"I never really believed in destiny - I know it's there, I know it exists, and I also know it doesn't control me. I was destined to have this power, but I worked hard to own it."
Name: Iris Valeria Sharon Nicolai
Age: Currently 22
Birthday: September 17
Gender: Female
Category: Student
Class: College, working at the post office to fund herself
College Major: Chemistry, skipped a bit
Appearance Description:
Refer to above. She wears sneakers. Occasionally has a hat on.
Personality Description:
Iris did not get to Starlight and skip a few grades because of sheer, deus ex machina levels of talent. She got where she is through hard work, and no matter what it is she works on, she gives it her all. It may seem like being straightforwardly earnest about everything, but she does choose what she works on.
No matter the situation, Iris is cheerful and positive, though she never lets it get to the point of foolishness. Her optimism is tempered with realism and pragmatism, so that when she encounters a problem she is not perturbed, as she knows that she can find a way to fix it. Time and time again she has proven that even through the hardest things she can still smile and quip.
She is easily approachable and easy to get along with due to her naturally trusting nature that insists on looking for the good in people. While some may call it gullibility, she calls it something else entirely even if she herself cannot deny that she makes it too easy to get in her good graces.
Her being chipper and friendly in general tends to attract a lot of attention, both romantic and not. She only pays attention to the latter; romance is something she does not put much thought into, reasoning that she'll know it when it happens.
Though often kind and reasonable, she has mean moods every now and then. She is also quite sarcastic and snarky, but her tendency to laugh her sarcasm off makes it obvious that she means well.
Powers:
Main Power - Latent: WHAT KIND OF POWER IS SOUL ANYWAY?
Iris is an otherworldly being of unspecified nature that not even she is aware of. Her true nature is that of a very powerful soul with nigh-absolute dominion over spirits and spiritual matters; her full potential could easily let her tear souls asunder, banish them from existence, or even create them - but since these are spiritual powers, she cannot use them for as long as she has a physical form. Ergo, she has to die before she can even access most of her abilities.
Main Power - Manifested: YOU BRING OUT THE BEST AND THE WORST IN ME
What she can use of her powers though is a peculiar ability to bind spirits together. She can connect two souls, and when two souls are connected a barely visible line of light purple stretches from those people's chests, connecting them to the others.
While people are connected, Iris can grant them access to the attributes of other people in the connection, which includes skills and abilities, as well as characteristics. If for example one person in the pairing has good emotional control, or is happy, the other person can also access that trait. If one person has a certain ability, such as a way with machinery, the other person can also use that. However, borrowed traits and abilities are weaker than their original, and the lack of experience may make it jarring for those who do not have the foresight to borrow the experience as well.
At any time, connected people can return what they borrowed by plucking the binding away from their chest. If they do not, it will automatically disappear after 24 hours. Only four people may be affected directly by this soulbond ability at a time.
Should she wish to, Iris can also force attributes or abilities from one person in a pair onto the other. If it is forced, it has greater power and effect, and the recipient cannot disconnect from the pairing without Iris's permission. This is usually used when she feels particularly mean and wants to give someone a taste of "being in less fortunate shoes". These "donations" only last a maximum of four hours.
Sub Power:NOT SURE HOW EXACTLY SOUL POWERS GIVE ME WINGS BUT WHY NOT
The biggest hint to Iris's inhuman true nature is the pair of translucent wings on her lower back. They are a dull universe in color and covered in feathers, and they let her fly at a moderately speedy 50 miles per hour. She suffers a lot of dizzy spells when flying that fast though. She can hide these wings should she wish but they come out when she is surprised or flustered.
Biography: Iris hails from a long lineage of animancers - magicians and scholars of souls and spirits - reaching back millenia ago. Technically.
In actuality, her family is as normal as any other, though there is the very minor detail that they still push through with the pursuit of animancy. As the years have passed and the blood of their heritage thinned with each passing generation, their magic and influence grew weaker and weaker until it got to their current state where the people are no more magic than regular people.
Iris took this family history in stride; when she learned of it she set to work on recovering some of the family's former glory. Of particular interest to her was an artifact modeled after the Egyptian Eye of Horus, said to be a powerful item in the occult. She studied it for several years, starting in her late teens, consumed by an all-powerful drive to unlock its secrets.
Her passion (or some would say obsession) did not escape her parents's attention. It split the family in two over time, as her father disliked her "wasting her present on the past", while her mother was all for restoring their family to the limelight. For two years the schism festered in her home until it reached a boiling point and things seemed to be on the verge of breaking.
Having realized that her focus on the past was driving the present to hell, she did the unthinkable and poured even more work into her studies. There, before her family could break, she managed to achieve a breakthrough and unlock the power of the Eye, both satisfying her mother's desire to see even a vestige of their past glory previously known only through tales, and her father's desire to see her cease focusing on animancy and live unbound to history.
What Iris did not realize is that she did not, in fact, unlock the Eye in any sense - rather, it was a seal on her capabilities set by her favorite grandfather long ago. Her own powers were simply unleashed and even if it was only a small portion of her full potential that came back, she still holds quite a bit of power. Her grandfather had two seals put on her upon birth, one of which was the Eye, and the other was an enchantment buried in her very blood that would release only upon her death.
Iris found out of her grandfather's connection to the Eye and tracked him down (which involved mostly e-mailing him and asking for an address). Over a weekend vacation in Vermont he told her of what he had done and explained that she wasn't quite fully human. The revelation shocked her... for all of two minutes. Afterward, they went skiing and let the matter lie once he told her things about how to use and or abuse her powers. Iris then bade farewell grandfather, came home, and worked on getting her parents to get past all the harsh things they said and did while debating over her future.
The first thing that greeted her when she came home was a letter from Starlight Academy that she promptly denied, stating that she will go there on her own terms and using her own capabilities. For her planned move to Starlight, she began to explore her abilities on top of studying extensively for entrance exams, almost exhausting herself to dangerous degrees at some points.
As soon as her family's relationships were fully reforged and her abilities were explored, she left. A year after her gaining her powers and receiving the first letter, she contacted Starlight Academy and was accepted almost immediately.
Two years have passed since then.
Additional Information:
She works as a mail carrier in Manta Carlos. With the allowance she receives from her parents back in Long Island, she doesn't particularly need the salary but she prefers to have more money and likes the job.
She has two cats in her apartment in downtown Manta Carlos named Fluffle and Werbenjaegermanser.
She has a tendency to bump into things or people while spacing out.
Her tolerance for horror is rather low.