knuckle_bones @ 2007-05-14T08:50:00

2007-05-14T15:11:41Z

Character Name: Riley Cecilia Jude Galletti
Player name (nickname, handle): Saphie (You gots my AIM and email already)
Character LJ (if applicable): knuckle_bones
Physical description (face, build, weight): Average to tallish height, at least for a girl (5'6"), thick frame and heavy build, stocky and a little flatchested like she looks like she belongs in the army (about 160 lbs). Short brown hair. She's not a babe, she doesn't look like she belongs in the next Marvel Swimsuit Special, but she's alright-looking--more cute than pretty or beautiful. When not in costume she tends to wear baggy sporty clothes, like her older half-brother's giant green hand-me-down jacket with all the pockets, and sports jerseys, and army boots. She does like skirts, though, but thinks they suck for fighting unless you don't mind flashing everyone your undies (she doesn't mind, but she still doesn't wear a skirt to fight). She has a belly button ring and ear piercings but doesn't wear them if she thinks she's going to be fighting.
Abilities: Molecular manipulation of her own body that results in the random manifestation of various superpowers.

Riley has a permanent morphogenic field around her DNA. When she activates her power, she undergoes a random transformation where all the cells in her body change completely, and for about fifteen to twenty minutes at a time she will have a completely random superpower (although many that she manifests are powers belonging to famous super-heroines in Marvel U), anything from talking to plants to telekineses. When the time is up, she changes back to a seemingly completely normal baseline human.

She can activate the change maybe two or three times in a given day if she takes a break in between each time, but it leaves her exhausted. In time, she may be able to draw out the time she can maintain having a power, or increase the number of times in a row that she can activate the change, but she will never have conscious control over what power she pulls up, unless someone else mucks about with her DNA and figures out a way for her to control it.

Sometimes a power will be useful, and sometimes it will be completely useless, like telepathically communicating with sea animals. That's why she's named herself "Knucklebones" as her code name, from the name of an old game that was a precursor to dice games, that involved tossing the knuckle bones of a sheep. Every time she uses her power, it's a roll of the dice.

Due to the extremely unreliable nature of her power, she tends never to use it unless absolutely necessary, therefore she has an assortment of simple weapons, mostly modified sports equipment and some illegal weaponry, such as an aluminum baseball bat, golf clubs, brass knuckles, small concealed knives, and smoke bombs and home-made napalm grenades. She also uses martial arts techniques learned while studying Aikido, kendo, and other martial arts for over half her life at whatever local dojos were available. By all appearances, unless in an extremely desperate situation in which she has to activate her power to save her life or someone else's, she appears to be one of those self-taught, home-grown, powerless vigilantes, and her greatest strength isn't her power, but speed and skill that too years of development.

Weaknesses and flaws: Her powers are extremely unreliable. Sometimes the power she manifests will be useful, sometimes it'll be completely useless. More alarmingly, sometimes she'll manifest something extremely powerful and it will be completely out of her control because while she has a little intuitive skill with the powers she manifests, for the most part, she gets them with no knowledge of how to use them. The first time she activated her powers and got an ability she couldn't control, she randomly manifested pyrokinesis and set the men she was fighting on fire. She was able to snuff it out but they were badly injured and had to go to the hospital, and she figured out very quickly that her powers ought to be used sparingly.

Also, if she tries to force the change to activate more than two or three times in succession without rest, it messes with her hormones and neuro-chemicals, leading to drastic mood changes. If she were to force it to happen over and over and over it would likely leave her temporarily insane, and could even damage her body and make the different powers start to meld together, turning her into a nasty amalgam of different mutations and power sets. If this happens, she needs to be calmed down and forced to focus past her uncontrollable emotions to change back to normal or else she might lose control.

Between the potential insanity, turning into a mergy-shifty freak of nature, and possibly activating a power she can't control and could cause havoc with, her superpower is a veritable powder keg. For this reason, she almost adamantly refuses to use it. Unless the situation is an emergency, or she feels she can manage not hurting anyone nearby due to the situation being secluded or something, she sticks to her weapons, homemade gadgets, and martial arts head-bashy skills.

