Safiya Nejem
aka Florissant
Alignment:
Hero
Sex:
Female
Appearance:
Tall for a Tunisian but otherwise standing at a fairly average height of 5' 6", her figure is lithe and well maintained figure with slightly sun kissed olive skin typical of Arabs. Her eyes are a dark brown and her hair is naturally dark brown but is usually dyed red. In her street wear, Safiya dresses lightly and with a very casual style, with tank tops, sandals, khaki shorts and shades in the warmer months. Colder months usually has her don a field jacket, boots and jeans.
Unlike her loose fitting and casual clothing, Safiya's costume as Florissant is skin tight and is shows more of her figure. The costume is a full body suit that is colored a dark green and black with vines around her waist and a moss ornamentation on the chest of the suit. There is also an accompanying mask to help conceal her identity, a bronze carnival style mask decorated with leaf designs.
Personality:
Outside of her duties of a hero, Safiya is very much a lover not a fighter. An outgoing, energetic young woman, Safiya is what you would consider a social butterfly in Fallcliff. Constantly hitting up peers for tea, dinner, movies or wherever she can be around people. As a very affectionate individual, she is very expressive of most of her feelings. There you can find something of a mischievous streak within her demeanor, being something of a lover for the adventurous and "rebellious", further fueled by being restricted and formerly kept at close distance with her well-meaning but very conservative and religious parents. Because of said parents, what is considered rebellious is fairly skewed and is not so much an active attitude of disobedience to authority as it is wishing to express herself. She chafes immensely under being subjected what she sees as dampers of her enjoyment of being herself, which just so happen to coincide with her parent's religious views. In addition, Safiya has an adept silver tongue and a sharp eye for reading people, an old trait she learned by pushing her family's wares at the local souk. Basically, all of the expectations of being a docile housewife subservient to a man and getting less privileges and rights, all while being constantly judged by Allah immensely, does not jive well with her.
Of all the things that make Safiya uneasy, it had to be ironically the one thing she should be great at as a affectionate, bubbly and outgoing person: romance. To the extent she was able, Safiya tried to date a few guys here and there in Fallcliff, but felt unable to muster any feelings of attraction, with her "dates" feeling nothing more than a get together with a friend. As per the patriarchal rules of Tunisian society, Safiya hanged around far more female friends. Strangely to her, she seemed to have the deeper feelings with other women, something she would deny vehemently if pressed. In fact, she vehemently denies the feelings to even herself, making excuse after excuse to somehow dismiss them. These feelings never just disappear, however, and they are manifested with seemingly uncharacteristic bouts of self-loathing and jealousy in romantic endeavors of others.
Power
Plant Mutation
A Master power, Safiya has domain over any sort of life that falls under the classification of plant, be it flowers, shrubs, trees, carnivorous plants or whatever else you could consider a plant. If it's in the Plantae kingdom, she can do something with it. Rather than merely will the plants into optimal photosynthesis, Safiya can mutate the plants into a far more effective arsenal, with giant vines to use for combat, monstrous venus fly traps run amok, shields made out of bark as hard as steel or cacti with hardened spines. The plants that are summoned can be imbued with characteristics of other non sentient animals, making plants such as the venus fly traps behave beastly rather than a sedimentary bug catcher.
History and Trigger Event:
Born to a merchant father and housewife in Tunis, Tunisia with an older brother, Safiya's life was busy and always filled with activity. Always kept close to their family by necessity for extra hands for the trade of souk merchant and the family oriented culture of the Muslim world, Safiya developed a natural, very affectionate relationship with her beloved brother Farouk and with her parents. From a very early age, through both the loving comfort of familial love and the more stern proclamations of family being at the core unit in Islam (which the family followed devoutly), Safiya lived life in a very family centric manner. This was no different when her parents had another child, Safiya's brother Yusuf when Safiya was four.
When Safiya became old enough to attend school, she attended the same schools as her older brother and was an average student with neither disdain nor passion for academics. She did, however, take a liking to learn French and English. She found the latter infuriatingly difficult, however. During her years of schooling, Safiya began to grow into the cheery person she ended up being, making her popular at school from primary school up to early secondary school. Throughout her childhood, she was also exposed to the communities of her local mosque and the merchants at the souk. Under the influences of these various factors, Safiya began to get a good taste of what life was like: fun, hectic, energizing with a firm hand to reel things in at times. Even if she was a little bit of a rambunctious child, she was always manageable and was simply chalked up to her personality and kids being kids. All was well and relatively normal, even with the contradictory authoritarian regime holding absolute power with the help of capes and the attempted maintenance of a relatively modernized society.
Then, the teenage years struck. Safiya wanted more independence, and she started to channel her slight rambunction into full on rebellion. She hung out with friends more than family, stopped wearing a hijab, melodramatically complaint of waking up early to go to worship services and even began associating with boys. Normal teenage stuff. With her older brother, who was also going through a lot of the same motions, there was more of a tut tut, slap on the wrist responses to his behavior. For Safiya, it was more severe. Lecture upon lecture about how improper it was to be running around and tarnishing their name, blah blah blah, something about how women shouldn't be out doing the blasphemous things she does should remain docile and submissive to men, all while remaining at arm's length with other men. Of course, that sort of talk further chafed Safiya, despite not actually possessing any romantic attractions (which Safiya found strange) simply for running her life to what Safiya saw as arbitrary rules. And so Safiya continued to rebel, adopting it more and more in her lifestyle and personality. It of course got to a point where they began punishing her, grounding her, taking away her phone, having her brothers keep a close eye on her. Safiya didn't seem to take it all that well, sulking and being more defiant with her parents and family. It started getting to a point where she questioned insistently why on earth Farouk was allowed to do more and frankly be more just because he was a man. The more Safiya rebelled, the more puritanical her parents seemed to get and they started to have strained relations.
Worse problems arose, however, with the downturn in the local economy and increasing brutality of the government. The populace got restless because of the failing economy under the president, and the government retaliated disproportionately. Capes, as supplements to the "law and order", helped with the crackdowns. This really peeved the Nejems, but were determined to weather the storm. However, after a grueling six months more of harassment, crime and disarray, the Nejems could take no more and fled to the United States in the city of Fallcliff. It was a stressful time for all, being thousands of miles from where they called home and being more or less forcefully uprooted. Safiya, most of all suffered standing on thin ice with her parents. Being away from home and coping with increasing isolation of the family, the final straw seemed to be laid and she triggered. It wasn't very apparent at first that she triggered, but when she was staring at a flower pot in their cramped apartment in the Divided District, Safiya found that she was able to grow into into a far bigger flower, simply through will. It turned out that she was a parahuman, a cape. Unfortunately, this was no good for her family's relation, as capes were reminiscent of trouble in Tunisia. And to find that her daughter was one mortified Safiya and her family.
Despite these familial difficulties, Safiya managed to be recruited into the ranks of being a Wards hero for two years before graduating into the Protectorate, living by herself in the Dutch-Indonesian District.
