Nitoichi
From Handbook of the Union Universe
| |
| Nitoichi in Galaxy City | |
| Nitoichi | |
| Player: User:Ravenswing | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Level: | 50 |
| Primary Set: | Dual Blades |
| Secondary Set: | Willpower |
| Epic Set: | Body Mastery |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Annette Barrington |
| Identity: | More or less public knowledge. |
| Aliases: | Ni (pronounced like 'knee'), Anne, Nitenichi. |
| Species: | Human |
| Date of Birth: | 16/02/1989 |
| Age: | 19 |
| Height: | 5'8", 5'10" in heels. |
| Weight: | 150 lbs. |
| Build: | Athletic |
| Eye Colour: | Dark Brown |
| Hair Colour: | Dark brown |
| Skin Complexion: | White/Lightly tanned |
| Distinguishment: | Confidential |
| Medical Status: | In good health and very fit |
| Financial Status: | Millionairess. |
| Religion: | Raised a Protestant, but lapsed. |
| Sexuality: | Sleeping with another woman, but generally prefers men. Sort of 'slightly-bi.' |
| Marital Status: | Single. |
| Known Relatives: | Brother: Nathaniel. Mother: Patricia Ferrero. Father: Charles (deceased). Step-mother: Jennifer. Step-sister: Alicia Houghton. |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American. |
| Ethnicity: | Irish American, a little Italian on her mother's side. |
| Legal Status: | For police record, see Trivia. |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City, RI. |
| Education: | Left school at 18. |
| Occupation: | Full time team leader in the New Vigilants. Keeper of The Barrington Club. |
| Group Affiliations: | New Vigilants. |
| Base of Operations: | New Vigilants Tower. |
| Residency: | Unity Vigil Tower. She has a room in the other tower, but usually sleeps here. |
| Known Powers | |
| Cutting things and resisting their damage. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Ni is a WYSIWYG sort of girl. | |
| Equipment | |
| In costume: a paired set of Talsorian swords. In civies, two Red Cap daggers. She uses a pair of blunt sai for training. | |
| Awards and Collections | |
| Annette holds two certificates in competence for kenjutsu and iaido. | |
| Licenses and Certificates | |
| Hero, Driving. | |
| IC Accessibility of Article | |
| Nitoichi isn't a well known hero, doing most of her stuff in the RWZ. However, she has become a bit of a hit with the geek set in Galaxy City, so information is out there on the Internet. Generally, you have to meet her and talk to her to know the personal stuff. | |
When I restarted playing CoH recently, I wanted to try out some of the new Scrapper sets, and I wanted to start a new character to see if anything had changed in the early levels. So, Nitoichi was born and, like many of my characters, went on to actually develop a personality.
She is, maybe, more of a classic hero figure than some of my other characters, though in some ways she's also the new Velvet Vengeance. With a brother crippled by the Rikti during the first war, she has the tragic background reason for stepping up to the bat which most of my other characters don't have. Unlike Velvet, she actually does have that relative in the background that could be threatened by some evil nemesis at some point.
Having spent a bit of time with Ni, I began to realise she's a bit of an Image Comics sort of heroine. Extra-long legs, slightly-too-narrow waist, that kind of thing. She's also my first ever CoH character to have a relationship with a MOSS. I also realised that I'd accidentally recreated Niki from Heroes, and there's a fair hint of Elektra in her nature, not to mention the fact that Jennifer Garner was made for the role. Very little of this was conscious effort on my part.
Read Nitoichi's Blog here.
Contents |
[edit] Affiliations
Nitoichi is a member of the New Vigilants, where she has been made a Team Leader with some responsibility for training other students and a field leadership role. Within that group she has become firm friends with Cindersnap and Alraune.
She is also best friends with Richard Huntington/Shadowe and the lover of Linda Lee/Liberty Girl.
[edit] Personality
Nitoichi and Annette are two distinct personalities created from one core personality. Originally, Annette 'hid behind' Nitoichi because she simply did not have the courage to go out in a costume and fight crime, but she did have huge amounts of motivation to do so. Nitoichi was not an actual personality, more a mask for Annette.
However, an incident where Annette blamed 'Nitoichi' for behaving in a way she really could not accept herself doing, resulted in an actual split. The two personalities now coexist quite happily, and are even friends. Nitoichi (usually just Ni) handles the fighting, Annette usually handles the social stuff.
