Basic InformationName:Claire Sparks
Nickname/Alias/Etc:Shocker, Ms.Lightningbolt,
Gender:Female
Age:17
Height:5’10”
Weight:150 lbs
Home District:Union Point Hills
AppearanceHair Color:Jet black with a pink streak, but that’s only because of the dye. Her hair is usually dirty blonde.
Eye Color:Dark Blue
Ethnicity:European
Physical Appearance:Claire is a girl of average height and weight. She is fairly toned (a life on the street tends to do this to you) and is pretty strong for a girl her size. She is extremely unladylike in her build and general posture, often moving with a swaggering walk like she knows she’s the shit. Her skin is actually slightly tanned but the black clothes and hair make it appear much paler than it actually is. Claire’s right arm is a sleeve of tattoos with various shapes and meanings. The image of a rose appears often in these. At the top of her right shoulder is a large colorful tattoo of a sugar skull.
Her face is heart-shaped and is set off by a rather obvious scar on her chin. Her hair is an unnatural jet black and is worn in a rather ragged chop-job which suits her oddly. Her hair pretty much exists in a state of disheveledness. Her eyes are almond-shaped with long full lashes and thin eyebrows. She has a very angular face, with a sharp nose and high cheekbones. Her lips are pale and generally scowl. There are dots of acne along her jaw, but her makeup covers this up to a degree. Claire’s teeth are white but slightly crooked. One or two of her molars are capped in metal from getting broken in fights. Her fingernails are painted metallic silver.
Attire:Punk isn’t dead! Claire dresses like a biker girl who just got back from a Halestorm concert. She normally wears a pair of black skinny jeans with a tank top or tee shirt with something from one of her favorite bands and a black studded leather jacket that cuts off just above her waist. The back, sides, and arms of the jacket are pockmarked with silver studs. She wears a pair of black combat boots on her feet.
PersonalityInnate & Outward Personality:How do I put this gently...Claire is in general a jackass. She’s known for having a short temper and a hard fist. She has more balls than brains, so the saying goes, and because of this seems to constantly be getting in fights with people. She is known to be rather reckless, devil may care attitude, throwing herself into danger constantly for seemingly no reason. She is incredibly blunt and quite honestly doesn’t give a shit if anyone’s offended by what she has to say. Claire is the type of person who says the thing that no one else is ballsy enough to say. You can’t knock her for her courage, though. She’s something else when it comes to that.
Claire is stubborn as a rock and just as unintelligent; obviously honors classes aren’t her thing. Claire is one of those insecure teenaged girls who instead of trying to fit in and blend with the rest of society does the opposite by trying to look as out of place as possible so as to laugh at insecurity. This makes Claire a rather unpopular person, as she makes fun of everyone and everything. This is generally harmless, though, and those who have come to know Claire understand that she doesn’t mean any harm.
Hobbies/Interests:Smoking, fighting, drinking, making fun of people, making lewd sexual references. She generally enjoys getting into trouble and/or getting trashed. She’s probably an alcoholic, but she doesn’t care. She loves guitar, playing both six-string and bass. Claire’s dream is to one day become a professional guitarist. She draws occasionally, but she’s really self-conscious about her drawing, so these are only doodles. Claire is a big fan of really spicy food, especially Mexican. Her music fits her personality and appearance; Halestorm, Paramore, Panic! at the Disco, Fallout Boy, My Chemical Romance, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Pink. Despite her appearance, she reads a good bit (not having a lot of people to hang out with encourages reading). She loves Looking for Alaska.
Skills/Talents:She’s a good guitarist and has a nice rock voice. She’s a pretty good artist, having designed most of her own tattoos (save the skull). Claire also has a good sense of streetsmart to balance out her lack of booksmart. She knows who to fuck with and who not to fuck with, and reads body language well. From living on the streets, she has learned how to fight fairly well (or more so how to fight dirty), but any trained fighter would probably school her in straight hand-to-hand combat.
Prized Possession:Probably her leather jacket, which belonged to her brother.
Quote(s):“Get the fuck out of here. I’m packing heat, bitch!”
History/Bio:Claire was born in Mendel to a pretty shitty family. Her father was an abusive drunk and her mother was completely useless and submissive. The only real parental figure that Claire ever truly recognized was her brother Damien, who himself wasn’t the best guy. Damien was significantly older than Claire, and he was a lieutenant in The Skulls, one of Mendel’s two meta gangs. Because her father was so violent, Claire generally spent her life outside, and often followed Damien wherever he went. Damien was known as the responsible Skull, and so he would often not partake in drinking if Claire was around.
When Claire turned seven, she discovered her power. One day, she walked in on her father beating her mother. Her father looked up and tried to come after Claire herself. Damien wasn’t there- he had detention -and so Claire was helpless. Just as her father approached her, however, she felt an energy well up inside of her. The moment he touched her, an arc of electricity shot through his body and he was sent flying backwards into the wall. Claire’s father left the next day, and the family never saw him again. In retrospect, this was a massive improvement.
