~ 23 Years Old | 5 ft. 0 in. | 120 lbs ~
Name: Katherine (Kay) Clarke
Age: 23, born June 21
stAppearance: Kay is a shortie at five-foot nothing, a full head shorter than 90% of people going into rifts these days- but she makes herself stand out with bright smiles and even brighter colors. She is almost always wearing something eye-catching to keep herself from getting lost in the crowd. And, if all else fails, just tie a balloon to her wrist.
Personality: Kay is a hyper little ball of excitement and energy and joy, 24/7. She seems to run more on coffee and solar power than sleep, but that never seems to affect her mood. She's pleasant to be around, and always treats others with respect and compassion, even when they haven't shown her the same respect in return. She tends to tackle problems before they're really even problems, and when something does go wrong, she throws herself at it twice as hard. She's always there to lend an ear if you need someone to vent to, or to offer you a hug when you feel down. Yes, she is a hugger.
She loves to be around people and thrives in a team environment. In the rare moment when she does show her own sadness though, she tries to be alone. She believes very strongly that what you put into the world perpetuates itself, so she only tries to show the world the best parts of herself, saving all the bad for the paperwork that needs filling out and file folders at her desk at home. Professionally she composes herself just a little bit more than usual, but tries to make sure there is always still a smile on her face. In private, she is much more relaxed, as she realizes the happy-go-lucky attitude can be overbearing when it's only herself and one or two other people.
If you said you'd never heard of Biotech, Kay would have an hour long conversation with you just pointing out all of the things you do in your daily life that wouldn't be possible without biotech. She's extremely hyper-focused on how she can use her skills and knowledge to better the world, and sees Biotech as the best way to get that change out, into the world as quickly as possible. She wants to help people, even if they don't feel like they want or need her help.
Attribute: Consciousness - ConceptKay has no idea if her attribute is tied to an Item, if it's something like "the element of Mind", or if it's a concept. What she does know is that one time while she was in a rift, she found a weird feather necklace/amulet thing, and she gained these powers at about the same time as when she decided to put it on. She's never taken the amulet off since.
The different aspects of her power are as follows:Empathy - She can sense and feel the emotions of those around her.
Mind Reading - She can read surface thoughts passively, and read into memories if she focused on one person.
Mental Communication - She can directly communicate with anyone nearby through thoughts alone. It's an open 2-way connection.
Mental Projection - She can project her consciousness out of her body in a ghost-like form and travel through walls and other objects up to a certain distance away from her body. She still feels what happens to her body, even if her mind is miles away. Her other powers follow her consciousness, so she can't still sense the emotions or thoughts of those around her once her mind moves far enough away.
Dream Manipulation - If someone near her is sleeping, their mental and emotional state just appears as "calm" to her, but if they are dreaming, she can read their mind and see their dreams, and can communicate with their dreaming mind to leave messages or to change the dream itself. (For example, she planted the thought "Cat" in her friend's dream once, and the dream immediately changed to be about cats, just a sea of cats. He wanted to pet a cat when he woke up.)
Abilities: Considering her attribute is not very physical, she's had to train extensively in hand-to-hand and short range firearms to get where she is now. She's a pretty good shot with any gun you could hand her, minus those big ol' sniper rifles, and she's held her own in many close-quarters fights. She's not the best, obviously, but she can take care of things herself if she has to. Her strategic planning ability all but flies out the window when she's actually in combat, so foresight and planning ahead are the way to go for her. Flying by the seat of your pants may be fun for a moment, but the amusement dries up pretty quickly when
giant bees swarm around you and your team and nearly completely block out the sky.
Skills: This is where she shines. Her attribute's ability to let her see into the minds of other sentient creatures makes intelligence gathering a breeze, and her hyper-focus on Biotech makes her a shoe-in for leading scientific investigative companies to try and get her on their rift exploration teams. She knows the chemistry of all Earthly biological systems like the back of her lab gloves, and with every trip into a rift, she understands more and more of what's possible. Outside of physical science, her knowledge of psychology and the human psyche is also pretty good, even more so now she has this attribute. Her investigative skills are pretty good, but more than anything she just tends to notice things that others always seem to miss at first glance.
