V I N E G A R ' V I N A ' L I L I A N N E
H E A T ◼ A U G U S T 2 2 N D (1 7) ◼ F E M A L E
"I'm really trying to control my temper these days. So don't push me, got it?"
Vinegar cuts a distinctive figure as she walks through the halls armed with a smirk, straight pale blonde hair usually pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, just far enough to frame her watery gray-green eyes. She's built like a whip, just a few inches short of six feet and skinny as a rail. Everything about her is kind of long, really. Long body, long hair, long legs, arms that end in long, dexterous fingers that constantly rap-tap-tap at any surface in front of her. When they can't, her leg bounces instead. If that can't happen either, she clenches and unclenches her toes within her shoes. She just...always needs an outlet for that nervous energy.
When she has the chance to wear things that aren't a stodgy uniform, she prefers athletic clothes. She doesn't really work out, per se, but she finds that running helps to clear her head, so mornings usually find her on a track or treadmill, and she's just kind of gotten used to the style by now. Tanktop, sweats, running shorts, running shoes, and so on and so forth, and during the winter, long sleeved shirts and more sweats. Utilitarian. That's a good word for her fashion sense. She carries herself with a carefully projected self-confidence, but if you're able to peer behind it, there's a little bit of apprehension with her at all times.
The Lilianne family has always been an object of intense curiosity for Vinegar. Honestly. What kind of family named their kid that?
Well, she never did know, after all. Soon after she was born, they both died in a terrible car accident. She doesn't really even remember a single thing about them. No, she never really had a single set of 'parents,' not really. With no grandparents, no aunts, no uncles, no relatives at all by sheer bad luck, she grew up in the foster system, and was always a bit of a...problem child. From the moment she realized as a six year old that she wasn't actually the Donaldson's daughter, behavioral issues started popping up, one after another. Provoking classmates. Indifference, then defiance, then outright aggression towards her foster parents. They did their best, they really did. But no matter what they did, Vinegar just came out worse and worse.
Finally, she broke a window in their house one day in a fit of misplaced anger when she was only eight years old, and the Donaldsons simply couldn't deal with it any longer. There would be someone else, they reasoned, who would be more capable of giving Vinegar the care that she needed. And so to the foster system she returned.
The problem was, there's not a lot of space in the foster system. Not enough foster parents. Few enough that children get tossed into places that don't suit them, and they bounce back and forth quite a bit. And so it was for Vinegar. As she grew from a child into a teen, the surge of hormones made it way worse. She was hair-trigger angry, all the time; she didn't walk so much as stalk. She was consistently avoided at school, and there were pretty fair odds she wouldn't go at all. She was a fight starter, and always in a bad mood regardless, it seemed like. Nobody really wanted to deal with Miss Vinegar. Nobody wanted to interact with her, and risk getting involved in whatever was going to land her in the principal's office or possibly suspended this time. Hell, who know, she might even get the police called on her. Best to stay the hell away.
Well, until that one time in her freshman year of high school that she saw a bully beating up on a younger girl, and she chased him off. Got a few bruises for her trouble, but she always had a bruise or two, it was nothing special.
But then the girl kinda...started idolizing her? It was weird. Really weird. Her name was Charlotte, she stuttered out. She was in her last year of middle school, and that bully had picked on her for a while because of her stammer.
"So what, you just take it? Punch him in the dick or something!"
Charlotte was aghast. The thought of properly fighting back, punching him, kicking him, biting him...it had never even really occurred to her. Or, it had occurred to her, obviously, but she'd never entertained it. He was so much bigger and stronger than she was. What purpose would it serve? The grown-ups would step in soon, she was sure.
Fuck.
Vinegar stepped back, shook her head. She wanted to say something, but she wasn't quite sure what it was. She knew Charlotte was going to keep getting bullied. Fucking moron teachers never did anything. And for some reason it was REALLY bugging her. A few more months went by. Every time she wanted to start a fight, the image of the bully harassing Charlotte played in her head, and it felt a little less tempting. The seasons went round, and school started up again. This time with Charlotte in the grade beneath her.
Fuck.
The two of them spent some time together; she went over to Charlotte's house now and then, though the inverse was never true. Her family life was, as ever, rocky. Not to say this round of foster parents were horrible people or anything, but they were strict, and that was the worst possible thing for Vinegar right now. She helped Charlotte study, and started caring more about her own grades too. This was when she started going by Vina. It felt...nicer. And she wanted to be nice around Charlotte. A few of her hard edges started to melt away. She even started getting along with her foster folks a little bit better, defusing some of the electric tension between them. She wasn't used to really having proper friends, but it was pretty nice.
