(no subject)

[yourunichase]

Character Name: Miss Parker
Series: The Pretender
Age: [This is important; it doesn't seem likely that a 12 year old would be a warden, for instance.]: 33
From When?: [At what point in their timeline were they brought aboard the Barge? Inmates must have just died or were about to die.] Season Two finale, just after SL 27 blew up.

Inmate/Warden: [Choose One and Say Why they're this way] Inmate. Miss Parker was making her way towards the light during the series. She had discovered the truth about the Centre murdering her mother, and was looking for a way out. But the constantly bubbling rage once more appeared when it came out that her prey's father was the one who pulled the trigger on her mother. Chasing Jared through the level of SL 27, she caused themselves and several other people including her father and her father figure to be caught in the explosion. (Or so it would be at the end of Season Two).


Abilities/Powers:: Miss Parker is a normal human, but she has been trained all of her life to be a Centre operative. She can shoot a gun, has been trained in torture techniques and “cleaner” procedures, including wet-work (despite reiterating that she's not an assassin). Was the head of Centre Security. She also speaks multiple languages including Japanese, Mandarin and French.

Personality: [You might include how they are going to react to all this] Miss Parker's personality is... difficult at best. She was never what one might call a people person. She feels the need to distance herself from everyone, which is one of the reasons that she is known only as 'Miss Parker.' A true ice princess, Parker feels the need to dehumanize the people around her, using insults so she doesn't get personally attached. Even the three most important people in her life (Jarod, Sydney and Broots) will often be called by simply their jobs or “dunderheads” or various other insults. Even the possibility of having a half-brother doesn't dissuade this. After Angelo had regressed into his mentally stunted state, Parker returned to calling him 'Cousin It,' despite the fact that she had been upset and worried for him moments prior.

As often happens with only children of men who wanted boys, Parker has adopted many stereotypic “masculine” traits into her personality and lifestyle. There is a distinct swagger to her walk, and an arrogance to the way she talks. Often she is driven to excess with smoking and drinking. She swears like a sailor, drinks like a fish and fucks like a “man”. Overconfident and competitive to a fault, she can be exceptionally aggressive. This aggressiveness is woven through her entire life, but most especially in the search for Jarod and answers.

In this search of answers, the ends will always justify the means for Parker. When attempting to find her father, she peeled skin grafts off of her arch enemy's back slowly, trying to get him to talk. She will gladly pull a gun on someone, hit them or threaten them within an inch of their lives in order to get her information. In addition to all of this, she can be vindictive and terribly cruel.

For all of her personality faults, Miss Parker is not entirely bad. When it comes to children, particularly of the motherless or female variety, she tends to have a soft spot. As someone who has deep issues based around her mother's death, she allows children in in a way that she allows very few other people. Miss Parker longs for her father's approval both personally and professionally. She demonstrates a fierce loyalty to her father as well as to her employees, Broots and Sydney, who have over time become closer then that. As Miss Parker puts it “they may be idiots, but they're my idiots.” The other thing that Miss Parker is loyal to is her mother's memory and discovering what actually happened to her. In her pursuit, she is both irrational and vicious; while some of the things she learns softens her slightly, the discovery that Jared's father killed her mother destroys all of that in an instant.

Miss Parker's mother, Catherine Parker, was a do-gooder who was determined to save all of the children of the Centre from their fate. For most of her life, Miss Parker believed that her mother had serious mental health issues and killed herself in a Center elevator. However thanks to Jared she was able to discover that her mother had been instrumental in smuggling several children out of the Centre. The night before she died, she was meant to save two more, Jarod and Timmy. The shadowy Mr. Raines destroyed Timmy's mind creating the empath Angelo and started to become suspicious of Catherine. The next day, she was murdered. In a letter discovered shortly before Miss Parker would arrive on the barge, Catherine Parker writes to Miss Parker, telling her that they would be going to Europe on the day after Catherine was found dead in the elevator. These information has started Parker questioning her trust in her father, and in the approaches that the Centre uses to conduct its business. Miss Parker was only brought in to catch Jarod after making her deal with her father that once she had done so, she would be free from the Centre and everything that went along with it. This new information has always been kept from her, and she is more determined then ever to find it.

On the barge, she's going to probably ascribe it to being hell and or Jared screwing with her once again, forcing her into a giant simulation. And she's going to be very, very pissed.


Path to Redemption: [(INMATES ONLY) Please outline possible ways a Warden can get through to them, possible triggers, methods, motives for them to change. This section can serve to give Warden players some idea of which route to take in working with your Inmate. While we don't expect every Inmate to become redeemed, they have to AT LEAST have potential for it. Irredeemable Inmates are not acceptable.] Ways a warden can get through to them: talking about her mother's work, what she lost in order to get some of the Centre children out. Trying to connect with her through kids. It will not be easy, but she's not a lost cause. At the same time, being motherless is going to be a trigger for her. Lack of faith is one as well. Miss Parker strives for approval, and she strives for answers.


