Rosalie Harrington

[Euphoria]

OoC: Hypocrisy warning! Yep, I'm posting an unfinished character. Perhaps you guys can take a look at these parts while I finish the bio ^.^

IC:

Name: Rosalie (Rose) Harrington

Theme Song: Tears Don't Fall - Bullet for my Valentine

Sex: Female

Race: Vampire, to an extent.

Age 29 officially, although she looks a couple of years younger, cursed to appear that age forever.

Height: 5’ 6”

Eyes: An enticingly conspicuous scarlet. When Rosalie is hungry, her eyes will look completely pristine and piercing. When her thirst is satiated they look much kinder, and the scarlet within almost ripples.

Weight: 92lbs

Hair: Rosalie holds her hair in a thick bob which covers her ears, but doesn’t touch her shoulders. It is completely black, except for the few strands of shock white throughout. Her bangs extend just past her eyes, almost impairing vision.

Weapons: Rosalie is an absolute treat in this category. She has two weapons: her ever-sharp fangs which can slice through any manner of things, and a poison-tipped dagger. Rosalie positively detests her little knife, mainly because it is fused into her wrist, making her incapable of using her right hand for purposes other than stabbing. The knife’s hilt was dismantled before being stuck in Rosalie, so now there is only a blade that extends several inches past her clenched fist. Her hand is always in this position when attacking.

Despite her hatred for this weapon, it is Rosalie’s most common. Her rare disease (more on that later) makes any form of close-combat impossible, except for stealth. Often the vampire finds inserting her fangs in her victim too hard to do swiftly, so an inconspicuous stab with the mildly paralysing (lose control of arms and legs for a second – enough for Rosalie to begin the draining process) dagger is much easier to pull off.

The blade is made in such a way that it can be inserted and pulled out again swiftly, by means of a small groove in the blade that allows blood to drain out. The dagger is extremely thin, with the two edges blunted for she has no need to slash. The tip is however extremely sharp. One prick of the blade will open a nasty gash.

Armour: None. Armour would slow her down, which is a risk she simply cannot afford to take.

Strengths: Rosalie moves inhumanly fast, so fast that she can outrun the swiftest Olympic athlete three times over. She also has the ability of foresight, which allows her to glimpse her opponent’s action milli-seconds before it happens. She has extremely quick reflexes and thought processes, and never needs to think twice. She has just about learned to curb her enthusiasm for blood, not something a vampire can normally do. This means that if she wounds a foe without time to finish them off she won’t become distracted by the hot, sticky red liquid tantalizingly oozing out of them…much.

One of her best vampiric traits is spontaneous regeneration. This means that when Rosalie is cut or hurts herself in any way the wound heals in a matter of seconds. The one exception is the dagger that is fused to her wrist. She is still wounded there because the cut can’t close over. If something of a considerable size becomes lodged in her body she can’t regenerate.

Finally, Rosalie doesn't require sleep. She can stay awake for years without feeling even faintly lethargic. This means that she is always completely alert, except for under one circumstance which is explained below.

Weaknesses: Osteogenesis Imperfecta (or Brittle Bone Disease) has stalked Rosalie longer than she can remember. It means she can hardly take a punch, a kick, throw, or even punch something herself without fracturing a bone. Because of this she is always afraid of being around people, just in case she experiences the crashing pain. Rosalie doesn’t die when a bone breaks, nor is she hurt for any period of time. Her vampiric regeneration means that the bone heals almost instantaneously. It does cause her a great deal of pain however, and the bone is weaker once mended for a few hours.

Rosalie is extremely susceptible to a few other things, which are widely known to kill vampires in the human world. The first is destroying one of two things: her head and her heart. Rosalie can’t regenerate a head, she simply dies. Likewise, when she is stabbed with anything in the heart (Rosalie abhors the old myths) she will die. Any form of holy thing – water, crucifix, magic- will do a great deal of damage, but not necessarily kill her.

Another vampire myth that holds true (and is probably her greatest weakness) is her affliction to sunlight. It won’t immediately turn her to dust as some scholars believe, but she will receive a nasty burn if her skin is in contact for too long. These burns are permanent.

