Post by Marshall Quatrevaux on May 28, 2011 22:41:20 GMT -5
Irma Broussard
Full Name: Irma Denise Broussard
Age: 37
Civilian or Special: Special
Currently Located: New Orleans, Louisiana
Affiliated with: Neutral
Celebrity Claim: Ellis, Aunjanue
Relation to You: Former classmate and coworker, and close friend
Personality: Irma's acquaintances would describe her as being friendly, helpful, and caring. Her patients adore her, as she offers comfort and understanding in their most stressful times. Irma is able to remain calm, cool, and detached even in the face of trauma or in hostile situations. However, despite being friendly, she is not a very open person; only her closest acquaintances even begin to know the most personal of her thoughts and feelings, and even those friends often find it difficult to reach her on deeply emotional levels.
Appearance: Tall and slender, Irma sports an enviable figure. Her hands and feet are small for her frame. Her skin and eyes are dark brown; her lips are full, and her nose is fairly round. She considers her hair an expression of herself, and thus it changes frequently- from straight and brown to a red-tinted Afro to a low crop. She dresses professionally almost all the time, even when she is not on the job; her wardrobe consists mostly of black, navy, and cream-colored suits, and a variety of ties.
Empathic Link: This ability allows Irma to create a mental link between herself and other people she meets. However, she can only create links with people she bonds with emotionally; meeting a random person on the street will not necessarily lead to a link being formed. However, once Irma allows herself to open up to someone, the potential for a link begins to grow. She must consciously create the link, though she does not need the other person's permission to make one.
Once she and a person are linked, Irma can tap into that person's thoughts and emotions at will, and she can broadcast her thoughts into the person's mind. In this way, she and the person can have a sort of telepathic conversation. She can only communicate with one person at a time, and as far as this ability goes, she can only read their thoughts and emotions and project her own to them. There is no distance limit on this ability; she can reach any person she is already linked with no matter where they are, as long as they are living and their connection is not being blocked by mental manipulation.
Suggestion: Through the links she forges, Irma can also exert limited influence over each linked person's mind. She can override a person's instincts and replace them with the suggestion of another action. She cannot force the person to follow this action, but it will feel like a natural instinct to the person. She can also send subliminal messages to the person's brain, which can initiate small actions such as falling asleep.
Born and raised in New Orleans, Irma's childhood was one of moderate poverty and instability. She grew up the oldest of four children, a sister and two brothers. Their parents were young, both in school when Irma was born; her mother later became a teacher, and her father a deacon at their local church. It often fell to Irma to take care of her siblings when her parents were away.
As Irma got older, she made less and less time for school. She was naturally smart and seldom needed to study. She coasted through all of her classes and graduated from high school with nearly straight As. This outstanding record easily got her into the top colleges in the country, including all of the Ivy League schools she applied to. Irma wanted to attend Brown University, but her parents insisted she remain in town. She would have insisted on leaving were it not for an incident that occurred the March before she graduated from high school: the older of her two brothers, Ezra, was shot and killed in an outbreak of violence between two local gangs. Ezra had been only nine years old. His loss grieved Irma so much that she did decide to stay in New Orleans to help raise her remaining two siblings.
She enrolled at Tulane University and pursued a degree in psychology. During her sophomore year, she met Marshall Quatrevaux, who was also a psychology student by then. They did not become friends until medical school, when they found they had a number of courses together, and began to lean on each other for support in the intensely competitive and demanding atmosphere. They went on to complete their residency together at River's Edge Mental Hospital; along with a young woman named Thalia Thibodaux, whom Marshall had been dating on and off, they became inseparable, and have remained friends since then.
When Irma first manifested her abilities, as a resident at River's Edge, Marshall helped her sort through and develop them. He was the first person her ability "linked" her with, followed later by her family, Thalia, and others. As a result, her ability is often at its strongest with Marshall, even across the physical distance that separates New Orleans and Los Angeles. They are quite used to communicating via telepathic link, and have also kept in touch via more normal channels such as email and phone since Marshall moved away to work at the Jung Facility.
Irma currently heads the Mental Health division of New Orleans' Department of Health. She is unmarried and has no children of her own, but often looks after her nieces and nephews. She also has a number of patients to care for as well, as she still practices as a volunteer psychiatrist and grief counselor on occasion.
