Mikistli

Name: Mikistli
Age: 22
Birthday: August 2[sup]nd[/sup] (?)
Gender: Female
Species: Alter-ego Hybrid (Human/Feathered Serpent)
Category: Student
Class: College
Grade: 4[sup]th[/sup] year
College Major: Undecided


Appearance Description:

• ~With a height of 5'2" and a weight of barely 99 pounds, you can tell that Mikistli is your average everyday latin girl, if not a bit smaller than usual.
• ~She has a slender build, and this mixed with her height and weight makes her look a bit more fragile than she really is.
• ~Her skin has a rather pale coloration, with several black tattoos all over it. The most notorious ones are over her eyes and two on each side of her face, on the cheeks.
• ~Her eyes are blood-red with black sclera and are easily comparable to those of a viper thanks to the shape of their pupils.
• ~Her teeth are extremely sharp and curved slightly backwards, her upper fangs are just like those of a rattlesnake, she even can fold them against the roof of her mouth to avoid hurting herself with them or being forced to keep them poking out of her mouth all the time.
• ~Before you ask, yes, she can produce venom at will. Be warned, she injects the venom in almost all her bites, dry bites are extremely rare.
• ~To match her fangs, she has a forked tongue. From time to time she may flick her tongue in a snake-like way. Thanks to her tongue she has a small lisp, and though she had learned to avoid it almost completely most of the time, in certain occasions she may drag the "S" a bit, making it should like a snake hiss. Both the flicking of her tongue and her lisp are related to her mood.
• ~Her flesh and blood are naturally pitch black. This is easily covered up by her pale skin, but you can see this without the need of wound her at all when she talks, since her tongue and mouth are completely black (Just like that of a black mamba).
• ~She has two wings covered in black feathers, with several blood-red feathers scattered between them. Their length and strength, mixed with her height and weight, allow her to fly freely through the skies at high speeds and even do a couple of tricks if she wants to. If she decides to fly at a calm peace, letting the air currents do almost all the work for her while keeping her wings almost completely immobile and fully open she can stay on the air for fairly prolonged amounts of time.
• ~She has a fairly long and strong snake tail covered in black and blood-red feathers, with some especially long feathers making a fluffy tuft at its end. While flying she uses the tail to keep her stability and balance, thing that has proven to be a huge help when fighting strong winds.
• ~Instead of hair she has some feathers that share the same coloration as the ones on her wings and tail. Usually these are mostly flat, only their tips lifting on a slight curl. When she gets angry or annoyed she may puff these a bit, just as a warning before attacking.
• ~She has some smaller blood-red feathers around her wrists and ankles.
• ~She has several scales on her shoulders, upper arms, back, neck, cheeks, forehead, upper nose and sides of her head. The predominant color is obsidian-black, but blood-red scales are scattered between them.
• ~They maybe don't look like it, but her feathers are quite soft, probably softer than any bird's.
• ~It's fairly hard to tell how she feels or what is her thinking, since she usually keeps a rather neutral expression, she is a perfect actress as well, so she can fake emotions easily. She only shows her true feelings when she feels like it.
• ~She likes to wear lose black clothes. Her clothes may have a couple of red or grey designs here and there.

Personality Description:

• ~Opportunistic: Mikistli isn't exactly trustworthy, she will do whatever is needed to achieve her goals, even if that means that she'll end up betraying the ones that helped her to do so. She will take whatever opportunities she can find, not really caring who can come out affected by this. If it benefits her, the rest of the world can die for all she cares.
• ~Aloof: She's of the silent unfriendly kind, the aura surrounding her being a bit too dark and dense, thing that makes most people think it twice before daring to talk with her. Most conversations with her are quite one-sided, unless you manage to catch her interest of course.
• ~Cold thinker: She rarely allows her heart to rule over her head, carefully thinking and evaluating the circumstances of whatever she may or may not do, always picking the option that she believes that will have the best outcome.
• ~Cautious: Mikistli would never throw herself head-first on any kind of situation, always being careful around anything new until she knows what is it or what it does, and how to handle it.
• ~Stubborn: It's extremely hard to make her change her mind once she decided something, and even trying can end in a lethal bite from her part just to make that person shut up at once.
• ~Resentful: She never forgets, and even less forgives. Once you do anything, no matter how harmless, she will always remember it, there are no exceptions to this rule.
• ~Vengeful: If you did anything bad enough, she'll be constantly hunting you down until you pay for whatever you did...with really high interests. You really don't want her as your enemy.
• ~Pessimist: For her, the world is a dark place full of hatred and betrayal, where none can be trusted and everyone will stab you in the back as soon as you lower your guard.
• ~Patient: Her patience is quite surprising, being able to stand huge amounts of almost anything you throw at her without even showing signs of anger or annoyance. Be warned though, just because she's patient it doesn't means that you are out of danger. All the other way around, the more you push her limits, the more you dig your grave. Pray to God (Or any deity) that she doesn't snaps.
• ~Second chances: Probably inherited from Coatzin, she MAY give the ones that offended her a second chance, but not without a warning of course. Third chances doesn't exist here.
• ~Manipulative: She likes to manipulate the ones around her to get whatever she wants, and she has several ways to do so.
• ~Always alert: Since she sees the ones around her as potential enemies, she's always ready to counterattack. This may make her look a bit paranoid from time to time, but it has proven to be fairly useful.
• ~Protective: Towards Coatzin. Yeah, I know it seems strange, since they are alter-egos and all that ying-yang stuff. But Mikistli knows perfectly that, even if they don't like to admit it, they are completely different girls but also the same. In other words, if Coatzin dies, there is a really high chance of her dying as well, and consequently she needs to keep her safe.
• ~Prideful: Her pride is a bit too big, to the point where if anyone even scratches the surface of her inflated ego they immediately fall into the to-be-killed list.
• ~Power-Hungry: She's always seeking for ways to make herself more and more powerful, but it's quite obvious that she will never be satisfied. She knows perfectly that she's trying to fill a bottomless cup, but she can't care less.
• ~Gamer: Coatzin introduced her to the world of videogames, and now she's just as stuck in it as her. For her, the more violent the videogame, the better.

Species Abilities:

Flight (Feathered Serpent): Fairly self-explanatory, her wings give her the ability to fly and even do countless aerial tricks, while her tail gives her good stability even against strong winds. Being strong enough to hold a good amount of weight, she can carry one fully grown human on her back without much issue, though carrying anything heavier will start to cause her issues to fly correctly. It would also be worth to mention that if the feathers covering her wings get harmed enough or wet, she won’t be able to take flight, and if her tail is harmed or loses it somehow her stability will be seriously hindered.

Venom (Feathered Serpent): She has a very powerful venom in her fangs that she can inject at will, though sometimes the injection can come out as an involuntary reaction to fear or anger. Without treatment, this venom is always fatal with the ability to kill a fully grown human in approximately five minutes.

Shape Shifting (Feathered Serpent): This is the ability that Feathered Serpents have to change between the form of a full human and their true full Feathered Serpents form. She, given her hybridization, has a third form which is her hybrid form and the one she likes to stay more time in as it feels way more natural than the other two. Her human form is quite similar to her hybrid form, just without scales, feathers, tail, wings and tattoos, as well as black hair and red eyes. Her full Feathered Serpent form is a fairly big obsidian-black winged snake with the same arrange of feathers on her wings, head and tail, having a length of 36 ft. In her full Feathered Serpents form she can’t speak at all, so she can only communicate through body language or through her mind if the creature she has around has any way to read minds.


Powers:

Blessing of Death: The ability allows her to control corpses, no matter how old or how fresh, kind of like zombie slaves. The best way to know if she's controlling these it's to see straight at their eyes. If the corpses eyes (Or its eye sockets if the corpse doesn't has eyes anymore) will be glowing red. When controlling them she can either allow them to be free or control them. All of these are “re-killed” as soon as her control on them ceases or they corpses are destroyed (No shooting on the head here, you need to destroy the corpse beyond repair).

When she lets them on their free will the energy toll she takes is way less as she only needs a minimum amount to keep them undead, the sentience of these will be directly linked to the species of the creature, capping at the max intelligence the creature could have in life, and the state of decay their brain may be in. A fresh corpse will have their sentience intact, however, the more decayed the brain is the more feral and plain out dumb the corpses will be…and if the brain is completely gone at the time she revives them they will be slow, dumb, unpredictable and basically…useless in most ways. Think of those without brains as a zombie from an old bad movie where nobody knows how the zombies are even a threat to the survivors to begin with. Given the small energy toll this decision has she can rise higher numbers this way, but she is often cautious about this option as an undead with free will can turn on her without second thoughts.

