Something always brings me back to you. It never takes too long.
Name:
River Elizabeth Riley
Alias:
Zero
Age:
20
Gender:
Female
Affiliation(s):
(TBD)
No matter what I say or do, I still feel you here 'til the moment I'm gone.
5' 8"
135 lbs
Hair:
Dark brown, just past her shoulders
Dark brown
Skin:
Dark brown
Distinctive marks:
Barcode tattoo on her left hip
You hold me without touch. You keep me without chains.
Personality:
~ P L A Y F U L : C O N F I D E N T : C H A R M I N G : A N X I O U S : M A N I P U L A T I V E : D E P E N D E N T ~
~ P L A Y F U L : C O N F I D E N T : C H A R M I N G : A N X I O U S : M A N I P U L A T I V E : D E P E N D E N T ~
On the surface, River is that girl. The girl in the center of that shining circle of light. The one who steps out of her car in slow motion while flipping her hair and pulling off her sunglasses. She's the girl every guy is used to wanting and every girl is used to wanting to be. And she loves it. As shallow as it may be, there's a warm, glow-y feeling that comes from knowing that people want you around. River revels in that feeling. She spends half her time attending wild parties and the other half throwing them, studying the people around them, playing with them, learning from them. Over the years, it's become clear to her that most people are remarkably similar. They're all looking for the same attention, validation, and love and they all open up once you've pushed the right buttons. Most people tend to give River whatever it is that she wants. And for the most part, all she wants is to hear people laugh (and maybe a few thousand dollars here or there...).
Below the surface, River is that girl. The one who blasts her stereo day and night to drown out the silence. The girl chasing after the same attention, validation, and love as everyone else, but probably looking in the worst of places. The girl who will spend days at a time too tired to get out of her bed. River soars high, but when she crashes, she crashes hard. Loneliness triggers her anxiety and awakens fears of isolation from childhood. River keeps most people at a carefully controlled arm's length, but once she's decided to truly care about a person, she tends to need steady contact from them. Her brother has been soundly trained to text her at least once a day or else expect her to blow up his phone (sometimes literally).
(Cherry pie)
(Partying)
(Makeup)
(Sex)
(Her work)
{Silence}
{Fighting}
{When her brother is in danger}
{Chocolate}
{Being grabbed suddenly}
I never wanted anything so much than to drown in your love and not feel your reign.
Technokinesis:
[MASTER - 7 / TINKER - 7 / THINKER - 4]
River can control anything with an electronic brain. More than that, electronics come alive for her. She can hear scratchy whispers in her mind from her cell phone, from her computer, from the GPS, from the chip in her car, from her calculator. Anything with a working computer chip can speak to her, hear from her, and be controlled. Her power spreads like a virus, over internet, cell waves, and wifi. Lacking this, she has to be touching something to be connected to it. River also has supernatural ability in writing code and programs and in creating electronics. Her creations are hyper effective at worming their way into different networks, retrieving data, and executing her will. Her gadgets do things that shouldn't be possible. She specializes tools for information gathering: code-breakers, trackers, scanners, etc. Finally, River has a highly analytical mind adept at understanding working through coding and software issues.
Limits: Without an established wireless connection, River must be touching an electronic to control or communicate with it. River can push the boundaries of a gadget's intended purpose, but only by so much. For example, a toaster may have a chip in it, but if all it does is display a clock and run a timer, River won't be able to get it do more than tell her the last few times it was used and make some excellent toast without some serious modifications. River also has no control over electricity itself. If someone cuts or drains the power from something she's using, she's powerless.
Replication:
[MASTER - 4]
River can create a single body double at a time. Her double is solid, an exact replica of her. When she doubles herself, she can also double any non-living thing she is touching at the time. Her double lasts for as long as it's "alive" and won't fade until she reabsorbs it. The double doesn't have to eat or sleep and she and her double seem to share a mind. River can see what her double sees and hear what her double hears in real time as it's happening. She can control what her double does even if they are far away from each other.
