PLAYER INFO

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Player Name: justine
• Player Contact: batsecretary or DM
• Player Age: 30+
• Permissions: Here.


CHARACTER INFO

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• Character Name: max briest
• Character Age: 33
• Character Canon: original
• Canon Point: Not long after her 33rd birthday, she's been doing this supervillain thing for a while and has a stable empire under her

• Character History:

World
Max's universe is much like ours, except sometime in the early 1970s, individuals across the began to develop strange powers.

Many tried to keep it secret, and with comic books having grown in popularity after the war, they took inspiration from the heroes and villains on those pages.

Being a masked hero isn't the sort of job that comes with a steady pay check, so it become common in the 90s for heroes to accept sponsorship deals from companies who'd pay top dollar for a logo on a superhero's costume. By the late 2000s, this practice had spiraled out of control; many heroes will only respond to events where there's going to be a high media presence, or if any corporate interests are in trouble. Others have thrown their lot in with the government, trading their secret identity for the promise of a secure future.

On the other side of the fence, supervillains were a natural by-product of the situation. Criminals with powers realised they could operate on a grander scale and began adopting personas and masks to lessen their chance of being discovered.

By the 21st century, heroes and villains, are an accepted part of everyday life, though most people are lucky enough to never interact with either.

Max cw: very vague reference to sexual assault

Max, originally named Amelia, was born into the Italian Mafia in New York. Her father, Joseph, was a capo and a successful one at that, in part due to his willingness to employ people with powers. Amelia was relatively sheltered from her father's business, though not from his temper. It wasn't until her own abilities manifested at 15 that she was drawn into his world. Despite all her protests, she became a thief and assassin who could wear a new face for every crime, and a bargaining chip to be traded to Joseph's allies after she came of age. For a long time, she held out hope that something would change, until a run in with one of her world's heroes made her realize she was going to have to save herself.

After years of planning, at 21 years old Amelia murdered most of the men in her family, framing a rival gang and flaming the fire of retribution between the two groups until they all but decimated each other. She faked her own death during this time, and rebuilt herself as Artemis, a superhero, wanting to make up for all her sins.

Being a superhero didn't pan out the way she'd hoped; after being blocked by red tape, being pushed out by what was essentially a superhero country club, and watching criminals walk away scot-free, Artemis decided to take matters into her own hands again. She felt that she couldn't work within the legal system, even one that allowed vigilantism, so she made use of what she'd learned with her father.

With a brand new identity, the Sphinx, she slipped back into a life of crime, slowly but surely building herself an empire. She controls the drug and arms trade in New York, doing her best to keep those dangerous things out of the hands of people who'd do the most damage with them, while also funneling her profits into humanitarian purposes. Eventually she expanded her operations to more legitimate avenues and she owns a variety of businesses under shell companies, all dedicated to bettering the world.

She also created the persona of Max Briest, the owner of a shipping company passed down from her parents with a penchant for dating celebrities; think a little bit Paris Hilton, a little bit Sara Blakely.

It took her a while to move onto politics, because she wanted to ensure she had a stable backing before taking bigger risks, but she's been whispering in politicians' ears or blackmailing them to support certain bills or reforms. Sex and money are powerful tools when it comes to getting what she wants, and while she isn't always successful, the world is slowly starting to change.

• Character Personality:

Max exists in a world where people became superheroes because that's What Should Be Done when someone suddenly wakes up with powers (thanks, comic books), and as the 'second generation' of powered people, she's been heavily influenced by the importance of stories. Combined with her own childhood of using fiction as an escape from reality, she tends to see the world in terms of narrative structures, and to understand her, you have to understand the roles she's cast herself in.

The first, of course, is the villain. She's being playing the part for so long that it doesn't matter anymore whether or not she is a bad person, she's convinced herself that she is, and that's all there is to it. Max is ruthless, she can do whatever needs to be done - by her own definition - without question, simply because she's the bad guy. Right or wrong don't matter to Max on the small scale, it's the big picture that's important, and that's what the Sphinx, the villain, is for, allowing her to do things that she couldn't do when she was playing superhero. It gives her a way to step back from herself, to view her actions as separate from her own feelings; it's resulted in her being far more resilient and able to cope with doing the terrible things she's done (or the terrible things that have happened to her). One result of this is that she 'plays up' the villainy; she can be melodramatic, she presents herself alternatively as someone with a short fuse who's a little unstable and can snap at any moment, or as the cold, hard, killer who isn't affected by anything. Neither of these facades are real, but she uses either of them as necessary, depending on which will get the best results.

