Johanna Sofia Konstanze van Kaiser

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Player: Nikki Myers (lnmyers@embarqmail.com)
Given Name: Johanna Sofia Konstanze van Kaiser (False surname. Real surname: “Schreiber”)
Date of Birth: December 18th, 1993
Place of Birth: Leipzig, Germany. Grew up in Vienna, Austria
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Known Relatives: Dr. Kaspar Augustus Schreiber (Father, deceased), Dr. Annaleise Brentano Schreiber (Mother, deceased), Isolde Marina Schreiber (Sister, deceased), and Wladyslaw Aurelius Zielinski (Brother, living in Poland, false identity)
Host Family: Connor and Janet Shepherd
Major Enemies: The Fiorenza Family (Italian Mob clan), particularly the clan underboss Dante Fiorenza, whose son (Guiseppe) is rumored to possess unusual abilities
Extent of Education: Attended the Vienna International School from until Freshman year, when she moved to the States and began attending Neptune High. Also received intensive extracurricular music training from Vienna Academy of Music professor Dr. Hans Luther Dresden.
Current Year: Freshman (Study Abroad – High School Level)

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:

Height: 5’6”
Weight: 120 lbs.
Hair: Dark brown, short, choppy-layered, dramatic side bangs
Eyes: Green
Skin: Caucasian, olive skin
Other distinguishing features: None
Uniform/Costume: Whatever, but feels most comfortable in black slacks and high heels with a nice blouse.
Health: Aside from her marijuana use, she is the picture of perfect health.
Mental Health: Goes through bouts of depression caused by the death of her family and separation from her older brother. Fully believes that Ludwig van Beethoven is her guiding spirit and constantly confers with him in her mind, generally referring to him as “Father Luigi,” since she and her brother are descendants of the composer (see history.) May also “talk” to Wladek, her older brother.
Appearance: Graceful, known to have delicate hands, often wears a touch of makeup

POWERS AND ABILITIES:
Music virtuoso - has the uncanny ability to play any instrument and is vocally talented (prefers piano). Also has perfect pitch and an enhanced sense of hearing.
Speaks German, English, Italian, and French. First language is German, but primarily speaks English.
Power: Can slow down time to a ratio of 5 experienced hours to 1 real-time hour and can extend the field of distorted time to another person so that they, too, can experience it (her limit is a field diameter of 20 feet, but has never tried to stretch it any farther.)

