Tabitha
Another character in the story. A 5-year-old vampire that's a chubby girl and so much more.
Tabitha started to develop a power when she was 5 years old.
Now, powers in the world are not TERRIBLY rare. About 0.5% of the population does have them, but they're all varying powers and sometimes they're not that useful. The rare thing with Tabitha was that hers began developing so early. 13 year old is one of the youngest times that powers start showing up, but they can develop at any point.
so, there were two or three organized vampires that decided to turn her and use her. Which did work for a while. Tabitha worked as bait and her powers became stronger from turning vampire. She had some problems since they turned her so young, but I'll get to that later.
However, one night someone smashes Tabitha's teeth. The three vampires hold on to her for a while as it takes some time for her teeth to grow back. However, her fangs don't really grow back as vampire fangs. She was turned before her baby teeth fell out, so the teeth that pop out now are her adult teeth not ordinary vampire fangs.
The vampires realize that she can't suck blood and leave her behind. If she can't suck blood they'd have to continually feed her and she already had a bunch of other problems as well, they decided she just wasn't worth all of the effort.
Well, her power (which continues to develop and strengthen over the years, even if she stays stuck in the 5 year old body) is the ability to harden any part of herself. It's basically an early form of Organic Constructs. For a while, all she can do is simply harden parts of her body. However, she can't soften them right away. So, when she hardens her hands she can't really use it for anything for an hour or so.
Without fangs to make puncture wounds to suck from, Tabitha develops a new technique. She doesn't want to use her hands because if something happens she needs them and she wouldn't be able to use them if she hardened them. So, she hardens her nose and pecks at people like a bird to stab them.
She gets better at doing this to where it's enough for her to survive by feeding on humans like this, but since she doesn't have real fangs anymore she can not suck blood out of a wound as fast as an ordinary vampire. As such, since she lost her vampire fangs she hasn't killed anybody by sucking them dry, simply because that takes too long and people are able to eventually get her off of them.
She also can't turn other people into vampires, since the poison is in the gums and usually the poison actually goes THROUGH the vampire's fangs into the person's bloodstream, but HER fangs now are ordinary human incisors so she can't just bite someone to infect them.
Her powers develop further, but by the time that she can comfortably use her fingers to make marks she has become so used to using her nose that she just falls back onto it with instinct.
Tabitha finds the community of vampires and well once they see her feeding technique they make fun of her. She's still chubby and everything too. She gets the nickname "bird" because of how it's like she's pecking at people. Plus fat jokes and how she's "certainly doesn't eat like a bird." and "Well, aren't you a plump bird."
In 1800s verse there's also the additional richness that came with having the food to be able to eat, so they'd call her spoiled and everything as well. Like saying that people must race to find her family so they can get a reward for returning the precious child.
By the start of the story (1868) she will have been a vampire for 11 years or so, and her mental age will be about 15. Taking off a year because there will be a period where she has to develop through and control her vampire mindset/animalistic instincts.
As for interactions with the team, I'm thinking maybe they hear about her and lets someone else take the job because it sounds like a joke and they don't want to waste their time. However, eventually they have to check it out because it's still an issue, and they find Tabitha.
Then.... I'm not too sure. I'm thinking none of them are sure what to do because well I mean she IS a vampire, but she doesn't have fangs so there's no way she's going to turn or kill anybody. Like those are their main concerns and Tabitha doesn't seem like she can do either of them.
Maybe she becomes really relevant to the plot later with getting info about the organized vampires. Because practically all of them made fun of her so of course she'll tell the team everything she knows.
I need a faceclaim pic for her now...