Dev/Ace



Rule #1: Trust no one

The Basics

 * Species: Human (Duo)
 * Age: 26
 * Race/Ethnicity: Caucasian
 * Location: New Babylon, RI, USA
 * Year: 2010
 * Verse: Original
 * Room # 306
 * Mun: Pen
 * LJ: duology

Dev

 * Name: Devin Caulfield
 * Alias: Dev
 * Gender: Male
 * Hair: Brown
 * Eyes: Brown
 * Played By: Marshall Allman/Cory Knauf

Ace

 * Name: Wren Caulfield
 * Alias: Ace
 * Gender: Female
 * Hair: Blonde
 * Eyes: Blue
 * Played By: Kristen Stewart

Dev
Dev is a rather short young man with absolutely wild brown hair that seems to have a life of its own. He’s thin and gangly to the point of looking rather weak, though he has a fair bit of muscle in his arms. His eyes are medium brown. He dresses even more casually than his Other Half—a shirt and baggy jeans and little else if he can help it. His hands and arms have a lot of small scars from his long training with sharp objects. His face is very expressive and he smiles quite frequently. He also wears reading glasses.

Ace
Ace is a young woman of average height with dirty-blond hair that she keeps at a length just past her shoulders and which she often puts up in a ponytail. Her eyes are blue-green, and her arms are rather muscular as if she’s used to heavy lifting. She wears very casual and often baggy clothes, usually in a skater style, and wears skateboarding shoes when she’s not on a job. Her hands are quite calloused from handling guns all the time. Her face is smooth and she rarely smiles. However, she has an oral fixation which means she almost always has something in her mouth—lollipops, popsicles, chewing gum and so on.

Psychology: Dev
Dev and Ace are, in a word, insane. Dev is more what society would think of as “insane.” Whereas Ace is muted and almost sociopathic, Dev is wild and psychopathic. He experiences and expresses the full range of emotions, and like his Other is very good at blending in and acting “human.” He comes off as a sweet if rather eccentric guy. The truth is that he’s as much a killer as Ace is, if not more so. While Ace is skilled with firearms, Dev is skilled with everything sharp and pointy, and has given feminine names to each and every one of his many knives, swords and other weapons. His favorite is a machete named Francine. He is also completely obsessed with blood. He is absolutely entranced by its look and color, its scent—he loves everything about it except for its taste. When he’s at work he tends to get drenched in it, probably his preferred state of being. He thinks of blood in very philosophical terms—it is a source of life and vitality, something almost sacred to him. If he likes you and trusts you deeply, he will probably ask to see your blood, and while this might sound creepy it’s actually deeply personal for him. If he doesn’t like you, he doesn’t ask. Dev likes Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, poetry, literature and philosophy and quotes these rather often. He’s an avid reader and prefers artsy, independent movies. His drink of choice is tea. He’s also the only one of the two of them who can actually cook. He also loves animals, and can very rarely bring himself to kill one.

Psychology: Ace
Ace is a borderline sociopath, a cold-blooded killer with very muted emotions and an almost unrivaled sense of selfishness and self-preservation. She is skilled in just about every firearm and explosive known to man, and has enough of a science background to create her own bombs, guns, or chemical combinations that can be used for one form of destruction or another. She usually seems stoic, but she is also rather good at faking emotions in order to blend in. She is self-disciplined, and though she becomes frustrated and angry very easily, she doesn’t let them rule her. She has very little patience, especially with other people and is hard to get along with. She considers very few people to be her friends. She favors a skateboard as a mode of transportation, likes chemistry and physics, strong black coffee and action movies with lots of unnecessary explosions. She has a dry wit and is something of a slob when it comes to her living space. Ace also has the need to say acronyms by their full name and will actively correct people when they use acronyms.

Skills/Powers
Dev and Ace are a Duo; essentially this means that they are two people in one body. Their appearance, personality and gender completely change depending on who is in Front. In order to shift from one to the other, all they have to do is pass a hand in front of their face--the transformation is instant. They can talk to each other in their minds as a sort of form of telepathy. The one "in Back," aka the one not controlling the body at the time, can be overheard by mind-readers. The easiest way to think of them is as super twins.

They are both assassins, and are extremely good at what they do. Dev uses knives and swords and prefers messy, message killings. Ace uses guns, explosives and occasionally martial arts and prefers quiet killings. They are also both rather insane.

History
Dev and Ace were born to four perfectly nice parents, both of whom were Duos. They were raised in a loving, well-off family that had very few hardships. However, at age three Dev watched as one of their fathers, Arnold, lost three of his fingers to a band saw when he was working in the garage. Thus began Dev’s obsession with blood, and thus began Ace’s disconnect from the world, as she was forced to watch the entire thing through Dev’s eyes.

