Marcella Dianne Bonaparte II.

22

Female.

Receptionist at the Mayor’s office (High School Diploma only).

Marcella has naturally dark brown hair and unassuming if somewhat piercing green eyes. She has a small nose, and a small mouth making her eyes look all the larger. Her face is mostly rounded and soft typically others seem to think she ‘looks nice’. She is commonly found wearing one of two outfits. A more work appropriate blouse and skirt combo, or a much more casual tank top and jeans/yoga pants. She also sports large, over the ear headphones to help drown out noise. She is the type to generally be caught looking over her shoulder and has more than a few fidgety mannerisms, for example: drumming her fingers on the nearest hard surface she can find. She has a small tattoo on her ankle that she regrets from her eighteenth birthday.

To start at a skin deep level, Marcella is a boisterous rather amusing person. Never one to shy away from making a joke or putting herself out there. She is constantly attempting to make friends, but is fairly bad at following through with plans or keeping in touch. As this has been a problem present for most of her life she does not have many friends – but primarily it manifested as an issue for Marcella at the brisk age of ten.

Going a little deeper than that however, it becomes apparent Marcella isn’t leading a very healthy life style. What with the constant cup of joe, bags under her eyes, and always having to ask people to repeat themselves. She is in a constant state of overtiredness much due to her ado with her mediumship. She doesn’t like her ability all that much – although she’d have to be remiss to let you know that. Marcella is very much afraid of more than a few things. The primary situations being death, as every dead voice she’s heard so far has been restless and very much in pain, and commitment. She has no idea how to go about a relationship or loving someone, she barely knows who she is after all. As such, she is horrified by the concept of commitment. The commitment to someone, to help them and be helped by them.

At the end of the day Marcella’s biggest detractor will always be herself. Constantly scolding herself and overanalyzing her interactions with people. Even though it may not be immediately evident or clear to someone she is speaking to at all. The most surprising thing about her interactions is the gross dichotomy of the ‘Marcella’ she presents to others and the one she truly is.

Aren’t we all looking for love? Marcella isn’t – at least, not yet. She’s gay, single and looking to strictly mingle. She has a huge problem with commitment after all. If you’re thinking of walking down that avenue you should be warned, she’s a mess.

Marcella, even from a young age was always a kind of weird person. She didn’t really understand how best to interact with people her age and often times found herself missing out on birthday parties as a young child. Early on, Marcella had two passions in her life. While her father tried to push her towards Hockey it started, of course at skating. It was around her fifth or sixth lesson when she realized that she had grown enamored. She began figure skating at the age of eleven and from that point it was a massive part of her life. Her second passion is operatic singing and music. While she doesn't have the voice for it herself she, at a school trip to the opera she became immediately and intensely interested in it.

Her mother was always very supportive of her decision to study figure skating in lessons and opera in an academic setting. She was set on it from such a young age, she may even make friends, her mother would rationalize.

However, when Marcella was in high school she began to be looked at strangely. She was used to having a lot of alone time. But this was different. This was like she was poisonous. She would look at someone else and they would look away. Marcella didn't get it. It took a while to find out that along with the popularization of Facebook, so to came group chats. Some rumours had been spread about her and she became a running joke. It took a year to even find out what the rumours were, mostly nonsensical bullshit. But it affected her confidence deeply.

That's why when Marcella turned Eighteen and moved to Verona, she was as outgoing as possible. Always making jokes attempting to be friends with just about anyone that'll listen. But Marcella has little to no follow through on a strong opening swing. When everyone fell asleep, however, Marcella awoke a different woman. She was no longer alone.

Now Marcella can hear the voices of the dead. But the issue, is that she can't not hear them.

Mediumship.

Mystic.

At this point (the beginning) of the RP, Marcella has very little power or control over it. She can currently hear the voices of the dead, though she has only luck to hope for with communicating back. When she is near a place in which someone who has died has attached their spirit to, that voice is the most commanding. So it can be a different voice every couple minutes on a bus/car ride. Marcella finds it incredibly distracting.

One of the main issues Marcella constantly runs up against is that she does not use her abilities. They are a fact of life as she has not found any way in which to turn them off so to speak. This has caused serious mental stress, and has honestly impaired her judgement to a quite real degree. Marcella has a low amount of willpower and is easily tricked, partially because she is quick to want to leave a situation and partially because of her constant tiredness and her trouble sleeping.

Jacqueline Desmarais.

People call her Jackie for simplicity's sake and she doesn't exactly object. It's catchy.

24.

Female.

