Post by The Exodus on Aug 21, 2012 19:53:40 GMT -6
Character: Carmen Vega Ortiz
Age: 30
Gender: Female
Occupation: Gangster
AI: Katherine Moennig
Personality: Carmen views herself as “one of the guys”. She knows, however, that most in her field are hesitant to accept her as an equal. She’s dealt with sexism her whole life, and frankly, doesn’t have time for your “you fight like a girl” sh*t. So before you even think of mocking her, remember, she carries two guns on her person and if she doesn’t get you between the eyes now, she doesn’t mind climbing on a nearby roof with a sniper rifle when you least expect it.
Despite the threat Carmen can pose, she usually doesn’t bother with any of it. If she’s not getting paid, Carmen figures there has to be a damn good reason to pull a gun. She’d rather joke around in the local bar, tossing back beers, and watching whatever game is on. A smile—or at least a smirk—is seldom absent from her face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Carmen was nothing but a barrel of laughs. This reckless attitude has gotten her into her share of scrapes, but Carmen knows her pandilla has her back. Since her late teens, Carmen has been a member of Las Garduñas and she considers them her family. Family is everything to Carmen. Her loyalty is unwavering and her love for her “family” is the only reason she’s in Paris now.
History: Carmen Vega Ortiz was born to Luis Alvarez Vega and Consuelo Vega Castañeda y Ortiz. She is the youngest of two daughters. Her sister, Teresa, was two years older than Carmen and Consuelo’s pregnancy had been so difficult, doctors advised she not get pregnant again. Carmen, however, was no accident. Luis was determined to have a son and Consuelo never said “no” to her husband. However, when Carmen was born, a second girl brought no celebration to the Vega family. Doctors performed a hysterectomy on Consuelo to save both mother and child. There would be no son.
Consuelo suffered from what would today be termed as postpartum depression and didn’t want anything to do with her new baby. Luis didn’t know the first thing about babies. He worked two jobs: the first as a dock worker on Malaga’s seafront and the second as a street fighter in seedy dives on the outskirts of town. He didn’t have time for a toddler, a baby, and a depressed wife. During this time, Carmen spent days and nights at her aunt and uncle’s flat two floors up. Consuelo’s sister, Sancha, had a toddler son two years older than Carmen. Though resources were strained, the family muddled through. In exchange, Luis offered to do anything he could for Sancha and her husband. This sense of family molded Carmen in ways she would never predict.
The years passed and Carmen returned to her parents’ apartment full time. She still spent much time with her aunt, uncle, and cousin and came to view them as her primary family. In particular, she idolized her cousin, Diego. Diego managed to make her father smile and Carmen desperately wanted to do the same. Often, Luis would take Diego out alone under the guise of bonding with his godson. Curious Carmen followed once when she was seven.
She saw her father take a swing at Diego in the empty parking lot behind the local pharmacy. Without thinking, Carmen rushed out and began smacking her father with her fists. Luis and Diego laughed. From that day on, Carmen joined them for boxing lessons. Luis often had the children spar against each other and gave them pointers. When Carmen was twelve, Luis was left blind in one eye by a fight and his night job ended. With Diego at boarding school, Luis turned all his attention to his daughter and training her. At this point, Carmen was tall and shaped like a whip. She was little more than sinew and bones and Luis confided to her that she was better than he had been at her age. He told her that she might really have a future in street fighting, after all.
When Carmen was fifteen, she tried to register for her first amateur street fight. The man taking names laughed at her and told her to go home and learn to cook like a normal girl. Angry, Carmen went home and cut her own hair off. Still stick-shaped, she could pass for a boy. She returned and registered under Diego’s name. She won her first fight with only a broken nose to show for it. It wasn’t a paying match, though, and Carmen was hungry to know what real success felt like.
She registered under Diego’s name in the amateur rings for months. After a year, she decided to try a paying fight. Carmen had won some fights and lost some others, but nothing prepared her for her first paying fight. During the fight, her opponent got a little too aggressive. Carmen had been doing well and it was her first round with the professionals. After she’d been deemed the winner, her opponent attacked her. In the scuffle, her shirt was ripped in two and revealed her bound breasts. The audience who had been cheering her spat at her and the referee who was in charge of payment gave Carmen’s winnings to her opponent. She limped home with bruises and it wasn’t for three days until Carmen realized one of her ribs was broken. She went to the hospital, but without her winnings from the fighting ring, the Vegas couldn’t pay for Carmen’s medical bills. Consuelo did not blame Luis for Carmen’s street fighting, but rather blamed Carmen. She threw her out. Carmen was only sixteen.
