CHARACTER INFO. ✖ Character Name: Amber (February or UB-001) ✖ Canon: Darker Than Black, end of episode 25 ✖ CDC ID Code & Team: NHD-A10-AMR-111, Red Team ✖ Character Appearance:Here and here! ✖ Character Age: It was never specified and made more confusing by the fact that she physically ages backwards as she uses her power. But judging from appearances, she must have been in her late twenties initially, so let's go with 27.
✖ Canon Setting:
Ten years before the series begins, the old sky was replaced by an impenetrable atmosphere filled with stars for each Contractor; human beings gifted with special powers at the cost of making strange remunerations for each demonstration. At about the same time, two Gates appeared on precisely opposite sides of the Earth: one in South America called Heaven's Gate and another in Japan named Hell's Gate. They aren't actual passages, but sealed off areas where all laws of physics are rendered moot and ghosts and hallucinations are commonplace. Inside the Gates, it was said, one can regain what was lost, like dead loved ones and the old stars. None knows why or how all this happened, but Amber said she has seen how destroying the Gates would cause all the stars to fall and every Contractor to die.
There are many kinds of Contractors, among them Dolls, known for a severe lack of affect and for having surveillance specters akin to a second pair of eyes that can travel through certain media, for example water or glass. There's also the rare Moratoria, who lack control over their powers and are highly volatile but aren't required to make remunerations. Instead, they quickly burn out and usually later turn into Dolls. Regressors are Contractors who somehow lost their power, though bringing them near the Gate has been proven effective in reactivating them, as in Carmine's case.
But this isn't a story about superpowered heroes fighting off bad guys to save innocent civilians. The appearance of the Gates incited widescale war between several countries, including the U.K. and Argentina, as they sought control over Heaven's Gate. The conflict was even likened to World War III. Amber, Hei and his sister Bai were involved in this battle along with many other Contractors, until the Gate disappeared five years ago in a mysterious event that rendered half of South America physically intangible. But even then, the general public was kept in the dark about the existence of Contractors. Technology called Memory Extractors are used to make people forget their encounters with Contractors and heavily-guarded walls twice as tall as Tokyo's skyscrapers were built around Hell's Gate to keep them out.
Bereft of any place in society, many Contractors work for an organization called the Syndicate in return for a livelihood and a sense of direction they lost along with much of their emotions and moral compass. But it was later revealed that the Syndicate is in fact an immensely powerful organization that controls many of the world's governments, from the CIA to MI6 and from Japan's police forces to the United Nations itself. Even PANDORA, a U.N. body created by an act requiring international cooperation in managing the Gates and Contractors, is effectively controlled by the Syndicate, whose sole motive is obliterating Contractors. Bai was the one who first discovered this and, with Amber's help, caused Heaven's Gate to become inaccessible to keep the Syndicate from destroying it to kill all Contractors. She was, in a way, one of the few who founded Evening Primrose, or EPR, a gathering of Contractors intent on securing their continued existence. This group was later led by Amber who seeks to repeat the South American incident at Hell's Gate to seal it once and for all.
✖ Character History:
Amber was the first confirmed Contractor and so was granted the Messier code UB-001. Presumably of British nationality, she joined the Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, and was given the code name February and also worked for the Syndicate under the name Amber. A double agent. She led a squad of the strongest contractors, including Bai and Carmine, as well as Hei the only human in the group, to fight for the Syndicate in the Heaven's Gate War. She grew deeply fond of the siblings despite what the scientists may say of a Contractor's lack of affect. She even kept the name Amber for this very reason: because it was the name that Hei used to call her. Once, in all seriousness, Amber suggested that they run away; Hei, Bai and herself, to somewhere where they can see the stars. It's a dream less rational and more sentimental. How unlike a Contractor.
But somewhere along the line, Amber stole a substantial amount of information from the MI6 just as Bai discovered the Syndicate's plan to rid the world of Contractors. The sequence of events was never made clear, but she said Bai enlisted her help in keeping it a secret from Hei for the sake of his safety as his sister vaporized a 1,500-kilometer wide diameter around Heaven's Gate to prevent anyone from approaching let alone destroying it. Millions died, including many Contractors, except for the fortunate few like Amber, Carmine and Hei, who later discovered that Bai's power was now his. Over the next five years, Amber traveled back and forth through time and perfected a plan to seal off Hell's Gate while gathering supporters to the cause. Her secondary motive was to reveal Contractors to the public, believing that it would help them gain civil rights equal to humans.
Amber arrived in Tokyo in time to prepare for the sunspot cycle that would make a repeat of the South American incident possible. She collected the necessary ingredients, first stealing the Meteor Fragment from the CIA then attacking the MI6 base to incite suspicion that the CIA was retaliating against the theft. She also planted a bomb at the CIA base to further rile up the organizations, turning one against the other. Look, what a farce when both are in fact part of the same Syndicate! Amid the chaos, she tried to recruit November 11, a top MI6 agent, and Hei. But the reunion was a bitter one, with Hei raising a hand against her for taunting him about Bai. She said he can see his sister if he joined her cause, an offer he violently rejected. Hei activated his power to attack Amber but not before she halted time, taking the stolen moment to kiss him before fleeing.
In the following weeks, the EPR collected the required number of Dolls for the plan and made another attempt to recruit November and Hei. Amber abducted November and Mao, Hei's colleague in the form of a cat, so they could hear a kidnapped PANDORA researcher speak about the Syndicate's plan to use the Saturn Ring particle accelerator to destroy Hell's Gate and all Contractors with it. She told the doubting November that she had seen the future and that she knew he would die once he stepped out of the building, a prophecy that later came true. As she planned, Hei rushed in to save Mao and to confront Amber, grabbing hold of her with the intention to kill but finding his powers amplified to a molecular level by the Meteor Fragment in her pocket. He stopped short when he heard Bai's voice, allowing Amber to escape again.
Amber later set her plan in motion, sending a number of Contractors to attack the Saturn Ring. To lead Hei to where she waited inside the Gate, she enlisted the help of Wei Zhijun, a skilled Contractor with a grudge against Hei, with the promise that he may kill Hei to prove himself the better fighter once he brought him to the Gate. But Amber knew all along that Wei wouldn't be able to kill Hei, which was why she sent him in the first place. Wei admitted Hei's victory and opened a passage for him to enter the Gate. When Hei finally found Amber near the Gate's center, her body had shrunk to that of a six-year-old, having used so much of her power. She revealed to him all about the Heaven's Gate incident and about how his power, in fact, was Bai's which was why he has no remuneration. Amber then told him that he must choose between destroying Japan or letting all Contractors disappear.
With time running out and Hei still indecisive, she shoved the Meteor Fragment to his chest and incited an explosion that took out all of Japan, revealing the real stars and showing Hei all that he would have should he choose to save Contractors: Bai, Amber, all the friends he gained and lost along the way. But he decided to choose both, unwilling to witness a repeat of South America. Amber asked him if this is really what he wants: a life on the run without her and without Bai. She thought all he ever wanted was to stop killing. Hei tried to say something but Amber interrupted him with a kiss before letting him say his farewells. But it was her intent all along to use the last of her powers to return Hei to a time before Japan was obliterated, allowing him the chance to destroy the Saturn Ring and save both humans and Contractors, at the cost of her own life.
✖ Character Personality:
When it comes to Amber, it's the silence between her words and the spaces between the lines that carry the most meaning. She banters and dabbles in mischievous taunts and offhand comments in order to communicate graver truths without saying them outright, believing that words can only convey so much. The most important truths must be shown or experienced firsthand in order to be accepted and believed, as in the case of her refraining from telling Hei about Heaven's Gate incident. This makes her appear childlike in many ways, helped by her playfulness, bright countenance and easy smiles. But she's far from gullible. A keen observer, she often seeks to guess at the other person's likely responses before executing her actions. Her every word is strategically uttered to incite the reaction she wants. Nothing is left up to chance.
Calculating is a word made for her, helped by the intensely rational mind granted by her status as a Contractor. But it isn't global domination or the end of the world that she seeks, not exactly, instead she longs for things much simpler and less tangible. What she wants above all else is to have Hei grant her that rare genuine smile. She finds great joy in freshly baked bread with marmalade and cream and thinks the real stars are nothing short of magical. She is idealistic bordering on naive in some ways, seeking a better world where humans and Contractors can coexist in peace, without fear and suspicion. But on the other hand, she understands how the world functions and knows the strings she must pull to achieve her objective. While it's true that she would have been happier had Hei chosen to obliterate Japan in exchange for her and Bai, it's undeniable that her mission is a great success. At the end of the series, she has saved Contractors from total annihiliation and made their existence public knowledge. Those were the Evening Primrose's prime motives all along.
