NameDr. Indira (Indy) Bhatia, Ph.D (Electrical and Electronic Engineering)
Secret Identity Tensor
GenderFemale (And female-presenting)
Age37
Date of Birth20 August 1983
ThemesNew Beginnings, Adaptation, Choosing Joy, All Those Explosions Were Someone Else's Fault
AppearanceDespite the fact that Indy is taller than both of her parents, she's still the person in the lab who knows exactly where all the step-stools are. Her hair is long and dark, with a few strands of bright, hard silver threading in among the tousled locks, which she keeps tied in a loose tail that's more practical than anything else. She has a lean, strong figure, unmistakably feminine, which she takes some care to maintain. Her features are, in a word, lovely, with wide, almond-shaped eyes the color of strong black tea, delicate eyebrows, and full, expressive lips - the whole usually set either in concentration or mild exasperation. Her hands are quick and clever, marked with small scars and callouses, the nails trimmed and only occasionally colored with polish.
Indy's dress sense at work is what would be expected of any professor, with a selection of slacks, jackets, and button-down shirts that compliment her dusky complexion. She otherwise very much prefers a jeans-and-tee look, often but not always with scuffed, dark boots. Both of her ears are pierced several times, and she has a seemingly-endless selection of studs, chains, and other small jewelry to display. Both her wrists typically hold some kind of bangle or bracelet, and she wears a variety of small rings on her fingers. While there are several scars on her body - especially recently - the only tattoos on her body are small crosshatch-like marks at various points on her skin, about the size of a pencil eraser.
CostumeIndira doesn't really have a costume, exactly - her ability to respond to anything requiring super-heroism generally is constrained by the fact that she has a job, so quite a lot of her adventures take place in slacks and sensible shoes, or after running out of the shop with metal chips caught in her hair and wearing a Van Halen t-shirt. So far, that hasn't been a problem.
PersonalityIndira is almost terrifyingly competent, a polymath with the kind of ferocious intellect that would be infuriating if it weren't also tempered by perspective and a deep confidence that never spills over into arrogance. Her students - and, indeed, colleagues - tend to find that she is utterly merciless in cutting down evasion and prevarication, but that she is also a consummate educator who cares profoundly about making sure that her charges understand even the most complex subjects. Asking for help is something she treats with the highest regard; an attempt to bluster or buzzword your way past her is a recipe for a long, excruciating conversation.
Otherwise, Indy is someone that people tend to like to be around. She is fond of puns - the worse and more groan-inducing, the better,
especially if they're across multiple languages. While she is a great storyteller, she might be an even better audience, with entirely authentic gasps and all the right facial expressions to make even the shyest person want to continue. She is kind, careful, and the kind of person who will drive you home, even if it's an hour out of her way. Her infectious laughter comes easily, and pairs well with her fondness for small measures of very expensive whisky.
Firm, but not immovable, of conviction, Indy is very much one of the Good Guys - she acts because it's the right thing to do, and considers it her responsibility to use her abilities in the service and defense of others. She
likes people, and wants to think the best of them, but that is matched by a sense of pragmatism. Sometimes, there really is no point in talking, after all.
Indy's social life is a complex balancing act. Since her abilities became clear, she attends fewer symposiums, and more of her advice to her students is done over text or email, but she manages to keep on top of her professional responsibilities; after all, she is aiming for tenure. Personally, the superheroics have left a hole in that part of her life. She has a a friend who is perfectly aware of what Indy's doing when she has to cancel on a party invitation and is a meaningful part of her life, but she hasn't been on a date in a very long time.
BackstoryI didn't mean to be a superhero.
I mean, I don't think any of us really woke up one morning and just
decided that yes, today, I'm going do something beyond the bounds of mortal ken. We don't step into the world fully-formed and cloaked in our manifest destiny, with a triumphant score and dramatic lighting. For most of us, it crept into our lives a little at a time - a road, you could say, paved with good intentions.
When I was ten, my family moved from Mumbai to San Francisco, my mother's career in academia having settled in a way that living in the States would be more convenient than in India. My father's business, a cutting-edge medical technology company, could be administered easily enough from California, although I think he may have had more frequent flyer miles than any sensible person ought to after a couple of years. My sister, though, always thought the city was too cold, even at the height of summer - at least, until she started to notice boys.
Even when I was young, I thought I understood the arc of my life. I loved the University where my mother worked, I loved the smell of books and the way my mind felt when I really understood something new. I knew those would be my footsteps, that I would carry on a tradition of learned women in my family that had gone on for generations. When I dreamed, I thought about winning a Nobel prize, discovering something that could change our understanding of the world. I imagined a life of books, small apartments, and symposiums, and I was content with that. Karma, though, can be a funny thing.
I was thirty years old when I first manifested superhuman capabilities, an only somewhat accidental result of an experimental therapy to correct an unusual, fast-moving neurodegenerative disease. There were surgeries, procedures that layered my bones and body with lattices of self-replicating molecular-scale machines; the whole process something so far past the description of 'experimental' that you couldn't find it with a map. After all, when you're facing down the possibility of not being able to control your own lungs, the concept of 'nothing to lose' takes on an entirely new depth.
I'll spare you the suspense: I didn't die.
The procedure didn't only make me better, it made me
better; that is to say, super-human. The woman behind the project, who I only ever knew by the name 'Jac,' seemed entirely unsurprised by that. She said I was 'potential made manifest,' and the last time I saw her, she told me to enjoy my life. My father would never tell me how he had run into Jac, how and why I became a subject of what apparently was some kind of super-science project.
