Nova Caine (![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} givemenova) wrote,@ 2008-04-19 16:12:00 |
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Character bio;
 NAME: Suzanne Kendrick ALIAS(ES): She goes by the name Nova Caine now, preferring not to refer to herself by the name her parents gave her. She doesn't even talk about her old name, and she's thankful that nobody has ever asked. AGE // DoB: 14 // 29th March 2004 RACE: Mutant AWARE OF MUTATION: No POWERS: Pheromone manipulation; Nova has the ability to control the emotions of others through the emittance of Pheromones. She is currently unaware of her power because it's not something that is easily spotted or seen, so she is totally unaware of how she can effect the people around her through her own feelings. When she feels a strong emotion it will cause those around her to feel something similar, if a slightly diluted version; for instance if she is angry people around her will tend to be irritable or snappy, and if she is in one of her periods of depression the people around her will find themselves feeling inexplicably sad, and so on. If and when she finds out about her powers she would be able to train herself to emit pheromones on command, inducing any number of emotional and physical responses, including happiness, anger, fear, calm, lust and would even be able to send people to sleep. Eventually she may even be able to use her powers for crowd control to, for instance, send large groups of people to sleep. Nova's power doesn't really affect her physically so there are no downsides in that respect, but because her powers affect those around her and their emotions she would never be sure about people's true emotions and intentions. Any time she shows any true emotion she will run the risk of inadvertantly manipulating the emotions of those around her so it would be hard to separate the real feelings from those affected by the pheromones. Her already paranoid and distrustful nature would not serve to help her in this area, either, as she finds it very hard to be able to trust her own instincts when it comes to judging people. Of course, once she ges a grip of her power she would be able to stop herself from emitting pheromones without meaning to. OCCUPATION: Student. APPEARANCE: Nova's appearance is never really at the forefront of her mind when she wakes up and gets dressed because, to be frank, there's not much point in putting effort in it since all she does is go to school or stay in the library. She dresses comfortably, with t-shirts, baggy tops or hoodies and jeans making up the vast majority of the clothing she owns. Her sense of style sometimes tends to mimic the 'punk' style that used to be pretty popular way back when, with her clothing of muted colours, heavy black makeup with smatters of bright colour here and there. Her hair, which was blonde to begin with, seemed to change to an even whiter shade of blonde over the course of the months immediately following the fallout from the war. Much like the rest of her appearance she tends not to obsess much over her hair and normally leaves it as it is when she wakes up, perhaps running a comb or her fingers through it just to make sure it doesn't look like a bleached bird's nest. Hair: White-blonde; falls a few inches past her shoulders; usually left in a messy state. Eyes: Brown. PERSONALITY: Although she will tell anybody who asks that the suicide of her father didn't affect her at all, in actuality Nova bears deep emotional scars from the event, partly because of the fact that she was the one to discover him hanging. It has led to her inability to truly trust many adults because in her mind they always let her down anyway. She has always suffered from depression but after the death of her father she seemed to start suffering from shortened periods of depression on sporadic occasions. This may be because Daniel's death meant that the vicious cycle they were stuck in was broken and she was able to not feel so upset over how she was treated by her father, who was ony acting as he was because of the effect her power had on him. She is stubborn to a fault and refuses to talk to anybody or ask for help with her feelings, being of the opinion that people have more important things to worry about like day-to-day living. She does sometimes share her feelings with friends but still feels dreadfully alone when she's in one of these slumps. When she's recovered, though, she is most comfortable with her schoolfriends and will always be willing to join in with a laugh or a joke or just to spend time with them. She's not intentionally unfriendly and a small group of people get that about her, especially since a lot of the children who live in the minor's apartment block have suffered similar things. It's another reason she finds it hard to relate to adults because the experiences they've each gone through are so different. At least among the 'orphans' the general theme of loss is the same. She is unaware of her own status as a mutant, but if she does find out she would probably not take it well since she would never be able to really tell if the people around her are being genuine or acting from the effect Nova's pheromones have on them. As it stands, however, she hasn't noticed the effect that her own depressive cycles have on the people around her, and more to the point, neither has anybody else. Even though she has never known anything else, and they have given her everything she has now, Nova has never been able to trust Horizon, questioning how they managed to maintain their power and wealth when the rest of the world was so devastated. She's begrudgingly grateful to the corporation for everything they've done, especially