College student, physics major. She's due to graduate soon. She also has side hustles in the form of working as a clerk at One Thousand Pages and amateur writing. Aspires to own that damn bookshop someday.

A baby face with a woman's body, Jackie is a lithe and curvaceous young woman, rather tall too, at 5'9". Her soft, sun-kissed skin is a shade of tawny beige and her curly, dark brown hair reaches down to just below her shoulders. Her beady, close-set eyes match her hair in dark brownness and also sport double eyelids, which she knows to be a desirable feature for some reason. When using her powers, however, her eye color changes to marble-like gray from sclera to pupil. People have often pointed out how young Jackie looks as far as her face goes. She has a round-shaped face with chubby cheeks and a subtle buck tooth.

Jackie dresses quite conservatively. Perhaps the only way to describe her style is with the words 'arty' and 'cheap'. Most of what she wears are brand-less or secondhand, with a tendency towards flannel shirts and dark leggings. There's also this one trilby hat that's her favorite; she wears it at any given chance.

Jacqueline comes as she is. She has her heart on her sleeve and is unabashed about it. Overemotional is pushing it, but she certainly doesn't make an effort to suppress her emotions. An honest and transparent woman, she tries her best to not come across a person to avoid. You definitely won't find her intentionally doing anything to anger someone or otherwise cause unpleasant feelings between them. When taking into account how naturally playful and flirty she is, it becomes hard to not notice when she happens to like you. It happens often, so get ready.

A calm and level head becomes both Jackie's strength and weakness. On the one hand, she doesn't panic in the face of adversity, but on the other hand, she doesn't panic in the face of adversity. While keeping composure is certainly useful in all sorts of situations, she also finds it difficult to react to major problems with the sort of urgency that is typically expected, even required. This is probably why she wouldn't fit as a leading type, to be honest.

One thing to note about Jackie is how she values the opinions and words of her peers, family and even strangers. Not to be confused with insecurity; she just has a high sense of self-improvement. She understands that she isn't perfect and is susceptible to faults, like all humans. Thus there is always room for self-improvement. And in her opinion, relying on solely what she says about herself hinders that regard because obviously the mind is hugely biased against itself. Unfortunately, she extends this to other people. Though meaning well, she can inadvertently turn judgmental and criticize others, the latter mostly to her friends since they can tolerate it for sure.

Jacqueline is arguably not the romantic type, but is a shameless flirt nonetheless. She has had numerous lovers spanning both genders in her adult life, but has yet to enter a serious relationship with anyone. The longest she has stayed with one partner is a measly three weeks. For lack of better wording, she has attachment issues; the thought of solely one love seems impossible to apply to her and, honestly, that scares her because there's a good chance she'll end up alone with that kind of life.

Probably unrelated, but Jackie has a preference for young, fresh out of high school girls. There's a reason her father forbids her from getting a job anywhere near Lincoln Memorial High.

The Desmarais name holds weight in Canada as a family of successful businesspersons, but the Desmarais we're going to talk about is not affiliated with those people. We are talking about Emile Desmarais, a fifty year old Verona bachelor that is known as the most trustworthy man in town. Himself an orphan with neither bias nor connections and a man grown in self-reliance combined with faith, he has served many different things, from college groundskeep to mayor's assistant to grave guardian undertaker of Verona's cemetery and is now enjoying early retirement while he still looks young. If anything, he deserved it.

Born Jacqueline Lacroix, her Canadian parents were planning to visit their American relatives in Verona, but died in a tragic car accident on the outskirt just a year after her birth. Normally, she would be placed in an orphanage, but wouldn't you know it, fellow orphan of ambiguous French-Canadian lineage Emile Desmarais came forward to instantly take her under his wing. No one knew why he wanted to adopt her in particular, but the people in charge trusted him enough to allow it. Thus she was now Jacqueline Desmarais.

Old man Emile showed great care in raising young Jacqueline, not wanting to do anything that could potentially harm her. Often times, he'd ask child caring advice from neighboring parents whom he knew for sure to be upstanding parents. Sometimes he overdid it with the carefulness, but it was borne from love. He also made sure 'Jackie' knew that she was adopted as soon as possible. He'd take her to her birth parents' graves every Sunday. Our girl would grow up to be a good, intelligent kid, also just a bit spoiled. Her household was a simple one; there wasn't much luxury to be had apart from television, warm water, a computer and cheap Internet. Simplicity, or rather frugality would then seep into her future life.

