Morgiana de Leon

♤Physical Appearance
Morgiana is most likely as close to fish as you can get while still being sexually attractive. Or maybe it's her fishy features that make her so alluring? Standing at a rather tall 70 inches, she tends to be one of the taller members of her class. Blessed with limbs long enough to make a bishie anime boy jelous, very few things seem to be out of her reach. Even though her limbs are thin, her frame tends to be on the muscular side due to her countless hours swimming and living the gym rat life. However, despite her broad shoulders, she is still remarkably feminine.

However, she certainly isn't 100% human. At most, she's probably 60% human. Sure, she has all ten fingers, two eyes, and a mouth, but that's where the normalcy ends. Her skin is actually made up of several small, smooth scales. She is mainly a pearlescent white, with tiger- stripes of burning orange, crimson, and medium brown similar to Lionfish. She does have gills, with one set at the base of her neck, where her collarbone is, and another set at around breast level on her sides. Her face, while mainly human, is a sweet rounded shape with two large, doe- eyes taking up a decent amount of it. Her eye color seems to be mainly black- brown, with stripes of the same red and orange as the rest of her body. Her nose looks like a human nose melted into her face, with two small slits towards the bottom, where nostrils would be. Her eyebrows and eyelashes are actually small fin- like appendages, and are a solid deep red in coloration. This fin motif continues to her ears, which have a solid ear- shaped body that blends into a transparent red fin at the edges. She also has another set of fins at her ankles, and on her elbows, as well as one last set on her hipbones. Her hair is the same red as her eyebrows and eyelashes, made of a mix of flat, wide spines and tentacle- like strands, with the spines oriented in the center of her head like a mohawk and the strands everywhere else hair would cover on her head. For control, she pulls the spines back into something like a ponytail, and braids two sections of her “hair” on either side of the central “ponytail.” while most of the spines fall down the center of her back, there are two darker red spines with white striping she pulls to lay in front of her shoulders, for reasons related to her quirk.

She has more spines in clumped patches on her body, these spines more rigid than the ones on her head. They tend to group on her shoulders, wrists, hips, ankles, around the base of her tail, up the top spine of her tail, and around the base of her fin. Her tail attaches to her body at the small of her back, in a rough diamond shape that begins at her mid back and ends right above her butt. Her fin is oriented opposite to how a mermaid's is assumed to be, and is fan- shaped, with a transparent fin and very obvious “spines” holding the shape.

♤Personality
Morgiana exemplifies the calm confidence expected of a hero's child, with the regal aura of someone used to being in the public eye. Something of a relic in both personality and bearing, the easiest way to describe her would be “well- bred 1950s lady.” She's the exact type of hyper- feminine to daintily sip water even when throwing weights at the gym, float even when running long- distance, and immediately attempt to apologize after a sparring bout. She's easy with her smiles and her laughter, always striving to bring positivity wherever she goes. She thrives in both large groups and small gatherings, faring both social seas with the aplomb of a master. It seems she was born to be the hostess, always acting in a manner that would bring credit unto herself and her family name.

At least, when she's in the public eye or around strangers.

Like most other well- bred people, her private life and personality is leagues apart from her public one. When she's comfortable, her more negative personality traits come out, the most foremost being her judgemental attitudes. Morgiana has a strong dislike of the willfully ignorant and people that squander their skills, especially if they would be leagues ahead with any bit of effort. She's fairly neurotic when it comes to her own ideas of perfection, and can be incredibly hard on herself when it comes to her failures. Morgiana has a keen eye for noticing small, inconsequential changes in a place, situation, or person. While it can be useful with navigating social situations, it can also feel a bit overbearing if she cares for you and your wellbeing. Her over- developed sense of justice also gets her into a fair amount of trouble, especially since she's also fairly mulish when she feels she is in the right. This tenacity of character is what drives her to push herself to new heights of excellence, even if her dogged pursuits negatively impact her health or wellbeing. It’s her overblown sense of justice that leads to her being fiercely protective of her friends and family, especially if they're the wronged party. However, if she goes up to bat for you, and you're in the wrong, you're going to hear about it. And lord help you if you lied to her; Morgi has less patience for liars than she does for the lazy.

While she may seem quiet, this is more due to morphology issues than a dislike of chatter. Due to her quirk, she has trouble speaking above a whisper when both sets of her gills are dry. To combat this, she either has to wear a “dreadful, awful, ugly thing” around her neck, or else dampen at least one set of gills with water.

♤Speech Pattern
Morgi can speak English and Spanish very fluently, as well as some key phrases in modern Gaelic. Due to learning the Spaniard dialect of Spanish, the small lisps present in that specific dialect can bleed into her English. When she does lisp, she becomes incredibly flustered. Overall, she has an obvious Upstate NY accent, with minor hints of an Irish lilt.

♤Quirk
She's a spiny fish lady.

