Pickle

[Pickle]

Name: Pickle

Species: Ruffed Lemur (anthropomorph)

Gender: Female

Alliance: Good

Age: 18 (ages at human rate)

Appearance:
Image References: Image 1 Image 2 Image 3
A long-limbed, gaunt and rather scruffy lemur, standing at just under 5 feet tall. She has a delicate, fox-like muzzle and wide, intense eyes. A spiky ‘ruff’ frames her ears and face like a lizard’s crest, making her look rather like a mad scientist. Her body is wiry and athletic, her fingers and toes are long and dexterous. Tail is long and bushy. Her fur is jet black, except of course for all her pastel-hued modifications. She is covered in patches and star shapes which appear to be sewn or otherwise fused into her flesh. Her rib-cage is partly exposed, and in low light her glowing heart can be seen beating behind it. A tiny pair of wings, no more than decorative fins, jut from her shoulder-blades, and a line of spikes protrude from her spine.
She can often be seen with a well-worn backpack of possessions (when not needed, she will usually leave it hanging from a random tree). This contains, amongst other things, all the colourful clothing and trinkets she likes to adorn herself with as the mood takes her. Legwarmers and a pair of goggles are a firm favourite.

Personality:
Pickle is an eccentric, observant, and usually sweet-natured creature. However, if provoked, she is prone to dramatic swings toward mania or, sometimes, even anarchic violence, though this is rare. Due to the amount of times she has been hunted and attacked, she can seem a little twitchy and neurotic at times.
She greets everything with a look of a wide-eyed wonder, and has a habit of focusing on everything but what she's supposed to be doing. This apparent absent-mindedness often belies fearsome wit and problem-solving abilities typical of a primate. She appears, for the most part, to be an innocent soul, but has a strange attraction to dangerous or violent situations, and often gets herself into trouble as a result.
This lemur speaks with a soft, perky, child-like voice. She is not particularly chatty, but when she does speak, it will usually be something either completely irrelevant, or oddly insightful.
She also really likes rainbows, glowing things, and fruit.

Abilities:
As a lemur, Pickle is one of the great 'free runners' of the animal kingdom. Whether she's in an urban jungle or an actual jungle, she has an almost precognitive ability to navigate through her environment with elegance, efficiency, and boundless energy. She rarely ends up cornered, as she can always find a way out.
Additionally, the small, decorative wings attached to her shoulders, though flightless and completely unnatural, do have one practicality. If they happen to catch the wind while she is in mid-jump, she can achieve a sort of ungainly glide, often allowing her to jump further than any lemur has jumped before!
Her teeth are sharp and her claws are sharper (and a little more pronounced than that of a normal lemur), but she'll rarely use them in a confrontation, preferring instead to use her athleticism and quick-thinking to outwit an opponent.
Her one supernatural strength (or curse) is the ability to remain cohesive through mutilations that would cause most to lose consciousness, though reactions to pain remain mostly normal. With that comes the ability to survive terrible injuries which would normally be fatal.

Disadvantages:
Very little fighting ability. Though athletically fit, she is a lightweight, with no notable ‘brute strength’. Can be quite naive, and too trusting of the wrong people. She can easily be lured into a trap for something as silly as a piece of fruit or a trinket.
As a strange side-effect of her resistance to the effects of injury, Pickle’s body tissue has lost the ability to rebuild itself after injury. Wounds simply freeze in time and remain open, vulnerable to infection or further damage. As a result, Pickle's wounds needs to be artificially sealed, hence all the perversely cheerful patches and star shapes that cover her form. Even the eerie bio-luminescence of her heart is a result of the chemicals that need to be continuously injected into the muscle, to build its resilience against being exposed to the air. And so, despite this strange power, its effects cause the lemur to become increasingly more fragile as time goes on.

Family: Lemur civilisation is bound to a single spot of land, isolated and cut off from the rest of the world. It is only when the occasional lemur, such as Pickle, decides to wander, that any other civilisation will actually get to see one. As such, Pickle’s parents remain on their home island, and little is known about them. Pickle is an only child, but this is not unusual for lemur families.