As for personality flaws, she is sometimes resentful at having to take care of her younger sister, even if she volunteered for it, and can lash out verbally to that extent, something she always regrets after, but by then the damage is usually done to her sister's self esteem.

She craves freedom and feels as if she's trapped by her life, and raising her sister, and at the same time, is often paralyzed, so used to how her life already is, that she's afraid to step up and make any changes to it, afraid they'll make it worse and make her let her sister down instead of being changes to the positive. She has quite a bit of trouble with change, especially when it comes to her personal life.

However, as a hero, she can get so caught up in the fun and freedom of it that she can, if not forget to take it seriously, get a little reckless, something she can't afford to do with a fourteen year old counting on her to raise her.

Her anger for her mother, also, quite frankly knows no bounds, and often leaks into her life even when she tries to force it out.

Base of operations: New York City, South Bronx
Alignment (villain, hero etc): Hero
Relatives (living or dead): Christina Galletti (younger sister that Riley is legal guardian of, living) Daniel Galleti (older half-brother and sometimes crime-fighting partner, living), Tony Galletti (father, deceased), Cathleen Brady (estranged mother, living)

Backstory: Riley Galletti figured out from an early age that her parents' marriage wasn't quite working out, just like on Sesame street where they talked about a kids parents having "mommy-daddy fights." Her mother cried all the time and seemed generally unhappy and her father seemed even unhappier, because he couldn't seem to make his wife happy. She tried her best to ignore it, and took advantage of the freedom her mother's semi-negligence gave her, running around with the neighborhood kids and getting into trouble. Being the somewhat domineering but otherwise fun, energetic, and goofy type, she rarely lacked for friends growing up, though few of them were very close friends, mostly just random playmates.

She did find a best friend, however, in her half-brother, Dan, who was a year and a half older than her and from her father's previous marriage. When he made his weekly visits, the two would usually run around outside and completely ignore their father and Riley's mother, playing pretend at superheroes and space heroes and making weapons out of Tinker Toys.

Despite the constant fighting between her parents, she had a relatively happy childhood, and it got even happier when her parents decided to try to have another child to save their marriage, resulting in Riley's little sister Christina. Riley was somewhat jealous of the attention the baby got at first, especially since another baby seemed to make her always-distant mother happier, but quickly took to being a big sister, mindlessly nattering on to the baby about the nature of the world as her three year-old brain could make of it, and telling her how she'd be fine as long as she stuck with her big sister.

For a while, there was a measure of peace in the Galletti household, and Riley participated in martial arts at a local Aikido dojo, learning kendo and Aikido itself, at her father's gentle insistence. She took to it, and learned quickly.

Over time, though, Tony's ex-wife and Dan's mother, Sandra, had a nervous breakdown, brought home a boyfriend from the mental institution she put herself into, and started refusing that Danny visit his father. Tony tried to get custody of his son yet again, but Sandra convinced Dan that his father didn't want to see him and without any actual evidence that the home was unfit for a child, Tony--and Riley--were S.O.L. Dan stopped coming for visits and for a time Riley was withdrawn and miserable, missing her older brother and best friend.

It was Christina, then five-years-old, that drew her out of her funk. Now that Christina was no longer a baby, Cathleen Galletti started neglecting her children again, at least on an emotional level, and Riley recognized that her little sister needed someone to look out for her (and unconsciously needed someone to look out for). The two became very close, and stayed closer than many siblings as they grew up. It often puzzled Riley when she heard school friends talk about how they argued with their siblings, as that was out of the realm of her experience. She'd rarely fought with Dan, and while she and Chris occasionally got into petty squabbles, for the most part, the two were inseparable, and rarely found a reason to fight.

In fact, all the fighting was done for them--Cathleen and Tony starting going at it again, and ultimately, when Riley turned fourteen years old, her mother packed and left home in the middle of the night, without saying goodbye to her children or her husband. Shortly after, Tony and Cathleen were divorced, with Cathleen not even trying to obtain custody of her children. Cathleen hadn't really been ready for marriage or children and wanted to "go live her own life." Riley, who compared her birth-date to her parents anniversary date and realized she'd been born before her parents had married, figured that her mother had only married because she had accidentally gotten pregnant, and was highly resentful of this fact.

