Post by Phelan on Jul 29, 2008 22:52:36 GMT -5
Name: Nemo
Story Apperances: None
Length: 14 meters
Weight: 53,000 tons
Wingspan: 20-220 meters (variable, see Special Abilities below)
Flightspeed: Mach 6 (atmosphere) and 0.8C (vaccuum)
Physical Description
Picture, if you will, an upward curving, fleshy cocoon shaped mass colored a dark olive green. Lighter, nearly metallic or even flourescent highlights trace around the curves of this mass. There are no eyes. No head. No discernable external members of any kind. Both ends are rounded to blunt ends. The entire mass emits a constant glow, almost a white halo that emerges from it. Extending farther, beyond that, are luminous undulating bands of light and color that ebb and flow into and through and past one another, constantly shifting and bleeding from one end of the visible spectrum and back. It's as if the creature inside the cocoon scooped up the Northern Lights and used them for wings.
Origin Story
The creature called Nemo is a mystery, a void-dwelling Kaiju that could have concievably been birthed with the universe in the inferno chaos of the Big Bang. It -- or she as people think of her -- has drifted for billions and perhaps trillions of years visiting stars and other galaxies, existing in the cold darkness between. Whatever her true origin is, Nemo has remained a mystery since she was first sighted on long range telescopes back in the 1960s. At that time she was some thirty light years from the Solar System and closing rapidly. It was a media sensation that quickly died down; a monster from outer space. That furor died down after a few months when it became clear that Nemo wouldn't reach Earth for nearly forty years and, except for a group that became dedicated to watching Nemo's movements through the cosmos, she was forgotten by the population of the Earth.
Among certain sects of human society there was wild speculation about Nemo's origins, what she was and why she existed. Some hailed her as a god made flesh, others as a monster come from the darkness so she might punish a sinful world. The truth was, no one knew. It was beyond most people's ability to imagine that, even though they'd known about Nemo for forty years by the time she arrived at Earth, humanity had been a part of Nemo's life for only an eyeblink to the monster.
In the end, watching her arrival to Earth another arrival nearly went unremarked: Ruiner, the advanced warmech sent back from the future and into the past, appeared only a few months in advance of Nemo and, in all liklihood, would have gone unnoticed for many months more. However, upon sighting the travelling cocoon, Ruiner attacked with a fury and tenacity that had been entirely missing from its other fights; as though Ruiner harbored some grudge against Nemo, some personal slight. This has lead many to think that there's a connection the two, maybe even that Nemo exists in the future, possibly even having shed her cocoon.
Personality
Curious is, perhaps, the best word that comes to mind when trying to describe Nemo. Child-like is another for she seems to delight in exploration and discovery no matter how large or small the find. She seems eager, inquistive, and somewhat lacking as far as an attention span goes, flitting from star system to star system and place to place as what we can only assume as whims take her. Beyond that, Nemo's actions are beyond mortal and certainly human ken.
Since Nemo's arrival on Earth she's paid special attention to the other monsters on the planet or who are just passing through, engaging each of them in turn as though fascinated by the myriad differences between foes both living and mechanical.
Special Abilities
One thing many remarked on is the complete lack of discernable sensory organs despite Nemo's uncanny ability to navigate through crowded areas and around obstacles. What none of the scientists considered, though, is that for a creature adapted to the coldest reaches of space, sight is useless, sound is non-existant, smell is pointless, and taste....well, what's to taste in a vacuum? The only sense left is touch but, travelling at eighty-percent lightspeed touching something is tantamount to death. How, then, does one navigate without being able to use any of the "traditional" senses? In Nemo's case, she has a highly developed "void sense" which is to say that she navigates by discerning where things are not. Basically, Nemo detects physical objects by the fact that they're matter -- they have mass and take up space. How she does is fairly well unknown but her range extends easily out into the light-minute range; anything less is suicide when travelling through space.
