[Wake App]
Sep. 29th, 2014 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
divaoftimePersonal Information
Name: Meghan
Age: 26
Personal Journal: N/A
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk: KansaiBanzai@plurk
Current Character(s): John Crichton, Prisoner Number 6
Character Information
Name: Piper Vivian Cardenas (Call her PVC Piper and she will slap you.)
Age: 18, Birthday: May 1st, 1996
Appearance: She stands at 5’ 7”, has a thin frame with olive toned skin and usually short cropped platinum blond hair (though it is naturally dark, nearly black). She has green-brown eyes under perfectly plucked eyebrows and her heart shaped face ends with a square jaw and small chin. She tends to dress in loud, bright colors often with a high fashion hipster sensibility and a particular love of things that look like they could have been worn in the 80’s.
Character history:
Piper, born and raised in the suburbs of Eagle Rock California, near the heart of Los Angeles, has always had an eye for the more expensive style of living. Unfortunately, for the majority of her young life, that was relegated mostly to a fantasy as her single mother, who bore her at the young age of twenty-one, had been working two jobs for as long at Piper could remember just trying to makes ends meet enough to afford the small two bedroom apartment they’d lived in all her life.
From a very early age Piper grew up bitterly jealous of the more affluent in her surrounding neighborhoods. While still in grade school, she used to lie to her fellow classmates about the quality of her living situation, claiming to be exceptionally wealthy. She used to invent all sorts of lies to explain the second hand clothing and sack lunches that were a normal feature of her life. Most were too farfetched for even the most gullible classmates to believe. However, as she grew, so did the lies, and also her skills at telling them.
By the time she was approaching thirteen she had gotten quite good at selling the image she had cultivated all those years. She had taken to shoplifting items from designer stores whenever she could get away with it, and when questioned adamantly insisted that her sense of thrift shop style was actually the newest in trends that her poor other friends just couldn’t predict yet. She enjoyed the praise she often got from these falsities, and was determined to rise to the top of the social hierarchy by the time she made it into high school.
As her fourteenth birthday neared, she experience a great boon towards this goal. When puberty came into full swing on her young body, she soon realized she had acquired something more than any of her peers. It was a strange and wonderful ability. At first it would manifest as odd feelings of deja vu, then as dreams that were eerily accurate. Then, on the eve of her birthday, she experienced the first instance of what she would later name Time Walking. While asleep in her bed, her consciousness left her and wandered into the future. There she saw that she would be getting a brand new bicycle for her birthday. In fact, she watched herself receiving it as if she were watching a television broadcast. Too afraid to continue, she ran back to her body promptly awoke. Just a few hours later events unfolded in the real world just as she had seen them in her dream and she realized that it had not been a dream at all. She could see into the future, and, as she soon realized, the past as well.
Excited by the possibilities, she spent the entirety of that summer before entering High school perfecting the ability to the best of her knowledge. She found, to her glee, that she could now do more than just lie about what the newest fashion trend, or popular item of the season would be, she could easily predict them by seeing them in the future. This talent of hers, she found, could be used in all sorts of interesting ways. In one year she raised to the top rank of her class thanks to her new ability to see the answer to any test before she took it. She downplayed her scholastic achievements when in the presence of her popular crowd friends, but she did find them useful for taking some of the pressure off her hard working mother who, without the merit grants, was having incredible difficulty in continuing to afford the prestigious private school Piper was adamant she needed to attend at all cost, lest she be relegated to the mundanity of the public school system.
In her high school years Piper enjoyed extreme success in her terribly shallow goals of becoming a notable and extremely dateable popular girl thanks to her powers and the power of her own ingenuity. The new hipster trend was truly a godsend to her. It was easier than ever with the use of her powers to help her predict what old would become new again. Now she could easily beat all the other thrifty divas to the hottest items on the dollar shelves. And being a know-it-all was easy to do when checking the facts was as easy as going back to look for herself. Staying abreast with all the hottest television, media and pop culture was a snap!
There were, however, a couple of bumps in the road. She was hospitalized twice in her freshman year each time with sudden onset of a coma thanks to her improperly leaving the time walk and being separated for a time from her body. Each time she couldn’t remember the experience, just like most coma patients, but after the second time, she realized that she had to be more careful with her abilities. And ultimately became more selective about where she would use them.
