Amari
"In a city with so much culture why would anyone ever eat at a McDonald's?"—Amari Olamina
Description:
Amari Olamina, age 34, is a petite woman, standing at 5’5” with a lean and muscular build. Her dark brown skin is clear and unblemished, making her handsome facial features even more striking. Amari’s black hair crowns her head with dozens of loosely dreaded coils, each falling to her neck. Amari rarely wears makeup on her full lips or around her wide eyes—choosing to adorn herself with jewelry instead, though she has been known to wear pitch black lipstick on occasion. When not wearing her sleek black chef’s uniform, Amari can typically be seen wearing oversized smocks, denim pants, jean jackets, and tailored suits. Though many would call her style masculine, Amari brings an element of beauty and femininity to every outfit she wears.
Personality: Amari is a spirited woman with a wry sense of humor. She’s tough and she refuses to let others underestimate her—though as a woman in a male-dominated profession, she often has to prove herself despite her years of experience. Amari loves the finer things in life; museums, fancy restaurants, luxurious hotels, expensive liquor, intimate jazz lounges, orchestral concerts, and the occasional rendezvous with attractive suitors. While in the kitchen she’s all business—her demeanor as firm as her Vibranium chef’s knife. Outside of the kitchen, Amari is a soulful free spirit, who breezes from place to place looking for her next opportunity or her next great thrill.
Reputation: Amari is known throughout the culinary world as a skilled chef. She's spent time in New York, but it's been a few years since she's actually lived in the Empire State so she has little in the way of a "reputation" aside from chef credentials.
History: Amari was born to a Wakandan mother and a French-Yoruban father. Born and raised in the wealthy Wakanda capital city of Birnin Zana, Amari attended the finest schools, dined on exquisite cuisine, and had access to all the books and art she could ever want. Her mother’s family remains one of the elite families of Wakanda and Amari benefited from this immensely.
Amari’s father taught her how to cook. A skilled chef himself, Mr. Olamina traveled the world to find new ingredients and learn cooking methods from people around the world. Watching her father cook inspired Amari to want to do the same, so she dived into her culinary studies in order to follow in her father’s footsteps.
With food as such an intrinsic part of her childhood, Amari’s Mutant abilities became apparent almost as soon as they manifested. One night, shortly after Amari’s 12th birthday, the Olamina family dined on a dinner of rice pilaf and oxtail. As Amari enjoyed her meal, short oxen horns painlessly sprouted from her forehead. Though her parents were relatively nonplussed by their daughter’s Mutant abilities, they still decided it best not to invite any scrutiny—using their privilege and wealth to isolate Amari as much as possible for the next few years until her abilities were more controllable.
On the night of her 18th birthday, Amari left Wakanda to travel the world. With nothing but a suitcase, a dream, and her cherished Vibranium chef’s knife Amari set off to broaden her horizons and expand her knowledge of the culinary world. Though Amari returned to Wakanda regularly to visit her mother and her father, she mostly studied abroad. She’s recently returned to New York with the intention of saving up to open her own restaurant. Amari heard of a wealthy establishment called the Hellfire Club and she’s hoping to secure a head chef position at the club or perhaps a personal chef position for one of the Hellfire Club members.
Powers: Amari is a Gastronomical Metamorph—her Mutant abilities allow her to take on the physical traits, senses, instincts, and memories of whatever she eats. While Amari’s abilities are limited to meat (“Plants don’t exactly have what we’d call ‘senses’, Love”), the range to and versatility of her Mutant powers is as vast as the animal kingdom.
Amari’s powers work best when she eats “pure” meat. Packaged meat tends to be made up of multiple animals (“I can taste a dozen different cows in any single hamburger—the memories from ground beef tend to be a bit jumbled”), so Amari prefers to eat whole cuts of meat like steak or filleted fish. Her mutant physiology includes sharpened teeth and an “iron stomach”, allowing her to tear through bone and muscle of the toughest animals and safely digest raw meat.
Being a Gastronomical Metamorph allows Amari to grow the deadly horns of a bull after eating a Kobe beef dinner, breath underwater with gills after partaking in a salmon salad, and squeeze through impossibly tight spaces after enjoying a plate of calamari—just to name a few of the animal properties she’s employed in the past. Initially, Amari’s abilities would activate without her control—eating any meat could trigger her Metamorph abilities. It eventually became evident that the quantity of meat ingested as well as the pleasure derived from said meat played a role in these seemingly random metamorphoses. With age, practice, and a more detailed understanding of both food and their source animals, Amari learned how to control her transformations. While it is possible for Amari to completely transform into an animal, she would have to consume her body weight in meat in a short period of time in order to fuel a full animal transformation. It’s far easier to eat a normal amount and complete partial body transformations—changing her eyes, growing horns, developing gills, etc.
Amari's powers are limited by the capacity of her stomach. While digestion lasts anywhere from two to five days, food only stays in the stomach for six to eight hours. Amari only has access to the genetic attributes present in food while said food is in her stomach—meaning if she eats a steak she can use that particular steak as metamorphosis fuel for eight hours max. Amari can use multiple animal genetics at once, making herself a chimera; this too is limited by the capacity of Amari's stomach as she'd need to eat enough meat from multiple animals in a short period of time in order to fuel multiple partial metamorphoses. At her current stomach size, Amari can eat enough meat within an eight-hour period to take on six animal body-parts simultaneously.
There’s one aspect of Amari’s powers that she doesn’t know about—couldn’t know about. Her powers work with human meat as well, allowing her to take on the form of another human if she ate enough of their body. This thought has never crossed Amari’s mind—perhaps a subconscious mental block preventing her from imagining such a taboo scenario.
Skills: Amari is a skilled chef. She began cooking at a young age and she has since studied with chefs all over the world. She expertly uses her Vibranium chef’s knife—a gift from her parents—to handle ingredients from the toughest meat to the finest vegetables. Amari is also a polyglot; she fluently speaks isiXhosa, Yoruba, French, and English.
Connections: Amari is a free spirit; she travels so often that she doesn't have too many close connections. Aside from her doting parents, Amari has a sprinkling of friends and lovers in various countries around the world.
