[hider=Elena Jäger]

[CENTER][h1][color=gold][b]Elena Charlotte Jäger
[/b][/color][/h1][hr][h3][sup][sup][color=silver]Fungi/Fungus[color=gold]◼[/color]  February 14th ( 16 ) [color=gold]◼[/color] Female [/color][/sup][/sup][/h3]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ubtu9Ue.png[/img]

[sub][color=gold]"Are they-...they're...of course they're [i]racing on school lawnmowers[/i]. And of course one of them used their element to shape the 'racetrack'. It's creative, I'll give them that, but I'm not being goaded into placing bets."[/color][/sub][/CENTER]

[COLOR=gold][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]A P P E A R A N C E:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][indent][indent][i][color=silver]

By most accounts, Elena is a conventionally attractive teenage girl with soft, lighter skin that has been treated rather well in her overall high-class upbringing and life thus far. Her silky, and naturally very rare to possess, platinum blonde hair has likewise recieved the same good and high-class treatment her skin has recieved in her personal cleaning and self-care routine (and use of 'proper product for caring for one's self' as she'd say in her own words). Yet where once was a pair of soft blue eyes has become a pair of golden, stunning eyes since the day of her awakening as a primalist without so much as her parents or relatives having any explanation as to 'why' that happened to her. Or in her own words:[/color]

[color=gold]"Wait, my [b]eyes[/b] changed color?! Why didn't anyone say-"[/color]

[color=silver]Beyond this she stands at the modest enough height of 5'6", though still taller than some other girls in her age group admittedly, without the use of shoes. Meanwhile, in terms of personal 'ornaments' or jewelry she often indulges in simple hair pins, small tie-offs to put in her hair (see her picture for an example), earrings (see picture for an example) of some sorts, and even 'cute' wristwatches as she puts it. Her clothes are sought on her part to be 'fashionable', and yet simpler, comfortable, and practical by design all the same without being 'too loud' as she says it. Indeed, one could say easily on looks alone that she is 'some rich kid born to rich parents' despite her circumstances in having to transfer to Merryweather and live on campus there. 

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[COLOR=gold][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]B I O G R A P H Y:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][indent][indent][i][color=silver]

A wealthy girl born with a silver spoon in her mouth to well-off American parents, ones on both sides steeped in generations of investments and involvement in companies that made them rather upper-class by nature in the long-term. On top of her mother being an American actress of French descent and a family involved in US politics, and her Swiss-descended father’s involvement higher up in one of the largest international pharmaceutical companies in the world, she has two older siblings and one younger sibling to boot. Family dinners, public events, luxurious vacations, fancy parties, servants and maids being dotted about, and the like colored her life from the ground up as well, with any sort of need she might have seemingly at arm’s reach to enough of an extent. On the other hand, her parents are also ardent philanthropists who donated to many charitable organizations and are at least generally moderate pro-primalist in their views despite being regular mundane humans.  

For the most part, Elena wasn’t very focused on the matter of primalists. She went through her history classes like others did, lived life like many other kids around her seemed to, and in her own words: “Can’t think of too much outside of that.” For the most part she seemed just happy to chill out and do what she wanted, though it was when chafing with her parents over her grades at school and just ‘not wanting to put in the effort’ alongside struggles in ‘learning a work ethic’ that they threw her a notable curveball at the ripe age of 9. Elena would have to learn a proper work ethic the ‘hard way’ by learning a practical life skill, and improve her grades in school, or else she was being cut off from quite a bit of the things she had enjoyed thus far in life and forced into catch-up tutoring (which she was already on the path toward really needing at this point in time). To this end, she was given one day to look over potential options from a list her parents gave her, and then to choose one of those things. Then, thinking it would be a simple enough idea she could do minimal work with, she chose ‘cooking’ as a practical skill believing at the time it would be the easiest thing to do….

….And she was soon proven very, VERY, wrong in her youthful and naive initial assumptions.

Her parents went about hiring a strict and disciplined professional chef they knew personally, of all people, to drill her, in their own words to the man: “Like she’s a nobody learning to be a short-order cook at a restaurant for her life.” Withheld from servants, withheld from most luxuries, and withheld from anything but school and other ‘important things’ by her parents, Elena was put into what her younger self would feel was a ‘personal hell on steroids’. At first she tried to refuse to do anything, but found sooner than later that she’d be going hungry more often than not if she couldn’t even so much as prepare something basic to eat for herself. No fancy vacations. No getting what she wanted at arm’s reach anymore. No amount of not accepting ‘no’ would do anything. Her parents, who would self-admittedly confess later on about having ‘coddled her more than her siblings’, would even seek out medical advice for how to handle her in their distress. Elena tried to protest back along the way to be sure, and her teacher and parents gradually pushed back firmly but surprisingly patiently back as they tried to steer her in a better direction. 

