Singularity app
Player Information ;
Your Nickname: Auria
OOC Journal: auriatetsukai
Under 18? Nope
Email/IM: auriatetsukai@gmail.com / auriatetsukai
Characters Played at Singularity: none
Character Information ;
Name: Tally Youngblood
Name of Canon: Uglies
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Uglies at Wikipedia
Canon Point: mid-Specials (see below)
Setting: Three hundred years ago, mankind was at a crossroads. On the one hand, people had everything they wanted--cars, houses, friends, family, people, six billion people, and they were still growing and still buying shit and still consuming. And at the same time, their world was crumbling. Its resources were depleting at a faster rate than ever before, and it was only a matter of time before they ran out completely. Scientists could devise temporary solutions, but the big picture was that mankind was in a downward spiral and needed a miracle.
One scientist finally engineered a bacterium that was supposed to be the answer; it would replace crude oil as the primary source of fuel, thereby making the air cleaner and saving one of the earth's biggest and most nonrenewable resources. However, all the bug ended up doing was infecting crude oil and its byproducts, namely gasoline. The bug changed the primary components into phosphorus, which ignites in contact with oxygen. Nearly the entire world was wiped out as the bug jumped from city to city, state to state, region to region, continent to continent. The survivors were the people who had already been cut off from society--farmers alone on their acres of land, rebels who had shunned society and taken off into the wild, and in some cases, members of the armed forces who were in remote areas or on boats that escaped the bug. These people came together to rebuild society with one goal in mind: never let the earth be sucked as dry as it nearly had been. Preserve its resources and start anew. With this goal, a new society sprang up, new technologies were born that used magnetism or renewable fuels, and slowly humanity started to repair itself.
Uglies
Tally was born into a society wherein beauty was a city-wide standard and easily achieved through surgery. As children, she and her friends were raised to pick on each other, call attention to facial features that didn't quite fit, and to admire their parents, their teachers, and the other pretties that lived with them. They were uglies and they believed it.
Tally's best friend during her childhood was Peris. They did everything together, right up until his sixteenth birthday. Peris was five months older than Tally, which meant he would turn pretty before her, and be shuttled off to New Pretty Town for parties, drinking, sex, more drinking, and fireworks. At first, Tally had pretended the five months didn't matter. But once Peris turned pretty, her life more or less came to a standstill. Five long months of waiting until she could turn pretty and join her best friend in all his fun. Until then, she was just lonely.
One night towards the end of the summer, Tally got fed up with just waiting and snuck into New Pretty Town. Uglies were forbidden there, but she and Peris had done it many times before and had never been caught (though they'd come close several times). Using the same route, Tally snuck over and found the mansion to which Peris had been assigned. She needed a disguise, though--her ugly features were a dead giveaway in a city full of flawless pretties. She found a smart-plastic mask which would fuse to her facial features and stay cemented there, which was a great disguise except it was a pig mask. Nevertheless, Tally found Peris and talked with him in a stopped elevator. She had to know they were still friends. He said yes, but he didn't sound very sincere at all, and in the end, he had to shoo her off lest the other partygoers find her. Tally ended up escaping by bungee-jacketing off the roof of the mansion.
And that was how she met Shay.
Shay was an ugly who had coincidentally been sneaking around New Pretty Town on the same night, checking up on some of her own friends. Tally bungee'd right into her. The two escaped back to the ugly side of the river, and, naturally, became friends. Friends who happened to share the same birthday. For the rest of the summer, Tally and Shay were inseparable.
Shay told Tally why she'd been skulking around the river that night: she'd been watching the friends who had chickened out on an important mission. Outside the city, out in the wild somewhere, there was a camp called the Smoke, full of kids who didn't want the surgery, who would rather stay ugly (or normal, as it were) their entire lives. Shay and her friends had planned to sneak out of the city over the summer, but half the group had gotten cold feet at the last minute--Shay included. They'd all turned pretty as scheduled, and now Shay was about to do so as well. At the very last minute, Shay told Tally she was going to this camp (for reals this time) and implored her to come with. Tally just couldn't bring herself to do it, and Shay left alone.
On her sixteenth birthday, the day of her surgery, Tally was picked up and taken to a building on the outskirts of the city. This was the headquarters of Special Circumstances, the organization that kept the city structured and running. (They were responsible for a lot of other things, as Tally would learn.) Most uglies and even the new pretties thought Specials were a myth; the Specials didn't involve themselves directly in society--only in a special circumstance. And Shay's disappearance was definitely one of these. The director of Special Circumstances, Doctor Cable, informed Tally that she had to track down and bring back Shay, or never turn pretty. Seeing no other option, Tally accepted. She was given a large supply of dehydrated food, a water purifier, and a locket with a tracker inside. Once she'd found the Smoke, Tally was to activate the tracker so Special Circumstances could get everyone back.
Tally took her hoverboard and supplies, and journeyed to the Smoke. Shay had left her cryptic directions on the night she'd left, so Tally followed them miles into the wild until she found the camp. Shay and a few others came to meet her and direct her into the actual camp. Among her friends were Croy, one of the kids who had made it with Shay's other friends, and David, whose parents had started the Smoke and who had never been inside a city. Tally was accepted eventually into Smoky society, though Shay continued to distrust exactly how she'd gotten there and why she was suddenly so intent on coming.
When Tally first arrived, it seemed that Shay and David were an item. However, Tally found herself growing closer to David, and eventually he introduced her to his parents, Maddy and Az. They had actually been surgeons back in Tally's city, the people who performed and regulated the pretty surgery. They informed Tally that there was a darker side of the surgery that they'd discovered: lesions strategically placed in the brain to ensure complacency and basic desires. Pretties were designed to want fun and instant gratification, not higher thinking or government or their city or the world. They weren't supposed to care about anything but themselves and their tiny bubble of New Pretty Town. When Maddy and Az discovered this, they performed surgery on each other to reverse their own lesions and then fled the city to start the Smoke. They accepted runaways from other cities and taught them how to survive on their own.
With this information, Tally decided that the Smoke was a better option than going back and having her brain messed with, so she destroyed the tracker locket by throwing it into a fire, ridding herself of Special Circumstances. Too bad damaging the locket at all activated the tracker. The next morning, hovercars were all over the Smoke, chasing everyone out and capturing anyone who ran. Tally escaped with David; but Maddy, Az, Shay, and anyone else who didn't die in the siege were taken back to the city, presumably to be lesion'd.
Tally and David raced back to the city, intent on rescuing the prisoners. They did successfully find Croy, Shay, Maddy, and a few others, but Shay had already been turned pretty, and Az was dead. The group got outside the city to discuss what to do next. Rebuilding the Smoke wasn't entirely out of the question, but it would take time, and there was something Maddy needed to do first. She pulled Tally aside and explained that she was working on a cure for the lesions, something that could quickly be ingested and left to do its job. But she needed a pretty to test it on. They tried to test it on Shay, but she refused, and Maddy wouldn't force the cure on her. As a doctor, she needed informed consent. Tally gave Maddy her consent, and then went back to the city to be turned pretty.
