Post by ronin on Jul 14, 2008 16:01:34 GMT -5
The Character
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Cannon or your own: Canon
Copyright (Marvel/DC/ect): Marvel
Characters civilian name: Maya Lopez
Code names/Aliases:Ronin, Echo, Crazy Horse
Class [Superhero, Vigilante, Mercenary..ect]: Superhero
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Gender: Female
Age: 20's
Apparent Age: 20's
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height and weight: 5'9, 125lbs
Appearance: As her father died, he put his bloody hand on little Maya's face, leaving hand-shaped bloodstains. The adult Echo will often reproduce that pattern on her face through makeup when preparing to dance or fight, either in white (usually) or red. As Ronin, Maya wears a specially designed armor which makes her appear to be male.
Picture [if available]:
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Super Powers: Echo has a "photographic reflex" - if she carefully watches somebody performing a physical task, no matter how delicate and intricate, she can reproduce the exact same moves. With enough study of somebody in various situations, she can build up a flexible repertoire of moves that make her as talented and efficient as the original. Thus, she can learn to play the piano, dance, fight, perform acrobatics and so on like the greatest masters.
For instance, she built her base Martial Arts knowledge after renting every kung fu flick in the nearest video store for a few weeks, and martial arts movie buffs could easily recognize this Jeet Kune Do parry by Bruce Lee in "Game of death", some Jackie Chan legwork and dodges from "Rumble in the Bronx" or signature Jet Li kicks.
Learned Abilities: Echo has picked up various moves seen on television, during performances from other artists, and so on - this is represented by her Scholar. She thus can replicate various moves such as a million-to-one basketball killer shot, a well-known dance step, various famous choreography in jazz dancing, MTV stuff or ice skating, etc. She also works hard and is an extremely gifted pianist (classical and jazz) and dancer (ballet, jazz, African) - although those skills were originally copied she has now mastered them and can write her own music and choreography. She also has great potential as a storyteller and shaman, and is a highly talented boxer and kickboxer.
Echo has learned to speak by mimicking every little muscle inflection in the lips and lower faces by other peoples, so her speech is perfectly clear and not slurred, as is often the case for deaf peoples who have learned to talk without being able to hear themselves. Watching Echo moves while she's duplicating someone nearby is eerie - two peoples doing the exact same acrobatics, tumbles or hand-to-hand fighting in perfect synch looks like some impossible ballet.
Equipment: Echo typically uses a pair of nunchakus and a standard katana blade. She has also used pistols and other weaponry in the past. As Ronin, Maya wears a specially designed armor which makes her appear to be male and allows her to blend into the shadows.
Weaknesses (Must Have): Maya is deaf. Her reliance on visual cues renders her vulnerable in the dark. Since she reads lips, she has difficulty communicating with people who are wearing masks or are not in direct visual contact.Echo still has all of the natural limitations and vulnerabilities of an ordinary human.
Background: Maya Lopez is the daughter of mob figure William "Crazy Horse" Lincoln - so nicknamed because he was a full-blooded American Indian, and because his sanity was tenuous and slowly unraveling. Lincoln was of no clear nation - starting with his grandfather on the Trail of Tears, his direct ancestors always had married people from different tribes.
Ms. Lopez (who may or may not have been a Native American herself) left Crazy Horse due to his growing insanity while Maya was about four or five. By that time, Lincoln presumably already was a friend and criminal associate of Wilson "the Kingpin" Fisk, and their partnership had led them on a fast rise - until Crazy Horse's growing madness forced Fisk to murder him in cold blood. As a last request, Lincoln asked his friend Fisk to care for his daughter (then aged nine) as best as he could, and the Kingpin agreed.
Fisk was, of course, true to his word and took care of the girl - who was though to be retarded. She wasn't - it was an all too common case where deafness was though to be a mental handicap, while she was actually a smart and active little girl. When she was about five or seven, a pianist came to the school for retarded children ; Maya was enthusiastic and after the small concert rushed to the piano to replay it again, perfectly, greatly enjoying the sensation of the piano's vibration feeding back to her as she was playing. It became quite obvious she actually wasn't mentally retarded.
