Tartarus Application
Aug. 10th, 2014 10:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
girlinasquirrelsuit|| Player Information ||
Name: Siobhan
Personal Journal: [Bad username or unknown identity: ”fiercebadrabbit”]
Time zone: US Central
Contact: email: israfel1030@gmail.com, aim: blitztsunami, plurk: fiercebadrabbit
Current Characters: Kurt Waggoner, Chime
|| Character Information ||
Fandom: The Red Panda Adventures
Name: Kit Baxter-Fenwick, a.k.a. The Flying Squirrel
Canon Point: Immediately post Season 9
History: Kit Baxter was once a sweet kid of twenty-one helping out her widowed mother and keeping body and soul together as a taxi driver, just like her dear departed dad. One day, she accepted a fare from some pain-in-the-neck spoiled rich boy who offered her an absurd amount of money to chase a car at ridiculous speeds and into a bad neighborhood. She was furious with him after the fact, both for his dismissive attitude and because he’d convinced her to risk her job and future for a bit of fun and a bunch of extra cash in the short term. When he came to apologize and hire her as his personal chauffeur, she told him to get stuffed. Then she discovered that the spot she’d delivered him to was just where the papers described Toronto’s mysterious defender, the Red Panda, thwarting a crew of bank robbers.
Despite the mockery of her friends, Kit believed in the Red Panda. He gave the city hope. He fought for everyone, not the wealthy and powerful. He stood up to the scum who lived in the lap of luxury on the backs of people beaten down by the Depression and the corruption and crime it created. And stupid Gus Fenwick had to be him. Fortunately, the job offer was still open.
It took a while to wear him down, but eventually, Kit only donned her chauffeur’s uniform as a cover story, and she and the boss formed a partnership. In the early days they faced down a goodly number of ordinary criminals, the task livened up by gangsters but largely a matter of purse snatchers and burglars. But while ordinary human greed and cruelty would have been enough for a lifetime’s work, they were only the beginning. The supervillains came often, mad scientists and crazed occultists, creatively themed merchants of destruction with only guts and gadgets to their names, the odd evil from another dimension. Though Kit was the only one to know all the secrets, they employed a vast and varied network of agents from all walks of life, street urchins to con men to beat cops, to keep the city safe.
They made a difference, they lived life to the fullest, and Kit quietly fell hard for the Red Panda, first for the mask and then for the man.
But the trouble in Europe wouldn’t be contained so easily, and intrigues of another kind began to find their way even to the Panda’s Toronto. The horrible marriage of magic and science embraced by the most twisted genius in Hitler’s Germany visited Nazi plots on them, and Von Schlitz became a far more daunting enemy than ever Professor Zombie or the Mad Monkey had been. Though he got some credit, as it was only his attempt to kill Kit that led Gus to confess love and start planning a marriage.
But no super heroes ever got left alone to carry on in peace. Leading up to the wedding and thereafter, the usual super villainy and organized crime became twisted up in Fifth column efforts by an agent known as Archangel, determined to weaken Canada and keep the country out of the war, or deliver it entirely to Nazi control in some of the more ambitious plans the Panda and Squirrel thwarted together. At the same time, Kit had to get used to being August Fenwick’s wife. The life of a rich woman was completely foreign and terribly restrictive. So as to have something for Kit Baxter to do when the Squirrel wasn’t about, she used a bit of Gus’s clout to pick up work at a newspaper he happened to own, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Toronto Chronicle. She was good at the work, and it was an invaluable way to acquire and pass information, plus working up some patriotic fervor and throwing the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel some good publicity. Not that they needed much help; even the police were on their side by then.
The Red Panda had a strict no-sharing policy when it came to his territory, and only he and the Squirrel protected Toronto, with help from their network of agents and an occasional tip from The Stranger, a mostly retired occultist hero who had trained the Panda years before. But every city had its defenders, and it was only a matter of time before the government tried to arrange themselves a force of super soldiers from around the country and south of the border. The Panda resisted at first, and Kit didn’t worry. She knew he didn’t play well with others. But the stupid man became obsessed with the fact that his much-neglected secret identity would be known as a coward for sitting out the war, and he enlisted as August Fenwick behind his wife’s back.