Being a vampire, Rosalie requires blood to survive. If she is extremely thirsty Rosalie will be jumpy, distracted and susceptible to surprise attacks. She will also have weaker attacks and be quite a bit slower. Thirst is for Rosalie like exhaustion to humans. She needs blood about once every weak to survive, but to retain her strength a meal is necessary every two or three days. For your average vampire this thirst is extremely managable, but for Rosalie, it is very hard to catch a truly evil victim every few days. This sometimes leads to extreme tiredness and loss of concentration. Even when she is dying of thirst, she won't allow herself to feed on the innocent.

Skills/Magic

Foresight: Rosalie can briefly gaze into the future, although it is not like it sounds. Instead of zoning out into a foretelling reverie, a blurred, bright green clone of her opponent will appear and show Rosalie what her foe is about to do. Foresight is always active and distracted Rosalie at first. She can now implement it without losing focus on the present.

Foresight is not an innate ability for vampires, it is actually incredibly rare. In only a few cases has a vampire developed an extra ability outside the norm. These supernatural abilities aren’t completely random though; in Rosalie’s other life she had quick reactions and was incredibly empathic. It was these things that determined the nature of her power.

Spontaneous Regeneration: Put simply, this means Rosalie can almost instantly heal herself. This trait is explained in more depth in the 'Strengths' section.

Appearance: Rosalie is, like all vampires, simply gorgeous. She makes up for her short stature with perfect ivory skin and an angelic face, which is in odd contrast to her malevolent eyes. Rosalie’s lips are a ghostly pink and her nose is sharp, without looking hooked. Her eyebrows are very light and evidently heavily maintained.

She has a very slight frame, which her simple clothes almost hang off of. She wears sharp-pointed boots that reach up just below her knee. A tight-fitting set of leather trousers is tucked into them before they meet a white tank-top and a black leather jacket. All of the clothes are slightly ripped from mishandling the dagger and she wears a simple little bat charm around her neck; ironic, considering how much she detests the old myths.

Finally, she has a pair of thick-rimmed square sunglasses which she wears when in cognito. After a while she realised that humans were scared of her devilish ruby eyes, so she took to disguising them when in human contact, which turned out to be a lot. Her odd vintage glasses are often met with judgemental giggles and whispers, but Rose doesn’t care.

Personality: Every minute of every day Rosalie is atoning for the unforgivable crimes she committed in her undead life. For that reason she is poisonously sweet to everyone she meets. She is never particularly emotional, but will go completely out of her way to help someone that deserves it.

Rose has an absurdly poignant moral compass. Being a vampire, she needs human blood to sustain her existence. But she found that she couldn’t bring herself to drain the life from people that had done nothing wrong. She is constantly judging people, assessing them to see if they deserve to live or not. If they fail Rosalie’s evaluation she will follow them and kill them discreetly, mirthlessly.

To people that ‘deserve to live’ she is the best friend anyone could ask for. Kind, forgiving, impossibly patient, she is the ultimate ‘Go to’ girl. She is, ultimately, uninterested in the minor tribulations of her friends’ lives, but she would never let them know they were nothing more than a tool of her penance.

She is desperately alone, but won’t let herself fall in love for two reasons: she doesn’t feel she deserves those feelings of complete bliss that accompany love, and she couldn’t bear to go through that spiralling pain that she has felt one too many times before. She often argues with herself on whether or not to let herself, and has decide that if someone falls in love with her, she will oblige and reciprocate. In that situation she would be letting someone experience the ultimate happiness.

Biography: Note: The following events occurred in Rosalie’s human life. The story will inform you when the change happens.

“You know you mean the world to me, right?” The sickly-sweet interrogation had been occurring almost non-stop since the engagement. Rosalie cautiously flung her arms around her fiancé James as she awaited an answer.

“Of course.” It was moaned, in a mock, loving way.

The bear-hug tightened as Rosalie registered the answer. “So you’re prepared to do anything to make me happy?”

“Anything at all,” James replied kindly.

“Well the wedding is in a week and-”

The phone rang in the other room.

“Hold that thought,” she chimed, gliding into the kitchen. She picked up the phone with a delighted flourish.

