app for capeandcowl

[xenabutagrizzly]

[PLAYER INFO]
NAME: Betsy
AGE: 19
JOURNAL: be_themoon
IM: oakashandwillow
E-MAIL: oakashandwillow (at) gmail (dot) com
RETURNING: Max Gibson | futurebatwoman

[CHARACTER INFO]
CHARACTER NAME: Rachel | n/a
FANDOM: Animorphs
CHRONOLOGY: After Book 22, The Solution.
CLASS: Neutral, leaning towards anti-hero.
SUPERHERO NAME: None.
ALTER EGO: Rachel, student.

BACKGROUND:

So Rachel’s world is ours, in the 1990’s. Same TV shows, same celebrities, same comic books and stores and malls and stuff.

Except for the aliens.

Specifically, the Yeerks, a parasitic slug-like race who take over the brain and control your every action and can access your memories and thoughts.

Rachel was a pretty normal teenager once (fashion queen, divorced parents, siblings, etc.), until one day when she was thirteen she walked home from the mall. Seems harmless enough, right? Unfortunately, the group she was walking with – her cousin Jake, her best friend Cassie, her cousin’s best friend Marco, and Tobias, a kid none of them knew too well – kind of ran into a crash landed alien ship. Except not the Yeerks – this was an Andalite named Elfangor, one of the Yeerks’ deadliest enemies, and he was injured and dying. With Earth completely undefended, he did something forbidden by Andalite law – he gave these five humans the ability to morph, a technology-based method of shapeshifting. He gave them the basic rundown of things – Yeerks bad, taking over your world, the rules of the morphing cube – and then made them run when Visser Three, the only Yeerk to take an Andalite body, came to kill him.

So now they're fighting back. I’m going to skip over some stuff that isn’t too important to Rachel because uh twenty-two books even if they’re short.

They find out very early on (like… day two) that Jake’s brother Tom is a Controller, as well as their Vice-Principal. Tobias stayed behind a bit longer with Elfangor than the rest of them and tells them the Yeerks are reliant on something called Kandrona, which they have to leave their hosts to bathe in every three days. Through Tom and the Vice-Principal they manage to find one of the entrances to the Pool, a massive underground complex, and attempt to rescue Tom and any other hosts they can. This fails miserably, Visser Three ambushes them, they almost all die, and though they (barely) manage to escape Tobias gets stuck in morph!

Next up, they try to spy on the Vice-Principal Controller dude by Rachel (who knows his daughter) morphing his daughter’s cat. During the mission, Rachel risks her own life to comfort her friend, who knows something is wrong with her parents, and then again to keep her from being turned into a Controller. This starts the fun trend of Rachel not informing her teammates of important stuff (namely that Visser Three saw her-as-cat while talking to the Vice-Principal and ordered her killed on the basis of possible-Andalite-ness) because she thinks she can totally handle it! In this case, it turns out she does escape, but only barely.

During Tobias’ narration, it’s shown that Rachel is the person he goes to talk to most and that she leaves her window open for him and tries to help convince him of his own humanity and that he’ll get better. She also keeps a picture of him from before he was stuck in morph. (She’s also shown to be super insecure about her gymnastics.) She shows herself several times to be really concerned about him, almost crying when she realizes how confused and lost he is.

When Cassie and Tobias start having dreams and begin to receive thought-speak messages from an unknown source that seems to be an Andalite, Rachel strongly supports them finding the Andalite, saying that he died to try to save earth and that means something. She pushes for the mission to succeed, and they eventually find a last Andalite survivor of the fleet trapped underwater in the remainder of his dome ship. They rescue him, quickly nickname him Ax, and he joins the fight.

Rachel’s dad tells her that he’s been offered a job in another state and will be moving, and he wants her to come with him. She tells him she has to think about it. Shortly afterwards, when trying (again) to infiltrate the Yeerk pool, they are in roach morph and in the process of being eaten by a Taxxon (a race of slug-like aliens that are almost or all Controllers) when time freezes and they find themselves all in their human bodies. Lo and behold, it’s a guy called the Ellimist, who says he’s here to offer them a choice. They can choose to continue to fight and they will all die, or he can take them, their family and friends, and some others of the human race to a safe planet where they can try to rebuild their civilization. The majority of them vote no, especially when they notice an escape route that they can use to get out as soon as they morph. Rachel is among those voting no. They escape narrowly. She says at one point that she’s fine until someone starts offering her exits and then she doesn’t know what to do.

They meet a race of peaceful androids, some of whom have infiltrated the Yeerk front group The Sharing and give them information. The Yeerks have a computer chip that would allow the androids to rewrite their programming, allowing them to do violence. The Animorphs attempt to get it for them and almost die in the effort. They manage to throw it to one of the androids waiting for them and he destroys their enemies. Apparently the violence was so much Rachel was in tears afterwards, and he promptly rewrites his own programming back to peace and gives them the chip, ordering them to hide it.

