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Mabel Tanaka ✦ Mabel Tanaka ✦ Reina Hardesty ✦ Hoppers

KILL THE CHAOS, FIND THE BALANCE

CURRENT AGE: twenty-eight

SPECIES: human

OCCUPATION: Animal research scientist at Walt University

AVAILABILITY: open

AROUND WE GO, MABEL TANAKA

Mabel has always been someone who cared too much. She loved too much, she tried too hard, she was just too much. The reputation she created for herself spread far and wide across her school. Mabel has been an avid animal lover since she can remember. She was notorious for trying to free class pets. To her, animals deserved to be out in the wild, not lost behind glass prisons. Every day without fail, she would try to release her critter friends, and each day her plans were foiled. The final straw was when she bit one of her teachers, which led to Mabel being suspended from school. She was dropped off at her grandmother’s house because her parents couldn’t take the rest of the day off just because their daughter decided to be a problem. Mabel expected her grandma to treat her like everyone else. She had these big feelings she didn’t know how to handle, but to her surprise, her grandmother completely understood. 

Not far from her grandmother’s house was a small wooded grove. The big rock just before the pond is where Grandma Tanaka spent a lot of her time. She told Mabel that she, too, used to get angry. When those feelings rose, she came out here to the grove. It was hard to be mad when it felt like you were part of something bigger. In that moment, as the breeze rushed through Mabel’s hair, the sun kissed her skin, and the animals gathered around, Mabel understood what her grandma was talking about. She asked her grandmother if they could come here every day. From that moment on, it became their spot. Every day after school, Mabel would visit her grandmother, and together they became part of something more. 

The grove became an integral part of Mabel’s being. Her entire adolescence was spent there. It’s where her grandmother’s spirit still felt close after she passed. Her passion for wildlife only grew as she got older. Mabel defended nature with every fiber of her being because somebody had to. Somebody had to care as much as she did. The grove meant everything to her, so of course, when Mayor Jerry proposed his superhighway that would destroy the grove, Mabel was furious. The only way for animals to return to the glade was for a keystone animal to return to the ecosystem. That animal was a beaver. Mabel did everything she could to lure a beaver back with no luck. However, the key to getting one back had been right under her nose the entire time. 

As it turns out, her Professor, Dr. Sam Fairfax, had created a technology called hopping. With it, she was able to transport the human consciousness into a robotic animal to communicate with and get up close to their respective species. Mabel took this as her way to save the glade. Her consciousness was transported into a believable beaver, and for the next forty-eight hours, chaos ensued. Mabel got up close and personal with animals she adored, learned pond rules, was judged by an animal council, killed a council member, and stopped a bloodthirsty insect king from destroying the human race. In the end, she saved the glade. Her relationship with Mayor Jerry mended as the two finally learned to understand each other, and above all, she gained the greatest gift: her friendship with King George, a beaver and king of the mammals. Although they could no longer communicate without Hopper technology, their bond transcended words. 

The Hoppers program was shut down due to Mabel. She felt guilty for ruining Dr. Fairfax’s life's work but offered her assistance in any way she could. To her surprise, Sam accepted her offer. The team could use someone who had Mabel’s tenacity and inner strength. So, for years, Mabel worked as an animal research scientist for Dr. Sam’s team at Beaverton University. Her passions led her into rooms she never imagined were possible. Eventually, she was recognized by Ozma Furbanna at Walt University. As a fellow Animal research scientist herself, Ozma found Mabel’s research groundbreaking. Her love for animals was exactly what their research team needed. Ozma had also taken an interest in Hopper technology. Mabel was hesitant to replicate Dr. Sam’s work, but Ozma ensured her they could recreate it to be better than before. Elias was a city like no other. It was a place where science and magic could commingle. The opportunities here endless. Besides, didn’t she want to connect with her old friends again while she still could? 

The chance to communicate with King George and the rest of her animal friends was too great an opportunity to pass up. So, Mabel agreed to join Ozma in her research and bring back Hopper technology. She has high hopes for the program. All her efforts had come to this. She was finally doing good in the world with people who cared just as much as she did.  

Hopper technology was great as long as it was in the right hands. If only she knew that people were lurking in the darkness of the Underland, who would try to take this technology and use it with malicious intent.

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Please don't talk to yourself. It's one of your more freakish Needy behaviors and it makes us both look like total gaylords.

HUDSON WILLIAMS for Timid Magazine