After four glorious years of breezing through high school, it was time to say goodbye to the old and hello~ to the new. Thanks to her ability she was able to net herself a fantastically high SAT exam score. That, combined with the still very low income of her mother, got her nearly a full ride at the California State University, Los Angeles. She was excited to move out on her own to a new world of adventure, a fresh start, and a fresh chance to reinvent herself. Nothing could stop her; She was determined to ace her fashion design courses and go right to the top.
The reality was a little less glamorous as she found herself rooming in a dormitory with a girl named Robin, who was the exact opposite of everything she liked. The girl was weird and nerdy and just not cool. Regardless, Piper wasn’t planning to stay in the smelly old dorms long. As soon as she could, she planned to rush with the most popular sorority on campus and work on getting herself moved into one of those houses. Then she’d be well on her way. She wasn’t there quite yet, but at only a little less than half a month into her life away at college she figured she still had plenty of time to turn it all around. Nothing's going to get in this Diva's way.
Personality:
One word can sum her up nicely: brat. There are other less pleasant words too, like crass, or in a lot of cases, just plain inappropriate. Those would be equally applicable. At eighteen years old, Piper thinks she knows all there is to know about the world, and the place she’s supposed to occupy in it. Obviously, according to her, she’s supposed to be the star of it all.
She’s self centered and lacking in any real empathy for anyone around her. Everything should be just how she wants it, and who cares what anyone else wants or thinks. She can tend to get insanely jealous if anyone else is taking the center stage instead of her. She will go out of her way to put people down in order to elevate herself, and she’ll go to outrageous lengths to make sure she stays the center of attention, because, in her opinion, she deserves it more.
Part of the problem is that she is constantly seeking validation and acceptance in order to relieve her own personal insecurities. Despite how she boasts, her family is actually not as wealthy as all her peers in the private school she recently graduated from. For her, every day is a struggle to hide the fact that she isn’t as socially elite or affluent as all the rest of her so-called friends. Piper is a very clever girl, but unfortunately all her intellect has been geared towards making her a good enough liar and con artists to keep abreast of the social pageantry in which she is so intent on being a part of. The most horrifying fate she could think of is being lumped in with the mediocre or worse the ‘nerd’ crowd.
Yet, despite how much she works to maintain her image, she still hasn't managed to make herself feel truly happy or fulfilled. This lacking confuses her greatly, but it only pushes her to try harder. She’s passionate when it comes to things that interest her, however, those interests are often very superficial. She’s extraordinarily knowledgeable in the things she thinks will advance her like fashion, popular culture, idealized romance. Too bad these are shallow goals that she has yet to realize count for almost nothing outside of her perfectly idealized and also perfectly fake life. If she applied her aptitude instead to more fruitful or creative outlets, she could be very successful as she is certainly not unintelligent, only ignorant to the bigger picture and sadly naive.
Instead, she throws herself with childish abandon at the things (or romantic interests) she frivolously desires, and very often won’t stop to fully consider the consequences of her impulsive actions. She thinks she can do no wrong anyway, and even if she does, she’ll look for someone else to pin the blame to, rather than accept responsibility for herself.
She may be eighteen years of age and experienced in the ways of some things very much adult, but it’s painfully clear she’s still only a bratty child with very little maturity for all her years of shallow conquests. Her view of the world is heavily skewed in her own favor, and it would be safe to say she’s due for a serious reality check. The world is a lot less forgiving than she expects and before she turns nineteen, she’s going to have a hard lesson in that. Until then, she’s perfectly happy being a pampered princess.
Powers and Abilities:
Time Walking: Since the age of fourteen at the onset of puberty Piper has had a unique ability which she herself has given the name Time Walking. With this power Piper has the ability to see into the past, and to view the possible future. She does this by projecting her consciousness past the normal flow of time and into an alternate plain. While there, she becomes incorporeal and invisible to anyone who does not also have this power.
While in this state she has very little ability to touch or affect the world as she walks through it, though she may be able to slightly move small objects, lightly touch things or people or interfere minimally with electronics. Often these instances are miss-attributed by the superstitious as ghostly hauntings.
When in the Time Walk, time seems to almost freeze for her physical body. When she returns to her present physical consciousness, usually, such a small amount of time will have passed, it will seem as if none has passed at all. She cannot, however, maintain present consciousness while projecting herself into the Time Walk. When she chooses to use her power, her physical form will be unconscious. She will not wake so long as her consciousness is elsewhere, even if she is touched or shaken by another person. This would only become an issue if she stayed in the Time Walk for an excessively long time. Otherwise, it would be perceived as nothing more than a quick blink of her eyes.
