[b]Edit: July 09, 2014 - 0647h: Patched for balance, History section completed. Character v. 1.0 awaiting approval or feedback.[/b]

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[Maria Sable | 18 | Female]
[i]“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” 
― Leo Tolstoy[/i]

[b]Appearance[/b]
A dark-haired, mature-looking girl whose sleepy eyes wander unfocused through her surroundings. Standing taller than most at 6'1, and with an average build, she sets herself apart from many girls her age, who are supposed to be slender and petite. Her skin is only a shade darker than the average caucasian, which could be a tan or pigment, and blends well with her shoulder-length russet hair and brown eyes. Aside from her height and build, there is very little to set her apart from a crowd, and her aloof posture serves to hide even that. Her long bangs fall over her rather dull eyes, which seem to roam endlessly - seeing everything, but never actually taking anything to heart, even the people that she speaks with.

Maria is no fashionista, often wearing simple dark clothes that one might wear to a workplace, complete with steel-toed boots. She prefers extremely baggy cargo pants and jeans and almost never wears shorts. In the cold, she bundles up with a second shirt (no sweater) and a thick leather coat. In casual situations, or when it's too hot, she prefers bare feet, but is still never seen in anything less than a t-shirt and cargos. Most people mistake her for being older than she really is due to her subdued (and therefore more 'adult') sense of style, and her larger frame, and she absolutely looks out of place in school, where bright colours are the order of the day. On top of this, she hardly wears any makeup - just a bit of eyeliner as an accent. She does not cover up her imperfections with makeup, citing laziness.

[b]Avatar Ability - [u]"Rewrite"[/u][/b]
By exchanging fragments of herself, Maria is able to grant herself new abilities. Essentially, by giving herself weaknesses, she gains new strengths as she needs them. This power works both physically and mentally, and as long as she can contextualize and section off the concepts of both what she is losing and what she is gaining, the power will work. The only restriction to this is that if the power she is gaining is non-human (something a human couldn't reasonably do with training, such as elemental abilities) she needs to have seen this power in the past, and reached some kind of 'understanding' about it. (So that she can conceptualize its form.)

Once she has exchanged these 'fragments,' she may choose to keep the exchange permanently, effectively destroying the fragment that she sacrificed, and she will never get it back. If she chooses, however, she may reverse the exchange. Doing this has its own cost, called 'degradation.' When exchanged beyond the first time, both fragments suffer from degradation, and cannot make the full exchange like before. A minimal part of the new fragment will stay with her, and a minimal part of the original fragment will remain lost. In other words, she will retain a small portion of whatever power she acquired, but she will not gain back whatever she sacrificed in full. Like a crumpled up paper, it can never regain its original form.

For a hypothetical example, if she had seen someone manipulate water in the past, she could sacrifice her sight in exchange for the power to manipulate water. This first exchange is without flaw. She will be completely blind, but copy the water manipulation perfectly. If, once she is done, she no longer needs or desires that power, she can reverse the exchange, but at the cost of degradation. Her vision will not return perfectly. It may be a bit blurry, or have larger blind spots or less peripheral, but it will not be as it was. However, she will also retain a small portion of the water manipulation ability. Just something small, like the ability to create small whirlpools or walk on water. Every time she exchanges something for the ability to manipulate water from then on will leave it stronger than it was, and she may eventually be able to form a 'full' power from the shards left behind. However, if she sacrifices her sight again, her vision will only get worse.

Where the degraded shards go, or where lost fragments go, Maria does not know, but she theorizes that they must be someplace, since it would be difficult to retrieve something like, say, memories, if they simply vanished into nowhere when they are exchanged. She also does not know where she pulls her 'borrowed' abilities from, or how exactly they manifest. For the immediate future, it is not a concern.

[b]Personality[/b]
Aloof to the point of seeming apathetic, Maria has a difficult time focusing on any one thing at a time, whether it be a conversation topic, a conversational partner, or a task. Rarely finishing what she starts, she is reputed to be lazy and shallow, though that is not entirely true. Her thoughts tend to run away with her at a moments notice, and thus she likes to start new projects, but somehow never follows all the way through. She makes friends easily, but has difficulty keeping them, and sometimes burns her bridges completely by accident.

While she prefers not to be around people at all, she is easily inspired by competition, and will try to one-up her friends in contests that were never established, or ones that she made up on the fly. Despite this need for competition, she has relatively little desire to ever 'win' anything, seeming to just enjoy the sport of it. Because of her competitive streak, she has become sort of a jack-of-all-trades. Learning many different skills very quickly, but at the first sign of an obstacle, she drops that study for another, easier, pursuit, only to rinse and repeat the cycle.

Maria easily latches on to the traits and quirks of others, and will often parrot turns of phrase that she likes, or has heard in the past. Some people find this habit annoying, but Maria herself sees it as a form of character development, absorbing things she likes through osmosis, and shedding habits and customs she no longer needs or desires.

[b]Traits[/b]
[i]Academic Strengths:[/i] Languages, Linguistics, Philosophy, Digital Media
[i]Likes:[/i] Solitude, Jazzy hip hop & Swing music, Curry & rice dishes, Competition, Cold weather
[i]Dislikes:[/i] Micromanagement, Slow learners, Loud music, People who disturb others, Spiders
[i]Other talents:[/i] Extremely quick learner, Quick wit, Thinks in abstractions

[b]History[/b]
Maria is an orphan, her parents having died before her 10th birthday, but aside from this fact, her past history is relatively unremarkable. After the death of her mother from disease, she went to go live with her mother's sister. It was not a significant change, but it was enough of a change of atmosphere at just the wrong age, and something happened to her, in mind or soul, that could not be reversed. An outgoing and overly excited child became a shy and thoughtful outcast who grew into a sullen and unsociable teenager. While not overly attached to the idea of family or friends, she became introverted and obsessed with the idea of finding her true self. One question stuck in her mind throughout everything: [i]"Who am I? What is it that makes me important? Why do I deserve to be here?"[/i]

Her school life was, predictably, a business affair at first. Without the need to socialize or fit in, she simply showed up to class, did the assigned work, and went home. After a few years, she stopped even doing the work. She was teased relentlessly, and physically bullied, but the words simply bounced off, and the bruises healed with time. By the time she turned 16, she was larger than all of the people who used to throw her around, and when they could no longer do that, they started simply ignoring her all together. A couple times she tried to reach out to somebody and gather a friend or two, but her history caught up with her every time, and in the end, she was back to square one. Currently she is still stuck in her same routine. Show up to class, listen to the teachers, ace her tests, then go home and get berated by her aunt and uncle about how her grades are terrible and she never studies.

When she receives the message from PhyKnight, Maria is excited, perhaps for the first time in over five years. Something extraordinary. Something that most people couldn't even dream of. Her chance to have a purpose, and perhaps the chance to discover who she really is, and why she is really here. Before the strange message even reaches its conclusion, Maria already knows her answer. This is her chance. Probably her only chance. 

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