As far as travelling goes she's an interesting case study, Nemo is. While no one's had the opportunity to observe her travelling in space. But, in the atmosphere, Nemo floats above the ground or through the air as it suits here. She's been observed as low as a scant meter above the turf to, obviously, the highest reaches of the exosphere. One oddity that's driven at least one physicist to suicide is that she apparently travels without regard to the normal laws of mechanics -- she doesn't seem to obey the laws that govern acceleration and inertia giving her unparalleled agility and mobility seeing as she can literally go from a dead stop to full speed so quickly as to be instantaneous or switch directions, even to full reverse, without concern. The reality of Nemo's abilities to avoid playing fair with Newton stem from the fact that she's what amounts to an embryonic energy-based lifeform. To her, energy is the world she lives in and, like all developing creatures, Nemo is learning how to manipulate and change that world. At the moment she can freely manipulate her own momentum and kinetic energy which is what gives Nemo her preternatural agility. What she does with this energy is up for speculation -- hence the aforementioned physicist committing suicide -- but it's obvious she's not playing fair with what humans consider to be the laws of physics. A much scarier outgrowth of this developing influence on her world is Nemo's demonstrated ability to affect the momentum and kinetic energy of creatures and objects within about a two hundred meters of her and any creature smaller than herself -- in terms of mass not dimensions -- is fair game. While Nemo's control is impressive she's unable to achieve the sort of results she gets with herself on another monster. Increasing or decreasing inertia or kinetic energy, changing directions of some portion of it, yes. But she can't manifest the total control of kinetic energy and inertia on anything but herself at this time.
Similiarly to Nemo's ability to control her own movements is her ability to "throw" energy at foes. Just as a human child can pick up and throw a rock, Nemo can hurl intensely powerful bolts of photons at her enemies. While they're capable of blasting apart buildings and melting concrete, these blasts aren't much of a threat to even a moderately armored kaiju unless Nemo can get lucky and strike a vulnerable portion of their anatomy such as an eye or something equally vulnerable. What she can do with these beams though is manifest them in a variety of ways from an intensely focused "blast" to a dispersed "flare" burst which will blind, at least temporarily most forms of organic and electronic sensors that rely on using any form of light to discern objects, and prettymuch anything in between.
There are some -- who might be considered naturalists or zoologists, after a fashion -- who point to Nemo's energy projection as a way for her to clear dangerous cosmic debris from her path. Others have taken the stance that these photonic blasts are a defensive mechanism and point to the creature's telekinetic abilities as Nemo's way of keeping her path through space clear of obstructions. Afterall, she's demonstrated to ability to lift and throw eighty and ninety thousand ton objects and move them around, seemingly without effort, even throwing them a fair distance. Well above normal telekinesis, Nemo's abilities have been dubbed "psychokinesis" instead for the raw strength and control she's exhibited.
Perhaps the most disturbing of all the powers Nemo has evidenced is her occasional manipulation of gravity. In the grand scheme of things she hasn't shown the capacity to make large or long lasting changes -- short term affects in her local area are the extent of things -- but the idea that there's something out there, playing with so fundamental a force as gravity..... Anywhere within two hundred meters of Nemo (or about 100 times as far in vaccum), she can create a pocket of gravity that ranges from microgravity -- about one-tenth earth normal -- to super gravity; roughly 20 times higher than Earth standard (the upper factor increases nearly ten-fold outside of atmosphere). These pockets are small spheres, no more than 15-20 meters in radius (or an equivalent linear size) and can only be maintained for a few minutes at a time though there's nothing stopping Nemo from simply warping gravity into a repeat performance, nor is there a limit on how many of those pockets she can have active at a time. The theory that many zoologists subscribe to is that she'll set up pockets of super-gravity, in space, to attract small scale debris away from here or to give herself a speed boost by slingshooting through the "orbit" of the pocket. What's abundantly clear, though, is that this is a dangerous and versatile ability in Nemo's arsenal.
One baffling demonstration of Nemo's unique physiology has been the occasional sighting of her passing through solid matter or even avoiding attacks -- physical attacks -- by turning insubstantial or etheral as some have called it. No one's quite sure how Nemo accomplishes this feat but there are several facts that are quite clear about it. One is that Nemo can't sustain that form for more than a handful of seconds -- twelve seconds is the longest recorded instance -- and, secondly, the effort of attaining this insubstantial state clearly wears Nemo out; she can't enter that state again for several minutes. During those few seconds though Nemo is completely absent from the physical realm, she has an effective density of zero and no mass meaning that she can't be affected by anything physical. She can avoid physical attacks and pass through objects; only purely energy -- purely energy -- and mental abilities can reach Nemo in that state. Unfortunately for Nemo, she can't access any of her abilities while in that state.
Speaking of purely energy things, Nemo's "wings" are composed out of nothing more than photons and magnetic currents, much like the Northern Lights. The extent of Nemo's wings and coloration fluctuates, the more power she's exerting the larger her wings become. While the wings are entirely non-physical and thus don't present an obstacle to melee combat -- except maybe scaring off or baffling less intelligent monsters who can't work out what the wings are -- they do function as a semi-permable screen against energy attacks. Since the wings constantly fluctuate and shift it's a near certainity that attacks will pass through them. As previously mentioned, purely physical attacks will be unaffected; energy attacks, on the other hand, will have power drained away and blocked to a greater or lesser extent. This energy that's drained off will then be recycled into Nemo, healing her of damage and injuries. Attacks will still get through to strike Nemo despite this but at a reduced strength and, oddly, stronger attacks will have a greater porportion of their power drained while the weakest attacks will pass through Nemo's wings almost unaffected. This also means that Nemo can heal just by catching solar radiation with her wings and heal that way. It's slow, especially in atmosphere, but the closer she gets to a source of radiative energy the faster she'll heal.
