Candice
Candice Willmer
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Portrayed By Missy Peregrym
Gender Female
Age 25
Aliases Mallory
Current Location New York City, NY, USA
Occupation Company Agent
Known Relatives Mother and Father (estranged)
Significant Other None
Known Abilities Illusions
First Appearance Company Man

Queen of illusions, Candice Willmer changes identities like other people change clothes. A few things remain true: she's a sociopath, she's a wicked, wicked person, and ultimately, knowing what she's really up to is as difficult as knowing who she really is. The consummate chameleon, she can fool almost anyone.



History

"Look at me, you may think you see who I really am, but you'll never know me.
Every day, is as if I play a part. Now I see,
If I wear a mask I can fool the world…but I can not fool my heart."

Candice Willmer seems to have had the perfect life. Pretty, popular, and influential, through her connections with Daniel Linderman and the Company. Of course, like most things about Candice, it was a facade, a pretty shell constructed over lies. The true telling is a complicated one, because it can be hard to know truth from fiction where she's concerned.

Candice didn't start out as Candice. She started out as Betty. Betty's life was rather a miserable one, all things told. She was part of the alternative crowd, all black clothes, pale, and piercings. It didn't make her a popular person at school. Nor did the fact that she was very heavyset; she simply enjoyed eating too much, and didn't have the will for dieting and the like. It made her an outcast, and she was frequently put upon by the students she went to school with. From one school to the next she went…each time things got too miserable, she'd change schools. It wasn't until her senior year of high school that things changed. She'd made friends with a boy who was a similar social outcast, Ren Metzger. But the environment at the new school was particularly cutting, with smarmy cheerleaders and abusive jocks.

And then everything changed. She was in the girls' room, hidden away in one of the stalls while the cheerleaders talked about her. Her thoughts about how they thought they were all so beautiful, but were really so ugly inside, seemed to pop like a bubble inside her head, and one of the cheerleaders suddenly manifested horrible, pus-filled sores and boils, which vanished as she ran from the room, screaming. Betty realized that she was the one who did it…and more, that she could do it again.

She set out on her own private campaign of revenge, making her fellow students experience horrific visions. One of them, Arthur Campbell, she so traumatized that it drove him into a permanant psychotic break. But a casual line tossed to the popular kids as a warning took on a life of its own, and blew into a rumor that Ren was responsible for what happened to Arthur. The jocks set a trap for him, and beat him severely. While he managed to hide from them, a chance fall sent him tumbling down a steep hillside, badly wounded. Betty went to visit him in the hospital, and she displayed her ability for him. She told him that they would both get revenge on everyone who'd ever wronged them. But the revelation, as well as Ren's injuries, proved too much for him. He went into shock, and he would not recover.

The next day at school, Betty had her own "Carrie moment". She produced a cacophony of horrors for the students there, immolating some alive, melting others, causing others to become hideously deformed. While all merely a product of her mental powers, the scars would last much longer. She left school, deciding it was time to use her power to live her life by her rules. She chose a new shape for herself, and a new name to go along with it: Candice Willmer.

It wasn't very long before she came to the attention of the Company…after all, it wasn't exactly as if she'd been subtle about her powers. They approached her, and decided that her ability was too useful to lose, at least if she'd play along. For her part, Candice had no problems doing just that. Her moral code had never been too strict, and she had a bit of a sociopathic streak ever since the beginning. The incident at the school had only sent her tumbling down that ethical slope, and now she was being offered money, power, and a freedom from the rules of society, all for doing what the Company asked. It was a bargain.

She worked as one of the Company's prime agents, and was instrumental in determining Noah Bennet's shaky allegiance, as well as getting Nathan Petrelli elected. Since that time, she's been given a number of assignments, and was being a good little Company agent…at least until the government raided the Company and shut them down. She's gone deep undercover, using some of her Company connections to get her "Stephanie" identity set up, at least until she can make contact with people…see who can be trusted, what's happened, and decide where to go from here.


Personality

Candice is a sociopath. Plain and simple. What started out as social non-conformity in her high school years was tainted and twisted by years of mockery, abuse, and helplessness, and then suddenly being handed a nearly godlike ability. Life is less about reality than the perception of reality, and Candice controls perception. She realizes exactly how high this puts her on the food chain, and rather than be a gracious winner, she's going to be as vindictive and petty towards "the little people" as they used to be towards her.

Her overall demeanor is very smug, very cat-with-the-canary. She's in control of most any exchange, or can be within an instant's concentration, and she knows it. She tends to portray herself with a sort of sultry, naughty demeanor (short skirts and Catholic schoolgirl outfits are both in her repertoire), reveling in people's attention towards her looks and her beauty. The fact that none of it is /real/ matters not a whit to her; she's bought entirely into her own illusions in some ways, and to her, far better the pretty lie than the ugly truth.

