Cerebella

"Keep the change."

-Cerebella

Summary
Character Sheet

Character Sheet (depowered)

Cerebella is a well-known hero and operative in MERIT. Real name Kaera Lohklann, born 1923 (month unknown). She is 5' 9" with unknown weight. Kaera is not normally seen in civilian clothing. Her original hero outfit consisted of a gas mask that attached to a short black hood that covered most of her head and standard MERIT operative gear that consisted of kevlar and a leather set. Her new costume has changed along with her appearance. She has shoulder-length jet black hair with green eyes. Her pale skin contrasts her dark outfit of a leather trench coat that covers her kevlar combat shirt and military black pants. Her shoes are also lightweight combat shoes that MERIT operatives often have. Her face is covered by a sharp, sleek mast with a pattern across the front that resembles exaggerated teeth and wraps around to the side of her head overlaying her ears, giving them a pointed appearance.

While channeling her psionic energy, Kaera has glowing bright blue eyes.

She is an A-class psionic meta-human whose abilities include teleportation, telepathy, psionic attacks on the mind, barrier creation, and extreme mental resistance to other psionic users. She also is capable of psionic suggestion and can deflect projectiles with her barrier. Pivotal in MERIT's rise to its modern age, Kaera is a valued member of the organization and the hero community on her achievements as an operative. These achievements have granted her a high position within MERIT. Though not the easiest person to work with, she is capable of carrying out solo operations as well as group operations if need be. Her intuitive thinking has let her defeat S-class opponents and has earned her a reputation of being rude, ruthless, but capable.

Intense training in MERIT as a field agent has increased her skill set to include advanced knowledge on computers and security, as well as piloting and escapology. She is trained in acting, sleight of hand, deception (both identifying and performing), disguises, and occultism. It has also increased her accuracy with her abilities, having trained to more efficiently use them in combat.

After the reopening of the Ley Lines of Earth, Kaera has increased her mental capacity and added a small form of telekinesis to her abilities, as well as her ability to focus her psionic energy into a single object, causing it to accelerate at incredible speeds. Additionally, she may emit occasional blue streaks of psionic energy when using her powers, as side affect of the instability introduced with the Ley Line event.

The addition of Paradox's unknown drug has given Kaera the ability to overload a given power, but at great cost to her own physical and mental well-being.

Due to traumatic events in her childhoood, Kaera is pyrophobic, and quickly loses concentration and reasoning when confronted with fire. Like most psionics and magic users, she is incapable of interacting with carbodanium, and suffers from loss of focus when she inhales nitrous oxide. Additionally, she has a psychological and physiological need for cocaine due to her early days of being trained to use psionic powers with cocaine as a catalyst.

Following her true return to life and this timeline, she has sworn off the use of cocaine and does not exhibit any psionic abilities, nor does she show any signs of the Paradox drug in her system. Despite her complete lack of powers, her prior knowledge and training makes a formidable opponent.

Teleportation
Kaera can teleport 50 squares with ease and with concentration, can send herself thousands of miles. She is capable of teleporting others and objects, even those who are unwilling, thanks to her fast reflexes.

Force Field
Kaera can project a psionic force field to block physical hits, and can even lock out elements such as oxygen and other gasses if she so chooses. This powerful barrier can be sculpted into different shapes, such as a slide or a boxing glove for Silverback's powered up form. She is also known for trapping people within a force field and using it offensively.

Danger Sense
Her training combined with her natural psychic ability lets her react to attacks and changes in battle much faster. She also is no stranger to mental attacks and invisible opponents, as well as capable of dealing with the loss of her senses.

Mind Spikes (Mind Blast)
Perhaps her signature ability as Cerebella, Kaera focuses her psionic energy to invade the mind of her opponent. Her victim is subjected to flashes of imagery from their own memory at random (or whatever Kaera chooses) as their mind is assaulted. Training has enhanced her ability to inflict massive damage by making direct eye contact. As a talented psychic, she does not need to concentrate to use this ability.

Mind Shield
Years of preparation on top of MERIT's training has given Kaera an extreme resistance to mental assault.

Railgun
Kaera's new ability post Ley-Line Event, she focuses her psionic energies into a single object, hurling it at incredible speeds towards a target. Common metals such as coins conduct her psionic energy best, as well as do not shatter when charging up. Attempts with wood or some stones usually cause the object to shatter, and she has trouble using her barrier to act as a conduit.

Deflect
Projectiles that fail to hit can sometimes be deflected and sent towards the attacker. Kaera cannot deflect explosions or burst-type attacks. She uses part of her force field to deflect projectiles rather than telekinesis.

Telekinesis
Though most metas with telekinesis use their ability for offense, Kaera's telekinesis is almost exclusively used on a smaller scale, such as floating objects out of convenience, or maneuvering smaller items in combat. This is also a relatively new ability as it was granted post Ley-Line event.