Unbeknowest to anyone, Nemo has a form of limited telepathy. She reads the electrical or energy currents and signals that run through her opponents and interpeting what those signals are. While it's not perfect -- in fact it's fairly imperfect -- Nemo can read feelings and intentions from these signals, though not specifics. Because Nemo relies on reading energy currents instead of anything biological, machines and mecha still fall within the scope of this ability.
Combat Style
Nemo's fighting style -- if it might be called that -- is more along the lines of experimentation. She tests at first, trying to guage reactions to her abilities, usually trying the whole gamut of her powers before settling on what works best against that specific opponent. Nemo also has a marked tendency to not go for the kill, trying to use her control of the battlefield to simply drive her opponents off and force them into retreat -- or just to give up in frustration when they can't hurt her.
Strengths
Perhaps the greatest strength Nemo has is that she's literally a cocoon without anything inside; there's no organs, no blood vessels, nothing within the outer casing except for the protoform of a creature that's made of something very akin to photons -- in some ways Nemo's "body" behaves in a similar manner to energy, in other ways her form acts much like matter. She has advantages of both. Of course, this renders her fairly well immune to poisons and armor piercing attacks and anything else that relies on attacking organic physiology -- the only way to truly "kill" Nemo is to completely destroy the cocoon and then sever and scatter the photonic nodules contained within. Seeing as those segments are only partially physical that's much, much, much easier said than done. And, of course, it is literally impossible to hide from her as Nemo sees everything so long as it's physical. Interpeting that information is another matter entirely, however. In combat, while Nemo isn't much for direct combat, she excels in dominating and controlling the battlefield through her abilities to manipulate energy, gravity, and light. Due to her unique physiology, Nemo is highly resistant, if not outright immune, to most psychic attacks and telepathic powers.
Weaknesses
As mentioned, Nemo is fairly lackluster at direct combat and is utterly, totally, and completely helpless in melee combat unless she rams herself into something but even that act goes against her natural survival instincts which is to avoid contact with other physical objects. Even in ranged combat her photonic blasts are weak as far as kaiju-scale energy weapons go. There's also the fact her healing abilities are spoardic at best and work best when targeted by a high power energy attack -- which in and of itself is a mixed blessing at best. And while it's impossible -- or the next best thing -- to hide from Nemo, her Void Sense doesn't let her see detail. She can tell where something is and how it's moving but that's about it. She can't identify weapons or interpet body language at all. There's also the fact Nemo can't really communicate in what anyone would consider a "normal" fashion and, while she can transmit feelings and intents, she can't send details to anyone, making coordination hard if not impossible.
Sample Fight
The fan named "Blingobite" trundled through a slightly rolling hills, along a valley, heading to what he dectected as a herd of animals several kilometers ahead. The hollow, gnawing hunger in his stomach, ever-present since the trilobite's awakening, drove him on, always in search of food. Nearing the far end of the valley Mr. Trilobite paused, slowing and turning to face away from the glare of the setting sun. There, in the east, a glow rose over the crown of the hills, pale and shifting colors, luminous in intensity. Sedately, even delicately, following the line of hills, was the creature called Nemo -- so named because she was nothing. At least nothing anyone had ever seen before.
There was nothing of preamble or posturing to it; Nemo simply let loose with an incandescent energy beam right at the Trilobite's "face". Mr. Trilobite reacted instinctively, with the speed of thought. Twisting the magnetic field emanating from his body into a tangled skew of attractive and repulsive forces he forced the beam to veer off course. Instead of a direct hit to his eyes and mouth, the photonic blast skipped off the curved surface of Mr. Trilobite's side, the glossy black armor deflecting the shot off towards the north. It wasn't a total waste of a shot, chips of black carapace scattered over the ground and the armor still on Mr. Trilobite was noticably scorched by the beam. But, all in all, no real damage had been done.
Noting the outcome, Nemo was already reacting to the retaliatory attack by Mr. Trilobite. Shrieking, a half dozen grooved and barbed spines launched from the trilobite all aimed at the center of the floating, glowing cocoon. Not a single one of them managed to hit. Or, more properly, the spines just couldn't harm Nemo. Reading the signals in the trilobite's brain, reading the hostile intent, Nemo had simply turned herself incorporeal for a few minutes, rendering herself immune to the physical projectiles. But this was a double-edged ability and left Nemo open for Mr. Trilobite's second attack.
