Post by .Cal. on Oct 27, 2010 22:29:36 GMT -5
CAL, the lab rat.
Basics
|Name| Cal
|Aliases| Full name Calderon, "that guy"
|Age| 2 years old
|Gender| Male
|Affiliation| Former lab rat who joined Cane, the Rat King
Physical
|Coloration| White and black fur, with orange, blue, and yellow patches
|Oddities| Vivid blue eyes, dark green patches on his tail, black paws
|Extras| He has a small piece of green glass on a thread tied to the end of his tail, and likes to collect other glass pieces.
|General Appearance|
Cal is a simple creature, but does not appear so. Because he was forced to participate in an experiment concerning colors, he was born with five different colors on his body. The other rats could not perceive as many colors as humans could, but they could tell Cal had many colors. The white and the black, every one could see, as these were more natural colors in rats. However, the orange, blue and yellow patches on his body appeared in dim shade to other rats, although to the human researchers the colors were as bright as thought his fur had been dyed. They also noted that instead of being a dark brown-black color, his eyes were bright blue, which made his small pupils easily visible, another feature that alienates him from many rats. He also has black paws instead of the peachy color that most rats have, and his tail has dark green patches mixed with peachy patches.
Cal is smaller than the average rat, and has less muscle than would be associated with any common rat. In other words, he's fairly scrawny, but that makes him able to move quicker when he's pressed to do so. He is a hooded rat, with a fully black face and various black and white patches, along with orange, blue and yellow patches as well, constant reminders of his past life in the laboratory. Cal usually doesn't want to wear any ornaments that his fellow rats might want to wear, but he loves anything shiny and with color (any color that he can perceive, mostly blues and greens), because they remind him of himself and the shine attracts him. He is usually seen with a shard of dark green glass from a beer bottle hanging from the end of his tail by a piece of thread. Overall however, Cal is a colorful, yet scrawny specimen - not particularly intimidating.
Mental
|Likes| Glass, colors (any he can perceive), trying to read, stability, almonds, sunflower seeds
|Dislikes| Dark colors, streets, cats, getting his paws wet, darkness, change/instability, fruits (too squishy - nuts are the better, and easier to store alternative)
|Strengths| Methodical, caring (to his family and those who are like-minded), loyal, intelligent, resourceful, determined
|Weaknesses| Close-minded, concerned with his own safety before others (usually), analytical, easily manipulated, unable to take authority, coward
|Complete Personality|
When you first meet Cal, you might think that he is a stick in the mud. He'll greet you politely, in as friendly a way as is necessary, and then he'll ignore you if you don't intrigue him or give him something to talk about (yeah, he'll point out your flaws). You would think that he is uninteresting and too serious, but smart. You would be absolutely correct.
Cal is very serious about anything that he does, and is not willing to give up until he's tried everything. This means that he has no sense of humor, or a very limited one that is only called into play when it would benefit him. On that note, he's serious about gaining power, or more specifically, riding on another rat's coattails to power. He's realized the hard way with his sister Blue that he can't do anything productive with any sort of authority, but has all the ideas that can power a leadership role. This is because Cal has all the ideas and all the qualities of an idealistic leader - determination, absolute loyalty to a cause, creative ideas, thinking on his feet - but he rarely can order people around. It's not because he doesn't want to, but because he doesn't quite have the gumption to get people moving in the right direction. He has a soft voice, and is really a coward. Once confronted, he'll shrink back and let the other rat take control. That doesn't mean he won't try and plot against them from his corner, though. (It does mean that he won't have the guts to actually carry out his plot.)
Cal thinks everything through before he tries it, and will take advantage of anything that comes to paw. He's good with his paws, and able to build little things that help make tasks easier, which helps him because he is a bit on the scrawny side. He wouldn't share with anyone other than a loved one (such as his sister Blue), and really doesn't give a crap about any other rat, even if they were dying. He has his own tail to worry about, so that what he concerns himself with. Despite his family loyalty, he abandoned his sister Blue because she did not take the "right course of action," as he did. His mindset is, "Loyalty as long as it's convienient." So Cal will be a loyal servant of King Cane until he falls or until a better deal comes along, though it is unlikely that he would return to the rebellion because he fears for his own life there and because he dislikes their shaky organization and seemingly chaotic ideals.
Which lead to another thing Cal is obsessed with: stability. He couldn't handle things changing, things being different than he is used to. Cal plans ahead for things, so when things change, he freezes up or gets angry and refuses to change. He nearly didn't leave the laboratory for that very reason, but then he had his own tail (and Blue's) to consider. (In that case he did consider Blue's well-being because he still loved his sister dearly, and it was before she made her so-called "fool-hardy" decision to stay behind.) Cal does his best to make sure things do not change in his life, and if he were human, he would be diagnosed with OCD because of his obsession with making sure things are the same or predictable.
