TMNT: Vanessa Diaz::Nessi

Name: Vanessa Diaz
Nickname: Nessi
Age: 14 (Season 2), 15 (Season 3)
Birthday: June 20th
Height: 5’ (human), 4’ 9” (mutant)
Weight: 100 (human), 115lbs (mutant)
Race: Humanoid Lizard/Mutant(Used to be human)
Personality: Around mutants like herself, Nessi can come off as soft-spoken and shy, as well as a bit reserved. She is also a bit on the awkward side.
Around humans, however, Nessi's shy nature becomes more prominent, as she gets nervous and more awkward than usual. She also has a relatively hard time talking to them alongside being unable to make eye contact. On top of this, Nessi can be quite untrusting when it comes to humans.
First Appearance: Between The Kraang Conspiracy & Fungus Humungous
Voice Actor: Andrea Libman
Theme Song: Iris by Goo Goo Dolls, Flashlight by Jessie J

Back Story

Vanessa was the only child of Ryan and Erica Diaz and was a fairly normal teenage girl. Though, because of her shy and awkward nature she was pretty much invisible at her school with only a few friends. Not that she mind. She thought it was better to be invisible because she was never good at handling confutation. Even with her friends, she was pretty quiet, letting them do most of the talking.
One of Vanessa’s closet and oldest friend’s was Madison Torres and her mother was a herpetologist. Which is were Vanessa finds her love for reptiles. Over the years, she studies them more and more with the help of Madison‘s mother and even considered becoming a herpetologist as well. To help, Ms. Torres let Vanessa come to her work any time she wanted to play with the reptiles as well as get to study them up close. One night after playing with some of the lizards Ms. Torres was working with, Vanessa headed home. She almost made it when something came crashing down to the ground, smashing open and making the green glowing goo that was trapped inside splash onto Vanessa. Panicking, she rushed into her home where she mutated. She didn’t have time to figure out what had just happen when her parents walked through the door. Before they turned on the lights, they noticed that the place was a mess and then heard things crashing and falling over in the livingroom. Worried about the safety of their daughter, they rushed in were they were met by a small figure. At first they thought it was their child but when they noticed a tail through the little bit of light coming from the window, they began to think otherwise. They both grabbed whatever they could to defend themselves and demand to know what the creature was doing there and where their daughter was. Vanessa tried to tell them it was her but through their fear they didn’t believe her and kept demanding to know what really happen to their daughter. They even started attacking her, casing her out of the home and until they lost her.
From there, Vanessa tried to keep out of sight but since she wasn’t used to her new body, she had a hard time doing so. This ended up getting her spotted by people walking by quite a few times, making them ether run off screaming or worst, them trying to attack her. It became even harder for her to keep out of slight the weaker she got from hunger and being sleep deprived. Out of desperation, she ran underground to the sewers where she wondered around until she finally collapsed.
Some time after she passed out Mikey discovered her on his way to pick up a pizza. He saw how bad off she was and took her back to the lair where she recovered with the help of Master Splinter. When she first awoke, she didn’t speak a word for a while and kept her distances from the turtles and Master Splinter, only making quick glances at them when they talked to her to let them know she was really listening and answering questions through nods and shakes of the head. Donnie tried to get her to write as a way to commutate with them since she didn’t seem like she would speak anytime soon but found out quickly that she couldn’t and through gestures and a little help from Mikey, she told them she wasn’t used to her new hands, making it hard for her to write. She then forced out a ‘sorry’ and from there, she slowly started to talk to them, telling them her name and later how she was mutated.
After finding out about her fear of the surface world and seeing how clumsy she could be, Master Splinter thought it might be best if she stayed with them, not thinking she could make it on her own. He also took it upon himself, with the help of the turtles, to help with her rehabilitation and later teaching her how to defend herself.

Other Facts

Nessi first gets her nickname from Mikey
    She didn’t like it at first because she thought he was calling her the Loch Ness monster and making fun of her
    After finding out it was just meant to be a shorting of her name and being ok with it, the others slowly started calling her by Nessi one after the other
Master Splinter is the only one that still calls her by her actual name for the most part
She has accelerated healing
    This isn’t found out until later on when she was badly beaten by Tiger Claw
She is able to climb walls
    She doesn’t find this out right away
Her tail shoots up straight whenever she’s surprised or shocked
Her tail also can drop off as a defense mechanism
    She first finds this out right after mutating when she’s running away from some humans that were trying to attack her
    It takes just a week to grow a new one but it’s very painful for her
While healing or growing her tail back, her metabolism goes into over drive which makes her need to eat more then normal.
    She’ll get weak and sick if she doesn’t eat enough
Other then Biology, Nessi was pretty average in her classes
She studies as though she was still in school with the help of Master Splinter and Donnie and April giving them books for her to use
    This was April’s idea to help her have some feeling of normalcy
Nessi has PTSD from what happen to her after she was mutated
When the boys are out late on a mission, Nessi stays up waiting for them or passes out on the couch waiting
    Master Splinter tries to put her to bed but she always ends up back on the couch until they come home
When Nessi’s nightmares get to bad, she usually goes to Mikey or Leo
    Mikey will stay up with her as long as she needs and keeping her mind off the nightmares any way he can, usually ending in them falling asleep together in front of the TV
    Leo allows her to sleep in his bed and if she’s still having nightmares, he rubs her head until she calms down