[quote=@Amethyst]
[hider=Bloom][center][hr][hr][img]https://i.imgur.com/PQDL0xR.png?1[/img]
[color=a3dd6f][img]https://i.imgur.com/bw7JB3E.png[/img][/color]
[i][color=a3dd6f]"...be useful, be silent, be normal."[/color][/i][/center][hr][hr]

[color=a3dd6f][B][  NAME  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Viridian "Vee" Elliot Montecroix (Harlow by birth)[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][  HERO IDENTITY  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Bloom[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][  NICKNAME/ALIAS  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Vee, Elle, Vir, basically any one-syllable reduction of their name. Some people they know from the street call them "Green" affectionately.[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][  AGE  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Seventeen[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ GENDER ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Nonbinary (they/them)[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ AFFILIATION ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Unaffiliated, full-time fugitive[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][  APPEARANCE  ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Vee's hair is the first thing most people notice about them; it's incredibly fluffy, unkempt and short around their ears, and colored in a messy blend of green. It's full of leaves and stems that seem almost attached to their scalp (spoiler alert - they are.) Aside from that, though, and the occasional flowering stem poking up from under their shirt collar, they seem to be a fairly nondescript (if grubby) teenager. They stand at a rather average-for-humans stature of five feet, seven inches, and appear downright fragile in their frame, undernourished and sickly. They move with little grace or coordination, as though they're not entirely sure where their limbs are (they aren't - they've grown five inches in the last few months.) Their pale skin is grubby and unclean, patched with dirt and scrapes. There are often sores on their shoulders and arms and particularly the palms of their hands.

In terms of clothing, Vee doesn't have much variety, and all of theirs are ragged and dirty. They're often seen in holey jeans that are about two inches too short for them, either a faded blue or grey-brown tee shirt, and a threadbare brown sweatshirt with sleeves that end three inches up their arms. They have shoes, sneakers that used to be white and are now vaguely brown, with the soles falling out of them.[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ PERSONALITY TRAITS ][/B][/color]
[INDENT][b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ P A R A N O I D[/color][/b] Vee's trust issues understandably stem from a lot of betrayals, but they are numerous. They are constantly convinced that there is someone who is out to get them, that their home isn't safe, that nothing in the adult world is as it really seems. Sometimes they're right; they do seem to attract a disproportionate amount of danger.

[b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ F L I G H T Y[/color][/b] As a result of their paranoia, Vee is constantly hypervigilant, always on the highest alert for anything that seems "not-right." When their alarm bells start going off, they're [i]gone,[/i] leaving behind whatever fledgling friendship or well-intentioned intervention. They have several "homes", humble shelters dotted around the green spaces in the city's East Flank, that they bounce between whenever they think they might have been discovered.

[b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ S E L F - R E L I A N T[/color][/b] Vee is adamant that they are doing [i]fine[/i] and that they don't need [i]any[/i] help to make it through the world. After all, they've been out here for a year and they haven't died yet. (They're also scared that they'll get taken back to the Montecroix's if they're found, but that aside.) Though their thoughts alternate between "I don't [i]want[/i] help" and "I don't [i]deserve[/i] help", they are rather self-sufficient all the same.

[b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ C H I L D I S H[/color][/b] Just as they were late growing into their body and their powers, they're only now starting to drift into teenage moodiness and emotions. They daydream as an escape and have an overactive imagination full of whimsical, fantastical stories. They collect shiny things that they find and decorate their hiding spaces with them; they're obsessive about their hoard and don't like the thought of sharing what little they have.

[b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ P R I N C I P L E D[/color][/b] Despite their current situation, Vee doesn't shoplift or pickpocket, for the most part. They have a strict moral code about not taking things that are rightfully other people's, and they don't want to end up in even more legal trouble than they already are. Usually, they try to take foodstuffs from the trash rather than from people, but they can't always bring themself to do that or find a good target, so when times are really tough they will sometimes snatch from a picnicker's basket or a distracted businessman's lunch. 

[b][color=a3dd6f]⚘ D E S P E R A T E[/color][/b] Vee is starved for affection and cripplingly lonely. Though they struggle to trust and form bonds, and are confident that it will never happen, it's their deepest desire to find a group of people who accept them as they are.[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ BIO ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Vee's birth mother went to jail when they were four. That was their earliest memory, flashing lights and cop cars outside of their home. The man they thought was their father knelt down in front of them, roughly wiping away a tear from under their eye. "You're a big kid now, Vir," he said. "And big kids don't cry. I'll make sure someone takes care of you."

