(former app)

[binaural]

Character Information

Name/Alias: Therese Frey | "Lorelei"
Gender: Female
Age: 19

Physical Description: Dyed blue hair, going slightly past her shoulders. A dancer's body, with toned and strong limbs from her years of training. Oval face, somewhat prominent nose, blue eyes, 5'5". Usually wearing some form of cosmetics - she prefers a more natural and fresh look, but wouldn't be caught looking less than put together by others. PB is Marimoon, without the lip ring. Therese and Vivi use the same PB save for the hair color.

World:
(The Frey sisters come from a shared OC verse.)

The Cartazonos Academy was founded in the 1970s in north Minnesota by a woman known only as Headmistress Coral Sparrows. Girls are brought to the academy mainly at a very young age, even as infants, to be raised up as students. No girl ever receives word of her life before Cartazonos, and very few attempt to escape, with even fewer succeeding, and none returning that do manage to get out of Sparrows' sight. Graduates become instructors in the academy themselves, although occasionally an outside presence is brought in.

Official academy word says that the goal is "to raise beautiful young women with passions that will change the world." Passions in this sense refers to powers, known as "pathos" in the academy. Put bluntly, the girls Sparrows collects have some form of superpower, and they widely vary, anything from spiritual possession to technopathy may be found there. There are several programs in the world to pick up and deal with people who possess these abilities, and the existence of both the pathos-bearers and the places that hold them is a closely guarded secret, with students and teachers both careful to erase evidence of where they've been or otherwise keep their existence under wraps. With the Headmistress being secretly an alien who plans for world domination, the secrecy is just a natural part of life.

Girls at Cartazonos are raised in teams of four, and they are expected to basically adopt these others as their sisters. Through both punishment and natural inclination, these bonds form in almost all but the most extreme cases. Such bonds serve them well when needing to interact with anyone that isn't from the Cartazonos community, as the girls tend not to be the best at getting along with others in anything close to a friendly context. Social pressure is everywhere at the academy, boiling down to an unspoken requirement to be wonderful at everything one turns her hand to. Art, science, battle practice, even a girl's physical appearance is subject to this intense scrutiny and as you'd expect, bullying is an everyday occurrence. Many crack under the pressure, yet no one bats an eye. If you can make it to 20, then you'll be allowed to take on missions of your own and go on the course to becoming a teacher someday or otherwise being useful to the headmistress. Even if one's pathos isn't much, Sparrows is far from willing to let any of her girls out of her grip.

The girls may be assigned missions at any time. From subduing a disaster to tracking down a lost puppy, whatever is deemed necessary for them to do will be done. Thus, they are all trained in fighting, and those that can are taught to weaponize their powers.

History:
Therese was raised at Cartazonos from the age of three, being collected along with her twin sister Vivi after Vivi's discovery of her ability to fly raised more than a few awkward questions. Quiet, uncomfortable with the stares of awe her singing produced, and too trusting for her own good, the young girl never dreamed her childhood was anything less than right. She believed the beautiful ladies who told her that her sister was going to be taken care of even if Therese could not keep her eyes on her always, she believed them when they told her it was such a privilege to be there, and she believed them when they told her that one day she could grow up to be as beautiful and talented as they were. Thus the vision of perfection was sealed into her dreams for the future.

Beginning to train her body and voice to go along with her natural inclination for music, the newly codenamed Lorelei, student #35853, spent the majority of her hours practicing and learning to refine her pathos until it was second nature to view things in terms of music, and quickly found herself confused by the others that didn't hold themselves to such strict standards. Still, she managed to form bonds with her team members, able to throw jokes about and just as fiercely protective of them as she would have been to her blood sisters. They were Felice Albrin (orinthopath, who could speak to and control birds), Denise Gutter (ascenciopath, who could come back to life perfectly fine after being killed), and Polly Q (odontopath, who could create teeth on any part of her body), and she loved them dearly, enough to confidently say she'd take bullets, torture, and the blame for them. As for Vivi, their relationship would have cooled if Vivi was not the happy go lucky personality she was and kept herself in Therese's life. And so even though they were twins, Therese began to take on more of the older sister sort of role from her nearly unceasing seriousness. This role carried over into her treatment of her team-despite one of her sisters, being physically older, Therese saw all her teammates as needing to be cared for and supported in that elder sister way.

