Janice "Snapdragon" Li's page

Janice Li was a promising graduate student in molecular botany, at a decent university; but as a natural social butterfly, she gradually grew to find her research and peers boring and grim. After reaching her Master’s, she spent a few months as a summer intern with the local law enforcement, and found the experience refreshing enough to request a year of leave from her program while she accepted a temporary job with the Jefferson Parish sheriff's department as a crime scene technician.

While much of her expertise was lost in a practical setting, Janice could run a DNA comparison faster than any other junior tech in the parish. With the encouragement of a few officers, she co-authored a federal law enforcement grant that bought her station a cutting-edge dissection scope for pollen analysis. Six months into the job, she even made it briefly onto the local news, after a sap comparison she ran proved the critical link in solving a cold case murder at a nearby national park. When Janice returned to school and finished her doctorate, Lieutenant Sams promised, he and a few of the other station boys would write her as many recommendations as it took to get her a job in experimental forensics with the FBI. In her spare time—and, no longer a graduate student, she found lots of it—she joined a local theater group, following up on her childhood passion for acting, costumes and makeup.

And then came the really interesting case. A dead body, dumped unceremoniously in a nearby river, bearing the ballistics and disposal of a mob hit or assassination. In his frozen hands, the corpse had held a fistful of strange moss, a strain whose DNA restriction map seemed to defy anything in Janice’s forensic database. The man’s left shoe, however, held a crushed petal from a flower exotic enough to require an importation license, and this led the forensics team straight to the abandoned greenhouse of a bankrupt former orchid show.

Intrigued by the strange moss strain, Janice Li had requested, enthusiastically, to be allowed in the field on this case, despite the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, and the lieutenant had relented. Nervously, three officers and one forensic tech investigated the abandoned greenhouse, and found it humming with life; tall and colorful flowers grew on strange stalks behind sheets of heavy plastic, and multi-colored fluorescent algae flourished in bubbling pools of heated water. And then the gunfire came, out of nowhere; Janice was hit twice in the left arm and three times in the chest, and fell backwards into one of the algae ponds. When Lieutenant Sams awoke, in the hospital, he learned that two of his men had been killed by sudden and mysterious sniper fire; the greenhouse had been burned to the ground, now nothing but a patch of scorched earth; and his best tech was nowhere to be found.

Janice awoke in a field, under the evening sun, with vague and scattered memories of being shot, of watching the blood leave her body. But her arm had closed up, leaving pale green scars in place of bullet wounds; and there was a strange feeling on the edge of her perception, as though she could feel and move more of her body than she used to. And, of course, the sunlight tasted good.

It hasn’t been long since the accident, but Janice has discovered that she is no longer the same person; her body, swimming with strange plant cells, was capable of new, exciting, and somewhat difficult things. Only Lieutenant Sams saw her die at the greenhouse, and survived, and so far, her boss has agreed to keep that secret, even helping her acquire the occasional UV lamp and bag of fertilizer. The incident itself was ruled a gas leak; orders from somewhere up high in the government ruled the whole thing classified, and closed the investigation out in a very definitive way.

But Janice has gotten restless; something very strange has been going on, and she’s begun to suspect she should be a part of something bigger. With newfound strength and reflexes, the stage combat and tai chi she learned as a child have become an effective martial art of their own, though she’s still clumsier than she would like to be. And she’s begun to read comic books and pulp novels, re-opening a few forensic cases of special interest, wondering just how hard it would be to start taking the law into her own hands.

