Real Name:Sylvia Elisa Maza
Nickname: Syl
Codename: Nymph, XVII *X17*
Preferred name: Sylvia
Canon or Non-canon: Non-Canon
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Marital Status:Single
Birthplace: Brazil
DOB: April 21th
Age:23
Occupation: Loner/Student
Species: Mutant
Alliance: Neutral * But stays at the Xavier Institute*
Height:5'4
Weight: 125lb
Hair color: Green
Eye color: Carmel Brown *Golden Like*
Identifying features: She has elf like ears, hair made of grass and vine, green skin, and green fairy like wings.
Appearance:
Mutation Type: Natural and Modified
CHLOROKINESIS
*Natural Powers*: Her mutant powers are conducted by her emotion (Like Storm).
Green Thumb: Able to grow plants, Kill plants, and Use plants in many ways that is necessary when in a fight or a tough situation.
One With Nature: Able to hear plants speak and ability to camouflage with plants in order to hide from praying eyes.
*Moderation Powers*
Healing Factor: Like Wolverine*Logan* she is able to heal any injury inflicted on her but not as quickly as Wolverine.
Chemical Defense: Since she is basically a plant herself she is able to put off chemicals that can be use as a defense or an offense, she is also able to makes plants use a chemical defense as well since she can control them.
Weakness: Cold temperature causes her to get sleepy, lack of sun and water makes her weak and may even cause her to die, polluted air and areas makes her sick. * To make it plain and simple, she is basically a plant so nearly anything that can hurt a plant can hurt her.*
Personality: Over the years she has become quiet and not to kind to others especially humans. She prefer the company of plants instead of the company of others and believed if you are a mutant but could still past as human then to her you were still a human. Also, she has a high respect for nature and dislike anyone who found enjoyment in destroying mother earth.
Background: I was born on April 21 in a little village in Brazil close to where the Amazon Forest. I moved to America when I was only one years old and become an American Citizen shortly afterward. Though we lived in America we always did like to visit Brazil; we would return every spring for my birthday. Legend and tradition said that my birthday served as the first day of spring so we would often return, not only to celebrate my birth - but also to celebrate Earth Day.
My childhood was good, normal - even average. I had parents who loved me, I did no wrong, and I had many friends who enjoyed my company. But my happiness was going to disappear, for I was showing signs of mutation.
As much as I loved reading and watching the news about the X-Men and even the Brotherhood, I knew that being a mutant was not the safest thing to be. I actually thought being a mutant would be cool, but also understood that they were dangerous, since humans - ordinary beings - didn't really like mutants. In fact, humans hated mutants because they were afraid of them, because they were so different.
I was only eight when I started showing the first signs of being a mutant. Luckily it wasn’t anything noticeable to the human eye but I notice it right way. Whenever I was alone, and no one was around me, I would start hearing voices. At first I could barely hear what these voices were saying, but then the voices started getting clearer and clearer. I thought I was literally going insane; hearing voices when there was no one around to have a voice.
It was only when I was taking care of my little garden at home one day, while the parents were away getting some groceries, that I knew that I wasn’t hearing voices in my head - I was hearing voices coming from the plants around me.
Though I still honestly believed I was going crazy until one day I knew I wasn’t . . . the day the plants told me where to find my mother's wedding ring she had lost a couple of days ago. No one would have ever known to look for it in the crow’s nest in our apple tree in the front yard. Mother was so happy when I gave her the wedding ring that I totally wasn't prepared for the next part - the obvious question she would ask: Where? How did you find it? But it was my mother, and I told her the only thing I could tell her - the truth. And I made sure to tell her all of it. I told her the plants told me, but she just laughed and said, "Maybe I should thank the plants then."
Because I was still a kid at the time, she thought I was just imagining things. Like I wouldn't have imagined better things. But even as a kid, I knew what was real and what wasn't; and the plants in my garden talking to me, was not my imagination.