In the grand tradition of Rachel not telling her team important stuff and also taking reckless risks, she jumps down after a kid who fell into a crocodile pit and manages to rescue him by acquiring and morphing a crocodile out of sight. When she starts having morphing problems afterwards, morphing uncontrollably, breaking morphing rules by going straight from one morph to another, and accidentally crushing part of her house by morphing into an elephant, she plays it off as being no big deal and probably a one time thing or just an accident so that they’ll let her accompany her on a mission to spy on the Yeerk’s, who are getting a famous TV star under their control so he can speak for the Sharing. After it happens again, they ask Ax. Turns out Rachel is allergic to crocodile DNA, something which happens occasionally! And unless she remains totally in control of her emotions she’ll keep morphing uncontrollably until whenever the crocodile DNA decides to ‘burp’ itself out. By separating from her and creating an entire crocodile out of her back. Since Rachel thinks she really, really needs to complete the mission – be on the same interview show as the TV star so she can disrupt the Yeerks plans – she lies and tells them that she burped the crocodile last night and everything’s fine. Naturally, she starts ACTUALLY burping the crocodile just as the TV star goes on, and the Animorphs generally create total chaos in the studio, get the Yeerk out of the TV star and him running far away from EVERYTHING, and Rachel gets yelled at but defends her actions as necessary for the mission.

Rachel receives a Packard Foundation Outstanding Student award, and invites everyone except for Tobias, not even telling him so that his feelings won’t be hurt as he can’t really come. They rescue two free Hork-Bajir (the entire race is Controllers, the shock troops of the Yeerk army) and guide them safely to a hidden valley. Mostly because the Ellimist keeps screwing around with them. He then gives Tobias back the ability to morph, though not his human body, which Rachel is really upset about due to her having feelings for him and it being kind of difficult because he’s a HAWK. However he does manage to acquire his own DNA through Ellimist shenanigans and comes to her award ceremony as himself, which she is shocked but thrilled about.

This isn’t relevant in almost any way, but one time they ran into evil horse Controllers and it was AWESOME.

After Cassie kills a Hork-Bajir during a battle after Jake calls for a retreat, she temporarily quits being an Animorph because she's scared that she's becoming too used to violence and too willing to kill, which Rachel interprets (pretty accurately) to mean "I might end up like Rachel and that's terrifying". Rachel is furious and says they can’t be friends anymore. Eventually, though, Cassie figures some stuff out for herself and comes back to the Animorphs. Her and Rachel’s relationship is still a little strained but they’re back to being best friends.

And then comes the David fiasco. When a kid named David finds the morphing cube and tries to sell it, the Animorphs manage to rescue him from Visser Three, but not before his parents are taken and made into Controllers. They induct him as an Animorph, with Rachel voting for him to join them. He quickly proves himself to be even more reckless and dangerous than Rachel herself, and they realize they've made a mistake when during a trap by Visser Three he almost immediately tries to sell them out. Jake secretly lays plans with Ax and Tobias to watch David that night. David takes off, like they'd suspected, and kills a red-tailed hawk they all believe to be Tobias. Jake immediately sends Ax to get Rachel, saying "We may need to do a terrible thing." David almost kills Jake, but they save him. Then David shows up at their school and threatens them. When he leaves, Rachel follows him with Jake's encouragement, puts a fork through his ear, and tells him that if he tries anything against them, she'll make sure his parents don't survive. After a series of cat and mouse games, they manage to trap David as a rat and leave him on a desert island. Rachel comes just after they've succeeded in this.

PERSONALITY:

Before all of this happened, Rachel was a tough, no-nonsense, fearless beauty queen gymnast. She was undoubtedly a queen bee in school, one of those people who's fearless and knows what they want and goes and gets it. These characteristics are a huge help once they start fighting the war. Rachel is the most reckless of them all, almost always ready to take on the enemy. Her catch phrase is "Let's do it", and she very quickly gains the nickname Xena, Warrior Princess. She borders on bloodthirsty, a trait the others have all noticed and that Jake has explicitly used, calling her above the others when there's something dirty to be done. Rachel is defensive of this, aware that there's something wrong with just how much she takes pleasure in battle and how far she's willing to go, especially after she stabs David in the ear with a fork and threatens his parents lives if he sells them out to Visser Three. She's angry that Jake's using her for it instead of trying to help her, and she's furious that the others are judging her for it. At the point I'm taking her from, she's only just really begun to face the fact that there's a very dark part of her that almost gets off on violence and fighting.

Rachel states at one point that she's not much for emotions. That's an accurate assessment in some ways and not in others. She tends to see things very black and white. These people are bad, so whatever we do to them is justified. We're fighting to survive and they attacked us first, we can kill as many of them as we want without a guilty conscience. She sometimes feels uncomfortable that she doesn't feel as conflicted about it as most of the others do, but mostly she just does what she has to do. On the other hand, she's perfectly capable of being a good friend and sister. She's affectionate towards her siblings, in a typical big-sister-teasing way, but she's shown that she cares deeply about them and their safety, and she struggled with whether or not to move with her dad and has shown that she loves him and her mom a great deal. She's been a great best friend to Cassie for years. She can be abrasive, vain, spoiled, arrogant and overbearing, but she's also funny and giving and social and enthusiastic. She's shown herself to be capable of great compassion - she risked her life to offer comfort to a friend, Melissa, whose parents were Controllers, and then again to make sure that Melissa wouldn't become a Controller. She's been very understanding about Tobias and his situation, mostly, and has feelings for him. So she does do emotion - she's just not very self-aware about it all the time.