Janice Li is a human woman who shares her body with a symbiotic alien plant; or, possibly, she’s an alien plant carefully preserving the memories and appearance of a woman already dead. She’s not really sure; every injury she’s suffered has repaired itself, microscopic green cells taking the place of damaged pink ones, but she might well have suffered real hypoxic brain damage in the accident that gave her powers, and she’s not about to cut open her brain and check whether half of it’s been replaced by leafy tendrils.
That said, her increasingly unusual cells seem to be solely beneficial, possessing an intuitive understanding of their acquired biology and constantly seeking new ways to improve it. Her skin, muscles, xylem and phloem seem to possess a sort of distributed, cellular intelligence, reacting blindingly fast to stimuli and danger and granting superhuman reflexes and awareness. A lack of solely-human anatomy has led to greatly improved stamina, strength, and pain tolerance. Overall, she’s been fascinated by the degree of control she’s been able to exert over nearly ever aspect of her body, from carefully-tailored facial expressions and breathing to reconfiguring parts of her arms into wings and climbing vines. With practice, she realizes, she may well learn new tricks entirely, but for now simply her amazing muscle memory and boosted self-control have been enough to quickly pick up a decent level of the fighting and stealth skills that will be useful should she continue her flirtation with vigilantism.

Snapdragon is only part human, her skin riddled with green scars where plant cells replaced damage to her original body. Her bones carry veins and fragments of hardened wood, giving her a distinct and irregular skeleton under the X-ray scanner she “borrowed” to investigate herself; she barely bleeds when injured, and her blood is sticky and golden, tinged with sap, though the healing process is distracting enough to shatter her carefully-focused disguises. At social meals, she feigns swallowing small quantities of food and drink, quietly storing what she consumes in vacuoles within her body, to be tossed in the trash when she is alone; her body no longer requires food, instead gaining its nourishment from the sun. It took a bit of wheedling, but she’s managed to get her lab at the station moved to a south-facing office with decent windows; at home, she sleeps in a high-powered tanning bed. Salt and salt water dehydrate her, while fire burns, and her cells seem to panic at the sight of an open flame; in water, she grows easily distracted, sprouting tiny roots and filaments that make swimming nearly impossible.

Janice, on the other hand, is quite ordinary. She is short, and thin, with heavy glasses and a great deal of joie de vivre; her ability to fit into social situations has only increased with her self-awareness, as she effortlessly shrugs her shoulders while quoting Shakespeare or Darwin. She’s cut back on her hours at the police station, often spending long lunch breaks outside in the sun, though the new high-strength forensic UV scanners her sergeant requisitioned have helped a bit at work. In her spare time, she volunteers with a local theater troupe, supplying stage makeup and diction coaching, while she has once again put off reapplying to grad school in favor of reading papers online. Recently, she has developed a bit of an interest in criminology, reading books on lie detection and the art of persuasion.

Snapdragon’s most visible power is an art she’s taken to calling Autotopiary—the ability to rapidly grow, direct, and reshape the plant cells in her body. While she might be less human than she once was, with the aid of pigment cells and sap veins, she’s been able to quickly and seamlessly alter the shape of her body, mimicking the appearances of others—or, in her everyday life, mimicking the appearance of a completely normal human woman. With her skill at acting and makeup, and recent practice in voice mimicry, this has given her a useful ability to impersonate nearly anyone she observes. Maintaining a specific form takes a great deal of effort; when threatened or frightened, she can drop the facade to focus on more useful self-modifications, condensing her skin and bones into hardwood armor or slowly stretching her fingertips into rugged climbing vines. In a fight, she moves unpredictably, as her limbs operate under distributed intelligence and her bones and organs relocate away from any obvious weak points. Recently, she has begun to learn how to incorporate elements of her environment, absorbing atmospheric water and soil nutrients to grow in size or rearranging her body mass to deliver powerful punches and blocks with oversized wooden fists. Finally, she’s developed a bit of an ability to glide on leafy wings, though she is still rather clumsy and slow at flight.
Snapdragon’s thoughts, slightly distributed among her greener cells, have also lent her mind a certain non-human genius; in addition to boosting her reflexes, this gives her thoughts a bit of an unusual and alien bent, making them hard to read (though she has yet to meet a mind-reader).

