Basic Information

Full Name: Quintessence Ethel Dover
Nickname(s): Quin, Tess, Tessa
Power Name: Alchemy
Age: 16
What Am I?: Ronald McDonald

Appearance

Celebrity Claim: N/A
Hair:
Quin’s hair is a wild piece of whatever, in her opinion and so she lets it grow whichever way it pleases. She pays little attention to the style of it and often you’ll find it brushed about roughly, thrown over her shoulders as if it was a fuzzy brown ferret, or possibly pulled back in a sloppy half-bun. It’s middle-length, cut bluntly, and the thickness of it keeps her head warm. Often her cousin likes to experiment with her hair, and because of that, Quin sports side bangs that are currently growing themselves out, along with layers.
Eyes:
Like her hair, Quin’s eyes are brown, a warm type of shade that often looks like the fur of a dark Burmese cat. Depending on her mood, her eyes can look flat and or lively, warm, and very much like chocolate.
Body:
Quin is a bunch of averages. She’s average height for a sixteen year old, at five foot six inches and she’s shown no signs of growth so that’s probably how tall she shall stay. She’s average weight as well at 125 pounds. By no means is she a skinny, knobby type of creature. She has a good amount of flesh on her bones and has always been a lover of food… so yes, every now and then she’ll put on a few pounds and have to run it off. (How boring, she thinks!) She’s not much muscle, honestly, and could probably be easily bullied by someone taller than her.
Usual Clothing:
Clothing… Quin doesn’t really care. Much like her hair, she feel as if she has more important things to do than spend hours picking out clothes. Because of this, her wardrobe is plain and simple. She likes darker colors, browns, blacks, navy blues, and she pretty much wears jeans with whatever top she picks out that day. She’s most comfortable in converse.
Distinguishing Features:
She always wears something metal, even if she has other accessories on. In particular, she wears a rather delicate looking silver chain with a locket on the end. The locket contains no picture. Other things you’ll usually always see her with is a ring on her finger which appears to be a cheap little mood ring.
Her dimples are trademark and are deep set in her cheeks. You’ll know if she’s really happy if her dimples show when she smiles.

Family

Mother: Natalie Ethel Dover is a strong working woman at the age of 47. She’s a chemist and often does research on this and that—whatever needs to be done, she gets done. As a woman “gifted” herself, she can relate to her daughter and they are very close.
Father: Vincent John Dover, 57. He’s ten years older than his wife but more livelier and also a scientist, specializing in quantum physics. His relationship with his daughter is more of an awkward one, and he has yet to understand teenage girls.
Siblings: No siblings, though her parents had expected a little baby boy (John) before they lost him in a miscarriage.
Other Significant Relatives: Carly Murlarkey is her 24-year-old cousin who is also gifted and a graduate of Crystall college

Short Bio:

She seemed perfect to them, but of course she seemed that way… the little baby had two very enthusiastic parents and they couldn’t help but feel proud of their baby, even if she had a big head and was a bit of a whiner so far. (Really, would she ever stop crying?) But because they saw her as perfect, and because they were scientists, they named her Quintessence: the most pure and concentrated essence of a substance. The most perfect embodiment of something. She was the quintessence of their life.

How they would come to laugh at how the name would later come to define her… even more exactly. Funny how life worked that way.

Quin was a lucky sort of girl and her life has little tragedies. She was born with rather quirky people who spoke too much about things a little girl couldn’t understand. She was awkward in her elementary years, too much of a dork to make many friends, but she made a few and it was enough to keep her happy. And her childhood was one filled with knowledge, something Quin would come to adore. She loved books, and she loved her parents’ books even more than the ones she would check out of her school library. They said things her mind couldn’t grasp, but the pictures were of bubbling vials and colorful stars and so she spent her time looking at them and wondering what all the words meant… and how it all came together in the end.

