Post by jestercarr13 on Dec 21, 2020 16:16:18 GMT
Name: None
Alias: Night-Child
AKAs: Nina Childs, Shadow Child, Darkspawn
Physical Description
Hair: Night-Child's hair is a fluid mass of shadow that seems to always be flowing or shifting
Eyes: Bright white, no pupils or irises
Ethnicity: Night-Child has no ethnicity; she is literally a sentient shadow
Age: Night-Child was formed originally from the shadow of an 8 year-old girl, and her humanoid form seems to have matured in exactly the same way as that girl until she was 14. The girl died at 14, and Night-Child was expected to cease existence. However, instead, she persisted, and appears to have continued to mature at the same rate the girl might have been expected to. Nina Childs would be 38 now, but Night-Child was "created" 30 years ago. Her physical stature has matured as you would have expected Nina's to, but without hair or skin as a clear reference, it's hard to tell if she's actually "aged" in the same way.
Build: Though she is a sentient shadow, Night-Child does in fact have three-dimensional form. She has a tall, slim, womanly, athletic physique. 5'9''.
Uniform: Night-Child wears no uniform when on mission. In fact, she wears nothing at all, as her appearance beyond having a womanly humanoid figure has no other discernible features beyond her hair and eyes.
Personal Style: Night-Child does wear clothing else-wise, however, mostly in order to fit in originally, but she has become accustomed, comfortable and pleased by the routine and ritual of clothing. She wears typical outfits of sporadic styles dependent on situation, weather etc.: dresses, skirts, blouses, jeans, t-shirts etc. etc., she has no one specific preference as such.
Psychological Description
Personality: Night-Child, once, was nothing more than a loyal and caring, if mischievous, vaguely sentient 2 dimensional shadow conjured up by an 8 year old girl to be her friend. The longer it existed, however, the more independent it became. The mischievous streak never left, nor did the care and affection it had for the young girl whose shadow it was, but it began to present its own unique and independent behaviours and interests. By the time the young girl was able to make the shadow 3 dimensional, it was essentially its own creature with feelings, aspirations, desires etc. It was kind, protective, funny, tricksy, quick-witted, but always loyal to the young girl. When the young girl died, it was assumed the shadow would die with her... but it did not. Night-Child continued to grow and develop as an independent life form, and after a lengthy bought of depression, anxiety and a significant crisis of identity, Night-Child came out the other end a strong, intelligent, independent woman. Still kind, still mischievous, tricksy and quick-witted, still loyal, but now also wiser with age and experience.
Relationships: Night-Child's first and best friend was that little 8 year old girl that created her. Nina Childs. She loved her like a sister. But when Nina died at 14, Night-Child was seemingly left alone. Except for a small group of young mutants that Nina had met, and were involved in the unfortunate events that led to her death (but weren't responsible for). They took her in, and became her new family and best friends: Rocky, Jacques & Felix (Living Statue, Tough & Shrieker)
Powers & Abilities: Night-Child is a living shadow given three dimensional form. She is capable of becoming invisible in shadow or near dark, and can take a two dimensional form upon surfaces when necessary. Night-Child can also, effectively, fly, or float with purpose... it's hard to explain the function, but it essentially resembles flight that can reach around 100 miles an hour almost immediately. Night-Child is also capable of manipulating shadow, much like Nina Childs was, but not as adeptly. She cannot as such create animated constructs (like Nina did in creating her), but she can use shadows as a tool or weapon, in both two and three dimensional forms. Night-Child can also use shadows as a form of conduit or "portal" through a pocket dimension, emerging from another shadow. She can do this in whole, but also in part, for example reaching into a shadow with one arm and it appearing out of another shadow while the rest of her remains in its original location. Night-Child is also a self-contained lifeform, of a sort. She has no need for food or water, or sleep, and is unaffected by environmental extremes of hot and cold (though she is not immune to the effects of fire or ice if used offensively against her). Night-Child appears to be tougher, quicker and stronger than ordinary humans; not significantly super-human, but certainly well above average. She can shift, but not lift, a moderately sized auto-mobile, for example. She can be injured like any other physical creature, but seems to recover at a quicker rate than humans.
Weaknesses: Light cannot destroy Night-Child, and normal every day levels of light don't bother her personally. She cannot be "lit" out of existence like other shadows, already an independent creature not having to be "cast" by another physical object. The science of this is not understood. However, her effectiveness can be significantly limited by the use of light to rob her of shadows to use as conduits, tools or weapons. She herself does not cast her own shadow, so she cannot rely on that.
