SteemHeroes Character Submission: Matrix

Basic Info

Alignment: Hero
Alias: Matrix
Name: Katherine Wilcox
Profession: Freelance artist
Age: 33
Height: 5’ 10’
Weight: 140lbs.
Gender: Female
Birthplace: Casper, WY USA
Description: Long brunette hair, brown eyes, tall and slender physique.
Costume: Red bodysuit with yellow trim, plunging neckline and a belt fitted with pouches for carrying misc. items.
Ethnicity: Native American

Origin:

Katherine Wilcox is grew up in rural Wyoming, living a fairly uneventful life. She’s always been a caring person, showing empathy and compassion for complete strangers when in need. She showed an early talent for drawing and painting, which naturally led her to a career in art. Rather than becoming a commercial artist or graphic designer, she wanted to have the freedom to produce more personal, intimate artwork. Her paintings are uniquely abstract, geometric and integrate letters and numbers in unusual ways. Some have described her style as the love child of Pablo Picasso and El Lissitsky.

Her work has gained modest acclaim and has appeared in various galleries in the Midwest. Galleries in New York, San Francisco and Chicago have started to show interest in her work as well, though nothing has happened yet.

After Katherine started experiencing the symptoms of Olympium poisoning, it seemed to have supercharged her artistic output. Previously, she would typically complete 1 or 2 pieces a month, however as an OPS she’s now cranking out 1 or 2 every week and the quality and creativity of her work are improving. As a side effect, her polarity powers have started to manifest and grow more powerful each day.

While she still has not had the opportunity to be featured in art galleries on the coasts, she has attracted the attention of galleries in nearby Olympus, CO. Ed York, the CEO of Zenethen, owns an art gallery in Olympus and has shown great interest in her work. He offered her an open-ended exhibit in his gallery, so she promptly moved to an apartment in Olympus where she continues churning out her artwork while trying her best to suppress the polarity energy she’s suddenly been gifted.

As she works on her art late into the night, she often goes out on walks to find inspiration. On these walks, she has witnessed muggings, attacks and other crimes. As the city grows, the frequency of these crimes has increased and eventually one night, she was targeted herself. While she had never used her powers in a fight, she was easily able to defeat a group of criminals who intended to rob her. The victory gave her confidence in her abilities and it didn’t take long for her to adopt the name “Matrix” as she turned her nighttime inspiration walks into the opportunities to stop criminals and protect the people of the city.

Equipment or unique items

None

Abilities:

Polarity sphere

Matrix has the ability to surround herself in a grid of energy beams in the form of a sphere and expand the sphere up to a maximum diameter of 30 feet. These beams can flip between two polarities for defensive and offensive uses. Positive polarity acts as a defensive field that repulses any matter than approaches it and negative is offensive, damaging anything it touches. Matrix is able to manipulate the arc of the sphere so that in negative mode it doesn’t destroy the ground she’s standing on.

The larger the sphere expands, the weaker and more spread out the grid becomes. At 6 feet, the beams are nearly impenetrable, but at maximum size it can only shield against items like debris.

As a grid instead of a solid energy shield, its possible to penetrate the grid with gunfire or other projectiles. Matrix has the ability to rapidly spin the grid sphere to essentially make it impenetrable, but the concentration required to do this requires complete focus preventing her from doing anything else.

Matrix can engage the grid for no more than 30 seconds at time. After 30 seconds she needs time to recharge the field, which requires 1 second of rest to recharge 5 seconds of a grid power (or 6 seconds to complete recharge the grid).

Flight

Matrix can merge the polarities of her grid to enable her to fly short distances at a maximum speed of 90mph. The grid sphere has to be disengaged for her to be able to fly.

Weakness

Matrix is highly sensitive to intensely bright lights, particularly strobing lights as well as loud, high-pitched sounds. These types of stimulation make it difficult, if not impossible, to utilize her grid field or flight power.