If asked, Nikki would call herself bored, but in truth she wouldn't fully understand the question and that should give you a picture of what Nikki's all about. Nikki has the emotional intelligence of a five year old, a very sadistic, and vindictive five year old. Curious to a dangerous degree, she's is all too happy to endlessly experiment with her powers, weapon designs, and chemical cocktails. Her lab is a minefield of dangerous explosives, half finished energy based weapons, all in a chaotic maze would be a prime example of her thought process, a mile a minute and all over the place. Conceptual ideologies annoy her, constructs meant to contain and confine in her thinking, really she just doesn't get half that philosophical stuff and would rather focus on the important things in life: money, money, and money.

That is the crux of Nikki's ambition is money, all her intellect, her abilities, and what she cares about most is making a buck and making her "toys". Despite her relative success as an arms and drug dealer, Nikki hasn't ever felt safe, always wanting more money, like it will save the sky from falling. She's utterly terrified to ever end up on the streets again and figures money will keep that from happening, its an irrational fear given her skillset but one that spurs her on all the same. Ruthlessness is a cornerstone of Nikki's business model. Anyone looking to sell on her turf wins themselves a present from Flamenco. She not above using any means necessary to make sure she isn't disrespected.

Bubbly and happy-go-lucky most of the time, she loves listening to sugary sweet pop music when working. She hates Mariachi music, or anything else that reminds her of Juarez. She has a special hate for Jesus Malverde figurines and buys them in bulk to use for target practice.

Nikki was a child prodigy with a love for chemistry, physics, and engineering. In any other life, she might have pursued a career, made something respectable of herself. Life is seldom so kind, Nikki grew up in a broken home to a ruthless drug dealer, and smacked out waitress. Her drug slinging dad saw her budding love of chemistry as nothing more than an angle and by the age of sixteen led his gang's team of drug dealers, laundered their money through shell accounts she made herself, and even tinkered with their guns, making them more dangerous on the whole.

The day Nikki's powers arrived after those weird ass domes started doing strange shit was easily the highlight of her week, maybe top ten. She was minding her own business, cooking some clean crystal on the southside in Atlanta when suddenly her hands started heating up and her makeshift lab blew up in her face. When Nikki woke up she could make her veins glow a right technicolor of colors and when she absorbed kinetic energy she could redistribute it in many ways, from firework like flares to high intensity beams that can cut through low grade steel but only at close up ranges. One would think, wonder, horror, and a sense of duty to her fellow man after being gifted such an amazing gift would be her response.

Wrong.

That night she robbed three stores, a gas station, and candy store (girl's gotta eat!), blasting each with neon beams. In the following weeks cops found the cut apart, cauterized pieces of what had been several known drug dealers, one of which being a ruthless bastard known on the street as El Flamenco. in that week a ruthless gang, the Espada were mostly killed, or on the run to this new player. Within a month a new Flamenco had taken his place selling high grade meth, and a few "stimulants". Nikki built herself a nice little slice of turf but all good things come to an end. Hotshots wanting to make their mark as "heroes" started pinching criminals of all flavors. One in particular, some stupid kid calling himself The Knight ( a stupid name) thought he could fuck with her bottom line. He was a pain in her side for a week and his superhuman strength made getting close to him a dumb idea. It didn't help he was bullet proof. Her dealers were brought down left and right, and two of her stash houses emptied out and left to the cops.

Nikki didn't have any choice but to deal with him herself. Which turned out to be a disaster because that encounter ended with him breaking her arm and nearly shattering her collar bone. Silver lining was, she found she could actually cut him with her high intensity beams. Nikki put her mind and hand to work. Sequestered away in her personal safehouse, Nikki built a specialized rifle that, when hooked to her veins could fire a pressurized beam. Crude and based after a game she liked to play, the rifle turned the Knight too slag. By the end of the ordeal, she found a niche in making energy based weapons since her rifle made the straps everyone else used look like peashooters.

The heat was too much though, a dead hero and her gang mostly caught and turning state's evidence, Nikki had no choice but to cut town. She'd find herself in Lost Haven, no crew but a sizable customer base online, and set up shop in a warehouse.

Let me pose to you a scientific question. What happens when two hundred pounds of stupid, naïve ideals, and meat ploughs into an environment of delicate instruments and volatile chemicals? I ducked to the side. Shattered glass and burning chemicals flew through the air. Half put together straps were scattered in the brute's wake. Hissing I stumbled to my feet, ripped my ruined headphones- they were my favorite pair motherfucker!- out of my ears, and stared down the bull in my china shop. Sheets of shoddy bent metal: iron scraps, sheet aluminum, some industrial steel covered his hulking body in some bastardization of a suit of armor in those fantasy stories. Every inch of him was covered, head to toe, the helmet was authentic at least.

Th Knight in all his bitch-ass glory.

I couldn't help smiling. Running to the far side of the warehouse I skidded to a halt and started digging into the wreckage. "Round two motherfucker!?" I grinned, lifting up a crude acumination of an energy rifle. The Knight turned to face me. "I'm game. Cause I owe you for breaking my arm, cabrón."

"I owe you so much more for the trouble you've caused, the pain you've wrought."

Thick, coiled wire snaked out from the side of my rifle. The whole thing was piecemeal scrap put together from junkyard finds, jacked tech from some lab out in the mountains, and a few other wielded bits. Thing looked like something out of that post-apocalyptic game I played when bored out of my skull. Only this wasn't no fantasy toy. I grabbed the wires, found a few veins and inserted the long steel ends like I was setting up an IV. I hissed in pain but quickly forgot as the wires lit up like Las Vegas at midnight. My grin turned positively jolly.

"This dumbass." I couldn't help but chuckle. I stood up.

"Bullets won't pierce me." His beady eyes narrowed behind his grill. "Face justice or I'll be forced to break both your arms."

"This ain't some fairytale, ese. You some kinda dumb, thinking you can roll in here!? You don't get no princess and you don't get to save the day."

A took a step forward. The ground shook under his feet. I nearly fell on my ass. "Last chance."

"Tomorrow you just gonna be another body."

The thing about firing a pressured beam at a human body wrapped in what can only be compared to aluminum foil, is it melts, fuses, then burns. The two millimeter beam pierced his armor covered belly like it was tissue and burned through the other side easily. He stumbled back and seemed to look down in disbelief as the metal rapidly cooled and fused to his cauterized flesh. He looked up and for a second I thought I saw him whimper. That second I knew he never thought this could happen. I set my jaw, and knew what came next.

I peppered his bulk with beams of plasma, like I was blasting the side of a building. By the time I was done, exhausted and feeling like my arms were going to give out, he was a pile of slag and smoking flesh. I slumped to my keens and started pulling the needles out of my arm. The metal was warped from the heat but my skin seemed alright save for the weeping pinpricks decorating my arm. I'd need to work on the metal prongs, any more warping and the rifle would have stopped firing. Was there a next time? I stared at the rifle for a good long while then up at the heap of twisted flesh and metal. A couple of weeks ago no one would have thought a guy could power through bullets and brick walls and lift cars or that a skinny bitch from the south side would be able to fire a neon show from her hands and make a laser rifle from scrap. It was like something out of a comic book.

Did that mean I was the bad guy?