Name: Livvy (Full name Olivia Elspeth Monks)
Alias: Mirage
Age: 19
Sex: Female




Personality: Mirage is a very upbeat, proactive, and friendly person! They are outgoing, genuinely care for the well-being of others, and always try their best. They are quite sensitive, however, and can easily be upset by the  unkindness of others. This is especially true in the case of the media, who seem to have it in for her no matter what she does to help others. Her good nature could be taken as naivety, but she is far from naive. Her life has seen too much  hardship and mistrust to warrant that accusation. She likes to believe the best of people, but if they cannot be trusted, she will be first in line to deal with that problem. Her teenage years were filled with a lot of unpleasantness, and it taught her not to lash out, but to be kind to people. She is that rarest of souls... a genuinely decent, generous, and compassionate being. She might not be entirely human, but she treasures humanity a great deal.

Physical Description: Mirage has two forms - human, and demon,

In her human form, she is a pretty woman of around nineteen years, with pale blue eyes, and long blonde hair that forms into natural loose curls. She is petite, almost delicate, and tends to wear loose summer dresses and slip on shoes or sandals. This is for practical purposes, as she needs to be able to remove these garments quickly, or at least make sure they have enough room to accommodate her other form.

As a demon, she is a very different prospect. She is still human-shaped, but there all similarity to her other appearance ends. She is around six feet tall, and though not heavily muscled, she is well toned. Her figure is far more lush and curvaceous. Her skin is a pleasant pale violet, and her hair is brilliant white, with flashes of lilac. Her eyes change colour and form every time she shifts into her demonic self, and they could be human, or catlike, lizardlike, or even two burning holes in her skull. Her lips are dark purple, so dark as to be nearly black. She also has horns. usually a pair of heavy, ram-like horns, but there can often be a second, smaller pair higher on her head. They too are usually deep, deep purple. Her ears are long, and pointed, and she has a double set of nasty looking canine teeth.

Her skin is covered in tattoos. Every time she shifts, the tattoos are different, and if anybody tries to study them too long, the tattoos squirm under her skin, taking on an even more inscrutable form. Sometimes they resemble runes, others tribal forms, or chaotic Escher-like murals across her torso. Occasionally, they even glow.

Her legs are extremely powerful, and resemble those of a goat in shape. However, they are not furry. They are covered with small, flexible scales, which are pale near her midriff, but darken down the limbs until they reach purple-black with her two, heavy, and viciously sharp hooves.

She also has a tail. It is long, prehensile, and even comes with the traditional demonic barb at the end.

In this form, her voice is very strange. It sounds like it is multi-layered, and warped by some sort of voice-bending software. But it is all natural.

She usually wears a purple bustier, and a pair of purple shorts, specially designed to accommodate her legs and tail. It might seem a little unwise, to leave herself exposed this way, but since she can instantly bend light around herself to form a suit of armour, she prefers to go unencumbered unless it is absolutely necessary.

Sadly, there is always a very faint hint of rotten eggs about her. Not enough to be unpleasant, and only really noticeable in close quarters, but... she smells of the sulphurous Demon Dimensions, and no amount of air-freshener is going to stop that happening.

Powers: Mirage has two major types of power: her latent demonic abilities, and her focussed magical powers.

Her latent demonic abilities are fairly simple. She can see in complete darkness perfectly well. She can sense the presence of evil - not humans who are bad people, it needs to be really evil. Someone who peddles drugs might not be evil. But if Jeffrey Dahmer is in the room next door, his sort of nastiness is going to ring all of Mirage's evil alarm bells. naturally, this means anything demonic is going to show up on her supernatural radar. Fortunately, genuine evil, the sort of thing that drives serial killers, or genocidal dictators, or utterly immoral scientists doing nasty things to unwilling subjects... these are rare, in everyday life. They do occasionally crop up in super-hero work, though...