The end always justifies the means. She has no qualms against massacre, deceiving her closest friends, double-crossing her team members and turning people against each other to risk all-out war. While she might feel a tinge of sadness at some losses, she finds remorse difficult to comprehend. An Olympic medalist at keeping secrets, her lack of guilt and hesitation over her questionable actions helped her in serving as a double agent for both the MI6 and the Syndicate only to later betray both. There's no such thing as crossing a line in her opinion, except when it comes to harming Hei or Bai, the only thing she understands as principally wrong. She wouldn't seek to harm November 11 to avenge Maki, a child who thinks the world of her, but she would send the kid to certain death because she knows he may harm Hei in the future and she can't risk that. She would compromise the mission she spent years perfecting to ensure his safety.
Maybe once, a very long time ago, Amber was a typical Contractor. Logical, ruthless and efficient. But in person she is nothing but warm, gentle and invariably gracious to those around her, earning the absolute loyalty of her Contractor followers using no other means but the draw of her personality and the ideals she fights for. She understands friendship, the joy of learning something new, nostalgia, and holds fast to her sense of wonder. While some Contractors laud their trademark rationality and lack of sentiment, Amber is fascinated by human attachment, the idea of fighting for something greater than oneself even at the cost of one's life. She values kindness and loyalty, as shown by her expending precious time in rescuing Amagiri for offering her a boiled egg just before she walks into certain death. The gesture touched her deeply.
Exceedingly logical but also inexplicable, her mind can quickly arrive at the most rational decision, but her ideals might lead her to abandon those options and instead lay down her life for the sake of allowing Hei a choice --just the choice-- between saving millions of humans or thousands of Contractors. It's not a leap of faith to imagine that she knew all along that he would choose both and neither, turning down her offer of a world where he could be with her and his sister. But it's not only about allowing him to choose, but also to allow him to come to peace with losing Bai and herself. To see him smile again. These are all intangible things that serve no obvious purpose to Amber herself. Wildly irrational, she serves as a rebuttal to the prevailing theory that Contractors are pure sociopaths incapable of any deep attachments.
You see, to say that she loves Hei would be a severe understatement. He was the one who showed her what it meant to feel as a Contractor and her time spent with the siblings showed her how much she longs for the kind of sacrificial love that Hei demonstrates toward Bai. The kind that defies all logic. Amber knows that for all his fervent denial, Hei unfailingly cares about the people around him and that he never wanted to take a single soul. Every murder he commits and every star that falls across the sky when his sister goes to battle kills a little part of him each time. It kills a little part of Amber too to watch him so. She sees the burden on his shoulders, but her love is of the selfless kind that has learned to let go and even ask Yin to take her place, so she would give him the chance to choose whether or not he wishes to keep carrying that weight.
✖ Character Powers & Skills:
CONTRACTOR POWER. Amber has the ability to bend time to her will; stopping, rewinding and fast-forwarding. She has been shown capable of reliving events over and over again until she figures out a sequence of actions that best serve her objective, so much so that she knows to buy an umbrella during a clear day because it would unexpectedly rain later. She could even travel beyond her own lifetime, planting an important clue for Misaki the policewoman to help save the world, long after Amber herself has died. Most usefully, she can stop time and flee without notice or manipulate objects while time is halted, as shown by her pushing up Misaki's glasses to allow Hei ample chance to escape once she returned time to its usual schedule.
She can also choose to bring other people into stopped time and allow them to flee or help her set up traps for the enemy, or rewind time for another person to help them escape death, as shown by her giving Amagiri a second chance to destroy the Saturn Ring. But none of it comes for free. Every time Amber uses her power, she ages backwards, meaning that there's a limit to how much she can manipulate time as running out of age would render her non-existent. In the CDC, she will be limited to halting time, rewinding and fast-forwarding in three-minute bursts only, with each instance shaving six months off of her age.
SKILLS. A former MI6 agent and a war veteran, Amber is physically fit, combat-ready and skilled in the use of guns as well as proficient in various intelligence-gathering tricks of spy trade. As a Contractor, her damped sense of remorse and ability to set aside sentiments to make the rational choice help her to make quick decisions under great duress and keep her undisturbed by even the most terrifying situation. With a keen ability to read people and their tendencies, she is also a proven strategist, able to orchestrate a complex plan against the wide-reaching Syndicate with humans and Contractors as her chess pieces. She seems to be able to speak several languages, including English, Japanese and Chinese.
