Submitted by Allyana on Mon, 07/21/2003 - 11:42
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Character’s Name: Alessandra Longwood, formerly Hunt
Nickname: Alessa
Species: human/Verbati demon hybrid
Gender: Female
Birth date: 10/12/1919
Birth place: Santa María, Paraguay, in the border with Brazil and Argentina, South América.
Group Affiliation: Demon Police, previously the White Hats.
Items: She always carries a fine chain with some personal icons, a silver cross pendant that belonged to her father, the agate ring that Morris Giles gave her, and her wedding ring. She always regretted not having anything of Chance to add to the chain.
Alessandra Hunt is played by Jessica Alba (with green eyes).
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Description
Description
Powers
Powers
Before the Hyde 232 Virus
Since Alessa isn't a pure blooded Verbati demon, she can't morph easily, thus she can't take animal or demon form and only after hours of concentration she can change into a different human body. She can easily take her demon appearance, nevertheless, but she doesn’t like to do so. She can also roughly camouflage herself, mostly unconsciously.
Alessa usually tries to hide her demon nature from people. Anyway, when she experiences strong emotions, like fury, sadness or happiness, her eyes betray her feelings and change from their usually bright green to any color that mirrors her emotions.
She's stronger and more agile than humans too, which sometimes surprises her opponents, given her size. As most demons, her senses are highly developed.
Another side effect of her mixed blood is an extremely long life - she was born in the turn of the century but looks barely twenty something. She is mortal, nevertheless.
After the Hyde 232 Virus
The infection with Hyde 232 affected Alessa in unexpected ways. Hyde 232 was a virus developed by the Watchers’ Council’s scientists that unlocked the subjects’ moral restrictions, inhibitions and emotions, therefore making them prone to follow their baser instincts, not caring about conventions, morality or ethics. Basically they did what they wanted to do in the moment and they way they wanted to do it.
In relation to Alessa’s life, this meant she stopped worrying about her demon nature, about fitting in with humans and hiding. In relation to her powers, it meant that - as she started to accept herself and her demonic blood - she allowed her true nature to emerge. This confirmed what Inés had told her again and again, that her human blood wasn’t what was preventing her from using her abilities, but her human mind.
When she let go, Alessa developed the morphing skills of a full-blooded Verbati. By the time Hyde was in full bloom, Alessa could make her body take the form of any living being, of more or less her size and mass, with ease and speed.
She hasn’t tested Verbatis' psychic abilities yet, but everything leads to believe she’ll develop them in time - as she did the physical ones - especially since she has already displayed those sorts of abilities at a more latent level beforehand. The power is there.
History
History
Alessa Hunt was an only child, she had a normal childhood in Santa María -a small village in Paraguay, South America- where her father, Alec Hunt, was working for an international company, until she was twelve and learned the truth about herself.
Alec had fallen in love with a beautiful native woman and had married against the will of either her family or his own. After the marriage Alec had noticed some strange things about his wife but he had been so blinded by love that he hadn’t paid much attention to them. Anyway, when his wife got pregnant she started to lose weight and seemed so preoccupied that his initial happiness turned to worry, but she wouldn’t tell him anything. However, when the pregnancy was coming to term the health of his wife turned extremely delicate and the night Alessa was born, Jalessa, her mother, finally told her husband the truth about herself. She was a Verbati Demon, and something about the pregnancy by a man was killing her; she wanted Alec to know about her true self.
This stunned Alec, and at first he didn’t believe it, but as labor got worse he saw glimpses of his wife’s true form, for Verbati Demons were shapeshifters and could take any form they wanted. Jalessa had seen Alec working and had fallen in love with him so she had taken human form to be with him. Jalessa made Alec promise to take her daughter to her kind when she was old enough to understand, and then, when the baby finally was born, she died.
Faithful to his promise, Alec raised the seemingly normal girl until the moment he presented her to her mother’s kind. This turned Alessa’s world upside down, she started to learn about herself and about the powers of Verbati Demons.
Alessa was lucky to grow up in South America. Her hometown, Santa María, in the border between Brazil and Paraguay, was a place where magic mingled with reality, and no one faulted a mixed blood. The rain forest was near and all knew that non-human things lived there. Alessa was not the first half demon in town, nor would she be the last, so she hadn’t grown up having to hide herself to survive.
