Valencia (Bang Bang) Harlow, District 3

x | x | x | x

( N A M E ) Valencia Ashe Harlow Bang Bang Harlow, bitches. Or else.
( A G E ) 17
( G E N D E R ) Female
( D I S T R I C T / A R E A ) District Three

Can't say it's gonna get me far
Do no good to say what you are
I run the streets and I break up houses
River runs deep and the flame devours it

( A P P E A R A N C E )

A junkyard hellion, Bang Bang is a notoriously ferocious spitfire. Every step she takes commands attention, whether effortlessly scaling precarious mountains of scrap metal or sauntering down the street as if even her quietest footfall could dominate the entire district. With an unsettling intensity that often has strangers praying she's merely joking, she'll go so far as to hold her fingers out like guns as she passes by, picking off pedestrians with a click of her tongue and a fiendish giggle. Self-assurance is something she possesses in spades and she uses that confidence to maintain a tenacious and capable front, even during her more tenuous moments. Admitting weakness has never been in her nature and she would rather people perceive her as offensively diabolical than allow them to witness even a moment of fragility.

If such radical effort weren't being put forth, the 5"6' peroxide blonde could almost appear innocent, with her round face and petite features. However, naiveté isn't Bang Bang's style and she wants to be sure everyone knows it. Her long platinum hair is often ratted up into a savage nest, dramatically mussed or knotted, but never styled too preciously. A bright contrast against the miasma of District Three's heavy pollution, it makes the pale complected teenager difficult to ignore, even during the rare instances when she's behaving herself.

Me, I'm a Creator
Thrill is to make it up
The rules I break got me a place
Up on the radar

Those civilized moments are certainly few and far between. Everything about the girl gravitates toward hostility, from her steel blue glare to the caustic scent of sulfur and explosives that persistently clings to her skin. Even the sly twist of her smile is wicked, full lips curling into the razor-toothed grin of a Cheshire cat as she leaves a scandalous riot of mayhem in her wake. The echos of her cackling laughter can be heard ringing out beyond the walls of her junkyard fortress as she revels in each newly hatched scheme; subtle and understated she most definitely is not.

The first glimpse of her roughly calloused hands, a decade of physical labor permanently mapped across her palms, might surprise a stranger. Those in the local loop — which, due to her rather conspicuous persona, would seem to include anyone she has ever encountered — know better though. It's no secret that, despite her roguish habits and delinquent tendencies, Bang Bang is something of a workaholic and entrepreneur. Proof of her efforts is often smeared across her skin and clothing, oil or other less identifiable grime permanently embedded beneath her fingernails and staining her flesh with ghostly swirls of gray.

Me, I'm a Taker
Know what the stakes are
Can't roll it back, it's understood
Got to play our cards

Although hoarding and repurposing mechanical debris for a living causes her to struggle with hygiene, it has also made her deceptively strong. Years of stubbornly declining help with hauling steel and iron around, due to both an insistence on self-sufficiency and an unspoken desire to ease the burdens of her guardian, has instilled her with a sturdiness not often found in teenage girls. If not for her insatiable sweet tooth, her muscles would be clearly defined to even a casual passer-by. Instead, her sugar vice hides the more obvious evidence of her physical strength, softening the edges of her body and preserving a femininity she's otherwise inclined to neglect. Not beneath utilizing her misleading appearance for personal gain, more than one unsuspecting soul has found themselves on the losing side an arm wrestling bet, their underestimation of her costing them not only their pride, but the contents of their pockets as well.

Never one to turn down an opportunity to make a statement, the enterprising young provocateur even applies her dramatic flair and ingenuity to her clothing. Inspired by her work, she tends to dress in scraps that have been pieced together and repurposed into something useful. While her eccentric ensembles are generally crafted from random snippets of cloth or leather, it's not uncommon for fragments of metal or other peculiar junkyard materials to find their way into her creations. Although seemingly impractical, the garments are often cleverly designed to counteract the hinderances of regular clothing when scrambling over and across the treacherous stockpiles of the scrap yard.

