Application
Aug. 3rd, 2012 06:49 amAbout You - The Player
Name: Amanda
Age: 25
Contact: farrago606 on AIM, or PM to this account
Past Role Playing Experience: I've been in various games on Greatestjournal, Livejournal and Dreamwidth over the years. Most recently, I've played in Mayfield and Last Voyages. I'm currently in Last Voyages, where I've been playing for roughly four years steady.
New Players (completely optional), if you'd like tell us how you found BTR: I was enabled by your lovely Psych cast at app_this_plz!
The Character
Name: Mr. Yang
Age/Birthdate: Mid-40s, birthdate unknown.
Species: Human
*Type: Wanderer
Canon: Psych, post episode 5x16: "Yang 3 in 2D."
*Pre-existing powers: None
*Rift Change, if applicable: The power to "go dim." This isn't invisiblity, but a way of blending in. People will see her, but they will instantly regard her as belonging in whatever situation and/or place she's in, regardless of whether she actually should be there and what's going on; if she focuses, they might also not connect her face, voice, etc. with who she really is, even if they've previously known her. She must will this power to use it. It will not happen inadvertantly, and if she stops using it in the middle of a situation, those around her will immediately be released from the effects and catch on to who she is and that she doesn't belong there.
Of course, I would not have her use this power without permission from any other players involved.
Dreamwidth:![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
murderkeptmeskinny
Played By: Ally Sheedy
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/4519783/1694172
Appearance: Despite her pseudonym, Mr. Yang is female in both sex and gender. She stands 5'5" tall with a lanky build, and is quite thin. Her face is very angular, with a long, sharp jawline and high cheekbones. When not dressed to boost her self-esteem, she looks haggard and wild, eyes underscored with lines and dark circles indicating that she doesn't sleep well or very much at all; lines also score her forehead and the sides of her mouth, and her complexion is somewhat sallow. Makeup helps her to look a little healthier, but the fact is that she started aging too early and not well due to the abuses she suffered. Yang is Caucasian, possessing pale skin, curly dark brown hair that tends to frizz, and brown eyes. She has a very expressive face and emotes exaggeratedly, so her rapid changes in mood are always crystal-clear in her facial expressions. The same goes for her body language, as she tends to utilize her hands and posture to lend color to her speech. Her movements are very flighty.
Personality:
While her serial-killing father is simply a narcissistic sociopath, Yang is genuinely unstable and disturbed. Being raised to follow in the footsteps of a murderer who'd never loved her took its toll, and the abuses she endured at his hands destroyed any chance she had of growing up to be happy and functional. While she'd never murdered anyone (until she killed her father to save Shawn and Gus), she has severe violent tendencies and anger control issues. Ever since her mental state began improving, she's worked hard to gain control over these to great success; the staff of the mental facility she's imprisoned in no longer regard her to be a danger to herself or most others, though sometimes her wrath can be triggered by tiny factors which she views as injustices. For example, she's either beaten or attempted to attack one of the food servers in the cafeteria for not giving her a full scoop of mashed potatoes, going so far as to call the woman a "bitch" despite rarely using cuss words. While she's not nearly as volatile as she once was, judging by her integration into the general facility's population when she was formerly in solitary confinement in a maximum-security cell, she is still moderately dangerous.
Yang is clever, capable of last-minute improvisations and quite literally frighteningly intelligent. She terrorized the Santa Barbara Police Department with her riddles; Shawn was the first person able to solve even more than a couple, and all of those who failed to win the games before him came away with post-traumatic stress disorder, unable to sleep well thereafter. Even when outwitted or denied, she's flexible enough to twist that result to benefit her anyway. When Shawn refused to play her game, she released her previous captive and kidnapped his mother instead, raising the stakes and forcing him to play.
