It’s expensive to fly. You burn out. You fry the machine. You melt the engine. Every creature on earth has approximately two billion heartbeats to spend in a lifetime. You can spend them slowly, like a tortoise and live to be two hundred years old, or you can spend them fast, like a hummingbird, and live to be two years old.--Brian Doyle
FULL NAME
Penelope (Poppy) Annemarie LaRue
SUPER NAME
Hummingbird ((I can change this if needed, due to a comic hero already being named that))
REVENGE OR JUSTICE
Revenge.
AGE
24
GENDER
Female
REPUTATION
Poppy hasn't accomplished a whole lot in her life, and boy won't her parents let her forget it! She was a poor student, dropping out of college. Works an average jane job at a gas station and barely makes enough to survive. So if you are anyone the chances of you knowing of Poppy is slim and if you are in that small percentage then you more than likely know her as verbally aggressive and genuinely unpleasant to be around. Who you would of heard of? Her parents; her mother Naomi is a chemist who has won several awards for her work, and her father, Bastion, is a highly sought after neurologist. You wouldn't ever hear them speak about their only child, but those in the field that knew about her knew that she was considered an embarrassment to her parents. As you can imagine Poppy resented that to no end. Until one evening she discovered that there was a way for her to become her own kind of scientific breakthrough. The Human-Hybrid experiment was going to be her time to shine!
HEIGHT
post-alterations she stands at 4'11
WEIGHT
68lbs
APPEARANCE
she looks different now than she did before. Most of the subjects did, though considering some of the others she was lucky she hadn't grown a beak. She used to have long light blond hair but something in the injections turned it green, she kinda liked it. Her eyes were the same ice blue as her father's. She had always been short, she suspected it was due to the Asian on her mother's side, she had lost several of those precious inches during the alterations. What she had gained ment so much more to her, her wings. She had a set of four, she was told the extra pair was was due to her size and lack of tail feathers, you better believe it was the first and probably only time special accommodations had to be made for her because she was too tall! They were a beautiful emerald with shades of jewels streaked throughout them, much like her namesake. The top pair spread high above her shoulders while the bottom set were angled lower to help her pilot as well as bear some of her weight. Her wingspan was only about five and a half feet from tip to tip, they both tucked beautifully onto her back.
Clothing wise Poppy was kind of basic. She wore shorts if it was hot, jeans if it wasn't. Usually the jeans had tears in them just because it drove her mother nuts. She had to alter all her shirts to backless. She usually wore arm warmers that stopped just below her shoulders because she hated being cold. She avoids covering her wings but when she has to she wears a loose fitting jacket.
POSITIVE TRAITS
- Ride or Die- Once you earn her loyalty and friendship Poppy is ride or die. She will defend you, she will align herself to you every time, she will stick with you too the end, unless (of course) you betray her trust in some extreme way. Then you have yourself a lifelong enemy.
- Double Dog Dare You- Poppy is very daring and brave, no feat is too big for her. Especially since she's been part of Maximation she has felt the need to prove herself. Just because she was one of the smaller non- predatory hybrids doesn't mean that she couldn't cause some heavy damage.
- I feel for you, Bro- This is a trait she has always tried to hide but Poppy is very empathetic. Especially if you willingly open your emotions to her, she will feel all of them with you. She often tries to change the subject from emotional things by distracting with her crude or dry humor.
- This girl can hold a grudge. - she has a hard time letting go when she feels like she has been wronged. Where her biggest case of resentment was directed at her parents before the Human-Hybrid experiments now for obvious reasons she had a fiery grudge against Maximation.
- Wait, what was I doing?- This trait is suspected to be due to her brain always being in 'hummingbird mode' even if she wasn't. When she is just going about her day to day business her mind seems to almost always be two steps ahead of her. She is easily distracted and usually has to take a few seconds to set herself back on track.
- Since when is being funny a bad thing?- she is constantly sarcastic and loves to crack jokes, often at somebody else's expense or at extremely inappropriate times. She doesn't care in the least if anyone else finds her comments funny, she's content to laugh at her own jokes.
- Scared of the Dark- Poppy has been scared of the dark since she was a child. She just feels so alone in the dark. To help her deal with this she sleeps with a night light and teddy or she will randomly be found in a comrades bed in the morning. Her only response being a sleepy "Quit yer bitchin' ".
- FEED ME- Due to her parent animals metabolic rate she has to eat pretty often. To help with this special juice boxes were made for her that contain a ridiculous amount of calories and she is very seldom seen without one. She also keeps food pills on her for emergencies.
- It's not a Fetish!!!!- She has a thing with hair, she just likes to touch it. Sometimes she will do it without even realizing it. Most importantly if anyone ever even thinks "hair fetish" in her direction she will rip them a new ass.
Hummingbird
POWERS
- I believe I can fly~ Poppy has four wings and with then she can fly incredibly fast. Her top pair are for speed, though all of her wings beat quickly these support the majority of her weight. the bottom two wings are mostly for helping her change direction quickly, keeping her incredibly agile in the air.
- Can't touch this~Due to her quick pace she has extremely heightened senses and can often times sense movement in the air around her, meaning she is very hard to sneak up on.
- And going, and going, and going Poppy has crazy stamina, just as long as she can keep up with the calorie burning !
