Leah the Echidna (ref)

Basic Info:

Name: Leah

Nicknames: Pinky (obnoxious; she hates it), Le-Le, Daughter of Peace (official title given by her family)

Age: 23

Height: 3'8

Alignment: Good

Status: Single

Hobbies: Exploring nature, being in touch with good spirits, reading about her past (Echidna race), honing her martial arts skills, breathing life back into things that are dying, protecting Mother Nature.

Likes: Nature, the wilderness, the (good) spirit world, her lineage, bringing peace to everyone, calm, and order.

Dislikes: Flirty men, (heavy) urbanization, chaos, violence, disorder, grotesque pieces of technology (doesn't mind phones or computers, but doesn't drive and will only ride or fly if she must).

Weaknesses: Animals, industrial pollution, evil spirits.



Abilities:

Spirit Ball Projection: her most basic attack.  Leah concentrates her energy into a white ball with a glowing blue aura and dancing sparkles emanating from the energy ball, and hurls it at opponents.  This does not do a lot of damage, but is designed more or less to slowly chip away at her opponent's health, hopefully to chase them off, or buy her some time to use something more powerful.

Boosted Martial Arts: Leah does possess semi-advanced martial arts skills, but when she uses her spirit energy to give herself a boost, she is much more effective at hand-to-hand combat.  The energy boost provides her with an increase in speed, stamina, quickness, and agility; more of an increase in evasive maneuvers so she can dodge, an also giving her a quicker striking speed.

Spirit Emission Blast: using the energy within her, Leah is able to fire a powerful blue beam of spirit energy in a straight direction that extends thirty feet out from her.  In appearance, it looks like a shortened Kamehameha wave, and doesn't have the distance as such.  This  consumes the most energy out of all her attacks, and it will take anywhere from 1-2 minutes to recharge before she can use it, again.

Energy Barrier: this is useful against multiple enemies, especially if they have projectiles or projectile-firing weapon (i.e. firearms, bricks, slingshots, etc.).  This can also protect her and those behind the barrier from falling or flying debris, preventing them from striking her or those around her.  It's a quick boost of energy, and takes a total of thirty seconds for a recharge time.

Life Force Regeneration: Leah can lend her energy to her allies in combat, giving them a boost of energy and stamina.  While this does not provide any healing properties, it enables the recipient of the regenerative boost to continue to fight or have the opportunity to run and seek medical attention, despite remaining wounded.  Along with the energy boost, any physical pain experienced prior to receiving the energy is alleviated.  This duration lasts for thirty minutes.

Aura: this is a visual indicator of herself powering up, tied into her manipulation of spiritual energy.  She first develops a blue aura immediately around her body, before a much larger aura forms around her that causes tiny blue sparkle-like orbs to float up and vanish.  She also can cause her aura to expand about 15-20 feet outward, and anyone who steps inside of it is given an overwhelming feeling of calm, peace, and rejuvenation.

Personality:

Very calm and tranquil, giving off a strong sense of peace and serenity wherever she goes.  She always looks to arrive in places that are peaceful, but if there's any type of negativity or disorder, she'll try to bring about calm to the environment, or some sort of situation.  Upon first meeting her, she doesn't tend to show too much emotion or get overly excited, but still maintains that air of peace and serenity; a smile will be shown more often than not, though.  When getting to know her on a more personal level, one will find Leah to be a very gentle and caring person, ensuring that her friends and those closest to her are always in good spirits and full of life.  She takes great pride in her heritage, and the abilities she possesses, always remembering where she came from and always looks to make use of her abilities for the greater good of everyone.  One interesting thing to note about Leah is that she doesn't speak in contractions, using formality in her speech as opposed to speaking in a more casual, shorthand way.  Her tone also airs of peace as well, a tad low for a woman yet very airy and soothing.


