Post by baker on Jun 15, 2009 20:15:50 GMT -8
• LISA MARIE BAKER •
x 
x 
x x NICKNAME : Lili, Leese, Rory, 'that little redhead'
ALIAS : Robin Hood
AGE : Twenty five
BIRTHDATE : 13th November, 1953
APPEARANCE : Lisa Baker doesn’t exactly look the part of her nightlife alibi, of the Robin Hood that has finally come to America, at least not how the stories portray her or her inspiration. You think of Robin Hood, and you think big, right? She’s actually fairly short and lithe, standing at 5”3 and 130lbs; she’s almost pixie-like, if very curvy and lithely built, but if you told her that she might have to kill you – figuratively speaking. Lisa wouldn’t describe herself as “pretty” and she certainly doesn’t set her face up to attract; she is incredibly tomboyish, and her features comply. Lisa’s skin is darker than you would expect of an Anglo-Saxon who was born and bred in Nottingham before she moved to Bronx, because she spent a lot of time, as a child, out of doors. It fuses well, however, with her forest green eyes, specked with hints of lime and Christmas tree green depending on the light, and the ridiculous mop of cropped ginger hair that is cut, at first glance, in no particular discernible style. Her hair is generally flicked to one side and isn’t left to grow any further than the line of her jaw where face meets neck. Iin fact, every now and then she finds herself explaining how she is not in fact Irish, as far as she knows, or Celtish.
She even has these freckles, dark and caramel coloured, in a ridiculous volume that she rather likes, dotted across her nose and under her eyes, and on her midriff and palms too. Pretty much every part of her body has some concentration of freckles, and they seem to be multiplying every day. On the small of her neck, she has a chocolate brown birthmark the general shape of a wood shaving, but a good few times bigger, slightly to the right. A close friend once called her ski-jump nose cute, and there is certainly something sexy about her in an imperfect I’m-not-really-trying-to-impress-you kind of way. Apart from anything else she's sort of single and sort of not and isn't dressing to get picked up at all. Mostly. As well as that, Lisa has a very large scar on her coccyx from a fall in her teenage years, from a great height. It doesn’t cumber her vey often, but if she receives a blow to the scar it can put her back in her work. She also has a more recent one on her left shoulder from when a bullet clipped her.
ATTIRE : In the daytime, you’d be hard pressed to find Lisa in anything pink or remotely feminine. Lisa in a dress could easily symbolize the dawn of the Apocalypse. Unless of course you count the end of school dance, that pretty little knee-length turquoise number, but that's not something we talk about. And she was being blackmailed, but not enough to stop her finishing the look off with heavy boots and getting her date to wear a dress by the end of the night. Now, a casual elbow-length shirt and a pair of boot-cut/boy-fit trousers or plaid baggy trousers would be more like her, with a big belt, or a casual shirt and maybe a gypsy skirt for her day job in the university, as a Historian. When she’s working behind the bar her clothes get decidedly skimpier, as much as she can get away with. Whenever she can she prefers to walk around in her bare feet, and she is rarely seen in anything other than a pair of comfortable pump-like shoes or boots. She tends to carry around a black satchel, with a couple of knick knacks sewn, glued and threaded onto the sides, containing her tools for both jobs and general miscellanea. And of course an address book.
At night, her looks takes on a darker tone. Dressed all in black from head to foot, she tops off the attire with a quiver of bows over one shoulder, tipped with green feathers, a large dark wooden bow, and of course the green masquerade mask and the red feathers sewn into her hair. Her shirt comes down to her elbows, where short fingerless gloves cover her hands, and cuts off at a eight cm wide belt looped over her waist that functions as a utility belt, a little bit more feminine but holding all her tools of the trade – gun, rope, other miscellania.The end result is a sort of comic book combination of Green Arrow and someone who thinks that they're a woodpecker. A balaclava if need be, or a pair of gloves to avoid fingerprints, sometimes completes the look; she has this pair that doesn't quite cover her fingers that she wears a lot and would be rather awkward should they fall into the hands of the police. Lots of DNA to be found there. And if it's not going to get in the way she wears a trench coat on a rainy day. What? She's British - she may tolerate the weather but that doesn't mean she likes it, even if it is a little better in Bronx than it was in Britain.
