Application
User Name/Nick: Cena
User LJ: lovefornature
AIM/IM: starvetheego
E-mail: darkisthehorizon@gmail.com
Other Characters: CLU 2.0
Character Name: Cassie
Series: Animorphs
Age: 19
From When?: At the end, after the rest of the Animorphs leave Earth.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Yes, Cassie took part in all of what the other Animorphs did, including all the violence. Yet I think she recognized that not only was a lot of it horrible, but she actively sought other methods to help win the war that didn't resort to violence. Cassie is also very sympathetic towards others (even her enemies), and always wants to help people.
Item: Her textbook 'Veterinary Medicine: An Illustrated History". The words on the cover's back will alert her about her Inmate.
Abilities/Powers: Cassie is an Animorph. This means that she can morph into any animal she touches, with the drawback that if she does not morph back within two hours she'll be trapped in that form forever. Other than this, she is a regular human.
Cassie is also what the Andalites call an "estreen", which means she has a natural talent for morphing. She can control the process to make it look less grotesque, and she can morph repeatedly within a short time without tiring as easily as others would.
Personality: Cassie is, in a word, compassionate. Her caring, empathetic nature makes it easy for others to come to her for advice and comfort. She is also quite perceptive and sensitive to the way that others feel, and her warmth tends to encourage others to open up about their problems to her. With the Animorphs, she sometimes acted as the 'team therapist' when it got rough, and she was usually the 'mediator' and peace-maker when problems arose.
Animals have always been a huge part of Cassie's life. Back before the war went public, her father ran a Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic for injured wildlife out of the family's barn, and her mother worked as the head vet for a zoo within an amusement park called 'The Gardens.' This family legacy, no doubt, helped Cassie develop a deep love for nature and animals, and also led to her desire to become a vet when she was older. She was considered the tree-hugger and nature-lover of the group, and Marco sometimes jokingly referred to her as "Earth Mother" because of it. But, her love of animals also meant that there was a constant struggle in her about the morality of using morphs, and of killing other sentient creatures.
At her core, Cassie is a good-hearted and peaceful person. But her ability to sense (and anticipate) the way that others feel and think has allowed her to sometimes manipulate (or, at least, help others to manipulate) someone when it's needed--this was especially seen in the case of David, as she was the mastermind behind the plan to trap him as a rat. She not only guessed his emotions correctly, but predicted his reactions ahead of time and, based on that, came up with the plan to have him trapped. And it worked perfectly. David--as Cassie knew he would--fell for the various tricks that the Animorphs employed on him, particularly since a lot of it fed his growing ego. There are also some times where Cassie can be seen as hypocritical--she always tried to hold strong to her morals, but yet still participated in the killing. One example in particular was when Jake flushed nearly seventeen thousand helpless Yeerks into space to die. While it clearly caused her some internal conflict and discomfort (seen later on, when Marco tries to explain to Jake that it was necessary, and Cassie shies away from agreeing with him or offering her own opinion, and even appears to be a bit uncertain about it), Cassie initially tries to justify it to Erek--and almost says that they'd massacred so many helpless Yeerks merely as a diversion.
The Drode, the Crayak's lackey, once described her as a 'killer with a conscience'. Cassie is a strongly moral person, and always questioned whether war and violence was the best choice to make to counter the Yeerks' invasion. While, as an Animorph, she naturally needed to be violent and kill others, there were times where Cassie would seek out an alternative way to deal with an issue. She was sometimes even sympathetic towards her enemies to the point that it was detrimental to herself (and others) in some way. At one point, after she'd quit, Cassie agreed to become a nothlit caterpillar (which meant she'd overstay the two hours and become stuck as one the rest of her life) if a Yeerk, named Aftran, would free the little girl that she controlled. Cassie also handed the Escafil device (the cube that gave morphing powers) to their enemy (and Jake's brother) Tom, to make it so Jake wouldn't have to kill his own brother. Both of these choices didn't go over very well with the rest of the Animorphs, but they were things she felt she needed to do.
