Ms Marvel

MS MARVEL

Real Name: Kamala Khan

Alias: Ms Marvel

Title: Ms Marvel

Identity: Secret

Age: 16

Species: Inhuman/human hybrid



Physical Appearance:

Kamala stands a glorious five feet four, unless being twelve feet tall helps her bash some baddies unconscious. When not shapeshifting, Ms Marvel has shoulder-length, black hair. She has a beautiful bold nose, sharp brown eyes and usually wears casual clothing. These can be superhero inspired, such as a t-shirt with a captain America shield. It can also be something low-key to blend into the crowd. As Ms Marvel, Kamala wears an outfit similar to Carol Denver's original costume. If actually shape-shifting into Carol Denver, it will be an identical replica. When using her own appearance, her Ms Marvel costume is long-sleeved, both around her legs and arms. It also sports a long, red scarf. Note that Kamala can shapeshift her clothes, which also gives her the ability to move and change her clothing at will.


Personality:

Kamala's personality revolves around certain core values, which themselves stem from her family upbringing. The first and foremost such value is her drive to help people, even at the cost of her own life. This manifests through and was nurtured by her family, her country and her obsession with superheroes. Kamala's intended career is as a doctor, saving lives. Now that she has gained powers, she has extended this mission to saving people as Ms Marvel.

Another personality trait is her analytical mind. Kamala is a no non-sense girl. She works hard, and even though she sometimes does silly things, such as sneak out at night, the risks she takes are always measured and have a clear goal in mind. She is brave and puts her life on the line to save people, but Kamala does not act in a rash manner. In every day life, the girl is known for her excellent grades and good behavior in class and at home. She also respects and follows the religious precepts her parents have taught her.

As an unfortunate consequence of her analytical mind and her complex background, and like many other teenagers coming to age, Kamala is also insecure. She thinks a lot about her place in society, about how other people feel about her, how they expect her to behave and how she is perceived by others. Add to that her supernormal powers, and there is a lot to worry and overthink about. Kamala initially shapeshifted into Ms Marvel to gain confidence, thinking incorrectly that this new appearance would automatically infuse strength in her. It did not, but helped her realize what really mattered to her, and what truly drover her actions: saving people. She still keeps up the Ms Marvel shape-shifting front, mostly to maintain her secret identity and because she still hasn't come to terms with her identity quite yet.

Despite the headaches her heritage brings her, Kamala is proud of it, even if she doesn't always show it and tries her hardest to fit into school with the more privileged students.

A last thing to know about Kamala is that she likes superheroes... a lot. Her idol is the original Ms Marvel, Carol Danvers. Kamala has written a number of fanfics and is very active in the internet community surrounding the Avengers. And because of her analytical mind, this gives her a rather extensive nerdy knowledge about the superhero community in the New York area.



Powers:

[Shapeshifting]
In a nutshell, Kamala can stretch, compress and change the appearance of her body. She can also increase and decrease its weight, within limits. As an inhuman hybrid, she also has the potential to attain peak human abilities, but is not yet trained to do so and would currently be qualified as 'very fit' by normal human standards. She heals at a normal rate but due to her shapeshifting can eventually regrow even lost limbs given enough time. In canon, Kamala eventually loses her appearance changing ability in favor of a fast healing factor as she gets more comfortable with her identity as Ms Marvel. She then eventually regains her shapeshifting abilities while keeping her healing powers. This is not (yet?) the case in this 'verse.

[Elasticity]
The simplest part of Kamala's powers is the ability to stretch and compress her body into all kinds of simple shapes. This involves turning a hand into an oversized shovel or inflate her head into a giant balloon. These transformations are near instantaneous and allow her to change her density by a factor of up to ten.

[Mass Manipulation]
A more complicated notion is the ability to gain or lose mass. Kamala can do so, but it takes a few seconds. Mass gain is usually associated with a gain in volume, and mass loss with a loss in volume. Mass can be multiplied by a factor of 100, meaning Kamala's weight can vary from 1lb to 5 tons. She gains the corresponding muscle strength

[Appearance change]
Kamala's body always remains biological in nature, which in particular means she can take the appearance of other living beings. Note that she can only reproduce superficial traits, and only if she knows them very well. This includes her idol Ms Marvel, and close people like her mom and dad.

COMMON TECHNIQUES
Ms Marvel often shapeshifts a specific body part into a weapon. For instance, she can increase the mass and size of her hand, turning it into a potent mace to break tables and other objects with. Any bruises on her over-sized body-part will be reduced, but not healed, when she returns it to normal size.