The only bit of loss that she experienced was the loss of her unborn brother. She was eleven and found herself confused and scared when her mother fainted in front of her while they were making sandwiches on a Saturday. When she began to bleed all over the floor, Quin panicked and ran out of the house, retrieving the next door lady to “fix the problem” for her. Her mother could have died… and sometimes that still pops up in Quin’s mind. “My mother could have died. If only I had acted sooner and maybe I would have eliminated the possibility.” Afterwards, she had to watch as her mother grew depressed and there wasn’t much Quin could do.

Then her powers popped up. It wasn’t an exciting occurrence, though it was unexpected. Though Quin knew her mother was gifted, it never even popped into her head that she could have powers as well. It happened at school when she was listening to her teacher lecture the class on the victories of Julius Caesar. Quin wasn’t exactly paying attention, having read the chapter the night before, and so she was fingering the chain on her neck as she doodled math equations on her papers. If she was going to zone out, she might as well concentrated on the math test she was having the next period…

“Quin, I always thought your necklace was on a silver chain.”

“Mm?” Quin looked up at the slight whisper at a fellow student who was staring at her peculiarly. “It is.”

“It’s gold.”

“It’s not.”

“It is.”

Quin looked down at the chain and instantly, she felt frozen in her chair. It was gold, and it glittered as if it had been freshly polished. “Well. Uhm. Guess I put on the wrong necklace this morning…”

Of course she hadn’t. Her power had manifested and it looked like she had the Midas touch. Or…something of that sort…




Friends

Room-Mate: None
Best Friend: None
Other Friends: None
Boyfriend(?): None
School Popularity: At the moment, she’s a five, because she’s a little mysterious, a little cute, and very new. But as soon as all the hype dies down, her popularity will quickly drop to a 1 or a 2. She’s no social butterfly after all… more of a hard-working caterpillar…

Personality

The Good:
Quin is like her parents: academically brilliant, confident, and driven. She knows her goals and works hard to get them, and because she’s so focused, she usually speeds ahead in courses and achieves those goals quicker than others her age. Her rationality and her determination help her pull all-nighters and her natural patience makes her a good tutor for struggling students. And she’s no shy thing—she’s very good at speaking her mind and she’s able to express herself clearly and logically.

The Bad:
“That’s what she said!”
”I don’t understand… what did she say?”

For all of Quin’s academic brilliance, she is beyond socially capable. She’s like a fumbling fawn trying to run before she tries to walk. Her ignorance is clear when it comes to pop culture and because she’s clearly too logical, she never understands when a joke is supposed to be a joke. People have to explain it to her, over and over and over again, and soon they get tired of even trying.

“It’s actually spelled with an e.”

Quin is smart, but she’s also an annoying smart aleck. She’ll correct someone without even thinking twice about it. And she simply thinks that that’s what they want. She can quickly come off snobbish and overbearing and she is a bit snobbish in reality. Because she knows she’s smarter then most people and she’ll say that to your face. To her, it’s a fact.

“We have to do it over. I can do it better.”

A ridiculous perfectionist, she pushes herself as hard as she can and won’t stop until it is her definition of perfect…and that rarely happens. A 99 is not good enough. She needs a 100. When she does fail at something, it severely damages her self-esteem. She wonders “How could I have failed? Am I not smart enough? Am I not good enough?” When working in groups, this can make her, again, annoying and overbearing.


The Ugly:
Quin goes into overdrive when under pressure. She simply can’t handle a situation where she has to make a split-second decision. She doesn’t stop—she goes too fast and often causes herself to go into a nervous breakdown, stuttering things that don’t make sense, trying to work out the problem even when the problem is over. She’ll obsess over that one moment of her weakness for months.

Also, she can be easily convinced to join the other side if someone uses logic to convince her that they are right. If they approach her with hard cold facts and evidence to back up her claim, she’ll easily switch her loyalties.


The Unknown: Quin is a secret romantic, something she is deeply embarrassed about. She was raised by a feminist mother who is adamant about women’s rights and is disgusted by chivalry. Quin, on the other hand, has romance novels tucked away, and dreams of her knight in shining armor. But she’d never tell that to a soul.