Pretties
Tally as a pretty quickly reconnected with Shay, who had found all her old friends in New Pretty Town. Most of the kids who had previously chickened out on the first Smoke trip had settled for being Crims, a new clique all about self-expression. And by self-expression, I mean pushing the boundaries of society. The Crims were essentially Smokies in pretty form. And Tally and Shay were all set to join them, along with Peris and a few other hopefuls. When you were pretty, belonging to a clique was all that mattered.
Tally snuggled right into the Crims and got particularly close to their leader, Zane. Zane had been one of Shay's old friends from the first Smoke excursion--in other words, one of the chickens. But Tally certainly admired him, and he admired her as well for being able to make it to the Smoke. Obviously, they started dating. For a time, Tally's life was absolute bliss, until one particular bash. While the Crims were generally being awesome and partying, Croy and a couple other Smokies crashed the party to find Tally. It was time for her to fulfill her promise to Maddy.
Tally and Zane climbed the tower at the top of the mansion to find where Croy had stashed the cure Tally needed to test. The Specials, however, had gotten wind of the situation and were following them, intent on capturing Croy and taking the cure. Tally got her hands on the cure before them--two tiny pills--and shared it with Zane. One pill each, and they'd both be cured. (Or so they thought.) After taking the pills, Tally and Zane were discovered. The Specials took them in for questioning, then cuffed them with orbital alloy bracelets that would record anything they said. They were prisoners.
As winter rolled around, Tally and Zane became accustomed to a) not being separated from each other and b) wearing thick scarves around their wrists to muffle the bracelets. But for the most part, it didn't matter. While they taught the other Crims to stay bubbly by getting adrenaline rushes, they noticed that they were still different. They were cured.
The last trick to get the Crims bubbly was to sabotage the floating ice rink just before a soccer game. The rink floated above the field, and while the spectators were seating themselves below, all the Crims got to the center of the rink and poured flasks of vodka right on the ice. With one jump from Zane, the ice cracked and the entire floor of the stadium gave way. Everyone in the rink was required to wear bungee jackets, which certainly came in handy. The breakthrough, as it was called, worked--the Crims were incredibly bubbly, their minds cleared from the haze that came with the lesions.
That night, there was a huge bonfire with a little champagne for celebration of the breakthrough. Tally and Zane were enjoying themselves right up until Zane got a headache attack, one of many he'd been suffering since taking the cure. Tally escorted him back home and then came back to the party, only to be confronted outside of it by Dr. Cable. Obviously, the rink shattering had not escaped Cable's attention, especially when she found out that Tally had been involved. She explained to Tally that trying to be "bubbly" was all well and good, but it was the sort of thing that got Special Circumstances to notice you. And not in the trouble sense. More in the "join us" sense. Cable asked if Tally wanted to be a Special, to essentially be bubbly all the time, and Tally said no. Rather, screamed. Cable backed off, and Tally went back to the bonfire.
Shay, of course, had been involved in all of this breakthrough stuff, and as a result was extra bubbly tonight. When Tally returned to the party, Shay confronted her. Being bubbly had broken through Shay's haze of memories, and she remembered everything that had happened in the Smoke--and she also remembered that she hated Tally. She demanded to know what had happened to Tally and Zane back at the mansion (since no one knew about the pills) and when Tally told her, she was insulted that Tally hadn't shared the pills with her. In so many words, she informed Tally that no matter what she said when her mind went pretty again, she still hated her and was not her friend.
Tally and Shay didn't speak for the next several days while Tally and Zane planned their escape. Zane's headaches were getting worse, and it was becoming more apparent that only Maddy could help him. They had to get out of the city, but the bracelets would ping the authorities if they tried to leave. So step one was going to be getting the cuffs off. Tally and Zane tried starving them off. During this time, they also asked Fausto, one of Zane and Shay's old friends, to trick a couple hoverboards for their escape. He obliged, and one rainy day, Tally and Zane tested out the boards by riding off to the river.
At the river, they ran into Sussy and Dex, two uglies who had helped Tally break into Special Circumstances previously. The two had been looking for the New Smoke (as David's group was now called) by trekking to the ruins outside of the city almost nightly. They told Zane and Tally that they'd seen some of the Crims in the park the last few nights, doing something weird. Zane had told the Crims to lay low, so he and Tally went to the park to find out what was happening.
They found Shay there, with several of the other Crims. In the pounding rain, Shay cut herself down her arm and directed the rest of the group to do so as well. Tally recognized that this was Shay's new cure, her way of being bubbly. She implored Zane to leave, but he doubled over from another headache. Tally hoisted him onto her hoverboard and tried to take him to the hospital, but he argued with her the entire way. When they finally came to a stop, they noticed Tally's cuff had heard the whole thing. Zane punched a wall to fake an injury, and let Tally take him in.
I should let it be known (if it doesn't become extremely obvious in about three sentences) that I started reading Hyperbole and a Half while writing this.
After Zane got out of the hospital, it was decided that they needed to leave. Now. So Zane's idea for getting the cuffs off was to use a giant metal crusher. Normally, the crusher could detect body heat and wouldn't work for this, but Zane had the great idea of plunging his hand into ice water before giving his hand over to crushing pancake death. Tally and Fausto (who was there to operate the machine) objected very loudly to this, but there were just no other options until Tally noticed a glassblower in the back of the workshop. She was holding the glass with her hands, so Tally got a few of the gloves she was using. New plan: escape in hot air balloons while using the flames to expand the cuffs. Long story short: It worked.
Mostly. See, part two of the plan was to jump off on hoverboards just before the city grid ran out. But before Tally jumped, Peris told her he wasn't going with them. He was content to stay pretty-minded. By the time Tally gave up on arguing with him, the grid had run out and there was nowhere to jump. Except the river. If she was lucky. Tally tended to be lucky, so she did it. Problem was, the part of the river they were floating above was actually part of a sealed-off reservation, and now Tally was stuck inside.
The reservation was home to a few tribes of what can only be described as cavemen. These people had never seen the outside world, didn't speak the same language as most normal people, and treated the pretties and Specials as gods. So when one tribe's holy man, Andrew, found Tally, he immediately accepted her as a god and helped her to get out of the reservation. (Tally later understood that the Specials used this reservation and its people as test subjects to refine the pretty operation.) Once out of the area, Tally found the New Smoke's whereabouts and met up with them.
