(no subject)

[driftingashore]

CHARACTER STUFF
Name: Feferi Peixes
Aliases: None she uses herself, although she may have been assigned some.
Canon: Homestuck (Feferi's page on the wiki)
Role: Escaped former Heiress to the Alternian Empire, currently not entirely sane undersea vigilante
Species: Alternian
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Appearance: Grey skinned humanoid, like most trolls. Black hair, usually a fluffy mess, yellow and orange horns, yellow eyes with still-grey irises, a grin like a shark. Has facial fins, and gills on her neck. Approximately 5'3", and on the slender side, almost too slender at the moment. Tyrian-pink blood, although these days she leaves it off her clothing and the jewellery at home, mostly dressing in grey and black. Very rarely still, unless she's angry. A number of very fine scars, from assorted assassination attempts, and near-misses in TRIDENT bases.

Origin story: Hatched 16 years ago, deep within the brooding caverns of Alternia. One of the highest-possible troll caste, a sea-dweller with tyrian purple blood, Feferi was born to be Empress. Unfortunately the current holder of the throne, Her Imperial Condescension, really didn't want competition. Fortunately, by the time she learnt of Feferi's existence, Feferi had already bonded with the lusus for her caste; Gl'bgolyb, a vast, psychically powerful visitor from another dimension. Rumor had it that a truly upset Gl'bgolyb could end the universe, and it was true that a mildly-upset Gl'bgolyb's slightest psychic mutter could and had killed low-blooded trolls in the past.

As time passed, though, the Condesce grew more and more concerned about potential competition and less and less concerned about potential side-effects, and so Feferi became the target of infrequent assassination attempts. Attempts she kept mostly secret from the assorted friends she met online, for many reasons, except for the other sea-dwelling troll, whom she had formed a moirallegiance with.

Learning of Sollux and the other trolls' escape attempt, Feferi insisted on being allowed to come along; Earth seemed like a much safer place for her than Alternia, as it would be more difficult for HIC to get to her. Unfortunately, somehow HIC learnt of the escape plans, and on her way to the meeting place Feferi was intercepted by a last-ditch group of assassins. With barely enough time to send a message asking for help, Feferi was nearly overwhelmed by sheer numbers until Sollux came to save her. The ensuing fight was hard, but not impossible, but a last desperate attack managed to injure Sollux, nearly killing him. Feferi managed to save him, using her healing powers untrained to keep him alive, but she couldn't heal him completely. Still, she managed to get him to the ship, and they left Alternia together. Feeling responsible for his injuries, Feferi kept a close eye on Sollux during the journey. Over the next two months they grew close, eventually ending up in a relationship.

When the group was separated, she managed to join Sollux in his tiny ship; when it crashed into the ocean, she was separated from him, too. Thrown some distance from the crashed ship, by the time Feferi found the wreckage again Sollux was already gone, the only things giving her hope the traces of his removal from the wiring and the complete lack of a corpse. Staying nearby, it wasn't too long before she found a TRIDENT submarine approaching the wreck, and managed to follow it back to one of the many TRIDENT bases on the bottom of the Pacific ocean.

Desperate, unwilling to leave behind her matesprit if there was any chance he was still alive, she risked attacking the base. Sollux wasn't there, but there was a laboratory for experimenting on people. Enraged, Feferi killed the scientists, setting free the test subjects and healing who she could; although most of them were terrified of her, one approached her anyway. Mostly rebuffed by the language barrier, he nevertheless managed to communicate with her using hastily cobbled-together sign language, and Feferi managed to pick up a few very basic words of English. Unfortunately, she found no signs of Sollux.

Since then, she's basically repeated the same thing a number of times, with varying levels of success; attack a new TRIDENT base, see how far she gets. If successful, let anyone go she doesn't find actively engaging in harmful activities. Heal the prisoners, let them go, learn a few more words of English. Fail to find any more than the barest traces of Sollux, if anything. Over time, she's managed to keep a couple of contacts, who've shown her how to use the TRIDENT computers to stay in touch with them; one of them recently sent her a message to tell her that a troll matching her very vague description of Sollux had been seen in LA, leading Feferi to make a Network post.

