Name: Jessica Ericson
Codename: Whisper (A pun on The Animal Whisperer)
Age: 19
Date of Birth: 10-09-96
Height: 5'3
Weight: 115 lbs
Hair Color: Warm Chestnut Brown
Eye Color: White-Grey (Blind)
Place of Origin: Fort Bragg, North Carolina
Nationality/Race: Caucasian
Classification/Origin of Powers: Mutant
Status: Resident
Occupation: None at this time
Personality Profile:
Jessica is a very caring person to those that she calls friends. Usually it takes some time for her to open up to new people only because she has become so accustomed to people whispering about her or treating her as though she were a fragile doll about to break. She is very open minded to others lifestyle choices and would never impose her own views on others nor judge.
Physical Description:
Jessica stands at 5’3 which is slightly shorter than the average day-to-day female in the real world although not so much shorter that it would be seen as an oddity. She is a fit girl without much muscle mass but no unhealthy BMI either. Her hair is long, down to her mid-back, with slight waves but not curly and a warm chestnut brown. She wears no bangs so most of the time she keeps her hair back in a clasp so she doesn’t have to continually push it off of her face. She is usually never seen without her dark sunglasses on, even when indoors, due to having milky white-grey eyes. Jessica prefers to wear t-shirts and comfortable fit jeans with Sketcher stretch shoes. She always has one of two things with her, either her 3 year old Labrador or her collapsible cane. Both of these help her find her way about the world, especially in places she’s never been before.
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General Power Information: Animal Manipulation
Ability One: Communication With Animals
She has the ability to speak to and be understood by animals as well as hear and understand what they are saying in turn. As animals do not have the same mental faculties as humans their way of speaking is very basic. For instance, if she asked her k9 companion if he likes someone the response may be something akin to “She pet me! She smells like biscuits!”. To which she would take that as a yes, the dog likes her.
Ability Two: Seeing Through an Animal’s Eyes
This is a power that she does not yet have but I would like to have in the future as part of her power growth. She would have the ability to see through her K9 companion’s eyes and see what he sees as he sees it. As time goes on she’ll then be able to see through any animal’s eyes of her choosing. This is a two step power growth for a later date.
Ability Three: Complete Control Over An Animal
This is the last powers expansion that she would gain in the future. Once her powers have peeked she will be able to take over the consciousness of an animal to make them do anything she wishes as if their body was her own. Only one animal at a time due to the drawbacks listed below.
Drawbacks & Weaknesses:
Communication With Animals – It is sometimes hard for her to tell if a human is speaking to her or if an animal is speaking to her. She hears both voices in the same way, as if they are outwardly spoken. As she is blind it sometimes takes a while to determine if a human is speaking to her or an animal. Also, if she is in a park she can hear every animal within normal hearing distance speaking all at once (even if it’s not to her but to one another). This can cause her to have headaches that can sometimes become migraines.
Seeing Through an Animal’s Eyes – The vision she gains can sometimes be too hard to interpret. As she was born blind some things she may see won’t at first make sense to her. Also, the vision she sees is much like tunnel vision and not peripheral vision. Meaning she can see dead ahead but things to the side that the normal human eye can see is dark and fuzzy unless the animal turns its head to look in that direction fully. When she leaves the animal’s vision and goes back to her own she is dizzy for a period of time as her own equilibrium takes over. The length of time she is dizzy is dependent upon the amount of time she was looking through the animal’s eyes. Time out minus ½ time in. Meaning if she’s looking through the eyes of a bird for 10 minutes she is dizzy for 5 minutes. 1 hour will leave her dizzy for 30 minutes, etc.
Complete Control Over an Animal – This is the most draining on her. If the time period she is taking over is short lived (20 min or less) it will always leave her drained as if she’s swam a great distance for a long time. Her muscles will ache, her head will throb, her throat will be dry, her heart will race and she’ll be over all tired. If the time period she is taking over is longer than that it can even cause hospital level dehydration and blacking out once she returns to her body. This dramatic of an affect may become less with practice and discussion with Ops.
Skills:
Award level cooking, explained below.
