Elizabeth Contessa Cane

Goes by Liza. Also known as Helios within the convoy.

09/13/1992

23

Female, She/Her

Asexual

Liza is a Caucasian woman in her mid-20's, thrown into adulthood by the world but still learning her place in the universe. She stands 5'10 high and weighs 115lb. Her hair is a dark, silky brown, and kept shorn, her eyes a shimmering pale blue. She has angular, arguably-androgynous features, with a strong brow and a slender neck, to compliment the rest of her slim frame.

She has light burning on her right arm, and heavy burns and muscular damage on her left calf, causing the leg to weaken requiring a brace. Her lower neck also sports some light lashes of burn scars.​

​Homo-Virium/Hyperhuman

Mars

Thermokinesis - The manipulation of heat.

Liza is able to manipulate the residual kinetic energy of ambient atoms and focus them in a central location, where the concentrated heat then creates a sphere of intense and extreme heat which ignites and stabilises itself - for the layman, she pulls heat from her surroundings to create a mini-sun.

Liza is then able to manipulate this sphere - guiding it, throwing it, withdrawing it - and can also change its size. This sphere becomes an extension of herself and is her only tool.

Liza can only create and maintain one sphere at a time - if she wants to create another, she must release the first.
She cannot draw more heat in to build into an existing sun - each new sun is fixed in intensity.
She cannot manipulate heat in any other way than the creation of her suns.
She can change the size of an existing sun, though doing this affects its intensity, decreasing further the greater the sun grows, and increasing the smaller it becomes.
She cannot maintain a sun while unconscious.
She cannot create a sun without any/enough ambient heat.

Liza is not immune to the heat her suns give off, or any heat source in general.

Due to her effectiveness revolving around wielding her sun, Liza has practiced herself in gymnastics and acrobatics, keeping herself agile, flexible, and light on her feet. She has also taught herself some tolerance to heat due to the temperatures her power forces her to deal with, but she still burns as easily as anyone else.

Baby girl, bald, born September, 1992. Elizabeth Contessa - mother's and father's choice respectively. Cane, old family, bad connotations - infighting, murder. No one's choice. To be Lizzy for her first eleven years, Liza thereafter until now. Contessa isn't brought up. Raised by loving mother and doting father, though the latter's work made him distracted, tense, and the family moved a lot. House after house, city after city, state after state. Difficult to cement a relationship when you're born into drifters. Attempted nonetheless. Succeeded with scarcity, but appreciated what she had: a good family. A proud upbringing.

Twelve years until they settled; Liza was a fresh start for a 'grown up girl'; her own words. Middle school was finally stable; time now for crushes and bullying turning into pressured kisses. Liza liked boys, seceded to the expectations of her peers and parents. It wasn't until four years down the line that Liza realized there was a growing schism between her and the teenagers around her; cooties were still cooties to her, heavy breaths and fumbling hands unwanted, though often attempted. Insistence plagued her: insistence of her parents that she 'just hadn't met the right man yet'; insistence of her friends that she just wasn't doing it 'the right way'; insistence of boys that they could be the one to 'make it feel good'. Eventually, it was just the insistence that she wasn't normal - that a switch inside her simply hadn't been flipped 'on'. Liza had accepted it, sought emotional attachment instead. Her desires seemed to be brushed aside by the apparent sacrifice fulfillment would entail. Eventually, boys stopped trying. They knew she was weird. They knew she didn't have what they wanted. And when the boys stopped bothering, all of a sudden Liza found she had little to talk about with friends. Instead, she sought out the like-minded, those with preferences that deviated from the accepted societal norm. She found them easily, but somehow, her own deviation was still an anomaly, still bizarre and incomprehensible. It was made invisible, dismissed. She had no place at their meetings, in their community. She was weird to them, too.

All of a sudden, Liza's friends stopped too. Middle School continued and finished with a dull taste in Liza's mouth; High School offered little more to her palate. And so it was that Liza came to and passed through her adolescence, an event that marked her abnormal, cast a dividing line between her and her peers. There was scare else that could separate her further - but it happened regardless. The universe cares not for small odds.

Hyperhuman. There have been few such divisive terms in Mankind's history, but it is arguable that the recent emergence of a better human being has been perhaps the single most controversial event in world history. And yet Liza, at young 19, found herself thrust into these annals of time. Homo-Virium, Mankind version 2.0. Suns, she created. Heat focused into balls of fire. Scary. Dangerous. Thrilling, to a young Liza with little else to do in her free time. She was impressive, distinctive. Hyper-humanity was not invisible. The world would be forced to notice her.

And notice her it did. A lot of burns, in the early testing, young probing. Before the suns became a regular occurrence. Her first sun was a lesson Liza would not soon forget; the brace that helps her walk will ensure that alone. Other scars keep other lessons constant. Her suns are stable now, reliable. But her self-made injuries did nothing to stay the objections to her potential danger; her parents became afraid. Her peers stopped calling her 'weird', began calling her 'freak'. There was no greater barrier to cast between Liza and her peers, her elders, her youngers. Her parents loved her - but they did not accept her. And so it was until graduation.

Then the convoy arrived. Bands of Hyperhumans drawn together for support. Truly, this was Liza's community, more than her parents, more than her peers, more than the LGBT groups. It was with only a few tears she left her home to travel with this new family; it was with speed they fled yet more opponents to their existence.

Liza remains with the convoy today. They are the only circle she has ever truly been part of; the only people she can trust not to question her. She is both Liza and Lizzy to this new family; she is Contessa; but most importantly, she is Helios. Hyperhuman.

BELONGING - Liza's asexuality has, by and large, led to being alienated by old friends who don't understand (or accept) her sexuality, and crushes who, despite romantic feelings being present, feel a relationship is unmanageable without the sexual element. Liza sought refuge in her minority, but found the LGBT scene itself to be dismissive in its reception of those on the aro/ace spectrum, leading Liza further afield in search of somewhere to fit in. Her Hype status only compounded this issue as it is, to Liza, another wall between 'her' and 'normal people'. With no friends remaining, the convoy is all she has left to feel like home.

SAFETY - Liza's ability has proven itself to be exceptionally dangerous - reckless and impracticed use when she was younger and still exploring resulted in property damage around their home, as well as bodily damage to herself: minor burns on her lower neck remind her why she keeps her hair short these days, and the brace around her leg - needed after her very first sun resulted in terrible burns, muscle damage and scarring, weakening the leg - is a constant reminder about how destructive her powers really are. Liza knows that she is not the only hype whose ability serves little practical, non-offensive purpose, but neither does it secure complete invulnerability against those anti-Hype persons who would bring harm upon her and her loved ones. Perhaps within the convoy, she will need her ability a little less, and can receive a little more tutoring - or at least find a hype that can heal.

-Liza's Leg Brace.
-Wears a removable pressure bandage on her burnt arm to relieve some existing pain.
-Anchovies.