Kiva 'Drake' Augillard

Individual

Character's full name: Kiva Augillard
Alias/ Nickname/ Code name: Drake

Gender: Female
Age: 23
Date of Birth: June 15, 1989
Birthplace/ Home/ Place of origin: Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Currently living in New York.
Nationality: Canadian
Ethnicity/ Cultural Heritage: 1/4 Native American, 1/4 French, 1/2 Irish

Appearance

Hair color and style: Jet black
Skin Tone: Scaly with a bronze-like hue
Eye Color: Dark brown
Height: 5'10"
Build: Very solid and muscular. Broad-shouldered with a thick waist and limbs and not much in the way of curves.
Visible mutation: Scaly skin, dark, hooked claws on her fingers, two pairs of dark spikes on her lower jaw, and small wings on her back.
Scars/ Tattoos/ Piercings: Pierced tongue
Other features: Kiva has very harsh, hawk-like facial features: large nose, narrow eyes, sharp jaw. It's almost kind of handsome in a...predatory way, one could suppose, but it mostly just makes her seem even more androgynous than her height and build already do.

Everyday clothing style: Due to the wings on her back, she has to wear shirts without backs or with customized holes for them. They're normally black or white, since black and white don't clash with the colour of her scales. In colder weather, she'll either toss a loose coat over top her wings or wear large sweaters that can accommodate them. She loves to wear black jeans.
Uniform:
Sleepwear: Usually just one of her specialized shirts and some shorts. Only these are more likely to be pink.
Miscellaneous clothing:

Character

Personality:

"People talk about 'humans and mutants' all the time...They keep forgetting that mutants are human. We're not a different species, and we're not superior. We're humans who were dealt a slightly different genetic hand than most. That's all."

Kiva is, in some ways, kind of quiet. She doesn't tend to approach people much outside of her job due to fear of scaring them--or simply annoyance over the stares--and isn't much of a conversationalist when others approach her, usually giving short answers to questions or, if the person manages to piss her off and/or say something mind-bendingly stupid, using a particularly biting or sarcastic tone. She can warm up very fast once she decides that someone's all right, however, and it rarely takes long for her to make a decision in that regard; usually a nice enough greeting will break the barriers enough.

Largely lacking in prejudice, Kiva gives everyone a chance, be they a baseline human or be they a mutant, visible or otherwise, though she could be said to warm a little faster to other visible mutants if all other things are equal. Still, male or female, gay or straight, young or old, she's not one to judge. We're all human. She also has very strong protective instincts, willing to step in with someone is in danger regardless of what the victim or aggressor are. For those she cares for, this tendency is turned up to a much higher level; no one hurts a person she considers 'hers.'

Still, at the end of the day, she's really only interested in living her life; while she's given up on 'being normal,' holding down a job and having a roof over her head is an acceptable alternative. She's not the type to get involved in activism, and just sidesteps her way around those who want her to 'join the cause' and keeps walking. Selfish? Maybe to some, but she sees it as not stirring up trouble.

Hobbies/ Interests: Literature (particularly the classics), sketching, painting, mythology, cats
Job or part time job and description: Tattoo artist; she works at Rex Tattoos, a fairly small place with a big tyrannosaurus on its sign that is nevertheless known for being very mutant-friendly, as long as everyone behaves themselves.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Kiva is claustrophobic; she refuses to go underground or into particularly tight spaces unless her or someone else's life literally depends on it.
Special talents: She's a very good tattoo artist, and an artist in general.

Morality

Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Neutral to good; she's a genuinely kind person who'll protect people who can't protect themselves if the situation arises, but has no intention of making it part of her day-to-day and just largely wants to take care of herself.

Mutations

Mutation description:

"No, Drake's not my real name. But it fits, don't you think? The wings don't work, though. Which might be a good thing; I'd have splattered myself against the side of my school years ago trying to show off."

Scaly skin, claws, spikes and wings. That's about it. Her shiny, bronze-coloured hide covers the entirety of the outside of her body, and is hard and smooth. The palms of her hands are slightly softer, though, comparable to the underbelly of a snake. The scales are slightly thicker and darker along her throat and upper chest.

Each of her fingers is tipped with a short, hooked, black claw, and Kiva tries her best to file them, but they grow quickly and have a quick inside of them that extends past her finger, meaning she can't cut them right to her fingertip.

Small, blunt, cone-shaped spikes, also black, emerge from her lower jaw, two on each side; the upper, slightly larger set grow slightly below where her jaws hinge, and the other set grow to either side of her chin.

Her scales, claws, and spikes are made of keritan of varying hardness, rather than any kind of unusual material. She will occasionally shed 'flakes' of dead scales as new ones grow.

Sprouting from her shoulders are a pair of small wings. Almost comically small. The scales on her inner wings are the softer variety also on her palms, and her wingspan is only 115 cm (roughly three and three-quarter feet), making them useless for flight.