Tony did his best to raise Riley and Christina, but as Cathleen, a rather talented businesswoman in a major advertising firm, had been the primary breadwinner, he was forced to move from the suburbs in North Jersey to one of the worst areas in the Bronx in NYC, as it was all he could afford, even while working several jobs. Riley suffered from major adjustment issues from being taken from her friends and dropped in an inner-city school, and had to toughen up quickly to avoid being hassled by classmates. Fortunately she'd been a very tomboyish, alpha personality to start with, and after a sufficient amount of fights at school, and class clowning, she was able to gain enough respect to at least be left alone.

With what little extra money he had, her father enrolled both her and her little sister in a local dojo, where one of his old friends, John Carney, was teaching Aikido (at a tremendous discount because Tony was his friend). Chris quickly took to the martial art as much as Riley had when she first started, but Riley took to it again with an aplomb and dedication that delighted both her father and her sensei, who became a surrogate uncle of sorts to the girls. She also took to the atmosphere of this particular dojo, which, while full of skilled martial artists, was somewhat laid back and full of people with good senses of humor. Through Sensei John, and the other people she went to class with, she was exposed to many nerdish things and comedians she'd never really paid attention to, like Monty Python, and George Carlin. Over time, she took to mouthing off in class to try to make Sensei and the other students laugh, and it was doing this--coming up with new material by each lesson--that made her start to harbor a secret desire to become a comedian.

Since she and her sister always got home from school at about the same time, she often wound up having to watch her sister until her father got home from work very late, and cooked dinner. Even exhausted, though, Tony made an effort to spend time with his children, knowing that both of them had suffered emotionally from their mother leaving, and felt rejected. During a short period of time that he came across money passed down from his father, he was able to pay for some family counseling and individual counseling for his daughters, for a few months, which did help the girls deal with the loss and abandonment of their mother.

Over time, the family adjusted and made the best of it, and was as happy as they could be, and although Riley was still very angry, she was able to direct all that anger into focus in her Aikido and kendo training.

When Riley was seventeen, however, her father, from all his hard work, stress, and not taking care of himself, suffered from a stroke while at work. Fortunately, his daughters got there in time to say goodbye, and so did his estranged son, after which he wound up throwing another clot and dying in the hospital.

Dan, who had realized over the years that his mother was mentally ill and had been lying to him about his father and half-sisters not wanting to see him, and Riley bonded again over their father's death and funeral arrangements, and he finally got to know Chris, the little sister he'd never had a chance to know before leaving.

It was the only bright spot in a horrible situation.

Devastated, Riley had to make a decision. With no relatives that could reasonably care for them she could either let her sister be put into foster care (and herself, as well, until she aged out) or she could become emancipated and finish raising her sister until Chris got into college herself.

Despite the tremendous pressure and responsibility she knew was forthcoming, she decided on the latter. She got emancipated, got her GED, got two jobs: as a file-clerk in a local law firm (Nelson and Murdock), and the other as a waitress. With her jobs and paying off at least some of the bills and the funerary expenses with her father's meager life insurance, she was able to scrape by, pay the bills, put Chris in a local Catholic school, which was slightly less horrible than public school, and was considered an acceptable guardian. Her sister was put into her custody. After a few months of evening classes, she received training as a phlebotomist, which paid marginally more, and Riley dropped her file-clerk job to work as a "professional vampire," as she calls it, at a local hospital.

Her half-brother, an art student and musician, lives on his own, on meager pay, but has helped raise his little sister as well, offering money whenever he has any extra (which isn't often), helping his younger sister with her homework, fixing things around the house, and most importantly providing Riley with emotional support, mainly by keeping her laughing. The two, who both mostly see themselves as wash-outs, unlikely ever able to achieve their dreams of becoming a musician/artist, and a comedian, see their little sister, who's astoundingly intelligent, as being the only one in the family with a future. They're both just trying to help her get by until she makes it to college and gets to have the life neither of them will ever likely have. However, at times, it seems like Riley has to take care of her occasionally responsible brother, as well.

