. There's something very primitive about her down to her core, from how she eats to how she sits; it's almost converging on childlike. She has a taste for sweets (rewards of some sort, perhaps, an "I have done well" to a poorly constructed idea of 'good' versus 'bad') and a light and curious touch to everything that she does, but that's not to so soon forget she's made up of equal parts sugar and spice.

Helena wasn't necessarily raised a soldier but that's what she was carved into, crafted like a blade under the hands of Tomas and Maggie Chen after she was whisked away from her home in Ukraine at twelve. Maggie had a hand in creating these abominations, and while it's unbeknownst to Helena what changed her mind on the moral nuances of human cloning, it certainly had a hand in doing a number on her. Her and Tomas played a fun game called gaslighting. It was ingrained within her that she was the original of the clones, the "light" to their otherwise wretched natures, and she was systematically constructed into an assassin, adept in the likes of casing her sister targets and then killing them with her weapon of choice.

Her own psychological ailments played no help in the matter. There's definitely something... off about the girl, a few crucial pieces missing. The least that can be mentioned includes her lack of moral center and her disregard for empathetic reasoning. While her sister speaks of the difficulty in killing a person she can identify with on such a biological level, Helena kills her clones ruthlessly, showing no remorse for the "sheep" she has brought to proper pasture, nor much to the troublesome meddlers who might stand in her way. But not the meddling kids. If there's one flaw in that remorselessness, it's Helena's well-meaning demeanor towards children, a love that she doesn't quite understand and has so rarely been given the opportunity to truly know where to begin to express.

Well, until Sarah bloody Manning came along.

Helena has absolutely no idea that she's a twin - and neither does Sarah when they first meet - but she does feel a magnetism to Sarah, immediate upon discovering she's merely portraying Elizabeth Childs. She becomes a woman possessed, infatuated with this new breed of emotion she finds herself actually feeling for another person. Rather than kill Sarah, she gets to know her - she sifts through her life and gleans what information she can (bouncing on her bed, eating her food, sniffing her boyfriend's clothes, whatever it takes). Rather than kill Sarah, she becomes obsessed with the idea that they have a "connection" that won't allow them to kill each other, asking Sarah if she "feels it" too, only perpetuated by the fact that Sarah lets her go free even when injured - at gunpoint - under the nose of a cop. Rather than kill Sarah? She asks her out to lunch.

With this new attraction comes a whole new seed of doubt sown by Sarah, not necessarily in her mission but in what she's come to understand her whole life: Is she the original or is she not? It's a wavering subject, one on which she waxes and wanes on her uncertainty, generally depending on what Tomas tells her. What Tomas says, she listens to, for the most part. He feeds her, he bathes her, he cares for her, and he's also the one pressing the razor into her hand for her own messy breed of flagellation, penance. They're her angel wings, and she rejoices in the moment she's allowed to cut herself open again. It's her equivalent to love, so far as she's concerned, and all of it makes the Sarah situation a confounding one.

Despite everything, Helena keeps as capable as she can, much as she was trained. She understands humanity on a level enough to barter her way into many a situation - and it's not just the killing, it's grand theft motorbike and stealing her way into nightclubs without being caught, it's imitating her clone well enough to implicate a murder confession. Rudimentary self surgery. She maneuvers people like she would a hit, and all of it is just a game for her to tease and prod and play with. The world should work around her charade, and it's not really naivete but inexperience that leads that charge, maybe that same childishness as aforementioned. She's not suave, she lacks finesse (almost animalistic in her own movements), and she really does play her life almost like a game, with strict rules that she thinks she understands, that she thinks people are meant to follow.

Sheep, you see. She's just the wolf in their clothing.

✖ Character Powers:

+ JANIE'S GOT A GUN: Though Helena's biology is largely human and she's constrained to the pros and cons therein, she does have a few skills that rise above and beyond the average, including a keen awareness of a fight. She's accomplished at hand to hand combat, deft with a knife, and even has some casual long-range sniping in her arsenal. She's killed several of her own clones, transcontinentally, without being caught - Katja Obinger's body, in example, was only found due to Sarah's ineptitude.

+ PARTY ROCK IS IN THE HOUSE TONIGHT: also some sweet dance moves

+ THE SECOND RULE IS DOUBLE TAP: There's also a small account of Helena's -- good fortune(?), or otherwise. She doesn't seem to die very easily. She survives, in canon, not only a length of rebar jammed pretty directly through her midriff, but also a gunshot wound to the chest. It's unclear as of yet whether this is a side effect of her biological makeup (as it may have also been with Kira surviving her car accident) or merely an account of her own big dumb luck. Oh, would you look at that - she has backwards organs! (04/27/14)

CHARACTER SAMPLES.
✖ First Person POV: [ LINK ]

✖ Third Person POV:

She doesn't rest when she arrives back underneath the ship decks, because she already knows she's been followed. She'd be on the floor by now, surrounded by wrappers. Lounging about, legs kicked lazily into the air. Instead she's here, perched backwards on this sunken in chair, head cocked to the side and every sense alert. Her neck cricks, she hears a creak in the floor, and she attacks before she is attacked.