However, even as dangerous as her actions have sometimes been, there has always tended to be a positive gain in the long run. The Yeerk Aftran eventually formed the Yeerk Peace Movement, a group of Yeerks that only took voluntary controllers and searched for a way to coexist with their hosts peacefully (even if it meant the Yeerk would have no host). And letting Tom's Yeerk have the morphing cube showed the Yeerks another way (besides controlling others) to gain all the senses that they lacked in their natural form. So while her actions can sometimes be seen as reckless, there always seems to be a certain foresight to what she does. Cassie even argues to Ax, while trying to justify her actions in letting the Yeerks have the cube, that she hoped it would show the Yeerks another way to live without controlling hosts. And, as some of the other characters have pointed out throughout the series, Cassie is able to pick out the subtle connections and possibilities that most other people don't (or refuse to) see.
After the war ended, Cassie settled into the role one would expect her to. She became an activist and spokesperson for the now free Hork-Bajir population, and became an advisor on the President's sub-cabinet on matters that concerned the aliens that lived on Earth now. She also spent some of her time traveling around as an animal conservationist (still trying to save the world, even after the world had been saved), and took night classes with the intent to become a vet. Out of all the Animorphs, Cassie, as well as Marco, were perhaps the only ones to move on from the war. Cassie even mentions that the two of them have 'prospered' while the others had a much rougher time handling life after the war.
So while Cassie may look young, she is very far from naive or inexperienced. The few years that she spent as an Animorph packed an entire lifetime of experiences in war, death, slavery, and violence into her. Cassie had to grow up fast, and she--along with the other Animorphs--have been through a lot.
On the Barge, Cassie will most likely happily embrace her job as a Warden. She'll want to be as helpful as she can to those around her, and for her Inmate, she will be protective and want to listen and help them work through their problems.
Path to Redemption: N/A
History: Cassie and her family lived on a farm that had been inherited down from as far back as the civil war era. It was remodeled into a Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic where her father, Walter, worked as a wildlife and livestock veterinarian. Her mother Michelle worked with animals at a zoo/amusement park called 'The Gardens.' Cassie, herself, spent a good amount of time assisting her father at the Clinic, always happy to get her hands dirtied (and clothes, as Rachel would always lament) as she helped.
Her existence as an Animorph (and the realization that Earth had been, for many years, under attack by an alien species) started on one fateful night, when Cassie and Rachel ran into Jake, Marco, and Tobias at the mall. The five of them decided to take a shortcut through an abandoned construction site on the way home. On the way, they came across a dying alien whose ship had crash landed. This alien, an Andalite named Elfangor, gave them the ability to morph into any animal that they touched. He then told them about a secret alien invasion, of the Yeerks and how oblivious the human race was to their presence. Not too soon after this, another ship landed--a Yeerk ship. As the Animorphs hid from view, the first and only Andalite controller, Visser Three, emerged from the ship accompanied by Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. The Visser taunted his wounded enemy, then morphed into a monstrous creature and devoured him (to the Animorph's complete horror).
And so, the task to prevent a total takeover fell squarely onto the shoulders of these five kids.
Thus began the next three years of their lives--days and hellish days of fighting, killing, hiding, terror, and constantly losing ground against the Yeerks as they waited for the Andalites to come help them. The Animorphs were never supposed to be the main resistance against the Yeerks, not against such a powerful and widespread foe, but the Andalites never put Earth at a top priority. Even during the few times the Animorphs were able to contact them, the Andalite military always assumed that the humans were attempting to place more priority on their situation than was necessary--which, later on, they realized they were horribly wrong about. When they finally did pay attention, the Yeerk presence on Earth was overwhelming.
Towards the end of the series, the battles became much more dire and the stakes much higher. The Yeerks were able to figure out that the Animorphs were, in fact, humans--as well as who they were and where they lived. This meant that Cassie and the rest of the Animorphs had to evacuate their families to a safe place to hide.
Visser Three, the Andalite controller and main villain, had also gotten himself promoted to Visser One by this point, and the Yeerks had begun to herd humans en masse via the subway to be infested. When the Animorphs discovered this, they immediately set in motion a plan to destroy the Yeerk Pool complex with explosives. They succeed in doing this, but also end up destroying a large chunk of their hometown in the process. With this move, the war between human and Yeerk became open and all out.