Fortunately, Carmen found a place to stay on Diego’s couch. However, instead of finding the best friend Carmen remembered, something about Diego had changed. She couldn’t place just what. And things only got worse when Diego’s lifelong crush, Gisele, was found dead later that year. Diego was always a quiet boy, but now he was a secretive man. Carmen worked odd jobs, but she knew none of them would cover the expenses of her own place. She was stuck in Diego’s place until she saved up the money or she would have to live on the streets. She decided she could handle anything.
Then, one night, she saw Diego get shot.
He was walking her home from a waitressing job across town. He mentioned that she should look for a job somewhere else. Carmen laughed and told him that she’d do anything for a little money. And then a bullet whizzed through the air and clipped Diego’s shoulder. He shouted and turned around. Carmen realized with sudden horror that her cousin drew a gun in return. A second bullet embedded itself in his lower arm. He dropped the gun. Carmen instinctively dove for it. She fired two shots down the dark alley way the other bullets had come from. One hit a dumpster and made a pinging sound. The other sailed through the air and Carmen never knew what it hit or if it hit anything at all. She dragged Diego out of there. She offered to get him to a doctor (although neither of them could afford it) and instead, he instructed she take him to his friend Lorenzo Reyes’ house.
The Reyes family owned the shipping company Diego’s father, Carlos, had worked for all his life. Diego had even taken a job for them. To hear Diego call Lorenzo Reyes, the wealthy shipping boss, his “friend”, jarred Carmen, but she did as she was told. In Lorenzo Reyes’ sparkling clean kitchen, Carmen watched as the two men talked like equals. Lorenzo’s sister, Catalina removed the bullet from Diego’s arm and sewed it up with a travel sewing kit. All the while, she and Lorenzo eyed Carmen suspiciously. Carmen vowed not to tell anyone what she’d seen.
Two weeks later, Lorenzo visited Diego’s apartment with a proposal for Carmen. If she wanted to live, she might as well make herself useful. He said Diego would “train” her and if Carmen was good enough, she could join their “family”.
By “family”, of course, Lorenzo meant Las Garduñas. The gang controlled drug and weapons dealing in the area, using the Reyes shipping company. Lorenzo was the gang’s leader and Diego was his most trusted man. If her cousin had been anyone else, Carmen would have been dead. The gang had no use for a woman—Lorenzo made that clear—but Diego had interceded on her behalf. Carmen agreed to let her cousin teach her to use a gun, make a drug deal, and differentiate between Malaga’s many gangs. After a year, Carmen was inducted. She still bears her Garduña tattoo on her ankle proudly.
For years, she and Diego worked as a team. They covered each other’s asses, but eventually Carmen moved into her own apartment. It was an exciting existence, fighting Las Netas and other gangs in the area, but more importantly, it gave Carmen a family to make up for the one that had discarded her. She was even able to exact revenge on her former boxing enemy. His death via Smith and Wesson made up for being disgraced in the ring all those years ago.
Years and years went by without contact from her biological family. She knew from Diego that his mother (Carmen’s aunt) had died, that Teresa was married, and that her parents lived with Teresa and her husband. Carmen protested that she didn’t care, but Teresa contacted her when Carmen was twenty five in an utter panic. Luis had been killed by another boxer—an accident in the ring—because he’d gone back to fighting in secret. Teresa begged Carmen to go to the funeral. She and Diego attended and stood away from the rest of the family.
However, two weeks later, Consuelo went missing. Teresa called Carmen in hysterics, thinking their mother had killed herself or run away, but Carmen couldn’t help but think she knew better. She was convinced someone had seen her and Diego at the funeral—a Neta, maybe—and was responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Carmen set up a case board in the back of her closet and spent years gathering evidence. She confided in Diego, but Diego was having problems of his own. The police were after him and he was going to leave Malaga. Later, he left Spain with the intent to hide out in another country. He never came back.
Stricken, Carmen threw herself into her work. She killed remorselessly and efficiently, not caring to tally her body count. She flitted from affair to affair, never committing herself to a relationship. She smoked and drank and went out with only other Garduñas. She committed herself to the study of machinery the gang would need: guns, at first, but she took a legitimate job-front as a technology expert at the Reyes’ shipping company and hacked to get funds into Las Garduñas’ pockets.
