Alice "Oberon" Clearwater {Villain | Complete}

Surprisingly enough, most of the Clearwater family cared little for heroes. They had no interest in engaging with them, or with becoming one, even if their quirks were of sufficient strength or utility to become one. They were simple folk and used their quirks to aid in their simple farming life in those areas where technology or good old hard work was insufficient. Grandpa Clearwater, on the other hand, was every bit as much of a hero nerd as the granddaughter he would soon have, and spent his golden years filling her head with all sorts of hero media he had collected over the years. Much to the chagrin of Alice's parents.

If ever given a chance between taking her time with chores to do them right, or using her quirk to get them done quickly so she could spend more time listening to Grandpa, Alice chose the latter. She didn't even know the man was quirkless himself and even upon learning this during one of many arguments between Grandpa and her parents, she never considered her parent's position that Grandpa was just trying to live the life of a hero vicariously through her. Sure the old man encouraged her to pursue a hero liscence when she got older, but he rarely mentioned how proud he would be. The focus was always on how many people she could save. How much better the world would be if someone of her talents was protecting it.

It wasn't until the day before classes that Alice finally told her parents that she had, in fact, enrolled in a hero academy. They'd spent the time assuming that she was going to go to a nice normal highschool like her mother had, or just join them out in the fields immediately where her quirk had a fair amount of agricultural use. That evening was not a quiet or easy one, but after many hours and a few hoarse voices, they agreed to let her go. It may or may not have been implied that green plants and crops were not as easy to control with her quirk as woody plants, and that the training of a hero academy would strengthen this aspect. Alice to this day wishes she'd had the time to properly thank her grandfather for this little sleight of hand.

Once in the academy, Alice took to it with all the zeal she had to her little hero stat competitions with her grandfather. Every moment spent at school was like a dream to her. Learning from real heroes, training with classmates, exploring what it meant to be a hero, and displaying her skills for the world in the tournaments. The only thing she couldn't shake was the feeling that something was missing. Or wrong.

It wasn't uncommon for teachers to compliment those things that would be good to show off for a crowd over those things that would actually be more effective, if less flashy. Her quirk, the more she got in tune with it, was naturally quite showy when used and thus garnered the attention of the teachers over others who she felt had more useful utilities to their powers and were just as earnest as her to help people. Regulations became a hot button topic as a few students went out without licenses to take on some small fry and bring them in. Even though no one had been hurt, and no one would be hurt in the future, the students still got detention for doing it without teacher approval or a licensed hero with them.

In her eyes, the pursuit of being a hero had been corrupted. The so called heroes had forgotten what really mattered in their job. Only vigilantes like the three punished students seemed to really get it. People who were considered criminals themselves, even if no innocents were hurt by their actions.

And so Alice thought. And thought. And thought throughout the rest of her academy career. And then, during one of the last tournaments of the semester, she took a fall. She said her quirk had suddenly weakened from what it was. She could barely make a single sapling sprout from a seed anymore. It was more than embarrassing, but for her plan, it had to be done.

The next seven years were spent in a sort of exile. Her grandfather had already passed, so there really was no reason for her to return home after dropping out of the academy. Her education thus far was good enough for a desk job, so she took to that. She almost gave up on her plan a month in as desk work was even more boring to her than farming. Compounded by the fact that she couldn't use her quirk fully when in public ever again. Small flowers, a little help to a wilting plant, maybe healing a broken branch. But she was still capable of so much more. She kept her edge with secret practice, but nothing to her full capability. Nothing that would bring attention to her actions or give anyone the suspicion that her power was intact after all.

The years seemed to stretch on forever, but things were looking up. She had fully faded from the public eye. Her coworkers no longer saw the hero that choked. They just saw little Alice, toiling away at her desk full of small plants that shifted and swayed with her. Her parents stopped trying to bring her home. The doctors gave up trying to study her and help her regain her old strength. Gaia the Plant Hero was dead, and only little Alice remained. Which meant it was finally time for Oberon to take the stage.