Her father died long ago from old age, but together they had researched in the ways of the occult so Alessa has deep knowledge of demonic races and customs.
When she was about 40 years old, but looked like a teenager, Morris Giles, a Watcher, contacted her. He believed Alessa to be a vampire slayer potential so he started training her. The Council, however, decided against it for they believed that only full-blooded humans could be Slayers. Morris Giles continued believing her to be one though, and he kept on training and watching her. Therefore she also knows fighting techniques and has a good use of weapons.
Morris and Alessa also developed a relationship, living together until Morris died at the hands of a group of vampires. Her lover’s death left Alessa desolated, and she has been alone ever since.
After Morris Giles died, she went in search of his nephew, Rupert Giles. His track brought her to Sunnydale, where she met him and Buffy Summers. Anyway she hadn’t taken into account the bitterness the man felt for his own uncle. As the rest of the Watchers’ Council, he believed his uncle to be mad and had lost any respect for him. It didn’t help that the “demon” that had been his madness appeared on his front door. After such cold welcome Alessa decided to leave Sunnydale and return to South America.
However, after a couple of years trying to live a normal life in Santa María, her hometown, she decided that she needed to start anew in some other place. She decided to finally contact his father's family, or what remained of it, and thus traveled to the United States.
There, she settled on the city of Alhambra in L.A where she tries to live like an ordinary person, she got a job teaching Spanish in a downtown high school and is trying to lead an ordinary life, gathering strenght to finally contact her niece and nephew.
Season Three Events
Season Three Events
Upon arriving to LA, Alessa secured a teaching job at Centennial High School and decided to live an ordinary -human- life at last. She had Morris’ diary to give to the Council and her nephew and niece to meet, finally her life seemed to have some purpose.
However, her intentions were soon thwarted when she became involved with a group of unknown people that would change her life. She was coming home when she saw a couple of teens trying to save an unconscious man from a band of vampires. Without a second thought she hurried to help them, and thus she met Chance, Cole Mathews and Vincent de la Rocha. Afterward she agreed to let Chance stay in her house while he recovered, especially after learning about the possibility of the Brotherhood being behind him.
In the following weeks, Alessa and Chance grew closer as he recovered and they started investigating the Elders with the help of Ernest Longwood, an old friend. In the course of that investigation, she discovered that her ex-lover, Morris Giles had been turned instead of killed, and that it was possible that his Diary contained information that could lead to the destruction of at least one Elder, the powerful Dathan.
Seeking to break the spell protecting the Diary, Alessa approached the Watcher Amanda Blaise and her friend Catherine Wiccham at Bibliophile, who agreed to help her. The Diary contained a Guaraní spell that could destroy Dathan but it needed a Flor de la Virgen, a very special flower that could only be found in the Iguazú Rain Forest, her homeland.
After confirming that Dathan had been responsible for Morris' death, or turning, Alessa saw a means to finally get her revenge against the Elder and help Chance at the same time. She agreed to help her new friends to destroy the Brotherhood. Long forgotten was her idea of living a 'normal' life again.
She and Chance traveled to Paraguay to get the sacred flower and it was in this trip that they acknowledged their love for each other.
Their bliss didn’t last long, as some weeks after their return to LA, Chance was captured by Evexus Drett, a dark Fae who had a personal grudge against the hunter. He took him to Dathan, and they managed to unbind Dray'chen, the demon who had inhabited Chance's body for centuries.
After being released, Dray'chen started in a path of destruction, taking special pleasure in hurting those who had been closer to its host. Dray'chen attacked and almost killed Alessa, sought Cole and managed to break into Ernie's household, killing his wife and leaving the old man in a coma. He was only bound again with the combined efforts of Pandora (the witch who had bound it once in the past), Cole and Alessa.
Heartbroken after Chance's decision of leaving her because of Dray'chen's actions, Alessa nonetheless embarked in the destruction of the Brotherhood, taking part in the Hyperion attack just to get another awful surprise.
