Black Diamond

Black Diamond
Author	/u/Shadeshadow227
Civilian name	Stephanie Davis
Alignment	Hero
Affiliation	Wards (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Tinker (Shaker), Changer (Blaster),
Born	(2007-01-03) January 3, 2007 Duluth, Minnesota
Status	Active

Black Diamond's a fairly new Ward, not much is known about her, though there are unconfirmed rumors that she's connected to a violent assault on one of the villains of the city.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Civ: Stephanie is a short, 5'0 teenage girl, with black hair, blue eyes, and lightly-tanned skin. Her powers have altered her appearance, giving her vent-slits on various areas of her body, but she can close them with some effort when necessary, leaving near-invisible lines behind, not usually noticeable unless someone's either actively looking for them or using anything that'd let them notice very small details about her appearance.

Cape: In costume, Black Diamond's aesthetic is clearly meant to be snowboarder-esque, an armored winter coat and a helmet making up most of it, goggles over her eyes and various detachable segments letting her plug in tech as necessary, "extreme terrain" symbols marked in key areas such as her torso and either side of her helmet.

Equipment and Resources

Wealth Level: 4

• Decent cell phone
• A few sets of handcuffs
• Can of pepper spray

Tinkertech

Rustblades

• Appearance: Two foot-long connection-plugs of metal pipes and intricate circuitry (almost like giant nails) that are pushed through the vents on both of her hands and into her arms, with a tracery of rusty wires sprouting from the ends that poke out of her palms, wrapping around her arms and hands. When in use, unwinds into a set of claws visibly vibrating as machinery rumbles underneath Black Diamond's skin.
• Abilities: Can corrode most kinds of stone, metal, etc. on contact, not doing enough to destroy them outright, but creating patches of rust and corroded material on surfaces. Objects affected by this piece of tech become brittle, prone to breaking, cracking, or shattering when struck, sending up flakes of rust which can get into eyes, mouths, open wounds, stinging like hell and making it painful to move as they dig deeper. The Rustblades also function as melee weapons, the thin wires making for fairly sharp cutting tools as well as being able to knot and coil to form clubs. Disables use of her Shaker power through her arms.

Contrail Boots Mk.I

• Appearance: A set of chunky-looking tinkertech boots made of polished black metal. In hoverboard mode, unfolds and connects into a small snowboard-esque hoverboard, with her boots (and therefore, her feet) firmly attached to it.

• Abilities: Has two modes, boots and hoverboard, both used for mobility but with different methods and purposes. The boots allow her to glide across surfaces on a thin layer of vapor, skating at high speed (capable of moving at roughly 20mph), with the ability to freeze the vapor the boots release into a patch of extremely slick ice that extends out to 30’ of herself, which she can navigate over without issue.

The hoverboard configuration is slower (roughly 2/3 the speed of the skating the boots enable), but allows for fully-maneuverable flight, leaving trails of the same vapor in her wake, which can be frozen using her blasts to coat everything within the trail in a layer of the frozen substance.

In both modes, the vapor acts as a paralytic, more dense with the boots but more spread out with the hoverboard, meant to disorient and disable opponents. Villains slip on the ice, go down, get a mouthful of the gas and are overcome with coughing and respiratory issues as it starts to work on the mouth, throat, and lungs, or alternatively they stumble into a cloud of the stuff, start being less able to move, and less able to resist when the cloud gets frozen into a trapping layer of the frozen paralytic, soaking through clothes and skin to get to the bloodstream.

• Notes: Made from her Filtration Mask and Jetboots, with assistance from Ammonite.

Ignition Gun

• Appearance: A shoulder-mounted flamethrower that hooks into her back, a large canister of greenish fluid on the back of the weapon being fed by tubing that leads into her vents.

• Abilities: Sprays a temperature-sensitive accelerant with a range of roughly fifty feet, which can either be ignited with the pilot light built into the weapon, or set off with one of her blasts. When ignited, it creates a gout of flame capable of causing severe burns if used on unprotected flesh, as the volatile mix of reactants catches fire. When frozen, it reacts to turn the spray into a chilled, half-frozen slush of ice and foul gunk that tends to soak into whatever’s hit with it, with its horrible stench and awful texture often causing nausea and other related reactions in those nearby.

Bio-patch Gauntlet

• Appearance: A thin, left-handed gauntlet with sharpened points at the fingertips and a hole in the palm. Has a small hole in the pointer finger which acts as a syringe for introducing new DNA samples into the gauntlet for further fabrication.

• Abilities: Creates and shapes small globs of biomass, effectively benign tumors, to patch up wounds and maintain the functioning of certain bodyparts, loosely programmed with an intended function and requiring a previously-collected DNA sample to synthesize patches for individuals other than Black Diamond herself, which are stable for roughly a day before they start to die and rot, making this a short-term method of healing at best.

Skills and Specializations

• Beautiful singing voice, as much as she hates to admit it.

• Skilled at identifying escape routes and other things she can use to disengage from a situation.

