Zipdash

Zipdash
Zipdash in her power armor, "the Rig"
Author	/u/unknownmercury
Civilian name	Memphis Booker
Alignment	Hero
Affiliation	Protectorate (Devilfish)
PRT Classification	Tinker Mover Shaker
Born	(2002-09-30) September 30, 2002 Devilfish, Minnesota, USA
Status	Active

A new member of the Protectorate, she claims to be a Devilfish native who recently got powers.

Character Sheet

Appearance

Out of costume, Memphis is short and stocky, with short-cut sandy blonde hair and bangs that hang in their bottle glass green eyes. Their skin is tan, with lighter freckles smattered across their cheeks and the bridge of their nose. They tend towards comfortable, practical clothing over stylish, with baggy T-shirts and sturdy jeans and boots being their usual choice.

In costume, Zipdash wears a full bodysuit with glowing lines of LEDs along the arms and legs. A helmet with a darkened visor covers her face. Most notably, however, is her Rig. The Rig is a seven-foot tall suit of power armor made of light metal over steel cables with LEDs dotting the surface. A set of wheels are tucked up at the heels of each foot, able to be lowered to allow Zipdash to skate using previously built momentum. (Think the most awesome pair of heelies imaginable.)

Equipment and Resources

• Acess to Protectorate lodging at PHQ
• Standard access to Protectorate workshop
• Standard access to Protectorate Tinker blueprints
• Small personal toolkit

Cores

Skills and Specializations

• Tool usage
• Skilled driver
• Deep understanding of aerodynamics
• Intuitive grasp of physics
• Knows how to repair a variety of engines

Mentality

Memphis is a bit idealistic at the best of times. They believe that if you have the ability to help someone, then it’s a moral obligation to do so. They want the world to be the best it can be and will strive to change things where they can.

Despite this, they tend to buck against authority if it’s too heavy handed. A light, gentle encouragement is the best way to keep them happy, and they don’t deal with punishments very well.

In costume they’re confident and like to trade banter and take charge of situations, but outside of costume they tend to be meek and quiet, going along with the flow.

Power

Trigger type: Natural Single Trigger, Tinker with Mover and Shaker subcategories.

Zipdash has an innate grasp of how aerodynamics will affect an object and can build things which have an incredibly low drag force. Their main project is the “Rig,” a power suit that lets them move incredibly fast while producing shaker effects. Once upgraded, the suit will also be able to project these effects from its hands as an offensive measure. Not quite there yet, though.

Power Example

Example

Memphis took a deep breath and shifted in the suit, squaring the shoulders back and standing straighter. Three villains. They could handle this. The Rig was made for this.

The Rig wasn’t finished. Fuck, what were they thinking coming out here? The palm projectors were nowhere near done, and that was the only real offensive part of the build. If they were going to take on the villains in front of them, it’d have to be with just the rearward projector.

Fine. They could do that. The trio they were watching was a group of low-level mischief makers. Not even B-listers, mostly wanted for petty crimes like vandalism and robbing the occasional convenience store.

If they were C-listers, though, then Memphis – Zipdash, she reminded herself. She was in costume. – Zipdash wasn’t even sure she ranked. She hadn’t done anything yet, hadn’t stopped any villains, hadn’t made any change. Well, she guessed she had to start somewhere.

She reached up and rotated the core plate on her chest. Design note: set core plate up to rotate automatically. Maybe move the mechanism somewhere more secure than the chest.

She took a deep breath. The LEDs that lined the suit gave off a soft orange glow. She took off, and a glowing translucent wall appeared behind her as she ran. The glow and the sound of her footsteps would alert the villains that she was coming, but they wouldn’t be able to stop her.

The first villain turned her way as she approached. She didn’t know his name, but he was the only guy in the group, so he would be the Blaster. She turned, and the rig made it a hard right angle, forming a wall perpendicular to the guy. She cut off the projector and whipped around to take cover as blasts of compressed air slammed into the wall. She shifted the core plate, the orange lights changing to red.

She jumped, landing on the other side of the field and running towards him. Flames trailed in her wake. She zigzagged, dodging blasts of air. Each burst made the flames flicker and flare with life. He launched compressed bursts of oxygen, which just helped the flames breathe.

As she closed in, she turned the projector off and spun, her foot coming around to kick him in the side. Too hard, she noted. He went flying to slam into the side of a building and then collapsed to the ground. Right, spinning kicks were a bad idea when you could spin over forty miles and hour.

Well, the groaning noises told her he was still alive. She shifted her stance, turning to face the two women who’d been with him. She wasn’t sure which was which. She knew that one was a Mover, like her. The other was a Brute-Striker. Different powers, different counters.

She adjusted the plate, turning the red glow to green. The fire in the area would limit the Mover’s ability to maneuver. She would make it worse before it got better. Zipdash charged the duo, a trail of oil spraying out behind her. Any that hit the flames combusted, spreading more fire over the road and sidewalk. She would need to throw in some way of suppressing fires in future builds.

She darted between the two women, letting the oil spread out behind her as she did. One of them crouched and launched forward, her form turning into a rough ball shape. The Mover. Good. The ball hit the oil slick and spun in place. Zipdash whirled around and kicked at it – not as fast as she’d kicked the Blaster. The ball still sailed through the air, bouncing down the street as it landed. That just left the Striker.

A hand slammed into the arm of the Rig. Zipdash found herself on the receiving end of a short-term flight this time. She crashed through a store’s display window, toppling mannequins and clothes racks as she skidded across the ground. She rolled to her feet quickly, wincing. Brute-Striker, the woman had super strength for lifting and punching things. Anything she touched briefly became lightweight and virtually frictionless, allowing her to send it flying much farther than normal.