There are two other main roles she relies on, the protector and the seductress. The latter is fairly simple; occasionally people need to be convinced to do what she wants them to and in many cases, she relies quite heavily on the fact that men like attractive women who pay attention to them. She'll flirt with almost any man with the aim of getting them in a position from which she can manipulate them, even if she can't see an instant use for someone. If there is a goal to be achieved, Max will fit whatever role necessary to get what she wants. Sometimes that means wrapping them around her finger, sometimes it's about getting them in compromising positions to get blackmail material. Her own feelings, and safety, don't matter.

The final role is the one she likes the most, even if she'd never actually admit that to herself. The reason for doing what she does comes from a drive to make the world better, and to protect people who can't protect themselves. It's the way she deals with the people who she helps, the people living in the buildings she owns, or the girls slinking into clinics to get broken bones set or STIs treated, or the kids coming into soup kitchens looking for a meal they don't have to steal. It's a fairly distant role, she doesn't like to get involved for their sake, feeling that she's unsafe due to people targeting her and who she is as a person, but she's friendly, generous, and willing to take the time to help anyone out with a problem, no matter how small it is. Despite this being her favourite 'role', it's also the one she views as being the most constructed, because she sees herself as a monster, and doesn't think that someone can take pleasure in murdering people, then turn around and be kind. If she spent more of her time in this role, she might be happier.

As part of these roles, the most important thing about Max's personality is her obsession with control, both in a personal content, and in how she deals with others. The skills she learnt in childhood to keep herself safe have only improved with age, and she doesn't often react without careful thought. She might let her surprise, or happiness, or anger show, but only because she wants to, and it's very rare that something gets a genuine reaction out of her. It's not that she chooses every single word, or expression, or gesture, but she'll decide how she wants to interact with someone and tailor her behaviour around that. There's a skill in playing nicely with others, or riling them up to get what she wants.

The problem with Max is that even if learning to play these roles has made her incredibly adaptable, she's spent so long telling these lies about the sort of person she is that she's started to believe them herself.


• Character Skills: Does your character have any particular skills that might help them in game? Maybe they have knowledge of firearms, carpentry, fishing, maybe foraging or how to make clothes. List them here in bullet-point form:

♚ Weaponry: from machine guns to swords, if something is used to kill another person, Max has learnt how to use it. She spends her down time seeking out experts in various fields and paying them to teach her. This includes hand-to-hand combat.
♚ Languages: while not a polyglot, Max has taught herself as many languages as possible. Along with being fluent in English and Italian, she also speaks French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, and Russian with decent skill.
♚ Machinery: she's a car junkie, and that extends to other machinery, particularly anything that involves an engine. It's not her most cultivated skill, but she's still useful
♚ Knowledge of human/animal anatomy: as part of her shapeshifting, she's had to learn in great detail how the human body works, while also studying various animals to find traits that she can adapt for her own use
♚ Intelligence: while she might not have finished high school, Max is still smart and calculating. She's had to be, in order to survive.
♚ Survival skills: operating with the 'better safe than sorry' school of thought, Max has taken several survival skills courses, the kinds of ones that drop people in the middle of nowhere with some ex-paratrooper, so she has a decent handle on catching/preparing wild animals, starting fires, building shelter, and safe water preparation
♚Medical/first aid: she's not a doctor, but she's learned how to manage basic wound treatment (cuts, burns, bullet wounds) out of necessity.

• Character Inventory:

— ITEM ONE: A handgun in a shoulder holster + a spare clip
— ITEM TWO: Maurice, her dog – he's a very large Shiloh Shepherd who's exceptionally well trained. Also a good boy.
— ITEM THREE: A cigarette case containing a dozen cigarettes + a lighter

• Important Notes: Nothing I can think of! Using this to apologize for the history section being a little too long, I tried to cut it down as much as I could, sorry!!

• Writing Samples:

— SAMPLE ONE: Here
— SAMPLE TWO: Here

memory one: the horrible one (CW child abuse)

The girl in the mirror looks absolutely nothing like Max does now; the girl is in her mid teens, with straight dark hair and Italian features. What's most striking, though, is the way she holds her hand up to the mirror as a constellation of dots appears on her palm. She winces as it happens, drawing her hand back to herself and looking down at it as the marks fade, but after a moment she regains her composure and focuses on the mirror again.