History:
On a remote and beautiful island lives the world’s sole population of lemurs. Though a laid-back and peaceful nation, no one was prepared for the odd-ball lemur that would become known as Pickle (she chose this name for herself, and would respond to no other title). Her parents were as loving and supportive as could be, but there was only so much they could do for a child with such a distant and alien outlook on life. Half of things she said made no sense to anyone else. Her appearance soon became just as outlandish as her mind. Pickle became obsessed with bright colours and body adornment at an early age, and started dying her fur, starting with her ruff and tail-tip.
All the other markings and modifications to follow, colourful though they appeared, would have more sinister origins.
One day, when her wanderlust finally overwhelmed her, Pickle ventured to the other side of the island, which was dominated by humans. She wondered amongst them, wearing a cloak to avoid drawing too much attention, for although the people there generally tolerated the presence of lemurs, she had been warned by her elders that some humans might seek to exploit unwary creatures.
The fateful moment came when Pickle happened upon a street market. She got too close, too curious, and ended up knocking a wooden effigy off its stand, where it shattered on the ground. In the angry commotion that followed, Pickle made a hasty getaway. But something, something that had been until now had been trapped inside that effigy, followed her home.
A few days later, Pickle was attacked by a horrifying apparition. It took up a sharp tool, and slashed at the terrified creature’s arm, almost severing it at the elbow. The demon disappeared shortly after, and strangely, Pickle did not lose the damaged limb. Even more strangely, while her arm remained functional, the terrible wound did not heal. No lemur remedy could cure it, and Pickle eventually had to patch it up herself, with some decorative fabric and clumsy stitches. Pickle of course tried to tell others what had happened, but being familiar with her wild imagination, no one believed her story, assuming instead that she had hurt herself while climbing.
The demon returned to her again soon after, this time with a larger and more brutal weapon, which it cleaved deep into Pickle’s chest, before leaving her for dead. Though, of course, Pickle did not die, and the wound remained open, leaving her rib-cage, and behind it, her heart, partially exposed. Pickle had deducted by this point that this strange resilience to injury, far from being a blessing, was the demon’s work. She was being intentionally kept alive, for the hunt – for sport.
Pickle implored the other lemurs to help her. Still they would not believe in the demon, though they could not ignore her sudden inability to heal. Fearing that she had contracted a terrible disease from the humans, the other lemurs (including, with heavy hearts, her parents), decided that Pickle should be sent away from the island. With that, Pickle was ordered to journey to the human town, where she set out across the sea on a small ship.
Upon reaching the mainland, Pickle found herself in a huge city, where she stayed for a while, learning more about the world in her own skewed way, and even finding creatures willing to help her with her strange affliction. But the demon had tracked her across the ocean, and would still occasionally appear to her, hungry for blood. So Pickle left the city, and travelled across the vast expanse of industrial wasteland that surrounded it, still, somehow, remaining oddly cheery about the situation.
Now, Pickle’s journey has led her to Deep Forest. Has the demon followed her to this place? Only time will tell.

IC (In Character) Entrance:

In the light of the evening sun, an odd and dishevelled creature padded across the dusty ground toward the green oasis that awaited her. With a scruffy pink bag slung across her spiny back and a pair of green-lens goggles over her eyes, the brightly patterned lemur loped along with renewed enthusiasm as she neared the edge of the forest. She shifted constantly between a quadrupedal and bipedal gait, an ungainly motion which suggested that this was not a creature built for flat, open ground.

When the trees loomed before her and bare ground had turned to grass, Pickle stopped walking, letting her backpack drop to the ground. She pulled the goggles from her eyes and drew them back to rest on top of her head, causing the spiky fur of her ruff to sprout out from under the elastic at ridiculous angles.

“Wow...”

For a few moments she simply stared at the forest with wide, fascinated eyes. Then she brought both of her long-fingered paws up to her muzzle, took a deep breath, and shouted,

“HELLOOOOOOOO!”

In the still air, her voice did not seem to carry very far. Pickle’s arms dropped limply by her sides. She tilted her head, blinked, and waited for a response.

