Shoe

Nicky (Scenesys ID: 1767)
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Profile
Full Name:	Nicole Black
Gender:	It's Complicated
Species:	Metahuman
Theme:	Original (OC)
Occupation:	College Student / Artist/ Welder
Citizenship:	United States of America
Residence:	Gotham City
Education:	College
Status:	Shelved
Groups:	{{{Groups}}}
Other Information
Apparent Age:	26	Actual Age:	26
Date of Birth	20 Jarnuary 1990	Actor:
Height:	170 cm (5'7")	Weight:	80 kg (176 lbs.)
Hair Color:	Black	Eye Color:	Green
Theme Song:	{{{Song}}}

Profile

By day, a disabled, non binary Native American art student attending classes at Gotham. By night, the wearer of the Shoes Of Hermes, quick-kicking, leaping, wall-running mad scientist and protector of reality!

Sheet

Description

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Nicky is an average sized, androgynous person, apparently Native American or maybe Latinx, with a soft, athletic build. They have a neutral voice that can be read either way depending on how they say things.

Their face and skin looks soft and feminine, but if they wear a mask you can't tell. They keep their black hair in a side cut that can be combed over into a short hair style. Their build is neutral, and their chest is flat enough to walk on a beach topless without a second glance.

IN COSTUME, The Shoe's outfit is dominated by a pair of bronze boots that look like something out of Ancient Greece, decorated with wing motifs. These are supposedly the Boots of Hermes, and are actually holoprojections. They also have a jacket with shoulder pads and a quilted protective front that makes them look masculine, and wear a mask.

OUT OF COSTUME, people often read them as female because of their face. Sometimes they dress femininely, other times they dress more masculinely and look like a high school boy.

History

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Nicole was born on a reservation to doting parents. Showing an affinity for engineering and mechanics, they poured everything into getting them into an engineering program. When they were interested in martial arts, their parents made sure they had coaching, even when it meant they skipped meals.

After high school, graduating their run down rez school with honors, they got into an engineering program. Maybe not the most prestigious, but a good one. They had a sports scholarship and merit scholarships, and the US Olympic TKD team was considering them for admission.

That was a bit complicated by their weird medical history, as they turned out to be intersex (AIS XY female) and thus having hormone levels that were strange and out of allowable ranges. Those tests made their athletic career problematic for the conservative college they were at, so they worked harder on engineering, taking side tech jobs to make up for the interrupted sports scholarship.

One of those jobs was for a startup that was working on aerospace technology, some more esoteric than others. One night, one of the experimental engines was flipped on accidentally, and Nicky happened to be on a scaffold above it. The resulting blast of dimensional energy destroyed the platform they were standing on, shattered both of feet, damaged their ears, and irradiated them with extradimensional energy.

Afterwards, they found that ideas for technology popped into their mind easily, and it worked.. but only for them. Many pieces of technology worked better for them, some worse. Architecture and purely mechanical engineering seemed safe, but they got enough of a reputation that nobody trusted them with that, either. Because an engineer whose designs don't work after they leave the room isn't much good, they had to drop out of the program.

As a fallback, they moved away and transferred to Gotham, becoming a humble, disabled, queer arts student working in sculpture and design.

But the designs for technology kept coming..

Based on a series of dreams and designs they couldn't get out of their head, they designed a few things: a supertech flywheel power storage unit intended to replace her wrecked inner ears and add extra utility while storing huge amounts of energy; a pair of cybernetic feet incorporating slightly mad electroweak mesh reinforcement and direct kinetic energy conversion systems so she could run again.. And jump.. And other things. And the interfaces to connect it all to standardized cybernetics.

The CEO of the startup, feeling terrible about the accident, agreed to help them install it - she flew them to a hospital in South America to have the equipment installed.

When they came back, they could kind of walk. Nicky decided it was best to not mention to the others at school when they could run, or leap over buildings, or walk on walls.

Personality

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Studious, protective of friends, family, and tribe, pragmatic, creative, forgiving. Unwilling to kill.

Abilities

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CLINGING
The electroweak projectors on Nicky's feet can also temporarily attach to other objects like pavement, walls, lightposts, or whatever, and release instantly. Their feet can lock onto things firmly enough that something else will give way first - probably Nicky's leg. It's about as strong as a steel weld. They can run on the ceiling and other such ridiculous stunts.