Cal also loves to read. He'll read anything, from the labels on human rubbish to newspapers that sometimes make their way into the sewers. He prides himself on being smart and being able to come up with solutions because of his reading abilities and his actual desire to read. He would prefer to spend his time away from other rats and actually read and ponder existence now that he is free. Cal sometimes wonders if he could become more intelligent than he already is, and the more the thought about it, the more he started to read, believing there was a coordination between himself reading more and his intelligence growing.
Overall, Cal is a selfish, OCD bookworm, concerned mostly with himself and aiming to make himself better by following along on the coattails of others work and reading, and with things never falling into the chaos he is sure the rebellion has planned.
History
|Parents| Jasper (father) and Penelope (mother)
|Siblings| Henry (brother), Blue (sister), Violet (sister)
|Complete History|
Jasper and Penelope were bought by a college student once he moved out of the house. The student, by the name of Reece, loved rats and Jasper and Penelope were supposed to be the beginning of the rat family. Reece's goal was that he would have a job, but then on the side, he would breed rats and sell some of the babies, similar to a dog breeder. He loved his first two rats, and cared for them like they were his own children. It was very fortunate that Jasper and Penelope grew to love each other and were soon ready to mate once they reached sexual maturity. But then Reece's student loans were starting to creep up on him as he neared being ready to graduate. He wanted to keep his beloved pets, and would have if he had not met two laboratory researchers, who Reece called the "labbies".
The labbies offered to take his rats and give him a good sum of money because Jasper and Penelope were of quality breeding and very healthy. They needed good, healthy specimens for their experiments, and Reece's rats were two good examples of what they wanted. At first, Reece adamently said no to their demands. But as he slumped lower and lower into debt, he started thinking about that money, how much he needed it, and how he would have to keep spending money on Jasper and Penelope in order to keep up with his dream of breeding rats. Jasper and Penelope knew something was wrong, but they couldn't understand what was goin on until Reece packed them into a cage and gave them to the labbies. They watched him walk away for the last time, and were carted off to their doom.
The labbies had promised Reece that his rats would not be harmed, and they weren't, usually. They were made to run for tests and were put into the intelligence tests, and lived in cramped spaces with more than ten other rats in a small cage. The only fortunate part was that Jasper and Penelope could stay together. Jasper did his best to be the strong one and protect Penelope, who was scared of what would happen to them. And both of them missed Reece - why had he abandoned them? They didn't understand the concept of money, and so Jasper grew to hate him for leaving them, and Penelope was just fearful for what would happen next. She feared being separated from Jasper or being forced to mate with another rat. Jasper had these fears too, but he was focused on being the strong, protective male. Most of the other rats laughed at them for their sentamentality. "We're just human playtoys, doll," one of them told Penelope. "Don't waste your time hopin' to get outta here."
Soon, however, Jasper and Penelope were separated from the large group and put into a smaller test group, but this time for colors. The goal of the experiment was to see if changed genes could produce unnatural colors or change pigmentation cleanly. The test rats were injected with various genes, and then forced to mate. Jasper and Penelope were mated, which was fortunate, and they produced four children: Henry, Cal, Blue and Violet. The experiment was a success as each of the offspring produced had different colors, although Cal and Henry were the strangest products: Cal had orange, black, blue, white, and yellow patches, and Henry had green, red, white and purple patches. Because of this, the two brothers were separated from their sisters for several months for testing to see what had caused them to acquire so many different colors, unlike their sisters, who were either one solid color (like Violet), or just white and another color (like Blue). Cal remembers these tests as painful and degrading. Humans would prod him to make him run through a maze (to see if the colors affected his intelligence) or make him listen to horrible noises or try and find food (to test for enhanced senses).
What made these tests worse was that Cal's older brother, Henry, was always determined to do better than Cal and then rub it in. He began to get better food, the better lodging, because he could perform well, mainly because of his larger size and strength. Cal, on the other hand, was stuck in the middle of all of the hardest tests, or so he felt. Henry also thought that he was the more intelligent one (although to Cal he was just the more arrogant one), and his sisters looked to him when they whispered to each other about how to escape. All of the siblings wanted to escape, ignoring their parents warnings that if they were caught, valuable specimens or not, they would be killed and probably just dissected to see how they worked and if their coloring did anything to them biologically. Cal often had good ideas of how to escape, but Henry either shot down his ideas or took them and said they were his own. Only Cal's sister Blue saw that Cal was the one behind all the ideas. Cal and Blue became close, and they split away from their siblings in order to form their own plans. It was in this way that they heard about Mako and his plans to escape from the lab. Cal and Blue found their siblings and filled them in, and they all agreed they would escape. Their parents were too afraid to risk it - they had some amount of safety in the lab, and they were together here. Who knew what was outside?