She often likes more the option to take over the corpse’s mind. To achieve this she first needs to hold a mental battle with the undead, a battle she doesn’t always wins. During this battle she will need to focus on them and break their will to take over, and while she does so she’s in quite a vulnerable state. The higher the intelligence of the creature, the harder it is for her to win the battle, and the more energy it takes her to maintain this control. Powers they had during their life preventing mind control or increasing their will also affect the battle against Mikistli. The intelligence its also related to the brain’s state of decay, allowing her to take control easily over those with no brain and turn them into way better soldiers than in their free will. Once the mental battle is over she no longer needs to focus to maintain control if she won, however, if she loses it isn’t uncommon for her to be too tired to keep fighting or even faint, so she needs to pick those she wants to control carefully.

Maintaining the creatures as undead and/or controlling them drains her energies constantly, and depending on both numbers and power of these beings she brought back from the grave the energy drain may be slow enough for her to hardly notice (Like a single brainless small sized creature on free-will) to quickly draining her energies on a minute if not less (Like trying to control the fresh corpse of a dragon or a big number of starting-to-decay human sized corpses). As she loses energy she will first lose the ability to control corpses (One by one in quick succession if she’s controlling more than one at the time), then the ability to keep them undead, and finally, if she refuses to stop using her power, in the moment the last undead under her control joins the dead once more she will faint on the spot. Just like anyone that gets tired through extreme workout, as her energies run out she will become slower, clumsier and overall more and more tired.

It’s also important to note that while she can reanimate corpses with magic powers, doing so will take way more energy than powerless corpses, and controlling them is way harder as well. The powers they maintain are also linked to the state of decay of the brain, the more decayed the less powerful they will be. A corpse without a brain, regardless of their powers in life, is void of any kind of magic.

Alter-Ego: Being an Alter-Ego, she has some special abilities unique to such creatures:

• Linked Souls: Because of the alter-ego relationship she has with Coatzin, their souls are tightly linked together, to the point where is impossible to tell if these souls are two separate souls linked through means that are beyond our comprehension, or a single soul that somehow is shared by two different bodies. This makes each other’s mind open to the others. Though it can prove helpful in means of communication, as they can talk to each other telepathically, it also can prove to be quite annoying as they no longer have privacy regarding the other. Feelings, thoughts, emotions, even sensations, are constantly shared between the two, luckily they can easily tell which emotions are theirs and which emotions belong to the other.
• Semi-Immortality: Mikistli can’t die directly, and if killed she would only turn into black smoke to be later reformed inside the mirror world. She would be stuck in it for a while as she recovers, which can go from a couple hours to even a whole week depending on how she died. However, if Coatzin dies she would instantly die as well.
• Broken Mirror's Curse: It only works at night and she also needs to leave the mirror world before dawn or she’ll be stuck in it for the whole day. She can use the mirrors as a way of transportation, traveling freely to whatever mirror she wishes, but none out of Coatzin will be able to see or interact with her for more than 20 minutes (Unless a spell allows them to) while she’s inside this mirror world. Being a native to this world she can find their way to certain mirrors quite quickly, however it can still take her some time to find the right mirror between all of the “windows” to the regular world that there are, especially if she's looking for a mirror she never had visited before (It can take her just a second or to to even a full hour to find an especific mirror, and it all depends on how well hidden is the mirror and if she had ever visited it before). The only mirrors she doesn’t have trouble finding at all are those in which Coatzin’s reflection is present thanks to the link she has with her.
  • The Mirror World

    Take the mirror world as a twisted, darker and somewhat confusing version of our own world. The laws of physics can be easily defied there and this causes places that are completely normal in the real world to become as logical as a surreal painting if not less, or be the closest thing to real a painting such as “Relativity” from M. C. Escher can be. However, from the regular world it only looks like a regular version of their word, simply mirrored, the barrier must be crossed to see how this world really looks like. Traveling across this world can be extremely confusing for any non-native creature and getting lost is way easier than you would expect, however, native creatures can move quickly through this world by taking advantage of the lack of true physics and cover kilometers in just minutes of walking if they know where they want to go. The whole place is covered in small or big “windows” that link to the regular world, these “windows” are actually mirrors in the real world. Objects that aren’t mirrors can also serve as windows as long as the reflection is clear enough, however, the barriers these impose are way harder to cross than the ones actual mirrors possess. It should be noted that both creatures in the regular world wanting to cross to the mirror world and creatures in the mirror world wanting to cross to the regular world need the ability to do so, which can either be achieved through help of a closely linked soul on the other side, an ability to jump between dimensions (Even if only these two) or a spell. It must be noted that not all mirrors ca be used to travel between the two worlds, as the mirror MUST be big enough for the creature to go through. Also those reflective surfaces that are not really mirrors will offer resistance to those wanting to cross, giving more than enough time to those around to either pull them back or shove them back in before they are are done crossing (The resistance is directly proportinal to the material the reflection is in. Its way harder to use a bar of steel to cross than foil paper, think of it as trying to jump through a wall made of that material, to break through steel you must be quite strong)