- Bada Bing Bada Boom! Hummingbirds are incredibly fragile, to counter this when the scientist sent in microbytes to hollow out her bones for flight they then followed it with injections to coat her bones in magnesium alloy. They explained that it's the strength of titanium with the weight of aluminum. Honestly it's where most of her weight comes from. This doesn't protect her from bullets or blades but it does make her able to endure more blunt damage with only bruises instead of broken bones. Not to mention it makes it especially enjoyable to ram into people and things.
- Baby, it's cold outside-Bluntly, if Poppy gets too cold she will die. She enters a state called torpor, which is kind of like hibernation. Her metabolic rate slows to a fifteenth of her normal sleep rate, her heart sludges nearly to a halt, barely beating, and if she is not soon warmed she'll never wake up
- FEED ME MOAR- Previously mentioned is her need to consume large amounts of calories, a darker side of this is that if she doesn't eat in a solid 36 hours she will starve to death.
- Still afraid of the Dark- For all her flying capabilities she is useless if she loses visibility. She does not have night vision and if she flies in the dark she cannot go even half her normal speed, even then will still more than likely be running into everything; on the bright side, she can't break her own neck. Not to mention her psychological fear of the dark, which makes her more paranoid and less able to focus.
- Shot through the heart! - Poppy will be randomly stricken with chest pains. It could be when she's exerting herself or when she's taking it easy, and it can range anywhere from uncomfortable to debilitating.
- Stiffy- Since her bones have been both hollowed out and reinforced on cold days it's hard for her to loosened up, and it can be quite painful.
- Move Yo Body- Since she has entirely new appendages, every once in a while she will lose control of her wings. They can stop moving all together or have nerve spasms where they flop around without her consent. Again the severity can range from a twitch to the YMCA.
Poppy has 2-4 years to live based on how hard she works her heart.
Poppy hasn't developed any sort of cancerous mass, like some of the others (at least not yet). She's suffering the same life risks of the animal her DNA got spliced with. All the fail safes that got put in place for her heart to be stronger than her predecessor failed her miserably. Now they are giving her just a few years before her heart gives out on her completely. After all hummingbirds suffer more heart attacks and aneurysms and ruptures than any other living creature.
FEARS
- Have I mentioned the Dark? Poppy has been left scared in the dark too many times in her life to ever get over it. Being in the black loneliness has always seized at her heart and now with her death looming the fear of being alone in the darkness for good terrifies her.
- Fear of the Failure She fears finally finding a place she belongs, people who believe in her and then letting them down. She's been a disappointment for so long that she doesn't think she could take it if that happened which is why she pushes people away even if she desperately wants a friend.
- heavy Since she was graced with the ability of flight she has been terrified that she is going to lose it. That her wings will be broken or her body will be too heavy for her wings to lift. She has nightmares about it all the time.
Though Poppy has always dreamed of having a real friend she would never in a million years admit to it. When asked she simply states that she has always wanted to learn how to cook.She lived off of ramen and tv dinners for years. She wants to known how to really cook.
HISTORY
Penelope's birth was planned out just as much as her life had been. It was a rude awakening to her parents when they realized that all of their text book methods and methodically thought out plans ment nothing to a two-year old. Poppy had never been a well behaved child though Mr and Mrs LaRue would never account it to their absence in their daughters life. Even when she was a baby they hired a wet nurse because Naomi could not be taken away from her research long enough to feed her infant herself. Poppy never had the luxury of becoming close to her nanny because when the LaRue's would finally come home and their child did not meet their expectations it was the nanny that had to accept the consequences.
Later on in life she made it a game to see how quickly she could get her nannies fired, her record was the same day the poor woman was hired. She told herself not to feel guilty about it, these women would of gotten fired anyway. There was no way that she would magically wake up one morning and stop being a disappointment to her parents. She'd never be a doctor,she'd never be a scientist. So that made her insignificant to them. She learned this at a young age and it shaped her into the person she is.
They would occasionally attempt to be the parents they were supposed to be, making promises they never bothered to keep. As you can imagine the teenage angst was strong with this one, making her push away anyone who she may of been able to make friends with. When Poppy turned 18 she got the helll out of there and never turned back. Life wasn't easy and she struggled,being homeless more than once. With her parents helping hand no where in sight she dragged herself out of the situations she got herself into. She learned that she had a lot more determination than she had giver herself credit for. She slowly tried to repiece herself together as a person and sure she wasn't sweet, she wasn't the girl everyone would love but she had finally come to terms with herself. Years had went by without Poppy thinking more than a few seconds about her parents. But then,like they did , they reached out to her, calling her home for Christmas. She should of declined but the idea of spending another holiday alone hurt somewhere deep. So, she went home. It was a nightmare it took no time at all for them to start berating her for her faults, asking her if she was done being a 'spoiled child' and if she was ready to 'come back home and take responsibility' that 'the least she could do was marry someone respectable so her children could continue the family legacy' she was flabbergasted, it had been years since they had last spoke. She shouldn't of been surprised. In the calmest act she stood up and left, oh but did the fire hit her later. She tore apart her apartment, screaming and crying. It wasn't until she was cleaning up the mess that she found the newspaper, partially torn, requesting civilians volunteers for an experiment and at that second she knew. She was going to make a legacy that even her parents couldn't outshine.
