Name: Minerva Talos, "Minnie" to close friends

Pronouns: She/her

Age: 22

Profession: Freelance scientist turned aspiring mad scientist.

Sexuality: Hopelessly flustered lesbian, attracted to thick and soft paws/talons. (Yes, that includes her own feet)

Powerset: Minnie possesses a 1st generation mutation, allowing her to switch between her normal human form and her larger beast form, her beast taking the form of a Raven. As such, when she transforms into this beast form, the following abilities are granted to her:
Flight capable wings sprout from her back.
Her muscles expand with superior strength.
Her mind is sharped with improved intellect.
Her animalistic changes heighten smell, touch, hearing and most particularly her eyesight.
Her skin puffs out, softening in texture that can absorb and resist most forms of physical damage.
Her boots strain and burst open as her bare feet swell into monstrous avian talons with highly sensitive soles and prehensile toes (Her personal favorite).
Each one of her fingers and toes end in a claw sharp enough to cut metal.
Her face pushes out and hardens into a sharp and durable beak.
Pitch black feathers sprout from her skin to provide extra aerodynamics, darkness-based camouflage, and decent warmth in chilly climates.
Her height increases to nearly twice her human stature.
All while the mutation swirls and writhes inside her cells and bloodstream, granting her both accelerated healing from injuries, and the ability to infect any other organic lifeform with the mutation through bite or scratch.
Minerva is able to switch between human and beast form at will, but being in beast form slowly drains her stamina until she either changes back into her human self or passes out from exhaustion, whereupon she'll automatically revert. Inversely, if human form Minerva gets overwhelmed with emotions such as anger, excitement, arousal or just general lust, she could potentially lose control of herself and start swelling into her beast form, whether or not she'll try to stop herself is purely based on what mood she's in, however most of her attempts to stop herself from changing have been unsuccessful, much to her embarrassment.

Magic specialty: Mutation.

Current intentions: Studying the mutation in the hopes of using it to bring Engrievion everlasting peace, while also trying to be the best girlfriend Queen Bellona's ever had.

Background: From the very moment Minerva emerged from her mother's womb, she was set to have a rough time. Born with not only a strain of autism, but an immune system that was terrible at adaptation and a unique disease that prevented hair follicles from properly developing on her scalp, her life would've already been incredibly difficult and stressful had she been born in a time where such diseases were even understood by the general public. Alas, Minerva was unfortunate enough to call the grim land of Engrievion as her home, a world plagued with so much dark magic that if a corpse hasn't tried to rise from its grave as an undead horror at least once, it's seen as an ill omen. Speaking of "Ill", Little Minnie was indeed ill, physically ill with constant childhood sicknesses and pretty much every allergy known to man, and mentally ill with a slew of anxieties and insecurities stemming directly from the ridicule and mockery her unfortunate body attracted, both factors distressing the young Minerva so badly that she began to instinctively cover up her allegedly hideous body and expose as little of her skin as possible, especially her supposedly deformed face, developing a severely low self-esteem at a very young age. Her parents did not exactly help either, they were a rather wealthy family that provided little Minerva with a prestigious education, fine clothing, and high quality food whenever she needed it sure, however it was rather clear that they were trying their best to not be associated with her, always keeping their distance and only doing the bare minimum of parenting if it was absolutely necessary, further adding to Minerva's loneliness.
However, despite everything around Minnie trying to bring her nothing but misery, she never held hatred for anyone barring herself. Minerva was a kind and compassionate girl, with an exceptional intellect that let her work through her issues by using her own logic as a therapeutic outlet (whether that actually worked for her is difficult to tell). Despite all of her own personal misfortune, Minerva knew deep down there was no shortage of people with much worse lives than her, lives she probably deserved more than they did. She knew what it was like to suffer, to be mocked, to be ignored, to have nothing go your way, and she despised it. Sickness and disease bothered her so much that she soon started to loathe the idea of suffering in general, believing that everyone in Engrievion should be living a peaceful life free of hardship and pain, regardless of whether or not they deserve such a thing.
And if you want something done right, you do it yourself.
Thus, Minerva vowed to become a doctor, a scientist, someone dedicated to the improving humanity. So even with all the other students always jeering and pointing at "The Faceless freak", young Minerva buried herself in her studies, perfecting her intellect and honing her craft through sheer force of her defiance alone, and in the world of Engievion, few things are more powerful than human spite.