“Is this Rosalie Harrington?” an unfamiliar voice asked. It was clearly male, but squeaky and with a sharp edge to it; probably just another caterer or a florist.

“This is she; can I help you?”

“Indeed you can, my dear.” There was an awkward pause. Rosalie twiddled her thick hair between her fingers, listening to the laboured breathing of the man.

“Don’t go to your wedding,” he finally coughed out. The easily-scared girl felt her heart plunge. What was the man talking about? She hadn’t the faintest idea. She did however know that he was trouble, what she had previously mistaken for sharpness was actually malevolence.

“What are you talking about?”

The line was already dead. The phone slipped out of her grasp as her knees buckled. The edges of her vision blurred, fear taking over. She barely glimpsed James flitting from the other room before crashing on the kitchen floor.

*

“Are you okay, Rosie?” It was James. Rosalie’s eyes immediately snapped open, taking in the sterile hospital room. Realization struck her like a lightning-bolt, along with a blunt pain in her forearm. James caught the nervous glance to her fragile limb. “Don’t worry, you’re fine.”

Rosalie thanked the heavens she wouldn’t be wearing a cast on her wedding day as she rearranged her thoughts. “How long ago did I fall?” she finally croaked.

“A few hours ago. The doctors said it was shock more than anything that knocked you out.”

For a second Rosalie relived the heart-plummeting moment: evil whispers down the phone-line, prophesying doom and regret on her wedding day. She had been terrified, traumatised. Her reverie was burst suddenly by a question from James:

“What happened anyway? And don’t lie to me, I know you too well.”

Rose chuckled before she began the story. “You know that I ran into the kitchen to fetch the phone. Well, it was someone I didn’t recognise that had called. He sounded evil, like he was going to hurt someone. Anyway, he told me that I shouldn’t go to the wedding.” She paused introspectively. “Come to think of it, blacking out might have been a tad melodramatic!”

She looked at James to gauge his reaction. It wasn’t the humorous smile that she had anticipated, but a sombre, almost vengeful, frown.

“What’s the matter?” she asked lightly, fluffing her pillow a little. “Surely you’re not upset by something as insignificant as that?”

“I’m surprised that you weren’t more upset!” He had placed an iron grasp on Rosalie’s forearm, and was breathing considerably more heavily. “This is our wedding day. Nothing is allowed to go wrong.”

Rose weakly replaced James’ hand and stroked his cheek. “And nothing will go wrong. It was just some drunken idiot that had heard about the wedding from a friend, or something like that.”

“You’re probably right,” James admitted. “Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again. Enough of that though; do you think you’re ready to be discharged?”

The woman replied with a crisp nod and a smile. “We’ve wasted precious minutes of preparation time!”

*

The sprawling cathedral was alive with flowers. The scent – heavenly – filled every crevice of the elegant building, and their subtle colours were garbed like dresses on the pews. Guests had started arriving an hour ago: men wearing hastily rented tuxedos; women in formal but beautiful dresses. The minister wore the customary black shawl and a white dog-collar, and held a lovingly bound bible. The smile on his face seemed to light up the room, but it was nothing compared to that of the man standing beside him. James’ thick blond hair had been parted in the middle and held down with several cans of hairspray. His white tuxedo wasn’t a rental, and was garnished with a frilly pink rose. The bride’s-maids stood a few feet away from him, each holding a small bouquet of the same pink flowers between their white-gloved hands. Everything was perfect, except for the absence of one Miss Rosalie Harrington.

“Let go of me!” Rose screamed hatefully at her captor. She was swung like a leaf over the man’s broad, heavily garbed shoulder.

His face was veiled by a pitch black balaclava, similar to the gloves he wore. There were no slits for eyes, but there was one for his malicious abyss of a mouth. Everything about him was black, especially his demeanour. “Shut it, woman!” he bawled. The cry didn’t sound human, it had been distorted by some piece of machinery. It sent a chill up her spine.

“You’re going to break something!” she squealed. “I’m fragile.”

The man laughed a demonic roar. It turned high, then soft, amplified and disappeared. He dropped her gently – horizontally - on the damp ground outside the cathedral, laughing as Rose fretted over her dirty dress. “You need some help prioritizing,” he chuckled, launching a violent kick at Rosalie’s shin. It broke with a sickening crack and a blood-curdling scream.

