Fern Zimmerman

[Merle]

IRC Nickname: Merle


Name: Fern Zimmerman
Alias: None at the moment
Age: 21
Date of Birth: April 15th,
Hometown: Maupin, Oregon

Height: 5'7"
Weight: 129
Hair Color: Auburn
Eye Color: Blue/Brown
Nationality/Race: American/Caucasian

Occupation: College student. The major she's working towards is one of a Livestock Biometrician: the measurement and recording of the physical characteristics and traits for use in subsequent indentification of animal husbandry and production.

Personality Profile: Fern has an easy going attitude - she's outgoing and cheerful and friendly to anyone. Strangers, new places, and people seem to delight her - she's always up for a friendly conversation with anyone who talks to her. She loves learning and work and gives it her all. Somehow, she always manages even in the worst of times to come up with a joke to toss out of her pocket to lighten the mood of those around her. Fern’s always willing to lend a shoulder to someone who needs it, or offer them five bucks to get a cab home after a binge-fest.

Unfortunately, Fern can come across to many people as if she isn’t taking anything seriously in situations of high stress and danger. The worse and more desperate it gets, the more upbeat she seems to become. It can sort of get downright annoying... rather along the lines being forced to stay in an enclosed room with a cheerfully singing canary.

Physical Description: To be honest, Fern is a an Eastern Oregon country-sort of gal. Her shoulder length hair is often haphazardly tucked behind an ear for as long as she can keep it that way, but really, it usually ends up scruffy and falling down over her eye, which she nevrer seems to notice. Freckles splash across the bridge of her nose, standing out against her light complexion.

Looking at her, she’s got the good, well-muscled physique of a girl who rides regularly and grew up tossing fifty pound sacks of feed around her parents' cattle ranch. Tends to dress in T-shirts and jeans and comfortable short paddock boots or cowboy boots. She loves cowboy hats, too and has quite a few. Fern usually wears a pair of dark glasses, and this tends to hide the fact that she's odd-eyed (sectoral heterochromia.) One eye is blue and the other is marbled blue and brown.

Most of the time Fern has her clothes code-tagged to tell her what color they are but sometimes she wears some really awful color combos when she's not paying attention or in a hurry. No one should mix red plaid and day-glo orange, no one. It's not a pretty sight.

Character Picture (Optional): Later!


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Mutation/Powers: Audiokinesis (Sound Control)

Primary : Active/Passive Sonar -- Fern can use her sonic powers as echolocation, and sonar. By sending out a precise pitch and listening to the returning, altered wavefront of the note, she can evaluate her surroundings with varying degrees of resolution. This allows her to move in complete darkness as if she was in broad daylight with 360 degree vision- and to move around so that you might never know she was blind. She generates ultrasound waves via her larynx and emits the sound. This sound is amplifed through her teeth and jawbones - she doesn't have to open her mouth to generate it, and most humans will never, ever notice it. Some animals give her some mighty strange looks though, and dogs seem to be especially interested in her. There is no color to this "sight" - only shades of grey, that depend on the density of the item.

Fern can also tighten down this ability to shriek out an extremely high-power sound wave that can disrupt and/or destroy the eardrums of a target, and cause severe pain or disorientation. This is usually sufficient to incapacitate a person or animal. Usually the target experiences nausea or discomfort. Fish, bats, and marine mammals seem very susceptible to this for some reason. It does no damage to buildings or objects, but man, it'll totally mess up a microphone and blow your speakers past 11.

Secondary : Ventriloquism - After hearing a voice, Fern can imitate it perfectly to the point where even sophisticated electronics can't tell the difference - this talent only works on women's voices. She can also throw her voice so that it seems to be emanating from somewhere else or some other person, animal, or random potted plant. One of her favorite tricks to do is to talk for her dog Red as if he was included in a conversation, but only around people she knows well.

Tertiary : Selective hearing - this enables Fern to focus upon, enhance, or totally block out one given sound in her environment. It shields her from the effects of her own scream, and makes her a rather acute eavesdropper in surveillance situations.

