Flux App

[agathaheterodyne]

Spoiler warning! Also warnings for violence, gore, a non-modern concept of underthings, and mad science. (This is written and drawn by the Folgios, what did you expect?)

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[agathaheterodyne]

OOC Information:

Name: Chicklet
Age: Adult
Time Zone: As I said on Me's app, EDT/EST but anytime is fine because my sleep schedule is all over the place.
Preferred Contact Method: Poke my journal or my Plurk (ChickletLARP)


IC Information:

Reserve Link: Linkity

Character Name:
Series: Girl Genius
Character History: I'm sorry, please don't hate me...?
Character Canon Point: In canon, she was taken from Paris, just as she was heading into the catacombs. (At least for one game. The other game she was taken accidentally as an AU as I put in her app near the end of a story arc, SURE I knew how it was wrapping up. I was very VERY wrong.)

CRAU-wise, she's spent a small amount of time on the Star Ship Enterprise (The game was called TenForward) and a LOT of time in the City of Change, Nautilus (The game was Wake). She was in both games when they ended, though in Wake she had no 10F memories, so this is going to be... interesting.

Personality:

Agatha is kind, caring, sweet... and utterly insane. But mostly in the best ways. When she is not caught in the Madness, she cares about friends and the family she's built (literally and not). She is driven often to do what she feels is "right" even if it isn't always what is smart. She takes her responsibilities seriously even when that costs her personally.

She started out wanting to be... to just be. She was a student who loved learning but was plagued by these horrible migraines that hit her whenever she tied to focus. She was raised by her loving adopted parents who were always sensitive and secretive about the fact that they were Constructs rather than naturally born humans. She helped to keep their secret and loved them, and loved her classes at university, even if she couldn't think clearly enough to make the connections she knew were there just out of reach. She kept building things that never worked. She missed her uncle who she had been with till she was five, and all she had of her parents was a locket her uncle told her never ever to take off, that had their photos. She didn't even know their names.

And frankly, even with the headaches and the secrets and the mysteries, she was happy. Sure, she wanted her machines to work, and she wanted to be able to think clearly and e a more active part of her school, but she was content with her life.

But that all changed when the fire nation attacked the day she first encountered (what I believe to be) the Muse Of Time. If the odd coincidences that led to her being kidnapped were just a series of semi-connected events, or if the Muse somehow had a hand in making sure she was mugged on the very day that the Baron and (possibly more importantly) his son were in town to go after the master of her school is unclear. But it all came together in a perfect storm that ruined her happy little light forever.

The locket had been designed by her uncle to suppress her Spark. She came to outside her quiet little life, with the migraines and more subtle chains around her shattered. For the first time she was able to feel strong emotions without debilitating pain. She could build things that worked. There was a rough adjustment period and lots of comical misunderstandings between her and Gil, the Baron's son. (Seriously, when he proposed, she laughed... not the answer he hoped for.)

From that point on, Agatha was in some ways a different person from the meek young girl she'd been. Watching her adoptive parents get ripped to shreds protecting her, finding herself on the run, and discovering that one of her childhood heroes was a psychotic mass murderer and the others were... well... family... also had a large part to play in changing her.

She became someone who his her own secrets as much as the secrets' of others. She learned how to channel her stronger emotions. She met people who help shape her, who taught her how to act, how to dress for different roles, and even helped her fake her own death to escape the Baron's son. A lot of the "find yourself" milestones that most people have as children and teens she had in her 20s. Because for the first time she could be herself.

Eventually she came to feel the weight of being the last of her (in)famous family. When the people she had come to love and travel with were in danger because of her, when one of them - Lars- DIED because the Baron was trying to recapture her, something in Agatha snapped. SHOWTIME! This is where we also find out that Agatha... is very good at planning ahead as she had, over the time spent with the Circus, been modifying each and every wagon in the caravan into deadly weapons. Everyone fighting, she fought with them. Lars died? She activated EVERYTHING. It became a one sided battle.

After, she felt the weight of what she had done, as well as the weight of Lars' death. Zeetha convinced her to see the locket - which now instead of surpassing her suppressed her mother's ability to take over her brain (see the Actress section of the wikia listed above for a VERY truncated summary of how and why that happened.) was not a mark of weakness, but a sign that she was growing stronger.

Filled with the determination not to let people die because of her anymore, she knew she had to claim her birthright. She needed a stronger position, and there were few stringer than the unassailable town of Mechanichsbug, which was her birthright as it had always been ruled, since founding, by a Heterodyne.

