I was a thief once

alebrije

CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Isha Devan
Canon: Original with CRAU
Canon point: After receiving her prosthetic arm
Age: 29
Character Appearance: This is Isha. She stands at 5'10". She has a black prosthetic left arm, with gold henna details and diamonds inlaid.
Species: Human.
Background: Isha's world takes place in a cyberpunk future of our Earth, where high fashion, mechanics and engineering live and breathe as one. Form is function, function is form. Specifically, it's the year 2176. Prosthetics, while available, are still not easy to come by; having a prosthetic is akin to an art form. Designers create custom pieces for their clients, representing a power and luxury not many can afford. The gap between the rich and the poor has become much wider over the years with the evolution of technology, and some wonder how in only one city there is a luxury high rise on one street and a complete overturned disaster on the next street.

Isha Devan was born to Indian parents on the outskirts of London, England.

That would be the least exciting part of this story, but it has to begin somewhere, doesn't it?

She was a happy child, living in the lower middle-class with her parents as an only child. They never made much money, but what Isha does remember of that life was all fond memories of a small flat and the rolling smells of traditional Indian food.

That idyllic life tragically ended for her at the tender age of 6, when both of her parents were killed in an automotive crash. Orphaned and with no family in the country, she was sent off to an orphanage, living with almost too many other orphan children in an overcrowded multi-story building. That was the trouble with technology: the dangers made orphans of children too fast.

Not three months later did she sneak out of the confines of the orphanage and escaped into the city of London. The city lights dazzled her, and the way of life was unimaginably colorful and surreal compared to the muted and drab colors of the orphanage. She knew she wanted to live here, but she just couldn't put it into words at her young age. She settled into some beat-up slum of an alley and began a harsh, cruel survival. Luckily, she was found by a pair of older boys, Jeramie, aged 15, and Finn, aged 18, and was taken in. Soon, she became a part of their money-pinching and thieving gang, which she now remembers as a brotherhood of sorts. Isha was taught the fine, slippery art of pickpocketing, using subtle sleights of hand and quick slashing maneuvers with small knives to steal keys, credit cards and more. This went on for about a year when the cops found their little gang and took them away. While Isha was 7 and thus far too young to really be implicated for extensive criminal charges like her brothers, Jeramie was sent to juvenile detention while Finn was sent to jail. Neither served over two years for model behavior, as she later found out. Isha, at this time, was sent back to the orphanage, with constant surveillance hovering over her. Far too clever and far too smart for her age, she remained a calm child with an aim to escape again, except her life in this orphanage went smoother and was happier. The facilities were better and she was given a sort of attention and small snippets of education. About six months later she was adopted by an older British gentleman, one with a kind smile and wrinkled eyes. That was the only part of him that gave his age away. His name was Benjamin Gelson, a widower who had no child but wanted one.

The curious case of Benjamin, however, was not the adoption of Isha and allowing her to keep her paternal last name; it lied in the fact that her father was a hacker, a thief, and an undercover cop. The latter was secondary to his life, as he preferred to be a hacker and a thief. He'd read Isha's file, and decided that not only would he adopt a daughter, he would create a prodigy out of her. Months and months of hassling with the adoption agency and providing extensive proof and paperwork that he could, in fact, adopt her and lived a stable life finally allowed him to adopt the child.

Naturally, Isha was wary of the man initially, but it didn't stop her from being curious. Slowly, he brought her into his world, taking her out and generally spoiling her silly. She grew to love his things at first. As time passed, Isha grew to love him like a father, too. Her birth father had constantly been out of the house, working constantly to be able to pay the bills for the family, so for her to be able to accept Benjamin as her father wasn't so difficult. She struggled more without having a mother, but Benjamin was kind enough to give her reminders of her home, such as playing Indian films and cooking Indian food. Not once did he stifle her culture; in fact, as he allowed her to research extensively on the history of India and let her participate in events and religious traditions as she felt like. Once she became old enough to be sassier and more open with him, she'd openly tease him about finding a girlfriend or a wife, and she still does now.