ELDRITCH INVENTIONS
Nicky was altered by exposure to extradimensional physics, and now the rules of physics are ever so slightly different for them. They picked up a bunch of alternate universe technological understanding from the incident - and they were already a competent engineer. They can invent and use various bits of supertech, but the devices only work in their immediate presence (about one meter from their body), and can't be large enough to go outside that range.

Inventing things takes time - days, usually - and usually means building things with abilities related to the ones in her feet - making matter stick together or blow apart on contact, kinetic energy absorption and redistribution. Powering the devices is usually an issue, as they haven't come up with any extradimensional reactor designs.

Other weird one-shot gadgetry can be built as required for plots with negotiation with the people running them.

FEET
Nicky's feet are cybernetic. They look normal to cursory inspection, but are reinforced with an electroweak force mesh that renders the material almost indestructible when powered up. The feet are substantially heavier than biological feet, and much more rigid, so kicking with them is a bludgeoning weapon. They can absorb kinetic energy from things like walking or jumping, storing it for later release. They contain a projector on top, so they can mimic various different kinds of footwear and not draw attention for being barefoot.

GENTLY AUGMENTED
As a Required Secondary Power, Nicky's body is lightly enhanced. Their lower body strength is enhanced somewhat above normal human limits, and their skeleton is mildly reinforced through biotechnology. Their tibia and fibula and part of their knees were simply replaced with the same mostly indestructible construction of the rest of the foot, so now they can break metal baseball bats with their shin. The repairs to their inner ear to connect their gyroscope to their brain also repaired their hearing, because why not while we're already in there? And now Nicky can hear sounds above and below normal human frequency limits, as well as some of the best audiophiles in the world, with protection against loud noises. They also can connect to electronic devices through the usual network protocols. With practice, Nicky's hearing might get even better.

GYROSCOPIC
A sealed flywheel system is mounted to Nicky's pelvic bone. This flywheel can store and release large amounts of energy quickly to keep their feet working, but can also track movement accurately. By manipulating the flywheel inside, Nicky can do all the things a gyroscope can do, twisting in air, standing on a wall, and the like. They do not lose their balance, even when it seems physically impossible such as hanging out over the street supported only by one foot on the roof, three feet away from their center of balance. Cats envy Nicky's feet-landing abilities. Also, Nicky can charge electronics with it, and use it to very accurately track movement, direction, and the like; Nicky always knows their latitude, longitude, direction, acceleration, and speed.

JUMP
Nicky's feet can discharge stored kinetic energy in the form of electroweak repulsion blasts. Used minimally, this allows Nicky to run at speeds up to about thirty miles per hour, but they find it more efficient to use the bursts to jump through the air. Nicky can jump to the top of a ten story building if needed, and thanks to the energy return in her feet, can land safely at terminal velocity without harm, ready to jump again. Doing this repeatedly, they can outrun normal cars at full speed. Nicky can use the repulsion effect on the air, but this isn't so much a rocket propulsion or blast as a way to make adjustments to the trajectory of a jump in the air.

Done as part of a kicking attack, this is basically a concussion blast that multiplies the power of the kick. It can be delivered in a short burst that tends to smash and break things it hits, or as a more controlled wave of force that tends to send targets flying without doing much internal damage.

REALITY DAMAGE
Nicky is dimensionally altered and carries a bubble of somewhat alien physics with them. To certain senses, they register as "reality damage".

Entropy is reduced in their immediate presence. Normal chemical fires are extinguished within a meter of their body (whether they want them to be or not); tools and devices tend to function better and longer for them, using somewhat less power, producing less waste heat, and running faster. That said, the moment they reach out and touch a computer and the moment they move away from one tends to make the system glitch and crash. Clocks run faster in their possession.

Skills

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ARTIST
Nicky is enrolled as an art student; they know all the basics about various art media, art appreciation and the like, and focus on metal sculpture.

BUSINESS
Unable to shake their pragmatic streak, Nicky is also studying business. They understand accounting, marketing, business law and the like, and have some understanding of things like forensic accounting and international trade.

ENGINEERING
Nicky can understand blueprints, create plans, and perform all the tasks of fabricating various widgets and devices. Unfortunately, their technology inventions tend to only work for them. Architecture and civil engineering type stuff seems safe enough, as is repairing other people's designs or building other people's blueprints, but as soon as they stray into electronics, mechanics, or other fields that move or turn on or otherwise change, they start using their alien physics knowledge.