Among those defending the Elders stronghold she saw Morris Giles, vamped and stronger after benefiting from the Slayer's ritual. By helping to create the magic circle around Sorrow as he performed his ultimate sacrifice in the Guaraní ritual, Morris managed to survive its effects, becoming the only one of Dathan's line to do so. Before she could kill him, though, the vampire ran away, vowing to take revenge.
MidSeason Three Events
MidSeason Three Events
A few days after the Hyperion Battle she received the visit of her cousin on her mother's side, Inés Montero, a full blooded Verbati whom she had thought dead for more than 20 years. She also discovered that her grandfather, Shongu, wasn’t dead either. Inés told her that now that her revenge against Dathan was fulfilled, Shongu wanted her back into the tribe, among her kin. However, Alessa decided to stay in LA since she had formed attachments with the place and its people. She had chosen the human world to live in.
This mid season was also a time for meeting new friends, among those a different vampire called James Conner and a gypsy girl called Adriana Lautari, as to the reunion with old friends, like Enzo Lautari, Adriana's uncle.
When Tash approached her with the offer to integrate the White Hats, a group of 'champions' against the evils of the world, she readily accepted. Within that group, and with the help of her new friends, Chance and her faced and defeated several threats, fended off Morris' attacks and struggled to make a place for themselves in the city.
However, events in the last months of this period led Alessa to a turning point in her life. Her lifelong friend Ernie Longwood was attacked by Morris, and rather killed himself before being turned. Her friend's death affected Alessa a lot and she started to wonder about how much she was putting her friends in peril by just being around. So when she was called to London by Ernie's son, Ellis Longwood, for the reading of his father's will she gladly accepted, starting a sequence of events that led to many changes in her life.
Alone in LA, Chance became more vulnerable to the influence of Dray'chen's sword, finally succumbing to its power and traveling to Israel and his fate.
Also, while staying in London, she herself became more vulnerable to Ambrose Delancre's plans, the Watchers' Council's First Elder, who had become obsessed with her. At the beginning of February, she was kidnapped and taken to Isla Nublada, an island off the coast of Colombia. The Isla Nublada's compound was one of the key parts of the First Elder's ambitions.
Alessa's time in the Colombian island was not pleasant, Delancre made his wishes in her regard quite clear from the beginning. However, Alessa was relentless and she didn't submit to his demands, even if she feigned a peaceful acceptance while she planned her escape and gave enough time to her friends to get to her.
The end of Mid season Three found Alessa alone and injured in the tropical island rain forest, with no memory of where she was or why she was there and being the unknown carrier of an evil virus, Hyde 232, vital to the First Elder's plans.
Season Four Events
Season Four Events
After Alessa’s disappearance in London, her friends started looking for her, especially Ellis Longwood and her cousin Inés. After getting reasonable clues of her whereabouts – a telepathic connection with Inés, a phone call from Pelor and Ellis’ interrogation of the bounty hunter who had kidnapped the demoness – Ellis and Inés contacted Amanda Blaise and James Conner to travel to the backwater Isla Nublada in Colombia.
Their mission was successful and they found Alessa in the island’s rainforest, but she was hurt and febrile, and completely amnesiac about the time she had been missing. Daye performed her magic on her, healing the physical wounds, but not her memory loss nor the strange virus that had infected her in the jungle.
Alessa grew harsh and bitchy, careless and unfeeling. Her physical weakness frustrated her, her cousin’s ministrations bothered her, her friends' disappearance exasperated her. She systematically abused her cousin, and taunted Ellis, fighting her growing attraction for him. She was getting crazy by just staying home.
A visit from Tash, where she learned of Emma’s death, reconciled her somewhat with her friends in the White Hats, but she still believed they could have prevented Chance’s death. She started toying with the idea of leaving the organization.
Another visit from Tash became a turning point in this period. The news that the White Hats may be allying with the Watchers' Council was the final drop in her decision to leave them. This didn’t sit well with the huntress and tempers flared, both of them saying things that they later regretted. Alessa and Tash parted in anger and disappointment.
A second turning point was Alessa’s giving up to her growing attraction to Ellis, becoming his lover and starting a passionate and fiery affair.
It was in this time too, that she discovered that her morphing abilities were developing unnaturally, becoming as proficient at them as a full-blooded Verbati. In her present state of mind, she didn’t find it odd at all.
