ZIMMERMANN, Claire Renee

CLAIRE RENEE ZIMMERMANN

AT FIRST GLANCE

FULL NAME	CLAIRE RENEE ZIMMERMANN
NICK NAMES	Not any I approve of.
AGE	26
DATE OF BIRTH	May 9
GENDER	Female
SEXUALITY	Straight
ALUMNI?	Yes
OCCUPATION	University History Professor and High School World History Professor
SOCIO-ECON	Middle Class

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL

FACECLAIM	Jennifer Morrison
HEIGHT	5' 7''
WEIGHT	127lbs
HAIR COLOR	Blonde
EYE COLOR	Blue-Green
COMPLEXION	Normal White Person skin
NATIONALITY	ENGLISH
APPEARANCE	Stylish and sweet, Claire is almost always dressed in what she refers to as her ‘teacher clothes’. Basically she is always looking professional, in case she were to run into some of her students. Even on casual Fridays, Claire makes sure that she is dressed properly and never, never, never wears jeans. It’s just not her style. The main unprofessional thing about Claire’s appearance would be all of her tattoos. None of them are wildly inappropriate or anything, but she does have a number of them that are generally visible. She has one on her wrist that says “If you’re a bird, I’m a bird.” She has one on the front of her shoulder that says, “This too shall pass.” And one on her foot that is a tribal style flower. When Claire was younger, she wore a lot of leather and loved motorcycles. Sometimes her friends say there is still some of that bad ass in her, but she is hiding behind the teacher.

BEYOND THE LOOKING GLASS

LIKES	1. Candy and other sweet things like cake and chocolate 2. especially ice cream 3. eating just in general 4. history, especially medieval history 5. watching movies, especially horror movies 6. cooking 7. visiting the beach in Orlando 8. going to the lake 9. being near the water 10. swimming 11. the Food Network 12. Ashford Academy 13. Teaching 14. Making a difference in the lives of her students 15. Playing on the computer 16. Helping people 17. Having heated discussions (aka intellectual arguments) 18. Travelling 19. Motorcycles (ESPECIALLY a guy with a motor cycle) 20. Leather jackets 21. Tattoos 22. Bad asses 23. …intimate recreation (with someone she cares about of course) 24. Doing things just for fun without worrying about the consequences 25. Living in the moment
DISLIKES	1. Being hungry 2. Having so much to do that it gets overwhelming 3. Being told what to do by others 4. Feeling like she isn’t being useful 5. Being a charity case 6. Most vegetables and fruits 7. Stupid commercials on TV 8. Pencil neck goody two shoes guys with no life 9. People who are disrespectful without even giving her a chance 10. Students who don’t bother to try 11. Italian food, for some really weird reason 12. Bugs, snakes, spiders, basically anything creepy crawly 13. People thinking she is weak 14. Being less than she knows she can be 15. Being touched by strangers unnecessarily 16. Not having enough to eat but not being able to get more 17. Being inside for too long 18. Being cold, she is way more of a summer in Florida kind of girl
BEST SUBJECT	History, Hands down
WORST SUBJECT	Pfft. Math. I mean come on.
STRENGTHS	1. Phenomenal student and learner 2. Strong willed 3. Great leader 4. People person 5. Great chef
WEAKNESSES	1. Stubborn to a fault 2. Can be rude if she thinks people are disrespecting her or her colleagues 3. Overly proud of her PhD 4. Thinks math is completely useless and isn’t afraid to talk about it 5. Really high expectations for her students
HOBBIES	1. Read about history and do research 2. Sit out by the pool, effectively killing the party mood down there 3. Being out on her boat
PET PEEVES	People who don't put their full effort into things, People who don't think history is useful because they don't see how it had a practical use.
PERSONALITY	Claire is a strong willed girl with an attitude. She loves to argue and be right about things and sometimes it can be a little insane. But she is a generally good person who cares a lot about her students. Since the time she was at Ashford herself, she has always loved history and wanted to teach it To her, things tend to be black and white. She is the kind of person who hates the "grey" parts of life, the parts of life that don't really have a label as 'good' or 'bad'. When she does something that is in the grey and kind of ambiguous, she feels guilty about it. She is always striving to do the right thing for her students. She is often staying up later than she should grading essays and creating tests. But to her, those things are what makes students fall in love with history, which isn't as common as she would like it to be. As far as a love life is concerned, because she spends basically all of her time teaching and at Ashford, she never really gave herself the opportunity to fall in love or date anyone. It’s not that she isn't interested, but it seems she needs someone who challenges her and she hasn't found anyone like that yet.

THE HOUSE THAT BUILT ME

MOTHER	MARTHA ANNE ZIMMERMANN (NEE BILSON) - 50 - RETIRED - "My mom is my inspiration. She is the greatest person I have ever known and supports me no matter what I choose to do. She is my muse and I love her more than anyone else. Recently, she was diagnosed with Breast Cancer and I think, if and when I loose her, will be the wort day of my life."
FATHER	KENNETH JAMES ZIMMERMANN - 52 - CEO OF HOTEL CHAIN - "My dad was always more strict than my mom. But since I am taking care of myself now, we are starting to really get along well."
SIBLINGS	none
OTHER	none

SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW

HISTORY

Claire’s history is not as exciting as most of the students at Ashford. She grew up in a boring, normal family as a boring, normal girl. She was born in Orlando, Florida to Martha and Kenneth Zimmermann. Martha and Kenneth were both boring, regular people. Besides the fact that they both possessed powers. Martha Zimmermann (nee Bilson) was an Orlando native with an affinity for water. Her Hydrokinesis was powerful and played a huge part in Claire’s childhood. They spent most of their days on the beach under a sunny sky, supplied by Kenneth’s Atmokinesis. To Claire, they were the best parents in the world. Nothing they ever did happened on a bad, rainy day. Everything was always sunshine with that perfect amount of breeze to make to bearable outside. The water always danced with Claire, and never once did she think that she would ever drown. Life continued like that all through Claire’s early years. By the time she was in middle school, she was more than ready to get a power all her own. She had spent her entire childhood day dreaming about what kind of amazing power she would get when she finally came into her own. She secretly hoped for a power like her parents. Something raw and elemental. To Claire, those powers always seemed so much cooler to her than something silly like duplication or animal morphing. But when her thirteenth birthday came, and she still didn’t have her power, she began feeling extremely impatient. In fact, when Claire was coming up on her sixteenth birthday with no indication that she was going to develop any sort of power, she actually started to give up hope of moving to Wyoming to go to boarding school. One day, Claire got a glimmer of hope about her power. After a rather difficult day at school, Claire came home crying and whining about how terrible teenagers are and how she wished she was different. Hours of comforting, and Claire still didn’t feel any better. Before dinner, she ran out the door and found herself curled up on a blanket at the beach behind their house. Something about the salty air and the water rising and falling against the shoreline calmed her down. She started walking along the beach, not paying any attention to what she was doing to where she was going. And suddenly she realized she was in the middle of the ocean, standing on the waves as she had seen her mother do some many times. Overwhelmed with excitement, Claire rushed home to share the news with her mother. She was hydrokinetic. A few hours later, after they had all been fed and taken care of, Claire dragged both of her parents out to the ocean to show them her new skill. She ran out on to the waves and splashed around and they all celebrated. But the excitement for Claire’s new gift didn’t last. After about a week, the hydrokinesis stopped working. Claire lost all control of her power and, in a fit of rage and disappointment (and a good slap across the face from her father), Claire ran away from home. Normally, Claire wasn’t the type of person to throw tantrums like that, but it seemed to her that nothing was ever going to go right. Once again, she found herself on the beach. For some reason, she always wanted to lie in the sand and cry when she was feeling upset. She flicked her fingers back and forth, willing the water to move on her command. And it didn’t. She began to believe that she had lost her power forever. That somehow she had been tricked into thinking she had gained anything more than a few pimple, when she had gone through puberty. From behind her, she could hear her mother calling to her. Someone was at the house asking for Claire. With no interest in seeing anyone, Claire stood up and ran down the coastline until she was out of range to hear her mother hollering for her. She slumped behind a rock and proceeded to pull her long blonde hair into a high pony tail on top of her head. In the distance, Claire could see the storm cloud rolling in, threatening to make the skies match her dark, brooding mood. It didn’t occur to her until later that she had been doing that. Her mother caught up to her just as the rain started to fall from the sky and thunder made the very ground beneath her rumble like the earth was shaking. Martha was out of breath and smiling when she found Claire hiding behind the rocks of a small lagoon at the end of the beach. The words she said were ones Claire would never forget for the rest of her life: “They’ve come for you. You’re going to Ashford.” Apparently, Claire had a gift called ‘power mimicry’. Of all the cool powers that Claire could have gotten, she was so surprised to hear that she had actually had one of the more rare abilities. She could literally have any power that she wanted as long as she knew someone who held that same ability. For Claire, Ashford became the most amazing place she had ever been. It was full of people like her parents, who could control water or fire, or make themselves go invisible. The magical abilities of the students at Ashford were more amazing to her than she could have ever imagined, even growing up with proficient SPB as parents. The teachers and professors at Ashford taught Claire more than just how to control her unique and coveted ability, though. She was also able to learn how to think critically and focus her opinions. She became very interested in history. And by history, she truly loved all history. From Neanderthals to the Vietnam War, from Ancient Greece and Rome to Medieval England, Claire loved the stories and lessons a person could learn from the past. It was no surprise to anyone that, when Claire graduated from Ashford Academy, she immediately turned around and started attending the University for History. She studied mostly history surrounding Medieval Europe and Ancient Greece, choosing to focus on those time periods and try to decipher the famous individuals and scholars from the time who might have been SPB. As is the Ashford University requirement, Claire took a few classes on SPB history and found it less interesting than other history, although still plenty fascinating. When she finish her bachelor’s degree in history, Claire started to teach at the Academy. She taught high school United States and World histories. Although she loved her job, and talking about history all day was definitely something she wanted to pursue further, she missed the constant discussions and research that university level classes brought her. She decided to return to school after only one year of teacher high school history at Ashford Academy. After finished Graduate level education, Claire knew she wanted to return to the classroom. She spent a few months trying and finally was given her job back at the high school level. This time, though, she taught only high school World history, as they had found someone else to teach US history while she was at school. After a year of teaching high school World history, Claire was invited to spend the other half of her day, when she wasn’t teaching high school World History, teaching college level history classes. And so she began her first year of teaching at both the high school and college levels.