Annette has grown considerably since becoming a hero, with no little help from Alraune and some gentle prodding from Richard Huntington. Originally a real geek-girl, shy, and only coming out of her shell to collect hero autographs, she has gained massively in confidence. Driven by revenge against the Rikti, she became worried that that was all there was to her, and her new position in the New Vigilants has gone a long way to allay that fear. Her relationships with Linda, Dinah, and Richard, and her finding of a family in the Vigilants has brought about a whole new lease of confidence, and hapiness in Annette.
Nitoichi is a 'likeable, psycho-killer, sociopath.' She gets the job done, and doesn't much care what she needs to do to achieve that goal. She is fiercely loyal to Annette, however, and this more than any of society's rules keeps her in check.
[edit] Other Personality Notes
Annette has shown a distinct lack of desire to augment her body by any artificial means. Both Ryan and BODICIA have suggested in some fashion that she have implants mimicing Ryan's which give him retinal access to the Vigil systems. She has rejected the idea fairly enthusiastically. She also tends to make comments regarding her own 'lack of superpowers' as though being 'just human' is somehow a badge of honour to her. Exactly what this attitude stems from is unknown, but it may have something to do with the fact that Rikti augment themselves to become what they are.
[edit] Motivation
Ever since 2004, Annette's life has been driven by one thing: the need to get revenge upon the Rikti for crippling her beloved brother. She could not get into Longbow, so she has resorted to convincing Vanguard to allow her into their project. The only reason she fights crime is to gain the security classification required to get her into the war zone so that she can extract her revenge out of Rikti hide.
Having made it into Vanguard she was left with a bit of an issue. She had done what she set out to do and all that was left is revenge. One of her reasons for joining the New Vigilants was to seek some purpose beyond the revenge she has sought for four years. Her new 'family' there, and her students have become a key motivating factor in her life.
[edit] Powers
[edit] Primary Powers
Nitoichi is an expert in the use of paired Japanese swords, katana and wakizashi. She does not explicitly follow Musashi's Nitenichi school, having constructed her fighting style out of a mish-mash of different kenjutsu forms.
She now tends to use a pair of Talsorian energy swords in combat, and carries Red Cap daggers when out of costume, but the techniques are the same. She has also demonstrated a good ability to use those same techniques with sai, and bare hands.
A lot of her skills were learned from movies. She often references the Vin Diesel 'Riddick' films for effective two-weapon use.
[edit] Secondary Powers
As part of her training, Annette learned meditative techniques to accustom herself to pain. As her training developed, she has pushed this inner reserve of power harder and harder, gaining great willpower, enhanced situational awareness and the control her autonomic systems through conscious will. In meditation, she can lower her heart rate to around one beat per minute, and hold her breath for around thirty minutes. In combat, her heart rate increases massively, pumping adrenalin and endorphins around her system, and amplifying her natural healing processes. She has been known to not notice she is really injured until after a fight.
[edit] Additional Powers
[edit] Travel
Nitoichi can run very fast, and jump pretty high, but she has no amazing travel powers like those used by many heroes. While she can drive, she does not own a car and mostly uses public transport.
[edit] Abilities
Despite being a normal girl, Annette is capable of some pretty amazing feats. She can stay underwater for stupid amounts of time, roll her razor sharp katana over her skin without leaving a mark, cut a falling feather in half, slice a fly in two in mid air, all that wonderful martial arts magery which she will tell you is all just a matter of learning the proper skills, nothing supernatural.
She's also pretty good at double-entry book keeping, can work Sage accounting software like a pro, is an ace web searcher, and has a thorough knowledge of the comic book market in modern day North America.
[edit] Vulnerabilities
Just like any normal human, especially when out of 'combat mode.'
[edit] Equipment
Her swords and knives, obviously, which she cares for scrupulously.
She also uses any and all gadgets she can get her hands on. She takes care of the injuries she takes in battle by use of a mixture of herbs and minerals which, she says, come from somewhere in Tibet. Placed in a hot bath, these rapidly mend tissue, soothe aches, and even mend minor breaks and fractures.
