Citrine

<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Citrine</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox>Jeanne Wynn (born Jean Brown), known publicly as Citrine, is a member of the Ambassadors, and eventually a mayor of The City of Bet refugees.

Appearance

Jeanne is a young, blonde woman. She wears a goldenrod yellow evening gown with a gemstone studded masquerade ball mask, showcasing her lower face with matching yellow lipstick.<ref name="I20 e1">He stopped partway up the stair case and faced her, saw her unharmed and unhurt. His Citrine, young, blond, wearing a goldenrod yellow evening gown and a gemstone studded mask. Her hair was immaculately styled, her makeup flawless, with a yellow lipstick that matched her outfit without being garish. - Excerpt from Interlude 20.y</ref> Her mask was yellow as well, and Taylor recognized the gems studding it as her namesake gemstone - citrines.<ref name="21.4">Excerpt from Imago 21.4</ref><ref name="Cast2">Citrine – One of Accord’s ambassadors, Citrine wears a yellow evening gown with gemstones on her mask and earrings – her namesake. - Cast (in depth)</ref>

Multiple characters have noted that she is physically attractive, including Accord and Skitter.<ref name="21.4" /><ref name="I20"> - Excerpt from Interlude 20.y</ref> She dedicated an hour every morning to caring for her skin, another hour to her hair, which was "immaculately styled".

When deployed to New Delhi she is explicitly referenced as having thrown off her elaborate gown costume for a more practical bodysuit. Implicitly for ease of movement.<ref name="24.4e1">“Citrine? Woman in yellow dress.”

“Yellow bodysuit now,” Golem said. “She stripped out of the dress when he pushed past the command center.” - Excerpt from Crushed 24.3</ref>

Personality & Relationships

Accord referred to her as his "best Ambassador".<ref name="I20" /> Taylor suspected that she had a similar personality to Grue - they were both "professionals".<ref name="21.4" /> Citrine led the Ambassadors in battle, even when her power was ineffectual.<ref name="21.6">Excerpt from Imago 21.6</ref>

She assessed the Undersiders as a threat based on their track record, disagreeing - politely - with Othello.<ref name="I20" />

Taylor believed that she was not Grue's "type". Nevertheless, it bothered her that she did not feel jealous of the time he spent with her.<ref name="21.4" /> It was implied in his interlude that she was attracted to Accord.<ref name="I20" />

All these combined made her marriage to Kurt one of equals.<ref>Next were a couple, male and female. She wore a nice suit-dress. He wore a dress shirt, slacks, and carried the paperwork. Their focus was sharp, they clearly worked well together from how well they coordinated. As with Big Picture, there was something else going on with the man’s perceptions. He wasn’t a cone- his perceptions were covering a lot of ground, and his fractures were very different from the norm. They were closer to being etches. - Excerpt from Interlude 2 II</ref>

Abilities and Powers

Citrine's power allows her to "attune areas to particular functions"<ref name="21.4" />, altering specific properties within a relatively small area.<ref name="R12">The area of effect is smallish, so it creates a problem where the power is very subtle up unless she can actually target someone who won't just walk out of range of it, or if she can keep a fight going long enough to figure out a power's frequency. - Comment by WildBow on Reddit</ref>

She can interfere with gravity, temperature variation, friction, light intensity, and the progression of time, among others.<ref name="List" /> She claimed that there were "more possibilities than I could count, many so minor you wouldn't notice."<ref name="21.4" /> She could use her power to make everything within her ability's range effectively waterproof as an example.<ref name="21.6 e1">I could sense the Ambassadors. Citrine and Othello were there. So were four new recruits: Jacklight, Ligeia, Lizardtail and Codex. The fifth potential recruit hadn’t been so lucky. The four of them stood off to one side, in the shelter of Citrine’s power, listening as she gave instructions. The area around them was somehow faded in terms of the colors there, the area she was affecting looked as though I were viewing it through colorblind eyes that were capable of only seeing yellow. Water wicked off of them as though they were waterproof, leaving them utterly dry even in the wind and rain. - Excerpt from Imago 21.6</ref>

Most notably, Citrine can "find the right attunement, as though I were searching a radio station" to neutralize a given parahuman's abilities. Furthermore, she can specifically cancel out protective powers, or cause powers to go out of control. This latter effect never takes more than twenty or thirty seconds.<ref name="21.4" /> She risked striking the wrong attunement and accidentally killing her target.<ref name="List">Citrine Altered reality in a small area, adjusting physics or natural laws. Could attune 'frequency' to diminish or disrupt a parahuman's powers, with perfect frequency killing them. Ambassadors - Parahuman List, bolded edit by Wildbow.</ref><ref name="21.6" /> Further, some powers are too subtle to find out in time before she is retaliated against, or have the subject step out of her range.<ref name="R12"/>

Citrine's power gives everything in its area of effect a washed out yellow effect as if the observer was colorblind, only able to see yellow.<ref name="21.6 e1" /> Under the influence of the Yàngbǎn, it appeared as a golden glow.<ref name="24.3">Excerpt from Crushed 24.3</ref>

History

Background

Despite being from a privileged family, she had grown up violent and 'uncivilized'. During her last year in a juvenile detention center, before her transfer to an adult’s prison, she received an offer that she could not afford to refuse.<ref name="5x II">“Because, Jean Brown, I understand the desire to rise up and desperately make sense of a world that seems so senseless. I read every file that can be found about you, and I don’t believe you ever had a chance to be civilized. [...] I know who your stepfather is, I know who your teachers have been. Your judge remarked on your privileged background, but you were the last file he looked at after an overworked day. He hadn’t had a vacation in five years and his retirement was imminent. He was lazy and he didn’t see you.”
[...]
“This will be far more difficult than juvenile prison, and even more difficult than being a newly minted eighteen years old in an adult’s prison, Jean Brown. You will want to do as I instruct, regardless of this difficulty.”