Before gaining moderate control over her urges, she showed a desire to cause others pain. It also took far, far less to set her off--her maximum-security cell was stark white and all visitors and staff were required to dress entirely white as well, because color agitated her and sent her into uncontrollable fits. She also had an imaginary friend named Reginald, whom she spoke to and tried to engage in physical contact. Two years of medications, shock treatments (which she mentioned to Shawn and Gus) and therapy have eradicated these traits. Due to her hallucinations, delusions, social dysfunction (a lack of self-care, disturbed interpersonal relationships) and the significant duration of her symptoms, it's likely that she suffers from either paranoid or undifferentiated schizophrenia.
Despite her improved condition, she is still by no means socially normal when nonviolent. She's never straightforward, even with important information. She instead drops subtle clues and delivers hints that only make sense to the recipients some time later, and demands to be present and involved in what requires her assistance. She regards this as her nature, and her involvement, despite her flippant attitude regarding danger and dire situations, has helped to save lives more than once. She not only saved Shawn and Gus from her father, but also provided Shawn with a clue that allowed him to rescue his former girlfriend from drowning.
She now strives to present herself as nicely as possible, caring for her appearance for the first time in an attempt to work on her self-esteem. Yang shows remorse for her actions and those of her father, even blaming herself for not having stopped him and viewing herself as weak for failing to do so. She even makes an effort to be friendly to others and is capable of genuine affection towards others who aren't Shawn, even blowing a kiss to Juliet for allowing her another picture with him. She was, and continues to be, an overly (sometimes disturbingly) flirty person, having mentioned her attempts to seduce a "cute" female guard and then inviting Shawn to engage in a conjugal visit with her. Possessing a very sharp intuition and sense of observation, she was even able to discern that Shawn was in a relationship just by his body language, AND that Juliet was his girlfriend by witnessing hers. Finally, she's very quirky, slipping in humorous non sequiturs at every opportunity, such as mentioning her desire to host The View and make out with Elisabeth Hasselbeck when told something was impossible and mentioning the aesthetics of her bone structure when confronted for kidnapping Shawn's mother.
Events:
1. "We looked so innocent back then!"
The original Yin-Yang Killer, who eventually took the name Karl Rotmensen, terrorized Santa Barbara, California, becoming the "most notorious serial killer the city had never seen." In the summer of 1995, he took six victims, and challenged individual members of the Santa Barbara Police Department with the opportunity to save the victims by solving his riddles. None succeeded, and each victim was brutally murdered in a different way. He later resurfaced twice when he'd found a worthy opponent, taking one victim each time.
Before this, however, he raised a daughter. Her real name is unknown, as is what happened to her mother. A professor at every prestigious college in the state, he home schooled his daughter with a very...unique curriculum. Preparing for the day when he'd no longer be able to commit his sick crimes, he forced her into apprenticeship with the plan of making her his successor. He did not love her, and the abuses she endured at his hands--mental, emotional, and no doubt physical--drove her to depression and eventually insanity. He later forced her to take the name Mr. Yang, and organize her own games and riddles, though she was unable to actually kill any of her captives, forcing him to do so.
In 1990, while unloading groceries from the trunk of her car, a young boy between the ages of eight and nine rode by on his bicycle. It was Shawn Spencer, who lived only three blocks away. As Yang turned to look at him, his mother Madeline drove up; Shawn was late getting home, and she'd been worried. Seeing her parental affection, and Shawn's simple innocence, sparked in Yang a deep longing. She wished more than anything that she and her father could be a real, normal family, and to her, Shawn was the luckiest boy in the world. She begged Madeline Spencer for a photograph with her son, and Yang looked so sad and lonely that Shawn's mother kindly agreed. After having the film developed, Madeline dropped the photograph off in Yang's mailbox. Yang treasured the photo more than anything, and formed an intense, unhealthy crush on Shawn which came to define her life as much as what her father forced her to do.