The night came, and Cal and Blue were waiting. Cal had the paperclip for his cage, and he quickly unlocked the gate. They scurried out quickly onto the floor, and raced to the air duct. They could only hold open the duct for so long, and then Cal and Blue were the last ones to race through - Violet and Henry were left on the other side. They tried banging on the closed duct, but the sound would attract unwanted attention, so they were ordered to go back. They would eventually return for them, just as they would return for the others who hadn't tried to escape. Cal couldn't help but feel elated that Henry wasn't coming. Cal would be the strong one, to set up a living for himself and Blue, to be free of all of the stupid experiments, the tormentors that were humans, and when Henry finally joined them, Cal would be knowledgable in all the ways of the wild outside of the lab. Then he would have to acknowledge that Cal was the brave, smart one!
Soon enough, though, Cal found himself disliking the lead position, where his sister relied on him to make all of the decisions. He loved Blue, but she was demanding, always scared of wherever they were going and she clung to him like a flea. And being out in the wild was hard. They had to escape cars, cats, and other terrors they had never known. Cal almost wanted to go back to the lab - at least there was a schedule there, one that he could predict and be prepared for. And then Mako joined this Rat Rebellion against a mighty Rat King. What was he thinking? Cal wanted no part of the rebellion - it was too crazy, and he was already having a hard time adjusting to life in the wild, what with his bit of OCD and the sudden, embarrassing realization that the power he always wanted was not for him, that he couldn't handle it.
So when a King's messenger, named Lorit, visited in the middle of the night to try and convince some members of the rebellion to leave, Cal was ready to listen. Blue didn't offer an opinion, but even when Cal offered to take her with him to serve the king, she just said that she didn't want to, and so he left her behind. He had his own tail to worry about, and besides, he wanted to follow someone in power and serve them to the best of his abilities.
King Cane was Cal's best bet.
--
RACHEL
|Where You Found Us| Through an ad on Mysste (a Pokemon RPG)
|Sample Post|[/ul]
Every drip caused the multi-colored rat to twitch as he scurried through the sewers. Every breath of wind echoing in the sewers sounded like one of his former brethren scampering after him. His own hurried, nervous breath sounded too loud, as though it would give him away.
Cal supposed that he should be nervous - to his fellow lab rats, this was treason, joining King Cane. But he was tired of running, tired of the monotonous chaos that had surrounded his existence. He wanted the stability and safety in living amongst King Cane's followers. The rebellion were fools to try and fight against Cane, since the King had the alliance of all of his rats, and he controlled much of the sewers below London. And his people lived happily. Cal liked the sound of that consistency, that peace. If only Blue could have come with him...
Blue was his sister who had also been a part of the tests in the lab, and she had been completely colored blue when she was born (or at least, her parents had assumed she was blue, since they couldn't actually distinguish many colors), which was how she got her name. She was shy and sweet, but had stayed behind when Cal left. He wasn't sure how she felt about all of this nonsensical rebelling going on, but she had been too scared to go with him to meet Lorit, one of the king's messengers. But if she didn't want to come and make the right choice, as he was doing, then that was her fault. Maybe later she would reconsider later on.
Cal pushed the thought of his sister from his mind. He had his own safety to consider - he wasn't sure if the other rebellion rats wouldn't follow him, since he was leaving in the middle of the night and all. He lifted his pink and black nose and sniffed the air. Under the usual smells of the sewer, which he was arleady finding himself used to - he could smell the king's messenger, who had visited once before to where the rats had been staying. Only Cal and Blue had considered his message of joining the Rat King, and now Cal was going to find the messenger where he had said he would be.
The scent was stronger now. He padded forward slowly and called, "Lorit? It is I, Calderon - or Cal, as I am usually called. I have come to pledge my allegiance to King Cane." He tried to sound more mighty than he was, though it came out sounding pretentious.
"Have you now?" Cal jumped as the black rat materialized from the shadows. The black rat smirked, which made Cal's fur prickle with irritation. He didn't like Lorit much, but he was a servant of the King - he couldn't do much about it. He put on his confident air again. "I have, truthfully."
The black rat's smirk faded to an expression of indifference, and he shrugged as he said, "You will have to meet King Cane first before you can join us. Follow me."
He turned and scampered away. Cal hesitated for a brief second as he wondered what he was getting himself into. Then he shook his head. Having a purpose and safety would be enough. He scurried off after Lorit, splashing in a puddle in his haste to catch up with the servant of King Cane.
