[Character Background]
Name: Ginia Solana/Alice
Gender: Female
Age: 31
Wing Color: Dark blue
Physical Appearance: Ginia is a woman of average height at 5'6” tall. She has an athletic frame from regular exercise and an often physically-demanding profession. Her hair color is dark brown and usually shoulder-length, her eyes are dark blue. There are burn scars and cut scars on her back and assorted across on her body. With a need for professionalism and setting a good impression, her style of clothing tends to be more on the business-casual side of things (blouse and dress pants or a skirt) or at least very well kept (nice jeans and a clean t-shirt at her most casual).
There's no change in appearance between Ginia and Alice. Her played by is Michelle Monaghan.
World History: The world is Earth, but one that drastically changes in the 1960s. During a meeting in Washington D.C. where many of the world's leaders and speakers rallying for peace and seeking an end to the Vietnam War were present, a large and sudden explosion occurred, killing and injuring hundreds of people, the President of the United States and Vice-President included. While many criminal groups and terrorist organizations tried to take claim for the event in the following days and weeks, the reality was the explosion occurred due to a gas leak, faulty wiring, and people smoking where they shouldn't have been. In short, a freak accident with catastrophic impact. Regardless of who was responsible for the event, the damage was done and many countries were left in a sudden state of chaos without their leaders and the Vietnam War only worsened.
With the death of the president and vice-president among other key figures and speakers, the US government was left in a state of chaos. Through the presidential rite of succession, the Speaker of the House, Andrew Locke, was appointed as president. With his focus and interests more on war and American safety, and with riots and chaos beginning to spread across some of America's larger cities (Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, Detroit, Seattle, Los Angeles, etc.), Locke took advantage of the situation to introduce drastic measures. Police were given more power and support in order to put down riots and in the worst areas, military patrols were introduced to keep the streets safe at night. Strictly enforced curfews were established and more security cameras were placed around the cities. In short, many American cities and states were put in a state of martial law. While this worked to some degree, the presence of military troops and the feeling of being oppressed only served to further fuel anti-military sentiment. Local gangs and organized crime groups saw this as a chance to win civilians over onto their side and began fighting and pushing back against the military and police. Others who just wanted to keep their families safe and realized the danger of military or crime groups taking over also began fighting, taking up arms to protect their family and livelihood.
This resulted in three distinct factions; the military, organized crime and gangs, and self-made vigilantes later termed as “hunters”. Chaos and fighting raged through the United States, focused around many of the larger cities or areas with heavy criminal activity. The military response was to create specialized units to curb violent outbreaks and deal with “domestic terrorism” through heavy force and even assassinations. Some members of these specialized units, disgusted by their orders, left the military and began passing information (and weaponry and training) onto the other two factions. By 1965, the Vietnam War had ended with the communists successfully taking over South Vietnam. By 1970, the United States was nearly in a state of uncontrolled chaos as its civilians, military, and government all waged war against each other.
For those born in the 70s and 80s, violence became a way of life. The distinction between the lower, middle, and upper classes grew with the upper classes living in safe gated communities or well-guarded skyscrapers, the middle classes in apartment complexes and suburban neighborhoods where the best protection was a loaded gun and good locks on the doors and windows, and the lower class and impoverished in slums and poorer neighborhoods that often became recruiting grounds for gangs. Because the military kept most of their focus on larger cities, smaller cities and towns fell under the control of hunters or gangs/organized crime factions. (Hawaii and Alaska, due to being disconnected from the rest of the country, practically became their own countries and near resorts, keeping a very close eye on who came in or out of the state.) Hunters also began taking on wider roles, becoming more like guns-for-hire or jacks of all trades in some areas, while others focused on keeping their communities safe through acts of vigilante justice. It wasn't uncommon at all for the wealthy elite to hire hunters as personal bodyguards or for members of congress to hire hunters as spies and even personal assassins. Corruption had eaten through the country and now all that mattered was finding a way to survive.