Everything would have been pretty awesome, except that Maddy explained to Tally what was wrong with Zane. Turns out, the pills were supposed to be taken together. One pills contained nanos that repaired the lesions, and the other stopped them after their work was done. Zane's anorexic habits eventually starved the nanos, but not before they did a significant amount of damage to the motor skills and cognition areas of his brain. Maddy had given him some stem cell tissue, but there wasn't much more she could do. The Smokies would have to wait for Zane to rest before packing up and moving on.
A few days later, the New Smokies realized there was a signal being sent, and they couldn't figure out the source. Tally immediately knew it to be from Zane, because he'd been in the hospital, so they must have stuck a tracker in him. The New Smoke acted quickly, packing up and getting the fuck out of there, but Tally refused to leave Zane behind. She stuck with him as everyone else departed, and was there when the Specials burst in. She argued briefly with Dr. Cable before a couple Specials showed up with an unconscious Fausto. They'd managed to capture him, but the rest of the New Smoke had gotten away. The Special with Fausto revealed herself to be Shay, newly transformed, and with her were some of her Cutter friends. She offered Tally the chance to be Special, but when Tally vehemently refused, she just stuck her with a tranquilizer and turned her anyway. Bad end.
Specials
Now that they were Specials, it was Tally and Shay's job to track down Maddy's cure and keep it from spreading into the city. After a month of Tally training in the Specials' camp, the group crashed a party in Uglyville where the cure was supposed to be. It would have gone swimmingly if Tally hadn't gotten all high and mighty and taken off her disguise before actually taking the cure from the girl who had it. Said girl ended up using her hidden bungee jacket to rocket into the air, where a group of hoverboarders grabbed her and took off. The Cutters followed them in hot pursuit, and it was an awesome futuristic police chase that ended with...the Smokies totally getting away, having managed to capture Fausto. But they did find out for whom the pills were intended: they were supposed to go to Zane.
This warranted some investigation as to why the Smokies wanted to fuck Zane over even further, so Shay intended to talk to him. However, Tally insisted on coming along. Shay was having none of it at first, but it's likely that she agreed to take Tally in order to passive-aggressively take out her frustrations about Fausto on her best friend. They snuck into New Pretty Town and climbed through Zane's window. He was there, but right away, Tally could tell there was something wrong. Shay had the pills from the Smoky girl, and she casually threw them towards Zane, who reached out to catch it a full ten seconds after it was in prime catching range. His reflexes and motor skills were completely shot, and Tally realized that she was physically disgusted looking at him. He was worse than ugly. He was crippled and weak.
Shay teased Zane about being crippled and also about not being Special, even though he totally could be. He was the trickiest one of them, leader of the Crims, and if he hadn't been crippled, he could be running around Uglyville with Tally, breaking up ugly parties, chasing out Smokies, and probably having the best sex in the world. He didn't even have a cuff like before, but an actual collar, so even if he could stumble out his door and fall down the stairs successfully, he'd never be able to make it outside the city. To rub this all in, Shay had her fingers all up in Tally's hair and it was the most possessive, creepy, lesbian scene in the entire series. Using Tally as bait, Shay convinced Zane to try escaping the city again, intending to have him take Special Circumstances to where the New Smoke was.
There was another half to Shay's plan that she used to get Tally on her side: If she and Tally could pull off Zane's escape, but make it look like he'd organized it himself, they'd make him Special in no time. Tally liked this plan, right up until Shay told her the trick: sneak into the Armory and grab some supplies to cut off Zane's collar. Only the Armory would have the kind of heavy-duty weapons or tools to snap the device. Tally suddenly became very, very doubtful, because the Armory was the most heavily guarded building in the city. But if it meant Zane could be Special, then it would be worth it.
It is at this point that Tally enters Sacrosanct - with a goal in mind, but before putting Shay’s plan into motion.
Personality: Over her canon, Tally changed considerably every book. Too bad it was reset by the next book through surgery. In Uglies, she gradually accepted herself as an ugly, hated and feared her city, and in general was her real self. But then she became pretty and had lesions inserted into her brain to make her docile and happy. As a pretty, she changed the most -- she managed to completely undo the operation's effects, getting herself back to a more ugly state of mind without the use of nanos. And then they turned her Special.
Tally settled very quickly into being Special, almost as if being a brainwashed superhuman was how she'd always imagined herself. For the time being, she looked to Shay as a leader, following Shay's convictions about the Smoke and the wild. At this point, it was very hard to change Tally's mind. What she saw and understood was what was right. Tally dealt with her Special duties head-on and at the speed of "AAAAAAAA", but buried her own memories and shortcomings where she didn't have to worry about them. Essentially, she lied to herself. Every time Zane showed up, he could get her to think of her past life and break through the exterior she'd set up, but that only served to make Tally nauseated and even more confused. Cutting herself was the only thing that got her personality and her goals to settle down and straighten out. That way, she saw where she was headed and what she needed to do.
Tally has repeatedly been called "selfish" throughout the series, primarily by Shay. To a certain extent, she is not responsible for the actions that Shay blames her for, but on the other hand, Tally does have a streak of selfishness. Most of her actions in Specials are driven by her desire to keep Zane to herself and make him Special as well. The way she describes the wild also makes it sound like she protects it because it means something to her, not because anyone told her to. It's hers. So yeah, in the strictest sense of the word, Tally is most definitely selfish.
Being taken from mid-book, Tally remains the way the Special surgery made her. She is rash, quick to anger, impulsive, and somewhat hateful and even spiteful. Though she is not familiar with the phrase itself, she very much fits into the idea of "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself". In terms of pure willpower, Tally relies on no one. She can be given a task and will execute it flawlessly. She is not, however, very creative. While she can be given the assignment of "Infiltrate this party and confiscate Smoky contraband", it will be Shay who comes up with the details of the plan, not Tally. She is good at thinking on her feet, but not thinking in long-term strategy sorts of ways,
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: Tally has no supernatural powers, only physical abilities and skills. The technology implanted in her during the pretty and Special operations also grant her a few tricks as well.
Her physical traits include heightened senses and reflexes. As Shay puts it, a Special can "smell an unwashed human from a kilometer away, a burnt-out campfire from ten." While the entire surgical processes for a Special aren't disclosed, we know that bone tissue is replaced with ceramic (and possibly orbital alloy) and muscles are sheathed in monofilament for durability, reflexes, and strength. Endurance is increased as well.
Tally has several implants for different functions. Her eyes have an infrared function and a network function, both of which can be toggled with finger gestures. Her network function allows her to tap into the public newsfeeds of the city and read/watch what’s being said. This is also a function of her skintenna, a communication network in her skin. The skintenna is what allows her to use gestures to control her technological functions. It also serves as a relay for other people with skintenna. The Specials have a private channel on their skintenna and can talk to each other in whispers, their words being carred through the channel via a chip implanted in their jaws. By touching surfaces that channel sound waves, Tally can also listen to conversations in buildings through her skintenna.
