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OOC Information

Name: Fritz
Timezone: -5 GMT (Eastern Standard Time US)
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thepeacock
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IC Information

Name: Patricia "Peacock" Watson
Canon: Skullgirls
Gender: Female
Age: 13
History: Canon information here

Headcanon Information follows:

Patricia Watson was initially born to a peasant family living in the ruined city of Rommelgrad, outside of the borders of the Canopy Kingdom where she would later be artificially reborn.

Rommelgrad lay within the “No Man’s Land” of the world, and was notably deteriorated by the wars tearing from the larger kingdoms on every side, namely the Canopy, Gigan, and Chess kingdoms continually vying for control of every piece of territory their armies could keep. Being under severe wartime stress, bleeding economically from tributes for protection, and ravaged by skirmishes along its borders, Rommelgrad experienced an incredibly high amount of disease and organized crime from the poverty and poor care within its walls. Both of these factors led to the untimely death of Patricia’s parents soon after she was born. Her father made desperate and risky deals to get medicine for her wife, for whom childbirth left sickly and weakened, and he was eventually murdered by those he had borrowed from. Patricia’s mother, left a hopeless widow, delivered her daughter to the closest thing the city had to an orphanage, a former nobleman’s manor long deteriorated from disuse, before succumbing to illness.

Within the orphanage, Patricia grew in relative safety for a time, sustained by those who could afford not only the means for both basic survival of the dozens of children kept in its care, but also sparse luxuries such as television and toys. The former, of course, would be what attract the redheaded orphan the most. For years, she spent her time between chores watching classic cartoons and the TV show Annie: Girl of the Stars, captivated and amused by the often blunt and humorous sense of justice done upon wrongdoers on the screen as well as the ever-present message of happiness and happy endings for all crises.

Socially, the young girl did not fare so well. Grumpy and oftentimes hostile could be the only descriptors of her attitude as she grew to school-age, becoming a girl who believed others weren’t worth her time and that she was the only person with any idea of what to do around the orphanage. The only person she bothered speaking to besides her countless imaginary friends was Marie Korbel, with whom she formed a distinct bond. Marie’s caring instincts pinned her as an unofficial caretaker of the orphanage, given how often the real caretakers were absent in order to secure funds and supplies for the children. Patricia worked alongside Marie (after numerous failed attempts to establish herself as the de-facto ‘leader’ of the children, all of which failed due to horrid differences in work ethics) to keep the orphans safe and keep a general order among them. They even adopted matching maid outfits found within the former manor to show their unique standing within the orphanage.

While things began to look up for Patricia, with a new friend and enthralling hobby, slowly the situation of Rommelgrad deteriorated into pure anarchy. Dominant gangs began to steal people from their homes, for lack of any other worthwhile goods, and sell them to the kingdoms as servants and workers. Such was the fate which would ravage the orphanage when Patricia had turned 11. Even attempts by Marie and Patricia, the former trying to hide while the latter led an escape attempt, could not prevent the orphans from being captured and brought to the hideout of a Rommelgrad gang, funded by and partnered with the ruling Medici family of the Canopy kingdom. Shortly before the Medici purchased the children off the slavers, Patricia attempted to stir the orphans against the slavers, stubbornly fueled by images of grandeur from episodes of corny television shows replaying in her mind.

The end result of her rebelliousness was a horrific mutilation leaving her blinded, crippled, and without most of her teeth. Here the story should have ended for Patricia, had her untimely death bleeding out in a ditch outside Canopy borders not been halted by a man in a white coat.
Dr. Avian stood as the head researcher of Canopy-based labs devoted to stopping an ever-powerful figure known as the Skullgirl from returning, an event which would mark the rise of the dead to kill and entrap the living. While Avian had saved Patricia from meeting her demise on that day, his motives could be argued as quite skewed; he transformed her crippled blank-slate of a corpse into a living weapon capable of stopping the Skullgirl and any other threats to the kingdom.
To ensure that Patricia would live through her horrendous injuries, Avian was moved to amputate her shattered arms and legs. Though these limbs could have potentially been saved, the doctor was deluded by the possibility of a true blank canvas to practice a twisted art, making her every limb a versatile tool capable of outmaneuvering and destroying not only the Skullgirl, but the very heart which powered her. Her legs were replaced with mechanical prosthetics, capable of boosting her off the ground as well as sustaining incredible force with tough, rubber-like joints. Her arms were replaced with a parasite, a term for living beings which could give power to those they attached themselves to while feeding off of their bodies. This parasite, created in Avian’s lab and named Argus, was a volatile and dangerous being, providing all-seeing eyes that had driven countless former test subjects mad with the sheer shock of its perspectives. Even with Argus likely spelling a maddening failure for the newly designated Project Peacock, Avian continued his pipe dream by furthering the strain on Patricia.