Piper cannot travel instantaneously while in the Time Walk, she must take herself manually to the place she wishes to view. For instance, if she wishes to view thirty minutes into the future of her home, she will either need to begin the Time Walk while in or near her home, or she will have to expend time in the Time Walk traveling to it. Additionally, while in the Time Walk, she views and experiences the scene she has chosen to go forward or back to in real-time speed starting from the specific moment she has chosen and moving forward. Therefore, if she wishes to view a location in the past that is a fifteen minute walk away from the location at which she starts, she will view fifteen minutes of time moving forward while traveling to her destination. She must take this into consideration when trying to pinpoint the event she wants to view. If, when backward in time she takes long enough that events catches up to her present physical time, she will begin to see the future beyond her present point instead.
When Piper wishes to end the Time Walk, she must be back in the same place as her physical body. It is possible for her to end the Time Walk while not in the same location, however it is very dangerous. The Disconnect between her consciousness and her corporeal self at that time will lead to a coma that may last anywhere from a day to two weeks depending on the distance she was from her physical body at the time.
Though Piper can view and minimally affect the environment of the past, she cannot do anything to drastically alter the chain of events. There is no creation of alternate timelines. Events of the past will always lead to the same result in the present. She may also return to the same points in time more than once without creating paradoxes, as she is herself moving outside of the natural flow of time.
Though the past is immutable, the future is more fluid because it has not yet come to pass. Piper may have the ability to change some events in her future, however, larger events tend to be harder to affect than smaller ones. Due to this flexibility of future events, the things Piper may see when Time Walking in the future will often change frequently, as each are only possible futures until they come into present being.
Looking into the future is the more risky of the two activities in Piper’s opinion, although she also finds it more much more useful. Most of the time she uses her ability for petty and self serving reason. She does, as a general rule, try not to tamper too heavily with future events, unless it's far more convenient for her to do so.
World Summary:
Piper hails from the state of California, part of the great nation that is modern America in the 21st century. At her current canon point, the year is 2014, and most elements of society such as political offices, pop-culture icons, fashion trends and content trending on social media sites line up evenly with the contemporary reality of real world 2014. Obama is the president, Taylor Swift is making a comeback with her new pop album, skinny jeans are still all the rage, and the internet is basically blowing up about minority rights issues.
There are some differences however. Moving below the surface of seemingly ordinary social and political norms is the hand of an unseen force. The company BioEnd is seen as just another big company on the block. The company produces antimicrobial products that branch into a wide range of mediums. Anything from antibacterial soaps and cleansers, to antimicrobial plastics and hospital supplies. Theirs is a household name. Most people are bound to have at least one of their trusted products in their cleaning cabinets. Their catchy little slogan is ‘Disinfecting your world since the 1950’s!’ That slogan might sound more sinister if people knew the whole truth about this seemingly benevolent company. It is interested in disinfecting more than just germs. Its secret goal is to disinfect the world of Time Walking atrocities like Piper.
The company is really an elaborate front for a brotherhood that is bent on exterminating anyone with a power to see into the past or future. Starting in 1950, when it was discovered that Time Walkers were being used as cold war spies, it began to takes measures in secret against these spies, with the blessing of the United States government. The Anti-Time Walker sentiment grew as fear did in that era, until the brotherhood became steadfast in its idea that Time Walkers were a dangerous menace that needed to be cleansed out of the world’s genetic pool for good.
The company now has plenty of resources thanks to its entrepreneurial success and it has also been able to buy itself a lot of sway in politics. Enough, in fact, that disappearances of certain people, especially from the coma wards of hospitals, have a way of going un-investigated. Its roots run deep, and anyone who attempts to defy it or to speak the truth tends to find themselves taken very ill before they get the chance.
Also moving in the shadows is a counter movement against BioEnd. It takes the form of a religious cult that calls itself the Church of the Turquoise Sun. The religious group has its founding in ancient Aztec beliefs, specifically in Xiuhtecuhtli, often referred to as the “Turquoise Lord" or "Lord of Fire.” Xiuhtecuhtli is the Aztec god of time, life, fire, and age, most notably. Little does the world now know, but many ancient civilizations had discovered the usefulness of Time Walkers, the Aztecs being one of them.
