[Spirit Class 9 | Hazard D] Arlette

○ Name: Arlette ○ Alias: N/A ○ Age: Functionally 25. ○ Gender: Female. ○ Race: Human ○ Affiliation: -Vandenreich Business Affiliate ○ Alignment: True Neutral. ○ Marital Status: Single. ○ Nationality: N/A. ○ Sexual Orientation: Irrelevant. ○ Special Skill: Insider trading. ○ Ideal Mate: Practical and sharp, but idealistic. ○ Height: 5’10” ○ Weight: Healthy. ○ Hair Colour: White ○ Eye Colour: Ice Blue

Arlette is generally curt and to the point in all that she says and does. Her eyes and her tone suggest not only a willingness, but an active hope that she might bring any interruption to her tranquility to as swift an end as possible. Despite this, however, there is a bit of hesitation in her, and she doesn't leap right to violence as quickly as she might once have. Her straightforward approach to conversation comes across as awkward rather than impersonal, and she makes some faint effort to actually be friendly despite her lack of practice.

She doesn't do much other than work, but in her free time she tends to seek out social situations despite her lack of actual inclination toward them. Arlette understands that she needs to become more normal, and that her life to this point has been little other than being used as a tool. To her, that's unacceptable, and she wants to seek out life experiences even if they end up being less than ideal.


○ Claudia Duvalier: Former employer, genetic mother, and the single person that Arlette hates more than any other.

○ Eliane and Wolfina Ovide: Her genetic sisters, but that doesn’t mean Arlette feels any sympathy toward them. They’re both just animals that need to be put down.

○ Antonetta Ovide: The third of Arlette’s sisters, and the only one for whom she actually feels any degree of affection. Her innocence makes her far more tragic in Arlette’s eyes, and while she understands that all four of them were made to suit Claudia’s needs, she believes Antonetta’s fate is the most cruel of the four by far.


5 years ago, in a laboratory operated by Carrington Developments, the business magnate Claudia Duvalier decided that she would have the most ideal bodyguards that a woman of her temperament, untrusting and misanthropic, could possibly have. Other people could not be trusted, and would be far too willing to betray her if, by some miracle, a bigger paycheck came their way. So she opted to develop bodyguards that she could always rely on, allowing herself to be protected by the only woman that she knew could ever be trusted.

So it was that the first generation in the Ovide Project began. Utilizing Claudia’s own genetic makeup, two clones were made in her image. At first, they were nothing more than identical copies of Claudia herself, and while that was all well and good, Claudia didn’t believe that was an ideal outcome, for several reasons. Perhaps most pressingly, she knew that her own body was hardly cut out for bodyguard work. A lithe woman of average build, without the capacity for any spiritual abilities, would not do. But, more important than anything physical was the matter of the mental. Claudia understood her own ambition, and she understood that more of herself would only lead to dangerous ambition. So those first clones were killed, and the data from their making was put to use. Months of effort, and millions of dollars, all went into the creation of Claudia’s ideal bodyguards. They were made stronger, faster, and their minds were made to reflect particular aspects of Claudia herself rather than simply to be a perfect recreation of her. Above all, however, they ensured one thing;

The two would be loyal to Claudia, but would hate each other deeply.

One of them, Eliane, was a misanthrope of the highest level. She was sadistic, spiteful, and lived for nothing more than to see others suffer. But the other, Arlette, was pragmatic. She saw only the necessity for results, to have everything accomplished in the swiftest possible way and with the fewest possible losses. The two of them, together, were fully capable of accomplishing nearly anything Claudia required of them, but in the course of every simulated training session, one distinction became quite abundantly clear from the outset. Eliane, knowing fully well that she was artificial, saw her life as disposable, replaceable even. Arlette, however, guarded her life fiercely, fully intent on staying alive regardless of what she needed to do. Considering she had been intended as merely a tool for Claudia’s use, she was interrogated on the matter, and she had a very simple answer: “I won’t learn if I die.”

That was enough to spare her from being considered a failure. Claudia was perfectly willing to let a bodyguard learn from their experiences. It was a useful little trait to give to one of them, particularly given the hedonistic spite of the other. It was one more thing to build a rift between the two of them, and through all of their years of work together, of experience both simulated and real, that rift grew. Eliane died countless times, only to be replaced by a new Eliane from the cloning tanks. Arlette, by contrast, never perished once. She knew that her life could be replaced, but she would lose the instinct she’d built across all her work. The experience would be gone, and that meant she’d be far worse at her job.