One night after several years, Lorenzo asked her to drinks. Carmen knew better than to refuse her boss. She worried that Lorenzo would kill her or worse. Instead, he told her Diego was alive and well in Paris. He told her that he had plans for Diego and that a day would come when Carmen needed to retrieve her cousin. Lorenzo passed occasional correspondence from Diego to Carmen, but it was scarcely enough. Without Lorenzo’s permission, Carmen left to visit her cousin. She spent several months in his apartment and even took work at his place of employment—an opera house in the heart of Paris. However, Lorenzo recalled her to Spain and Carmen left without a goodbye. Although angry that Carmen had disappeared, Lorenzo understood. Diego was one of their own and he, too, had made a few visits to Paris to check on his former right-hand man. He barely punished her—a ten lash beating, just to set an example to other Garduñas. He sent her on a mission to kill a business rival of his in the legitimate world of shipping and paid her well for it. Shortly thereafter, Lorenzo told Carmen he’d go to Paris and if she wanted a message passed to her cousin, she should let him know. Carmen asked Lorenzo to tell Diego that his father and Teresa were well and that she was getting by. Lorenzo left for Paris and didn’t return. Las Garduñas fell under Catalina’s watch—much to everyone except Catalina’s dismay. The gang was restless and didn’t take well to a woman’s orders. Catalina left to find her brother and Las Garduñas looked to Carmen for guidance. Carmen orchestrated a few minor hits, but refused to order the gang to do more than protect their turf without word from the Reyes’.
Catalina sent her a letter after two months of silence. It was a suicide note of sorts. Lorenzo had been murdered by Catalina’s ex-boyfriend, Sebastian, and Catalina had no intention to carry on without her brother. She instructed Carmen to handle Lorenzo’s last will and testament.
The will left the shipping company and Las Garduñas in Diego’s hands. Lorenzo wrote that he intended Las Garduñas to move to Paris and had already moved some members to scope out the area. He wanted the shipping company to be expanded along the Seine and for Carmen to handle remaining affairs in Spain. The Reyes’ estate—their centuries’ old money and land holdings—was to be put in Diego’s hands and funneled towards the relocation of Las Garduñas. Carmen is Lorenzo’s last messenger.
Carmen has come to Paris to convince her cousin to take his rightful place as the leader of Las Garduñas and install herself as his second-in-command. And if he needs a little “persuading”, she’s brought along reinforcements.
Not that she’ll need them. Family is everything when you’re a Garduña. Carmen knows that and if Santiago Ortiz has forgotten, she’ll just have to remind him.
Age: 30
Gender: Female
Occupation: Gangster
AI: Katherine Moennig
Personality: Carmen views herself as “one of the guys”. She knows, however, that most in her field are hesitant to accept her as an equal. She’s dealt with sexism her whole life, and frankly, doesn’t have time for your “you fight like a girl” sh*t. So before you even think of mocking her, remember, she carries two guns on her person and if she doesn’t get you between the eyes now, she doesn’t mind climbing on a nearby roof with a sniper rifle when you least expect it.
Despite the threat Carmen can pose, she usually doesn’t bother with any of it. If she’s not getting paid, Carmen figures there has to be a damn good reason to pull a gun. She’d rather joke around in the local bar, tossing back beers, and watching whatever game is on. A smile—or at least a smirk—is seldom absent from her face. If you didn’t know better, you’d think Carmen was nothing but a barrel of laughs. This reckless attitude has gotten her into her share of scrapes, but Carmen knows her pandilla has her back. Since her late teens, Carmen has been a member of Las Garduñas and she considers them her family. Family is everything to Carmen. Her loyalty is unwavering and her love for her “family” is the only reason she’s in Paris now.
History: Carmen Vega Ortiz was born to Luis Alvarez Vega and Consuelo Vega Castañeda y Ortiz. She is the youngest of two daughters. Her sister, Teresa, was two years older than Carmen and Consuelo’s pregnancy had been so difficult, doctors advised she not get pregnant again. Carmen, however, was no accident. Luis was determined to have a son and Consuelo never said “no” to her husband. However, when Carmen was born, a second girl brought no celebration to the Vega family. Doctors performed a hysterectomy on Consuelo to save both mother and child. There would be no son.
Consuelo suffered from what would today be termed as postpartum depression and didn’t want anything to do with her new baby. Luis didn’t know the first thing about babies. He worked two jobs: the first as a dock worker on Malaga’s seafront and the second as a street fighter in seedy dives on the outskirts of town. He didn’t have time for a toddler, a baby, and a depressed wife. During this time, Carmen spent days and nights at her aunt and uncle’s flat two floors up. Consuelo’s sister, Sancha, had a toddler son two years older than Carmen. Though resources were strained, the family muddled through. In exchange, Luis offered to do anything he could for Sancha and her husband. This sense of family molded Carmen in ways she would never predict.