They thought that meant he was going to be there for him. But they were wrong. He was frosty, distant in the following days. A week later, a police officer showed up to collect them and take them to live with their mother's sister. Aunt Magdalene was twenty-five, unmarried and less than enthused to be their new caretaker. But she took them in, because that's what family did.

Aunt Magdalene did her best to hide that Vee existed in her life. After all, she was a pretty young woman, and she had her eye on a rich, recently divorced businessman, and having a kid - even not her own kid - would've overcomplicated that matter. So Vee got to exist in the background, bouncing between school and underfunded after-school programs and the houses of best friends who's parents secretly resent them.

Doctor Alan Montecroix, Vee's soon-to-be uncle-in-law, found out about them when they were seven. Aunt M was furious, but he didn't kick her to the curb for it as she had feared. In fact, he was quite magnanimous about it. After all, he had just won the custody over the kids from his previous marriage. There was always room for more in their picture-perfect life, right?

Wrong.

There were three rules for them in the Montecroix household. Be useful, be silent, be normal. Vee had lots of practice at blending into the background, and was for the most part good at it - with no more formal schooling past the age of ten, they spent their days working in the garden alongside the manor home's extensive staff, and did the best they could (which was admirable for their age, but never enough for Dr. Montecroix) while keeping their head down. At first they hated it, but they grew to thrive, and only sometimes felt the tears prickling at their eyes. [i]Big kids don't cry.[/i]

Their powers grew in gradually around their fifteenth birthday, slow to begin like the rest of their development. At first, they were excited about them. The plants they had grown to love began to show them the same kind of care, trailing stems out to brush their fingertips and revealing berries that had been missed in the wine harvest - perfect for a quick snack when they were hungry. Their straw-brown hair began to turn green, their skin no longer sunburning, and they found themself more energetic under even the midday sun. Seeds would sprout into shoots and flowers would bloom in their fingers; struggling shoots would be reinvigorated. Leaves whispered things that sounded like words in a pitch just slightly too low to hear.

They thought their family would be happy for them, and they showed one of their step-siblings one night after dinner. 

Wrong again.

At once they were different, they were weird, and their origin story was the threat to the very Montecroix name. were told at the mature age of fifteen that they had two hours to get off the grounds and stop freeloading on the Montecroix's goodwill, or else law enforcement would drag them to the foster care system that Aunt M had worked so hard for them to avoid.

So they left. They packed a backpack with the few non-uniform clothes they owned, and left, scraping together just enough of their saved wages for a train ticket to New Athens' Central Garden Station. They almost cried on the train, but held it together. [i]Big kids don't cry. You're practically an adult, now, you can do this.[/i]

They met a boy there, scruffy-clothed but well-fed, who took one look at the expression on their face and the bag and stuffed animal in their hand and asked where their home was. They didn't have one anymore, they said. So he offered to help.

He helped them build a little shelter behind a garden outbuilding, then in the night while they slept took the 'first watch' and what little they had left. All of their clothes, their extra shoes, their pitiful amount of money, and then he vanished without a trace.

Since then, they've been on their own, and they've been doing okay. Well, that's a lie. They stink, they're always sick from the pesticides that the city uses, people keep calling the robocops on them for being homeless, and their powers are really unpredictable when they're anxious and desperate. They're always itchy or mildly injured from weeding plants out of their skin. But they're self-reliant, which means no one can let them down. ...Even if they also have no options for advancement and their hope for the future is dwindling.

As they're growing into an adult, their powers are becoming more volatile and dramatic. Someone is going to notice them for what they are someday. But whether its a HERO, or a villain... that remains to be seen.[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][b]|  MISCELLANEOUS  |[/b][/color]
[indent]Technically, Vee doesn't need to eat. Their hair photosynthesizes some energy, and they can tap into the energy of green life around them as a form of sustenance or actually drawing nutrients from the fluids that run through plant stems and trunks. It's not particularly [i]satisfying[/i] sustenance, leaving them undernourished and lacking in minerals, but it keeps them alive when food is scarce.[/indent]

