Helena Vaeli Ecco

//GENERAL//

Site Alias: eev!

Character's Full Name: Helena Vaeli Ecco
Any Nicknames?: Lena, Ecco, Ms. Ecco
Age: Sixty Five
Birthday: December 19
Gender: Female
Sexuality: Heterosexual :] She likes her some may-uhn.

Element(s): Water/Fire
Subject: Alchemy, also some for-fun 'cooking like humans' classes

//APPEARANCE//

Played By: Evangeline Lilly

Eyes: Helena's eyes are almond shaped and upturned, like those of a cat. There are thin crow's feet at the outer corners of each eye; lingering evidence of the smiles that often grace her face. The color of her eyes is a light olive brown that sometimes borders on gold, and she doesn't posses the deep sea-blue eyes that usually come with water powers. She attributes this unusual color to the passive earth powers of her father.
Hair: Her hair is dark brown with copper highlights which show up more predominantly in sunnier conditions. Helena's locks curl loosely, and she only has to let it air dry to 'style' it. Even if her hair was unruly, she probably wouldn't give much thought to it, believing that there are more important things and that she should leave her hair to its natural tendencies. While in class, she keeps it up in a ponytail or bun high on her head to keep it from getting into any trouble with an alchemical solution, but when she is outside of class she likes to keep it down and loose.
Smile: Helena's smile is broad and tranquil, and is usually slow in forming. She does not believe in smiling when she does not mean it, so when she does smile you can be sure that she is pleased at something. She tends to smile with her teeth showing only when she is intensely pleased, usually when a student makes particularly impressive progress.
Face: She has a long face, which would be considered rectangular if it weren't for the rounded point of her chin. Her nose is straight and slightly pointed up at the tip and is a little bit lower on her face than average. Her eyebrows turn up at the ends, giving her a naturally amused expression. Being a water element, her skin is always clean and hasn't seen a blemish since she herself attended Aegnor.

Height: 5'5''
Weight: 121 lbs
Physique: Helena is in shape both physically and power-wise, but the way she stays in shape is not very healthy. The dual nature of her powers expresses itself in the way she reacts to the world on a weekly basis. Sometimes she will bury herself in her alchemical work for days on end, neglecting herself and those around her, until her inspiration has passed. During these times she rarely eats and only uses her powers insofar as they help in her work. It is just as likely, however, for her to be caught in an active mood that usually results in her taking her students for romps around the school campus and practicing the more offensive uses of her powers. In this way she reaches some sort of strange balance between being active mentally and physically, and though she can sometimes drive herself to extremes, she somehow manages to maintain a good average.

Style: Helena prefers to wear clothes that don't get in the way of her alchemical researches. Nonrestrictive clothing that fits close to her skin is best, and her preferred mode of dress is tank tops and shorts. Other than that, she doesn't put much thought into the cut or color of her clothes. Her mind tends to wander elsewhere when she dresses herself, so it isn't unusual for her to unknowingly put on miss-matching outfits.
Hygiene: When inspiration hits Helena, she completely ignores her own needs in favor of concentrating on her work. Thankfully, the fact that she is a Water Elessarian means that she has a relatively easy time keeping clean. When she's in a less concentrated mood, she enjoys taking steaming showers at least once a day.

//PERSONALITY//

Likes:

hot water
bubbling cauldrons
ingenious solutions to tough problems
curious students
human cooking
warm climates
having adventures
trustworthy people
creative excuses from students
unusual use of powers
long showers
optimism
giving into impulse
spending time in the garden
opening students' eyes to new possibilities
meeting new people
men

Dislikes:

cold water
losing somebody's trust
people as stubborn as she is
students who don't think for themselves
human-haters
animosity
cold weather
having to wear a sweater
her hair getting in her cauldron
having to do silly things like eat and sleep
having to give out bad marks
losing her train of thought
forgetting to put on shoes
people without subtlety
people who are too dependent on others

Strengths:

water form
water manipulation on pure water or water mixed with liquid
heat manipulation
thinking outside the box
courage
optimism
sympathy
energy
quick mind
quick wit
friendliness
ambition

Weaknesses:

fear of large bodies of water (she can't swim)
water creation
water manipulation on water mixed with anything semi-solid
optimism
short attention span
ambition
cockiness
irresponsible
temperamental
impatient
careless
easily distracted

Hopes:

mastering her water form
earning a place as a Master in the Alchemist's Guild
finding a guy who can keep up with her
completing her collection of human cook books
discovering a new species of alchemical plant and getting to name it

Fears:

swimming
uncontrolled Elessarians
coming up against an unsolvable problem
pushing all of her friends away
teaching a student who goes on to do horrible things with their knowledge
losing her edge in her craft
losing control of her powers
disappointing her father

//HISTORY//

First Sign of Powers: Helena was eleven when she first used her power. She was digging near her father's garden when she broke a water pipe with her shovel. Not wanting the cascading water to flood her father's cabbages (which were growing nearby), she waved the water away with her hands. She was surprised when it actually happened, but she knew that it meant her sign was Water. She rushed to tell her father, who was predominantly Water himself, and he congratulated her. For two years it was unknown that she had a double sign, but when she hit puberty at thirteen her powers started acting up. When she was angry water around would jump to a boil, and she could never go into the shower without leaving the whole bathroom a waterlogged mess when she left. Her ability to mess with heat soon led her parents to realize that she was a Water/Fire sign, and not just pure water. They were overjoyed at this, since it was a strange and rare combination of signs. Helena herself was disappointed that she was not Water/Earth like her father, but her parents and friends soon persuaded her that her signs were just as good.