Fortunately, his identity had been made by the Super Services, and they recruited him directly. Kit was irritated beyond telling by everything about this turn of events. They excluded her, refusing to admit female heroes into the corps, ordered around her husband and partner, and were up to their necks in shady plots. Everything she’d feared came to its inevitable head when the Red Panda left on a mission to Occupied France.
Most of the active agents of the Super Services were assassinated in a single day, and the Panda’s plane was blown out of the sky. She never believed he was dead, but she had to carry on without him. The city needed defending, and the service rebuilding, even if Gus was missing. Kit carried on as the Squirrel, enlisting the help of an old ally, John Archer (an impossibly advanced android imbued with full sentience by lucky accident) to impersonate the Panda and leave their enemies to think they’d failed. She fought on as long as she could, and when she stopped, it wasn’t from injuries or loss of spirit.
It was because the catsuit didn’t fit anymore. Kit was pregnant, and she hadn’t found a way to tell her husband before he left.
With John’s help and by accidentally letting the butler in on the secret (a fine tradition), she kept the Red Panda going until the baby was born and she could get back in the game. Which she did with remarkable aplomb, joining John on a mission to stop Von Schlitz once and for all. While they were at it, they recovered an until-recently-amnesiac Gus, who resumed his mantle as soon as their old nemesis was in custody and he’d met his son.
As much drama as it was, this great adventure only made a small dent in the larger battle between good and evil, the war on the radio or the secret battle of super-powered soldiers, impossible science, and occult forces. They carried on, but they stuck to their own city for everyday purposes and took on the training of a new corps of heroes, the young up-and-comers with their silly spandex and shiny boots. Kit redoubled her efforts at the paper, spreading patriotic morale boosters and opining against injustice, be it Nazi in origin or Canadian. A new threat loomed, crested, and was defeated, an old enemy twisted from a greedy criminal to an inhuman monster. This final defeat of Professor Zombie (or the thing she had become) only served to uncover the depths of horror that some within the government had stooped to, experimenting on captured supervillains in an attempt to create their own army. Yes, the war was almost over, but there were clearly those with an eye on the next war, and the one after that, secret services conspiring with war criminals and serving up their own agents on silver platters when it served their purposes. John Archer’s robot body was damaged beyond repair, his consciousness transferred to a human body.
And then came VE day, and a reckoning with Von Schlitz, and the dawn of a new world in the testing of the first atomic bomb. A super hero’s work is never done.
Personality: Even before she was a super hero, Kit had a pugnacious streak and a total lack of fear. Punching out a grammar school teacher was just the beginning of her career. She ain’t afraid of nobody or nothin’, but as she eases with catlike grace into middle age, she’s learned a bit of... caution, if nothing else. She’s got people to worry about now, and she’s seen what the depression and the war have done to people. Her urge to destroy everything unjust (and when she’s done, possibly everything annoying) has been tempered enough for occasional caution.
But Kit’s still a crusader, worldly or no. She can keep a secret as long as she wants (like, say, a decade’s worth of secret identity), but she prefers to make the truth known by any means necessary. She can suss out a careful, discerning course of action, choosing precisely the right weapons and tactics, but then she’s going to show up and drop kick everything. She’s come to accept that time and tragedy, evil banal and supervillainous, and forces beyond any one person’s control will take away the ones she cares about, but if she has to mug the Prime Minster of Canada to demand that it be fixed, she’ll call up a friend and get that underway. And while she’s a mom and a lady with a career, she’s a super hero, and just try and stop her.
On an interpersonal level, Kit’s friendly and affectionate, but a bit rough. Mask on or mask off, she tends to assume everyone else exists in the same zone of low-level hostility and excessive cheer that defines her outlook, and she treats them accordingly. Being punched in the jaw is always a danger, but being teased mercilessly is more likely, and she can’t really turn it off, relying on force of personality to get herself out. She loves more enthusiastically than she hates, though it takes some work to be added to her inner circle. She is, however, very protective of anyone who seems to need someone a little stronger to help them out, and before she defended the world from the threats of fascism, she protected kids and working girls from everyday predation that the hoi poloi were only too willing to forget.