As she was incorporeal Nemo had been cut off from the material world and all things in it -- including her foe. As such she was unable to read Mr. Trilobite's intent a second time and, as she phased back into the physical world, Nemo was caught unaware by the second fullisade of spines launched by the trilobite.The staggered attack Mr. Trilobite used made it even harder to counter but Nemo made a good effort. Unable to phase again so soon after coming back Nemo shifted quickly and smoothly to the side, moving as only she could. This let Nemo avoid some of the spines but not the rest but she still wasn't done. Reaching out with....something, Nemo bent the direction of the spines' kinetic energy into a tangle of conflicting vectors. Some of these spines missed Nemo outright, others collided with each other. But a few still hit, slamming deep into the fleshy material of the cocoon walls. The nightmarish concoction of organic acids and venoms pumped nto the fleshy walls of the cocoon. And, while the outer casing did bubble and bits of it sloughed off, melted, but the toxins simply dripped from the wounds, inert. There was nothing in the cocoon that was organic, nothing for the toxins to act upon. So, drops fell to the grasses below raising trails of smoke.
Extending her "wings" outwards Nemo rose up dozens of meters into the air and reached out through whatever it was that let her affect space around her. Twisting, she warped one of the most basic and fundamental forces of the universe to suit her whims. Several meters below, front, and to either side of Nemo the air warped and shuddered as two pockets of super-gravity appeared as visible distortions in the air from where light rays were bent and curved by the inexorable pull of gravity. It was a simple maneuver but one with enormous implications made clear only as Mr. Trilobite launched a new attack, a barrage of electrical beams. These beams -- lightning bolts for all intents and purposes -- flashed upwards faster even than Nemo could move and react. But it didn't matter so much as the beams, having even a small bit of mass in the form of countless electrons, were pulled aside and their paths bent and curved by pockets of super-gravity. Several of the beams, though, still were more or less on target. While they only grazed Nemo all of the beams that came close to hitting her did pass through the field generated by her wings. As the electric beams did the wings drained away bits of their energy, weakening the beams and feeding the energy into Nemo. Puncture wounds and the scorch marks from the lightning bolts faded, and scabbed over, healing in moments.
Screeching in frustration, Mr. Trilobite charged forward as the space behind him was obliterated by the photonic blasts from Nemo. Leaping to the crown of a low hill Mr. Trilobite gave up on scoring direct hits. Highly intelligent, though he didn't look it, the trilobite saw the problem and devised a solution. His next assault was a cluster of tightly packed, crackling, electric orbs. As Mr Trilobite predicted and, indeed, hoped for, the gravitational pockets pulled the orbs apart, scattering them around instead of letting them fly straight at Nemo. And, on cue, just as Mr. Trilobite had planned, every one of the orbs explooded in a sphere of dazzling and deadly electricity that stretched for dozens of meters in every direction.
Those overlapping fields of electric power washed across Nemo. Even though they were weakned by passing through her wings there was simply too much power with all of them combined. The cocoon was scorched and blackened, obviously damaged, and the color of Nemo's wings darkened as she experienced geniune pain. Rearing up dangerously Mr Trilobite launched another barrage of the armor piercing spines. Having seen the gravity-pockets' affect several times he aimed to roughly compensate for their pull. Nemo arced around in the air, smoothly and mockingly, letting only a few of the spines rip shallow furrows along the sides of the cocoon before telekinetically sweeping Mr. Trilobite up and hurling him away like a tiny piece of trash.
Mr. Trilobite flew through the air for over two kilometers, curled into a protective ball of protruding spikes and razor edges before slamming to a stop across an open plain. Armor cracked and broke, littering the furrow the trilobite's body carved in the ground, as caustic ichor spilled out, killing grasses and poisoning soil. And Mr. Trilobite didn't move, didn't uncurl from his protective roll. Back at the battle site, Nemo, satisfied with the encounter, ascended through the coldest reaches of the atmosphere and into space, wings spreading wide to rest and heal.
