Jinx

Strength 7c

Agility 8b

Intellect 4d

Willpower 7x

Hand Size: Edge:

3 (17) 1

Origin:

Natasha Huston is a sorcerously altered human, a formerly normal (more or less) young woman that manifested strange and unpredictable powers in the face of an accident involving her father's extradimensional studies. Bathed in inexplicable energies from beyond in this accident, Natasha has developed a variety of beneficial abilities that vaguely mirror raw, uncontrolled magical power.

Powers:

Probability Field (w): her primary superhuman power, this ability isn't totally under Natasha's control, and it is constantly on. When she relaxes her control, Natasha's field will cover everything within near missile distance, but she concentrates Natasha can contract her p-field to within an inch of her body. Depending on its current state, Natasha has access to these super human abilities:

* Chaos Combat (w): while her probability field is tightly contracted around her person, Natasha's combat prowess is remarkably improved, as opponents have a particularly rough time getting a bead on her. In game terms, this negates the benefits of ascendant abilities like combat edge, and offers her all the benefits of the fortuity power.

* Danger Sense (w): while it is spread out across near missile distance, Natasha's probability field gives her the benefit of an intensity 15 danger sense. This makes her totally immune to ambushes, allows her to dodge as if her Agility score were 15, and she can declare an action in any exchange when somebody tries to use an ambush or other surprise attack upon her.

* Force Field (i): if Natasha compresses her probability field tightly around her person, she benefits from the effects of this power. It is strongly limited, in that it can not be used to produce other force field configurations, and Natasha must pass a challenging difficulty Agility action to touch anything while it is active. On the other hand, it also obscures her features, being a dull gray in hue.

This protective barrier operates at intensity 12 (offering Natasha like protection, or +3 protection, whichever is currently higher).

Hindrances / Augmentations:

Unlucky: whenever her probability field isn't compressed (most of the time), Natasha suffers from this particularly dreadful hindrance. Namely, whenever a Narrator draw is made on her 'behalf', the Narrator must in fact draw two cards, and choose the one that will adversely affect her the most. This bad luck also spreads to others, and any cards Natasha draws to affect others will utilize the same principle...

Equipment:

Mag Cannons (a): having no attack powers per se, Natasha relies upon her twin pistols to solve her more troublesome problems. These two magnetron-accelerator slug-throwers fire 9mm ferrite bullets at incredible velocities, bullets that inflict her Agility +5 Armor Piercing damage per hit, +6 if Natasha fires an entire clip off at once (the mag cannons are auto-fire capable).

Targeter Goggles (w): this specialized piece of combat headgear is essentially a pair of night vision goggles (providing intensity 5 infravision), retrofitted with a computerized heads-up display. This computer targeter system grants Natasha a +2 bonus when firing on opponents with her mag guns, and even prevents her from hitting undesired targets if her opponent is ensconced within a crowd.

Titanium Blades (s): Natasha's secondary weapons, these finely crafted blades are, in her hands, +2 edged weapons. Sure, she prefers to enter a fight guns a' blazing, but if stealth (or a lack of ammo) prevents such an option, she's fully capable of using these blades to lethal effect - and if she's mad enough, she won't mind the resulting mess all that much.

Vibro-Blade (s): swiped from a villain she bested some time back, Natasha will occasionally use this blade instead of her ordinary titanium knives - it's much deadlier, after all. A nifty high-tech device, this blade vibrates at a super-sonic frequency, allowing it to inflict +5 damage in melee, and it can cut through items of up to m.s. 16 (the blade is itself of m.s. 14).

Skills:

Acrobatics (a): Natasha is highly acrobatic, being able to swing from ropes, tumble, and take a fall like the best of 'em. In fact, when dodging and attempting to reduce falling damage, Natasha acts as if the inherently difficulty were one level lower.

Brawling (s): Natasha fights dirty - real dirty. If unarmed, she can render an opponent comatose if she reduces him or her to zero health or cards. This fighting form isn't very heroic, but it gets people out of her way, so Natasha doesn't mind.

Contingent Attack (a): a tried and true combatant, Natasha is very good with guns - any guns. In fact, within a given exchange, she can divide her total action score between two gun attacks, the last of which will occur as a contingent action.

First Aid (i): after hooking up with a gang of vigilante super-humans, Natasha learned rather quickly how necessary it is for somebody to patch folks up after a brawl. She can restore a lost card of Health to anyone if she can use this skill on them within one exchange of them losing it. *

Knives (s): in addition to her down and dirty fighting skills, Natasha can competently use a knife against another in battle. Any knife-fighting action she attempts should be made as if the difficulty were one difficulty level lower than normal.

Marksmanship (a): Natasha is one with the gun, so to speak. Whether she uses a standard slug-thrower, her usual mag-cannons, or any other advanced energy weapon, she makes her attacks at one difficulty level lower than usual.

