Shyft
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Shyft | |
| Player: @Shyft | |
| Origin: | Science |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Controller |
| Security Level: | 50 (8/22/09) |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Dr. Cerenje Wolkoff |
| Known Aliases: | CeCe (to her friends) |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 38 |
| Height: | 5' 5" |
| Weight: | Several Thousand Metric Tons |
| Eye Color: | Crystal Blue |
| Hair Color: | Platinum Blonde |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Russian |
| Occupation: | Astrophysicist |
| Place of Birth: | Kiev, Ukraine S.S.R. |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City, RI (with a penthouse in Galaxy City) |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None |
| Known Powers | |
| Gravity and Kinetic Manipulation | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Undocumented | |
| Equipment | |
| None | |
| This is the Virtue reflection of Shyft, and may or may not be how she exists in other universes. | |
Shyft is the heroic persona of Dr. Cerenje Wolkoff, an ex-Soviet scientist who emigrated to the U.S. in the early 90's when the Soviet Union fell apart. She is a brilliant scientist, and holds doctorates in several fields including mathematics, physics and mechanical engineering. Her research and inventions have garnered her many accolades, including a Nobel Prize in physics. Residuals from her patents and inventions afford her a lavish lifestyle.
Contents |
Biography
The Early Years
Cerenje Wolkoff was one of the best and brightest minds to come out of the Kiev Collective Science and Technical Academy. Years ahead of her peers, the Kremlin gave her access to as much world-class education as she could soak up. When she expressed a desire to work in the Soviet Space Agency, she was exposed to as much aerospace and astrophysics information as she could drink in.
By the time she was a teenager her mind surpassed any of SSA's expectations, so Cerenje was sent to study at other world-renowned places of education in the west, including MIT, Sorbonne and Oxford
For her doctorate thesis, she focused on artificial gravity, and proposed the use of gravitational field shifts as a means of propulsion in space borne craft. Many of her western peers laughed these ideas down, calling her concept of controllable and modulated gravity fields "outrageous".
The Move to the West
It was the spring of 1991, and the Soviet Union was in turmoil. Her "handler" and the agency that tended to her needs and education were eliminated. A 20-year-old Cerenje found herself back in her homeland; humiliated and laughed at by the scientific community, too young and impetuous to work in teaching, and no state agency position waiting for her genius.
As luck would have it, Gerald Boyle, an eccentric philanthropist and distant relative of Robert Goddard read her thesis, and brought her back to the States in 1994. His dreams of interstellar flight and faster than light travel was possible, were she able to continue her thesis to its practical development. He turned one of his research and development "think tanks" over to her control, and granted her a massive budget, supported by several scientific foundations and a few government grants.
With as many eyes as were on her, results were expected. Gerald made it clear he believed in her, but she would need to produce something spectacular quickly to keep the money flowing.
Within one year, her team developed a method of creating a small, controlled, anti gravity bubble. The team she led won a Nobel prize in physics, and the field was further developed, eventually replacing the primary suspension used on many monorails, as it provided a safer and smoother ride, allowing higher speeds of transport, as well as being more energy efficient.
Gerald Boyle was heralded as "The Common Man of Science" for his actions in funding and furthering these sort of scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, his fame was short lived.
Crey Takes Over
In early 1997, Gerald Boyle was in a horrible car wreck, and was pronounced dead at the scene. Investigators could not determine the cause of the crash, and the final cause was simply listed as "mechanical failure". As his heirs squabbled about his assets, the Crey Corporation swooped in and bought most of his research facilities for more than anyone had imagined they were worth. The Countess made it clear that she fully supported all of the ongoing projects, and simply wished them to continue.
Five years passed, and Cerenje's project continued on. Mathematical and scientific theory showed that her idea was possible, but the amount of controlled gravity needed was nearly immeasurable. She went to the Baroness herself with her idea. They would need far more money and facilities than they had, but Cerneje had developed a theoretical means of creating what she called “a pinpoint singularity”. Her research had already developed a small efficient field generation that could completely nullify gravity in an area. Using enough fields with enough power, she could cause a gravity influx and create an artificial black hole, no bigger than the head of pin. That would give them the power they needed and hurdle humanity to the stars. As long as the field stood around the singularity, one could come within inches of it and not know what they were looking at.