Yet it would take one day, in late September, that young Elena would hit her ‘breaking point’ only just over seven months after turning nine and six months after beginning her cooking training and new life regimen. Arguing with her parents after school, things had become heated and her father had eventually erupted in the heat of the moment with something horrible. Something ultimately which was enough to send the young girl running from the room in tears. She would then abruptly deem herself a ‘true failure’ and just outright drop things and run off later that day, all after trying to cook a sauce her cooking teacher was trying to get her to learn that week. It was enough to get her teacher to go talk to her (both still mortified and fearful after earlier) parents about things, concerned about her not very ok and odd behavior, where he learned what had occurred earlier. Then, later, he would approach a stomach-growing, hungry, and red-eyed Elena in her room, walking in with something on a plate and sitting down next to her as she tried to ignore him. 

After gently rubbing her back and humming a soft tune, enough to get her to calm down somewhat more, her teacher would encourage her to take a bite of something to eat at least. Broken and tired enough, young Elena would take the offering silently after sitting back up and would take a few bites. He would ask her how the food tasted, only for her to respond that ‘she liked how it tasted, and that the sauce on it was good’. With a smile, he would reveal it was the same sauce she’d been making earlier during their lesson put on some chicken he’d made. Her sauce. Something she had made, successfully, herself. All that despite running off earlier and deeming her efforts and self a failure without even tasting her own creation. It was, ultimately, a humble spark that emerged within her mind that evening, even that night after she went to bed and tried to get sleep. 

She had made something good. She…..she’d made something to eat that was actually ‘good’ for once. Successfully. Despite everything. With her own two hands. 

The next day, she seemed to listen more to her cooking teacher than she had before. Even if just a little bit. The next day, one of her teachers at school noted that she seemed to listen a bit better than she had before, if nothing else, than she had before. The next week, after some days of practice, her teacher would invite her to her family home’s kitchen to help prepare a practiced dinner for her parents and siblings. It was something she felt unsteady about, even a bit scared of to be sure, and yet in the end she would accept the invitation to assist her cooking teacher. Her teacher would, after hearing how the meal was, bring her out, still in her little chef uniform made for her, after revealing to her family that she’d made their humble dinner herself that evening with him assisting on the side. Her father, for his part, would beckon her closer before pulling her into a hug….before beginning to cry. Then she began to cry too. Through half-sobbed apologies, through a bit more listening, and a warm, hot meal, parent(s) and child began to fix things. It was just one step, not some overnight sudden transformation that came at the drop of a hat, but it was one step of many that began to go in the right direction for once. 

Paying more attention to cooking turned into paying more attention in classes. Listening more to her teachers led to a greater understanding of herself and what she was doing. Gaining more understanding of herself came alongside a greater sense of self-discipline, if nothing else, that seemed to be reflected in her growing and changing mindset about the world to some extent. Day by day. Week by week. Month by month. Year by year. A young, struggling child would turn into a blooming, beautiful flower in the eyes of her parents. An aspiring chef who found a passion in her former punishment. A young woman who began to branch out more than she might have done otherwise in life without some form of intervention. 

The proud girl never truly went away, in the end, but something else began to bubble up near the end of high school. Odd dreams outside of the normal, even by her standards. Mushrooms growing on dead logs, as if footage was being fast-forwarded. Zooming in on the nectar in a flow, down to the microscopic level, and seeing myriad yeast wiggling about and growing on it. Bad food in a garbage can, zoomed in to see black and white fuzz of different sorts growing all over it. The wall of a dilapidated building’s inside, with black mold peeping from around the corner as it grew and spread. The way each dream came and went over those many nights was….surreal, as if she was watching nature documentaries or seeing it all for herself personally with her own two eyes. She began to look up some of these things she was seeing, looking into them with a peculiar and sudden curiosity, which for the most part was put off as just a harmless curiosity or a desire to learn of some sort by those about her at first. 

