( note - brief mentions of suicidal behavior within )

The setting of Lilah's world is in the not too distant future following what is often referred to as 'The Annihilation Event.' While the annihilation event did not actually take out all of humanity, it did reduce the population in America alone by over half, with projects for full annihilation within decades to follow. Stories surrounding how the annihilation event actually came about are beyond numbers to count, but everyone knows the main ideas - it began in the United States; the enemy is proven to be extra terrestrial in nature; and the enemy can change our world. The aliens in question, colloquially called alters, are still a mystery to the vast majority of the public. They do seem to have some form of intelligence, though sentience is uncertain, and the aliens are almost parasitic in nature. They have been shown to be able to exist without a host, but often organic material that encounters an alter is taken over/forever physically changed by the alter. Since the event, alters have spread to other nations of the world and the threat of full annihilation has driven most of the world into military states of emergencies to respond to the invasion.

Alexandra Trace was born one of a pair of twins to the Trace family in 2051. The Trace children were a part of the first generation to be born in America post-annihilation. The state of the country, and the world at large, made caring for a family near impossible. This left the Trace parents feeling as if they had no other options but to sell their children to the military when they came knocking. Despite promises to the Trace family to keep the children together, Emmett and Alexandra were sent away from the New York City area and their older brother Noah. Emmett and Alexandra would never see any of their family again following that day.

At the age of seven, the twins were taken to west to an army base that had developed around what had been Area 51. The base had grown to encompass Las Vegas itself, becoming a centralized headquarters of the United States Planetary Defense branch of the Armed Forces. It was here that the twins were introduced to the Alter Response division of the Planetary Defense, and here they remained for years.

On paper, the Alter Response division did not exist in it's early stages. The experiments done on the twins and other children like them skipped stages of the scientific process that called into question the ethics of the Alter Response and whether the end results truly justified the means, even in the face of human extinction. In the decade after the Alter Response went public, many of the minds behind the division would use the results of their experimentation to justify that the means were in fact necessary.

The Alter Response program was a program designed to create super soldiers through a variety of melding techniques with the alien DNA. There were a wide range of experiments of varying types until a particular methodology emerged that was deemed the most successful route to creating a soldier that could use alter DNA to their advantage. Even still, this experiment did not yield perfect results, but Alexandra and Emmett who were among the first children to survive this method and get pushed through to practical applications.

While in the Alter Response program, the Trace twins were stripped of their names to reduce compassion towards the subjects. As the twins advanced through the first stages of the program, they would be given the codenames Sunny and Rain when they were quietly introduced to the Planetary Defense division. Sunny and Rain and a select group of other children were given covert missions across the United States to begin testing the efficacy of the AR program. It was during these missions that it became evident that there was a psychological component to the program that couldn't quite be managed through increasing experimentation alone.

Rain was found to be the weaker of the Trace twins on missions on an emotional level at the age of fourteen. While Sunny's skills skewed more mentally, Rain's were physically based. She was trained harshly for close combat fighting using the parasite to alter her physicality and enhance where needed. This put Rain at the forefront of most fights, and also had her witnessing the harshest realities of war and the invasion. Rain began to falter in practical application, often having to have the other children make up for her mistakes. The AR program tried various methods of pushing Rain past her limits, including psychological evaluation, but it was determined that while Rain could physically handle the alterations, mentally she could not cope with the harsh environment of war.

Thus, the process for disposal was approved.

Turning Rain's disposal into another experimental opportunity, the scientists of the AR program set up an environment in which all the children of the program were left alone to their own devices. One child in particular, codenamed Mist, was manipulated into believing he had a duty to his team to complete one goal - eliminate Rain. Pushed to his limits, Mist confronted Rain in the children's communal area in front of the others. Fed vitriol against Rain, Mist used the lines given by the scientists to convince the rest of the children that Rain was a threat to their lives. She wasn't a team player. Reaching the edge of her breaking point, Rain collapsed under the weight of the children's anger in her own mental break. It was then that Sunny managed to push through to rush to Rain's defense. Unfortunately, this had the opposite effect of protecting Rain. Instead, it provoked the children more that this was the proof they needed that Rain couldn't carry her own weight. The ensuing chaos was a bloodbath.

Being the volatile child that Mist was, the boy attacked Rain. He used the full force of his powers against her, ripping out her throat in front of Sunny and leaving the young twin bleeding out on the floor.

Rain remembers nothing after Mist launching himself at her, only waking inside the ruins of some abandoned apartment just outside of Vegas. A woman was with Rain when she woke, one of the scientists from the AR program - Dr. Melody Thornton. Melody, as she asked Rain to call her, explained what happened after Rain had died. Sunny lost control of his abilities and displayed power unseen. He took control of Mist's body and pushed the child to slaughter many of the other children. When it was all done, they lost more of the program than they'd intended. But Melody had seen Rain in the carnage, and seen what the other scientists didn't. Rain's body had begun to repair itself from a killing blow. Melody took it upon herself to save Rain from disposal, knowing that Rain still had unknown potential within her. Though, unfortunately, it seemed that Rain's body had repaired only essential functions for survival, as Rain found that her vocal cords remained damaged.

However, Melody's intervention would end there. Melody already risked too much being here for when Rain woke. From then on, Rain would be on her own. She just hoped Rain remembered what the mission was, so that when she came into her own power she could be the hero the world needed.

