Hannah '13' King

The Basics
Name/Title: Hannah/Thirteen

Full name: Hannah Clarence King

Love interest: None

Age: 19

Gender: Female

Nationalities: English/Czech

The Features
Physical appearance:

Hannah’s hair is past-shoulder length and honey brown, with her eyes being blue. Her skin is pale peach/white to the extent of appearing ‘corpse-like’ on a cold day, but this is down to her adamant dislike of direct sunlight and not a reflection of her health. She has an awkward build for someone in her line of work: wide shoulders and slim arms, but long legs which give an advantage when jumping and sprinting. Her working attire is a black hoodie over an assorted dark t-shirt, black tracksuit bottoms and well-worn grey trainers. Her other attire is generally a different coloured hoodie (ranging from blue to dark olive), a t-shirt and jeans. Her pajamas are a red t-shirt and grey trousers with pandas-wearing-glasses prints.

Her formal dress is generally a tux and trainers. Any attempts to get her into a dress are usually met with foul glares unless you appeal to her good nature. Constantly. For about ten minutes straight. After that she might cave and sport a long green dress, the hem hiding dark blue laced boots (which are the smartest shoes she owns).

Personality:

Hannah…well. It’s best to say that Hannah comes in ‘layers’. Layer One is professional: she’s disconnected and of minimal speech. Work comes first here. Layer Two is ally: considerably more friendly, she passes words of encouragement and teaching in equal quantities. She’s also questioning about things, such as schooling and food and “where’s the toilet?”

Layer Three is friend: It’s here where the teenager she’s left behind in the blood and shadows springs forward with a grin. She jokes, she pulls silly faces, she gives support and hugs and she’s honestly helpful. And she savours every second she can keep because she knows she’s found someone she can actually trust. Anyone who reaches layer three also finds themselves on the recieving end of a raging protectiveness because if you hurt her friends she will make you pay. For free.

In all layers she shows a decent moral compass (for a mercenary), and has enough bravery to stand up and shout if someone starts straying off the slippery slope. It’s gotten her enemies, but it’s also won her a handful of allies.

Backstory:

Brought up by an everyday family with everyday siblings, Hannah found something wrong with her by about the age of ten. She began to figure out that the reason shadows would bend toward her, or leach out of the ground when her fingers touched the dark, or that at night she was never afraid because she was surrounded by shadow, might be because of her.

For the next year she began to subtly train herself to pull shadows out and make them into shapes. It seemed odd to her that is was easier to make blades more than anything. But then again, she was starting to hit rougher roads: secondary school, with exams and pressure to do good as her parents began to push her to ‘do her best’ even if she had to go past her limit. The stress of being an A-student and having to smile even when schoolmates glowered at her began to crumble her psyche away.

When she was thirteen, a boy went at one of her few friends with harsh words. She went at him with a shadow knife that sliced his foot almost in two. Teachers waived the freak accident as an accident with a scalpel (as the incident occured in the Biology department) but suspended Hannah for two weeks.

One week later she disappeared in a fire that took hold of the Drama department. No other students were hurt, but the teenager was presumed dead.

Three years later and Hannah resurfaced, not as an A-student, but a mercenary. She’d spent all her time after faking her death underground, training herself harder and uncovering new talents. From there she’d found two paths: that of a soldier or a monster. She took that of the soldier, but kept her profile low. Not many people expect a child to be a killer, but then again neither did she. Her first kill was in Russia. The rest of her jobs took her even more international, with a range of protection gigs or targets, the range of which only grew after the Nanite Incident. She gave herself the name ‘Thirteen’ since it was her lucky number, having no knowledge of the true Numbers. Although she did have a run-in with Five and Tres during one protection gig which she ultimately failed. At the time though she was glad to escape mostly intact.

After that, she ran into Five when off-duty. Post recognizing each other and spending a few minutes trying to kill the other before realising the other wasn’t her to kill them, Five sent her in the direction of Providence to look for work there.

Hannah went. Got into a fight. Got locked up. Broke out. Got into another fight. Ran. Slapped Five the next time they met.

The two are now on good terms. But Hannah is on Providence’s radar, and she’s looking for a nice big job to get her on it’s good side…

The Extras
Powers/abilities:

These are the reasons for the young lass becoming a mecenary: shadow manipulation. The ability to mold shadow into a physical (and occasionally breathing) object.

- Shadow weapons: By far the easiest task, she can makes weapons from hand-held knives to falchions to spears. Far easier to hide on one’s person when you can slip a shadow blade from your palm. Her preference is a spear with a wolf’s head design holding the blade. They have their flaws mind: they can only take as much stress as the normal object they are inspired from, and have to stay in her hands to hold their form. What is more, she cannot create guns of any sort (which is a shame because she’s a hardcore sniper).

- Shadow creatures: Considerably more complicated. Hannah summons various animals from the shadows and has them fight for her. The most common are wolves, second most common are snakes. Depending on the size of the animal, she can summon more or less of them at once, e.g. three wolves or eight snakes.

- Shadow scouting: Using a shadow creature, Hannah enters it’s mind and controls it to scout for her. This requires her to enter a sort of meditative state, shut off from her surroundings and leaving her vulnerable to attacks. It’s also the most draining of her abilities, as using it for at least 2hrs wipes her out.

- Martial arts:…..okay, it’s hardly karate or tae-kwon-do, but if you get in range the girl can fight dirty, knowing the better pressure points of the body and with strong enough legs to kick out a knee.

Weaknesses/fears:

- Weaknesses: Hannah has limited arm strength, relying on her feet and weapons in a close-range fight. Get her hands and she’s helpless.

There’s also her limited stamina. She’s a fast sprinter, but too long and she finds it difficult to breathe. What’s more her shadow abilities can sap her energy, especially shadow scouting. If she uses those abilities for too long (2+hrs) she becomes at risk of hypertension, with nosebleeds expected. Longer than that (3+hrs), and she passes out. After any sort of serious shadow use, she needs about half an hour ‘recharge’ time.

- Fears: She suffers claustrophobia and a severe pyrophobia. The claustrophobia stems from a  mission that had her stuck in a pipe for five hours, but the pryophobia has no clear cause. It kicks in especially when another person is wielding the fire, and can range from cigarette lighters (panicked expression, slightly faster breathing) to wild fires (complete panic attack).

Hobbies:

As a merc, she doesn’t really do hobbies. But she loves a good book during downtime.

Extras:

- She’s bisexual, but tries not to get crushes on anyone. The closest she has is an admiration of Five.

- Her favourite film is Labyrinth, and favourite book is Neverwhere.

- She can speak Czech and German, plus limited Russian.

- Having missed out on a lot of her education, the only subjects she’s really good at are politics and science. Everything else is badly broken up.

- Her preferred method of contact is via internet cafe computers. Last time she met someone face-to-face she got annoyed because they belittled her on being too young and female, and proceeded to take out their bodyguard.