Limits: River's double is no stronger or faster than she is. If River is hurt, her double reflects the damage and if her double is hurt, River feels the pain, even if she doesn't sustain the physical damage. River's double cannot speak. Things that she's touching that also double start to breakdown and fade after 8 hours. Food that she doubles is bland, tasteless, and has no nutrients. Complex things like computers look like exact doubles, but are useless and never function. Simple, mechanical objects will copy exactly and function. She cannot copy living things that she is touching and must be physically touching something for it to be doubled. For example, if she is holding a cup of water when she doubles, the cup will double, but not the water.
History:
River was born into the stereotypical perfect American family. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom and her dad was a high priced lawyer. Her brother, about four years older than her, was a football star and she was head cheerleader. Everything about her life was perfect. Her parents were loving and doting. Even when her father worked too much, her mom was always there to tease him and make him spend time with them. She and her brother bickered, but she adored him and she always knew that he would do anything for her. She grew up bouncing from hobby to hobby, gymnastics, dance, soccer, cheerleading. Eventually, like most teenage girls, she fell in love with her phone and social media. She started keeping a blog following her favorite heroes and villains and gained a modest following around her school. Everything about River's life was ideal... until the accident.
When she was 16, River's mother and brother were in a car accident. Her brother had been caught smoking with his friends by a few local cops, who called her mother to come pick him up. Her mother had been drinking that night and according to reports, ran a red light on her way back home. The car was hit by a semi-truck. The accident killed her mother and triggered her brother's power. And River's entire world started to fall apart.
Her father lost it when her mother died. He started picking fights with River's brother, fights that got worse and worse over the next six months before they turned into abuse. At first, her brother didn't fight back, terrified as he was of his own power. When he did, he just about destroyed their home, collapsing River's room with her in it. River was mostly unharmed, but her brother was devastated and ran away, cutting contact with both River and his father. Suddenly, River had lost two of the three most important people in her life and was left alone with an angry, unstable father. In the beginning, things were okay. The games started slowly. Her father would go missing for days at a time and then come home as if nothing had happened. He would spend a week completely ignoring her and then spend a week obsessively tracking her, demanding that she be in contact every hour of every day. For someone as social as River, it was like torture. Eventually, the games became physical abuse, slaps and shoving, always followed by remorse and doting. River began to lose weight, threw herself into her social life, desperately searching for the genuine love she wasn't getting at home. She gathered a reputation for being easy around the school and her friends started to cut contact with her. This sent her even deeper into depression. She became obsessed with finding her brother, learned some elementary hacking skills and spent all of her time searching. Even at school she'd search from her phone, but her brother had basically disappeared. She was stuck in this pattern for two years, desperately searching for a way out, hoping that her brother would come back to save her, hoping that someone would notice the bruises and take her away.
Her trigger came on a day that was so much like so many days that had come before. Her father came home, threw his coat and briefcase down on floor in the foryer and stormed through the house shouting for her. He found her in her room and immediately starting screaming at her, calling her stupid and a slut and worthless. And something just clicked inside of her. Her laptop on the other side of the room powered up, and she could feel it flipping on it's camera and microphone. She could see a line of code in her head, one that could search through images taken on security cameras and match her brother's face, and another that would pull his contact information once he was found. As her father advanced on her, she pushed the code and kept recording. An hour later, when her father was stumbling out of the room, looking for ice for his knuckles, a second her picked herself up from the floor and sent a single video to an email address the code produced and then came back and played with her hair while she cried. Within minutes she had a reply. Pack a bag. Take the next train to Capetown. I'll be there to pick you up. I'm so sorry.
River has been living in Capetown with her brother for about two years now. Through some savvy entrepreneurship, she's managed to establish a high-tech command center in a hidden room in the home she and her brother share. Her eyes are everywhere, deeply embedded in just about every security camera in town. Nothing happens in Capetown that she doesn't see. For that reason, she often liaisons with different heroes in town or the occasional villain if they can convince her to trust in their benign intentions. She also sells programs on the dark net and gadgets to capes in need, again, only when she can be convinced that they aren't being used for anything too malicious. No one has ever actually seen "Zero". She keeps herself hidden behind her screens when she works and has a wide range of IRL lackeys to make her deliveries for her. She has a flair for the dramatic and often rigs video chats with a animated face in place of her own.
Face Claim:
Kat Grahm
Kat Grahm
You're on to me, you're on to me and all over...