With that knowledge, Rain was abandoned to the streets outside of Las Vegas to fend for herself. Terrified and alone, Rain often tried to find ways to end her own life. She found that Dr. Thornton had been correct, Rain's body always found a way to repair itself. Eventually, Rain encountered groups of people living in the desserts of Nevada. She found herself wary of human interaction, but would on occasion aid the nomadic groups fighting to survive where the military had abandoned them. She began to interact with people on a more personal level than she ever had before, slowly restoring a sense of humanity once lost in the girl. When asked her name, Rain shed the name given to her by the people that had abandoned her. She took up the name Delilah, and slowly integrated her into a new kind of society.

It's been nearly a decade later, but Delilah has begun to do her own research into the truth behind the alters, leading Lilah to question what all the US Armed Forces actually knows, or what they're hiding if they do know more.. It is with that goal in mind that Delilah has begun to create her own community in the desserts and caves outside the city. A community that's slowly beginning to embrace a reality where the alters are here to stay, so there has to be a better solution than mutual destruction.

+ RESOURCEFUL : Lilah was born into a generation that never knew luxury. Instead, she has had to fight and claw her way through every breath of life to survive. This has imbued Delilah with a sense of resourcefulness, finding ways to use the world around her to her advantage. After all, Lilah herself was deemed to be a waste, but here she is today. So Lilah takes that concept to heart in her desire to find a way to utilize all things in her surroundings. She tries not to waste the potential of even the smallest things in life. This kind of thinking has helped Lilah to develop her critical thinking skills in a number of ways, from simple day to day tasks to coordinating the growth of a whole new community. Lilah endeavors to both avoid wasting advantages she never had growing up and never overlook the potential of a dismissed thing like herself.

- TRAUMATIZED : Growing up in a near post-apocalyptic world, Lilah's existence is riddled with traumas that are difficult to cope with. Lilah herself was a more delicate soul growing up, feeling more of that pain than most. A part of her always hoped life was some bad dream and there were magical happy endings like in the books she'd seen as a child. But reality was far darker, and Lilah's young mind barely coped with it. In her adulthood, Lilah has learned to repress her trauma. She still doesn't cope with it well, and when it creeps up it can be near crippling to her. As such, her trauma is a real problem that she never plans to address head on and will deny causes her any issues.

- VINDICTIVE : With such a harsh upbringing, Lilah has endured a lot of hardships caused both directly and indirectly by others. This has caused Lilah to develop a deep level of resentment towards large numbers of people both specific and general. As such, she can be a bit coarse to deal with at times if you happen to fall into these categories. But the more difficult aspect of this part of her personality is that, whether a part of those groups or not, if slighted, Lilah tends to hold a grudge. Even worse, she often acts out on that grudge. To a degree, she is aware of this personal shortcoming (unlike her refusal to deal with her own trauma). She will try to mitigate her patterns to snarky remarks in this situations. But she finds it hard to live and let go, and can take awhile to build up trust again once slighted.

- MISANTHROPIC : This sort of quality is a little more subtle in Lilah, as she displays herself to be quite a sociable person. In fact, as a child Lilah was always friendly with others. The difficulty is that Lilah has no faith in humanity after what she's experienced. And what faith she does have, there's little personal trust to develop beyond it. As such, all of Lilah's relationships tend to be on a superficial level. Even if she develops a fondness for a person, she has a hard time putting any level of trust in them. It's hard to see it, but there's a detached way about Lilah that makes it hard to get to know the true girl beneath the soldier.

ALTER DNA SPLICE - Spliced with the DNA of the unknown extra terrestrial species known as 'alters,' Delilah has gained two major capabilities from this:

• BIOKINESIS allows Lilah the ability to manipulate her physical body on both a conscious and subconscious level. With this ability, she can enhance her senses, strength, speed, agility, etc. with deliberate effort (though she cannot maintain these effects for longer than a few hours at a time). She can also change the shape of her body on more dramatic levels, manipulating her muscles and flesh to change her physical features (ie. making her features present more masculine). This gives her essentially the ability to shapeshift into other forms (something I will have a permission post for). Additionally, because her body can do this without her conscious thought, Lilah is almost fully immortal as she's discovered. Even when suffering injuries that stop her heart or brain function, her body can work to mend those injuries to functional levels again. This can take several hours to even days depending on the injury.
  
  
• TELEPATHY developed later in life for Delilah. Delilah was always taught that her abilities were purely on a physical level, so when her telepathy developed Delilah was more than shocked. Delilah hasn't fully fleshed out what this ability means and can do for her, so for now her telepathy remains on a one-to-one contact basis and only with other humans. She has noted, however, that does tend to be easier with creatures where alter DNA is also present. Telepathy will also be in her in permissions post.

SOLDIER - Aside from her technical skills, Lilah was raised to be a soldier. She has had combat training with mostly short range weaponry (short range guns, knives, etc.) as well as hand-to-hand combat. She is also trained in survival techniques for a variety of different environments.

BILINGUAL - Delilah knows English and can communicate in American Sign Language.

1. Knife with Sunny's name etched into the handle.
2. Her favorite leather jacket.
3. Her alter-infected pet fox ( note - her fox does not have powers himself, just an odd sense of devotion and obedience to Lilah ).