since, whatever their means or methods they did save what remained of the human race from dying out... she just doesn't trust them and is suspicious of the motives of this faceless corporation. When she is alone Nova likes to sing and often sings along to the radio; it gives her a sense of freedom and helps to cheer her up during times of sadness. Her other major hobby is reading and Nova will spend any time she can at the library indulging in said activity. She often wonders what it was like before the war, when people were able to do things they love not just for fun but as a career as well. It's strange to her that people were once paid in money for doing things like singing and writing and painting, things that don't really contribute anything to life. Life before the war - a life she's too young to remember - is almost like a fantasy to her, something that people could only dream of having. It's hard to imagine life was ever as good as it was before it became what it became. SKILLS: Being as young as she is, Nova hasn't really been able to build up any skills other than the basic ones she has learned and continues to learn in school. She still isn't sure about what she wants to do once she leaves school, so there aren't any specific skills she's working on just yet but she does have a natural affinity and interest in science and hopes that she would be able to get a job in this area when the time comes for her to choose a path. She takes the time to read any science related books on topics she has learned during classes whether she is required to read them or not, as a way of merging a hobby and interest. LIMITATIONS: Nova is a mortal and can die in every way that mortals can die, be it through injury or illness. Additionally, she suffers from frequent migraines which are possibly linked to her emotions; she normally suffers from one during or after a moment of depression. There's not really anything she can do about them except to struggle through the day and get an early night, which seems to do the trick. Her depression itself is another limitation, putting her in a bit of a slump until she can clamber her way out; during this time she will prefer to stay on her own, getting a book from the library to occupy her mind. Given that she's only 14, and is also quite small for her age anyway, it wouldn't be surprising to know that she lacks physical strength and would be easily overpowered by anyone older or bigger than her. Her power may help her a little in confusing her attacker but she most certainly couldn't ever win a fight. Her youth could also be considered as a major disadvantage; she hasn't really been exposed to too much of the world, and even thought she's sharp enough she isn't too aware of the world as it currently is. HISTORY: When Nova's parents, Kelly and Daniel, decided to have a child they never imagined how badly the future would turn out for the next generation. Sure, they knew, like most people did, that a war was inevitable and that tensions were reaching breaking point but they never imagined in their wildest dreams that nuclear warfare was on the cards. If they had known how unstable the future was they would never have brought a child into the world to suffer in the way that the world suffered when the first of the nuclear warheads struck the earth. When she was born they named her Suzanne, a name that she would later discard along with the remnants of something that couldn't even be called an 'old life'. For four years they lived happily together as a family, trying to ignore the sense of impending doom that seemed to grip the entire nation, maybe even the entire world. The war wasn't a surprise, no, but it was a shock to the system for the people so used to a life of comfort who suddenly found themselves running for their lives. They were lucky; there was an old air-raid shelter not far from their home which they and the families from the surrounding area tried to cram themselves into. Eventually it got so full that people had to be turned away forcibly, with those closest to the doors closing them and barricading them from the inside so that the people on the outside couldn't get in. Eventually the banging on the doors and the desperate pleas for help ceased as those on the outside hurriedly tried to find safer places to be. It's a good thing the families who had made it inside got along, because for the next few years they were stuck with each other in that confined space. People would take turns in venturing out for food and provisions, going out in big groups in case one was wounded or killed which, unfortunately, happened all too often. One of the people who never came back was Kelly, who had gone to see if she could get a prescription drug that Daniel couldn't remember the name of. Nobody could tell Daniel exactly how his wife died; there was no reason or sense in it but it left a husband without a wife and a young child without a mother. All he had left was his daughter, which should have been incentive for him to fiercely protect her from harm but instead he began to gradually distance himself from her, his mind forever on his wife. The loss of his wife - the love of his life and his soulmate - was more than he could come to terms with and depression began to take hold of him. When the war finally ended and the people who had taken shelter could come out the world was in ruin, dust and debris was all around and there was an eery silence. It was strange, their neighbourhood had never really been anything for anybody to target but there it was, laying in utter devastation with literally no house left unscathed. It was clear that they couldn't stay there so the group began to walk without a real end destination