Rachel Berenson

Page history last edited by PBworks 4 years, 5 months ago

Oooooh, nifty playtime

Rachel Berenson

Basics

Age: Dubious - died at sixteen, physically living at eighteen, mentally living anywhere from teenager to thirty-seven or so

Birthplace: California

Family: Parents (divorced), younger sister Jordan, younger sister Sara; cousin Jake and Jake's parents; various other relatives

Personality

Now, thanks to the Ellimist's deal, Rachel isn't quite as crazy as she once was - though she's suffering from growing up too much, too fast, and will never be able to be a "normal" teenager again. She is extremely loyal, though her loyalty can be hard to earn in the beginning; once you get it, though, there is almost no getting rid of it (otherwise there would've been bite-sized Marcos all over the place by now). She is an absolutely rotten strategist and a pretty bad long-term thinker in terms of battle plans, though if she's planning for solely herself her thinking is much better, and she can do long term general life plans just fine. She's a warrior now, and always will be; there will always be something in her that's just this need to be doing something big and important, fighting the good fight - which is much better than just fighting, admittedly. As long as she can channel that drive into a worthwhile endeavor, she'll do fine. If she's left at loose ends, though, it's anybody's guess. She uses sarcasm as a defensive mechanism and tries to appear tough because on the inside she's shaking - but she never wants anyone else to see that, and so comes off as trying to be tough.

Rachel, however, is tough, and she isn't vain. She knows what she can and can't accomplish and what she is and isn't capable of - although getting her to admit that is basically a losing battle a lot of times. She still enjoys shopping more than almost anything, and physical activity is always a release for her, though since there isn't any sort of war going on it'll be mostly through sport from now on.

History

Rachel Berenson was born to Naomi and Dan in California, the first of three girls. Her parents had a somewhat shaky divorce when she was in late elementary school and never really got along very well afterwards; not long after Rachel became an Animorph, her father moved a thousand miles away to take a better job as a TV news anchor. In her normal life, Rachel was a good student, athletic, an enthusiastic gymnast (though she always knew she was too tall to make it competitively), a fashion maven, and a mostly-loving sister. Very much a "daddy's girl" in many ways, she debated about moving away with her father, but decided she could neither leave the fight nor her mother and sisters. Though she discounts it in a lot of ways, Rachel is a very attractive girl, often described by others as looking like a model and knowing how to appear her best at almost all times; but in many ways she hates the superficiality of looks and would much rather have someone judge her by the skillset she possesses. Her best friend was her total opposite, a short, tomboyish, animal-loving, demure, and kind girl named Cassie, and the completely mismatched pair spent parts of almost every day together.

It was after one of those hang out sessions at the mall in eighth grade where the two of them met up with Rachel's cousin Jake, his best friend Marco, and Tobias - one of Jake's acquaintances - and all ended up leaving in one big group. Cutting through an abandoned construction site, they were astonished to find a spaceship landing nearly on their heads. They met their first alien of far too many, Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, who hastily explained the terrible threat of the Yeerk invasion and why it had to be stopped, and why his people couldn't stop it. Trusting in the five young humans, he charged them to carry on the task to protect their planet, giving them the surpreme Andalite weapon - the power to morph, the ability to absorb DNA from any living organism and to shift one's body into the form of the animal (or person) they'd acquired. Morphing out erased any injuries, since all the bodies were based on DNA, but if they remained in a morph for over two hours, they became a nothlit, a person stuck in that form forever.

For three years the Animorphs, as Marco named their group, fought the Yeerk threat through ever increasing trials - some of which came from Rachel herself. It was a frequent comment on how the blonde beauty queen had this Amazon warrior inside her just waiting for something like this to come around and violently break out, because of all of them Rachel felt the most at home in a fight - even enjoyed it, where the others saw it as a necessity. That enjoyment was a little uneasing at first, but as more and more things began to go wrong Rachel began to spiral down into the darker side of enjoying fighting, and actually craved it. Her relationship with Cassie frequently became strained because of this, because of Cassie's pascifistic nature; it was really only her relationship with Tobias, whom she'd developed some sort of feelings for, that kept her in check in many cases, or Jake's direct and sometimes physically enforced orders. Rachel became violent out of proportion to the situation, actively hunting a fellow human being in David specifically to kill him when she'd thought he'd killed Tobias, and becoming borderline sociopathic. She was even offered "employment" by one of the universe's ultimate evils because of her lust for the hunt and the kill. However, she retained enough of her humanity to be sickened by her actions and feelings, and over time learned to control them more. It never faded entirely; she was never able to be "just a teenager" again. But she learned to keep it in check for the most part, though she was always the first to volunteer for the dangerous jobs.

At the end of the war, with all of them running for their lives, Jake gave Rachel an order to sneak onto the Blade Ship and take out Tom. She did, biting him as a grizzly while he was in snake form, but after she demorphed she was attacked by a Yeerk in polar bear morph and was instantly killed.

After Rachel died, the Ellimist briefly stopped time to honor her death and tell her his "life story." However, he also had an offer for her: as a reward for her services, she could live again in a parallel universe to her own, one that had never been invaded by Yeerks. Despite being a soldier - a warrior - Rachel was nowhere ready to die yet; however, it would mean leaving behind everything she loved and knowing it, never being able to see them again. But her will for life was too strong and she accepted. The Ellimist also offered to help with her "recovery" from her "war-high" by giving her the mental equivalent of a couple of years rest and relaxation (and probably some very high-quality therapy) in her remade body, at the cost of entering her new life as an eighteen-year-old instead of being sixteen as when she died. Ashamed and horrified at many of the decisions she'd made and many of the actions she'd taken because of her addiction to battle, she also accepted that offer - and the Ellimist restored her to life in the middle of a Cardiff night.

Little-Known Facts

Tried to go vegetarian when she was younger and failed miserably
Tries to keep things neat and clean as much as she possibly can
Has something like an addiction to raspberry - fruit, color, and smell
Loves kids' TV shows and is completely ashamed to admit it

Connections

Tobias: friend, comrade, doomed romance (at least Romeo and Juliet were the same species), he was the first one she met after the Ellimist brought her back, deliberately placing her near him. Joined at the hip in many ways, but they spend plenty of time apart as well.

Peter: he's letting her stay with him, partially for Tobias's sake and partially because he's just a nice guy. She wants to - and does - like him, but she's still a little twitchy about getting close to new people.

Game History

Landing in Cardiff: Rachel is taken to Cardiff on a cold night in not at all proper clothing, ends up running into Tobias, and is taken to Peter's hotel room

Breakfast Talk: Peter tries to get her to calm down over breakfast, and it works to a certain degree