Skyler Leah Rizzo
Code-Name: Chimera
Nicknames: Sky, Rizzo
Ethnicity: British
Sex: Female
Age: 27
Appearance:
Hair: Dark brown, short
Eyes: Pale grey / green
Skin: On the paler side
Height: 5'7
Build: Lean figure, without many pronounced curves.
Other: With an overall androgynous look, she prefers boyish clothes and short haircuts. However her love of makeup, soft featured face, full lips, and dark painted clear eyes easily give her away as the captivating woman she is. She has over thirty tattoos scattered across her body, including two full sleeves, 'just love' across her knuckles and a scrawl of the lyrics '... And breathe me' on the side of her neck. She has three piercings to each ear, always wears multiple rings, has short often painted nails, and prefers black and white over most colors.
Date Of Birth: January 13th (Capricorn)
Place Of Birth: East End of London, England.
Education: HS Diploma from Xavier Institute, class of 2010.
Powers: Skyler is an animal shapeshifter. With years of practice she became an expert at blending together different or exaggerated animal forms, to the point where she rarely uses normal shifts anymore. She is able to create mythical-like and fantasy creatures, and has a preference for reptiles.
With her ability to shift and change her body, Skyler has learned to heal herself, but it does not happen instantly or completely - she cannot knit her flesh back together unless she is already in the process of shifting. If wounded, she might choose to deal with it rather than shifting back to human form and risking exhaustion or becoming vulnerable in a fight. She is able to heal most cuts, stabs or slashes, but a broken bone is trickier. Typically she doesn't heal bullet wounds, as the bullet would be left behind in her body and cause more problems than it was worth.
Separate from her shapeshifting abilities, she is an expert markswoman, tracker, and packs a punch at both kickboxing and MMA fighting. She has been compared to a rock in a fight, she is solidly built and unusually strong for a woman of her size. She's known for being able to take a lot of punishment without backing down.
Power Limitations: Blending animals makes it much more difficult to shift in succession, so when picking a mixed shift she normally has to stick to it. Shifting more than three times an hour takes a lot out of her, and making additional changes to an already established shift can be strenuous as well. New mixed morphs are not things she comes up with on the fly, as it takes time and practice to get the proportions and anatomy right.
Hobbies and Interests: Sky is an avid reader. She has a passion for music, and writes her own poetry/song lyrics and is also a beautiful singer. She loves art, particularly tattoos and ink. She's a kick boxer, likes a good work out, and a good fight if the mood strikes her. Cartoons are her guilty pleasure.
Background: Abandoned at four years old, Sky remembered little about her mother, but remembered much of the time she spent at the St. Joseph's Children's Home in East London. There were dozens of children, tall never ending fences, gray brick walls and stained glass windows - church pews, and crude classrooms covered in projects made in art class.
Sky was passed between the hands of volunteering families, foster care, and foster homes, and she saw many kids and volunteers come and go, so she gained and lost countless siblings and parents over the years. Despite trying to be the perfect little angel, nothing ever seemed to stick, so she learned the lesson not to pretend to be something you're not early in life.
When Skyler was thirteen two American suits came to the orphanage to see her, explaining they were from a private recruitment agency, though she never understood exactly what for. She was simply told she could be very special, and they were very covert and secretive about the rest. Once all the papers were signed Sky found herself traveling to Washington, undergoing a series of bizarre tests and trails.
Whatever tests they were, she must've failed, because she soon found herself dropped back into foster care without explanation, except in a country she wasn't familiar with and no one she knew. It had been a mistake to get her hopes up - she'd always known she was nothing special. It was at her lowest moment that she meant her first love, Tira.
Their relationship was viewed as unhealthy and obsessive by the orphanage staff, so it wasn't long before they were separated. Tira fought the decision until she ended up in a behavioral mental institution for several months, though her stints there over the years would be plenty. No matter where they were, the girls still wrote each other, using a coded language they'd created together so no one else could read them.
Sky was never officially adopted, and over time she found with foster families it usually went one of two ways - if they had kids, she was a babysitter, if not, a maid. When she was seventeen she was stuck with a particularly bad family, so she took off, and once she found Tira, the two ran away together.
Tira was different though. She couldn't function anymore without the slew of different medications she'd been taking since puberty. Growing up the doctors had seemingly diagnosed her with something different every week, and every time they found each other again Skyler could see Tira fading away, becoming less of who she used to be. For the first time she was faced with the reality that the drugs had done irreversible damage to the girl she loved.