Background:
Jessica was born on October 9th in Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Her father was in the Air Force and stationed there with her mother. They had only been married for a less than a year before her mother found out she was pregnant. The Ericson’s didn’t have a lot of money but they did have everything they needed, a roof over their head and food in their bellies. It wasn’t until Jessica came into the world that they discovered she was blind. Blood clots had formed within the artery of the eye that traveled up the optic nerve and as such denied the eye vital blood supply during a time of delicate development. This caused parts of the inner eye to not form, so while the outside of the eye looks normal (save for the coloring of the iris), the inside of the eye wasn’t fully connected.
The doctors told her parents that there was no way that they could surgically address the blindness and that Jessica would have to learn to live with this disability. Both of her parents decided that her blindness would not become a disability but only a way of living. They were very understanding and patient with her as she grew up, teaching her to compensate for a lack of seeing. Through touch Jessica learned to read and through her hearing she learned to pay attention to details that others may take for granted. Of course there were always some children who pointed and asked questions when she was a little girl but Jessica was never shy about answering them to the best of her ability.
As a teenager things became more difficult. The questions and pokes turned to snickers and teases. The once outgoing girl became more self reflecting and quiet. Although she’s never been shy about her lack of sight, hearing the continual jokes took its toll. Her parents thought that perhaps seeking the church may help. While Jessica’s mother was very Christian, Pentecostal, her father believed in God but had no particular religion he claimed. Every Sunday like clockwork her whole family would dress up and attend church. For Jessica it was always strange to be there as she could hear the speaking in tongues and the yelling of the pastor. For her it was as if she traded one yelling for another.
By the time she was fourteen she had gone to three different schools until deciding on home schooling. While at home with her mother she was taught not only academics but how to cook as well. Her mother adored cooking a variety of things and wanted Jessica to learn how to do so as well. Using her finger Jessica learned how to measure with measuring cups, the outside of which the numbers were raised and easily tangible. She took to cooking rather well and even began to experiment with certain recipes. She loved going to the store with her mother, all the while getting very good at feeling out ripe vegetables by not only touch but scent. Cooking was one of the few things that truly made her happy.
Yet this joy also was short lived as 2 years later, at sixteen year old, she began to develop her powers. At first she thought the voices she was hearing was from other people in the room she hadn’t noticed were there but this quickly turned out to not be the case when at home with just her and her parents she’d hear another voice.
The voices she’d hear were always childlike and simple minded. Her parents began to worry about her greatly and it wasn’t until Jessica was alone in her room that she started to realize the voices she heard were those of animals, one in particular. She had a puppy at that time, one that was in the beginnings of training to be a Seeing Eye dog. It was his voice that she heard speaking. She noticed when she pet his belly that he’d say things like “I love you, I love you, this is awesome, I love you!”. After a time she started to notice that it wasn’t only the dog she could hear but other animals as well. She could hear the birds outside her window bicker over who gets the cherries from the cherry tree, “mine! No mine!”
Although Jessica now found the voices to be amusing, her mother found it to be too much. Perhaps it was the disability while growing up in combination with the powers that she grew into but her mother wasn’t the same. She barely spoke to her anymore and when she did it was in short sentences. The tone of voice she used lacked the loving high points it once had and her mother always seemed to be fighting with her father over every little thing.
When she was almost eighteen her mother and father got a divorce. Jessica stayed with her father. Her father was a blessing during rough times and never once wavered from showing her love and attention. It was his idea that she start looking into places that may help her learn her new abilities strengths and weaknesses. He’d heard of a place in Massachusetts that catered to helping people like her. So with her father’s urging and now the age of 19 she packed up some clothing and a few belongings that she thought may be hard to come by and they both traveled to Massachusetts. Once there her father got a job as a security officer and an apartment in Salem. Jessica decided to stay on the grounds of Cobalt Hill, leading us to today.
Criminal Record: None
Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts:
Although Jessica wears a small silver cross around her neck on a slender chain (usually tucked under her shirt) she avoids talking about religion whenever possible. Even to the point of avoiding saying “Oh God” in a sentence.