Benjamin put her into one of the best schools and began to teach her the art of hacking and the art of thieving. Benjamin taught Isha how to distinguish between an authentic and a copy of really anything, from a painting to a jewel. He showed her how to wirelessly tap into a machine, and how to disrupt the feed on a hologram. In short, Benjamin taught her how to be a master and how to surpass him. He instilled in her a passion to learn and a passion to compete and to win. There was nothing better for Isha than to make him proud and to be able to help him figure out the problems he couldn't solve alone. It wasn't uncommon for the two of them to spend hours on end cracking codes and dismantling databases.

Unfortunately, Benjamin went far too deep in his undercover life. He stole obsessively all kinds of things, and yet in his thieving he showered Isha with lavish gifts and fancy technology. Benjamin was arrested when Isha was 16, and because she was of consent, it was allowed for her to live on her own, as long as she continued to check in with a supervisor. There were perks to being taught how to charm and how to lie, after all: she claimed that she knew nothing of his second life. She convinced the police to allow her to keep some of the money to attend the rest of her schooling and eventually college. Isha majored in computer science and engineering, which gave her the real edge of learning the technical side of computing and programming so she could adapt and make up new hacks and codes.

Isha staked out on her own now, taking on the name Mythos online to hide her identity. She became a bolder, more cunning thief than her father, and she wrote to him all about her exploits. In code, of course. A part of her knew that he would never leave behind his life of thieving, so she felt comfortable telling him everything without worrying that he would snitch. Benjamin was too kind and loving, as well as too proud of his protegee. In return, he provided her the names various people she could trust. Among them were fellow hackers, thieves, programmers, designers and engineers in the elusive black market world of technology. One man in particular named Jerome owed her father a favor, so she cashed in and had her sunglasses and her bracelet custom-designed to suit her needs. Her sunglasses could read the world around her, while her bracelet could help her break into things. It was a perfect set-up, and she always aided Jerome. It was only fair, after all.

During the time she began to build her reputation, she became increasingly curious about her lost brothers and what had become of them. Would they even recognize her? Were they even alive? By this time, the faces in her memory had become blurred, so she took it upon herself to find them, somehow, or at least know of their status. Around the age of 18 she found Jeramie, now 25, living with his girlfriend in a small flat in London. Every Thursday afternoon, they'd decided to have a coffee and catch up, talk about nothing and everything. Jeramie loved her stories and her exploits, so she made sure to give every detail, maybe even exaggerating a few. Yet she made sure that she kept her online identity a secret, because even if he knew stories, she was well-aware that her hacker life and her real life were very independent. She couldn't make herself tell him, anyway, because she felt it would drag him into a mess that would be unnecessary to a life he'd worked hard to make. As for Finn, he fell off the grid. Jeramie confessed he hadn't heard anything of him since he left juvenile detention, and any lead Isha found died out, which she found curious considering her proficiency at being potentially a very good stalker. She would return later to Jeramie to try and recruit him into INTERPOL and Mythos, but he declined, stating that his girlfriend would likely not be pleased with his life choices.

Isha had been caught multiple times by the cops, and then by INTERPOL. Her constant run-ins with INTERPOL led her to have a sort of acquaintance with Kadin Bagshaw, the head of some hacking department that she could never get the name of properly. They could never charge her with the crime because all evidence would either be wiped out or circumstantial, thus Isha would be let go and she'd continue on with her life, amassing more and more expensive things and living in a luxury high-rise.

In mid-May of 2175, a strange series of murders began to crop up across Europe. The oddest part of this was that nearly every single aspect matched Isha's style of hacking and thieving. Once again, she was brought to INTERPOL and questioned by Kadin. Isha spat back that she would never murder, and besides, if they had bothered to look close enough, they'd know that some small piece of code was wrong. In this, she accidentally admitted to being a thief and a hacker, but instead of being arrested, Kadin recruited her: INTERPOL would need someone of her caliber to be able to catch and stop the copycat before it got worse. With her help, the pair recruited three more members to the crew over the span of a year, bringing them to a total of five including herself and Kadin: Lukas Six, a former online freedom fighter being unjustly pinned with acts of terrorism; Zoya Lubarsky, a former security programmer fired from her job for uncovering a giant scam occurring in her company; and Landon St John, an all-too-smart kid who simply enjoys hacking and uncovering security flaws. Their team was now collectively dubbed Mythos, using Isha's existing identity to protect the others and to make the thief seem even more untouchable and legendary.

