If you have to kill a snake, kill it once and for all.

[ Video ]

None of you have much reason to trust me.

[ Not the best way to start a post, but Medusa is looking abnormally serious as she addresses the camera. She is, for once, being entirely honest. ]

I have worked in science and advanced medicine for centuries, and I have no intention of allowing myself to be infected with whatever new virus my fellow inmates have introduced to the barge. I would like to help. It would be a great deal easier with access to even a fraction of my magic, but I am capable of working lab equipment without them.

If you truly don't trust me enough to preserve my own life, perhaps one of the less scientifically minded wardens would volunteer to stand over my shoulder and make sure I do what I'm best at.

[ Video ]

[ Medusa appears on screen wearing what can be described most kindly as a ’jaunty’ sweater and a cheerful little Santa hat. Her smile, for those who are familiar with her usual expression, is both incredibly wide and incredibly genuine. She’s got it, and she’s got it bad. ] It occurs to me quite suddenly – quite suspiciously suddenly, in fact – that there aren’t nearly enough decorations up. The mistletoe is a nice touch, but it needs more. We need wreaths, and lights, and- are there any menorahs up? We wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out. “Christmas” is intended to be a Christian holiday, obviously, but its roots lie in the change of the seasons which makes it a time of celebration for most religions. [ Yes, she managed to fit a small lesson into this. But as a witch she mostly serves as an observer for your cooky human holiday season. ]

Now, mistletoe and trees are pagan. Perhaps if we put up a few angels for the Christians, at least one public menorah and perhaps a few Stars of David for our Jewish neighbors? Let’s see, what other holidays do humans celebrate around the solstice? Well, you’ll all have to help me out if I’m forgetting anything. Of course there should be a feast, you can’t possibly celebrate the coming light of spring without a feast. And if anyone would like company to stay up on the longest night of the year and help the mother Goddess give birth to the sun, I would be more than happy to join you.

[ She smiles again, in something like a farewell. Then something occurs to her, and she holds up a finger to ask you to wait while with her other hand she picks up the head end of her enormous viper so that he can look at the screen.

If snakes can have expressions, he looks curious and mildly confused. He eyes the thing and flicks his tongue out at it experimentally as Medusa goes on. ]

Oh, one last thing. Does anyone have a very small hat like the one I’m wearing ? Poor Ophion has nothing to wear.

( [ Private Text to the Admiral - Gifts for Red, Arthas, Barron, Lua, and a general gift for all ] )

[ Video ]

Now wasn’t that a nice vacation? [ An alarmingly large viper winds its head happily up Medusa’s arm as she speaks. It missed her while she was gone. She rests her chin on the other hand. ]

What a delightful world we crashed into. Did you all have fun? I know I did. I don’t suppose anybody got a chance to try the food? [ Of course being the queen, Medusa only had properly prepared food that neither shrank you nor made you grow. But she does wonder if anyone took any back with them. ]

I do hope nobody is too angry at the two meddlers who caused this one. Let’s not lose our heads now, shall we? [ She grins widely and shuts off the feed. ]

[ Medusa hasn't been around much since the Willow Incident. She wanted to let things play out and pass her by while she recovered, a longer process than she would have liked. ]

How are all the kittens doing?

[ She smiles wickedly, but the joke is clear on her face. No real malice here. ]

I wonder, since so many of you seem to keep pets, if I might be allowed one. [ She shrugs. ] Probably not. Most people don't seem to care much for snakes. So afraid you'll be bitten. A pity.

Anyway it seems your ridiculous superstition has some merit. Tell the world you're bored and it really will reward you. Are you all having fun yet?

Messages from home? How sweet. It's absolutely adorable how you're all tripping over yourselves to hear from loved ones or people you've wronged.

[ Video ]



My poor, dear sister. Even after death you find ways to cause trouble. A pity you couldn't stay to see the outcome of all that hard work.

Tell me, what has she told you? Not a word about me, I'm sure.

I am Arachne, Medusa's older sister. And I can't say I'm surprised to find her in a place like this. Let's share stories, shall we? I want to know everything she's been up to since her untimely demise.


[ooc| Replies to come from the_heretic ]

Hello! [ Medusa smiles at the screen, pure sugar and sweetness. ]

My name is Medusa Gorgon, I’m new here. I understand I won’t be given an inmate to take care of for quite a while, but I’d like to do what I can now. [ She glances down and blushes slightly, shy to be making such a forward statement when she’s only just arrived. But what can she do? Helping people is just in her nature. ]

I have quite a bit of experience as a doctor, if the infirmary would have me. It seems we already have a decent sized staff, but more help can always be useful and I promise I won’t be in the way. [ She smiles again, completely sincerely. ]

Health is important , after all.