Desperate, and without their only source of nourishment, the Yeerks landed their Pool Ship on Earth. The Animorphs used this opportunity to infiltrate it, take control, and outmaneuver Visser One. With the ship in hand and Visser One defeated, the Animorphs were able to force the Yeerks to surrender. The win wasn't without some massive personal losses, however. Jake lost his brother Tom, and the Animorphs lost Rachel (who was also Jake's cousin) in the process. The Auxiliary Animorphs, a group of seventeen kids that the Animorphs had just recruited, were also killed in the battle. Visser One was taken as a prisoner of war, and forced to stand trial for his war crimes. The Visser, a Yeerk who had antagonized the group since the beginning of the series, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
After that, the Animorphs became massive celebrities, regarded as brave heroes to the public.
Yet the war had definitely changed everything. Jake became clinically depressed, Tobias disappeared altogether, and Marco reveled in his celebrity status, but lived a shallow life. Cassie, herself, didn't care for stardom. Even when she did do interviews, she always tended to speak about the moral subtext beneath each battle or decision that had been made--not something the media (or public) was particularly interested in hearing about. But with her life returned to some faint semblance of normalcy (if, really, you could call it that), Cassie had to make peace with the last three years and move on with her life. During this time she wrote a book called 'Insights on the Animal Mind', was hired by the president as a Special Assistant to the President for Resident Aliens, and dated a decent guy named Ronnie Chambers (the Californian Governor's liaison to the Hork-Bajir). On top of work, Cassie also started to take night classes to become a veterinarian.
At the end--after they'd learned that Ax had been kidnapped by Yeerks and taken into territory that the Andalites themselves couldn't enter--Cassie decided to listen to Jake and stay on Earth while the rest of them (Jake, Marco, and Tobias) set off on a suicidal mission to rescue Ax. The fate of the other Animorphs isn't known to her.
Here are a couple wikipedia/wikia links for more history:
Animorphs Wikia.
Wikipedia.
And a(n extensive) list of Animorphs books, for an even more complete history of all the Animorphs went through: Here.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The video flickers on, and within the comm's frame sits a young woman with a bright smile. She wears overalls with a plaid shirt, and her dark hair is tied back away from her soft face. Behind her is a modest, cluttered room--the oak paneled walls are covered with a messy array of official (and non-official)-looking papers, along with various photographs of animals tacked into the wood. If you look close enough Cassie is in one of the pictures, dressed in hiking attire and sporting a huge backpack, standing happily next to a man with the same outdoors-y type gear.
Cassie gives a nice, excited wave to the camera, then sits back.]
Hi there, everyone! I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Cassie, one of the new Wardens here. [Despite it all, Cassie appears maybe a tad nervous about this. Public speaking, ugh. It's never been fun.] I've already explored the ship a little bit, but [the camera gets picked up, then we're shown a quick view of her room. Then she settles back down, and centers the camera on herself again] I have to say, I didn't really expect to see my own room here. It feels so oddly out of place... just so normal, compared to everything else.
Anyway. Do you guys know if there is anything more that I should know about this place, beyond the basics? [Then there's a pause as she tries to think about what else she wants to say. Then, ah!:] And oh yes! Are there any pets aboard? If so, I'd love to volunteer as a vet. I have some previous experience with animal care, and [her hand taps briefly against the veterinary textbook next to her on the desk] I'm taking a couple classes to become a vet. So hopefully I can be of help somehow.
Sample RP: Cassie offered a warm smile and wave at the nearest person that passed by, then slipped into the CES and closed the door behind her. The environment shifted around her in subtle ways, adjusting to a more temperate forest landscape--the same type that was around her old farmhouse.
She took in a deep breath, inhaled the familiar scent of the forest. It caused a dull pang of nostalgia in her, made her miss home a little bit and all the memories that came with it. But really, this place hadn't been home for a few years now. Cassie had moved out from her parents' house not too soon after the war had ended, and she'd been too busy with her work to come visit all that often--her schedule hadn't really allowed it. One day she'd find herself in Yellowstone working with Toby and the rest of the Hork-Bajir population, then the next day she'd be whisked off via private government jet to some tropical rainforest somewhere.