Because a Special's job is to protect the wild from the advance of civilization, new Specials learn how to survive for days at a time away from the cities. Tally has a number of skills to help her survive, such as killing animals and preparing them for food. Her sharp teeth and nails help her in this task.
None of Tally’s technological components will work in Sacrosanct. Her communication abilities will be replaced by the wearable, and finger gestures will do nothing but make her look silly for wiggling her hands around. Additionally, her tattoos (mentioned below) will be immobile. She will retain her other physical skills and traits.
Inventory: some items involve explanation
- one set of clothes, including pants, closely-fitted shirt, gloves, lightweight boots, and appropriate undergarments
- one knife, shows traces of blood
- one interface ring, worn on left hand; this is the equivalent of a wearable. It allows all technological/electronic devices in cities to see her, and also allows her to use/interact with them. For instance, in Uglies, an automated street sweeper nearly runs her down because she isn't wearing her ring; that is, the sweeper can't "see" her. On the opposite end, devices like the hole in the wall (a sort of room-service which can create anything) can only be operated by someone wearing a ring. This will be rendered inoperable, being replaced by the wearable.
- one sneak suit, a full-body garment able to transition between complete invisibility and black, scale-like armor. It will be rendered completely useless in Sacrosanct, becoming a lightweight black body suit with no special abilities other than skintight fanservice.
Appearance: I apologize for the next sentence, because it is going to be the most Mary-Sue sentence I’ve ever had to write, but here we go. Tally is insanely beautiful. The books describe it as a “cruel beauty”. The point of the pretty operation is to make everyone the same standard of soft beauty, with rounded features. The Special operation seeks to be frighteningly attractive, to still conform to the standards of beauty but to also strike fear and obedience into the hearts of simple-minded pretties. As such, Tally’s facial features are sharp, making her look cold and haughty. Pretty-standard height is unknown, but we do know that Specials are slightly taller; it’s most likely that Tally is between 5’8” and 6’. Her hair is dark and sleek and her irises are turned black for the fear effect. Her body is lean and toned, her skin pale. As a pretty, she once got a flash tattoo on her forehead. This tattoo has been added onto, becoming a network of Celtic knots that trace across her forehead, down the right side of her face, and down her arms to end at each of her hands. The tattoos spin and pulse to her heartbeat (though not in Sacrosanct). She has several small scars along her arms from cutting. She wears plain, comfortable clothing, stuff in which she can move easily.
Age: 16
OC/AU Justification ;
N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
When she awoke, the first thing she was aware of was the sharp pain in her lower back. Tally heaved herself into a sitting position, expecting to be in the wilderness or something, lying on a rock, but it turned out to be a junkyard instead, and the rock was actually some sort of crumpled metal. The dark gray expanse before her suggested she was somewhere near ruins. Plenty of decrepit Rusty cities existed, and she’d been to quite a few in the area. This one didn’t look familiar though. Was it one she hadn’t gotten to see yet?
How did she even get here? Last she remembered, she’d been speaking with Shay about a plan for Zane. Had someone ambushed them? Knocked her out and dragged her to this dilapidated city?
No, because that would be pointless and dumb. Also impossible. No one could just sneak up on Tally Youngblood and smack her in the back of the head. Even the Smokies with their potential new city help couldn’t do that. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have dumped her in the middle of nowhere. They would have brought her back to their city and “cured” her of being Special.
They might have done so, on second thought. Tally did feel wrong. Would the Smokies have cured her, then dumped her here to fend for herself? She felt her teeth with her tongue and found that they were still sharp, not filed down. A couple flexes of her arms told her the monofilament sheaths hadn’t been removed. But there was something missing that she couldn’t put her finger on.
She checked her hands without really thinking why. Her tattoos had stopped moving. Though her heart was beating (and slowly working its way into “alert” mode), the swirls remained stationary. She flicked her fingers to run internal diagnostics, but nothing came up in the videofeed. So either the skintenna relays to her fingers weren’t working, or her eyes weren’t.
“Diagnostics,” she intoned softly, hoping the skintenna chip would make her software start working. No luck. Was her skintenna completely gone? She could rip apart her skin to find out, but the idea didn’t really appeal to her. Not right now.
Okay, so maybe her body wasn’t working, but she still had her interface ring. If she was in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t pick up a city’s network, but she could still see if anyone had messaged her. She twisted the ring to bring up her inbox, but nothing happened. The ring remained an inert band of metal.
“Crap,” she muttered. She slid the ring from her finger and tossed it into the rest of the junk, her temper rising. Her only links to her fellow Cutters were either useless or broken. The ring was just a stupid, boring accessory by this point and she would have to get a new one when she found her way back to the Special Circumstances headquarters. Once she did, Cable would probably kill her. Or Shay would, for ditching her. Shay wanted to kill her for a lot of things already.
As her anger and frustration continued to build, Tally reached for a particularly jagged piece of metal and pressed the end into the palm of her hand. But before the skin could break, before she could start bleeding, before she could obtain clarity, she heard something beep quietly behind her. She stood up and whirled around, the piece of metal still gripped in her hand and becoming a weapon rather than a tool of her own self-harm. Her eyes scanned the area for the source of the noise…and then fell upon a small, mechanical creature.
Tally knelt down to inspect the thing. What would a city droid be doing out here? Then again, it wasn’t like any city droid she’d ever seen. Besides, it couldn’t see her. Without her ring, she was invisible to the automated processes of the cities. But this thing was looking right at her, and after a moment, it offered her the thing it clenched in its right hand. It appeared to be the cuff Tally and Zane had worn as pretties, but a second glance told her that wasn’t the case.
As she held out her hand to take it, the droid opened the cuff and snapped it on her wrist. Tally, reacting on instinct, yelled and kicked the thing away. It bounced twice against the discarded metal scraps, then picked itself up and tottered away.
She was angry again, but she didn’t need to cut herself. She already knew what she had to do - she had to figure out what this cuff did, and then remove it as soon as possible.
Network Sample:
[Tally is going to stick to text for the time being. No need to frighten people with her appearance, or let them know there’s a Special in their midst. This is the most special of Special Circumstances and she needs to lay low.
Chances are, she’s in a new city. Possibly kidnapped. She needs to adopt an identity. Maybe a new pretty still woozy from the operation? No, she can’t be arsed to pretend to be a bubblehead. But she’ll still have to be careful.
She finally decides on what to type.]
Hey, can someone help me out here? I think I got a little too drunk at last night’s party and I’m…not really sure where I am.
[That should answer a few questions right off the bat. In the meantime, she can look for a way out.]