Character History: Ginia Solana was born May 7th, 1981 to Christopher and Amestia Solana in the city of Davenport, a city located a few miles outside of Boston and bearing heavy hunter and Irish Mob presence. The youngest of three children, (older siblings Avery and Amelia were fraternal twins six years older), she was born mute (malformed vocal folds) though this fact wasn't discovered until several months later (her family thought she was simply a very quiet child). While she had already learned some baby sign language, after discovering she was mute and realizing surgery to fix her vocal folds wasn't affordable, they all began learning American Sign Language as a way to communicate. She went to public school from kindergarten through first grade before she was pulled out due to immense teasing and teachers not wanting to deal with her inability to speak. When the deaf school in Boston stated they couldn't take her, her family began home-schooling her, using all the resources available to them in order to assure she had a well-rounded education. It was fortunate Ginia herself turned out to be quite the bookworm, happily reading book after book and sometimes even having to be forcibly dragged away from the library.
In addition to the usual lessons in English, mathematics, history, geography, and science, Ginia also learned how to play the piano from her mother and began dance lessons around age eight. She developed a deep love and passion for the arts, enjoying the new way of expressing herself through music and dance and began performing with the local dance and theatre companies. However, as much as she loved dancing and playing the piano, bartending became one of her biggest passions and her self-declared job of the future. As the family owned a bar (Christopher was the bartender and Amestia managed the paperwork and occasional sang for entertainment, and three Solana children cleaned and served drinks), some of Ginia's earliest memories was sitting behind the bar and watching her father mix drinks and keep a friendly rapport with the customers and the passion and friendliness he had with everyone was something she wanted to emulate. Her father, more than happy to pass down his knowledge to his youngest daughter, began teaching her in the ways of bartending and mixing drinks, adding in his own philosophy in the process. By age 18, Ginia was already working as a bartender alongside her father and everyone knew she'd eventually take over the bar.
When Ginia was 16, her brother Avery, now 22 and finished with college, began to grow distant from the family. While they reasoned it was because he was in the process of settling into his own career as an actor and trying to make ends meet, the reality was while attending Boston University, Avery fell into the lifestyle of a con man and the allure of being a hunter. He found a group of hunters to work with and began to make quite the name for himself. Most of the money he made was given back to his family to give them a comfortable life; remodeling the bar here, paying for vacations there, covering any loans or debts, buying presents for his family, everything. Though he tried to explain it was because he'd landed some very well-paid acting jobs, the truth eventually came out. While his family was furious, they knew they couldn't change his mind and he was an adult. While they made it clear they didn't approve, they also promised he'd always have a home with them.
Around age 18, Ginia met Thomas "Hatter" Thompson, a hunter mentoring Avery and someone who quickly became a family friend; Erika Rosenfel, a fireball of a hunter at age 16; and Lettie, an introverted computer hacker adopted by Hatter. As many close friendships tend to go, Erika and Ginia hated each other due to a complete personality clash (Erika thought Ginia was too serious and rule-abiding and Ginia thought Erika was too reckless and insensitive), but after several long arguments and one fistfight that left both of them bruised and a little bloody, the two came to an understanding and became very close friends after that. Hatter and Erika often visited the bar, entertaining them with stories and the latest dealings in the city, while the Solana family repaid them with friendship and free drinks.
Ginia was 22 when her life came crashing down. On November 4th she remembered a panicked phone call from her brother and him telling her how much he loved them all and that he was going to be away for awhile, but he'd get back in touch when he could. On November 5th, an envelope containing almost 50,000 dollars arrived on their doorstep with a note inside from Avery (“I love you all. I hope this helps.”).
On November 7th, four men came into the bar and dropped a body on the floor. It was Avery Solana.
(Disclosure: What had happened on the previous nights was Avery and his group of hunters were betrayed on a job involving the Irish Mob. With their identities compromised, they all split up and fled the premises. As a bit of security, Avery found a man who looked enough like him and offered him several thousands to assume his identity. The man accepted and Avery fled. The man killed and brought to the Solana family on the 7th was the other man, but no one realized it at the time. Ginia is unaware of is Avery is still very much alive and leading a new life under a different name.)
After the delivery of the body, the men, serving on behalf of the Irish Mob, decided the family had to pay for Avery's mistake as well and brutally tortured the Solana family before setting the bar on fire. Ginia herself was raped and smashed repeatedly against the bar wall, leaving her back badly cut up from broken glass and wood and with burns on her back after the fire.
