Amery Hayes
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| "I'm right here." | |
| Amery Hayes | |
| Player: @Peripheral | |
| Origin: | Mutation |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Security Level: | Confidential |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Amery Lee Hayes |
| Known Aliases: | N/A |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 17 |
| Height: | 5'11" |
| Weight: | 155 |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Etoilian |
| Occupation: | Student |
| Place of Birth: | Port Oakes |
| Base of Operations: | Port Oakes |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Claudia Hayes (mother, deceased) |
| Known Powers | |
| Forgettability, teleportation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Hand-to-hand combat training | |
| Equipment | |
| N/A | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
Personality
Amery is awkward and often appears detached. She displays blunted affect, rarely expressing herself through gestures or tone of voice unless overwhelmed, and is uncomfortable with and largely incapable of articulating her own emotions even when called out on them. She usually speaks in brief, direct phrases, repeating parts of them into a refrain when asked to elaborate. Despite this and her abilities making going unnoticed easier than building relationships, Amery tends to seek people out. Simply being in the same area as and acknowledged by someone seems to be enough for her, but she has started to make occasional attempts at small talk. She is also fascinated by cats and regularly saves part of her food for strays.
She tends toward pacifism, insisting that everyone matters and no one has to die. She hasn't clarified how far her definition of "everyone" extends, but she has compared the idea of killing any of the cats she feeds with killing a person.
Physical Description
Amery has light brown skin, curly brown hair, and brown eyes perpetually hidden by her goggles. She is tall and lean, though her insistence on oversized men's clothing tends to hide her build. Her favorite brown coat has been meticulously repaired but is still showing its age. She keeps her hair cropped short, and though practice has made the result more even it's hardly an appealing haircut.
Powers and Abilities
Amery is eminently forgettable thanks to a field of suggestion that directs attention away from her. When deflecting at full force, even people with a good idea of where she is have a hard time keeping track of her. The eye wants to slide away and everything else is just so much more important to notice. The effect is much less pronounced in her daily life, though people do tend to forget if she's nearby or not. She often needs to announce herself before others are aware she's entered a room, and even some people familiar with her have a hard time remembering she's present if anything distracts them. On several wards' recommendation, Amery has taken to wearing a bell around the home to give some warning of her arrival.
She is a competent teleporter and can take a limited amount of extra weight with her. Her ability to complete any jump depends on her familiarity with the intended end point, knowledge of its location relative to the starting point, and how much extra weight she's carrying. Amery is not aware of her maximum teleportation distance and prefers to travel in multiple short jumps, reorienting herself quickly after each. Traveling this way lets her gauge each jump by sight instead of needing to know the area well beforehand.
Thanks to her training with the Order, Amery is proficient in hand-to-hand combat. Unbeknownst to her, a psionic wall keeps others from reading anything involving the secret of Father Gerard Henri's Home for Wayward Youth from her mind... though keeping focus on her mind long enough to try could be a tricky proposition.
Weaknesses and Limitations
Though for most purposes Amery can be functionally invisible, she will still appear on camera or other mechanical means of detection and it is possible for some people to resist the effect through mental effort or natural immunity. Interacting too much can also break the illusion. She can teleport with a considerable amount of extra weight if needed, but trying to travel too far with too much weight can exhaust her to the point that she is incapable of completing even a short jump successfully until she's rested.
Amery operates according to a sometimes paralyzing personal code. Presented with multiple things she "has to" do, she may be unable to choose any option but recusing herself and living with the consequences. One effect of this is that, though she will fight to protect others, outside of designated training sessions she is slow to react to physical threats to herself. She would almost always prefer to let an assailant call off the attack or to remove herself from the field than to engage. This tendency to play chicken has yet to backfire, but it does leave her open.
History
Amery had a relatively peaceful upbringing in Port Oakes. Neighbors and teachers tended to overlook her, leading to a quiet, isolated life that mostly suited her. Her mother worked hard to provide for them, and Amery occasionally "helped" by shoplifting items they needed. After her mother's death, she disappeared. Amery spent the next few months drifting around the island. On the occasions she was caught shoplifting or trespassing, it somehow never seemed important enough to actually arrest her. She was eventually discovered near Father Gerard Henri's Home for Wayward Youth and offered food and a place to stay in exchange for helping with "chores," the popular euphemism for work in the Home's secret Order.
The area around the Home has had a persistent stray cat infestation since shortly after her arrival.