Personality: Feferi is usually cheerful, optimistic and energetic, and she is frequently smiling and laughing. This effervescence has a darker side, though; whilst a lot of her humour is based around replacing common words with fish puns, or making metaphors based around the sea, she also seems to sometimes find humour in vicious jabs at other people. Her cheerfulness can also be at the expense of other people's feelings; unless it's Sollux, she seems to be lighthearted even when other people are being serious, and will obliviously ignore other people's emotions even as she's glubbing about feelings. Sometimes, too, her bubbly exterior slips away entirely, revealing something far more serious underneath; this never lasts long. Very few things bother Feferi, least of all her own possible death, except for the part where to die now would leave the Empire in the hands of its current rule for that many more years. One of the few things that can make her truly drop the cheerful exterior is to threaten or harm the few people she is close to, especially Sollux, or to mess with anything she's taken responsibility for. She's also capable of the odd moment of dignity, if the occasion calls for it, but usually doesn't bother.

That's not to say Feferi is completely mean and heartless to those she doesn't know well; she does care, but more in a general way. Before the escape, she spent some time thinking about how to make life fairer for the Alternian underclasses, and one day hopes to return to implement those plans. She wanted to reduce the amount of trolls killed for having mutations or disabilities or being old, and to introduce a better way of caring for those trolls who couldn't care for themselves. She also refused to let her lusus go hungry, as to do so could kill millions of trolls. It is debatable whether or not she feels guilt for having to kill other trolls and their lusii in order to feed Gl'bgolyb, but certainly it is something she took very seriously, which indicates at least some level of remorse. Having discovered TRIDENT's views on experimental subjects, she's also made a habit of freeing them whenever she can, and healing the worst cases.

Feferi takes her responsibilities seriously, but does not consider herself superior to others in most respects. Indeed, she seems to take offence to anyone who declares themselves better than others purely because of birth: she finds her fellow sea-dwellers' tendencies in that direction very irritating. She has declared herself to be no better than anyone else, regardless of the fact that her blood colour places her higher in the hierarchy than any other troll save her ancestor. As previously mentioned, though, she planned to make a lot of changes during her time as ruler of the trolls; she understands that power means responsibility. Her place on the hemospectrum means very little to her, save as a means to an end; she will become Empress if it's the only way of changing things, but she won't capitalise on her blood on Earth if she can help it. She also has developed a skewed but strong sense of justice during her year of fighting TRIDENT; initially seeing Earth as a haven, she has come to understand that it too has problems, and she is trying to fix them in her own way.

Feferi also rarely shows fear or apprehension during any event, instead channeling her energy into fixing the problem; most usually, she gets angry instead of afraid. She can attack without hesitation if she is convinced it is the right thing to do, without taking into consideration her own safety; she can also kill (and has), although she tries not to unless she catches someone mid-cruelty. This does mean she can be stubborn and headstrong; she is perfectly capable of carrying out an action she knows full well she has been banned from, or one that is not usually considered good by the vast majority of those around her if she thinks it is. She also sometimes has a tendency to see reality not as it is, but how she wants it to be, which can lead her into trouble. This last trait occasionally comes across as wilfully ignoring danger signs in people around her, and sometimes just failing to spot dangerous character traits in people.

Differences from canon: Mostly, Feferi is 3 years older, and much more scarred than her canon counterpart, in a number of ways aside from the literal. She's had an extra two years of responsibility over canon, and she's had to take it somewhat more seriously too, without the horrorterrors to tell her that Sgrub is going to make it all not matter. She's had to survive a number of serious threats to her life, and she's probably even more blase about it than her canon self. She's also spent a year as basically a lone vigilante desperately searching for Sollux at this point; she's angrier than her canon counterpart, and more likely to show it. Because of all of this, she's also had some of the edges rubbed off her optimism and cheer (and puns), and she's slightly faster and slightly more likely to slide into serious mode. She's also expanded her responsibilities to cover humans, because someone has to, right?


Power level: B? Feferi's capable of some real damage when she wants to be, and her ability to heal makes her even more formidable as a melee fighter/tank, but her powers are actually inclined more towards the defensive. Not that she uses them that way, mind.

Powers:

Sea-dwelling troll: Horns, fangs, presumably slightly better than average night vision and related photosensitivity, tougher skin (not bullet-proof, but tougher to injure), amphibious, capable of enduring great amounts of pressure and presumably blunt-force damage, very fast swim speed.