But I took Jac's advice. I lived my life. Citing a miraculous recovery, and steering myself clear of the most inquisitive members of the medical-flavored faculty, I returned to my studies. I completed my doctoral program, and despite the way my mind and body were expanding, defending my thesis was daunting. I'm convinced that nothing short of actual divine intervention can make that process anything but exhausting and harrowing. The whole time, I spent most of the time that I wasn't actually studying or writing papers in trying to discover the extent of what had happened to me, of learning to control the machines in my body, discovering that there were quite a few different things I could do with them.
I still wanted to teach, to learn, to expand the world in the ways I thought I could, and I accepted a job at NYU three years ago. The world was already starting to get stranger, with things that people couldn't quite explain, or took great pains to say never
really happened coming on the nightly news with increasing frequency. The night before my first lecture, I found myself in that world, in the most direct way I possibly could have. The things on the news were abstracts, they were rumor, even if they were credible. But that night, I found out that I wasn't alone.
Unfortunately, the way that happened was by being attacked in the parking lot behind the university's electronics lab well after midnight. He was every bit my equal, in fact in some important ways, I was overmatched. I had never used the abilities I'd developed in any earnest way, but the human body will do a lot of things rather than die. Whether it was luck or adrenaline or some kind of test, I managed to avoid having my head crushed by a lamppost my attacker tore out of the ground without apparent effort, and grounded out lightning-strikes of power that rained sparks from utility poles for a quarter of a mile. If I took a split second of pettiness out on making sure one of those strikes immolated a car belonging to someone I really didn't like, who could blame me?
We fought to a standstill, and in the closeness and the reflected bursts of light, I saw marks on his skin; small, crosshatched tattoos, nearly invisible scars that followed some of the long bones of his skeleton. They were intensely familiar, because I saw the same marks every time I took a shower.
I locked his arms behind him, and forced him to his knees, though I had no idea what I was going to do with him in even the medium term. But I had to ask him, I had to
know. I asked him who he was, and his answer made my blood run cold.
"Potential made manifest."
All I remember after that is the wind being knocked out of me, a grunt of pain that I'm fairly sure didn't come from me, and the sound of sirens. By the time I came back to myself, I was alone in a parking lot, surrounded by wrecked cars, gouges in the asphalt, and a whole lot of questions I didn't want to answer.
Everything seemed to become real after that. I was something other than human - and I wasn't alone. While I washed the blood off my face, I knew I couldn't keep myself to myself any longer. There was a world out there that needed me, that I could help, that I could change for the better. The world might not be ready for that truth just yet, but that wasn't a reason to hide. My life, my career, was just starting - I was a professor, a faculty member, an accomplished academic. And now, also, apparently, I was a superhero.
I scrubbed the water off my face with a towel, looked at myself in the mirror, and stood a little straighter. There were purpling bruises under my shirt, a scrape on my cheekbone, a black eye spreading gloriously across the left side of my face. One side of my mouth pulled up in a careful smirk. Nothing broken, and new challenges ahead. Of course. Karma really can be a funny thing.
But first, I had a lecture in the morning.
Superpowers- Field Manipulation: Indy possesses a suite of force field emitter systems, laced into the muscle and skin of her hands and forearms and constructed from the nanomachines in her body. They allow her to project semitransparent barriers in any shape or style she desires, but not of unlimited size. Her control over this is fine enough to allow for slicing through the bolt on a door, acting as a kind of strength-enhancing exoskeleton, or projecting an anchored ramp to deflect a runaway vehicle. If she had to
stop a car dead, that would be a considerable effort, and possible only with some reasonable forewarning. The barriers are able to absorb energy across physical domains (kinetic, electrical, etc.), which is dissipated as heat, distortion of the barrier, or stored in limited-capacity systems inside Indira's body. The effort required to keep the field in place increases with this dissipation, and is also directly correlated to the size of the field. This is something she uses both in place of heroic actions and almost unconsciously in her daily life (away from 'normal' people) to bring her phone to her, open a door, or gently nudge someone out of the way.
- Direct Connection: If required, Indy can connect directly to an electrical or computer or electronic system, and manipulate it at the speed of thought. She is an accomplished attack suite artist and cryptographer, but that doesn't mean that everything will fall before her at a thought. This ability takes time, and requires virtually all of her conscious thought, rendering her typically unable to defend herself in a fight if she has to make use of this ability.
- Enhanced Biomechanics: Indira has quicker reflexes, can move more quickly, is stronger, and is much tougher than standard-issue humans. She is, after all, a superhero - though this suite of effects from her procedures is not to the same scale as other metahumans. A car hitting her at speed will break bones, and while she will heal more quickly than expected, this is still on a scale of weeks or months rather than hours or days.
- Technologist: In the last year, Indira has begun building an awareness of herself in the metahuman world. She is an armorer on commission, and some of the stranger tools in the world are her creation. Many of these are, in their own right, complex super-science. In this capacity, she introduces herself as Tensor.
Talents and InterestsIn addition to her academic accomplishments, Indira is an accomplished bellydancer, a phenomenal cook, and an adequate musician. She sings (at karaoke, enthusiastically if not necessarily with perfect talent), and plays guitar well enough to entertain people around a campfire. In addition, Indira speaks English, Arabic, and Hindi. She has a a gentle accent in all three.