Not that she didn't completely love her job, and what she did. She had the opportunity to make a difference again, to help animals and people and aliens all over the world. It was her dream, come true. But somehow, in the back of her mind, she always wondered if that was terrible of her. If the fact that she enjoyed her life, now, after the war, somehow made her a bad person. The only other Animorph to make it out of the war without some sort of mental breakdown was Marco--but you could expect that from him. He was the one that rolled with the punches, he was resilient, adaptive. He looked for the humor in everything.
And so Cassie had done her best to look on the bright side of it all, to make peace with what had happened. She'd recognized that yes, terrible things had happened in the war. They'd lost loved ones. They'd seen horrible things. They'd done horrible things. But sometimes you had to just acknowledge that it'd happened, and you had to mourn, but then you had lift up your head and move forward, take care of what you had now.
And now, Cassie wanted to relax. So she closed her eyes and concentrated.
The changes started immediately. Coarse, ash-gray fur flowed down her body in waves, down her arms, across her back, until it covered her entire body. Her bones cracked, shifted, twisted. Then her face pushed forward into a muzzle, and her nose turned a dark, wet black as her ears extended and crawled up the side of her head. Suddenly her senses became sharper, fine tuned, infinitely better than a human's. The air was suddenly filled with a thousand different, subtle scents that she could pick out, while her ears could now distinguish fainter sounds--the rustle and fall of leaves, the pleasant slosh of cool water over rocks in a nearby river. Her fingers melted together, formed into padded paws. And after a few more moments, Cassie stood on all fours as a gray wolf.
It was her original battle morph, the same morph that she'd used so many times to rip out the throats of countless Controllers (Taxxons, Hork-Bajirs, sometimes even humans). It had always had the potential to be destructive, but always less so than everyone else's battle morphs had been. That'd been a decision she'd made herself, even though she'd always had more powerful morphs in her arsenal. She hadn't really wanted to severely harm the Controllers, because she knew that beneath those faces distorted with hate, there was always an unwilling, innocent host buried down somewhere in there. So the wolf morph had been perfect for that. Enough to harm, but not overkill.
But for now, the wolf was totally at ease in the forest. It may not be her pack's territory here, but it was the wolf's native environment. And Cassie let herself sink into that ease, that confident calm, and started out into the forest at a quick trot.
Special Notes: None!
User LJ: lovefornature
AIM/IM: starvetheego
E-mail: darkisthehorizon@gmail.com
Other Characters: CLU 2.0
Character Name: Cassie
Series: Animorphs
Age: 19
From When?: At the end, after the rest of the Animorphs leave Earth.
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Yes, Cassie took part in all of what the other Animorphs did, including all the violence. Yet I think she recognized that not only was a lot of it horrible, but she actively sought other methods to help win the war that didn't resort to violence. Cassie is also very sympathetic towards others (even her enemies), and always wants to help people.
Item: Her textbook 'Veterinary Medicine: An Illustrated History". The words on the cover's back will alert her about her Inmate.
Abilities/Powers: Cassie is an Animorph. This means that she can morph into any animal she touches, with the drawback that if she does not morph back within two hours she'll be trapped in that form forever. Other than this, she is a regular human.
Cassie is also what the Andalites call an "estreen", which means she has a natural talent for morphing. She can control the process to make it look less grotesque, and she can morph repeatedly within a short time without tiring as easily as others would.
Personality: Cassie is, in a word, compassionate. Her caring, empathetic nature makes it easy for others to come to her for advice and comfort. She is also quite perceptive and sensitive to the way that others feel, and her warmth tends to encourage others to open up about their problems to her. With the Animorphs, she sometimes acted as the 'team therapist' when it got rough, and she was usually the 'mediator' and peace-maker when problems arose.
Animals have always been a huge part of Cassie's life. Back before the war went public, her father ran a Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic for injured wildlife out of the family's barn, and her mother worked as the head vet for a zoo within an amusement park called 'The Gardens.' This family legacy, no doubt, helped Cassie develop a deep love for nature and animals, and also led to her desire to become a vet when she was older. She was considered the tree-hugger and nature-lover of the group, and Marco sometimes jokingly referred to her as "Earth Mother" because of it. But, her love of animals also meant that there was a constant struggle in her about the morality of using morphs, and of killing other sentient creatures.