Attire:

Her normal outfit consists of a light blue and silver-gray one-piece suit with matching-colored gloves and heeled boots.  On her wrists are gold amulets, and also at the top center, top of the toe, and the front of the soles, are gold plates.  She wears this when going out because it doesn't cause much restriction of her body movement, and it's perfect in case she ends up finding herself in some sort of conflict where she has no choice but to defend herself and those around her.

Her more formal outfit consists of a white dress with blue trim around the edge of the skirt, and a pastel teal bow up by her neck.  Her gloves go all the way up to the middle of her forearm, where the opening end is covered by a gold amulet, and feather-like fabric sticks out of the bottom end of the gold clasp.  Around her mid-section is a corset outline in golden-yellow, with a pastel yellow elastic band and pastel teal feathery fabric on the top half.  She also wears a gold belt around her waist, just below the corset.  She wears black tights under her dress, and the heeled boots she wears are physically very similar to those on her casual outfit but instead they're mostly white with red toes, red buttons at the top, and blue stripes--one running from the toe to the top, and blue trim around the top folding portions of the footwear.  On either side of her hair are gold clasps with white feather-shaped pieces of fabric encased into the gold jewelry itself, which flow freely in a gentle breeze.  This outfit she will wear when at home, and while out in nature, never to be seen in public with this, though.


Background:

Leah was born into a family where pride for the Echidna culture, heritage, and tradition, was one of the most important things shared by everyone--her mother, father, grandparents, and distant relatives.  As a child, Leah was often quite sheltered from the rest of the outside world, homeschooled as a little girl and taught in the ways of her ancestors.  Beginning at the age of eight, Leah began to learn about how to use magic as a tool to connect with the spirit world.  The person who first taught her how to wield such abilities was her aunt, whom she then spent much time with after beginning her training.  Although slightly difficult at first, Leah began to smoothly grasp the ability to wield such powers, and connect herself with the spirit world.  When the time came, she was given the permanent choice on how she wanted to wield such powers, and thus would determine what type of magic/spirit energy wielder she would be.  She decided that she wanted to use her abilities to bring life back into dying things, and to also bring about peace and harmony wherever she went.  During this ritual is when her aunt made contact with the spirits to permanently seal Leah's fate as a wielder of the energy whose purpose is to bring life and peace to all living things around her.

At the age of thirteen, Leah went off to an academy to further sharpen the arsenal she had received from the basic training her aunt gave her.  Here, she began to learn how to really utilize the powers she had learned from her aunt, and taking her skills to a whole new level.  With the understanding that she wouldn't always be able to live at home with her parents, forever, she realized that some sort of physical self-defense would be vital when she's out on her own, and while at the academy she took up martial arts classes to develop a good, solid sense of hand-to-hand combat.  Upon graduating from the academy at the age of eighteen, she returned home and worked with her family on what she should do with her life, now that she had to find some sort of calling.  Upon deliberating the possibilities, Leah concluded that staying close to the area where her family is would be best, and that she would be a guardian of the land she was born on, protecting it from any sort of economic disaster, evil spirits, and preserve the rich history of the land.  On the day she officially left home, she was given the title "Daughter of Peace" by her family, since this is related to the choice she made of how to use her abilities when first learning them from her aunt.

Right now, she lives off in a house that's surrounded by nature, however not too far away from civilization.  From the time she arises, her duty is to ensure that the surrounding nature and wilderness is calm and at peace, and if something seems amiss, she must do what it takes to bring back order and stability, maintaining the goodness of the environment.  While she is not in favor of concrete jungles and massive urban sprawl, she does venture off into the city when she feels she must.  She also is not terribly fond of technology, but does understand the need for things such as having a computer and a phone, to stay connected with the rest of the world and to have some form of communication.  As far as transportation goes, if she can walk to it, she will.  On rare occasions will she ride in a car or fly in a plane, since she's not terribly thrilled with them because they're connected to heavy industrialization and urbanism.

Artwork/Leah the Echidna © MostWanted06