Name: Lily Strider
Age: 23
Sex: Female

Shifter Form: Nine-Tailed Fox

Human Appearance:
Lily is roughly 170 high with a somewhat athletic build with a few muscles, but nothing extraordinary, being visible. It doesn’t take two glances to see that Lily has japanese blood in her veins, though mixed with something western. Her hair is pitch black and reaches absurd lengths, going down past her buttocks, though usually held in a braid. Her eyes are a dark brown—almost black—and peeks out from beneath a pair of equally dark eyebrows, a hard glint almost always visible in them, rarely ever absent. Her lips are prominent, with a rosy colour and noticeable pucker. She's nothing extraordinary when it comes to womanly assets either, being medium both up front and behind—perhaps even less than medium.

Shifter Appearance:

Shameless steal, I know, but it was the best picture I could find that was halfway decent. Please note that she doesn't necessarily wear those clothes, though. Larger version of the picture is here: http://i.gyazo.com/463cbc1acfb47850519cd571ead46606.png

In her human form one might say that she’s decently pretty, but none would deny the fact that she’s a stunning beauty when she Shifts: Jet black hair the same length as before and kept in a braid as well, although there is enough hair to cover where her human ears would be. Her eyes are a striking summer blue with slitted pupils, giving her a slightly feral—and sometimes mischievous—look. Nine white tails extend from behind her, each about as long as she is tall and covering in soft, silky fur. All four of her canines are elongated, each a good centimetre longer than usual, giving her toothy smiles a bit of a dangerous edge to it all thanks to her fangs. It also makes her bites that much more painful, and potentially dangerous. Another thing that should be noted is that, in this form, she is the epitome of feminine beauty in accordance with the legends, with full lips, long eyelashes and so on; something which she's actually rather fond of, if she had to say so herself.

Where her nails are usually kept short for convenience’s sake, they are quite long when she's shifted, with an ever so slight rounded point to them, and coloured a purple-ish blue. Aside from that her hips become wider, as does her bosom become a fair bit larger. Where before her body had been somewhat tough thanks to her developing muscles and athletic lifestyle, they have now softened; giving her a body devoid of hardened muscles but rich with pleasant curves. Her facial structure also changes as well, becoming more sharper and a little angled; more fox-like as opposed to the roundness it had before.

Abilities:
Athletic and flexible, skilled at gymnastics/parkour, and a very fast and agile runner.

Powers:
True to the mischievous and trickster nature of the Kitsune in the legends, Lily's magical skills are focused mostly around illusions, enabling her to trick the senses of those around her; create ghost sounds and touches and make them see things that are not there. The more energy she uses the more powerful the illusions.

She also has a secondary magical gift which allows her to drain life energy from the area around her and use it for various purposes ranging from creating a light source to weaponizing it. The amount of energy she draws from anyone depends on how much they are willing to give, or how much more powerful her will is than theirs. She can freely take from plants and smaller animals, though she has to overwhelm the mind of other sentient beings, or larger animals, to drain theirs, though doing so is forbidden—A rule set in place by Ikari, the Kitsune Teacher.

Background:
Lily has never had an easy life, not by a long shot. For as long as she can remember she has been on the street, without easy access to food or shelter. She never knew her parents and has been forced to steal to survive more times than she can count. Her early life was spent in the company of an elderly person called Max, also a homeless man. For the first several years of her life he took care of her, sharing what food he had between the two of them. She remembers little about him, save that he was kind and patient, and always soothed her whenever she got sad, or cold. One fond memory from her past is one winter night when he gave up his coat for her so that she didn’t freeze.

Alas, fond though that memory may be, it was also what led to his death. He caught a harsh flu and, without money for medicine and no hospitals in the town, got deathly ill and died by the end of winter. She was six years old back then, and it took several years before she finally stopped blaming herself for his death, and realised that his old age was why he had died and not just because he got sick.

The town where she lived, she later found out, was located somewhere in England. She never really bothered to learn the name of it as her mind was more focused on finding food and a place to sleep each night, but staying unaware of her hometown was not quite possible. The town was Lichfield, a small-ish town with around thirty thousand citizens.

Aside from her time with Max, her life was rather uneventful. She scraped together what food and money she could, stole when money was scarce, and hoarded when she had sufficient.

She was a skilled thief. Quick with her fingers, and even quicker on her legs. There were hardly any roof she hadn’t been on, no alley she hadn’t sped through or hidden in when some gang or other criminal chased her. She lived on those skills, and constantly trained with whatever she had at her disposal to stay in shape; to stay quick and agile. It wasn’t always enough, however, as she was cornered from time to time, beaten up and had whatever food and money she had stolen. Life in a small city was never easy, and the multiple bruises she got was proof of that, and even though she often longed to just rob someone blind, hide the money somewhere safe and live a somewhat decent life, she didn’t. Stealing when she had to was something she was had no reservations with doing, but taking more than she needed… she did look down on that, especially those who stole from others who had so little—She wasn’t completely without morals, after all.

The day came, however, when the war erupted and the Shifter Program was started. She had heard, and noticed, the people going around recruiting everyone who would be willing to be test subjects. Lily initially volunteered, but due to her young age they wouldn’t accept her: A 13 year old was not old enough to become a potential soldier, regardless of her zeal. It was her chance for a proper life, a job, a room of her own. A chance for a life where she didn’t have to wonder if she’d go hungry to bed that night, wonder if she had to run from the police yet again for stealing. But they wouldn’t let her.

Seven years went by with her asking every time they came to Lichfield to recruit, but every time they told her no because she was too young. That was until she turned 20, and they returned to Lichfield after three years of absence. She was finally over 18 and, to her relief, they finally let her join. She didn’t hesitate even once about leaving her old life behind.

She was brought to a facility in Spain, the nearest one at the time, and was immediately subjected to test after test, swarmed by humans and Mythics alike, each of them trying to figure what type of creature she was compatible with. The next day came faster than she realised, and the knews were thrust upon her: She was a Kitsune, or Nine Tailed Fox. She was compatible with a Demon Class, specializing in illusions and speed.

She didn’t care much about the news at first, but all the excited voices of the other applicants talking about what kind of Mythic they were compatible, and how much they wished to be able to test the abilities they would get… It infected her, so little by little she was getting excited as well, wondering how she’d look and how many tails she’d get. One of the things about Kitsune, she’d heard some of the people in the facility say, was that they were one of the few where you could estimate their power by their number of tails. Usually a Shifter only had between four to seven tails, but the occasional eight-tailed Kitsune also popped up. Nine-tailed ones were exceedingly rare, with only a handful having appeared in the past ten years since the Shifters came to be. She secretly hoped for seven or more.

Finally came the day—after all the others had been tested for compatibility—when she would undergo the process of becoming a shifter. The memory is still vivid in her mind, of standing stark naked in that strange, vertical tube with electrodes attached to every conceivable part of her body; from chest to legs, scalp to feet. One might say that she was covered head to toe in electrodes.

The process itself wasn’t painful, as she was knocked unconscious almost the moment a strange, blue-ish liquid started flowing into the tube itself. No, there wasn’t any pain but what happened when she awoke might as well have been for how vividly she remembered it all. The first thing she noticed as she was brought back to consciousness, still stark naked inside that tube, was a heavy weight behind her. A quick glance revealed a multitude of tails. She had counted them, counted every one of them and felt the joy fill her as she counted five and she wasn’t finished counting yet. She had gotten the seven tails she had been hoping for, but… There wasn’t seven.

She was stunned. She could hardly comprehend the fact that she, a no-body from the streets of a small town in Britain, was a Kitsune with NINE tails. The rarest and, supposedly, most powerful of them. That alone made her soar: She was special, she wasn’t a nobody. She was something now, and not just an unwanted rat on the streets. But that wasn’t all, she soon discovered.

They had a large, wall-length mirror installed in the room where the process took place, and when she looked in that she almost dropped her jaw. She had always prided herself on being fairly pretty—at least among the rabble on the street. She had no uneven teeth, no excessive amount of pimples, and she managed to keep relatively clean. But what she saw was beyond her imagining.

It wasn’t a word she would have used about anyone she just met or saw in passing, let alone herself, but in that moment the only word that came to mind was “Beautiful.” Her eyes were a summer blue, and slitted, as opposed to their usual dark brown. Her face had become more angular, sharper, and more fox-like. What’s more, the toned and athletic body she prided herself on was gone, replaced instead by the well kept and fit body of a gorgeous woman, wide hips and a bust far larger than what little she had had before.

It was the first time in years that she had cried. Just seeing herself like that, seeing, and feeling, that she was worth something. Not just because of her enhanced looks, but also because she knew that with this transformation, she could help others. Selfish though she might have been, she’d learned from Max early on that compassion goes a long way.

