Rally the Softail

Rally Jane Ryder is one of two people who own and maintain The Iron Doe, a business dedicated to repairing motorcycles, customizing them, and selling various accessories to riders.

Most notable of Rally's strengths are her kinetic powers, something she refers to as 'Shifting Gears'. At a baseline, she is faster and stronger than the average mobian, and these qualities only improve the more she's active. This must be kept in check, however, as keeping too much energy stored makes the already impulsive deer even more reckless, and a danger to her own well-being.

First Gear

Rally was born as the youngest daughter of a herd of fawns, a year apart from their older brother, and two years from their eldest. For most of her younger childhood, Rally bonded with her second oldest brother, riding around their part of town on her bicycle, and other things kids their age would do.

Every Saturday morning, Rally and her brother would huddle up around the TV for their favorite show: Masked Grasshopper, the story of a costumed, motorbike-riding super hero devoted to stop the evil Stinger organization. Rally lived for this show, imitating the hero's poses and kicks, much to the chagrin of her mother! Before she knew it, this show they fancied had sparked something in her, one that would soon become her passion and career.

As a child, Rally got herself into a lot of trouble with kids in school, standing up for her classmates who would get bullied on the frequent. More cases than not, these instances would net her in more trouble than the bullies themselves, but she always stuck to her mindset of standing up for those who couldn't, well after her childhood years. The school especially had a difficult time dealing with Rally, taking note that she moved around and fidgeted a lot. Attempts at restraining the child were proven futile, and despite her best attempts otherwise, the bullies she would get in scuffles with were hurt with a bit more than simple scrapes and bruises. This led to Rally's mother devoting herself to home-school her, which proved easier for the doe to pay attention and improve in her classwork.

Second Gear

Rally's pre-teen to early-teen years progressed pretty normally. The deer was diligent enough with her studies, just enough to get herself solid B's and B+'s. In her free time, she typically would ride on her dirt bike gifted from her father, or go out in the forested area of her home town, trying to understand why she was always so...jumpy. In truth, she did exemplify faster feet and a harder punch than most of her crew, which seemed to become more apparent the more she moved. Breaking into a sprint, the longer she was running, the more energy she felt inside her, and her speed would rapidly increase before peaking. After getting as fast as she could go, she could feel something within her: her reflexes were faster, she wasn't anywhere close to being out of breath, and her hooves felt like they could break stone with ease. As she remained idle, the energy was starting to fade, fatigue began to set in, and fast! She likened this experience to a really intense caffeine rush, powered by her own movement.

Around the time of high school, she had returned to public education. Meeting new people was a bit awkward, and she found herself a bit more reserved to those around her. In truth, Rally juggled a lot on her plate: auto-motives electives, a part-time job, and working towards a motorcycle permit. On top of the high school life, Rally spent more and more free-time to test herself and her abilities in secret, excusing these periods as 'visits to friends houses'. Soon enough, at the cost of her grades in normal curriculum beginning to dip slightly, Rally was at a point where she could store this power at idle times and prevent herself from fatigue after regular use.

Third Gear

Entering college, Rally started her career as an auto-motives major, learning how to fix up cars and learn more about other various automobiles. On the side, she took up part-time work at a local motorcycle shop. The pay was good, but the true reward of this gig was getting closer with those two-wheeled beauties. The most fun she had there was working on custom projects, anywhere between fine-tuning naked bikes, to customizing rugged choppers. This allowed her to work on and customize her own bike, which she now had a license for at this time.

Life was simple, until the time Emerald City, the location of her college, fell victim to a raid of badniks, spearheaded by none other than Dr. Eggman. While the mad doctor was nowhere close to this scene of chaos, his robots were just as calculated and menacing as ever. Seeing this as a true test of her skill, Rally immediately jumped at the chance to help fend off the advanced machines. Many Egg Pawns fell at her feet, along with those of the others defending the area. It took a large toll on the city, but in no way was it beyond saving. With the current college semester on hold, she devoted herself full-time to volunteering around the city. Her self-assigned duties ranged from cleaning up wreckage, helping cook at soup kitchens, and generally doing her part to help the city rebuild, as it quickly did.

Fourth Gear

It was a long road to take, but Rally would come out on top with a Bachelor's in Automotives, and along with it: certification to operate as a motorcycle repair specialist. With the help of her father and the owner of the shop she worked at, who was now looking into retirement, Rally's aspirations took form; The Iron Doe was open for business! Aided by her best friend from college, Harleen, the shop started humbly, with a single small garage where all the magic took place, even the office was in the same general area. Overtime, business started to bloom, inevitably expanding the shop to a bigger building, next to the deer's house of residence. Nowadays, Rally is living her best life: doing what she loves to do, and doing a damn good job at it to boot.

