#9 “L’Artiste” Ashley Ash

Universe/Storyline: The Band

Universe details: In the isolated city of Crescent where these characters live, superpowers spring from close encounters with death. Only people born in the city can gain these powers, and since this is a relatively new settlement, the first generation of people born there are just starting to show signs of super-fication. This means mostly kids and teens. Of the teens, Camille, Max, Amelia, Walter, and Rin decide to team up and form a band. They take it upon themselves to help other kids who are just getting powers/dealing with death. Eventually, when The Band realizes that everyone deserves to be informed about the city’s unique predicament, they try to reach every kid in the city at once by putting on a live concert.

Height: 5’ 5”

Body Type: Somewhat gaunt.

Hair: Just past the shoulder, black, with various colored highlights spaced throughout. The highlights have grown out to about halfway down her hair.

Eyes: Blue

Race: White

Age: 14

Attire: Lately she’s been limited to the generic orange jumpsuit of the jailbird, but before that she wore long, flowing skirts and dresses with t-shirts and leather boots. A mixture of feminine and hardcore. Her style resembles that of Greenbeard.

Superpowers: Anything that Ashley renders (draws, paints, scratches into the wall with a toothbrush) on a flat surface, she can pull out of the 2D world and into the real world. Depending on the crudeness of the illustration, the item drawn may not look exactly as it should, but it always suits the artist’s intended purpose. If she were lost in the desert and hungry and she drew an apple with her finger in the sand, the apple might still look like it was made of sand when she pulled it out, but it would taste like an apple and satiate her hunger. Ashley’s preference seems to be for still life, but she may be capable of creating something a little more complicated given the provocation.

Personality: Ashley has gone a little insane since her power first manifested. (See backstory below.) She babbles, stares into space, and does finger paintings in her own blood because they won’t let her have art supplies in prison. She’s detached but not in a sad way, exactly. Sometimes, in her better moments, her madness can be comedic. During their stint in jail together, Ashley and Camille form a strong bond because they are both fighting off darkness inside of them. Camille helps Ashley put an end to her insanity and use her powers to help people.

Power source/backstory:

a.                  After her mother died, Ashley painted a portrait of her, as beautiful and lifelike as she could make it, which is pretty damn beautiful and lifelike since Ashley is something of an artistic savant. In a moment of grief, she went to touch the finished painting, only to find her hand reached inside and pulled out her mother’s warm, fleshy, living arm. The arm, poking out of the canvas, thrashed and scratched, an angry contrast with her mother’s still smiling face in the portrait. The painting desperately drags itself after Ashley with its one exposed arm, a grotesque creation that Ashley decides could not possibly be her real mother. She sets the canvas aflame, and the exposed arm burns just as easily as the rest of the painting. The fire spreads to consume the rest of Ashley’s house, and she is arrested for arson. Ashley vows never to paint another portrait.

 

Theme song: Pictures of You- The Cure

 

Category: 2011, Superhero