Kumari Kamiri

Kumari Karimi

shifter | female | 36 | june 26 | homosexual

☄ abilities Born a shifter, Kumari’s spirit animal is that of an Atlas Beetle, a subspecies in the Rhinoceros Beetle family. Oddly enough, she takes the form of the male of the species, despite being biologically female in human form. It is incredibly rare for her to make a partial shift, much preferring to conserve her energy for when she makes a full shift, which is much more frequent, though she tends to avoid making the shift when in view of others, so it is still a rare sight. In fact, she will often avoid giving any hints to her powers, preferring to identify herself as a powerless hybrid.

That said, she does share some attributes with the Atlas Beetle, some being more notable than others. She gained the competitive nature of the insect, enjoying the thrill of victory in scoring mates than the actual prospect of mating. Again though, her animal form being male means that these instincts are particularly geared towards females, but she doesn’t have any hang ups about it. While not a power, it is a heavily influence of the animal she has been bonded with.

A more notable trope that she gains from her animal other though, is their immense strength. Some species are known for being capable of lifting 850 times their body weight. While she is not capable of reaching such an impressive feat in her human form, her general size and build is very deceptive in how much she can lift. At best, she could bench press the average car, though she does not spend a lot of time testing her limits in human form and is not a disciplined fighter, so theoretically she could hit rather hard, but in practice she would not be all that impressive. In addition, she has certain physical health problems that hold her back from using the full extent of her strength. Not to mention that showing off her strength would be counter-intuitive to attempts at blending in with powerless hybrids.

In beetle form though, it is a completely different story. Kumari is a well disciplined and trained brawler, a scary opponent to face off against, assuming the opposition is within her size-class. She retains the same size of a real world Atlas Beetle, meaning that she is only skilled in fighting something that is relatively her size, otherwise she will be quickly outclassed.

☄ role Primarily, Kumari works at the local library in New Rome, a quiet job of sorting books and keeping record of other older media platforms, such as film and CDs. What most strikes her interest is records, an ancient form of recorded music on big vinyl disks. She is a collector of this older music, so she often keeps an eye on any new entries that come through her workplace. She is quite reserved on the job, but willing to help customers if she can read their difficulties in finding what they need. It is merely her day job though.

Kumari’s night job revolves around the underground shifter fight clubs. It is a street level event run by the corrupt, pitting two shifters against one another in their animal forms. Some contestants are willing, others might not be. The fight lasts until one is either knocked out or can’t maintain their animal forms, thus shifters with Dyadic links are strictly prohibited from entering the ring. Kumari finds herself in the willing category. Being generally considered lower class and her job as a librarian not making ends meet, she has partaken in this event for quite some time, being a rather notable figure, her street name being ‘Cream’ because, as she puts it, ‘if you get in the ring with me, you’re going to get creamed.’ While not having a perfect win record, she does still have an impressive ratio. Due to the size of her animal form though, she is strictly within the smaller size class, often being pitted against rodents, arachnids, and other insects. The money she makes is one thing, but she also enjoys the thrill of the fight.

☄ appearance As her name would suggest, Kumari is of Indian descent, having a darker complexion. As noted in her powers section, her build is not too impressive, as someone who doesn’t work out would naturally have. She keeps relatively thin as it is somewhat mandatory for her to watch her diet. She stands at a rather underwhelming 5’4”. She has jet black hair that is often tied up into a braid that extends to the bottom of her shoulder blades. She has a notable scarring on her lower wrist, in addition to a scarab tattoo located just above it.

Kumari face is not exactly striking in terms of features. Her eyes are a very subtle brown that blends in with her skin tone, in addition to be rather sunken in. Her face is rough and rounded, though her cheek bones become quite prominent when she emotes. Due to her age, she’s grown some slight wrinkles, most notably her crow’s feet. Her complexion is normally stoic, though very inviting when she wants to be.

Her attire is drastically different depending on situation, eluding to the multiple lives she lives. Librarian Kumari wears a sharp pair of glasses and dresses rather conservatively. She wears a saree and hijab to promote her heritage and display her most notable field of study to make her more approachable to patrons with questions about her ancestors’ culture. Of course, the entirety of her left arm is always concealed and sometimes she includes a bindi on her forehead.