Now... as I said above, for the first twenty plus years of her life (well, from when she was eight until the day she was mugged at the start of the story) much of her personality was suppressed, as there are some personality traits that go hand in hand with being a Spark. Meglomania is one that we saw almost none of in Agatha, which had seemed odd, since it was a common trait in strong Sparks, and she was among the strongest. Once it came to Mechanicsburg, we saw the first stirrings of it. Some Sparks empire build and can be satisfied once they have a large enough one. Agatha... became territorial over the one held in trust for her as soon as she got a feel for the people there. It was her town. And when Zola (pinkie) tried to take it, all those empire building urges came to the fore. This was her homicidal Castle, her town, her people, and no one was going to destroy them but her! (she did kill the Castle, but just a little bit, but it was trying tom stop her from killing herself, which she needed to do... so yeah. Did I mention mad science is a thing?)

Other Spark personality traits that she has in spades include extreme emotions, a constant attraction to new tech - specifically taking it apart to see how it works and then putting it back together as she thinks it should be, the ability to attract minions, and (as my friend puts it about me) a tendency to ask "Can I" while skipping over "but should I?".

Now for Agatha some of this is offset by how she grew up. She seems to have lesser versions of some of them, and so long as she isn't already in the Madness, it is easier to bring her back down than it is other Sparks.


So let's discuss the Madness Place. Because it is a THING. The Madness is the mode in which a Spark is moist effective at building things that defy the very laws of science and nature. What they do in the Madness cannot be replicated outside of it, and even with the Madness it is rare for a Spark to replicate another Spark's work, even if they had watched everything happen. Sparks in the thrall of the Madness lose all sense of time, of propriety, of limitations and generally just all... sense. At all. They are at their most violent, and can often be single minded to the exclusion of all concerns that aren't the beautiful machine they are building. Agatha can kind of hover in the borderline of the Madness at times, but often dives in headfirst. Like most Sparks she doesn't eat or sleep or do anything but work on her machine until it is done. Explosions aren't set backs, they're ideas how to improve things. And any chance they might have had of ever thinking "maybe I shouldn't" is gone. Seriously. I mean, Gil recognizes her based on this. (The last three panels)

On the topic of coffee, dear gods do not let Agatha have any if you value your life or sanity. She's had it once. The caffeine throws her into overdrive and she launches herself head first at a project without consideration or thought.

During the battle for Mechanicshburg we have another case of things happening so close together in time that it amplifies everything. The Baron sets off a time bomb (in this case a bomb that freezes time. This is mad science. A bomb that just went off on schedule is faaaar too simple) just as Agatha is kidnapped (again) through a transportation portal. (She wants a look at that tech after this is all over, and words with the people who aided her kidnapper once she saves their lives.) This has the net result of the transport taking far longer than anticipated. He town has been trapped in time for waaaaay too long by the time she gets back. She goes to Paris hoping to find answers about how to undo the time stasis so she could free her people. As well as needing to figure out what was done to Gil since he is clearly not himself, and needing a cure for Tarvek who if time had not frozen would be dead by the time he hit the floor from the poison he was knifed with.

So her focus as of when she got dragged into her more recent game was on saving everyone. You know. Again. This was the girl who would have happily traded with Belle for her simple provincial life.


CRAU: 10F didn't change Agatha much in and of itself, but there were some differences which is why I am including it (and not just for the fun of having her question which is real, that's just a perk). Some is just the higher level tech she and Billy (Power Rangers) got to play with. Billy himself is a huge part of it, though. Since she left the Circus, Billy was one of the very VERY few close male friends she had that didn't start crushing on her. Perhaps the ONLY male friend she's ever had that wasn't family, that could keep up with her mentally and still didn't hit on her. Her emotions over Lars, Gil, and Tarvek are enough of a mess that it meant the world to her to have a male fiend that wasn't tangled up in her love life. (she also came off of, at that canon point, being harassed by her Castle to produce heirs... so yeah. Platonic male friend was AMAZING.) Also there is the oddness of the accidental AU she came from, where she had saved mechanicsburg, Gil never got taken over by his father's mental overlay, and Tarvek wasn't dying.