Yet, that was only the first sign that made me aware that I had the x-gene in my DNA. The next sign was far more visual and more shocking then hearing plants talk. It was only a couple of months later, that my next mutation came around. It was after I took a shower that I noticed there was something different to my hair. As I brushed it, and began to take hairs out of the brush, I noticed a piece of what looked like grass in the hairbrush. I remember pulling the piece of grass off the hairbrush and examining it. It looked like grass, and it was the color of grass, but it felt like hair. But at the time, there was only that one piece of grass like hair strand that came from my head, and of course I thought, or rather wanted to believe in utter denial, that it was nothing.
However, the next morning when I looked at the mirror in my room, I saw that the roots of my hair were no longer brown, but a light green. And by the following week my entire hair was a dark green color, which looked like grass and vines, but still felt and moved like normal hair. I tried to dye it back to brown, but the instant I dyed it, the green would come back - and it made me a fanatic. I had no way of hiding my hair, it was too long to hide underneath a hat or a hoodie and I couldn’t possible cut it myself without my parents asking why I cut my own hair. But I had a feeling, that even if I did cut it all off, it would still grow back green.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, my ears started to look like elf ears - what was happening to me?! There was nothing I could do to hide my mutation any longer and the idea of my parents knowing I was a mutant was the scariest thing in the world to me. My heart knew that my parents would love me no matter what I looked like, but my heart was wrong.
When my parents saw my pointy ears, and my green hair made up of grass and vines, I could see the truth in their eyes. But though their eyes told me they were afraid of me, their voices were calm when they told me that it was ok - and that they would figure something out. But still, their anxiety loomed over them, and swept over me. We all knew what would happen if anyone found out I was a mutant; the whole neighborhood would run me out, or worse. So for the next two years I stayed home; I couldn’t go outside, I couldn’t hang out with friends, and I definitely couldn’t use my powers.
After the first year of my x-gene mutating within me, the pigment of my skin began changing into a green like tint. Now, not only did I have green hair, but now I also had green skin to match. I no longer even looked the way I did when I was born. I no longer had brown hair, or tan skin, or even normal human ears. My mutant powers were starting to metamorphosis, but I didn’t know how to control my mutant powers - not that I even knew exactly what they were at the time.
But soon I began to understand and recognize the cause and consequence of my powers - at least the latest part of it. Now I was beginning to be able to control the plant growth around me. For example, whenever I got upset, any plant around me would grow twice its original size.
Another facet of my powers caused a few earthquakes here and there, and my parents, out of concern, or fear, would always yell at me whenever my powers were being used. But I couldn’t help using them; I had no control over my powers when my emotions were causing them. What was I supposed to do? Not feel anymore? The only thing I knew about my powers; besides being able to hear plants talk, was that I could also help plants grow. It was like I had a green thumb - no pun intended - seeing that my whole body was green. After a short while, I began to realize that through the trees, I could hear everyones conversations. It was like I was playing the game of telephone. Whenever somebody said something around a plant, that plant would tell the next, and so on, until it came to me - and plants never mixed up the words in the conversation, they always remembered exactly what they heard.
Everyday it seemed like my parents were getting more and more afraid of me, to the point where I even started to believe that they actually were beginning to hate me. What about me being mutant would make them so afraid of me? Worse, hate me? My personality didn’t change, just my appearance, and truthfully I didn’t think I looked very scary. But no matter how many times I tried to show my parents that I was still the same child they raised, they just kept getting further away from me. Their eyes told me the truth on how they felt about me; they couldn’t hide that emotion from their eyes.
It was only when my parents took me back to Brazil in the Spring that I knew my happiness with them was over. Every year we would go to the Brazil in the spring for my birthday, so my heart made me believe that my parents had finally accepted me for who and what I was. But my heart was wrong again, they didn’t accept who or what I was and I knew this for sure, because that spring, was the last spring I ever saw my parents.
They abandoned me right in the middle of the Amazon Forest. They said it would be fine to use my powers to help a sprout grow, seeing it was Earth Day and all. And I was so happy that they encouraged my powers, that I didn't even notice the pain in their eyes. As I attempted to help the seedling that I had just buried grow, my parents silently started walking back to the Jeep - and when I finally noticed that they were gone it was too late.
