Name: Petya Alkaev, her friends call her. Definitely not a legal name though, as she made it up.
Codename: Shifter
Age: She doesn't know. Her first face was that of a middle-aged woman, but nothing about that body feels right to her.
Gender: Male, female, it doesn't matter. Ambiguity works so well, she rarely bothers with the private parts. She doesn't even truly care which pronoun others use, though usually her own tastes lean towards the feminine.
Place of Birth: She remembers waking up in Russia and speaking the language with an atrocious accent. Beyond that, she doesn't really know. The fact that no-one can really pinpoint her natural accent doesn't help.
Affiliations: She has some connections to both the criminal underground and the heroes in Russia, specifically Lady Fortune, a well known telepath famous for taking on only super villains. Whenever she visits the US, she commonly partners up with the Orchid, a League member known for his healing powers.
Occupation: Does thieving count as a day job? Pickpocketing and cheating people out of their money is how she makes her living these days. Those who know of her occupation actively question her hero-status. Thankfully Petya isn't one to share private information with just anyone.
Appearance: As a shapeshifter, Petya doesn't feel the need to stick to a single body for too long. Changing appearances is a good way avoid getting caught, and you don't want to get caught when stealing important information or money.
She has a ”default” of course, something she built for the days when she doesn't feel the need to steal or spy and goes for the heroics or a casual night out instead. At these times, Petya is an odd, ambiguous combination of both masculine and feminine traits, which makes it impossible to tell her gender. Her thin body is described as ”boyish” by some, ”girly” by others, loose clothing hiding any possible (and non-existent) indication feminine and masculine traits as well as the wiry muscle she's gained over the years. She has a fluff of brown hair that curls around the ears and stops before reaching the jaw. Her face has a look of something inhuman, interesting or unsettling instead of attractive, all soft angles and sharp edges at the same time.
Considering her powers, having a suit made of anything but her own body would be incredibly expensive. Just imagine all those suits destroyed after a single transformation! Instead she uses her ability to manipulate her own body, using her hair to build a full body suit, gleaming with the natural color of her hair. Easy to retract, easy to put back on! What's not to love?
Her voice changes as her body does, especially when she lets loose, but outside of the heroics, Petya's voice stays warm, inviting and annoyingly gender-ambiguous.
Powers: Petya's entire life revolves around her ability to shape her body to her own will. Her abilities aren't unlimited, but they put her far above any ordinary man. If she wishes to, she can take the shape of anything she can think of. What she can't do is change her body weight. Creating inorganic body parts is also impossible. She may take the form of a motorcycle, but she'll still be made of meat and bones. Beyond that, her own creativity and anatomical knowledge are the only limit she has. Petya is able to transform as quickly as she wants to. While the shapeshifting can look and sound painful, the aches she feels during and after the transformations have never slowed her down unless she's badly injured.
To put things into simpler terms: Biomorphing without the plant morphing and elasticity(gotta stretch them body parts for them to take on a new shape). She's unable to create substances she doesn't already create in abundance. Taking the shape of a scorpion is all good, but creating the venom isn't possible.
Skills: Quick on her feet, Petya is great at hand-to-hand combat that she mixes fluidly with her powers. She has a specific love for knives, and a skill to match it. She would most definitely bring one to a gunfight. Observant and a ruthless opportunist, Petya is good at making plans on the fly. Most of them are pretty good, too, at least for her. A masterful liar and manipulator.
Equipment/Resources: Even a simple utility-belt would fall off as soon as the shapeshifting would start. She wants to carry knives, but for now she's needed to lean on her own body and any weapon she can find around her, improvised or otherwise.
Weaknesses: In the end she's just as vulnerable as any human. Shoot her enough times and you will be able to stop her. Cold weather seems to slow down her ability to shapeshift.
She's not too big on working with people she doesn't know either, especially if she doesn't gain anything from it. Solo is the way to go, unless you're speaking of her dearest healer or a specific heroic telepath from Russia. She rarely takes things seriously either, unless it's a matter that directly involves her.
