Spirit
Name: Ripley
Description: A very lightly reflective collection of gears, shafts, and belts (and some other mechanical parts), shifting position and size depending on his mood, mostly translucent and transparent, visible primarily where the gears contact each other. Usually, these parts take the shape of what is most likely a large housecat, though Ripley feels little compunction about taking the appearance of something else if he feels like it. However, it's usually either a cat, a strange-looking bird he calls an ornithopter, or a lizard. Though capable of moving through matter like most spirits, Ripley prefers to maintain the illusion of solidity by walking on surfaces, falling if not on anything, and so on. He enjoys perching on his human's shoulder, and has an air of arrogance about him, a nature untouched by the nuisance of time. When he speaks, the air seems to buzz or thrum, just underneath the range of human hearing, and it sounds like it's being synthesized, along with an undertone of clicking that help to create consonants. More disturbing, perhaps, is his purring, a sound somewhat resembling an very quiet diesel engine.
Abilities: Ripley has multiple abilities, though most might be somewhat predictable. He can create the physical sensation of pressure in things he 'touches', as well as shift extremely light or airy substances touching his body, as though he were almost physical. As well, Ripley can cause distinct and separate mechanisms to link, making one gear turn a gear completely unconnected to it, though it wears off after a while and he has to 'touch' both mechanisms to link them. He can also do the opposite, causing mechanisms that should be connected and functional to just not do anything. Finally, Ripley can induce electrical currents in circuitry and wires, though he cannot actually possess electronics or fully control them. Simply influence, short-circuit, or manipulate.
Human
Name: Serra Conseicao
Description: A young bi-racial woman in her early to mid-twenties, Serra has a more athletic figure than one might expect for someone out of the big city. Her face is quite expressive, though the usual thing its expressing is being tired and suspicious. She's been told multiple times that she'd be quite pretty if she just smiled, and she's replied multiple times that she'd smile if she never had to speak to them again. Usually, she's wearing jeans and a tank top, with a jacket on top if it's cold out. Her shoes tend to be running shoes or tennis shoes; Serra's long since given up on trying to bother with fashion in the typical sense. Usually, Ripley lies across her shoulders, a comforting presence by now. She's taken to wearing gear and cog-shaped hair-pieces to help keep him hidden, since he's typically difficult enough to spot that with those as camouflage, she can take him into public.
Abilities: Studying engineering, computer science, and astronomy in college, working as a professor's assistant and a side-job as a very new auto-shop mechanic. Serra participates in the college intra-mural track team and the varsity swim team, in addition to trying to learn some martial arts, primarily capoeira, as her grandmother would have told her to take. She doesn't have a huge friend pool, being busy studying and becoming even more reclusive since Ripley showed up.
Backstory:
Some spirits are more intrigued by humans than others. Ripley, for example, with his obsession with mechanisms and the concrete, the 'real', found humans fascinating. This probably explained why he would take the risk of living in a city, and the pain of dealing with humans. In fact, his first encounter with Serra involved children throwing rocks at him. They had believed he was a weird cat, as he'd taken to looking like one, and on this particularly sunny day, Serra thought so too. She noticed on her way home from work and chased the brats off, getting a rock to the head for her trouble. She went home, nursing her bruise, to put ice on her head in her crappy 6th story apartment and listen to her roommates bicker about stupid bullshit some more. She liked them, but not when she had a goddamn headache from some stupid bullshit kids.
What she didn't notice was that Ripley had followed her home. He didn't show himself, he just wanted to watch, since he thought she was interesting. It was only a few weeks later, when she was being mugged on her way to the university, that he really revealed himself. The gun refused to fire, first. Then a forklift found one of it's forks inside of the man's chest cavity. The other mugger ran after that, and shortly found himself the victim of a truck with brakes that had blown out at just the wrong moment. Sera was just as terrified, since a yellow belt didn't mean shit against a gun, and then stuff came to life out of nowhere. Ripley climbed onto her shoulder, and three hours later, when Serra could be convinced she wasn't going crazy, she got home. The blood spatter should convince the professors that she had in fact been nearly mugged, she figured. Her roommates were less than enthused, but they found the spirit interesting, once their initial disbelief and rationalizing faded. Ripley, of course, basked in the attention.
Now, he's helped her get a new job and is as insufferable about that as he is about everything else. Nonetheless, Serra's always had a soft spot for cats, and he doesn't actually weigh anything, not really. She only wrecked the apartment's lights once, after all, when Ripley wanted to try something he thought would be 'interesting'. That would be, in fact, the reason he's helping her with her second job...someone has to pay for the repairs, after all.
Combined Abilities:
Usually, Ripley needs to touch something to mess with it. It turns out that that's not the case whilst inhabiting a human body. It also turns out that electronics really, really don't like it. It's theoretically possible that they could be controlled more astutely with Serra's help, but so far, at least, they just go haywire. Leverage, principles of force, and projected movement patterns and interactions also become really easy to see. Plus, you know, the whole tiny pieces of metal flying everywhere from machines starting to rip themselves apart with too many connections.
That day was not a good day.