Your Nickname: Auria
OOC Journal: auriatetsukai
Under 18? Nope
Email/IM: auriatetsukai@gmail.com / auriatetsukai
Characters Played at Singularity: none
Character Information ;
Name: Tally Youngblood
Name of Canon: Uglies
Canon/AU/Other Game CR: Canon
Reference: Uglies at Wikipedia
Canon Point: mid-Specials (see below)
Setting: Three hundred years ago, mankind was at a crossroads. On the one hand, people had everything they wanted--cars, houses, friends, family, people, six billion people, and they were still growing and still buying shit and still consuming. And at the same time, their world was crumbling. Its resources were depleting at a faster rate than ever before, and it was only a matter of time before they ran out completely. Scientists could devise temporary solutions, but the big picture was that mankind was in a downward spiral and needed a miracle.
One scientist finally engineered a bacterium that was supposed to be the answer; it would replace crude oil as the primary source of fuel, thereby making the air cleaner and saving one of the earth's biggest and most nonrenewable resources. However, all the bug ended up doing was infecting crude oil and its byproducts, namely gasoline. The bug changed the primary components into phosphorus, which ignites in contact with oxygen. Nearly the entire world was wiped out as the bug jumped from city to city, state to state, region to region, continent to continent. The survivors were the people who had already been cut off from society--farmers alone on their acres of land, rebels who had shunned society and taken off into the wild, and in some cases, members of the armed forces who were in remote areas or on boats that escaped the bug. These people came together to rebuild society with one goal in mind: never let the earth be sucked as dry as it nearly had been. Preserve its resources and start anew. With this goal, a new society sprang up, new technologies were born that used magnetism or renewable fuels, and slowly humanity started to repair itself.
Uglies
Tally was born into a society wherein beauty was a city-wide standard and easily achieved through surgery. As children, she and her friends were raised to pick on each other, call attention to facial features that didn't quite fit, and to admire their parents, their teachers, and the other pretties that lived with them. They were uglies and they believed it.
Tally's best friend during her childhood was Peris. They did everything together, right up until his sixteenth birthday. Peris was five months older than Tally, which meant he would turn pretty before her, and be shuttled off to New Pretty Town for parties, drinking, sex, more drinking, and fireworks. At first, Tally had pretended the five months didn't matter. But once Peris turned pretty, her life more or less came to a standstill. Five long months of waiting until she could turn pretty and join her best friend in all his fun. Until then, she was just lonely.
One night towards the end of the summer, Tally got fed up with just waiting and snuck into New Pretty Town. Uglies were forbidden there, but she and Peris had done it many times before and had never been caught (though they'd come close several times). Using the same route, Tally snuck over and found the mansion to which Peris had been assigned. She needed a disguise, though--her ugly features were a dead giveaway in a city full of flawless pretties. She found a smart-plastic mask which would fuse to her facial features and stay cemented there, which was a great disguise except it was a pig mask. Nevertheless, Tally found Peris and talked with him in a stopped elevator. She had to know they were still friends. He said yes, but he didn't sound very sincere at all, and in the end, he had to shoo her off lest the other partygoers find her. Tally ended up escaping by bungee-jacketing off the roof of the mansion.
And that was how she met Shay.
Shay was an ugly who had coincidentally been sneaking around New Pretty Town on the same night, checking up on some of her own friends. Tally bungee'd right into her. The two escaped back to the ugly side of the river, and, naturally, became friends. Friends who happened to share the same birthday. For the rest of the summer, Tally and Shay were inseparable.
Shay told Tally why she'd been skulking around the river that night: she'd been watching the friends who had chickened out on an important mission. Outside the city, out in the wild somewhere, there was a camp called the Smoke, full of kids who didn't want the surgery, who would rather stay ugly (or normal, as it were) their entire lives. Shay and her friends had planned to sneak out of the city over the summer, but half the group had gotten cold feet at the last minute--Shay included. They'd all turned pretty as scheduled, and now Shay was about to do so as well. At the very last minute, Shay told Tally she was going to this camp (for reals this time) and implored her to come with. Tally just couldn't bring herself to do it, and Shay left alone.
On her sixteenth birthday, the day of her surgery, Tally was picked up and taken to a building on the outskirts of the city. This was the headquarters of Special Circumstances, the organization that kept the city structured and running. (They were responsible for a lot of other things, as Tally would learn.) Most uglies and even the new pretties thought Specials were a myth; the Specials didn't involve themselves directly in society--only in a special circumstance. And Shay's disappearance was definitely one of these. The director of Special Circumstances, Doctor Cable, informed Tally that she had to track down and bring back Shay, or never turn pretty. Seeing no other option, Tally accepted. She was given a large supply of dehydrated food, a water purifier, and a locket with a tracker inside. Once she'd found the Smoke, Tally was to activate the tracker so Special Circumstances could get everyone back.
Tally took her hoverboard and supplies, and journeyed to the Smoke. Shay had left her cryptic directions on the night she'd left, so Tally followed them miles into the wild until she found the camp. Shay and a few others came to meet her and direct her into the actual camp. Among her friends were Croy, one of the kids who had made it with Shay's other friends, and David, whose parents had started the Smoke and who had never been inside a city. Tally was accepted eventually into Smoky society, though Shay continued to distrust exactly how she'd gotten there and why she was suddenly so intent on coming.
When Tally first arrived, it seemed that Shay and David were an item. However, Tally found herself growing closer to David, and eventually he introduced her to his parents, Maddy and Az. They had actually been surgeons back in Tally's city, the people who performed and regulated the pretty surgery. They informed Tally that there was a darker side of the surgery that they'd discovered: lesions strategically placed in the brain to ensure complacency and basic desires. Pretties were designed to want fun and instant gratification, not higher thinking or government or their city or the world. They weren't supposed to care about anything but themselves and their tiny bubble of New Pretty Town. When Maddy and Az discovered this, they performed surgery on each other to reverse their own lesions and then fled the city to start the Smoke. They accepted runaways from other cities and taught them how to survive on their own.
With this information, Tally decided that the Smoke was a better option than going back and having her brain messed with, so she destroyed the tracker locket by throwing it into a fire, ridding herself of Special Circumstances. Too bad damaging the locket at all activated the tracker. The next morning, hovercars were all over the Smoke, chasing everyone out and capturing anyone who ran. Tally escaped with David; but Maddy, Az, Shay, and anyone else who didn't die in the siege were taken back to the city, presumably to be lesion'd.
Tally and David raced back to the city, intent on rescuing the prisoners. They did successfully find Croy, Shay, Maddy, and a few others, but Shay had already been turned pretty, and Az was dead. The group got outside the city to discuss what to do next. Rebuilding the Smoke wasn't entirely out of the question, but it would take time, and there was something Maddy needed to do first. She pulled Tally aside and explained that she was working on a cure for the lesions, something that could quickly be ingested and left to do its job. But she needed a pretty to test it on. They tried to test it on Shay, but she refused, and Maddy wouldn't force the cure on her. As a doctor, she needed informed consent. Tally gave Maddy her consent, and then went back to the city to be turned pretty.