The only survivor of that night, Ginia spent a week in a coma. Hatter and Erika often visited the hospital to keep her company and take care of her hospital bills. When she woke up, the news of her family's death sent her into a bad mental breakdown and she was kept in the hospital for nine more months for both physical and mental/emotional therapy. It was during this time a second personality began to develop, later dubbed 'Alice'. Alice was very angry and very protective of Ginia, lashing out at doctors or anyone else who tried to hurt her. While Ginia was out, she would be unresponsive and withdrawn, spending most of her time staring out the window or reading a book and ignoring the world. Due to the appearance of Alice, Ginia was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) and they tried to treat the presence of Alice with drugs, therapy, and sometimes even isolating her in a room, but Alice only grew more vicious and Ginia even more withdrawn. It was reasoned Alice was a defense mechanism and Ginia's way of reasoning and dealing with everything that happened.
Instead of trying to subdue her with drugs, the doctors and psychiatrists began cultivating Alice into a controlled guard for Ginia. While they made it clear she was not a person herself, even forcing her to accept she was another personality sharing a body with Ginia, they also gave her a purpose as Ginia's personal guard. Through Alice they also began studying the effects of conditioning within a person, studies that would eventually result in Project Whitecap, a government program that took in teens and young adults who had gone through traumatic experiences and helping them recover (while secretly conditioning them as spies or soldiers). In this way, Alice became gradually focused and approachable and as Alice calmed down, Ginia began coming out of her shell and eventually coming to terms with what happened. While still deeply affected by the tragedy, Ginia began slowly pulling herself back together and was eventually released into Hatter's care.
She lived with Hatter for three months, recovering in the countryside. Under the quiet and peaceful environment, she began to show more of her usual self with Alice only appearing under stressful situations to give Ginia some mental relief. Eventually she moved in with Erika and out of a need of something to do and being the kind of person that enjoyed organizing and compiling things, began organizing all of Erika's paperwork for her past jobs and completely cleaning up Erika's makeshift office. Erika, while quite surprised, was not at all displeased and began to employ Ginia as a personal assistant of sorts. Ginia was happy to compile information, pull jobs, and serve as a sort of liaison between potential clients and Erika (through text messages or emails). During this time, Erika also began training her how to fight and shoot a gun, figuring it was good for her to have some self-defense skills.
As Ginia worked for Erika, she began looking into the events of her family's death and was quite dismayed and angry to find out the whole thing had been covered up as a tragic fire. Deeper research pulled up the identities of the people involved. While three were regular guns-for-hire, one man, Daniel Braddock, much to her dismay, was a prominent police officer in the Davenport police department (which was now overrun with corrupt cops for the Irish Mob). Knowing she wouldn't be able to get vengeance against Braddock, she settled for tracking down the other three men. She spent the next few days planning how to carry out her revenge toward the men that had murdered her family. However, before she could do anything, she was stopped by Erika. Concerned for the potential path her friend was moving down, Erika talked her out tracking down and killing the men, explaining she wouldn't be able to protect Ginia if she became a murderer and that senseless killing wasn't the answer either, but there were other means of bringing the men to justice.
That was when Ginia asked Erika to train her as a hunter. Erika agreed and the two began to work together as a proper pair (much to Hatter's chagrin), Ginia's careful and calculating nature balancing out Erika's impulsive and fiery personality. They began with simple jobs such as guarding a person or an item or retrieving items and information, things that would give Ginia proper experience and training without throwing her right into the deep end. As Ginia gained more experience and grew more confident in their skills, they began to travel around more, taking on bigger and more dangerous jobs. They began making a name for themselves in tracking down serial killers, rapists, human traffickers, drug lords, and other scumbags, doing their part to protect those that couldn't protect themselves. As it turned out, over their years of working and service, Ginia ended up getting the justice she wanted against the three men; one of them was killed in justified self-defense, the other two were captured for other crimes and sent off to prison.
During the years of service, Alice began making her reappearance, sometimes showing up when a fight was going badly and a burst of violence and aggression was what was needed, other times when a case hit Ginia particularly hard and her emotions gave away to anger and rage. But even with her violent nature, Alice remained Ginia's protector and was able to stay reined in enough to function. With Erika's help, a system of note-taking was figured out, with Ginia leaving notes of all the important details Alice needed to know, then Alice leaving notes on her actions while she was out. Through this way, the two worked out an agreement of sorts, though Ginia still made Erika promise to stop either of them if they lost control.