After he'd grown to adulthood and began working with the SBPD as a phony psychic, Yang's father selected him for a game. She herself kidnapped Madeline to force him to keep playing, and was ordered by her father to blow the woman to hell with the bomb they'd strapped to her. She disobeyed him for the first time in her life for Shawn's sake alone, letting his mother go free and allowing herself to be apprehended by the police. Her brief moment with him all those years ago had affected her that deeply.
2. "Hi, Daddy!"
Once she was locked away, Yang wrote and published a book telling a false version of her life's story, one where she had worked alone and killed every victim. Her father, angry at her betrayal, was also jealous of her infamy. He took the name Mr. Yin, with the goal of staging games defined by chaos rather than rules and rhyming riddles. Yang was determined to keep her mouth shut about him, but when Shawn demanded her help and threatened to be done with her entirely, she admitted to having had a partner. Though she didn't reveal who he was, let alone that he was her father, she assisted Shawn in saving his girlfriend when Yin had intended for her to die.
Two years after she'd first allowed herself to be apprehended by the police--one year after she helped Shawn to save Abigail Lytar--Shawn and Gus came to her again. Yin had ostensibly kidnapped a woman named Allison Cowley, and they needed Yang's help to save her before it was too late. She agreed to lend her own special brand of assistance, and the two men were surprised to find that Allison was actually Yin's new apprentice, who put them at his mercy. The SBPD called upon Yang, bringing her to her childhood home, where Shawn and Gus were imprisoned. Yang promised to guide Juliet to the men if she agreed to go alone with her, and to take a new photo of her and Shawn; once inside the house, she quickly escaped Juliet's supervision and made her way to Yin alone.
In a move that utterly shocked Shawn and Gus, she greeted Yin as "Daddy." She asked if he'd read her book, and affected despair when Shawn mentioned her father's new apprentice. When Yin said she'd betrayed him, she said that all she wanted was for the two of them to be a "real family, like the Spencers." He admonished her for her 'foolish' idealism. Pretending to be filled with regret, she asked her father if she could come home, if he would accept her again, and he agreed. He brought her to sit on his lap, at which point she injected him in the heart with a syringe of lethal chemicals which Yin had planned to use on Gus. His final words were that he'd never loved her, to which she replied that she knew. She'd disobeyed her father twice for Shawn's sake when she had never before opposed him, and in the end, she'd killed him without hesitation to save the lives of Shawn and his best friend.
She finally admitted that she'd never killed any of the Yin-Yang murder victims when asked by Shawn, at which point he seemed to forgive her, understanding that she'd been mentally and emotionally warped as a child and telling her that she wasn't to blame for the deaths just because she hadn't stopped Yin. She got her new photograph with Shawn, and at last appeared to be willing to start forgiving herself. She said goodbye to Shawn, Gus and Juliet happily as she was taken back into custody, and invited them all to the mental institute to play badminton with her.
Writing Sample:
Yang clunked up the basement stairs as fast as she could, awkward in the shackles that linked wrists to waist to ankles. Of course Juliet had refused to remove the cuffs, but it had been worth a shot. "Follow me!" she'd called to Juliet after throwing things to the floor between the two of them and and switching off the lights to impede the detective's passage. Yes, she had agreed to guide Juliet to her lover and his friend, and guide her she would...but she needed to get there first. It was imperative.
Emerging on the ground floor of her childhood home, Yang took a moment to quickly assess the room, her head darting back and forth. Daddy dearest would never leave the lower floors unguarded, not while sequestered with his victims. After all, who liked being interrupted in the middle of a very important meeting? Nobody, that's who! On the other hand, she was painfully aware that the lead she'd obtained over the younger and sprier Juliet would last a minute at the very most. Caution and haste must be utilized in equal measure, she knew, and so after her initial examination, she began carefully moving forward, still on the lookout for that little blonde upstart who'd been willingly (happily!) drinking some of her Daddy's brand of Kool-Aid.