I couldn’t catch up to them, I couldn’t even find my way out of the Amazon Forest and it was already starting to get dark. I called out to them to come back, to not leave me there - to not leave me alone, but it was no use. I was alone; lost, and broken. I was ten years old when my parents abandoned me.
I was ten and lost in the Amazon Forest, full of dangerous creatures and habitats and my parents didn’t care . . . because now they were free from having a mutant as a daughter.
At first, living in the Amazon forest was scary and unpredictable. I had to learn how to survive, and how to find, and make a place to live that would be away from the danger on the ground. But the animals weren't the only dangerous things I had to hide from. I also had to make sure to hide from well, normal people, too. Knowing full well how they would react to my appearance. After all, I already saw how my own parents reacted to the way I looked, to the powers I had obtained over the years. I could only imagine how everyone else would react - so I hid.
When a year had past since I was abandoned in the Amazon Forest, I started to take root of my mutant powers and abilities. It was the most loneliest and hectic year of my life. I had to learn how to find food, and how to defend myself against the dangerous animals that would vie for the food - and vie for me. I had to know how to find my way back to the tree that I slept in. But the most important thing I had to learn - was how to watch out for humans. You wouldn't think too many humans spent time depp in the Amazon Forest, and in fact, I never really encountered too many tourists - but there were plenty of tribes that lived not far from where the Amazon forest laid. And they use the forest to hunt food and gather fruits and vegetables as well as wood. So I made sure to learn where they hunted, and learned to stay away from those spots.
I actually learned to live pretty well by myself in the Amazon, even though I was only eleven. A lot of it had to do with my mutant powers; I could practice how to use them within the forest, without anybody being the wiser. Practicing how to grow plants was starting become a natural thing to me, and because I could hear the plants speak, I could easily find my away around without getting myself lost. I never had any natural agility, or capability to do any acrobatics until I came to live in the Amazon. But once I harnessed it, I could climb a tree faster then any monkey could. I could jump from one to another with ease, and without fear, because the trees would actually - even if only slightly due to my accuracy - move to make sure I made the leap. I was truly in my element when I lived in the Amazon Forest, and even though I had no human contact, to be able to speak to the plants and trees comforted me - and they became my only friends.
At twelve I started to see what I could really do; with my mutant power that is. I already knew I could hear plants speak, and help plants grow, but I knew I was destined to do much more than that. So one day I gathered some seeds, and started seeing if I could use them as a weapon; just in case I had to fight an animal off, or a wandering human that might have spotted me. I started with a seed from a vine to see if I could use it as a whip, and it was most effective if I may say so myself. The vine worked perfectly as a whip, though it might not have cut through stuff like a regular whip could, I was still able to latch around somebody tight enough to make them unable to move.
The rest of the seeds I collected weren’t much of a weapon though, but I did learn that I was able to reverse a plants growth and turn them back in to seedlings. Another mutant ability I learned through my self teaching practices was that I could camouflage myself to look like part of a tree or a bush to hide from a dangerous animal like a Jaguar. I not only looked like part of a tree or bush but it would envelope me completely with its scent, so I also smelt and felt like one as well.
It was really amazing to discover all the things that I was capable of doing now. I was so nimble and acrobatic that it was like I was some perfumer in a circus. Before my x-gene came along I couldn’t do back flips, kart wheels, or even balance on a tree branch like I could now. I was actually pretty damn glad that I became a mutant because of that power alone! I mean I always wanted to be acrobatic and graceful. And I was always a huge tree hugger; it was like my x-gene was granting me my little wishes.
I could do so much now; but my X-gene granted me yet another, final transformation. At the age of thirteen I started to grow wings which completed my fairy like mutation from a human. And before long, I slowly began to feel happy again, despite the fact that my parents abandoned me in a dangerous forest. But even the forest didn't turn out to be so bad - once I got use to the surroundings. The rain forest was my domain, it was a trap for any enemy that I might have, but a new home for me.
