Down, down in an earlier round...

SO. Peyton's power is VERBAL ALCHEMY. What does this mean? Well, Peyton can turn one object into another just by speaking it, usually by “NOUN into a NOUN”. This does not at all work on mammals or reptiles, and it’s best employed with small-scale things, like a teapot into money or a chair into an AK-47. Changing, say, a building into a sofa would exhaust her to the point of collapse (and kill everyone in the building; she can’t transform them but she can crunch them) and transmuting say, an entire city, would kill her.

So.

I. Can she ever mess with your stuff?

II. Do you want to be personally sought after in some way? As in "Oh Peyton, can you please turn this pile of tic tacs into a photon canon" sort of thing. Yeah, this is more for plottage than anything else.

PLAYER
NAME: Sara
JOURNAL: asphinxiated
IM: asphinxiatedidea
E-MAIL: sphinxingintongues@googlemail.com

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Peyton Riley | The Ventriloquist II
FANDOM: DC Comics
CHRONOLOGY: Detective Comics #844

BACKGROUND:
Growing up in a city like Gotham is hardly a cake walk. Growing up as the mafia princess of the Irish mob? Even less so. Peyton Riley was born to Sean and his wife on a cold morning in September as the only child to one of Gotham’s slyest mob bosses and his prissy lady love. For all appearances, Peyton entered a world of privilege and wealth; she was sent to the best academies, she wore the best clothing, she attended the best socialite parties. But under the surface thickness, Peyton was a haunted and unhappy girl. Sheltered to an oppressive level, her time was structured down to the minute by her father. The family business, after all, was a lethal one, and Sean, always the mother hen, couldn’t risk his baby girl getting hurt. Close friends were a rarity, and the most consistent companions she could find were her mother’s prized ocelots. There was something poetic about that image, of beauty and grace trapped behind glass, condemned to loneliness. Something that Peyton could relate to. And so for Peyton, the price of wealth and power was her freedom; a pattern that would repeat throughout the years.

It was during her first socialite “debut” into Gotham’s higher society when Peyton met Thomas Elliot. The ladder wasn’t an easy climb; despite Sean Riley’s inexhaustible funds and many business facades, the smell of new money and shady dealings reeked throughout the scintillating company of the upper crust. But misery loves company. Peyton recognized a sadness and loneliness within Tommy that was not unlike her own; she connected to him, drew him into conversation, and soon the two privileged progeny merged into a couple.

The relationship was relatively smooth, despite Marla Elliot’s displeasure over her son dating a criminal’s daughter. Perhaps Thomas pursued the relationship not in spite of but because of his overbearing mother’s disapproval. The two were engaged in a romantic relationship for over a year, during a time when both finished their undergraduate studies. Peyton, in all her optimism, took this romance at face value; her devotion to Elliot blinded her from any potential manipulative intent he could be harboring. Such was a mistake she never made again, not after Tommy.

It was a January evening, the kind that had slush rather than snow littered about the ground. The day previous, during a outing with her beau, Peyton had listened to Tommy’s woes of monetary dependence on his mother and his aspirations of medical school. She offered to talk with Marla, noting how she could “pour on the sugar” if need be. He agreed it couldn’t hurt, and so the following day he took her to the Elliot estate. Thomas hadn’t anticipated that Marla would make the first move; she had called the family solicitor to officially exile Thomas from the Elliot fortune. Upon this smugly delivered revelation to her son, Marla was promptly suffocated to death. Peyton, who had been craftily eavesdropping, followed the lawyer out along the slick winding road from the Elliot manor. Aggressively bolting her car into his, she lured the lawyer out of his vehicle. And ran right into him. The mess was easily cleaned up, after a call to her daddy’s mobsters. They would, after all, do anything for the Boss’ little girl. Although not explicitly stated, Peyton had murdered with such ease and determination that it begs the question if this was her first murder. However, such is a mystery for her earlier years. Upon returning back to Thomas, Peyton informed him of what she’d done for him. The funeral of Marla Elliot was held in the following week.

Not even an hour after the funeral, Thomas Elliot abandoned her for Paris, his last words to her ending with a bold-faced threat.

It’s likely that Peyton didn’t pursue revenge, not because she couldn’t (not with the Riley mob at her disposal and its connections in Europe), but because she was too heartbroken to do so. Thomas was the first significant person she had connected to outside the family business.

The second was Matthew Atkins. Matt was another socialite sort; best friends with the illustrious Bruce Wayne, a notable patron of the arts, and something of a roguish playboy. He enjoyed his fast lane life a little too much, but Peyton didn’t care. Unlike the other socialites she faced, unlike Marla Elliot, Matt didn’t judge Peyton on the basis of her birth. And perhaps because of that, she fell in love with him. This was the escape, the meaning she had been looking for, and Matthew was simply enamored with Peyton. Soon enough, they had even announced their intention to be wed; all Matt had to do (ever the romantic) was ask Peyton’s father for her hand.