Oh yes, she knew exactly who to watch for. Despite the information she'd fed to Shawn and his police department friends, she knew full well that poor little Allison Cowley was no victim; the supposed "crime scene" at his father's house had practically screamed it, and yet no one had heard the warning signs. Not even Shawn, and he was such a bright boy...bright and gifted and lucky. She wondered if his perky detective lover realized how lucky she was to have him.
Anyway, who could blame her for capitalizing on their idealistic ignorance to engineer a meeting with the man who'd raised her? If this whole mad enterprise was going to end, she would damn well be there. She had the right, after everything she'd been through...after what he'd put her through. She still loved her father a little, sort of, and she supposed that was another effect of his sick tutelage. She approached the stairs, and as she mounted the first step, the nebulous question of what she'd do when she saw him again was reformed into three simple words: Shawn or Daddy? With each and every step, the question echoed in her mind. There was no way she could get both of them out of there alive, not with the way Yin worked. And so...Shawn, or Daddy?
Something about the asking of the question itself irritated her consciousness, like an unpleasant tickle she couldn't scratch. By the time she reached the door to his study, she'd admitted to herself that weighing her options was silly. In her heart, the decision had been made a long time ago...maybe as far back as her first meeting with the boy with the kind eyes, and if not that early, then certainly since she'd disobeyed orders and let his mother live. It would be Shawn again, he and that brooding partner of his who just loved making those mean little digs at her. She didn't really mind his jabs; Gus was just so much fun to screw with.
When she gripped the doorknob, it was with no small measure of trepidation--behind the door was the man who'd raised her, who kept her under his thumb for decades, who'd taught her to know fear, emptiness and violence with his words and hands (the truly keen rhyming skills he'd given her weren't enough to make up for the rest, that was for sure). Though she'd betrayed him before (and always for Shawn, of course!), how could she expect to stop him when she'd always been so infuriatingly weak? And yet, despite the fear, there was no regret over her decision. It was very simple: Shawn, her dearest Shawn, deserved to live. Period. It was with that certainty that she steeled her resolve, opened the door a crack and peeked in on her father with a smile quirked by apprehension.
"Hi, Daddy!"
Name: Amanda
Age: 25
Contact: farrago606 on AIM, or PM to this account
Past Role Playing Experience: I've been in various games on Greatestjournal, Livejournal and Dreamwidth over the years. Most recently, I've played in Mayfield and Last Voyages. I'm currently in Last Voyages, where I've been playing for roughly four years steady.
New Players (completely optional), if you'd like tell us how you found BTR: I was enabled by your lovely Psych cast at app_this_plz!
The Character
Name: Mr. Yang
Age/Birthdate: Mid-40s, birthdate unknown.
Species: Human
*Type: Wanderer
Canon: Psych, post episode 5x16: "Yang 3 in 2D."
*Pre-existing powers: None
*Rift Change, if applicable: The power to "go dim." This isn't invisiblity, but a way of blending in. People will see her, but they will instantly regard her as belonging in whatever situation and/or place she's in, regardless of whether she actually should be there and what's going on; if she focuses, they might also not connect her face, voice, etc. with who she really is, even if they've previously known her. She must will this power to use it. It will not happen inadvertantly, and if she stops using it in the middle of a situation, those around her will immediately be released from the effects and catch on to who she is and that she doesn't belong there.
Of course, I would not have her use this power without permission from any other players involved.
Dreamwidth:
murderkeptmeskinnyPlayed By: Ally Sheedy
Icon: http://www.dreamwidth.org/userpic/4519783/1694172
Appearance: Despite her pseudonym, Mr. Yang is female in both sex and gender. She stands 5'5" tall with a lanky build, and is quite thin. Her face is very angular, with a long, sharp jawline and high cheekbones. When not dressed to boost her self-esteem, she looks haggard and wild, eyes underscored with lines and dark circles indicating that she doesn't sleep well or very much at all; lines also score her forehead and the sides of her mouth, and her complexion is somewhat sallow. Makeup helps her to look a little healthier, but the fact is that she started aging too early and not well due to the abuses she suffered. Yang is Caucasian, possessing pale skin, curly dark brown hair that tends to frizz, and brown eyes. She has a very expressive face and emotes exaggeratedly, so her rapid changes in mood are always crystal-clear in her facial expressions. The same goes for her body language, as she tends to utilize her hands and posture to lend color to her speech. Her movements are very flighty.