And then one day, Vina noticed that Charlotte wasn't where they usually ate together in the cafeteria. Curiosity piqued and a bad feeling in her gut, she slipped out from the watchful gazes of the lunch ladies, pacing back towards Charlotte's last class.
And oh look, there he was. The bully. And Charlotte did not look happy.
FUCK.
The sound he made when she yanked him off her and threw him to the ground was like music. She was about to beat the tar out of him when she remembered the image again: him, beating up on Charlotte. So her fist, so close to him, pulled back, and she simply stood in front of Charlotte, arms crossed, as he rose.
"If you touch her again," she spat, "I'll put you in the hospital." He weighed his odds, and he stopped bothering her. And the round edges that had replaced those jagged ones were finally there for the world to see. And, most importantly, for Vina herself to see.
She'd actually made a few friends at her school. The legacy of the problem child still surrounded her, but she actually had a small group of people to call her own.
And then the dreams started. Dreams of staring at the sun, and of the sun staring at her. Of her hands shaking as the world around her blazes like a sauna, of extreme heat pumping through her veins until she glowed like embers. She didn't understand what it meant, not really. She'd only just started paying attention in classes, after all. But then she hear someone talking in the hallway. Quietly, quietly, almost out of earshot. Retracing her steps, she paused to listen. Just some guys talking about girls in a...teenage fashion. Alright, yeah, fine, no big deal. She made to walk away.
And then she heard Charlotte's name. And hearing what the person wanted to do to her...even if it wasn't real...even if she KNEW it wasn't real...there was this PRESSURE that was building, sunspots dancing in front of her eyes as she rounded the corner on them, the look of annoyance and then fear that suddenly took them, it was all too much, too much, TOO MUCH TOO MUCH-----
She doesn't know how nobody was hurt. Luck, she supposed. And a bone-deep instinct that if she hurt anybody, Charlotte would be furious with her. So it was just pieces of metal lockers that clattered to the ground as a searing blast of heat screamed out from her, and not pieces of people.
At that point, the meaning of the dreams became...ABUNDANTLY clear. The instant this round of foster parents heard about the incident, they ceded her straight to the Merryweather Institute. She was really upset about getting shuffled around this time; she actually had friends now, and saying goodbye to Charlotte was quite upsetting. But, she supposed, she needed to learn to control this. Or else someone really could get hurt next time.
The whole 'problem child' thing doesn't have her starting fights anymore. Not much, at least. Though there is that core of anger balled deep down there, the time spent with Charlotte has built an edifice of protectiveness around it. It's a bit less open aggression now and more just...general grouchiness.
To put it succintly, Vinegar is a real grump.
But she's a nice grump, sort of. If you come to her with a problem, for instance, she is GOING to scoff at you. Probably ask you how the hell you got into that mess. She'll maybe (probably) make fun of you for it. But all the same, if you come to her with a problem she WILL help you with it. She has a similar energy to an long-suffering elder sister, with the infuriating smirks and occasional caustic barb. But she still remembers what it was like to be so horribly full of anger, the sheer violent rage of it all, and doesn't really want to deal with it anymore. Still, that core of anger is still there. And though it's a lot harder than it used to be to get her really pissed at you, it's a lot easier than she wishes it were.
And NO she doesn't have crippling abandonment issues after being passed around between foster families like unwanted garbage that's RIDICULOUS what are you talking about?
A B I L I T I E S / S K I L L S:
Vina can channel flameless heat, turning a space into a furnace or concentrating and focusing it into searing blasts of energy that can melt through steel, as seen during her awakening. She can generally serve as a radiator, heating a room up a bit (always useful during the winter!), but it's not something that she does often as it can be a liiiittle bit dangerous.
In addition, as a byproduct of her running, she's rather fit and has a high degree of endurance. Finally, she still knows how to fight. It's been a while since she's been in a real fistfight, but it's like bicycling; some things you never really forget. Nothing like fancy martial arts, just pure dirty street fighting.
C H A R A C T E R N O T E S:
Here's that whole 'it can be dangerous for her to heat up a room a little' bit: Vina has a massive amount of trouble with moderation. She can use her powers at 120% and she can use them at 0%. Those are pretty sure bets. But whether she can wrangle them enough to keep them subdued and controlled is more up in the air.