Except Sean Riley had other ideas. Like the warring kingdoms of ancient days, the mobs of Gotham were constantly edging at each other’s territory and biting at new ways to control the city. The Irish section was in a heated rivalry with Gotham’s Italian gang, and Sean Riley was determined to ride this out with the optimal gain on his side by forging a union between the two factions. So without his daughter’s consent, or even awareness, he betrothed Peyton to Johnny Sabatino. Matt protested this, seeking Sean immediately to demand the honor of marrying Peyton.

He was released from intensive care three weeks later. Sean admittedly admired the boy’s courage and devotion to his daughter, and gifted Atkins with an eighteen year old bottle of Irish whiskey as a notion of his high opinion. But he wasn’t giving up Peyton. Matt sought little comfort from anything else other than alcohol after that. Nearly ten years later, he’d die by a rather nasty case of head trauma at the hands of a partner in a tiki man costume who was into illicit business with him. The bizarre homicide would be solved by some jerk named Edward Nygma, but that’s another story.

Her marriage with Johnny was not a happy, loving one. Johnny was spoiled and reckless, more fond of sleazing around Gotham than his actual duties, and arrogant without any business sense. More often than not, it was Peyton who sealed the deals and saved his ass, and that did not sit well with Johnny. They were both locked into a marriage that neither wanted, but whereas Peyton took this with a stoic grace, Johnny just took it out on his wife. It wasn’t long before Johnny had the moronic idea to rip off Scarface by fifty grand over a weapons deal, which got them both a private audience with Ventriloquist and Scarface. Peyton eased out of danger through her charm, and saved her husband from a painful death, citing that “a scared hood works harder than a dead one”. The price was a clean one: Scarface and Wesker took thirty percent of whatever the Sabatinos took in. The scare cleaned up Johnny a bit; with Peyton’s guidance, they took nearly half of Gotham’s drug trade racket and frequently sold the highest of quality weapons to Gotham’s more celebrity criminal element. Johnny kept his word to Scarface; never once did he attempt to cheat the mobster.

But as time moved on and Scarface’s empire began to crumble, Johnny decided to take his fate into his own hands. Sean Riley started to regret choosing Gotham’s first mob’s little prince as his successor; and he regretted it even more when Sean showed up to his bar, The Shamrock. Two rounds for the bodyguards, and one shot to the neck took Sean Riley out of existence. Johnny only had Peyton to deal with. As a Catholic, Johnny wasn’t keen on the idea of divorce; especially since murder was so much cheaper. He dragged Peyton to one Sean Riley’s old complex buildings, the kind he used to house criminals and masks that were suffering from a low. As Peyton screamed her vows of revenge on Johnny, he shot her once in the face.

Caught between life and death, Peyton fought to survive. She was always a fighter, after all, and the sheer desire for vengeance pushed air into her lungs. She heard two more shots from the floor above. Her mind jumped to Johnny, hoping he was still in the building, demanding another chance at finishing him. It took her thirty minutes to crawl out of the room she’d nearly died in, and even more to ascend to the floor above without losing consciousness. When she stumbled into the room she thought she heard shots from, she saw two bodies. One was Arnold Wesker’s, the Ventriloquist. The other was Scarface, his puppet.

His very loquacious puppet. Dissociative Identity Disorder can remain dormant for years, perhaps even for one’s entire life time, but scientific evidence indicates that a traumatizing event can ignite this disorder within a person’s mind. And Peyton definitely heard the puppet talking to her. Broken, betrayed, and missing most of her face, Peyton saw herself reflected in Scarface’s shattered visage. Wesker had been murdered by Warren the White Shark, in an attempt to frame the currently reformed Harvey Dent. But Scarface lived on in Peyton’s embrace. Finally, she had a man that she could control, after years of playing the puppet to other people.

After months of plastic surgery, Peyton dedicated herself to learning ventriloquism and plotting about her comeback into Gotham’s gangster scene. Despite the phenomenal facial reconstruction, Peyton had kept a small momento; her right eye had been shot out of her head during Johnny’s murder attempt. She kept an opaque glass one surrounded by a small grotesque of mutilated skin—but such is usually covered by her hair. A little secret behind the curtain, in a way; a reflection of what made her into what she is. And she was the new Ventriloquist.

Her debut back into the crime scene went off with a bang. Well, a little more than that, but when you did up the rotting corpse of your predecessor to make an entrance, you’re aiming for ambition. And Peyton was a hell of an ambitious woman now. Her new rackets were steadily growing successes, for Peyton was always smooth with it came to charming the right people and she was undeniably clever, but not everyone agreed with her assuming the Ventriloquist mantle. Especially masks. Especially Harley Quinn. Especially when hiring Harley Quinn to do a few jobs. But in the bigger scheme of things, that small complication hadn’t greatly bothered Peyton and Mr. Scarface; they had a growing empire, after all. No use getting irate over a little loss in loyalty. Especially in the wake of Black Mask’s earlier demise, there was loads of instability and opportunity in the Gotham Underground. After a few unsuccessful team ups with other masks, Peyton decided to drop the community angle and go solo again. With her trusty bodyguard Moose, Peyton and Scarface were ready to enact the girl’s deepest craving: revenge.

She kidnapped him from one of his usual haunts; Johnny owned a theatre, and his stage presented Zatanna that evening. Ever the sleaze bucket, Johnny harbored high hope of hitting it off with the Mistress of Magic that evening, and he was lured into her dressing room by her sweet beckoning. But really, Peyton didn’t assume the Ventriloquist for nothing. After Johnny had been properly roughed up, she left with him—with Bruce Wayne in tow, as a security measure. It seems her exit was a little too showy for safe taste, and she needed to take a little insurance.

But oh, Peyton remembered Bruce Wayne. She remembered who his friends were. She remembered Matthew, who had died during the time of Peyton’s own transformation. But sentimentality never got a girl anywhere, and it wasn’t long before that little reunion ended up with Wayne tied to an explosive fake Scarface doll and left to die as she ran off with her darling ex-husband and his new pair of cement shoes.

Shame about that pesky Batman thing, really. Even more of a shame that Zatanna was keeping watch the whole time.

They met her on her boat, just as she was about to dump Johnny for good. Despite Zatanna’s attempts to sway her from Scarface’s grasp—all of which was an act on Peyton’s part, the girl was born for the stage—her urge to kill Johnny and avenge herself and her father won over everything. Even over her own life. Johnny had managed out of his fetters and attempted to choke Peyton with the rope; but she was determined to see him dead. So she threw herself herself overboard, with Johnny unwittingly in tow, and embraced the depths of Gotham’s cold, dark bay.

But Peyton Riley has a knack for surviving even the most dramatic of predicaments.

PERSONALITY:
Peyton has always been a charmer. Her reoccurring nickname, Sugar, is a testament to that. She’s sly and clever, but is never inclined to exhibit this unnecessarily. Unlike other Gothamites, Peyton has no need to hoard the spotlight; her greatest concern has always been and will always be freedom. And her new persona allows her to access that in ways she had never experienced before. Along with her charisma is her noted ability to persuade; the girl can talk her way around and reason with irate, trigger-happy gangsters. Beautiful, elegant, quick-witted, and extraordinarily smooth, Peyton is an extremely dangerous mobster. She’s been known to get what she wants through her wily ways, but if that doesn’t work on the more obstinate types, she won’t hold back on the Tommy Gun or the AK-47.

Peyton knows how to organize. She’s lived with gangsters all her life; she has the street smarts of the criminal world and the glamour and elegance of the socialite one. But to her? They’re two of the same. She knows how to present herself and how to work with other people. Most importantly, she knows how to communicate. Such is evident with her first encounter with Thomas Elliot; she broke his indifferent façade with a few well-chosen words that penetrated his insecurity. Her intuition and insight into people is likely what makes her so charming; she just knows how to work with them. Perhaps because of her suffocated childhood, Peyton is extremely talented at working around a situation without outwardly appearing to do such. Subtly, when it is necessary, is one of her talents. But with subtly comes the knowledge of knowing when to turn up the theatrics, and Peyton maintains quite the flair for that as well.

On the other side of the spectrum, Scarface, now a projected facet of her personality, embodies her wrath and cruelty. Through him, Peyton exposes her sadism, ad her pent-up aggression that had been building throughout the years of her early life. Her relationship with Scarface is a rather complex one; unlike the relationship between Scarface and Wesker, Peyton is (for the most part) treated as an equal to Scarface. She’s more assertive with him, and often speak more than he does (something that was unheard of with Wesker). Another rather important detail to the Scarface/Ventriloquist connection: Peyton actually believes Scarface loves her. Their relationship, in that manner, is quasi-romantic; Scarface can become irrationally jealous and even abusive when he thinks Peyton’s making eyes with other men. Of course, given the fact that Peyton is actually controlling Scarface (there has been dubious mentions of magic involved on Zatanna’s part, but a close reading indicates that her remarks are intentionally ambiguous and more metaphorical than not), Peyton is actually enacting her own twisted fantasy of romance; the very sort she’s been denied her whole life. Despite being a strong, independent and ambitious woman, Peyton’s tragedy is her misconception of love and control. She sees them as two of the same; she thinks Scarface loves her because she makes him love her, she makes him react in the manner she wants. However, Peyton appears to have poor—or at least inconsistent—insight on this singular matter. To her perspective, Scarface is a very real persona. At least, most of the time. There have been hinted moments of clarity and—given her exquisite acting skills—Peyton tends to say whatever she needs to say in the right place at the right time. It’s likely that she’s willingly fallen prey to delusion, but her subconscious is more than aware of what’s really going on. It could be that she knows, at least some of the time, exactly what she’s doing; but this way she has the power she’s always sought to wield.