Sit tight I know what you are
Mad bright but you aint no star
Polish up 'til you make it gleam
Your M.O., I know what you mean

( P E R S O N A L I T Y )

With her devious charisma, one could say that trouble seems to follow Bang Bang wherever she goes. Although this statement would be irrefutably true, as her footsteps never fall far from the epicenter of mischief, it would not be entirely accurate, as that epicenter tends to be Bang Bang. Following has never been her style; she prefers to be the leader of her shenanigans — not that anyone is fighting her for the position. Most of her "extracurricular activities" tend to be solitary endeavors, which suits her just fine considering that secrecy is of utmost importance when one wants to play with explosives without attracting the watchful eyes of District Three's peacekeepers. It would be much more difficult to savor the taste of triumph that comes with blasting a defunct piece of machinery to smithereens if she were to loose her tongue over it.

Concealed behind the protective wall that surrounds the junkyard Bang Bang calls home, she finds amusement in covertly constructing and, more importantly, destroying crude dolls and building models created from empty oil cans and other scrap metal. Few things bring her as much joie de vivre as watching the hand drawn smile being blown off one of her makeshift playthings. Her cruelty streak and love of violence against inanimate objects does not extend to their sentient counterparts, although she enjoys letting those around her imagine that it might. In addition to her homemade explosives and detonators, she also fabricates bizarre clockwork firearms and doesn't hesitate to wave them around in front of passer-bys or even business patrons. Despite the outlandish appearance of the guns, which are blatantly fake and little more than toys, most still find them unsettling — especially after she pulls the trigger in their face. Instead of firing bullets, they spit out miniature flags with BANG! scrawled across them in her primitive handwriting.

Tail ridin' and I know it's true
While they screamin' I love you
Down deep you know there aint no flow
A soul decay, was D.O.A.

Not all of Bang Bang's inventiveness is channeled into her dubious hobbies — some of it is actually used productively. A skilled mechanic, she specializes in building and repairing steam powered bicycles. As if to compensate for her obnoxious behavior, her demands for payment seem to fluctuate in direct relation to the amount of torture she puts her customers though, as well as the extent of their tolerance for her antics. If her mood swings in their favor, she can be quite generous, as she cares relatively little about financial gain and only thinks in spur-of-the-moment impulses. Several of her more shrewd clients have picked up on this idiosyncrasy and take full advantage of the negotiation opportunities it presents. Familiar with her predilection for sweets, they will barter lollipops and bubblegum in exchange for her services as a mechanic. Such propositions earn Bang Bang's everlasting favor; candy is rather something of a luxury in her part of the district and can otherwise be difficult for her to come by.

The last thing one should do while conducting business with the renegade mogul is to refuse one of her demands, no matter how outrageous. While her temperament and personal interests may be insufferably underhanded, her official junkyard dealings are strictly aboveboard. Deeply offended by any implication that she would insult the legacy of the man she inherited her profession from by swindling customers, such people earn her unrelenting animosity and imminent vengeance. The wicked scowl that crosses her face at this type of insinuation will become the least of their worries; it is simply the warning signal that she's about to go on a mission to prove she's dangerous. Using whatever means necessary, she will wield her local influence like an arsenic-laced battle axe, taking vindictive swings at the most vulnerable pieces of their life and reveling as the inflicted damage festers beneath her glare.

I know what you here for now
Word's out you're an idea whore though
Now don't you crush on me
I'll see you in your pipe dreams

This kind of harshly judgmental temper comes instinctively to Bang Bang; precision and forethought aren't in her repertoire. Besides, she finds it far more amusing to make a mess and delight in the wreckage like the emotional heathen that she is. All of her patience and subtlety is saved for fine-tuning her inventions, after that only blunt words and brute force remain. Even on days when she may feel an unexpected impulse to approach others with respect and courtesy, she will ignore the compulsion in favor of showing off her unforgettably acidic persona.

Each step she takes in the presence of another person is generally engineered to be as over-dramatic as possible. To her, life has become something of a performance and if her childhood taught her anything, it's that she'd better make it impressive if she wants people to remember her. So now she walks loud and proud, in every sense that she can, with enough energy pulsing through her veins to light up the entire district or at least to spark a fire and burn it down. One thing is certain, she's going to make damn sure no one ever forgets her... again.

Whether or not you know it's true
You're who they dictate to
That shit must hurt real bad
Fakin' what you wish you had

( H I S T O R Y )

The perpetual street urchin, Bang Bang has always found her home in the grit and filth of District Three and is completely unfamiliar with the lifestyles of its wealthier residents. Homeless for the first few years of her life, she retains no solid memories her early childhood. Everything from the alleyways she slept in to the parents that didn't know how to care for themselves, much less their daughter, has been romanticized and re-imagined so often that she's no longer sure what's truth and what's fiction. However, this doesn't stop her from occasionally telling stories about how her mother and father were elite peacekeepers (a tale that always elicits a laugh for irony), rebel spies against the Capitol, or the inventors of the hovercraft.

