Gabriela Adelita Mendoza - FIN
Apr 24, 2014 15:22:43 GMT -5
Post by Gabriela Mendoza on Apr 24, 2014 15:22:43 GMT -5
The BasicsName: Gabriela Adelita Mendoza
Nicknames: Doza (mostly reserved for military buds or people that close to her)
Age: 33
Orientation: Biromantic/bisexual. Sexual relationships don't come easily for Gabriela. She can hook up with people, but it usually stays within the realm of heavy petting.
Desired Rank/Job: Trainer
Powers: Peak Human Condition: Though none are superhuman, Gabriela's agility, strength, and speed are boosted. It is controllable, but it is there by default and Gabriela needs to make a conscious effort to dampen those abilities. Side effects include hyperactive metabolism, which is managed by larger food intake; attention deficit disorder; and lastly, slower healing times for injuries. This power is limited in that it is not superhuman, it is just the maximum level humans can achieve with extensive years-long training.
Play By: Daniella AlonsoThe DetailsHair Color: Brown
Eye Color: Brown
Any Piercings? Just her ears
Any Tattoos? The U.S. Marines emblem tattoo on her upper left arm
Any Scars? More than we have time to go over. The main ones are on her bottom lip (right side) from a split lip, burn scars on the side of her body from her left thigh up to the middle of her ribcage, and an old gash across her belly down to her right hip.
General Appearance:
Gabriela is just above the average height for women, and it doesn't stop her from wearing high heels. She has long, dark brown hair with golden tones, and it's usually either up in a ponytail or hanging loose. Her eyelashes are long, dark, and curled, and her lips are full and naturally tinted. At first glance, Gabriela seems to exemplify the ideals of feminine beauty. However, her strong cheekbones and straight jawline begin to reveal the kind of woman she is.
The first thing anyone notices about Gabriela is her posture. She stands up straight, sits up with a strictly vertical spine, and holds her head high. Her posture could be easily misconstrued as graceful, but what it truly can be described as is severe. She has the posture of a woman who has dedicated herself to discipline.
However, her severity doesn't restrain her from being traditionally feminine or from having fun with her appearance. She loves clothes and makeup, and her fashion sense is (for the most part) pretty on-par. She has an eye for color-based organization. Maybe she was a wedding planner in another life. It's really a toss-up with Gabriela; she's as likely to be in sweaty workout clothes as in a fashion scarf and floral dress.
Personality:
On a scale from social recluse to social butterfly, Gabriela falls within the spectrum of extroversion. She is someone who definitely gains energy from interacting with other people, and she loves experiencing new interactions with people. She's quite flirty when she wants to be, but the high standards to which she holds possible partners do indeed limit the actual execution of aforementioned flirtatiousness. She's more of the pizza-and-a-movie party type than the drug-addled-rave party type.
Gabriela is a very familiar person. When she interacts with people socially, she gives nicknames, tells jokes, laughs at her own jokes, and feels casual. Her friends would describe her as laid-back in the social sphere. She doesn't need structure or organization to her meetups with people, but she also doesn't mind making dates at specific times. She just enjoys spending time with people, whether that's scheduled or spur-of-the-moment. However, whenever she interacts with people in a professional arena, she is very cool-headed and matter-of-fact. She gets the job done efficiently and as quickly as possible while not sacrificing quality of work.
When it comes to high-brow intellectuality, Gabriela isn't your gal. She doesn't care much for the big picture or symbolic meanings behind words, events, or anything else. She thinks in concrete terms: what concerns her is what can get done here and now, with the least cost possible to the available resources. She's a pragmatist, not a deep thinker.
Now, that doesn't at all mean that Gabriela isn't intelligent. She may not be an intellectual, but she can finish a jigsaw puzzle in record time and her verbal lexicon has more words than the average Joe can shake a stick at. She simply doesn't care much about intellectual pursuits. She cares much more about physical prowess and emotional intelligence.
Furthermore, Gabriela is definitely someone who makes decisions based on solid logic and facts, not subjective opinions or emotional urges. She does trust her gut because it's saved her life plenty of times, but she understands that she should take a moment to think before acting. She can sometimes lack sympathy, because she's been through a whole lot and believes in powering through things. She's not someone who values hand-holding.
Lastly, Gabriela is stubborn and determined. She is a force to be reckoned with when she wants something, whether it's for herself or for the greater good. She is very practiced in discipline, so she can withstand a lot of waiting for things she wants.Your VicesLikes: Rain, guns, lipstick, training young powered people, the Corps, dating, friends, exercise, food (Chilean, Mexican, Italian, Thai), cake
Dislikes: Loneliness, cocky kids, cocky anyone, when people don't believe that she's ex-military, her burn scar
Strengths: Working out, running long distances, jigsaw puzzles, free association games, charades, hardcore strength workouts, jumping really high, rifles (assault & sniper), resisting pain
Weaknesses: Knowing when to quit, puns, self-esteem issues, getting defensive, secretiveness, skill with electronics/digital gadgets
Fears: Hail, thunder, driving, landmines, being alone, fire
Secret: She's had PTSD both times she toured in the Marines.Family TiesFather: Domingo Tomas Mendoza, 65
Mother: Fernanda Suelita Mendoza, 61
Siblings: Ricardo Bartolome Mendoza, 28
Any Other Important People: She has a yellow lab named BusterHistoryDomingo Mendoza, from the Yucatan Peninsula, and Fernanda Gutierrez, a woman of Japanese and native Peruvian descent, met by accident on a layover flight as they were both moving to the Bronx in New York. The two fell in love within hours of sleepy talking at the airport, and a couple months later, Gabriela was on her way into the world.