[Sky Lily]

"Heelllooooooooooooo!!!"

A little feathered dinosaur glanced up as he caught the noise of someone's call echoing through the field, soft yet audible at the forest's edge. His feathers ruffled as he peered all around him, curiosity alight in his dark green eyes.

Someone was calling? That was absurd, no one ever called out here, no less existed here! He'd been alone for a good portion of his time at the edge, and had only the stray snake and insect for company- or even mice if he was lucky- and even then, he pretty much marked them for snacks. The Forest's edge had little to provide, yet it remained steadfast in its stubbornness, having yet to allow the little dinosaur in. He'd been here for a few days now, and the shielding mist hadn't dissipated in the least. Iezekiel was growing worried...

But now there was something that he could really do with at the moment, when faced with the grim possibility of finding a home elsewhere or dying in the Wastelands...

...A distraction!

The little feathersaur sped off in the direction of the "hello" as fast as his legs could carry him, feathery tail streaming behind his zooming form. It wasn't long before another figure appeared on the horizon, and it took even shorter for the sharp-eyed little raptor to make out the stranger's features.

However, upon seeing her, he slowed to a stop, his expression that of incredulous surprise.

Why, with her rainbowy tail, the colorful tufts, the starry marks on her striking black coat... whoever-- or whatever-- this was, she was just as colorful as him!

Throwing caution to the wind, Iezekiel rushed right up to the lemur, halting some yards away before calling out eagerly, "Hello, hello!"

[Pickle]

If it were possible for the lemur's multi-coloured eyes to grow any wider, they certainly appeared to as a small feathered reptile suddenly shot out of the undergrowth toward her.

Only Pickle's head moved; tracking the creature's nimble path in silent wonder until it stopped directly in front of her. After a few, rather drawn out moments, the lemur uttered in a small voice,

"Feathery..."

Pickle's long tail swished once, and suddenly all motion returned to her. She promptly dropped onto all fours, with her rear pointing skywards and her head level with the raptor's.

"Is this a place where dinosaurs live?" She asked, and after a moment's thought added, "You are very pretty."

[Sky Lily]

Zeekie was delighted to see that the lemur was not just interested in talking, but friendly as well. Maaayybe he should have thought about that before running up to strangers, but oh well!

"Is this a place where dinosaurs live?"

The raptor paused and shook his head. "Nope, not at all. I'm... kind of wondering if I'm the only one..." he said with a bashful series of chirps before scratching his head with his foreclaws. "If I'm right, this place's name is called Deep Forest, and it accepts all kinds of creatures of all shapes, sizes, colors and everything~!" He stopped to tilt his head, getting a better look at her before commenting"I've never seen anyone like you here, before, but--"

"You are very pretty."

The feathersaur blinked with surprise. "Really? Cause I was thinking the same thing! About you, I mean. It's fur, right? Not feathers of course, hehe!"

"Hey uh, what's your name?"

[Pickle]

As the little dinosaur talked, Pickle rose up and slowly rocked back onto her haunches, before sitting down, sticking her long legs out in front of her. As the smaller creature raised a claw to idly scratch its head, Pickle imitated the action.

"All kinds of creatures..." she repeated quietly, looking past the raptor to the line of trees.

She continued to stare around absently until a question drew her attention back to the chattering dinosaur.

The lemur smiled. "It's fur." She said, using her paws to fluff up the fur on her chest in demonstration of this fact. After doing that, she pointed to herself.

"Pickle."

She then pointed at the raptor, and waited.

[Sky Lily]

"Ahh so it is fur! Well, like I said, it's really pretty. It's got all sorts of colors, and I like your spots. They kinda look like starfish!"

When the lemur pointed at herself and mentioned the name Pickle, Zeekie blinked. "Pickle? What a fun name. Hahaha, it kinda sounds like tickle! Don't you think?

"Oh... Ohhh, uh, my name's Zeekie! It's nice to meet you!" The dinosaur, upon realizing that this particular creature had hands, stretched out his fore-fingers in case she wanted a hand shake. It was a custom he was just barely familiar with.