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A G E: 22 | G E N D E R: Female
G R O U P: Superhero Squad
[Cover Name] Luna Accalia Though the other employees at the Zoo know who she is, on record Artemis goes by this name.
[Age] 22 Without knowing when her birthday is she can't know for sure but the doctors deduced she had to be 20-24.
[Ethnicity] 1/2 African American, 1/2 Hispanic Her mother was Hispanic and her father African American.
[Sexuality] Heterosexual Though Artemis can appreciate female beauty she is too in-tune with her animal instincts to be attracted to another woman.
While this is an immensely powerful ability it also has many limitations. The most serious of these limitations is the nature of the connection that she makes. While her purpose in using her power is to wield certain characteristics of an animal the connection can also cause her to take on other traits. For example, if she were to 'connect' to a dog for it's enhanced smell and tracking abilities she could also take on a dog's hostility towards cats.
Another thing that limits her is her knowledge and connection to an animal. While she can connect to an animal she has never encountered and bonded with in person the connection is extremely unstable, leaving her more vulnerable to what she and the squad call 'Feral State'. The strength of her bond with an animal is also what determines how long she can stay connected to the animal without risking Feral State. If she had never seen an animal in person she may only be able to connect to it for a minute where as if she were to connect to an animal she had spent a lot of time around like a cat she could probably stay connected for hours.
When Artemis connects with an animal she does so body, mind, and soul. As such it is not something that she can limit. If she pushes herself too far and draws too much of an animal's power she can cause her mind to take on an animalistic way of thinking. When this happens the results are either a momentary lose of her ability to think logically, if she is able to break the connection, or if she is unable to break the connection she will go into a Feral State where she relies fully on animal instinct. When this happens she still has full access to the animals abilities and also loses the ability to communicate with any creature other than the one she is connected to. Since she is usually panicked just before going into a Feral State the aftermath can be disastrous, her panic carrying over. As of yet the only way she, or rather the Superhero Squad, has found to snap her out of it is knocking her out. Something usually easier said then done depending on her current connection.
[Singing] As a child Artemis loved singing and that was the one thing that she was able to keep during her time in the lab. Most of the scientists liked her voice and the others usually didn't care enough to make her stop, though eventually she forgot the words and songs and was left with only melodies to hum. Since she got free and rejoined the world she has taken great interest in music, especially rock music.
[Hand-to-Hand Combat] After connecting to a gorilla and then throwing a bad punch during one of her first fights against the Guardians, Artemis quite effectively broke her wrist and Connor decided that she needed to take some basic hand-to-hand combat classes. Though Artemis had been reluctant at first she found that she greatly enjoyed the combat lessons, especially when she realized she could use what she learned to vent her anger on practice dummies rather than keeping it in or lashing out at her team. Due to taking some advanced classes, spending quite a lot of time practicing, and keeping up with it for the last four years Artemis is quite the skilled fighter.
[Zoo Keeper] When she was still in the hospital Artemis started taking online classes to gain a basic level of education. Since she only needs about 30 minutes of sleep a day she threw herself fully into her studying and was found to be quite intelligent, "graduating" from high school shortly before she left the hospital. After that she decided to take college classes online, earning an Associate's Degree in Animal Behavior Science and a Bachelor's Degree in Wildlife Biology in three years. She currently works at the Violet City Zoo as a Zoo Keeper and is taking online classes to get her Masters Degree in Wildlife Biology at her boss' encouragement.
[Skill 4] Explain
P E R S O N A L I T Y
Artemis' personality is extremely hard to describe especially since it, along with her emotions, change so quickly. While she was in the research facility she became numb emotionally but the one thing that she never lost was her passion, which she focused into her will to live. Once she had escaped she let herself rely on her instincts to help her survive, only really having the time to process what happened to her when she was found by the police. As she finally was able to take a step back and focus on what had happened to her Artemis still couldn't feel anything but numb, her basic needs the only ones she seemed to care about. It wasn't until Connor started to visit her in the hospital that she started to feel anything. Annoyance was what finally roused Artemis' emotions and it sparked life into her.
Though Connor, and later on the rest of the team, was able to bring Artemis out of her shell she's still more of a loner. She spends a lot of time in the gym working out or in her bedroom. When she is spending time with the other members of the Superhero Squad Artemis can be quite amiable. When she's at her best she can be playful and energetic, and even when she's not she is usually friendly. Artemis considers the rest of the team her family and as such is extremely protective of them. She has a strong sense of right and wrong when she's actually using her head to make decisions and is extremely loyal to the entire team.
That being said for anyone other than her team and her close friends Artemis is polite but very distant, not trusting others easily. This most comes to light when she's out in the city, whether or not it's to fight the Guardians. While Artemis protects the city with the rest of the team she does so merely because that is what has been asked of her. She of course, doesn't want to see anyone get hurt, but also would put her friends and teammates before anyone else.
