Sleepwear: shorts and tank top or t-shirt generally
Miscellaneous clothing: During Shabbat, Rivka has a headscarf that she wears while lighting the Shabbat candles. It belonged to her mother, and is precious to her. She'd run into a burning building to retrieve it.
Character
Personality:
Rivka is quiet, and rather shy, except with close friends. This tendency has only gotten worse since coming to the United States, where she feels awkward because she isn't fluent in English, and her accent is hard to miss.
She is polite, and fairly conservative in her dress, though she has been a little more rebellious and daring as she's hit her mid-teens. She defers to adults and doesn't tend to take the lead in things, unless no one else will and she really feels she has a plan. She has a tendency to bite or chew on her lower lip when she nervous, and has a shy giggle when she's attracted to someone. She also plays with a lock of her hair when nervous or flirting, though her expression will usually reveal if she's nervous. Being shy however, flirting tends to make her nervous.
She's a little OCD about funny things like light switches - Given a 3-way switch, she wants them both up, or both down. Eating M&M's, she'll sort them by color, then eat them. Given a handful of peanuts, she'll eat the peanut halves first, then the whole peanuts. The list goes on...
Rivka tries to keep Kosher, but has found it harder to do so since coming to the US. Still, she makes a real effort, and won't deliberately violate the rules. She's more flexible than what some would call ultra-orthodox, and doesn't insist on two sets of plates and such.
Because she's shy and conservative in many things, people often underestimate her sense of humor. She actually loves practical jokes, and if pranked, she won't get mad - she'll get even. Mess with someone who can completely fill your dorm room with bubbles at your own peril.
While she may be timid around people, Rivka is actually an adrenaline junkie outside of social settings. She loves roller-coasters and going fast by whatever means. Cars, motorcycles, airplanes, zip lines – she’s willing to try most anything. It's one of the reasons why she loves ultralights. She's especially fond of open cockpits and motorbikes.
Hobbies/ Interests: Flying, Anime, Reading, Friends
Job or part time job and description: None currently.
Fears/ phobias/ concerns: Rivka worries about her country, and the possibility of another war. Whenever there's a missile attack, she's concerned for the safety of those she knows back in her home country.
Rivka is slowly coming to terms with the fact that, while she's attracted to boys, she can't help but find some girls attractive too. This runs counter to a lifetime of religious upbringing, and twists her stomach in knots every time it happens or she just stops to ponder it.
Special talents:
Language:. Rivka picks up languages very easily, and had the opportunity to do so in her multi-ethnic home country. She's fluent in Hebrew and good at Arabic, which are both used extensively in Israel. Her English is usually understandable, but comes out very clipped and her phrasing can be rather interesting. English is a mandatory class in Israeli schools; she wishes she’s worked harder there now. She knows a smattering of Russian – mostly things like Please and Thank you and ‘pass the potatoes’. She picked up the Russian because her best friend (Tamar) is the child of Russian emigrants to Israel. She can't read or write any Russian.
Flying: Rivka has a little experience as an ultralight pilot, under her father’s tutelage. She has never soloed, nor has she flown anything bigger, and is not familiar with the complex avionics in high-performance aircraft. But she'd love a chance to learn about them. She could probably land an ultralight in a pinch, but it would likely only count as a ‘good’ landing. That is, one you walk away from…
Weekend Mechanic: She's an adept assistant with tools, and helped her father assemble a new ultralight he had purchased, as well as assisting older friends work on their scooters. She's just young enough that she missed the window of being able to use an electric scooter in Israel herself. She probably thinks she’s better at this than she really is – she is a teen after all.
Dance: Rivka likes to do dancing in the shul, and Israeli folk dancing. It isn't anything fancy, but she is quite graceful at it. She'll happily teach anyone who cares to learn.
Morality
Good/ bad/ neutral/ other: Good - Rivka was raised in an Orthodox Jewish home, and follows her religion closely. She tries to apply Torah to everything she does, to the best of her understanding. It would take a lot to get her to deviate from those principles.
Mutations
Mutation description:
Bubblepathy: Rivka is able take over bubbles and control them for various purposes. She usually uses children's soap bubbles, but most any liquid-based bubble will do in a pinch. She has two levels of bubbles; Basic or Enhanced. A basic bubble she takes control of will last 5 minutes before popping, unless she further enhances it. For the sake of clarity and my sanity, I use a fatigue system of 0 to 10 to track Power costs, where 10 is ‘can barely walk’, falling-down tired.
Unfortunately, at this time she has to have a bottle of bubbles to make use of her power – she cannot generate them on her own. She can also use ‘found’ bubbles – car washes, dish tubs and such. She once robbed her betta fish of a couple of bubbles from his nest!
A bubble she controls looks slightly more shiny than the average soap bubble. The difference is subtle, but noticeable if you’ve seen it. Capture bubbles have a blue shine to them that makes them distinctive.
