Sidney Lynch

Sidney Lynch is a doctor of parasitology driven by an intense curiosity and, once, a genuine desire to do good and help her fellow humans. Now, lacking in the humanity that caused her to choose this profession and the memories that defined her, Sidney uses her Abnormality to harvest information from other intellectuals in search of some nebulous ideal of superiority and knowledge. Sidney is a tall woman (nearly 6 feet), with thick, wavy brown hair and green eyes. Lanky and awkward in build, Sidney wears simple clothing - most often, she finds herself in a simple, somewhat large lab coat, an outfit suitable for a doctor. Her clothing is generally bland and unflattering, which suits her just fine.
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Thanks to her Abnormality, Sidney can extent a spiny tail with a stinger from the base of her spine, and she may transform into considerably more monstrous and less human forms by stealing the genetic information of other organisms. When out in search of information, Sidney wears her lab coat and a bone white mask, resembling a hockey mask, to disguise her identity.

Over time, due to her Aversion, Sidney's appearance has changed slightly, and she will only change more the more she uses her Abnormality. Once a sweet and empathetic young woman who became a doctor to help people, Sidney is now a whole lot less human. An overuse of her Abnormality has destroyed her ability to form emotional connections with other humans, as, plagued by the knowledge that she'll eventually forget all her relationships anyways, Sidney has distanced herself from others and grown to see them as merely a source of information.
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Ambitious and insatiably curious even before her Abnormality consumed her, Sidney is driven to learn as much as she can. Once, she did so through research and hard work, but now, she does so by hunting down those with choice bits of knowledge and taking their information for herself. Sidney is not sadistic or cruel, but, lacking in compassion and humanity, Sidney cares little for others and considers their deaths a necessary sacrifice in the pursuit of her own ambitions.

Despite the damage to her identity and her memories, in many ways, Sidney remains the same person. Even though she no longer recognizes the faces of many of her loved ones, Sidney still keeps momentos and photographs of them, feeling some residual attachment, something that confuses her to no end. And yet, the thought of discarding these things, the last relics of her humanity, is distressing to her in a way she cannot comprehend. Tier: 10-B. Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole
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Powers and Abilities:
 * Information Absorption (She can extract information from biological and technological sources using her "stinger", actually an extension of her nervous system; she can absorb memories and genetic information)
 * Body Control and Shapeshifting (After absorbing and utilizing the genetic information of other species, Sidney can take on the traits of these beings, potentially completely transforming), allowing for;
 * Enhanced Senses (Sidney can emulate the senses of animals like birds, cats, and dogs, allowing her to see in the dark, hear sounds humans cannot, and track other organisms by scent)
 * Flight
 * Poison Manipulation (Sidney can emulate the venom of various animals by copying their genetic information)
 * Regeneration (Low-Mid; Sidney can regenerate lost limbs and some internal organs)

Attack Potency: Human level (Without transforming, Sidney is no physically stronger than any other human). Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole (By partially or fully transforming into other organisms, Sidney can replicate their strength. Her stinger can easily pierce a skull or even metal).

Speed: Normal Human. Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole

Lifting Strength: Regular Human. Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole

Striking Strength: Human Class. Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole

Durability: Human level. Varies, but higher with Head Like a Hole

Stamina: Superhuman.

Range: Extended melee range with her stinger, potentially higher with Head Like a Hole

Standard Equipment: A variety of notes on important aspects of her life, and a cool lab coat.

Intelligence: Already a clever girl before she developed her Abnormality, Sidney has only become more and more intelligent as she's given into the allure of Head Like a Hole. She possesses a vast amount of information on many subjects, derived from her victims, and can thus quite easily understand and make use of high-level science and mathematics. However, this knowledge is patchy and inconsistent, and not terribly reliable thanks to her Aversion. In addition, Sidney is somewhat impulsive, and even if she is knowledgeable, she has little interest in matters of strategy and combat, causing her to favor other sources with things that interest her more. Still, she is competent enough in a fight, using her extensive knowledge to come up with creative solutions and utilize her abilities cleverly.

Weaknesses: Sidney's Aversion causes her Abnormality to overwrite other information inside her mind as she uses it, resulting in the loss of many years worth of memories. Without the proper precautions, she would eventually devolve into an inhuman monster incapable of speech. As she is constantly losing stolen genetic information because of this, Sidney can only have so many abilities copied at once. Transforming takes a lot of energy, and she must carefully conserve her nutrients and eat more than a regular human to keep her metabolism from backfiring on her.