After several incidents that have indicated just how bad the neighborhood gang violence is getting, such as their front windows being broken by gunfire, and Chris being roughed up by some drug dealing thugs in the neighborhood (although she fought back rather viciously), Riley and Dan decided they were tired of living in a veritable urban warzone, and decided in their somewhat psychotic manner to wage a two-person war on crime in the neighborhood.

After taking out some of said thugs (while masked and wearing black clothes) and depositing them where the police would find them (with lots of drugs on their person) they stole most of their drug money and invested it in bulletproof body armor, bought cheap through someone Sensei Carney knew. Modifying sports equipment to make weapons, ala Casey Jones of the Ninja Turtles (who they both consciously acknowledge as being their inspiration when it comes to their basic shtick), they basically go around beating the ever-loving shit out of gang-bangers and criminals that happen to wander into their section of the 'hood, with the help of cheap but useful gadgets and home-made incendiary devices (while estranged from them, Dan had apparently spent a short run in juvie for his pyromaniac tendencies getting him into trouble. He mixes the explosive solutions in the tub).

On a night when Dan was doing a show at a club, Riley received her powers. A mutant family in the neighborhood had physical mutations and were often ostracized for it. The youngest, a little girl named Sharisse Hawkins had her powers manifest at a very early age (much like Leech and Artie and many of the Morlocks and such). Riley babysat her from when she was very young onwards, and both she and Chris were very fond of her. Sharisse had the ability to put a morphogenic field around the DNA of other beings, to make that DNA change into anything she wanted, although had a naturally-occurring mental block to keep from doing it to herself, also part of her mutation as a survival trait to keep her from accidentally hurting herself by changing her DNA to something irreparably horrible or changing it so she lost her ability. She would turn birds into mice, cats into dogs, and other such things, much to the disgust of many in the neighborhood (and the delight of Chris and Riley who just though Sharisse's power was neat).

Sharisse also worshiped various superheroines and superheroes (but mostly superheroines), and her walls were covered in posters of them. She wanted to someday join their ranks use her powers for good, to be an Avenger or join the Fantastic Four, and be a scientist and help people.

However, Sharisse never got to live long enough for that to happen. When she was walking home from a friend's, she was grabbed by a bunch of thugs, who dragged her into an alley and started to beat her to death.

When her mother started to worry, she called Riley to see if Sharisse was there, and Riley went out looking for her, not even bothering to gear up.

She came across them and fought them alone, barehanded, and without any of her armor or gadgets, almost getting killed in the process, but due to quick-thinking and improvisation, she was able to take them all out. Sharisse however, had been shot twice, and was mangled.

Riley implored her to use her ability to change her own DNA to heal herself, but because of the natural block, she couldn't change her own DNA.

Before she even had time to run out into the street and call for help, the little girl asked why none of the heroes or heroines she looked up so much had come to save her, tapped a bloody hand against Riley's face, and then died in her arms.

What Riley didn't realize at first was that that tap had been Sharisse intuitively putting a permanent field around her DNA, giving her the ability to temporarily change her DNA and manifest a random superpower for a short amount of time. The dying little girl, disappointed that her heroes hadn't come to save her, made it so the person who had saved her could do what all her heroes could do (and more), without realizing the price--the damage to Riley's body and psyche that could so easily be done.

Sharisse's death only made Riley more dedicated in her fight to reclaim her neighborhood, and still haunts her to this day.

After a time, Riley triggered her power for the first time, eventually figured out that Sharisse was responsible, and after a few times of triggering it, figured out its limits and setbacks. The last time, she randomly manifested pyrokinesis, lost control of it, and set the men she was fighting on fire and hospitalized them, and hasn't used it since, fearing, justifiably, that it will go out of control.

Now nineteen, she hasn't stopped fighting crime however, although she has taken up the name Knucklebones, like the old dice game (and because she thinks it sounds cool and gritty). Her brother just calls himself Angry Dan, but acts more as support nowadays, as he's trying to get his music career off the ground and needs to be pretty for it.

Balancing vigilantism with her jobs and being a parent of sorts is ridiculously hard for Riley, but it's something she sees as absolutely necessary for the safety of her family, and also the one area of her life where she feels free. Riley loves her sister, but would much rather be living on her own, goofing around and playing video games, and going out with people and having fun. She's not a serious person in general, or ready to be a parent and sometimes the only thing that keeps her going and makes her keep the bitterness at bay is the fact that she doesn't want to be like her mother.