Pretties
Tally as a pretty quickly reconnected with Shay, who had found all her old friends in New Pretty Town. Most of the kids who had previously chickened out on the first Smoke trip had settled for being Crims, a new clique all about self-expression. And by self-expression, I mean pushing the boundaries of society. The Crims were essentially Smokies in pretty form. And Tally and Shay were all set to join them, along with Peris and a few other hopefuls. When you were pretty, belonging to a clique was all that mattered.
Tally snuggled right into the Crims and got particularly close to their leader, Zane. Zane had been one of Shay's old friends from the first Smoke excursion--in other words, one of the chickens. But Tally certainly admired him, and he admired her as well for being able to make it to the Smoke. Obviously, they started dating. For a time, Tally's life was absolute bliss, until one particular bash. While the Crims were generally being awesome and partying, Croy and a couple other Smokies crashed the party to find Tally. It was time for her to fulfill her promise to Maddy.
Tally and Zane climbed the tower at the top of the mansion to find where Croy had stashed the cure Tally needed to test. The Specials, however, had gotten wind of the situation and were following them, intent on capturing Croy and taking the cure. Tally got her hands on the cure before them--two tiny pills--and shared it with Zane. One pill each, and they'd both be cured. (Or so they thought.) After taking the pills, Tally and Zane were discovered. The Specials took them in for questioning, then cuffed them with orbital alloy bracelets that would record anything they said. They were prisoners.
As winter rolled around, Tally and Zane became accustomed to a) not being separated from each other and b) wearing thick scarves around their wrists to muffle the bracelets. But for the most part, it didn't matter. While they taught the other Crims to stay bubbly by getting adrenaline rushes, they noticed that they were still different. They were cured.
The last trick to get the Crims bubbly was to sabotage the floating ice rink just before a soccer game. The rink floated above the field, and while the spectators were seating themselves below, all the Crims got to the center of the rink and poured flasks of vodka right on the ice. With one jump from Zane, the ice cracked and the entire floor of the stadium gave way. Everyone in the rink was required to wear bungee jackets, which certainly came in handy. The breakthrough, as it was called, worked--the Crims were incredibly bubbly, their minds cleared from the haze that came with the lesions.
That night, there was a huge bonfire with a little champagne for celebration of the breakthrough. Tally and Zane were enjoying themselves right up until Zane got a headache attack, one of many he'd been suffering since taking the cure. Tally escorted him back home and then came back to the party, only to be confronted outside of it by Dr. Cable. Obviously, the rink shattering had not escaped Cable's attention, especially when she found out that Tally had been involved. She explained to Tally that trying to be "bubbly" was all well and good, but it was the sort of thing that got Special Circumstances to notice you. And not in the trouble sense. More in the "join us" sense. Cable asked if Tally wanted to be a Special, to essentially be bubbly all the time, and Tally said no. Rather, screamed. Cable backed off, and Tally went back to the bonfire.
Shay, of course, had been involved in all of this breakthrough stuff, and as a result was extra bubbly tonight. When Tally returned to the party, Shay confronted her. Being bubbly had broken through Shay's haze of memories, and she remembered everything that had happened in the Smoke--and she also remembered that she hated Tally. She demanded to know what had happened to Tally and Zane back at the mansion (since no one knew about the pills) and when Tally told her, she was insulted that Tally hadn't shared the pills with her. In so many words, she informed Tally that no matter what she said when her mind went pretty again, she still hated her and was not her friend.
Tally and Shay didn't speak for the next several days while Tally and Zane planned their escape. Zane's headaches were getting worse, and it was becoming more apparent that only Maddy could help him. They had to get out of the city, but the bracelets would ping the authorities if they tried to leave. So step one was going to be getting the cuffs off. Tally and Zane tried starving them off. During this time, they also asked Fausto, one of Zane and Shay's old friends, to trick a couple hoverboards for their escape. He obliged, and one rainy day, Tally and Zane tested out the boards by riding off to the river.
At the river, they ran into Sussy and Dex, two uglies who had helped Tally break into Special Circumstances previously. The two had been looking for the New Smoke (as David's group was now called) by trekking to the ruins outside of the city almost nightly. They told Zane and Tally that they'd seen some of the Crims in the park the last few nights, doing something weird. Zane had told the Crims to lay low, so he and Tally went to the park to find out what was happening.
They found Shay there, with several of the other Crims. In the pounding rain, Shay cut herself down her arm and directed the rest of the group to do so as well. Tally recognized that this was Shay's new cure, her way of being bubbly. She implored Zane to leave, but he doubled over from another headache. Tally hoisted him onto her hoverboard and tried to take him to the hospital, but he argued with her the entire way. When they finally came to a stop, they noticed Tally's cuff had heard the whole thing. Zane punched a wall to fake an injury, and let Tally take him in.
I should let it be known (if it doesn't become extremely obvious in about three sentences) that I started reading Hyperbole and a Half while writing this.
After Zane got out of the hospital, it was decided that they needed to leave. Now. So Zane's idea for getting the cuffs off was to use a giant metal crusher. Normally, the crusher could detect body heat and wouldn't work for this, but Zane had the great idea of plunging his hand into ice water before giving his hand over to crushing pancake death. Tally and Fausto (who was there to operate the machine) objected very loudly to this, but there were just no other options until Tally noticed a glassblower in the back of the workshop. She was holding the glass with her hands, so Tally got a few of the gloves she was using. New plan: escape in hot air balloons while using the flames to expand the cuffs. Long story short: It worked.
Mostly. See, part two of the plan was to jump off on hoverboards just before the city grid ran out. But before Tally jumped, Peris told her he wasn't going with them. He was content to stay pretty-minded. By the time Tally gave up on arguing with him, the grid had run out and there was nowhere to jump. Except the river. If she was lucky. Tally tended to be lucky, so she did it. Problem was, the part of the river they were floating above was actually part of a sealed-off reservation, and now Tally was stuck inside.
The reservation was home to a few tribes of what can only be described as cavemen. These people had never seen the outside world, didn't speak the same language as most normal people, and treated the pretties and Specials as gods. So when one tribe's holy man, Andrew, found Tally, he immediately accepted her as a god and helped her to get out of the reservation. (Tally later understood that the Specials used this reservation and its people as test subjects to refine the pretty operation.) Once out of the area, Tally found the New Smoke's whereabouts and met up with them.
