Sheet:Elodie Vautrin
Elodie Vautrin's Sheet
Background
Once, five extraordinary girls protected Paris with the fierce power of love and devotion.
It began with Elise Véronique Vautrin, a radiant girl whose sense of justice and compassion made her a beacon in the city's darkest hour. Chosen and empowered by a mysterious force known only as La Luciole, Elise became the first. One by one, others awakened in turn, each called by that same light. Together, they became known as the Loyal Five.
For three long years, they fought to restore hope to a Paris weighed down by sorrow and despair. From Monsieur Lierre and his Mains Grises, who promised oblivion's gentle slumber to the city's weary hearts, to Le Mémorialiste and her army of grief-bound fantômes émotionnels. They faced foe after foe born from loss, longing, and emotional ruin, shielding the city and its weeping heart.
In the aftermath of their battle with Le Mémorialiste, the Loyal Five recovered one of the strange relics she had used in her crusade: a mirror unlike any other, veined with silver and laced with cracks that shimmered like old scars. It radiated pain and darkness, it wept silver, and sometimes it seemed to whisper to them, calling out. They chose to call it the Woundglass, for the memories that it brought to the surface when they stared into its fractured surface.
The Woundglass was no mere artifact. It was the time-tossed result of a magical catastrophe that occurred in Paris, where a young tourist to Paris saw themselves sealed within it. Frozen, they would reflect each individual who gazed into the mirror. They became a well, drawing out the darkness in the memory of every soul that met its gaze, a presence trapped and forever watching, forever remembering.
It became a potent source of energy. Suffering always is.
In the years that would follow its birth, the mirror would be collected and passed from hand to hand fore those who wanted power with no price, remaining mostly within Paris but appearing elsewhere from time to time. The spirit asorbed reflections, collected thoughts, rememberd traumas. Eventually, there were too many selves to separate. Too many emotions layered into one soul, and so they forgot. Forgot who they were. They were just a reflection. And now its fate rested with the Loyal Five.
The Loyal Five, knowing well the darkness that the mirror had contained and the chaos it had helped the Memorialist sow, tried to destroy it. Bringing their power to bear, they almost succeeded, cracking it and letting loose a powerful blast of dark energy as it buckled inwards. And from that chaos, the long-suffering soul within was freed in the form of the one who had last gazed into it, a mirror-born twin, a girl made of memory and glass, no longer merely staring at them from the other side.
he mirror-born girl was as fragile as she was radiant. She was not the monster they feared might emerge from the Woundglass. A reflection, yes, but one shaped by Elise's courage, kindness, and marked by a quiet sorrow they now shared, a secret between them both.
They named her Elodie, and for a time, all was well.
The Five welcomed her with warmth, laughter, and love. Elise treated her like a long-lost sister, albeit one whose lives were only diverging from each other in this moment. The others followed her lead, as they always did, always would, weaving Elodie into the rhythm of their lives and missions. They helped her feel real, like she belonged, like was more than just an echo. Like she was a person.
And so it seemed the Loyal Five might become the Loyal Six.
But it was not to be.
Some of the power that had been released in the creation of Elodie had taken root inside Elise, infecting her. Rotting her with darkness from the inside out. At first, she felt powerful, and she wanted to share that power with her friends. They were her loyal five, after all. And they would change. Kindness would turn brittle, shared joys turned sour, and love become envy. And when Elise looked upon her new twin, one thought began to crowd out all the others. "This should be *mine*." And the power of the woundglass itself beckoned, power that brought with it dark clarity.
And so it was that one warm Parisian night, the girl and her corrupted friends invited Elodie to a hidden place deep in the catacombs of Paris of what they said was old magic, to grant the gift of empowerment by their benefactor, Le Luciole. A final blessing to welcome her home. Instead, it was a trap. Waiting for her was the woundglass, renewed. They spoke of duty. Of balance. Of rightful places. But in the end, it was always the same: spite, greed, and the fear of being second place. They tried to push her in. She didn't let them.
She fought back with light pulled from deep within, the very light their love and warmth had grown inside of her. She fought with blades, with crystal butterflies, with reflections and with her own pain. She wasn't human anymore, her body cracking like glass and bleeding quicksilver. When the final attack came, the one that would push her into the mirror once and for all, she reflected its power back at Elise, while tapping into the same temporal energies that surrounded it. She froze them, all of them, in a moment of time together, each in a fragment of the shattered Woundglass, and Elise in the mirror itself. Frozen, each and all. All but her. She would not allow this to be the end of her story, or their own. She couldn't bear the thought of it. She wanted only to save them from themselves, to help them return to the people she knew, she remembered.
And so Elodie rested on the edge of time, a guardian of stories that the Veil and time itself forgot, stories that were frozen in place. Pulled from the moment and dormant, waiting for the when the moment might be right for them to return, for Elodie to find a way to bring them back to themselves. And then the magic began to unravel, for reasons initially unclear to her, bit faster and faster as time wore on. Now, Elodie finds herself with the woundglass on her back, fleeting across a familiar-yet-unfamiliar French countryside from the friends she once called her family, her Loyal Five. There was a thread. A trace of power that was calling to her that would lead her to help. Just one jump through a mirror to another. All the way to a place called Radiant Heart.