However, my happiness was soon to be destroyed once again as it had before. When I turned fifteen I was captured by a man named Malcolm Colcord, the man who directed the Weapon X Project. I was forced to be a weapon for his destruction, otherwise he would have killed me. The man tortured me until I broke; brainwashed me in until I had no memories of my own left, and used me like a dog for his destructive pleasure.
The torture was unbearable; it was only when I got tortured that I realized my body acted as a plant. I needed water and sunlight to survive and without it I would start to wilt away like a flower. I also learned if my wings got torn or ripped into, that they would slowly grow back or patch up. Sadly, I was only able to learn this when Colcord’s men tore off my wings every time I tried to fly away. They would leave me in a cold, sunless room till I begged for water and sunlight.
After months of torture I finally broke and no longer cared if I was being used as a weapon. I no longer cared that I was killing people who may have been innocent or not. I actually started to feel better when I killed. I took out my anger on the targets Malcolm Colcord gave me since I was unable to take it out on Colcord himself. The man even gave me another name; he called me, Nymph. He also called me Weapon 17, but I never understood why.
It had been four years since I was captured by Malcolm Colcord and used as his weapon - just as he had done with every mutant he captured. It was only after four years of destitute service that the Brotherhood came to destroy the Weapon X Project entirely - and when I was finally free again.
Though I must admit being at the Weapon X facility did increase my mutant powers and abilities, despite all the torture, brainwashing, and killing I had been through. However, though I was more powerful than ever, and though I was free from the Weapon X Project - my mind was also more unstable than ever. And sadly, or ironically, most of my memories were gone.
I still could remember my name and where I used to live before I was captured by Colcord, but everything else was a blur. Even my ability to speak English was gone; then again I had become mute while being at Weapon X - it was wonder I could handle speaking Portuguese once I was freed. But yes, while I was still at Weapn X, I became mute. It wasn't that I was all of sudden unable to speak; I just lost the will to say anything. But when I did speak I only spoke Portuguese seeing that was the main language in Brazil and I was after to all Brazilian.
It was only thanks to Professor Charles Xavier that my mind became stable again and my will to speak had slightly returned. My education was coming back as well and I relearned how to speak English again . . . but still, I barely spoke to anyone. I no longer bothered being kind to humans and barely even tolerated them when I saw them. If a human even looked wrongly at me there would be a chance that they would never do it again.
I had killed so many people that my mind started to believe that I was a monster, for the people I had killed would say so with their last breath. I even recalled the look my parents gave me when they found out I was a mutant, in their eyes - was the fear - just like the people I killed.
But at least I was free now, away from Malcolm Colcord and away from the Weapon X Project completely. If I didn’t need Xavier telepathic powers to restore my mind, or need his school to get my education, I most likely would have sided with the Brotherhood. After all, it was Magneto and his gang of vigilantly mutants who saved me from being further used as a weapon by Colcord. But instead I stay here at the Xavier Institute for the "Young and Gifted". I have only been here for a year now, and am already ready to go back to Brazil. I don’t like having to be nice to humans, nor do I like being bossed around by a solider boy leader who can’t even take off his sunglasses without blowing someone or something up to smithereens. Plus there's to much concrete and not enough grass, trees, and clear air for me to feel at home here. But all in all, I suppose I have to deal with the place till I get at least a High School education; good thing there a couple of mutants here that I like, and tolerate.
But still I always find myself coming back to the question of just how much more I have to go through till I am finally happy and at peace with myself. And just how long will it take until I am finally accepted by the world? I am not ashamed of who I am - at least of who I was before I was brainwashed and used as a weapon. I am not ashamed of what I look like either. In fact, I rather like being green and plant like and having fairy wings. I think I look pretty damn good if I had to compare my human self to my now mutant self. Besides, in my opinion you’re not a mutant unless you look the part of a mutant. I mean if you can pass off as a human, then to me, you are still a human. Looking back at myself in the mirror - all I see is a mutant, and I smile because of it!
Gaian Name: Lildaydreamer
Reply
