![[X-Force #28]](feral.gif)
The following is the application that I sent in to x-original@cota.sneakers.org, the Staff that handles Non-Feature Character applications. Although Feral is copyrighted by Marvel Comics, she appeared after the cut-off of the MUSH so is considered a NFC.
Special thanks goes to Reignfire @ CotA, for all the time he spent in helping me with this application!
2) Character Information:
Name: Maria Callasantos
Alias(es): Feral
Age: 15
@Desc:
Green eyes flicker as if with a life of their own, slipped pupils and
yellow-flecked irises reflecting light so fully it seems as if they
glow even in the darkest of shadows. Her hair pushes straight back
from her head, twin corners coming to a peak with white-and-black
stripes slashing through the light brown strands. A few strands of
white and brown curl over her brows, her own eyebrows elegantly arched
with tufts of fur accenting the ends. Her cheekbones are also accented
with fur, slightly curled with the longer hairs matted together.
Pointed ears poke out from behind the tufts of fur, long and narrow and
forming straight back from her head to follow the slope of her hair.
Her entire body is covered in a light glazing of fur, the forearms and
calves thicker and darker. She is short for a humanoid and built to
proportion; she is neither attractive nor ugly by humanoid standards as
well, her most striking features resembling that of a feline than
anything else.
Her form is clothed in a stiff, dark pink material. There is a
noticeable lack of material down the very front of her chest and
midsection, leaving little to the imagination. The shoulders point
just at the tips, and the rest of the top tucks into a plain white belt
that also holds in place the double loincloth that falls over her front
and back. Her hands are held in wide-brim gloves, claws tipping the
fingers where they broke through the cloth, the edges of the gloves
outlined in white. Her feet are bare, the toes bearing similar points,
and a thin tail whips back and forth as if it were alive and a separate
entity from the rest of the girl.
3) Character Powers:
Feline Form
Maria's appearance changed when she hit puberty, and her
mutation manifested. She is now covered in light brown fur, with a
long mane of hair. Her teeth, especially her fangs, are sharp, and she
sports a thin, felinelike tail. She is not able to change her
appearance and is permanently 'locked' in her feline form.
Resiliency
Feral does not possess a healing factor, nor is she
invulnerable. However, she is physically very resilient, has a high
pain threshold, and can suffer more damage than normal humans before
being severely affected. Her wounds heal at normal speed, but they
affect her less than they would a normal human. This enables her to
do cling on to life after near-fatal injuries such as being shot in the
torso several times, and gives the impression of a 'cat having nine
lives'. She can, of course, not survive fatal injuries such as
having her heart ripped out or her head severed. She has an
animal vitality that keeps her holding on to life stubbornly when a
human would give up.
Sprinting
Feral is quite fast a runner, able to roughly match an
Olympic athlete, running 100 meters in 10-12 seconds. However, when
on all fours, she is able to move even faster, sprinting at almost
double that speed, being able to clear a 100 meter distance over flat
ground in roughly 6-8 seconds. She can't keep this sprinting speed
up for extended periods of time. At most, she can sprint at the top
speed for a few minutes before having to slow down to the Olympic
running speed.
Claws
Feral's fingernails and toenails are strong and sharp, not
like a human's but like a cat's. With a strong human musculature
behind them, her claws are capable of ripping through light body
armor like kevlar. They are not razor-sharp adamantium, and can't
slice like a hot knife through steel doors. They can scratch deep
grooves on light metals like cars, and can easily rend plastic or
wood, but can't affect strong metals like steel.
Fluid
Feral's body is extremely graceful, agile and fluid in its
motions. This grants her two major advantages. First, she is able
to move through very narrow, very confined spaces such as small
ventilation ducts that would be too small for someone of her size
without her gracefulness. Secondly, it grants a significant boost to
her stealth abilities, as her movements are very smooth and very
silent when she so wishes.
Enhanced Reflexes
Feral's reflexes are astonishingly quick. She is capable of
dodging energy blasts when she expects them, and can jump into the
middle of a moving webwork of dozens of laser beams and manage to clear
a corridor kept secure by such a laser grid, from one end to
the other. Similarly, she reacts very quickly to surprises, and can
regain her bearings in a surprise situation faster than people
without enhanced speed of some kind.