What she hadn’t considered was that going so long without being replaced would lead to her becoming attached to parts of her life beyond simple survival, however. When Claudia created two more twins to work alongside the originals, Arlette didn’t feel threatened. If anything, the innocent, childish affection that Antonetta felt toward the rest of them only made Arlette feel sick. Not toward Antonetta, but toward Claudia. There wasn’t any benefit to making a woman like this. It was fundamentally against her pragmatic nature, pointless cruelty that reminded her of her own hated twin sister, but she had no choice but to simply deal with it. Every time Antonetta died on a mission, despite her fear of death, Arlette’s spite grew. Every time she was forced to work alongside Eliane, every time she created discord that interfered with Duvalier Group profits simply because Claudia wished to see it, Arlette became more and more disillusioned with her time spent here. She began to work outside of the Duvalier group, establishing her own independent companies which worked to build stability, build profits without any of this nonsensical misanthropy.

She could have lasted. Her pragmatism would have certainly carried her through, if not for Claudia’s decision to “upgrade” the original twins. They’d become obsolete, made in the same image as Claudia, with her muddled spiritual energy. Antonetta’s Fullbring and Wolfina’s zanpakuto both provided them leagues more capability than the simple ability to falsify an identity a bit more easily. She would replace Eliane and Arlette with newer models, ones that properly had access to abilities. Eliane, naturally, welcomed the opportunity, but Arlette maintained that her life was worth more to them than whatever powers she could develop, that her experience from never having once died would be sufficient.

Claudia disagreed. But if Arlette didn’t wish to die, then they would work around it. Eliane was simply killed again, replaced with a new body that had all the capability of her demon heritage. Arlette was not so lucky, and she might well have wished she’d chosen death at times during the process she endured. A radical, cruel procedure that was built on highly experimental premises, following on the logic of both the purification of hollows and the soul destruction of the Quincy. The hollow, demon, and shinigami aspects of Arlette’s soul were purged from within her, an agonizing and traumatic process that not everyone could realistically have survived. Even she barely managed to do so, and when those days of torture were through, and she sat weakened in that surgery room, only a single thought ran through her mind, repeating itself so that she didn’t lose herself completely.

Claudia Duvalier had to die.

She’s still yet to fully recover from her experience, and her pragmatism has shown her the sheer depths that her creator is capable of. If this sort of agony was within Claudia’s grasp, if she could subject others to this, the world was in far more danger from her than even Arlette had been aware of. Before, it had simply been business. But it was personal now. She left without warning, and disappeared to the City of Lights before her recovery was finished. That was fine by her. She could recover on her own time. She wouldn’t avoid the opportunity to right this wrong.


○ Section 12 Leftovers: As one of Claudia’s personal guards, Arlette is outfitted with the absolute pinnacle of Carrington Developments’ arms and defense technology. Of this equipment, the vast majority of it comes from Carrington’s Section 12, dedicated to the most radical and innovative developments and given the most extensive funding for its research. Much of this equipment is specialized and advanced enough that, even with the extensive resources of the Duvalier Group, and the financial boon of subsidies from the Vastimian government, it simply is not feasible for any large scale manufacturing. Of these technologies, the most deadly (and also the least visually obvious) are specialized ammunition and body armor designed to interfere with spiritual defenses and attacks, by usage of a proprietary alloy which incorporates sekkiseki without compromising the overall structural integrity of the projectile or the body armor itself. While spiritual attacks against Arlette are not totally negated, they are tremendously reduced in efficacy, and even the most powerful of spiritual defenses are no different from a mundane blockade when fired on with this specialized ammunition.

However, she is no longer operating with Claudia’s blessing, and as such, only has access to the gear that she already had on her person. Her supplies of this dangerous ammunition are limited, and while the actual spiritual-dispersion abilities of her body armor are still quite present, she can’t maintain it nearly as well as she once could with Duvalier Group assistance.


○ Genetic Augmentation: Created for the sole purpose of protecting Claudia, Arlette was given quite exceptional modifications from the original genetics of their “mother.” This is, of course, to make up for her otherwise wholly unremarkable physicality or talent. Unlike Claudia, who is by all accounts a normal woman, Arlette has more than enough physical prowess to match most threats even without her wide array of equipment. These include extreme enhancements to strength, durability, agility, and perception, as well as several systems of secondary organs to function in the event of the primary organ’s failure.

○ Simulated Experience: Despite being mere clones of Claudia, and having never undergone a genuine upbringing, Arlette has lived through several thousand years of combat simulations before having been introduced to the greater world at large. As such, she carries the hardened knowledge of the battlefield that most only find after years in the killing fields, though it must be noted that many of these simulations are not mere electronic exercises, but rather direct recreations of real battles, and on several occasions she has been left to simply experience the aftermath of failed exercises so as to impart the importance of success onto them. Any environment, any foe, any circumstance, Arlette has been drilled in it to a degree that would likely have broken many. And, to be fair, it did break many previous attempts at her creation.



General Skills

• Durability: Adept
  
• General Speed: Adept
  
• Strength: Adept
  
• Martial Skill: Adept
  

Will Skills

• Willpower/Determination: Advanced
  
• Mental Deduction: Adept
  
• Focus: Advanced