Other Information

Best Subject: Her affinity for science is really unfair, as her parents plotted from the start to make her a big science geek. She’s excellent in science or math class and honestly, gets As in any academic class.
Worst Subject: Any class dealing with combat or physical movement. She hates it, she’s terrible at it.
Status: Student
Powers: Matter manipulation (To Quin, metal manipulation)

Power 1: To put it broadly, Quin’s power is a big one and she can take any substance and turn it into another, as long as it isn't a living substance. This power has a lot of potential, but she doesn’t know the extent of her powers and only recently discovered them. So she is limited to the manipulation of metal. She can only change one metal substance to that of another metal substance. (Such as silver to gold, or vice versa.) She can also reshape the metal—as in, she can take her little silver chain and through some practice, she can change it into a silver pocketknife. She cannot make metal appear from thin air though, and has to have a metal substance with her. She can’t manipulate it from a distance and has to be touching it. But she can use it in both solid and liquid form and is immune to poisonous metals like lead. A fun little perk that comes with this is she can tell if gold or silver is fake if she touches it and considering she can turn things into gold, she’s never out of cash.
(Her power is pretty similiar to that of Edward Elric's from Full Metal Alchemist, if you know what that is. Another example would be metalbending from The Avatar. Just... two quick references to clear up any confusion. ^^; )

Sample Roleplay:

“Ah, what can I say! My little girl is growing up so quickly!” Mrs. Dover wrapped her arm around Quin and pulled her tightly against her chest before burying her face (and crushing her already crooked glasses) into her daughter’s thick nest of hair. Quin squirmed a little, if not from habit then because of the sudden glances strangers were throwing her, before laughing off her mother’s show of affection.

“I’m sixteen Mom. Not six.” Quin pushed her away softly before wringing her hands awkwardly in front of her. “I have to go or I’ll miss my train.”

“Will you call?”

“I’ll call.”

“And you’ll write?”

“If I have time.”

“Will you have time?”

Quin paused. “Yes. I’ll get all my work done, so I should have time. Mom, I have to go.” Quin picked up her bags and swung one over her shoulder. She stood crooked as the weight tipped her over like a seesaw. “Tell Dad I love him.” Mrs. Dover nodded to her daughter and gave a slight wave of her hand before Quin spun on her heels and walked away.

As the train whistle squealed in her ear, Quin stared absentmindedly outside her window at the gritty tracks and roughed-up concrete. The world seemed to spin by rather than race, and the blur of colors did little to interest her sharp mind. She thought of taking out a book for the right. But she found herself fixated on the window, for some odd reason, most likely do to some subconscious reason. Subconscious is a tricky thing. I’m sure it’s trying to tell me something.

But there was a lot on her mind, and maybe it was reflected in the mess of the scenery outside the window. She was alone, for the first time in her entire life. No parents to guide her, to aid her, to talk to her. She was awfully close with her parents too, and she could already feel the sharp pang of homesickness. She longed for her adorably embarrassing room, even with it’s robin’s egg blue walls and tacky drawings of the night sky. She longed for the smell of crisp cleanness that her house achieved. They were naturally clean people after all and the house always smelled like it was new, fresh—maybe a little bland, but the smell was so familiar to her nostrils that Quin didn’t care. Now she smelled a bunch of other objects, like food, baby powder, lotion, a sharp carpet cleaner. Too much, her brain seemed to say. Too much.

Quin sunk low in her chair and then lifted up the chain around her neck, rolling it around in her fingers. It was because of this chain that she was leaving home. How could such a small action, such a small object, change her life? Quin was excited about her ability, yes… but she was wary as well. What did it mean for her? This chain had singlehandedly reworked her destiny, rearranged the way she viewed herself and now Quin was at the crossroads. It all sounded so dramatic, so promising. She couldn’t help but think that she was going to be disappointed.

Hmm... I can't get the image to work either...maybe it's protected by Flickr?

Private Tutor: Healer Jared Micks (m) - Metal Manipulation
Year: Mercury