Name: Michelle Taylor Ashworth
Age:
Birthday: June 13th
Gender: Female
Nationality: British
Category: Citizen / NPC
Appearance Description: Michelle stands at six feet and three inches tall, with a a slender build and fair skin. She has chest length green hair and plum colored eyes, which actually is hilarious to describe but is actually written on all of her official documents. She often has an authoritative air about her.
In terms of clothing, Michelle favors formal fashions that can be said to make her look like a villain. Normally all purple or black, with a tendency to favor high collars.
Personality Description: On the outside, Michelle is a stern and intimidating figure who does not "hang out" with people and takes everything with the utmost seriousness. She is a proud woman with a strong sense of justice and therefore is also extremely law-abiding with little tolerance for those who cross the line. Used to getting her own way, people who oppose her will quickly find that they have a fight on their hands if they object to her methods. Though she is not a cruel person, Michelle can be obliviously mean because she says what is on her mind, sometimes with tact, sometimes without. It depends on how the person she is talking to has been acting.
What a lot of people don't see, however, is that Michelle is rather soft hearted when it comes to familial matters. She is usually unyielding in all other fields except for this one, especially when it concerns her brother. She is a very protective person and is often concerned about those under her care, even if she rarely shows it. As Michelle knows, words are cheap. Actions speak louder. Therefore, people should keep in mind that Michelle means every word that comes out of her mouth. Unless she doesn't. Michelle shares a deep bond with her brother so people should be wary when messing with either of them.
Power: Eviscerating Touch - Michelle has the ability to phase her hands and remove organs from a person's body without physically harming them. However, when she does this, the person will maintain an sympathetic bond with the removed organs, meaning that should harm come to the organs, the person will feel it. This bond can be severed with difficulty but Michelle is well trained in her craft and is now very skilled in this art. The severing itself may prove disturbing to the subject, often said to feel like a violation of some metaphysical sense, but after it has been completed, harming the organ will no longer matter. This is usually done in a hospital setting.
The subjects that Michelle performs this procedure on will not die from but will experience certain side effects as a result. For example, should she remove a person's lungs, they will no longer need to breathe, nor will they die of lung related illnesses considering that they no longer have lungs to be affected by said illness, and can continue to function with that benefit. However, it means that they also will be mute and possibly constantly dizzy as a result. She can only perform this on one sort of organ per person at a time. So, she can remove both lungs and both kidneys but not one lung and one kidney.
Organs that are removed in this way are sustained magically if Michelle cannot procure scientific means. If the sympathetic bond is maintained, then even more care must be taken. At this moment, if the sympathetic bond is severed, she can sustain seven minor organs at the same time or two major ones, major meaning that you only have one of these and or transplants have a high death rate. For example, your brain. Or your small intestine. If the sympathetic bond is maintained, then she can sustain only three minor organs and one major one. Organs that are sustained magically do take a toll on Michelle's fine tuned control. In addition, people who are without their organs for too long will either slowly adapt to the point where they don't need them, or they will start to deteriorate from the lack of them. Or both. Why should they be mutually exclusive?
This is where the benefit of maintaining the sympathetic bond comes in. If the bond is maintained, then the body will enjoy the benefits of not having the organ as will as not deteriorating from the lack of one. The bond will fool the body into thinking that it is still present. However, the body cannot be too far from the organ, otherwise the sympathetic bond will cease to be. Michelle takes time to sever the bonds but if a person strains it too much and breaks it themself, then the consequences will be severe because instead of easing into the change, the body is shocked into it.
This power operates only through skin to skin contact and Michelle must have enough knowledge of anatomy to pull out whatever organ she is attempting to remove. Theoretically, she can remove skin but what purpose would that serve? Since skin is a very large organ, it is likely that unless she has completely immobilized somebody or if somebody were mad enough to ask her to do it, the length of time needed would be enough for something to deter her. She cannot manipulate the skin itself as in plastic surgery so there is literally no reason for her to do this. Besides, removed organs are very vulnerable out in the open and thus must be carefully taken care of or simply put into somebody else.
Putting organs into somebody else is very complicated because Michelle is limited by blood types. If the blood type of the organ and the blood type of the receiver are different, the consequences could be fatal. Less moral people would pay no mind to that but Michelle is proud and refuses to dirty her hands in that way. So yes, she can remove animal organs and stick them into other beings but that would probably be painful for the receiver. Michelle is not some uncouth torturer. In order to make the transfer a success, she must also create a new sympathetic bond between the organ and the body. This takes time. One must be patient.
This power can also be deterred by bones. Therefore, the brain is incredibly hard to remove and should not be attempted unless Michelle is having a very good day. Having multiple organs put into a person will affect them in different ways but definitely, having two hearts or two brains is not a good idea. Having two pairs of lungs, though, may be beneficial. But the extra pair might not fit in the body so one should be mindful of that and also the fact that at any given time, something could go horribly wrong. With time and multiple checkups, however, this could be made to work. But emphasis must be put on multiple checkups. This is something that must be regularly maintained.
How will side-effects be determined? Largely on how the other RPer wants things to go. If it doesn't matter either way, we roll a one hundred sided die. 1-40, you have complications. 41-80, you adapt but still have complications. 81-100, you win.
In addition to her typical organ removal powers, Michelle is able to tell the condition of organs when she touches them. She may not be able to tell exactly what the organ is suffering from but she will be able to piece together details to possibly put together a working diagnosis. In terms of self defense, she is also able to temporarily sever sympathetic bonds without removing organs but this is a relatively weak ability that simply causes numbness or cramps. This is rather difficult to pull off, however, because she still needs to be able to reach the organ she is aiming for.