History: For Miss Parker, it makes sense that her first breath would be of the air that was pumped through the sub-levels of the Centre. When Doctor Raines held her up to her mother, he was wearing Centre-issued scrubs, and her mother was laying on a Centre birthing table, and he wrapped her twin brother in a Centre issue blanket and bundled him away, telling the Parkers that the boy was dead. It was one of the first secrets that the Centre stole from Miss Parker, but it certainly wouldn't be the last.

Miss Parker grew up surrounded by the Centre and its secrets. From the outside, the Centre looks like a perfect building. White, granite and glass, it overlooks the water in Blue Cove Delaware. But appearances are deceiving, and the Centre is anything but perfect. The stone facade hides a multitude of sins, including murder, extortion, arson, and the taking of children and abusing them in ways that are some of the most horrific one could consider.

One of the most important and profitable operations that the Centre runs is called “The Pretender Program.” Pretenders started off as children who were stolen from their families because they possessed a rare gift: due to their tremendous mental gifts, this children could run “stimulations” using them to become whoever they wished to be and causing them to learn whatever skills they needed. These geniuses were children who were stolen from their families and raised in sterile environments that deprived them of love, friendship, companionship and even sunshine in order to force them to become better subjects for the experiments.

But things tended to go against the Centre's orders. Little Miss Parker wandered the hallways of the sublevels, becoming friendly with Jarod, despite how much it angered her father. Sydney, Jarod's handler never put as much of a stop to it as he should have. Perhaps he wanted to see what happened, or perhaps it was guilt, but he allowed the two children to become friends. Jarod and Miss Parker shared everything: they were each other's first kiss, and he was the only one that she told her first name. They were as close as people who lived their life monitored by cameras could be.

The other person Miss Parker was close to was her mother. Catherine was an amazing mother, who both adored and was adored by her daughter. They shared everything, and Catherine would often write her daughter notes, allowing her to feel loved. Mother and daughter read to each other, and Catherine would brush Miss Parker's hair and they would just talk about everything, especially what life would be like “someday.” But someday was never to come. By all accounts, most people loved Catherine Parker. She seemed to have a sparkle to her, and she cared about the people around her, especially those who others wouldn't allow themselves to: the children of the Centre. It was her caring for these lost children that would eventually lead to her death.

For the last year of Catherine's life, plans were made in order to help the children escape. A friend was made, and the two had been successful for a time. However, their actions drew the suspicions of the one man that they should have avoided. Doctor William Raines was the handler of at least two Pretenders, and he destroyed their minds. First was Jarod's brother Kyle. Raines used brainwashing techniques in order to create a Pretender who didn't have any mortality. The case can be made that his goal in doing this was to create an assassin in order to murder Catherine Parker. The second boy was one named Timmy.

On the night before her murder, Catherine Parker had been intending to rescue Timmy from Raines' grasp but it was not to be. Instead, Raines used an experimental procedure in order to remove any personality or self-awareness from the boy's head. Timmy became the empath Angelo, who was more of a beast then a person. Catherine found him immediately following the procedure, and cradled the poor boy to her chest, angry and upset. That night she wrote a letter to Miss Parker, telling of her failure to save Timmy.

On the morning of April 13th, Catherine Parker's letter to her daughter was more hopeful. In it, she promised to take her daughter to Europe, wanting to show her a new world away from the Centre. It was not to be. Instead, in the evening of the 13th, Catherine Parker was found dead inside a Centre elevator. Miss Parker heard shots, and she ran to see her mother's body as the elevator door was closing. Mr. Raines and a sweeper (a Centre cleaning agent) came out. In Mr. Raines' hand their was a present that Catherine had promised Miss Parker. Screaming, the girl crushed the parcel to her chest; it would remain wrapped for over twenty years.

Mr. Parker reacted oddly to his wife's death. He patted his daughter's shoulder and told her life goes on. Later, he would tell her that her mother was ill, that she had killed herself. At the funeral, the only person there to hold Miss Parker's eleven-year-old hand was Sydney. After the funeral, it was as if someone had frozen Miss Parker's heart over. The words about her mother being ill worked their way into Miss Parker's mind and she found herself believing it, wondering what she had done wrong to make her mother want to leave her. From the few people she was close too, Miss Parker pulled completely away. Visits to see Jarod almost never happened now, and she went to school as normal people did. Miss Parker remained aloof, going only by her last name and not making friends where she went. Oh, she had associates she had boyfriends, she had fuckbuddies, but she never had any friends. Even visits with her father became less and less frequent as it became apparent that Miss Parker was growing up to be Catherine's double. Any conversations between father and daughter were brief, normally centering around school.

Mr. Parker would only accept the best in grades, and Miss Parker worked her ass off in order to ensure that she received them. Upon graduation from High School, Miss Parker attended UCLA, wanting some distance from the Centre and the memories that it represented. But even there Miss Parker couldn't shake the old Centre ways, and found herself connecting with someone who had a past similar to her own: Tommy Tanaka, the son of a major Yakuza family. He understood how she could be, how she would sometime slip into violence or her own word. Tommy knew secrets, how to keep them and how to respect that they needed to be kept. The two casually dated through out Parker's junior year, commentating in a “long hot summer in Tokyo.”