CHARACTER SAMPLES. ✖ First Person POV:
April picks up a stray Amber Amber shows off and then goes stargazing Stacker Pentecost is worried and Amber isn't at all Amber talks sports with Adrien Arbuckal
✖ Third Person POV:
If you must ask, aging backward feels like nothing.
There are no bones creaking as they shrink or skin loosening and pulling taut as it readjusts to the flesh underneath. Amber simply blinks and in the next moment she is no longer as old as she was before. She won the Contract lottery in many ways. There are worse ways to pay for the immense power granted to her than the ability to theoretically live forever. But her great paradox is that she is now the one running out of time. If she blinks once more, she thinks, she won't even live to open her eyes.
"There's only one way to know." It's a woman's voice, level and unaffected, but not her own.
Unwittingly, Amber opens her eyes to find herself back inside the Gate, seated on that stone bench by the decaying temple, only this time without anyone visible for company. It takes her a moment to realize how tall she has become, how the world changes depending on one's vantage. Expressions of surprise don't come easily to her, having grown so out of practice with it, so she only stares at her hands --elongated and full-grown-- entirely dumbfounded.
"If you like it, you can keep it." The voice again, without lips to speak the words.
Amber draws a quick inhale and plasters a polite smile on her face. Dons her armor with a chuckle. "What's your refund policy?"
The voice laughs with exaggerated amusement. "Aren't you going to ask how much it costs first?"
So there's no going back, Amber thinks, reading between the lines and already listing out the pros and cons in her mind. You're either in or out. It wouldn't the first time she has signed a Contract she knows nothing about.
"Alright," she moves to stand, feeling safer when on her feet and able to run. "What does it cost?"
"Just your service to our cause. We have many worlds to take care of and someone of your skill is dearly needed. Besides--" the voice seems to smile. "Don't you want to see the real stars?"
The voice, whatever it might be, seems to know her better than she would have liked. Amber closes her eyes and imagines how Hei smiled at her that one time. His face was brighter than the sun and her heart felt as if it might burst like a supernova and that's no exaggeration. Should we run away? You, me and Bai. Someplace where we can see the real stars.
"Hm," she can hardly deny the smile blooming on her lips. There's a chance she might see the siblings again. The universe works in strange ways if this encounter isn't proof enough. "Where do I sign?"
CHARACTER ITEMS. ✖ Reason for Joining the CDC:
Simply put, because death would be the alternative and a Contractor's rational mind would decide easily enough that anything would be preferable to non-existence. Amber would complete her missions with some nonchalance, doing as much as she needs to without feeling the need to impress or challenge her superiors. As in the case of the Syndicate, she doesn't care to ask after the CDC's end goal, if there's such a thing, as long as she's assured that it doesn't involve harming Hei or obliterating Contractors like herself.
✖ Personal Item or Weapon:
The Meteor Fragment. Its ability is twofold: magnifying a Contractor's power beyond usual limits and concealing what's there or showing what's not there. The fragment emanates Lancelnopt synchrotron radiation, which is produced by the Gates and by Contractors when they use their powers, implying that it serves as an extension of the Gates and is closely linked to the Contracts, as such it can only amplify powers granted by such Contracts. For example, the fragment can amplify Hei's molecular ability because it was Bai's Contractor power, but it has no impact on his superhuman acrobatic or eating skills. It's no disaster if the fragment falls into Darth Vader's hands either because it won't interact with the Dark Force, for instance. In the CDC, only Amber can use the fragment in this capacity and she won't. She never did so during the series even when it may have saved her life, possibly because it runs the risk of having her lose control of her own power, so she has even less reason to use it here.
Secondly, the fragment is shaped like a lens for a reason as it's able to literally create illusions and conceal reality. This is the ability that can affect anyone, Contractor or not. As an extension of the Gates, its ability is to show the law of physics rendered moot and show what's lost being regained, but not to actually make it so. It reacts to the viewer's deep-seated wishes or fears, for example, showing Nick the real stars because he genuinely longed to see it and showing Hei an image of Bai, whom he's spent years seeking, only with her head bleeding. A capricious thing, it doesn't obey any master in this regard. Even if Amber holds the fragment, she can't control the illusions it creates or conceal what she wants to hide. The most she can do is tell the viewer to believe that it will show them what they want to see, and the fragment may oblige if it's their genuine wish.
✖ Character Inventory:
Her pink skintight suit. Pair of white boots. Oversized sports sweater numbered 26 A white and blue hat. A sling pouch.
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