At her core, Cassie is a good-hearted and peaceful person. But her ability to sense (and anticipate) the way that others feel and think has allowed her to sometimes manipulate (or, at least, help others to manipulate) someone when it's needed--this was especially seen in the case of David, as she was the mastermind behind the plan to trap him as a rat. She not only guessed his emotions correctly, but predicted his reactions ahead of time and, based on that, came up with the plan to have him trapped. And it worked perfectly. David--as Cassie knew he would--fell for the various tricks that the Animorphs employed on him, particularly since a lot of it fed his growing ego. There are also some times where Cassie can be seen as hypocritical--she always tried to hold strong to her morals, but yet still participated in the killing. One example in particular was when Jake flushed nearly seventeen thousand helpless Yeerks into space to die. While it clearly caused her some internal conflict and discomfort (seen later on, when Marco tries to explain to Jake that it was necessary, and Cassie shies away from agreeing with him or offering her own opinion, and even appears to be a bit uncertain about it), Cassie initially tries to justify it to Erek--and almost says that they'd massacred so many helpless Yeerks merely as a diversion.
The Drode, the Crayak's lackey, once described her as a 'killer with a conscience'. Cassie is a strongly moral person, and always questioned whether war and violence was the best choice to make to counter the Yeerks' invasion. While, as an Animorph, she naturally needed to be violent and kill others, there were times where Cassie would seek out an alternative way to deal with an issue. She was sometimes even sympathetic towards her enemies to the point that it was detrimental to herself (and others) in some way. At one point, after she'd quit, Cassie agreed to become a nothlit caterpillar (which meant she'd overstay the two hours and become stuck as one the rest of her life) if a Yeerk, named Aftran, would free the little girl that she controlled. Cassie also handed the Escafil device (the cube that gave morphing powers) to their enemy (and Jake's brother) Tom, to make it so Jake wouldn't have to kill his own brother. Both of these choices didn't go over very well with the rest of the Animorphs, but they were things she felt she needed to do.
However, even as dangerous as her actions have sometimes been, there has always tended to be a positive gain in the long run. The Yeerk Aftran eventually formed the Yeerk Peace Movement, a group of Yeerks that only took voluntary controllers and searched for a way to coexist with their hosts peacefully (even if it meant the Yeerk would have no host). And letting Tom's Yeerk have the morphing cube showed the Yeerks another way (besides controlling others) to gain all the senses that they lacked in their natural form. So while her actions can sometimes be seen as reckless, there always seems to be a certain foresight to what she does. Cassie even argues to Ax, while trying to justify her actions in letting the Yeerks have the cube, that she hoped it would show the Yeerks another way to live without controlling hosts. And, as some of the other characters have pointed out throughout the series, Cassie is able to pick out the subtle connections and possibilities that most other people don't (or refuse to) see.
After the war ended, Cassie settled into the role one would expect her to. She became an activist and spokesperson for the now free Hork-Bajir population, and became an advisor on the President's sub-cabinet on matters that concerned the aliens that lived on Earth now. She also spent some of her time traveling around as an animal conservationist (still trying to save the world, even after the world had been saved), and took night classes with the intent to become a vet. Out of all the Animorphs, Cassie, as well as Marco, were perhaps the only ones to move on from the war. Cassie even mentions that the two of them have 'prospered' while the others had a much rougher time handling life after the war.
So while Cassie may look young, she is very far from naive or inexperienced. The few years that she spent as an Animorph packed an entire lifetime of experiences in war, death, slavery, and violence into her. Cassie had to grow up fast, and she--along with the other Animorphs--have been through a lot.
On the Barge, Cassie will most likely happily embrace her job as a Warden. She'll want to be as helpful as she can to those around her, and for her Inmate, she will be protective and want to listen and help them work through their problems.
Path to Redemption: N/A
History: Cassie and her family lived on a farm that had been inherited down from as far back as the civil war era. It was remodeled into a Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic where her father, Walter, worked as a wildlife and livestock veterinarian. Her mother Michelle worked with animals at a zoo/amusement park called 'The Gardens.' Cassie, herself, spent a good amount of time assisting her father at the Clinic, always happy to get her hands dirtied (and clothes, as Rachel would always lament) as she helped.
