Neon Red
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Neon Red | |
| Player: @Bright | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Security Level: | ' |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Naomi Ashpool |
| Known Aliases: | ' |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 29 |
| Height: | 5'7 |
| Weight: | 85kg |
| Eye Color: | Green |
| Hair Color: | Red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Canadian/American |
| Occupation: | Private Investigator |
| Place of Birth: | Montreal |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Orphaned |
| Known Powers | |
| Nanite-infused physiology | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Expert investigator, hacker, lockpicking martial artist, markswoman. | |
| Equipment | |
| Revolver, notebook, lockpicks, bugs. | |
| * * * | |
Contents |
Concept
Naomi Ashpool, codename Neon Red, is a nanite-infused private investigator that walks the seedy underbelly of Paragon City, dragging those more subtle criminals and sinners out into the light.
Naomi does not fully understand her abilities, but she has been playing the PI game since long before she received them, and is not one to turn down a little bit of superpowered assistance in her relentless pursuit of the cancers that poison the city from the shadows.
History
Growing up in Montreal, Canada, Naomi led a peaceful and happy childhood. For her, and the entire globe, that peace was shook by the sudden and violent arrival of the Rikti; though she and her family survived the devastation, it did bring about huge change for Naomi. Her mother and father, an architect and project manager respectively, decided to move to Paragon City, the centre of the invasion and most heavily hit warzone, in order to help with the lucrative reconstruction efforts there. Life continued, in relative luxury no less, for another five or so years until the Rikti once again swore to bathe the world in blood. Naomi's parents ended up listed among the casualties, when a hero crashed a Heavy Assault Suit through the shelter where they were hiding.
Driven by a strong desire to protect her adopted home and the city her parents had died for, a sixteen year old Naomi set about joining the PPD. Her years with the force taught her a great deal and helped shape her into who she is today, but in the end she only managed a few years before turning in her badge. Her enthusiasm, while strong at first, slowly but surely dwindled while her frustration only grew. If it wasn't the tape and the bureaucracy holding her back, it was corruption, plain incompetence, or a feeling of being utterly powerless to actually do anything in the face of the many superpowered threats the city faced on a daily basis. She grew tired of being told to wait on the sidelines for the heroes to step in, tired of the dirty sergeants and captains defending even dirtier politicians, tired of the institutionalised racism and prejudice, and tired of never quite getting the results she wanted.
So, Naomi went private. She joined up with Armitage Security & Investigations, a small but respected firm that often accepted contracts the PPD couldn't, or wouldn't, touch. Employees in Armitage were divided up into teams named after periodic elements, with each member of the team then getting a colour- thus Neon Red was born. Naomi enjoyed her time with Armitage and it was an environment that she thrived in and where her talents could really be put to use.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end sooner or later. Naomi was called in for what ought have been a simple security gig escorting an art piece for a wealthy client. The piece, a small statue, was to be moved from the state capital of Providence to the Vault Reserve in Atlas Park. All of the client's background checks came back clean and there was no particular reason for worry- for all intents and purposes, the job seemed to be nothing more than a formality. And yet, just outside Paragon City limits in the dead of night, the Armitage van was attacked. A high-explosive rocket came from nowehere and flipped the van, severly injuring most of its passengers. The attackers were well-organised, decked out in the latest tactical gear and weaponry, and knew exactly where the convoy would be. Naomi, still on her feet and determined to save the package, slipped the statue into her pack and ran into the woods and undergrowth by the road. She was able to evade the strange militia for some time, until she was eventually found and another closely aimed rocket sent her flying. In the instant before she lost consciousness, she felt the statue in her pack shatter and blistering pain as the heat seared something into her back.
She awoke a day later in a hospital bed. The doctors and her teammates quickly rushed in and informed her that the PPD and a small group of heroes had arrived just after the explosion and managed to drive the soldiers away, though had failed to capture or identify any. More important to Naomi however, was the status of the statue. The doctor's face grew stiff and she invited Naomi's team leader to help explain. The statue - and the job - had not been a normal affair after all. The statue was just a disguise for a container containing, as the doctor then explained, a swarm of advanced nanites. Nanites that, their tests had shown, had fused with Naomi's physiology in the explosion. Further investigation showed the client to have vanished, all their contact details and profiles proving to be an highly elaborate and well-constructed front for someone that had never existed.
