Post by Inari Beck on Feb 4, 2012 13:55:05 GMT -5
INARI SOFIA BECK
THE BASICS;;
NAME: Inari Sofia Beck
AGE: 17
SEX: Female
CODENAME: Menagerie
ALIASES: Fi, Sofia, M
AFFILIATION: Hero
STATUS: Completely new to the whole business and trying to fit in
CANON: No
PLAYBY: Athena Glory from Aria
THE GOOD STUFF;;
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION:
Inari is about 5 feet 11 inches in height, and she's hoping she won't be growing much anymore. Inari has a toned, almost wiry build, but after she quit ballet and gymnastics, she has gained some weight and filled out in places, putting her within the average-range, rather than the almost starved look she used to have as a child. Inari dreads going on the scale due to childhood hobby-related anxieties, but she's most assuredly healthy weight-wise. Her hair is cut short and dyed lavender (her hair is naturally brown), and her eyes are green in colour, proving a strange contrast with her tanned skin, faint tanlines present here and there from catching a few rays in a bikini.
There is a slight sense of grace in Inari's movements, mostly due to the fact that she is a trained ballerina. While Inari is not really into fashion, she likes to wear clothes that are neat and often a bit on the muted side, with no real clash in colour or pattern. She prefers pants over skirts, but it's not a great, hour-long decision to wear one. Inari wears white pants, a yellow tubetop, an off-white, 3/4 sleeve collar shirt and a black scarf usually, but of course, the weather affects her attire somewhat.
As Menagerie, Inari wears a black, sleeveless leotard with a mandarin collar (and an opening over her upper back to facilitate wings), long black fingerless armwarmers and black knee-high boots, as well as a black domino-mask over her eyes. There are some grey/silvery trimmings on her leotard, boots and the mouths of the sleeves. The material is fairly stretchy, and morphs with her when she uses her powers (how and why she manages to morph a tail in and not have it get stuck under the fabric, she has yet to figure out), and she conciders it a great achievement that she's learned how to morph with her boots on and NOT break them somehow. That being said, accidents still happen...
PERSONALITY:
Inari is a very steadfast and unflappable young woman, though a bit awkward and more than a little dorky, and almost painfully optimistic in every turn. "I can do this!" is her favourite phrase, and it's not uncommon that in the event of failure, she'll come up with something else to try and tackle her problem, and repeat until the problem is no more. Caring, motherly and always willing to lend an ear to others' problems, Inari is warm and kind, though almost naive in how she expects all manner of people to have some form of good in them, and there are very few people in existance she outright dislikes, hates or otherwise wouldn't try to help. Inari's the type of person to waltz into a room signing some rendition of "Don't worry, be happy" and ask you if a cup of cocoa would do the trick to make you smile again. Almost always with a smile and a very polite attitude, you'd think she wasn't even capable of anger or any negative emotion.
You'd be wrong. It's the result of years of practice in bottling up everything negative, so efficiently that she doesn't even realize it herself most of the time, but there are times when all that is let loose, almost always in an explosive, violent manner. These events are very few and far between, but when it happens it's loud, it's painful and you REALLY don't want to be the one who triggered it. On a smaller scale, while she's willing to listen to your worries and try to help, she herself can rarely, if ever, bring herself to tell others about her worries, preferring to go sit in her room, play it in her head over and over and sob into her pillow. While her problems are by no means any less valid than those of others, she feels as if they are and that she has no right to complain, concidering how good her life has been in general.
Thanks to her stature and heritage, Inari is very self-conscious about herself. She speaks softly and with a very British lilt, tries to remain sitting down in the presense of others so she won't tower over them, feels awkward and gangly most of the time and suffers from a profound inferiority complex. After all, she's a six-feet-tall schoolgirl, not the petite, slender thing her mother and coaches and ballet teachers wanted her to be, and boy did they let her know that! As a result, Inari has a hard time taking compliments of any kind from anyone without blushing, babbling or otherwise fidgeting, and then changing the subject. Insults she can laugh off quite easily, though...
POWERS AND/OR ABILITIES:
Animal Mimicry
- Inari can borrow the abilities of animals and shapeshift her body to a limited degree: rather than fully transform into an animal, she can only transform parts of her body to match. Gills and webbed hands and feet? Sure. Snake fangs? She's likely to bite her lip, but yes. Agility of a cat? Yep! Wings? They'll be pretty huge and she really can't explain why she gains wings rather than have her arms turn into wings, but yes. At most Inari can transform into an anthropomorphic version of an animal, looking much like a werecreature, but prefers not to if she can help it. She also can't mimic pre-historic, extra-terrestrial or mythological beasts, even if she wants to.