Her existence as an Animorph (and the realization that Earth had been, for many years, under attack by an alien species) started on one fateful night, when Cassie and Rachel ran into Jake, Marco, and Tobias at the mall. The five of them decided to take a shortcut through an abandoned construction site on the way home. On the way, they came across a dying alien whose ship had crash landed. This alien, an Andalite named Elfangor, gave them the ability to morph into any animal that they touched. He then told them about a secret alien invasion, of the Yeerks and how oblivious the human race was to their presence. Not too soon after this, another ship landed--a Yeerk ship. As the Animorphs hid from view, the first and only Andalite controller, Visser Three, emerged from the ship accompanied by Hork-Bajir and Taxxons. The Visser taunted his wounded enemy, then morphed into a monstrous creature and devoured him (to the Animorph's complete horror).
And so, the task to prevent a total takeover fell squarely onto the shoulders of these five kids.
Thus began the next three years of their lives--days and hellish days of fighting, killing, hiding, terror, and constantly losing ground against the Yeerks as they waited for the Andalites to come help them. The Animorphs were never supposed to be the main resistance against the Yeerks, not against such a powerful and widespread foe, but the Andalites never put Earth at a top priority. Even during the few times the Animorphs were able to contact them, the Andalite military always assumed that the humans were attempting to place more priority on their situation than was necessary--which, later on, they realized they were horribly wrong about. When they finally did pay attention, the Yeerk presence on Earth was overwhelming.
Towards the end of the series, the battles became much more dire and the stakes much higher. The Yeerks were able to figure out that the Animorphs were, in fact, humans--as well as who they were and where they lived. This meant that Cassie and the rest of the Animorphs had to evacuate their families to a safe place to hide.
Visser Three, the Andalite controller and main villain, had also gotten himself promoted to Visser One by this point, and the Yeerks had begun to herd humans en masse via the subway to be infested. When the Animorphs discovered this, they immediately set in motion a plan to destroy the Yeerk Pool complex with explosives. They succeed in doing this, but also end up destroying a large chunk of their hometown in the process. With this move, the war between human and Yeerk became open and all out.
Desperate, and without their only source of nourishment, the Yeerks landed their Pool Ship on Earth. The Animorphs used this opportunity to infiltrate it, take control, and outmaneuver Visser One. With the ship in hand and Visser One defeated, the Animorphs were able to force the Yeerks to surrender. The win wasn't without some massive personal losses, however. Jake lost his brother Tom, and the Animorphs lost Rachel (who was also Jake's cousin) in the process. The Auxiliary Animorphs, a group of seventeen kids that the Animorphs had just recruited, were also killed in the battle. Visser One was taken as a prisoner of war, and forced to stand trial for his war crimes. The Visser, a Yeerk who had antagonized the group since the beginning of the series, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
After that, the Animorphs became massive celebrities, regarded as brave heroes to the public.
Yet the war had definitely changed everything. Jake became clinically depressed, Tobias disappeared altogether, and Marco reveled in his celebrity status, but lived a shallow life. Cassie, herself, didn't care for stardom. Even when she did do interviews, she always tended to speak about the moral subtext beneath each battle or decision that had been made--not something the media (or public) was particularly interested in hearing about. But with her life returned to some faint semblance of normalcy (if, really, you could call it that), Cassie had to make peace with the last three years and move on with her life. During this time she wrote a book called 'Insights on the Animal Mind', was hired by the president as a Special Assistant to the President for Resident Aliens, and dated a decent guy named Ronnie Chambers (the Californian Governor's liaison to the Hork-Bajir). On top of work, Cassie also started to take night classes to become a veterinarian.
At the end--after they'd learned that Ax had been kidnapped by Yeerks and taken into territory that the Andalites themselves couldn't enter--Cassie decided to listen to Jake and stay on Earth while the rest of them (Jake, Marco, and Tobias) set off on a suicidal mission to rescue Ax. The fate of the other Animorphs isn't known to her.
Here are a couple wikipedia/wikia links for more history:
Animorphs Wikia.
Wikipedia.
And a(n extensive) list of Animorphs books, for an even more complete history of all the Animorphs went through: Here.
Sample Journal Entry:
[The video flickers on, and within the comm's frame sits a young woman with a bright smile. She wears overalls with a plaid shirt, and her dark hair is tied back away from her soft face. Behind her is a modest, cluttered room--the oak paneled walls are covered with a messy array of official (and non-official)-looking papers, along with various photographs of animals tacked into the wood. If you look close enough Cassie is in one of the pictures, dressed in hiking attire and sporting a huge backpack, standing happily next to a man with the same outdoors-y type gear.