Contacts:

Natasha's most reliable contact is her father, a rather... experimental scientist. The man would do just about anything for her, should she only ask. Other reliable folks in Natasha's life include her ex-fiance, Joseph Frieghten, a private investigator, and her father's military contact, a General in the United States Army. Of course, her patron organization can also be relied upon for aid and such.

As long as, of course, it's in their best interests to do so.

It should also be noted that Natasha is on good terms with a group of vigilante super-folk that have no particular name to speak of. She typically (and inexplicably) serves as the brains of this outfit, since out of the lot of them she has the most tactical experience available to her. If not, you know, the common sense or natural leadership capabilities one would expect from such a teammate.

Calling:

Uncontrolled Power: while she can condense her probability field into a sort of force field, Natasha nonetheless can't control her luck-altering abilities, which has pretty much put a complete damper on her personal life. She manages a vigilante career thanks to them, of course, but isn't doing what she'd really like to... all thanks to her accursed powers.

Costume:

Natasha prefers to wear functional gear when on the job - either with her 'amateur' vigilante buddies or the Direct Action Americans. This often consists of a black skinsuit with the appropriate utility belts and holsters for her miniature adventuring arsenal. She will often have her hair pulled back in a severe ponytail, or tucked up into a bun and under a black hood.

Image:

Natasha is your classic Russian Ice Queen. She got most of her looks from her mother, but is built quite a bit sturdier. She excels in athletics, and is an avid gymnast despite her well-developed bust. This has tightened her physique, giving her the sculpted musculature and grace of a cat - which comes in handy as much as she gets herself in trouble with her various vigilante buddies.

Personality (in the words of Bil):

Natasha is a bitch. She's a good looking woman who likes the attention of a man, but can't let anyone get too close to her because they'll most likely have a piano fall on them within a week of meeting her. This has given her a really cynical view on life, and she's started to vent through her job as a position with a Black Ops group.

She's found the rush of the hunt and danger of her missions to be almost addictive and appears to only be in a decent mood when in the middle of a gun-fight.

Real Name: Natasha Huston
Occupation: operative of the Direct Action Americans
Legal Status: American citizen with a probable criminal record
Marital Status: single
Alias(es), if any: none
Group Affiliation: Natasha is a Direct Action American, and a member of an unnamed vigilante squad

Height: 5' 9"
Hair: blonde
Eyes: icy blue
Weight: 150 lbs - she's rather muscular and (according to Bil) stacked
Other Distinguishing Characteristics: when her powers are active, Natasha is surrounded by an obscuring gray aura of light.

Story:

While visiting her father's laboratory, Natasha inadvertently tripped over a random cable laying about, and disrupted one of his many experiments. This wouldn't usually be such a big thing, mind you, but while in a laboratory where a man is performing experiments involving the piercing of the dimensions themselves, well, bad things can happen. And they did.

The portal her father had opened up with his equipment failed... spectacularly. In it's explosion, energy from the space-time rift was thrown about the room and, since Natasha was essentially a bad luck magnet, most of it struck her. This forever altered her, magnifying her normal bad luck into a superhuman presence about her at all times, a presence that would forever disrupt her life.

Despite the fact that she was forever jinxed, Natasha continued on with her life, faltering through high school, though she eventually met a young man in her Champaign-Urbana, IL, self-defense class that seemed to understand her, and make her happy. He was Joseph Freighten, and he'd started his very own private detective agency: Closed-Case Investigations.

The two worked together for a while, and almost got married, but Natasha broke off the engagement after her inherent bad luck almost killed Joseph during a string of near-fatal accidents. It was during one of these terrible events that Natasha first manifested her ability to control her probability field, in that her field protected her from a spray of bullets that were meant for Joseph.

She started to work alone, trying to find her niche, and drew the attention of a very shadowy organization, known as the Direct Action Americans to its operatives. She has been working for them as a Black Op ever since, using her skills as a markswoman and her inherent bad luck to foul up the plans of her targets. And she's rather good at it, too...

Of course, after a job to infiltrate Ariel-Shijitzu Systems went bad, Natasha had to hide out for a time, and while doing so, she literally tripped over a small but growing group of ascendant human vigilantes. After dealing with various members of a government anti-terrorist strike team and the psychotic Plantmaster, she joined these vigilantes in order to do more good; they seemed luckier than most, after all.

Natasha generally keeps her distance from these folks, at least on an emotional level, for fear of getting them horribly killed somehow. But she functions well with them even if they completely lack tactical ability or even common sense, since the unnamed group seems to do rather well in trashing threats to freedom. Heck, Natasha has even helped to save the world once or twice!

Extra Goodies:

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