Unfortunately, things aren't all sunshine and rainbows, as much as she'd like to believe. As her life continues, soon too will a necessity for the powers she discovered as a kid. Close encounters with hostile faces are soon to follow, but she will be ready for them, may they be man or machine.

Kinetic Powers

For as long as Rally can remember, she has possessed innate powers derived from kinetic energy. At a baseline, Rally possesses strength and mobility slightly above the average mobian. Her pysical strength, fortitude, and agility gradually increase the more she is physically active. This build-up is all encompassing: The energy she builds up from, say, throwing punches in the air is the same that is built from sprinting continously. So long as she is in somewhat-constant motion, her energy and augmentations will increase. The two surefire ways to expell this energy is to let it die down in earlier stages, or to strike something.

Thresholds

There are different thresholds, or stages of Rally's build up of energy. Research and field experience has led her to nickname these stages after different gears on an vehicle.

Neutral gear, as she calls it, is her baseline strength and agility. Performing day to day activities and working at the shop will almost never bring her out of neutral.

First gear is typically achieved when Rally starts fighting or running, though there have been rare instances that she has entered this threshold by mistake. When Rally enters this state, the build-up of energy starts to become a little easier, and her physical strength and agility are heightened.

Second gear follows with semi-constant momentum or action. It goes without saying that she's continuing to build strength and agility, but she is now conducting faint sparks of energy between her antlers intermittently. Her reflexes and reaction times are slightly improved, as well.

Third and fourth gears are where things really shake up. At this point, the world around her begins to slow down considerably. To the rest of the world, she is moving at ludicrous speeds, though nowhere near as fast as the likes of Sonic.

Fourth gear is where her build-up of energy becomes physically taxing. While her reactions and reflexes are at their peak in this stage, the excess energy is causing her physical pain, almost like a stinging sensation around her whole body. It's managable, but not for long.

Should Rally be pushed to her limits, may it be from a challenging foe or her lack of self control, she'll enter the fifth and final gear.

Oh, hell.

In her fifth gear, there is now a constant, violent stream of energy channeled between her antlers. Additionally, the irises and pupils in her eyes are as white as her sclera.

Gone are those augmented reflexes, as the world from her eyes is moving at a normal pace. This is due in part to the searing pain coursing through her body, distracting her and harming her judgement.

At this point, Rally becomes reckless and potentially dangerous to her self and others. The only thing important to her in this state is getting rid of all this energy inside her, by hell or high water.

With luck, the resulting strike will be just weak enough to simply bring her to a lower gear. The worst case scenario is her expending this energy all at once. The results can be devastating to the poor bastard or structure that meets this impact. Even more so, she will almost certainly pass out afterwards, both in part to the pain and the exhaustion of her final blow.

The Kutai'rah Pendant

The Kutai'rah Pendant is an item created by Arrow Rinehart, a symbol of his trust and friendship found with Rally. The charm resembles that of a smooth sided rectangle tablet made of mystically infused jadeite. With a small silver slate bearing the mark of a doe's antler with a tree behind it. Designed to store energy types: Kinetic, Solar, Wind, Concussive, and is capable of passive transference of stored energy and absorption of excess energies in order to aid its bearer.

When Rally obtains this pendant, she is able to store excess energy within it to keep herself in check. This isn't foolproof, as the pendant can only harness so much power, with the rest of the energy going back to her until the pendant can be emptied, but it is rare that this happens.

• Ignoring what she has in storage (as they're typically sold or traded within a short span of time), Rally currently owns three bikes that she's worked on: two cruisers, and a sports bike. Her favorite of the trio is nicknamed Tyris, and is modeled heavily after the 'Billy Bike' as seen in the movie 'Easy Rider'.
• Fixing up things is Rally's forte! While her expertise lies in motorcycle repair, they have a strong sense of problem solving when it comes to machines in general. She's also talented in carpentry.
• Rally has gotten her hands on all sorts of bikes: big and small, slow and fast, loud and quiet. To that end, she's skilled at driving even the trickiest of machines. It's rare to find a beast she can't tame...
• Rally loves cruisers and choppers especially. The bigger, the better, to an extent at least. She's not fond of bikes with the loudest exhausts imaginable, she'd rather not blow out her neighbor's eardrums!
• This deer also likes to go to different bars and pubs from time to time. Unfortunately, with people being people she has had to get rowdy with some other patrons out of self defense, or if they looked at her funny. There are at least two joints out there that she's currently banned from, not that she cared much about those rickety shitshows.