She wanted to ask why, and her instincts told her that she couldn’t and shouldn’t.

Failure wasn’t an option.

“You get one chance, Ms. Brown.” - Excerpt from Interlude 5x II</ref>

When talking about the type of people who sought out Accord, she implied she was the type that had power and sought more.<ref name="21.4 e3">“Why?” I asked. “Why leave a successful, ordinary, happy life behind, and go to that risk? Why work for Accord, of all people?”

“Power,” Citrine said. She turned her back to the portal to meet my eyes, her dress flaring slightly with the rotation of her body.

“Power isn’t magical,” I said. “It creates as many problems as it solves.”

“Power is less a thing unto itself than it is a journey.”

“To where?”

Her eyes were penetrating as she gazed at me. “Not all journeys have destinations. Power is the ability to effect change, and people who create change ride that tide, with far-reaching effects. For some of us, that’s something we’re born into. Our fathers or mothers instill us with a hunger for it from a very early point in time. We’re raised on it, always striving to be the top, in academics, in sports, in our careers. Then we either run into a dead-end, or we face diminishing returns.”

“Less and less results for the same amount of effort,” Grue said.

“Others of us are born with nothing. It is hard to get something when you don’t have anything. You can’t make money until you have money. The same applies to contacts, to success, to status. It’s a chasm, and where you start is often very close to where you finish. The vast majority never even move from where they began. Of the few that do make it, many are so exhausted by the time they meet some success that they stop there. And others, a very small few, they make that drive for success, that need to climb becomes a part of themselves. They keep climbing, and when someone like Accord recognizes them and offers them another road to climb, they accept without reservation.”

“Which are you?” Grue asked. “Did you start with power, or did you fight for it?”

Citrine smiled a little, looking over her shoulder at the tower. “I suspect Tattletale will tell you, if you’re curious enough to ask.” - Excerpt from Imago 21.4</ref>

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine

Under Accord, she helped to watch Blasto in his lab,<ref name="19.x">Interlude 19.x</ref> and was one of only two known Ambassadors to survive the raid by the Slaughterhouse Nine.

Post-Echidna

She accompanied Accord to a neutral meeting of all the villains in Brockton Bay<ref name="I20" />. Afterwards, she agreed with Othello's assessment that the Ambassadors could deal with any individual group but not more.

Accord sent her to inform the Undersiders leadership that the Ambassadors would be "recruiting" five new parahumans - by which she meant purchasing five vials from Cauldron for Accord's five highest unpowered lieutenants. She admitted that she was also a Cauldron cape.<ref name="21.4" />

She led the Ambassadors alongside the Undersiders against the Teeth.<ref name="21.6" />

New Delhi

During the battle with Behemoth, she helped suppress his sonic attack<ref name="24.3" />. This extended to several other effects the dynokinetic monster used against the defending forces. She was not able to counter all of the Endbringer's attacks however and eventually had to withdraw from the battle, due to exhaustion.

Post-Timeskip

She still leads the Ambassadors and had begun a relationship with The Number Man.

Early-Ward

Jeanne Wynn was elected mayor of The City. She and her husband worked to keep things in check.

Post-Goddess' Takeover

Jeanne negotiated with Earth Shin regarding Red Queen's host.<ref>Breaking 14.6</ref>

Breakthrough agreed to work with her.

Citrine halfheartedly re-approves practice of retaliatory kill orders.

Once Cradle tried to leave Earth N through a reactivated portal he ran headlong into Citrine and Number Man leading a crowd of parahumans. Citrine nullified Cradle's mover abilities and expressed the desire to proceed with his kill order, but Antares suggested to keep him alive as a precaution.<ref>Heavens 12.9</ref>

Post-Time Bubble Pop

Citrine had granted some degree of autonomy to Bluestocking and villains of Earth N as was promised by Breakthrough.

She was outed as a parahuman by Gary Nieves.<ref>Breaking 14.2</ref> In ensuing diplomatic conflict with Earth Shin Citrine and her husband were called in to recover Breakthrough from Earth Shin custody.<ref>Breaking 14.9</ref>

Citrine was leading the assembly of the second assault team deploying against Teacher. She presented her own parahuman team, created from the recovered vials.<ref>Dying 15.a</ref>

Fanart Gallery

• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  Image by Pabel and Nine on tumblr
• Error creating thumbnail: File missing
  Citrine with Ligeia by Lonsheep

Trivia

• It was initially planned for Citrine to meet with The Number Man after Accord's death and, recognizing that she had been in love with Accord, form a relationship with the former Harbinger instead as a way to move past her grief.<ref name="IRC">

Wildbow: Accord was definitely grooming Citrine. Sorta wish I'd explored that more
Wildbow: But in writing Worm, I was definitely keeping the "That thing you're planning to do in the future? Do it now. Move the story forward" adage in mind, and it had done well for me up to then
Wildbow: But it did sorta overly condense things in the final quarter
Wildbow: The Citrine/Imp vs. Heartbreaker interlude I ended up canceling would've touched far more on that
Wildbow: But I wasn't comfortable with writing romance/relationship stuff.
Wildbow: Would've done a lot to round out the Number Man, tho
Wildbow: Citrine mourning the death of Accord, meets with Number Man to discuss taking over the Ambassadors.
Wildbow: He fills some of the void that Accord left.
[...]
Ridandria: She wasn't sure she was in love till he threatened her with a plastic protractor
Wildbow: No, Rid is closer. Up til the plastic protractor bit.
Wildbow: There's a reason I canceled it though. Wasn't sure I could sell it. - Wildbow on IRC</ref>

References

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