Her crime-fighting could not be accomplished without the help of her brother--or the understanding of her sister, who quickly deduced what her siblings were up to. This only made all their lives easier, though, as she managed to scramble together communication devices and relays info to her crime-fighting siblings over her headset while listening to a police scanner--in between doing her homework.

For the Galletti's, vigilante crime-fighting is a family affair.

Personality: Despite all she's been through, Riley isn't a very serious person. Her father had a fondness for corny jokes, her sister is a sharp-tongued witty little thing that's much too smart for her own good, her brother is arrogant, but hilarious (and slightly psychotic, but in a good way) jerk, and the people she's fond of at the dojo, like Sensei John, spontaneously quote Monty Python during practice. Riley's no different. She's a wiseacre, and in a goofy kind of way. As far as she's concerned, all that matters is that at least one person laughs at her jokes, and it doesn't matter if that one person is herself. Sometimes she tries a little too hard to get people to laugh, but that's more because she likes hearing other people laugh in general than any sort of self-esteem thing.

She also doesn't have any majorly huge issues. Her mother makes her angry, but she's realized that anger and over time has realized that her mother didn't leave because of anything that was any fault of hers. The anger's there, but the hurt isn't as strong as it used to be, and she doesn't really have the abandonment issues one would expect her to have. However, anything having to do with mothers, like tear-jerker movies involving them, and seeing a mother playing with the kid in the park, either annoy her to where she just ignores them or make her get slightly sappy, even if she doesn't deign to show it.

The death of her father was sudden, but she's learned to deal with that too, and found closure.

Really, at this point, she just really loves her family and wants to keep them happy and safe. Sharisse's death only accentuated how important that is to her, since she was very fond of the little girl and stills feels guilty that she couldn't save her.

So she's jokey, funny, somewhat focused superheroine, but one that usually flies by the skin of her teeth rather than does much long-term planning, even if she's somewhat smart. She is good at improvisation though.

Over all, Riley is a surprisingly jovial and well-adjusted for a badass warrior chick vigilante. Mainly it's because it's the one area of her life where she feels some measure of freedom. She doesn't see raising her sister as something she had a choice in, her jobs are boring and she has to resist the urge to mock her bosses because she can't afford to get fired, she doesn't think that she'll have the freedom to pursue her dream of being a comedian even after she's put her sister through school, but being a hero (not a superhero, but a hero) is something she gets to choose to do. And while it's a serious thing and certainly a responsibility she tries her best to take seriously, it sure is hella fun thwacking punks in the head with a baseball bat. She'd love to do it to some spandex-clad punk supervillain, although she wants to make sure the nitty gritty hoods are protected first before she ever does that. Very few of the capes seem to bother with the deeply embedded stuff and neither do the cops, so she doesn't have much respect for either.

Over time, as she meets some other heroes, and gets a little more deeply entrenched in the supervillains and crime lords pulling the strings of the local bad guys, that may change.

Sample: Thwock. "Ow! You bitch! You just cracked my head open!"

"Dammit, Kid, you won't believe this, some guy broke Thuddy! With his head! Isn't that rude? Maybe I should break his head with my head."

"You and Dan really need to get out of the habit of naming your weapons. Aside from being creepy and wrong, it only makes it so when you break or lose them, you cry," came a reproachful, and slightly mocking voice over the comm.

"Alas, dear Thuddy, I barely knew ye!" Riley parried a swing of the next thug's fist, ducking under his arm and pinning his arm to the wrecked and dented bat, using the leverage to contort his arm painfully.

He screamed.

"And unlike this guy, I don't cry." The man's elbow snapped and he screamed louder as he went down. "Our brother cries," Riley insisted. "But our dear brother also makes napalm in the tub--I mean, expecting him to be normal is like expecting the president not to say 'internet' like it's plural. Not gonna happen in the next decade, dearie."

The entire conversation was pretty much going on while she was ducking punches and throwing them back, and made her appear she was talking to thin air.

