APPROVED: BACKGROUND_1 Creation
Part of (yet another) secret experiment, Project Armageddon first came online sometime in 1980. Hidden within the Florida Everglades, research and experimentation began in order to create 'the perfect weapon.' Inspired by the success of the original super soldier projects this group attempts to bypass the Spectre's judgement by influencing the subject at birth rather than pushing such changes onto an already existing individual. An albino woman named Beatrice willingly joined the project, artificially impregnated with DNA which had already gone through select modifications. The end result is a girl which shares her mother's physical traits but retains the lab-altered traits. Beatrice names her daughter Neena despite the project leaders disallowing the use of any personal identification of the subject.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_2 Development
Physical and mental abilities are constantly put to the test. The subject is quickly tagged with a circular black tattoo around the left eye, forever marking her as belonging to the project and the facility which created her. She lives within a lab, tested and trained around the clock to become a fighter. As she grows additional training is added in the form of vehicle and weapon simulations, pushing her abilities in combat-like conditions. Psychic conditioning trials are added to the program despite being largely uncharted territory by those performing it.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_3 Evolution
The project is met with peculiar setbacks, their attempts at psychic conditioning showing rapid deterioration within the subject. What isn't known is that the original genetic modification had also carried with it a hidden metagene which begins to develop on its own, though at a greatly weakened state. It manifests in a peculiar fashion, resulting in personal injury to the subject during tests which she should have had no difficulties with. In time it's determined that this isn't a trick on her behalf, the problems become worse. Thinking that their subject is starting to deteriorate on a physical level as well results in a termination order being filed, Subject 1 is to be destroyed. Beatrice, still connected with the project, finds out about this and manages to escape the facility with Neena before the order can be completed.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_4 Life
Neena spends the next several years living at the Church of the Sacred Heart in Chicago, watched over by Father Rudolpho Boschelli. The neighborhood is rough and money is tight. Neena soon gravitates toward theft in order to try and support herself. At age 13 she gets caught by police for shoplifting, using the name 'Jessica Marie Costello.' As she grows older the thefts become larger in scope, though she also begins branching out once she's offered money in exchange for help in handling someone else's less than legal problem. Jobs become more risky and more violent, but also much more lucrative. At age 16 Father Boschelli realizes how far the problem has gotten and tries one last time to steer her back toward the light. She decides to leave, instead. She can cover herself financially by now, and then some.
APPROVED: BACKGROUND_5 Mercenary
Payment for work becomes her way of life. The jobs barely matter, she doesn't seem to care how risky or crazy they are. Contracts which others won't touch become her bread and butter, quickly earning herself a reputation among the underground. It remains complicated by one issue first instilled by her mother then later reinforced by Boschelli: Neena still has a conscience, even if it does short circuit more often than not. This 'proof of humanity' ultimately leads to a short-lived marriage with a man named Milo Thurman. She keeps his last name but chooses to identify herself by a different name which Milo had given her, 'Domino.' It isn't until the first day of 2010 when she realizes just how fitting this name is, the lift of Spectre's judgement suddenly boosting her luck altering powers to a whole new level yet to be fully discovered. What had at first only been able to bring her perceived misfortune had resulted in her freedom from the project. With her metagene now in full swing it feels as though the sky is the limit.
APPROVED: PSY1 Alektorophobic
Chickens. Yes. Those things. She's afraid of them. Don't ask her why.
APPROVED: PSY2 Conscience
Not something she likes to admit to, she's not a mindless killer and does still have emotions. Sometimes they conflict with her job. It's generally not pretty. It can be her one saving grace, or her ultimate undoing.
APPROVED: PSY3 Goals
Live to work, work to live. She isn't interested in saving the world, or destroying it. She likes living within the grey and will probably be doing what she does until she's dead and gone, barring anything drastic or unexpected getting in her way. So long as she can live fast and dangerously, everything's just peachy. IC plans will be to add to the morally grey territory of the game and have the occasional inner conflict with herself and her conscience while outwardly having conflicts with the more devoted of heroes and villains. OOCly, I enjoy the freedom of finding my own path and seeing where she might wind up, and what ultimately would keep her wherever she lands. I have a lot of experience with ICly 'drifting' and I always have some reason for her to be somewhere in order to be involved with other scenes.
APPROVED: PSY4 Hard Sell
If she's not promised a good payout for her time or effort then she's simply not going to do the job, go find someone who cares. It is possible to push her around this, however. Blackmail, playing on her conscience, threats, there are ways to get her to act in someone else's interests. Most of them will also lead to retaliation and back-stabbing down the road. She never likes being played.
