Real Name: Sumire Tsubomi
Aliases: The Gaia Nymph, Alraune
Good or Evil: Heroically Good
Age: 24
Gender: Feminine, Asexual
Race: Parasitic plant
Appearance Normal:
Sumire Tsubomi, while not being Alraune, is a fit woman of 5’7” stature. She has long, straight black hair, buzz-cut on the right side of her head (with a single braid before her ear) with the rest held up in a updo. She has a strong jawline, sharp eyebrows, and brown eyes.
Appearance Superhero/villain:
Alraune is a hulking figure of 8’6”. Her creator got a little lazy at this part and decided against writing out what you already see above.
Rivals or Friends:
Powers:
Momotarō, the Peach Boy –
[indent]Alraune has an extremely large reservoir of energy and nutrients, and the more resources she holds the more vibrant her colors. She can obtain nutrients from eating just about anything, and energy is naturally acquired simply by being in direct sunlight. With this energy and nutrient, she can regrow lost limbs and use her other abilities. As she uses her resources, though, she slowly starts to look more wilted, obtaining a dry and brown appearance. She cannot replace limbs lost to fires, and she can only replace up to six limbs before running out of energy/nutrients.
Not that she loses limbs easily, mind you: She is incredibly tough, almost akin to tough trees, despite actually being a featherweight fighter with a lithe and slender body.
Fun fact: Alraune has a very thick and bitter-tasting gold/orange sap in place of blood. This includes when she is in her human-like “civilian” form. It’ll cause a stomach cramp for a few hours if you ingest it.
Note: Unlike most abilities of similar regenerative capabilities, Momotarō is centered around her heart instead of her head. Unless her “heart” is damaged (or she is lit on fire), she probably won’t die for a long time. In addition, damage for her is based on its surface, not its penetration: a sword that can lop off an arm is much more dangerous than a bullet that is lodged in her head, as she is not a human with fragile organs and bones.
Hanakotoba, The Language of Flowers –
This is the “meat” of Alraune:
Alraune can shape, transform, and manipulate her body into a myriad of supernatural plantlife, effectively making every single part of her body capable as being used for her hero antics. If there is a plant somewhere in the world that can do some particular thing, Alraune can probably morph and use it, and more. Her more common creations are fruit with a variety of effects ranging from medicinal syrups to catastrophic explosive dehiscence, transformation of limbs into quick and long-reaching vines with various debilitating effects, or transforming a grasping arm into a large and tough tree-like structure to pin down enemies. With the mixture of plant forms, structures, and effects on the body Alraune is an extremely versatile hero.
Sumire used to be able to also morph the plants outside her own body, but that extension of this ability is believed to have been lost when she became infected.
[/indent]
Weapons/equipment/items:
Nettle Whip –
Alraune’s favorite weapon is to transform her arm into a very durable and long vine similar to a nettle. It has a myriad of stinging hairs all along its length that, despite not being very lethal, have quite a painful and long-lasting sting.
Blast Fruit –
Another of Alraune’s commonly created items, the Blast Fruit’s properties are quite obvious by its name. What makes it so useful is its ability to contain and expel most chemicals, spores, flesh, pollen, or other features of plants. A Blast Fruit that expels a gaseous version of the usually fatal abrin poison of rosary peas? Perhaps instead a Blast Fruit that erupts and sends a myriad of nonlethal seeds to pepper and stun the enemy. It could also be used supportively, creating a cloud of pollen for cover or to coat an ally in inflammable wax when they are fighting fires. Like her body, the abilities of the Blast Fruit are endless.
Syrup, Wax, Honey, Sap, and other fluids/chemicals[/i] –
All fluids and chemicals that come from Alraune follow the pattern you’ve probably noticed. Extremely variable affects for her many different chemicals, ranging between debilitating poisons to healthful elixirs to potent steroids and everything inbetween.
Strength:
Inhuman –
Alraune is not a human and she does not turn into a human. As such, she has to worry about different things than a human. She does not have organs like humans, and as such does not have to worry at all about wound penetration, internal bleeding, the breaking of bones, or other such damaging wounds. She can still bleed out, though, and she isn’t immune to poisons (though she can usually create a fruit that cures, or at least hinders the poison). In addition, she also has to worry about wounds in a different way than humans, though explaining further would be spilling too many secrets~
Versatile –
Alraune’s strongest physical trait is how simply versatile she is. With a myriad of combinations between her abilities, Alraune seems to have a solution to every situation.
Low Maintenance –
Alraune’s only need for Coin is purchasing food and water. Thanks to that, she’s made a name for being one of the cheapest, if not free, heroes available. Physically, Alraune gains energy while in direct sunlight, and can fight at full throttle outside at daytime almost indefinitely. At night, she still has a large reservoir of energy but would tire after an hour or two of nonstop rapid movement. In artificial light, she’d have about 10 minutes of nonstop running. In darkness (no moonlight), she’d wear herself out in about five minutes.
Weaknesses:
Fire –
Fire is almost an insta-kill. If any part of her catches on fire, it’ll spread to the rest of her body faster than she can say “not good,” and it would turn her to ashes faster than you could say “definitely not good.” If you want time, if her fingertip caught aflame it would spread to the rest of her body within 5-10 seconds, and then she would be dead in less than 30 seconds. Add in the fact that she has to cut off the burnt flesh before being able to heal it:
fire is not good.Pesticides / Planticides –
Obviously, if you can spray something on a plant and kill it, you can probably do the same to Alraune.
Technophobe –
Besides not knowing how to use a complex phone and avoiding computers, fluorescent lamps are brighter than the sun and a dim garage is a nearly pitch-black abyss. Though bullets are pretty much useless against her, tasers could potentially light her afire. Natural poisons are ineffective against her, but man-made chemicals are more dangerous than any poison. Essentially, nature will cradle and love her, while man-made artifacts are surprisingly effective at maiming her.
Darkness –
Natural light feeds and improves Alraune. Artificial light holds no benefits other than keeping her alive. Total darkness, though, is a slow and agonizing death for Alraune who would die after 4 days of no light, as indicated when she gets progressively sicker and weaker as the days go on.
Weight –
Alraune is a featherweight. I don’t mean she’s light when compared to humans, I mean she isn’t even comparable to humans in terms of weight. Bringing down the floral thunder at less than 60 pounds, she dwarves humans with her size despite being about as heavy as an adult bulldog. Needless to say, when someone can be lifted up by a normal adult human with relative ease, that someone needs to be very careful to avoid getting grabbed by something much stronger. Not to mention that her physical strength is no better than any other normal human’s.
Impaired Hearing – Alraune is completely deaf normally. She has created small buds sensitive to vibrations to act as ears, but they inferior in many ways: Distant sounds and whispers are unheard, and sometimes she has trouble hearing a person speak normally from across a room. Not to mention that she has a difficult time separating sounds, so the voices of many people speaking at once all blur together for her. Not to mention the intense pain and loss of balance she experiences when these super sensitive buds are struck.
Backstory/Personality:
Despite being born deaf, this genius girl managed to crawl within two months after she was born. Two more months after that miracle, and the plants were crawling with her. Her parents were so overjoyed with her intelligence and powers that they did not predict that their smart little girl would meet such a quick end. The small genius Sumire liked playing with the plants far too much, and a rather parasitic one managed to get in her body. Eating her from the inside out, Sumire became gravely ill at the age of 5 and died just a few days after the first symptoms. The day after her death, a large flower bud burst from her small body in the hospital and grew until it was nearly the size of an adult, before blossoming and revealing a sleeping Sumire nestled in its center.
It was like a dream for her parents, but the small girl was quickly found to be a plant in the form of Sumire. However, when she awoke it was discovered that the plant child thought itself as Sumire, perfectly imitating her personality and character. The doctors debated on whether it was a monster imitating the girl and must be euthanized or the small girl reborn with the body of her killer. The father believed furiously that the child was in fact Sumire with a different body, but the mother only saw the child to be a mimicry of her daughter, a cruel joke from the plants that took Sumire from her.
This new Sumire was the same as she always was, save for a suddenly ravenous appetite and craving to be outside in the sun constantly. As she aged, the father supported and loved her as much as he did before that event, but the mother grew distant and cold. Eventually, when Sumire reached the age of eight, the mother—unable to accept this new Sumire—left the father and his plant daughter.
The father raised Sumire alone as best he could, showering her with adoration and affection and constantly reminding her that she is a “good girl.” It was that constant reminder that burned itself deeply into Sumire’s mind, and she strived to be a “good girl.” Though, that goal eventually turned into obsession as Sumire worked extensively to keep that title. Sumire was a good girl. She had to be.
Eventually, she obtained the responsibilities that come with being an adult and left the protection of her doting father. Donning her human disguise that consisted of folding herself to almost half of her size and filling out a humanoid skinsuit composed of wax and flexible, smooth rhytidome. Simply adorning clothes upon her human disguise and spreading a bit of hallucinogenic pollin that makes people a tad bit more agreeable, and Alraune was ready for the outside world. Though, as always, her father’s voice rang in her mind. What would a “good girl” do?
Though she originally wanted to obtain a career as an actor (pfft), she quickly gave it up when she discovered a knack for being a hero. Always wanting to help and please people, the first tasks she helped with was a few simple things. Helping an old lady across the street, saving cats from the tops of trees, walking a few dogs. Not much hero work, but helpful neighborly work. She accepted Coin when it was offered, but never asked for it. Eventually, she was promoted to stopping purse snatchers, convincing people threatening suicide out of it or stopping them with force when they ignored her, preventing looters and robbers from breaking into houses, and so on. Of course, like before, her work escalated to subduing armed robberies, capturing escaped convicts, combating villains, and other high risk assignments.
Alraune’s name as a hero, though not yet too common, is not unheard of. Her name is more well-known throughout organizations that deal with children, though, due to her love of them and volunteer work (what else is better to educate children about nature and natural things than a hero that looks like a plant?).