At thirteen, the double pressure of the school and her own standards made Therese crack enough to actually dream up a plan for escape and attempt to implement it. The plan was simply to ensure key doors were left unlocked, sing any watchers to sleep, and then start running north to escape into Canada. Though she tried hard, it was clumsily executed-she was caught fleeing the grounds on camera, and she was back in Sparrows' hands before she had the chance to cross the border. Not five days after her failed plan, the punishment had her sobbing on the floor, utterly mentally broken and whatever spark of disobedience had temporarily flared was stamped out of existence for good. Again, she saw the beautiful ladies, and emotional wreck that she was, swore with all her heart to be good for the academy, to return back to her dreams and schedule and do whatever they asked without question.

They rewarded her for such a vow, treated her as gently as she could have wished, and her mind twisted the punishment she had received earlier into something she had deserved for daring to think against Cartazonos. What had this school given her, but friends, sisters, love, and power? Had it not helped shape her into a beautiful young girl, well on the path to fulfilling her dreams? It had, and so she began analyzing all the flaws in herself which had led to rejecting those pieces of truth, changing what was a mere desire for perfection into a full blown obsession with the concept. From that moment on, she withdrew emotionally from all but a select few, choosing instead to focus on ridding herself of imperfections and distractions.

During these years, her idolatry of Cartazonos' finest found a home in the music instructor, Fallon Pinset, a melodupath who had what Therese considered to be a perfect voice to go along with her grace and beauty. When Therese then would say she wanted to be a good Cartazonos girl, what she meant was that she wanted to be like Miss Pinset. Though she would never speak of the depth of her infatuation, she believed that her and the instructor must share some kind of bond, no doubt supported by the way Therese occasionally was allowed to sing with the teacher during lessons. Things like this convinced Therese that if she only worked hard enough, if she only perfected her song, she would be smiled at and acknowledged by both her peers and elders in the fashion she desired.

The murder of one of the students by the battle tactics instructor occurred when Therese was fifteen, and gave her more reason to believe that people could not be trusted aside from her chosen few. She was unsettled by the incident, and her caring began to slowly seep out again from fear of losing those closest to her. She would never again be as warm as she was before her escape, but neither was she as standoffish as she had been. Small tokens to show she was listening would appear around her teammates, her relationship with Vivi was picked back up again-no matter how childish Therese had thought Vivi acted, she was still her blood and a dose of sunshine in Therese's life, and she realized she couldn't bear to lose her either. And of course, she was back to instantly leaping to her sisters' defense, from words and blows. If a single person decided to touch any of her team in a way Therese disapproved of, they better like being under the influence of infrasound. More importantly, Therese no longer completely ignored the other girls in the academy when running across them, and actually bothered to learn names and faces if only to know who Polly was going on about over dinner.

Since that time, Therese has remained as strict as ever with herself - though not to the same depths of blocking others out - especially with her goal of teaching so close by, and tried to live as peaceful a life as she could at Cartazonos. The music still flows endlessly from her room, she still revises her papers three times, and her devotion to the school is still unshakable. One would not call her happy, necessarily, but she is content with her lot in life, waiting for her happiness to come on the day she can influence others as she was so influenced.

Personality:
Always, Therese was the quieter twin, the one concerned with rules and what was allowed, always knowing that things had to be right in her world or else it might all fall apart. This has stuck with her throughout all her years, morphing from a concern into a full blown obsession or at least something close to it. Her work, her art, her looks-they are all subject to her intense scrutiny and more often than not fall short of her expectations. This perfectionism leads into a neverending cycle within her to work on correcting these flaws, looking at it again, finding other ones, working again...etc. If confronted, she'd deny there was anything wrong with the standards she keeps herself to, and then question why everyone else was not as strict as she was.

Her upbringing does nothing to curb this-if anything, Cartazonos and the extreme pressure within feeds the desire in how it not so subtly pushes the girls to be the absolute best in everything. Any unhappiness Therese feels from pushing herself this hard is yet another flaw to be pushed aside, shoved down deep and never mentioned. If something is wrong, obviously it is her fault instead of being the problem of anyone around her. Some girls turn to drinking or rage, but repression is her coping method, from repressing her emotions towards her instructors that are anything but idolatry to repressing her feelings towards her gilded little cage of a life. She obeys Cartazonos without question since her failed escape, and she considers her high standards just another way to be the best for them. What she can fix, she must - and what can't be excised can at least be shelved and ignored. And if by ignoring it she can get through and receive even a shred of praise, that's enough positive reinforcement for her to continue. All this has contributed to the Opera most people know - politely dismissive about what doesn't interest her, more a machine than a girl when it comes to achieving her desires, never really inviting people into her mysterious little sphere. In her view, most people don't need to know what she's doing or why she does it, and more's the better, because the more people know that her core may be soft under a shell, the worse it will be for her.