But some part of her still knows how to have fun. Even fun that doesn’t involve punching bad guys in the head. She’s a shameless flirt, a fan of beach expeditions and fancy cocktails, and an enthusiast of strange models of car, even after all these years. In short, she loves life, from the simplest little things to the highest ideals, and she’ll kick anyone’s butt who gets in her way.
Skills | Powers: All by herself, Kit is a crack reporter and a pretty good writer, an excellent driver, schooled in interrogation, a gymnist, an accomplished martial artist, and a pretty good detective. She has considerable resistance to hypnotism and mind-control, thanks to the Red Panda’s training. When she’s wearing the squirrel suit, she has access to a myriad of technologies. The static shoes, managed with controls in the gauntlets, let her walk up walls like streets. Her uniform is woven through with magic-resistant alloys that both hide her from spells and block many magical attacks, and is also insulated against extreme temperatures and energy attacks. Her goggles have infrared and night-vision settings, though she doesn’t much use them. The suit comes equipped with retractable gliding membranes that let her defy gravity in a controlled fashion, more or less. Her cowl is fitted with a voice-throwing device known as the ventriloquator. There are advantages to marrying a mad scientist.
First Person Sample: [The image is a bit off center and wobbly, as Kit's accustomed to radio communication as a high tech, superscience solution. Still, the redhead in the hooded mask and goggles is basically visible. And looks generally irritated.]
Okay. So I kinda get this alternate worlds thing. I hate them, but I get it. I've had this problem before. But when I've run up against some other universe, it's been a different take on the world I know. Up is purple and sandwiches have corned beef on the outside or what have you, but the people and the history I know are there, if screwy. This? This is not that.
So, is anyone there? Boss, I'm sure you'd have found me already, but just in case. Doctor C? John? Grey Fox? Heck, I'll take Baboon McSmoothie. ...Don't take that as too much of a compliment, Man of a Thousand Faces. It just means I'll only break nine hundred and seventy of them if you annoy me.
...And yes, maybe I did just announce myself to any of costumed goonie birds and Rotzi thugs, if they're around. To you I say, neener neener neener, you've never got me before and you won't now. Squirrel out.
Third Person Sample: “Baxter!”
“Congratulations, Editor Pearly. You got the right room today.”
The portly little man barreled into her office, reeking of cigar smoke and newsprint, as was his wont. “Baxter, I wanna know why half my staff is up to their eyebrows in the Preston family story and the other half is eating doughnuts.”
Kit batted her eyelashes winningly. She did it from under a somewhat silly hat that was barely hiding the bruises she’d picked up pulling the last heir to the Preston fortune out of her bedroom right before their summer home went up in some pretty impressive fireworks. Fortunately, the Chronicle staff were used to more eccentricity from their deputy editor than an unbecoming hat indoors. “The doughnuts are a present, Mr. Pearly. Don’t you worry, now. I made sure there were a few Bismarks in there for you.”
“I’m not here to talk about doughnuts, Baxter!”
“Your loss. I stole your staff, boss, to cover the biggest story in town in the kind of depth none of the other papers are going to bother with. Let me keep my shovel just a little longer and you can have a big batch of buried treasure splashed all over the front page.”
The editor looked ready to bite through his cigar. “Stop mixing your metaphors, Baxter. What are you digging for? What’s gonna move those papers? Explosions are already pretty good copy, you know.”
Kit grinned. She was entirely aware these days of the power of her smile, and she tried to use it judiciously. “Yeah, yeah, the story’s already got all the violence you needed, and all the scandal, with the Preston sisters and their mysterious beaux...”
“I know that look...”
“I should hope so, after all these years.”
“Spill the beans, Baxter. Who’s the young man the younger Miss Preston walked out on that kind of money for just to spite her sister?”
“The Prime Minster’s nephew.”
“The Prime Minister’s--” Sputtering took over from words for a bit.
“So, didja get a doughnut?”
“I got two doughnuts, Baxter. I do still seem to be the editor around here. That’s what it says on my door, doesn’t it?”
“Some day, Mr. Pearly,” Kit warned, leaning back in her chair with her hands behind her head. “I’m gonna come in early with a few of the newsies and switch all the nameplates. And then where will you be?”
“The broom closet, if you’re making the calls. Get that story on my desk before lunch, Baxter.”
“Of course, Mr. Pearly. Bye-bye now.”