Everything would have been pretty awesome, except that Maddy explained to Tally what was wrong with Zane. Turns out, the pills were supposed to be taken together. One pills contained nanos that repaired the lesions, and the other stopped them after their work was done. Zane's anorexic habits eventually starved the nanos, but not before they did a significant amount of damage to the motor skills and cognition areas of his brain. Maddy had given him some stem cell tissue, but there wasn't much more she could do. The Smokies would have to wait for Zane to rest before packing up and moving on.
A few days later, the New Smokies realized there was a signal being sent, and they couldn't figure out the source. Tally immediately knew it to be from Zane, because he'd been in the hospital, so they must have stuck a tracker in him. The New Smoke acted quickly, packing up and getting the fuck out of there, but Tally refused to leave Zane behind. She stuck with him as everyone else departed, and was there when the Specials burst in. She argued briefly with Dr. Cable before a couple Specials showed up with an unconscious Fausto. They'd managed to capture him, but the rest of the New Smoke had gotten away. The Special with Fausto revealed herself to be Shay, newly transformed, and with her were some of her Cutter friends. She offered Tally the chance to be Special, but when Tally vehemently refused, she just stuck her with a tranquilizer and turned her anyway. Bad end.
Specials
Now that they were Specials, it was Tally and Shay's job to track down Maddy's cure and keep it from spreading into the city. After a month of Tally training in the Specials' camp, the group crashed a party in Uglyville where the cure was supposed to be. It would have gone swimmingly if Tally hadn't gotten all high and mighty and taken off her disguise before actually taking the cure from the girl who had it. Said girl ended up using her hidden bungee jacket to rocket into the air, where a group of hoverboarders grabbed her and took off. The Cutters followed them in hot pursuit, and it was an awesome futuristic police chase that ended with...the Smokies totally getting away, having managed to capture Fausto. But they did find out for whom the pills were intended: they were supposed to go to Zane.
This warranted some investigation as to why the Smokies wanted to fuck Zane over even further, so Shay intended to talk to him. However, Tally insisted on coming along. Shay was having none of it at first, but it's likely that she agreed to take Tally in order to passive-aggressively take out her frustrations about Fausto on her best friend. They snuck into New Pretty Town and climbed through Zane's window. He was there, but right away, Tally could tell there was something wrong. Shay had the pills from the Smoky girl, and she casually threw them towards Zane, who reached out to catch it a full ten seconds after it was in prime catching range. His reflexes and motor skills were completely shot, and Tally realized that she was physically disgusted looking at him. He was worse than ugly. He was crippled and weak.
Shay teased Zane about being crippled and also about not being Special, even though he totally could be. He was the trickiest one of them, leader of the Crims, and if he hadn't been crippled, he could be running around Uglyville with Tally, breaking up ugly parties, chasing out Smokies, and probably having the best sex in the world. He didn't even have a cuff like before, but an actual collar, so even if he could stumble out his door and fall down the stairs successfully, he'd never be able to make it outside the city. To rub this all in, Shay had her fingers all up in Tally's hair and it was the most possessive, creepy, lesbian scene in the entire series. Using Tally as bait, Shay convinced Zane to try escaping the city again, intending to have him take Special Circumstances to where the New Smoke was.
There was another half to Shay's plan that she used to get Tally on her side: If she and Tally could pull off Zane's escape, but make it look like he'd organized it himself, they'd make him Special in no time. Tally liked this plan, right up until Shay told her the trick: sneak into the Armory and grab some supplies to cut off Zane's collar. Only the Armory would have the kind of heavy-duty weapons or tools to snap the device. Tally suddenly became very, very doubtful, because the Armory was the most heavily guarded building in the city. But if it meant Zane could be Special, then it would be worth it.
It is at this point that Tally enters Sacrosanct - with a goal in mind, but before putting Shay’s plan into motion.
Personality: Over her canon, Tally changed considerably every book. Too bad it was reset by the next book through surgery. In Uglies, she gradually accepted herself as an ugly, hated and feared her city, and in general was her real self. But then she became pretty and had lesions inserted into her brain to make her docile and happy. As a pretty, she changed the most -- she managed to completely undo the operation's effects, getting herself back to a more ugly state of mind without the use of nanos. And then they turned her Special.
Tally settled very quickly into being Special, almost as if being a brainwashed superhuman was how she'd always imagined herself. For the time being, she looked to Shay as a leader, following Shay's convictions about the Smoke and the wild. At this point, it was very hard to change Tally's mind. What she saw and understood was what was right. Tally dealt with her Special duties head-on and at the speed of "AAAAAAAA", but buried her own memories and shortcomings where she didn't have to worry about them. Essentially, she lied to herself. Every time Zane showed up, he could get her to think of her past life and break through the exterior she'd set up, but that only served to make Tally nauseated and even more confused. Cutting herself was the only thing that got her personality and her goals to settle down and straighten out. That way, she saw where she was headed and what she needed to do.
Tally has repeatedly been called "selfish" throughout the series, primarily by Shay. To a certain extent, she is not responsible for the actions that Shay blames her for, but on the other hand, Tally does have a streak of selfishness. Most of her actions in Specials are driven by her desire to keep Zane to herself and make him Special as well. The way she describes the wild also makes it sound like she protects it because it means something to her, not because anyone told her to. It's hers. So yeah, in the strictest sense of the word, Tally is most definitely selfish.
Being taken from mid-book, Tally remains the way the Special surgery made her. She is rash, quick to anger, impulsive, and somewhat hateful and even spiteful. Though she is not familiar with the phrase itself, she very much fits into the idea of "If you want something done right, you've got to do it yourself". In terms of pure willpower, Tally relies on no one. She can be given a task and will execute it flawlessly. She is not, however, very creative. While she can be given the assignment of "Infiltrate this party and confiscate Smoky contraband", it will be Shay who comes up with the details of the plan, not Tally. She is good at thinking on her feet, but not thinking in long-term strategy sorts of ways,
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitation Suggestions: Tally has no supernatural powers, only physical abilities and skills. The technology implanted in her during the pretty and Special operations also grant her a few tricks as well.
Her physical traits include heightened senses and reflexes. As Shay puts it, a Special can "smell an unwashed human from a kilometer away, a burnt-out campfire from ten." While the entire surgical processes for a Special aren't disclosed, we know that bone tissue is replaced with ceramic (and possibly orbital alloy) and muscles are sheathed in monofilament for durability, reflexes, and strength. Endurance is increased as well.
Tally has several implants for different functions. Her eyes have an infrared function and a network function, both of which can be toggled with finger gestures. Her network function allows her to tap into the public newsfeeds of the city and read/watch what’s being said. This is also a function of her skintenna, a communication network in her skin. The skintenna is what allows her to use gestures to control her technological functions. It also serves as a relay for other people with skintenna. The Specials have a private channel on their skintenna and can talk to each other in whispers, their words being carred through the channel via a chip implanted in their jaws. By touching surfaces that channel sound waves, Tally can also listen to conversations in buildings through her skintenna.