in mind. Along the way many fell from radiation poisoning which got to them no matter how many pieces of cloth they tied around their faces to try and keep their lungs clear. When they eventually got to New York they saw that Horizon had already got to work on setting up various rescue station-type areas where people were given food and medication. Against the odds both Daniel and Suzanne made it through to see the construction of the Complex, where Suzanne was enrolled in school and Daniel was given a job as an electrician. Suzanne grew up as a troubled young girl, not least because of the fact that her father seemed to wither away over the years, pushing his daughter further and further away and never offering any sort of explanation as to why. They never had any sort of bond between them, and Suzanne never knew the love of a parent for their child, instead feeling as if she was living with a lodger. What neither of them realised was that Nova's mutation, the ability to manipulate her pheromones in such a way that they affected and altered the emotions of those around her, were contributing to her father's depression. His actions would then cause Nova to become more depressed, and her depression affected her father's even more. The dangerous downwards spiral continued until one day, not long after she had turned 10, she returned home to find that Daniel had hung himself out of sheer desperation of being so unable to escape his dark feelings. Possibly due to her own confused mental state Nova didn't feel as much grief as a child should after seeing her father in such a state. In her mind this just meant that adults were all unreliable and would leave her all alone when things got too tough for them. When Horizon moved her into the accommodation for 'oprhaned children' she changed her name to Nova Caine - which she thought was a pretty awesome play on words - so that she could leave all thoughts of her father behind her and try to start anew. That was easier said than done of course because while Suzanne, now Nova, managed to climb out of her melancholy mood, she instead began to suffer from short boughts of sadness which she tried to hide from everyone. The only people she could tell were the other kids in her class and apartment complex who she had become friends with and a lot of whom had suffered a similar ordeal to herself. Her friends made life bearable and with their help she is able to clamber out of her moments of sadness by helping her friends out of theirs, still not knowing that her own emotions were influencing those of the people around her. Her mutation remains undiscovered because as sad as she sometimes gets, since the death of her father her emotions have never been extreme enough for people to notice the effect she has on them. Nova lives through each day hoping it'll be better than the last, finding that it isn't but being able to get through because it's not really any worse either. writing sample... The worn, tattered maths textbook lay forgotten on the desk, pieces of paper on which homework had been hastily scribbled upon wedged into the page with the questions that had to be answered, used as a sort of bookmark to keep the page from being lost as other pages were flicked through and read. The textbooks, like almost everything that people used nowadays, had been salvaged, since while there were now no resources available to print new books the children had to have an education of some sort. The one that Nova Caine had been given to carry with her to complete her homework task was no better or worse than the rest, but some of its pages had been scribbled on in pen, no doubt by some bored student who had been in his or her classroom, staring out of the window and hoping to God that something would happen for school to be out early. Funny how wishes sometimes work out, really. It's like that old saying people used to - and some people still do - go by; God works in mysterious ways. Hah, yeah, mysterious. The way Nova saw it, if this God was so powerful why didn't he stop this war from happening? Why would any God who created this world to watch it thrive then just stand by and let those people he created destroy themselves? Must be a pretty sick dude for that to be his shtick. Needless to say, while Nova loved to read, she wouldn't be attempting to read the Bible the whole way through again any time soon. But back to her textbook, which Nova was flipping through, reading the faded commentary that various students had added over the years. Page 22 was home to a conversation about Miss Argyle, whom Nova assumed was their maths teacher, and how not even someone as pretty as her could save them from this topic. In the corner of the next page was a heart with some initials inside, with a neatly scribbled '4eva' underneath. Nova sighed as she flicked back to the page her homework assignment was on, suddenly irritated at the lackadaisical attitude displayed in the worn graffiti when kids now could only wish to have lives as they did before. Of course they weren't to know what would happen to the world, and how they had it easy compared to how things are in this broken shell of a world they live in now. Nova wasn't stupid; she knew that they weren't to blame for being kids, she just wishes she had the opportunities that they did back then and feels somewhat bitter about the lot they were all left with. She would give anything for things to be like they were then and Nova suspected that, if they were still alive, the people who wrote these notes would, too. ooc... NAME: Isaviel AGE: 22 EMAIL: hitsuphile@googlemail.com MESSENGER(S): yim - tennyness, msn - yuukomackay@hotmail.co.uk TIMEZONE: BST (GMT) JOURNAL: givemenovaPB: Jac Vanek |