Desperate to help her somehow, Sky broke into a pharmacy but was sloppy and got caught. She shifted for the first time in her life, turning into a grizzly and attacking the police, hurting several people before she was sedated. Tira was taken back to the institution, with Sky blamed for her sharp decline in stability, and after that the two never saw each other again.
Skyler was brought to the Xavier Institute as a ward of the state to learn how to control her mutant abilities. While she was a mouthy pain in the ass at first, she was grateful for the help, to be around those like her, and of course the free room and board provided. It was more than she'd ever been given before. For the first time in her life, she really felt like she belonged - unfortunately, she was only there a year before the Sentinels attacked.
The X-Men were warned a few minutes before by Blindfold, but there isn't enough time for everyone to escape. Blink teleported anyone she could out of the mansion, but in the end, there was only so much time and she had to prioritize. Skyler was left behind, as well as her girlfriend Lerina, and the majority of the students. They tried to defend the school, but in one fell swoop Skyler had to watch all of her friends die. Lerina was hit by a blast and completely vaporized - there was simply nothing left of the woman she loved.
Skyler barely escaped with her life. For a time she desperately looked for the X-Men, returning to the rubble of the mansion when she thought it was safe, but they never came looking for her. The bodies of the students were left out to rot in the sun. She had to give up, and hitch hiked south into the city. Homeless in a now volatile and severely anti-mutant New York, Skyler dedicated herself to learning to fight and shoot, seeing it as a matter of survival. She would sometimes spend weeks as a stray dog or a bird, just trying to stay out of people's notice.
She left NYC when she heard whispers of a meeting set up by the X-Men, a chance for mutants to work together to live freely again. The meeting was set in an empty factory outside Milwaukee, Wisconsin, but before it could even begin Sentinels attacked. Mutants scattered, and again Skyler had to see her people die and again she barely escaped. This became a painful theme in her life, as she constantly dodged capture and encampment from the Sentinels and human enforcers.
When Apocalypse appeared, tearing through the western United States with brutal efficiency, Skyler didn't know what to do. It wasn't long before the streets were crowded with people desperate to flee to the central states, and brutal riots broke out as those forced out of their homes fought for food and shelter. Protests raged on at state capitols for days, all calling for a mutant cull, for her people's extinction, and the police and the army were no longer able to contain them. Days later, the President was murdered, and the U.S. Government crumbled.
Skyler saw no other choice than to venture into Apocalypse territory, where the humans feared to tread and those brave enough were quickly crushed. The West was less chaotic then she expected, and soon mutant cities rose up, starting trade, offering protection, the strongest among them answering calls to join bands of soldiers who protected the borders. Defenders of the Highestkind, they called them. She'd be lying if she said she didn't like the ring of it.
Settling in Oregon, far from Apocalypse's capitol city, Skyler befriended a woman named Noelle, who shared a similar history with the X-Men. The two fought to prove themselves and rose among the ranks of War's army, and Sky stood at Noelle's side when she killed War and took his title. Skyler was named War's trusted general. She'd never felt more powerful or respected. She worked to recruit stable, powerful mutants to join Noelle's closest ranks, and brought Cody, Yaara, and eventually Charlie to Noelle's attention.
After Apocalypse was murdered, chaos erupted once more. War was quick to deflect, and Skyler, Cody and Yaara were invited to join her and any others they could trust. Charlie was never found and presumed dead, a loss Skyler felt as she considered him a close friend. She followed Noelle across the world to settle in Genosha, an abandoned island that held so much history and symbolism to her people. Her team travelled across the states, to sites such as Black Hawk and Bellator to find mutants willing to join them and fight for their species.
Personality: Sky is quick-witted, streetwise and has a passion for life. She is driven, grateful to be alive, and a romantic to the core. She is friendly, blunt, sarcastic and even more flirtatious. She is possessive and loyal to her friends and not a fan of gossip - she's not afraid of anything, least of all what others think.
Skyler has a noticeable but light British accent. She appears to have a carefree attitude but has fought for everything she has, so takes her goals very seriously and works hard. She has a fear of losing people close to her, what she has built for herself, and of being left behind. She distrusts medical doctors and is against anyone who labels others with psychological disorders.
This is an alpha female who will kick if provoked, though seldom loses her cool.
Special Notes: Model/Play By - Ruby Rose. Sky vapes regularly, and smokes on the bad days. She has an albino (yellow and white) ball python that is five feet long named Audrey.