Still injured and unsure of the effect the nanites would have on her, Armitage had little choice but to offer Naomi her medical severance per her employment contract. She got a healthy payout, as well as the files and effective ownership of the contract she had been working on before the statue gig, but was otherwise let go.
Now, only slightly bitter at her fate, Naomi nonetheless continues her work while exploring her emerging, nanite-granted abilities.
Powers & Abilities
Nanites
Naomi's body plays host to a swarm of nanites- tiny, self-replicating, wirelessly networked microscopic robots capable of operating on a molecular level. The nanites are nominally very similar in nature to those from War Earth, that granted the hero Valkyrie and Praetorian agent Battle Maiden their own abilities, and are most likely an attempt at reverse-engineering their powers. Naomi's nanites do differ in a number of key areas, however, as the developers seemingly failed to crack the secret behind War Earth's considerably more advanced weapons technology. Nonetheless, whatever data they did manage to secure served as a suitable enough foundation for their own, unique ideas and design direction that has produced significant results. Naomi's nanites grant her the following powers:
- Enhanced Physiology: Similar to Valkyrie's, if not as potent, Naomi's nanites have blessed her with a superhuman physiology. Rather than rewrite her biology like the aforementioned hero's, Naomi's nanites instead infest and augment her organs, muscles, bones, and skin as a set of internalised cybernetics. This grants her low-tier superhuman strength, stamina, speed, durability, reflexes, and healing factor.
- Constructs: Whether an intended feature or a result of her traumatic fusion with them, Naomi is able to directly control and then manifest her nanites through her pores and shape them into a variety of forms. Naomi only has so many nanites, and thus the scale of her constructs are limited, but are nonetheless highly variable. She most notably uses this ability to form a pair of nanoblade claws for use in combat; she can alter these claws' properties, so they can be blunt enough to simply incapacitate, or sharp enough to cut cleanly through most armors. Outside of combat situations, Naomi can also use this power to form small, simple items such as keys, hand tools, or visual representations of people, places, or objects.
- Technological Assimilation: A unique ability of Naomi's nanites which she does not yet fully understand or control. By breaking down and analysing compatible devices, her nanites are able to effectively assimilate the technologies behind them and replicate their function within her body, thereby granting her new abilities based on what she absorbs. Naomi has thus far assimilated the following technology:
- Mediporter: The very first thing Naomi (accidentally) assimilated while being fitted for one in hospital, and which alerted her doctors to her nanite's unique capabilities. Functions more or less as a regular mediporter, though is obviously safer from hacking, interference, and damage.
- Taser: A simple taser, with which Naomi can send electrical pulses through her nanites. In combat, this allows her to more effectively deal nonlethal blows to human or other targets that her blunted claws might otherwise be less effective against and which she does not want to seriously hurt.
- Cloaking Device: A combination of Longbow and Arachnos cloaking devices, absorbed from suits of donated and captured armor that Naomi's doctors requested to help test her nanite's properties. While active, Naomi's presence on the electromagnetic spectrum is seriously dampened, the noise she creates is muffled, and any scent she produces is masked, rendering her invisible to all but the most sensitive and advanced sensor suites.
- Force Projectors: Absorbed from the personal weapons of a gadget-based villian Naomi helped arrest. These force projectors allow her to fire off short range shockwaves of concussive or cutting energy from her nanites, giving her some ranged utility.
Expert Investigator
From her time with the PPD and Armitage Security & Investigations, Naomi has recieved considerable training and practise in the arts of forensics, detection, deduction, and tracking, and she has developed a strong talent for them. There are few clues she will ever miss, and fewer leads she cannot follow. Her ability to comb an area and pick out minor details others might disregard as irrelevant has lead her to solving cases before the blood has even dried. She often eschews and even looks down upon more esoteric and high-concept means of investigation, preferring to focus on the small, mundane bits of information she can piece together into the profile of an actual person and life. Her considerable street smarts and contacts in all the right places only act as multipliers to her considerable investigative force, and it is rare to find Naomi so totally stumped that she cannot think of anyone to turn to in order to provide the insight she needs to make sense of something.
Expert Hacker
Information is power, and computers represent nothing if not raw, networked information. Naomi is a naturally gifted hacker and startied her code-breaking career while she was young, by constantly breaking the child-lock on her parent's electronics. Her proficiency only increased as she attended numerous coding bootcamps and completed a masters in cybersecurity with full honours during her service with the PPD. Given ample enough time, she is able to break into most digital systems and has even written several of her own, dubiously legal worm programs she can use on particularly stubborn firewalls. Her expertise is such that she even occassionally hires herself out as a white hat hacker in order to test firm's security and earn a little extra income on the side.