The years passed and Carmen returned to her parents’ apartment full time. She still spent much time with her aunt, uncle, and cousin and came to view them as her primary family. In particular, she idolized her cousin, Diego. Diego managed to make her father smile and Carmen desperately wanted to do the same. Often, Luis would take Diego out alone under the guise of bonding with his godson. Curious Carmen followed once when she was seven.
She saw her father take a swing at Diego in the empty parking lot behind the local pharmacy. Without thinking, Carmen rushed out and began smacking her father with her fists. Luis and Diego laughed. From that day on, Carmen joined them for boxing lessons. Luis often had the children spar against each other and gave them pointers. When Carmen was twelve, Luis was left blind in one eye by a fight and his night job ended. With Diego at boarding school, Luis turned all his attention to his daughter and training her. At this point, Carmen was tall and shaped like a whip. She was little more than sinew and bones and Luis confided to her that she was better than he had been at her age. He told her that she might really have a future in street fighting, after all.
When Carmen was fifteen, she tried to register for her first amateur street fight. The man taking names laughed at her and told her to go home and learn to cook like a normal girl. Angry, Carmen went home and cut her own hair off. Still stick-shaped, she could pass for a boy. She returned and registered under Diego’s name. She won her first fight with only a broken nose to show for it. It wasn’t a paying match, though, and Carmen was hungry to know what real success felt like.
She registered under Diego’s name in the amateur rings for months. After a year, she decided to try a paying fight. Carmen had won some fights and lost some others, but nothing prepared her for her first paying fight. During the fight, her opponent got a little too aggressive. Carmen had been doing well and it was her first round with the professionals. After she’d been deemed the winner, her opponent attacked her. In the scuffle, her shirt was ripped in two and revealed her bound breasts. The audience who had been cheering her spat at her and the referee who was in charge of payment gave Carmen’s winnings to her opponent. She limped home with bruises and it wasn’t for three days until Carmen realized one of her ribs was broken. She went to the hospital, but without her winnings from the fighting ring, the Vegas couldn’t pay for Carmen’s medical bills. Consuelo did not blame Luis for Carmen’s street fighting, but rather blamed Carmen. She threw her out. Carmen was only sixteen.
Fortunately, Carmen found a place to stay on Diego’s couch. However, instead of finding the best friend Carmen remembered, something about Diego had changed. She couldn’t place just what. And things only got worse when Diego’s lifelong crush, Gisele, was found dead later that year. Diego was always a quiet boy, but now he was a secretive man. Carmen worked odd jobs, but she knew none of them would cover the expenses of her own place. She was stuck in Diego’s place until she saved up the money or she would have to live on the streets. She decided she could handle anything.
Then, one night, she saw Diego get shot.
He was walking her home from a waitressing job across town. He mentioned that she should look for a job somewhere else. Carmen laughed and told him that she’d do anything for a little money. And then a bullet whizzed through the air and clipped Diego’s shoulder. He shouted and turned around. Carmen realized with sudden horror that her cousin drew a gun in return. A second bullet embedded itself in his lower arm. He dropped the gun. Carmen instinctively dove for it. She fired two shots down the dark alley way the other bullets had come from. One hit a dumpster and made a pinging sound. The other sailed through the air and Carmen never knew what it hit or if it hit anything at all. She dragged Diego out of there. She offered to get him to a doctor (although neither of them could afford it) and instead, he instructed she take him to his friend Lorenzo Reyes’ house.
The Reyes family owned the shipping company Diego’s father, Carlos, had worked for all his life. Diego had even taken a job for them. To hear Diego call Lorenzo Reyes, the wealthy shipping boss, his “friend”, jarred Carmen, but she did as she was told. In Lorenzo Reyes’ sparkling clean kitchen, Carmen watched as the two men talked like equals. Lorenzo’s sister, Catalina removed the bullet from Diego’s arm and sewed it up with a travel sewing kit. All the while, she and Lorenzo eyed Carmen suspiciously. Carmen vowed not to tell anyone what she’d seen.
Two weeks later, Lorenzo visited Diego’s apartment with a proposal for Carmen. If she wanted to live, she might as well make herself useful. He said Diego would “train” her and if Carmen was good enough, she could join their “family”.