Enhanced Senses
Feral has enhanced senses of sight, hearing, taste and smell.
She is capable of seeing things too far for the human eye to make
out, much like an eagle, but to a smaller degree. Her eyes also
adapt to darkness much more and much quicker than the human eye,
enabling her to see in almost pitch darkness. However, there must
be some light available, she is not capable of seeing in complete
darkness. She can hear sounds normal humans can't hear, having both
a broader spectrum of sounds she can hear -- like dog whistles,
sub and supersonic sounds -- and a more accurate hearing, so she
can hear more silent sounds than humans can hear, such as the
walking of a large insect. Her taste and smell are also extremely
sharp, and she can make out tastes and scents superhumanly well.
Her sense of smell is on par with someone like Wolverine, and whereas
her sense of taste does not quite reach the level of
Daredevil's, it nonetheless remains superhuman and is able to
detect the tastes of familiar substances in food and drink.
Scenting
Feral's enhanced sense of smell enables her to perform a
variety of feats. She can detect odd scents in an area that vary from
the norm, whether it is from machinery, people, animals, chemicals
or other things. She is able to remember different scents and
identify things based on scents as humans do based on sight.
Therefore, she can tell most shapeshifters from their templates if
she has encountered the scents before. She can smell remnant scents,
and determine if someone has been recently in an area, unless special
measures have been taken to remove those scents with chemicals or in
other ways. Similarly, she is able to follow scent tracks and track
people that way.
Flaw-Sensory Overload
Feral's enhanced senses can be overloaded. Her eyes are
accustomed to darkness, and blinding flashes such as magnesium
flares affect her more severely, blinding her for a longer time than a
normal human. An individual can disguise his or her scent by
applying some chemical with a very strong scent on themselves.
Ordinary perfumes or colognes are insufficient for this. Simply
very bad smells such as garbage dumps don't affect Feral much, as
she has lived in the sewers and became accustomed to such smells.
Furthermore, odd tastes in food or drink can be disguised by an
overriding other component, which has very strong taste. Feral does
not prefer eating spicy food. Loud sounds also affect her more
than a normal human, and she is therefore especially vulnerable
to sonic attacks from individuals like Banshee or Ruckus.
Flaw-Obvious Mutant
Feral is an obvious mutant and can't shift out of her feline
furform. She will always look as she does, having a fur covering
and a tail. She can not walk in public without being noticed as a
mutant with any means short of a trenchcoat and a hat overshadowing
her face. Due to common public reactions towards mutants, unless she
takes measures to disguise herself, she can not get into many
establishments, and will constantly be stared at and receive racist
comments.
Flaw-Killer
Feral's animal instincts often lead to a situation where she will
use unnecessary force. Unlike normal humans, who have to concentrate
to go for their most deadly attacks, Feral does not have to
concentrate to go for her most deadly attacks. Her natural tendency
is to rip peoples' stomachs open, tear their throats out, and
these are the kinds of attacks she will go for unless she has some
very good reason to hold back, such as being part of a team whose
moral code necessitates for her to hold back.
4) Character Skills:
Fighting
Feral has no formal training in any form of fighting. However,
she compensates for this with her natural sharp claws, her
quick reactions, and her natural urges of brutality. She is not as
good a close combatant as Wolverine, or even Storm, but is roughly
equal to people like Nightcrawler, Colossus and Mirage.
Mapping
Feral has lived for quite some time in the Morlock tunnels, and
has had to develop a knack for mapping out new areas in her head as
she travels in them. She can learn the layouts of new areas the first
or second time around, and is helped especially by her senses, as
she doesn't only rely on what a place looks like to realize where she
is, as most humans, but also what it smells and sounds like.
Stealth
Feral's catlikeness extends to her stealth abilities. She
is extremely graceful and silent when she wants to be, and can sneak
past a vast majority of humans without enhanced senses. People
with enhanced senses have a good chance of noticing her, but
otherwise, if Feral is being as stealthy as she can, one would need
to be in tune with one's surroundings practically to such a degree as
Iron Fist or a zen master of similar ability. She can stalk a group
of superhumans without enhanced senses or telepathic ability with
ease and not be noticed before she so wishes.
Scrounging
During her life in the Morlock tunnels, Feral has learned to
perfect the art of scrounging. Much like Jubilee did from the X-Men
when she was hiding out in their Australian outback town, Feral
is highly capable of going about areas, buildings and
environments full of potentially hostile people without being detected,
obtaining goods and then exiting with the goods. She is one of the
best when it comes to crawling around ventilation ducts, looking for an
armory or the prison area where she needs to free her friends.
Pigeonry
Maria is skilled in taking care of birds, particularly pigeons.
She knows how to act with birds to make them feel comfortable, has a
good rapport with them and knows how to feed them and care for any
possible injuries birds might have.
Languages
Maria grew up in a Latino area, and has acquired skill in both
the Spanish and English languages from her family and friends as she
grew up. She is capable of speaking both languages at a proficiency
level of a native and thinking in both languages, but her English
has a noticeable lower-class 'hood accent, and she uses random Spanish
words in her sentences every now and then.
Uneducated
Maria possesses a significantly low level of education. She
left normal life in her early teens, going to the Morlock tunnels,
and prior to that had definitely not been a straight A student
nor particularly concerned with her education. There is a lot
of completely regular knowledge, from spelling to geography
to mathematics that she is unfamiliar with.
Streetwise
Maria is a very streetwise and not very intellectual person. She
has a good feel of the laws of the streets, and how fellow street
people will act and react in certain situations. She knows good ways
to find people and find out information in the streets, and knows in
what ways not to act to attract unwanted attention to herself.
5) Character Personality and Physical Attributes:
Manic Depressive
The mental imbalance recognized as 'manic depressive' is something
that has plagued Maria Callasantos from her childhood years. Her
violent mood swings were that which eventually led to the death of her
siblings, Matteo and Carolina, as well as her mother. The imbalance
came to a head around her teenage years when both puberty and mutation
hit her in full swing and it seems to have only worsened over the
years. Maria's condition may also have been worsened due to her unique
manifestation - that of a being with a blend of feline and human
attributes. That alone should cause conflict, but felines as a rule
tend to be finicky, adding another factor to Maria's already unstable
personality.
Without treatment and after being exposed to such trauma over her
life-time, her imbalance has worsened considerably, eventually leading
to a clash of opposing personality factors and a killer's instincts and
impulses. She acts without thinking on a regular basis and her
personality as a whole could be comparable to a house cat - in your
lap, purring cutely for a scratch one moment, then dropping a dead
mouse at your feet and looking to you for approval the next.
Impulsive
A side effect of her worsening manic depressive personality,
acting without thinking has become a daily routine. She kills without
remorse and blurts things out without looking at them beforehand, often
leading her into trouble.
Victim
Maria Callasantos is a victim of physical and sexual abuse. After
her father died, her mother fell into alcoholism and drugs and a foul
pig of a man assaulted both Maria and her older sister Lucia. Though
both Marcella Callasantos and Harry Belinger are dead at Maria's hands,
the effects still leave their mark to this day. She is fiercely
afraid/hateful of alcohol and drugs and she reacts violently to any
sort of degradation - physical, mental, or verbal. In times when she
has absolutely no control over the situation Maria is prone to
flashbacks and will become outwardly violent and hostile towards her
assailant or any that may be close by.
Vengeful
The slightest insult may carry with her for the longest period of
time. Humiliation or defeat is met with a vow to return the favor no
matter how far ahead in the future it will take place in. Anger fuels
her rage and her rage is everlasting. Enemies are enemies forever and
friends can very easily become enemies.
Rage
Even as a young child Maria was violent and a killer. Jealous and
accusing of her younger sister Carolina, she shoved the child down a
flight of stairs, the final slam of her body ending with her death.
Matteo, chasing after the pigeons she used to keep as pets, met his own
demise after falling off the roof of the building the Callasantos's
lived in, Maria looking down at his body with narrow eyes. After
watching her older sister begin to be introduced to the same abuse she
had suffered, Maria ripped the assailant's face clean off.
Animals are killers, but they rarely kill without reason. They
are often equipped with teeth, claws, and builds meant for power and
death, yet they are careful only to kill what they need to survive.
Humans, in contrast, kill without thought, because it pleases them.
They use guns, knives, and bombs because their bodies are too soft and
defenseless to do it themselves. They have nothing against shooting
down a hapless sparrow simply to see if their slingshot works.
Feral is the combination of the worst aspects of the two sides of
the same coin. She is equipped to kill like an animal, with sharp
teeth and claws and muscles that ripple with power; but, like a human,
she abuses these tools and inflicts pain upon others without thought to
vent her rage. Rarely is there remorse from the pain she inflicts,
for, like a human, she kills without thought and, like an animal, she
does not mourn her prey.
Birds
You would expect one that hates with such vehemence and embraces
her animal side to eat birds rather than love them, but Maria has
always possessed a strange kindness for birds. In a household without
love her pigeon coop was her only solace and she loved her pets as
dearly as one might love their parents or siblings. Even after the
slaughter inflicted upon them by her mother, Maria still retains that
almost motherly quality for birds that betrays her outwardly hateful
demeanor. She takes care of them, knows of them, and loves them - and
they love her in return.
Yearn For Acceptance
Despite everything, Feral is a loner and suffers for it. Raised
in a household that showed little love or warmth, and refused by a
society that, in majority, dislikes her for her appearance, she longs
to be a part of a whole or at least be accepted by one who can look
past who she is. This is why she was so protective and possessive of
the pigeons she looked after as a child; they were innocent and knew
her only as the one who took care of them and loved them, and they
returned the kindness. Her social graces what they are, Feral finds it
frustrating that she cannot be accepted as easily by her human peers.
6) Character Resources:
Morlock
Maria is a Morlock, or rather former Morlock. Like most Morlocks, she
has little or no personal property, wealth or other possessions. What
you see is what you get -- what she has on her is pretty much
everything she owns. She has access to the Morlock tunnels, and can
return to them for shelter, to sleep in, if she so wishes, and knows
the layout and the surviving Morlocks.
MLF
Feral is a member of Reignfire's Mankind's Liberation Front. As such,
she has access to the MLF's resources as a full-time member, gets cared
and provided for by Reignfire, who supplies her with a roof over her
head, food, a job as a terrorist and whatever choice luxuries the MLF
has access to at any given time.
7) IC Background:
Fifteen years ago, Marcella Callasantos gave birth to a baby girl
that she named Maria. She already had a daughter by the name of Lucia
and she and her husband went on to bring into the world two more
children, Matteo and Carolina. They were a Hispanic family living in
the Bronx section of New York in not the best of neighborhoods. Life
was difficult and the crime rate was high - their apartment was robbed
one night and within the month Mr. Callasantos left Marcella.
A single parent alone with four children, Marcella Callasantos
begin the lonesome trek towards a nervous breakdown. Lashing out at
her children, she blamed them for her husband's departure and starting
drowning her sorrows in alcohol. Somewhere along the lines Harry
Belinger came into the picture and it all went to hell in a hand-basket
from there. The fat, greasy man introduced Marcella to assorted drugs,
some of which were crack, cocaine, weed, and heroine.
Hateful of this ugly man who had intruded upon their home, Maria
blamed the sudden hell their life had become on her younger siblings,
echoing her mother's sentiments. When her older sister Lucia ran off
to play with a neighborhood boy she sorta-kinda-maybe liked, Jose, the
youngest sister Carolina meant her unfortunate end at the bottom of a
flight of stairs. Maria was at the top looking down at her with the
faintest of smiles. She was eight years old.
Time passed and Marcella more and more neglected her children,
unaware that Harry had begun to make advances towards her oldest
daughter. Matteo died, her only son, a while later, last seen chasing
Maria's pigeons around the building rooftop. Maria and Lucia both
entered puberty early and began to sprout fur and tails.
When Maria was twelve Harry's advances began to be focused on her
as well. Mutating faster than her older sister, the fur grew thicker
and the tail longer, her head-hair stiffening until it stood straight
up on her head. Lucia was seen around the apartment less and less and
every night Marcella could be found passed out on the couch. Maria
tried to run away often, but the local authorities almost always found
her and brought her back. The other times Lucia had to come and get
her.
One night, when Maria was hiding up on the roof attending to her
pigeons, Harry followed Lucia out of the house. Ambushing her and
dragging her into a nearby alley, he proceeded to do to her what he had
to come to do, unaware that the pair had been followed. All noise was
drowned out as a hissing growl of anger and hatred shattered the night
and Harry Belinger died at the hands of Maria Callasantos. The two
sisters hid the body in a warehouse and fled home before dawn arrived.
His body was never found, but Marcella knew what had happened and
who had done it. Furious, mad with grief, the mother crept up to the
rooftop to where the pigeon coop that Maria kept was. She slaughtered
nearly every single bird and frightened the rest so terribly they never
returned. The next morning, when Maria came up to feed them she found
the carnage instead.
Marcella Callasantos was found dead in her apartment, literally
all /over/ the apartment. Neither of her remaining children were to be
found anywhere in the vicinity; indeed, they seemed to simply vanish.
To the tunnels they ran, hiding amongst the sewers until the Morlocks
that dwelled there happened upon them. They were both accepted
grudgingly, but Maria was never happy there, though they still remain.
She has lived there in the tunnels for the past year or so, gained
skills and knowledges of survival, yet missed out on scholar education.
Her disposition has worsened over time and she has become something of
an outcast, even among outcasts, until she finally left it all behind.
That was when Reignfire came to her. Attention drawn by the
article in the newspaper describing her mother's death, she was found
in a back alley looting through the trash bins. He offered her a
chance to be free of that which restrains her, to embrace her animal
side and strike back at those that oppress that which is different.
And she accepted.
8) Narrative Section:
The following is a would-be scene of Feral's leaving the Morlocks.
I've chosen to concentrate more on her thoughts than her actions and
interaction with other characters, since the log excerpt wasn't
suitable for this section and Feral herself isn't really the type to
keep a diary or anything along those lines. But anyway..
It was strangely amusing how easily she had become used to the
dank smell that seemed to be a permanent mark on the Morlock tunnels,
no matter how hard the tunnel inhabitants struggled to wash it away.
The bunk she shared with her sister Lucia, cobbled together out of
spare parts scavenged from multiple bunks that been abandoned by their
previous owners, was one of the few clean things in this place.
She could do better. She knew she could.
Feral's eyes were narrowed slightly as she folded what clothing
she had and bound them together in a bundle held in place by a leather
belt starting to wear thin. Lucia knew she was leaving, she had
decided an hour ago. The quiet look she had given her with her
yellow-hued eyes had spoken louder than any words she could hope to
muster; then she had offered some lame excuse about checking out the
nearby refuse bins to see if anything edible could be found.
But Maria knew better. She always did. She could smell it on
her. Feral's eyes narrowed into green slits, tucking the bundle of
clothing underarm and shrugging her overcoat and hat on. She wasn't
going to stop her and she never would. She hadn't tried to stop her
when she killed Harry, when she killed Mama, and she wasn't going to
stop her now. Feral's lips curled back from her teeth, baring them in
a false parody of a smile. Even if she tried, she wouldn't have been
able to. She was getting out of this hellhole.
Feral had never been much of a team-player. Trying to work with
the Morlocks to survive had made more than one conflict arise. She
had always gotten out of them, though. Somehow. The last argument,
though.. That one had gone too far. The others had tried to hold that
fat, ugly one back, but oh.. He just had to keep pushing, didn't he?
The felinesque female studied a spot on the wall, still holding
that false smile on her lips. It had been a long time since she had
lashed out at someone.. Since she felt flesh give way beneath sharp
fingertips.. the tear of skin.. the warm rush of liquid splashing over
her hands, its hot smell reaching her nostrils..
She blinked. That had been the last straw, hadn't it? She would
have clawed his face off and spat on him had Lucia not slapped her
across the face and shoved her into their room. Oh, how older sister
had screamed at her! They had gone on for hours that night until
their voices went hoarse and Lucia ran off to sulk in a friend's
chambers.
That had been when she decided to leave, hadn't it. Feral
tightened the belt around the bundle of clothing. Nobody could tell
her what to do, damnit! She jerked the hat down over her eyes, then
pushed it up a bit, just enough to allow her to see and keep her face
shadowed. She'd be free! Free to do what she liked, decide upon her
own role, and make her own choices and deal with her own consequences.
Nimbly, the Hispanic young woman darted down a dark tunnel, then
the next, weaving her way through the labyrinth until a scattering of
light shone through the holes of an above sewer grate. Readying
herself, Feral sprang up the ladder, unhinged the grate, and darted
out, replacing it in a single series of fluid, almost graceful
movements. The city was dark at night.. Good.
No one would ever hold her again.
9) Player Experience:
I have been MUSHing for over two years now and RPing for longer.
My experience mostly lies in fantasy and science fiction - ElfQuest,
Star Wars, Crystal Singer - but I also have been RPing X-themed MUSHes
for some time. I started out at PhoeniX-MUSH as Feral and later went on
to hold such characters as Nightcrawler, Emplate, and two human alts by
the names of Hannah (a Wiccan art-shop owner) and Dana (a hacker for
Operation: Zero Tolerance). I had a brief career as Tessa on AoA MUSH
and a briefer career as a NFC /waaaay/ back when by the name of Marty.
More recently I played Feral and Nightcrawler at Gen-X, but have
since left the MUSH after the spreading of rumors led to its eventual
demise. At the encouragement of Reignfire and Hrimhari's players I
decided to apply for Feral here as a NFC.
I still play at an ElfQuest-themed MUSH, holding two Features -
Treestump and Rayek - as well as a wizbit now under the name of Lissar,
specializing in canon and player relations.
10) Reasons For Wanting Character:
For as long as I can remember Feral has always been my favorite
character. AoA MUSH being the exception, I have played her at every X
-MUSH I have taken part in, and have grown to adore venting out my
frustrations through her. She is a simple character on the outside,
with simple goals and simple thoughts, but beneath she is very
complicated and enjoyable to explore.
I know that Feral, as a character, is a rather overused concept.
Taking a look at 'news overused2' I didn't see anything specifically
mentioning 'furries', but 'creature-morphs' and 'enhanced senses' were
mentioned, and so I take the time to take note of this. I play Feral
the Character, not Feral the Cat. The feline aspect of her is a very
dominant part of her character makeup, but there are other factors that
succeed in making her who she is. And I want to explore those factors.
11) Plans For Character:
Since it was Reignfire's player who encouraged me to apply for
Feral at CotA, he also invited her to join the Mutant Liberation Front.
Since, if approved, I will most likely be entering headlong into a
plot, I will be introducing her as a set member of the Mutant
Liberation Front.
This stage in life is the most interesting to me since it is
roughly around the same time that Feral defected from the Morlocks and
joined X-Force. Of course, the timeline is quite different from that
of the books, and instead of joining X-Force Feral went on to join the
MLF.
Unlike other 'animalistic' characters, there is no conflict
between Feral and her animal side. She is governed by that which makes
her different from the majority of humanity, and embraces that wild
streak in her. Obviously that will bring to blows clashes with both
teammates and deferring to one of higher rank than her - a squad leader
or even the team leader himself. It certainly would be interesting to
find a romantic interest for Feral, to see the conflicts that would
arise when she realizes she is receiving such attentions and even to
see if such a thing would work out, but that's not a particular plot
that I would be looking into any time in the immediate future.
Feral is a villain and while its certainly possible that she could
become an 'in between' character - one that you're never quite certain
of - that again is an avenue I won't be looking into for quite some
time. If conflict arises, she will meet it as only she could. It
would be nice to see if I could get someone to apply for Feral's older
sister Lucia (Thornn) or for Jose Hidalgo, Lucia's friend who later
joined the New York Police Department.
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