It was the next year that the Mendel Gang War began. Damien wasn’t home as often now that the gang needed him, and Claire began to become quite lonely. She drank her first beer at age eleven, and spent her middle school years getting into trouble. She practically spent her life in detention to get away from her Damien-less family. The Skulls never truly forgot about Claire, though. They always seemed to have her back even during the war. Several times she was saved from potential rapes and muggings by them, and at age thirteen they officially inducted her into the gang, though she was not allowed to see combat against the Vanguard or NEST. She received the tattoo that same year, and over the next few years would complete her tattoo sleeve.
Then the war ended. Skeleton was arrested, Diablo was killed, and many members of the gang fled to Verthaven, where they knew NEST presence to be less intense. Damien and Claire went with them, simply leaving home one day with their high mother cursing after them. They arrived in Verthaven and settled in Union Point Hills. Some of the members who fled (about a dozen of them fled) joined the Fiends, but the others knew better and decided to attempt to live normal lives. They all lived side-by-side each other, working like one big family. When Claire turned fifteen, she was attacked by members of the Fiends. In the course of escaping from them, she released a blast of lightning so strong that two of the gang members were killed, two were put in six-month comas, and all of the streetlights exploded. After this, she was approached by recruiters for Academy 12, and was invited to join the school to learn how to use her powers. In the spirit of living normal lives, the Skulls convinced her to join, and she has been going to school there ever since.
RelationshipsFamily:Joel Sparks- Father -50
Sierra Sparks- Mother -48
Damien Sparks- Brother -29
Dynamics: | | | "" |
AbilitiesPower Class:Elemental
Power:Kinetic Electrokinesis: Claire has the ability to create and manipulate electricity through movement. Her nerve cells release twenty times more electrical energy than your average nerve, you see, and so Claire naturally has an electric charge to her, which she can use offensively or to power electronic devices at her touch (her phone never dies). The more Claire moves, the more energy she gains. She can store electrical power in her brain, but only for about fifteen minutes until it leaks out and she has to regenerate it. Electricity, of course, is a pretty powerful form of energy, as it can move at light speed and is extremely hot. This makes Claire pretty dangerous, especially when opponents are carrying metal. Claire’s brain is brimming with electrical power, which gives her a very interesting relationship with telepaths. She is stupidly easy for telepaths to locate, but they cannot enter her thoughts lest they enjoy the sound of white noise due to the powerful electrical current.
Limits:Claire has a limit to how much electricity she can use at one time. Her body has adapted to the increase in energy by using it to power certain high-energy organs (ie, the heart). If Claire wastes too much of her power, her heart will give out and she’ll fall into a coma until her body restarts it.
Secondly, motion. Claire has to move in order to generate energy, meaning that if she stops moving, she loses her power. Restraining Claire will cause her to quickly lose her powers. If Claire is knocked unconscious, she loses all of her powers instantly, and while sleeping Claire does not generate a charge, so when she wakes up she temporarily does not have her power.
Thirdly, lightning rods. Any kind of grounded conductor (such as a lightning rod) can draw Claire’s electricity towards it, making her less accurate. She can resist this, but it requires significantly more energy to accurately use her powers in the presence of a grounded conductor, tiring her out quicker.
Claire also has a range restriction on her electricity due to the blooming effect. The blooming effect is essentially where the heat of a projectile causes the oxygen around it to heat into a plasma, making it more difficult for said projectile to travel. This is usually observed with lasers, but it works the same with Claire’s electricity. The blooming effect gives Claire a range restriction of about fifty feet.
Weaknesses/Drawbacks:Claire’s main weakness is that she is not actually immune to electricity. While her body can tolerate it when it is in a potential form (like, not being used), it cannot tolerate it so well when Claire is releasing her powers, meaning that residual energy can majorly mess her up. To compensate for this, Claire must always be grounded when she uses her powers. Grounding is a process where an excess of charge in an object is removed by transferring it to an object of substantial size. In layman’s terms, Claire needs to be either standing on the ground or touching something metal (or a building with a metal frame) to prevent herself from getting zapped. Basically, if Claire uses her powers when not touching the ground or not touching metal, she electrocutes herself, which can cause some really bad damage.
Speaking of electrocuting oneself, Claire and water don’t mix. Claire has no catlike fear of water, but if Claire uses her power while wet, she can seriously harm herself. Non-pure water (ie all water) is a great conductor, and so Claire using her powers while wet yields a similar effect to taking a bath with an electric heater. Long story short, if Claire uses her powers while wet, she’ll burn the fuck out of herself. When Claire does shock herself while wet, however, she creates an odd effect on electronics around her. In an attempt to keep herself from being fried, Claire releases most of her electricity in a form known as The Discharge, a low-amperage energy wave which is harmless to humans (it might feel like a little static electricity shock) but devastating to electronics. She once shocked herself in this manner while in a Target and blew up the entire electronics section. These effects, however, must be caused by external water, as Claire’s sweat mysteriously will not cause these effects.
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