ALL THE SMALL THINGS

POWER	Power Mimicry
POWER DESCRIPTION	Claire’s power is call Power Mimicry. There have been many stages of this power throughout Claire’s lifetime and they are listed below: Earliest stage: When Claire first developed her power, she actually didn’t know how to use it. It didn’t always stick when she would touch someone. In fact, for the first few months at Ashford, she couldn’t get her power to work hardly at all. It took her nearly a year to find out that the few times her power worked her always emotionally charged. That was when Claire started trying to channel her emotions into her ability more directly. When she did get the powers to mimic to her, she could keep them from anywhere to a few hours and a week. The inconsistent nature of her ability made it difficult for her to practice with the powers that she took from other people. She also could only have power at a time. Even if she tried, she couldn’t pick up a second power until the first one wore off. Second stage: As she got closer to graduation from the Academy, Claire got a better handle on her emotional state. This meant she was able to (mostly) control when her power copied other peoples abilities and, for the most part, was able to keep all of those abilities for at least a week. The older she got the longer she was able to keep the abilities in her system. By the time she actually graduated, she held powers for about two weeks at a time and could hold two at a time. Third Stage: Throughout college, Claire continued to hone her abilities. She got to the point where she could have three powers at a time, and is certain that is the maximum for her. She can also control when she loses the power more accurately now that she is older. She can keep powers for nearly a month now, but the longer she keeps them the weaker they get. She can choose to discard the powers if she wants to, although there are more aggressive powers that she can’t get rid of until they have run their course. Claire has a good handle on when she can copy powers, and does not always take powers from others when she touches them.
SPECIAL ITEMS	Claire has a small memo pad she carries in her back pocket to help her remember what powers she has and when she picked them up. Without this her control over her power is nearly lost completely.

PULLING THE STRINGS

ALIAS	If you don't know, you need to get your brain checked
CREDITS	THIS APP WAS CREATED BY RYN ★

Yay for Claire!!! Claims though.