Born as a child of New York, she has been grown up with the high crime rates and ever present crime. Living some streets deep into the Bronx, her most memorable childhood experience was spotting some riots from time to time. When she was in middle school, she sold newspapers to earn at least some pocket money and so always knew about the most memorable news that happened. For her striped pullovers she caught the nickname "stripe" or "stripes" from her classmates.
Smart as she was, she managed to earn herself a well high-school degree and later a half-scholarship for New York University. During her college years she worked in a downtown bar as bartender to fund the other half. With 23 she did her Master of Science in Biotechnology, joining a small Biotechnology Laboratory some miles north of the city.
From her first day at the laboratory, she worked at a project to safe the nearly extinct Panthera tigris amoyensis, the southern Chinese tiger, however the funders list was not public. In the process of the project they developed a special carrier fluid that was able to transfer feline DNA of big cats into those of other felidae, which would result in hybrids born from these.
((Info she does not posses: Smaller deal of the funding came from UN wildlife fund, but most was payed government agencies (some of them Military, CIA) and SHIELD, because of the possibility to use the research on humans to (re)create supersoldiers, alter an agents appearance, and similar uses. Some purists in Senate also pulled strings to further the project as they thought the results might be usable in development of an Anti-Mutant-Serum. However via black funds the Brotherhood of Evil played their part, having had directly opposite ideas of the purists.))
As the project was coming to the first greater testing stage they mixed P.t.amoyensis-DNA into the carrier fluid to start the testing. However after the first tests were scheduled the weather began to turn worse and worse, the strong rain beginning to wash away the sand under the building. As the Laboratory was located very close to the shore, the crew quickly begun to evacuate and leave the building.
Even as they were careful to store the liquid away carefully and then bring up the test animals to the roof for evacuation, one of the containers with about 2 pints of the DNA-Injector was forgotten on a shelve. When she carried the very last cage with a big specimen of Felis silvestris, the European Wildcat, towards the truck she slipped on the wet floor and stumbled into the shelf. The container fell and hit her back, spilling the liquid over her and drenching her already wet clothes. Still she brought the cage to the roof, where she awaited evacuation with the others, not even realizing her contamination.
After the incident, the Projects got relocated towards a different building, halting or slowing down most projects for the time being. Most personal was assigned to do paperwork while the laboratory was going to be rebuilt and set up, while smaller parts of the projects were set up running in provisory labs with long term filled schedules who can access it when.
But bad luck struck - her exposition to the DNA-transfer agent began to slowly change her after an incubation time. The first change was a decent change of her hair color towards a more orange about a week after the drastic change of the weather. Another day later she experienced a constant pain of her back, when her spine began to reform to sprout a tail slowly. As the change went on it begun to speed up, beginning to sprout fur over all her body, beginning at her back and her head reformed as the ears wandered upwards.
Some weeks later, when she discovered the first changes, she quickly pulled some levers to get the late night times in the provisory labs, so she wouldn't have to confront her coworkers with her changing body and camouflaged the more visible changes with wearing hooded pullovers and long skirts.
omeone said curiosity thrills the cat. For Monique this is right for sure. She always was curious and that was, what pulled her to Bioengineering, the conquering of a field yet mostly undiscovered. New stuff waits at every corner.
Even as she is shy by heart, she tries to cover it up with phrases and playing extrovert with not too much success. This makes her a silent loner at times when she was with people she didn't know too much, but she is a good listener. If the topic changes to something she is interested in however, she tends to talk much more and a bit more open.
When it comes to problems, she most times tries to help, even if she has to jump her own shadow. In this aid she is bond by morals she has set up for herself during her student times, basically adopting scientific ethnics and mixing them with some basic Christian values, ignoring any afterlife ideas. This includes for example the value of a life, but she is not opposed to replacing crippled parts with transplants or replacements. In her opinion it should be normal or legally enforced to be organ donor, as a dead person does not need his liver or kidney, but thousands of living people do so. Also experiments on human beings should be allowed, if the target of the experiment signs a paper (while being in a good shape of mind) that he is ok with the possible outcomes and has been informed about all possible consequences. However for animal tests and tests on humans alike she believes that they have to be cut down to an absolute minimum within the first stages of development and should be as noninvasive as possible. Fatalities happen, but they are a reason to rethink the process and refine methods and material.
SHAPESHIFTING: Chemicals changed her to a permanent bestiamorph state which she can't leave on her own accord.