Skills: Night-Child has no significant formal combat training beyond the basic self-defence classes taught to x-mansion students, but she is quite adept at the use of her own abilities. As a young shadow she and Nina practiced and developed her ability to manipulate her own form and other shadows around her extensively for the purposes of pranks, personal entertainment, and the not few rebellious/sub-criminal activities they got up to. She's also quite the drummer.
Equipment: Night-Child uses and carries no significant equipment beyond a personal cell phone and, when needed, an x-team communicator (a ear-mounted piece, in her case, as she wears no uniform for it to be clipped to/embedded within).
Background: The shadow that would come to be known as Night-Child was 'born' of the imagination and mutant ability of an 8 year old girl: Nina Childs. Nina Childs had the mutant power to manifest and manipulate shadow from a very young age, and did so secretly, never revealing her powers to family or friends. She didn't actually have many friends, and her parents (Nicholas and Aliyah) were busy professionals that, though they loved her, so Nina spent a lot of time entertaining herself while housekeepers and nannies looked after her and the home. So keeping her abilities secret wasn't hard.
Nina had been able to create constructs from shadow that she would treat as pets and friends; none of them ever had their own independent sentience, instead acting out subconscious commands from Nina so that she could feel she had someone or something to play with. That was, until, the shadow that would become Night-Child.
It was the first time, at 8 years old, Nina had ever tried using her powers on her own shadow. At first, it was like any of her other constructs, just her own shadow that was able to come away from her and play with her like another child. To an extent. At that age, Nina had not been able to create three dimensional constructs, they were always two dimensional, playing on her walls. It didn't take long for Nina's shadow to start acting differently, however. It began to do more than simply act out her subconscious 'commands', and began acting more independently. Sometimes, even while Nina was asleep.
Her shadow had come to life. Over the next few years, they got to know each other very well. The shadow couldn't speak, none of them could really make sound while two dimensional, but they found ways to communicate, and the shadow began to learn and grow. They became best friends, like sisters, and partners in crime. By the time Nina was 13, this had become quite literal. At 12, Nina had figured out how to make her shadows three dimensional. With some effort, and encouragement from her shadow that she had started calling her night-child, it was Night-Child that first became more physical. With that, came form and even a voice, the same as Nina's.
Night-Child and Nina were already mischievous sorts together, but now things became more fun as they were able to pull bigger and better pranks. Never anything dangerous or cruel, just some harmless fun. But a year later, at 13, Nina started to rebel as a teenager. Her parents had died in a plane crash, returning home from a business trip to Canada, and though this did not affect her as much as it might have done if they'd had a more conventional relationship to start with, you could describe her as having 'gone off the rails'.
Reluctantly, initially, Night-Child played along, feeling she had to after all. Nina fell in to bad habits like shop-lifting, pick-pocketing, and small scale scams with Night-Child's help. It wasn't long until this kind of activity became necessary; without her parents, there was no money for the house-keepers or the nannies, and with no other family to step in, Nina unfortunately fell through the cracks before child care authorities could catch up.
Her 'criminal' activity was what eventually caught the attention of 3 young mutants from the local Xavier school. Night-Child attempted to pick Rocky Treborn's pocket while he was out in the city with friends, Nina distracting him. But Felix (otherwise known as Shrieker) noticed the young girl all swaddled in a big coat, hat and scarves. On confronting her, they discovered what she was. Night-Child and Nina fled, easily escaping the three young men. For several months, there was a degree of cat and mouse while the young men took it upon themselves to find the young thieves and convince them they could put their energies to better use with the X-Men. During this time, however, Nina's activity had caught the attention of a small outfit of pick-pocketing youths who felt she had encroached on their territory. At this stage, everyone thought Nina and her friend were both independent people; Night-Child some kind of mutant with significant physical manifestations, and Nina either a normie or maybe a less obvious mutant. They all assumed the strange shadowy stuff that went on around Nina was just Night-Child protecting or helping her.
This changed, however, when Nina and Night-Child were separated when trying to run a particularly tricky con to make a big score. The pick-pocketers jumped Nina, knocking her out and holding her hostage. They soon found out the shadow powers were her own, but before she could escape or do too much damage, they started to dose her with over-the-counter sedatives they'd pilfered and usually either sold on or enjoyed. Obviously, they didn't appreciate that you could still overdose on even those weaker products, but if they gave her enough she couldn't use her powers.
They wanted Night-Child to give them the score she'd secured just before they took Nina, along with anything else of value they'd taken that they felt should have been theirs.
Night-Child, in desperation, sought out Rocky, Jacques and Felix for help. She revealed to them the extent of what she was, and what Nina was to her, and her fear that if something should happen to Nina, she too might die...