Techniques she is currently working on:
Increase the size her her shoulder muscles such as to be able to launch her elongated arms into the air, for example to grab a distant ledge in a spidey-like fashion.
Increase her mass and size, before compressing her size back to normal again. This has the net effect of increasing her bodies' density, but greatly decreasing her movement speed.
These two techniques she is still currently working on, and cannot use without some preparation and significant failure-rate.


Abilities:

[Superhero Nerd]
Kamala has extensive knowledge of anything super-hero related in the marvel-verse. This means she can recognize heroes and villains of her own universe with ease. She has a reasonable understanding of the strengths, weaknesses and allegiances of supers within her universe. Some of them she can even claim has friends.


Weapons/Equipment:

None

History:

Kamala grew up in Jersey City, right on the edge of New York City. Her father, Jusuf Khan, is a retail banker who immigrated to the United States from Pakistan. In addition to herself and her dad, Kamala's family also comprises Disha Khan, her mother, and Jamir Khan, her older brother. This family unit is quite tight, with both parents pushing both kids to do well at school as well as respect the Koran. Jamir in particular is more pious than the rest of the family.

Trying to fit in is no easy task for Kamala. Like many teenagers and minorities, she feels under-represented by mainstream media. It doesn't help that people at school can sometimes be ... nasty. Nevertheless, the young woman tries to fit in while staying true to her heritage. No easy task to juggle expectations both at school and at home.

When she is barred by her parents from taking part in a midnight high school party at the docks, Kamala decided to sneak out of her room and go anyway. After being teased by her schoolmates and ready to go back home, the whole coastal region of Jersey City is enveloped in Terrigen mist. This triggered a hallucination as well as Kamala's hidden powers as a Inhuman/human hybrid. Scared and insecure, when asked by hallucinated idol Carol Danvers what she wanted, Kamala answered 'I want to be you'. Her powers conformed to the wish, shapeshifting her physical appearance into that of Ms Marvel.

What followed then was a rescue mission as the new Ms Marvel saved the very same people that had made fun of Kamala a few minutes earlier. The young woman realized two important things at that moment. First, changing her physical appearance had not fundamentally changed her. It didn't solve her problems, not did it change her identity. Second, she realized that her calling was to save people. So even though her true identity was not the blond Carol Danvers, she was in some way the new Ms Marvel. A hero.

The young hero has barely been active for a couple of months before being sucked into a new universe. The event happened as she was investigating strange sightings of a dinosaur all the way to a church in New York. Crashing into the abandoned Church as Ms Marvel, the young hero was surprised however to find little Molly Hayes instead. The two barely had time to get acquainted. One moment they were talking about dinosaurs and a friend named Gert and supervillains and how not all dinosaurs were bad and *poof* the world just disappeared on them. Then it reappeared, just different. It felt different, like the two were not welcome here, like the air was filled with hostile current.

Just as she was getting comfortable being the Superhero New Jersey needed. And the world Kamala Khan found herself in was less intimidating and more downright terrifying. Hiding underground, the inhuman knows only one person so far.





Weaknesses:

Whatever shapeshifting Kamala does, her body remains human at all times. This means it is still made out of flesh and bones and can bleed. Gun shots, knives and other conventional weapons still cause the same wounds as on a normal human. Now, changing her size and mass does provide Ms Marvel with some interesting trade-offs:
[*]Making herself small makes her harder to hit, but also multiplies any damage she takes by the shrinking factor. Indeed, any wound inflicted will grow by the same factor when she returns to normal size.
[*]Similarly, making herself big reduces the damage Kamala takes by the corresponding factor, as her wounds shrink when she returns to a normal size. On the flip side, she becomes a very easy target.

And as for taking someone's appearance: she can only copy superficial traits. The better she knows a person, the more accurately and faster she can copy said superficial traits. Her powers do not grant her the ability to copy powers, mannerisms or even clone a physical appearance. She can only express whatever appearance she has studied beforehand.


Kamala's biggest fear is that her actions as a superhero will end up hurting her family and friends. This is the main reason why she keeps up her secret identity and maintains her appearance as Carol Denver. A side-effect of this is that she is quite anxious of meeting a true avenger and being questioned about... being Ms Marvel.

Personality-wise, Kamala has a lot of advantages. She can be very analytical and is good at solving problems by taking calculated risks. When it comes to people however, Kamala Khan can be *too* trusting, especially in a new world where she cannot use her extensive super-hero knowledge to determine whether a person is good or bad.


Other Information: I've apped Kamala Khan on two RP forums before. The apps may contain a large amount of common material.

OOC Information
OOC Name: Empathy
Character color: Black
Group title: Molly's big sister
Face Claim: -