Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Mutant Haven Utopia. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Locked Topic
Dryad; Callie Anne Betto
Topic Started: April 29, 2015, 9:26 pm (184 Views)
Alison
Member Avatar

DRYAD
Posted Image


Full Name: Callie Anne Betto
Code Name: Dryad
Age: 22
Gender: Female
Physical Description: Callie has bright pink skin and pointed ears. She also has brown eyes and red hair, normally worn curly but sometimes straightened. Callie is small busted, of thin build and delicate in appearance. While she can be quick to smile, often her expression is one of silent thought. Callie usually wears clothing in earthy or natural shades, such as green or browns. She leans towards old-fashioned clothing but will usually wear whatever is available, whether it be t-shirt and jeans or a dress. The one noticeable quirk, however, is the absence of shoes. Callie is ALWAYS barefoot no matter what the weather, as it allows her to bond more easily with the natural environment and harness her abilities.
Playby: Emmy Rossum


Personality Overview: Callie thinks of herself as a messenger of Mother Nature, to repair the damage done to the natural world. Because Callie’s plant communication ability has no ‘off switch’, she is constantly subjected to the voices of any plants around her. It isn’t that she is clinically insane, simply that she experiences a constant stream of sensory information that her mind is not able to fully process. As a consequence, Callie developed a form of dissociative identity disorder [split personality disorder] where her mind has splintered into two distinct personalities as a way to cope with trauma.

Callie’s true personality is characterized by a bubbly nature and a sweet disposition. When in control of her own mind, she can be many things: sensible, funny, optimistic, sweet and indulgent. Her upbringing among a large extended Italian family taught her to value family and simple comforts above wealth and fame. She likes to impart generosity by gestures such as writing a thankyou note, cooking a meal for them or using her powers to create living works of plant art. She adores making things with her own hands and considers herself a somewhat talented cook, enjoying baking and making traditional Italian cuisine.

However, Callie has faced a lot of trauma in her life. While as a child she was relatively isolated by her family from the bigotry directed at mutants, as she grew older this became harder to ignore. The death of her last immediate family member due to not only a possible Mafia connection but also a hate crime finally pushed Callie’s mind to split, the prejudice and cruelty of the outside world around her already too much for her to handle. She pretty much gave up trying to fight. To try and cope, Callie’s second personality sought refuge in her powers and the delusion that nature had chosen her to be their champion, if you will.

When in this second persona, Callie’s behaviour and personality both change. Because Callie has no ability to filter or block out the voices of plants because of her trauma-induced lack of control, she is constantly bombarded with voices of the plants around her. This constant stream of information takes its toll on her sanity, driving her further into her powers to try and make it stop. This vicious cycle continues for as long as she is being influenced and can abate once she is removed from any areas with plants in them. Once Callie is under the influence of her powers, she finds it hard to concentrate on anything other than what is being broadcast. This often makes her appear unresponsive to others, confused or even mentally unstable. It seems to those who may be observing her that she's talking to the air and herself, but she's actually talking to her plants.

Callie firmly believes that her plants are her children and she treats them like that; singing to them, stroking their petals, kissing them and so on. She will often refer to them as her ‘babies’ and woe betide anyone who damages or hurts one of them. When influenced by her powers, Callie’s ability to control her emotions and the consequences of these outbursts are non-existent. If she believes she or her plants are being threatened, she will not hesitate to lash out with anger and will not recognise friend from foe. To be completely truthful, Callie is traumatized. The plant world is something that is comforting to her and will always be there for her, a safe refuge in the hell of reality.


Powers:
Plant Control: Callie can impart limited movement and self-awareness to plants. The plants obey simple commands and possess rudimentary communication and senses. Callie can also make plants under her control grow nearly instantaneously. For example, she could force a seed to sprout immediately, even in the absence of normal nutrients. This power does not change the natural abilities of the affected plants; it only enhances them for a small period of time. Once her influence wears off, they revert back to normal without any indication that they were anything otherwise.

Plant Creation: Callie can copy existing plant life in her immediate vicinity and create new ‘copies’. This new life can only possess characteristics that are intrinsic to its physical structure and only possess sentience if Callie chooses to give it to them. This sentience is always easier to achieve with a copied plant than an original and will leave it once Callie’s influence ceases. Otherwise, they remain typical plants. This ability draws heavily from her physical state, sapping her energy and vitality the longer she uses this.

Plant Communication: Callie can speak with plants. Anything that has a vegetable physiology can be affected, such as grass, trees, flowers and so on. Different plants pose different levels of resistance, as each plant has its own differing cellular structure which impacts on how much mental energy Callie must expel in order to communicate. The less cellular complexity the plant has, the easier Callie finds it to be. If she doesn’t focus on a single plant or mass of vegetation, the voices will create a chorus of noise in her mind that only she can hear or understand. This power is permanently on and cannot be muted, driving her mind to varying levels of sanity depending on the amount of plants nearby.