Ability Meters
Melee Ability: 1
Ranged Ability: 5.5
Toughness: 9
Invulnerability: 9
Healing Ability: 3-10 (Variable, depends on how much energy she can absorb)
Physical Strength: 2
Stamina: 10
Instinct: 5
Logic: 8
Creativity: 6.5
Speed: 0
Reflexes: 10
Acrobatics: 8.5
--Phelan
Story Apperances: None
Length: 14 meters
Weight: 53,000 tons
Wingspan: 20-220 meters (variable, see Special Abilities below)
Flightspeed: Mach 6 (atmosphere) and 0.8C (vaccuum)
Physical Description
Picture, if you will, an upward curving, fleshy cocoon shaped mass colored a dark olive green. Lighter, nearly metallic or even flourescent highlights trace around the curves of this mass. There are no eyes. No head. No discernable external members of any kind. Both ends are rounded to blunt ends. The entire mass emits a constant glow, almost a white halo that emerges from it. Extending farther, beyond that, are luminous undulating bands of light and color that ebb and flow into and through and past one another, constantly shifting and bleeding from one end of the visible spectrum and back. It's as if the creature inside the cocoon scooped up the Northern Lights and used them for wings.
Origin Story
The creature called Nemo is a mystery, a void-dwelling Kaiju that could have concievably been birthed with the universe in the inferno chaos of the Big Bang. It -- or she as people think of her -- has drifted for billions and perhaps trillions of years visiting stars and other galaxies, existing in the cold darkness between. Whatever her true origin is, Nemo has remained a mystery since she was first sighted on long range telescopes back in the 1960s. At that time she was some thirty light years from the Solar System and closing rapidly. It was a media sensation that quickly died down; a monster from outer space. That furor died down after a few months when it became clear that Nemo wouldn't reach Earth for nearly forty years and, except for a group that became dedicated to watching Nemo's movements through the cosmos, she was forgotten by the population of the Earth.
Among certain sects of human society there was wild speculation about Nemo's origins, what she was and why she existed. Some hailed her as a god made flesh, others as a monster come from the darkness so she might punish a sinful world. The truth was, no one knew. It was beyond most people's ability to imagine that, even though they'd known about Nemo for forty years by the time she arrived at Earth, humanity had been a part of Nemo's life for only an eyeblink to the monster.
In the end, watching her arrival to Earth another arrival nearly went unremarked: Ruiner, the advanced warmech sent back from the future and into the past, appeared only a few months in advance of Nemo and, in all liklihood, would have gone unnoticed for many months more. However, upon sighting the travelling cocoon, Ruiner attacked with a fury and tenacity that had been entirely missing from its other fights; as though Ruiner harbored some grudge against Nemo, some personal slight. This has lead many to think that there's a connection the two, maybe even that Nemo exists in the future, possibly even having shed her cocoon.
Personality
Curious is, perhaps, the best word that comes to mind when trying to describe Nemo. Child-like is another for she seems to delight in exploration and discovery no matter how large or small the find. She seems eager, inquistive, and somewhat lacking as far as an attention span goes, flitting from star system to star system and place to place as what we can only assume as whims take her. Beyond that, Nemo's actions are beyond mortal and certainly human ken.
Since Nemo's arrival on Earth she's paid special attention to the other monsters on the planet or who are just passing through, engaging each of them in turn as though fascinated by the myriad differences between foes both living and mechanical.
Special Abilities
One thing many remarked on is the complete lack of discernable sensory organs despite Nemo's uncanny ability to navigate through crowded areas and around obstacles. What none of the scientists considered, though, is that for a creature adapted to the coldest reaches of space, sight is useless, sound is non-existant, smell is pointless, and taste....well, what's to taste in a vacuum? The only sense left is touch but, travelling at eighty-percent lightspeed touching something is tantamount to death. How, then, does one navigate without being able to use any of the "traditional" senses? In Nemo's case, she has a highly developed "void sense" which is to say that she navigates by discerning where things are not. Basically, Nemo detects physical objects by the fact that they're matter -- they have mass and take up space. How she does is fairly well unknown but her range extends easily out into the light-minute range; anything less is suicide when travelling through space.
As far as travelling goes she's an interesting case study, Nemo is. While no one's had the opportunity to observe her travelling in space. But, in the atmosphere, Nemo floats above the ground or through the air as it suits here. She's been observed as low as a scant meter above the turf to, obviously, the highest reaches of the exosphere. One oddity that's driven at least one physicist to suicide is that she apparently travels without regard to the normal laws of mechanics -- she doesn't seem to obey the laws that govern acceleration and inertia giving her unparalleled agility and mobility seeing as she can literally go from a dead stop to full speed so quickly as to be instantaneous or switch directions, even to full reverse, without concern. The reality of Nemo's abilities to avoid playing fair with Newton stem from the fact that she's what amounts to an embryonic energy-based lifeform. To her, energy is the world she lives in and, like all developing creatures, Nemo is learning how to manipulate and change that world. At the moment she can freely manipulate her own momentum and kinetic energy which is what gives Nemo her preternatural agility. What she does with this energy is up for speculation -- hence the aforementioned physicist committing suicide -- but it's obvious she's not playing fair with what humans consider to be the laws of physics. A much scarier outgrowth of this developing influence on her world is Nemo's demonstrated ability to affect the momentum and kinetic energy of creatures and objects within about a two hundred meters of her and any creature smaller than herself -- in terms of mass not dimensions -- is fair game. While Nemo's control is impressive she's unable to achieve the sort of results she gets with herself on another monster. Increasing or decreasing inertia or kinetic energy, changing directions of some portion of it, yes. But she can't manifest the total control of kinetic energy and inertia on anything but herself at this time.