Casual Kumari (or as she often prefers to be refered to as in this attire, KK) finds herself breaking from tradition, usually wearing a variety of different more modern outfits. A night out on the town, or just relaxing on her days off she can be found in tank tops, halter neck tops, cold-shoulder blouses, cardigans, jeans, and long skirts to name a few. If her shirt leaves her arms bare, she wears a series of metallic bangles on her left arm, enough to cover both her tattoo and scar. She can often be found with a bit of mascara to accent her eyes, striking red lipstick, and concealing makeup to hide her wrinkles with this attire. Outside of work though, she rarely wears her glasses and prefers contact lenses

As her street persona, Cream, she tends to wear concealing clothing, though in a manner completely different from her work clothes. She tends to wear darker shades and plain clothing that usually hides her skin from head to toe and a large sweater that covers her more notable female features, in addition to sporting a beanie that conceals her hair and a handkerchief that hangs loosely around her neck, ready to be pulled up at a moment’s notice. She often doesn’t stress much about what she wears considering that her human form isn’t the center of attention whenever she dons this attire.

Being an Atlas Beetle, her other form is rather big, as far as insects are concerned. At a mighty twelve centimeters (fits comfortably in the palm of your hand!), she is a rather big specimen, for a male of her species anyways. This form is male, so it has the trademark three pronged horns that were notable for battling over mates and burrowing. Her shell is a smooth black shade and rather tough at that. She can expand her shell to expose her tan-translucent wings as well.

☄ personality Kumari is a bit of a social chameleon, in that she can be quite different depending on her social environment. First and foremost, she can be quite outgoing when it benefits her. She will be the fist to strike up a conversation should someone catch her eye or something on them. She is perfectly willing to pry someone open, though will get quickly offended if someone tries to do the same to her. When in a pinch, she is quick to lie about herself, even if the first thing she thinks of isn’t all that convincing. She is willing to strongarm her way into making the opposing person believe her lie or take it for what it’s worth.

While Kumari can seem somewhat brutish at times, there’s a quiet intelligent person somewhere in there. As evident by her choice of jobs, she values information and knowledge just as much as the thrill of the fight, though sometimes it is more dominant than others. She is a natural neat-freak, so the relaxing job of a librarian is quite soothing for her, though at the same time the scrappiness of street brawling is equally exhilarating. It is a matter of balance, if she was exclusively doing one job over the other she would get bored with either very quickly.

In terms of hobbies, Kumari is a big-time vinyl collector, her house being full of records from vastly different eras. She mostly collects genres she is interested in, such as classical, though she will seek some out specifically for their rarity. She’s a well learned reader, her field of interest being history. While she had spent some time in college, she primarily learnt everything she knows on her own accord. Outside of that, she also spends much of her time trying to win people, not much caring for personal attachment, in terms of love interests anyways. She is perfectly fine with plutonic friends, so long as they don’t question her business.

She is also well known for her affinity for what most would consider terrible jokes. She unironically enjoys her humor, even if most others would consider it lackluster, her favourites being puns. Her street name and the story behind it are clear indicators of this trait of hers. She does not take her ‘street’ life very seriously, it is more of an outlet than anything else. That said, she doesn’t go around announcing what she does nor does she fill in her close friends on it. That is her own personal business that she wouldn’t share with anyone curious. Perhaps if she retired, but that would be her sole consideration.

With such a tough exterior, she has plenty of interior flaws to go with it. She has nervous ticks, some that can creep up on her if she isn’t careful. One telltale sign of her becoming unsteady is that she’ll grasp at her braid and begin plucking hairs one by one. She has akousticophobia, mostly pertaining to gun shots or sounds similar. Fear can dominate her if it is faint or debatably self-inflicted making her quite weak willed, but she pushes back if it gets too overbearing, completely thrusting thoughts out of her head to focus on other things.

Kumari was born and raised in a family devoted to the Meteora religion, so she might be caught saying ‘by the light!’ or something along those lines, but she isn’t much of a believer herself. At best she’s a casual follower, at worst she disregards it completely.

☄ strengths

01.) While not disciplined, Kumari can be a decent fighter in terms of raw strength. She is capable of lifting weights far beyond the capacity of most human beings, though most times chooses not to. She still isn’t quite aware of her full potential, though isn’t interested in knowing it.

02.) Kumari is well researched in her fields, being far more intelligent than she lets on to be, at least in casual conversation. In her work environment, she fits the role quite naturally, being rather soft-spoken and insightful.

03.) In her Atlas Beetle form, she is an esteemed street level brawler, being quite capable of taking on opponents three times her size, though that isn’t incredibly impressive. While she is in her twilight years in terms of her fight club status, there’s a reason she hasn’t given in just yet.

☄ weaknesses

01.) Kumari’s immense strength is quite beneficial, but she has some physical health problems when it comes to using it. Her left arm has issues with its tendons, being heavily influenced by the scaring on the area effected. General movement can cause swift and sharp pains should she neglect her morphine intakes, or their effects wear off for any reason. She will often neglect her left arm, avoiding its usage unless completely necessary, essentially leaving her with one useable hand.

02.) While being intelligent, Kumari is not incredibly clever. Aside from her amazing ability to piece together puns, she is not very capable of thinking on her feet. Unless she has been given time to plan something out, she might not have very convincing lies nor good strategy for generally anything, board games, fighting, or mind games, she will sooner flip the table than plan out a solution in a pinch.