Psychological Profile: For someone who hasn't had the easiest life, Petya's surprisingly joyous. She seems to take the most out of everything, enjoying life while it lasts. This tends to lead to long nights in bars, expensive meals, traveling and flirting with just about anyone. She does what she wants to do, whenever she wants to do it. What matters is that she feels good, and if other people happen to enjoy it at the same time, that's even better.
For someone so flighty, she's surprisingly loyal. The only reason she's in the superhero business to begin with is due to a promise she made to someone she trusts. Big on grand gestures, being her friend is either extremely enjoyable or horribly awkward. This blends to her superhero persona as well. One-liners are known to happen.
There's a slight undertone of desperation under all this, something Petya purposefully tries to ignore. She can't seem to choose what she wants to do with herself, so she tries to do everything at once. Sometimes it leads to her rushing into things without thinking them through. Thankfully she's good at thinking on her feet.
It's important to note that she won't take the form of anyone who exists or has existed. She finds it incredibly disturbing when people recognize her as someone she didn't make up. Not only that, she can't really stretch her creative muscles by just copying someone.
Biography: Petya doesn't know anything about her past. The first thing she remembers is waking up in some alley-way in Volgograd wearing a body she didn't recognize and speaking a language she didn't know she could speak. Even more odd were the powers she had, the ability to stretch and change her face and body into something it wasn't before.
At the start, Petya's goal was to figure out who she was, something that ended being pretty much impossible when you had no name, no identification to start with. She didn't even know if the first face she wore was a real one. More than that, apparently you needed money to do anything. Even worse, you couldn't really get a job when you didn't even know your real name.
Petya found herself taking others money instead, and found that she was really good at it as well. If you wore the right face and acted in a specific way, it was easy to fool people out of their money. The money helped, but you needed more if you wanted out of the country. After a year of searching for any type of clue, she gave up. There was nothing she could find, not a single clue she could fallow Angry, she did her best to forget the difficult first year, opting to change faces often. She created some ties to the criminal underground, creating plenty of mayhem as she went, leaving before things truly blew out of hand. Some of these ties still hold strong, specifically inside the Uralmash gang, though said ties aren't under the name and face of Petya herself. It was during this time when Petya made her first contact with Lady Fortune. Through a series of (un)fortunate events, Lady Fortune was able to track Petya down, recognizing her as a metahuman and wishing to put an end to her before her influence within the gang grew out of control. She tried reasoning at first, as was her usual routine. What Lady Fortune didn't expect was that it worked. Suddenly, a man by the name of Mihail Ilyich Polzin disappeared for quite some time. A few months later, Petya Alkaev appeared on the scene, and quickly left Russia behind.
What Lady Fortune had offered her was not only a way out of Russia, but also a chance to figure out who she was. The only thing she asked was that the shapeshifter stayed away from the life of crime and tried to do some good in the world. Petya agreed, and Lady Fortune accepted her answer, seemingly trusting the shapeshifter enough to let her go. Odd choice, considering everything, but Perya wasn't going to question her good luck.
For the last few years, Petya has traveled the world, looking for answers and making both friends and enemies on the way. While in the US she had an opportunity to make a small mark in the world by helping the Orchid with a minor villain in the south. This lead to the creation of Shifter. The name stuck with her, as did the heroic deeds. It was fun to put her talents to some good use.
Petya's travels have led her to the US once more. She hopes that her current lead won't be yet another dead-end.
Expect mistakes! I's bloody tired right now, leads to me missing those lovely typos. I'll check it properly in the morning.
You know, I hate her codename. If someone has better ideas, please tell me. All that depends on whether or not I get accepted of course. Please, if I messed anything up, tell me so that I can fix it.
She might be a bit too OP. I'm always worried that my chars are OP. And the bio's ending is really rushed. Yay!
