Heather Lachlan/Crow

[Crow]

Heather Lachlan

Nickname:
Codename: Crow
Preferred name: Code name or an alias. No one knows her real name and she will be very interested in anyone that uses it.
Canon or Non-canon: Non-Canon
Gender: Female
Sexual Orientation: Omnisexual
Marital Status: Single
Birthplace: Lorraine, NY
Current Residence: Central Park
DOB: 23 August
Age: 22
Occupation: Spy, blackmailer, information broker. Assassin or thief when necessary.
Species:Mutant
Affiliation: Unaffiliated

Shown in the Light of Day

Height: 5’8”
Weight:105 lbs
Hair color: Red
Eye color: Green
Identifying features: Crow has a multitude of scars in many differ places. The most distinctive is a branching electrical scar running from her right shoulder down her arm and torso.
Appearance:

Standing at 5’8” and weighing a little over a hundred pounds, Crow is best described as underweight. Not in the glamorous, runway-model way, unfortunately. Her posture is usually terrible, her muscle mass is somewhat lacking, and her demeanor alternates between intently focused and twitching. She has the tendency to forget about eating, or just push it off her busy schedule. Side effects of her telepathy tend to make keeping food in a bit difficult, too. When Crow does get around to eating, it usually ends up being in the form of fast food and coffee, with all their nutritional value. Her drug of choice is caffeine, seeing as it is much more efficient than real sleep. Crow's physical endurance is somewhat impressive, however, and she regularly goes for several days without stopping to rest or eat. She has a remarkably high pain tolerance, and can keep going for a while in spite of serious injuries. Coincidentally, she also has numerous scars.

Crow's wardrobe is incredibly varied, and when necessary, she can blend into nearly any situation. Her horrible posture can disappear in an instant, and when she actually feels like cleaning up, she can be quite pretty. Of course, most of the time she really doesn't feel like cleaning up. Crow bathes regularly...enough...but she doesn't bother with makeup, and dresses like a homeless person when she has the luxury. It's comfortable, and if she wears nice things she'll just wreck them anyway. Besides, she likes having people underestimate her. It makes life easier.

*Uniform:

Crow charges into battle naked. Also a bear. She does happen to own one SHIELD uniform, but it’s mostly a trophy.

Power Corrupts Absolutely

Power Origin: Mutant
Powers:

Animalistic Shapeshifter: Simply put, Crow is able to turn into animals. More accurately, she can change herself on a molecular level into any creature with a moderately complex nervous system—generally insect level and up. Although there is no real size limit in either direction, larger changes will require more time and focus. Still, even the largest differences will take just a little over a minute. It is possible for her to 'snap' into forms instantaneously, but it is very stressful. Ideally, she shouldn't do it more than a few times a day. To some extent, she can also combine two or more animal forms in various ways, such as adding wings to a red panda, or increasing the size of a bear. These are more difficult to do than plain shape changes, however, and generally take several minutes to fully implement. Sometimes, however, being an elephant-sized bear is very useful.

Adding animal traits onto a human form is more difficult. If necessary, however, she can change her hair color, grow claws, or the like. She generally keeps her senses and reflexes enhanced, which is a fairly easy change and can prove very useful. She will go back to a normal human state if purposefully relaxing—being able to hear everything gets annoying sometimes—or if she knows she'll be encountering loud noises (like gunfire). Fine manipulation of features, however, is beyond her—she cannot imitate another human. If she has an hour or two of free time, a mirror, and a photograph of the person she's imitating, she can make herself similar enough to be mistaken for them at a distance. It would probably be easier to do this with stage makeup and hair dye.

All changes, no matter how simple, require some amount of focus. This is mainly to ensure that everything is in the proper place. Bringing clothing with her through various forms requires a little bit of focus as well, and if fatigued or distracted enough she might just end up naked. Nothing other than basic clothing (and what she can fit in her pockets) can be shifted with. Any internal objects will shift to the closest possible equivalent based on her new size and biology. Although this means that changing forms after eating won’t kill her, any implants will continue to function. Biological organisms tend to be less resistant to this changing—this means she is nearly immune to disease, but also can’t stay pregnant very long.

Overuse of any sort of shifting causes both physical and mental stress, and leaves the possibility of going feral.

Healing Factor: Crow has yet to figure this part out about her powers, and it is unlikely she will figure it out without some sort of outside impetus. Currently, if she changes shape while injured, she is prone to making her injuries worse. She hasn't realized that shifting can also fix injuries. This healing will have to be consciously used, however, and will require a good deal of concentration and effort. It will not work if she is already exhausted or otherwise incapable of changing shape. 'Tired' is generally considered better than 'bleeding out', however.

Animalistic Telepath: Crow can talk to animals. The complexity of this varies based on the intelligence of the given animal, with the least complex giving little more than a sense of presence, while parrots, apes, and some cetaceans can engage in long, philosophical discussions. With a few exceptions insects and fish only give off base empathy or single-word thoughts, whereas the average mammal and bird can use sentences, and relay emotions, senses, and ideas. Crow only picks up on insects a few meters away; a hundred meters, if she's actively searching. More intelligent animals can be picked up from several miles. Of course, just being able to talk to animals isn't particularly useful—they don't necessarily listen or respond, much less do one's bidding. That's why she carries around bird seed and dried fruit as bribes. One never knows when they might need a rodent to go spying. Although her telepathy cannot be shut off, she's gotten fairly good at ignoring it. Still, she's prone to distraction, and breeding seasons produce...interesting...changes in her personality.

To some extent, Crow is capable of more complex telepathic manipulations. She can read memories—limited by the animal in question's capabilities—alter emotions, and instill compulsions or commands. Animals that she has contact with frequently will become more intelligent, and their mentality will be closer to human. In reverse, Crow becomes more animalistic with frequent contact. Hers is generally temporary; the increased intelligence is permanent. With prolonged contact and a good deal of effort, it is possible for her to teach a dog to read, but this would take several long sessions of mental manipulation. With telepathic training, it will be possible for her to do more with her telepathy.

Ferals and animalistic mutants can be picked up on, but give off a weaker signal—they're still human, after all, and mostly out of range of her abilities. Contact with them is limited to empathy, telepathy, and simple manipulation. Although she is capable of simple mental attacks, and small emotional changes, she cannot read their memories, or compel them to do anything. The more animalistic the mutant in question is, the more contact she has with them.

Weaknesses:

Where to start. She has acute paranoia (although reasonably so, given her line of work), her telepathy make her effectively schizophrenic and her feral nature makes her somewhat bipolar, while her empathy gives her near-constant migraines and nausea. She rarely eats or sleeps. If she is injured while shapeshifting, she tends to rip wounds into new, exciting shapes and sizes. Considering how many people try shooting her, it means she gets injured frequently and heals slowly. When she goes feral, she doesn’t necessarily enter into a helpful berserker rage; she simply mimics natural animal behaviors. Her powers are doing their very best to kill her, and her tendency to blackmail everyone she deems useless means that there’s always plenty of actual people that want to kill her too. In short, she’s pretty much the mutant version of Lindsay Lohan.

Getting to the Root of the Problem

Personality:

Both calculating and self-assured, Crow is very aware of her own abilities and limits—and she's generally observant enough to figure out what they are in others', too. She is an excellent reader of faces, able to tell emotions and lies easily. And if it means she knows how to manipulate people too, well, she can't afford to let any of her skills go to waste. In reverse of this, Crow is also a skilled actress. Her lies and bluffs are nothing short of impeccable, and she is a master at making her not-so-intimidating self a little more imposing. Her general demeanor is cool, collected, and distant, even if she is very interested in the current situation. She plays her cards very close, after all, and will go out of her way to be a bit of an enigma.

Crow might not be a gossip hound, per se, but she does keep up on all the latest blackmail. She has this unfortunate habit of knowing everything about everyone, no matter how well they try to keep it hidden. She doesn't necessarily use—or sell—this information, but has no problems doing so if the need arises. Mostly, she enjoys knowing things that no one else does, and pulling it out when necessary. Knowledge is power, after all, and she aspires to be one of the movers and shakers. Also, she really doesn't like getting surprised. If she knows people better than they know themselves, it's easier to anticipate what they'll do. Besides, it freaks people out, and that's just good fun. If there's something going on in New York City that she doesn't know about, it's because it is hidden amazingly well.

Although Crow might act confident and fearless, she's actually just a really good liar. The truth lies much closer to paranoia. Some of her fears are justified, of course—there really are people out to get her, and many of her 'friends' would have no problem turning her over for the right price. She is constantly aware of everything and everyone around her. To not do so makes her an easy target, and she has no intentions of getting killed. She trusts no one completely, and will go out of her way to silence anyone who knows her secrets. On the other hand, this means she's always prepared for the worst, which means she's pleasantly surprised when things actually go her way. She consideres her given name to be a liability, and will never give it out.

Stemming off of this are whole bunch of commitment and authority issues. Both platonic and romantic relationships are very difficult for her, and rarely last long. She always works freelance, and will rarely claim loyalty to an employer, or work for one long-term. She's had some bad experiences with that, after all, and now centers her actions around politics alone. Even simple alliances tend to make her twitchy. Crow never really settles down, instead switching apartments every few months—even if the new location is only a few blocks away, she finds it necessary. Not that she stays in that much, either. Crow generally sleeps in trees, just to make herself harder to track down. Everything that actually matters to her is set into a backpack, ready for an emergency disappearance. She prides herself on this mobility, and it's one of the reasons she hasn't been killed off yet.

Although it might seem strange, Crow has a visceral fear of telepaths. This stems partly from her need for control at all times, and partly from her prolific use of lies, secrets, and bluffs. She also realizes that most of the information she has could be incredibly dangerous in the wrong hand. The thought of having someone else in her head terrifies her, much less having them take it over. They are the one group of people she will leave alone, to the point of avoiding them at any cost. Of course, on the other end of the spectrum she tends to have...strange...reactions around ferals, as they set off her own tendencies. But although they might make her even less predictable than usual, she doesn't tend to fear them—at least, not most.

Family:

• Jake Lachlan, Father
  
• Mary Lachlan, Mother
  
• Claudia O’Brian, Grandmother
  
• David O’Brian, Grandfather
  

Background:

Amazingly enough, Heather Lachlan’s early life was normal enough. She was raised in upstate New York, had caring parents, and went to Catholic school. She was even a decent enough student—maybe not the top of the class, but good enough to satisfy her teachers and parents. Her rebellious streak was noticeable even then, but it was never particularly harmful. Annoying to everyone around her, definitely. Heather was the leader of her group of friends; a half-dozen girls that were almost as skilled at getting out of trouble as they were getting into it. She was always the best at coming up with diabolical schemes to keep them busy after school. Other than being ginger, she was a pretty normal child.

When Heather was 12, she began to notice changes to her body. She had gotten all the talks on puberty, and figured hair in strange places was normal enough. It was a lot heavier than she expected, though, and the growth of a tail definitely gave her pause. Neither the school nor her parents had mentioned anything about turning into a malamute. It was two days before she figured out how to turn human again. Instead of telling her parents what happened—she was pretty sure it was abnormal—she decided to concoct a runaround story of staying over a friend’s house for the weekend. It worked well enough, and Heather tried to figure out what was going on.

It was a few months later that she began to hear voices in her head, and realized she was hearing the family dog. Of course, no one else had seen her change shapes—and she couldn’t exactly prove that she could talk to animals. Heather was convinced she was going crazy. She had headaches constantly, was too distracted to focus on anything for more than a few minutes, and increasingly spent her time alone. If she wasn’t going crazy, she figured it would be best to keep anyone from learning she could do…weird things. In private she practiced using her powers, though, and figured out she could turn into nearly anything around her. It was turning back human that proved to be difficult. She was also getting strange urges with increasing regularity. Although sometimes it was as innocent as chasing squirrels, well…the following spring was eye-opening. After one memorable—and unpleasant—incident with a mallard drake, she decided she needed to leave. She couldn’t face her family or friends.
Heather was already a duck at the time—and couldn’t figure out how to turn back—and so she flew. She had no clue where she was going, other than away, but eventually she ended up in New York City. This time she was trapped as a duck for several weeks, and laying eggs in the interim didn’t exactly make her situation any better. After finally managing to turn human again, she found shelter with a group of other strays. It was there that she learned the term ‘mutant’. Although it confirmed that she wasn’t going insane, she still couldn’t bear to go back home. Weeks extended into months, and then years. Heather learned how to take care of herself, and began to figure out how to control her powers. It was then she adopted the name Crow, mainly to make sure she couldn’t be linked back to her old life. She was still convinced this wasn’t permanent, but she didn’t want it to end prematurely.

It wasn’t long before Crow decided dumpster-diving and begging really weren’t her life ambitions. She was learning to control her powers, and she could do better than that. Petty theft was enough to make sure she had enough food and shelter, but she quickly moved up to larger crimes. As it turned out, being able to turn into houseflies was great for stealing things. It wasn’t long before she was taking jobs from others. She was sixteen when she performed her first museum heist, and shortly thereafter she was hired to steal a set of documents from the Pentagon. It went over well, but her original employer ended up getting caught and turning over her name. It was then that Crow had to evade her first assassins.

It didn’t take long for Crow to realize that people were willing to pay much more for secrets than physical objects, and she moved into espionage like it had been her life’s work. Listening to conversations and planting bugs was much easier than stealing physical objects, and far more useful. The right information could get anyone to stop in their tracks. Knowledge was power, and blackmail was absolutely amazing. Granted, it meant she had even more people trying to kill her. It kept her sharp and made sure she didn’t get too ambitious. When she was seventeen, she decided to finally put her telepathy—ignored up until now—to use. Pigeons had excellent memories, and overheard everything that happened in the city. She persuaded a flock of them to report back to her, in exchange for food and shelter. It was far more successful than she anticipated, and only took a few months before she felt she had dirt on anyone and everyone that mattered. It wasn’t too long after that before she realized her offshore bank accounts had more money than she knew what to do with.

A few years into her new line of work, Crow was contacted by SHIELD. They needed information about a certain company, and she was in a better position to find it than any of their agents. She accepted readily enough—the money was good, and she didn't have anything else to do at the time. She found what they needed quickly, and was paid in full. She continued on for several more jobs before they offered her a deal: either start working for them, or be considered a threat and get treated as such. Crow was still leery of settling down to work for one employer, and decided to go for the latter. A week later, she found a pair of agents trying to track her movements. Which was funny in itself; they were mostly unsuccessful. Crow decided to discuss business with them, though, and ended up killing one of them in the confrontation that followed.

SHIELD was less than pleased about this, and over the next few months, Crow kept finding agents all over her city. Annoyed—mostly because of the inconvenience they caused—she decided to send Nick Fury a strongly worded letter. She left it on his desk. In the helicarrier. Getting in and out without being seen was far easier than it should have been. She added a few notes about that into the letter, but for some reason he wasn't happy and didn't stop sending agents. Oh well. She tried. It wasn’t a huge issue, until SHIELD sent a Psi-Ops agent after her. Unlike the rest, he managed to stop her. Coincidentally, it was about then that Crow discovered she had no defenses against real telepaths. It was only through a stroke of luck that she managed to break free of his control. She ended up killing him before he could report back to SHIELD on anything he’d found, thankfully.

Of course, attracting more attention wasn't necessarily a good thing. It meant better work, sure, but it meant that more people were out to kill her, and more groups out to catch her. Not a fun time. She was careful to the point of paranoia, sure, but there would always be someone smarter and tougher. Crow set up several extra security measures, and kept a closer eye on everything that went on in New York City. She also put a backup plan into her safehouses—if she ever failed to check in with them for six months, all the information they contained would be released to SHIELD and various media sources. If she was going to die, she figured that she might as well take the world down with her. Of course, there was a good chance her powers would end up being the thing to kill her. She decided to overlook that detail.

No One Likes a Show-Off

Skills: Does your character have any skills that are separate from your character’s powers? Are they a Five Star Cook or Black Belt? This is where you explain them. Make sure it is explained in history how they may have acquires such skills.[/I] Feel free to delete this section if it is not applicable.

• Skilled reader of expressions; can spot a lie from a mile away. Almost completely unreadable herself.
  
• Skilled burglar and spy. There is very little she can’t break into, even without the use of her powers.
  
• Working knowledge of electronic and digital security systems.
  
• Decent at pickpocketing, sleight of hand, and cheating at cards.
  

Weapons: If your character uses weapons, list them. Be Realistic and explain where they have acquired them. if they don’t use weapons, feel free to delete.

• Being able to grow claws at will is occasionally very useful.
  
  
• Never carries any firearms regularly—guns are loud and obvious—but owns and knows how to use a Dragonov SVDS sniper rifle. Just in case.
  
  
• Likes grenades a little too much for anyone’s well-being.
  
  
• Has access to (does not regularly carry) botulinum.
  

Equipment: Gadgeteer? Super Inventor? Tony Stark or Forge? List any equipment your character might utilize on a regular basis here. This includes vehicles, code breakers, and other things. Feel free to delete if Inapplicable.

• Untraceable cell phone
  
• Painkillers
  
• Occasionally steals prototypes from SHIELD. Only carries them if she thinks they’ll be useful.
  
• Has the contacts and resources to obtain nearly anything she needs for her line of work.
  
• Usually carries jerky and bird seed.
  

Anything else?: Anything else we should know?

To Meet Expectations

RP sample:

Lol nope.

Other characters: Forge, Cheryl Harrison, Ghost.
My Name: Mel

[Magneto]

All good here. Approved.

[Agent Collie]