With a sudden lunge back off her chair, the altercation is quick and paroxysmal. Her elbow strike blocked, the heel of her hand connecting with his chin, stabbing intercepted, one sharp movement after another until her back is to his front, her arm wrenched up and behind her into the small of her back. Her knife is to her throat and it's all in this language she actually understands when he breathes out her name - a gentle sort of sound, meant to placate in contradiction to the fight. Helena tilts her head back against him and laughs when her hair musses up into his face. This is clearly not going as intended.

"Who are you?" she coos as she draws up her free hand to paint a hand down the man's cheek. "Tell me before you gut me like a little piggy."

"My name - " he starts to tell her reflexively, and jars when he realizes that he's the one actually holding the knife here, the one in charge. " - is Gabriel." He releases her, palming the blade from one hand to the other. Though she doesn't pounce again, his guard's far from dropped as she starts to circle him, a catlike smile curving up one corner of her mouth. Gabriel's hands slowly raise, one palm open and one half-clutched around that knife of hers. He jiggles it in her direction - got your nose. "I'm not here to kill you."

"Business?" She stops pacing, her voice is stilted, only lazily sidestepping around that thick accent. "Or pleasure?"

"Business. Will you let me speak?"

After a moment's pause, her fingers wiggle in debate, a soured look starting to sink into her expression. "I want my knife back."

"After we talk. Helena, please. This is important."

His hand stops onto the back of the metal chair she was sitting atop not long before and swings it on one leg, planting the seat firmly facing her. An invitation to sit. Maybe it's the jacket, when her hands easily slide into her pockets and she takes a few, romping steps towards the chair, slinging herself wide into it and hooking an elbow over the back. Her eyebrows pique. "Let me hear you then."

He doesn't rescind the knife, but he does start to ease himself up against a nearby wall, first leaning back against it and then slowly folding his arms.

"This should have been Tomas - "

"Where is he?" Her hands coil against her knees as she leans forward towards Gabriel, scrutiny apparent in her expression. Something urgent, something new, and it's not someone familiar with a hand to guide her - it's this stranger, with teeth that brighten when he lies and a name probably meant to appease, Gabriel, a calming messenger with news from on high. "He does not tell me? He sends an angel?"

"He wanted me to - "

"No!" Her hands slap against her thighs abruptly and she's to her feet faster than her chair can even be kicked over. Gabriel is at once alert, upright, and when their hands meet, it's clutched around the knife handle together, fingers messily intertwined. And many shall follow their pernicious ways; by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. Helena tries to drive the knife into his stomach, but Gabriel holds strong.

"Helena - "

"False prophet - "

"This didn't end very well for you last time." His hands twist and so do hers - important not to terminate the mission objective, naturally, but similarly important not to die. The knife skitters onto the floor and this time when Helena's pinned, it's up against the wall with a wail of torment. Gabriel's eyes nearly roll out of his sockets. "Are you going to listen?"

"Don't lie to me!"

"Fine, here's the truth: If you don't do exactly as I say, everyone you know and love is going to die."

Her shouts dwindle to an acidic mewl, almost a growl in her throat before she goes limp. She's not above all reason, and she doesn't need a list of names spelled out to know who might be on it. It's plenty, and not enough. Important, for ways she can't articulate yet. Her eyes dart like a trapped animal and her hands clench and unclench where he has her wrists held tight behind her. "What do you want?" she asks in a breath of a voice, small and insignificant. Not necessarily what she needs to sound like, but rather what he needs her to sound like.

She doesn't mistake his pause for hesitance. "Helena," he tells her, and he releases a hand only to part her hair back over her shoulder, to get her to turn her head towards him. "Will you be our archangel?"

CHARACTER ITEMS.
✖ Pick a Team: Orange

✖ Mission Freebie: Well, firstly, she wants her knife back. But with each mission completed, Helena will receive the name of a new "sheep" for her to hunt down and kill. Whether these are actual leads or fake names are to the discretion of the mods. Obviously, this system won't keep her appeased very long, but it's a working start.
✖ Personal Item or Weapon: A leather jacket with an envelope in the pocket.

✖ Character Inventory:

• The clothes on her back
  • Including, but not limited to, Sarah's jacket
  • Contents: A letter from Sarah's daughter, and photos of Kira
• One (1) knife with a wood-carved handle; a winged fish, a symbol for fecundity
• One (1) amputated human tail
• An entire pocketful of sugar packets