The story goes that there once was a Time Walker who lived in the Aztec nation, who was the most powerful that has ever existed. This man’s name has been lost to time, thanks in part to the destruction of relics by the Spaniards who brought the nation to its downfall. It is held that while acting as an adviser to the Aztec priests, he traveled further into the future than any Time Walker ever has before or since, and he beheld a vision so magnificent that it compelled him to come back and facilitate the destruction of his own nation, citing that it was the only way to ensure that the world was set on the path to this great and wonderful future. He felt he had been given a message by the god of time himself, and it was his burden to carry out this holy mission.
He told the priests that in one year’s time, they could expect the return of their fair skinned god, Quetzalcoatl. In actuality, this great Time Walker had witnessed in one of his journeys to the future the arrival of the conquistador Cortes. This ‘prophecy’ helped tip the balance in Cortes’ favor, starting a cascading effect leading to the downfall of Aztec civilization.
The Time Walker, however, did not remain to watch it. He gathered all the other Time Walkers he could trust, so legend says, and took them to safety. He told them they had been selected by the god of time to shape the future towards this beautiful ideal he had seen. He told them they had the spirit of the god in them, and that their mission was a holy one, larger than one nation or one era. It is a mission for the world that is and will be.
This mission has persisted, and is the driving force behind the modern embodiment of this religion. It has had to operate discretely, as throughout the years discovery of Time Walkers (or as they are referred to in this religion, the Turquoise Spirits) has led many to fear them as devils, witches, or great threats to humanity. Regardless of this danger, the group has spread its influence as far as it can, reaching out and seeking more Time Walkers to bring into the fold. They search for the one who can lead them. One who is strong enough to see back into that beautiful unknown future and tell them what it is they must do now to achieve it.
Piper, of course, lives in blissful ignorance of all these political and religious machinations. Her greatest concern is doing well in her new college life. She graduated near the top of her class from The Sacred Heart Catholic School. Thanks to her abilities, she got a near perfect score on her SAT, enabling her to get a full ride to California State University, Los Angeles. There she will have to endure a dormitory room shared with an unpleasant -to her, anyway- roommate. But, not for long if she has any say in it. She is planning to go to the top. The sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma is her plan for success and fashion world domination. Piper’s gonna do what it takes to ascend the ranks at this school, because, though there’s a big scary world of secrets and danger surrounding her powers, the only world she’s in is the fantasy one where using those powers is never going to catch up to her.
Samples
Network:
Alright, listen up! I’m bored, so I’m heading out to the mall to score some new threads. Any of you cool people who wanna meet up for a good time better call me back ASAP if you wanna go with. You know who you are. And if you don’t, I’ll give you the verdict when you call.
[Fashion is a cruel game, some people just don’t make the cut. She shrugs.]
Maybe after we load up on shoes and purses we can go hit the spa for a little well deserved pampering. Come on girls, what do you say?! We’re worth it.
[She winks into the camera, blows a sassy kiss and hangs up. That’s sure to have gotten someone’s attention.]
Third Person:
Oh goddammit. Where were her fucking sunglasses? She had them in the taxi on her way home from shopping, but where were they now? She stood there a minute, trying to think about it. She could picture them in her head, but...oh, what the hell was she wasting her time for? Duh! She'd just go back and see for herself.
She sat down on the ground, Indian style, and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in, and let it out very slowly. Her head slumped forward, pressing into her disappointingly flat chest, and then...she stood. Not all of her, just her inner self. Her soul some people might call it, not her, but some people.
It was her Time Walking self. Time Walking was the term she'd made up for it herself. Not too shabby, if she did say so herself. And, accurate. She could leave her body sometimes, like now, and go walking around in the past or future. The science of it was a little sketch, but who fucking cared? It was cool! And, in cases like these, useful too.
"Okay Piper," She said to herself, pacing back the way she came.
"Just need to go half an hour back, and look at where my glasses were."
Piece of cake. Seriously, thirty minutes was nothing. She concentrated for a moment on what she wanted to see, and then, in a blink, the room was slightly changed. Nothing dramatic, obviously, just that the way the sun hit the wall across from the window was slightly different.
"Welp, I better get moving."
Now, it was common knowledge -okay not really since she was the only one who knew it and she's really not common- that when Time Walking, a person couldn't really do a whole lot. Like, they could maybe move small things, or flash the lights or little things like that, but opening a door enough to go out it wasn't gonna happen. Not that it mattered anyway. No body meant no need to use doors at all. Out she popped, out the wall and onto the sidewalk. Time to go investigating.
And, she was off, walking down the street, looking for her past self and those dumb glasses. She'd just been here, so it shouldn't actually take that long to find herself again.