Birth Place / Hometown: Manta Carlos City, Manta Carlos Island
Occupation: Police Department Forensics Scientist, Manta Carlos Hospital Surgeon (Part Time)
Father: Bernard Ashworth (Deceased)
Mother: Filomena de Santis (Deceased)
Sibling: Michael Tyler Ashworth (35) Starlight Academy Staff
Biography: Michelle was born into the main branch of the Ashworth family as the older of a set of twins and thus was declared the family's primary heir. As a whole, the Ashworth family tended quarrel amongst itself when it came to money due to its large size. Not all of its members had powers and the distribution tended to be one in four, so those who were lucky enough to be born with had more of a claim. Despite this, Michelle and Michael largely stood aloof from the interfighting during their childhood to early adulthood. To them, the entire issue was their parents' problem. Their only job for the moment was to complete their education at Starlight Academy.
The early years went by almost blissfully as few things went wrong outside of the family quarrels. The twins had a mansion to spend their days in, money to spend, a loving set of parents, and a bright future ahead of them. Because of the nature of their powers, they decided that their next destination was medical school. They went together because, well. Why not? To Michelle, Michael was the only person she could fully trust. She looked out for him, he looked out for her, always. During that time, there was little that could be accurately summed up in words. It seemed like the bond between these two siblings was perfect.
However, partway through graduate school, their father become ill from the stress of fending off their extended family and died. Grief-stricken, their mother, unknown to anybody, formed a friendship with a mysterious woman who kidnapped and murdered her. Having been on the island for so long, their mother had thought herself safe from harm but was unfortunately mistaken. To her family, however, it seemed that she had simply disappeared one day without a trace. And then, wasting not a moment of time, the elders of the other Ashworth branches seized the opportunity to drain the twins' inheritance as they struggled with academic and emotional burdens. After a short time, the drain became noticeable as checks started to bounce.
Michelle was incensed and decided to challenge the elders. She took over the mansion that their parents had lived in, seizing all of their holds on Manta Carlos and keeping it out of the hands of selfish adults. Everything else, though, was tied up in the dispute and in the following years, her efforts were thwarted time and time again. After some time and lingering suspicions, she was eventually able to deduce that her brother was behind this but decided to turn a blind eye to it and never confront him. She merely drove onwards as she normally did but his sabotages privately caused her pain.
As she struggled to deal with betrayal from all sides, Michelle found herself drifting away from her brother for the first time ever. At first, it was easy to simply blame academics for the divide. Both of them were too invested to ignore the endlessly stream of work that found itself in their inboxes so Michelle took refuge in that chaos. Feeling emotionally alone, she decided to pursue the leads behind their mother's disappearance but was met with a cold case that was becoming more and more frozen by the day.
Still, Michelle persisted. It was what she did best, after all. She all but lived in three rooms across the island: her bedroom, the forensic labs, and the emergency room. Eventually, after having spent enough time with them, law enforcement offered her a job, which she was hesitant to accept. She thought that she had too little experience in that and so, right in the middle of graduate school, she did what any other reasonable person might have done and started a new major.
It was horrible and awful. For those years, Michelle had virtually no life beyond her work. She spoke to nobody except when she needed to. She saw nobody outside of her usual routine. She did nothing that did not need to be done. She cut out the redundancy from her life. She handled family quarrels on paper and electronics, shoving procedures at as many officials as she could. There was no more time to be thinking of how anybody felt. She wasn't even sure she wanted to keep going this direction anymore but because she had started, Michelle thought that she had to end it, too.
She graduated. She graduated twice. She did more work. She kept up the cycle. Somehow, she ended up with two doctorates, one medical and one in forensic science -the result of the largest period of high intensity concentration in her entire life. People whispered mixed concerns, one about how she was too successful, another about how her health in every aspect couldn't possibly be still completely together. Michelle ignored them all.
She pushed on and on until one day, the person who couldn't take it anymore was herself. Michelle can't remember exactly what it was but Michael probably said something, did something at the wrong time and wrong place. At that point, it was like a mirror had suddenly shattered. Instead of it being just her, the world had another person in it again, who was similar but not the same. Years of avoiding the issue boiled up and Michelle lashed out furiously.
She underestimated Michael. It was understandable, really. At this point, they were almost like strangers, having drifted so far apart. She forgot that if they were so alike, he would have had to be just as stubborn. So they fought and afterwards, there was simply this period of dead silence. They went their separate ways again and for a while said absolutely nothing to each other, stewing in the silence.
But it had to be resolved eventually. As in the case of her quarrel with the elders, Michelle had started something and she had to end it. So she went back. The ensuing confrontation began stiffly, before prompting dissolve into a disgusting mess of tears and general sentimentality that neither twin will ever speak of again because it was that ugly.
And after that, things were almost all right again. Their bond didn't bounce back to what it had been, ever, and certainly the change didn't happen overnight. But it eventually evened out to something that paralleled where they had been before and Michelle found that it wasn't bad.
It was fine. They were fine. Everything was all right again.
Additional Information: Have you seen Poppy's character? That's the younger brother!
Bernard Ashworth had minor teleportation powers. Filomena de Santis was the paternal aunt of Paschalis de Santis. She had the power to craft silk. The mysterious woman is The Duchess.
The twins own House Upon Haven Mortuary in addition to the mostly empty mansion left to them by their parents.