Outside of science, she's a skilled communicator and thrives in a teamwork environment. Because of her involvement in so many clubs and teams in the past, She has a wide array of skills that have proved useful to her in the rifts. Strategy and large-scale tactical planning, Resource and time management, High endurance from sports like swimming and cross country, and more random things. She also has a deep knowledge of how to make different types of great tasting, low-budget foods.
History: Kay hates talking about her past. Mainly because it's not a very happy story, or a story that she's proud of.
Shortly after Kay was born, Kay's mother was diagnosed with cancer. Expensive treatments and the knowledge that none of them were really working made her parent's relationship fall apart, and by the time Kay was in middle school, she didn't even want to come home once school was over anymore. The constant fighting at home made her feel like she was dying too. So, she started joining after school clubs. Science club. Chess. DnD. Homework and Tutoring programs. Volleyball. Swimming. Cross-country. Yearbook club. School newspaper.
Anything to keep her away from home for a few extra hours each day.
By the time her mother actually passed away during her last year of middle school, Kay was well known throughout the community. And so she began looking for opportunities to move up in the world, and hopefully get away from this little city she felt so trapped in. This was about when the rifts first started appearing. In high school she continued her tradition of balancing as many clubs and teams as possible, but because home was so quiet now she wasn't quite sure why she still wanted to do it. Maybe she liked being around people? Or maybe it was the easiest way to make sure she qualified for the types of opportunities that would get her out of this place.
To her surprise, once the world realized the rifts could be used to gain awesome resources, information, and powers, a club popped up at her high school that was backed by a locally based Biotech company-
Suivu>Sev. Their sole purpose was to explore and catalogue the types of rifts that appeared in their area, and to report this information back to S>S. In return, S>S would provide high schoolers with a "Superhero" Scholarship to cover their first two years of college- enough to get a technical diploma and an associates degree. Of course the only requirement other than being in the club, getting good grades in science and math, and accurately reporting on any rifts they explored, was more of a fluke to get than anything. She had to get herself an attribute to fully qualify.
Kay was well on her way to her goal of earning that scholarship, but the attribute problem almost didn't fall into place at all. Then, finally during her senior year, it happened. Luckily (or not), a new rift had opened up earlier that day, and there wasn't anyone from the company or Government poking around it yet to stop them from going in to explore on their own. So, Kay went in with three of her friends from the club- and of the four of them only two came back out.
While she was in there, Kay had found a necklace with a amulet of feathers, and almost as soon as she picked it up she'd begun to feel, different. Suddenly she could tell what her friends were thinking and feeling- and when she saw the giant feathery-bee looking things coming towards them, the one friend that made it out of the rift alive with her started running as if he'd heard Kay say "GIANT BEES" out loud.
Needless to say, she regrets that experience. That was the last push she needed to start taking things more seriously in life- and that was also when she adopted her happy-go-lucky demeanor, because she was damned if she was gonna put any more negativity into the world. In the aftermath of that tragedy, Kay threw herself into her studies even more, and after graduating she began to work at Suivu>Sev while going to college. She's graduated now, and in her work at S>S she helps search the rifts for new scientific discoveries and amazing revelations about humankind as a whole.
S>S main focus is on the biotechnological innovations that can me made using knowledge and resources from the rifts. As such, Kay goes in to as many rifts as she can on their behalf, discovering and documenting as many things as she can about the strange biologics on the other side of the rifts. Kay is often traded to other companies so she can have access to rifts that S>S couldn't claim.
Other: Greatest Dream: Kay wishes that she could take all the knowledge she has, and make her own company focused on making so Humans could not just survive, but thrive in alien environments like those of the rifts- without the need for an attribute. Space and the colonization of other planets might happen first, but the rifts are a tantalizing idea for new worlds.
Biggest Fear: Being inside a rift when it suddenly closes.