Despite this, however, she's not biologically reptilian; her eyes, inner mouth, and everything under her skin is still identical to a baseline human, and she's still warm-blooded.

Strengths:

Her scales are resistant to damage. While not bulletproof, her skin is difficult to slice or stab without significant pressure applied to the weapon in question. Her claws can also make moderately effective weapons in a pinch.

Weaknesses and Limitations:

As stated, her skin is not bulletproof, nor are her claws unbreakable. Her unprotected eyes and the softer flesh of her palms and wings are weak points.

Her reptile-like skin also means she lacks any way to sweat, and is thus more vulnerable to overheating. Her claws reduce her finger dexterity to some degree, requiring her to be more careful when handling small objects, and the wings on her back make clothing more difficult to deal with.

There's then the fact that she, simply put, doesn't have any outright 'powers.' No way to attack someone at range or do any more or different damage to someone other than claw marks.

Physical Abilities

General Physical Capabilities: Kiva is fairly strong, having good muscle strength for her size, and her size is not particularly petite. Her cardiovascular health and her stamina aren't as good, since she lacks the ability to regulate her temperature via sweating and so can't exercise too vigorously lest the heat become dangerous. All in all, she's well within human capabilities, since she's internally human.

Fighting Style: Her general 'style' is to lash out with her claws, primarily looking to disarm her attacker if they're holding a weapon, and hope her hide withstands whatever they throw at her until they back down. If they're not going to back down, she tends to try to rapidly find an escape route for herself, and whoever she's protecting if anyone, rather than risking injury or trying to seriously wound her attacker
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: On one hand, she is tougher than average and unless they shoot at her and/or have combat-inclined mutant powers, it tends to work. However, if she can't get them to back down or escape somehow, she's in trouble.

History Of Your Character

Kiva was perhaps lucky among visible mutants that her mutation was not nearly so visible at birth. Born with normal skin of a bronze-like hue, the colouration wasn't thought much of due to her Native American ancestry; putting her next to her grandmother would show enough of a resemblance that it was easy to assume she was perfectly normal.

She grew up in the city of Winnipeg, and for the most part it was uneventful. She went to school, got decent grades for the most part, and when she was seven she became an older sister to Sorcha Aguillard, who took much more after the Irish side of her family in appearance.

Puberty, however, was where it all started. Classes got harder, and Kiva, already a fairly tall and solid child, hit a growth spurt at thirteen that rapidly made her the tallest student in her class; while many of the boys in that class would get closer to, and surpass, her height later in life, right then it was awkward and uncomfortable on both a physical and emotional level, especially since the growth made her clumsy as her sense of balance tried to catch up to her current size.

In hindsight, Kiva would consider it inevitable that things would reach their breaking point in physical education class. While the teacher did try to keep order, at her grade level the boys and girls had classes together, and the boys played rough. Being a fairly tough kid, she could get rough-and-tumble with the boys and didn't mind the bruises too much, but her lack of coordination was making that more difficult, and her higher stress level--since she genuinely cared about her grades--made her less tolerant.

There was no scheduled activity that day, it being the day for a rare written test in the class, and those who had finished writing were shooting hoops at the far end of the gym while those that remained continued writing. Kiva was one of the latter, when one of the boys who were the former got the 'brilliant' idea to see how far he could kick a basketball.

The ball went rocketing toward the test-writing students by accident, and struck Kiva in the side of the head as she was getting up to hand in her paper. She slammed into the floor and her vision momentarily went black on impact, but those who were moving over to see if she was all right were soon backing away when Kiva started convulsing. The unexpected 'attack' had kick-started her mutation as a defense mechanism, and her skin rapidly started to shift into hard, lustrous scales, followed by growing claws and spikes and lastly by small wings emerging from her shoulders.

Once the transformation was finished, Kiva, aching all over from the pain of the change and a bit delirious from both it and the blow to her head, slowly and shakily tried to push herself up into a sitting position. The teacher, and a couple of the braver students, helped her to her feet once they realized she wasn't in a berserker rage or anything of the like, and quickly brought her to the principal's office, where they got her a glass of cold water, since the only coherent thing she was saying was that she was too hot, and called her parents.

While she was sitting there in the office, she was largely oblivious to the stares from the staff and passing students. In her muddled state, she just gulped down the water and then stared at her clawed hands and scaly arms, not yet realizing that they were a part of her or the implications of such.

Her father was stunned by this turn of events, not able to keep from staring in shock when he first saw his transformed daughter after her mother brought her home. Her mother was...less so. It turned out Kiva's aunt, who lived in America, was a mutant as well, albeit not one who showed any physical signs of it. Still, she hadn't considered that her own children could have it as well, not until now. Sorcha, being five, actually thought her sister's dragon-like skin and little wings were kind of cool, and the family cat, Max, while he needed to give Kiva a good sniff to make sure it was really her before doing so, just hopped into the girl's lap for cuddles like always.

Kiva kept going to school, since they were in a fairly enlightened area as far as mutant rights and tolerance went, and she showed no sign of having any real 'powers' beyond her tough hide and claws, but the atmosphere had changed. Her appearance was fairly frightening, and the health-related challenges it presented made things hard; she had to be more careful about not overheating thanks to having no way to sweat anymore, and the scaly hide felt heavier than ordinary skin, which made her feel 'trapped' and made it hard to sleep at first. Not to mention that her wings seemed determined to get in her way in every way possible.

She spent a lot of time in library, when she wasn't exercising what amount she could safely, and just kept to herself. She became interested in art, and frequently looked up mythological creatures and figures to incorporate into sketches and paintings. Particularly dragons.

Her parents were supportive--she was still their daughter, in their mind--but Kiva was very aware of the collective sigh of relief with they had Sorcha tested for the X-gene and she came up negative. To them, it was like finding out Kiva had a disease they couldn't cure; to this day, Kiva often calls her mutation a 'condition.'

Upon graduation, she toyed with the idea of going to the states. Her aunt claimed she was always welcome to stay in her apartment in New York, and there were some very nice schools there for taking art classes. The Mutant Registration Law coming into effect in the US quickly crushed that idea, with said aunt nothing short of fleeing to Canada to protect herself. Still, when the law was overturned and things seemed to settle down, her aunt went back home...and Kiva followed.

She went to school, got an Art degree, ended up working as a tattoo artist and absolutely flourishing at it, and eventually got her own apartment. And a cat. But while perfectly legal to live and work in the states, she never applied for American citizenship. If things go absolutely loco again, she's heading for the Canadian border at breakneck speed.

Roleplay
Where did you learn about this site?: Referred by Ty Fisher's player
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Nope
Sample RP:

Rex was a great guy. He was old enough to be her dad--though he sure didn't look that old--married to a mutant, and had so many tattoos that looking at them was comparable to counting the rings on a tree. He'd also hired a young woman covered in scales, who had been in art school when she first applied, to work in his tattoo parlor and kept her there for years. He was like the awesome uncle Kiva had never had; he even was cool with calling her 'Drake.'

In fact, that was the exact name he was hollering at her to get her to come out and help the customer who had just shown up, and all five-foot-ten of her scaly self, wings visible through the open back of her shirt, casually stepped out to do just that.

The guy standing next to Rex turned white. It was a rare thing to see the colour drain from a human face that quickly. Kiva waited for the shock to wear off, casually examining her black claws. She'd filed them just this morning, but they were still very much clearly claws and not simply dark nails. After a few moments, she glanced back up to see if he'd recovered, and she saw the man's features twist into something akin to a mix of a fear and disgust.

"Do you have any other artists who could do it?" he asked.

Rex looked like he about to tear the guy a new one, but Kiva held up her hand in her signal for 'no, let me' and took a few steps forward. The percentage of fear in his expression started to increase as she glared at him. "Now, look here, pal," she said, "I know what you're thinking, and the fact that I'm a woman has nothing to do with my ability with ink and needles."

The guy looked blank for a second. Intended reaction achieved. Kiva wondered if he'd even registered that 'Drake' was a woman before now, or if all he'd seen were the scales and wings. "That...that's not--"

"Then what, pray tell, is bothering you?" she said, crossing her arms. It was a fight not to glance down at her skin and claws or back at her wings after saying that. Pretending she was entirely oblivious to her condition so often left people knocked off-balance; it was always the exact opposite of what they expected a mutant to be like.

"I...uh..." He glanced over her form, his gaze lingering on one of her hands. "Well, how well can you honestly hold a needle with those..." Kiva casually plucked a pen out of the pocket of her jeans and twirled it in her fingers; he didn't finish his sentence. Truth be told, the claws did hinder her somewhat, but she'd had them since she was a teenager and had been working this job for years.

Rex took that moment to clap on the guy on the back--'accidentally' disturbing his balance a tad with the strength and enthusiasm of the action--and speak up. "Drake's one of the most talented artists I've ever met, and she's got the skill to match. Trust me, you're in good hands."

Good, scaly, clawed hands. He nodded, almost meekly, and moved to follow Kiva. She smiled, showing her very-much-human teeth. "So, what were you thinking of getting, hun?"

He blinked, and looked at her uneasily. "Oh, I was...I was going to get one on my arm. Of a...dragon."

Kiva was torn between the impulse to shut her eyes and sigh and the impulse to laugh at this information. She ended up muzzling both and simply continuing to smile. "Well, you're in luck. I've got a book full of dragon designs if you wanna leaf through it..."