When Ginia was 29 and Erika 27, the two were out vacationing in Los Angeles when a sniper shot Erika through the chest, resulting in her death. Ginia remained in Los Angeles long enough to recover Erika's body and have her friend cremated before she flew out to Davenport to scatter her ashes. The death of her best friend made Ginia crack and she went into a dark period of severe depression and anger, resulting in Alice coming out more frequently just to help Ginia pass the days. At one point, Ginia began planning her own suicide, making arrangements for all her money and belongings to be donated to various properties and for even her organs to be donated. Hatter found out and talked her out of it, reminding her Erika would have never wanted her to kill herself; Erika would have wanted her to live. It took awhile, but Ginia eventually pulled herself out of her depressed state and focused her energy into investigating Erika's death and finding out the cause and culprits. However, despite the time and resources she poured into it, she never found her answer.
(Disclosure: Erika's death was the result of some side work probing into Project Whitecap and their actions. With the risk of top secret information being leaked to the public, the easiest solution for the military was to assassinate Erika and cover their tracks.)
On her own, Ginia threw herself into work as a hunter. She traveled more frequently, took on more jobs at once. One day she'd be planning out protection detail for a conference in Chicago, the next day she'd be tracking down a serial killer in the Kansas. Her work became her life and entire focus and so Ginia became another dog of war doing her part to keep people safe in a war-torn country.
Personality: Ginia is a highly focused and dedicated individual that is largely ruled by precision, order, and careful planning. She's an excellent strategist with a fondness for planning and exploring situations. Give her a task and she'll deliver no less than three sound plans with back up ideas and branching alterations for each one. She likes order and likes things when they go as plan, understandable considering how many things in her life have spiraled out of her control. However, a need for order does not mean rigidity and Ginia is not so dedicated to rules and orders that she would follow them blindly and without question. Following orders is not the same as servile loyalty and she will make her displeasure known if the orders go against her own moral code and beliefs. This can make her a very stubborn person, for better or worse. While she rarely gives up on things and always tries to find some way to success, this can also make her narrow-sighted on some subjects, especially if it's more personal.
Even if she is a hired gun, there are some beliefs Ginia follows. Not harming innocent people is the biggest thing and she will do whatever she can to minimize any damage. She also tries to avoid killing whenever possible and when taking on an assassination job, she does thorough research to make sure the target is worth killing. Also important is not leaving anyone behind (“No one is expendable, no one gets left behind.”) While she knows there is merit in the saying “the lives of many outweigh the lives of a few”, she also recognizes sometimes the lives of a few or an individual can be someone's entire world.
Ginia is fully aware of the hypocrisy of her job and life. She knows even if she does kill people that are utter scumbags, everyone has a mother and those that care about them. She's the rock sending ripples through otherwise still lives. However, this is also the side of “the lives of many versus the lives of a few” that she believes in. Because her main targets tend to be serial killers, rapists, human traffickers, crime lords, or people that would otherwise harm or restrict others, by taking them off the streets then the world becomes a safer place. Her actions are with the overall good in mind, but good is not always synonymous with nice. She'll play the part of the villain if it keeps other safe.
Good is not nice is a curious thing. Ginia was taught by her parents to be polite, composed, and civil to everyone in addition to strong-willed and to never start fights (but certainly be the one to end them) and she takes all of those to heart. She always says please and thank you, sir and ma'am, rarely interrupts, and is very patient and a kind person at heart, but she doesn't hesitate on her jobs and can be ruthless if the need calls for it. Some topics tend to hit her harder than most (child abuse, human trafficking, rapists) and she's been known to act with a bit more cold vengeance in those cases. Having gone through the murder of her family, she'd rather not have anyone else go through that.
But for all she's seen in the world, Ginia still likes people and has faith in humanity. She's an realistic optimist, knowing not everything is peaches and cream, but believing things will get better and there's still good in the world. This is one such reason she can be quite personable and friendly and isn't entirely jaded (though she certainly can be sarcastic or blunt on some things). She's cautious and careful what information she gives out, especially relating to herself, but she's a friendly individual. To those she gets to know and feel comfortable around, she lightens up a little more, smiling and joking around. She's a nurturer by nature and will take time to check up on people and make sure they're doing okay. Even if she's the kind of person to neglect her own health, often forgetting to eat or sleep in order to finish her work and pushing herself to her limits, she makes it a point to see others are okay. She's also very big on honor and returning favors; if someone does her a kind turn, she does not forget it and will do what she can to return the favor to them. On the flipside of things, if someone does her wrong in some way, she won't forget that either. She may forgive, but she certainly won't forget.