Name: Meghan
Age: 26
Personal Journal: N/A
Email / AIM / MSN / Plurk: KansaiBanzai@plurk
Current Character(s): John Crichton, Prisoner Number 6
Character Information
Name: Piper Vivian Cardenas (Call her PVC Piper and she will slap you.)
Age: 18, Birthday: May 1st, 1996
Appearance: She stands at 5’ 7”, has a thin frame with olive toned skin and usually short cropped platinum blond hair (though it is naturally dark, nearly black). She has green-brown eyes under perfectly plucked eyebrows and her heart shaped face ends with a square jaw and small chin. She tends to dress in loud, bright colors often with a high fashion hipster sensibility and a particular love of things that look like they could have been worn in the 80’s.
Character history:
Piper, born and raised in the suburbs of Eagle Rock California, near the heart of Los Angeles, has always had an eye for the more expensive style of living. Unfortunately, for the majority of her young life, that was relegated mostly to a fantasy as her single mother, who bore her at the young age of twenty-one, had been working two jobs for as long at Piper could remember just trying to makes ends meet enough to afford the small two bedroom apartment they’d lived in all her life.
From a very early age Piper grew up bitterly jealous of the more affluent in her surrounding neighborhoods. While still in grade school, she used to lie to her fellow classmates about the quality of her living situation, claiming to be exceptionally wealthy. She used to invent all sorts of lies to explain the second hand clothing and sack lunches that were a normal feature of her life. Most were too farfetched for even the most gullible classmates to believe. However, as she grew, so did the lies, and also her skills at telling them.
By the time she was approaching thirteen she had gotten quite good at selling the image she had cultivated all those years. She had taken to shoplifting items from designer stores whenever she could get away with it, and when questioned adamantly insisted that her sense of thrift shop style was actually the newest in trends that her poor other friends just couldn’t predict yet. She enjoyed the praise she often got from these falsities, and was determined to rise to the top of the social hierarchy by the time she made it into high school.
As her fourteenth birthday neared, she experience a great boon towards this goal. When puberty came into full swing on her young body, she soon realized she had acquired something more than any of her peers. It was a strange and wonderful ability. At first it would manifest as odd feelings of deja vu, then as dreams that were eerily accurate. Then, on the eve of her birthday, she experienced the first instance of what she would later name Time Walking. While asleep in her bed, her consciousness left her and wandered into the future. There she saw that she would be getting a brand new bicycle for her birthday. In fact, she watched herself receiving it as if she were watching a television broadcast. Too afraid to continue, she ran back to her body promptly awoke. Just a few hours later events unfolded in the real world just as she had seen them in her dream and she realized that it had not been a dream at all. She could see into the future, and, as she soon realized, the past as well.
Excited by the possibilities, she spent the entirety of that summer before entering High school perfecting the ability to the best of her knowledge. She found, to her glee, that she could now do more than just lie about what the newest fashion trend, or popular item of the season would be, she could easily predict them by seeing them in the future. This talent of hers, she found, could be used in all sorts of interesting ways. In one year she raised to the top rank of her class thanks to her new ability to see the answer to any test before she took it. She downplayed her scholastic achievements when in the presence of her popular crowd friends, but she did find them useful for taking some of the pressure off her hard working mother who, without the merit grants, was having incredible difficulty in continuing to afford the prestigious private school Piper was adamant she needed to attend at all cost, lest she be relegated to the mundanity of the public school system.
In her high school years Piper enjoyed extreme success in her terribly shallow goals of becoming a notable and extremely dateable popular girl thanks to her powers and the power of her own ingenuity. The new hipster trend was truly a godsend to her. It was easier than ever with the use of her powers to help her predict what old would become new again. Now she could easily beat all the other thrifty divas to the hottest items on the dollar shelves. And being a know-it-all was easy to do when checking the facts was as easy as going back to look for herself. Staying abreast with all the hottest television, media and pop culture was a snap!
There were, however, a couple of bumps in the road. She was hospitalized twice in her freshman year each time with sudden onset of a coma thanks to her improperly leaving the time walk and being separated for a time from her body. Each time she couldn’t remember the experience, just like most coma patients, but after the second time, she realized that she had to be more careful with her abilities. And ultimately became more selective about where she would use them.
