Hekat Bakshi

"Out of my way. I won’t say it again."
Hekat stands tall at 5’8”, lean and wiry rather than overtly muscular, but make no mistake, there’s considerable strength in those limbs. Her copper skin is an even deeper brown from long hours in the sun, and her yellow-green eyes are often fixed either in a glare or on some distant horizon. Her masses of dark hair are nigh-untameable, and always seem to be crackling with static electricity; usually, she’ll beat them back into a braid and hope it holds. Wherever she goes, she walks with purpose and intent, head held high and shoulders back, and she holds herself in a perfectly balanced fighter’s posture when still. She carries a strange scent, a mixture of ozone and spice. Hekat is striking, yes; approachable, no.

Age:
21

Gender:
Female

Rich or Poor?:
Poor. The rich in Sector 5 made their fortunes either from the Battle, or managing the services of those less well off; Hekat is in the latter category.

Sector:
5

For the Battle or Opposed?
Hekat never wanted to enter the Arena; the Choosing Ceremony interrupts plans she’d been working on for years, and might have been able to put into motion within a few more. Now that she’s here, though, she’s outside of her Sector for the first time in her life—and she wants to take advantage of any opportunity that offers, including the riches she’d gain from winning the Battle. She’ll fight as hard or harder than anyone else to stay alive.

Power Description:
Hekat is a weather leviathan, which means she has the same basics the other leviathans from her sectors do: sensing weather changes, slightly ‘nudging’ weather the way she wants it, temperature sensing. However, she specializes in:
Electricity Manipulation: Sparks fly around Hekat—literally. She has the ability to generate, direct, control, and absorb lightning and electricity. This includes manipulating electronics and machinery, although her fine control is not as fast as she’d like—she’s more likely to throw a lightning bolt and fry the whole machine than manipulate a turret into swiveling towards its owner, although she could do the latter, with a little more time and focus. She’s also been struck by lightning—more than once—and come out just fine. Usually, she generates her own charges, but if there’s a natural source of lightning nearby, she becomes exponentially more powerful.
Weather Generation: This is the cataclysmic side of being a weather leviathan. It’s not as obvious nor as fast as her electrical manipulation, but calling weather is one of the few situations in which Hekat can be patient. She can let loose tornados (although truly leashing them is beyond her), cloud over a sunny day or chase the rain away, or call down a monsoon. There are a thousand different applications, and all of them take time, but Hekat is nothing if not inventive—if there’s a will, there’s a way, and she most certainly has will. There’s less finesse involved with bringing down the sky, but she tries to control it as best she can. She’s reluctant to do too much with rain, though, due to...

Power Weakness
Water: Water and electricity always makes for a deadly combination; Hekat knows this better than most, as she occasionally fried entire ponds of fish back home. However, because the potency of lightning is so amplified by water, it can easily get dangerously out of her control. When wet, manipulating electricity becomes impossible, and just directing the shocks away from her major organs would require all of Hekat’s considerable skill, and she certainly would not escape unscathed. She prefers not to test her theories, and simply avoids water altogether.
Emotionally Affected: Control of the weather is an inherently emotional pursuit. While Hekat has plenty of power behind her abilities, she’s also worked for more than twenty years to perfect them, and herself. It takes a lot to break her control, but once it’s broken, things get out of hand very quickly.

Weapon of Choice:
Spears and Polearms: Long sticks were easily obtainable on Sector Five plantations, so Hekat began using them as weapons at an early age just to entertain herself. From there, it grew into true skill—she can use all kinds of staves and spears, and has mastered the balance of bladed ones.
(To a lesser extent, Hekat can also use katar, traditional Indian punching daggers. Her family owned a pair, so if she finds something similar, she’ll know how to use it.)

Fighting Skills:
Hekat didn’t train to enter the Arena, but she did train herself to fight—one never knows when such skills will be needed, especially with her goals in mind. She knew she’d be smaller than many opponents, so she taught herself all sorts of dirty tricks, using her unfortunate brothers as test dummies.

As shown above, she’s also proficient with polearms, and will use them to put distance between herself and larger opponents. In Sector Five, she’s most recently used a discarded pipe as her practice weapon, and has perfected electrifying the weapon without harming herself, posing an extra risk to her enemies.

