Post by Briar Michaels on Feb 14, 2012 0:57:58 GMT -5
BRIAR REEYNE MICHAELS
Character Basics
Name: Briar Reeyne Michaels
Nickname: Briar
Age: Fourteen
Birthday: 13 , November, 1997
Race/Species: Shapeshifter.
Birth star/stone: Citrine
Sexual Orientation: Straight
Status: Single/Not really looking
Character Appearance:
Model: Abigail Breslin
Eyes: Briar retains the strange dark brown, seemingly pupils eyes of her shifted form, the Margay, when human. You cannot see the whites of these eyes!
Hair: Gold to match her shifted form, Briar’s hair is actually surprisingly curly and falls to her middle back
Height: 5’2’’
Weight: 102 lbs
Tattoos: n/a
Piercings: Simple ear piercing, not that she ever really uses them.
Shifted Appearance: Margay. (Feline)
Height: 11 inches
Weight: 7 lbs.
Markings: Margays resemble their cousins, the Ocelots, and likewise have a similar fur pattern. Golden, with dark brown dashes and spots, Briar does not differ from the typical feline of this species much.
Scars; An ugly scar parting her shoulder blades, but is hardly noticeable when the fur of her margay form has grown out.
Character Personality: Well, Briar certainly has an interesting contrastive personality. She tends to be gentle and kind-- though growing up youngest in a house with five siblings as worn her patience and temper thin. She's highly competitive, cocky, and jokingly boastful—though at the drop of a hat, she can be lenient, gentle, and quiet. She typically the latter around people she doesn't know, and once comfortable around you—the girl will instantly rear back into her cheerful, confident self.
Briar tends to be rather youngly-naïve at times, but makes up for her lack of age with sly responses and catches onto things pretty quick. The girl adores exploration and danger, one of her fatal flaws being that she simply ignores all the warning signs and hints of danger with a laugh and a joke. She takes every situation she can, no matter how bad, and makes a joke out of it. On the other hand, when a situation calls for it, or when the girl becomes unusually somber— Briar can be quite serious, gentle, and rather protective of others. She hates to see others in pain, and actually means it (rather than just going through the motions) when she says, 'how are you?'
On the negative side, Briar has a tendency to ball up every emotion she's ever experienced and keep it locked away. She's never one to talk about feelings, but her gentle and protective side would listen both seriously and carefully to a friend who's more open. She has a short fused temper, and readily defends her strong beliefs no matter who or what else is happening around her. Briar refuses help in all forms. It humiliates her to find that she's been doing something wrong, or someone corrects her. She might listen and cover up her mistake with a laugh-- but help is one of the things Briar refuses to ask for, even when she's terribly off. Her exterior is a tough as armor, reinforced with just a general happy-go-lucky personality—you’d never expect the soft and vulnerable inside the girl that she has beyond her suit of armor.
Ontop of that, Briar will refuse to stand down or give up-- even if a gun (or wand in this case) is pointed at her forehead. She'll continue to stand back up, even if it means getting another blow to the head. While this may be a handy trait in certain situations-- it can also be a fatal one. It wouldn't be surprising if Briar met her end that way.
Likes:
- Margays (the animal Briar can shift into) are known for their vicious climbing skills, and likewise—the gift has shifted over to the girl’s human form. She enjoys climbing over any other sport, or activity.
- Running. What’s not to like?
- Books
- Cards
Dislikes:
- Chocolate: Ask her why, and she’ll say: I have no bloody idea.
- Mexican Food: She’s never been one for spicy stuff.
- Biology: Just… just DON’T. Don’t even THINK about going there.
Strengths:
- Cards anyone? *shuffles* Betcha’ Briar’ll win.
- Briar’s a pretty good puzzle solver. As in good, I mean pretty dang-amazing. Riddles? Psh. Rubik Cubes? As if. Sudoku? Try something she hasn’t mastered since third grade.
- Briar has an excellent endurance—probably a side effect of her powers, but maybe not. She can run at a sprint for quite a few minutes, and I tip my hat off to anyone who can actually catch her.
Weaknesses:
- Briar’s not very big, even in human form. Her Margay form is hardly bigger than a regular housecat, and not any heavier as well. If you can manage to pick Briar up without her clawing your eyes out, you could toss her with ease. Briar’s human form isn’t very sturdy either—and being smaller in general means Briar probably can’t take as much as some bulky six-foot senior.
- She has a weak immune system—Briar admits it. She rarely gets sick, but when she does—god, it hits her HARD. Colds are often lingering for weeks. It’s pretty annoying in the long run.
- If there is a thing to loose, Briar has lost it. She doesn’t have a great memory, which is really surprising due to her excellent problem-solving skills.
Habits: Briar hops from foot to foot when nervous, and stand on the balls of her feet to appear taller. She also hisses. Yes. Like a cat. Don’t look at her strangely, it’s just instinct. xD She also has an unnatural ability to flick her ears, which she calls her unofficial second super power.
Fears:
- Like her margay counterpart, Briar is not a big fan of snakes.
- Emptiness, voids, being unconscious, etc.: Briar’s secretly terrified of nothingness. What that means, exactly, she’s not quite sure—but it sure as heck was annoying when the girl was trying to fall asleep at night and found herself quite suddenly terrified of the actual action. The prospect of nothing, blackness—going on forever, not her bowl of soup.
- Syringes: Try to stick her with one and see what happens to your face. Yeah. I went there.
Character History: Ah, California: the golden state. Well, the Johnson Family has lived in the third house in 2nd street for as long as Adele and Roe Johnson have been married. They lived fine for a while, always on the brink of not having enough money to scrape by—but hey? Isn’t that the main problem with everyone in this economy?