A second parasite, the Avery Unit, was added to Peacock, long before she even had the chance to adjust to her now unnatural body, let alone the Argus parasite. With the power to make even the most impossible of thoughts come true with careful concentration, the Avery Unit would allow Peacock the limitless power to bend reality itself, provided she didn’t destroy her very mind in the progress. With the amount of strain and corruption placed upon such a young subject, Avian’s experiment was sure to fail; however, his desperation to find a proper repellent of the now-resurrected Skullgirl outweighed the horrifically high odds of failure.

Against all logic, Patricia flourished with her augmentations. She adapted to her body within months, moving naturally with little therapy. Her mind, already on the desperate edge of depression and insanity from what she had witnessed and experienced, imagined numerous childish and anthropomorphic friends helping her every step of the way. And, like some cliched Saturday morning cartoon, those friends soon became real, not only to her, but to the baffled overseers of the lab. By the end of her eight months, Peacock had not only overcome the strain of her parasites, but she attained the closest to mastery of them that any researcher had witnessed. The way she harnessed this power was unorthodox, making life for her nothing but an endless cartoon, using all of the powers at her disposal to forget the horrors of her past and focus on more important things: television watching and returning to her snotty, self-important ways. She meshed much more fluidly with the somewhat misfit lab researchers and experiments than she did with the orphans, and in many ways, her twisted experimental life became a perfect life to her.
Project Peacock stands at the time of her canon as a carefree, arrogant girl who has long moved past the dark looming images of her past, although they still occasionally appear to her in short bursts in her sleep. With a terrifying arsenal and the gleeful willingness to use it, she is by far the most suitable experiment for the task of defeating the Skullgirl, no matter the jarring true identity of the being.

Personality: Patricia was raised with very little to go around for herself nor her fellow children, and as such, takes everything she can get her hands on. If anything from food to toys to money is offered to her, she will gladly take all of it, holding no semblance of restraint when it comes to living the high life. While this factor primarily fuels a very apparent greedy attitude, it also contributes to an astounding arc of laziness despite her fiery words. She is not afraid to enjoy every second of free time she can get, and will often prefer an extra hour splaying out on a couch to watch reruns rather than doing something productive, even if it would actually save her more work later down the line.

One noticeable side-effect of Patricia’s love of television is in her manner of speaking. Her Boston accent and old-style lingo are not at all indicative of Rommelgrad, a land where a more proper form of speech is widely adopted. Most of Peacock’s mannerisms and speaking patterns are directly learned and imitated from television.

The only possible thing that could perk Patricia up from her slothful stupor in front of the screen is the promise of action and adventure. While she loves to watch television heroes do their work time and time again, she much prefers to live it, though in a much less well-executed fashion. Her spirit to get down to business defeating the villains of the world is admirable, but her tendency to pay no regard to anyone along the way is more than a little disconcerting. If someone has wronged Peacock personally, or anyone she even remotely related with, they can expect a rude awakening at the end of a glorified cartoonish slaughterhouse with no remorse for the wicked.

The wicked to Peacock, of course, generally involves any person who contributes to a system of injustice and blatant exploitation of others. Starkly opposed to members of organized gangs, slave rings, and military personnel, as well as those who control them, Peacock will more than likely only target those who are obviously in the wrong. Lesser criminals, on the other hand, are often completely looked over by her. Most people, actually, are often looked over and shrugged off by Peacock. Given a general repulsion to socializing and a disdain for anyone who disagrees with her every word, becoming friends with this cyborg is more often than not a task of extreme patience.

Not the least of these reasons for difficulty communicating is Peacock’s somewhat twisted sense of humor. Raised on Tom and Jerry-esque slapstick violence, Patricia finds nothing funnier than the classical art of Schadenfreude. Anyone who has the mixed blessing of getting close to her will often find themselves at the butt of many jokes that they will not find funny, and quite painful to boot. More often than not, Peacock means no actual harm in these jokes (if she meant harm, she would make herself quite clear), and she often expects people to be able to suck it up and move past pain much like animated drawings can.