Kickboxing
- A hobby encouraged by her mother's gardener and her only friend, Inari has about 2 years worth of light training under her belt. Which isn't really saying much to be honest, but at least she knows how to throw a punch and NOT break her fingers on the same go. And she's learned not to catch every punch thrown at her with her face, so that's a plus too.
Ballet & Gymnastics
- Ever since she was a toddler, Inari's mother had started to push her towards ballet and gymnastics in hopes that Inari would reach something she never did. Despite her size, these two hobbies made sure Inari is fast and flexible, and her sense of rhythym and timing is pretty developed.
WEAKNESSES:
- Inari's shapeshifting is tricky on a mental level. While just changing parts of her is fairly safe, the more she starts resembling an animal, and when she's in the halfway-werecreature form, the more her primal side gains control, and she's likely to behave erratically as a result, often corresponding with the animal she's mimicking. If it's a tiger, she's more likely to attack blindly and aggressively to defend her "territory", if she's mimicking a housecat she's more likely to flee. This may be something she'll eventually gain control over, but since she's only just started to train herself, this is unlikely to happen for a good few years to come.
- If Inari's shifting has anything to do with her mouth, throat or respiratory system in general (such as gills) or the wereform, she temporarily loses the ability to speak properly, and might even go completely mute for a time until she undoes the transformation. Perhaps not a great loss, but not everyone can understand manic flailing as a form of communication. She also can't change her overall body size, which means she can't shift dramatically bigger or smaller (even if shifting halfway into an animal may bulk her up somewhat), which makes mimicking a mouse, for example, a fairly moot point. Ditto for hippo and elephants.
- Mimicking animals also means she's subject to the animal's weaknesses. For example, if she were to mimic a bat, she might grow wings, get the ears and the echo-location, but on the flipside, she could only squeak and shriek in communication and the ears would pick up everything, making it a very poor choice in an environment other than a cave.
- Inari is reluctant to throw punches with the intent of hurting people, and would rather prefer to talk it through or avoid the fight alltogether. That being said, she will fight in self-defense, or in the defense of others, but even then tries not to use excessive force. Still, if a bit of intimidation without physical harm is what would do the trick, she's more than ready to show a little fang and snarl.
GOALS: Getting a grip on her abilities, establishing herself as a person, actually getting a few friends while at it.
HISTORY:
Inari was born to a half-Finnish, half-British mother and an American father. Soon after her birth, her parents divorced and her mother moved back to the UK, taking little Inari with her. Because her mother was raised in relative poverty, she had become almost obsessed about keeping up appearances as something more well-off than they actually were, and as a result started to enroll Inari into classes and hobbies where she could befriend other well-off children and they could get a better social status. Inari, partly due to being a very obedient child and partly because she really didn't know or understand her mother's reasonings, went along with her wishes happily.
So she was enrolled into ballet, gymnastics and piano classes, with a side-order of singing. Her mother also expected her to do well in school, and for a while, Inari complied perfectly. She did what was needed, her mother got to socialize and mingle... Though on the flipside Inari didn't really have friends due to her busy schedule, they were more like acquintances. It wasn't until she was about 10 that things started to get difficult: she was always a bit above average in school, due to absolutely horrible motivation in studying, and all motivation otherwise was attached to her hobbies. The hobbies, however, were starting to get darker. Inari is unclear whether she just had bad luck with her teachers and trainers, but even when the children were aged 10, there was suddenly an awful lot of pressure regarding bodytype and physical condition. If the ballet teacher didn't complain about her "overly" developed muscles, her gymnast coach was complaining about her twinkle-toes approach, and both were very aggressive about diet.
Inari wasn't really having fun anymore, at all, but her mother demanded she continue anyhow. When it became apparent she would not be a professional pianist or singer, her mother took her out of those classes, but still expected Inari to perform well in every other thing. Which meant stress for the child, so her performance started to suffer everywhere, even in school, which in turn caused things to go a bit sour with her mother. As for her father, an American police officer, he was a supportive and kind influence, but due to the prolonged separation, all their interaction, face to face or phone, was tinged with an awkward, uncomfortable vibe.
When Inari reached 14 it became very clear she had taken after her father, especially in height. She was now actually a bit taller than her ballet teacher, and the tallest person in the ballet class, what few boys they had included. Inari had also developed more muscle due to gymnastics, and her ballet teacher was displeased, deciding not to give her parts in recitals anymore. In gymnastics, the coach was starting to get really pushy about diet, and it was getting unbearable for the girl: at the same time, her mother married a fairly wealthy man and suddenly, she was too preoccupied with him to drive Inari on as much.