Similiarly to Nemo's ability to control her own movements is her ability to "throw" energy at foes. Just as a human child can pick up and throw a rock, Nemo can hurl intensely powerful bolts of photons at her enemies. While they're capable of blasting apart buildings and melting concrete, these blasts aren't much of a threat to even a moderately armored kaiju unless Nemo can get lucky and strike a vulnerable portion of their anatomy such as an eye or something equally vulnerable. What she can do with these beams though is manifest them in a variety of ways from an intensely focused "blast" to a dispersed "flare" burst which will blind, at least temporarily most forms of organic and electronic sensors that rely on using any form of light to discern objects, and prettymuch anything in between.
There are some -- who might be considered naturalists or zoologists, after a fashion -- who point to Nemo's energy projection as a way for her to clear dangerous cosmic debris from her path. Others have taken the stance that these photonic blasts are a defensive mechanism and point to the creature's telekinetic abilities as Nemo's way of keeping her path through space clear of obstructions. Afterall, she's demonstrated to ability to lift and throw eighty and ninety thousand ton objects and move them around, seemingly without effort, even throwing them a fair distance. Well above normal telekinesis, Nemo's abilities have been dubbed "psychokinesis" instead for the raw strength and control she's exhibited.
Perhaps the most disturbing of all the powers Nemo has evidenced is her occasional manipulation of gravity. In the grand scheme of things she hasn't shown the capacity to make large or long lasting changes -- short term affects in her local area are the extent of things -- but the idea that there's something out there, playing with so fundamental a force as gravity..... Anywhere within two hundred meters of Nemo (or about 100 times as far in vaccum), she can create a pocket of gravity that ranges from microgravity -- about one-tenth earth normal -- to super gravity; roughly 20 times higher than Earth standard (the upper factor increases nearly ten-fold outside of atmosphere). These pockets are small spheres, no more than 15-20 meters in radius (or an equivalent linear size) and can only be maintained for a few minutes at a time though there's nothing stopping Nemo from simply warping gravity into a repeat performance, nor is there a limit on how many of those pockets she can have active at a time. The theory that many zoologists subscribe to is that she'll set up pockets of super-gravity, in space, to attract small scale debris away from here or to give herself a speed boost by slingshooting through the "orbit" of the pocket. What's abundantly clear, though, is that this is a dangerous and versatile ability in Nemo's arsenal.
One baffling demonstration of Nemo's unique physiology has been the occasional sighting of her passing through solid matter or even avoiding attacks -- physical attacks -- by turning insubstantial or etheral as some have called it. No one's quite sure how Nemo accomplishes this feat but there are several facts that are quite clear about it. One is that Nemo can't sustain that form for more than a handful of seconds -- twelve seconds is the longest recorded instance -- and, secondly, the effort of attaining this insubstantial state clearly wears Nemo out; she can't enter that state again for several minutes. During those few seconds though Nemo is completely absent from the physical realm, she has an effective density of zero and no mass meaning that she can't be affected by anything physical. She can avoid physical attacks and pass through objects; only purely energy -- purely energy -- and mental abilities can reach Nemo in that state. Unfortunately for Nemo, she can't access any of her abilities while in that state.
Speaking of purely energy things, Nemo's "wings" are composed out of nothing more than photons and magnetic currents, much like the Northern Lights. The extent of Nemo's wings and coloration fluctuates, the more power she's exerting the larger her wings become. While the wings are entirely non-physical and thus don't present an obstacle to melee combat -- except maybe scaring off or baffling less intelligent monsters who can't work out what the wings are -- they do function as a semi-permable screen against energy attacks. Since the wings constantly fluctuate and shift it's a near certainity that attacks will pass through them. As previously mentioned, purely physical attacks will be unaffected; energy attacks, on the other hand, will have power drained away and blocked to a greater or lesser extent. This energy that's drained off will then be recycled into Nemo, healing her of damage and injuries. Attacks will still get through to strike Nemo despite this but at a reduced strength and, oddly, stronger attacks will have a greater porportion of their power drained while the weakest attacks will pass through Nemo's wings almost unaffected. This also means that Nemo can heal just by catching solar radiation with her wings and heal that way. It's slow, especially in atmosphere, but the closer she gets to a source of radiative energy the faster she'll heal.
