Flannery Caertas

art by adalhyde

> There was no good, no evil, no villain, no hero, no deus ex machina. That was reality. Such an ugly color.
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> - *Flannery Caertas,* (110) Part III | 18.⭑-1: Saint Candidate, ∞ Zugzwang
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Flannery Caertas, or **the Saint Candidate of Libra**, is the current Saint of the Scales. She is a Specialist.

## History

### Early Life

Flannery’s parents were from an old family in Libra with a lineage extending well before the Reservoir War. Her “great-to-infinity”— as she had put it—grandparents started one of the first conductor-manufacturing-slash-research companies in Signum. The business was passed down for generations and produced 2/3 of the conductors—generator and weaponized—currently in circulation.

- *Jericho about Flannery's parents,* (84) Part III | 14.1: Observer & Peacekeeper, 0000 Unusual Activity

Not much is known about Flannery's childhood, except for the fact that she was in the same shelter as Talib Al-Jarrah and Alice Kingsley, with whom she became friends with. Her parents are very wealthy, to the point where she earned the name "money bags," being from an old-lineage family in Libra.

### During the Reservoir War

After the war was almost over, Flannery was told that she had been marked as a potential Saint Candidate after taking the V-Type Test. On the day of the ceremony, she was taken to the main Libran Monadic temple and then to Ophiuchus by train, where she was separated from her parents and passed off to the priests.

> When they reached Ophiuchus, she was separated from her parents and passed off repeatedly from priest to priest. Each handler placed on her a cold accessory that either dangled from her neck, arms, or ears. The weight had been unpleasant.
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> Eventually, she’d been led out onto a bridge—she could tell back then by the metal, hollow clang, clang beneath her shoes. And from beneath that bridge had come a familiar warm updraft that swirled around her cheeks and brushed her bare legs. She’d been hard-pressed to find out why it was so familiar to her at the time.
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> - *Flannery, about the candidacy ceremony*
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After dropping into the vitae reservoir, she described it as "as *everything*—[clawing] its way in through every pore of her body. Things she didn’t want to know, things she didn’t want to *see*, things she didn’t want to feel. She remembered killing and then being killed, peace then war, camaraderie bleeding to contempt, pride to failure and disappointment, growing old and dying young. Over and over again for centuries."

Flannery remembered her previous lives, her past life as the Libran saint candidate Arthur Pond, a blind lawman who dabbled in music.

### Post-Ceremony

After recovering from the ceremony, Flannery realized she recovered her sight. She could see people's vitae, where people end and begun and the diminishing of their lives, but was not in the best mental state. When Talib and Alice visited, Flannery could see how their vitae diminishing and "didn't want to see it." Thinking to herself that it wasn't the Talib and Alice that she knew, Flannery attempted to gouge her own eyes out. It had taken "Talib, Alice, and the medical Conductors combined to pull her hands away, but the damage had been done."

However, her eyes soon recovered, and Flannery realized that "pieces of her that ‘broke’ or were ‘insufficient’ could be removed and would return themselves to—not the cycle—but to the reservoir where she’d come from."

> Her body had become just a malleable storage unit for the memories and vitae of millions of Librans past. A representation of all of Libra’s conquests and failures.
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> In other words, she was no longer human, and *that* was reality.
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> - *Flannery, after her eyes recovered*
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### Post-Reservoir War

After Alice and Talib became Ophiuchian peacekeepers, Flannery accepted Gabrielle Law's offer to join Gabrielle's group in order to protect both Alice and Talib, as Flannery thought Gabrielle "was a person who would never dare look away from the sun—even if it meant blinding the eyes [... she] was a dangerous person who created danger for those close to her."

## Abilities

### Vitae Ceasas

Flannery can see the vitae of the people around her, and thus can seen whether they are Manipulated or not. This ability came after her Saint Candidacy ceremony, where she fell into a vitae reservoir.

### Conducting

**Disintegration? (Specialist):**

> Flannery didn’t respond and instead stepped in place in front of Forstchritt whose back was facing her. She lifted her gun and pointed it at the back of the woman’s head. Before she could pull the trigger, however, a burst of golden light lit up the smoky area and Flannery’s gun-wielding flopped onto the ground. Flannery stared down at her severed hand, unperturbed.
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> “ELPIS has P.D. Oran, Flannery,” Leona said calmly. “We need someone to help with the final preparations of the syzygy. After what ELPIS did to the Aurora reservoirs, Gemini and Capricorn are far from being able to assist us with the ley lines.”
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> The blood pooling out from the severed hand began to glow with an intense dark pink light before slowly being pulled by an invisible force back onto Flannery’s arm. The glowing dark pink blood and ligaments reattached to each other; and once everything was connected, Flannery tightened her grip on her gun again.
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Flannery can break apart vitae particles. Her ability functions similarly to Jericho's, as in () she was observed to line objects such as knives and glass shards with her vitae to make contact with a group of Militaripolizei, in order to purge Scorpio's vitae from them. She has been observed to be able to cut out Scorpio's spores.

## Personality

> “Capricornians, don’t y’see?” Flannery frowned. “All of this yer doin’ here is just a small part of the bigger picture. All of y’might think this is the end of the world—the end of yer country as y’know it—but… Scorpio’s just havin’ a kick and harvestin’ vitae while he’s at it. This might all just a game.”
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> “A *game*?” The captain now.
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> Without looking back, Flannery continued past the thrushes and left them with, “Sorry t’say this, but it isn’t like a country in Signum hasn’t gone through a revolutionary crumble before.”
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> That was reality.
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### As Flannery

Flannery is said to have a lofty imagination, thinking of herself as a "deus ex machina" when she was younger. She thought of Talib as "the detective," and Alice as "the villain," suggesting a very black-and-white view of the world, cataloguing her friends into cliches. She is said to have gotten along with Talib very well, as she was creative and similar to Talib (who operated on possibilities).

### As Libra

The Libran value of fairness and justice influenced Libra to not "intervene unless absolutely necessary." As such, Libra needed to operate without bias and with only fairness in mind. However, Flannery contradicts this value on more than one occasion: she acted on a protective bias towards Talib and Alice by joining the peacekeeper ranks; and she personally asked her parents to leave Capricorn due to the escalating hostilities.