Cut to several years later, and a now adult Minerva works as a freelance scientist and plague doctor, doing whatever bit of experimentation and research that suits her fancy and/or pays the bills. At this point in her life, she wouldn't be caught dead without her full plague doctor uniform, an attire that perfectly suited her "I don't like interacting with the outside world" lifestyle, often times unnerving anyone who even notices she's present due to how adamantly she hides her physical identity. Things have not exactly improved for Minerva however. Without direct support from her wealthy family, Minerva's budget suffered from wild inconsistency, either being so lucrative that she'd blow her savings on stuff like expensive boots or some fancy trinkets, or being so badly squeezed that she'd only be able to have a single slice of bread for dinner. Additionally, Minerva was still at risk of being mercilessly ridiculed by everyone around her, her sheltered and isolated upbringing clashing heavily with the more experienced working class whenever the two sides were forced to interact, so even though she expected her mental health to improve once she entered the adult world, she instead had to deal with taxes and her mortgage on top of the bulling. Worse yet, she was nowhere close to achieving her dream of finding the cure to Engrievion's suffering, still not really grasping that it wasn't how that worked.
That is until she inevitably learns of a famous anomaly within Engrievion's scientific world, the bizarre disease known only as "the Mutation", a biological curse formed from the residual wild magic of Engrievion's hostile and possibly sentient surrounding nature. Supposedly it lay dormant in some of the more magically gifted beasts within Engrievion's forests, jungles, swamps and etc. a curse that horrifically deforms a human the beast in question through bites or scratches, destroying their mind and devolving them into a mindless monster, many theorizing that it was some deity of nature's attempt to forcefully drag humanity back into the cruel, stagnant clutches of the animal kingdom. Such a concept fascinated Minerva, she may not have been able to use magic but certainly knew how it worked, and the idea of a breed of wild, untamable magic specifically designed to alter a person's physical appearance and mentality lived rent-free in her head, her ugly, bald, allergy-prone, cripplingly fearful head. She was hooked, this might be what she was looking for.
Now, there was a small issue with her plan. In a technologically advanced yet excessively dangerous world like Engrievion, everyone's first reaction to seeing an animal bit suddenly darken with evil magic is to amputate that bite immediately, and if not that then anyone nearby would be all too happy to start swinging weapons once they see someone with swelling black veins coursing over their flesh approaching them. Thus, no-one has actually managed to encounter a living example of the mutation and lived to tell the tale.
This factor only encouraged Minerva however, because now it seemed like she could be the first to correctly harness whatever potential this Mutation had. She could be famous, she could be the most respected member of Engrievion's scientists, she could finally, finally, escape the prejudices plaguing her life. Maybe she'll even start to like herself.
Minerva couldn't resist, as soon as she got the opportunity she hired two adventurer bodyguards and ventured out into the darker regions of the forest in search of any samples of the mutation....whereupon she almost immediately gets mauled by a shadow-hopping dire wolf. The adventurers were quick to come to her aid as one of them, a lad named Brian, faces the beast head-one and slays it with shocking efficiency. The wolf had caught Minerva by surprise however, and she had felt its fangs sink into the flesh of her left arm, along with an eerie warmth within her veins.

She had been infected, the mutation was in her body, and most likely had already gotten to work with altering her cells. The adventurer who wasn't Brian (she never got his name), even joked about how she found her sample after all, while Brian immediately started to advise that she should amputate the limb as soon as possible. Seeing as she was left-handed, Minerva hastily declined with a bit more aggression than she intended, but the adventurers knew the mutation better than she did, and continued to pester her. Still not wanting to lose her limb, Minerva then lied to the adventurers, saying that she'd need to go back to her home to do the procedure with more sterile equipment, and eventually manages to get away from their suspicions by hastily paying and thanking them for their service before hurrying away.

The adventurer whose name Minerva didn't know did have a point even if it was a poor taste joke, Minerva now had a sample of the mutation, and her mind was awash with emotion. She wasn't going to amputate her arm, no matter what they'd say. She was a scientist, a pretty good one too. She could find a way to slow or even suppress the changes coursing through her, to have the mutation obey her, so she could study it to her hearts content. As her arm stung and ached with building wild magic, Minerva for the first time in her life wasn't feeling scared, she was excited, ecstatic even. The stories she's heard, the things she could do, if she could pull this off then she could have whatever body she wanted, she could give everyone whatever body they wanted. Screw those adventurers, screw everyone that doubted her.
She'll embrace this supposed curse, and make it her bitch. She'll harness its power and use it to revolutionize the world. She'd no longer be some creepy leather wrapped loser. She'd be a hero.