Plant Mimicry: Callie can duplicate the natural abilities of plants or alter her physiology to become any plant form within sight. The altering of her pshysiology could be as simple as growing thorns out of her arm to use for protection , as complex as turning into an oak tree or anything in between. Generally the less of her body she transforms, the easier it is. When in plant-form, she is immune to attacks that specifically affect animal life [nerve gas, mind reagents, biological illnesses such as swine flu] but is vulnerable to attacks that affect plant life [herbicides, napalm, agent orange, pesticides]. This ability does, however, require the availability of water, air, and sunlight. While she is in an altered physiological state, Callie’s internal organs also mutate to mimic the normal functions of that plant. This is by far the most dangerous aspect of her power, as it leaves her extremely tired when shifting back. It also makes her mind simpler, leaving her more open to mental attacks. The plant form she takes determines her energy levels, thought processes and movement. She also must be careful not to spend too much time in these forms, as the longer she stays in these forms, the harder it is to transform back.

The biggest weakness of all Callie’s abilities is her own mental state. If a mental link between the controller and the plant is broken without her will or permission, Callie will be mentally and physically harmed. Any serious damage to plants nearby could send her reeling, even physically hurt her if the damage was severe enough. For example, while she would not feel sizeable pain from people walking on a patch of grass, she would be harmed if the same person started to mow the lawn or set fire to it. If plants she was connected to were killed, it would send her into physical shock.


History:
Callie was born in Venice, Italy. Raised mostly in Tuscany and Sicily with holidays to other regions and to nearby countries such as Greece and France, Callie was raised not only by her parents but also her very large extended family. What marked her out as a mutant was her appearance; pink skin and unusually pointed ears. While her father was a mutant with plant-based powers and it was expected that she might carry the mutant gene, Callie's appearance at birth was still a surprise. Italy was, on the whole, an altogether happy time in Callie’s life. When Callie was seven, however, the family moved to the US. One night, the whole family went out to dinner at a local restaurant. The waiter refused to serve them on account of Callie's obvious mutation, so they left and drove towards the nearest McDonalds instead. They had barely driven a few yards when a drunk driver crossed into their lane and rammed into them. The impact killed her mother and severely injured Callie.

After the funeral, Giancarlo retreated into his work and Callie into her schoolwork. While she loved school, she was often bullied by others because she looked different. Her father was often gone on jobs around America so he left Callie in the care of his mother. Nonna helped raise Callie until she died when Callie was fourteen. Callie attended the funeral and burial then stayed back to say her goodbyes. Falling to her knees in front of the newly dug grave, she burst into tears and begged her grandmother to come back. As she cried, her mutation manifested as the tree they had planted next to her grave began to grow and burst into blossom. Sadly, the outside world didn’t see it that way. It wasn’t just the bullying at school that eventually drove Giancarlo to move back to Italy, or the opposition from the Catholic Church. It was the prejudice in everyday life. Callie was 16.

Sadly, even Italy failed to provide a safe haven. While Callie was looked after by family, kept ‘away’ from the outside world with the excuse that it was safer, Giancarlo rebuilt his business with fatal cost to himself. Late one night, his premises were burgled while he was working late. The next morning, his body was found in his office with the word ‘Mutant’ scrawled above his body in blood. Nobody said anything about the crime and nobody avenged his death, keeping silent due to the ingrained local code of Omerta. Sent away to a distant cousin in Sicily, Callie mourned alone and slowly began to lose herself into her abilities. Plants were the solace she needed, as the world outside was too cruel and heart breaking to face. Her cousins property was isolated and remote, vast tracts of olives and orchards and rice fields where she could commune with plants and not be seen by outsiders. But mother nature is dangerous and unstable and Callie followed in those footsteps when she almost killed one of her second cousin’s husbands with her abilities, when he disturbed her communing with a olive tree grove.

Nobody knew quite what to do but salvation came in the form of a Charles Xavier. He arrived on Sicily a few days after and sought them out, unfazed by their warnings about Callie. Instead, he recruited her to take up a place among mutants on Utopia.


Optional Information
Likes: Nature; open spaces; earth; colours; plant lovers
Dislikes: Lies; plant cruelty; hospitals; the cold; being restrained
Fears: Fire; Losing abilities
Goals: Bring about the healing of nature; avenge fathers death; control abilities
Family: Giancarlo Betto [father, deceased]; Maria Betto [mother, deceased]; Apollonia Betto [Nonna, deceased]; Extended family spread across Italy; Alessandro and Graziella Fatorre [godparents]
Skills: Botany; polyglot [fluent in Italian, Greek, Latin, English and French]; cooking;
Offline Profile Goto Top
 
1 user reading this topic (1 Guest and 0 Anonymous)
« Previous Topic · X-Men · Next Topic »
Locked Topic