Cassie gives a nice, excited wave to the camera, then sits back.]
Hi there, everyone! I thought I'd introduce myself. I'm Cassie, one of the new Wardens here. [Despite it all, Cassie appears maybe a tad nervous about this. Public speaking, ugh. It's never been fun.] I've already explored the ship a little bit, but [the camera gets picked up, then we're shown a quick view of her room. Then she settles back down, and centers the camera on herself again] I have to say, I didn't really expect to see my own room here. It feels so oddly out of place... just so normal, compared to everything else.
Anyway. Do you guys know if there is anything more that I should know about this place, beyond the basics? [Then there's a pause as she tries to think about what else she wants to say. Then, ah!:] And oh yes! Are there any pets aboard? If so, I'd love to volunteer as a vet. I have some previous experience with animal care, and [her hand taps briefly against the veterinary textbook next to her on the desk] I'm taking a couple classes to become a vet. So hopefully I can be of help somehow.
Sample RP: Cassie offered a warm smile and wave at the nearest person that passed by, then slipped into the CES and closed the door behind her. The environment shifted around her in subtle ways, adjusting to a more temperate forest landscape--the same type that was around her old farmhouse.
She took in a deep breath, inhaled the familiar scent of the forest. It caused a dull pang of nostalgia in her, made her miss home a little bit and all the memories that came with it. But really, this place hadn't been home for a few years now. Cassie had moved out from her parents' house not too soon after the war had ended, and she'd been too busy with her work to come visit all that often--her schedule hadn't really allowed it. One day she'd find herself in Yellowstone working with Toby and the rest of the Hork-Bajir population, then the next day she'd be whisked off via private government jet to some tropical rainforest somewhere.
Not that she didn't completely love her job, and what she did. She had the opportunity to make a difference again, to help animals and people and aliens all over the world. It was her dream, come true. But somehow, in the back of her mind, she always wondered if that was terrible of her. If the fact that she enjoyed her life, now, after the war, somehow made her a bad person. The only other Animorph to make it out of the war without some sort of mental breakdown was Marco--but you could expect that from him. He was the one that rolled with the punches, he was resilient, adaptive. He looked for the humor in everything.
And so Cassie had done her best to look on the bright side of it all, to make peace with what had happened. She'd recognized that yes, terrible things had happened in the war. They'd lost loved ones. They'd seen horrible things. They'd done horrible things. But sometimes you had to just acknowledge that it'd happened, and you had to mourn, but then you had lift up your head and move forward, take care of what you had now.
And now, Cassie wanted to relax. So she closed her eyes and concentrated.
The changes started immediately. Coarse, ash-gray fur flowed down her body in waves, down her arms, across her back, until it covered her entire body. Her bones cracked, shifted, twisted. Then her face pushed forward into a muzzle, and her nose turned a dark, wet black as her ears extended and crawled up the side of her head. Suddenly her senses became sharper, fine tuned, infinitely better than a human's. The air was suddenly filled with a thousand different, subtle scents that she could pick out, while her ears could now distinguish fainter sounds--the rustle and fall of leaves, the pleasant slosh of cool water over rocks in a nearby river. Her fingers melted together, formed into padded paws. And after a few more moments, Cassie stood on all fours as a gray wolf.
It was her original battle morph, the same morph that she'd used so many times to rip out the throats of countless Controllers (Taxxons, Hork-Bajirs, sometimes even humans). It had always had the potential to be destructive, but always less so than everyone else's battle morphs had been. That'd been a decision she'd made herself, even though she'd always had more powerful morphs in her arsenal. She hadn't really wanted to severely harm the Controllers, because she knew that beneath those faces distorted with hate, there was always an unwilling, innocent host buried down somewhere in there. So the wolf morph had been perfect for that. Enough to harm, but not overkill.
But for now, the wolf was totally at ease in the forest. It may not be her pack's territory here, but it was the wolf's native environment. And Cassie let herself sink into that ease, that confident calm, and started out into the forest at a quick trot.
Special Notes: None!