PLAY BY : Keira Knightley
AFFILIATION : Independents
OCCUPATION : Historian at a university, and a barkeep between terms
EQUIPMENT : When Lisa is Lisa, there’s not much she carries on her person; an address book, a gun, maybe a good sandwich if she knows she’s not going to get away from work for lunch and the money needed to buy a coffee on the way home if it’s a wet day. It’s a long walk if she can’t hail some better transport for the journey, after all. As Robin, however, it’s quite a little bit more complicated. She always carries a large bow made of dark cherry wood, and a quiver made of leather on her back filled with at least ten large bows, tipped with dark green painted feathers. She never goes out without her green masquerade mask, a fabric and somewhat glitzy piece of her outfit, on her face, since it somehow does manage to hide her identity, and she sews red feathers into her hair, a lot of them. She always carries a small pistol on her utility belt, as well as a loop of rope around her waist belt, a small smoke explosive, small change and other knick knacks for the job.
PERSONALITY : The Lisa most people see isn’t exactly historian material – the only way you could say she was her job would be to compare her to a rogue archeologist with a treasure and honour complex, emphasis on the rogue. Lisa is the kind of historian who likes to be out there, finding and making history, and she doesn’t exactly sit still. Ever. A foot tap, a finger drill, a hair ruffle… You name it. But that’s not to say she isn’t dedicated and focused. Give her a job, and she’ll complete it, as long as it doesn’t conflict with her moral code or her beliefs. Really, this is a pretty important attribute during her night job, but it's hardly white and pristine.
No, if Lisa makes a threat, she follows it through - she once 'posted' her best friend's Godfather to the petstore covered in gasoline and catnip. And she was certainly the kind of child that parents did not want near their sons and daughters. All butter wouldn't melt as long as it suited her, but enlisting neighbourhood cats and paper boys as her helpers on the sidelines. If there was something going on in the street, like Mungojerry and Rumpleteaser Lisa was doing it, but like Macavity they were very, very, rarely caught. She's sneaky like that. But maybe a little grey - stealing from the ice cream van as a child, for example. She never committed any evil crimes, per se, nothing vicious or that hurt people.
Lisa likes to think of herself as Robin Hood. Somewhere in the middle of the strong sarcasm, witty comebacks, spontaneous impulses, occasional physical attacks and the sometimes hard to comprehend Nottingham accent there is definitely a woman who would give her last bottle of water to a busker during Armageddon. Lisa genuinely wants to help the homeless, even if her magpie urges do get the better of her on occasion. Its treasure, after all, it gets her attention. She’s also very flirtatious, as people know especially, and won’t hesitate to put on the feminine charm to get what she wants, on the street, with the police, or even with the villains if she's reckless enough to get caught up and really wants to annoy them enough. Surprisingly this doesn’t happen all too often, because she prefers being elusive, doing her job as spectacularly as she wishes but then stepping back, even if she does enjoy the press's frantic guesses at who she might be. Since they've only just worked out she's not male.
As Robin Hood, the alibi which the underworld and the media has come to know her as, Lisa is more violent and reckless. She’s reckless anyway, so think about that one. She has a pretty short temper, and uses her pistol and bow and arrow quite a lot when snappy, not shooting to kill but rather to maim or hold back, or to knock something down onto someone's head that puts them out for the count long enough for her to get some money for the poor for good measure and make her escape. She does however possess a particular moral code: No killing unless it’s live and let die (and she hasn't killed yet and doesn't know how she would handle doing so), no heavy extortion, no violence towards innocent people. Although she doesn’t trust that many people, so innocent people is a slim criteria to fit. High strung is the phrase people use, and it only just does the state of mind justice. Of course Lisa still has her fears - exposure, capture, death, all the usual you would expect. And serious flaws, like her tendency to jump in like Anansi and run like the wind when it all goes pear-shaped. But it gets the job done. However, Lisa does fear exposure, and is incredibly claustrophobic, cripplingly so.