After four glorious years of breezing through high school, it was time to say goodbye to the old and hello~ to the new. Thanks to her ability she was able to net herself a fantastically high SAT exam score. That, combined with the still very low income of her mother, got her nearly a full ride at the California State University, Los Angeles. She was excited to move out on her own to a new world of adventure, a fresh start, and a fresh chance to reinvent herself. Nothing could stop her; She was determined to ace her fashion design courses and go right to the top.
The reality was a little less glamorous as she found herself rooming in a dormitory with a girl named Robin, who was the exact opposite of everything she liked. The girl was weird and nerdy and just not cool. Regardless, Piper wasn’t planning to stay in the smelly old dorms long. As soon as she could, she planned to rush with the most popular sorority on campus and work on getting herself moved into one of those houses. Then she’d be well on her way. She wasn’t there quite yet, but at only a little less than half a month into her life away at college she figured she still had plenty of time to turn it all around. Nothing's going to get in this Diva's way.
Personality:
One word can sum her up nicely: brat. There are other less pleasant words too, like crass, or in a lot of cases, just plain inappropriate. Those would be equally applicable. At eighteen years old, Piper thinks she knows all there is to know about the world, and the place she’s supposed to occupy in it. Obviously, according to her, she’s supposed to be the star of it all.
She’s self centered and lacking in any real empathy for anyone around her. Everything should be just how she wants it, and who cares what anyone else wants or thinks. She can tend to get insanely jealous if anyone else is taking the center stage instead of her. She will go out of her way to put people down in order to elevate herself, and she’ll go to outrageous lengths to make sure she stays the center of attention, because, in her opinion, she deserves it more.
Part of the problem is that she is constantly seeking validation and acceptance in order to relieve her own personal insecurities. Despite how she boasts, her family is actually not as wealthy as all her peers in the private school she recently graduated from. For her, every day is a struggle to hide the fact that she isn’t as socially elite or affluent as all the rest of her so-called friends. Piper is a very clever girl, but unfortunately all her intellect has been geared towards making her a good enough liar and con artists to keep abreast of the social pageantry in which she is so intent on being a part of. The most horrifying fate she could think of is being lumped in with the mediocre or worse the ‘nerd’ crowd.
Yet, despite how much she works to maintain her image, she still hasn't managed to make herself feel truly happy or fulfilled. This lacking confuses her greatly, but it only pushes her to try harder. She’s passionate when it comes to things that interest her, however, those interests are often very superficial. She’s extraordinarily knowledgeable in the things she thinks will advance her like fashion, popular culture, idealized romance. Too bad these are shallow goals that she has yet to realize count for almost nothing outside of her perfectly idealized and also perfectly fake life. If she applied her aptitude instead to more fruitful or creative outlets, she could be very successful as she is certainly not unintelligent, only ignorant to the bigger picture and sadly naive.
Instead, she throws herself with childish abandon at the things (or romantic interests) she frivolously desires, and very often won’t stop to fully consider the consequences of her impulsive actions. She thinks she can do no wrong anyway, and even if she does, she’ll look for someone else to pin the blame to, rather than accept responsibility for herself.
She may be eighteen years of age and experienced in the ways of some things very much adult, but it’s painfully clear she’s still only a bratty child with very little maturity for all her years of shallow conquests. Her view of the world is heavily skewed in her own favor, and it would be safe to say she’s due for a serious reality check. The world is a lot less forgiving than she expects and before she turns nineteen, she’s going to have a hard lesson in that. Until then, she’s perfectly happy being a pampered princess.
Powers and Abilities:
Time Walking: Since the age of fourteen at the onset of puberty Piper has had a unique ability which she herself has given the name Time Walking. With this power Piper has the ability to see into the past, and to view the possible future. She does this by projecting her consciousness past the normal flow of time and into an alternate plain. While there, she becomes incorporeal and invisible to anyone who does not also have this power.
While in this state she has very little ability to touch or affect the world as she walks through it, though she may be able to slightly move small objects, lightly touch things or people or interfere minimally with electronics. Often these instances are miss-attributed by the superstitious as ghostly hauntings.
When in the Time Walk, time seems to almost freeze for her physical body. When she returns to her present physical consciousness, usually, such a small amount of time will have passed, it will seem as if none has passed at all. She cannot, however, maintain present consciousness while projecting herself into the Time Walk. When she chooses to use her power, her physical form will be unconscious. She will not wake so long as her consciousness is elsewhere, even if she is touched or shaken by another person. This would only become an issue if she stayed in the Time Walk for an excessively long time. Otherwise, it would be perceived as nothing more than a quick blink of her eyes.
