Player InfoName: Madi
OOC Journal:
runawayballistaOver 18? yes
Email/IM/Plurk:
runawayballista [preferred]
AIM: timetravelresetbaby
Current characters: Agent York (CR AU)
Character InfoName: Rachel
Canon: Animorphs
Age: 14
Canon/AU/CR AU: Canon
Reference: http://animorphs.wikia.com/wiki/RachelCanon Point: After #15,
The Escape, after the entire group has discovered that Visser One’s host is Marco’s mother
World Information: In the late 1990s, Earth is the site for a secret alien invasion by a race of parasitic slugs known as the Yeerks. Yeerks are able to take complete control of host bodies with large enough brains by entering via the ear canal and wrapping themselves around the brain; although the host may try to resist, the Yeerk’s control over the host body is absolute, and it also has unfettered access to the host’s thoughts and memories, which means that it can perfectly mimic the host’s personality and mannerisms so that no one is the wiser. The Yeerks do have one weakness, however; they must return to the Yeerk pool every three days to soak up nutritious Kandrona rays, or they will die of painful starvation.
The Yeerks are vast in number, but harmless in their natural state as well as deprived of much in the way of useful senses, hence the need for host bodies. Their original host bodies were the clumsy Gedds, a race native to the Yeerk homeworld; the Yeerks have also allied with the Taxxons, cannibalistic centipede-like aliens with an insatiable hunger, and enslaved the Hork-Bajir, a peaceful, bark-eating race whose bladed bodies make them easy weapons. However, there are still not enough host bodies for the Yeerks’ vast numbers, so they’ve come to Earth to enslave the humans, who are ideal hosts for the Yeerks in both capability and number.
On Earth, the human race is oblivious to the invasion, which is already well-established and underway. The Yeerks use a front organization called The Sharing to recruit more and more host bodies; The Sharing is like a boys & girls club, but for all ages, and encourages family values and community services. Because it also engages in philanthropic work and is ostensibly concerned with community welfare, The Sharing is a viable method of attracting hosts of considerable influence, and it’s enabled the Yeerks to slowly strengthen their forces over time.
The Andalites are the main front of the war against the Yeerks. An alien race of blue centaur-like creatures with bladed tails, the Andalites are very technologically advanced, and in fact were the ones responsible for giving Yeerks advanced technology in the first place, which has enabled them to begin their conquest. As a result, the Andalites now have a law known as the Law of Seerow’s Kindness, named after the Andalite responsible, that forbids the sharing of any Andalite technology with other races. The ability to morph is granted through physical contact with a small blue cube known as an Escafil device. Communication in morph is achieved via “thought-speak”, a form of telepathy which is native to Andalites and is conferred to any non-Andalite being who is granted the ability to morph.
Morphing technology still exclusively belongs to the Andalites, with a few exceptions. One of them is Visser Three, the Yeerk general leading the invasion on Earth; he is the only Andalite-Controller in existence and is considered an abomination by the Andalites. He is the only Yeerk with the much-envied power to morph. The other exceptions are the Animorphs, a group of five American youths who were given the ability to morph by Elfangor, a dying Andalite warrior after he crash-landed on Earth. Rachel and the other Animorphs, along with Elfangor’s surviving younger brother Ax, comprise the primary anti-Yeerk resistance on Earth, although they are also occasionally aided by the Chee, an ancient race of pacifist androids living among humans. Because their identities must remain secret in order to fight the Yeerks, Rachel and the other Animorphs must balance their personal lives with their secret guerilla warfare.
Personality: At a glance, Rachel seems like the perfect It girl: feminine, fashionable, well-adapted socially, and she’s good with people (well, most of the time). She’s active socially, in and out of school; some of her favorite hobbies are doing gymnastics and going shopping. Rachel is very confident and self-assured, to the point where others around here often believe she isn’t afraid of anything; others see her as sort of untouchable, not only in that she looks like she’s never had a speck of dirt on her, even after a fight, but also because although she’s social and has lots of friends, she gives off an independent vibe. Especially true of her before the invasion, she’s never
needed other people’s approval, and her self-confidence and her total willingness to blow off cute guys flirting with her makes people see her as somewhat inaccessible. On closer inspection, though, she’s not quite the popular girl she appears to be on the surface. She has little tolerance for bullshit, and isn’t above making sarcastic remarks in response to something that’s annoyed her, sometimes being downright mean. And while she’s fairly independent and seems fearless to everyone, Rachel has her own fears and insecurities; but she’s also keenly aware that her friends expect her never to be frightened, and she plays into that as well.