Academics were not a problem at all. Jackie was blessed to be smart and was also blessed to continue to be smart as she rolled onto college. Her grades were high and stable and she was sustaining an independent life very well. When the stranger things happened to town, she didn't think much of it, but when everyone fell into sickness and then a deep sleep, Jackie joined them. And awoke with a bizarre power to see into the pasts of objects and people.

Not exactly a glamorous power, but it of course had its uses. Perhaps Jackie could take up detective work and put Sherlock to shame.

Retrocognition.

Mystic.

By putting a great deal of mental focus to a person or object clearly visible to her naked eye, Jacqueline is able to view, in the form of a short vision, said person or object's past position and/or actions. She likes to call this power 'Backtracking'. The range of time in the past that she can view is currently unknown. The first time she's applied such a power was on the family car; she witnessed it being bought twenty seven years ago by her father and then witnessed it getting crashed for the first of many times (Mr. Desmarais has never been a good driver). She assumes from this instance that the visions only highlight significant events that have happened to the object/person, but this isn't concrete.

Just as entering a backtracking vision takes a great deal of effort, so too does exiting it. Until she does exit the vision, Jacqueline is completely unable to see the present. She's harried by the constant, irrational fear of her sight getting literally stuck in the past. Liberal use of backtracking, or use of it without preparation, also causes an insane amount of strain in the brain. On the aforementioned first time using her vision on the family car, she blacked out completely for about half an hour and was actually hospitalized for the trouble. There's also no telling what sort of unspeakable things are left in the past and is quite scared to use her powers on just anything.

Aaliya Patel

Eighteen

Female

Senior High School student, but she can also complete commissioned requests through her Tumblr and DeviantArt pages.

There isn't anything exactly striking about Aaliya, at least if you ask her. She has long, frizzy hair that she usually keeps out of her face in a ponytail, bun or side braid. Her hair is dark brown and reaches past her shoulder when untouched. Her eyes are wide and smile even wider, always curled into a welcoming smile that barely scratches at her optimistic and cheerful nature. Her wardrobe consists of comfortable, but stylish clothing - not to mention, cheap.

What Aaliya lacks for in looks, she makes for in personality. At least, that's what she had heard her brother say. Just like her wide, welcoming smile suggests, she's always open and clearly a cheerful person- almost to an annoying level. It's like nothing can rain on her parade and she's proud. Her happy-go-lucky nature does tend to rub people the wrong way. It may be because its just too annoying, or because sometimes Aaliya doesn't take things seriously. She will always look on the brigher side of things, even going as far as purposely dumbing herself down to make others feel better.

Because of her happy nature, Aaliya feels like she shouldn't ever let herself feel bad. That means any negative emotions she feels, she'll bottle it up. How bad will it look if the happy one isn't happy anymore? That's her logic anyway. Aaliya is thankful that she hasn't had any reason to feel real sorrow or anger, and so this bottling-up-negative-emotions works well enough for now when it comes to dealing with small town stressors.

Aaliya also has a short attention span. She loves to do anything exciting, a true adrenaline junkie (but its not like there's many chances in a small town like Verona). Aaliya is the type to pick up a hobby but drop it two days later all because it bored her. The only hobby she has ever stuck to, other than annoying the hell out of her older brother, is art - and that's only because of the possibilities that art offers, but she rarely finishes most of her sketches before she gets bored. Aaliya's need for excitement also means that she can be overly friendly and chatty. What's more exciting than other humans? While it may take her a while to realise when her presence is not wanted, she's not the type to force her friendship upon anyone. With Aaliya, you know what you're getting.

Aaliya is a true romantic at heart. It doesn't help she grew up adoring Bollywood movies, that have a tendancy to feature over-the-top romance, but despite the cheesiness that her brother scoffs at, Aaliya loves every moment of it. What's wrong with wanting to be seranaded every once in a while? Especially by a cute, and tall hunk - definitely tall. Anything taller than her is good enough. Being smart and funny is quite the bonus too.

Born to second-generation immigrants from India, Aaliya can admit she's had a relatively cushy life when compared to her zillion cousins back in her home village in the rural outskirts of Gujarat. Her parents weren't graced with her wonderful presence first, however, instead it was Aaliya's brother, Ajay they met first. Born two years earlier to two very young adults barely starting their own life, Arjun was almost like the trial child so when Aaliya was born, it was all smooth sailing from there.

Actually, it wasn't. They were just as demanding of Aaliya as they were of Ajay. They'd seen their first-born do so well in school, eventually leading to being the top student amongst his peers in school. While her parents were a little more considerate a second time around, ensuring Aaliya (and Ajay) would grow up being loved and happy, but successful too. That was the keyword after all; Aaliya's mother was a gynecologist in the local hospital, and her father taught Business in the local college.

