Physique

Chrysalis is a shapeshifting teen superhero who first appeared on the scene in November 2058. Almost no one knows that she is the Colonial Heights High School student Lyssa Bryant, or that she isn't in fact entirely human but an alien (and an illegal one at that), one of the Df3-Yb4=, or Mhechtpalyan Shifters, whose real name is Ch1.Se7.. It's also generally unknown that she is the same person as the hero Variable who was in Colonial Bay from November 2057 to September 2058, or the former CHHS student Chrissie Nash.

Description
As a shapeshifter, Chrysalis cannot really be described generally, but she does have some standard forms:

current

As Chrysalis: Chrysalis isn't the easiest person to describe because she seldom looks the same twice. Her height, her weight, her build, her features, her colouration and her costume, to name but a few aspects, may all differ from one time you see her to the next - or indeed may change as you watch.

That said, she usually typically as an attractive young woman, perhaps a teenager, of maybe 135 pounds, and her costume, whatever its design, usually has the same colour scheme of turquoise, purple and cream. Sometime even her hair, eyes or even skin may be one of these colours too!

As Lyssa: Lyssa is tall for a 16-year-old girl, almost 5'11", and of athletic build. She's also quite striking of appearance, with a strong-featured but still feminine face, shoulder-length auburn hair and well-proportioned figure. She carries herself with in a confident manner, as someone who is comfortable in herself, but her ready, friendly smile prevents her from seem to hung up on herself.

She generally dresses in current teen styles and favours short skirts, the better to show off her long and shapely legs.

former

As Variable: Variable is a shortish woman, but the contours of her costume suggest an athletic physique. She wears a glossy black bodysuit with silver-grey trim and a symbol on her chest in the same silver-grey: an italic x. The costume has a mask which covers much of her face, but allows her long black hair to flow freely down her back. The mask doesn't fully cover the mouth and eyes, which show her to be of Chinese appearance.

As Chrissie: Chrissie's a 16-year old girl, with a slim (but not too slim) athletic figure, a pretty (but not perfect face), a clear (but for a few cute freckles) complexion, blonde (but not strikingly so) hair and blue (but not too blue) eyes. She's rather attractive (but not stunning). She dresses in not-quite-the latest fashions. Most people wouldn't have to be told to guess she's a cheerleader; she looks the part and acts the part (but not quite perfectly). All in all, she's just enough off a stereotype not come across as a caricature, and to fit in rather than stand out.

Origin
The Df3-Yb4=, or Mhechtpalyan Shifters, have been jokingly described as "beings of impure energy": though they are arguably basically sentient energy matrices which can manipulate the matter within them, they can't exist independently of that matter. Some think they evolved from normal carbon-based life, some from a symbiosis of a true energy being and a carbon-based animal in any case they lived long as the only sentient life on Mhechtpaly, physically taking on the shapes of many different species while developing an extensive culture. They built little, for they had little need to adapt the environment to themselves when they could adapt themselves to the environment, but they passed an ever-broadening knowledge to each generation.

Then the Nghaojk, from the fourth planet of the system, colonized the world. They had no idea at first of the existence of the Shifters, let alone of their sentience. Inevitably, though, some of the Shifters began to take the form of the Nghaojk, and the discovery was made. For the Nghaojk it came as a shock that the Shifters had infiltrated them, and they began to take measures to protect themselves (while securing their hold on Mhechtpaly: after all, the Shifters were still savages - they didn't even have a material culture!). The Shifters, for their part, mostly did what they had always done: they simply adapted themselves to the Nghaojk exploitation of their world. Some though, those that had taken on Nghaojk forms, developed a taste for their Nghaojk culture and Nghaojk technology. They were admitted into society, albeit with fewer rights than true Nghaojk.

The Nghaojk were admitted to the Guild with no improvement to the status of the Shifters: they were treated simply as a second species within the Nghaojk regime. But increasingly as they embraced Nghaojk culture, some of the Shifters came to resent their lower status and to fight for greater rights. Soon they were outlawed and on the run. For two of them things got more complicated when they had a child, Ch1.Se7..

Ch1.Se7.'s parents had a problem: wanted as they were they couldn't return to their own world, or even system, to raise the child, but it was essential (once a certain age was reached) to raise the child among sentient beings, or it would probably never achieve sentience. No Guild world was safe, due to trade and treaties with the Nghaojk, and barbarians were hardly better than animals that left the fringe worlds, those worlds in partial quarantine till they're fit to join the Guild. They chose Earth, and Colonial Bay in particular, not least because they appreciated that the fellowship of beings of unusual ability would help the child's development at a later stage.