CRAU from Wake is more intense and changed her more. She did meet Billy again, though neither of them recalled 10F because CRAU wasn't allowed in that game) but again she had that wonderful platonic friendship with him that she treasured. The Third Doctor and her started out antagonistic - her fault, but thanks to Billy they became friends as well. She also had other friends in Wake, far more than she had in 10F. Connie basically became her younger sister. Baymmax was just fascinating. Leia Organa and Nita Callahan were a ton of fun to spend time with, even of Leia did want to smack some heads together in Agatha's world. Or maybe because of that. There was a huge todo early on in her stay there when a Nobody (Kingdom Hearts) was interested in her research on post-mortem revivification. Because such things are, if not common back home at least seen as a Spark thing that happens sometimes, and because she was of the mind that science should be SHARED and that only things you shouldn't be doing are done in secret, she broadcast their experiment to the network. An experiment in which she killed him in cold blood, at his request.

She was HATED by most people for YEARS after that on game. Even people who hadn't been in game when it happened heard about the mad woman in the tower who had murdered someone on the network. It wasn't until near the end of the game that some of them came to see her as anything other than a monster.

She learned some lessons from this, though maybe not the lessons her fellow Wakened wanted her to learn. She learned to build a center for science, a huuuuge lab she spent over a year in game building that got finished scant months before the game ended, where she would conduct all her possibly scandalous experiments and only those who wanted to see them would be exposed to them, because she'd announce the experiment on the network, and then let whoever wanted to come sit in the amphitheater....

[agathaheterodyne]

Abilities: She's a Spark. So she can warp science with her creations. As a particularly powerful Spark there is quite a bit she can do that most Sparks can't, and putting it out there because unlike Frozen this isn't a power her series glosses over - she can create mechanical LIFE. In fact there is some in canon debate as to if her Dingbots (small clanks she creates about the height of a Pocket watch in most cases) are themselves Sparks. Basically anything that could be done instantly with magic in other world sets she can probably do with science, it will just take her longe to figure out what to build and to actually build it.

Also re: Spark, see endurance/physical strength. Sparks can take a LOT of punishment. And if they are in the Madness place they might not even realize they'e injured. Seriously, Gil got shot in the arm at one point and that ticked him off so much he a walking machine taller than him that had a person INSIDE IT and threw it across the room. Yes, he paid for it very soon after, but he lifted a huge metal thing and a person and threw it across the room, right after taking a blast to the arm. Just... Yeah....

I mentioned the Madness place a few times, so just dropping that here again.


Any mechanical weapon she can probably figure out how to use quickly - though she might dismantle it and remake it in the process. She can also craft a Death Ray on the run (she's done it before) and she can usually improvise with a jammed weapon by turning it into a bomb. Yes, in combat.

Fighting skills - She is being trained by a warrior princess of Skifander. Some days she thinks training is a thinly veiled excuse to torture her, but really it is training. She also has been observing Violetta who is a Smoke Knight (basically a ninja who also uses poisons) and in Wake she was training Connie in both styles of fighting, which also kept her training so that Zeetha wouldn't kill her if she ever showed up.

Genius - She can absorb information, especially scientific information at an astounding rate, and now that she no longer has constant pain stopping her, can process it in all sorts of interesting ways. Mind this does not apply to emotional information. She's still somewhat..m uneven emotionally.

Bending. (See Me's App for more details.) Bending is basically Bending reality to suit one's will. She does not think she Bends. She usually only Bends when she is lost in the Madness, or when she's asleep, so she's not even aware she does it. Which given she (unlike Me who left sooner) got a huge power boost at the end of the game has the potential for some really epic explosions and errors until she learns that she is Bending, and how to balance it.

Sleep Building - Agatha builds in her sleep. Always had, even while the locket kept he abilities at bay. Mostly this is when she makes Dingbots, but she has made other things as well...


Minions - While this is an in canon POWER I have always handled it as an RP thing. And oddly, it happens fairly often without having to discuss powers or plot in advance. In canon basically all Sparks have the potential to order someone around and have them hop to. And some people are natural born minions that are almost desperate for someone to serve. In most cases though it is, to steal a riddle from another series, a question of is the music in the harp or in the hands that strum the strings. It is both. Not everyone becomes a minion, and those that do, not all of them would minion for just anyone. Some minions are also just for a scene, some become attached to a specific Spark for life. Agatha, both as a Heterodyne and as a Mongfish is unusually strong in her ability to minionize people. This is bolstered by her town being a whole town of born and bred minions who have a rich history of proudly serving the HEterodynes.

In RP however, what usually happens is that a scene has Agatha in the madness place, she demands a tool. Either it is given to her by the other character(s) or it is not. If not, she often demands it again unaware she asked the first time and/or her dingbots bring the tool over to the other character. What has never ceased to amaze me is how often the other character hands over the tool without complaint, and winds up drawn in, fascinated by watching her work. I have never used her ability to minionize people as a power in game. And frankly, I never needed to. It just becomes a fun RP thing.