The dreams became more and more frequent, then, and an odd sensation began to build within her. Like something was ready to….explode! Or…blossom? Bear fruit? It was hard to tell, but phrases such as those felt fitting about it all. Then, one day as she was leaving school, she felt a sudden urge to run to the bathroom as a lurch came up into her stomach. From here she would dip aside in a hurry, worried about if she ate something bad, and would zoom into the nearest bathroom and stall before-

[/color][color=limegreen][center][h3][i]*BWOOMF*[/i][/h3][/center][/color]


[color=silver]....Well, that was one bathroom the school was going to need to clean from head to toe for [u]at least[/u] a few days.

Fortunately she’d been the only one inside of said bathroom at the time, but by the time firefighters and ambulances arrived the bathroom Elena had run into was overrun utterly with myriad forms of fungal growth….and the air was thick with spores to the point of needing gas masks. From here she was ultimately fished out, ironically enough, by a fire primalist firefighter who worked on the local force. She was then scrubbed from head to toe and disinfected at the hospital, as were several others who had been near to the bathroom, and then sent back into the arms of her frankly more than a bit worried parents at the hospital. Safe to say, from here it was apparent where she’d need to be going next. Arrangements were made, talks between her and her parents and teacher were held behind closed doors, money exchanged hands to help her now-former school clean up and such, a primalist relative on her mother’s side of the family came to talk to her, and she was prepared to go to her ‘new school’ in good enough time. 

What would the future bring? Well, Elena had no clue. Sure she had an older first cousin on her father’s side she knew well enough who’d become a fire primalist, one Thomas William Jäger, who was two or three years ahead of her and already there at Merryweather at least. But….but….of all the things she could have had as an ‘element’, why was [b]fungus[/b] hers, hmm?! It was so very inelegant! Really?! Someone of her upbringing, and after everything, getting stuck with [b]that[/b] as her element as a primalist?! Even [i]metall[/i] would have been preferable if nothing else! Wind! Lighting! Water! Fire! [i]Something[/i]! It was [u][i]absurd[/i][/u]!!! She’d still read more about fungi, sure, she did want to try to get more of an idea of what she could maybe do or something….but it didn’t make her any more happy about the results though. 

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[COLOR=gold][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]P E R S O N A L I T Y:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][indent][indent][i][color=silver]

Someone whose sense of the world inclines her to boldly, proudly, and certianly "state what she thinks, without reservation, if she feels like it" without any sort of hesitation or holding back. It isn't that she can't hold her tongue or even hold back, but that she will simply speak her mind as she sees fit in various places and situations. This being said, she is also someone whose at least more self-disciplined than not nature leads to quite a tenacity when dedicating herself to a task or situation or course of action before her. Naturally this at times can lead to a bit of stubbornness though, especially if she's riled up or her hot head peeks out in earnest, and the more she's riled up or worked up over something the harder it becomes to bite her own tongue and stop. Yet, without a doubt, she is one who will without a word seek to earnestly learn from failures, both big and small, and will try more than a little bit to grit her teeth and 'get back up again' with is one getting up as many times as she feels nessecary to 'keep moving forward' or the like. Giving up something half-heartedly is not her peronsal 'mantra' as she'd describe it, though sometimes knowing when to quit can be a struggle. 

Despite these things, in a 'professional' situation or setting she can hold a rather 'profesional' expression and demeanor about her. This even if she was bickering with someone a mere few minutes ago! That 'mode' she can put herself in is something in part related to her ability to focus on things, and even focusing on multi-tasking several things at once for that matter, that she has both had ground into her in life so far and has seemingly sought to foster as a 'skill' both as one who has lived among the upper class and personally for herself as well. Things such as posture, having a 'stuff upper lip', and her shoulders up straight and back properly aligned are other aspects of how she seeks to carry herself on the average at the very least to boot. 

In terms of passion, one might think that clothing and fashion are her 'things' in the sterotypical sense. Yet in truth her passion for cooking and learning have become rather fierce within her, and are matters she takes seriously enough mentally even if outwardly she might be mouthing off with a classmate she's chafing with at the time or isn't in the best of moods. She considers food a 'fine art' as much as 'something practical', and her former cooking teacher's way of teaching and drilling fine cooking and professional methods into her has certeainly come to shape her in the kitchen rather much so. She doesn't look down on 'simpler food' either, however, nor is she someone to call a nessecary meal 'peasant food' simply because it isn't gilded in gold or something absurdly high-class and fancy either. Indeed, she also isn't a stranger to the idea and concepts of 'hard work' and 'proper work ethic', nor in getting her hands dirty to get something done, something that might be found among the most surprising bits of her by those who make assumptions about her personally. 