However, there's no denying Ginia is a mentally unstable individual. The murder of her family, her best friend, and some of her past jobs haunt her deeply and she suffers from PTSD, apparent through her general inability to sleep, growing distant and cold at times, and being very uneasy around fire. When her patience snaps or something sets her on edge, she can be either cold or defensive, or throw up walls and cut a person out. As someone unable to speak, if Ginia doesn't want to communication, she won't communicate. Even knowing there are people around who care, she tries to keep things to herself so as to not bother or worry others, even as unhealthy as bottling things up can be. There is also the fact she has DID. Alice is a personality developed as a result of Ginia's trauma and while sometimes seen as a manifestation of Ginia's anger and rage or Ginia's darker half, Alice is a little more complicated than that.
Alice isn't Ginia's darker half as Ginia has her dark and violent moments without Alice's interference but Alice is far more violent and dangerous than Ginia. She thrives on trouble and danger and while she wouldn't put Ginia (or anyone else Ginia would care about) in harm's way (intentionally), she can be a loose cannonball or a raging tiger when allowed free reign. She'll torture, main, destroy, mutilate with a grin on her face and a mad twinkle in her eye. While Ginia has reservations about killing and tries to avoid it, Alice feels little guilt over it. Some of Ginia's most violent actions have been attributed to Alice or at least influenced by Alice. Ginia sees the world in shades of gray while Alice tends to be a little more black and white. Things are or they aren't.
Alice is also much more physical and fascinated with touching people. It's never outright groping or molesting, but light gestures like petting someone's face or hair or brushing her fingers over their chest or shoulders. She likes contact and because she knows it makes people uncomfortable. It's all about testing limits and pushing people to their boundaries. However, children and teens tend to be an exception and she'll leave them alone or at least show more respect for their boundaries.
Where Ginia tends to be more reserved and respectful, Alice is a button-pusher. She takes some enjoyment in pushing people to their limits and pissing them off and has a tendency to get into trouble or start trouble with her mouthy ways. However, while she may be more forward and blunt about things, Alice does take Ginia's feelings into consideration, for better or worse. Sometimes she'll be a little more flirty with someone Ginia genuinely likes to get things rolling, other times she'll push away someone that's bad for Ginia's health. She's a troublemaker at her very best, but she's also security for Ginia and has a fondness for her other personality. This fondness also extends to any friends of Ginia's; she'll be the first to extract revenge on anyone that hurt a friend of Ginia's.
An interesting thing about Alice is she cannot lie. While she can avoid saying the truth and dodge subjects, lying outright is not something she's capable of doing. This means when she says something, she absolutely means it. Because she can't lie and because she was never taught otherwise, Alice is honest about her emotions. When she's happy, she's happy. When she's sad, she's sad. There's no deception or facades there, unlike Ginia.
Because they're two personalities in the same body, there is a disconnect that's created. Ginia has no memories of anything when Alice is out and vice-versa. This is a benefit to Ginia as she doesn't remember some of the more horrific things Alice might experience (though any pain or lasting damage is certainly felt), but there is also an odd disconnect and some disorientation over loss of time. This is why the two try to communicate with each other through detailed notes in order to keep the other side up to speed on what might be going on. The feeling of losing control terrifies her and she has a silent fear of losing herself completely. The two personalities aren't at odds and Alice always cedes control to Ginia, but that fear is there. Ginia is also afraid of how people will react to her if they know she has two personalities so Alice is generally kept a secret.
Strengths: With a very physical job, Ginia has to have a skill set that matches. She's a fighter and has been trained in Krav Maga and kickboxing. She's very fast and limber due to a past history of being a dancer and going running on a regular basis. She's been trained in knife-fighting and is proficient in small handguns. She's not a sniper, but she does have very good accuracy and is comfortable around weapons. Her tolerance for pain is also quite high, having already been tortured and beaten once and having received her share of bumps, bruises, and cuts through work. This isn't to say she'll shrug off gunshots like it's nothing or won't feel the affects of a broken spine, but she can take punches and kicks and keep on going. Having a very stubborn nature also helps.
