Player: Jackwrench

Link: http://jackwrench.deviantart.com

Character Name: Makenzie Marshal

Age: 20

Sex: Female

Species: Skunk / Red Tailed Hawk

Height/Weight: 1.67 m / 59 kg

Social Status: UniClass

Physical Description: Even just at a glance, Makenzie is an athlete. Her body is toned and fit from well-rounded training and a lot of time on the field, but still pleasantly curvy and feminine. She is the product of skunk (her mother) and a red tailed hawk (her father), and her appearance includes a number of features from both. The combination of species gives her an exotic look, which is part of the reason she has gotten more media attention than some of her more athletically capable teammates.

Makenzie’s features are primarily that of a skunk; her body is covered in a coat of short black fur that she meticulously cares for, giving it a healthy sheen. A single white stripe runs from her nose along her muzzle to the crown of her head, where it disappears under a mass of neatly-groomed brown feathers. The shorter feathers cover the top of her head and become longer towards the back of her skull, giving them a swept and almost elegant look. Spots of white dot the fur of her head along the edges of where the feathers start. The hybrid’s eyes are a bright green color, which she inherited from her mother.

A single white stripe runs from the base of Makenzie’s skull along her spine, splitting at the small of her back into two lines that continue along to the tip of her fluffy tail. Several long crimson feathers, each roughly 30 centimeters in length, sprout from the base of her tail. When standing still or going about casual day-to-day activities, these feathers hug tightly to her tail; when running or moving quickly, the feathers splay out like a red paper fan behind her.

Another feature inherited from her father is her talon-like hands. Instead of fur, Makenzie’s hands are covered in the same scales one might expect to see on a bird’s feet, though these scales are an off-white color. Each of her fingers ends in a carefully-manicured shiny black talon, the tips of which are filed down slightly to make them a little less sharp.

Makenzie typically dresses in clothing associated with ‘rebellious’ fashion, wearing somewhat-baggy pants, large boots, t-shirts, and so on. When she is going to be making public appearances, or when she wants to be noticed, she wears signature clothing from several fashion lines who have endorsement deals with her. Since she doesn’t like to draw attention to herself in her personal life, however, she rarely wears such clothing, unless she’s being told to do so.

Background: Makenzie was born in Einheit shortly after her parents, both purebred refugees fleeing different colonies, met there. From the beginning, her family has enjoyed many of the benefits that came from having a hybrid child, namely a safe family environment and free admittance to the UniClass. Keeping the UniClass and Outer Class separate never sat well with her family, but they knew better than to speak out; vocal resistance to the established Ministry rules makes people disappear. Recently, her parents were hybridized per the Ministry’s order that all UniClassers go through the genetic reassignment process. They resisted the notion at first, but were quick to change their minds when the slightest pressure was applied; they wanted to live, and resistance could have ruined their daughter’s career.

Even as a young girl, Makenzie loved to play sports. She was always hanging around with the neighborhood boys, trying to muscle in on the sort of games that most girls her age had no interest in. Before long, the boys found out that they couldn’t play gentle with her because she was a girl, especially because she made no effort to play gentle with them. Young Makenzie was the cause of many an injury in her neighborhood, but that’s just the way things go when you’re a kid.

In her mid teens, Makenzie started taking an active interest in a then little-known sport called Gravball. It was really only played by people in the UniClass, as very few Outer Classers had the money to afford the expensive equipment needed to play. The sport involves two teams equipped with special boots that greatly reduce the friction of the wearer’s feet on a surface, allowing them to easily slide from place to place. Essentially, the boots function like mundane skates, but they allow much more mobility and don’t require a special surface to play on. Because the ‘gravskates’ don’t function like wheels, they are difficult to master, as they reduce friction in all directions instead of just allowing forward and backward movement like a series of wheels or blades might.

Makenzie saved up her money to buy a pair of skates and start playing with the groups of teens who were getting things off the ground. Gravball already had a bit of an underground media following, as the face-paced game play and frequent roughhousing gave it a wide draw to younger audiences. A controlled level of risk and violence has always been part of the sport, even after it started receiving more mainstream attention.

After several years, knowledge of Gravball spread and several large corporations took interest. Seeing the sport’s popularity and its potential to explode into the public eye, many companies started to offer funding to underground teams if the teams would agree to wear uniforms and play on corporate-run fields in front of the cameras. Many teams, including the team Makenzie played with, jumped at the opportunity.

30 ECE marked the first season of Gravball in an official capacity. Twenty teams across the Toride participated in the competition, the top ten of which quickly accumulating sizable fan bases. Certain stars, Makenzie included, took up more of the media focus than others; some for their talent, others for their looks, and some for both. While Makenzie was not nearly as skilled as some of her teammates, she draw a lot of attention because of her aggressive play style combined with her exotic and attractive appearance.

At the end of the season in October, two teams met in competition for the championship. The Myrmidons, Makenzie’s team, squared off against the Colossals. After a long and brutal game that went into one overtime period, the Myrmidons managed to pull off a risky play that left one of their own injured, but scored the needed goal to win. The Myrmidons took the first official Gravball championship, which made many of the team’s star players ideal targets for marketing and merchandising deals. Makenzie, while not an exceptional player when compared to some of her teammates, received benefited from many endorsement contracts and advertising deals on account of her popularity.

Personality: Makenzie is friendly and likes to talk to people, but she tries to avoid public recognition as much as possible. The same exotic appearance that provided for lucrative endorsement opportunities makes her very easily identifiable, though, so she generally has to grin and bear it. She’s usually up for signing an autograph or two, but doesn’t like to be mobbed by fans. Even though Gravball is still not widely recognized, her role as a model for several clothing lines has put her face in the public eye through commercials and published ads.

When talking about sports and her career, Makenzie is surprisingly humble; even though she is popular, she knows that most of that popularity comes from how she looks and how she hits, not from how well she actually plays. She is eager to talk on just about any other topic, specifically avoiding her career unless someone else brings it up.

Weapons/Equipment: Makenzie does not own any weapons and wouldn't know how to use them even if she did.