You’d think that having more kids would bring down the family income—and at first it did. But as each child grew up and learned how make money for the family—it grew. Briar was born last, in this family of eight. Only girl too—as far as she knows. She’s heard rumors that she had a female cousin—but other than that her family has remained untouched by female children for three generations.
At eight, Briar figured out that something was different about her family. Something… strange. Something being that her oldest brother would breathe fire occasionally, and how the twins would fly around the dining room at dinner—and that other families didn’t do this. Hm. Well, soon after this realization—Briar woke up to find herself with paws and large teeth and rather freaked out. Her mother was the first to spot the freaking out cat (who was later on a library computer was identified as a margay, but details, details,) and was also the first to figure out that yet another one of her children was given an unparallel ability.
After figuring out how to morph OUT, the rest of Briar’s life was unextraordinary. She excelled in PE and Literature, while she miserably failed at fractions and science. Math was generally a mess, except when it came to those problems few problems that ya’ just have to know. She made friends, a very good one too by the name of Sadia—and had adventures with bears and trees and all sorts of teenage madness. She learned to keep a cool head with her older brothers constantly picking on her, and how to weigh her strengths and weaknesses.
Life was simple—until life called in its dues for their good fortune.
At thirteen, Briar was sitting at the dining room table eating dinner—when her family received a call that Tyler had never reported for work, and that the company was wondering if he was running late. Guess what? He wasn’t. Tyler had disappeared off the face of the planet. Next came Briar’s Father and the twins. Simply vanished while driving to the grocery store. Then came Orion, while he was doing an aerial search for the family—while Todd and Briar searched below.
Briar ended up staying with her friend Sadia for a night, while Todd went to contact some extended family on the other side of the city. When he never came to pick her up in the morning (she waited all day before assuming the worst)—Briar was on the verge of hysteria and fled. The girl was bigger than a cat, but smaller than a leopard. She blended in easy with the city—her tan pelt with the trash, and the black spots with the night. She did fine for a while, never ‘disappearing’ like her family—seemingly alluding whatever had happened to her family. The tall buildings of the city similar to trees, and she learned to catch pigeons to eat raw (which tasted almost cooked in morphed form). She did this for about a half-a-year—never sought help, never returning to contact her friends (though checking in on Sadia a few times to make sure she hadn’t disappeared either).
Though the inevitable happened. One long night, Briar was forced to morph rapidly several times while avoiding a less than nice mutant street-gang, and a gaggle of zookeepers with tranqs from a nearby zoo. Several hours later, returned to her Margay form after throwing up several times with a high fever. Briar curled up half-conscious in a nearby suburban area in a person’s hedge. The next time she woke up—she was in human form and someone was standing above her with a suspiciously large object. Naturally, Briar flipped out and lashed out with claws and teeth—knocking the rather harmless platter of food to the ground. She was halfway out the door as a streaking cat before she ran into the problem of fever-pitched legs and tunnel vision. Instead of a doctor with gloves and needles, a woman with ungloved hands picked the cat back up into NOT a metal surgical table, but a bed. Whoa. Didn’t see that coming.
Apparently, when Briar heard the story later—she continuously changed from human to margay several times during unconsciousness, which didn’t help the case. Which leads up to how Briar ended up at Markswell’s academy.
Lucky for Briar—the woman who found the girl happened to be a gifted human. A gifted who also knew several other gifted people who lived nearby, all hiding in plain sight against the world. This particular mutant’s name was Emily Barksin, who found a rather strange cat out in her hedge one morning—and being an empath told her that the emotions coming out of this thing were not animalistic at all. Emily was smart enough to realize that she had a mutant in her backyard, and after several failing times of trying to wake the mute up—moved her inside at the thought of sickness.
Why is this important? Because Emily had attended Night and Day academy for her growing up years—Briar was healed under Emily’s care. And eventually, Briar herself realized that this person weren’t going to hurt her—and stopped attacking anyone who came near with fangs and claws. Briar ended up living with Emily for several months while she healed completely. Afterward, when the girl again intended to set out in fear of disappearing—Emily gave Briar another option of protection. Instead of hiding in the streets, she could attend Night and Day Academy and learn how to protect herself so she wouldn’t have to live in fear.
And so she did.
Strengthens:
- Being able to turn into a feline with a high climbing ability has given Briar some obvious benefits. She can jump from tree to tree with ease (or roof-top to roof-top) and can climb a 50-foot tree in thirty seconds flat—in human form. With a feline grace, Briar moves completely silently through nearly any terrain, and can wiggle through small spaces.
- Heheheh. Just because Briar isn’t shifted at the moment doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous. One time, some, er, less than sober guy was bugging Briar at a party to, er, engage in intercourse. Finally, it went to the point where he grabbed her on the shoulder—and Briar whirled around and sunk three-inch fangs into his hand. Aka, Briar can morph certain parts of her body without the rest. Likewise, those fangs are pretty long—three inches. Despite being so small, Briar can pack a surprisingly punch if she can sink her fangs in—and her claws are thick and strong, built for tearing into tropical tree bark.
- No time limit to her shifted form.
Weaknesses:
- The morphing process Briar uses to shift does not deal with DNA. If Briar is injured as a margay—the wound carries over into her human form.
- While the shifting process is short, it’s fairly strenuous. Doing it once a day is fine—but performing many morphs in a short period of time leaves her exhausted and very ill.
- How heavy is Briar exactly, while morphed? Probably about seven pounds and it’s probably her greatest weakness. Her bones are nice and sturdy, but anything can be broken if you throw it hard enough—and trust me: you can throw Briar. (granted you don’t lose your eyes in the process)
Other: nothing much more to say! Ah, sorry if the history's off. I did the best I could... but I couldn't find a plot or the original adverisement to help me set up a better history.