"I can always hope. In vain."

"Besides, I mourn. Not cry. You don't need to cry to mourn."

"You're going to be mourning your freedom in five minutes, if you don't get out of there. The cops are coming, and they're still not happy with you crispifying those guys."

"Yeah, yeah, Kentucky Fried Thug makes the Piggies whine. Squealsqueal. Whatever." It was said dismissively, as she dropkicked another one of them, but something tightened around her eyes at the mention of her 'accident.' "Anyway, our pointies and thuddies; they're a part of the family, you know? Only a lot more useful than most of our family, unlike, say Uncle Todd, since they don't still live in grammy's basement, and they help us hurt people."

"You know that listening thing? You need to start doing that now. Cops. Coming. Your way."

"Awright, awright, bossy lady," Riley said, looking all the downed thugs all around her. They were all out cold and loaded with crack and guns. Plenty of ammunition for the cops to throw them in the hoosegow. "Turn my stories on and get my hot water bottle, Action Granny's hobbling home for the night. In her skimpy spandex outfit."

"First of all, you don't wear spandex, second, for the mental images you put in my head, I hate you."

"You love me."

In addition to the writing sample, please tell us a little bit about how you see the character, the kinds of stories you'd be interested in doing, etc.

Um, she's definitely street level. More for gritty crime stuff and single-person heroism with occasional team-ups than anything else. She might jump in during the occasional "OMG ROBOTS OR ZOMBIES ALL OVER NYC" crisis, but she'll likely never be an Avenger, nor does she want to be.

I think I'd like her to meet Adri Marks possibly, since Riley's not a spandex type either, more a combat fatigues and almost-normal-but sturdy clothes type with a bulletproof vest underneath. If she ever did join a team, she might hang with the New Warriors and she'd probably only be a reservist. (I could see her and Namorita getting on very well. Possibly Speedball, too). She's more likely to be a random hero that most people know is the decent sort and occasionally team up with, and a street contact for teams that want the down-low on what's going on with the criminal element, since she has good contacts.

Ooh, it also might be neato for her to be one of the ones Punisher tries to off to leave a message. Not that he, y'know, ever tries and doesn't succeed, but I'd have to see beforehand if there's any way he'd ICly lay off. Maybe finding out she'd leave a kid behind. Gotta talk to the player.

Various Skills and Details (For my own use)

Various Skills: Some medical training (she's a phlebotomist and has undergone full EMT training, even though she isn't certified (she did a last minute career change to phlebotomy). She can patch most injuries up at least long enough to get someone to a hospital, unless it's horribly complicated.

She's also very good at Mario Kart and the undisputed Jenga champion of the Galetti household.

And she knows lyrics to many, many songs. Her dad left her his record collection and turntable when he died, and the only one in their family that doesn't share a love of cold, hard rock is Chris (She prefers pop, Celtic, and Asian pop and j-rock, much to the abject horror of her siblings.)

Relationships (Other than her siblings):

adri_marks (Adri Marks): Is Riley's best friend. The two often patrol together and both are thrilled that they have a friend the same age that they can share details of both their superheroing and normal private lives with. The slightly nerdier Adri is often the brain to Riley's brawn, reigning her slightly more bombastic and adventurous friend in and giving Riley some much-needed direction and well-thought-out advice whenever she needs it. Riley, on the other hand, often pushes Adri during the occasions she needs a little pushing, usually in an effort to try to get Adri to be a little more adventurous and assertive.

no_not_hawkeye (Kate Bishop): Is a stranger Riley met in the park, and the two got along rather well and sparred together. Neither knows the other is a superhero, but it's likely they'll both start practicing together regularly.

more_stars (Jono Starsmore): Is Riley's current boyfriend. The two get along very nicely, as Riley is rather effective at cutting through Jono's melodrama, and Jono is rather effective at getting Riley to be honest instead of telling the little white lies she's apt to telling. But with Riley's complicated family situation, and Jono's insecurities regarding his rather explosive mutation, there are occasional...complications. The both of them, however, are in it for the long haul.

I've got so much spunk I put Mary Tyler Moore to Shame

knuckle_bones @ 2007-05-14T08:50:00