Icon from Saishraddha Malage at the Noun Project
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Maria Reyes (21)
Project: YA Novel (Psi High)
Known as: No nicknames
Real name: Maria Reyes
Group affiliation: The Omegas
Physical description: Maria is 16-year-old Hispanic young woman (she is Mateo’s fraternal twin). He has dark eyes and hair (wavy to her shoulders) and is overweight. She is attractive and has a warm smile that is very rarely on display.
Personality: Maria is warm, fun, and funny. She is confident and teases her brooding brother mercilessly. She is nosey and has boundary issues but is overall hard not to like. Still she finds small talk tedious and enjoys spending her free time alone or with close friends. Selena likes Maria but suspects more is going on with Maria than Maria reveals.
It turns out Maria REALLY has boundary issues.
History: See Mateo’s entry for their shared history. Maria loves her brother but finds him to be overprotective. Also, they are examples of how shared experiences can have different results. While the unfairness of the world has made him cynical and withdrawn, Maria never expected fairness from the world. So, when it happens she is more apt to take it in stride. Since stuff happens, Maria is keen to enjoy things when times are good.
Her difference in perspective is also due to her powers. It’s harder to feel trapped when you feel like you can escape at any time. Her powers also give her a unique perspective on her physicality. She knows for a fact that her body is not her, so she can be lackadaisical about her appearance and health.
Her powers also cause her to take others a bit less seriously. She knows that the public face people show is not the real them (even the most confident person is hiding some secrets). It’s harder to feel intimidated by people when you can see them in private moments. She is like her brother in hiding her true potential (knowing that people wouldn’t take her abilities well).
Despite her warmness, she is very much an outcast (and Omega). Given she is known to have fainting spells, it is not unusual for her to spend the day in a wheelchair. While tied to her power, rumors abound that her fainting spells are sometimes faked (Mateo’s reputation doesn’t help here).
Nice as she is, her voyeurism is a moral weakness. But how many people would spy on others if there was no chance of getting caught?
Role in the narrative: Characters like Maria can be highly useful when you need a key piece of information handed to your protagonist (need not to abuse that). But mostly I find her power interesting. Maria loves using her power. She might at some point abandon her physical body completely. The only thing that prevents her from doing so is her inability to interact with others in her astral state.
Down the road I might even have her ultimately reside in a different body (which opens up some interesting social commentary).
Abilities: Maria can astrally project her soul outside her body. In this form she is invisible and intangible, but can still see and hear things (she cannot physically interact with the world). She can fly, traveling vast distances very quickly. She is able to go anywhere.
The limiting factor is that her body is vulnerable while she isn’t in it, and there is a limit on how long she can be away from it.
Everyone believes, btw, that she is a simple clairvoyant. She has no reason to disabuse them of the notion. Where clairvoyants can see things happening some distance away (usually in an uncontrolled fashion), Maria’s ability is more powerful.
Inspirations: I’m a little worried I’m ending up a little too Psi-Force here. Not in terms of characters, just in terms of teenagers and powers. I have no plans to have them create any merged entities and whatnot, but don’t want to line up too closely. Still, not like Psi-Force invented these powers, either.
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