Player Information
Player name: Alexis
Contact: flamingchemist
Are you over 18: damn straight
Characters in The Box Already: Stephanie Brown, Swamp Thing

Character Information
Character Name: Medusa Gorgon
Canon: Soul Eater (anime)
Canon Point: Post-series
Is your character Dead, Undead or Alive: Double-dead
History:
Medusa Gorgon was born one of three witch sisters, all of whom are incredibly powerful witches. Although the youngest sister Shaula is virtually unknown, Medusa’s older sister Arachne is infamous even in the DWMA (Death Weapon Meister Academy). Arachne is known as the Heretic Witch and the mother of all Demon Weapons – a category of humans that create one half of the entire DWMA, sworn to kill witches and protect the world from evil. After the incident resulting in the creation of the first Weapons, Medusa abandoned her sister to be killed by Shinigami, a.k.a. Lord Death.

800 years later, Medusa has a child, presumably with a human male. The father is never named or mentioned. The child, apparently genderless and named Chrona, is a part of a grand experiment to create a Kishin – a demon created when one succumbs to the madness within oneself and begins to consume normal human souls. Medusa discovered an inhuman Weapon known as Ragnarok, not unlike an insame demon himself, and melted him down into a substance she calls “black blood”. When Chrona was very young Medusa pumped the black blood into their body to replace their own blood and become their permanent weapon. She had hoped that with Ragnarok eating whatever souls he could find and Chrona pulled along for the ride, too timid from their harsh upbringing to say otherwise, Chrona would eventually be turned into a Kishin.

When this initial plan failed, Medusa used her findings from Chrona as well as some of their black blood to revive an ancient Kishen held captive underneath the DWMA and wreak havoc on the world. In order to accomplish this she poisoned a fellow witch, Erika, with her snakes. She had Erika enlist the help of the Mizune sisters and liberate a dangerous Immortal from witch prison who refers to himself only as Free. While these sub-plots were underway, she infiltrated the DWMA as the school’s nurse to study Soul, a young Weapon who had been contaminated quite accidentally with black blood. When the time was right, Medusa, Chrona, Erika, the Mizunes, and Free attacked the DWMA and freed the ancient Kishin Asura.

Once Asura was resurrected, Medusa allowed herself to be killed in order to escape an impossible fight with the teachers of the DWMA and went into hiding, using the body of a small human child to survive and protect herself from attack. With her sister Arachne revived and the Kishin on the loose, her plan moved on its own. Madness began to spread beyond Death’s control and the cogs of change began to move. Medusa manipulated her sister’s company to provide a dangerous weapon to the DWMA in exchange for her own immunity, ensuring that Arachne and Death would be far too busy killing each other to hunt her down.

While working at the DWMA, Medusa found that one of the teachers had a strong madness of his own just waiting to be tapped. She developed a crush on Professor Stein, and poisoned him with her own brand of madness in order to bring him at least partially over to her side. Her plan was that, once Arachne and Death had killed each other, madness would rule the world and she and Stein would be free to do whatever they wanted. This plan was interrupted when a few interlopers from the DWMA managed to enter her stronghold and finally kill her. Her own child was among them.

Personality:
Medusa is first and foremost completely and utterly selfish. Everything she does is for her own benefit, whether or not it can be spun to appear to benefit or others or some greater cause. She cares only about her own needs. Everyone else is irrelevant. As such she has very little patience for anyone other than herself. She does not put up with well with minor annoyances unless it serves her some purpose. Because everything she does is so well planned, we rarely see her lack of patience. It is only when something is outside of her own desires or plans that it can truly enrage her, because this is the only time when such things don’t benefit her in the long run. As a part of her selfishness and self-centered attitude, she feels no need to explain herself to others. She will often describe her own plans to brag so long as doing so doesn’t endanger their success, but she needs no one’s approval or support but her own.

The main tactic Medusa uses to get what she wants is trickery and cunning, traits associated with her own symbol, the snake. When it comes to the plan, nothing is beneath her. She will demean herself, lie, or even tell the truth if it will make you believe what she wants you to believe. She knows no bounds, and often urges others to join her side or work for her through whatever means necessary; blackmail, threats, kisses, promises, whatever it takes. In order for her deceit to be succesful (as it almost always is) Medusa has developed fantastic acting skills. Although basic kindness is nowhere in her own personality, she can fake it quite believably. It isn’t that she doesn’t understand these concepts, in fact she understands them perfectly. She uses her understanding of people and social interactions to manipulate those around her and obtain her own goals.

For all of her play-acting and willingness to look like a fool, Medusa does have her pride. She will go to any lengths necessary to commit to a plan, but if it isn’t necessary she hates to look foolish. Even as a part of her plot, she is horribly shy when Professor Stein asks her to dance with him. Looking like an idiot on the dance floor does nothing to instill the students’ trust in her. The only reason she does it is because she wants a chance to speak to him privately, and she’s developed a bit of a crush on the crazy professor. Indeed, when her plan involves her appearing as a professional, such as when she surrenders herself to the DWMA and asks to meet with Lord Death, she cannot stand being belittled or demeaned. She would even go so far as to walk away if it seemed that nobody was going to take her seriously.