Together, they succeeded in fighting off the pick-pocketers rather easily. None of them had powers, and though a couple of them were lunatics that still tried to fight back and were problematic, they were of little threat or consequence ultimately. Unfortunately, when they found Nina, she was very much worse for wear. The floor of the room she'd been tied to a chair in was littered with the bottles for both liquid and pill forms of different over-the-counter sedatives, and Nina herself was slumped low in her chair as if she couldn't pull herself up under her own power. And she couldn't.
Night-Child cut her free, and Rocky carried her out of the building, meaning to take her to hospital. But they stopped when Night-Child collapsed, and momentarily appeared to be fading out of existence. They stopped to check on Nina, but she simply wouldn't come too, and though she appeared to be heaving as if to throw up what they'd pumped her full of, she just couldn't seem to do so. She died there in that alley. Night-Child cradling her head in her lap, the three boys looking on in helpless panic. Night-Child did not disappear. She did not cease to exist, but instead was left alone holding Nina's dead body in a dark and dingy alley-way.
The boys called the police, and Professor Xavier arrived just as they started questioning the boys; Rocky was only 17, and Felix and Jacques just 16, so he stepped in as a responsible adult. Nina had been just 14 years old. With the Professor's help, they were able to convince the police that they had in fact been trying to help. When the questions about Night-Child came about, the boys panicked... it was Charles' quick thinking that saved her. He was able to make the police believe that Night-Child was not just a freakish oddity needing investigation and experimentation, but in fact a young mutant that should be under his care. Things became complicated again when her identity was demanded. It was Felix that thought quickly, if possibly inadvisably, that time. He posited she was in fact Nina Childs. The boys now knew that to be half true, in a sense, and after a beat Xavier supported the efficacy of the claim, helping sell the lie that even tough Nina Childs' body might be dead, her mutation had allowed her to survive in a new form.
The police had no way of proving the mutant expert wrong, and so Night-Child was informally assigned to his care until Xavier could be officially ruled her guardian, and she could enrol at his school. Night-Child suffered for a long time through the shock and confusion of what had happened, and why she was still alive (if you could call it that). Depression, anxiety, somewhat of an identity crisis thanks to having to live under Nina's name (at least on paper)... but she had friends in Rocky, Jacques and Felix, the only other students to know the truth about her, who took her under their wing, she recovered and continued to grow as an independent soul.
Alias: Night-Child
AKAs: Nina Childs, Shadow Child, Darkspawn
Physical Description
Hair: Night-Child's hair is a fluid mass of shadow that seems to always be flowing or shifting
Eyes: Bright white, no pupils or irises
Ethnicity: Night-Child has no ethnicity; she is literally a sentient shadow
Age: Night-Child was formed originally from the shadow of an 8 year-old girl, and her humanoid form seems to have matured in exactly the same way as that girl until she was 14. The girl died at 14, and Night-Child was expected to cease existence. However, instead, she persisted, and appears to have continued to mature at the same rate the girl might have been expected to. Nina Childs would be 38 now, but Night-Child was "created" 30 years ago. Her physical stature has matured as you would have expected Nina's to, but without hair or skin as a clear reference, it's hard to tell if she's actually "aged" in the same way.
Build: Though she is a sentient shadow, Night-Child does in fact have three-dimensional form. She has a tall, slim, womanly, athletic physique. 5'9''.
Uniform: Night-Child wears no uniform when on mission. In fact, she wears nothing at all, as her appearance beyond having a womanly humanoid figure has no other discernible features beyond her hair and eyes.
Personal Style: Night-Child does wear clothing else-wise, however, mostly in order to fit in originally, but she has become accustomed, comfortable and pleased by the routine and ritual of clothing. She wears typical outfits of sporadic styles dependent on situation, weather etc.: dresses, skirts, blouses, jeans, t-shirts etc. etc., she has no one specific preference as such.
Psychological Description
Personality: Night-Child, once, was nothing more than a loyal and caring, if mischievous, vaguely sentient 2 dimensional shadow conjured up by an 8 year old girl to be her friend. The longer it existed, however, the more independent it became. The mischievous streak never left, nor did the care and affection it had for the young girl whose shadow it was, but it began to present its own unique and independent behaviours and interests. By the time the young girl was able to make the shadow 3 dimensional, it was essentially its own creature with feelings, aspirations, desires etc. It was kind, protective, funny, tricksy, quick-witted, but always loyal to the young girl. When the young girl died, it was assumed the shadow would die with her... but it did not. Night-Child continued to grow and develop as an independent life form, and after a lengthy bought of depression, anxiety and a significant crisis of identity, Night-Child came out the other end a strong, intelligent, independent woman. Still kind, still mischievous, tricksy and quick-witted, still loyal, but now also wiser with age and experience.