No matter how far-fetched her lies or how skeptical others are of them, there's always one person gullible enough to believe her words: none other than the great Bang Bang Harlow herself. Her inner child clings to her own frivolous myths, a tiny piece of her still desperate to believe that the people who brought her into this world were a duo of consequence. If they were important enough, then perhaps there was a crucial reason for them to flee the district without their daughter, abandoning the six-year-old and never looking back. While she feels no urge to search them out and have a teary eyed reunion, even her inner child can't stomach that kind of sentimentality, she can't escape her secret desire to convince herself that they had once wanted her, despite their actions.

Here all the folks come ask about me
Band wagon, know they used to doubt me
Blind side tend to hit real hard
You should heed the warning, get a body guard

Left to wander the streets, the combination of desertion and her innate fascination with machines led her to the local scrap yard. The proprietor, an elderly mechanic named Igby Plaith, found the feisty guttersnipe amusing and merely stood back and laughed as she threw junk around, howling and yelling BANG! BANG! as the metal projectiles clanked against one another. It wasn't until he later discovered her sleeping in the scrap piles that he realized the young girl was homeless. A kind and lonely old man, albeit rough around the edges, he took her in and began raising her as if she were his own. For months she refused to confess her real name and spoke in little more than sound effects, so Igby took to calling her by the only words she would actively respond to: Bang Bang. To this day she despises being called Valencia, unable to shake the way it subconsciously reminds her of being young and helplessly abandoned, and its use may even trigger violent fits of displaced rage.

Soon it became apparent that the girl, as tempestuous and untamable as she was, was nothing short of a savant. Her natural aptitude for navigating her way through the inner workings of any machine she touched astounded Igby. The knowledge it had taken him a lifetime to gain took her a fraction of the time to master and, in many ways, her skills began to surpass his own expertise. However, no matter how hard she tried, she was never able to explain how she figured a mechanism out or identified a wiring flaw. Names of parts would escape her memory and the ensuing confusion would prompt her to make up her own nonsensical terminology. Everything was purely tactile for her and it took years of conscious and practiced effort before she could successfully identify a spark plug with its proper name. After more than a decade, she still struggles with explaining her logic and will resort to rambling inquisitive customers into confusion in order to avoid admitting her inability to speak intelligently about her work.

Steady friction in this bitch
Creepin' in just like an itch
So far I got the last laugh
Still the rich rise up, still I live fast

Bang Bang's difficulties with communication were only exacerbated by her lack of schooling. Preferring to stay at home with her "old man" and new father figure — who taught far more interesting subjects than District Three's educational institutions, such as motor repair, demolition, and the art of hoarding — she was truant so often that her teachers soon relinquished all attempts at instructing her. As a result, she is deftly street smart, but almost completely illiterate. Unable to read or write much beyond her own name, she will go out of her way to avoid situations that draw attention to this particular shortcoming.

Shortly after her sixteenth birthday, Igby Plaith, the only family she could recall feeling acknowledged or loved by, passed away. Incompetent at coping with emotional trauma, Bang Bang vented her angst the only way she could think of: blowing things up. Having learned the art of explosives from her late guardian, who had worked as part of a demolition crew prior to becoming a mechanic, she began applying her knowledge to whatever innocuous targets she could rummage up from around the junkyard she had inherited. The acts of destruction became a catharsis for her, each small blast soothing her anger until it became almost purely recreational.

Wouldn't know it face to face
Got no soul and got no taste
Moving in speed up the pace
I got it locked though, what a waste

( C O D E W O R D ) Odair
( F A C E C L A I M ) Nina Kate

( C O M M E N T S / O T H E R )

Bang Bang's bicycle

Creator by Santogold

( O T H E R S P E A K I N G ) 665544
( T E X T ) 887766
( T H I N K I N G ) 888877
( O T H E R ) 777777
( S P E A K I N G ) 8D8F8F

All the talk is standard fare
Walk the walk if it gets you there
On the grind 'til the gig is up
I'm 'a smash 'em down
Put a muzzle on them like "what!"