This time, her eyes change color - another wince - then her hair. The girl takes a shaky breath, clearly trying to steady herself, before her cheekbones shift under her skin, the shape of her face changing. There's no wince this time, because she cries out instead.

This was a mistake, she covers her mouth as soon as the sound escapes, but barely a second later there's a man shoving the door open, Amelia's gaze going directly to him. Looking through her eyes, the man is familiar, and there's a familiar sense of fear associated with him, even as his expression shifts from worried to confused.

"Papa--" The girl's voice is shaking already, her hands on her face like she's trying to cover up the changes she's made, but her father stalks over and pulls her hands away so he can see.

"What is this? What have you done?" He speaks in Italian, but the girl understands.

"It's-- it's a power, Papa, from God, but it hurts. I can't use it," The thoughts are clear in the memory, that hiding something from her father is one thing, but she can't ever lie to him.

The next few moments are nothing but arguments, the girl trying to convince her father of how much shifting hurts, while he tells her how much they could do with it, how helpful she could be, how it doesn't matter how much it hurts. She's crying after ten minutes, scared of not just of the pain, but of the things her father describes (no one could catch an assassin who changes their face, think of how you could help your family), and finally she says no.

She's never told him no before, she's always tried to talk her way out of things without uttering that word, knowing how dangerous it is.

Pain blossoms on her cheek as her father strikes her, then there's more pain as her grabs her by the hair, dragging her out of the room. He's never hurt her like this before, but she's never said no to him before.

"You think that hurts, Amelia? If you don't do what I tell you, I'll show you what can hurt," There's anger in his voice, but it's tightly controlled, cutting even through the haze of Amelia's fear and pain.

Her father throws her against the wall, strikes her again, and when she drops to the ground, he kicks her down the stairs.

The last thing Amelia hears is a woman's voice calling her name, but she doesn't have a chance to respond before the world goes black.

/child abuse warning

memory two: the nice one

"For God's sake, Miss Briest, would you stand still?" The voice comes from behind, as Max looks at herself in a mirror, arms held out to the side as someone sticks pins in her side.

There's a glimpse of red hair in the mirror, mostly hidden by Max's body and the gown she's in.

"Perhaps if you stopped treating me as your personal pincushion, I might be more inclined to stay still," There's amusement in Max's voice, even though her tone is clipped.

Seemingly on purpose, the red haired woman sticks a pin in her side, "I've seen you come in here with gunshot wounds, Ms Briest, how come a little prick bothers you?"

"A lot of little pricks bother me, Emmy."

The other woman - Emmy - dissolves into giggles, as Max tries and fails to keep a straight face; it's nice to hear Emmy laugh, when memories within memories suggest less pleasant things in the woman's past.

"A lady shouldn't talk like that, Ms Briest," The tone is clearly mocking, and as Max looks in the mirror, Emmy sticks her head out to show a grin.

Max scoffs, turning to look down at where Emmy is fussing with the fabric at her hip, "A lady also shouldn't ask for a way to hide her gun in her designer gown, but here we are."

Emmy looks up at her for a moment, seeming to consider that, before she nods, "Point."

The memories fades with the sound of laughter.

〈 PLAYER INFO 〉
NAME: Justine
AGE: 23
JOURNAL: n/a
IM / EMAIL: justine.cole91@gmail.com
PLURK: failenume
RETURNING: No but I already have a character in game!

〈 CHARACTER INFO 〉
CHARACTER NAME: Max Briest
CHARACTER AGE: 24
CANON ORIGIN: Completely original
CHRONOLOGY: 5 months after meeting Asteria and their rivalry developing
CLASS: Um. Supervillain that actually wants to do good and change the world but does it by horrible means
HOUSING: Randomize, she likely won't be there for long!

BACKGROUND:

Throughout history, there's been stories of people with magical powers; oracles, witch doctors, demons and priests, people imbued with powers from deities or from nature or from something else entirely. As science began to develop and humans began to explain the world around them in more logical ways, much of these phenomenom were written off as flukes, liars, charlatans, or mass delusions. The world progressed much like ours has, with the culture, technology and environment turning out much the same by the late 20th Century. Sometimes in the early 1970s, these powers started to show up again.

At first, most people tried to keep it secret, but some made their abilities public, and those few ended up disappearing quite quickly off the face of the Earth, taken by governments or private organisations who were looking to use this magic for their own purposes. It was enough to make people reconsider their approach, and with comic books becoming an integral part of popular culture, they took inspiration from the heroes and villains on those pages.