When the news reached Fisk, he made the necessary connections to change her education -- Maya went from an expensive school for handicapped children to an expensive schools for prodigies. She was consider by doctors who examined her as some kind of savant, able to reproduce and master extremely complex sequences of movements. During her teens, she played a lot of piano, enjoying the vibration through her fingers and whole body, breaking through her isolation. Fisk paid for a succession of highly talented teachers, and Maya eagerly replicated and mastered numerous arts such as playing the violin, dancing, archery, fencing and the like. Although she found her greatest talent in boxing, she also studied unspecified Japanese martial arts with a Japanese sensei, during which time she learned a fair bit of Japanese and a lot about the martial secrets of the islands, such as the role of the Hand. It is even possible that this man was the same man who also taught Elektra for some years.
Maya soon became a renowned artist and acquired financial independence. For years, Fisk was a paternal but somewhat distant guardian and occasional tutor. She trusted him completely and didn't know anything about his actual activities, thinking that the attacks against him were slander and terrorism perpetrated, among others, by the dangerous vigilante Daredevil. However, Fisk was watching with interest the extensive physical and martial training Maya was putting herself through to learn new "words" in her kinetic language ; he was presumably considering using her as a weapon and enforcer even back then.
Fisk eventually did use Lopez as a deadly weapon against Daredevil/Murdock. At first she simply dated Murdock at Fisk's apparently casual suggestion - and quickly found herself very attracted to Murdock, and vice versa. That was Fisk's primary plan - to destroy Murdock by filling the void inside men, not by taking away from him. Murdock understood that strategy and clearly took the message to Fisk that he was to leave him and Lopez alone. Angered, the Kingpin changed his approach, massaging the truth to convince Lopez it was Daredevil who had murdered her father.
Feeling like she was riding a savage, unavoidable destiny, Lopez took the name Echo - and drawing upon the memories of stories and traditions from her father's people, readied herself for the warpath. She did not manage to kill Daredevil, and during their last fights discovered he was really Murdock. Daredevil explained to her it was obviously impossible for him to have killed Crazyhorse (since he was a schoolboy when Crazyhorse died), making it plain that the real killer had been Fisk all along. Echo went back to Fisk's building, finding him wounded, with multiple gunshots in the chest and head - he had been ambushed in an unrelated incident just hours before. Refusing to listen and trust him anymore, she shot him point blank in the head. Fisk survived even that, but his sight was destroyed.
Within hours, Maya Lopez fled the United States to avoid the attention of criminal and police forces, making it impossible to pursue any kind of relationship was Matt Murdock and putting her US artistic career on hold.
Lopez spent months in Europe, starting with France and then moving around. She visited many museums, watching art and become a talented painter herself (possibly by replicating the master's strokes from watching the shape of the paint on the canvas). Although painting soothed her for a time, her yearning for Matt Murdock was too great and she flew back to New York City - only to learn that he was now in a relationship with someone else. Searching for a direction in her life, she confronted Fisk by visiting him in prison. Although Fisk admitted to playing her like a chess piece, he told her he had grown fond of her, much like a daughter, and didn't hate her for shooting him. Knowing he was both sincere and manipulating her, Maya left feeling even emptier and angrier than before.
She eventually drove to a place where her father would often take her during her childhood - the Rez, a territory visited by many Native Americans desiring to retire from the world and explore their traditional ways for a time. There she found the Chief- an old man who had taught her Indian Sign Language and many stories when she was a child, and told her about her potential as a storyteller and shaman. Maya offered tobacco to the Chief so he would lead her to a vision quest.