APPROVED: PSY5 Loner
Given the option she tends to prefer working alone. It's safer for everyone and less of a headache for her, fewer liabilities.
APPROVED: PSY6 Motivation
Cash is King. Not only does she like getting paid, she lives for the rush and excitement of the job. That it happens to be illegal most of the time doesn't matter, she knows that she isn't always going to win. In the meantime she's going to use her cash and her job to cover her vices, which include powerful guns, fast cars, high explosives, and strong drinks. She's an adrenaline junkie and loves finding new ways to push the boundaries of her world.
APPROVED: PSY7 Repressive
Her trick to survival is to not dwell on the past, at all. Memories and emotions are simply wiped away at the first chance she gets. Because of this her psyche is actually quite dark and empty. Bad things happen all the time, she'll just set them in the past where they belongs and keep on walking.
APPROVED: PSY8 Selfish
Most people around her don't matter. She does her very best to never get attached to anyone, ever, for any reason. Personal gain is valued. Other people are obstacles at best.
APPROVED: PSY9 Somewhat OCD
She likes to be in control of things, whether it means being the driver, knowing all of the escape routes possible, or having her weapons arranged on a table just so. She doesn't always need all of the details, she only wants to know what her options are. Messing with her sense of order tends to irk her quite a bit.
APPROVED: PSY10 Unpredictable
A direct result of her power, at times her actions aren't provoked or even logical. She would only randomly yank on the wires of a ticking bomb because she knows that somehow things are going to fall into place for her, even if they don't for everyone else. What most people would consider to be reckless or sudden death stuff she sees as being viable options. It's just another reason why trusting her can be a bad idea.
APPROVED: PSY11 Wary
Any job, any situation, any person she encounters could become a threat, a problem, or something which tries to take her out. She's not real big on trusting anyone else. Free help isn't.
APPROVED: POW1 Probability Manipulation
Domino is the luckiest woman in the world. Her power is so random that not even she can predict it, though she does have very limited control over it as throwing herself into very stressful or dangerous situations will kick the power into high gear. As if following a cosmic balance, people around her suffer adverse luck while she reaps the benefits. This can also negatively affect allies, as the power only really cares about Number One. It can manifest at any time and in nearly any circumstance, allowing for highly improbable, though never impossible, outcomes. A winning lottery ticket, a perfectly timed traffic light, landing a miracle shot, a building collapsing on an opponent, an enemy suffering a sudden weapon jam or explosion, a speeding car distracting or interrupting a foe at a critical moment… While it may not always spare her from capture, injury, or worse, it will always find the most beneficial path for her in the end. How is she supposed to know if her next target is going to be more useful to her if she misses the shot? In addition, if the variables are known, she can instinctively calculate the odds of virtually any event's outcome.
APPROVED: ADV1 Ambidextrous
Due to her genetic modification from Project Armageddon she can function equally well with either hand. While the original intent had been to keep her in the fight if she were to suffer injury or lose a limb, she's discovered that it also means she can use two weapons instead of one.
APPROVED: ADV2 Armor
Thin and lightweight, her armor is designed to be concealable and highly mobile in exchange for heavier protection. It's temperature regulated between 0 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit and can be programmed to change coloration to better suit her environment. It's capable of deflecting edged weapons of common build and material (bone, steel, ceramic) and stopping pistol caliber bullets just shy of a .44 Magnum or a hot 10mm Auto but it does not redirect the kinetic energy from such attacks, and is completely useless against more powerful bullets. Getting shot is still going to hurt. Getting shot more than a few times is still going to slow her down. Heavier rounds can still cause fractures even if the rounds themselves do not penetrate.
APPROVED: ADV3 Reflexes
Traditional combat rules don't apply to this woman. Instinct and luck work in tandem to keep her within a state of flux, making her a very difficult person to read during a fight. This helps her to keep pace with highly skilled fighters even if she lacks their more specific or specialized training, such as with martial arts. She's able to dodge bullets if she can see them coming, however she cannot move faster than a bullet. It may seem random to everyone else but she tends to know what she's doing.
APPROVED: ADV4 Resources
Between raw cash, weaponry, personal armor, and spare vehicles, she's weaseled away lots of the good stuff in order to keep herself in the game. If she doesn't already have it then she can probably find it or buy it. She's got a few fancier pieces of gear to her name as well, including forearm mounted tasers and grappel lines, though generally nothing particularly substantial beyond firepower.
APPROVED: ADV5 Safehouses
She's got a fair number of stocked hidey holes.