Biography:

Mikistli's birth is quite a mystery, was she born with Coatzin? Why she was born? How she was born? Nobody knows, and if she knows, she never had said a single thing about it.

Nobody knew that she existed until one night Coatzin saw herself in a mirror as a 5 year old, but instead of finding her reflection on the mirror she saw a dark being glaring back at her. Much to her surprise the dark being jumped out of the mirror, attacking her viciously with all the intention of killing her right there and then. Typical alter-ego enemy feelings indeed.

Mikistli grew with Coatzin, who kept her as a deep dark secret, at the beginning out of raw fear and later because she considered that everyone would think that she was crazy. She tried to avoid having big mirrors on her room to avoid the awful fights to death during the night. Yet, mirrors were part of her daily life anyways, so she obviously couldn't keep Mikistli away forever, and she knew this perfectly.

Mikistli spent almost all her life looking at Coatzin through the shiny prison of the mirror world, only being able to come out from time to time. After some years she learned to control her own abilities, mostly by watching her train with her dad, and soon discovered that she could communicate with Coatzin (As well as anyone else for short amounts of time) through the mirrors, no matter how big or small.

Things started quite badly, threats and teasing being their main topic of conversation whenever they saw each other. But as time passed by and both of them grew more mature, Mikistli's behavior started to change as she started to learn new stuff, going from lethal enemies to a weird kind of allies, being there to support each other whenever they needed it. What Coatzin doesn’t knows is that all this developed from an event where Mikistli almost successfully killed her, though just as she was already savoring victory she felt a sharp pain go through her whole body and several dark drops of blood fell on her hand as she felt herself being close to death. It didn’t took her long to piece two and two together, and realize that if Coatzin died, she would die with her too. This allowed Mikistli to earn enough trust from Coatzin to convince her to let her be free during several nights and stretch her wings.

They even started to play videogames with each other, even if they didn't like each other's choice of games that much, share books and just talk about common stuff. Most people would immediately think that this kind of peaceful relationship between alter-egos was impossible to achieve, but hey, they somehow managed to do so! Mikistli acceded to this relationship out of convenience at the beginning, but after so many years she started to actually care for Coatzin. However, being such a "Heartless Prideful Being" she'll never admit this, and if anyone tries to make her she's more than willing to bite them, inject her venom, dismember them and then throw that their corpses inside an active volcano to shut them up for good.

She was just as excited as her light counterpart to go to Starlight Academy, knowing that she would be able to learn a couple of things as well. She even convinced Coatzin to carry a small hand mirror everywhere on her backpack just so she could listen to the classes as well. During the nights se obviously planned to explore and make her own knowledge grow as much as possible, and sooner than later it proved fruitful as she discovered an old script belonging to an already forgotten pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican culture that let her know how to get free from the curse that had been her constant torment since she could remember.

After a long chat and even some manipulation from her art, she convinced Coatzin to go on the dangerous trip that would give her freedom. However, much to her surprise, the trip was way more dangerous for her than it was for Coatzin, and if it wasn’t for her semi-immortality she wouldn’t have been able to complete it as even in the mirror world there were countless traps placed specifically to prevent any alter-ego from reaching such destination that were way too effective. However, in the end the Smoke Mirror was shattered and she was freed at last.

Now she’s returning to Starlight Academy, no longer as a creature sneaking into class through a mirror that Coatzn carries around, but as a student as well.

Additional Information:

• She's Coatzin Yoliztli's Alter-Ego
• Given the alter-ego relationship she has with Coatzin, her light world counterpart is affected by her Soul Link power, however she doesn’t have the power itself as it is exclusive to Alter Egos, reason why it isn’t on Coatzin’s app.
• The antidote for her venom is extremely rare, however, Coatzin always carries some, so if bitten by Mikistli it would be an amazing idea to look for her before your time runs out.