Personality
Much like Elodie had all of Elise's memories up until their divergence, she also shares her personality, albeit one with some sharp divergences fueled by her past as the spirit trapped inside the Woundglass, her growth as an individual during the period before their corruption and fall, and as the sole witness to it. Like Elise, Elodie is a gentle soul, perhaps even more so than her originator, unable to abide cruelty or intolerance and with a strong sense of justice, and a willingness to take charge of a situation which threatens to be unfair or unjust. Elise was a born leader. Elodie might instinctively follow suit before becoming quickly crippled with self-doubt.
She is warm-tempered, friendly, loyal to a fault, and most of all, she is brave.
But she is also an echo. Despite how much the Loyal Five told her that she was one of them, they also turned on her and attempted to consign her to a fate worse than any she can imagine. Having tasted freedom once more, the thought of being imprisoned again was terrifying on a whole new level. The very thought of being captured, of being held against her will once more, is enough to send her into fight or flight on a level she can scarcely yet comprehend.
Having the memories of Elise's triumphs, as well as her own since, grants Elodie a measure of confidence -- but being witness to Elise's fall has tempered their shared pride with an awareness of what comes after it in a way that few have witnessed. This has given her a level of understandably crippling self-doubt and as she is not Elise and those memories are not both her's and not her's, a very serious case of equally understandable imposter syndrome. Her fears of falling like her 'twin sister' has are quite real.
She is working hard to find her own interests, dreams, and hopes. Starting with reminding the Loyal Five who they really are and can be again.... assuming they don't catch her first. While both she and Elise were quick to judge, Elodie has shown herself to be more forgiving than her twin ever was, and to have a deeper wellspring of empathy, no doubt brought about from spending decades as nothing more than a reflection.
Focus
Loyal Five were empowered by the 'La Luciole', a being of light and love. Each were given an enchanted device, a hairpin, that they could use to activate their henshins, become Flameheart, Bloomheart, Shieldheart, Ribbonheart and Stormheart. As such, one could consider them something of a kind of Cure, operating closely or in parallel with them. Each had grown significantly into their power by the time they turned to darkness.
As as reflection of Flameheart, Elodie's powers, on the surface, might seem to come from a similar place, but they all stem from her true nature as a being of glass and mirrors and magic itself. She is no longer human, after all, and remains bound in part to the Woundglass itself.
Style
Elodie's powers are one part duplication of the power sets of Loyal 5 and one part her innate nature as a Doppelganger. When invoking her magic, there is often a crystalling ringing in the air around her, or light fracturing around her, splitting and crackling. Her powers tend to 'shatter' at their climax or their casting. She is all white fire and refracted light, and cool glass. Frustratingly -- to her that is -- to use most of her powers she has to 'activate her henshin', despite most of them technically being innate to herself in most ways. She uses a simple, golden hairpin as a focus for her shift -- but at least it lets her generate a really pretty dress.
Powers
Beneath her seemingly flesh and blood exterior lays this truth: she is not human. She is a Doppelganger. A reflection wrought of glass and magic. When she is struck hard enough, her blood reflects like quicksilver, her body cracks like a porcelain doll instead of breaking like a human's might, with light threatening to spill out from behind those cracks. She is incredibly durable, for such a being, but she can and will shatter if pushed hard enough. Fortunately, like the mirror that spawned her, she can piece herself back together with enough time.
Elodie is still tied to the other side of the mirror, so to speak. She can hop between them, traversing between two spaces she is familiar with. This is generally very taxing for her and she does not like doing it for very obvious reasons. Still, if a battle calls for it, she'll gladly put aside her discomfort for the greater good. These mirrors can't generally be more than within a few miles of each other for any single jump. She can do more than this if a situation calls for it, but there is considerable risk, both to her magical energies, and the chance of something from the other side of the mirror taking notice. Not everything that dwells there is as kind as Elodie.
While Elodie is no longer the woundglass, sometimes, just sometimes, when she touches someone she can see their memories, their joys or their worst moments. Sometimes, she can push them back towards their bearer, forcing someone to remember who they might have once been, or could still be again. Otherwise, this often can inconveniently overwhelm her. You can take the girl out of the woundlgass, but...
Appropriately, for a doppelganger, Elodie is capable of splitting herself into multiple clones of herself. This is brief, and these are little more than extra-shatterable figments or fragments that don't last more than the space it might take for her to try to gain an advantage on an opponent in a fight or to allow her and others to take flight.
Elodie can call forth a magic blade, she calls it her Fracture Blade, seemingly made of glass and charged with cold flame and blazing captured light. This is her primary tool in a fight, and she's skilled enough to make good use of it on account of years of experience drawn from Elise. While Elise could once purify with her sword's flame, Elodie lacks this capacity with her own.
Elodie can summon shards of radiant glass that act as both offense and defense for her. These shards can attack, most commonly in the form of pretty, cutting glass butterflies that flutter towards her opponent. She can enhance this effect further by expending them in a Fracture Bloom, a radial burst of shattering light.
Elodie can form a mirrored shield in front of her or her allies to capture or deflect an enemy's magic. Few things are better at reflecting power than a big old mirror, after all, and any captured magical power can be further 'detonated' this way or turned back on its wielder in some cases.