She's more than a little sadistic, and likes to see people brought low, likes the thrill of causing them fear and pain. But there's a line that she's reluctant to cross…people who are already the outcast, or children…anyone who's already powerless and has no airs to put on…those people are more likely to find a protector than a tormentor in her. It's not ironclad…she was willing to use her powers maliciously on Micah if she were told to…but the fact that she chose not to when so many opportunities presented themselves says something.

Ultimately, she's out for herself, and her ultimate loyalties are there. She works for the Company because of all the benefits it provides, but her loyalty is to herself, not to them…she'd cut and run if she had to. She wants…everything. If there's a deadly sin that's hers, it's gluttony, because no matter how much she has, it's not enough for her. Power, money, control…all of that she wants and more. Restraint is not her watchword, and more than once her superiors at the Company have had to rein her in lest she drive a subject completely off the mental rails.


Abilities

Candice's power is that of illusion generation. She is, simply put, one of the best and most powerful Evolved illusionists known. She can construct scenes involving all five senses simultaneously, complete mindscapes for the person to interact with, literally overriding each one of their natural senses and feeding it the information she desires. What's more, she can impose this on the area, hiding things from view, changing the scene, or making it seem that space itself seems to fold the way she wants (making every path out of Kirby Plaza lead back to her, to Micah).

Candice's power has a physical component, rather than just a mental one, photos and cameras will see the image she is displaying, microphones will pick up the sounds she is broadcasting. In this respect, the power differs from the mindscapes projected by telepaths. While she cannot alter physical existence, she can seem to do so by overriding all the senses that relate to it (her true form is substantially wider and heavier than her Candice form, yet people think they are interacting with the open space around her…someone hugging her would feel like they were hugging Candice, not the much larger Betty).

Candice can maintain her illusions almost effortlessly. They don't tire her effectively to keep up, and indeed, she keeps one of them running (her "Candice" form) so well that even if knocked out, /that/ illusion remains in place, even though her others will fade. Only voluntary choice, suppression of her powers, or death would remove the "Candice" illusion to reveal her true Betty form.

Because of the strength of her powers, and her level of control, Candice can affect even mentalists (like telepaths) with her illusions, unless they are specifically trying to resist her illusions and concentrating hard to do so. Even then, sight and sound remain hers to affect, since she can manifest physical phenomena in those ranges.

Stunts

  • All Roads Lead To Rome: By twisting people's perceptions of the world around them, Candice can effectively change their course, so that when they think they've turned they haven't, or they turn too far. People become rats in a maze…routed effectively to the destination of her choosing even if they weren't planning to get there.
  • Doppleganger: While she's fully capable of generating whole-cloth illusions, Candice's favorite use of her power is to take on an illusory identity, becoming someone else to twist the knife in them, manipulate them, and get them to do what she wants. She's very, VERY, good at this. She fooled Noah Bennet. About his WIFE. Yeah.
  • I Control The Horizontal, I Control The Vertical: Candice can basically take over the senses of a person or a group of people, creating an illusionary scene of her choice. "Actors" within it can be people with illusory overlays or simply formed whole-cloth of illusion. This is her "basic" stunt…the one for using her illusion powers.
  • My Name Is Candice: This is Betty's strongest illusion. Her desire to be Candice is so strong and so subconscious that even if she's sleeping or unconscious, she'll only revert to this form, not to her Betty state. Only the suppression of her powers or death would reveal her true state unless she chose to do so.
  • Roll 1d6 SAN Loss: Candice can, using her powers, literally break someone's mind…sending them into madness by the use of extremely realistic illusions. While the nature of that madness is not hers to control, even the strongest mind can be made to snap by the prolonged use of her powers. Of course, the stronger the person's will the longer it will take to break them so thoroughly…but she's a fine little walking torture device.

Timeline

  • February 2, 2008 - Pointless Torture: Candice decides to have a little bit of fun with Kitty before returning the memory wiped girl to her home.
  • March 9, 2008 - What Happens In Chinatown: A troupe of Pinehearst slime start hitting on Candice in Chinatown. She gets a business card out of the deal.
  • March 10, 2008 - Illusions of Grandeur: Noah enlists Candice to do a little bit of dirty work not only against Pinehearst, but against her old friend Elle.

Identities


Relationships


Quotes


Trivia


Fun Stuff


RP Hooks

RP Hooks for Candice's various faux personas are listed above in the identities section. But as for the woman herself, there's really only two obvious hooks:

  • The Company: Candice was a loyal Company operative for several years. As such, anyone who is or was a Company employee has an obvious reason to either know her or know OF her, and a quick and easy in for RP.
  • The Linderman Group: Admittedly, while this was really more of a cover for an extension of the Company, it's the specific
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