At the end of the day, however, she is also still a teenager just like the rest of her peers.  

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[COLOR=gold][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3]A B I L I T I E S / S K I L L S:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr][/COLOR][indent][indent][i][color=silver]

[list]

[*]Cooking - Despite her youth, her dedication to cooking as a pasttime and personal hobby is something she has put more than a small amount of work into in the last seven years and some odd months before coming to Merryweather. She was drilled by a professional high-class chef of some renown and good repute, though usually refrains of using his name as a 'means to brag or anything' in her own words. However, from making the 'four mother sauces' to improvising recipies on the fly, she has a surprisingly high level of skill in this area for a mere teenager of all things. You ask her to replicate a general recipe by taste, she can generally do it right back. You ask her to cook a steak to a specific level of 'done-ness', and she can do it. You ask her to roll up her sleeves to go pick ingredients from a field to find good ones to use for a meal, and then to prep and cook them? She can frankly do just that. 

It is also her main hobby for stress-relief when getting notably stressed, so if one sees her in the kitchen after a bad day....yeah. It can certianly be a sign of things. (([b]Note[/b]: She isn't sudenly the 'best chef on the planet' or something, though she can produce some form of five-star-quality food, but is just really good at this hobby and passion of hers.))

[*]Exersize/Fitness - From swimming to running, she has learned a 'healthy regimen' that takes up the early mornings for her or alternatively takes up the evenings after classes and such are done. A generally healthy regimen of fitness is something she believes in, and is something that has given her some solid stamina and a general advantage over othher potentially unathletic peers at the very least. Naturally in practice this isn't allowing her to sucdenly do parkour or such athletic feats she hasn't trained in, though, which is also something to take note of. 

[*]Learning - Taking notes. Listening to instructions. Asking questions when they pop up into her mind. Etc. And given her acquisition of 'straight A's' in her prior schooling that started since around the ages of 10-11 years old, she's become tgenerally quite the dedicated student as well. 

[*]Learner's Permit - Requires and adult in the car for her to do anything legally, sure, but she can at least do some basic driving correctly 'enough' to function in a basic manner. Just don't ever think to make her a getaway driver for...well, anyone. Ever. Please. The car's durability will not hold up to her lack of overall driving skills. Just see what happened before in her Driver's Ed class prior to coming to Merryweather.  

[*]

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[COLOR=gold][INDENT][B][SUP][SUB][H3] C H A R A C T E R  N O T E S:[/H3][/SUB][/SUP][/B][/INDENT][hr]

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[list]

[*]Her mother’s maiden name is Merryweather, and her mother’s family is known to have been involved in US politics on and off for some time. (([b]Note[/b]: Will remove if the GM wishes, thought it’d be some fun flavor to toss into the mix if nothing else.))

[*]Her now-former cooking teacher is a father to three, and is better with handling kids than some might think despite his strictness and disciplined approach to cooking and such. He also told Elena that whenever she graduates from Merryweather, eventually, he promised to continue teaching her cooking if she so desired. His kids even wrote Elena a letter to read before heading off to her new school…..she now refuses to comment on what she did after she read it (aka: she cried, and will get angry if you ever try to prod her about it for sure). 

[*]Starting partway into middle school and going into high school, at least as far as she got into middle school before all of 'this' happend, her cooking teacher took her a fair few times to work hands-on at a soup kitchen of all places. It was something he and her parents thought 'would help ground her in reality' a bit more,and something he'd done when he was younger and training to become a chef many years ago as well. Since then, Elena has donated part of her allotted 'personal allowance' money to those one or two local soup kitchens she was taken to help keep them running. 

[*]A Secret Hobby Of Hers: Enjoys gaming with a headset on occasion on console, even using a voice changer to avoid being outed online. [s]Would be the one to have a nickname like "HereticPurger69" in a WH40k type game and talking smack over the headset at times in general, though, which is a side she doesn't like to show to other real people. Also got into some games due to her older brother, Mark, and highly competitive in them due to him nor her other siblings just letting her win a game.[/s]

[*]Enjoys long, soaking, hot baths. She finds them relaxing at the end of the day/night.

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