BACKGROUND:
Personality: Ever since the death of her parents and little sister, Johanna has refrained from becoming close with anyone and therefore comes across as cold, distant, and uncaring. Because of her musical ability, her peers think her to be self-absorbed and conceited when, in fact, she is neither. She knows that the people who killed her family are most likely still looking for her and may eventually find her…so, in essence, she is protecting the students around her by not becoming too involved with them. However, due to the fact that Johanna grew up performing with various Austrian music ensembles such as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, she couldn’t resist joining the school marching band and orchestra, despite the fact that neither ensemble is really worth a damn.
She often misses class either because of her marijuana habit or because she feels more like playing music than attending class (she can usually be found playing on the upright piano in the school auditorium). School bores her, mainly because, having been brought up in a household run by her European intellectual parents, she actually has the education level of an American college student studying for their Masters, which is the reason behind why she skips out her classes. She is often caught, and this usually causes her to be placed in detention quite frequently, which she also skips.
Hobbies: Music (performing and composing), art, theater, literature, writing, and traveling (will occasionally skip school, roaming anywhere from art museums in Washington DC to concert halls in LA). Also has a fascination with European cars.
History: Born in Leipzig, Germany, Johanna Sofia Konstanze Schreiber was the second of three children. Her brother, Wladyslaw (who is referred to as “Wladek” only by Johanna), is the firstborn and they had a baby sister, Isolde, who wasn’t born until 2006. Her father, Dr. Kaspar Schreiber, was a firearms dealer and worked as the CEO of Research and Development for Sig Sauer. He, therefore, had his foot in some pretty nasty dealings, particularly with the Fiorenza family, one of the lesser-known mobs in Perugia, Italy, whose underboss Dante Fiorenza was Dr. Schreiber’s most valuable client. Dr. Annaleise Schreiber was a music and art symbologist and an accomplished writer of books on the same subject. She spent most of her time at home either doing research or writing books. Annaleise’s maiden name is Brentano, and it is a family secret that they are direct descendants of Ludwig van Beethoven, as a result of the composer’s affair with Countess Antonie Brentano in the early 1800s. The family attributes the history of Brentano – and now, Schreiber – musical success to this.
Johanna’s musical talent was realized only a few years after she was born. Her parents discovered very early in her life that Johanna had a knack for mastering any instrument to which she was introduced. Her brother also seemed to share a knack for music, but only at the piano. It was then that their parents decided that the best place for their children to grow up was in Vienna. There couldn’t have been a better place than Vienna, Austria, for someone like Johanna to grow up. Her parents immediately enrolled her and Wladyslaw in private music lessons with Dr. Hans Dresden, who teaches at the Vienna Academy of Music. Johanna soon learned that she preferred playing piano to any other instrument. During her life in the music capital of the world, the child prodigy was asked to perform concertos, operas, symphonies, and various other types of concerts with groups such as the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, the Wiener Singakademie, the Wiener Singverein, the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, and the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien (Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra), as well as doing several solo concerts and the occasional piano duet concert with her brother around Europe. Throughout her studies in music, she discovered her ability to compose and became highly interested in the art of creating musical works. However, she has never had anything published and the two siblings never gained any sort of real fame outside of Austria and Germany.
It was also while living in Vienna that Johanna discovered that she had the ability to slow down time. One day, Johanna was asked to play the trumpet solo for Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in E-flat with the Tonkünstler-Orchester Niederösterreich. Going through puberty at the time, Johanna was definitely experiencing wild hormones and became easily stressed by the difficulty that the concerto was giving her. It came down to the last week before the performance night and Johanna found herself staying up at all hours of the night practicing. At one point, she desperately wished that the clock would stop so that she could have more time to practice. As the night went on, she noticed that the minutes on the alarm clock kept going by slower and slower until it eventually stopped altogether (or so it seemed). That was when she realized, after checking the clock to make sure the batteries were working and seeing that nothing outside her bedroom window was moving at all, that she had somehow willed time to slow down. This gave her time to master the piece and – needless to say – after that, when it came to her music, she used this ability to her advantage quite often. There is still no explanation as to why Johanna has this ability and Wladyslaw is the only other person who knows about it.
As soon as they moved to Vienna, the Schreiber family began enrolling their children into the Vienna International School, were Johanna and Wladyslaw both learned English and were taught primarily in English. Johanna also slowly picked up French and Italian from the many of the professional musicians with which she collaborated and Wladyslaw took Polish courses so that he could attend college in Poland. Wladyslaw graduated in 2006 and went on to study geophysics in Poland at Uniwersytet Warszawski (Warsaw University). During his educational career in Warsaw, he got a job after classes as the live pianist in the Lazienki Lounge at the Hyatt Regency Hotel of Warsaw.
Dr. Schreiber always knew that one day his shady business dealings with the Fiorenzas would come back to haunt him…but he never imagined that day would come so soon. One early afternoon, in February of 2007, soon after Johanna turned 14 and began her second semester of her Freshman year at the Vienna International School (she was a year ahead), the Schreibers and the baby sister were murdered by Dante Fiorenza and his gang because they had learned that Dr. Schreiber had been discreetly slipping information about the family’s firearm purchases to the Italian government. Johanna was in school at the time. Wladyslaw was still in Poland.
The Austrian government issued death certificates and new last names to the two remaining siblings: Johanna now goes by the surname “van Kaiser,” and Wladyslaw goes by “Zielinski.” In order to change their appearance, Johanna had to cut and dye her hair while Wladyslaw got slight reconstructive surgery. Lastly, in order to get her out of Europe, Johanna was forced to move to the States as a high school study abroad student. She was taken in by Connor and Janet Shepherd of Neptune, Michigan. Wladyslaw dropped out of college just before graduating and had to re-apply as a freshman under his new name at a different university – AGH (Akademia Górniczo-Hutnicza) University of Science and Technology in Krakow, Poland. He is currently working on his degree again and, though the Austrian government had advised him against doing so in order to keep from attracting attention, has attained an after-class job as the live pianist at the After Work Piano Bar inside the Qubus Hotel Kraków. Wladyslaw and Johanna have cut off communication with each other in order for it to become near impossible to link the two together. The once very close siblings haven’t spoken in almost 3 years.
Johanna was required by Neptune High School to redo her freshman year because of only having completed one semester at Vienna International School. She slowly became less and less interested in the poor American education that was being given at the Michigan school and began skipping out on class, sometimes to practice her music on the upright in the school auditorium and sometimes just to find something better to do. She also became involved with marijuana and began skipping on even more class to get high, sometimes getting caught by the police. Having skipped class so much has kept the now-15-year-old Johanna in 9th grade, so she will start as a freshman again for the second time this year. The state refuses to issue Johanna a driver’s permit due to her convicted drug use and frequent juvie visits. Her host parents are aware of Johanna’s state and are constantly struggling to keep Johanna from going under. Though she is old enough, Johanna will not drop out of school because, unless her host family adopts her, she knows that the American government will send her back to Vienna since her citizenship is still with Austria. Though she likes the Shepherds well enough, she still cringes at the thought of being adopted and is simply waiting to turn 18 so that she will just apply for U.S. citizenship.
No one in Neptune, Michigan, knows anything about Johanna’s life prior to her arrival to the States. Not even the Shepherds.