The stress had started to do some weird things to the girl too, because sometimes she would wake up with her bedlinen completely shredded, sometimes her nails would grow and sharpen, and once when she sneezed, an honest-to-god WING popped out and ruined the back of one of her leotards! And it took hours to disappear! She just wanted to lock herself up in her room and away from all the stress! So when she said she wanted to quite both ballet and gymnastics, her mother gave in surprisingly easy: it only took a week of headbutting and arguing. And finally, Inari could be in peace and do what she wanted! ... Only she didn't know what she wanted to do.
Her mother had a gardener, a woman named Emily. She was a kind, gentle soul, and befriended Inari. She didn't know what was up, but the teenager looked sad and her mother was away a lot, so maybe she needed someone to talk to. Emily was right, in a way, Inari needed someone to talk to, and she was restless because she had suddenly gone from multiple active hobbies into none at all. Inari's mother loved her, she really did, but now she was sure Inari was old enough NOT to need her mother, even though this time in her life would be the time she needed her like no other.
Emily and Inari started to talk, and somehow, the topic of hobbies came up. The gardener mentioned she kickboxed on her free time, and Inari was curious. She started to attend practice with Emily, without her mother's knowledge, and started to practice lightly. She was past 16 now, and suddenly, her mother and her step-father decided this was the time to take a long-overdue honeymoon, and planned to go on a trip around the world. This left Inari in a rather bad spot, but it was solved by sending her to live with her father in America. It... Wasn't an ideal thing, but it wasn't like Inari had much to keep her in the UK. Besides, it should be a good opportunity to get to know her father a bit more!
So she packed her things, kept mum about her budding, freaky abilities (which she had tried to steadily ignore for a good deal of time because she just couldn't handle them yet) and moved to her father's house in Jump City. There, she started to slowly and steadily practicing on her abilities, trying to keep her father out of it as well in fear that he might throw her out, and tried to fit in into a completely strange place. But maybe here she could finally figure out what to do?
THE NITTY-GRITTY;;
SCREENNAME: PenOfManyTalents, or just Penny
Time spent roleplaying: 6 or 7 years
Other Characters: N/A
RP Sample:
"Alright, okay, I can do this." Inari mumbled to herself and sat on her bed, shaking her hands. She clapped them together and then stared at them intently, as if daring them to disobey her somehow. And then, she started to concentrate. The image of a cat popped into her head, and she hummed in approval: should be easy enough! Taking a deep breath, she concentrated on the cat's paws: the look, the claws, how they function... Soon enough, the familiar, strange feeling of tingling and ripples started to feel on the skin of her hands. Staring harder, Inari watched as her nails started to curve and lengthen, and the pads of her fingers becoming more pronounced.
She flexed her fingers, watching the claws and then lightly scratched herself with them, noting that they indeed felt as sharp and pointy as they looked. With a goofy grin, the girl clapped her hands before smoothing down her hair. Or she would've if her hand hadn't hit something fuzzy on the side of her head. Confused, she started patting her head, and noted a second thing on the other side and... They felt like animal ears. She looked to the side, towards a mirror on the wall and-
"AAAAAHH!" She shrieked, eyes taking in the brown cat-ears, a puffy tail and the claws on her feet as well. "Too much, too much! Fade, go away!" Inari mumbled as she tried pushing one ear down and the other hand grabbed the tail, trying to somehow jam it back in. She kicked with her foot, only to have the claws on her feet get caught in her duvet and wouldn't disentangle, no matter how hard she kicked or shook her leg.
"Inari? Are you okay?" Oh man, dad! With a renewed panic, Inari tried to concentrate on getting the things to disappear, but the things just showed no sign whatsoever of disappearing!
"Yes! I'm fine!"
"Really? I heard you scream-" The knob on her door started turning and Inari squeaked, oh no! She grabbed the duvet quickly.
"Wait!"
"-really... Loud?" Her father opened the door, a very confused look on his aged face as he saw his daughter huddled under her blanket and her duvet, staring back at him eyes wide. A moment of silence passed between them before Inari smiled awkwardly.
"... I thought I saw a really big spider?"
"I thought you weren't afraid of bugs."
"I'm not, it's just... It... Caught me by surprise, is all." Her father looked at her like he wasn't sure he believed her or not.
"O... Kay then. Well, since I'm here, how does Chinese take-out sound?"
"Sounds good!" Inari grinned and nodded in agreement, and the man told her to come look at the menus soon so they could order. She'd be right there, she said, as soon as she was sure the spider-threat was gone. When the door closed she heaved a big sigh and slipped the covers off, looking at the mirror. Everything was back to normal again.
"Oh, sure, now they're gone." She fell back on her bed, relief flooding her system. "That was a bit too much excitement for today." She would have to pick a better place for practice from now on, or pick a better time alltogether!