"Basic" bubble uses & abilities: She can move a bubble she controls up or down and make it float in a direction of her choosing. She can also resize it from miniscule (a couple of millimeters) up to giant size (4 meters). They move at up to 15 mph. Her maximum range is dictated by how far she can maintain visual contact. A tiny bubble might be 10 or 20 meters, a really big bubble could be hundreds of meters or more. Basic bubbles are very durable - relative to a plain soap bubble at least. Touching them won't pop them for instance. However, deliberately trying to pop one with a knife, stick, bullet or whatever will pop them immediately. She can control a maximum of five bubbles at once, but making them all do different things is akin to patting your head and rubbing your tummy - not impossible, but not easy either. Moving them as a herd or just letting them drift on the wind is much simpler. Basic bubbles are useful for Bubble Jump.
Bubble Jump: - Rivka can jump into, or out of, any bubble she controls, or from one to another. Basic bubbles are good for this, though this is best done when they're close to the ground, as jumping out is just like jumping off of something. The bubble grows to accommodate her. NOTE! She can bubble jump into a capture/protection bubble, but not out. She is trapped inside of it until it dissipates, just like anyone else. By holding hands, she can take someone with her, if they’re adventurous…
She can further enhance bubbles for specific tasks.
Bubble wall: – the exception to the “5 bubble” rule. She can create a mass of bubbles that stick together. They can slow or halt movement, though they are a poor defense against bullets or similar. Imagine individual bubble-wrap bubbles, stuck together with the worse static cling imaginable. Fill a room or hallway with them. Now try to walk through it… Good luck with that. While they can be used stand-alone, the bubble wall works best in a confined space. 1 pt of fatigue per 10’^3 area x hours.
Capture/Protection: – A very strong bubble, which can be used to trap opponents. To use, she must move the bubble to touch her target, which is immediately enveloped and trapped. Note! It will trap the first thing it touches – friend or foe, sentient or animal. In theory, it could trap an object, if it is small enough.
The bubble is extremely tough and flexible, and can take a beating without breaking. It would take a character with strength in the 5 ton (or greater) range to punch through by brute force. Blades can be used to cut out of (or into) the bubble, but it is akin to hacking through the thick rubber conveyor belts used for mining, and takes time to do.
The bubble doesn’t just keep something in, but also keeps stuff out. As such, it can be used for protection from bullets and other attacks. Unfortunately, for that to work, someone has to be inside the bubble. One could, in theory, hide behind a bubble for cover which already contains someone.
It costs her a point of fatigue to create a capture bubble that lasts up to an hour and would hold up to a large human. Giant-sized bubbles (up to 4 meters) cost double. A person sized bubble can grow to envelop something giant-sized (up to its max) but the extra fatigue is sucked out of her immediately! She can have it last less than an hour, but the cost is the same and she has to decide how long it will last at creation (like setting a timer). Each additional hour costs another point of fatigue at creation, and she cannot change the time once set.
Transport: – essentially a slightly tougher, longer-lasting Basic bubble, the transport bubble lasts an hour or more. She (and a guest, if they’re friendly) can sail along, up in the air, in a transport bubble at up to 15 mph, unfazed by lakes, rivers, or hordes of hungry mosquitoes. The transport bubble has about the same durability as a car windshield. It’ll protect against wind, rain, and even hail if it isn’t too large, but not against bullets or phased pulse cannons. They are gas permeable so oxygen isn’t a problem unless altitude gets extreme. But do you really want to go to 30,000’ in a soap bubble? A bubble that lasts up to an hour costs her a point of fatigue. Unlike the Capture bubble, she can choose to extend that time at the expense of additional fatigue. She can Bubble Jump in and out of a transport bubble at will or simply make it dissipate. Getting out is like getting out of a car or airplane; you want to be close to the ground when you do it, or have a plan if you’re not!
Weaknesses and Limitations:
Beyond the cost in fatigue, her Bubbles do have some other interesting limitations...
Wind: While she can move a bubble at up to 15 mph in still air, a headwind will take away from this. A tailwind will increase it. A crosswind plays havoc with her attempts to make a bubble go exactly where she wants it and often cuts into the top speed (unless it's a quartering tailwind).
Up or Down drafts: Like wind, these mess with moving a bubble where she wants. A strong draft in either direction may be able to overpower her ability to make the bubble rise or fall.
Not immune: Rivka isn't immune to her own Capture bubbles! If someone can blow it back into her, it'll grab her! Ditto teammates, civilians, neighborhood dogs... it'll catch the first critter it contacts. Think of it as a floating grenade. While she can use them for protection, she’s stuck in there until it dissipates at the end of its set time.
Capturing a Giant target by accident If she accidently captures a giant target with a capture bubble intended for something normal sized, she immediately loses fatigue equal to the original bubble cost. Depending on how tired she already was and the cost, this may have some bad side effects, like knocking her out.
Physical Abilities
General Physical Capabilities: Rivka is a pretty average teenage girl. She likes to go running, so she has good speed and stamina, but nothing exceptional. Because she does martial arts training regularly, she's fairly strong for her size, but being quite petite, she's not strong compared to large people.
Fighting Style: Krav Maga (see History)
Fighting Style Pros/Cons: Krav Maga was designed to end a fight quickly, but Rivka tends to hesitate due to her desire not to hurt anyone and fear that she might injury someone badly. Her skill level would be about equal to a green or brown belt in karate. Good enough to be useful, but not a master by any means.