At the age of seven, Aaliya discovered that her drawings weren't so bad. It wasn't exactly a talent, she couldn't exactly recreate a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa again, but it certainly wasn't terrible. It was a recreational hobby she enjoyed and was rewarded each time her mother stuck a drawing on the refrigerator.

From plain paper and colored crayons, her drawings developed into painting, and by the time she was thirteen, she was gifted her own digital tablet to keep her entertained on the condition that she'd focus on her education and not let art get to her head. It was only a hobby, Aaliya didn't have any plans to make a living out of it.

She had seen enough movies.

Moving onto high school, the pressure to do better than her brother grew harder for her to avoid. Ajay had moved out of the town to study Law in some big city, leaving her to be reminded constantly about his accomplishments. While she never did bad, it wasn't the best. Aaliya would avoid the pressure by staying back late under the pretense that she was studying in the library with friends, but in fact, she was holed up in the art club room, relaxing the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening away, only going home for dinner and bed.

This lasted until her senior year, and surprisingly she's yet to be caught by her parents. The day she discovered her powers was certainly a strange one. After taking the previous day off from being strangely ill (Aaliya never got ill, she was proud of her immune system, thank you very much!), she found herself already in the art room the next day, in her pyjamas and her hands a complete mess with a drawing of shattered glass on a pavement. At first, she brushed it off as sleep-walking-slash-drawing and forgot about her edgy sketch until it happened again. Two hours later, she "woke up" in the middle of Maths to find she had doodled on the back of her textbook without being fully aware of it, this time of a kid being tripped in the hall. Before she could brush this one off, she saw the exact same kid get tripped in the exact same place. Chalking it up to coincidence, she tried explaining away the many instances she'd "wake up" to a sketch only to see it happen later.

There are a few drawings that she's yet to identify or see happen in reality, and there are a few that she doesn't understand at all. Unable to figure out what exactly was going on, Aaliya decided to keep this to herself, after all it's not every day you wake up being a clairvoyant after being sick.

...But at least this makes her unique from her brother, so that counts for something, right?

Precognitive Artistry

Mystic

Aaliya can draw the future. That's the most basic way of putting it. When she's having a 'moment', as she puts it, Aaliya gets the sudden urge to draw, which she can't suppress. Even if it's a scribble in the corner of her notebook in the middle of History, Aaliya's mind will go blank and her hands will move without her consciously thinking about it.

Well, first of Aaliya can barely remember drawing. Sometimes she finds herself awake at four in the morning with her sketchbook out, tools scattered all across her desk and a sketch that she doesn't remember drawing. Because of this, Aaliya also has to figure out what her drawings mean, and depending on what has been drawn on the paper it can easily take a while before she figures out what it means.

The drawings she has may be completely random, and doesn't need to be about her own future (one time she drew her neighboour being locked out of their home after a long day at work) and that makes it infinitely more complicated to find out what the actual hell is going on.

There's also the fact that she can't exactly control when or where she'll get the need to draw, and when it hits, she cannot stop herself from drawing. So far she's been lucky that she's always been carrying a pen and could draw on a spare page in her notebook, but Aaliya doesn't know what will happen if she doesn't have either a tool to draw with or a canvas to draw on.

Nöel Barbara Beauchamp.

22

Female

Tattoo artist.

Noel has a ton of tattoos, which is probably the most notable thing about her. Most of both of her arms are covered. She also has a few outer thigh tattoos along with a large coat of arms on her back. When one looks at Noel, they see someone who is incredibly jubilant. She is always smiling, always laughing. If someone were to catch Noel when she was on her own they might catch her at one of the only times she isn’t smiling. Typically, when she doesn’t have someone else to bounce off of, she internalizes everything and catches herself having full conversations with herself, explaining her course of action and what is going to happen next.

While her wardrobe is too varied to go into great detail about, a few notable elements of it come to mind. She is very rarely found wearing tight clothing, opting more towards baggy large sweaters/coats and loose fitting tank tops. The only real exception to this is shorts and jeans, but she is no stranger to the nice pair of sweatpants either.

She stands around five feet and four inches and is rather small, but she makes up for it in her energy.