Unexpectedly, Isha is kidnapped by CDC agents, a company known for decimating planets for pay. Not that she's aware of this, of course, she only thinks they're thugs she can pay off with a favor. Little did she know she would be recruited into a brutal company, one that forced her to revaluate her stances and her abilities. For better or for worse, she softened and became a strong asset in her team and among various groups. Most notably, Isha became much more of a team player during this time. As a self-aware woman, she put herself squarely in a position to be able to learn everything she could while defending the team in her own subversive ways.

On the eve of what would be considered her final mission and receiving a mysterious badge, she is flung back to her world with little to no recollection of her time at the CDC.

At least, not immediately. Throughout her time back home, she remembered things through dreams and vague senses of deja vu, though she couldn't quite place what it all means.

She and her team continued to hunt down the mysterious serial killer, whom Kadin has revealed to Isha is using her former targets as victims. With a very long list to consider for the next attack, they worked their way through names, finding themselves one step behind whoever the killer was. Each death was someone more prominent, with a more important place in the world. At her urgings, Isha devised a plan to attack the serial killer online, denouncing their ways and claiming that the real Mythos has no need for blood. Between everyone, they flooded every single point of access with this information. They didn't get any real support outwardly, but the message was out.

So the serial killer began again with a new game: the clues and the stakes are now more obvious. Instead of one death, the numbers escalated rapidly to multiple at a time. While this easily proved the sheer insanity of the serial killer, many more people throughout the world doubted that Mythos is truly innocent. A huge surge in the hunt for the killer and Mythos' identity formed across forums, chat rooms, black market groups, and just about any seedy place and group around the world.

Isha, much against her usual nature, decided to stake out on her own. The name Mythos had become far too prominent and too stained with this heinous reputation. Many signs had cropped up during the investigations, and she began to suspect that this wasn't just a copycat, this was a ghost from her past. She went completely offline without warning, dropping so far off the grid that her own team couldn't locate her.

Following leads, she found herself in an abandoned industrial complex on the countryside, a lone testament to the failures of industry. Her new stealth gear allowed her to move around the area quickly and quietly, but found no one was guarding the area. A flash of an EMP and a stun gun later, she awoke bound to a chair, confused and in serious pain.

The man, the killer, who had done everything in her name was none other than Finn, her former cohort and brother. The man had clearly become delusional, obsessed with some sort of liberation of humanity from technology. Not much of it made sense to her, even less so with her stunned and drugged state. Initially, it seemed, he had been hired to be like her, a thief, a corporate hacker to steal money and information in the name of economy and state. He grew jaded, he explained, and needed to make a statement. Finn shadowed her for years, then became her slowly but surely.

He surmised in all of his years following her that she had become a part of the problem, and that she would pay just as equally as everyone else.

Rather, she already had.

The pain searing from her shoulder had come from one of the worst things to happen to her yet: the loss of her left arm. Finn had amputated her arm in a drugged state and put in its place an incredibly crude prosthetic with a homing beacon. Furious and slowed in her senses, she lashed out. The adrenaline now pumping at full force in her veins pushed her past her limits. Isha, with the prosthetic, literally bludgeoned him bloody to a mere few breaths of his life. Losing her arm was more than just an attack on her physically, it was a mental attack, her pride in being completely human but being among the best.

This was a loss of identity.

The homing beacon was immediately located and traced by her team. Isha was desperate and alone as she tried to make sense of how truly insane her situation had just become. In pain and exhaustion, she fought off her need to pass out. She forced herself to the entrance in her terrible physical state, calling Kadin from the phone she stole from Finn. She talked complete nonsense, trying to relay what Finn had said, but most of it was just to keep her awake.

What seemed like hours later, but was really about 30 minutes, Isha met with Kadin and Zoya at the entrance. Two two rushed to her and hugged her, but not for very long. They put her in an ambulance, sedating her further while the two threatened their way into staying with her. Lukas and Landon followed in a car against Kadin's wishes.