Drawbacks/Weaknesses/Side Effects : Fern is blind. If there was injury to her vocal cords, or you managed to block her sonar from returning to her ears she'd be completely, utterly incapacitated in any visual capacity. Also, the common cold tends to cause her to lose her voice and have to rely entirely on her dog or a cane.

Fern can become saturated by high-volume, high-sound areas, and unable to tune into her own frequency at times. When this happens, it instantly returns her to a visually blind state. This has happened in places like airports, concerts, downtown New York rush hour traffic, and of course, detonating dynamite. In these situations she has to entirely depend on her dog Red to guide her safely through.

How do you believe this character's powers will further develop in the future? With practice, teaching, and time, Fern will likely be able to use her powers for acoustic resonance. The classic example of this is breaking a wine glass with sound at the precise resonant frequency of the glass. She will be able to find the resonant frequencies of objects such as glass, wood, concrete, stone, metal, and cause serious structural damage or catastrophic failure within them. At some point, her powers will mature to the point where she could blow out large sections of windows, crumble bricks or concrete, or shake apart a mechanical object, such as a car or a truck.

However, this is a very long way up the road, and she will absolutely have to start with small, easy things to break -(like the mentioned wine glass.)


Background: Fern's parents own a working cattle ranch in Oregon -- it's tight sometimes, but they get by. She grew up among hard work, horses and cows, and lived a perfectly normal childhood in that regard. She's loved horses from an early age, and has always been involved with equestrian sports like team penning and sorting.

At sixteen, Fern had a bad fall from a spooked horse and smashed her head on the gate to the arena. She was wearing a helmet, and seemed all right. Within a week, she woke up completely blind due to cavernous sinus thrombosis, (the formation of a blood clot within the cavernous sinus, a cavity at the base of the brain which drains de-oxygenated blood from the brain back to the heart.) She'd gone completely blind, and while the doctors struggled for six months to see if they could restore her eyesight, there was unfortunately no change.

Fern was determined not to let this change her life too much. She still rode and refused to quit that at all - her cutting horse didn't need a person to see to cut cattle. Fern still worked on her parents' ranch, learning to do things without sight, how to get around places, to do the chores, go to school, keep with routine. Within a year was paired up with her seeing eye dog, Red, and they immediately blossomed together and are fantastic partners.Soon, the two of them were cheerfully humming along, taking the bus, bopping around downtown and the local college campus.

It was during this time that Fern found that while she was humming to herself, she felt almost as if she could make out shapes around them. Surprised, she soon found that the more she hummed and chirped and talked to Red, she started to recognize familiar shapes, familiar places, things like people on the sidewalk and garbage cans on the corner.

The more she practiced, the clearer these things became, and soon she didn’t have to hum at all, it simply happened. It soon became apparent to her what was happening, and while she's kept her powers quiet and under wraps - except to her parents, who know and support her wholeheartedly, she finally decided that it was in her best interest to apply to Cobalt to learn more about her powers and how they worked. She's had to take out a personal loan for this.

Fern works part time, doing on-line catalogue work for several cattle companies, using text to speech software.

Quirks, Extras, Random Character Facts: Fern has a Seeing Eye dog named Red - which is sort of funny, since Red's a blue merle Border Collie. Strangely enough, he too is odd-eyed, one blue and one brown, on the opposite side of Fern's. Red will always be in harness and working alongside Fern; wherever Fern goes, there he is. He's a well behaved, polite dog that knows quite a few handy tricks like pressing elevator buttons and picking up dropped books.

Red also plays a mean game of frisbee on his off hours. For that matter, so does Fern.

Fern is an accomplished equestrian. She's not afraid to clamber up on any horse. Enjoys doing outdoor physical activities, including, hiking, skijoring - (which is a dog sport on cross country skis.) She adores country music, audio books, and good sushi. Does not drive.

Fern also loves to go out to the movies, but tends to like to go with someone else. That way she doesn't miss out on the sappy, no-talking parts.