Ginia is also a very intelligent woman. She thrives on learning new things and quite enjoys reading and researching and was a bookworm before she was ever a brawler. While she can fight, she's much more comfortable as a tactician or planning things out. When working with Erika, she was the person that worked out all the details of how their job would go, putting together plans and back-up plans that could be easily adapted, and getting everyone on the same page before the two of them carried things out. Knowledge is something she thrives on and if there's something she doesn't know or understand, she'll dive into research to gain a better understanding. She's a fairly fast reader with an excellent memory, though her memory is better with things she's seen and/or read rather as opposed to things she's heard. She's also better with concrete facts as opposed to abstract theories or ideas; excellent with history and English, but needs a little more time on math and science.
She's versed in several languages, having learned them over the years; English, American Sign Language, Italian, and Spanish (writing, reading, and listening/understanding; obviously can't speak any of it), and a lot of swear words and dirty phrases in German due to Erika though some useful and business phrases as well.
On the entirely mundane side of things, she's an excellent bartender and cook and still enjoys serving up drinks and cooking for people. She's an excellent piano player and tries to practice when she can. She doesn't dance as much as she used to (aging and multiple injuries over the years have made it harder), but she does now and then in private. That side of her that performed often as a child is still a part of her and while she's fairly modest, she'll never pass up the chance to show off either.
For the most part Alice shares Ginia's physical strengths and is just as intelligent as Ginia, though she's much less a planner and more a doer. Alice is a much more physical and active person, much more likely to settle things with her fists (or a knife or a gun) than to talk things out. When enraged, she's like a bull running on pure adrenaline and likely to keep going even after taking a few blows that would take someone down.
Mentally, because she's supposed to serve as a defense mechanism for Ginia, she can take a lot more abuse. She's the one that steps in when Ginia is at her limits in order to spare Ginia any more pain, or if the situation will lead to memories Ginia is better off not having.
Weaknesses: For as put-together as Ginia seems, there's a host of instability about her. She's been heavily traumatized and while she's talked things over with friends and received some therapy in the hospital, there's still a lot bottled up inside. Her work only adds on with all the stress of violence and the kind of people she sees and has to deal with. She doesn't sleep easily at night, is always keeping an eye on her surroundings, fires make her uneasy (small flames like on a candle or matches are okay, but larger things like bonfires and definitely burning buildings have a way of triggering her flight/flight response), and being pinned down or restrained makes her lash out violently. Even after eight years, the day her family was killed and birthdays tend to be days where she gets depressed and withdraws into herself. She may seem like someone who has it all together and can certainly function, but once you get behind that mask of stability, there's a whole bunch of trauma. What makes this more problematic is she's not a person who likes to share how she's feeling either, much preferring to hide things behind a mask so people aren't worried. She'll tend to be more open with people she feels comfortable and trusts deeply, but even then she has a way of shrugging things off. There's also the fact Alice exists, and she tends to come out when Ginia is at the most stressed (emotionally or mentally) and Alice's default response is to usually eliminate whatever the source of stress is.
Her need for organization and control can also make her difficult to work with at times as she likes having things a certain way. While she will cede control to those with more experience and knowledge, if she's in control or in charge of something, she can become demanding and difficult to work with. Ginia is also a workaholic. Good when results are needed, bad when it begins impacting her health and her general mood. As it tends to go, Ginia is the kind of person that will work tirelessly on something and neglect her own health in the process or use work as a way of avoiding other things.
The fact she's mute is something she doesn't see as a weakness, but she realizes the difficulty behind it. Not being able to speak does slow down communication and while she's adapted to writing (and signing when possible), it does require patience on the part of the other person. Her own communication can also be restricted if her hands are full or otherwise injured; a broken hand is one of her biggest nightmares.
She's also completely human. No super speed or strength, no robotic modifications, no magical abilities or other supernatural abilities. Completely human. Putting aside the possibility of connecting with a spirit and learning some spells, this does put her as a disadvantage as far as fights and such go, but it also means she'll be picking her battles wisely.