The Countess quickly agreed, and development began. As 2003 came to a close, Cerenje stood at the brink of the greatest achievement in her life.
But it was not to be.
The Lie Discovered
Sergei, her former “handler” had been one of the KGB’s best field agents, and with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, he found himself out of work. Crey’s European division picked him up as a security specialist, and paid him well for it. When he learned that Cerenje was part of the company, he kept tabs on her. He may not of been her handler any longer, but as he had watched over her for fifteen years, he thought of her as a surrogate daughter.
She entered her office, shocked to find him there. He hugged her, and handed Cerenje a folder. Not a word was spoken as she read the file. Crey had lied to her from the beginning. Crey had modified her antigravity projects into weapons. Her gravity suspension coil was the base propulsion unit for a new particle cannon. Restraining devices, capable of holding the strongest superheroes had been reverse engineered from a monorail hoverplate. But the worst was the two final documents in the file.
The first was the report from a field agent that had successfully used a gravity based propulsion weapon in the field. His target: Gerald Boyle.
The second was an interoffice memo that outlined Cerneje’s “dismissal”. Crey believed she had finished with the artificial black hole and was simply stalling. Other engineers were waiting to get their hands on her prototype. The motivation was clear. They were not going to use the singularity as a means of space travel, but had outlined how they believed it could be harnessed as an unstoppable weapon, that could be used to humble a nation.
Turning on her heel, she stormed into her lab, Sergei at her side. She quickly erased all data on the labs computers, and began to pile up all hard copies and recorded media as Sergei poured lighter fluid on it. As it burned, she put one of the nullgrav devices the engineers wore when working in the field center. The fields were not fully active, but they were still strong enough to cause adverse physical effects. She would need to enter the field center and destroy all of the alignment settings as well as the plutonium control matrix that would be the source of mass that would become the singularity. Sergei’s eyes narrowed as the building alarms blew.
Tears streaked down her face as Sergei fell. He had held the Crey operatives off long enough for her to enter the matrix. She would die with him, but not before she rendered the entirety of her work worthless to them.
Cerenje looked up, surveying her laboratory one last time. Fifteen years of work stood before her. As she looked up to the control booth, the source of her pain, the mastermind of her anguish stood at the master board. The Countess.
The fields went live and the whole room began to shudder with power. The Countess had activated the device. The additional mass of Cerenje would be a miniscule change to the calculations, and would have no real effect on the outcome.
Or so she thought.
The Birth of a Living Star
Cerneje felt her hair stand on end as the fluctuating graviton fields crashed against the field her nullgrav belt made. She stood in awe as the plutonium matrix hovered to eye level for a moment then collapsed in upon itself, winking out of sight, and began to form a small but growing pinprick of absolute blackness. A broad smile crossed Cerenje’s face. As a scientist, she had just seen her dream come true. She had seen the birth of a black hole. Suddenly the control alarms began to ring. She could not hear them over the hum of the fields, but the red and amber alert lights were plain to see. As the rest of the staff panics and began to rush from the control room, Cerenje looked up in time to see the countess sneer in disproval before her guard ushered her out of the room.
From the gauges she could see, the fields were not stable, the flux of the black hole was not constant. Something was interfering with it, and it threatened to take the entire containment system down. Cerenje’s mind began to race. If the fields fell, the singularity would be unleashed, uncontained. The destruction would be catastrophic, even if the singularity was only the size of a single molecular chain. As the field shifted, the platform the matrix had been on was sucked into the marble sized growing black ball. The nullbelt would keep her safe but…
The nullbelt! That was what was causing the fluctuation. She acted as a barrier in the middle of the fields, making them uneven. She quickly did the math and realized she had only a few minutes to figure out a solution. She could leave the fields, and everything would stabilize, but then Crey would have their super-weapon. If she did not take the nullbelt out of the field, it would bring the entire system down, and leave a wake of destruction that would make an atomic bomb look like a firecracker. Her only other option was to somehow nullify or destroy the singularity.