Telepath
Telepaths are invaluable in interrogation and espionage, and Kaera is no exception. She is a very powerful telepath and uses this for information gathering, as well as linking her team psychically in order to have a secure communication line. She is also known to use this to interrogate others, as well as communicate more effectively while wearing a mask.

Suggestion
Suggestion is a psionic abilty that refers to the superhuman ability to suggest commands and compel weaker minds to follow a specific order. Adrenaline and increased heart rate easily cause this ability to fizzle in the first place. Kaera has made use of this ability before combat to avoid conflicts entirely.

Training
Due to MERIT's training, as well as through other teachers, Kaera has focused her skills as a psychic to a much more refined level. Additionally, she has learned to locate and abuse a target's weak point using her incredible accuracy, whether it be from a mind blast, a railgun shot, or even a martial attack.

She is also exceptional at hacking computers and is one of MERIT's top scoring agents in the field of deception, disguse, and interrogation. Several training regimens are modeled after her field work. She is also proficient in legends in the occult, and is very skilled at disabling alarms and cameras within security systems.

Through MERIT, she has also learned to improvise escape methods without meta abilities, can pilot most aircraft at a professional level, and palm and plant items with ease, even before her telekinetic abilities came into play.

Finally, she is a capable actress, utilized mostly in field activities and relating to the public. She has the capability of acting for television programs and movies, but has vehemently refused to do so. Between her ability to psychically suggest, acting prowess, and the ability to deceive with ease, she is capable of charming others when necessary, though she would rather use more subtle approaches.

Having been a veteran of many battles and hardships, Kaera is a quick thinker and intuitively uses her powers while in combat, opting to use more efficient methods of dispatch. Her mental training on top of her personality gives her an iron will and most psionics will find her too much to handle, especially in a one-on-one situation. This has led her to be one of MERIT's most exceptional interrogators.

Limitations
Due to severe childhood trauma, Kaera suffers from pyrophobia. Most of her abilities with the exception of her suggestion do not work while fire is nearby. Additionally, she has a dependency on cocaine on both a physical and mental level, due to her upbringing using cocaine to focus her powers. Without a minimal level of cocaine in her system she is not able to use her meta-human abilities.

Like most psychics, carbodanium resists her psionic waves and is harmful in her bloodstream. Nitrous oxide also harms her ability to concentrate on her mental abilities.

While Kaera has severe limitations, she chooses to remain a field operative, and is allowed a daily amount of cocaine in field operations, which she has been able to manage.

Finally, she has some very prominent scarring on her cheeks from various knife wounds as well as some scarring on her lips. Due to her ability to disguise herself, she is able to hide this except at very close distances.

Equipment
As Cerebella, Kaera is known for wearing a gas mask or a variant of a face mask most of the time, hiding her scarring. Her original mask also had a cocaine dispensary system where she could more subtly fuel her habits. Additionally, it helped prevent any type of weaponized gas such as nitrous oxide.

Unknown Paradox Drug
Due to Kaera missing during the summer of 1949, she was captured and presumably experimented on by Paradox. This drug is only known in the hero community as the unknown Paradox drug, and on the street as Azure. Its composition includes meta-human DNA, although the owner of the DNA remains unkown. This glowing blue drug is used by meta-humans to enhance their powers or by regular humans to instantly manifest powers, but at a great cost to their well being. Due to Kaera missing and being experimented on, she has a permanent strain of this drug within her body, allowing her to access its ability at will. In addition to its regular side effects, Kaera has permanent side effects within her body, such as even brighter uncontrollable glowing blue eyes, physical manifestations of psionic energy in blue streaks, and an overall reduction in stamina.

Trivia

 * Kaera's first hero name was Pixie. She grew annoyed by the name assigned to her and chose Neurotica, but was told by PR that it was not well-received. After a few more tries, she settled on Cerebella.
 * Despite Kaera being blunt with her peers, she is a fairly well-known and liked hero among civilians.
 * She frequents Sal's Bar and uses the location as a meeting place. Her spot is the far end of the bar on the north wall --something that Sal makes sure is always open with one seat in between her's and the next seat over.
 * Despite her success holding her own with powerful telepaths and psionics, she has stated that Tigerman is one of the most difficult minds to read.
 * She has one of the highest level of security clearances within MERIT, but has frequently been lectured on breaking their security due to her forgetting her credentials.
 * She has taught a few classes within MERIT.
 * A first year student once tried to hit on her, and has since resigned.
 * When wearing a mask, she rarely takes it off even to eat or drink, instead opting to teleport the contents into her mouth. When asked about why she does not teleport it into her stomach, she simply stated "No, that's weird."
 * She has trained with Tigerman in CQC.
 * Investors in merchandising tried to assign Cerebella a "super vehicle". The idea has since passed.
 * She holds an odd record within MERIT, for "longest aerial interrogation".