APPROVED: ADV6 Underground
While she has lots of contacts, very few of them are personal. The sorts of people she has to call on are somehow connected to the underground and almost always demand payment or favors in exchange for any help they can provide.
APPROVED: ADV7 Willpower
She has an incredible strength of will, which is a combined effort of genetic modification, combat conditioning, and faith within herself.
APPROVED: SKILL1 Athletics
She is a very talented athlete and an expert swimmer.
APPROVED: SKILL2 Explosives
Identifying materials, wiring and setting charges, and detonating explodey things to good effect, she knows how it's done.
APPROVED: SKILL3 Firearm Finesse
She has superb marksmanship skills and has an intimate understanding of hitting a moving object with another moving object, sometimes with another object or four in the between. While some of her shots land purely due to her power of luck, sometimes she really is that good. Mind the ricochets. She's pretty good at fixing and upgrading her arsenal, too.
APPROVED: SKILL4 Languages
She's also fluent in German, Russian, and Italian, and knows bits and pieces from several others.
APPROVED: SKILL5 Melee Combat
Blades, batons, fists and feet, sledgehammers, she'll find a way to make it work. She's not the strongest, fastest, or most skilled, but she's pretty darned good at landing her hits while avoiding theirs. She can fling a blade or dart quite well, too.
APPROVED: SKILL6 Security Systems
When luck and avoidance don't get the job done, she's familiar enough with modern security measures to be able to circumvent quite a few different types of systems.
APPROVED: SKILL7 Survivalism
By no means is she the best survivalist but she knows enough to stay alive. This includes basic first-aid skills with whatever happens to be available.
APPROVED: SKILL8 Tactics
She has an understanding of military and combat tactics which can sometimes give her the upper hand, though highly trained groups can easily have her beat. She also possesses some leadership skills for small team operations, though she generally tries to avoid taking such a role.
APPROVED: SKILL9 Tracking
She can track an animal in the wild, though she's generally tracking targets within urban environments.
APPROVED: SKILL10 Vehicle Operations
She's best behind the wheel of a ground vehicle or on a motorcycle, though she's also skilled and confident in aircraft and watercraft. She's spent time in fighter jet simulators, though she's previously only flown helicopters. While she can fix and maintain some vehicles she'd much rather pay someone else to do it.
APPROVED: FLAW1 High Risk
Spending time around this woman can be hazardous to one's health. She's constantly taking on near-impossible odds, throwing herself into all sorts of trouble, and is always giving others bad luck. Maybe she can be a real asset to a team, for a while. The problem is that there's never any warning before luck takes a turn for the worse, as her late husband had come to discover. A situation which might somehow spare her life, such as a massive explosion, could end up injuring or killing everyone else, friend or foe. Such events are not common with allies however, as they will only occur if the result would somehow spare her from a particularly worse fate and if there aren't any other options. The real trouble is simply not knowing if or when something bad might happen toward someone who is not the enemy. For enemies, all bets are off.
APPROVED: FLAW2 Reputation
In the underground and merc worlds she's actually made quite a strong name for herself. This would be great if they didn't happen to be illegal communities. To the proper, legal world, her reputation is anything but sterling. She's a criminal, an assassin, and more. Mercs old and new may even want a literal stab at her in order to prove themselves, sometimes simply because of this new rumor starting to go around about her having peculiarly good luck.
APPROVED: FLAW3 Targeted
Over the years she has made a positively stupid number of enemies. Individuals, groups, families, organizations, divisions, heroes, villains, law enforcement, it's almost no longer a question of who would want her captured or killed so much as asking who wouldn't. Oh, and then there's the people still alive within Project Armageddon that wanted to kill her over a decade ago…
APPROVED: FLAW4 Unique
She is the only patch-eyed albino woman in the world. For as lucky as she is at avoiding detection and capture, sooner or later her actions are going to catch up to her in a real bad way.
She's a mercenary, information which she's not afraid to reveal. (It might get her more jobs!) The name 'Domino' is known in many of the larger cities within North America, as well as a few other countries. She can be a ruthless sort and demands top dollar for her work but she's also willing to take on many of the risky jobs which no one else will touch. She's known to be quite lucky but it's not yet obvious that it's due to a metagene.
Unfortunately, having a name and reputation for herself within the underground means that she also has quite a number of rivals and opponents that know about her, as well. She's got records with many law enforcement agencies under a myriad of different aliases and is not highly appreciated by the good guys. So far she's been lucky enough to stay just under the radar compared to most superpowered baddies, though all it would take to change her standing is if she took on one wrong contract.
Her real name remains a very closely guarded secret.
