mustakrakish

Her ability to write. It's as if she's forgotten how to form the letters, and though she can still read and try to find herself a workaround or two, it's going to severely limit her note-taking abilities, as well as an ability to interact on certain levels over the Paradisa network. As a tiny little private investigator of her own right, this is going to be an endless source of frustration for her, unable to even take down a simple Post-It note for herself.

Meet Veronica Mars: That skank who's done at least half the guys in the school. At least four of them were teachers in order to get the grades she's pulling in. Have you seen all of her absences? They're probably doctor appointments to check up on that bastard child she's carrying of one of the school's finest. I hear it's Duncan Kane's. I hear it's Logan Echolls'. I hear it's Dick Casablancas', if you remember the way they made out at that Shelly Pomroy party. She knows four types of martial arts, she knows at least two ways to kill a man just by hitting him in the face, she knows the president and she's on the FBI'S Most Wanted list. Her hair's fake, so's her chin, so would be her tits if she had the moolah for it.

What a cretin.

Of course, that's if you believe the stories.

Take two. Meet Veronica Mars: The run of the Neptune High rumor mill. She's not actually pregnant, and she can swear up and down that the blond's not out of a bottle but it's not as if it'll change much. She knows and hears plenty of the things that people say about her around school - it's difficult not to - and it's all fun and games until someone fucks with her clique. Then it gets personal. Until then, she's ambivalent.

See, the thing is, Veronica used to belong to that group, used to have status and support in this town, used to be a normal teenage girl with a mother and a family and a boyfriend and a best friend. It's hard to remember a time when Veronica Mars was among Neptune's elite, now that she's slipped so far into the "dregs" of society, but so long as she can keep the connections she has, well, she's not going to be complaining too much. She can cast on about them and reminisce all she'd like, but those days are far behind her and she's become all the more of a person for it. They rebuilt her. They had the technology.

Who was once a shiny and bright-eyed girl with all the naivete in the world had her life come crashing down around her, and it all started with the murder of Lilly Kane. There's a story to be told, a complex and weaving one about movie stars and tampering with evidence and supposedly bumbling local sheriffs not seeing eye to eye with the whole of the world, but in a word, it left her family broken and Veronica all the more jaded for the matter. Her and her father's adventures turned into a job, her best friend became nothing more than a memory, and Veronica Mars grew up.

The creature she is today is a far different beast than the one she started out as, though that's not to say that it wasn't a good base for her to start off of. Her parents raised her well, and raised her strong, but nobody was really prepared for just how strong Veronica might come back, and it was with a vengeance. She's become a sort of private investigator in her own right, carrying on in her father's footsteps for cash and chickens. She's short, she's small, she has an overabundance of sarcasm and pop culture references up her sleeves (both of them, that's how much), and she carries a piping hot can of taser on her if you really want to try to make her day, when all else fails.

Veronica takes after her dad in plenty of ways, and least of all of that is her intelligence. She's been compared to a miniature Sherlock Holmes, or perhaps a more adult Nancy Drew, able to draw easy connections between case files and evidence she's gleaned on her cases. It's rare one goes unsolved (and that's in due part to a frankly riotous amount of stubbornness), and it's all thanks to everything she learned from her father. Research, sources, scandalizing pictures; you name it and she can probably procure it. She takes on everything from lost dogs to potential terrorism, murder, rape, all with a kind of tenacity that's beyond her years. She's older now, wiser, and she applies all of her skills she has with an unapologetic vengeance.

That's not to say she's all equal parts razor edges and a hard shell. Veronica's in touch with her emotions like any girl her age, and she can fall victim to her gut instinct because of it, often jumping the gun on her cases and her relationships because of a newly innate sense of mistrust. She takes on cases for people who need it, no matter how paltry in comparison - half because she's a sap under all that steely exterior, and guilt trips like no tied shoelace ever could.

Despite it all, Veronica presents a cool outside and a jovial one at that. She's constantly poking fun, cracking jokes for a little levity (even under pressure, even in potentially life-threatening situations) and keeping that quick wit sharpened like an axe; it's her only and best weapon against the rest of the world, and she plans on wielding it. She's passionate about what she believes in, works on both snap decisions (generally when she's angry or upset) and oodles of forethought (she has, after all, infiltrated even the head of security at Kane Software's own office with simple and sleek plans), and can switch from naught to sixty in under 0.4 seconds if you really get her riled enough.

In a nutshell, Veronica is a feisty bit of a thing with enough cheery misanthropy to power a major city, unpolished around the edges, but overbold as anything and twice as bright. She can and fully intends to take the world by storm.

Veronica's certainly got her proclivities and her strengths, and they range from photography to basic car repair to a mean taserin' arm, but overall she's simply your regular, human, teenage girl and as such has very human limitations.

Okay, Veronica. Just because you've found yourself on the roof of an extremely large castle in the better part of South Nowheres, Country Unknown, it doesn't necessarily mean you've been kidnapped. Sure, you've done this whole song and dance before, the memory loss. All part of that one, big night. And what a reminder it serves here and now while you stand atop Hogwarts in all its glory. At least you have your underwear on this time. But just about as many questions unanswered: Two.

Who the hell did this? And why to me?

Veronica draws her camera out of her bag, peering out over the rooftop and onto the city below. She'd be lying if she said that it wasn't a nice view - beautiful, in fact, she thinks as she snaps a few shots and meanders closer to the roof's edge to get a good look. She could try to reason with herself and all the renaissance faire glory that came with the town she saw sprawling out beneath her sneaker toes, but none of this made any sense. But someone sure took the time to make it look nice.

Why here? Wherever here was? Why a castle? I haven't tripped across any hungry vampires shooting claims of Vanting to Suck My Blood, so as far as I can figure, at least it's safe to assume it isn't Dracula. But the city, the room she'd woken up in, the stone beneath her feet. Lavish, meretricious. A little more Ritz-Carlton than it was stalactites and stained glass, but. Well. "Let's not rule out Transylvania just yet," she murmurs to herself as she takes a few more photos and checks them out on her camera screen.

Time to figure out who the bad guys are.

[ DICTATED ]

[ There's the sound of paper shuffling around, the pages of the book being rapidly flipped through before the thing's just slammed down onto a dresser regardless. Veronica shouts at first, ] Okay! Empty book! No means of answers, patience wearing thin! Oh boy.

[ Her voice meanders, and it's clear she has no idea that she's actually being recorded right now, just kind of ranting to herself as she stands akimbo over the journal. ]

You know, it's really one thing to roofie and kidnap a girl, but not even a handcuff to the bed? Locked drawers, giant safe in the corner? Bear traps? They bought me clothes? Kind of creepy, dudes, kind of creepy! [ Maybe it's not her first kidnapping. But then again, maybe it's not exactly something a 17-year-old girl just gets herself used to. ]

[ Her breath is puffing a little, almost panicked, but when she speaks up again, her voice is resolute and decided. ] We're doing two things, Veronica. We're getting out of this room, and then we're knockin' in some doors. Okay. [ She claps. ] Here we go! Chins high, eyes front, karate - chop.

Oh, Veronica. My little pixie. She's an absolute joy to play, from the sarcasm to the jokes to the Holmesian side of her investigating into the people here and the castle itself. I can't wait to stretch Veronica's imagination based on what she's going to end up seeing here, and I'm absolutely excited to be playing her again for the first time in years. She's an old muse and an incredibly fun muse at that, one that I'd love to see set loose on Paradisa.