Post by cassandra on Feb 1, 2013 1:55:19 GMT -5
* - - Cassandra.Lexan.Underwood. - - *
[/color] Cassandra Lexa Underwood
Name ;;
Nickname(s) ;;[/color] Cassie, Cass, Sparky (not recommended), boomstick, Juno’s curse, Cursed girl
Age ;;[/color] 16
Birthday ;;[/color] November 11
Gender ;;[/color] Female
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Species ;;[/color] Demi-god
Immortal Parent ;;[/color] Jupiter
Years at Camp ;;[/color] 7
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Celebrity Claim ;;[/color] Ksenia Solo
Appearance ;;[/color] Cassandra is a dark and petite creature. With hair as black as onyx and eyes that contain the same crystal-blue electricity as her godly father, she toes the line between cute and pretty. With her dramatic bangs and dark hair reaching to her mid-back contrasting with her creamy skin, she exudes a sense of edginess. However, beneath her personal style choices, her general features are a suspension between Roman and Scandinavian features with a delicate nose and full lips.
Cassandra is one of the shorter campers, coming up to only 5’3”, and although she trains as much as the rest of the campers, she doesn’t have a whole lot of muscle to show for it. She tends to cover that fact up with her fashion sense, either dressing in dark colors or incredibly flashy outfits, depending on what kind of mood she wakes up in that day. Occasionally she might wear the camp t-shirt, but only if she isn’t feeling well or doesn’t particularly care about her wardrobe that day. When her arms are exposed, however, her standard SPQR tattoo is displayed, complete with a lightning-bolt and seven lines for her years at camp. One final trademark accessory that is always visible on Cassie’s person is the thick rope chain choker of pure silver, a gift from her father.
Personality ;;[/color] Like her father, Cassandra is prone to frequent and spontaneous mood swings. One moment she can be fairly sweet and endearing and the next, she will become either taciturn or flat out bad-tempered. One constant, however, is that she is fluent in sarcasm. Although her behavior may seem off-putting and indiscriminate, she is nothing if not a product of her difficult life. Thanks to a curse placed on her by Juno when she was five, she has suffered abandonment and avoidance by others, greatly contributing to her volatile personality.
This is why she is also extremely guarded. If someone were to try and dig into her personal life without gaining her trust first, she would quickly do her damndest to derail their line of questioning, either with wit or force. It simply depends on how she’s feeling when someone tries to spring her. On the same vein, thanks to the nature of her curse, any attempt at physical contact with her will result in failure. If there were real walls around her heart, they’d be twenty miles tall.
Because of the nature of what she suffered, however, she is very protective of people who get picked on or shunned at camp and is more likely to be friendly to people who have been through hell like her. Even still, she is not adverse to making friends with most people, she just needs lots of time careful handling. If she does happen to harbor friendly feelings towards someone though, she can be incredibly warm and dote on them. When near friends, it seems to work like a tranquilizer on her volatility, dampening it and making her much more pleasant to be around.
Powers ;;[/color]
- Bio-electric current- Thanks to a curse placed on her by Juno, the regular control over lightning that is normal for a Jupiter child has been subverted into a current that runs just over her skin. When she wears her silver chain, however, the current is concentrated into the chain instead of everywhere on her body. She has learned minor control of the current, such as concentration of it or strengthening it with ions from the surrounding air, but this takes a greater amount of effort and control
- Electrokinesis- As per usual for a Jupiter kid, if there is any sort of source of electricity or lightning, she has the ability to redirect it as she sees fit, although it can be a little harder for her as it interferes with the current around her body.
- Storm manipulation- If pressed or angry enough, Cassie has been known to churn up small storms from a pre-existing bank of clouds, resulting in gusty winds kicking up, generation of lightning and thunder, and all the scary things that come with it. It's one of the most exhausting things she can do, and if not brought out of it quickly enough, may result in the formation of a small but nasty storm and her loss of consciousness, which would take a day or two to completely recover from. This was what drew Juno's attention in the first place.
Family ;;[/color] Andrea Underwood- Mother
Jupiter- Father
Tye Renton- Step-father
Lilia Renton- Half-sister (older)
Ben Renton- Step-brother (oldest)
History ;;[/color]As most affairs with Jupiter once began, this one started with a beautiful and successful woman named Andrea. Andrea was a broker in Los Angeles at the time she’d met Jupiter. He pretended to be an investor and would show up in her life every few months after their first meeting. Of course he was attracted to her at first blush and so was Andrea to him. Even though she’d never committed herself to any real relationship since high school, Andrea agreed to go back to her place one night after a good time at the bar down the street and they had a passionate time together.
