A tester, as it says
》 𝖡𝖠𝖲𝖨𝖢𝖲: Noelle Hodge || 29 || Human (Faye Ancestry)"I try to always live in the moment. Not my fault if the moment happens more than once!"The daughter of a British academic and a Tokyo-born singer, and raised to bear an ingrained knowledge of magic, Noelle has spent the majority of her adult life as a Starweaver of some renown, known for her rare ability to manipulate small increments of time. A contractor for various large corporate bodies and research conglomerates, she spends her days going from experiment to live-fire to Corporate unveiling, standing by with a flash of elemental magic and a touch that can turn back time; ready to step in should the... unfortunate happen.》 𝖠𝖯𝖯𝖤𝖠𝖱𝖠𝖭𝖢𝖤: 203cm tall || 76 kgTall, lithe and generally fit, with long, powerful legs and deceptively thin arms, Noelle moves with a certain erratic grace, her movements often sudden and energetic but always in-place. While in most respects she resembles a plain human being, the Faye blood that has tinted her lineage since before living memory has lent her skin a pale shade of forest green. Striking at first glance, her silhouette is tall and strong, cutting a narrow, tightly packed figure and almost constantly tensed and ready to move. Her lilac hair falls in short, messy locks around a long and angular face, framing a narrow, smile-lined mouth, large yellow eyes and a prominent Roman nose. She dresses fairly practically, normally wearing some combination of flexible, brightly-coloured trousers, comfortable tops and one of two light, waist-length coats. Her hands, large and deceptively powerful, are almost always gloved.》 𝖯𝖤𝖱𝖲𝖮𝖭𝖠𝖫𝖨𝖳𝖸Noelle is, at heart, a cheerful woman, but equally one who's inclined to hold her cards close to her chest. While she's never afraid to crack a joke with her superiors, or kick up banter with a random passer-by, the number of true friends she can claim to have can be counted on one hand, and she prefers it that way. In this regard, she could be considered something of an introvert, although in truth she simply prefers not to open up to people she hasn't become particularly familiar with. Consequently, while a conversation with her can be anywhere from engaging to utterly mundane, and one might consider her generally agreeable, attempts to actually get to know her can be futile. Should she feel that a person is prying, she can and will show them a cold shoulder.
Truthfully, Noelle is a lonely soul, with a tendency to isolate herself. Given how often she travels from job to job, holding down any kind of relationship is understandably difficult for her, and in the years since her ability manifested, she has grown less and less outgoing and equally more private. She approaches new conversations and people with a distinctive snark and an ever-present smirk, which has so far yielded... mixed results, and the process of meeting and subsequently stalling with person after person only leads to her becoming more insular. She's easy to work with, but far from easy to get on with.
Noelle's upbringing has left her very familiar with most kinds of magic, even beyond her not inconsiderable ability with elemental magic and spell-layering, and in her free time she will often go out of her way to follow leads or individuals that intrigue her. Similarly, through her mother's career she has some connections in the showbiz world, and is generally better informed than one might expect. On the other hand, her somewhat lonely upbringing and experience with death and catastrophe make her hesitant to approach large groups of people, and outside her career as a contractor she's notoriously private.
Crucially, she believes firmly that life should be lived moment-to-moment. Her experience has exposed her to horrors and joys in equal measure, and too often she's met people - especially through her mother - who are too hung up on wallowing in mistakes or misfortune to truly change things in the present. Consequently, her ability, in her eyes, is an incredibly valuable thing; one that allows her to avoid or correct those tiny, critical moments that might otherwise ruin a life.
At heart, what she most wants is happiness. As satisfied with her career and lifestyle as she is, she truly desires connection, and despite her high barriers, this can lead her down paths and decisions which may not be all that wise.》 𝖧𝖨𝖲𝖳𝖮𝖱𝖸"WAKE UP, NOELLE..."
The voice came to her unbidden, even as the shock of the explosion echoed in her head. In the haze of dust and smoke, an ethereal light settled over Noelle, a spiritual weight permeating Noelle's body in a way she'd never experienced. Time itself, if for only a moment, stopped; then, suddenly, like a siren in the dark, a scream - Nico's scream - cut through her deafened ears, and she found herself scrambling to her feet, rushing across the courtyard to her friend. There, caked in dust, lay the other guard, a long shard of glass impaling his lung. Blood bubbled to his lips, even as his breath began to slip, and she could see the life fading and something pulled-
And suddenly his scream had just begun to die down, and a feeling of less seemed to fill her as she pushed into him. A sound like the crack of a whip cut across reality, and before her eyes, Nico's body seemed to rewind, the glass rocketing back towards the broken window as his wounds closed and a strange, sideways 'S' burned itself into her view. Just as suddenly, the whipcrack seemed to reverse, and the glass shot forward like an arrow. Heedless of the danger, she threw herself towards the man, shoving him out of the way just as the glass scored a gash through her calf. She shrieked, and Nico's eyes widened as he moved to help, but the whip cracked again, and in the next moment, she stood at her post, panting, a shell-shocked look in her eyes and a body that showed no signs of the events of the last 18 seconds...