[hider=Green Thumb]
[color=a3dd6f][B][ RANKING ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]C[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ POWERS ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Vee says they have a "green thumb" but the truth of the matter is that they can manipulate plants beyond the bounds of conventional physics. They can draw energy from photosynthetic life around them, or deposit their own energy into plants as vessels. Additionally, with contact between their circulatory system (usually via a small pinprick or one of their many accidental injuries) and a large plant's (such as a tree or a particularly hardy vine infestation), they can pull nutrients directly into their system. As part of their exchange with nature, they've become progressively more plantlike themself. Their skin doesn't burn and their hair photosynthesizes. Plants can take root into their skin if given an opening, or enough time, and they've used that to their advantage before. However, that does hurt them, or at least itch miserably. Since the little vines started growing in their hair, they've started randomly blossoming plants, mostly wildflowers from their shoulders and palms and behind their collarbones - they're not sure what that is about, either.

When channeling plant energy, their own wounds heal at an accelerated rate, but only to a point. And it doesn't work on anyone else.

Plants they encounter in the wild will bend and move to their whim, when they're in contact with them or their root system. They can make vines or flexible branches wrap around objects or reach for things. Without prompting, plants tend to extend towards them over time. Vee is also certain that plants have a language or some way of communicating - they hear things that aren't quite decipherable, but they get ideas in their head that almost always lead them to cleaner water or fresh food.

Even passively, plants grow faster and hardier when Vee is near them. They can rapidly accelerate growth with focus and an external energy source, accomplishing in seconds what might take months. This has become one of their defense mechanisms, gathering seeds for spiny or poisonous plants and clutching them into their fists when threatened, creating thorny vines that shoot out of their palms (and sometimes cause themself injury while doing so). They think it might be possible to augment their own strength with the support of wood or fiber grafted to their skin, but they've never been quite so desperate that they have to try.

Interestingly, animals tend to treat Vee as though they themself are a plant. Birds will frequently land on them or in their hair and most small creatures show no fear of them.[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ PHYSICAL STRENGTH ][/B][/color]
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Though Vee's never been desperate enough to try, they think they could probably reinforce their own skeletal strength and lifting capacity with wood or other plant matter. They do use plants to help support heavy objects when digging out a place to stay and could probably turn it into a more direct show of brute-force strength.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ AGILITY ][/B][/color]
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Their power offers no help here, but they're relatively fit and agile from being constantly active as a young child.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ INTELLIGENCE ][/B][/color]
■□□□□□□□□□
They have a fifth-grade education. There was no bus to the middle school from the Montecroix estate and asking for one made them too much of a burden, so they just... didn't get to continue. They have some life-smarts but almost no book-smarts.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ DESTRUCTIVENESS ][/B][/color]
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WHile not as instantaneously destructive as some hero powers, Vee can tap into root systems and dislodge sidewalks, water mains, or power lines. With enough time and well-placed trees, they can probably crack foundations. It takes more energy than it's usually worth but if the need for it arises... they've done it before.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ LETHALITY ][/B][/color]
■■■□□□□□□□
Being suffocated to death by a plant blooming into your nose and throat or strangled by a thorny vine... not a pleasant way to go for sure. Vee could probably come up with more ways of killing people but that's against their principles and the chance has never really come up.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ ENDURANCE ][/B][/color]
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Because of their ability to draw energy from any photosynthetic organism they touch, it's pretty hard to knock Vee down completely or get them to a point where they're too exhausted to use their power.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ EFFICACY ][/B][/color]
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Quite frankly, Vee sucks at controlling their power. They have no finesse with it; it's purely utilitarian for them. It's easily triggered out by their emotions and is quite volatile, destroying things around them as they try to protect themself from threats real or imagined. It hurts them almost as much as it helps them. Still, a plant manipulator is a certainly unique power, and one that could have many versatile applications. Even if the concrete jungle of the metropolis makes it a little different for their plants to find an opening.

[color=a3dd6f][B][ SKILLS ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]Adept at identifying plants
Good survivalist
Excellent sense of stranger-danger
Good knowledge of the surface streets of New Athens and the East Side
[/INDENT]

[color=a3dd6f][B][ EQUIPMENT ][/B][/color]
[INDENT]The clothes on their back
A threadbare backpack full of "treasures" - cool rocks, bits of smooth glass, a random book they found in the gutter, interesting newspaper pages, scraps of receipt paper or stained napkins folded around seeds, probably at least a few long-rotten berries and roots they harvested and forgot about.[/INDENT]
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[/quote]

Accepted! They look super cool C: