Badaboom. Done.
Full name: Riley Dauth
Age: 15
Appearance: Riley still hasn't ever managed to get his body past anything that can be called scrawny. Thanks to his ridiculous metabolism, he walks a silk line between underweight and normal weight. He's not exceptionally tall either, just about scraping 5'7'', maybe a half inch shorter, but it passes for his age, and he is confident he'll catch up with a growth spurt sometime next summer. His skin is light and plain-looking. He has a flaring, fleshy nose, and possesses dark brown, downturned eyes, and just as dark medium length hair. He lets the front skim his eyebrows in a messy fringe that just slightly juts forward and curls back in to gently scrape his brows, instead of sticking like tar against his forehead. He lets the sides cover his ears, and the back feather out in a small mullet that reaches just above his collar. His visage looks slightly longer than it is wide, and his jawline ends in a hearty point.
He doesn't dress to belong to any clique or youth subculture or to be popular of any sort. He likes to dress in clothes he thinks look fine on him and are comfortable to wear with a heavy dose of the unremarkable. Washed green cargo ¾ trousers work fine for him, and he usually wears a simple t-shirt, with or without a plaid button down shirt or short-sleeved denim jacket over it.
History: Riley Dauth was born in Sydney, Australia, the only child of a working class family who took residence in an single-storey detached home in the suburb of Carramar to his mother Stacey, and his father Peter. He was enrolled in a public primary school, where he was a quiet, intelligent, introverted young kid. He put up with some teasing from his classmates, and made few but very good friends as a kid, including his childhood friend Lazlow. Alone, they didn't seem like much, but in a duo, the two coaxed out their playful, mischievous sides. Riley was just 7 years old when he realised what ability he had, when he began to imitate his pet cat surprisingly naturally, and to his shock his physical form began to shift. In panic, he yelled for his parents to help him, but could utter nothing but meows. Yearning to return to his human form turned him back, but the experience left him frightened and unsure of how to explain what happened to his parents. He didn't know whether there were others in his area who had similar powers, so he kept quiet about it to most people except for his parents, and Lazlow, who showed support for him and explained that there were a handful of people around the world who had powers like him.
Despite the revelation and apparent acceptance of his parents that he was special, his father became uneasy about raising a mutated child. The conflict between his parents stayed unresolved, and the bickering only got worse and worse. When Riley's mother also found out her husband had an affair with one of his co-workers, the marriage broke apart, and she filed a divorce. The unhappy ending to the marriage made Riley feel more than just a tad insecure about his powers, and he often thought he was the cause for the divorce. He stayed with his mother, who at the time got close to an American, Frank Barnsley, who was temporarily living in Australia to backpack the city and the surrounding area. The two kept seeing each other, and got into a relationship. He had little issue with Riley's powers, and got along with him alright. After about a year, when Frank's working holiday visa expired, he and Riley's mother decided they would get married and move to Millville, California.
Riley was nervous about the move. He wasn't sure whether he could handle adapting to the rural lifestyle, living in a village of less than 800 inhabitants. His mother made a point of it that Riley retained his surname of birth, to make the process easier for him, and he got placed in Millville Elementary School. Frank worked most days as a farm hand on the ranch of one of the richer land owners, and his mother found employment as a waitress in the local café to support the upkeep. This left Riley at home and alone after school until the evenings, so he mostly kept himself occupied with reading. His ability always stayed in the back of his mind, and he felt uncomfortable opening up about it in school, and he also missed his friend Lazlow back in Aus.
When he became 14, he had to travel to Palo Cedro, to the west of Millville, every weekday to go to the Foothill High School in that town. There his talents in English came to their full right. He began to take an interest in writing as well, and successfully wrote his first novel when he was 14. He and his parents searched around for a while to find a small publisher which agreed to distribute the book and cut him a small portion of the profit. When he got older, he put more practice in his abilities. He realised the limitations in his abilities and what triggered them to activate, and experimented with different forms. He put effort to research his species via the internet, and felt more comfortable with animals he had seen at some point before, especially those that belonged to his native Australia. His parents took note of his eagreness to develop his talents, and when he was 15, they found some way to fund his tuition to send him to the Gilded Halls so that perhaps there, he could have proper guidance with his supernatural talents.
Ability name: Animal Shapeshifting
Explanation: Riley is capable of shifting his physical form into any animal that he can think of. He can trigger his power by mentally projecting himself in the form of the animal and deeply concentrate on his physical transformation. Homing in on an animal transformation requires him to have seen the animal at least once, or otherwise have a deep knowledge of the physical structure of the animal he shapeshifts into. When in any animal form, Riley will have the physical prowess of his animal. His mind remains human throughout the transformation, but it can go more feral if he stays in a form for extended periods of time.
Limitations:
- He must know what the animal looks like before he can shift into it. This can get pretty precise, so it often takes weeks of preparation such as research on the species (just knowing the genus doesn't work) before he can use it. The number of forms he is comfortable with using are limited, but can expand with age and experience. His current forms include: a domestic cat (british shorthair), a wedge-tailed eagle, a red fox, a brown rat, and an eastern grey kangaroo.
- Using his powers requires deep concentration for at least half a minute until the transformation is complete. If he snaps out of it, he reverts to his human form. He requires the same concentration when shifting back to human, and failure shifts him back to his animal form.
- He can only safely stay within an animal form for around 2 hours. After this time, he runs the risk of his transformation becoming permanent.
- If he's already shifted into an animal, he cannot shift into a completely new one again, except for reverting to his human form, for around 2 hours as well, he also has to recover once he is back to his human form.
- His instincts can overtake his mind if he stays in his animal form for a considerable time, which warns him he should probably get back to his human form before it's too late.
- He cannot speak in an animal form, since he lacks the voice box to do so.
- In the presence of loud high-pitched noises, it's nearly impossible for him to switch back. Combined with the risks of staying in his animal form for too long, this can be problematic.
- (OOC: For the sake of PG-13ness, he won't end up butt naked when he returns to his human form)
Room Number: 2