Artemis' parents met in South Africa, her mother being a college student volunteering abroad and her father being a Safari guide. Her parents were the last people you would think would fall in love, both seeming to hate each other. Despite this as her mother's time in Africa was coming to a close they realized that through their constant arguing they realized how much they cared for one another. It wasn't until after her mother had gone back home that she realized she was pregnant. Her mother's Hispanic family strongly disapproved and she went back to Africa after finishing her last year in college. Amaris Ebele Oyinlola was born in the middle of the night out on the safari, her parents having been too far away to reach the hospital. From then on the couple and their new child rarely left the safari. Amaris' mother, having gone to school to become an animal behaviorist ,worked on the safari with her father, who was a guide, and Amaris was more often than not right there beside them.
Amaris was always extremely tomboyish. She loved being out on the safari with her parents, being around the animals and in nature. She was three when her parents realized that her connection with the animals was a bit too strong. Like most people they tried to brush it off as nothing but eventually they were unable to, especially when Amaris started to befriend some of the more dangerous animals. Until Amaris was taken she and her parents lived out on the safari full-time, her parents home-schooling her so they wouldn't have to send her away. Amaris' trips off of the safari and into the cities were very rare, only happening one or twice eyes year. It was on one of these trips, when she was 6 years old, into Johannesburg that Amaris was kidnapped. Not a month earlier she had calmed a lioness, with a few snarls that were nowhere near human, after a tourist had gotten too close to her cubs and it had caused a scene, though Amaris never knew this was what had caused her kidnapping. She wasn't the only one that they had, at least half a dozen other people had been imprisoned with her. They only stayed in Africa for a few more days, another person being added to their numbers, before they were shipped off to the lab.
Just the section of the, what she assumed to be, large building that she was kept in was run by dozens of people. From what little she gathered it was a facility that mainly focused on doing research on people 'like her'. Constantly the doctors were injecting Amaris with one thing or another but as time passed she grew used to it. As the experiments continued, days turning to weeks and weeks to months, the other people kept in the lab changed as test subjects died. As more time passed and she didn't die the doctors took more interest in her, eventually becoming one of the main test subjects. She forgot about the tall yellow grasses and simple wood cabins of her past and adapted to the white walls and chemical tang in the air. By the time she was 13 the fact she was alive was medically baffling but she had become a 'permanent' fixture in the research facility.
She could never remember exactly what had happened the day she escaped when she was 16. A about a year before they had decided the reason why none of the formulas and chemicals were working on her was because she was so calm. There was no reaction because 'Subject A' was 'too calm'. It had only been a few months prior that someone had finally realized, after a lot of other failed options like talking about the parents she no longer remembered, that with her ability maybe the best way to elicit a reaction was with animals. It hadn't taken long for the scientists to realize that hurting the animals was far more effective in eliciting a response. As such after every new formula or experiment they would bring in an animal to cause the spike of energy they wanted from her. Her last day in the facility had started like any normal day, tons of new experiments and chemical injections, followed by watching some poor animal be tortured. That was when everything changed. She did remember the dizziness, the throbbing in her skull, a feeling like her brain was trying to push it's way outside of her skull, and then blackness.
When she finally woke up again her previously white clothes were damp, coated in blood that was not hers, and she was far from the building that she had been kept in for years, surrounded by tall lush green trees. Traveling through the woods wasn't as hard as it would have been without her ability to communicate with the creatures around her. When she did finally come across civilization a few months later it was a great shock. It hadn't taken long for a police officer to pick up Artemis. After a lot of confusion and not many answers to the questions they had the police couldn't do much more than surmise that she was a mystery. Since she was still a minor she was put into the system and was sent to a hospital in Violet City that could figure out what was wrong with her, it being the closest one with the experts they needed. It didn't take long for the doctors to realize what kind of things were done to Artemis and that she didn't remember anything before her kidnapping. It was decided that until she was recovered enough mentally she would stay in the hospital. Her abilities were soon discovered by a doctor who was friends with Connor and he immediately got into contact with him.
After that Connor started to visit her at least once a week. At first she didn't know what to think of him, watching him silently as he made small talk or just sat there. It only took six visits for Artemis to finally snap, one of his teasing comments finally pissing her off enough to react. What she didn't expect was for him to simple smile, like he had just won. From that point on Artemis slowly started to get more talkative during his visits and Connor decided that she needed a name. A lot of the names that he suggested she rejected swiftly, refusing to even consider taking a name that didn't start with an A. Eventually Connor took up looking names up online and just saying them out loud, which is how they found her name. It was at that moment that she decided that she would be staying by Connor's side after she got out of the hospital.
The hospital kept fer for over a year but as soon as she was released she joined the Superhero Squad.