However, the change in attitude in her and Ellis didn’t go unnoticed. After a series of tests, it was evident than both of them were affected by some kind of virus that had a pernicious effect on their limbic system. This virus promoted a highly emotional yet heartless behaviour, for it lowered the subject’s moral and ethical barriers, leaving them open to the most basic instincts. Through different paths, Alessa’s friends: Catherine Wiccham and Nikolai Makarov, also became aware of the virus. There was something infecting the White Hats, and it was something of mystical origin. The exact nature of Hyde was still a mystery, but the friends discovered how it worked, how it fed and which subjects did it prey upon.
The implication of the Watchers’ Council – and especially of their First Elder, Lord Delancre – in the different happenings in LA, including the mysterious virus, also became obvious, especially after Alessa was contacted by a Watcher, Stuart Montrose. The watcher brought unnerving news about Alessa’s stay at Isla Nublada, and the organization’s activities in the island.
Carried by her emotions - and the Hyde virus - Alessa started an affair with Stuart Montrose, subsequently ending his relationship with Ellis. However, after infiltrating the Watchers’ headquarters in LA, Alessa discovered that Stuart was in fact, Delancre, and that he had been playing her all along.
Her morphing abilities continued to improve, by that time Alessa could make her body take the form of any living being, of more or less her size and mass, with ease and speed – she couldn't turn into a little bird, or a very large animal, for example. Even to the point that she received a visit from her cousin telling her that her grandfather thought her ready to fulfil the ultimate Verbati morphing ritual: taking her Primal Form. If she did so, she could cure herself of the strange virus that was affecting her and her friends, however she refused to do it, considering that being infected was her main weapon in the revenge path she was treading.
The rest of the season was a race to find a cure for the virus before it completely destroyed the balance between the Council and the now disperse White Hats. A clue from Pelor, before Kyle Ashton killed him, triggered Kate’s research and finally gave the witch the necessary information for finding the cure.
Kate and Nikolai, rounded up all the infected White Hats –including a very reluctant Tash- as well as Ellis and Adriana, and performed the spell to cure them of the virus. The immediate action was planning an attack on the Council and uncovering Delancre’s activities to the rest of the Council. Delancre needed to be stopped. With the help of a group of Sindell witches, some uncomfortable Watchers, the Ghosts and the Demon Police, the White Hats started to act in this direction.
Frustrated, and furious at herself for her weakness Alessa abandoned the Council’s mansion and went to Poplar in search of shelter. There she finally performed the Primal Ritual, becoming a complete Verbati, and curing herself of the virus.
She reconciled with her friends, Tash and Cole, and came to an understanding with Ellis. She asked to be let into the White Hats again and joined her friends in their offensive against the Watchers’ Council.
During the battle, Alessa faced Delancre, this time without pretences, and in a fair fight, she finally killed him.
MidSeason Four Events
MidSeason Four Events
Basically during Midseason 4, Alessa struggled to live with her actions of the past months. After the battle at Runyon Canyon, she wound up at Memorial Beach where she could finally say goodbye to Chance. Still amnesic, she returned to the big house and to her routines, even if she avoided her friends for some time, including Ellis. News of Morris looking for a strange mystical object: the Eye of St. Vigeous got her interested again and helped her focus. She started hunting and got to an easy understanding with Kyle, who she encountered frequently in her patrolling. The restart of the White Hats’ activities after last season events and Ellis persistent but non threatening attentions helped too. Things seemed to be changing for the better.
However, after Daye found the necklace she had lost in Isla Nublada among Delancre’s stuff, and Kate performed a spell on it, Alessa recovered her memory. She remembered clearly the events in the Council’s island and felt horror at having ended falling into Delancre’s arms. This led to another period of aloofness that was even harder to overcome.
She only reunited with her friends and Ellis again during Daye and Drew’s wedding. After the wedding, and a hot sensual dance with Ellis where she realized that she couldn’t keep denying her feelings for him, Alessa and Ellis enjoyed a blissful moment together on the beach and decided to give their relationship a chance, even if slowly.