Months later, heartbroken that Jupiter had loved and left her especially pregnant with a child, she decided to withdraw from her high profile life and move somewhere with a less fast-paced lifestyle and she settled on Blythe, CA to raise the baby she was expecting. Finally on November 11, 1996, Cassandra came into the world. With a nice cushion of money that Andrea had accumulated over her time on the job, she was easily able to care for the baby with little worry of having to go back to a steady job too quickly, but she did return to work when Cassandra was one because she was a workaholic at heart and realized that she was spiraling into a depression without it in spite of loving taking care of her little girl. Yet she stood as a reminder of the man (or God) she’d lost.
For the first three years of Cassandra’s life, things went by smoothly and relatively uneventfully as Andrea worked as an independent personal broker from a small office she opened in town, which she took her daughter with her to every day. She usually had a pretty mild temperament, though she was occasionally prone to major tantrums, but her mother took them in stride. Half-way through her third year was when Tye Renton came into the picture. When a freak storm hit Blythe, it destroyed some of the roof at Andrea’s office building which had to be fixed. Tye was the divorcee owner of a construction and repair company that was responsible for fixing the issues and when he came in to survey the damage, he and Andrea got to talking and she was surprisingly smitten. He had a son named Ben who was five years older than Cassandra and she really took a liking to him, but he also had a daughter named Lilia who could be cruel for a younger kid. However, despite the turbulence between them, their families merged a year later.
It didn’t take very long for things to start going badly. Tye and Lilia seemed to create a monopoly on Andrea and Cassandra started feeling cast aside when her mother started seeming to pay more attention to her step-sister than her, as if she didn’t have to think about Cassandra’s father if she had her attention somewhere else than her child and Lilia lapped up the attention. Ben seemed to be in a similar boat as Cassandra, though. His mother had died (after the divorce between her and Tye) when he was old enough to remember the pain and he didn’t seem to be in a hurry to be replacing her relationship with Andrea’s. He felt like his dad and sister had betrayed his mother’s image somewhat and in a way felt a kinship with Cassandra more than he did with his own blood, and he took care of her.
Sometime after Cassandra had turned five, she and Lilia had a fight over some silly teddy bear that Cassandra had had and loved since she was two and Lilia decided to throw it away because she thought Cassandra was too old for teddy bears. When she found out her bear was gone, she cried and begged her mom to tell Lilia to get it back, but she didn’t take her side. When she didn’t, it sent Cassandra into throwing such a big tantrum about it that she kicked up a tempest over the house, her abilities manifesting incredibly suddenly, which did not bode well for her. It was noticeable even to the Gods. Jupiter had an idea of what was happening and went to go have “the chat” with Andrea about his daughter, but Juno became suspicious and followed him, having been unaware of this affair until now. Because she got there first, Jupiter never got the chance to explain.
The result of Juno’s interference was disastrous to say the least. In rage at finding out Jupiter had had a child by another woman AGAIN, she decided to get back at them both by taking it out on Cassandra. That night she bestowed a curse on her, making her ability to generate lightning turn on her by confining it to forming only around her body, meaning that she would be emitting an electrical current just over her skin at all times, which caused her a lot of pain. Suddenly her skin seemed to shock everyone who tried to touch her, and normally not in the “mild, staticky shock” kind of way. Suddenly, she was no longer able to share those affectionate gestures that most young children needed and took for granted, and it didn’t take long for most everyone to turn on her. Her mother and Tye both looked at her fearfully every time she came into a room and avoided touching her at most costs.
It was incredible how much of a toll the fact that everyone suddenly avoided Cassandra took on her. She knew she was different and that she couldn’t help but hurt anyone who touched her, but the looks she got from almost everyone were pretty much unbearable. By the time she started kindergarten, she’d learned that isolating herself was for the best and barely talked to her classmates. When she made and effort to with people she thought might be able to accept her, she always tried to make an effort to come off as friendly and pretend she wasn’t really cursed, but most of them would leave her alone after trying to play tag with her, or hug her, or give her a high five, or anything that involved physical contact and found out that touching her was painful. In first grade, she even tried wearing rubber gloves on her hands so that she could at least try to be normal, but the kids made fun of her for having to wear weird gloves on her hands and questioned her ruthlessly.