Unbeknowest to anyone, Nemo has a form of limited telepathy. She reads the electrical or energy currents and signals that run through her opponents and interpeting what those signals are. While it's not perfect -- in fact it's fairly imperfect -- Nemo can read feelings and intentions from these signals, though not specifics. Because Nemo relies on reading energy currents instead of anything biological, machines and mecha still fall within the scope of this ability.
Combat Style
Nemo's fighting style -- if it might be called that -- is more along the lines of experimentation. She tests at first, trying to guage reactions to her abilities, usually trying the whole gamut of her powers before settling on what works best against that specific opponent. Nemo also has a marked tendency to not go for the kill, trying to use her control of the battlefield to simply drive her opponents off and force them into retreat -- or just to give up in frustration when they can't hurt her.
Strengths
Perhaps the greatest strength Nemo has is that she's literally a cocoon without anything inside; there's no organs, no blood vessels, nothing within the outer casing except for the protoform of a creature that's made of something very akin to photons -- in some ways Nemo's "body" behaves in a similar manner to energy, in other ways her form acts much like matter. She has advantages of both. Of course, this renders her fairly well immune to poisons and armor piercing attacks and anything else that relies on attacking organic physiology -- the only way to truly "kill" Nemo is to completely destroy the cocoon and then sever and scatter the photonic nodules contained within. Seeing as those segments are only partially physical that's much, much, much easier said than done. And, of course, it is literally impossible to hide from her as Nemo sees everything so long as it's physical. Interpeting that information is another matter entirely, however. In combat, while Nemo isn't much for direct combat, she excels in dominating and controlling the battlefield through her abilities to manipulate energy, gravity, and light. Due to her unique physiology, Nemo is highly resistant, if not outright immune, to most psychic attacks and telepathic powers.
Weaknesses
As mentioned, Nemo is fairly lackluster at direct combat and is utterly, totally, and completely helpless in melee combat unless she rams herself into something but even that act goes against her natural survival instincts which is to avoid contact with other physical objects. Even in ranged combat her photonic blasts are weak as far as kaiju-scale energy weapons go. There's also the fact her healing abilities are spoardic at best and work best when targeted by a high power energy attack -- which in and of itself is a mixed blessing at best. And while it's impossible -- or the next best thing -- to hide from Nemo, her Void Sense doesn't let her see detail. She can tell where something is and how it's moving but that's about it. She can't identify weapons or interpet body language at all. There's also the fact Nemo can't really communicate in what anyone would consider a "normal" fashion and, while she can transmit feelings and intents, she can't send details to anyone, making coordination hard if not impossible.
Sample Fight
The fan named "Blingobite" trundled through a slightly rolling hills, along a valley, heading to what he dectected as a herd of animals several kilometers ahead. The hollow, gnawing hunger in his stomach, ever-present since the trilobite's awakening, drove him on, always in search of food. Nearing the far end of the valley Mr. Trilobite paused, slowing and turning to face away from the glare of the setting sun. There, in the east, a glow rose over the crown of the hills, pale and shifting colors, luminous in intensity. Sedately, even delicately, following the line of hills, was the creature called Nemo -- so named because she was nothing. At least nothing anyone had ever seen before.
There was nothing of preamble or posturing to it; Nemo simply let loose with an incandescent energy beam right at the Trilobite's "face". Mr. Trilobite reacted instinctively, with the speed of thought. Twisting the magnetic field emanating from his body into a tangled skew of attractive and repulsive forces he forced the beam to veer off course. Instead of a direct hit to his eyes and mouth, the photonic blast skipped off the curved surface of Mr. Trilobite's side, the glossy black armor deflecting the shot off towards the north. It wasn't a total waste of a shot, chips of black carapace scattered over the ground and the armor still on Mr. Trilobite was noticably scorched by the beam. But, all in all, no real damage had been done.
Noting the outcome, Nemo was already reacting to the retaliatory attack by Mr. Trilobite. Shrieking, a half dozen grooved and barbed spines launched from the trilobite all aimed at the center of the floating, glowing cocoon. Not a single one of them managed to hit. Or, more properly, the spines just couldn't harm Nemo. Reading the signals in the trilobite's brain, reading the hostile intent, Nemo had simply turned herself incorporeal for a few minutes, rendering herself immune to the physical projectiles. But this was a double-edged ability and left Nemo open for Mr. Trilobite's second attack.