She also possesses super-strength, and is easily capable of lifting or towing about 40 tons of weight, or jumping approximately 30 feet straight up, especially from water.

Due to her position on the hemo-spectrum, she's also relatively immune to psychic powers, especially actively harmful or malicious ones, although passive ones may still pick things up.

Feferi possesses the ability to heal, although she finds healing others much easier than healing herself, and even then it takes her time. Most of her ability is in healing open wounds; she can stop bleeding relatively easily, even major bleeding given a minute or two. She's also capable of fixing burns, bruising and broken limbs, although she does find it a little more difficult. She's not capable of fixing old wounds, however; anything that has healed naturally but wrong and her power simply isn't effective. She also has no effect on poisons or diseases, and her power simply isn't strong enough to deal with injuries to internal organs.

Weapon: The Ψdon's Entente, a double-ended trident (2x3dent) generally seen in the context of ceremonial culling fork, and practise using it, although not necessarily training. Her fight style mostly revolves around having a really big heavy trident and the speed, endurance and strength to give as good as she gets.

Team affiliation: None currently, but vehemently opposed to TRIDENT

First person sample:

[Someone's posted a recorded video message to the Network. Slightly blurry, it's focussed on a single grey figure, who is far too close to the camera to be seen clearly until she takes a couple of steps backwards, when it resolves into what anyone who's seen one can identify as a troll, between the skin, the yellow eyes, and the obvious yellow horns curving up out of way too much black hair. She looks off-screen at something out of frame, and smiles, revealing a whole lot of very pointy teeth.]

On? Go?

[There's a weird bubbly sound to the words, almost a chirp underlying them, and a weird glubby glottal stop before some of the es. Someone says something in response, although it isn't clear, but it must be confirmation, because the next thing that happens is that the figure straightens up, looking seriously straight into the camera.]

I am Feferi! Come to Earth. Lost... fronds? Looking.

[Something inaudible off-camera again]

Friends. Not good with words. Important L-EAV-E M-ESSAG--E IF S--E-EN!

[The language changes, to something much more alien, recognisable as Alternian to anyone who's heard enough of it to recognise it.]

(H-ELLO! This is Feferi! Someone glubbed they heard someone who looked JUST LIK-E SOLLUX was seen in...) Los Angeles? (That's a really weird name! If any of you see this video floating around, L-ET M-E KNOW IF YOU'R-E ALIV-E! I might not be able to stay in one plaice for long, though, so leaving a message might be a good idea! I hope it was you, Sollux. I've been looking for you for AG-ES!)

[She steps forward and to the side, and the room behind her is a little clearer; it's what clearly used to be a very sterile lab, although now there's a lot of mess everywhere, mostly broken lab equipment and some amounts of what might be blood. A TRIDENT symbol is clearly visible on the wall, before the feed cuts off and the video ends.]

Prose sample:

She doesn't usually get this close to cities, or even really land. For one, she's still technically hiding; alone, even on Earth she'd make a pretty good target if someone was really looking for her. For two, from what she's managed to pick up from the two or three humans she's kept in contact with, humans don't always approve of some of the necessary things she's done in her life, and they might even cause trouble if anyone finds out. So mostly, she sticks far enough out she's hard to spot. There's a whole lot of ocean empty of intelligent life, after all, and she's not exactly a massive target.

This time though, she'd managed to injure the giant water reptile (oddly greeny-grey, rather than white like it should be), but not kill it. It had got its own bites in, bites she'd had to stop and heal, and by the time she caught up again it had swum into the middle of what looked like a harbour for a whole bunch of silly tiny flimsy human boats. Why humans built such tiny easily-broken things without even a harpoon or two to defend themselves with, she didn't know, but she supposed that didn't actually matter right now. What did matter was the panicking deadly lizard, and the fact that the humans on those boats were basically defenseless, and it was kind of Feferi's fault it was panicking and here.

"IT'S ME YOU WANT!" she called in Alternian, swimming closer and trying to distract it from hitting anyone else. "I'm the one who hurt you! Me!" After another half a second, she remembered she was surrounded by humans, and added in very heavily accented English "H-ELLO! I am H-ELPING! Not shoot!" At least, she thought those were the right words for this situation; she'd also finally gained the dinosaur's attention, meaning she wasn't really able to concentrate on her faltering human language skills.