She's pushy, and frequently believes that she knows best. On a couple different occasions she's withheld information from the team because she thinks they'll bench her or cancel the mission and she's determined to accomplish it and thinks she has everything under control. Rachel pretty much always thinks she's got things under control, or if she doesn't she refuses to let anyone else see that. Her image is really important to her - both how people see her character and her physical appearance. However, when the stakes are high enough she's willing to play humiliated and broken down for the sake of the mission. She's incredibly loyal and would do almost anything for her team and to help save the world. She does best when there's nothing ahead but the mission - once she starts getting offered ways out of a situation she starts second-guessing herself and gets muddled up. She's in general a very intense, single-minded person - once she sets her mind on something, it gets done. She hates failure and being showed up, or not living up to people's expectations. Several times on missions when she's had doubts, she's kept herself from voicing them because it would make the other's think less of her or because it's what's expected of her.

At the same time as all of this, there are some remnants of teenage girl left in her. She's been shown to swoon over hot guys, she still loves going shopping and is very focused on how she looks and eager to help Cassie get made over. She teases her friends and hangs out at the mall and still does gymnastics. She looks after her siblings for her mom, keeps her grades up (that thing with other people's image of her again), and keeps up a social life. Granted, some of it's for her cover so that she remains unsuspicious, but some of it she still genuinely enjoys. It's becoming less and less important, though, as the war goes on.

POWER:

Rachel brings in the canonical technology-granted power of morphing. Basically she’s a shapeshifter! There are some important rules regarding her powers.
RULE ONE – there’s a time limit of two hours – any longer and you’re trapped in morph, permanently.
RULE TWO – you have to have ‘acquired’ the DNA of whatever animal you’re morphing into – so prior physical contact is necessary.
RULE THREE – no morphing directly from one animal to another. You have to return to your base form first.
RULE FOUR – morphing heals injuries. You’re going on DNA, so anything but a DNA-based disease goes away as soon as you morph out of that body.
Those are the important ones. There’s also some other things – she can meld two creature’s DNA to come up with a third creature, sometimes you acquire an animal you’re allergic to (loool), and all extra material is in or comes from Z-space when morphing animals bigger or smaller than yourself. Sometimes there are problems in an initial morph when you can’t control the animal brain.
As of coming into the city, she has 24 usable morphs.

[CHARACTER SAMPLES]
COMMUNITY POST (FIRST PERSON) SAMPLE:

[There's a fuzz of video for a second, but it turns back off again immediately. The girl's voice that comes afterwards is confused and upset.]

I'm sure you've heard this one a lot before, but humor me. Heard the hero spiel, found the apartment, took the tour - but nobody's said anything about a way home other than that there isn't one.

I don't belong here. I'm not a hero, I'm a kid. I don't get it. What does this place want with me? You guys have Batman, I saw him on the network. I saw Spiderman out and about yesterday. I can put together a great outfit and I get good grades. That's about it.

I'd like to go home now. My mom's going to be worried sick.

LOGS POST (THIRD PERSON) SAMPLE:

She wants to laugh. Picking her for the hero game was about as far as they could get from the truth. Cassie, sure. Tobias, Jake, yeah. Hell, maybe even Marco and Ax. But Rachel? Wrong choice. Because she's not a hero. She's a soldier. The difference isn't just in the bright colors and capes and fancy words. It's in the way her head goes clear and calm in a fight, the way she has to fight herself to pull out of it afterwards. It's in how far she's willing to go. Jake and Marco argue enough about their superheroes that she knows the number one rule - they don't kill. Not Batman, not Spider-man, not Superman, not Wonder Woman. That leaves Rachel right out of the running.

If this is the Ellimist trying to play head games with her, trying to show her her true self or whatever, she's going to - no. Better not to head down that route of thinking this time.

It better not be, though. She's tired of games and tricks and betrayals. And if this City thinks it can use her - well, it's got another think coming. Nobody else is going to get to use her, not for some unknown and vague purpose. She needs to settle down. Sit tight, wait and see what happens. If the Ellimist wants something, he's going to have to come to her, because she's not going to him. If it isn't the Ellimist, well, she'll think about that later. They've given her dog tags and a place to stay and a phone, and apparently a monthly allowance. For now, she'll take them up on that offer, but handle it with caution. Everything is suspect, here.

She does need a place to sleep, though. The phone and its network may prove useful, if for nothing else than establishing herself as an innocent, just in case. She doesn't think the Yeerks have the power to do something this massive, but there's still a definite possibility that they're out there in the city somewhere. In which case there's still a fight. And she's always in for a fight. She'll need her cover, and a way to find them.

No way out. She's always liked that about a situation. It means you have to make your own, and she's good at that.

FINAL NOTES ABOUT YOUR CHARACTER:

nooope.