Post by 621 on Apr 12, 2017 19:03:58 GMT
(Picture credit does not belong to me.)
Name: Lori (028)
Years Active: 1 and a half, approximately.
Sex: Female
Primary Function: To floriate Jumba's house for the pleasure of his wife.
Abilities:
In addition to natural Experiment abilities like seeing in the dark, climbing walls, eating almost anything, and retracting extra limbs, Lori's primary ability is to grow fake plant life from nothing using a touch from her antennae and a spray from her hose-like tail. She specializes in Kweltikwan flora, but is also able to mimic any type of flower that she touches with her antennae. There is no limit to how many plants she can create, and although they look and even smell exactly like the real things, none of the artificial flowers need any more sunlight, water, or soil than decorative styrofoam. The claws on her feet are used like shovels, her fingers are perfect for picking stems, and her hose-tail is very prehensile. She is also capable of closing up the petal-like flaps around her head if she feels like hiding her face.
Weaknesses:
Lori's flowers can't grow at all by themselves, being lifeless. She's easily distracted and forgetful, in addition to being generally scatterbrained. Tying a knot in her tail or otherwise preventing her from spraying with it puts an end to any flowers and makes the girl virtually useless. Finally, Lori's fake plants can be disintegrated with the same chemical components found in coconut milk.
Personality:
Unlike the naughty inclinations of her younger cousins, Lori actually wasn't created with her maker's spark for mischief...but she tends to cause it by accident. Being obsessive and scatterbrained at the same time, she loves all things flowery, bright, and colorful, and impulsively creates her flowers everywhere without thinking about how inconvenient they may be. She has an innate desire to please, but is as fragile as a daisy. Once she realizes her little flowers aren't welcome or liked, she's liable to burst into tears and hide, dejected. Luckily she's forgetful, so it doesn't take much to encourage Lori out of a down mood. Despite being insecure, she's generally good at bouncing back and trying new things. Her whole world is making flowers and showing them to people, as well as discovering new kinds of plants, so this singleminded creature doesn't often think about fears or bravery, except perhaps fear of rejection. She's easily excited and deep down wishes she could make real plants. Obsessed with her cousin Sprout.
Home Planet: Kokaua Town, Kauai, Hawaii, Planet Earth.
One True Place: In Auntie Kaihiko's Event Planning business, making unique artificial flowers for parties, weddings, and tourist gatherings.
Past:
Lori was created by Jumba as only his twenty-eighth attempt at life. Since the evil genius hadn't really figured out a direction for his mutants, the 0-series were random, and usually involved helping the lazy scientist solve his own house problems. Lori was no different.
During the time of her creation, Jumba was in a rare mood, trying to please his new wife for once. She was an outcast from their home planet, so he attempted to earn points with her by creating an Experiment that could actually make Kweltikwan flowers. Not only that, but he added an extra dash of genius by giving his creation the ability to mimic any other plant life she touched with her antennae, so that the parlor trick wouldn't get old. Unfortunately, the plan backfired for two reasons. Lori was so excited to do her job that she went overboard, covering not only Jumba's house but his lab in artificial blossoms from floor to ceiling. The second snafu was figuring out that Jumba's wife actually hated flowers. Go figure.
Lori was promptly dehydrated into pod form until almost twenty years later, when she was activated by falling into a fountain in Hawaii's Birds of Paradise Hotel. No sooner was the excitable girl awake than she began sprouting fake alien flowers everywhere; literally. The island had plenty of new blossoms to try out, too. Soon there were flowers covering the streets and buildings of Lilo's little town. None of the tourists could take a step without tripping over, or even finding themselves entangled in Lori's plants.
Blissfully oblivious to the trouble she was causing, Lori might have pranced around in a happy flower-making daze until she ran into Lilo and Stitch.
The two were preparing for the annual Halau Open House, when all of the class’ families would visit the school building and see what their kids had been working on while learning hula. This year, Kumu Moses had decided to let the girls help decorate. Knowing there was only a small amount of time and space, he asked his class to get help from their families, and each child come up with their own design for making their little building look festive. The best idea would win and be worked on by the whole group for the big night, not unlike the sandcastle or parade float plans. Of course, Mertle turned this into a competition with Lilo, who promptly teamed up with Pleakley to out-decorate her redheaded rival. Unfortunately, Mertle’s Aunt Stacy happened to be helping her niece with her own project and made a passing comment about how unattractive Pleakley’s eccentric room designs, based on Florganart architecture, were.