It took a while for all the kinks to be worked out, and there are still a lot of problems, but gradually superheroes and their villainous counterparts became an accepted part of society (at least in the Western world, where this particular story is set). Most of the problems come from the fact that despite all the different ways the magic can manifest, each power comes with a drawback, a curse to counterpoint the gift. It isn't as easy as it was in the comic books, but those with magic also seem disposed towards reckless, dramatic and self-destructive behaviour. It's hard to say if one is a side effect of the other, or if it's pure coincidence, but there's some truth in the way that superheroes get called crazy for risking their lives, and that supervillains are often labelled mad scientists or insane psychopaths.

Somewhat fittingly, this is where the Sphinx comes into the world. A supervillain with likely borderline personality disorder and personal vendetta against almost the entire world, she's made some drastic changes since she started developing her crime empire.

Max, named as Amelia by her parents, was born into the Italian Mafia in New York, her father, Joseph, was high up in the family and not a very nice man, which affected how Amelia grew up. Her father was cruel, her mother was distant, and when Amelia discovered her powers, she tried to hide them. Unfortunately, Joseph discovered Amelia's talent for shapeshifting and quickly put her to work in the family business, under threat of violence and forcing her to murder, steal, and seduce wherever he felt necessary. Amelia became a bargaining chip to be traded to Joseph's allies, until after a run-in with a superhero (who Amelia thought would save her, but tried to arrest her instead), and a meeting with a strong-willed woman who changed Amelia's opinion on what she could be, the girl decided she was done with being a pawn.

Her plan took a while to perfect, but at 19 years old, Amelia managed to murder a large number of the men in her family, framing a rival gang, and then flaming the fire of retribution and antagonism between the two groups, until they decimated each other. She faked her own death during this time, and rebuilt herself as Max, and as Artemis, a superhero.

Being a superhero didn't pan out the way she'd hoped; after being blocked by red tape, being pushed out by what was essentially a superhero boys club, and watching criminals walk away scot-free, Max decided to take matters into her own hands again. Max felt that she couldn't work within the legal system, even one that allowed vigilantism, so she made use of what she knew, and that was the criminal world.

Using her knowledge and developing new connections, Max slowly and carefully built herself a crime empire, stylising herself as the Sphinx. She control of the drug and arms trade in New York, doing her best to keep those dangerous things out of the hands of people who'd do the most damage with them, while also funnelling her profits into humanitarian purposes. She bought apartment blocks to turn into shelters, using the money from her crime syndicate to fund these projects, taking in desperate people and helping them get their lives back on track. Eventually she expanded her operations to more legitimate avenues, hiring scientists to solve problems she saw in the world and profiting from patents while ensuring that the production of these goods is ethical and environmentally responsible. She owns a variety of businesses, largely employing people who've been through her shelter system and other disenfranchised people.

It took her a while to move onto politics, because she wanted to ensure she had a stable backing before taking bigger risks, but she's been whispering in politicians' ears or blackmailing them to support certain bills or reforms. She's kind of like a one woman lobbying whirlwind, using whatever means she thinks are necessary to get what she wants. It's not always successful, but she's made some changes to the world.

At 23, she has herself a nice little empire, controls most of New York's crime, has her fingers in a considerable amount of political pies, and everything seems to be continuing smoothly, nevermind the fact that she's incredibly unhappy as a person, at least she's making a difference.

So unlike our world, the Sphinx's version of America is powered by 60% renewable energy resources (she funded development of more efficient and cheaper to produce solar panels, for example), and by 2013 at least half the country is driving electric cars. The United States has universal health care, abortion is legal in every state, as is same sex marriage (among other reforms to LGBT rights), and she's eliminated a large number of food deserts that exist within the country. In other countries, particularly developing nations, access to clean water is no longer an issue, there are significantly less weather extremes (thanks to weather manipulators working with a team of climatologists), and large numbers of the population in these places have better access to vaccines and general healthcare. Natural or man-made disasters have a less dramatic effect, since there's specialised relief teams that help predict disasters, stop them, and deal with the aftermath.