Piper cannot travel instantaneously while in the Time Walk, she must take herself manually to the place she wishes to view. For instance, if she wishes to view thirty minutes into the future of her home, she will either need to begin the Time Walk while in or near her home, or she will have to expend time in the Time Walk traveling to it. Additionally, while in the Time Walk, she views and experiences the scene she has chosen to go forward or back to in real-time speed starting from the specific moment she has chosen and moving forward. Therefore, if she wishes to view a location in the past that is a fifteen minute walk away from the location at which she starts, she will view fifteen minutes of time moving forward while traveling to her destination. She must take this into consideration when trying to pinpoint the event she wants to view. If, when backward in time she takes long enough that events catches up to her present physical time, she will begin to see the future beyond her present point instead.
When Piper wishes to end the Time Walk, she must be back in the same place as her physical body. It is possible for her to end the Time Walk while not in the same location, however it is very dangerous. The Disconnect between her consciousness and her corporeal self at that time will lead to a coma that may last anywhere from a day to two weeks depending on the distance she was from her physical body at the time.
Though Piper can view and minimally affect the environment of the past, she cannot do anything to drastically alter the chain of events. There is no creation of alternate timelines. Events of the past will always lead to the same result in the present. She may also return to the same points in time more than once without creating paradoxes, as she is herself moving outside of the natural flow of time.
Though the past is immutable, the future is more fluid because it has not yet come to pass. Piper may have the ability to change some events in her future, however, larger events tend to be harder to affect than smaller ones. Due to this flexibility of future events, the things Piper may see when Time Walking in the future will often change frequently, as each are only possible futures until they come into present being.
Looking into the future is the more risky of the two activities in Piper’s opinion, although she also finds it more much more useful. Most of the time she uses her ability for petty and self serving reason. She does, as a general rule, try not to tamper too heavily with future events, unless it's far more convenient for her to do so.
World Summary:
Piper hails from the state of California, part of the great nation that is modern America in the 21st century. At her current canon point, the year is 2014, and most elements of society such as political offices, pop-culture icons, fashion trends and content trending on social media sites line up evenly with the contemporary reality of real world 2014. Obama is the president, Taylor Swift is making a comeback with her new pop album, skinny jeans are still all the rage, and the internet is basically blowing up about minority rights issues.
There are some differences however. Moving below the surface of seemingly ordinary social and political norms is the hand of an unseen force. The company BioEnd is seen as just another big company on the block. The company produces antimicrobial products that branch into a wide range of mediums. Anything from antibacterial soaps and cleansers, to antimicrobial plastics and hospital supplies. Theirs is a household name. Most people are bound to have at least one of their trusted products in their cleaning cabinets. Their catchy little slogan is ‘Disinfecting your world since the 1950’s!’ That slogan might sound more sinister if people knew the whole truth about this seemingly benevolent company. It is interested in disinfecting more than just germs. Its secret goal is to disinfect the world of Time Walking atrocities like Piper.
The company is really an elaborate front for a brotherhood that is bent on exterminating anyone with a power to see into the past or future. Starting in 1950, when it was discovered that Time Walkers were being used as cold war spies, it began to takes measures in secret against these spies, with the blessing of the United States government. The Anti-Time Walker sentiment grew as fear did in that era, until the brotherhood became steadfast in its idea that Time Walkers were a dangerous menace that needed to be cleansed out of the world’s genetic pool for good.
The company now has plenty of resources thanks to its entrepreneurial success and it has also been able to buy itself a lot of sway in politics. Enough, in fact, that disappearances of certain people, especially from the coma wards of hospitals, have a way of going un-investigated. Its roots run deep, and anyone who attempts to defy it or to speak the truth tends to find themselves taken very ill before they get the chance.
Also moving in the shadows is a counter movement against BioEnd. It takes the form of a religious cult that calls itself the Church of the Turquoise Sun. The religious group has its founding in ancient Aztec beliefs, specifically in Xiuhtecuhtli, often referred to as the “Turquoise Lord" or "Lord of Fire.” Xiuhtecuhtli is the Aztec god of time, life, fire, and age, most notably. Little does the world now know, but many ancient civilizations had discovered the usefulness of Time Walkers, the Aztecs being one of them.