A contributing factor to Medusa’s odd sense of pride is her desire to have complete control. She will look the fool when she is control of the situation, just as she will be respected when control has been temporarily handed over to someone else. Indeed, raising Chrona was mostly about control for Medusa. Some part of her is attached to the child as her own, but mostly she wants to be able to control every aspect of her life that she can. Even madness and under chaos are preferable to her as long as she initiated it and she is ultimately in control. The same is true of every one of Medusa’s relationships that is shown: she simply must be in control. This is actually why she prefers to use people before killing them; if there is any ounce of control left to manipulate, she will do it. If something cannot be controlled, it is better off killed.

Medusa is also a person who thinks of every possibility. She plans for every outcome incredibly thoroughly so that she is always in control of the situation. She will not go through with a plan unless it’s fool-proof and she has the utmost confidence. This way when she acts it is always with the cool confidence we see on screen and in the manga. When something unexpected happens or mistakes are made, she refuses to linger on them but rather rolls with the punches. She is intelligent enough to come up with new plans on the fly and work out the details as she goes. She calls herself a scientist, and there is certainly an almost scientific aspect to her methodology. Her plans are precise and eliminate the uncontrolled variables while planning for the expected and allowing for adjustments to be made according to outcome. Because in the end, she always gets what she wants.

Items on your character at canon point: Technically speaking, literally nothing but I’m nice enough to fib and say she has clothes and a physical form when she arrives, as well as her magic snakes (see: Serpent Whip).

Abilities, Strengths and Weaknesses:
Medusa is a very powerful witch. This seems to give her superhuman speed and strength. By her nature she has a strong soul- what this means practically speaking is that she can survive for a time without a body, in spirit form. She is reportedly able to create a new body for herself if her old one is destroyed, although it seems to require more power than she would have access to in a borrowed body.

SPELLS: May be returned one at a time, but at the start will all be inaccessible.

• Serpent Whip: Medusa’s witch ‘theme’ gives her an infinite number of magic snakes contained within her body to be used at her disposal. ‘Serpent Whip’ is an attack in which she sends one of her snakes to attack from a distance.
• Snake Bomb: Medusa is able to send her snakes into another person’s body and use them to communicate with or destroy the other person. Also void without the possession of her magic snakes.
• Vector Arrow: Black magic in the shape of a long arrow is summoned to slice and cut like a knife.
  • Analysis Disassemble, a sub-spell of Vector Arrow: A combination of Vector Arrows used to tear something apart at the seams, delicately or viciously.
  • Steam Vector, a sub-spell of Vector Arrow: Vector Arrows twist and spin, creating a tornado shaped shield to protect her.
• Vector Plate: Black magic in the shape of an arrow on the floor that pushes a person or object in the direction indicated by the arrow.

All of these are spells specific to Medusa and her theme. There are other abilities generally available to all witches:

• Soul Protect: This is a protective spell meant purely to prevent others from identifying witches as anything other than normal humans by disguising their ‘souls’, or in a more translatable sense their auras.
• Flight: Done via broomsticks.
• Longevity: Witches are notoriously long lived and long youthful. The more powerful the witch, the longer they are likely to live.

Medusa’s weaknesses are primarily in personality. She plans obsessively, but this makes her overconfident at times and if something was missed in the planning process it becomes a serious weakness. In the Soul Eater universe magic has the tendency to make the users turn bad over time, which is really just a childish way of saying it drives them a wee bit insane. Medusa embraces her madness, but it is still a personal weakness.

Samples
Network/Action Spam Sample: link
Prose Log Sample:
She was angry. Furious, really. Of all people, it was that little kid Maka who had done her in? All of that work, and now she wouldn’t get the chance to see it to fruition. She could only hope that the Kishin would do his part and she would have left some mark on the world. At least it seemed that Chrona had gone down with her. The child was truly a disappointment. They finally learned some strength of character and they were stupid enough to give those fools at the DWMA their loyalty. What a disaster. At least some of her plans had gone off without a hitch.

She lay on the pathetic, uncomfortable bed she was given on the barge and stared at the ceiling. There would be plenty of time to seethe later. Now she needed a plan. She still existed in one form or another, which was actually a surprise. She had honestly thought she was finished for good. She had the rules of this place – they were easy enough to understand. Humans were predictable. Even the non-humans were easy to guess about. That nobody knew her here would be a distinctive advantage. What she needed was to know the people themselves: what they wanted, what they loved, what they feared. Once she knew that she could manipulate them to do whatever she pleased.

She needed information. That would be much simpler if she was not an inmate, but a warden. Wardens obviously had access to things she didn’t know about, that couldn’t be helped. She could pick up bits and pieces by listening to other people’s conversations. As a scientist she would be able to do the most good in the infirmary. There wasn’t any serious research to be done, but there were certainly enough injuries to be treated. And when they found her out, as they obviously would, she would simply tell them the truth: she wanted to earn their trust. It was easy enough to do. Act nice long enough and people will start to believe that’s who you really are.

She had in her head already a few escape plans, but she knew most of them wouldn’t work. The trick would be implementing them without blowing her cover completely, long enough that she could come up with a plan that would work. It was only a matter of time, after all. She was nothing if not thorough.

Medusa took a deep breath and ran through the process of getting into character. It was an old familiar character, but it had to be flawless. Last time she had been discovered far too easily. This time? They wouldn’t know anything until it was too late to stop her.