Command all Jägers/Geisterdamen/Reverents - Now there is one POTENTIAL exception to this. Jägers and Geisterdamn. If anyone apps someone from either of those (can we call them races? Species?) then there is the potential for it to have a bit more oomph than just RP between strangers. But anyone who apps any of them would do so knowing this. The short version though, incase NPCs of either show up for an event is as follows:

Jägers are former humans (I think they were all human, but this is Girl Genius, I could yet be surprised) who were so loyal to House Heterodyne that they agreed to drink a brew that would either kill them painfully, or if they could endure, turn them into monsters that are super strong, excessively long lived, and almost impossible to kill. So commanding Jägers is about her being a HEterodyne, but it is closer to power level just in that if one of them meets her and doesn't know who she is, he scent will make them lean towards serving her anyway, and they would be hard pressed to deny a direct order. Such denial would have to be plotted out rather than obedience. The execption to this is Vole who is the only Jäger to renounce the Heterodynes. Maybe one day we'll find out why.

The Geisterdamen and Reverents are Lucrizia powers more than Agatha powers. Agatha can command them to a degree because her vocal harmonics are so much like her mother's. but stronger Geisterdamen can resist her. If Lucrizia is in her head, then on the occasions Lucriza is free, they can NOT resist an order from her, even if it comes from Agatha's mouth. (She ordered Vrin to die and the woman did. So.) Honestly though I do not expect anyone to app a Geisterdamen, and if someone apped a Reverant... that would probably require a whole mess of OOC planning anyway. Possibly with mod involvement to make sure everything is fair. I've never seen a journal for one though. Jägers, yes. Geisterdamen and Reverents? Nope.



Heterodyning - Linkie. Basically she can make an odd noise that tunes out other noises so she can focus.




Lucriza's abilities - If needed I can add those in here as well, but as I don't know if she will be on ride along, and as even if she is Agatha will fight tooth and nail to keep her locked up in her own skull.... not likely to e a huge issue outside of the odd event here and there.



Not a power or combat skill, but she is also pretty good at acting by this point.

Six Items:

Not sure if a creature she needs to survive counts as one of the six, so listing it here, JIC. I am presuming her locket, as she is wearing it, does not count. If I am correct:

1. Her weasel. (Info on her specific mustelid can be found here. (and yes for triggery reasons I avoid using the proper name of this kind of weasel.

2. Rotem (She got some pokemon in Wake. I presume they come in their balls? Rotem was in too large a body to fit in the trunk by game's end.)

3. Klinklang (another pokemon, again presumably in his ball.)

4. The book of Van Rjin's notes that was also her network device in Wake

5. A small clank that holds the mind of The Castle - a homicidal building (Like with Lucriza's mind this is a copy and does not prevent anyone from apping the Castle, though the only one I have ever known to try to do that, frankly, is me.)

6. A small clank that holds the mind of the The Beast - a homicidal train. (Not a copy, his mind was taken out of his body and put into a harmless clank so he couldn't keep killing people and devouring things.)

If any of these are unacceptable, please let me know. I know that the Castle and the Beast could theoretically be seen as characters, and thus questionable. After two years of trying to find a game where I could app the Castle, I feel they are less likely viable, and frankly having them in small clank form doesn't stop anyone else from apping the Castle if they can figure out how.


(One further note, I do plan on canon updating her not long after game starts, once she is settled into this new place, so I can pull the rug out from under her.)

Character Samples:

Sample 1: Building at the end of the world.

Sample 2:

[Camera up on a young woman with flyaway red hair and expressive green eyes showing through her oil stained glasses. A weasel looking creature with bolts in its neck, too many sharp teeth and an extra pair of legs sat on her shoulder, watching curiously.]

"Well this makes more sense than talking into a book or dingbot, I suppose. Hello, my name is Agatha," [a hesitation then she chose to forgo her last name entirely. [And I was wondering if anyone know of a scrap yard around here that I could toor through for parts? Oh! Right! While we're stuck here, I'm going to be opening up a mechanics shop and once I can build it, a science lab. So anyone who needs anything repaired or wants to help out, the name over the door will be Clay Mechanicsburg." [A nod to the town that was hers and her adopted parents.]

"Oh and, Connie? If you see this? Well... now that you know I'm here you know how to find me." [Just follow the explosions.]

"Guess that's it for now. Thanks!"

[She cut the feed.]