She woke up in a hospital days later without the prosthetic. Seeing herself properly without her arm nearly sent her into a spiral of hatred and violence. Her rationality would win out time and again, but it was difficult for her to not be so enraged and confused. Isha didn't like what had been done to her, yet what was there to do?

Kadin offered her a solution while she remained at the hospital, attending to the wound and ensuring it was not infected: get a prosthetic. It would be highly customized and state-of-the-art, requiring very little effort to use because it would connect to her neurons.

And it would all be footed by INTERPOL, to thank her for her service and great sacrifice in the case. Isha conceded to the surgery, seeing as that she would need to have an arm to be able to continue her work.

The surgery took nearly two days to complete, as attaching mechanical pieces to functioning neurons was an incredibly delicate and dangerous task. Even with the high rate of success, the surgery still needed its time to work and to test at intervals. What she got in place of her natural arm was an incredibly lightweight arm that went up to her shoulder.

Months of intensive training and therapy followed, though Isha was not one to be idle. She recruited one of her moles and protegees to INTERPOL, and continued to work with Kadin and the Mythos team. Not that she left her life of crime entirely, of course, but who better to catch criminal than a criminal herself?


Personality:
Charming and easy-going, Isha can make friends out of nearly anyone anywhere at any time. Her way with easy smiles and ability to say just the right thing at just the right time not only earns the trust of those around her, but gets her into all the right places. Flattery is only a part of her thieving game, as she uses it to get close to her more peculiar, more interesting targets. Basically, Isha is a master bullshitter and she knows she can get away with it.

Even in a threatening situation, Isha will madly attempt to charm her way out of it. Isha takes far easier to flight than to fight, as she values her life and all of the things she has very highly. It would take a very, very special circumstance of a very extenuating nature to sacrifice herself and give up everything. In her mind, there is always a way out and there is always a way to perhaps not win, but at least survive with a good draw. She is now, though, more given to considering putting herself in harm's way as an option. There's something to be said about the fact that she has the capacity to handle certain things better than others, and if she could spare others from that fate, so be it. She'll take the hit and leave with far less damage than whoever else would've been in that same situation.

In this sense, she is practical, though prone to making questionable decisions based on what she believes would ensure survival. Some of this is in part due to her early thieving life, though a majority is simply based on the fact that losing is not an option. Whether through manipulation or simply having to grit her teeth and get it done, she'll do anything and everything to get her way. She would much rather stay alive to be able to enjoy everything she's been able to steal than to find herself dead in a ditch. No, she has too much riding on herself to allow anyone to simply up and kill her. Isha has a need to prove that no one and nothing can stop her, and no one can take what is hers now, not even her own life.

Being a former pickpocket to buy food while living on the streets has taught her the importance of living and enjoying the world around you. Her aim to becoming a bigger and better thief was solely to be able to have all the nice things, to claw her way out of the life that she saw as boring and become a part of that dream world that she fawned over. Because of this, she loves her lavish lifestyle and all kinds of expensive luxuries that she flaunts constantly. She made her way into the lifestyle that she wanted, and now she wants the world to see it, too. Never limit yourself, that's her way of life. If you can reach for higher, for better, then aim for it and never give up. Her gravitation towards nice, shiny things marks her as a bit of a vain woman, one who never settles for second-rate because she knows she can get the best whether by her own virtue and skills or through manipulation and charm.

Isha is a proud woman. She's keenly aware of her own value as a master hacker and thief and is most definitely not afraid to flaunt her skills. Knowing the value of her own skills makes her a bit of a wildcard, as she will definitely throw in anyone's face that she can do what most others can't do. This, in combination with her willingness to survive and win, can make her a pain in the ass to those that try to blackmail or threaten her with losing her life. No, she might not be the strongest, but she is the smartest. Isha, put simply, is cunning. In no way is she above proving her value to even her own enemies. Not to say that she will run and tell those who oppose her what she can do, she's smarter than that: she never plays all of her cards all at once. That only leaves an opening for cheap tricks and being undermined, and Isha would rather be the dealer with the highest card than a card player merely bluffing.