“I hate you!” The shriek was out before Rosalie could think. The balaclava contorted with a quick grin, twisting the entire hood into something other-worldly but for a second.

“Is that so?” he whispered back. “You don’t know hatred, little girl. Hate is the feeling of wanting to take a knife and plunge it into a person’s heart; could you do that? Could you take a life without a second thought, a hint of remorse? Could you?”

Rose stared down at the wet earth, defeated. She couldn’t do that, not even to a monster like him. She could, however, put up a fight. She looked the man right in the eyes, her lips little more than a taciturn line. “What do you want with me?” she spat.

The man didn’t answer for a moment. He turned away from Rose and looked up at the sky. “Can you feel the rain?” he whispered. “I can’t. Every drop that falls, every whiff of pungent cakes, every whisp of sweet, passionate music, it’s nothing to me. Yes, I can sense them – more than you can, by the way – but I can’t feel them, not the emotion that accompanies them. I’m a shell, a ghost. Perhaps you can restore my feeling?”

Rosalie was a sudden mess of unspoken questions. What is he? What will I become? She stared downward again, too terrified, too emotional to look her captor in the face. “What are you going to do to me?” she prayed through solemn tears.

The man laughed again, but it wasn’t from humour. It was insanity. “I’m going to sire you.”

*

She was strapped to a table: cold, hard, bone dry. She felt all the pain and discomfort, and she savoured it. From what the demon said, they might well be her last feelings at all. She couldn’t hear him, and the pain in her ankle prevented too much concentration. There was a silky opaque blindfold veiling her eyes, and her hands and legs were tethered to the table with the same material. She had tried tearing it; no use.

“Soaking up your last moments of feeling, I hope?” The voice had broken past insanity, creeping towards the very brink of a mental breakdown. The demon obviously had no limits. She couldn’t tell where it was coming from. “Now, as well as making you my little partner, I’m going to be conducting an experiment on your body.”

Rosalie’s blood froze.

The man giggled again and resumed talking. “I’m going to insert a knife into your wrist mid-transformation, just to see what happens. Fun, no?”

Rose pulled once again on her lashings, unleashing a violent scream as more pain crept into her ankle.

“Don’t try to move.”

“I’ll be your partner!” she shouted madly. “Just don’t do that experiment!”

“But, my dear, only the worthy can become vampires.”

Rosalie’s body went limp with a sharp pain in her neck. Next her head was being raised forcefully by the man, and a hot substance was trickling down her throat. She spat it out. The man grabbed her nose and sent a greater stream of liquid into her mouth. She resisted the urge to swallow, but it was in vain. The transformation had begun.

“You’re going to feel pain. Lots of pain.”

*

Blood. Feed. Kill. Blood. Must drink. Kill. Kill.

There was something in the room, pulsating with pathetic fear and expectation. Rosalie stalked towards it, her wedding dress stained with blood. “Must kill. Drink. Feed.”

The man gulped, pointed out the door into harsh sunlight. Rose could smell the fear in its blood, it had to die. She launched forward at the beast, intent on biting it, but something stopped her. There was a look of pure agony on the man’s face. She looked down. A razor-sharp dagger was protruding out of his stomach. She grinned malevolently. “Kill.”

Rose revealed the dagger with a fluid movement and grinned at it. She laughed at her own demonic reflection: gormless, rock-hard scarlet eyes sparkled back at her. She grabbed the man’s throat with her good hand, making sure not to press so hard as to break her hand. She traced the line of a heart in front of the man’s veiled face, before creating a sharp nick in it. A single drop of blood fell from the cloth. She watched it splash on the ground. She bent down and poked it with one finger, tasted it.

“No good.”

The girl snapped up in an instant and pressed harder on the man’s face with the dagger. As more and more blood poured she could feel his resistance weakening. Her grip on the throat was little more than a pinch. She moved off the face, down to the body. The wounds were miniscule, shallow, but everywhere. She could almost feel the pain emanating from him. She got lost in the work of pulverising the man, almost too lost to notice the rapid scars that had been created. “But...how?” she stammered. “It’s only been a few minutes!” She thrust the blade into the man’s shoulder, feeling a little better when a scream burst from his hidden lips. He was regaining strength; time to end it. With a casual smirk she slit open the vampire’s heart and laughed as a supernatural flame devoured his body. Only ash remained. She dusted off her hands – thoroughly peeved when she nicked her wrist, but overjoyed when it healed in seconds – and set off out the door.

She was on fire. A million tiny suns and furnaces ripped apart her skin from every angle, blocking out sight, movement. She dashed blindly for cover. Stepping inside was like an oasis from the greatest desert. Rosalie sighed uncomfortably and searched for somewhere to wait for nightfall. She was going hunting.

*

The humans would all be in their beds by now, resting, crying themselves to sleep, ignoring reality. Rosalie wasn’t. She had never gone to sleep. She lay down on the operating table and tried, but it was hopeless. She was an eternal insomniac, not that her feral mind would let her comprehend that. She thought of blood mostly as she lay there; blood trickling down her lips, her eyes splashing with satiation, the draining of colour from her victim’s face. It gave her pleasure, imagining their poignant deaths and the growth of her own strength.

But that was just a dream. Catching her prey would be much harder, especially with her new ‘weapon’. Rose sweeped off the table, spending a second to lament her tattered and bloodied dress. In a way she admired it too, the blood was a fierce red. It was strong blood. The vampire stalked out the door of the place she in, not bothering to check what it was.

The humans crowded the streets like ravenous dogs to a carcass. Rosalie was overwhelmed by the sights, the sounds, the smells; everything was heightened. Most of them gave her odd looks as she crept down the busy, lamp-lit streets, but she hissed and glared with her pulsing red eyes. They fled, dogs once again.

“Rosalie?” The woman broke out of her numb state of mindless walking. She snapped her head the direction of the sound, recognising the name. It was James. He looked distraught, but flowing with fresh blood. She contorted her evil face into something forlorn.

“James, is that you?”

The man rushed over to her. She savoured the smell as he gripped her, not too tightly. He walked her over to a nearby alley, away from the crowd.

“I’ve been looking everywhere! What happened yesterday? What’s that knife doing?I was petrified.” Rose took his hand with hers and parted his greasy hair with the other.

“Me too, sweetheart. It was that man that called me, remember? He kidnapped me, and –“ she broke off, feigning emotion. James gripped his shoulders, terror slapped across his face.

“What did he do to you?”

Rose turned away with a sob, even managing a few tears. She didn’t answer.

“What did he do to you?”

“I can’t tell you here; can we go home?”

*

The apartment seemed different, sharper. James ushered Rose towards a comfortable seat as she prepared to divulge her alibi. James ran his coarse hand over her face, wiped away her mustered tears. “Can you tell me now?”

Rose nodded with another aching sob.

“Just tell me truthfully what happened. I won’t speak, do anything, until you say the word.”

She gave a faint smile and began. “Well, I had just finished getting changed into my wedding dress when I saw something through the mirror. I turned around, but it wasn’t there. Suddenly I felt someone pick me up from behind, over his shoulder. He carried me out of the church and dropped me on the ground. He said some things – horrible things, James. Things I couldn’t bear to repeat. Then, he took me to a building I didn’t recognise. He knocked me out, but I still felt pain. So much pain, James. You have no idea of the sort of agony we can endure.

“I woke up disorientated, feeling weird, this knife was in my wrist. I noticed my captor in the corner of the room. He looked...fearful.”

James’ eyes opened incredulously, but he didn’t speak.

“I asked him what he did, but he wouldn’t tell me; he didn’t have to tell me what I am, because I know.”

“You know what happened? What? What?”

“He made me a vampire.”

James froze suddenly. He retracted his hands from Rose’s body fearfully. “A...vampire?”

“Yeah. So, I killed him. Sort of like how I’m going to kill you.”

Rosalie stood up abruptly and grinned. “Soaking up your last moments of feeling, I hope?” She let the dagger gleam in the moonlight, savouring the look of terror on James’ face. “Don’t take it personally, my love. I’m hungry.”