There are a lot of things that can be said about Rachel: she’s brave and she’s got guts, whether it comes to a nasty fight or talking down a bully. She’s got a strong sense of right and wrong, but it doesn’t always align with everyone else’s, and she tends to lose sight of the bigger picture when people she cares about are involved. Rachel is the sort of person whose first impulse would be to save her best friend over a bunch of strangers, even if they’re innocent bystanders. Rachel cares deeply for her friends and family, and she’s willing to go to great lengths to protect them. She also tends toward a vigilante brand of justice -- when somebody bites, you bite back, and you always get revenge. Everyone gets what they deserve in the end. She is also proud and competitive, and doesn’t always receive criticism especially well. When she’s having a personal problem, she doesn’t tend to ask for help until she’s confronted; rather, she tends to engage in self-destructive behavior, like taking unnecessary risks, and when she’s upset she’s even more easily emotionally provoked than usual. Rachel doesn’t like her weaknesses to visible -- when she’s intimidated, she’ll try to act tough.
Rachel has always been a kind of thrillseeker, and before she became an Animorph gymnastics was a big thrill for her. Now, it’s morphing into a bird and soaring the skies, or getting into a grisly fight. Rachel enjoys the rush of battle a lot -- maybe a little too much -- and she’s always eager for a fight. The longer she fights against the invasion, the more she discovers that there is something inside her that craves violence, the thrill of the fight. This makes her oddly more suited to combat situations than the other Animorphs, and she’s always ready for a fight. Especially when it comes to the Yeerk conflict, Rachel is likely to see violence as the solution, although she isn’t above throwing a few punches in normal, everyday situations, too.
She has her flaws, though, too. Rachel isn’t just brave, she’s reckless and impulsive; she tends to make snap judgments, especially in the heat of the moment, and she doesn’t function well as a leader under pressure. Although she’s generally pretty self-assured, she doesn’t like feeling inadequate or that she has something to prove, and when she does it tends to make her
more reckless. Her ideas, particularly when it comes to fighting the Yeerks, tend to lack subtlety for the most part -- Rachel likes the direct approach whenever possible, which usually means smashing through the front door and whoever happens to be in the way. She prefers raw power and strength over anything else, which is why her preferred battle morphs are the African elephant and the grizzly bear. Rachel has a hard time seeing the flaws in her own plans; she lacks forethought when it comes to combat and planning (she’s the one most likely to rush into a room without assessing the situation), and she often has a hard time separating herself emotionally from what’s going on. She also tends to get serious tunnel-vision when she has an objective in mind, which can be handy for getting things done, but her lack of attention to the bigger picture usually causes trouble.
Abilities, Weaknesses, and Power Limitations: Rachel’s main asset is her morphing ability; she is able to morph any creature whose DNA she acquires via physical contact. However, she can only remain in morph for two hours at a time or she will be permanently trapped in that morph; additionally, she must return to her human form between morphs. Since morphing is DNA-based, injuries do not carry over between morphs, including her human morph. However, morphing does consume energy and she can only do it so many times in a short time span before she wears out completely. Additionally, she can use thought-speak (a form of directed or general telepathy) while in morph, but not as a human. Thought-speak does have limits, however; if there is too much interference, or the physical distance is too great, thought-speak may not work or may cut out, similar to a phone call with poor reception.
Physically, Rachel is pretty much your normal, able-bodied fourteen-year-old girl. She’s been doing gymnastics since she was a kid, so she’s in good shape and quite flexible and nimble, but aside from that and her morphing ability, she doesn’t have anything that sets her apart from other girls her age. She’s about as killable and breakable as anybody else her age, although since morphing resets injuries and some illnesses, she’s a little more resilient in that sense. She can also tell the difference between Express and K-Mart at a hundred yards.
Usable morphs that Rachel has acquired at this canon point: African elephant, bald eagle, shrew, domestic cat, gray wolf, trout, bottlenose dolphin, seagull, ant, cockroach, housefly, great horned owl, grizzly bear, white rat, termite, striped skunk, bat, Hork-Bajir, race horse, parrot, hammerhead shark
Inventory: Aside from her day clothes and her morphing suit (read: leotard) underneath, the only things Rachel will have with her are a tube of lip gloss and her wallet.