LANGUAGES
Nicky is fluent in written and spoken Navajo, and in Spanish (with an accent).

MARTIAL ARTS
Nicky is good enough with Taekwondo to have been considered for the Olympic team. More recently, they have picked up some tricks from Savate, Capoeira, Boxing, and Wrestling to add extra tricks or to shore up their weaknesses a bit. They keep in shape and practiced up, and cross train with yoga and handcycling.

Resources

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REZ
Nicky has a lot of relatives and family on their tribal reservation they can call upon. The poverty there keeps things more or less off the grid, and they send help home enough and have plenty of useful skills to trade. Their Native background is also sometimes useful on its own.

TOOLS
Gathered as an engineering student and later as a sculptor, Nicky keeps a room full of fabrication tools. They can make circuit boards, print, fabricate, machine, and forge various parts and tools out of metal or plastic or whatever. They have their own welder and a pile of scrap metal - metal pieces and electronics parts accumulate in the shelf on the wall like yarn in a knitter's closet.

WORKS WITH METAL
Sometimes, Nicky sells an art piece. Sometimes, somebody needs a railing or some such thing welded. They get paid either way. As a whole, it averages out to enough to get by.

Weaknesses

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BATTERY LIFE
Nicky can charge up from walking and running, or plug into a standard power outlet, and can store huge amounts of energy in their flywheel - but they don't have a reactor to fuel themself. If they keep pushing themself without a recharge, eventually they will have battery life issues.

One major fight scene in a night's patrol is generally no problem as long as they don't do anything really bizarre that drains a freakish amount of power - but if they are worried about anything happening after that, such as if kidnapped and taken to a weird alien dimension where there are no power outlets, they will be looking for a large source of electricity and practicing some serious rationing and recharging behaviors.

CYBERNETIC
Nicky is a cyborg. They have electrical equipment and ferrous metals inside their body, and as a result has extra vulnerabilities to magnetic, etc. attack.

ELDRITCH PHYSICS
Having been changed by dimensional exposure, Nicky remembers learning about scientific principles that do not match the physics textbooks. Physics classes now feel like the person from the alternate history dimension in a history class. Some technology works strangely when they touch it.

Because one of the effects of the physics change is an alteration of the entropy constants, Nicky extinguishes mundane fires for about a foot from their skin. They cannot ride motorcycles with internal combustion engines or cook with gas stoves. Additionally, they cause computers to glitch when they touch them, and when they move away from them. This causes occasional weird cover ups and awkward bad excuses in ordinary situations.

ZOOMIES
Zoomies: The term for that crazy thing where pets suddenly start running around.

Since the accident with the engine, Nicky gets occasional restless urges to do various things.

Go to someplace and look at something. Go stand on the roof of that nondescript building and wait for nineteen minutes. Build this device to detect something pointless, bring it to this place, turn it on, and read off the numbers. Acquire five pounds of pure lead ingot and bury it exactly 1.4 meters deep at these coordinates in Central Park. So far as they can tell, this is completely harmless, but the randomness of the urges, and the complete lack of apparent reason, is a bit alarming.

If they don't do these things, it is distracting and kind of invades their thoughts. They generally have enough warning to be able to make time for such things without creating suspicion, but it puts them in odd situations and places where they usually wouldn't be.

Logs

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Title	Date	Scene Summary
Showdown in Mu-town	June 11th, 2018	Some robbers try to hold up a store in Bushwick. It's as bad of an idea as it sounds like.
Wait, what	June 11th, 2018	Nicky does something weird. Suzanne is befuddled. Much confusion and a few hamburgers are had by all.
Mall caper, over-easy	June 9th, 2018	Inexperienced newbie heroes and Kaelyn deal with hacking thugs.
That's not a floor!	May 31st, 2018	Rift, Nicky, and the Scarlet Spider meet on a wall. And under a ledge. Escher would be proud.
Circles in the grass	May 28th, 2018	Nicky goes exploring, and regrets seeing people having fun while they are still recovering
Just a little weird activity	May 26th, 2018	Victor runs into The Shoe, and gets them advance warning of the police. Geometry and physics gets lightly abused.
Light Metal	May 19th, 2018	School is on break, but artists and directors never rest..

Cutscenes

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To Refresh Character's Log List Click Here. Then hit the resulting button to dump the old cached list.

Title	Date	Scene Summary
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Gallery

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