After four days of meditation and fasting, with occasional visits from animals and other portents, Echo came face-to-face with Wolverine -- although it is quite possible it was just an hallucination. She instinctively fought him for a bit. After they made peace, Wolverine, who played the role of the nature spirit in her quest, explained how he would come to the Rez once a year to meditate, and told her the parable of the man with two dogs fighting inside of him. Then he told how the original story had actually been told to the Chief by a man who had died more than twenty years ago, allowing Maya to understand that the man who had told the story was her own father. Finally understanding her father's story and the power of all stories, she knew that her path was that of the shaman.
Maya went back to being an artist, staging plays telling stories in music, dance, sign language and other media. Those proved successful on the off-Broadway scene ; Matt Murdock saw several of them, and eventually they kissed goodbye.
Daredevil would again enter Maya Lopez's life some time later, though. The New Avengers were attempting to hunt down the escaped Silver Samurai ; since Wolverine wasn't available, they needed Daredevil and his knowledge of the Japanese underworld. Daredevil wasn't able to help, though - Matt Murdock had been outed as Daredevil, and had six distinct federal task forces attempting to prove it. However, Murdock directed the New Avengers to somebody who had the necessary knowledge about Japan and the Hand - and also had the same moves and techniques as he did : Echo.
Thus did Echo help the New Avengers under the costumed identity of Ronin, successfully infiltrating Castle Yashida and bringing back valuable intelligence about the plan of the Samurai and the Viper. It is likely she is still investigating the activities of the Hand and House Yashida as Ronin.
Personality : Maya Lopez is a playful, vivacious and high-spirited young woman, and obviously a successful, gifted, multi-talented artist. She has beaten a crippling handicap and is a quite popular artist while she once was considered retarded, and this gives her great joy of energy. She has a genuine childlike enthusiasm, and seems to simply go through daily life and ordinary problems like a happy kid would.
She works hard on her piano and dancing skills ; to her dance is very important, and she attempts to convey deep feeling through her choreography and music. She seems to be appreciated mostly by connoisseurs for her actual talent, but was also well known to street kids - so she probably also works in more popular forms, likely hip-hop.
Maya's childhood has left deep impressions on her - she is badly scarred by the loss of her father (and haunted by the mystery of his death), and in some situations she feels she's still a little girl . In many ways her whole identity was either molded by childhood hardships and innocence, or by her reactions against it. When her deafness comes back to cripple her despite all of her efforts (like when Daredevil forced her to fight in pitch blackness, denying her her all-important sight) she feels extremely vulnerable, like a lost kid.
As Maya her charm is obvious, her manner full of life and spontaneity, and Daredevil noted that her body odor was very natural and very pleasant. The avenging side of Echo was made of cold rage of focused murderous fervor - it was obvious that she felt in many way like an angel of vengeance, using various symbols to claim poetic but deadly justice. She tends to draw inspiration from Native American symbols and culture.
Both as Echo and as Ronin, she has a tendency to put things in an oddly poetic ways - often metaphor about nature, mysteries or silence.
The name Echo comes from her deafness (she only get the echoing, vibratory feedback of sounds, not the sounds themselves) and the fact she feels she's just an empty echo left by the death of her father and that her only real, serious destiny is to put his memory to rest. Of course, it also alludes to her ability to act as an echo to the movements of others.
Other:
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Brief Sample Roleplay Echo laid down on the ground exhaling in sigh of exhaustion. The ice cold metal floor of the cell felt good against her over heated skin. Her heart rate was still elevated slightly from the workout in the "exercise room" She'd ran 10 miles on a stupid tread mill with an armed guard staring at her the whole time. He made her mad, his staring made her mad. His gun aimed at her made her mad. The fact that the guard who "escorted" her to her cell was still around dumbly staring at her made her furious.
She glared pointedly at the guard. The idiot didn't move. Echo's attack was so fast the guard only had time to draw in a startled breath as she lunged forward, snarling like a wild creature. She stopped herself just inches short blue force field, that completed the three walled cell. The guards expression made an amazing evolution from self righteousness to a stupefied ghostly complexion. He staggered back a few steps in surprise, clutching his shirt over his heart in a clenched fist.