Name: Tansy
Nicknames: N/A; sometimes when she's feeling "hip" she'll sign her posts/texts "Tan-Z", but obviously you can't pronounce that differently.
Gender: Female
Age: 15
Faction: Monster
Race: Yule Cat
Yule cats are monsters of Icelandic legend, who are large, and pitch black, and nasty. If you are caught by a Yule Cat on Christmas Day and you are not wearing any new clothing, they get to eat you (so the story goes.) In reality, all they do is scare humans that wear old clothing.
Yule Cats live in Halloween, and grown Cats who have proven their ability to properly identify clothing and have their passports to the human world are given responsibility over one Icelandic village each. They will patrol and attempt to scare unfashionable humans in their village; on Christmas Day the whole clan has a concentrated effort to harvest the largest amount of FEAR they can.
Natural Ability:
Year One
Shapeshifting - she has the ability to shift from her humanoid form to a large, black cat with many teeth.
Year Two
Clothing Identification - a Yule Cat's job would be impossible if they weren't able to tell how old an item of clothing was just by looking at it. If they decide to concentrate on refining this ability, a Cat can even learn other things, either by sight, smell, or taste -- things like the rough fabric composition of the clothing, or the type of person made it.
Personality:
Always hungry
The first thing about Tansy is that she is very food motivated. She is by no means a chef (and doesn't even find the preparation or baking of food to be fun), but she appreciates anything and everything edible. And a few things that aren't. Her first instinct when coming across something strange and new is to taste it. She takes very good care of her many teeth.
Fashion-conscious
She judges everybody by their clothes. She is not necessarily a very fashionable person (she has a habit of accessorizing with food, and will gladly clash patterns and colors), but she believes that clothes show more about a person's character than any other thing. The worst thing that could possibly happen to anyone is to be forced to wear an item of clothing older than a year old, the same thing as someone else, or jeans.
She is handy with a sewing needle, and would love to learn to work a sewing machine. She makes her own clothes, and will show her appreciation for others by giving them something to wear.
But not socially conscious
It's not that Tansy doesn't like people, and secretly she wishes she had more friends or could connect more easily with others than she does. But she never seems to have a handle on social situations: her jokes tend towards the macabre and inappropriate, and she has a habit of telling them at the wrong time -- like when a teacher is trying to scold her, or when someone is crying over a recently deceased pet. She has no idea how to read people, and thus sometimes her responses can seem a little... Non-sequitor.
Since Yule Cats usually work alone (one Yule Cat per village), she doesn't have any leadership skills. She can take directions, and can do well in groups where responsibilities are clearly defined and distinct, but is unwilling to compromise any vision that she may have and thus finds it difficult to work directly with other people. She isn't naturally a very loyal person, and in the process of seizing any opportunity to either eat food or further her fashion skills will find herself throwing others under the bus.
Why are they enrolled in Amityville Academy?
A custom of her clan is that, once a Cat is of a certain age, they are sent away to another town in Halloween to study its fashion under the guidance of the Yule Cat who currently patrols there. Tansy is spectacularly horrid (perhaps willfully so, no one could ever figure it out) at identifying new clothing; a Cat only gets to scare a person when it's not wearing any new clothing, and she wasn't discerning enough to be anything more than a nuisance to the residents of the town. Soon enough, no Yule Cats willing to take Tansy on as an apprentice remained. Her family, hearing good things about Amityville Academy, decided it was best to send their daughter away.
FEAR Ability: Tainted Fang -- Tansy licks her claws and then slashes at her opponent. If successful, the slash causes an acidic reaction that affects clothing. At her age/training, the acid is only strong enough to mildly bleach cloth (it doesn't affect armor or clothing that's made primarily from plastic synthetics like polyester or nylon), which may in turn create only an uncomfortable burning sensation from the affected clothing against bare skin.
Physical Description:
Eye Colour: Black sclera; silver-white pupils. They reflect white.
Hair Colour/Style: Tansy's hair is comprised of two layers; the top layer (which includes her bangs, and is cut short at the back of her neck) is deep red. The bottom layer is grown out enough to be divided into two short pigtails, and is black. Her natural hair color is black.
Skin Colour: Icelandic human-flesh colored.
Clothing Style/Colours: She imagines herself very fashionable, and is usually seen in fancy blouses, long poofy skirts, and striped leggings. She also has a fondness for bells and holly, which both feature prominently in her accessorizing.
Extra: The only marker of her species are her odd eyes and her long, poofy, beautiful tail. She draws attention to it by creating 'tail cloaks', like the one she regularly wears that looks like cupcake icing and sprinkles.
References: I have official art already, seen to the right, created by the wonderful Chimarii.