Expert Lockpick
Similar to her hacking proficiency, there are few physical locks that can bar Naomi from entry. If it requires a key, chances are she can get through it. Somewhat to Naomi's chagrin, this particular skillset of hers has become nearly redundant since aquiring her powers, as her nanites are able to take on the form of nearly any physical object and thus can replicate keys with ease. She still keeps her practise up for the sake of the art, and has also started to study the nature of magical and enchanted locks, which can frequently give her trouble in the rare instances she encounters them.
Martial Artist
Though not on the same level as some dedicated martial heroes, Naomi is nonetheless a competent martial artist that can hold her own in a hand-to-hand fight, even before taking her powers into account. She has gone through and earned certificates in numerous PPD training programs and supplemented that teaching through additional courses at Armitage and, of course, raw experience while on the job and street.
Marksmanship
As part of her PPD training, Naomi naturally made extensive use of firearms and is a competent shot with anything from small sidearms to high-calibre rifles. Even after leaving the force, Naomi is a licensed and certified gun owner and keeps a small revolver with her as a backup weapon if, for whatever reason, her nanites fail her and she needs a bit of stopping power.
Equipment
- Dan Wesson .357 revolver, kept in a holster behind her back.
- Notebook computer, complete with universal connectors and pre-loaded hacking executibles.
- Impervium lockpicks.
- Spy bugs, complete with remote audio/visual feed and satellite tracking.
Weaknesses
Despite her augmentations, Naomi's physical abilities still lie on the lower end of the superhero spectrum; she is not as fast as actual speedsters, not as strong as typical superstrength users, nor as durable as those with invulnerable skin. She is a keen, slippery combantant that excels at exploiting distraction and maximising any mistakes or leverage her opponent's give her, but she is liable to cracking under sufficient pressure. The best and easiest way to down her is simply to use concentrated, overwhelming force without any breaks in focus; the moment her enemy looks away to deal with her allies or falls for one of her feints is the moment they have a monomolecular blade slicing through their innards. Apart from this, Naomi also has a handful of specific weakenesses that can be exploited by someone with sufficient insight into her and her powers:
Hacking
Naomi's nanites operate on a closed, wireless network composed of millions of individual micro-processors sharing their power in order to function as a collective whole. Their very nature makes them immune to most conventional forms of hacking, jamming, or disruption, and being slaved to Naomi's central nervous system makes it all but impossible to subvert her control of them without first controlling her. That said, her nanites do still work wirelessly, and are reliant on their cloud computing nature to work; though it would require study of their specific architecture, it would not be unfeasible to devise a means to remotely hack into the nanites network and disrupt their ability to operate, thereby nullifying Naomi's powers while the hack was in effect.
EMPs
Like most forms of digital electronics, Naomi's nanites are at least partially vulnverable to sufficiently strong electromagnetic pulses, which can temporarily disable or muddle them. Unless the pulse is so devastatingly powerful that it can also begin to effect organic targets, this method of offense will likely only buy an attacker a few seconds at most against Naomi, who can forcefully restart her nanites through the link she shares with them.
Psionics
The bane of many heroes, Naomi is yet another individual that considers psionic threats to be something of a bogeyman. Her nanites offer no protection against mental assault, she has not fought sufficient psionic foes to build up a natural resistance, and while her PPD training brushed on mind-protecting exercises they were certainly not extensive enough to offer her any meaningful protection from a strong, competent psychic.
Enhanced Senses
Naomi relies extensively on stealth, feints, and hit-and-run tactics in combat in order to turn the tables and overcome physically stronger opponents. While her absorbed cloaking device, enhanced agility, and natural prowess makes her difficult to detect even with sharpened senses, those exceptionally sensititive instruments, sensors built specifically for tracking what few signatures she does leave, or forms of precognition, can nullify one of her main advantages in a fight and level the playing field against her.
Notes
- Naomi's line of work makes annonymity an asset and she does what she can to avoid the spotlight and expunge any publically available records of her. None of the information on this page is public, and the nature of her powers are sealed in her medical files at M. Harvey Medical Center and DATA. Her weakenesses are speculatory, and even she isn't necessarily aware of them.
- She predominantly speaks with a soft Canadian accent.