Towards the end of the midseason, events took a turn for the worse again as Tash got turned by an anonymous vampire while she was hunting alone. Alessa received a visit of Loki and her, and shockingly realized that her friend was a vampire. After she and Loki fled the Big House, Alessa got in touch with Daye, and discovered that Tash had already attacked the Langleys and taken Drew’s life. The next White Hat meeting was completely different from any before, as the friends gathered to decide on vampire Tash’s fate, set up a plan for finding her and hunt her.
It was Darian who found their ex-friend first, and called the rest of the White Hats to round her up. However, Tash didnt go without a fight. In the little time she had been a vampire she had shown the resolution and initiative she had had alive and became the leader of the Black Veins, so she had her own army to counter attack.
The White Hats then fought the Black Veins and some little surprises Tash had prepared. Before Nikolai can finally dust her, Alessa and Ellis get seriously hurt in the fight and only the combined efforts of Kate and Daye saved their lives.
Being so close to death, and having seen Ellis so close to death too, finally made Alessa realize that she loved him, and that life was too short – even for a Verbati – to waste. The two finally get back together and express their feelings for each other.
It was only ironical that the following morning, Alessa received a visit from Chance, alive and kicking after she had thought him dead for more than six months. Alessa’s reaction to Chance’s return was mixed to say the least, she was happy Chance was back, of course she was, how could she not be? However, she didn’t feel the elation she thought she should. Why was he back just when she had finally accepted her love for Ellis? And why did he sound more interested in Dray’chen’s sword than in her? Disgusted with her own doubts, Alessa decided to start from the beginning, and went to Darian to check on the exact circumstances of Chance’s death. She discovered that her ex lover had not really died, but crossed a dimensional portal, so he could actually be alive.
Alessa was in a turning point. She had her lover back, but she was starting a new relationship and she really wanted it to work. She had to choose. As she felt that her love for Ellis had overcome what she had felt for Chance, she decided she couldn’t go back to him. However, when she told Chance about it, he didn’t react as she had expected, which rose some suspicions in her mind and the determination to investigate further.
She didn’t have to, though, since the next morning she got a visit of Darian and Chance. The two were fighting, and during the fight it became evident that Chance wasn’t Chance at all, but a shapeshifter who was actually searching for Dray’chen’s sword. After some struggle, Ellis finally killed the demon.
Strange as it was, the visit of the fake Chance gave Alessa closure on her relationship with the real Chance, and allowed her take another step in her relationship with Ellis.
Season Five Events
Season Five Events
As for the rest of the White Hats, Season five was a decisive time for Alessa. After Tash’s death, the White Hats struggled to keep afloat, but it was difficult. Tash was dead, Kate was missing, Daye had completely detached herself from her friends, Alice was bitter about them dusting Tash, so she had rejected coming back to the group, and Cole was away at Sindell learning his craft. Darian, Galen, Kyle, Nikolai, a sporadic Reah and Alessa were all that was left of the White Hats. In those conditions, and after realizing that something new and dangerous was definitely happening in LA, they were extremely vulnerable to Zayn’Jae Vex.
Zayn'Jae Vex had once been a member of "the powers that be", but she had been stripped of her powers and cast out to Earth. That made her very angry, and set on the course of getting her power and position back.
In the months that followed, the White Hats struggled to fight in an LA that was increasingly dangerous, given a new Hellmouth was opening in it. Apart from Zayn and her Black Hats, The Ministry of Magic, the Order of Valour, Wolfram & Hart and the Dalton Corporation were also players in the Season 5 arena, that finally proved too much for the White Hats to manage.
However, some good things happened in those times too. Kate appeared again, although with no memory of her life in LA, Cole came back to Los Angeles, and in January 2008, Alessa and Ellis married – much in the fashion of Kate and Galen – after an impulsive elopement. Their happiness didn’t last long, though, since events were down falling too quickly.
At the end of the Season 5, the White Hats fought a battle that they couldn’t really win. Much was lost in it, too much according to any standards. Ellis, Darian and Reah were killed, along with many more; Kate and Galen got lost in the chaos of battle, and nothing was heard of them since. At the end, the only living warriors were Nikolai, Kyle, Cole and Alessa, and they were left heartbroken, disappointed and bitter.