Personality:
While her serial-killing father is simply a narcissistic sociopath, Yang is genuinely unstable and disturbed. Being raised to follow in the footsteps of a murderer who'd never loved her took its toll, and the abuses she endured at his hands destroyed any chance she had of growing up to be happy and functional. While she'd never murdered anyone (until she killed her father to save Shawn and Gus), she has severe violent tendencies and anger control issues. Ever since her mental state began improving, she's worked hard to gain control over these to great success; the staff of the mental facility she's imprisoned in no longer regard her to be a danger to herself or most others, though sometimes her wrath can be triggered by tiny factors which she views as injustices. For example, she's either beaten or attempted to attack one of the food servers in the cafeteria for not giving her a full scoop of mashed potatoes, going so far as to call the woman a "bitch" despite rarely using cuss words. While she's not nearly as volatile as she once was, judging by her integration into the general facility's population when she was formerly in solitary confinement in a maximum-security cell, she is still moderately dangerous.
Yang is clever, capable of last-minute improvisations and quite literally frighteningly intelligent. She terrorized the Santa Barbara Police Department with her riddles; Shawn was the first person able to solve even more than a couple, and all of those who failed to win the games before him came away with post-traumatic stress disorder, unable to sleep well thereafter. Even when outwitted or denied, she's flexible enough to twist that result to benefit her anyway. When Shawn refused to play her game, she released her previous captive and kidnapped his mother instead, raising the stakes and forcing him to play.
Before gaining moderate control over her urges, she showed a desire to cause others pain. It also took far, far less to set her off--her maximum-security cell was stark white and all visitors and staff were required to dress entirely white as well, because color agitated her and sent her into uncontrollable fits. She also had an imaginary friend named Reginald, whom she spoke to and tried to engage in physical contact. Two years of medications, shock treatments (which she mentioned to Shawn and Gus) and therapy have eradicated these traits. Due to her hallucinations, delusions, social dysfunction (a lack of self-care, disturbed interpersonal relationships) and the significant duration of her symptoms, it's likely that she suffers from either paranoid or undifferentiated schizophrenia.
Despite her improved condition, she is still by no means socially normal when nonviolent. She's never straightforward, even with important information. She instead drops subtle clues and delivers hints that only make sense to the recipients some time later, and demands to be present and involved in what requires her assistance. She regards this as her nature, and her involvement, despite her flippant attitude regarding danger and dire situations, has helped to save lives more than once. She not only saved Shawn and Gus from her father, but also provided Shawn with a clue that allowed him to rescue his former girlfriend from drowning.
She now strives to present herself as nicely as possible, caring for her appearance for the first time in an attempt to work on her self-esteem. Yang shows remorse for her actions and those of her father, even blaming herself for not having stopped him and viewing herself as weak for failing to do so. She even makes an effort to be friendly to others and is capable of genuine affection towards others who aren't Shawn, even blowing a kiss to Juliet for allowing her another picture with him. She was, and continues to be, an overly (sometimes disturbingly) flirty person, having mentioned her attempts to seduce a "cute" female guard and then inviting Shawn to engage in a conjugal visit with her. Possessing a very sharp intuition and sense of observation, she was even able to discern that Shawn was in a relationship just by his body language, AND that Juliet was his girlfriend by witnessing hers. Finally, she's very quirky, slipping in humorous non sequiturs at every opportunity, such as mentioning her desire to host The View and make out with Elisabeth Hasselbeck when told something was impossible and mentioning the aesthetics of her bone structure when confronted for kidnapping Shawn's mother.
Events:
1. "We looked so innocent back then!"