Both Lisa and Robin Hood have a tendency to the drink; nothing addictive, or obsessive, but she goes in search of rum, whiskey and scotch for more reasons than just to drown sorrows. It’s one reason she took a part time job in bar. Her real obsession, though, lies in the stories of Robin Hood, both the legends and the records of the real man. It fascinates her, and was her inspiration to start fighting crime and helping the poor, and she also has a love of adventure and treasure that has led her to the profession she chose. Along with the rain, rock music, winning and running, she has plenty of hobbies. However, Lisa has a strong dislike of small places and crowds, that can cripple her in a fight or a chase. Lisa is, however, more than a little anarchist, and has long since passed the phrase “borderline” and left it far behind her. She can be a little neurotic, dislikes scary movies and sleeping in, and isn’t overly fond of the deterioration of the Guardians.
SKILLS : Lisa can fire a bow very well, and always wears a leather wrist strap on her right arm, being left handed. It wouldn’t help for her to strip the skin from her arm. She’s also a pretty close shot with her pistol, and very good at running and hiding, and escaping. But not sneaky – that’s why she’s gotten good at running and hiding so fast. Lisa is quite the quick talker, like a modern day British Anansi the Spider, and can talk her way out of many things, or at least talk her captors into confusion if it happens. For work, she is pretty good at working the university databases – it helps her find information for her hero persona, and to keep her in a job. It also helps feed the research that Lisa Baker is famous for into Robin Hood and similar legends across the world. In the bar, she mixed drinks a lot as a teenager; it comes in handy.
STRENGTHS : Lisa has a very high tolerance for alcohol; she has to, for the sheer volume she drinks and still manages to work on. She is also incredibly loyal – anarchist, yes, but if she’s on your side then she is on your side, indefinitely. On a similar point, if you agree to help her she will not tolerate or stand for disloyalty, or for that matter black morals, generally. She has a very strong if grey sense of morals. Lisa is a great shot with a bow and arrow, coming from her lessons when she was young and a sheer thrill in the sport of archery, and it comes in handy for her hero persona. Lisa is a sharp-tongued trickster like Brer Rabbit, elusive and good at using her feminine wiles to get what she needs, snad sometimes wants. She can also sing very well, if she lets someone hear, and runs fast.
WEAKNESSES : Lisa’s biggest weakness is her claustrophobia; put her in a small room, or a crowded arena, and she can come close to a break down. It would cripple her in a fight, and stems for a teenage experience. She can also be borderline neurotic on her bad days, for example during her time of the month or when she’s very tired – she is a little high strung about being unmasked as well. She can be very reckless, jumping into a situation without directly thinking out of a backup plan, and cannot read map, although since she spends most of her time in a few cities now she doesn’t need one so much. Oh yes, and she’s also allergic to paracetamol – it makes frequent doctor’s visits rather awkward.
RESIDENCE : Lisa lives in a small apartment in the outskirts of Bronx. Humbly furnished but comfortable, there are two rooms; a bathroom, and a living room with a kitchen at one end and a ‘bedroom’ at the other. Well, I say kitchen, it’s a cooker, a counter and a fridge, and I say bathroom but it’s more of a shower room. Either way, it is how she likes it. The bedroom consists of a large sofa-bed like contraption and a mountain of history books.
FAMILY :
Gordon Baker (father, living)
Annabel “Annie” House (adoptive mother, living)
Terrance Baker (grandfather, living)
Jane Goodwin (birth mother, deceased)
Felix (small chestnut ferret, living)
HISTORY : In the start of 1952, Gordon Baker Jane Goodwin finally had success in the child they'd been trying to have for about three years. They'd been married for two, meeting through Gordon's rather cliche work as a plumber when they first married and Annie's broken flat sink which was effectively flooding the leased apartment near where she was studying. They got along nicely, Gordon offered his spare room until her house dried off, and two years later they got married. The coming baby girl was a welcome surprise, and when she came along she was fondled over and later guarded carefully, when it came to her habit of climbing out of the cot (learning that if she cried when she hit the ground the adults came and put her back in) and down the stairs at any given hour. However, at the age of six months, Jane fell ill with influenza, and went missing one night; nobody ever knew where she went, and she was presumed dead. Soon after, Gordon, broken-hearted, remarried Annabel “Annie” House, the only woman Lisa ever knew as a mother.