But Miss Parker pulled away once school began again, and started to throw herself into her studies. Just before she graduated, her father came to LA and said that he was proud of her, while at the same time demanding that she take up the Parker family legacy and come work for the Centre. Really, Parker had no intention of doing such a thing, but he admonished her before he left, saying that he knew she would chose what made him proud. After graduation, Miss Parker returned home to Blue Cove.

However, if she thought that returning to Blue Cove would foster some sort of renewed closeness with her father, she was sorely mistaken. As an adult, the relationship between the Parkers was even more distant then it had been when she was away at school. Despite her name and linage, Miss Parker started out as a sweeper and a cleaner, just like everyone else did. She spent holidays alone, and every year on April 13th, the journey to Catherine's grave was a solitary one.

Work was the driving force in her life, and when she was 28, Miss Parker was promoted to the upper level of the Centre management: the Tower. She moved deeper and deeper within her work, never having relationships that lasted more then a few nights. Her smoking and drinking increased, as did her bitterness. By the time she was 31, she was already showing signs of developing an ulcer. The Centre was eating her alive, and Parker wanted out.

The chance presented itself to her when she received a frantic three am phone-call from her father. Of all of the Centre's assets, the most valuable by far was the Pretender, Jarod. He had escaped from his cell and gone on the run. Mr. Parker's assertion that he wanted “the best” and “someone he could trust” leading the team to recapture Jarod gave Miss Parker the leverage she needed. Miss Parker agreed to find Jarod under the condition that if she caught him, then she would be released from the Centre with no repercussions. (It is said you only leave the Centre two ways, dead or retired which is often the same thing).

Parker's team consists of two other primary people. First there is Sydney, who was Jarod's handler throughout his entire life. There is still a connection between the two as Jarod often calls Sydney to talk about various things including the search for Jarod's parents and past simulations. Further, Sydney is one of the people who knew Miss Parker as a child. The other member of the team is Broots, a computer genius who has a motherless child of his own.

While Parker's team is good, Jarod always seems to be one step ahead of them, but there has been many, many close calls. Jarod always leaves red notebooks at the scenes of the good he does, and more often then not, there is some personal memento to “screw with” Miss Parker. But the actions are not always malicious. In his efforts to find out about his family's past, Jarod is the one who leaves Miss Parker the clues as to the fact that her mother didn't end her own life. He also is the one who informs her about several other things inside the Centre, including the warning of an assassination attempt against her father.

Right before Miss Parker's death, Jarod and she spend a substantial period, of time together. He had tracked down the man whom had helped Catherine Parker attempt to save the children, a Mr. Fenigor. Covertly, he set up a meeting with her when Mr. Fenigor was visiting a bank. Before they could get answers, however, the bank is robbed, with Jarod and Miss Parker placed in the middle. They work together to try to get everyone out, as well as their answers, but Mr. Fenigor panics and gets shot attempting to flee. After Jarod and Miss Parker stop the robbers, Jarod escapes, but with Miss Parker in pursuit.

New evidence leads both Miss Parker and Jarod to a fertility clinic. Once there, Miss Parker is forced to help Jarod save a child who shares the genetic predisposition for becoming a Pretender. Mr. Raines believes that with a refining of the techniques that he had used on Angelo, he can create a Pretender to rival Jarod. It is during this time that Jarod has sent Sydney an experimental treatment to help restore Angelo to Timmy. The treatment works, and with Angelo's help, Miss Parker discovers that she had a twin brother who lived. A twin, Jarod tells her, who is either Angelo or her nemesis Mr. Lyle. Lyle is an evil scumbag. He just is. He attempts to kill Miss Parker and Mr. Parker several times in his attempt to take over the Centre.

Upon hearing that the Centre intends on creating a new Pretender, Sydney plants a bomb in SL27, wanting to blow it up, as well as all of Raines' technology. He sets an explosive charge, and he rigs it to chemical lines that will fuel the blast. No one expects anyone to be down there.

Desperate, angry, and sad, Miss Parker kneels next to Mr. Fenigor's bedside, begging her to tell him who killed her mother. She knows that there is nothing she can threaten him with; he's not Mr. Raines to pull skin grafts off, or Broots to scare, or Sam to order around... all she can do is beg. Jarod shows up, wanting answers as well. For a long moment the two of them just listen to the man who can finally tell them what they need to know... And then with the truth, any peace or compassion or good will is severed with the news that Jarod's father killed Catherine Parker.

The game is afoot once again, with Miss Parker chasing Jarod through the Centre with her gun drawn. Security alarms are tripped, alerting Mr. Raines, Mr. Parker, Sydney, Broots and several sweeper teams to the fact that Parker and Jarod are down there. With Miss Parker out for blood, and Mr. Raines telling her that the Centre wants him alive, Sydney arrives down there to tell them about the bomb... but it's too late.

Due to the fact that the show is so old, it's hard to find good web resources, but here's a wiki with an episode guide for seasons one and two: http://pretender.wikia.com/wiki/Season_1
http://pretender.wikia.com/wiki/Season_2
http://pretender.wikia.com/wiki/Season_3
http://pretender.wikia.com/wiki/Season_4