Marks:
W for Wrath
P for Pride
Name: Siobhan
Personal Journal: [Bad username or unknown identity: ”fiercebadrabbit”]
Time zone: US Central
Contact: email: israfel1030@gmail.com, aim: blitztsunami, plurk: fiercebadrabbit
Current Characters: Kurt Waggoner, Chime
|| Character Information ||
Fandom: The Red Panda Adventures
Name: Kit Baxter-Fenwick, a.k.a. The Flying Squirrel
Canon Point: Immediately post Season 9
History: Kit Baxter was once a sweet kid of twenty-one helping out her widowed mother and keeping body and soul together as a taxi driver, just like her dear departed dad. One day, she accepted a fare from some pain-in-the-neck spoiled rich boy who offered her an absurd amount of money to chase a car at ridiculous speeds and into a bad neighborhood. She was furious with him after the fact, both for his dismissive attitude and because he’d convinced her to risk her job and future for a bit of fun and a bunch of extra cash in the short term. When he came to apologize and hire her as his personal chauffeur, she told him to get stuffed. Then she discovered that the spot she’d delivered him to was just where the papers described Toronto’s mysterious defender, the Red Panda, thwarting a crew of bank robbers.
Despite the mockery of her friends, Kit believed in the Red Panda. He gave the city hope. He fought for everyone, not the wealthy and powerful. He stood up to the scum who lived in the lap of luxury on the backs of people beaten down by the Depression and the corruption and crime it created. And stupid Gus Fenwick had to be him. Fortunately, the job offer was still open.
It took a while to wear him down, but eventually, Kit only donned her chauffeur’s uniform as a cover story, and she and the boss formed a partnership. In the early days they faced down a goodly number of ordinary criminals, the task livened up by gangsters but largely a matter of purse snatchers and burglars. But while ordinary human greed and cruelty would have been enough for a lifetime’s work, they were only the beginning. The supervillains came often, mad scientists and crazed occultists, creatively themed merchants of destruction with only guts and gadgets to their names, the odd evil from another dimension. Though Kit was the only one to know all the secrets, they employed a vast and varied network of agents from all walks of life, street urchins to con men to beat cops, to keep the city safe.
They made a difference, they lived life to the fullest, and Kit quietly fell hard for the Red Panda, first for the mask and then for the man.
But the trouble in Europe wouldn’t be contained so easily, and intrigues of another kind began to find their way even to the Panda’s Toronto. The horrible marriage of magic and science embraced by the most twisted genius in Hitler’s Germany visited Nazi plots on them, and Von Schlitz became a far more daunting enemy than ever Professor Zombie or the Mad Monkey had been. Though he got some credit, as it was only his attempt to kill Kit that led Gus to confess love and start planning a marriage.
But no super heroes ever got left alone to carry on in peace. Leading up to the wedding and thereafter, the usual super villainy and organized crime became twisted up in Fifth column efforts by an agent known as Archangel, determined to weaken Canada and keep the country out of the war, or deliver it entirely to Nazi control in some of the more ambitious plans the Panda and Squirrel thwarted together. At the same time, Kit had to get used to being August Fenwick’s wife. The life of a rich woman was completely foreign and terribly restrictive. So as to have something for Kit Baxter to do when the Squirrel wasn’t about, she used a bit of Gus’s clout to pick up work at a newspaper he happened to own, and quickly rose through the ranks of the Toronto Chronicle. She was good at the work, and it was an invaluable way to acquire and pass information, plus working up some patriotic fervor and throwing the Red Panda and the Flying Squirrel some good publicity. Not that they needed much help; even the police were on their side by then.
The Red Panda had a strict no-sharing policy when it came to his territory, and only he and the Squirrel protected Toronto, with help from their network of agents and an occasional tip from The Stranger, a mostly retired occultist hero who had trained the Panda years before. But every city had its defenders, and it was only a matter of time before the government tried to arrange themselves a force of super soldiers from around the country and south of the border. The Panda resisted at first, and Kit didn’t worry. She knew he didn’t play well with others. But the stupid man became obsessed with the fact that his much-neglected secret identity would be known as a coward for sitting out the war, and he enlisted as August Fenwick behind his wife’s back.