Apart from that, Lisa had a generic childhood, coming up to school. As an only child of parents both in corporate business, by that point having come up in the world for the good of their daughter, she never really saw them, to be frank, and it suited her. She liked the quiet (well, not the quite but the solitude from her parents and guardians) where she could do what she liked, and from the age of four her parents would let her go down to the park on her own or round the corner to the shop. She even had an imaginary friend, or so they thought, who later turned out to be a busker on the High Street. They didn’t really know how far she often went, and they didn’t really care all that much anyway.
No, Lisa’s life, as she defines the term, began in her first year of primary school when she moved to America. It wasn’t long into the term that a certain Johnny Granger tried to steal her lunch and found a well-placed fork through his jumper sleeve, and after that she spent most of her time with Oliver, the fork’s wielder. He'd been eying her up like a brand new crayon from across the classroom, and she in turn had been oddly intrigued by the strange kid across the room. Turned out he'd felt the same about the new English girl. In and out of heists (including the one which gained her the coccyx scar through Oliver's experiments 'in the name of science') but always managing to avoid detention through persuasion, the two became inseparable, Lisa taking the position of Oliver’s twin sister quickly when the Oliver and Mathilda went to different schools. It wasn't until later, stolen ice-cream vans and hidden kittens aside, that they became best friends.
It was in secondary school that Lisa gave Oliver the name Felix. They both got into a load of fights, often bloody, but Oliver had a habit of walking away where the other did not, smiling his head off while Lisa distracted his opponent or gained a nice little battle scar to irritate her parents, being the riskier of the two. Felix came from the word feliz (happy) in their languages class, and a subtle reference to Felix Leiter from James Bond, and it stuck. It was also in their last few years of highschool that they first began to date – after all, it was only a matter of time before that friendship became a little bit more. On and off, mostly in secret, Lisa lost certain things to Felix at the age of eighteen, but it was never serious. There was love, but it was too complicated, and neither pursued it, much to both their dismay - because somewhere along the line Lisa had fallen in love, and it was clear to anyone else that Felix felt exactly the same, and although they remained side by side through everything they were never really pronounced as a couple by anyone in school. If somebody asked them, they were 'together'. Annie Baker had pestered Lisa against playing with boys until the age of fifteen, at which point she was ecstatic to hear of Lisa's interest; and then Gordon pointed out that it was Felix. Lisa was her father's little girl and her mother's thorn in the side.
High school kick started the Modern Robin Hood ideas. For the first time Matt and Lisa were in the same school, and Lisa’s anarchist stance coupled with how she and Felix both hated the poverty in the world led them to calling upon Matt’s lock-picking and electrical prowess once they graduated. Matt got them in, and the two of them did what they needed to do, both in the Robin Hood area and in Felix’s side some personal gain. They pick-pocketed, they stole things that belonged to the state and that they could sell, and all that jazz. Which was why they argued. Lisa disagreed with his stance, he saw no reason why he couldn’t get a little on the side to support them all… Lisa moved out of their shared flat, split their group and went solo. However, not long after Felix joined the ranks of the many people, in the last twenty years to have vanished in the city. Although Lisa never entirely got over it, she slipped into her Robin Hood hero persona for good in his memory, and within a year had picked up the persona of “Robin Hood” by the press and underworld, and joined the police most wanted list at first for her thefts for the poor. She went to university, graduated in History, and within another few years had a job at the University, a fame as a historian, and had deviated into more hero work than just robbing from the rich to give to the poor.
Now having moved, mostly, to Bronx, Lisa had officially established a name for herself as the vigialante Robin Hood. Her life has moved on, and things are – for the most part – settling out. She has enemies, sure, but keeps her back guarded, and really what else does she need to do? Lisa’s not looking for Mr. Right but plans one day to meet him, and is still evading exposure.
YOUR NAME : Cookie
CONTACT :PM, aim=cookieacookie
RP EXPERIENCE : Three years, mostly modern and fantasy/MARVEL
HOW DID YOU FIND US? : Word of mouth
