Ceri Elwood

BIO

Ceri is a scientist-turned-Xenon Zombie, living in Drifters' Refuge with the rest of her friends, nicknamed the Bloodhearts after the very magic symbiote occupying her body. She is effectively harmless, and much more intelligent than the average X-zombie, thanks to the capabilities of the Xenon Virus. She is warmhearted and sweet, but also cripplingly shy, rarely speaking up in conversations, unless she feels as though she has permission. She's also rather spacey and slow, occasionally pausing mid-sentence in an attempt to remember what she was going to say.

Ceri originally died in a hospital after a piece of machinery in Axel's laboratory malfunctioned- designed for precisely cutting and shaping small objects for use in other work, a misplaced line of code caused the machine to swing in the wrong direction, hitting Ceri in the chest. She bled to death after being driven to the hospital. Axel, however, didn't want her to be gone so easily. The day after Ceri died, both of them vanished from the hospital without a trace...and not long after that, Ceri awoke again in her brother's laboratory, feeling very different.

She quickly noticed something was very wrong when she held up an arm to see her skin was now dull green, and noticed Axel's conflicted expression just as quickly. Some explanation later, she learned she was deliberately infected with the Xenon Virus by Axel in an attempt to revive her- which clearly worked, but somewhat damaged her mental capabilities. To Axel's surprise, she wasn't particularly upset by this. According to her, as long as her limbs don't start rotting off, she's happy being alive again.

The crystalline heart that loosely follows Ceri is believed to be a symbiote of some kind. Ceri's memory fails as to when or where she found or obtained it, but it is responsible for a significant alteration to her circulatory system, and a small network of pebble-sized crystals embedded into her arms, legs, and neck. According to internal scans done by Isamu, she has a network of smaller, less-active ones inside of her that interact with her circulatory and nervous system when needed. The heart can send signals to these crystals to manipulate her bloodstream, generating considerably more than her body actually needs and expending it in the form of temporary weapons, often forming pseudo-throwing knives from the gems embedded into her knuckles. The heart also has a passive healing effect, giving her even faster regeneration than a normal Xenon Zombie's.

Unfortunately, her heart malfunctions (or perhaps it's a defense mechanism?) from time to time when she's under considerable emotional or physical distress, which causes her mental and physical processes to go into overdrive for a short while, sending her into what Isamu has dubbed a "blood frenzy". In this state, her eyes turn weeping blood-red, and the various short crystals embedded in her body extend into long, razor-sharp horns.