By “family”, of course, Lorenzo meant Las Garduñas. The gang controlled drug and weapons dealing in the area, using the Reyes shipping company. Lorenzo was the gang’s leader and Diego was his most trusted man. If her cousin had been anyone else, Carmen would have been dead. The gang had no use for a woman—Lorenzo made that clear—but Diego had interceded on her behalf. Carmen agreed to let her cousin teach her to use a gun, make a drug deal, and differentiate between Malaga’s many gangs. After a year, Carmen was inducted. She still bears her Garduña tattoo on her ankle proudly.
For years, she and Diego worked as a team. They covered each other’s asses, but eventually Carmen moved into her own apartment. It was an exciting existence, fighting Las Netas and other gangs in the area, but more importantly, it gave Carmen a family to make up for the one that had discarded her. She was even able to exact revenge on her former boxing enemy. His death via Smith and Wesson made up for being disgraced in the ring all those years ago.
Years and years went by without contact from her biological family. She knew from Diego that his mother (Carmen’s aunt) had died, that Teresa was married, and that her parents lived with Teresa and her husband. Carmen protested that she didn’t care, but Teresa contacted her when Carmen was twenty five in an utter panic. Luis had been killed by another boxer—an accident in the ring—because he’d gone back to fighting in secret. Teresa begged Carmen to go to the funeral. She and Diego attended and stood away from the rest of the family.
However, two weeks later, Consuelo went missing. Teresa called Carmen in hysterics, thinking their mother had killed herself or run away, but Carmen couldn’t help but think she knew better. She was convinced someone had seen her and Diego at the funeral—a Neta, maybe—and was responsible for her mother’s disappearance. Carmen set up a case board in the back of her closet and spent years gathering evidence. She confided in Diego, but Diego was having problems of his own. The police were after him and he was going to leave Malaga. Later, he left Spain with the intent to hide out in another country. He never came back.
Stricken, Carmen threw herself into her work. She killed remorselessly and efficiently, not caring to tally her body count. She flitted from affair to affair, never committing herself to a relationship. She smoked and drank and went out with only other Garduñas. She committed herself to the study of machinery the gang would need: guns, at first, but she took a legitimate job-front as a technology expert at the Reyes’ shipping company and hacked to get funds into Las Garduñas’ pockets.
One night after several years, Lorenzo asked her to drinks. Carmen knew better than to refuse her boss. She worried that Lorenzo would kill her or worse. Instead, he told her Diego was alive and well in Paris. He told her that he had plans for Diego and that a day would come when Carmen needed to retrieve her cousin. Lorenzo passed occasional correspondence from Diego to Carmen, but it was scarcely enough. Without Lorenzo’s permission, Carmen left to visit her cousin. She spent several months in his apartment and even took work at his place of employment—an opera house in the heart of Paris. However, Lorenzo recalled her to Spain and Carmen left without a goodbye. Although angry that Carmen had disappeared, Lorenzo understood. Diego was one of their own and he, too, had made a few visits to Paris to check on his former right-hand man. He barely punished her—a ten lash beating, just to set an example to other Garduñas. He sent her on a mission to kill a business rival of his in the legitimate world of shipping and paid her well for it. Shortly thereafter, Lorenzo told Carmen he’d go to Paris and if she wanted a message passed to her cousin, she should let him know. Carmen asked Lorenzo to tell Diego that his father and Teresa were well and that she was getting by. Lorenzo left for Paris and didn’t return. Las Garduñas fell under Catalina’s watch—much to everyone except Catalina’s dismay. The gang was restless and didn’t take well to a woman’s orders. Catalina left to find her brother and Las Garduñas looked to Carmen for guidance. Carmen orchestrated a few minor hits, but refused to order the gang to do more than protect their turf without word from the Reyes’.
Catalina sent her a letter after two months of silence. It was a suicide note of sorts. Lorenzo had been murdered by Catalina’s ex-boyfriend, Sebastian, and Catalina had no intention to carry on without her brother. She instructed Carmen to handle Lorenzo’s last will and testament.
The will left the shipping company and Las Garduñas in Diego’s hands. Lorenzo wrote that he intended Las Garduñas to move to Paris and had already moved some members to scope out the area. He wanted the shipping company to be expanded along the Seine and for Carmen to handle remaining affairs in Spain. The Reyes’ estate—their centuries’ old money and land holdings—was to be put in Diego’s hands and funneled towards the relocation of Las Garduñas. Carmen is Lorenzo’s last messenger.
Carmen has come to Paris to convince her cousin to take his rightful place as the leader of Las Garduñas and install herself as his second-in-command. And if he needs a little “persuading”, she’s brought along reinforcements.
Not that she’ll need them. Family is everything when you’re a Garduña. Carmen knows that and if Santiago Ortiz has forgotten, she’ll just have to remind him.