The original Yin-Yang Killer, who eventually took the name Karl Rotmensen, terrorized Santa Barbara, California, becoming the "most notorious serial killer the city had never seen." In the summer of 1995, he took six victims, and challenged individual members of the Santa Barbara Police Department with the opportunity to save the victims by solving his riddles. None succeeded, and each victim was brutally murdered in a different way. He later resurfaced twice when he'd found a worthy opponent, taking one victim each time.
Before this, however, he raised a daughter. Her real name is unknown, as is what happened to her mother. A professor at every prestigious college in the state, he home schooled his daughter with a very...unique curriculum. Preparing for the day when he'd no longer be able to commit his sick crimes, he forced her into apprenticeship with the plan of making her his successor. He did not love her, and the abuses she endured at his hands--mental, emotional, and no doubt physical--drove her to depression and eventually insanity. He later forced her to take the name Mr. Yang, and organize her own games and riddles, though she was unable to actually kill any of her captives, forcing him to do so.
In 1990, while unloading groceries from the trunk of her car, a young boy between the ages of eight and nine rode by on his bicycle. It was Shawn Spencer, who lived only three blocks away. As Yang turned to look at him, his mother Madeline drove up; Shawn was late getting home, and she'd been worried. Seeing her parental affection, and Shawn's simple innocence, sparked in Yang a deep longing. She wished more than anything that she and her father could be a real, normal family, and to her, Shawn was the luckiest boy in the world. She begged Madeline Spencer for a photograph with her son, and Yang looked so sad and lonely that Shawn's mother kindly agreed. After having the film developed, Madeline dropped the photograph off in Yang's mailbox. Yang treasured the photo more than anything, and formed an intense, unhealthy crush on Shawn which came to define her life as much as what her father forced her to do.
After he'd grown to adulthood and began working with the SBPD as a phony psychic, Yang's father selected him for a game. She herself kidnapped Madeline to force him to keep playing, and was ordered by her father to blow the woman to hell with the bomb they'd strapped to her. She disobeyed him for the first time in her life for Shawn's sake alone, letting his mother go free and allowing herself to be apprehended by the police. Her brief moment with him all those years ago had affected her that deeply.
2. "Hi, Daddy!"
Once she was locked away, Yang wrote and published a book telling a false version of her life's story, one where she had worked alone and killed every victim. Her father, angry at her betrayal, was also jealous of her infamy. He took the name Mr. Yin, with the goal of staging games defined by chaos rather than rules and rhyming riddles. Yang was determined to keep her mouth shut about him, but when Shawn demanded her help and threatened to be done with her entirely, she admitted to having had a partner. Though she didn't reveal who he was, let alone that he was her father, she assisted Shawn in saving his girlfriend when Yin had intended for her to die.
Two years after she'd first allowed herself to be apprehended by the police--one year after she helped Shawn to save Abigail Lytar--Shawn and Gus came to her again. Yin had ostensibly kidnapped a woman named Allison Cowley, and they needed Yang's help to save her before it was too late. She agreed to lend her own special brand of assistance, and the two men were surprised to find that Allison was actually Yin's new apprentice, who put them at his mercy. The SBPD called upon Yang, bringing her to her childhood home, where Shawn and Gus were imprisoned. Yang promised to guide Juliet to the men if she agreed to go alone with her, and to take a new photo of her and Shawn; once inside the house, she quickly escaped Juliet's supervision and made her way to Yin alone.
In a move that utterly shocked Shawn and Gus, she greeted Yin as "Daddy." She asked if he'd read her book, and affected despair when Shawn mentioned her father's new apprentice. When Yin said she'd betrayed him, she said that all she wanted was for the two of them to be a "real family, like the Spencers." He admonished her for her 'foolish' idealism. Pretending to be filled with regret, she asked her father if she could come home, if he would accept her again, and he agreed. He brought her to sit on his lap, at which point she injected him in the heart with a syringe of lethal chemicals which Yin had planned to use on Gus. His final words were that he'd never loved her, to which she replied that she knew. She'd disobeyed her father twice for Shawn's sake when she had never before opposed him, and in the end, she'd killed him without hesitation to save the lives of Shawn and his best friend.