SHAPESHIFTING/CLAWS: Her fingernails were changed so they became retractable claws. This becomes most obvious when they are extended, but if they are not, they appear as brown and dull nails. However this can be hidden by nail polish. In combat they can rip bleeding wounds and while running or climbing they help for greater speed. They are able to dig find stable grip on cement, brick walls or similar surface. The limit that can be cut with them without harm to them is about 1 mm of aluminum or 0.5 mm of mild steel. On thicker or more durable material she can leave claw marks at most.
SHAPESHIFTING/BODY RESISTANCE: Her half bestial nature makes her much more durable than her frame looks like. Hard blows of peak trained humans hinder her much less than a normal human.
SHAPESHIFTING/DARKVISION: Her senses are heightened due to her half feline nature - she is better to recognize movement and has a better vision at night at the cost of a slightly dampened color vision (less detailed in the color range, but not color blind. A red is easily distinguished from green, but for example there is no difference between scarlet and cardinal red)
SHAPESHIFTING/HYPER-HEARING: Her senses are heightened due to her half feline nature - her ears are more sensitive with all ups and downs of it. The Hearing range is 20 Hz to 64 kHz (1.6 more than human, 1 more than dogs) and they recognize sound beginning from -6 dB compared to a human ear (4 times better hearing). Noise begins get annoying hurt at 90 dB (equivalent to a loud main street) and hurt at 120 dB instead of 130 dB (10 times more sensitive to noise).
SHAPESHIFTING/HYPER-SMELL: Her senses are heightened due to her half feline nature - her nose recognizes more faint smells than humans, however shifts the liking of smells more towards a cat's. It is enough to recognize traces of eau de toilette or recognize someone by his/her smell, but not precise enough to track someone.
SHAPESHIFTING/FELINE COMMUNICATION: She is a cat - at least halfway. The feline part makes it possible to her to actually have a conversation with felines, even if the feline language is somewhat limited to concepts cats are interested in. It is possible to ask them about a good spot to rest for example, but not where the guy with the grey coat went. If that guy however smelled of catnip that is something different. This also allows befriending cats very easily.
SHAPESHIFTING/SELF HEALING: Injuries heal considerable faster - bruises within hours, broken bones within days instead of weeks. However her body does not regenerate lost limbs or a broken spine should this happen.
ROOFTOP APARTMENT: Even if it is not too big or too tidy, she loves her small rooftop apartment not far away from east Harlem. It features direct access to a roof terrace and a *beautiful view over the historical area* (read: central Harlem). However the Elevator is broken about half the time and she needs to walk at least two blocks towards the subway or other public transportation.
BIOLABORATORY ACCESS: Although she has been contaminated and transformed while she worked in the first laboratory, she is still employed in the project. However the coworkers are oblivious to her changed state as the research was slowed down greatly for the time while the new laboratory gets put up. In the provisory laboratories she shifted her timetables to the late nights so she is there mostly alone and she goes lengths to cover the changes up towards her coworkers. In secret she tries to research a cure or suppressant for her altered state.
BESTIAMORPH: She has been transformed into a beast-woman when she was exposed to the DNA-Injector fluid spilled from a genetic experiment tub. These transformations are easily visible for the fur that covers most of her body, the reformed ears and face anatomy are easy to spot and her tail is not to hide with many types of clothes. The additional appendage also demands many clothes to be tailored specifically for her. People might believe her to be a mutant (though she lacks the X-gene) or a freak if she does not cover these features. Doing so completely is likely to be uncomfortable for extended time and is not done within a minute.
HEDONISM: Cats live for the moment, and enjoy pleasure much more than normal humans. She not only tries to maximize the pleasure can gain from simple things (being lazy, good food etc) but also strives to minimize pain - this can result her in breaking combat to lick her wounds after only minor injuries. Cornering her in such a state isn't a good idea however, as then the primal instincts kick in.
PHEROMONAL ISSIUES: She does not only look like a cat-hybrid, to cats she smells like one of theirs. this can result in odd behavior of cats towards her - either they try to befriend her (especially male ones) or they demand to fight for their territory.
PRIMAL INSTINCTS: Since she has been transformed, she has to fight with the urges of her now half bestial nature. Things like raw meat or moving small animals tend to catch her interest as food, although she finds the idea to eat them disgusting, and she turned to become more mercurial. Interest is drawn to other topics completely without connection to the former at times and her behavior might seem erratic at times. Also she is more sensitive to intrusions into her private space, which can result in odd results like a hissing for a handshake or a purring when some someone brushes against her in a crowd by accident. It also covers a very basic self defense behavior when she is cornered.
UNABLE TO CHANGE FORM: Her outer appearance change is permanent in a way that she can't influence it by her own will. The only ways to modify her form are cosmetics, operations (though her genetics have changed and it will change back within some days) or possibly outer chemical stimulation. Yet the fitting stimulants are not yet found.