The most striking thing of this woman’s psychology is her apparent manifestation of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Before her near-death experience, Peyton had always held a collected, cool demeanor with both feet securely on the ground. Now she lingers half-absorbed by her own fantasies and half-aware of the actuality of her situation. The disorder seems to progress each time she appears on Gotham’s scene. Along with her fragmented multiple personality disorder (culminating, of course, in the form of Scarface), Peyton’s lack of concern and appreciation for human life indicates a severe step towards a sociopathic nature. She’s an extremely vengeful human being who utterly lacks compassion (except for Scarface) and her warped sense of justice rules her every action. It’s important to note that Peyton is aware how she’s played the victim before. It’s also important to note that she still holds the men who ruined her life fully accountable. Peyton does not recognize her own passivity in her past; she blames her ruin on other people. And only through Scaface’s recognition of this—only through the act of playing a man—does Peyton outwardly blame her men. If she feels that someone’s betrayed her (and she is oh so touchy about that) then that poor, sad individual is a shuffle a way from a dirt nap. But as venomous as she can be, Peyton call really pour on the sweetness when the time calls for it.

CLASS: Victim turned villain, Peyton Riley still knows how to pull the pity act. But really, she will bury you in bullets, so don’t fall for those crocodile tears of hers. She’s a lot more vicious than her predecessor Wesker.
SUPERHERO NAME: The Ventriloquist
ALTER EGO: Peyton Riley | a badass lady mobster
POWER: > NON CANON POWER: Verbal alchemy. Peyton can turn one object into another just by speaking it, usually by “NOUN into a NOUN”. This does not at all work on mammals or reptiles, and it’s best employed with small-scale things, like a teapot into money or a chair into an AK-47. Changing, say, a building into a sofa would exhaust her to the point of collapse (and kill everyone in the building; she can’t transform them but she can crunch them) and transmuting say, an entire city, would kill her.

A Note: N/A

COMMUNITY POST SAMPLE:
[There is a small clearing of throat—a lady’s delicate cough—before someone speaks.]

Sugar here ain’t no Annie Apple, so yeh chumps betta’ lay off. ‘Dere ain’t no way in hell I’d letta jump in a boondoggle wit’ lotta ya. She ain’t got time for no soda jerks.

Shh, now Mr. Scarface, that’s hardly a way to make friends in a strange new world. Not good business sense. Come on, baby, don’t be like that.

Shut it, ya broad! Don’t think I won’t—oooh. Oh yeah, tha’s it… Righ’ ‘dere…

[Scratching is heard, the slight sound of fingernails against wood. Mr. Scarface doesn’t speak again.]

My apologies. The boss doesn’t like funny business, and I can’t say I blame him. It’s that witch, isn’t it? Zatanna. Last thing I saw before dear old Johnny--well—heh. Thank God we didn’t die.

But this isn’t Gotham. Looks a lot like New York City. I didn’t really get my figures straight before I was whisked in and out. So can someone help a girl out?

THIRD PERSON:

She sat still in the car, her hands clutching the wheel with a pianist’s intensity. Strong, yet delicate in grasp. Words that described her well enough. Her good eye sought one figure, one particular form, one traitorous shape. She had been waiting, car stalled in the warm, stale air of the evening, for not even fifteen minutes before she saw him. Confident in his ignorance, striding out of the sleazy, side-street bar as if he owned the place, as if he owned the very city he sullied with his presence. She saw him.

And the Peyton dropped her foot on acceleration.

The hood pulverized his hipbone on impact, and his body flew up against the front window, pleading with gravity as he bounced on the roof and fell off behind the car. Poor schmuck probably broken his legs from the fall. Perhaps a shoulder, too. Peyton smiled into her rearview mirror. And reversed the car. The sickening rise ad fall of the back wheels squealed in harmony with the dying man’s screams.

“See, Mr. Scarface? Baby? I told you I’d take care of the rat.” Peyton flipped her hair, her arm moving in a fluid motion as she turned to face the wooden doll safely buckled in the passenger seat.

The man wasn’t going to own anything now, not anything except a six-by-six dirt pit. Just the way Mr. Scarface liked it.

ooc || This is an application for Peyton Riley at capeandcowl