Reality however may have had other ideas, as the wound on her arm had been quickly healing itself during her daydreaming, and as her left hand suddenly started to bulge and twitch while her body erupted with aches and a sudden extreme warmth, she soon found herself regretting the whole "embracing the curse" bit of her mental monologue as she rushes back home with her old childhood pal; "excessive panic."
By the time she got through her door, it was already too late. Her body was starting to swell, the wild magic warping her human biology and infusing it with the traits of whatever animal it deemed would suit the good doctor best. Deep down, Minerva knew full well there was nothing she could do to stop it, and in truth even wanted to let the changes wash through her, a giddy excitement at the thought of what she'll become coursing through her soul. But her anxiety, her fear, the little voice in her head that always said "What if it goes wrong", all of those dominated her mind as she went into a full panic attack, desperately trying to find a way to suppress it, to have some modicum of control. And yet the changes occurred no matter what she did, because she secretly didn't want to resist, she wanted to transform, she just couldn't understand it through her terror.
The wild magic of the mutation knew this however, it was fusing into her mind after all. The mutation in reality may be dangerous to those who reject its embrace, but to any who desire its power, who accept its offer to bring out the real person the infected bury within themselves, to those who want to be transformed, it too will change. Change from a curse, to a gift. Like an artificial intelligence generating an ideal routine based off their master's displayed preferences, the mutation adapted to Minerva's personality.
It knew she hated being scrawny and weak, so it made her body swell with size and strength. It knew she liked small cuddly animals, so it made her feathers fluffy and her flesh squishy. It knew to forcefully make her beautiful wings sprout from her back when her doubts grew too strong. It even knew that she had an unawakened attraction to women's feet, so it made sure that her boots popped, split, and burst open as the emerging talons swelled as thick and puffy as they could, giving them a bit of ticklishness too just as a nice bonus.
The mutation found that a Raven, a bird that enjoyed discovery and exploration while representing knowledge and science, was the animal that best suited poor little Minnie, and as it twisted and changed her meek human body into the powerful winged beast she was destined to become, it slowly attempted to calm her as her changes progressed, It did what it always did with its hosts, taking her anxieties and phobias and locking them away from her mind as best it could, gently soothing the whimpering yet purring doctor as she swelled larger and larger, her uniform tearing apart against her body as more and more skin was being properly exposed for first time in a long while, the mask she used to hide her wonderful face all this time soon crushed under her meaty toes.

At first Minerva thought it was the end, that her mistake had cost her everything, that her life was lost to madness. But once she stopped growing, once she took what were possibly her first ever steps in bare feet, once she flexed her aching, tingling, absolutely wonderful brand new body, Minerva had never felt more alive. She had become something completely different to what she expected, a near perfect fusion between human and animal, a hulking beast of pure beauty. Minnie was both ecstatic and extremely aroused, she transformed into something beyond her wildest dreams.
She was big.
She was powerful.
She was sexy.
But most importantly, she was free. All of her doubts, all of her fear, her insecurities, her hesitation, her shyness, all of it, gone. She couldn't even find anything to hate about herself, she wasn't ugly or scared anymore. She was.....she was the real Minerva, what all of her scrambled emotions barred her from accessing. She could finally be herself.
Seeing all of the benefits of her new monstrous form, Minerva quickly came to the conclusion that the mutation was truly the key to her lifelong goal of improving Engrievion's entire society, or at least it's the first step toward something greater, too enthralled with her newfound power to notice the equally significant drawbacks of the mutation's grasp on her mind.

With her goal in mind, she immediately got to work. First up, testing what her own body was capable of, entailing a serene training session where she explored and played with her new abilities. Minerva flew across the sky, feeling the freezing wind in her feathers and across her skin. She ripped tree stumps out from the ground in a nearby forest, shocking herself with her own strength. She danced on a thunderstorm-soaked hill, letting the cold, squishy, wet mud tickle her swollen soles and toes. She even hunted some small animals when she grew hungry, not at all bothered by the thought of eating a living creature. She felt like she could take on the world, take on anything that stood in the way of her passion, perhaps like the band of thieves that mistake her for some large wild animal before attempting to ambush and capture her.
It goes about as well as one would expect it to go, with the knives and crossbow bolts merely bouncing off Minerva's thick skin as she retaliates with brutal efficiency. Even Minerva herself is surprised at how one-sided the fight is in her favor, unable to stop herself from giggling like a school girl as she wipes the floor with her would-be assailants. Somehow, she was actually having fun throwing the thieves across the forest with her massive arms, smacking them with her immense wings, and grabbing and lifting them into the air with her thick, girthy talons, cackling with childish glee as their pathetic struggling tickles her soles.
Her fun however is cut short when a swipe from her clawed hand manages to carve right into one of the higher-ranking thieves, all of whom by this point are attempting to retreat. Without her ability to fear the consequences of her actions, the idea that she herself may be contagious crosses Minerva's plague doctor mind, but she irresponsibly brushes it off thinking nothing of it, flying away back to her home as the infected thief starts to feel strange...