James started for the door, but she got there before him. Back to the door, she cackled madly and launched the dagger millimetres from James’ ear. “Feed. Kill. Kill. Drink.” James’ eyes darted to the windows, she punctured them with her blade. His scream filled the room, igniting a frantic euphoria within Rosalie. She took the dagger and stuck it concisely into his stomach, enjoying the sudden numbness of his ligaments. “You’re going to feel pain. Lots of pain.” With melodramatic relish she slithered towards James’ vulnerable neck. She simply set it on her jaws, stroking his grizzled chin one more time. Then, with pristine clarity, she bit into his throat. The blood was warm, almost bubbling. It rushed into her like a waterfall, filling her up with energy. When it was done, she dropped the rapidly cooling corpse.

Rosalie’s watery eyes mirrored the demonic grin on her face. “Miss you already, love.”

*

What were those green silhouettes? They plagued Rosalie all the time now, just seconds away from the bodies they belonged to. She didn’t understand them, didn’t want to. They plagued her nearly as much as her insatiable demonic thirst. It had been three days since she’d fed on James, and the hunger had crept up steadily on her since.

She was alone in the warehouse of her transformation, alone. The shadows hurt her head too much to go out, even at night. What’s more, images of James had started creeping into her thoughts. She had loved that man for years, and killed him in a matter of minutes. It didn’t have to be him, it could have been someone that actually deserved it. James was a good man, a honest man. What Rosalie did was unforgivable, and she would have to pay. In a way though, her act of penance wasn’t so great, now that ‘life’ was such an abomination. She didn’t care. It had to end, because of James.

It had to be painful, a blow to the heart would be too swift. In the end, she settled for melodrama. The shining dagger on her hand would do the trick; a few quick punctures from it would leave her bleeding to death.

The moon had risen a few hours ago, so Rosalie guessed it was midnight. This was when she had to do it. Steadying the dagger with practiced precision, she placed it on her left wrist and breathed deep. This was the end. She pointed the tip of the dagger into a vein, and pressed down. She didn’t stop into bone shattered and the knife could be seen through her arm. The pain was intense, nearly as great as her transformation. Apparently the man had left out the part about still feeling pain. She took the dagger out again and plunged it into another bloodied vein. Warm life-force gushed out of the wounds, making Rose’s ghostly face even paler. This really was the end.

A flash of green. Rose forgot her suicide attempt and dashed out the door to find the source. It had fled down an alley, and there was a second silhouette following it. She chased after the people, forgetting the blood that poured out of her wrist. Then she saw it. There was an enormous hulking man standing over another person. Rose could see a faint trickle of green blood that was soon to come from the victim, and she dashed over to help. Without thinking she slit the throat of the attacker with her knife, began drinking. The victim was a girl, but she couldn’t find out any more. The girl fled in an instant.

Rose wiped the blood off her face sombrely. “I know my calling,” she whispered into the night. “I’m going to live, but not like other vampires. I will live by the blood of the unworthy, the dangerous. My life will give life to others, and take it from the unrighteous. I will be good.

*

Harrington Investigations was set up a week later, in the dead of night. All the windows were tinted, to spread an air of mystery, as well as preventing Rosalie from combusting. Things took off immediately as she followed clues laid down by her police links. She got kills every few days, enough to live by. All of them deserved it.

So Rosalie spends her days researching the vile and unworthy, and her nights tracking them down. She’s miserable, but alive. After all, a miserable life is more of a penance than death could ever be. Everybody wins.

[Puck]

Here is Puck, as he has been so ordered.

All looks well, I was going to comment on how her regeneration is a bit too powerful, but after looking it over a second time I have decided that her Brittle Bone Disease is a good enough weakness to counteract the regeneration. Finish the Bio and Puck shall stamp this with his brand new stamp.

[Euphoria]

Yay!

*Dances around*

I'll return in a few months to finish her up =3

[Euphoria]

*Double-post*

BIO ALERT.

[Puck]

*STAMPS*

*APPROVED*

*Goes back to playing tales of Symphonia*

[Euphoria]

*Grumbles*

You could at least put some feeling into it >>;;

[Puck]

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG!

*APPROVED*

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!





Happy now?

[Euphoria]

Extremely ^^;

Do you plan to post in A Trick of the Light soon? Respond in teh Box :]