Appearance: PB is Imogen Poots:

She looks older than fourteen, yes, but shhh use your imagination.
SamplesLog Sample: It was pretty clear who ran this town. That blue alien lady, Aria, she was at the top. People said she was mean, called her a bitch, sure, but she was still in charge -- Rachel could respect that for sure. She didn’t let anybody get in her way and she did what she had to do. It wasn’t hard to see why she ran this place.
But Aria was only the top-level management. And Omega didn’t exactly have a linear command structure. When it came down to the street, it was the mercenary groups who ran the show around here. And it was survival of the fittest. The strongest, most vicious group seizes the most territory. It was a simple kind of logic that Rachel could appreciate. And you want to ally yourself with the strongest. And while power was always changing, always fluctuating, as far as Rachel could tell by now, the Blood Pack definitely wasn’t to be messed around with.
And hey, as long as she was stuck here, she might as well do something she was
good at, right?
It wasn’t hard to find out where the Blood Pack hung around. There certainly weren’t a whole lot of humans around, that was for sure. Mostly just krogan and those nasty things with too many teeth. Vorcha. Rachel was tall for her age, but she felt dwarfed in this crowd. A little too naked in her human skin. Some of them ignored the human girl striding with confidence through the room, but a good number of them turned to look. That was a whole lot of eyes on her.
Come on, Rachel. Don’t lose your cool. You’ve got this.The recruiter in the back of the room didn’t say anything at first, just grunted at her and gave her barely a glance. “I think you’re in the wrong place, human,” he rumbled, sounding almost amused.
Rachel lifted her chin, squaring her shoulders, and she gave her head a little shake to toss her hair over her shoulder. “Oh, I’m exactly where I meant to be,” she said, forcing a smile. She’d have been lying if she claimed she wasn’t scared. Wetting her pants almost seemed appropriate when the krogan recruiter stood up and leaned forward, huffing a breath out through his nostrils. Ugh, alien breath. Rachel had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from suggesting a Tic-Tac. His beady little dinosaur-like eyes were narrowed, searching her face. She tried her best not to waver.
And then he laughed, a low, guttural sound. “
You want to join the Blood Pack? I don’t know if you noticed, but we don’t exactly hire humans. And you look like I could break you in half if I looked at you the wrong way.” He laughed again, dropping himself back down in his seat. “Go home, tiny human girl. You wouldn’t last five minutes.”
All right, she had to give him points for the intimidation factor. Krogan could be pretty freaky. But Rachel wasn’t about to back down, not when she’d come all this way. She just smiled a little more, showing teeth. “I don’t know about that.”
The krogan merely looked on in mild bewilderment as Rachel started to focus on the DNA stored inside of her. Usually this’d be the part where she stripped down to her morphing suit, but she wasn’t exactly going to start taking her clothes down in front of a bunch of nasty krogan. Besides, the Hulk-out factor totally made it look way cooler, right? Rachel supposed she could sacrifice a good pair of jeans for the cause.
The krogan’s bewilderment started to turn to alarm as the changes started to take place. At first, she didn’t grow any larger; a pattern of bristly brown fur formed all over her skin before it sprang to three-dimensional life. Rachel smiled at him just as her lips pulled back to reveal sharp teeth -- too sharp for a human -- and her face shot forward to form a snout. It was time to go grizzly.
Network Sample: [ There’s a blue-eyed white girl on the video feed with long, impeccably perfect blonde hair. Like, seriously, you’d expect somebody hanging around Omega to have at least a hair or two out of place. But nope, not Rachel. It’s like her other superpower. She’s fourteen, but she’s tall for her age and looks a little older. She tosses her hair with a little shake of her head, smiling. ]All right, so I guess for a den of thieves or whatever, this place isn’t
too bad. I guess the place could use a few multiplexes and Mickey D’s if you want to make it
really habitable.
But it’s not all about fast food and the latest Brad Pitt movie. There’s something way more important than that:
clothes. I mean, a girl can only live in one outfit for so long. And I’m noticing a distinct lack of JC Penney here. So can anybody direct me to a boutique that
doesn’t cater to derelict armor chic? I’ll take a K-Mart sale at this point.