They got into a lot of trouble in their teen years and it quickly became clear that they were “bad seeds.” They both killed their first person at a very young age, and though the event was seminal, it also forced them acknowledge and accept the evil within them, and also to vow to never again kill without a purpose. They recognized the harm they were doing to their parents, and in order to “save them” they ran away from home at age sixteen and haven’t contacted their parents since—though they do check up on them occasionally. After a few months trying to make it on the streets, they were taken in by Absinthe, a woman with green hair and a constant smirk. She was like an artist working with fine, but unpolished marble—she was the one who crafted Dev and Ace into assassins who could not only blend in with the normal humans around them, but could also pick up targets, track them and kill them without being caught, relying heavily on their ability to transform into each other. They became very, very skilled at it after six years in Absinthe’s care.

But then, out of nowhere, Absinthe betrayed them and disappeared into thin air, leaving Dev and Ace to fend for themselves. The betrayal forced them to go to another city after narrowly escaping capture. Despite the upheaval, they were eventually able to collect themselves and get back on track, reestablishing contacts and creating new ones that allowed them to continue the only career they really knew. These days they are killers for hire, often working through their friend and “professional middleman” Wheeze. They’re currently living rather comfortably and are well known in the underworld, though very, very few people know that they are a Duo.

World Info
Dev and Ace’s world is a lot like the real world, only it has a few subtle, supernatural differences. There are no fantastic creatures or flashy magic, but there are some humans who seem to be a little less, or perhaps more, than human. Dev and Ace themselves belong to one of these groups, specifically the Duos.

Dev and Ace are a Duo; they are, quite literally, two people who share the same body. This is to the point that their physical appearance changes completely depending on which of them is in control of the body at the time. The body itself remain constant to some degree, at least internally—their DNA is the same no matter who is in control, and if the body is sick or injured then it will remain there. In other words, if Dev gets a cold or gets stabbed, Ace is forced to share the cold or the stab wound. The only major internal change is the organ swapping that inevitably occurs when they switch from male to female. Duos refer to their counterparts as their “Other,” their “Significant Other,” their “Better Half” or other such terms.

Their appearance depends on which person is in control of the body at the time.

There are very few Duos left in the world, and due to their rarity people aren’t quite sure about the biological reasons behind a person who at once a single individual and two. It doesn’t quite fit that there are simply two consciousnesses inhabiting the same body, because even the body changes a bit when a Duo transforms. Most Duos have a male half and a female half, and it’s speculated that this came about as a biological way to carry on the species.

Very, very rarely is there contention between two halves of a Duo. The overwhelming majority of Duos get along very well with their halves. There can only ever be one Half in control of the body at any one time, and during that time the body takes on the appearance of that Half. The Half that is not in control at the time takes on the role of something like a backseat driver—sometimes they sleep while the other is in control, but if they are awake they are able to see, hear and generally experience everything that the one in control is experiencing. However, they can’t directly influence what they are seeing—not unless they usurp control and take over. Halves often communicate with each other internally or even externally; to passersby this would sound like nothing more than someone talking to themselves. Another unique aspect of a Duo is that when they look into a reflective surface, they are able to see their Other Half standing just off to the side or a little behind them. This is when most Duos engage in external communication, stating their questions or comments and then listening as their Other Half responds within their mind.

A Duo can only be born from two other Duos, and the child of two Duos will always be a Duo. It seems that Duo DNA is recessive while human DNA is dominant; a Duo can give birth to a normal human, but not vice versa.

There is also a small ritual that must be performed in order to transform, which is simply the act of covering one’s face in some way. Dev and Ace do this by passing a hand in front of their face.

Other supernatural humans in this world include werewolves and other were-beings, various kinds of psychics, Skyborn (humans with bird-like wings), genderbenders, and humans with animal-like skin colors and patterns. These supernatural humans are all rather rare and keep to the shadows.

Canon

 * Absinthe--???--The woman who taught Dev and Ace everything they know about assassination, weaponry and spywork. She would be about 35 now. She has bright blue eyes and keeps her hair dyed a vibrant green--hence her nickname. No one knows her real name or origins; she has spent her life wandering, training assassins and doing all kinds of inexplicable things. She is well-known in the underworld, but her current whereabouts are unknown. Since betraying Dev and Ace the Duo has been looking for her--for revenge as well as for answers.


 * Wheeze--Friend--A professional middleman, he deals in the trade of information as well as items and weapons. He's in his sixties and is in recession from throat cancer, causing the perpetual wheeze that gives him his nickname. He likes Dev and Ace more than most of his clients, and likewise he's one of the few people Dev and Ace can get along with.