History Of Your Character
Rivka is the daughter of Major Moshe Katzin and Liam Katzin. Her mother died in a traffic accident when she was young. Major Katzin never remarried, but focused his available time and attention on his daughter. Her father is a career IDF officer, who most recently was assigned to the Israeli Embassy in New York in charge of security. He was a fighter pilot, but after moving away from front-line roles, he took up ultralight flying, much to the delight of his daughter, who was still quite young. Flying has been a hobby that they've shared ever since then, and one that Rivka loves. She had begun to learning to pilot her father’s ultralight, under his teaching, before they moved from Israel.
Rivka's father insisted on teaching her self-defense from the time she was about 7. She's really not that found of it, particularly since he insists on krav maga. She'd be more interested in kick boxing, with it's more elegant kicks, but her father is not one to be argued with. He could never quite wrap his head around the fact that his style, with his greater strength, particularly in his upper body, didn't necessarily transfer that well to his much shorter, lighter daughter. All the same, she fairly good, if only to make her father happy. That said, she's only 47 kilos (soaking wet), so she won't be standing toe-to-toe with a UFC champ anytime soon. She did compete in one tournament, where she placed third in her weight class. Just don’t ask how many were competing.
She happened into her mutation quite by accident. She had bought a bottle of bubbles on a whim, and was on the balcony of their apartment blowing them. She watched one float away over the complex pool, and absently wished she could float around with it. The next thing she new, she was in the bubble! Wishing (thinking) she didn't want to be got her back out - about 3 meters in the air, but still over the pool luckily. No one happened to be in the pool at the time, so she slunk back up to her apartment, dripping and totally bewildered by what had happened.
Rivka told her father, who quickly figured out what was going on. Knowing how mutants are received in the world, Rivka's father swore her to secrecy. Still, teens will be teens, and a couple of her friends are aware of her special 'talent'. Shortly after finding out about her power, Rivka moved to Washington, when her father was assigned as head of security to the Israeli embassy there. While she likes the adventure of seeing new things, she's very homesick for her friends in Israel. It's hard to stay in touch with the time difference.
After arriving in the United States, her father found out about a "special" school through contacts, and arranged for his daughter to attend there. The school, being in New York is close enough that he can arrange for his daughter to visit Washington when needed. She is, however, not under foot while he attends to his duties at the embassy.
Roleplay
What’s your OOC alias?: Nim
Where did you learn about this site?: N/A
Do you have any other characters on MRO, if so who: Claire Lockerby - Scissors
Sample RP:
"Okay, what was so important that you couldn't tell me in a text?" Tamar asked Rivka, after she'd been let into Rivka's apartment. She was showing a playful annoyance with her best friend, who said she needed to talk to her, but couldn't do it over the phone.
"Um, well" Rivka stammered, not sure how to begin. The expression of worry and stress was immediately apparent to Tamar, who quit joking around and became immediately supportive. Her first thought was that something had happened to Rivka's father.
"Rivka, what is it?" she asked, putting her hands on the smaller girls shoulders. Tamar stood a good half-head taller, with light-brown hair and deep brown eyes that seemed to drive boys wild. She never wanted for suitors, whereas shy Rivka hadn't been on a date. Technically, she'd been asked out once, but her father, Major Katzin, had scared the boy off.
"I, ah, I found out something about myself. Something you may not like" she confessed, looking down. She glanced up to an encouraging 'go on' expression on Tamar's face. She took a deep breath, and then blurted it out, eager to just be done with it. "I'm a mutant Tamar" she said, her eyes beginning to fill with tears. It wasn't being a mutant and having a weird ability that frightened her, so much as the fear of losing her friend. But they'd never held anything back from each other, and she felt that Tamar deserved to know. Tamar's eyebrows rose in surprise at this announcement. Rivka? Petite little Rivka? A mutant?!?
"So...how? Or what or, I do not know how to ask. How do you know?" the taller girl inquired. After all, maybe it was a mistake, and Rivka was freaking out over nothing.
"Is easier to show you" Rivka said. She'd been experimenting since the Pool incident, and now had a little control over her bubbles. She led Tamar onto the balcony, and picked up the bottle of bubbles. Tamar was obviously trying not to laugh as Rivka blew a few bubbles. "Now watch" she said, as they began to drift away on the breeze. She made two of them come back, and hover between them. "Go ahead. Touch it. It won't pop" she stated, nodding at the bubbles.
Tamar cautiously touched the bubble, expecting it to burst despite Rivka's assurance that it wouldn't. True to her word however, it moved away but didn't burst.
"You control... bubbles" Tamar stated flatly.
Rivka nodded solemnly as she began to weep, her tears rolling down her face as if she'd confessed to being a fire-breathing dragon who now craved virgin flesh.
Tamar wrapped her arms around Rivka, pulling her into a hug. "Rivka... only you would wind up as a bubble mutant" she said, making no attempt to keep the bemused tone out of her voice. It said all that needed to be said - she wasn't worried about her best friend being a 'mutant'.
Edit history:
2-15-19 Updated Age to 16