Her pride fuels her competitive streak at times. Tell her it can't be done, she'll sit down, cross her legs, and prove to you that it can and will be done. Oddly enough, her pride as a thief also shines, so she doesn't quite shy away from admitting that she's a thief; rather, it's not something she'll bring up instantly until it's a relevant skill.

It's worth noting that she generally has some small form of respect for other people, at least outwardly. Not that if anyone questions her, she'll question them right back, of course, but Isha will at least listen before condemning. Now, if you're just completely idiotic and continually make very poor decisions, Isha will simply ignore you and will have absolutely zero respect for you. To those that she does trust and genuinely like, Isha will poke fun at them and will try to get on their nerves every so often. She believes there's no reason to be so high-strung and tense all the time. She would rather have a more relaxed environment because stress kills, didn't you know?

Cross Isha, though, and you will regret it. Anything dirty she can uncover, she will bring to the surface and slowly destroy your life. Isha can and will blackmail you if you push her too far. It would take a betrayal of immense proportions to bring out this vicious, conniving dark side, but she knows that it's a very valid threat she can make to strike fear. Of this it can be said she makes for a particularly terrifying INTERPOL agent. She plays off people's emotions very well and will make no small secret of what she can do to put someone in their place.

Through her time at INTERPOL and CDC, Isha has become a great leader and one who is excellent at barking orders. She does at times play herself up as being useless and dumb, but she is incredibly competent. She doesn't shy away from placing herself in a position of command now, as she is essentially the leader in team Mythos. Her arrogance and her biting streak are still ever present, though, so she isn't always the most understanding of leaders.

Abilities/Skills: Isha is a normal human, therefore she is not powered and, most importantly in her canon, not prosthetically enhanced. Instead, she has several skills:

• Hacking: Her abilities as a hacker allow her to access a wide variety of not only physical computers, but anything connected to a wireless network. This includes wearables, prosthetics with wireless connections, anything with a Bluetooth connection, disruption of live video data streams, disruption of audio playbacks, disruption of video holograms, and remote-controlled drones and machines.


• Thieving: This includes from small-time pickpocketing to breaking and entering, stealing physical items, stealing encrypted and unencrypted data due to her hacking skills, identity theft and bank account access to steal money.


• Acrobatic skills: Nothing so fancy as a professional gymnast, but she can do things such as handsprings, backflips, quick sprints, somersaults, climbing, and so on.


• Sneaking: Being a legendary thief means you are very, very sneaky. She can walk quietly, snap from place to place, find the most useful hiding areas and generally stick to the shadows if necessary.


• Combat: Isha's style of fight is mainly close range hand-to-hand combat, specializing in quick, light but highly pinpointed attacks that are mainly meant to disable and distract as opposed to causing real damage. She is also a skilled knife-fighter, but prefers to use her hands. She has also trained in fencing


• Prosthetic:
Her prosthetic is not strength-enhanced, but it is enhanced in other ways. The knuckles are reinforced and provide an extra weight to serve as a brass knuckle of sorts. The arm carries its own electrical current to become a taser on command, but it needs to be recharged for this to function fully. A blade is hidden into the arm, so she can bring out a knife to use in combat (it's not like the hidden blade from Assassin's Creed, simply a customized knife to slip into and out of her prosthetic and to be used like a traditional knife she knows how to use).

Inventory:

• Stealth suit


• Q-11, her mechanical greyhound


• Folding knife


• Sunglasses embedded with technology (can be explained further if need be)


• Noise-canceling boots


• Biker jacket


• Hoodie

SAMPLES
Test drive
Network post: let's shoot the shit
Get the answers
Isha secretly loves Steve Rogers, bares her soul to him as if he were a priest
Everything is awful
Isha makes the boys have danger boners, is very willing to kill a man by feeding him to the kraken

PLAYER INFO.
✖ Handle: Lina
✖ Contact: lightcycle ; vagabondwoof @ aim
✖ Are You Over 16: Y
✖ Other Characters Played in Consignment: N/A

( Diamonds are a girl's best friend )