STUDENT FORM
Name: Sruthi Chandra
Alias: Sruthi
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Powers: Psychometry, animal telepathy, clairvoyance
Aura: fairly high frequency for her age, centered around her head. Primary #FF355E, secondary #FCE883
Appearance: Sruthi holds herself tall, with a slight scowl on her face. That's probably the first thing people notice, even despite the bright shocks of pastel purple and pink hair and luminous golden eyes (which are almost always alert and glaring - hawklike, she's been called). All of those things tend to demonstrate the same thing, anyway: Sruthi probably doesn't like you, and she also doesn't care what you think of it.
She has an angular face capped with killer cheekbones that she's pretty proud of (she's less satisfied with her rather pronounced underbite - but that's never stopped her from using it to look "tough".). In contrast, her body is on the stocky side, but its bulk is made more of muscle than pure fat - she's spent a lot of time spelunking and rock climbing and hiking, and it shows. She's of average height for now (5'5", which is respectable for a girl of her age), but she's clearly not done growing yet, so no one can really say whether that'll be true in her adulthood. She has a hint of curves but she's far from voluptuous.
Fashion-wise, her parents handwave her as a bit of a young punk (she's a rebel! Her skirts are so short even though all her hobbies are so outdoorsy!) but Sruthi prefers to think of herself as assertively feminine. She refuses to go out in pant or shorts unless she's wearing a skirt of some sort over them. She goes all in for bold, contrasting patterns but surrounds herself with soft grey-pinks anyway. She can be loud and nontraditional but no one can take her femininity from her.
Personality: Most people get the sense that she's angry at something. To that she says: Hell ******** yeah, she's angry. But sometimes the details of that are a little nebulous - she just likes being angry, because it makes her feel righteous. She's a die-hard activist and probable future television politician who jumps at the chance to explain herself and gets easily offended by others, but she's often grounded by the presence of her family - especially her closest (and youngest) sister, Nikita. That said, while she loves them deeply, they also make her feel pretty self-conscious at times. Her father dotes on her, after all: she's his second oldest, most opinionated daughter, who's as smart as a whip and unafraid to show it. But sometimes his constant bragging can get her down about herself: she can't help but think that everyone in the family expects her to be eternally articulate and over-prepared for every eventuality. It's not the best feeling - a lot of the time, she feels like she's not going to be able to keep up. It's pretty troublesome for someone who's already conscious of every word she says. She has a hard time realizing that her parents already appreciate her for exactly who she is.
That said, her father's boasts are definitely grounded in reality. She is finicky and methodical, and she loves doing research and plotting out five-step plans to get things Done. She just...maybe doesn't always know where to stop, or, more precisely, where to prioritize. She wants to handle everything, and she has an unfortunate tendency to want control over everything. You're the expert? Fine, but she's better at research than you are, and she'd just like to check over your data just in case. Oh, and do you mind clarifying a few things? Just for her peace of mind, you see... She's extremely organized but has a lot of trouble balancing her workload, precisely because she seems to have a need for every minute detail to pass through her brain for approval first. Tasks that are easy in isolation become difficult when compounded with the rest of her commitments, 'simple' as the rest of them may seem, and that means she tends to be unreliable when it comes to delivering. (But when she gets things done, they're stellar.)
The things she cares about most are, well, her family, and also animals. As a huge fan of the Great Outdoors, she's always on about some new cause or other. She's definitely vegetarian, although this has a bit more to do with her slightly Hindu upbringing (the thought of eating most red meats makes her literally nauseous, just because she's so unaccustomed to eating them, so she figured sacrificing chicken and fish wouldn't be too big of a step on top of that). Of her sisters - while she loves them all, her favorite is Nikita, who shares a lot of hobbies with her and her father. They've spent so much time together as they grew up, that it was the happiest surprise that Nikita was the one who'd end up sharing in Sruthi's abilities. Nikita is one of the few people who really makes Sruthi feel less self-conscious, but on the other hand, she also constantly feels the need to intervene in Nikita's life, protecting her, in a way, from anything that might hurt her.
She's happy to be the angry, outspoken one, if that means Nikita can live a happy life. And - well, Sruthi is just suited to be angry and fierce, in her opinion. But sometimes she wishes her sister wasn't so carefree. She has to focus on something...right?
History: She was born second of six vastly different sisters to a pair of first generation immigrant Indian parents in northern California (both of whom had traveled to the US in the first place for their undergraduate and later graduate degrees). While her temperament was a little more similar to her mother's (both fairly high-strung people), Sruthi's always shared her baba's hobbies. Hiking, camping, the outdoors: Sruthi loves it all, and when her siblings drew away in favor of mathematics or music or writing, she always begged her father to take her on trips to nearby Yosemite, or just to admire the redwood forests. He was really the first one to notice when her psychometry manifested: she was always commenting on colors that weren't there, in their travels. At first her parents feared something was wrong with her, but they were quick to latch on to psychic abilities as an explanation: after all, you can't really deny what's right in front of you.
For a while they were all right with that. It wasn't the easiest thing to deal with, but it was something that could be handled: Sruthi had a lot of family around to help her out, and she didn't do a ton of things that were really outwardly violent. A lot of her abilities were, well, in her head, so to speak, so it was easier for her to blend in, especially if she withdrew from public school. Her parents and sisters were all traditionally educated enough that they could pitch in to help her prepare for standardized tests, and she preyed on her older sister, Tanya's, old textbooks. As for socialization...well, it wasn't like she cut off contact with her public school friends, and she still saw people in their city frequently: both from just going to town, or just because her sisters had plenty of friends, too. No one in her family was really super educated about psychic abilities beyond, well, rumors, most of which were fairly insubstantial. They'd heard a bit about Murmuring Pines - Sruthi and her father Nikhil (who had become, really, her primary teacher) had thrown themselves into research - but they'd figured that they were dealing all right at home. And they were! Sure, Sruthi's not some prodigy of psychic ability, but she's definitely able to pass as "normal" in polite company - outbursts of any psychic kind are very, very rare.
That changed when Nikita's powers manifested, in an episode that involved a family of bears and two over-familiar dogs. Sruthi had always been closest to Nikita: as the sibling who stayed at home for school, she was the most frequent babysitter, and although Nikita is a lot more spontaneous, they have enough similar hobbies that they spend a lot of time together. They'd been out on a hike together, gathering flowers for a gift for their parents, when they'd run into a mother bear and her cub. They were eventually saved by two dogs, who seemed to also have some sort of psychic ability, and provoking it in Nikita herself. That put them off hiking for a bit - but Nikita and Sruthi being who they are, they were quick to return. For a tiny bit they attempted to educate Nikita in the same way. Unfortunately, Nikita's temperament is a lot less well-suited to self-study than Sruthi's is. She thrives a lot better around peers, and she's also much more easily distractible. But her psychic abilities weren't really something she could keep to herself, and they both did need more training.
In all honesty, no one is sure why both Nikita and Sruthi have psychic abilities. Neither of their parents are similarly gifted, and the same goes for their sisters (although the family is extremely vigilant about checking for signs of psychic ability now that they know about Sruthi and Nikita for certain). "We're like Colin and Dennis Creevey," grins Sruthi, when asked. Muggleborn, attached nearly at the hip - yep, that's them. When they and their father researched it (well - a bit more Sruthi and Nikhil than Nikita), they came back to something they'd easily tossed aside before. Murmuring Pines...it really was real, wasn't it? And with two siblings there, it'd just make a lot more sense. Nikita would have some familiarity, and a place to explore her powers. Sruthi could concentrate on improving her actual control, rather than her ability to deal with having powers.
She feels a little out of place and behind, though - a lot of people who've been here since they were young seem much more experienced. They know how to control their powers rather than just...not talking about what they see and know.
Siblings (just as a note lol):
Tanya, oldest, 18-19. absurdly smart math prodigy. Good Indian Girl, incredibly socially conscious, quiet but very naturally charismatic/commanding. ambitious. slightly passive-aggressive, but she thinks of her sisters as people to protect.
Priyanka/Aditi, "third" (twins), 15. really artsy - priya likes writing; aditi likes music. probably they're trying to write a musical together. they're pretty excitable, like nikita, and are peeved that they, the ACTUAL TWINS, didn't get telepathy. what is up with that?????? friendly with nikita/sruthi, but they keep to themselves - special twin bond or w/e
Vani, fourth, 14. follows her older sisters around like a little duckling she got to be the littlest one for THREE WHOLE YEARS. her hobbies still fluctuate every week. she has a wild imagination and kind of wishes her family was a superhero team. If Nikita and Sruthi have powers, can't the rest of the family handle the behind the scenes stuff?