Mentality

Generally nervous and somewhat afraid of physical confrontation, but her own tech and the power it gives her has left her a little overconfident, so she's able to be a lot brighter and happy in costume, and she would happily talk shop with another Tinker for hours on end. Prone to panic attacks, especially when in situations that mirror her trigger event and the events surrounding it. Despite her hesitance and fear, she has an intense temper when genuinely angered, flipping from calm to shouting whenever something sets her off.

Power

Black Diamond's powerset is twofold. Firstly, she possesses vents in certain parts of her body (on her cheeks, down her back, on the palms of her hands, on her calves, and down her front starting from over her stomach), that can produce powerful gusts of freezing wind and stinging snow with a range of roughly 30 feet at maximum power, strong enough to toss people back, slow things down, extinguish flames, etc. Generally tends to hurt a fair bit more than it really should, despite not causing much actual damage by itself, and her vents usually passively remain active on a lower intensity unless she deliberately closes them, surrounding her with cold air, the intensity ramping up if she gets stressed. Comes with a general resistance to the cold.

Secondly, Black Diamond is a Magi Tinker with a specialty in pollution, creating pieces of personal tech that plug into and draw power from the vents in her body, weakening or outright eliminating her ability to use her Shaker power if she uses enough at once as it’s all siphoned away to power it, general dieselpunk vibe with the mess and smog turned way up. Jet-boots that produce thick clouds of exhaust, guns mounted on her back that fire metal slugs dripping with toxic oil, a hose that spews streams of disgusting sludge, etc., generally revolving around using or generating deleterious effects she can then manipulate.

Trigger type: Natural single trigger, can second-trigger. Tinker (Shaker), Changer (Blaster).

Backstory

Piano lessons at six years old. Two to four, every day. Cookies and smiles, as she showed her mother what she learned. Frowning at every wrong note.

Third-grade, star of the choir, solos and showers of praise from teachers, from family, from her mom. She had a stutter in the beginning, forced to practice until she could pronounce her words effectively, better than her peers. “No dinner until you can ask for it clearly, Stephanie.”

Nine years old, her first recital. Eyes glued to the keys, her mother’s gaze burning right through her, searching for mistakes. She had to be perfect, and so she was.

Ten years old, staying out with friends, losing track of time and coming home to screaming, half an hour late. Her mother called the cops, called her father, called everyone in a panic, shouting at Stephanie as she was dragged into the house. A mumbled excuse gets her slapped, and she falls to the floor. Sent to bed, without getting to eat. Her cheek stings, as she seethes under the covers. She sneaks out again a week later.

Middle school. Classes, private lessons, home, practice, bed. Day after day. No time for friends, she made them anyway. Minutes between classes, venting and joking, wishing school could last forever so that she wouldn’t have to go home. No time for hobbies, she had a recital coming up, advanced classes to study for, starring role in her school’s musical she needs to practice for, day after day. She has her first panic attack at eleven, sitting on her bed with her knees tucked into her chest. Too many to count after that, over the years.

Her most recent one, the first on-stage, happens at fourteen, falling to pieces with a microphone in her hand during a local talent competition, months of practicing down the drain as she mis-speaks during the song she decided to sing. She’s frozen as her performance comes to a screeching halt halfway through, brain thrown into chaos as she tries to correct herself. A single mistake cascades into a breakdown, cameras cutting away as she’s led offstage, terrified of how her mother will react.

The ride home is eerily silent, she barely breathes. Once they’re home, her mother explodes. How could she fuck up like that? After all that she’s done for her, after every lesson she paid for and everything she’s sacrificed to prepare her child for success, that’s what she got back?

She angrily responds, screaming that she wants to live her life, and gets locked in her room for the night for the trouble.

The next morning, she comes down to see her mom on the couch, textbooks on the coffee table and a phone in her hand.

She’s no longer enrolled at her school. Too many bad influences, and home-schooling is more effective anyways. She already has tutors ready who will teach her, so she can keep a closer eye on her daughter. So something like yesterday doesn’t happen again. She protests. Fights against the idea. What about her friends? What about her life outside of what her mother wants?

An argument sparks up, insults tossed about. She hates music, hates her life, wishes she could have gone to live with her father.

Accusations of faking the breakdown for attention, to spite her mother, and any number of other reasons, are tossed her way in response, back and forth.

She doesn’t remember what finally pushed things too far, just the aftermath. Her nose breaks under her mother’s fist, sending her stumbling back from the hit and crashing into the china cabinet, shards of glass stinging her skin as something shatters against her head. The world turns to a mess of noise and color, as the concussion hits her.

Her mother stands over her, red-faced, words muddied and muffled as she shouts at her to stand up, words sloshing together into a roar of indistinguishable noise boring its way into her brain, somehow every insult, every stupid thing she’s ever been forced to do, every single time she broke under the pressure. Always the same, shouting and violence. She can’t take it. It’s too much. It’s always been too much. Always a failure. Always more mistakes, always less freedom. Stop. Stop. Please. Stop. STO-

Something inside of her finally snaps as she triggers, and a burst of air throws her mom fifteen feet back. Her skin itches and her head swims as she staggers to her feet, making a beeline for the front door. So many ideas, so much she can do. But right now, she needs to get away.

She collapses on her dad’s doorstep in the city of Devilfish three hours later, a half-finished, half-melted set of prototype jet-boots smoking and sparking on her feet.