For those that need more specifics, she takes after the morphology of a lionfish, complete with various poisonous spines all over her body. Unlike lionfish, however, these spines do not contain a toxin. They contain a paralytic instead, which varies in intensity based on both how old the spine is, and her diet. If she has a diet high in fish, the toxin becomes more potent. In order to keep herself combat ready, she needs to pluck her spines at least once every five days, in which a new spine will grow in its place over the course of a day. Due to this timeline, she ensures her spines are used on a cyclical basis, and has to ensure she is tactical with which spines she uses and when. The spines, if plucked prematurely, will retain their potency up to the remaining days in the cycle.

She also creates her own antitoxin, which is held in two sacs at the base of her skull. There are two spines that attach directly to these sacs, the darker red and white striped ones she keeps in front of her shoulders. These spines need to be milked daily, or else she suffers from a blistering headache that messes with her eyesight. The antitoxin retains its potency only about 24 hours, then quickly diminishes in potency. The stronger her toxin, the stronger the antitoxin, and vice versa.

As for her overall mutation, her long, thin body and strong tail make her an excellent underwater swimmer, though she moves less like a mermaid and more like a serpent or alligator when she swims, her arms straight up before her and her legs tucked tight against her tail. Her head spine mohawk is free to stick up and away from her head, and creates a row of spines down her back. Her remaining tendrils act as whiskers, which give her more underwater awareness.

♤Costume
Morgiana’s actually has three costumes, two for strictly underwater use and a last one that's amphibious (The main suit). Her underwater costumes are modified diver's suits, the patterning on the costume closely mimicking the natural patterns on her body. There are two versions, one for cold water and one for warm, though they both share the same basic construction. There are strategic cutouts on her hips and sides to allow ease for her fins and gills, to ensure she can move in comfort. Her winter version is made of a thicker neoprene and has long sleeves and full pants, though there have to be further cutouts for her spines and fins elsewhere in her body. Her summer version is made of a thinner neoprene has no sleeves, and the legs stop at about mid- thigh.

Her main suit is again much the same as before, but with a little more flair. Instead of neoprene, the suit is made of the same spandex/ kevlar blend of other hero costumes, with the same general look as her long- sleeved winter suit. However, the cutouts over her gills are covered with a fine mesh material, which has a subtle silver threads. These silver threads continue onto the suit itself, the silver randomly running along with one of the stripes. She has a fin- like stiff collar around the v- shaped neckline of her suit, in much the way of old monarchs or classy fairytale villains. This V cut dips to about mid- chest, but is held together with more fine mesh. She also has further fin- like decorations around the cuffs of her sleeves, and along the opening where her hip- fins come out, giving that area a skirt- like appearance. Her boots are a solid white in color, with more stylized fin- filigree along the slit for her actual fin. The boot comes about up to her knees, and ends with a thin silver cuff along the top edge. She has a white fin- shaped mask, with silver designing mimicking the lines in a normal fin and silver piping on the outer edges. Her ‘finishing touch’ is a small set of silver chains that hang from her “hair,” with a opalescent shell and hanging in the center of her forehead.

In all costumes, she has a white “utility belt,” with small pouches that hold plucked spines, a vial or two of antitoxin, needle knits, tweezers, and several small bags full of small dried fish snacks. Her personal logo is a three- prong trident head stylized to look like a crown. Her utility belt’s circular buckle has this logo in the center.

♤History
Like many other children of famous heroes, Morgiana was placed in the public eye at a very young age. Unfortunately for her, however, her birth was also another part of an ongoing drama concerning her parents. . Her father was the lion- headed support hero Leonchador, a legendary Spanish native who saved heroes and civilians alike with his healing roars. The crimson- caped hero had built his brand on being a suave, prolific womanizer, which is why his sudden marriage to her mother caused such a stir. The marriage was further sensationalized by the fact that her mother was a no- name hero from America, whose only claim to fame was being a part of the large New England Water Rescue Team. All hell broke loose when he revealed he was quitting as a hero and moving to the Upstate New York to better support his wife in her endeavors. Gossip mongers and tabloids began subtly vilifying her mother, assuming that she had somehow trapped her father in this disadvantageous marriage, which was “confirmed” when Morgiana was born just after a year later. At first, her father attempted to staunch the flow of gossip by releasing statements debunking the rumors in what he thought was clear language. When that didn’t work, he tried posting images of his happy life as a stay- at- home dad, hoping that his clear satisfaction with his new life would make the gossip stop. While he was lauded as a wonderful, ground- breaking father, his wife’s abuse only worsened. In the end, he decided on a complete withdrawal from the public sphere, and soon lapsed out of the news. To ensure his family had the privacy they needed, he moved them into a small hamlet in the mountains.