The story goes that there once was a Time Walker who lived in the Aztec nation, who was the most powerful that has ever existed. This man’s name has been lost to time, thanks in part to the destruction of relics by the Spaniards who brought the nation to its downfall. It is held that while acting as an adviser to the Aztec priests, he traveled further into the future than any Time Walker ever has before or since, and he beheld a vision so magnificent that it compelled him to come back and facilitate the destruction of his own nation, citing that it was the only way to ensure that the world was set on the path to this great and wonderful future. He felt he had been given a message by the god of time himself, and it was his burden to carry out this holy mission.
He told the priests that in one year’s time, they could expect the return of their fair skinned god, Quetzalcoatl. In actuality, this great Time Walker had witnessed in one of his journeys to the future the arrival of the conquistador Cortes. This ‘prophecy’ helped tip the balance in Cortes’ favor, starting a cascading effect leading to the downfall of Aztec civilization.
The Time Walker, however, did not remain to watch it. He gathered all the other Time Walkers he could trust, so legend says, and took them to safety. He told them they had been selected by the god of time to shape the future towards this beautiful ideal he had seen. He told them they had the spirit of the god in them, and that their mission was a holy one, larger than one nation or one era. It is a mission for the world that is and will be.
This mission has persisted, and is the driving force behind the modern embodiment of this religion. It has had to operate discretely, as throughout the years discovery of Time Walkers (or as they are referred to in this religion, the Turquoise Spirits) has led many to fear them as devils, witches, or great threats to humanity. Regardless of this danger, the group has spread its influence as far as it can, reaching out and seeking more Time Walkers to bring into the fold. They search for the one who can lead them. One who is strong enough to see back into that beautiful unknown future and tell them what it is they must do now to achieve it.
Piper, of course, lives in blissful ignorance of all these political and religious machinations. Her greatest concern is doing well in her new college life. She graduated near the top of her class from The Sacred Heart Catholic School. Thanks to her abilities, she got a near perfect score on her SAT, enabling her to get a full ride to California State University, Los Angeles. There she will have to endure a dormitory room shared with an unpleasant -to her, anyway- roommate. But, not for long if she has any say in it. She is planning to go to the top. The sorority Kappa Kappa Gamma is her plan for success and fashion world domination. Piper’s gonna do what it takes to ascend the ranks at this school, because, though there’s a big scary world of secrets and danger surrounding her powers, the only world she’s in is the fantasy one where using those powers is never going to catch up to her.
Samples
Network:
Alright, listen up! I’m bored, so I’m heading out to the mall to score some new threads. Any of you cool people who wanna meet up for a good time better call me back ASAP if you wanna go with. You know who you are. And if you don’t, I’ll give you the verdict when you call.
[Fashion is a cruel game, some people just don’t make the cut. She shrugs.]
Maybe after we load up on shoes and purses we can go hit the spa for a little well deserved pampering. Come on girls, what do you say?! We’re worth it.
[She winks into the camera, blows a sassy kiss and hangs up. That’s sure to have gotten someone’s attention.]
Third Person:
Oh goddammit. Where were her fucking sunglasses? She had them in the taxi on her way home from shopping, but where were they now? She stood there a minute, trying to think about it. She could picture them in her head, but...oh, what the hell was she wasting her time for? Duh! She'd just go back and see for herself.
She sat down on the ground, Indian style, and closed her eyes. She took a deep breath in, and let it out very slowly. Her head slumped forward, pressing into her disappointingly flat chest, and then...she stood. Not all of her, just her inner self. Her soul some people might call it, not her, but some people.
It was her Time Walking self. Time Walking was the term she'd made up for it herself. Not too shabby, if she did say so herself. And, accurate. She could leave her body sometimes, like now, and go walking around in the past or future. The science of it was a little sketch, but who fucking cared? It was cool! And, in cases like these, useful too.
"Okay Piper," She said to herself, pacing back the way she came.
"Just need to go half an hour back, and look at where my glasses were."
Piece of cake. Seriously, thirty minutes was nothing. She concentrated for a moment on what she wanted to see, and then, in a blink, the room was slightly changed. Nothing dramatic, obviously, just that the way the sun hit the wall across from the window was slightly different.
"Welp, I better get moving."
Now, it was common knowledge -okay not really since she was the only one who knew it and she's really not common- that when Time Walking, a person couldn't really do a whole lot. Like, they could maybe move small things, or flash the lights or little things like that, but opening a door enough to go out it wasn't gonna happen. Not that it mattered anyway. No body meant no need to use doors at all. Out she popped, out the wall and onto the sidewalk. Time to go investigating.
And, she was off, walking down the street, looking for her past self and those dumb glasses. She'd just been here, so it shouldn't actually take that long to find herself again.