Because a Special's job is to protect the wild from the advance of civilization, new Specials learn how to survive for days at a time away from the cities. Tally has a number of skills to help her survive, such as killing animals and preparing them for food. Her sharp teeth and nails help her in this task.
None of Tally’s technological components will work in Sacrosanct. Her communication abilities will be replaced by the wearable, and finger gestures will do nothing but make her look silly for wiggling her hands around. Additionally, her tattoos (mentioned below) will be immobile. She will retain her other physical skills and traits.
Inventory: some items involve explanation
- one set of clothes, including pants, closely-fitted shirt, gloves, lightweight boots, and appropriate undergarments
- one knife, shows traces of blood
- one interface ring, worn on left hand; this is the equivalent of a wearable. It allows all technological/electronic devices in cities to see her, and also allows her to use/interact with them. For instance, in Uglies, an automated street sweeper nearly runs her down because she isn't wearing her ring; that is, the sweeper can't "see" her. On the opposite end, devices like the hole in the wall (a sort of room-service which can create anything) can only be operated by someone wearing a ring. This will be rendered inoperable, being replaced by the wearable.
- one sneak suit, a full-body garment able to transition between complete invisibility and black, scale-like armor. It will be rendered completely useless in Sacrosanct, becoming a lightweight black body suit with no special abilities other than skintight fanservice.
Appearance: I apologize for the next sentence, because it is going to be the most Mary-Sue sentence I’ve ever had to write, but here we go. Tally is insanely beautiful. The books describe it as a “cruel beauty”. The point of the pretty operation is to make everyone the same standard of soft beauty, with rounded features. The Special operation seeks to be frighteningly attractive, to still conform to the standards of beauty but to also strike fear and obedience into the hearts of simple-minded pretties. As such, Tally’s facial features are sharp, making her look cold and haughty. Pretty-standard height is unknown, but we do know that Specials are slightly taller; it’s most likely that Tally is between 5’8” and 6’. Her hair is dark and sleek and her irises are turned black for the fear effect. Her body is lean and toned, her skin pale. As a pretty, she once got a flash tattoo on her forehead. This tattoo has been added onto, becoming a network of Celtic knots that trace across her forehead, down the right side of her face, and down her arms to end at each of her hands. The tattoos spin and pulse to her heartbeat (though not in Sacrosanct). She has several small scars along her arms from cutting. She wears plain, comfortable clothing, stuff in which she can move easily.
Age: 16
OC/AU Justification ;
N/A
Samples ;
Log Sample:
When she awoke, the first thing she was aware of was the sharp pain in her lower back. Tally heaved herself into a sitting position, expecting to be in the wilderness or something, lying on a rock, but it turned out to be a junkyard instead, and the rock was actually some sort of crumpled metal. The dark gray expanse before her suggested she was somewhere near ruins. Plenty of decrepit Rusty cities existed, and she’d been to quite a few in the area. This one didn’t look familiar though. Was it one she hadn’t gotten to see yet?
How did she even get here? Last she remembered, she’d been speaking with Shay about a plan for Zane. Had someone ambushed them? Knocked her out and dragged her to this dilapidated city?
No, because that would be pointless and dumb. Also impossible. No one could just sneak up on Tally Youngblood and smack her in the back of the head. Even the Smokies with their potential new city help couldn’t do that. And even if they had, they wouldn’t have dumped her in the middle of nowhere. They would have brought her back to their city and “cured” her of being Special.
They might have done so, on second thought. Tally did feel wrong. Would the Smokies have cured her, then dumped her here to fend for herself? She felt her teeth with her tongue and found that they were still sharp, not filed down. A couple flexes of her arms told her the monofilament sheaths hadn’t been removed. But there was something missing that she couldn’t put her finger on.
She checked her hands without really thinking why. Her tattoos had stopped moving. Though her heart was beating (and slowly working its way into “alert” mode), the swirls remained stationary. She flicked her fingers to run internal diagnostics, but nothing came up in the videofeed. So either the skintenna relays to her fingers weren’t working, or her eyes weren’t.
“Diagnostics,” she intoned softly, hoping the skintenna chip would make her software start working. No luck. Was her skintenna completely gone? She could rip apart her skin to find out, but the idea didn’t really appeal to her. Not right now.
Okay, so maybe her body wasn’t working, but she still had her interface ring. If she was in the middle of nowhere, it wouldn’t pick up a city’s network, but she could still see if anyone had messaged her. She twisted the ring to bring up her inbox, but nothing happened. The ring remained an inert band of metal.
“Crap,” she muttered. She slid the ring from her finger and tossed it into the rest of the junk, her temper rising. Her only links to her fellow Cutters were either useless or broken. The ring was just a stupid, boring accessory by this point and she would have to get a new one when she found her way back to the Special Circumstances headquarters. Once she did, Cable would probably kill her. Or Shay would, for ditching her. Shay wanted to kill her for a lot of things already.
As her anger and frustration continued to build, Tally reached for a particularly jagged piece of metal and pressed the end into the palm of her hand. But before the skin could break, before she could start bleeding, before she could obtain clarity, she heard something beep quietly behind her. She stood up and whirled around, the piece of metal still gripped in her hand and becoming a weapon rather than a tool of her own self-harm. Her eyes scanned the area for the source of the noise…and then fell upon a small, mechanical creature.
Tally knelt down to inspect the thing. What would a city droid be doing out here? Then again, it wasn’t like any city droid she’d ever seen. Besides, it couldn’t see her. Without her ring, she was invisible to the automated processes of the cities. But this thing was looking right at her, and after a moment, it offered her the thing it clenched in its right hand. It appeared to be the cuff Tally and Zane had worn as pretties, but a second glance told her that wasn’t the case.
As she held out her hand to take it, the droid opened the cuff and snapped it on her wrist. Tally, reacting on instinct, yelled and kicked the thing away. It bounced twice against the discarded metal scraps, then picked itself up and tottered away.
She was angry again, but she didn’t need to cut herself. She already knew what she had to do - she had to figure out what this cuff did, and then remove it as soon as possible.
Network Sample:
[Tally is going to stick to text for the time being. No need to frighten people with her appearance, or let them know there’s a Special in their midst. This is the most special of Special Circumstances and she needs to lay low.
Chances are, she’s in a new city. Possibly kidnapped. She needs to adopt an identity. Maybe a new pretty still woozy from the operation? No, she can’t be arsed to pretend to be a bubblehead. But she’ll still have to be careful.
She finally decides on what to type.]
Hey, can someone help me out here? I think I got a little too drunk at last night’s party and I’m…not really sure where I am.
[That should answer a few questions right off the bat. In the meantime, she can look for a way out.]