If it wasn’t for Ben and the couple of kids at school who stuck by her despite her condition, Cassandra would probably not have been capable of smiling for those few years. At home, Ben diligently took care of her and always hugged her and comforted her, even if it was painful. He was the one who suggested the insulated rubber gloves (which he’d stolen from his dad’s repair company supplies) after he’d worn them himself and found out he could touch her when he put them on. He was always encouraging and patient with her, and although he wasn’t more than five years older than her, he tried to help her as best he could. She those few school friends too who thought her curse was cool and not weird (though as mortals they didn’t know why she couldn’t touch people and rumbling seemed to come from her general direction when she was angry) and didn’t care if she wore weird gloves. That was how she’d come to have such a split personality. Weary around strangers, hostile towards anyone who seemed to scorn her, and incredibly bubbly and protective of those who dared to treat her well.
Like all powerful demi-god children, though, it didn’t take long for the monsters to come. Although her curse meant that most of her abilities were concentrated just around her body and kept her smell a little more hidden, monsters began to catch on and attack her. They were far between at first and just scared the hell out of her, but by the time she was in second grade, they took a turn for dangerous. Her teacher was an old man who seemed pretty nice. But one day they had a woman who came in, claiming to be a student teacher. It turned out that she was a Scylla though, and had tried to corner Cassandra when the rest of the class was going out to lunch. That day, she’d forgotten her gloves at home and was being extra careful not to touch anyone, but she tried to defend herself against the Scylla when she attacked. Her old teacher came back into the room and saw Cassandra beating up a young woman instead of a monster and tried to grab her around the wrist. Because she was so stressed and primed for battle, the electrical current around her body was amped up and the resulting shock to her old teacher almost killed him. The recoil of the lighting from her strong emotions killed the Scylla and started an electrical fire in the classroom. At that point, she fled from school.
Cursing herself as she ran home crying, she screamed prayers to the gods for someone to help her, and much to her surprise, Jupiter appeared to her. She begged him to take her curse off of her, but he told her that it wasn’t his curse to revoke, with regret. Instead, he told her to go back home to Ben, who would help get her somewhere safe, apologizing for being the reason that her mother had pretty much turned her back on her, which was a massive apology, coming from any God, let alone her parent and the king of the Gods.
When she made it home, she told Ben what had happened and he told her that he’d had a weird dream that had told him he had to help her get to San Francisco. He’d called his mother’s sister who still lived nearby and told her some wild story about how they really needed to get to San Francisco to take Cassandra to stay with relatives there. Somehow his story convinced her to help them and although she was confused and a little bit suspicious, she helped load Cassandra’s luggage into her car and drove her to what was really the wolf house, but appeared to her as an old manor house. Ben had gone with and he walked her to the door, hugging her fiercely and telling her to stay out of trouble and be good while she was there.
She stayed at the wolf house for a full three years before she moved on to camp Jupiter. During her time with Lupa and the wolves, Cassandra learned to gain some control over her curse and even utilize it to her advantage when it came to fighting by concentrating the current over the limb she was attacking with, or even pushing it into a weapon she was wielding. She managed to learn some control over the wind as well to keep attackers away under Lupa’s tutelage, and finally when she was ten, she set off for the camp itself. It wasn’t easy trying to assimilate into the way of life at camp either. In a place where superstitions were rooted in truth, many of the campers feared her for her curse and stayed away from her, while others were simply curious or wanted to bully her for it.
One day when she was eleven, her father appeared to her again, much to her astounment and this time came with a gift: a thick chain of pure silver forged by Vulcan, which would conduct the current away from her skin and trap it in the metal, making the curse much easier to handle. It was a gift she needed when the war at Mt. Orthys came three years later, too. With its help, she learned to infuse her attacks with lightning more precisely and without harming herself or others in the process. The war was hard for her to bear with all of the losses they suffered, among them a friend or two who had come to accept her and be good to her despite her condition. Gods knew she didn’t have many friends to spare. But after she helped pick up the pieces of the devastation after the war, she more or less returned to normal camp life, apprehensive about the new rumors of problems that were arising…
(Dude, I’m really sorry. This history turned into a short story.) [/blockquote]
Site Alias;;[/color] Issa
Reading;;[/color] All, both PJO and HoO
Roleplaying Experience ;;[/color] 7 or so
Sample RP ;;[/color] See Zidane
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