03.) Due to her lack of Dyadic pairing and her innate refusal to get one, Kumari’s time in her animal form is quite limited. It depends on how much of her strength she’s used while transformed, but she has never lasted for longer than 3 hours without having some devoted rest time. That’s if her insect form is of any use in a given situation. In terms of fighting, she is just about as capable of fighting bigger creatures as an actual bug, in most situations she’d probably be better off in her human form.

☄ history Born in Uttarakhand, India, Kumari was the second oldest of her four siblings, her being the singular female of the batch. Her most important relationship was that of her immediate younger brother, being only a year and a half older than him. Shakir and Kumari had a very close bond with one another, being the middle children, they very often looked out for one another. Naturally, they were both shifters, taking forms of two different, yet somewhat identical insects. Shakir’s got a bit more attention since it was more peculiar.

Their father was a historian on Arabic culture, identifying that his son’s form of a Golden Scarab had incredible religious significance in old Egyptian culture. Given the creature’s unnatural colour, he was convinced that the gods had blessed their son with a mythical creature as his animal form, the Scarab that symbolized Khepri, an ancient Egyptian god of creation. He no doubt had some untapped potential and this gospel was passed along through the grapevine by their mother, praising the light for their gift. They had no idea the dangers of proclaiming their son as a mythical shifter would bring.

Out playing and adventuring, day no different than the last, Kumari and Shakir where approached by a group of strangers. Kumari’s memory on them was fuzzy, the most she knew was that they came to collect her little brother, quite forcefully. She was nine at the time, so she wasn’t fully capable of taking them on, Shakir being whisked away with ease. In a last-ditch effort to prevent them from escaping, Kumari grabbed one of their legs, her grip being quite impressive due to her powers. She managed to prove herself a threat, though all that earned her was a bullet to the wrist, a quick measure to relieve her grip.

As she grew older, Kumari switched gears from blaming herself for the incident, to turning against her parents for putting the bounty on his head to begin with. They had no proof that he had any extraordinary powers that would warrant his status as a mythical shifter and even if he did labelling him as one was a bone headed decision for them to make. Over time, she had to abandon her home, though it was around the age where she could attend college, so it was a fitting time to leave anyway.

Kumari focused her studies for two years, but overtime got fed up with the college life, finding complete devotion to study to be a bore. She spent a few odd years bouncing around jobs, trying to make a life for herself and keep herself at a stable income so that she could afford her medication. Her parents constantly offered to help her with her financial needs, especially for her morphine, but at that point in her life she wanted nothing to do with them.

It was into her late twenties that money issues began to arise. She caught wind of underground fight clubs where shifters would clobber each other, and people would take bets on the side. She had herself convinced that it would be worth her time since she could also be scoping out for her long-lost brother while she was at it, but that thought disappeared overtime. Being her first foray into gambling, she took the chance and invested a good chunk of time and money into the ring. She wasn’t fighting herself, she was a spectator at this point. Some lucky wins got her a moment of luxury, where she began to revisit her passion for history, studying for the fun of it rather than the grades.

As gambling goes though, you win some, you lose some. Kumari was in the losing category. A few boneheaded investments and bad wagers put her in a pit that seemed near impossible to crawl out of. One major bet threw her so off that she got fed up with being a spectator, she wanted so bad to just throw herself in the ring and make her bet win. It gave her the idea though, she could start fighting in the ring. Her animal form wasn’t impressive, but she heard that some of the fighting circuits in major cities had size classes since they were much bigger events there, and it kept things interesting.

While Kumari was acquainted with her other form, she didn’t spend too much time fighting in it, in fact rarely at all. She had to devote a few months to training, but her debts were getting closer to strangling her completely. She fled to New Rome, no house, not a dollar to her name. She spent her first couple fights on the ropes, but overtime she grew a natural fighting sense, like it was in her blood. People were having a difficult time pronouncing her surname, so often people would refer to her as ‘Creamy’, which she would later adopt after winning a major fight. She exclaimed to her opponent “you just got Creamed!” Nobody laughed except for her. To this very day, many curiously wonder if she legitimately thinks her name holds any intimidation value. It has become well recognized among the fighting circuits, that isn’t contested.

She wasn’t immune to failure, but success did come more naturally to her and with it she regained the luxuries she once had without too much uncertainty like her gambling days. She got a house and eventually a real job with stable income. However, she always returned to the fighting circuit. Kumari had to be a bit more discrete with her business though, as she was essentially leading three different lifestyles, all of them would not interlink with one another very well. Her job as a librarian and her social life were easier to get along, but her street life, not so much.

Art Claim: Wesley Fleming