Gabriela was a very engaged child. She was outgoing and always excited, and once she had a little brother under her wing at five years old, she blossomed even more. She was always very protective of Ricardo, and often tackled his bullies for him on the playground. That would be just the beginning of her experience in physical combat.
In middle school, Gabriela wasn't sure where she stood, clique-wise. She loved her female friends and their girly slumber parties, but she also played video games with the boys and was even on the boys' soccer team. Things were mostly fine, though. There was some tension when she was caught between her male and female friends when they had drama with each other, but for the most part she avoided trouble and managed to escape the ostracization that many children face when they don't fit in seamlessly.
During high school, at around 15 years old in her freshman year, Gabriela began to sense something different about her physical self. She was stronger, faster, and more agile than anyone else on her sports teams, and what she considered to be pulling her punches landed a boy in the hospital with a broken jaw. Her powers were manifesting, and she wouldn't learn to properly navigate them until her time at Hammel.
Hammel got hold of her and took her into the mountains of Vermont to learn to control her powers. High school was a different ball game for Gabriela. She got into fights, sometimes hospitalizing herself or others, stayed out late, and partied quite often. She almost flunked out of her senior year, but her favorite Hammel teacher, a history teacher, who was also an ex-Marine, approached her at the end of first semester and told her that he had high hopes and expectations for her. He called her out on screwing up and told her that she only had one chance to make things right. She lifted her grades to Bs and As for the next semester and was inspired to enlist in the Marines in honor of her teacher.
Within two years of domestic service in the Marines, she had been promoted to Sergeant. Then, the September 11 attacks occurred in 2001, when Gabriela was 20 years old. That was the first time she experienced crippling loss. Her mother had been in the Twin Towers at the time of the attack for a job interview, and was killed in the attack. Before Gabriela had time to mourn, the United States went to war with the Middle East, and Gabriela started her first tour of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Her first tour is the origin of the massive burn scar that covers most of the side of her body. In 2004, while Gabriela was leading her squad through a building in Fallujah, one of her squadmates found a bomb workshop in the basement. One private in her team was bomb squad in her police years, so they let her check out the workshop and look for any clear and present dangers. The rest of the team mainly relaxed while this was being done, taking off helmets and laying down their rifles, as they had cleared the rest of the building.
Somehow, something detonated, and the building caught on fire. A piece of the ceiling fell on Gabriela's head, knocking her out and exposing her to the flames. By the time she was rescued, she had sustained second-degree burns on the side of her body, from her knee all the way up to her chest. She was sent home on medical leave, unable to continue fighting due to the long period of time she'd need to recover.
She received treatment for PTSD at home, and was not designated mentally ready for combat again until 2008. During that time, she completed 8 semesters of a physiology Bachelor of Science degree at UVM. She returned to Afghanistan in 2009, and that tour ended in 2012. She sought out PTSD treatment again, and her recovery was speedier this time since she had already been through that process before. In 2013, she returned to The Hammel Institute and applied to be a trainer, hoping to help young people get on the right track, just like she did.Roleplay Example(This is set in December 2005, before Gabriela was finished with either physical therapy or PTSD treatment. She does not still hold these views.)
Deep breaths, Gabriela reminds herself as she pulls a pair of athletic shorts over her underwear. Deep breaths. She can feel the oozing, drooping heat, hotter than hell, sharp like a hunting knife carving off each layer of her skin.
She tries to remind herself where she is, tries to remind herself she's not there, she's in the United States, thousands of miles away from that building, that fire, that hell. But thinking logically isn't helping when her skin is melting down and charring, each brush of the fabric against her leg feeling sticky. Her skin is on fire! She's burning away, and there's nothing to get rid of the ghostly pain because vicodin can't cure imaginary ailments.
"Dios," she whispers—but it's more like a whimper, and without another moment's hesitation, she rips off the two articles of clothes she'd managed to put on. She stands in front of the mirror, naked, and stares at the pink flesh on her body. It feels foreign. It feels misplaced. It looks like saran wrap, feels like nothing because the nerve endings are all either dulled or gone, and it looks ugly.
She looks at herself naked in the mirror and hates. It's not just her body that's ugly, it's her feeble mind. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is the most shameful thing she can imagine. She wasn't strong enough for Iraq. She was too fragile. Too weak.
She manages to tear herself away from the alluring self-hatred for long enough to look at her doorway, where her brother is standing with a pitying look on his face.
"Leave me," she spits.What About You?Name: Christie
Age: 18
Experience: I played for about 3 years around 4 years ago, but I'm back!
How Did You Find Us? I googled "RPG Directory" and this site was on the Fantasy Schools subforum.
Ready To Play? Only after you hold my hand.