Lilo broke it to her noodle friend that his designs were, in fact, ugly and over-the-top, borrowing Stacy’s words. This broke Pleakley’s heart, and despite Nani’s scoldings and Jumba’s mischievous approval, Lilo couldn’t be talked back into letting Pleakly in on the project.
Enter Lori. While trying to pick up supplies to make up for starting from scratch, Lilo and Stitch quickly foiled Gantu’s attempts and captured 028 themselves. Jumba explained her flower-making function and a bit of her first short-lived activation, recounting how he had had to smuggle whole crates of the alien chemical Acidone into his lab just to dissolve the fake plants she’d overgrown it with.
The turning-from-bad-to-good process was easy, and Lilo predictably named her Lori (short for ‘floriate’) and enlisted the pink cousin in designing flower wreaths for the competition. Lori was overjoyed to be able to please.
When the day arrived, Pleakley eventually offered to help hang Lori’s decorations despite being rejected earlier, and things were going well. Before Kumu Moses could go around and examine each girl’s efforts, Mertle and Aunt Stacy struck again. Though they secretly felt threatened by the colorful array of the Pelekai team, they made Lilo feel insecure about Lori’s exotic blooms. Pleakley took the young lady aside and tried to convince her that it didn’t matter what others thought; real art only needed one person to appreciate it. Lilo was more concerned about winning at the moment, and Lori overheard her doubts about the artificial flowers.
Crushed, the little Experiment ran off, straight into the arms of Gantu. Having been taught by Stitch briefly to fear the big villain, she stayed out of his reach; this time, Gantu was thinking before he acted. While the good guys had been busy, the former Captain of the Galactic Alliance had made a plan of his own. He tricked, more than forced, Lori to grow her fake blooms all over town by pretending to love them. Not noticing her mischief, Lori was happy to try and please, and ended up playing right into the shark alien’s hands when her overzealous flowers began turning Kokaua Town into a churning, writhing maze of artificial vines.
With Lilo and Stitch as lost and bewildered as the rest of the island’s citizens, Gantu was free to capture 028, and, he hoped, any future Experiments while they were out of the way. He clamped the flower-headed girl into a containment pod and stormed off victoriously, trying to find his ship in order to send her to Hamsterviel.
Looking for their house to ask Jumba how to solve the problem, Lilo and Stitch instead stumbled upon the Old Water Tower. It was the only thing tall enough to be untouched by Lori’s overgrown vegetation. Reaching the top, they could see all of the town covered in the alien fakey blooms, but even worse, they could just make out Gantu’s frustrated form and Lori strapped helplessly to his back. Upset, Lilo realized that it was her fault. If she hadn’t made Lori feel like a failure, none of this would have happened. It was at this low moment that Lilo realized Pleakley and Nani had been right; encouraging a friend was way more important than being the best, and the best way to encourage Lori was to appreciate her flowers even if everyone else thought they were weird.
At this moment, Pleakley had a stroke of rare genius. He suddenly realized that Acidone, the alien Kweltikwanian chemical Jumba had mentioned as being able to dissolve 029’s flowers, had similar components to coconut milk on Earth. Now all they needed was a way to spread coconut milk all over town in order to clear the way and save Lori before Gantu reached his ship.
Luckily, Sprout, Experiment 509, was handy and ready to help. Stitch, and a few other cousins like Slugger and Deforestator gathered as many coconuts as they could find in the tangled fake-flower mess the island had become, and began cracking and feeding them to Sprout. Once he had drank enough of the coconut milk, the weed-like alien spread all over town, infecting 028’s artificial maze with his now-milky spit.
With everything cleared away, Lilo and Stitch easily stopped Gantu and freed Lori. After apologizing to both the magenta Experiment and Pleakley for her selfish, mean actions, Lilo found Lori’s one true place living with Officer Kaihiko’s aunty, who was a local event planner for tourists. Lori flourished like a thriving plant in this, content to have her gift appreciated.
She hasn’t noticed 621’s advances on the island, focused on her job, showing off her latest created flora, and being basically obsessed with her cousin Sprout, a one-of-a-kind plant with a brain.
Boochiboo:
None (Could be anyone but I don’t mind Sprout?)
Sample Post: See 621