She can also inflict fear on others, or cause them to become utterly obsessed with her, in a sort of succubus-like trance. She really hates using either of these powers, and will only do so if no other option is available. She can target an individual, or everyone in the near vicinity, but has no way of being selective if more than one target is available. One person, or everybody, are her only options.

Her magical powers are more impressive. She only really has one area of magical expertise, but within that discipline, she is very skilled. She is an illusionist. She can create illusions that are so real to all the senses, that it is virtually impossible to tell them from reality. Of course, if someone walks through a wall that is not there, or tries to punch someone who does not actually exist, then they are going to realise what is going on. Interestingly, her illusions do show up on recording technology, meaning that they are actually physically present, and not a vision placed into the mind of the observers.

She can also create illusions that are solid. However, there are very strict limits to this. She could not reproduce a person, or a car, or anything with complex moving parts. These are effectively energy constructs, solid images made of light (or, more likely, something far less pleasant from the Demon Dimensions, briefly manifested into this world.) They are very robust, and within the given limits, can be quite versatile. For example, she could inject the light into a keyhole, then solidify it, to make a key to open the door. She could make orbs of solid matter to throw at people, walls to block attacks, and so forth. One of her most common tricks is to create a solid disk upon which she can kneel, and since she can manipulate the constructs, she can use it to fly - her demon form having no wings of its own.

The major downside to all this is that she needs to focus on her illusions and constructs. If she loses concentration, or becomes unconscious, all her conjured images vanish. This could be especially dangerous if she happens to be standing on a construct high above the ground. She can, of course, concentrate on several things at once, depending on how complex they are. It is not much effort at all to keep a solid wall in place. It is entirely a different matter to create an illusion and control it, putting her consciousness essentially into the illusion and her body into a light trance, so she can impersonate someone, albeit incorporeally. This situation leaves her vulnerable, and she only has so much focus to spread amongst illusions. If she tries to push things too far, they will all fail, and potentially leave her brain too addled to focus without some time to recover.

Weaknesses:
Focus. Needs to concentrate to maintain illusions and constructs.

Evil Ping! She can sense evil, but evil can sense her...

Ewwwww - Stinky! The mild odour of sulphur she carries becomes increasingly strong the more she uses her illusion magic. The more she uses them and pushes herself in an encounter, the more her constructs resemble something infernal. If nothing else, it is terrible for her public image...

Bad First Impressions. The first time someone sees her in her demon form, they are almost always going to leap to the wrong conclusion, and presume she is some sort of villainous evil baddie. Obviously, if they get to know her, they will hopefully realise how lovely she is. Most people do not take the time to do that. She is almost always going to make a bad impression. It is bad for public relations. Mass media tend to blame all mistakes made by the team on her demonic influence. Religious groups, the right wing, the left wing, the middle ground...  let's face it, just about every political affiliation thinks she is bad news. And don't even THINK of reading the comments on Mumsnet. They've invented whole new words to describe how much they hate her.

Beelzebabe! While many groups can't stand her, some other subcultures think she is absolutely amazing! Goths'n'gamers, geeks'n'freaks, and many more besides, all think she is some red hot alt cultural sexual icon. There are posters. There are death metal songs. She has groupies. And, worst of all, there's an awful lot of truly horrifying slash fiction. It's not just bad, it's graphically, brain-warpingly bad. And the problem is, these people have also got totally the wrong end of the stick. If they ever get wind that she might be showing up somewhere, even if it is to do some heroing to save the world, there's a chance some of these idiots will show up to Instagram or Tik-Tok the action. And probably hit on her. Or just hit her, if they are from the community that want her stopped from doing whatever it is they think she is doing.

In short, she is under constant assault from the public and the media, both hating her and loving her, and it causes an enormous amount of personal distress, and possibly even turns up when she is trying to save the day, needlessly complicating an already dire situation.