Even people who get close to Peacock will find themselves on a slippery edge. She is not afraid to turn on a former friend within seconds if they wrong her, and in fact can often bounce back from a betrayal with a smile and an incredibly violent send-off to the traitor. Only those who she holds in incredibly high regard will she find herself hesitant to leave, and she has been able to form unbreakable bonds bordering on dependencies with those who she gives value.

Ben “Big Band” Birdland is a major example of one of these people. Patricia sees him as a sort of father-figure in the Labs, often only sharing any major issues she may have with him on rare occasions. Even then, she still jokes with him and will not hesitate to blatantly disregard his advice if she so wills it. However, losing contact with Big Band would give her no one to speak levelly to, and would likely result in her closing up even more in response. Her relationship with the mother figure of the lab, an experiment named Ileum, is much the same way.

Marie Korbel, the new Skullgirl, is a mixed example of sorts. Peacock believes Marie had turned against her by making a wish to become the Skullgirl, and no matter how justified Marie’s wish may have been or how much Peacock agreed with her, she didn’t hesitate to stop Marie and even kill her to stop her power. Unlike most other people, however, Patricia felt an incredible guilt killing one of her only true friends, one that urges her to fulfill her promise of seeing Marie’s wish through, only without the evil of the Skullheart behind it all.

Then, of course, there is Peacock’s last group of friends, those being the ones she had made up on her own. Her cartoonish imaginary pals are the prime example of what she sees as a perfect group of friends; they all joke together, poke fun at each other, work together in perfect harmony, and most importantly, follow Peacock’s words to a T. They form a stereotypical gang of cartoonish goons to most, but to Peacock they form an irreplaceable family and prove that she would never stop believing and keeping her friends in existence. When stripped of her Avery unit, however, the choice would be taken out of her hands. Provided such a conclusion must be met, Peacock would still continue to believe that they are real, likely refusing to believe anyone who stands to the contrary.

On the opposite end of Peacock’s closest friends stand her worst enemies, the Medici Mafia which had spread its influence throughout the Canopy Kingdom like a cancer. The Medici were responsible for the enslavement of Marie, herself, and numerous other orphans from Rommelgrad, a crime which Peacock intends to repay fully in the blood of any involved. She has made clear her intentions to kill every last member of the Medici family, furthered by her final promise to Marie, and little will stand in the way of her doing just that.

Peacock’s brutality in regards to criminals like the Medici has earned her quite the renown in Canopy. She is enthusiastic and cheerful about defeating the world’s enemies to a level of nearly enjoying the gory mess which usually ensues. As it turns out, the sorts of injuries and hits that cartoon characters can take with little more than a silly noise and a rattling of their body is more likely to result in cracked limbs and bursting extremities, though that makes little difference to Patricia herself. These sorts of tendencies are luckily isolated in their extreme cases, but they all tie in with her somewhat sadistic personality as a whole.

Peacock’s disagreeable personality has led to severe clashes with authority figures, which only further flares her arrogant personality. She fosters an attitude of being the best at what she does, whether it’s memorizing television trivia or fighting. Anyone who disagrees with her or even shows the slightest hint of doing so will be met by her fiery distaste before long. Her arrogance often makes her ignore advice or possible ways of bettering herself, often for her own ironic detriment. True to this nature, she’s also one to not learn from her mistakes, continually running headlong into any obstacle in her course until it either budges or busts.

Other facets of Patricia’s personality prove more hidden and seldom-spoken, primarily any she thinks conveys weakness or simply isn’t grandiose enough to boast about. Primary upon this are her blurry repressed memories which haunt her whenever she has time to think. She doesn’t remember most of her past clearly, having forced the thoughts out of her head with as many distractions as possible. Whenever she is left with a moment to stop and think, however, she is often faced with snippets of her mutilation and life as a slave, most obviously late at night. As such, to prevent these thoughts from dredging from the murky waters of her psyche, Patricia will try to keep herself constantly active and always moving.

This tendency has led to her learning numerous hobbies in her time alone, from drawing her own fairly talented cartoons to tinkering with her own robotics to see how they tick. She has a surprising knowledge of whatever she takes an interest in, thanks to her usual way of taking any hobby and stretching it out to the fullest in order to distract herself for as long as possible, though these subjects are widely varied and sparsely retained fully thanks to her short attention span and impatience for meticulous details.

At the core of it all, Peacock is still quite a lot like any child her age should be. She is attached to how things are and is incredibly static to any outside forces. Any harmful change or threat of change in her constant figures in life or daily routine will be met by brash and loud protest by the cyborg, and she is often not one to think such reactionary impulses through far. This is evident in her reaction to the Skullgirl appearing and the death of Doctor Avian in her story mode, after which she charged straight to Marie and simply pushed past anything in her way to gain revenge.