Relationships: Night-Child's first and best friend was that little 8 year old girl that created her. Nina Childs. She loved her like a sister. But when Nina died at 14, Night-Child was seemingly left alone. Except for a small group of young mutants that Nina had met, and were involved in the unfortunate events that led to her death (but weren't responsible for). They took her in, and became her new family and best friends: Rocky, Jacques & Felix (Living Statue, Tough & Shrieker)
Powers & Abilities: Night-Child is a living shadow given three dimensional form. She is capable of becoming invisible in shadow or near dark, and can take a two dimensional form upon surfaces when necessary. Night-Child can also, effectively, fly, or float with purpose... it's hard to explain the function, but it essentially resembles flight that can reach around 100 miles an hour almost immediately. Night-Child is also capable of manipulating shadow, much like Nina Childs was, but not as adeptly. She cannot as such create animated constructs (like Nina did in creating her), but she can use shadows as a tool or weapon, in both two and three dimensional forms. Night-Child can also use shadows as a form of conduit or "portal" through a pocket dimension, emerging from another shadow. She can do this in whole, but also in part, for example reaching into a shadow with one arm and it appearing out of another shadow while the rest of her remains in its original location. Night-Child is also a self-contained lifeform, of a sort. She has no need for food or water, or sleep, and is unaffected by environmental extremes of hot and cold (though she is not immune to the effects of fire or ice if used offensively against her). Night-Child appears to be tougher, quicker and stronger than ordinary humans; not significantly super-human, but certainly well above average. She can shift, but not lift, a moderately sized auto-mobile, for example. She can be injured like any other physical creature, but seems to recover at a quicker rate than humans.
Weaknesses: Light cannot destroy Night-Child, and normal every day levels of light don't bother her personally. She cannot be "lit" out of existence like other shadows, already an independent creature not having to be "cast" by another physical object. The science of this is not understood. However, her effectiveness can be significantly limited by the use of light to rob her of shadows to use as conduits, tools or weapons. She herself does not cast her own shadow, so she cannot rely on that.
Skills: Night-Child has no significant formal combat training beyond the basic self-defence classes taught to x-mansion students, but she is quite adept at the use of her own abilities. As a young shadow she and Nina practiced and developed her ability to manipulate her own form and other shadows around her extensively for the purposes of pranks, personal entertainment, and the not few rebellious/sub-criminal activities they got up to. She's also quite the drummer.
Equipment: Night-Child uses and carries no significant equipment beyond a personal cell phone and, when needed, an x-team communicator (a ear-mounted piece, in her case, as she wears no uniform for it to be clipped to/embedded within).
Background: The shadow that would come to be known as Night-Child was 'born' of the imagination and mutant ability of an 8 year old girl: Nina Childs. Nina Childs had the mutant power to manifest and manipulate shadow from a very young age, and did so secretly, never revealing her powers to family or friends. She didn't actually have many friends, and her parents (Nicholas and Aliyah) were busy professionals that, though they loved her, so Nina spent a lot of time entertaining herself while housekeepers and nannies looked after her and the home. So keeping her abilities secret wasn't hard.
Nina had been able to create constructs from shadow that she would treat as pets and friends; none of them ever had their own independent sentience, instead acting out subconscious commands from Nina so that she could feel she had someone or something to play with. That was, until, the shadow that would become Night-Child.
It was the first time, at 8 years old, Nina had ever tried using her powers on her own shadow. At first, it was like any of her other constructs, just her own shadow that was able to come away from her and play with her like another child. To an extent. At that age, Nina had not been able to create three dimensional constructs, they were always two dimensional, playing on her walls. It didn't take long for Nina's shadow to start acting differently, however. It began to do more than simply act out her subconscious 'commands', and began acting more independently. Sometimes, even while Nina was asleep.
Her shadow had come to life. Over the next few years, they got to know each other very well. The shadow couldn't speak, none of them could really make sound while two dimensional, but they found ways to communicate, and the shadow began to learn and grow. They became best friends, like sisters, and partners in crime. By the time Nina was 13, this had become quite literal. At 12, Nina had figured out how to make her shadows three dimensional. With some effort, and encouragement from her shadow that she had started calling her night-child, it was Night-Child that first became more physical. With that, came form and even a voice, the same as Nina's.