The following days brought with them several more discoveries. Among them the fact that her smell, hearing, and sight had been vastly enhanced when she Shifted, as well as her speed and raw physical strength being far above what she had previously had. One of the most annoying changes in her Shifter form, she decided, were the fangs. Sure they looked good and gave her smile a certain level of viciousness, but the amount of times she had to put healing salve on a lip she had punctured was high. Far higher than she’d like.

In the following two years from when she was shipped off to the Academy from the facility in spain, to when she started her final year in said Academy, a lot of things happened. For once, she learned how to fight and utilize her knew powers. She learned how to trick the minds of others, to change reality as she saw fit and how to draw the very life out of plants and trees, small animals and insects. She was forced through tactics classes, dragged through the mud when she didn’t meet the field trainer’s expectations.

She learned a lot, and while she appreciated that there was still one thing she gained that she treasured, and still treasures, above all else: Her girlfriend, Tsukiko, a fellow Demon Class Shifter, and a Bakeneko—a two-tailed Cat-and-Human hybrid with the ability to divide herself into two, one tail staying with each of the ‘copies’. She was a sweet japanese girls, and one of the few who managed to get past her tough exterior, and touch and thaw the frozen heart within her. They hit it off early, and their initial friendship bloomed into something more in the months following their arrival at the Academy.

Now they’re inseparable, spending much of their free-time together and sparring when they get the chance.

As for Lily, so far she’s enjoying her stay at the Academy. For the first time in her life she has a bed and a room for herself. She doesn’t have to worry about food, or how to not get cold during the winter.

If it means that she’ll have to fight and put her life on the line to pay back for all of that, then so be it. At the very least, she spent the last of her life being happy if things go bad.

Personality:
As opposed to the kind nature of Ikari, Lily is quite the rough girl. Her life on the streets has made its mark on her, making her aggressive and distrustful. She’s used to having very little, and what little she has has always been in danger of being stolen. As such she’s very possessive and protective, suspicious of anyone she might find near her rooms getting a little too close to the few she cares about—Especially her girlfriend.

Despite this, she can be perfectly friendly and amicable if someone proves to her that they are trustworthy, though it doesn’t get rid of her tough exterior. Some might call her a Tsundere (made even more exasperating due to her japanese roots), and they might be right. She doesn’t open up easy, and she’s stubborn, but she isn’t impossible to befriend. She’s the kind of person you can count on when things go downhill if you have managed to win her over to your side.

Furthermore, she’s somewhat arrogant and a tad narcissistic, as well as being the kind of person who has trouble seeing the difference between right and wrong. That is not to say that has no regards for other people, but having lived a life where taking what you could from an exposed fruit stall or sneak the wallet out of some fat business man’s pocket has sort of made her indifferent to stealing, meaning that she’s not opposed to taking something if she feels that she has a need of it—something her girlfriend is trying to make her stop doing.

Other:
- She is very proud of her looks in her Shifter form, and can be caught admiring her naked self in the mirror if you “forget” to knock in the late evening before entering her room.

- She’s a lesbian and has a girlfriend who’s also a Shifter: A fellow Demon Class able to shift into a Bakeneko. Her name is Tsukiko, and she’s born Japanese.

- Her name was given to her by Max. Lily because he thought she was a pretty little girl, like a lily, and Strider because she was quick on her feet and faster than most kids her age.

- Her hair is as long as it is because she never really had a proper chance to cut it while living on the streets, so she just got used to it being so long.

- Lily is being taught Japanese by Tsukiko, and is decent at it so far, able to at least swear at it and do simple shopping in a japanese town. Longer conversations is something she’s still working on.

And since a bunch of other people found a theme song, I thought I'd jump the band wagon as well

Name: Alice Blackwood
Gender: Female
Age: 21
Shifter Form: Valkyrie

Appearance: Alice is a somewhat short, heavyset, muscular girl, 5' 4" and 190 pounds, to be exact. Her skin is somewhat pale, mainly due to spending most of her daylight hours indoors. Her muscles, while not grotesquely large, are big and as hard as whipcords. Her hair is jet black, and about midway down her back when left alone, though she ties it in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes, which are a steely grey. It's impossible to tell what her legs look like, as they're covered 24-7 with a pair of heavy, black, military cargo pants completely covered in pockets and other things. Under one of those pant legs is a sleek and shiny prosthetic, top of the line and if anything better than the organic limb it replaced. Her face and steely blue eyes appear to be locked in a semi-scowl. Due to her less than feminine form, many people would and will frequently mistake her for a man with long hair, mainly when her figure was obscured by something, either a jacket, or weapons and armor (armor, weapons, etc-cetera).

Shifter Appearance

Use the image as a reference, not as an accurate representation of her appearance.

Her hair shifts along its length from black at the top to pure silver at the bottom, but remains the same length. She gains several inches in height, and her already muscular build only becomes more so, with the muscles visible standing out like steel cables rather than whipcords. The prosthetic disappears, replaced by a "regular" leg that's just as muscular and powerful as the other. Any change in "Feminine assets", if any, is small. A pair of glossy, jet black wings spreads from her back, with two small holes in her armor permitting their use in battle. When she shifts, she gains a set of elegant but futuristically angular armor, also in varying shades of black and silver. The breastplate juts out slightly in a single point, with several overlapping plates angling downwards to deflect blows, and similarly in the back. A helmet in similarly angular but deflective style rests on her head, and more armor of the same style covers her arms and legs. Her face, while not exactly loving by any stretch of the imagination, nonetheless softens noticeably.

Abilities:
Has extensive training in both armed and unarmed combat- (Unarmed: Kapap and Tai Chi. Armed: Kapap, some dabbling in HEMA (Historical European Martial Arts), and training at The Academy)
Even while unshifted, she’s strong. While she wouldn't be able to beat a steroid guzzling power-lifter, she’s no slouch in the strength department.
Fast, in the sense of a sprinter. Excels at quick bursts of speed
Basic knowledge of field medicine,
Strong self discipline. It takes an awful lot to set her off, and by contrast she’s excellent at masking her feelings and essentially isolating herself in a personal fortress. (Not to say she does so all the time.)
Speaks Russian, more or less.

Powers:
Greatly increased physical abilities (Faster, stronger… tougher)
Can use a powerful short range offensive blast with her magic, mainly to let her catch a breath or exploit an opening
As she’s a Valkyrie, she does have the ability to bolster her allies’ strength and fortitude, and can heal wounds to an extent
Can fly
Can further augment her abilities and those of her weapon with magic, the more magic she pours into it, the more her abilities are strengthened.

Background:
Alice Blackwood was born to a militant family. Not military, militant.

From a young age, her highly competitive single father (her mother died shortly after her birth from an accidental overdose of pain medication) pushed his also competitive, but not pathologically so, daughter to her limits. While one might've expected her to resent it, she saw it as a competition against her father- one she was determined to win. Occasionally however, he broke those limits so much that she actually wound up with a prosthetic leg and a policy for a discounted upgrade to a top-tier version upon adulthood. She didn't mind too much, well, she didn't mind the prosthetic as it fascinated her to no end; the fact that her father was the reason she needed it severely damaged their relationship. The prosthetic was paid for of course, by her father’s company, or at least the company he worked for, a private military company which stipulated that she work for the company upon her reaching 21, circumstances permitting.

And so, her already intense training increased even more so, with her learning things at the age of thirteen that no normal young teenage girl would've really wanted to know- things such as small unit tactics, where to stab or shoot to kill an opponent hopped up on drugs, and first aid. As the company was in fact Russian based, another part of her training was Russian with a native speaker, also from the PMC, though this was more of a formality, she still took it seriously. Her school began to take notice, especially after she walked in one morning after a prolonged absence with a whirring prosthetic limb. They took umbrage with her father’s practices and how they rubbed off on his daughter, her impressive knowledge of ways to kill people or occasional remarks about how “That position would be untenable in [Insert a situation here]”.

This extensive training left little or no room for a social life, and though she tried on multiple occasions, the closest she ever came to real friends were other students of HEMA. She chose to go into HEMA because it was one of the few things that her father would approve of, and his controlling nature lead to her slowly developing an intense dislike for him.

After much arguing and many letters of pure vitriol, she was pulled from public school and was enrolled at a private institution for aspiring military officers- where she mastered the art of keeping a straight face and hiding emotion behind an impenetrable mask.

The public school was thrilled to be rid of her truthfully- having brought up several other issues with her father. Incidents such as the time she’d “accidentally” forgot to return to classes after lunch, and released hazardous materials into the building after managing to trip over several valves and crash an electrical line into flammable material. While she had had some inkling they were hazardous, she hadn't been as aware of where exactly they would go. While there were no fatalities, her voice never recovered from her brief exposure and remains horribly raspy to this day.

When she was seventeen a large legal battle commenced with child protective services and her father, and her father lost. It wasn't the government that took custody of her, but rather the company her father worked for, and they took over the training role. In fact, she enjoyed her time there more than with her father, largely because they weren't technically able to subject her to anywhere near the same regimen as her father, and partially because the director of the American branch of the company had in fact been shocked when he learned of what she’d been trained to do from a young age and had essentially reduced her training to a classroom.

At age 18, with a brand-new, top-of-the-line, bleeding edge prosthetic limb she made a spur-of-the-moment decision to see if she was mythically compatible. It was either fight against superior forces as just another soldier, and likely join a list of statistics, or fight superior soldiers as a shifter and maybe stand a chance of not dying horribly- there wasn't really any decision.

At a facility run by the CDC in Atlanta, flurries of people- humans, shifters, and mythics alike poked her, stabbed her with needles, et-cetera. Suddenly it was the next day, and lo and behold, she was compatible with the Demon class, a Valkyrie. So she got to stab things and mess stuff up, make everyone else feel like they could stab things and mess them up, and help them do so a little.

Well that didn’t seem too hard.

She’d left herself on a sort of autopilot for the next bit, the actual transformation itself more of a blur than anything. Her mind was primarily occupied with how to make things work with the company and her contract (which she had technically agreed to anyway).

She does remember appraising herself after the transformation with approval. Prominent muscles more so, impressive wings that would… well, she wasn't sure what exactly to do with them. Oh, and the armor, she had no idea at all where that had come from, but she certainly liked it.

She’d not really done much experimentation with what powers she’d been granted as a Valkyrie, and didn’t do so until she arrived at the Academy later. Her primary concern had been potential issues with the company, though surprisingly they proved fairly reasonable, though she suspected her new status had something to do with it. Not many PMCs could brag that they technically had a shifter working for them.

She progressed through The Academy much like she had prior, though this time there was the new variable of socializing, that she’d actually be able to participate in, maybe even make a real friend!

Or not, she progressed through The Academy exactly like she had previously, and was completely baffled by all the social niceties she encountered.

While she’d been fully expecting to have her ass kicked when she arrived, and was not disappointed, it happened a lot less than she’d been expecting. Her familiarity with strict physical training and regimens certainly helped.

She learned many things over the next three years. She made a runic blade, and learned how to use it better than any amount of HEMA could’ve done. She learned to augment her abilities and those of her blade and other with magic, and while not as blisteringly fast or agile as other Demon classes, she far exceeded them in strength and endurance. She learned to apply the wings she gained when shifted to their fullest extent, able to quickly cover ground or rapidly brake. She also learned to apply her magic in a more active manner, with varying results.

Perhaps the biggest glaring error in her training was her disdain for the healing and support capabilities of a Valkyrie, her logic always being “If the enemy is dead fast enough I don’t need to heal them, now do I?”

Something she’s well aware of is the fact that she’s theoretically still going to be fighting as an employee of a private military company, and not of one of the different governments of the world.

Personality:

Alice predominantly has a cold, almost distant disposition to most people, though that will change depending on whether the person she’s speaking to is someone she likes (not a whole lot of people on that list) or someone she dislikes (lot more people on that list). To someone she likes, she can still seem distant, though it’s more a confusion with how to interact with them rather than an intentional barrier, nonetheless she will at the very least greet with a smile as opposed to the half-scowl. With someone she dislikes her attitude also changes considerably, the best term being “Bitchy”, though luckily it actually isn't easy to get oneself on the list of dislikes.

She can be very patient, up until a point when everything will explode, though if this does happen one must consider themselves supremely unlucky; she once waited four hours while standing to wait for a store to find something, only to discover they had in fact forgotten she was there after something happened, and they were able to bring it out shortly after.

Privately, she has an almost poetic way of looking at things, and can be very romantic in the 18th century Romanticism sense, and were someone to catch her in the middle of well, not being the hardass military chick, it’d be hard to gauge her reaction beyond “Flustered”.

Other:
I suppose this’d be a theme song, mainly when she’s not around other people.


She refers to her sword as Umbrae, Latin for "Of Shadow".

Jackets were mentioned earlier, she wears a military styled one wherever she goes when not shifted, for an idea of what I'm talking about: http://www.polyvore.com/cgi/img-thing?.out=jpg&size=l&tid=570499

If I think of anything else later I’ll put it here.