As she was incorporeal Nemo had been cut off from the material world and all things in it -- including her foe. As such she was unable to read Mr. Trilobite's intent a second time and, as she phased back into the physical world, Nemo was caught unaware by the second fullisade of spines launched by the trilobite.The staggered attack Mr. Trilobite used made it even harder to counter but Nemo made a good effort. Unable to phase again so soon after coming back Nemo shifted quickly and smoothly to the side, moving as only she could. This let Nemo avoid some of the spines but not the rest but she still wasn't done. Reaching out with....something, Nemo bent the direction of the spines' kinetic energy into a tangle of conflicting vectors. Some of these spines missed Nemo outright, others collided with each other. But a few still hit, slamming deep into the fleshy material of the cocoon walls. The nightmarish concoction of organic acids and venoms pumped nto the fleshy walls of the cocoon. And, while the outer casing did bubble and bits of it sloughed off, melted, but the toxins simply dripped from the wounds, inert. There was nothing in the cocoon that was organic, nothing for the toxins to act upon. So, drops fell to the grasses below raising trails of smoke.
Extending her "wings" outwards Nemo rose up dozens of meters into the air and reached out through whatever it was that let her affect space around her. Twisting, she warped one of the most basic and fundamental forces of the universe to suit her whims. Several meters below, front, and to either side of Nemo the air warped and shuddered as two pockets of super-gravity appeared as visible distortions in the air from where light rays were bent and curved by the inexorable pull of gravity. It was a simple maneuver but one with enormous implications made clear only as Mr. Trilobite launched a new attack, a barrage of electrical beams. These beams -- lightning bolts for all intents and purposes -- flashed upwards faster even than Nemo could move and react. But it didn't matter so much as the beams, having even a small bit of mass in the form of countless electrons, were pulled aside and their paths bent and curved by pockets of super-gravity. Several of the beams, though, still were more or less on target. While they only grazed Nemo all of the beams that came close to hitting her did pass through the field generated by her wings. As the electric beams did the wings drained away bits of their energy, weakening the beams and feeding the energy into Nemo. Puncture wounds and the scorch marks from the lightning bolts faded, and scabbed over, healing in moments.
Screeching in frustration, Mr. Trilobite charged forward as the space behind him was obliterated by the photonic blasts from Nemo. Leaping to the crown of a low hill Mr. Trilobite gave up on scoring direct hits. Highly intelligent, though he didn't look it, the trilobite saw the problem and devised a solution. His next assault was a cluster of tightly packed, crackling, electric orbs. As Mr Trilobite predicted and, indeed, hoped for, the gravitational pockets pulled the orbs apart, scattering them around instead of letting them fly straight at Nemo. And, on cue, just as Mr. Trilobite had planned, every one of the orbs explooded in a sphere of dazzling and deadly electricity that stretched for dozens of meters in every direction.
Those overlapping fields of electric power washed across Nemo. Even though they were weakned by passing through her wings there was simply too much power with all of them combined. The cocoon was scorched and blackened, obviously damaged, and the color of Nemo's wings darkened as she experienced geniune pain. Rearing up dangerously Mr Trilobite launched another barrage of the armor piercing spines. Having seen the gravity-pockets' affect several times he aimed to roughly compensate for their pull. Nemo arced around in the air, smoothly and mockingly, letting only a few of the spines rip shallow furrows along the sides of the cocoon before telekinetically sweeping Mr. Trilobite up and hurling him away like a tiny piece of trash.
Mr. Trilobite flew through the air for over two kilometers, curled into a protective ball of protruding spikes and razor edges before slamming to a stop across an open plain. Armor cracked and broke, littering the furrow the trilobite's body carved in the ground, as caustic ichor spilled out, killing grasses and poisoning soil. And Mr. Trilobite didn't move, didn't uncurl from his protective roll. Back at the battle site, Nemo, satisfied with the encounter, ascended through the coldest reaches of the atmosphere and into space, wings spreading wide to rest and heal.
Ability Meters
Melee Ability: 1
Ranged Ability: 5.5
Toughness: 9
Invulnerability: 9
Healing Ability: 3-10 (Variable, depends on how much energy she can absorb)
Physical Strength: 2
Stamina: 10
Instinct: 5
Logic: 8
Creativity: 6.5
Speed: 0
Reflexes: 10
Acrobatics: 8.5
“I, the applicant, have studied the FFKT rules and regulations in detail. I understand them and agree to adhere the terms and conditions outlined by the FFKT staff in this form. I acknowledge that breaking the rules are grounds for rejection of my application or disqualification from the tournament, and hold full responsibility for my actions.
--Phelan