Kamala Khan

APPEARANCE
Kamala is a teenage American girl of Pakistani origin. She is rather short, has lush, shoulder-length hair, a bold nose and brown eyes. She looks fit and strong and can sprint faster than most girls in her class. Kamala's appearance is always clean, emphasizing practicality over revealing outfits. She can also quite often be seen sporting long-sleeved clothes featuring some of the avenger's symbols, in particular Ms Marvel's lightning bolt.

The teenager's face is very expressive, making it easy to tell how Kamala feels just from reading her face and a bit of body-language. When she shapeshifts into Ms Marvel, Kamala's appearance changes drastically. Beyond the physical changes (blonde, tall, even more toned), her expressions also changes. She becomes rather rigid and hard to read. As Ms Marvel, Kamala's uniform is rather impractical sporting high heels and a tight black swimmingsuit with a scarf wrapped around her waist. She is considering changing it in the near future, but keeps the standard outfit for now to maintain her public persona. Only the facemask is practical, allowing her a good field of vision while hiding her eyes.

PERSONALITY

Kamala's personality revolves around certain core values, which themselves stem from her mixed heritage and her family upbringing. The first and foremost such value is her drive to help people, even at the cost of her own life. This core value both 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 lives 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.

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.

LONGER VERSION
Because I always do those. I like theorizing powers.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Since then, Kamala has been busy fighting crime while keeping her identity a secret. A recent chase on a criminal has led her to NYC, where she is now stuck.

Kamala was running, running hard through the hot, windless roads of Jersey city. The longer legs were quite handy when chasing down criminals, even if the high-heels were not. The robber took a sharp left, stolen cash dropping onto the pavement as he did. Drat, he's getting away. And with that thought in mind, Ms Marvel morphed her shoes into sneakers and darted past the corner as well.

Dead end. Quick look up. Nothing. A gust of wind blowing her blond hair was the only sound the hero heard. Well, besides her own heavy breath. "Where?" Kamala was sure she had seen him run this way. And with his huge bag of money, there was no chance in hell he went over that wall before she arrived here. Then where? Ms Marvel was left scratching the back of her head. The wind was now a constant stream, making Ms Marvel's belly scarf float in the air.

Something was off. Kamala grew up here, in the streets of Jersey City. She didn't recognize this dead end. That's when someone yelled at her from behind. Turning around, the young hero instantly understood where she was. "The city." The one the Jersey people kept hearing about. The big Apple, with its highrise, fancy bankers and world-class heroes. The city of the Avengers.

What the heck am I doing here? Did the robber have powers too? Why didn't he use them earlier? More importantly, what happens if I meet the real Avengers. Flustered and still being yelled at by some stranger, Kamala did the one thing that seemed natural. She ran. Legs stretched out again as Ms marvel tried to gain some speed. One turn, another and still she couldn't recognize anything. Tall buildings everywhere. Where was the coast? Shouldn't she be able to see the Hudson river by now?

With that thought in mind, Kamala looked up. Her gaze lingered on a particular building. It was not as high as the others. Maybe I can reach it. Back and leg muscles grew as Ms marvel got ready to launch herself into the air. She jumped, simultaneously throwing her arms as far as she could. These stretched out, trying to grab the edge of the building she was targeting. Almost! But really not. Hands clawed helplessly against the brick wall, a good foot below the intended height. With a loud crash, Kamala hit the wall face first, then fell two stories down. She barely had time to increase her size before hitting the ground.

Ow. By tripling her size, she had effectively divided by three the height from which she fell. There was a nasty bruise on her backside. It would stay as she shrank back to normal size. "Calm down." Keep a cool head. She could turn back to Kamala, and then take the train back home. Her parents would probably kick up a fuss if they knew she went to New York City alone. But then, they would probably kick up a fuss if they knew their daughter training to be a doctor was secretly a superheroine. Calm down. Blond hair turned brown. Everything became a bit bigger.

USER NAME: Emp, E, Empathy

YEARS RPING: 5

REFERRED TO BY: The amazing Silv.

OTHER: Not as of now.