But she must be diplomatic if she is to maintain a good image, and so she can still smile prettily and feign that other's problems are really something she cares about. Better to manipulate those around you than run the risk of a damaged reputation. After all, you can always indulge in petty gossip behind their back, and Therese can be just as catty as the rest of them. She's gone through her fair share of ripping a girl down for the smallest of reasons, especially when the target has said anything about her sisters, and she wouldn't deny she gets a bit of pleasure from watching their unhappiness when she feels they deserve it. While she wouldn't go so far as to try and kill someone for a slight, her moral code is generally dictated by the idea of what is deserved, as well as what is necessary. Certainly no one deserves to die for a slight, but if in a mission, it's necessary to kill, then it's weighed differently to her. Therese would consider herself a good person in that respect, but what that truly means is muddled in the various concepts of how to be she's gained from the Academy.

Her sisters are her ultimate soft spot-the girls she grew up with are her closest bonds, and she'd easily die for them. The forced loyalty Cartazonos instills took hold in her without question. She considers herself the big sister of the group, despite how Felice is older than her, and she sees it as her personal mission to care for them and be there for them. Though balancing that without being smothering is tricky for her, she tries her hardest. She's the one to encourage them to do their homework, to wear pretty things, to eat lunch, and she's the first to get angry when she hears of anyone saying anything about them. Her protectiveness is enough that a few girls who tried talking trash about her team ended up in the infirmary, sick from Therese's aural attacks.

This protectiveness is not limited to the team, though; she extends the same feelings to Vivi, and the Academy could not crush her bond with her twin. Vivi's cheer has more than once helped Therese get through her own bad days, and she's privately thankful Vivi didn't leave her when she was at her most reclusive. Though Therese would not say aloud she loves Vivi, it's clear enough to see from her actions towards her, which ignore the split in their teams. Blood bonds are rare in the Academy, and Vivi's persistence in maintaining a connection to her when it could have been so easy to let it drift away in those years enabled the Freys to strengthen their relationship again, and proved to Therese her own foolishness in trying to place that connection at a lower priority. Cross team or not, she cares enough to listen, to be there, to ensure her sister doesn't forget the more boring things for class and to let her know someone always has her back.

Music is her great passion in life, and she prefers to have it around her almost all the time. If it cannot be playing, she sings or hums to fill the void. Everything and everyone in her life has a song attached to them. She spends more time in the music room than she does in any other place, and it is when she sings and dances that she's truly happy, that she's truly confident. Therese considers her voice her greatest talent, and combining her sixteen years of training with her sonupathy creates a thing of beauty indeed. Music is her core, the thing that keeps her stable and has been so reliable, and if she could do nothing for the rest of her life but sing, she'd be fine with that. With everything she shoves down inside of her, it's all let out in an acceptable manner when she performs - no one can find fault in her channeling sorrow into a song to make it sound better, or letting her rage show through a dance that is supposed to be passionate. And in this respect, she's rewarded for her methods with the praise that she craves.

Abilities:
Sonupathy is the ability to manipulate and control sounds. Being trained since she was small to control this, her abilities have a broad range - some examples are changing the sound of her voice as she sings to refine it and create a specific frequency, controlling the sound output of a space to allow or deny sound passing through, projecting her voice to be louder without needing equipment or yelling, and effectively muting someone by cancelling out their sound output before it reaches their and other people's ears. With concentration, she is able to weaponize this ability when traveling into various frequencies, particularly the extremes of of ultrasound and infrasound. So far she has not been able to make this lethal, just highly uncomfortable and able to incapacitate. There are worse things than a ruptured eardrum that sound can bring, and Therese knows them. By extension, she has an extremely high resistance to sonic attacks of any kind.

She also participates in combat training in addition to the extensive education she receives at Cartazonos, and so has been trained in dealing with various sorts of weaponry and unarmed combat. Still, her body's only human.

Basic educational statistics.