Fortunately, his identity had been made by the Super Services, and they recruited him directly. Kit was irritated beyond telling by everything about this turn of events. They excluded her, refusing to admit female heroes into the corps, ordered around her husband and partner, and were up to their necks in shady plots. Everything she’d feared came to its inevitable head when the Red Panda left on a mission to Occupied France.
Most of the active agents of the Super Services were assassinated in a single day, and the Panda’s plane was blown out of the sky. She never believed he was dead, but she had to carry on without him. The city needed defending, and the service rebuilding, even if Gus was missing. Kit carried on as the Squirrel, enlisting the help of an old ally, John Archer (an impossibly advanced android imbued with full sentience by lucky accident) to impersonate the Panda and leave their enemies to think they’d failed. She fought on as long as she could, and when she stopped, it wasn’t from injuries or loss of spirit.
It was because the catsuit didn’t fit anymore. Kit was pregnant, and she hadn’t found a way to tell her husband before he left.
With John’s help and by accidentally letting the butler in on the secret (a fine tradition), she kept the Red Panda going until the baby was born and she could get back in the game. Which she did with remarkable aplomb, joining John on a mission to stop Von Schlitz once and for all. While they were at it, they recovered an until-recently-amnesiac Gus, who resumed his mantle as soon as their old nemesis was in custody and he’d met his son.
As much drama as it was, this great adventure only made a small dent in the larger battle between good and evil, the war on the radio or the secret battle of super-powered soldiers, impossible science, and occult forces. They carried on, but they stuck to their own city for everyday purposes and took on the training of a new corps of heroes, the young up-and-comers with their silly spandex and shiny boots. Kit redoubled her efforts at the paper, spreading patriotic morale boosters and opining against injustice, be it Nazi in origin or Canadian. A new threat loomed, crested, and was defeated, an old enemy twisted from a greedy criminal to an inhuman monster. This final defeat of Professor Zombie (or the thing she had become) only served to uncover the depths of horror that some within the government had stooped to, experimenting on captured supervillains in an attempt to create their own army. Yes, the war was almost over, but there were clearly those with an eye on the next war, and the one after that, secret services conspiring with war criminals and serving up their own agents on silver platters when it served their purposes. John Archer’s robot body was damaged beyond repair, his consciousness transferred to a human body.
And then came VE day, and a reckoning with Von Schlitz, and the dawn of a new world in the testing of the first atomic bomb. A super hero’s work is never done.
Personality: Even before she was a super hero, Kit had a pugnacious streak and a total lack of fear. Punching out a grammar school teacher was just the beginning of her career. She ain’t afraid of nobody or nothin’, but as she eases with catlike grace into middle age, she’s learned a bit of... caution, if nothing else. She’s got people to worry about now, and she’s seen what the depression and the war have done to people. Her urge to destroy everything unjust (and when she’s done, possibly everything annoying) has been tempered enough for occasional caution.
But Kit’s still a crusader, worldly or no. She can keep a secret as long as she wants (like, say, a decade’s worth of secret identity), but she prefers to make the truth known by any means necessary. She can suss out a careful, discerning course of action, choosing precisely the right weapons and tactics, but then she’s going to show up and drop kick everything. She’s come to accept that time and tragedy, evil banal and supervillainous, and forces beyond any one person’s control will take away the ones she cares about, but if she has to mug the Prime Minster of Canada to demand that it be fixed, she’ll call up a friend and get that underway. And while she’s a mom and a lady with a career, she’s a super hero, and just try and stop her.
On an interpersonal level, Kit’s friendly and affectionate, but a bit rough. Mask on or mask off, she tends to assume everyone else exists in the same zone of low-level hostility and excessive cheer that defines her outlook, and she treats them accordingly. Being punched in the jaw is always a danger, but being teased mercilessly is more likely, and she can’t really turn it off, relying on force of personality to get herself out. She loves more enthusiastically than she hates, though it takes some work to be added to her inner circle. She is, however, very protective of anyone who seems to need someone a little stronger to help them out, and before she defended the world from the threats of fascism, she protected kids and working girls from everyday predation that the hoi poloi were only too willing to forget.
But some part of her still knows how to have fun. Even fun that doesn’t involve punching bad guys in the head. She’s a shameless flirt, a fan of beach expeditions and fancy cocktails, and an enthusiast of strange models of car, even after all these years. In short, she loves life, from the simplest little things to the highest ideals, and she’ll kick anyone’s butt who gets in her way.