Morgiana never wanted for affection growing up. Her father was more than happy to be Mateo de Leon, the king to his princesa, with her from her first steps to her first day at kindergarden. In those early days, her mother’s schedule was more hectic. Kathleen McCarthy was still at the mercy of her job in the NEWRT, along with attempting to build her Water Rescue Dog Breeding and Training program from the ground up. However, when possible, Kat ensured Morgi got the best job of all- playing with the new puppies. Both her parents were careful to ensure her life was as normal as possible, and that she didn’t develop the sense of entitlement and delusions of grandeur some children of famous heros had. They went out of their way to drill the importance of hard work, perseverance, and morality into her head from a young age. Mateo taught her the basics of combat, namely tactics and discipline, and Kathleen taught her all about swimming and the basics of water rescue. Morgiana simply adored her parents, and early on was a boisterous but sweet child, if a bit of a tattle- tale. However, that know- it- all attitude worsened as she got older, and her love of her parents morphed for the worse as she brought more and more friends home to play.

Morgiana was always more susceptible to the opinions of others, and it was her friend’s opinions of her parents that morphed the relationship from loving to blind devotion. Whenever she brought friends home from school, they always seemed to get starry- eyed whenever they met her father, and the puppies definitely made her mom the coolest one on the block. Seeing her parents through the lens of her friends, instead of just her parents, turned their teachings from good advice to the gospel. She began to develop that same sense of entitlement her parents had tried so hard to avoid, galvanized by the very teachings meant to deter it. She began to see her learned morality as the only acceptable standards of right and wrong, and very quickly became the class cop. To add to this, she threw herself into her studies, and her single- minded determination meant she quickly became the top student in her small primary school. Her successes only further inflated her ego, which manifested as a holier- than- thou attitude. Morgiana’s parents saw the changes in their child’s personality, and misattributed it to a lack of challenge in her environment. To try and push her back to the right path, they enrolled her in a prestigious private secondary school that almost exclusively catered to the children of famous heroes. While this change in environment was a bit of a wake- up call, it wasn’t the positive one they wanted. At least, not at first.

Morgiana was about 10 or 11 when she joined the school, and used to being the top dog with relatively little effort on her part. This abruptly changed when she was surrounded by classes of her peers. Not only did her bossiness meet more resistance when her parent’s star factor was removed, but she also had more trouble standing out from the crowd, at least academically. Her parents thought the sudden slide in her grades was a side effect of this entitlement they had noticed, and became much more strict in response. The sudden change in both her home and school life wore on Morgi, who was quite suddenly just another person. While she did still manage to make a friend or two, the overall snubbing of her due to her attitude caused her to lash out more at her peers, while the overbearing weight of disappointing her parents caused her to withdraw at home. This duality finally came to a head one mild summer day, when she was in her first and only fight. The boy who picked the fight, Peter, was one of the most outspoken students against her, and as such received a large portion of her ire. This constant, often vicious back and forth had finally caused him to snap, and during the fight he accidentally ended up being stuck with one of her spines. The paralytic she was producing at that time was a touch too strong for the kid, who ended up having to be hospitalized.

This marked a turning point for Morgiana, who was quite suddenly thrust to the forefront of the public sphere once again. At school, she was treated as poison, dangerous, and given a wide berth by any and all students... including the few friends she had. At home, she had to deal with the crushing disappointment of her parents, who now had to field a media circus that insisted on vilifying their ‘fallen daughter.’ The scandal not only affected her mother’s business, but it also served to tarnish her father’s reputation. After all, he was the one that raised her, he was a stay- at- home dad throughout most of her life. The worst of it was when she had to go out in public, like when she had to get to school. Whenever she was out without her parents, she had to deal with the whispers and scowls of complete strangers. She began to feel every bit the villain everyone saw her as, her shame manifesting as a deep self- loathing for her quirk and her form. She went from understanding she had a dangerous quirk, to feeling as a dangerous person, and she felt every league of difference between those two mindsets. Her parents, noticing the toll the drama was taking on Morgi, decided to send her to a private school near where her mother’s family lived in Ireland.

This seemed to be the final straw that broke Morgiana, since she saw this move as less of a mercy and more as them getting rid of her. She had noticed the strain between her normally loving parents, and the effect the story had on her mother’s business. In her pain, she decided on a plan of action to ensure she never brought this amount of trouble to her family ever again.

She landed in Ireland a completely different person than the boisterous, prideful child that had left- She was quiet, studious, and antisocial. During the four years between when she went to Ireland and when she returned in order to go to Lady Luck Academy, she honed this new persona, taking every etiquette class she could, devouring books on public relations, and shutting herself away from all save a few minor acquaintances.

This new, polite, well- mannered Morgiana was fully embraced by her parents, who felt they had done the right thing by sending her so far away. Little did they know, this perfect ladylike persona was just a well- manufactured disguise over a deeply neurotic, unbalanced individual.