Personality:
At first glance, Hekat comes across as proud, haughty, and intimidating—and that assessment proves absolutely true. She carries herself regally, sets herself apart from others, and at first glance one can tell she’s dangerous. Mostly, this is her true self. She’s not so much arrogant as reserved, and has few friends, none of them as close to her as her siblings. Hekat keeps a tight lid on her emotions when dealing with strangers, both good and bad—however, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t offend. She does, and easily, but grits her teeth through it and remembers it for later; she’s never forgotten a slight. On the flip side, she values honesty and politeness. Deep down, though, where only her favorite brothers and mother can see, she’s a passionate, driven individual.

Hekat values no one more than her family, and is unwilling to test if that holds true in the face of true friendship, so she simply avoids making friends—she wants to be able to devote her full energy to her kin, rather than being distracted by other bonds. This devotion has shaped her into the loyal, painfully protective woman she is today, and a friend would be wise not to betray that confidence. Everything she does, she does for those she loves—so she has a powerful motivator for winning the Battle. Although she considers herself honorable, she doesn’t truly know the lengths she’d go to to win.

Biography:
Hekat is the second oldest of five and the only daughter of the large Bakshi clan. She lived in a four-generation home on the outer edges of the Sector City, run down and filled to the brim with loud, nosy, wonderful relatives. Hekat and her older brother, Amar, were the only leviathans to have ever been born in their family. Because of their powers, Hekat and Amar started working as soon as they were able, before either of them hit ten years old—taking long monorail rides out to the plantations or into the industrial centers of the city. Amar was skilled at bringing rain or sun to the crops, while Hekat was more proficient working at power plants wherever she could, carefully moderating her bolts of lightning into the great tesla coils that dotted the sector. Whether working nearby or separated by miles and miles, they always tried to help each other with training as best they could.

These exacting, precise tasks built the foundation for her legendary control; it was cemented by the death of her brother. A twelve-year-old Hekat arrived home from the factories one day to find her family dressed all in white—the monorail Amar had taken home every day for six years had been struck by lightning, and the fourteen year old had reflexively absorbed the energy rather than let the entire car be electrified. From then on, Hekat vowed to learn every nuance and capability of her powers. However, it was the city’s denial of their pleas for compensation that truly galvanized her into action, and put a concrete goal in her mind. After losing a third of their income, the family was plunged even deeper into poverty—she had to do something.

Since she was a girl, Hekat had heard stories of Before. Her great-grandmother and grandparents all remembered the country the family came from, far away and untouchable. They described the glittering of the Indian Ocean, the noise and crowds of the bazaars, even the long plane ride to America (just in time for Before to end). Her great-grandmother had traveled the world from Paris to Timbuktu, and she gave every memory she had to Hekat—and the young leviathan was enthralled. As she grew up, wonder turned to serious thought turned to determination. If she could just get her family past the walls and barbed wire of Sector Five, there must be something better out there.

That ideal has been Hekat’s driving motivation for the training, experimentation, and toil of the last nine years, carrying her through even when circumstances were dire. She passably finished high school, and is in her third year of the community college, by the time the Choosing Ceremony rolls around—most of her time has been taken up with supporting her family or training her powers. Being Chosen was completely unexpected, and has, understandably, completely derailed her long-term plans.

Likes:
The great outdoors; storms (obviously); has a top secret love of romance novels; high places.

Dislikes:
Apathy and laziness; being belittled; cold weather; failure.

Fears:
Drowning. This fear combines two things she’s terrified of: dying slowly and being helpless.
Refuses to admit the possibility that nothing she does matters, and the world will never change.
Now that it comes down to it, she doesn’t know what lines she won’t cross, and in extreme situations that could cause her to doubt herself.

Weaknesses:
Water, as mentioned in the ‘Power Weakness’ section.
Betrayal is guaranteed to break through her control in record time. Because of this, she’s also reluctant to ally.
Has a debilitating fear of drowning.
Hekat finished high school and attended community college; she’s never had any high-quality education.

Other:
Excellent stamina.

Theme Song:
"Castle" by Halsey