Noelle first encountered the fog when she was Seventeen. One year earlier, her mother had been killed on a car crash while she and her father were away on a research trip. Her father, the latest in a line of part-Fey academics of some renown would often take her on such trips, much to the consternation - and eventual anger - of her mother. The last interaction the two ever had was a screaming match.
The fog came to her on the streets of London, near the house where she was born. It was a misty night to begin with, and for all she knew she'd simply stumbled across a particularly dense patch while reminiscing, but the experience shook her. Even years later, she would have done anything to simply tell her mother that she loved her, and she would often reflect, with some bitterness, that her power couldn't fix the one mistake worth undoing.
Noelle's life has been an odd mix of a sheltered upbringing and a particularly broad worldview. Her father Bruce had met her mother Satsuki in Japan at one of her concerts, and they fell in with each other almost out of convenience. That said, she was far from unloved. The three of them would often go abroad for musical performances, absorbing culture after culture as they went from place to place. When she wasn't trekking around to operas or orchestras or band performances, Noelle attended a small State Primary school in London until she was Eleven, at which point her father pulled her out and set to teaching her the ways of his family.
By the time she was of University age, Noelle was a skilled magician, well versed in wind and fire manipulation and barrier magic, and with a penchant for particularly nasty spell layering. Her father, of course, wanted her to follow in his footsteps, but Noelle, holding him partly to blame for her Mother's death, decided instead to put her practical talents to good use, serving first as low-level security for a high-status bank, and later as a doorman at one of her mother's old concert hall haunts after calling in a favour. It was there she met one of her closest friends, Nico Vasquez, who would serve as the catalyst for her ability's emergence during a small-scale terrorist assault.
She tried to keep her newfound status as a Starweaver under wraps, but being so public an awakening the press quickly latched on, and in the aftermath several large corporations and even a few smaller governments approached her to act as a contractor for various high-risk projects. Given that her workplace had been blown up, Noelle needed a job, and decided she may as well put her abilities to use.
The things she's seen since have left her jaded. Over the course of nine years, she's seen both the best and worse that the world has to offer, from... ethically dubious research projects to the development of increasingly unpleasant weaponry. She does, of course, turn down many more jobs than she takes on, but remains a well known, well paid and well regarded Starweaver, and ends up credited by far more projects and papers than she would like. At present, she's taking a break from work to do some research of her own, and is doing her best to stay out of the public eye. She's made overtures to reconnect with her father, but given her current home base in New York, the efforts are slow-going.
❖ 𝖬𝖠𝖦𝖨𝖢TIME SLIP
» 𝖲𝖳𝖱𝖤𝖭𝖦𝖳𝖧 » 𝖲𝖴𝖯𝖯𝖮𝖱𝖳 » 𝖣𝖤𝖷𝖳𝖤𝖱𝖨𝖳𝖸 » 𝖣𝖤𝖥𝖤𝖭𝖲𝖤 » 𝖲𝖳𝖠𝖬𝖨𝖭𝖠 ★★★★☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★★☆☆ ★★★★☆ ★★★★★Time Slip is a deceptively simple ability. Fuelled by a stock of fifty 'charges' which regenerate with the dawn, it grants the ability to manipulate and undo moments of time in increments of up to nine seconds, either in relation to herself, or the world around her. By expending a single charge, Noelle can reverse her position in linear time by up to nine seconds, moving backwards while the rest of time remains as normal. In doing so, she effectively erases the effects of those 9 seconds on herself. Conversely, she may expend a charge to undo the passage of time around her, placing her nine seconds ahead of the situation and undoing the time she spent moving/casting. Using these two abilities in tandem allows her to blip around an area, fleeing extraordinarily quickly, dodging attacks as though she was never there to be targeted and otherwise confusing things, at the cost of a finite and valuable pool of charges. Noelle can rewind anywhere from half a second to the full nine, but must always spend a full charge to do so, complicating her micromanagement even more.
Alternatively, she can spend a second charge to manifest the rewind as a projectile to be exerted over someone or something else. The sphere is roughly the size of a tennis ball, bears her symbol, and moves at roughly the speed of a sprinting Greyhound. When it makes contacts, either by being touched to the target directly by Noelle, or by being propelled at them from range, they and anything touching them experience the next 9 seconds in reverse, appearing to rewind while the rest of the world moves forward. During this period they are completely inviolable, as anything which touches them is caught up in the effect. In this way, Noelle can heal associates, undo disasters in labs or facilities she's contracting for and inconvenience opponents or line them up for an attack.
Beyond the resource limit, the ability has certain hard limits. It cannot reanimate a corpse; the body will simply revert to the state it was in prior and remain dead. It also does not remove the memory of rewound time.❖ TELEGRAPHNoelle's sign is a stylised musical Turn: a horizontal 'S' marking that curls in on itself.❖ 𝖬𝖴𝖲𝖨𝖢
❖ PLAYLIST ❖ SONG OPENING THEME Satellite Young = Moment in Slow Motion CASUAL THEME Motoaki Takenouchi = Shining Force 2 - Town Theme BATTLE THEME Mr Big = Strike Like Lightning ENDING THEME Tomohito Nishiura = Time Travel (Instrumental)