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Skills

 * Encyclopedic Knowledge: Sidney has extensive knowledge on nearly all branches of mathematics and science, derived from the countless intellectuals she's fed off of. She can deal with and understand complex quantum theory, advanced calculations, psychological subjects, and she can practice medicine competently. However, her knowledge is patchy and inconsistent, thanks to her Aversion, and she no longer has the expertise on any single subject a more devoted scientist would have.

Abnormality
Sidney's Abnormality is Head Like a Hole.

Nervous System Expansion
Head Like a Hole has altered Sidney's biology, causing her nervous system to expand throughout more of her body, most notably in the form of a long, spiny tail that ends in a bony "stinger". This tail is an extension of her spinal cord, and is the core of Sidney's Abnormality and its abilities.
 * Information Extraction: By piercing a "source" her stinger, Sidney can begin the process of absorbing information, in a multitude of forms, from this source. This takes time, depending on the entry point, how much information Sidney is absorbing, and its complexity. To avoid flooding her mind with useless nonsense, Sidney has to filter out garbage data, taking even more time to do so, but, this way, she can select the choicest bits of knowledge to retain and leave behind anything that she has no need for. Sidney can absorb information from both biological and technological sources, but different species need slightly different stinger iterations and technological systems need a much different structure, so she must take the time to consciously change her stinger's form for different sources. Against humans, Sidney now targets the head whenever possible, stabbing straight through the skull to pierce the brain, and her "feeding" process is almost always lethal.

Parasitoid Metamorphosis
After absorbing genetic information from a subject, Sidney can "install" this information into her own biology, causing her to transform and take on the traits of the original organism. She can control the degree to which she transforms, picking and choosing select useful traits from different organisms.

At first, this aspect of Head Like a Hole had no use against humans, but it is now necessary for Sidney to drain the DNA from humans so that she can transform back into a human shape, as she no longer "remembers" her own body. However, even though she generally appears to be human on the outside, Sidney is a completely different organism on the inside, having incorporated biological systems from many different lifeforms and greatly modified her own body. These changes are constant, as Sidney must swap out different traits for others in different situations.

The variety of traits Sidney can steal are plentiful and include abilities from all across and even beyond the Animal Kingdom. For example, she often takes on the enhanced senses of other animals such as cats and dogs, the power of flight from birds, venom from snakes and arthropods, and even advanced cellular regeneration from certain species of lizards and salamanders. Transforming takes quite a lot of energy, and Sidney thus must be careful to properly conserve her nutrients and she has to eat a lot more than any ordinary human to keep herself at her best.
 * Internal Wetware: In her pursuit of greater knowledge and intellectual power, Sidney has further improved on her expanded nervous system by copying computer systems and emulating them in a biological form across her body. When this biological computer is active, it greatly enhances Sidney's processing abilities, allowing her to think far faster than a human and act to the best of her ability.

Wasting Truths
Sidney's Aversion. The human mind only has so much capacity, and as Sidney utilizes her Abnormality to absorb information, she will slowly overwrite other, older information inside her mind - first, her memories, and eventually, everything that allows her to function as if she were a normal human. The rate of this rewriting has only increased over time, and though Sidney doesn't know it, older, excess information is now in danger of simply disappearing on its own.

As a consequence of carelessly using her Abnormality in the years after she first got it, Sidney has lost nearly all memory of her childhood and no longer recognizes most of her family and loved ones. She has virtually no emotional connections, and this has only worsened as she has used Head Like a Hole more and more, leaving her with a stunning lack of empathy and humanity. This also affects the genetic information she can collect and utilize, forcing her to abandon certain traits for others. While she has expanded on her capacity through her new biological computer system, it is still finite, and this itself came at the expense of years of memories.

Now knowing how her Aversion functions, Sidney keeps detailed notes on who she is and what she does on her at all times, so that she will always be able to refresh this knowledge. However, without this precaution, Sidney would eventually completely devolve, becoming a monstrous, inhuman creature incapable of understanding humans at all. Not knowing even how to speak, Sidney would be a hyperintelligent parasitoid constantly on the hunt for more information, transforming constantly as she stalks prey. This is a prospect Sidney finds just as thrilling as she does terrifying, and she often has to fight the urge to give into these changes and become a monster.