Skills | Powers: All by herself, Kit is a crack reporter and a pretty good writer, an excellent driver, schooled in interrogation, a gymnist, an accomplished martial artist, and a pretty good detective. She has considerable resistance to hypnotism and mind-control, thanks to the Red Panda’s training. When she’s wearing the squirrel suit, she has access to a myriad of technologies. The static shoes, managed with controls in the gauntlets, let her walk up walls like streets. Her uniform is woven through with magic-resistant alloys that both hide her from spells and block many magical attacks, and is also insulated against extreme temperatures and energy attacks. Her goggles have infrared and night-vision settings, though she doesn’t much use them. The suit comes equipped with retractable gliding membranes that let her defy gravity in a controlled fashion, more or less. Her cowl is fitted with a voice-throwing device known as the ventriloquator. There are advantages to marrying a mad scientist.
First Person Sample: [The image is a bit off center and wobbly, as Kit's accustomed to radio communication as a high tech, superscience solution. Still, the redhead in the hooded mask and goggles is basically visible. And looks generally irritated.]
Okay. So I kinda get this alternate worlds thing. I hate them, but I get it. I've had this problem before. But when I've run up against some other universe, it's been a different take on the world I know. Up is purple and sandwiches have corned beef on the outside or what have you, but the people and the history I know are there, if screwy. This? This is not that.
So, is anyone there? Boss, I'm sure you'd have found me already, but just in case. Doctor C? John? Grey Fox? Heck, I'll take Baboon McSmoothie. ...Don't take that as too much of a compliment, Man of a Thousand Faces. It just means I'll only break nine hundred and seventy of them if you annoy me.
...And yes, maybe I did just announce myself to any of costumed goonie birds and Rotzi thugs, if they're around. To you I say, neener neener neener, you've never got me before and you won't now. Squirrel out.
Third Person Sample: “Baxter!”
“Congratulations, Editor Pearly. You got the right room today.”
The portly little man barreled into her office, reeking of cigar smoke and newsprint, as was his wont. “Baxter, I wanna know why half my staff is up to their eyebrows in the Preston family story and the other half is eating doughnuts.”
Kit batted her eyelashes winningly. She did it from under a somewhat silly hat that was barely hiding the bruises she’d picked up pulling the last heir to the Preston fortune out of her bedroom right before their summer home went up in some pretty impressive fireworks. Fortunately, the Chronicle staff were used to more eccentricity from their deputy editor than an unbecoming hat indoors. “The doughnuts are a present, Mr. Pearly. Don’t you worry, now. I made sure there were a few Bismarks in there for you.”
“I’m not here to talk about doughnuts, Baxter!”
“Your loss. I stole your staff, boss, to cover the biggest story in town in the kind of depth none of the other papers are going to bother with. Let me keep my shovel just a little longer and you can have a big batch of buried treasure splashed all over the front page.”
The editor looked ready to bite through his cigar. “Stop mixing your metaphors, Baxter. What are you digging for? What’s gonna move those papers? Explosions are already pretty good copy, you know.”
Kit grinned. She was entirely aware these days of the power of her smile, and she tried to use it judiciously. “Yeah, yeah, the story’s already got all the violence you needed, and all the scandal, with the Preston sisters and their mysterious beaux...”
“I know that look...”
“I should hope so, after all these years.”
“Spill the beans, Baxter. Who’s the young man the younger Miss Preston walked out on that kind of money for just to spite her sister?”
“The Prime Minster’s nephew.”
“The Prime Minister’s--” Sputtering took over from words for a bit.
“So, didja get a doughnut?”
“I got two doughnuts, Baxter. I do still seem to be the editor around here. That’s what it says on my door, doesn’t it?”
“Some day, Mr. Pearly,” Kit warned, leaning back in her chair with her hands behind her head. “I’m gonna come in early with a few of the newsies and switch all the nameplates. And then where will you be?”
“The broom closet, if you’re making the calls. Get that story on my desk before lunch, Baxter.”
“Of course, Mr. Pearly. Bye-bye now.”
Marks:
W for Wrath
P for Pride
