Denice Jones

Profile:

Theory, abstract concepts and plodding discussions about global issues and their implications doesn’t keep Denice interested for long. Denice likes to talk about what is – or better yet, to just go out and do it! Denice leaps before she looks, fixing her mistakes as she goes, rather than sitting idle, preparing contingencies and escape plans. She  lives in the moment and dives into the action. She enjoys drama, passion, and pleasure, a real Dionysus. Likewise, she is forced to make critical decisions based on factual, immediate reality in a process of rapid-fire rational stimulus response. With perhaps the most perceptive, unfiltered view of anyone, Denice has a unique skill in noticing small changes. Whether a shift in facial expression, a new clothing style, or a broken habit, Denice can pick up on hidden thoughts and motives where most would be lucky to pick up anything specific at all. She tends to use these observations immediately, calling out the change and asking questions, often with little regard for sensitivity. She has trouble remembering that not everyone wants their secrets and decisions broadcast.

She is also embarrassingly obsessed with vampires. She LOVES twilight and true blood and other trashy vampire nonsense unironically. Her biggest dream in life is to fall in love with a vampire and have them turn her into a vampire too. It’s unrealistic, but that’s what she wants. 

Appearance:

Denice is a young White Woman, standing at a slightly below average height of 5’5. She has a rather twiggy and rail-thin appearance, owing to the fact that she never wants to do a military exercise ever again in her life. She doesn’t enjoy exercise in any capacity, and is weaker than her peers as a result. Her skin is White but tanned from the Floridian sun, though it has grown paler in the months she’s spent hiding from the American military. She has many small scars and scrapes, as well as at least one bullet still lodged under her skin. She has an XOXO tattoo on her face, and a butterfly tattoo on her knee.

She has short bright pink hair that rests just above her shoulders. Her bangs are feather-cut and are swept to her right. She has purple eyes, oftentimes seen with hearts in them. Her eyes were not originally purple, instead they were blue before. She doesn’t go into much detail, but something the American military did with her did remove some of the pigment in her eyes, mixing the naturally blue hue with the red of her blood vessels, making her eyes appear purple. Her hair, however, is naturally pink. That’s just the work of the Florida water.

She can oftentimes be seen in a pink cold-shoulder crop top, a pair of jean shorts, pink flip-flops, and her various accessories. This is her favorite outfit and one she wears the most often. She has a particular fondness of trucker hats, oftentimes with extremely vulgar and nonsensical writing on them. It confuses others, and it delights her greatly. 

Ability: N/A

While Denice is definitely a level 0 when it comes to psychic ability, it would be unwise to misjudge her as weak. Okay, she may not actually be all that physically strong, but when it comes to making plans on the fly, no one is better than Denice. She can break into just about any compound, no brute force needed. She mostly just allows herself to be caught and chats up whoever has her up, either charming them, or making them so annoyed that they’ll do anything just to get rid of her. 

Denice is extremely adept at gathering information, intentionally or unintentionally, and is able to weasel it out of just about anybody. She has this uncanny ability to disarm people emotionally. It’s not an esper ability, just who she is. 

This is more explored in her History section, but Denice was afforded some… lasting effects by the military. She loathes using them, opting instead to rely on her friendliness and charm to get by, but when push comes to shove, she does have something to fall back on. Denice was used as an experimental subject in the American’s project to create a super soldier, or, rather, a collection of them. These experiments turned Denice’s eyes from blue to purple, having taken the pigment out of her eyes, and also increased her metabolism by quite a lot. While she is a failed experiment set to be terminated, she still has the skills said experiment gave her. When in a pinch, Denice can utilize a sort of… sixth sense. Her senses are heightened, everything comes into focus, and she is suddenly the exact super soldier that America was trying to perfect. However, this state cannot last very long at all. Denice can use it exactly five minutes at a time, before the toll it takes on her body reaches a critical point, and her organs begin eating themselves to make up for the lost energy. She carries around energy bars to compensate, but those can only stretch her so far, and many people who fight her would take notice of that. 

Denice is very aware of the limitations she has. Hence, that secret skill of hers is reserved exclusively for emergencies!

(P.S. She’s also highly skilled in the art of Gun, and knows quite a bit of self-defense even without using that unfortunate skill of hers.)

What's Her History?:

Denice began her traumatic life inside a trailer in Clearwater, Florida. She was born during a summer shower, and neither of her parents wanted to bother with driving in the rain to the hospital. Hence, she was a home birth. This would be the same trailer that she would reach adulthood in, with one older sibling and three younger ones, there was rarely a dull moment. In such crowded conditions, Denice naturally wanted to do something more with her life, preferably away from her rowdy siblings. Unfortunately, with such a shitty financial situation, being just barely above the poverty line, Denice was offered little help in pursuing her dream of writing raunchy vampire novellas with a degree in English literature. The only option left was, regrettably, the military. 

Upon joining the military, Denice just hoped to make it through basic and go through school and not have to face combat ever, actually. America being America, of course, she does! She barely gets through training before she’s being deployed into one of America’s military compounds that exist merely to hold the existing nation hostage. She doesn’t agree with what she’s doing, but she hopes, truthfully, that if she just makes it to the other side she can complete her schooling and go home to write about vampires. Luck is not on her side, however, as, in the midst of the already pre-existing combat, she’s selected for an experiment regarding making a collection of super soldiers who would rarely need to eat, sleep, or otherwise be a human being. While America invests heavily in their drones and remote strikes, utilizing physical people is just the kind of soulless thing the imperialist oligarchy is geared up for! Denice is roped in against her will, among her peers, much in the same style as the Frankenstein kids. Except, she’s on their payroll too. After repeated trials, it’s declared that Denice’s group is a failure. They are not told this, however. Instead, they are sent off on a suicide mission so that the problem “takes care of itself” and “might offer them something they want anyway”. 

While Denice realizes that they are being sent out to die on purpose instantly, her peers do not. She doesn’t want to crush their hopes, but with every single death going forward, she becomes more and more disillusioned with not only herself, but with humanity as a whole. The suicide mission takes six weeks. In only six weeks time, every person she had known who experienced the same horror she had died around her. Landmines, and gunshots, and stab wounds, and infections, and organ failure. When her best friend allows his organs to eat themselves to complete their mission, that’s what does it for her. Using her skill in an inventive way, she stops her heart for just long enough for the government to extract her body, declare her deceased, and pack her in the morgue. From there, she escapes, fleeing to China, then to South Korea, then to Japan. It seems as though she can never escape the military, no matter where she goes. She’s a loose end they intend to cut. 

So, she flees to the one place more impossible to escape than the American military: Academy City. 

Upon entering Academy City, under a pseudonym of course, Denice immediately gets involved in the underground. Listen, she can’t get an apartment because she doesn’t have a job, she can’t get a job because she doesn’t have a permanent address, no shelter will take her because she’s got her toes out and her tattoos on display which has a stigma about the Yakuza around it or something, and her only skills are writing Twilight erotica and shooting people in the head. So! She takes the easy route and just shoots people in the head for a living. She only lasts for a short while as a hitman before being hired on for reconnaissance and support with Ayaka and Yui. Out of the three of them, she’s the one who sees combat the least. 

Doesn’t mean she’s not prepared for it though!