Powers/Abilities: With the Argus parasite, Peacock possessed countless eyes which adorned her arms, an artificial tail, and the space around her. These eyes allowed her to see everything near her and keep track of any details of a combat environment which also serving the basic purpose of replacing her gouged-out eyes. The Argus system is also weaponized, allowing the numerous eyes to shoot laser beams from their pupils in a devastating attack.

The Avery System allowed Peacock to bend the rules of reality to her whim, which included making her imaginary friends real entities and creating portals leading to anywhere. Such portals were able to supply her with an endless arsenal of cartoonish weapons and objects that she could hurl at an enemy from afar. She could also teleport herself or other beings through them to retreat or close in on an enemy.

Without her parasites, however, she is very little more remarkable than an average human, aside from her extraordinary willpower and stubbornness which allowed her to use her systems in the first place.

Keepsakes/Mementos: -Plushes of her imaginary friends: Avery the Peacock, Tommy Ten-Tons, Andy the Anvil, and George and Lenny the bombs
-Signature purple top hat
-Numerous recordings ranging from VHS to DVDs of cartoons
-Hammock she prefers sleeping in instead of a bed

Sample:
3… 2 … 1… Showtime.

Cameras were rolling and the stage was set for a finale of proportions appropriate for such giants of two staunchly contrasting forces of good and evil. On one side of a polished, checker-tiled floor stood a girl clad in purple and drenched in the scarlet of her own blood; on the other, a woman in blacks and violets lay coughing and wheezing for her last breaths. All the while an aging man at his desk continually slammed his finger into the silent alarm beneath the tabletop, praying for a last escape. There would be no escape; the cyborg had ensured that.
With a single laugh echoing from the mechanical girl’s throat, she spun an overly sized revolver around her gloved index finger, promptly blowing the smoke out of the top with a cocky grin bifurcating her rounded face. “Whad’dya know? Looks like the ol’ bag had some fight in ‘er!” The girl boasted, stepping past the woman in question with a momentary sneer downward and metal-bottomed boots clanking to the tile, before her pitch black eye sockets faced towards the elderly man at his seat, “But that still won’t save you, y’know. Would’ya believe it’s actually got to here? Heck, I even doubted myself for a second, there!”

Lorenzo Medici had lost. For once in his innumerable years of reigning over the people of the Canopy Kingdom, he had lost. And for the first time, he sat defenseless before but a child who had proven herself more than capable of tearing his family down, from the nameless goons to the arms-dealing kingpins. He could only push his office chair back further from the approaching redhead, stammering for words as she approached closer and closer, perfectly triangular teeth shimmering in the well-lit room.

“What’sa mattah? Cat got yer tongue?” Peacock spoke the overused line with a cheerful, almost song-like tone in her robotic voice, bringing one foot upward with a spring-like step to bounce atop the family head’s desk, looming over him with those six beady red eyes of hers staring relentlessly at him, watching the sweat drip down his forehead. “I betcha really regrettin’ all those shady deals now, ya palooka,” She scoffed with a quick shake of her head, pulling her revolver back and tucking it away in a portal behind her back. As she does so, Avery arose out of the portal to supply her with a large wick bomb, adorned with an 8-ball pattern. She held the explosive up in front of Lorenzo, making sure he got a good look at it before placing it on his lap and patting it against him, “Would’ya hold this for me for a sec? Thanks, you’re a dear!”
Laughing gleefully, Peacock’s arms moved in a flurry of directions, tying numerous lengths of ropes around the man and the bomb, pressing them together faster than the human eye could comprehend and trapping him in his chair. With a slow, drawn-out motion, the cyborg then raised her index finger to the air so the man would have no choice but to watch it, and then struck it across her large top-hat, igniting the tip of her finger like a match with inexplicable reasoning behind it. After but a moment’s hesitation, she delivered the line that the joyous look on her face, lip bitten to hold in a laugh and mouth twisted upward, telegraphs she had been waiting to deliver, “Need a light?”