She has recently purchased a battlesuit from Serge at Icon, which provides rather more protection than her old leotard or dress. It is almost as flexible as her normal costume, has in-built kevlar plates, and a hard, articulated breastplate and shoulder guards.
[edit] Character History
In 2004, Annette's world ended when her bother Nathaniel went into battle with the Rikti and lived. A mentalist scrambled Nate's brain so much that he was left a mindless, superstrong husk. After the war, Nate was moved to a special care facility, the Galaxy Girl Long Term Hero Care Unit, paid for by a grateful city, but there was nothing anyone could do to bring him out of his waking coma. Annette still visits him and has based her entire hero persona around what Nate thought made a good heroine. Her only problem was that, while Nate was a mutant, the gene never surfaced in her and she has had to do everything through natural talent and training.
Since Nate thought girls should wear skirts, Nitoichi first hit the streets wearing a mini-dress and calf-length boots. It was an outfit that she would never be seen dead in normally, but it was what Nate thought worked for heroines. At least, as best as Annette could remember. Her first excursion to Galaxy Girl resulted in her meeting Liberty Girl, a far more experienced hero, and they discussed mini dresses and fighting the Rikti. As a result of that conversation (and a lot of missions in the sewers) Nitoichi's costume switched to her current one, leotard and thigh boots, which allowed her to wade through crud easier, and gave her greater freedom of movement.
She has been working her way through the city diligently taking on whatever was asked of her and has risen through those stupid, restrictive security levels quite quickly. She hopes to reach her goal of Vanguard membership soon, but in the mean time, she has had one crack at the Rikti when drop ships invaded Talos Island one evening. Discussing this later with Liberty Girl and Cindersnap, she has decided that a heavier duty costume might be needed for the war zone and is currently working on one.
By October 2008, Annette had gained a Security Assessment Level of 35, allowing her to join Vanguard, but had also had a run in with some Hellions which left one of them dead, and her 'asked' to vacate her beloved flat. Saved from prosecution by circumstances and the RI state law enshrining the Castle Doctrineshe nevertheless has to live with having killed another person. Partially for somewhere to live, and partially because she needs some purpose other than revenge, Nitoichi has joined the New Vigilants. She has also become involved with Liberty Girl. They don't actually live together (though BODICIA has made several comments about the amount of time Annette spends in Libby's quarters), but do spend a lot of time in each other's beds.
Recently, Annette learned of a family 'tradition' which has been ignored for the last century, and has become the Keeper of The Barrington Club. This has, through the magic of compound interest, made her very rich.
January 2009 started out badly, with the manager of the shop she worked in being killed in a robbery, and the new manager deciding that a 'caped goon' was not suitable shop-girl material. She has now become a full-time hero, spending her days training/teaching with the New Vigliants and her evenings in the War Zone, or doing special ops for Crimson.
[edit] Trivia
Annette collects superhero autographs and has quite a collection. Heroes are likely to meet her out of costume at the statue looking to see whether any heroes are about she recognises and has not yet got to sign her book.
Annette Barrington has an arrest record for killing a Hellion who invaded her home. No charges were ever filed since the DA deamed that the trial conclusion would be aquital.
'Nitoichi' means 'Two swords as one.' It is an alternative name for Miyamoto Musashi's famous Nitenichi school, usually translated as 'Twin Heavens' (which happens to be the name I gave her OC SG). Musashi had his students train with two katana or bokken (wooden practice swords) because using the two longer swords in practice would make it easier to use the normal katana/wakizashi pair normally carried by samurai.
Annette does not believe in magic. She believes there is a perfectly rational explanation for anything magical, and doesn't like Croatoa much because she's having a hard time rationalising that one. It's likely she will have to admit there is something to magic, because even arch-scientists like the Rikti do.
Annette's mother lives in Florida, her dad in Cleveland. They are divorced. Her father died recently on a business trip to Manchester, England. Her father married Jennifer Houghton after the divorce, who had a daughter, Alicia, from a previous marriage. Jennifer took her new husband's surname, Alicia did not.
[edit] Favourite Quotes
"I am an indestructible master of waaaarghhh! Hey Geroff!" Annette singing Disturbed and getting tickled by Libby.
"I was watching this programme on the Discovery Channel..." It's amazing what Annette sees on the Discover Channel...