Favorite Way to Use Powers: By far Helena's favorite way to use her powers is in her water form. Being able to turn her body into water has helped her greatly in the past, especially when she ended up in fights at school. She has perfected the art of turning herself to water (and often boiling water, at that) with split-second timing in able to completely avoid a blow or deliver a watery punch to her opponent. Since she has grown out of picking fights (at least for the most part) she doesn't have much practical use for her water form anymore, though she does volunteer for target practice as often as she can. Her most practical use of her powers, and the one she employs most often, is the manipulation of the water in her cauldron. This gives her more control over her alchemical processes as she can manipulate both temperature and flow of the water and be much more exact in her processes.

History At School: Helena was enrolled in Aegnor as soon as she hit puberty, and she was an immediate hit with her peers. Her strange pairing of powers meant that she had more work to do than most other students, but she soon found a tight support group in the company of the other students who made up the double-power community at Aegnor. She got along relatively well with most people her age, but her burning desire to prove herself to older students led her to pick fights with the most powerful students in the school. She was rather impressive in a fight, but she was still untrained and often got in over her head. After this resulted in several visits to the nurse, the Headmistress stepped in and guided Helena to the dueling club. With the other students in the dueling club and her fellow double powered students, Helena had a large support group to help her with her studies. Helena was an average student, marks-wise, for the first half of her time at Aegnor. She split her time up between her schooling and her dueling, and she often had trouble focusing on schoolwork when there were so many other things to do at the school. When she was a Celebrimbor, though, she got detention for an out-of-club fight and ended up having to spend her time with the alchemy professor. They got along magnificently and he encouraged her to put more effort into her studies of alchemy. Once the ball was rolling, Helena became completely stuck on alchemy, getting top marks in the class for the rest of her time at school.

History With Humans: After graduation, Helena took three years off from her studies to live amongst the humans. This wasn't out of any desire to learn about them or blend in. In fact, she had always particularly disliked human studies. Instead, she was interested in traveling the human countries from one end to another, always searching for an adventure or a new experience. She wasn't exactly the most skilled at blending in, and she had to move around often to keep ahead of the suspicion she aroused from the fights she often found in human bars. Brawls, however, were not the only things she discovered in such places. She soon found she had and amazing love of human cuisine, and she began to collect human cook books on her travels. She didn't make any extremely close friends amongst the humans, but she did find a few solid contacts that she's kept up over the years through letters, pretending to age as the humans did.

History After School: After the trip into the human world immediately after her graduation, she returned to Vastarsis and sought out the guidance of her old alchemy professor. He suggested that she apply to join the Alchemist's Guild and perfect her studies. She studied there for twenty years and rose relatively quickly in the ranks. By the time she was forty-four she had become the youngest Expert alchemist in the guild. After this, she took a two year sabbatical back into the world of humans to enroll in culinary school. Once she had finished, she returned to Vastarsis once more to work on becoming a Master within the guild. Part of the requirements to become a Master was to teach the alchemical arts to others. She immediately decided that she was going to fulfill this at Aegnor, where her own professor was then retiring. She took up his position and has been teaching there for nineteen years now. For the most parts she gets along well with her students, mostly because she's remained young at heart herself. She's very forgiving as long as students don't try to take advantage of her, and a student who is honestly gifted or interested in alchemy can get away with anything in her class. Her open-minded and passionate nature gives her a great reputation as a professor, her extracurricular activities as a punching bag for students, her role as a staff sponsor of the dueling club, and her enthusiasm in teaching students human cooking after school hours makes her one of the more approachable professors at Aegnor.

//FAMILY//

Parents:

Teneibrus Alistair Ecco, 179, Water/Earth. Representative of Water for the Vastarsis High Council.

Citobriah Vaeli Ecco, 165, Fire. Secretary of the Friends of Fire Outreach Program.

Siblings: None.

Relationship with Family: Helena gets along wonderfully with her parents ninety percent of the time, and the other ten percent consists of her parents worrying over her treatment of herself. She feels that her mother is too overprotective of her, and Helena's fierce independence clashes with her mother's own fiery personality. This is only a problem, however, when they start on the topic of Helena settling down and producing grandchildren. While Helena isn't totally against the idea of having a family, it frustrates her to be rushed into something that will probably upset her entire life. Helena is completely in awe of her father, who is one of the most powerful Elessarians, and nearly everything she does is meant to be a way to impress him. In return, he loves her dearly and always praises her on her accomplishments. Helena, however, never thinks she has done enough to make him proud of her.

Done!