Her mind raced, doing calculations over and over in her head. The nullbelt could, in theory, contain the singularity, but if she removed belt, the fluctuating fields around her would instantly kill her. If though, the belt worked as designed, the belt could contain the singularity, if she drew it in. Although the idea of it being on the same side of the barrier to her meant she would be instantly crushed into a hole the size of a molecule, just like the pedestal was. Or did it? Would drawing the singularity into the field immediately cause the gravitic adhesion to fall apart, forcing the black hole to discorporate into its component parts? She had little time to work out the numbers. For the first time in her life, she would simply have to guess.
She stepped forward, into the singularity. For a brief moment she felt a searing pain on her forehead, like a drill boring its way in. She felt a small trickle of blood run down her face. Her eyes grew wide as the world turned white, then black. The sound of rushing water throbbed in her ears and patterns of stars mixed with atoms, as the universe danced through her vision.
Cerenje opened her eyes, looking up at a firefighter. He was helping her to her feet. Firemen, policemen, national guardsmen, Hero Corp agents littered the surrounding area, looking through what little rubble there was. As she gathered herself, and got her bearings she realized she at the epicenter of a crater, no less than a half mile across. Unlike an impact crater or an explosion, there was no smoke, no debris. It had been an implosion, not an explosion.
The authorities had questions, but she no answers. All she had done, all she had worked for was gone, without trace. None of it made any sense. Her head throbbed and she couldn’t think straight. As the first few Crey Security agents arrived on sight, they pushed their way past the police to take Cerneje into custody. As the lead man grabbed her arm, she pulled away and instinctively threw her hand up in defense. What happened was not expected.
A large mass of twisted rebar and concrete ripped itself from the ground and impacted the agent, knocking him cold and sending him flying. When a group of them drew their weapons, she held out her hands, and watched as alternating gravity fields held them still, like a fly trapped in amber. As more agents exited the Crey hovercraft she turned to run, and felt the ground ripple as she sped across it, nearly breaking the sound barrier. In the blink of an eye, she had run nearly a mile. A smile grew across her face. The nullbelt had worked, but not as she expected. There was no way to explain it, but somehow the belt merged her with the black hole, and gave her mental control over the massive gravitic fields and stellar energies the pinpoint singularity contained. She was a living gravity well.
Taking a few years for herself, to rediscover who she was, and what she was about, CeCe became a minor celebrity, hobnobbing with high society and the idle rich in Europe and New York before realizing as much as she loved the glitz and the glamour, she needed to return to doing something that mattered.
Returning to Paragon City to take up a lead research position with the Portal Corporation, she learned that she was barred from working as a research scientist, consultant or engineer for anyone other than Crey, due to a non-competition clause in her contract until 2017. Angered and enraged at Crey's meddling and manipulation of her life, CeCe adopted a costume and took the name Shyft, in honor of the shifting gravity fields that had given her the powers she now commanded. Her newfound power in hand, she took aim at Crey. Wherever they went, so did she. Wherever they built up, she went to tear them down. Where they went to grow, she went to weed them out. This was a war and she would see Crey destroyed, no matter the cost.
Affiliations
The New Regulators
Funded by wealthy lawyer and real estate magnate Victor Mason, The New Regulators were organized by Gaia's Soldier as a group of heroes dedicated to keeping the streets safe. CeCe acts as their chief science and logistics adviser, as well as one of the heroes on their roster.
Personality Profile
General
Shyft is a very deep person, complex and many-faceted. She often switches gears at a moment's notice and the change is striking.
Dr. Wolkoff - The Scientist
Cerenje is a world class intellect, with a complex and diverse base of expertise. Whether talking theoretical physics with Stephen Hawking, mathematics and computer science with Larry Page or nanotechnology and aerospace engineering with Ave Kludze, she finds herself on equal footing.
Born with the gift of eidetic memory and the ability to do complex mathematics in her head faster than most calculators, She spent most of the first twenty years of her life being force-fed as much education as she wanted in dozens of fields.