On a more personal note, sometime after her 24th birthday, Max met Atlas, an up and coming superhero who unfortunately fell into one of her traps, and then more unfortunately saved her life after she was attacked by assassins. Seeing the opportunity to gain herself a pet superhero, Max let Atlas in on some of her secrets, namely the fact that she wasn't truly as evil as everyone thought she was. After a lot of work, Max convinced Atlas to work alongside her, though she didn't account for the growing affection between her and Donny, the boy under the mask of Atlas.

Nor did she count on Atlas having a dream controlling psychopath for a sister. Asteria Casy is a dreamwalker, who used her powers to build her own little criminal empire in Boston, under the names of Nyx, Hypnos, and Morpheus, focusing mainly on pharmaceutical. After Max made the connection between Asteria and Nyx, and revealed this to Donny, Asteria started screwing with the both of them.

With a dreamwalker fucking around in her head, a weird relationship developing with her superhero bodyguard, and the rest of the heroes in the world closing in on her, Max is having a slightly difficult time. But she isn't going to let Asteria win.


PERSONALITY:

Content warning for drug/alcohol use

Max exists in a world where people became superheroes purely because that is What Should Be Done when someone suddenly wakes up with powers (thanks, comic books), and as the 'second generation' of powered people, she's been heavily influenced, somewhat unconsciously, by the importance of stories. This was only impacted by her own personal love of literature, which provided an escape during her childhood. As a result, she tends to see the world in terms of narrative structures, and to understand her, you have to understand the roles she's cast herself in. The first, of course, is the villain. She's being playing the part for so long that it doesn't matter anymore whether or not she is a bad person, she's convinced herself that she is, and that's all there is to it. She can do whatever needs to be done - by her own definition - without question, simply because it needs to be done, and she's the bad guy who's capable of doing it. One result of this is that she 'plays up' the villainy; she can be melodramatic, she presents herself alternatively as someone with a short fuse who's a little unstable and can snap at any moment, or as the cold, hard, killer who isn't affected by anything. Neither of these facades are real, but she uses either of them as necessary, depending on which she thinks will get the best results. In her mind, this is what being a villain means, and she never stops to question whether there are other ways to do things.

That said, the villain isn't the only role she plays. There are two other main roles she relies on, the protector and the seductress. The latter is fairly simple; occasionally, in her line of work, people need to be convinced to do what she wants them to. Not everyone can be bribed, or blackmailed, or threatened with an unfortunate amount of violence until they do what she wants, and in those cases, she relies quite heavily on the fact that men like attractive women who pay attention to them. Being a shapeshifter, she can change her looks to suit a target, seduce them, and then whisper in their ear until they're on her side. She plays this role most often with rich men for their money or politicians for their power. Occasionally it takes on a bit of a black widow aspect, but she doesn't like to do that too often in case it draws the wrong kind of attention. The problem with relying on, essentially, herself as a thing to be used, is that it's left her with a really warped perspective. Sex is a tool, rather than something to be enjoyed, as is her own body, and she heavily relies on sex and seduction to get what she wants, without thinking about the consequences. She'll flirt with almost any man with the aim of getting them in a position from which she can manipulate them, even if she can't see an instant use for someone. Women are an entirely different matter. She'll flirt with other female 'villains' if she thinks it might get her what she wants, but she very, very rarely treats women as targets, and despite being mainly attracted to women, she's never even kissed another girl, because she likes them too much to inflict herself on them. The villain is still her main role, what she thinks of herself as, and she's too terrified of hurting a woman to ever let herself get close to one. Unsurprisingly, this hasn't improved her perspective on sex, and she tends to act cagey and avoidant if a woman shows interest in her.

The third and final role is the one she likes the most, even if she'd never actually admit that to herself. It's the way she deals with the people who she helps, the women living in the apartments she owns, or the girls slinking into clinics to get broken bones set or STIs treated, or the kids coming into soup kitchens looking for a meal they don't have to steal. It's a fairly distant role, she doesn't like to get involved for their sake, but she's friendly, generous, and willing to take the time to help anyone out with a problem, no matter how small it is. Despite this being her favourite 'role', it's also the one she views as being the most constructed, because she sees herself as a monster, and doesn't think that someone can take pleasure in murdering people and be kind. If she spent more of her time in this role, she might be happier.

As part of these roles, the most important thing about Max's personality is her obsession with control, both in a personal content, and in how she deals with others. The skills she learnt in childhood to keep herself safe have only improved with age, and by the time she's twenty, she doesn't have reactions that aren't controlled in some way or another. She might let her surprise, or happiness, or anger show, but only because she wants to, and it's very rare that something gets a genuine reaction out of her. It's not necessarily that she choses every single word, or expression, or gesture, but she'll decide how she wants to interact with someone and tailor her behaviour around that.

The only time she lets go of her control is with the help of alcohol, or, occasionally, illicit drugs. The latter is generally used when she's operating under other identities, particularly that of a young socialite who spends too much money on clothes and goes to a lot of parties. Since she's usually the one supplying the drugs offered to her in these situations, she knows they're safe to take, and part of her enjoys relinquishing that control. The alcohol is a more common vice; she often unwinds with a few glasses of wine or a tumbler of scotch, though it can escalate more when she's had a rough week. It's a problem and she knows it, but she doesn't let it interfere with her work, and thinks she has it under control, too.

Whether a reason for being so tightly controlled, or a result of it, underneath the surface Max tends towards rather intense emotions, both with regards to frequency and variation. Rapid mood swings are a common occurance, and she can get extremely worked up over nothing, it's just that she rarely actually lets any of it show. These intense emotions are often on the negative end of the spectrum, though she does get intensely elated when something goes right. In an attempt not to keep her control and not let her emotions overwhelm her, she can sometimes suffer from a sort of dissaffection, shutting down her emotional reactions. It's likely that she has some degree of borderline personality disorder (not a great illness for a shapeshifter to have, really), but it's undiagnosed.

In recent months, with Asteria's constant torment, Max has started to unravel, some of her carefully constructed facades coming undone and leaving Max angry and scared. Her moods have become more volatile, and she's become more self-destructive, losing herself in alcohol or drugs, because the sleep brought on by them doesn't result in dreams. She's withdrawing from all the positive parts of her life, from the role of the protector, because she thinks it's the best way to keep the people she's promised to look after safe from Asteria. As a result, she's been crueler in other parts of her work, and with most people in general, taking out her frustration on targets that she deems acceptable. Asteria has also fucked with Max's sense of worth, making her question herself and dragging up a lot of self-loathing that she thought was buried in her psyche, which is making her act out even more, and she's often overcome by periods of depression, during which she'll barely talk to anyone. This is slightly gentled by Donny's presence in her life; his belief in her has kept her from spiraling too far into self-destruction, and he reminds her how to be human, how to be someone other than the roles she's created for herself, which has helped negate some of Asteria's torment.

Still, the problem with Max, is that she's spent so long telling these lies about the sort of person she is, that she's started to believe them herself. Asteria has started stripping them away, forcing them out into the open for Max to see, making her confront all the things she hates about herself. Without the lies, Max doesn't really know how to function, so by the time she's coming to MoM, Asteria has started her on the path to destroying herself, and that will be reflected in the way she thinks and acts.

She's a fucking disaster, basically.


POWER:

Max has a single power in canon, which is that of shapeshifting, though it comes with many limitations. I'm just gonna detail it below it's long I'm so sorry.

Max's power has manifested in the form of shapeshifting, although of a very limited nature. She can't shift 'automatically' as it were, can't just think "I want to look like this", and have the magic work. It requires a conscious effort on her part, to make every single change, from bone structure, to muscles, to skin. She has an extremely intimate knowledge of human anatomy as a result, because if you fuck up how a joint is supposed to work and end up in agony, you're going to learn how to do it better next time. That said, the more she practices, and the more experienced she gets, she's been able to learn what are essentially shortcuts. For example, when her power first developed, if she wanted to be one inch taller, she'd have to think about changing her bones, the muscles and tendons and skin to match, as well as adjusting all the other little things that need adjusting when someone suddenly grows a bit taller. With about eight years of practice under her belt, at her current point, she can just can give herself an inch of height without having to grow through each step individually.

For this reason, she sticks to a humanoid figure. While theoretically she could shift into something more complicated, at this point in time she doesn't have the necessary knowledge to do it, though she may take on non-humanoid aspects. She's learnt a lot about animal anatomy, for example, and makes use of smaller features, such as claws/talons, jaw/teeth structures, or things like hardended skin or spikes/spines that are used defensively.

The advantage to this, is that shifting back requires just as much conscious thought. Once she's shifted to a certain form, she'll retain it until she chooses to change, regardless of whether she's exhausted, killed, or unconscious (even if her power was taken away, somehow, she'd be stuck in the form she'd been in at the time). This means she doesn't have to worry about going back to her own form, if she happens to fall asleep around someone. It also means that she can't automatically return to the body she was born with, and over the years, she consciously returns to it less and less, until she forgets what she used to look like. By the time she's 24, she hasn't worn her own body for years, and couldn't tell you how tall she naturally is.

