Maxine Riley Hyde {Finished}

[Kazza]

MAXINE RILEY HYDE

nickname -- ( MAX ) gender -- ( FEMALE ) age -- ( FIFTEEN ) b-day -- ( JUNE 1 ) species -- ( PIDGEOT POKEMORPH ) profession -- ( RANGER )

badges ¬

appearance ¬ Max is fairly plain looking, as far as first appearances go. She has dark brown hair and eyes of a slightly lighter colour and while she is well built, her physique doesn't bulge with muscles. She has lightly tanned skin, with many nasty scars, most of which are hidden beneath her clothes. Although she comes in at slightly above average height for a female of her age, she doesn't tower above the rest of the crowd. All in all, she looks fairly normal - that is, until one notices the great pair of wings on her back. As a Pidgeot pokemorph, Max considers herself lucky that all she has to show for the process is her wings, and not some hideous beak or unwieldly talons for feet - at least, not permanently. Her wings stretch almost four and a half metres from tip to tip, and do not fit comfortably beneath her clothes. As such, Max has cut slits in her shirts and jumpers to accommodate them, and often walks around with them folded on the outside of her clothes. That's not to say that she isn't capable of hiding them, but they tend to get cramps from being held too closely to her body. The wings themselves range from a pale cream-colour to a rich brown, starting darker at the primary flight feathers on the back, and growing lighter underneath where the downy feathers can be found. Max typically dresses casually, usually wearing jeans, t-shirts and boots or sneakers. She cares little for appearance, and aims to be comfortable instead of stylish. Like many pokemorphs, she has the ability to shift into a fully Pokemon form, should the need arise. This form looks much like a normal Pidgeot, although her irises are brown instead of black. Otherwise, there is little to distinguish her from an actual Pidgeot in this form.

personality ¬ As far as people go, there are easier ones to get along with than Max - she does not trust new people easily and prefers her own company. Lately, though, she's been pushing herself to get out of her shell a bit more and, little by little, she's hoping to overcome her mistrust of others. Her suspicion goes back a long way, though, and will not be easily overcome. At any rate, her lack of trust does not seem to apply to young children, animals, and most Pokemon. Lately, however, she has decided to dedicate herself to helping others, and is striving to become the best she can be. As such, she is out to prove herself, to everyone else and herself. Now that she has a goal she will strive to reach it, and she is always looking to improve. Everything she does, she tries her hardest at. She has no time for failure when it comes to herself, and she will not back down from whatever she puts her mind to. In spite of her intense need to succeed, though, this same standard does not apply to those around her, and so long as those around her try their best, they will have her respect. Much like she has no time for failure, she also has no time for her own weakness, and she will do her best to bury any fears or doubts she has. Beneath her strong front, she's still just a scared kid, and nightmares from her past still haunt her. Certain sounds and smells are enough to send her into a silent panic, which frustrates her, and results in a viscous cycle. She's also not all that great at talking to people, and often ends up in an awkward silence. To her, conversation can be a chore, and she enjoys casual, comfortable silence more than awkward small-talk. In spite of all of this, though, she still likes to have fun and wind down every once in a while, usually taking joy in feeling the wind in her feathers, or the sun on her face, or simply the company of those few she cares about.

history ¬

Max was born into a loving family - or, at least, she likes to imagine she was. In reality, she never knew her parents. Her earliest memories were of the laboratory in which she grew up. She, along with the many other children in the facility, was an experiment in the pokemorph process. Some, like her, were successful, or so the scientists said. Others, not so much. Those others, the so-called "failures", still haunt her dreams at night, with pained faces and unnatural, twisted lungs. Most did not last more than a few days. Some lived for years in pain. Max was lucky, in that the Pidgeot DNA had melded quite well with her own, and no complications had arisen from the procedure. It was her relative normalcy, save for her wings, that earned her the name Max - a joke by one of the scientists who had read a certain book series. It was meant to be a joke, but over the years, Max came to quite like the name, even keeping it after she left.
Most of her early years were spent living in the labs, sleeping in a shared dorm with the other pokemorph children. The days were filled with classes, lessons, tests. Max hated the tests. Some were better than others - motor skill tests, IQ test. Others were more annoyance than anything else, perhaps slightly painful - blood tests, fitness exams. Some, though, were terrifying, involving fights with Pokemon, and sometimes other children like herself. It was horrible, but bearable - until, one day, one of the children from her dorm, a close friend of hers, was killed in one of the fights. It was then that she realised she had to leave. She began to plan for the eventuality - it was either escape, or death, and she had no intention of dying.
She planned in secret, watching the guards, the scientists, the cameras. She learnt their movements and routines, the places that the surveillance couldn't see. Her first attempt failed to take into account the floor-plans, and she lost her way in the hallways of the lab, was caught before she could get too far. The punishment was hard - she was removed from the dormitory, confined to a cage in a room with the less "social" experiments, starved for days.
The second attempt ended much the same when she set off a silent alarm. Again, she was confined and punished.
With each failed attempt she grew more and more desperate, and as more time passed, the number of her fellow pokemorphs, the ones she had grown up with, began to dwindle as the battles grew more viscous, or they were sold off. With each day that passed, her hopes of ever leaving dwindled and she began to despair.
Her eventual escape did not come of her own agency. One day, as she was trying to sleep, she heard it, out in the hallway - the sounds of quiet footsteps. No guards were meant to be passing by at that time. They went past and she would have forgotten all about it, had that been it. Then came the sound of gunshots, and screaming. Smoke began to poor through the cracks in the door to the room, followed by flames, hungry and reaching. They licked at the walls, at the sides of her cage. She was sure she would die, until the door was knocked down. Someone ran into the room and opened the cages, then ran back out. Max did not stop to think, instead ceased her chance to escape. The labs burnt around her, and she barely made it out into the night. She took to the skies, did not look back.
She flew for hours across empty seas until she could fly no more, and she swam instead. Finally, exhaustion overtook her, and she was sure she would drown. Hours later, she came to on a beach. A ranger had pulled her to the shore.
At first, Max was suspicious of her kindness, but eventually she came to realise that the woman had not saved her for any reason other than to help. Over the next few weeks, she came to trust the woman, who took her in, fed her and cared for her. Max took her last name as her own, and the woman, named Sarah, treated her as a daughter.
A year passed, and the wounds of her past slowly began to fade. With time to think about what she wanted to do with her new freedom and life, the teenager thought of how her new mother had saved her when she didn't have to.
After discussing it with Sarah, Max set her mind on becoming a Pokemon ranger. Decision made, Max prepared herself, and set out on her journey to become a Pokemon ranger, leaving her new home on the edge of the Laokian region to head to Nirven Town and begin on her path to becoming a ranger.

[Nemechu]

ACCEPTED!