(no subject)

[moonflower77]

once again, this is mostly for dreaming_brooke to make the character easier for her to write. pertains to the three-year period between de-assimilation and re-assimilation.

Advantages:

- Resistant to extreme temperatures. The T'elX colonies were located in the open desert where the temperature could reach +50C and drop below zero at night. As a result, during assimilation, Azila’s body was adapted to these conditions. She can withstand temperatures within this range naked, as she used to be when she was part of the T'elX, or with minimal clothes on, without feeling any discomfort. To her, “hot” begins around +60C (higher for surfaces), while “cold” would be well below -15C. Her optimal thriving temperature is around +40-45C.

After de-assimilation, she was known to remove her shirt and work topless in the sun when the thermometer climbed over +40 C and everyone else seemed to be hiding indoors or wore several layers of linen and a woolen outer cape. She habitually walked walk barefoot over rocks heated to about +75C, a temperature sufficient to fry an egg or bake wheat, and felt the ground as pleasantly warm. Similarly, she could stay outdoors in a light sweater and jacket at -10C and think that the weather was quite mild for winter. In effect, there is no risk of heat stroke or sunburn for her at any natural temperature found on the Earth's surface, and frostbite would be a problem only in an arctic and sub-arctic climate during the cold season.

- Diminished need for sleep. Azila needs no more than 3-4 hours of sleep a day, which she usually breaks down into brief naps of one to ten minutes. She is able to fall asleep anywhere, in any position, whether sitting down at a desk, curled up in a corner, propped up against a wall, huddled inside a box or narrow tunnel, standing up, or even while walking. Her eyes remain open, except for the second lid, and one can have difficulty telling whether she is awake or not at any given moment (all the more so given her habit of being still for extended periods of time).

- Remarkable stamina. Azila is well-adapted to average physical exertion spread over a prolonged period of time. She is a great endurance runner and may hike or run at a moderate speed across a difficult rocky and/or sandy terrain and cover to 42 km before she needs rest. However, she is poor at activities that require a sudden concentrated effort (such as power-lifting or sprinting).

- Good at climbing or scaling vertical and/or smooth surfaces, not least owing to the claws.

- Partial organic armor. The chitinous scales that cover part of her body are extremely hard and offer solid protection against blades and decent protection against blunt-force trauma. She may grab and/or deflect a knife or sword with her bare hands and only her head, thighs and upper arms (which no longer have any scales) would be vulnerable to stab wounds. A blow delivered with a blunt heavy object may fracture the scales, but will be considerably softened, causing less internal injury. Firearms pose the same danger to Azila as they would to any other human, but a bullet is more likely to slow down when it hits the scales, thus doing less damage, or to bounce if fired at an acute angle.

If fractured or forcibly removed, the scales will heal back much the same way as human fingernails, but at a quicker pace.

- Organic weapons. Azila is nowhere as strong as a brown bear, nor does she have the same body mass, but she can be almost as dangerous in hand-to-hand combat due to the claws, which have a sharp end and lowermost shearing edge, and can easily cut through flesh and thick clothes, including wool, leather, felt, down-filled coats or non-reinforced vests without any additional ceramic or plastic plates.

- Adaptive vision. Due to the fluctuation in pupil size, from a slit to a full circle, Azila's eyes are capable of adapting to a wide variety of lighting conditions - from maximum (midday at a subtropical latitude with no cloud cover, whitewashed houses and streets) to minimum (night, no moon visible, no human-made sources of light). This is what enables her to see six times better than a human at night, and, at the same time, not to go blind during the day.

- Faster healing. Azila heals about twice as fast as a non-altered human, which means that she has a higher chance of surviving a serious injury, and fewer chances of becoming crippled.

- Enhanced strength. Azila's physical strength is about two times that of an average able-bodied, fit male.

- Night vision. Due to having a tapetal layer in her eyes, Azila can see in the most minimal lighting, such as the light of the stars (with or without the moon) even when obscured by cloud cover. Her night-time sight is six times better than that of humans. This was necessary to enable her to function during the darker time of day deep in the desert with nothing but weak natural lighting to go by.

- Exceptional vestibular system. Rotation won't produce vertigo and/or nausea in her even in conditions that qualify as extreme overload (e.g. the centrifuges used to train pilots and astronauts).

- Diminished need for nutrients. Being still largely T'elX, Azila's metabolism is extremely efficient, capable of synthesizing any necessary substance from scratch. She doesn't have to eat as much or as frequently as a human, and can subsist for extended lengths of time on non-solid foods - jellies rich in sugar and starch, juices, sweet soft drinks, broth, protein shakes. During a certain period, she was known for consuming nothing but milk, soured milk or buttermilk mixed with protein powder, to a point where "Azila and her jar of milk" became an inside joke at her workplace. Her metabolism does not require animal proteins the same way as ours, and she may stay on a lactovegetarian diet indefinitely without any harm to her health. May actually live on vitamin and/or food supplement pills for weeks. That said, she has managed to get herself seriously undernourished in the past because she would forget or neglect to take even what little food she did need.

Disadvantages:

- Neurological instability. A joiner's nervous system was not meant to function outside of the superorganism, and separation would trigger a degenerative neurological disorder that was usually fatal within the the first three or four weeks after the separation. Due to the aggressive treatment applied in order to make her survive long enough for her knowledge of organic technologies and genetic modification to be put to use, she has managed to survive on her own for a record time. However, she remains terminally ill; while the neural decay has been temporarily suspended, it can never be stopped and may resume at any moment.

Emotional shock is a particular danger. In the past, trauma has caused psychotic episodes, which, much like delirium tremens or the psychoses induced by prolonged amphetamine use, produced widespread and, for the greater part, permanent neurological damage. A limited number of them is possible before the higher neurological functions disintegrate and global CNS collapse occurs - four or five for a regular human and perhaps a few more for Azila. So far, her nervous system has managed to compensate for the damage and to readjust, but as it stands, each new episode is life-threatening and may easily become the last. High doses of potent old-school anti-psychotics such as thorazine (chlorpromazine) or haloperidol may somewhat improve her condition during an episode and reduce the degree of the irreversible damage, but there is no guarantee that the damage will be prevented altogether.

At present, she may expect to live for another year or two at most. The only way to survive beyond that would be assimilation by, and with, her own or a similar collective species, which so far has not been an option.

- Vulnerability during moults. During the moults, which occur every five years and may last up to a week, Azila is exceptionally vulnerable. She cannot perform most everyday activities and is unable to wear any clothes until the new scales are hardened, as the contact between the fabric and her exposed skin causes excruciating pain. Throughout the period, she is forced to remain indoors and is susceptible to just about any threat one could imagine.

-  Loss of control and life-threatening complications in heat. The extreme metabolic changes (especially the large quantities of hormones ejected into the bloodstream) and strong emotions during the mating season may serve to further destabilize her neural tissue and endanger her life. In the initial stages, while the condition is manageable, she will try to isolate herself and acquire the hormonal medications and typical anti-psychotics she had used last time to suppress the symptoms, but if she has no access to these measures and the mating fever is allowed to run its course unchecked, she may die.

In the more advanced stages, if not on medication, she will be unable to exercise any self-control and will be reduced to little more than an animalistic state - aggressive, quick to be provoked and roused to anger, and impossible to reason with.