Skin deep – Noel seems to be someone who couldn’t be kept down. She was the prom queen of her high school’s senior prom, she was the chairwoman of yearbook, everyone in high school loved her and she got to that point by just being nice, mostly earnest. In high school Noel was just kind of respected. She had most of her tattoos already because she had been dating one of the artists at the parlor for a long time, which in turn gained her a decent amount of respect, especially from her peers. She also knew how to deal with people who would attempt to take her position as queen bee, which is to say she simply accepted them into her friend group. Most of the ended up being so desperate for friends that they’d simply appreciate her kindness.

The main crutch of her position right now is that since high school ended and everyone parted ways… Noel has kind of not done anything. At first, people came and visited the parlor and it was great. It felt like everyone would always keep Noel in mind. But recently, she’s found herself completely alone. This has left Noel somewhat at odds with herself. She feels many things because of it, but primarily she is simply lonely. She is scared that she peaked in high school and from this point forward the only thing she has going for her is an empty life full of skin deep relationships.

Noel has had very little experience in romance in her life, but she is a single bisexual girl who is fairly confident in her own body. She isn’t looking for someone to support her, even though it may be what she needs as her confidence in herself, her spirit as it were, is not the best. Ever since the incident Noel has been feeling fairly lost, she doesn’t know where to go from here at all. Thusly, she would be hesitant to start a relationship due to feeling like she would weight someone else down. It would take someone being a very loving and kind person, along with at least a little quirky/funny to spur Noel’s romantic interest.

Noel, as previously mentioned was a fairly popular high school student and someone that always had felt like she garnered respect from most of the people she interacted with and had grown to know. At a very young age her father who was raising her as a single parent taught her how to play the ukulele. He was Hawaiian himself while her mother was French and had been playing the instrument since he too was just a boy. Even from a young age, Noel was always viewed as ‘such a lucky girl’ by her peers.

She get packed left over pizza in her lunch, or get some McDonalds delivered to her on her birthday and it was always something that other kids looked at her jealously about. But her father had always taught her that making a friend with a simple jesture that would only impact Noel for a day or two was always better than keeping whatever she had to herself. Thusly, every birthday she had during grade school she would always let her friends or someone who forgot their lunch have her McDonalds instead. This was the start of Noel’s increasing popularity.

At fourteen, during her ninth grade year Noel had already built a reputation of being exceptionally kind. She always helped others when she could and really sacrificed a lot of moments she could’ve had to bolster those of others. Even when she had her rebellious phase from fifteen to eighteen, she was hardly rebellious at all. She started dating a girl named Cynthia, who worked at the tattoo parlor and did a lot of Noel’s art. But her father was mostly accepting of everything but the age gap between them. Cynthia was eighteen turning nineteen at the time and Noel was barely fifteen.

But she had always been mature for her age. The first real major issue came up when Cynthia broke up with Noel after two and a half years. Just a little before her grade twelve graduation. Cynthia had cited the main reason was because she couldn’t date someone that did so little for herself that she wasn’t sure who Noel was anymore. Noel had been living for others entirely up until this point and had not really taken any time to discover who she was so much so to an almost laughable point. She couldn’t come up with a favourite colour, movie, song, artist. There was nothing individualistic about her.

This was only further pronounced when she graduated and was left with nothing, really. Her grades were slightly below average and she couldn’t get into her first three choices of colleges and thusly took a job as a tattoo artist, having enough of an artistic style to be able to do that at least. But even as the alternative girl working in the tattoo parlor, she felt as though she was doing that simply as a way of proving she was unique. However, all she did was further prove she had no idea what she wanted from life, herself or others in her life.

After the incident, Verona has been a fairly cloudy and Noel can’t help but feel a link to it. She has no idea where she is going or what to do next, but for some reason, she knows the weather. She knows the weather when she’s underground and she’s right. She knows it when she’s asleep or just waking up.

Weather Manipulation

Ascendant

Currently, there are two specific things that happen because of this ability. The first, is that Noel is always aware of the weather, she has an acute awareness of when it changes and how long it will take to change. This only applies to the area she is in however. The second is that, passively, the weather is currently changing based on how she feels. She is not aware of this yet, however her mood has very direct correlations as to waht the weather is currently.

Currently there are three potential outcomes for this:

If she is happy it will be sunny and somewhat humid.

If she is feeling lost it will be overcast and windy.

If she is sad it will be raining at about 12-15 mm per hour. Which is classifiably a heavier rain but nothing that could flood or damage crops.

She has no inherent benefits from her abilities other than optimal picnic planning, especially when she is not under any amount of control of her abilities. At a later state of more control it will take fine precision to not damage the ecosystem however, the weather is a cycle for a reason and messing with that cycle could be like advancing global warming by decades ore centuries.