With focus, she can also release a fine cloud of pollen spores; the effect is subtle, and nearly undetectable without a microscope or superhuman sense of smell, but with focus and patience she can leave a whole room sneezing uncontrollably, a talent that’s helped her avoid questions and harassment from the wrong sort of passersby.

And, perhaps most usefully, her body possesses the ability to regenerate itself, as her de-centralized plant cells remember its previous shape and work to restore it after a bodily injury that leaves them unharmed. She still needs sunlight to grow—separated from it for too long, her cells go dormant and she takes damage that does not recover—but, aside from fire, acid, or chainsaws, she’s pretty hard to kill, a talent that’s saved her once and now led her to consider dabbling in something dangerous, like real and proper crime-fighting.

A) Stance of Veils (out-of-combat) is a skills/morpher stance; it's the only one that lets Janice Li look like her normal human form without altered surface anatomy, and it should make for entertaining interactions via disguise. Pollen is modified to follow your version, which I like better, and mental defenses are boosted to stymy mind-readers.

B) Stance of Crawling Ivy (utility and non-lethal combat) is a martial artist stance with some morph tricks. By turning her hands into clinging vines, Snapdragon can pull herself and others up tall buildings; where she has surfaces to "vine-sling" from, she can travel fast and deliver some powerful judo slams. She can also swing her vines like a lasso, for a bonus to trip, disarm, or grab enemies, though she can't effectively throw, crush, or otherwise deal damage with them. The drawback, of course, is that she's relatively weak in this form, meaning that her vines can be easily grabbed or severed, leading to loss of a partial limb until she can regrow it.

C) Leaf on the Wind (mobility and skirmishing) is a martial artist stance with some morph tricks. Sprouting leafy wing membranes and reconfiguring her body to be aerodynamic and streamlined, Snapdragon gains some flight ability, as well as the breath control to survive at high altitudes for a while without fainting (allowing her to, for instance, skydive without a parachute if necessary). She also gains the ability to run and jump faster, and strike with more agility, though her armor is lighter than in other forms.

D) Stance of Thorns (full combat) is a martial artist stance with some brick capability. Without sacrificing any defense, Snapdragon hardens and reinforces her body as necessary, striking with great force. The thorns on her fists and feet break off to stick in whatever she punches, like a stinging nettle or a porcupine, slowing enemies down with pain every time they flex their muscles.

E) Cloak of Leaves (out of combat) is a stealth stance. By shifting her patterning and breathing through her skin, like a plant, Snapdragon gains the ability to blend into shadows and stay completely silent when not moving. (She's not invisible, but does gain decent camouflage that may help stealth in some situations). Vine crawlers on her hands let her climb walls and ceilings as she sneaks around, while a slightly different pollen causes a drowsiness reaction in those who get too close.

F) Lotus Meditation (regeneration) is a healing stance that Snapdragon shifts into automatically when incapacitated, though it could be useful in combat if major recovery is necessary and time is allowed. Her regeneration increases substantially, restoring ability damage and limbs, though she is still decently able to dodge and resist attacks.

10 CP - Restore Vitals: Healing Body 1d6 (Regeneration 1), Resurrection, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (60 APs), Extra Time (1 minute; -1.5), Only in contact with natural ground (-1/2), Self-Only (-1/2), Resurrection Only (-1/2)
11 CP - Regrow Structure: Healing Variable 2d6, Can Heal Limbs, Variable Effect (Can restore any one characteristic or plant-SFX power; +1/4), Reduced Endurance (1/2 END; +1/4), (37 APs), Concentration (1/2 DCV, unaware; -1/2), Only in contact with natural ground (-1/2), Self-Only (-1/2), Visible (-1/4)
(2 END cost)

11 CP - Photosynthesis: Recover 7 (14 APs), Only in Daylight (-1/4)

18 CP - Cellulose Skin: Armor (7 PD/5 ED)

10 CP - Sessile Mind: Invisibility to Mental Group, Reduced Endurance (0 END; +1/2), Persistent (+1/2) (20 APS), Only while unconscious (-1)