Once the child had learned to take on a full human shape and had the basic education needed, she was sent to school as Chrissie Nash, and was soon acting like a typical, or even stereotypical, teenaged girl. But she was not even typical for her true species: she was "gifted", able to copy other beings to the smallest detail, and her parents knew that this marked her too as a target for the Nghaojk government: the perfect Shifter has always been a bogeyman for the Nghaojk. They stressed more than ever the need to remain hidden. And for a time Chrissie did, happy in her human life. But it was inevitable that as Chrissie got older she'd want to start exploring her Shifter side. It was wanting to impress a boy that first brought her to the next stage in her development.

Powers
Lyssa can change shape into anything essentially made up of organic chemicals, even (normally) nonliving ones, at least potentially: she's still young and has a lot to learn, having spent most of her life as a member of only two species. The change is complete to the molecular level, and as one of the "gifted" she can imitate someone else so well that only exotic equipment, psionic examination or observation of behaviour can give her away she can analyse something by touch well enough to achieve this.

She can't change her mass without absorbing or shedding nonliving organic material, but she can do this readily enough (she can't control the living tissue of another, presumably due to it's own "life force") within certain size limits. She can greatly alter her physical attributes (though dexterity only slightly, since some practice is required to use a form fluidly), grow extra limbs, imitate her surroundings, grow claw and club appendages, excrete stinging or blinding substances, wrap a target in an excretion (typically hair), harden her body, grow bony armour, survive in practically any environment, move about in a multitude of fashions, enhance her senses, wiggle out of bonds or through small gaps and healing her own body in whatever form it is - and she's just a novice, using tricks she's learnt from only a few species. But she can't do everything at once: any give body is generally only good at two or three things.

For some reason, though she can imitate people down to the genetic level her ability to mimic "superpowers" is limited, generally to the more conventional physical sorts. Perhaps her energy matrix impairs the proper functioning of the power, or perhaps there's more to superpowers than just genetics. Or perhaps it's just a trick she hasn't learnt yet.

Personality
Lyssa is both an adolescent Shifter and an adolescent human girl - if anything she thinks of herself more as the latter - and her behaviour reflects this.

Young Shifters have a strong drive to fit in with their assumed species, and between that, her parents' emphasis on the need for secrecy and adolescent human need to fit in, she used to be quite obsessed by it. She's now reached a stage of development, however, at which she's beginning to rebel against this, and to practice changing shapes instead of trying to fit in so much in a single form. That said, she still finds it strange, even "wrong", when people don't fit with the expectations of their subculture or clique. This is partly because young Shifters also have an instinct to take as gospel what is passed on with authority: necessary for the "oral" transmission of their culture, and her initial socialisation was done with the help of high school movies. She is becoming a bit more sophisticated about such things as she matures; it helps that her new persona as Lyssa is more forthright than she was as Chrissie.

Shifters tend not to be very violent (though there are exceptions): even those who are customarily carnivores tend to try to talk to their food before killing it, just in case it's sentient. Between this and the particular human role she's assumed, Lyssa finds it quite abhorrent.

As Chrysalis she acts as a younger but more confident hero than the role she played as Variable: she's not longer as uncertain of how to act as a hero as she was, and the fact that she now plays a young hero means she no longer has the added complication of having to act mature.

Lyssa has an increasing interest in various sports. This might seem strange in one who can cheat by changing her form so readily, but once she has adopted a particular form - such as her standard one as Lyssa - she can compete on the same level as everyone else.

Relations
Chrissie does not know anyone of her species other than her parents, with whom she has perhaps a typical adolescent relationship, beginning to find her own way and yet still very much depending on them in some ways; her rebelliousness had been increasing lately, made easier perhaps by her father's departure from Earth. As Chrissie she had friends among the cheerleaders at Colonial Heights High School, including to some extent Lorelei, but now she "the new kid" she's having to make new friends. Golden is one of these - they know each other's identities, and Golden is indeed the only person not in Lyssa's family to know she was Chrissie and Variable. She is now friends with both Teflon and Dragonfly; the three know each others identities and have agreed to form a superhero team.

Amber and Azure and Terat were friendly with Chrissie and knew she was an alien, but the former believe her to have moved away, and Terat hasn't been seen in a while.

History
When Lyssa, then Chrissie, was showing off to the football player Hank she was spotted by a robot of an alien bounty hunter, apparently searching for her parents. With this lead the bounty hunter managed to pursue Chrissie's family until he was defeated and his spaceship destroyed by various superheroes. It is not known what became of the bounty hunter or whether any more pursuit is to follow, but heroes' actions and words inspired Chrissie to aspire to become a superhero herself, as Variable.

In the events around the invasion the the Horde she joined Starguard Gamma, and for a while was a fairly active superhero with them; however, when the local branch of Starguard was closed she was seen in action much less. The appearance of a new bounty hunter, Orion, searching for her family using mosquito-like drones, convinced her parents that it was time to adopt a new identity. Her father headed into space to lure away other pursuers while she and her mother adopted new identities as the Bryants. Lyssa also adopted a new heroic identity. Lyssa is "younger" than Chrissie was; this is because she matures slower than humans, so it's convenient for her to spend more time as a teenager.