Night-Child and Nina were already mischievous sorts together, but now things became more fun as they were able to pull bigger and better pranks. Never anything dangerous or cruel, just some harmless fun. But a year later, at 13, Nina started to rebel as a teenager. Her parents had died in a plane crash, returning home from a business trip to Canada, and though this did not affect her as much as it might have done if they'd had a more conventional relationship to start with, you could describe her as having 'gone off the rails'.
Reluctantly, initially, Night-Child played along, feeling she had to after all. Nina fell in to bad habits like shop-lifting, pick-pocketing, and small scale scams with Night-Child's help. It wasn't long until this kind of activity became necessary; without her parents, there was no money for the house-keepers or the nannies, and with no other family to step in, Nina unfortunately fell through the cracks before child care authorities could catch up.
Her 'criminal' activity was what eventually caught the attention of 3 young mutants from the local Xavier school. Night-Child attempted to pick Rocky Treborn's pocket while he was out in the city with friends, Nina distracting him. But Felix (otherwise known as Shrieker) noticed the young girl all swaddled in a big coat, hat and scarves. On confronting her, they discovered what she was. Night-Child and Nina fled, easily escaping the three young men. For several months, there was a degree of cat and mouse while the young men took it upon themselves to find the young thieves and convince them they could put their energies to better use with the X-Men. During this time, however, Nina's activity had caught the attention of a small outfit of pick-pocketing youths who felt she had encroached on their territory. At this stage, everyone thought Nina and her friend were both independent people; Night-Child some kind of mutant with significant physical manifestations, and Nina either a normie or maybe a less obvious mutant. They all assumed the strange shadowy stuff that went on around Nina was just Night-Child protecting or helping her.
This changed, however, when Nina and Night-Child were separated when trying to run a particularly tricky con to make a big score. The pick-pocketers jumped Nina, knocking her out and holding her hostage. They soon found out the shadow powers were her own, but before she could escape or do too much damage, they started to dose her with over-the-counter sedatives they'd pilfered and usually either sold on or enjoyed. Obviously, they didn't appreciate that you could still overdose on even those weaker products, but if they gave her enough she couldn't use her powers.
They wanted Night-Child to give them the score she'd secured just before they took Nina, along with anything else of value they'd taken that they felt should have been theirs.
Night-Child, in desperation, sought out Rocky, Jacques and Felix for help. She revealed to them the extent of what she was, and what Nina was to her, and her fear that if something should happen to Nina, she too might die...
Together, they succeeded in fighting off the pick-pocketers rather easily. None of them had powers, and though a couple of them were lunatics that still tried to fight back and were problematic, they were of little threat or consequence ultimately. Unfortunately, when they found Nina, she was very much worse for wear. The floor of the room she'd been tied to a chair in was littered with the bottles for both liquid and pill forms of different over-the-counter sedatives, and Nina herself was slumped low in her chair as if she couldn't pull herself up under her own power. And she couldn't.
Night-Child cut her free, and Rocky carried her out of the building, meaning to take her to hospital. But they stopped when Night-Child collapsed, and momentarily appeared to be fading out of existence. They stopped to check on Nina, but she simply wouldn't come too, and though she appeared to be heaving as if to throw up what they'd pumped her full of, she just couldn't seem to do so. She died there in that alley. Night-Child cradling her head in her lap, the three boys looking on in helpless panic. Night-Child did not disappear. She did not cease to exist, but instead was left alone holding Nina's dead body in a dark and dingy alley-way.
The boys called the police, and Professor Xavier arrived just as they started questioning the boys; Rocky was only 17, and Felix and Jacques just 16, so he stepped in as a responsible adult. Nina had been just 14 years old. With the Professor's help, they were able to convince the police that they had in fact been trying to help. When the questions about Night-Child came about, the boys panicked... it was Charles' quick thinking that saved her. He was able to make the police believe that Night-Child was not just a freakish oddity needing investigation and experimentation, but in fact a young mutant that should be under his care. Things became complicated again when her identity was demanded. It was Felix that thought quickly, if possibly inadvisably, that time. He posited she was in fact Nina Childs. The boys now knew that to be half true, in a sense, and after a beat Xavier supported the efficacy of the claim, helping sell the lie that even tough Nina Childs' body might be dead, her mutation had allowed her to survive in a new form.
The police had no way of proving the mutant expert wrong, and so Night-Child was informally assigned to his care until Xavier could be officially ruled her guardian, and she could enrol at his school. Night-Child suffered for a long time through the shock and confusion of what had happened, and why she was still alive (if you could call it that). Depression, anxiety, somewhat of an identity crisis thanks to having to live under Nina's name (at least on paper)... but she had friends in Rocky, Jacques and Felix, the only other students to know the truth about her, who took her under their wing, she recovered and continued to grow as an independent soul.
Attachments:
