Vertigo (Character)

Vertigo is Bloom's Nemesis. She appears in World of Winx.

Appearance
Vertigo is fairly tall and has a slim build. She has a light skin tone with ghostly white facial makeup, black sclera and golden irises. She only has one solid eyebrow on the left side of her face and has red eye makeup; the makeup on her left eye being more solid compared to the makeup on her right eye, which forms a large flower shape. Her red-orange hair is combed back and pinned up with four long, black hairpins and holds a few decorative pearls in it. Two sections of hair rest directly on the lowest pair of hairpins and two long curls rest on her shoulders, each of them flowing down to her chest. Her hair is waist-length with most of it curled just like the sections on her shoulders, giving her an overall Victorian era look.

True Form
Her outfit is comprised of a dark purple leotard with lilac trimmings and a lilac sash wrapped around her waist with three large bows behind her. The smallest bow around her waist is the same color as her sash, the medium-sized one is dark purple, and the largest bow is black-and-white checkered. She wears dark purple gloves and has sections of lilac fabric tied around both of her upper arms that connect to her wrists, as each piece of fabric drops under her arms before being tied around her wrists in small bows.

Glowing cyan-colored nets spill out from below her sash with large lilac fabrics spilling out from below the nets, flowing down to her feet like a classical dress. The lilac fabrics have three small white and fluffy trims and are a darker shade of purple on the inside. Vertigo also wears purple tights under her leotard, along with open dark purple boots bound together by black laces.

Human
When Vertigo assumes human form, her red hair becomes messier and no longer has ghostly white facial makeup. Bangs flare out from under a black bandana with one of the strands of hair being an icy blue. Two long curls rest on her shoulders flowing down to her chest as the rest of her hair reaches her waist. She has four long, black hairpins sticking out from behind her bandana. She has light blue eyeshadow and lipstick with a small blue star under her right eye.

Her attire appears to be punkish in style as she wears a black top with an exposed shoulder, a blue-to-pink flower emblem on the chest and three layers of ruffles that go from grey to white, exposing her midriff. She also has a light blue strap that hangs off the top and rests on her right arm.

As a Nemesis created using Bloom's stolen essence, Vertigo's human disguise shares many visual similarities with Bloom.

Bloom's Inner Self
During her biggest attack on Bloom, Vertigo takes on her appearance to fool her into thinking that she is her inner self.

Personality
Vertigo is openly sadistic with psychopathic tendencies. She derives a great sense of joy from being able to break a person's spirit and usually lets out her recognizably maniacal laugh when she gets to see their suffering. Her illusory magic allows her to toy with her targets as she sees fit, and she especially loves to use it for as long as possible to see just how badly she can wear down her target's psyche by exploiting their fears and heightening their paranoia.

She is also very prideful and crafty, even to the point of declaring to Tinkerbell, her creator, that she does not take orders from anyone and, almost as if she is challenging the dark fairy queen, proclaims that she can wear down anyone's spirit, no matter who they are or how powerful. As such, Vertigo takes great pride in her methods and goes to great lengths to make sure that they work out flawlessly. This can be seen when she goes out of her way to disguise herself amongst the Winx's fans and seemingly puts herself in danger just to frighten Bloom. Naturally, this can make her very stubborn as well as she was still persistent with her act during her biggest attack on Bloom, even when the real Bloom had already seen through her ruse.

Season 2
In "Neverland," Tinkerbell recites an incantation and uses a mysterious stone pendant to transmute a shadow creature containing Bloom's stolen essence into a being born from Bloom's darkest aspects. Once she has been successfully born, Tinkerbell gives this new dark being the name "Vertigo".

In "Peter Pan's Son," Vertigo's voice is heard in Bloom's nightmare and she soon makes her appearance in a cloud of fog, scaring Bloom awake. Proud of herself, Vertigo returns to Tinkerbell's lair in Neverland to boast, only to have her confidence questioned by Tinkerbell at every turn. After taunting Tinkerbell and insisting that she knows Bloom better than anyone else, Vertigo disappears in a flash of lilac light, most likely to finish the job she had begun.

Throughout the day, Vertigo torments Bloom by subjecting her to her frightening presence and illusions to break down her psyche and rapidly escalate her fears and paranoia. Masking her presence from the rest of the Winx, Vertigo makes Bloom look as if she is going crazy, and her constant haunting drives Bloom to avoid sleep in the hopes that she would not see Vertigo in another realistic nightmare. After the Winx leave the Literary Café, they plan to look in the Concert Hall, completely unaware of Vertigo's next move.

At night, when the Winx search the theatre, Vertigo challenges Bloom to face her once she ends up alone. She then subjects Bloom to more of her illusions by making the Winx all look like five images of herself while disguising herself as Bloom's inner self in need of protection. Her plan is almost completely successful until Bloom uses her heart to see through her illusions and purges Vertigo's disguise with a burst of fire magic. Vertigo then taunts Bloom more believing that she could never just "accept" her Nemesis but, unfortunately for Vertigo, Bloom proves her wrong by invoking the shadow of her stolen essence and accepting it back within her being as her fire burns Vertigo away until she is no more.

With Vertigo gone, Bloom reveals to the Winx of Tinkerbell's latest plans: to attack them with personalized enemies just like she had done with Vertigo.

Magical Abilities
Vertigo has the magical power over illusions and uses them to confuse, disorient, and mainly terrify her opponents and victims. She can create illusions of varying complexities ranging from making multiple copies of herself to making her victims see her image in other people. Furthermore, she can completely mask her existence from everyone except for the mind of her victim, making it so they are the only ones who can see, hear, and feel her. This makes it so they cannot seek help from others to deal with her and she showcases these powers all throughout the episode "Peter Pan's Son," as she harasses and terrifies Bloom while leaving the Winx out of the loop, effectively making it look like Bloom is going crazy. She can even mask her presence from everyone including her victim if she needs to make a quick getaway.

Due to her powers over the mind of her victim, Vertigo can also subject them to multiple nightmares and usually does so to start off her attacks. This allows her to wear down her victims even more as they cannot escape her presence at any point in the day, and this drives her victims to avoid sleep altogether, further breaking down their psyche by heightening their paranoia as they cannot rest.

Vertigo also flies about, much like the other Nemeses, and can disguise herself to take the form of a human girl. She also takes Bloom's form during her biggest attack on her to trick Bloom into thinking that she needs to protect her "inner self" from multiple Vertigo copies. Lastly, Vertigo seems to be capable of traveling between Earth and Neverland with ease, implying that she may have teleportation powers.

Trivia

 * Vertigo's name and powers are derived from the medical condition, Vertigo, which is when a person feels as if they or the objects around them are moving (particularly either spinning or swaying) when they are not.
 * She might be a reference to the Marvel Comics character, Vertigo, who gets her name from the same condition.
 * Vertigo is the only one of the Winx's Nemeses to be partially absorbed by her heroic counterpart, though this is mainly because she is the only Nemesis to have been created by using part of a Winx girl's essence.
 * Vertigo not only shares her name with one of Darcy's spells, but she also shares a similar mastery of illusions with her.