Skills:
Running. In human form, Mirage is a good sprinter. In demon form, she is a superb sprinter! And has considerable long-distance stamina, thanks to the amazing efficiency of her goaty legs. She can also climb with them just like a goat, scaling surfaces that would confound a human. She would probably be good at parkour, but it looks like such a rough and dangerous thing, and not a hobby for her at all!

Crochet. She's a great hooker. (Don't even THINK about saying it... We all know what you are thinking!)

Needlework. She likes to make things like embroidery and cross-stitch. She also makes her own clothes.

She is very bad at cooking and baking, however. She will keep trying! But even if a meal looks nice, there will be a hint of sulphur in the taste. Demonic taint follows her around, and gets into things she makes. not so bad on fabric, it can be washed out. In food, it's just nasty!




Notable connections/assets: Mirage has very few connections or assets of her own. Her appearance makes most people believe her to be untrustworthy. Nothing could be further from the truth, she is a very honest, generous, and generally law-abiding person, but her demonic nature, and undeserved reputation, mean that making any long-term contacts is extremely difficult. She has to rely mostly on the generosity of her super-powered friends and allies to support her in daily life, and fortunately they are at least able to understand her predicament, once they get to know her.

History: Mirage's history really begins with her mother. She was something of a wayward youth, and had an on/off relationship with the man she would eventually marry. It was during on of those off periods that she was seduced by a charismatic and dashing and oh so very handsome man... who sowed his wild oats, and then vanished, never to be heard from again. It was only a few days later than she got back with her sometime paramour, but when she discovered she was pregnant, she assumed that he was the father. After all, what were the odds? A one night stand, compared to a regular every-night thing... she was sure that the stranger was not remotely responsible.

That said, her boyfriend did the right thing, and proposed marriage, for the sake of the child. In due course a wedding happened, then a baby, and the family settled into what, if it might not be called wedded bliss, was at least a fairly stable situation. They were not rich, not important, and never expected life to ever become exciting.

But it did become exciting.

Olivia Elspeth (named after her two grandmothers) went into puberty around the age of ten years. At first, that too seemed normal. But then... she developed an unpleasant odour. And then here eyes kept going funny colours, and she accidentally terrified a poor woman behind the meat counter in Morrisons. It all went downhill from there. Her parents were in a terrified panic a lot of the time, her school expelled her on the grounds that they taught human beings, not festering demons from the deepest reaches of Old Nick's wretched abyss of tormented souls, and what was worst of all, the house was besieged by the media. For a little while, she was a national celebrity - though half those following the story were sure she was a hoax. This was not helped by newspapers like the Daily Star, and National Enquirer, claiming that she was the lovechild of Elvis, or actually an alien who was here to suck faces and implant eggs... which was all painfully embarrassing for someone who is only ten years old, and who keeps getting her horns stuck in the car roof.

Eventually, the furore died down, but she was always on the periphery of media attention, and the family had to move house several times. They ended up having to keep her locked in the house, for her safety as much as that of everyone around her. It was this enforced seclusion that led her to experiment with her abilities. When she started to realise what she was capable of, she practiced constantly. After a couple of years of this, and keeping it all a huge secret from the family, she became really quite skilled at the creation of small illusions, and fashioning small constructs out of... whatever it was. It was not exactly light. It was not ectoplasm. She can summon some sort of matter from elsewhere, and that is all she has to say on that subject.

When she was confident enough, aged fourteen, Olivia ran away from home. The family had settled eventually in Leeds, and in the brief time she managed to go to school, she had made a friend, Anya. Her family was also very unusual, and not entirely understood or liked by their classmates. The pair had bonded over their outcast status. While she was locked up, Mirage had maintained constant touch with the internet, and even managed to sneak out when her parents were at work. They had a close friendship now, and Anya's parents were far more tolerant and accepting of Mirage's unfortunate situation. So, when she resolved to flee, she fled to Anya's home.

She was made welcome. And it was a bitter realisation that, when she was discovered to have gone, her parents did not inform the police, nor did they make any attempt to find her. To them, she was just a burden. A shame. And they were well rid of her.