She finally admitted that she'd never killed any of the Yin-Yang murder victims when asked by Shawn, at which point he seemed to forgive her, understanding that she'd been mentally and emotionally warped as a child and telling her that she wasn't to blame for the deaths just because she hadn't stopped Yin. She got her new photograph with Shawn, and at last appeared to be willing to start forgiving herself. She said goodbye to Shawn, Gus and Juliet happily as she was taken back into custody, and invited them all to the mental institute to play badminton with her.
Writing Sample:
Yang clunked up the basement stairs as fast as she could, awkward in the shackles that linked wrists to waist to ankles. Of course Juliet had refused to remove the cuffs, but it had been worth a shot. "Follow me!" she'd called to Juliet after throwing things to the floor between the two of them and and switching off the lights to impede the detective's passage. Yes, she had agreed to guide Juliet to her lover and his friend, and guide her she would...but she needed to get there first. It was imperative.
Emerging on the ground floor of her childhood home, Yang took a moment to quickly assess the room, her head darting back and forth. Daddy dearest would never leave the lower floors unguarded, not while sequestered with his victims. After all, who liked being interrupted in the middle of a very important meeting? Nobody, that's who! On the other hand, she was painfully aware that the lead she'd obtained over the younger and sprier Juliet would last a minute at the very most. Caution and haste must be utilized in equal measure, she knew, and so after her initial examination, she began carefully moving forward, still on the lookout for that little blonde upstart who'd been willingly (happily!) drinking some of her Daddy's brand of Kool-Aid.
Oh yes, she knew exactly who to watch for. Despite the information she'd fed to Shawn and his police department friends, she knew full well that poor little Allison Cowley was no victim; the supposed "crime scene" at his father's house had practically screamed it, and yet no one had heard the warning signs. Not even Shawn, and he was such a bright boy...bright and gifted and lucky. She wondered if his perky detective lover realized how lucky she was to have him.
Anyway, who could blame her for capitalizing on their idealistic ignorance to engineer a meeting with the man who'd raised her? If this whole mad enterprise was going to end, she would damn well be there. She had the right, after everything she'd been through...after what he'd put her through. She still loved her father a little, sort of, and she supposed that was another effect of his sick tutelage. She approached the stairs, and as she mounted the first step, the nebulous question of what she'd do when she saw him again was reformed into three simple words: Shawn or Daddy? With each and every step, the question echoed in her mind. There was no way she could get both of them out of there alive, not with the way Yin worked. And so...Shawn, or Daddy?
Something about the asking of the question itself irritated her consciousness, like an unpleasant tickle she couldn't scratch. By the time she reached the door to his study, she'd admitted to herself that weighing her options was silly. In her heart, the decision had been made a long time ago...maybe as far back as her first meeting with the boy with the kind eyes, and if not that early, then certainly since she'd disobeyed orders and let his mother live. It would be Shawn again, he and that brooding partner of his who just loved making those mean little digs at her. She didn't really mind his jabs; Gus was just so much fun to screw with.
When she gripped the doorknob, it was with no small measure of trepidation--behind the door was the man who'd raised her, who kept her under his thumb for decades, who'd taught her to know fear, emptiness and violence with his words and hands (the truly keen rhyming skills he'd given her weren't enough to make up for the rest, that was for sure). Though she'd betrayed him before (and always for Shawn, of course!), how could she expect to stop him when she'd always been so infuriatingly weak? And yet, despite the fear, there was no regret over her decision. It was very simple: Shawn, her dearest Shawn, deserved to live. Period. It was with that certainty that she steeled her resolve, opened the door a crack and peeked in on her father with a smile quirked by apprehension.
"Hi, Daddy!"