Lorenzo didn’t answer, only staring with his mouth agape and his eyes widened in horror as the ignited finger is lowered to the wick of the bomb, lighting the explosive with a long hiss, as if counting down the seconds to the death of the Medicis in one long breath. The finger then rose to light a cigar which seemed to have materialized in the girl’s mouth while the man’s eyes were elsewhere. Peacock shook out the fire on her own finger and watched the wick slowly burn away, leaning against the chair casually, “Y’know, buddy, you REALLY gotta /light/en up! I mean, if you’re not gonna laugh at this, ya might never get the chance to laugh again! What’s the point a’ life if you ain’t gonna enjoy it?” She poked his chest a few times, the cigar dangerously close to burning into the man’s ropes and suit with each prod, then she took a deep hit of the cigar, blowing it out of her eye with a wistful sigh from the socket, “It’s gonna be a shame, too! I dunno what I’m gonna do without’cha! Might get a hobby. Might find some new baddy t’ beat the tar outta.”

The heart-to-heart was lost on Lorenzo, who only now began to spew out curses and angered insults at the girl. All six Argus eyes rolled simultaneously at the outburst, and Peacock pulled away from his chair, “Geez! Fine, fine! I’ll letcha go now. Now, it’s a long way down, so ya better lift your arms an’ scream! It’s gonna be a tonna fun; in fact, it’ll be a BLAST!” With a borderline maniacal laugh, Peacock’s wobbly arms settled upon Lorenzo’s chair as she reared her body back, hoisting the weight up effortlessly but with cartoon-like effort as she launched the man out of his back window, saluting him with a last puff of smoke on her cigar and a metallic grin fit for the big screen. All that was left was to listen for the boom.

As it turned out, in all her enjoyment, Peacock had forgotten the ever-dangerous woman laying across the floor. Black Dahlia was the Medici’s best assassin, and while she had been bested, she would never let herself go out without taking someone with her, and that was exactly her plan.

Whilst Peacock stood, arms on her hips, in front of the busted open window atop a tower overlooking the entirety of New Meridian, the capital city of a flourishing but corrupt nation, Dahlia raised herself for one final attack. Her arm, replaced long ago by a crude grenade launcher, raised and aimed at the gloating cyborg, launching one final round with a hollow ‘thunk’ as it races through its barrel and straight into the girl’s back. Anyone else would be blown to bits, but again, Peacock seemed to have withstood the blow, letting out a wobbly groan as she tries to catch herself on steady footing from the momentum. It was only a moment before she was unfazed enough to see herself fast approaching the broken window, not nearly in enough of a position to stop herself. One eye glanced back to watch Dahlia collapse with finality after the shot, and Peacock would have exploded with laughter at her futile effort had her other eyes not caught glimpse of her own body uncontrollably vaulting over the windowsill. Her legs were suddenly skyward, and the open air of the skies of New Meridian surrounded her.

Some might have waxed poetic about the beauty of the skyline, or the irony of meeting one’s end after accomplishing their life goal. Even Peacock couldn’t help but note that she at least fulfilled her promise to Marie. However, the predominant thought on her mind as she rapidly approached the neon-lit pavement far below was that she was sorely going to be pissed at missing that new Annie tomorrow night.

Cut. End scene. That’s a wrap!

Mindset: Patricia had become a leader of sorts in her own world and destiny during her life, so being thrown into somewhere where she’s definitely not in charge, lost, and confused will be incredibly confusing to her. She already didn’t understand the circumstances of her death very well, provided that she figured herself near-invincible, so she’s definitely going to be upset about giving up contact with people like Big Band and the others of the lab. However, at the same time, she will likely find some way to power through this new development as she usually does, especially when she finds out she can still keep up with television shows. However, without her most trusted friends, she’s likely to avoid contact whenever possible.

G̶̶l̨͡i̵͢t̷c͝͠h̕é͠s̷̷͡: Peacock is left essentially helpless and uncomfortable from the get-go in the simulation. She no longer has her parasites, and thus the way she is used to living life is completely stripped away from her. For once, Peacock has to face with reality as it is and can no longer sugar-coat things in her own way with cartoon visions and impossible antics at will. Anything involving her lack of control over things around her now will definitely be enough to unsettle and disturb her. Also, anything about her life in Rommelgrad, including the orphanage, the maid outfits that were her only clothes, lack of food, lack of luxury, war, and crime would all be horrific reminders of her past. Atop this, loneliness and the lack of her ‘real’ imaginary friends could easily be exploited by the system to dig into her insecurities. For more extreme fears, anything to do with her regained limbs would be horrific to her, especially regarding her eyes being squashed or gouged out once more. In fact, eye imagery in general will be very potent for Patricia given the nature of her mutilation and parasites. Her greatest insecurity, however, lies in Marie, since she still feels regret over killing her despite believing in what she said. She fears betraying her closest friend in that way, and often tries to avoid thinking about it completely.

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