Because of her ability to mentally multitask and crosstask, the Soviet regime encouraged her radical approaches to problems and conceptual work. In later life, this lead to her prolific catalogue of inventions and patents. Several publications have likened her to a 21st Century Edison.
When at work, she becomes exceedingly focused, to the point of tuning out the world around her. She can be very single minded, and will often snap or bark responses to assistants or co-workers who interrupt or break her train of thought. Although very apologetic afterwards, she is also quick to acknowledge that this is a character trait she will never try to change, as she considers being "in her zone" to be the producer of her best work.
She is quick to assume leadership and control of a research or engineering project, but also makes very certain that everyone involved, even if only in a minor capacity, gets due credit.
When working on a problem that has an immediate need or solution, she expects anyone involved to give it the same amount of effort she puts forth, and has no use for slackers or half hearted work.
CeCe - The Person
Cerenje was raised in very strict surroundings, with little chance for expression outside of indulging her educational desires. With the non-compete clause in her Crey contract and her absolute disdain for teaching work, CeCe has found herself in a very new situation: Nothing but free time.
With her patents and residuals providing her a vast fortune, she has taken the opportunity in her life to experience the comforted side of life. She has become something of a minor celebrity in the French Riviera, Monaco and around the Mediterranean. She has also taken to high society in New York and Los Angeles.
After years of repression and studiousness, she has "cut loose" and become something of a hedonist. She has been described by people who know her as "affectionate" and "touchy-feely". She thinks nothing of greeting a new acquaintance with a hug rather than a handshake, and old friends with a kiss on the cheek and a lingering embrace.
She has fully embraced the super hero lifestyle and her costumes tend to be very striking. sleek or almost negligible in what they cover.
Shyft - The Hero
Shyft is very direct in the way she deals with criminals. Take them down, lock them up, move on to the next need. She makes no bones about her open disdain for criminals and will often taunt them verbally as waves of gravitic force bear down on them.
She makes little discrimination between common criminal organizations, gangs or organized militant forces. The only exception is Crey. She will thwart them at any opportunity, and doesn't mind going out of her way to prolong their suffering or maximize property damage to increase the costs to Crey. This tendency was noticed early on by Victor Mason, who made it a point to recruit her for The New Regulators
Personal Morals and Convictions
Cerenje is first and foremost a research scientist. If she can learn something from a situation, she will. She has a deep sense of procedural and research ethics, and does her best to apply them to the way she acts as a super hero.
Agents of Crey do not always receive her ethical side. She is not a murderer, or a sadist, but she does make it clear that their working for Crey is the reason they are getting "extra attention" from her. In her private life, CeCe is a hedonist. Fine wines, rich foods, sensual clothing and living space, art, music and opulence are needs rather than luxuries.
Because of her clinical approach to understanding the world, she is truly without prejudice, be it due to nationality, color, gender, sexual orientation, religion or anything else. People are people. She is an apathetic agnostic atheist: she does not believe in God, but doesn't make a lot of noise about it. If someone could show her actual proof of deific existence, she would believe it. Theoretical mathematics count.
Awakening
Private experimentation early on lead CeCe to believe the pinpoint singularity actually sustains her body, and that she may be functionally immortal. She does not appear any older than she was the day of the accident, which was six years ago. She has no need to sleep and often spends evenings in research. Although she enjoys food and drink, she does not need to eat, nor does she excrete any sort of waste. Even though hard physical contact hurts as if she was normal, she does not bruise or bleed. Cuts sparkle for a brief moment then instantly close. She can be pummeled to unconsciousness, but her awakening seems to be more of a matter of will or consciousness rather than actual medical treatment.
Powers
Shyft's powers are variations and manipulations of the gravitic forces of the pinpoint singularity she merged with. This can be anything from increasing gravity on a foe by a dozen degrees, to reducing her own gravity to nearly nothing allowing her to leap over buildings. She has learned how to "turn" gravity 90 degrees, allowing her to run exceedingly fast.
On a smaller scale, she has learned how to stretch her event horizon allowing her to dilate time for herself. She finds this exhausting to do, but can use this dilation to do things such as move at speeds that near the speed of sound, and combine with her eidetic memory to read a book in seconds.