The next morning, a human Minerva wakes up in her bed with possibly the worst hangover she's ever experienced, except with all of her memories of the previous night intact. At first she panics upon realizing it wasn't a nice dream, thinking that she's horrifically cursed and an actual monster. Yet as Minerva nervously yet passionately daydreams about her bestial form and all she's done with it, her fears subside ever so slightly, and out of curiosity tries to will herself back into her beast form to check if she had any control over it. To her shock, her body starts to swell again, and soon enough she had transformed back into her beast form. Squealing with glee, Minerva then proceeded to spent the whole day locked in her home as she giddily studied and examined her form, her notes soon filled with groundbreaking information on how the mutation operates. One factor she learns the hard way however, is that to compensate for her beast form's immense size, her mutated body consumes a lot of energy and burns a considerable amount of calories just to fuel her increased muscle mass. When Minerva notices this drawback, she had just enough time to jot down a note before passing out from exhaustion....

A few hours later, an aggressive knock on Minerva's door yanks her human self awake. After hurriedly throwing on an outfit to hide her flesh, Minerva throws open the door....and comes face to face with the very thief she had potentially infected, and what she could see from how bad his posture and demeanor was, that Minerva correctly guessed that the mutation had taken a hold of him too.
The thief explains to Minerva how he got into a fight with some strange bird monster, and in the scuffle he was badly wounded and seemed to catch some strange plague. Since Minerva was the closest Plague doctor, he had decided to visit her to get whatever's happening to him fixed, all while Minerva is having a silent panic attack as she quickly connects the dots. The thief grows aggressive with stress as he believes he's going crazy, while an equally stressed Minerva tries to calm him down, trying and failing to prevent him from stepping inside.

After getting more and more agitated and worried, the thief then soon grunts as his own body starts to swell before Minerva's eyes. Fur sprouts from his skin, bloated rodent paws swell and rip open his boots, a long pink tail tears open his trousers, and his face stretches into the visage of an oddly cute if extremely infuriated Rat, causing Minerva to freak out further. The argument progresses as the Rat man tries to make sense of everything, and in the heat of the moment a panicking Minerva blurts out that she didn't mean to infect him, instantly shutting herself up with extreme regret as the room goes silent.
As the thief stomps closer, angrily trying to get Minerva to explain, the good doctor's stress goes through the roof as she starts choking on her own panic...only to feel the uniform she just put on start to get tighter, her whimpers turning into growls. The thief could only watch in surprise as Minnie feels her gloves ripping off her hands, her wings erupting from her back, her feet bursting out of her boots, and her body swelling and swelling with muscle as her mask strains before exploding off her face, fully exposing the face of the beast that originally attacked the thief.

Once she finishes growing, Minerva and the thief stand and snarl at each other as the atmosphere slowly gets more and more... awkward, their growls soon lowering into throat-clearing coughs as neither beast knew what exactly to do. Eventually, Minerva breaks the silence to say that it was indeed an accident, and that the thieves had attacked her first while she was just minding her own business, to which the thief nods in embarrassment as the two awkwardly apologize to each other and call it even. After glancing around at all the notes and experiments Minerva conducted, the thief asks what on earth she was doing, to which Minerva explains her plan, before realizing that the thief was essentially in the exact same position as her in terms of the mutation's gifts.
Upon making this conclusion, Minerva asks if the thief was at all looking for a job.
If Minerva really wanted to gain the respect of Engrievion's most powerful....then she may need some extra muscle...

Personality: On the surface, Minerva Talos appears to be an nervous wreck, stuttering and whimpering with hesitation whenever she has no choice but to socially interact. Minerva does possess an exceptional intelligence and can get rather passionate and egotistical when it comes to her work, her pride is just always outmatched by her self-loathing and shyness.
When entering her beast form, her inhibitions and fears are switched off entirely, causing her social presentation to do a full 180, going from a flustered, sniveling coward to a confident, boastful, and very sophisticated scientist in a monster's body. Without the ability to hesitate, Minvera's overly-enthusiastic, almost childlike love of experimentation and science really bubble to the surface, her immature giddiness and excitement of just being in her avian form sometimes breaking through her level-headed smooth-talking. However, because she can't feel fear, it also means that she becomes a lot more cocky in beast form, not being able to understand when a situation puts her life at risk, making her appear either much braver...or much stupid depending on the situation. Her ego increases absurdly as a consequence, and she even starts to enjoy getting into fights just to prove how strong she is, even though she doesn't know the first thing about how to properly fight. In beast form, Minerva loves to challenge any opposition before her and letting her animal instincts take hold as she really gets her hands dirty, a new part of her personality that would never even cross her mind when in her more anxious human form. Which makes all the more awkward when she does revert back into her human self, and all those phobias and anxieties come flooding back into her mind, much to her dismay.
Further still, this passion for her work is not at all unjustified. Minerva genuinely wants to make Engrievion a better place, and believes that the mutation will help in her quest. She doesn't really have any interest in seizing power (even if she does admittedly like being the one in charge) all she really wants is to just turn people into werewolves. Is that so wrong?

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Artwork by  catmonkshiro