Zipdash rotated the plate again, her LEDs lighting up orange once more. She rushed at the Striker, an amber force field springing up behind her. The Striker rushed to meet her, cocking a fist back for another punch.

Zipdash jumped, backflipping away from the punch. The projector left its barrier, a thin expanse of hard light that the Striker crashed into. As Zipdash landed, the barrier cracked, then gave way. She made a mental note that the generator needed work. She rushed again and began circling around the woman, trying to pen her in with walls layered over one another. The villain punched one, cracks radiating out from the point of impact. But the wall held.

She was reaching up to adjust the plate again, when something slammed into her from the side. She stumbled, and another blow came from her back. She spun, and the ball-Mover hit her in the chest. She sprawled onto the ground for the second time in as many minutes.

The ball bounced over the wall, landing next to the Striker. The two women spoke quietly to each other, and then the ball formed again. The Striker picked it up and launched it.

The ball cannoned through the barriers as Zipdash was getting to her feet. It slammed into her, and she could feel the Striker effect transfer to her. She skidded back into a wall. Something to make a note of.

If she survived. The ball had bounced back into the Striker’s hand. The woman smirked. “You made a mistake, freak. We’ve been doing this for a while, now. We have ways to deal with all sorts.” She threw the ball again, and it slammed Zipdash into the wall again.

The Striker caught it and laughed. “Easy!”

Zipdash had to do something. She knew that as soon as she pushed herself up, the ball would strike again. She reached up to adjust her cores, her costume lighting up red. From where she was, she kicked out. The ball soared towards her once again and she tried to juke to the side. The ball clipped her shoulder and she spun a bit. Good.

She deployed the wheel on her left ankle and used the momentum of the hit and the brief frictionless feeling to spin in place. Fire belched from the projector in a wide arc around her. The Striker shouted in pain as the fire washed over her briefly. Zipdash stopped spinning and rushed at her, using the wheel to skate forward even faster.

The flame had gone out. Good, that was working at least. She’d designed it so that it obeyed the Manton Limit. The fire would hurt just from the ambient heat it gave off, but it wouldn’t continue to burn once it hit organic material. Not that the villains had to know that.

Zipdash jumped, slamming her heels into the Striker’s chest. As the woman tumbled and Zipdash landed, the ball flew at her. She ducked, letting the Mover fly overhead. The Striker was trying to get back to her feet. Zipdash shook her head.

She could maybe win if she kept going, but… Well, she could lose, too. That would be bad for a number of reasons. At the very least, she’d disrupted the villains’ night. These three had a history of taking care of each other, getting away rather than continuing to cause trouble if one had been injured. The women had probably only fought her because she’d attacked first and had put herself between them and the Blaster.

She cleared her throat. “We good?” she asked. “I’ll let you take him to a hospital, and you’ll–”

She ducked again as the ball sailed towards her. The Striker was snarling at her now. “You think we’ll just let you go because you got in one good hit?!” the woman shouted. The ball bounced back into her hand and she hurled it again. Zipdash jumped to the side, frowning.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” she said. And I don’t want you to hurt me.

The Striker didn’t care. She lunged forward, punching Zipdash in the chest. She felt something crack as she was sent flying once more. She flipped in the air and managed to land on her feet. She skidded again, though, finding herself pushed back way further than she should have.

That was fine. The Striker had given her plenty of distance to make an escape.

Mentally berating herself for picking a fight she wasn’t sure she could finish, Zipdash turned and ran. She tried to shift her cores so she could project a force field, but the plate sparked and all she got from her projector was a brief spray of flame.

Fuck, that would need to be fixed before she tried anything else.

All in all, the test of the Rig was a success. It worked as intended. She would just have to work to make it more offensive for next time.

Backstory

Memphis wanted to join the Air Force, but instead had to stay home and take care of their mother. The woman was sick, dying from a disease with no cure. A disease that left the woman bedridden for much of the time, slowly wasting away.

Memphis despised it. They couldn’t hold it against her mother of course. She hadn’t chosen to get sick, hadn’t asked for her immune system to turn against her. That didn’t entirely excuse the way she acted, though. Memphis’ mother was extremely vocal about even the slightest failing on Memphis’ part. Dinner wasn’t spiced right? They missed a spot while vacuuming? She would shout, insult, and tear Memphis down.

It got to the point where Memphis was reaching out to the cape community, trying to find some Tinker or Thinker who knew medicine, someone who could find a cure for their mother’s disease. Nothing came up. Memphis knew they couldn’t take it much longer. Their mother would keep getting sick, and she would take her frustration out on her own child.

Eventually, they started thinking dark thoughts. If their mother wasn’t around anymore, they could go live their life, join the Air Force, see the world. It wouldn’t even be murder, would it? The woman was dying anyways! If anything, it would be a mercy.

It was while they were laying in bed one night, considering either a cure or a way to kill their mother without making it look obvious, that they triggered. One minute, they were considering putting a pillow over her face. The next, their mind was supplying high-tech solutions. A machine that would allow their mother to move and do her own chores rather than stay in bed, a steroid solution to try and help her immune system…

A way for Memphis to break free. A device that would let them run. They might never get into the Air Force, they knew. Their mother’s condition might be a genetic disorder, something that would keep them from military service. This would allow them to see the world in a different way. At the very least, they would get to help people in a different way.

Over the next few weeks, any free time they had was spent in building the Rig, the contraption that would let them move. Better, it would help keep them from being followed. Fire, oil, force fields, ice, electricity… They could plug three cores into the chassis and switch between them at will. Once the Rig was completed, they went to the PHQ and applied to join the local Protectorate.