She's also limited by the law of conservation of mass, much to her annoyance. If she wants to be taller, she has to be skinner, if she shifts into a form with more well defined muscle mass, she has to make sacrifices in other places. It's all a bit tedious.

It's also worth noting that she can't imitate other people perfectly. She can copy a look, going for a vague sense of a person, but up close it would be obvious that she isn't who she's pretending to be. All her tutors have told her that it should be possible for her to perfectly wear someone else's face and body, she simply can't get past the mental block of it. Sometimes her morals show up in odd places.

That will take up one power slot! And I'd also like to give her the power of transmutation, only over her own body, so that she isn't limited by shifting to organic matter only. It will still be limited to conservation of mass, and her knowledge of whatever she wants to shift into. For example, she could turn herself to concrete, so long as she understands the chemical and physical make up of concrete. This will keep her fairly limited at first, but as she learns more and studies more, she'll get much better at controlling it.

I'll leave the last slot free in case I think of anything cool to give her.

〈 CHARACTER SAMPLES 〉
COMMUNITY POST (VOICE) SAMPLE:

[The woman on the screen is dressed simply, but the white blouse she's wearing was probably very expensive, as is the gold bangle on her wrist. Considering she came in with the recent batch of arrivals, that might seem a bit odd, but Max has never had an issue with getting what she wants, and for this, she wanted to look nice.

And she does; along with the outfit, her hair is in loose curls to frame her face, and her lipstick is a soft pink that makes her look a little more friendly than her usual bright red does. It's always important to make a good impression.]

I've been led to understand that those responsible for our presence here claim to have no control over the process.

[Her accent marks her as a New Yorker, from the Upper East Side if anyone has an ear for that sort of thing. And it's clear she doesn't buy the line that the government is selling.]

I find that hard to believe, when they have the practice down to such a fine art.

[She thought about playing stupid, but she doesn't have time for that. She needs to get home.]

While I've made a start on reading through the backlog of all your conversations, I feel it would be much simpler if someone would care to summarize what I need to know. I'm not interested in hearing the governments' lies; I have business to attend to at home, so the sooner we can clear all this up, the better.

[Something in her tone manages to suggest that she has every confidence she'll be the one to clear it up, because Max occasionally has an ego problem.]

If you do have answer for me, I'll be sure to make it worth your time.

[Her smile is sweet, with no suggestion in it, though if someone reads more into it, well, that's not her problem.]

Thank you.

[She cuts the feed.]

LOGS POST (PROSE) SAMPLE:

a test drive thread

another test drive thread

FINAL NOTES:
Can Max please have her puppy?? He's a pitbull named Maurice who's a total sweetheart

When she starts school, she learns to love books. It takes a while for her to learn to read; it's a skill neither of her parents thought to teach her, and when the other kids talk about having stories read to them, she makes up lies, remembering the titles they talk about. One day they catch her out on the lie, when she doesn't know how Where The Wild Things Are ends, and that's how she ends up in the library, reading the books her classmates talk about, so she can pretend her parents read them to her. Like so many children living in an unhappy reality, she finds an escape in books, in stories.

She likes Where The Wild Things Are. She imagines becoming king of the monsters and bringing them home to eat her father, even if that's not how the story is supposed to end. Matilda, of course, is her favourite. The little girl with terrible parents, who gets magic powers, and finds a way to save herself, to make a wonderful new life with Miss Honey. She knows all about powers. There's a man who works with her father, who can make the shadows come to life, crawling over her skin, pulling her hair, tugging at her clothes. He laughs when she screams, so she stops screaming, no matter what the shadows do (eventually, she stops screaming no matter what anyone does). She doesn't want powers like that, but she still dreams of waking up with magic, still looks for her own Miss Honey, in every teacher she sees.

And then one day, half her dreams come true.

She can't make things move with her mind, like Matilda, can't make people scream, like the shadow man, but when she concentrates really hard, she can make her face change. It hurts, but she's young, and scared, and still thinks magic powers mean she can escape. Her father catches her, sees what she can do, and tells her all the ways they're going to use this to their advantage. It still hurts, changing her face feels like skin tearing and bones breaking, so she refuses, but then her father learns ways to hurt her more than the changing does.

It's not like a story at all.