FAMILY: Biological family unknown, Shepherd Boschelli (adopted father), Milo Thurman (husband, deceased) RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Widowed, but currently single SEXUALITY: Heterosexual OCCUPATION: Rebel covert operative, gun for hire, underground cage fighter
RESIDENCE: Lady Luck (ship)
LIKES: guns, sex, knives, fighting, winning, truly awful dance music, justifiable homicide, butts. DISLIKES: live chickens, bullies, armor piercing rounds piercing her armor, cilantro, your face.
history
Neena doesn’t know exactly what the circumstances surrounding her birth were. Though she has been told that she does have a mother, she has no memories of the woman. She has also been given reason to believe that she was born in a laboratory as part of a government-funded mutant cloning experiment, but has yet to find concrete evidence supporting that. Her earliest memories are of white walls and cold, sterile surfaces. Though she will occasionally remember a face from her early years, she never remembers faces that evoke any kind of loving, familial emotions.
She chooses to focus, instead, on her school years. Though she started off as a ward of the government, she was eventually released into the care of a Shepherd named Boschelli, on Chiton. Boschelli was a kind, tolerant man who was frustratingly good at side-stepping the questions Neena had about her early childhood. He assured her that she did have a mother, even though she couldn’t remember one, and that said mother had risked a lot to keep her safe. It sounded like a load of bullshit, but there were times that it provided her comfort. Unfortunately, the older she got, the more obvious it became that Boschelli was actively trying to hide something from her, and the more resolved she became to find out what it was.
Though Neena had an obvious physical mutation, she did not manifest noticeable powers until age fourteen. It was then that she noticed that things just sort of started to work in her favor. It was small things at first, but she gradually noticed it happening more and more, and eventually started actively testing it. Instead of taking her to be registered and evaluated, as was standard, Shepherd Boschelli assured her that it was unnecessary, that she’d been registered as a child and there was no need to update the file with the newfound power set.
She continued to test her powers in as many ways as she could, putting herself in situations that were often incredibly risky, and always coming out on top. Boschelli insisted that she continue her studies while in his care, but she supplemented the schooling with training, learning a few different martial arts styles. Even though she had luck on her side, it definitely didn’t hurt to have some technique to back her up when she picked fights.
At around age seventeen, after overhearing a conversation Boschelli was having with a uniformed man she’d never seen before, she decided that not only was Boschelli actively hiding information about her past, but that he was doing it under some sort of orders. She decided that the best course of action was to get away from him and try to find out what was going on. She stowed away on a cargo ship and left Chiton, not really caring where she ended up.
She spent time on a number of planets, doing everything from working as a farmhand to performing with a circus, to (her favorite) cage fighting. Ditching her real name and going only by the nickname Domino, Neena became fairly well known in certain underground mutant fighting circles. That led to her getting jobs as a mercenary, which was a blast (often literally). Eventually, her travels brought her into contact with a young precognitive scientist named Milo Thurman, who approached her, claiming to have information about a government-funded experiment that she had unwittingly been a part of.
Seeing as though his information had been unsolicited but seemed to back up what she did already know, she decided to trust him, and they set off to the Fringe, where he was hiding out. She came to learn that he had been employed by the Alliance, hailed as one of the brightest and most promising scientific minds, until he happened across classified information regarding an operation known as Project: Armageddon. The government was attempting to genetically engineer mutants to be used as weapons, using another mutant’s DNA. He was caught and branded a Rebel spy, forcing him to flee.
Milo was convinced that Domino was one of the project’s early, failed, experiments, and together they set to trying to find more answers. Domino was more than happy to be the brawn to his brains, and was even happier when their working relationship became much more. They were married within the year, and were making what looked like great progress on the Project: Armageddon front. Milo bought a ship in anticipation of them needing to access compounds on Core planets, and named it Lady Luck. It was corny, and Domino pretended not to love it.
A few months after the wedding, Milo finished the modifications on the ship and announced that it was time to go in. With the connections that they both had and the assurance that both of their power sets provided, he was certain that they’d be able to get into the compound and retrieve the information he needed. They recruited a small crew and set out. Though she wanted to go along with him, Milo insisted that he needed to enter the compound without her. She should have known then that it was essentially a suicide mission, but for some reason she chose to ignore the signs.
Milo never made it out, but before he was captured, he was able to transfer a few heavily encoded files to her, along with instructions and an apology. He’d seen the outcome of the venture and knew going into it that it would be the last thing he did. She followed his instructions, transferring the files to a secure drive and hiding them, along with all evidence that pointed directly to Milo having been there, on the ship just in time for the entire vessel to be boarded and thoroughly searched by Alliance troops. They were, as Milo had predicted, conducting a sweep in an attempt to discover the rest of his crew.
They came up empty, and as soon as she was cleared to leave, she headed back out to Milo’s crappy little compound. It took her a few months to pull herself together, but when she did, she knew immediately that she needed to focus less on her own past and more on the big picture – there was a real enemy out there, and it was in control of everything.
Domino eased herself back into her old life, throwing herself into work. She made a point of remaining outwardly neutral in her alliances, while edging her way into the Rebels’ forces. Before long, she had cemented her status as a Rebel operative, and she handed the information Milo had extracted over to them, deciding that they could do a lot more with it than she could and trusting that they would contact her, should they find anything relevant to her interests.
For the past six years, she has been secretly working for the Rebels, operating covert missions and moving information, supplies, and even people across the ‘Verse while still acting outwardly as a ship (and full arsenal of guns) for hire. The Alliance believes her and her crew to be neutral, possibly even Alliance-leaning, and as such, they have on occasion allowed her access to areas that would otherwise be unreachable to her.
Though she still owns and maintains Milo’s property in the Fringe, she prefers to stay mobile. Lady Luck is her home, and she feels much safer on board than she does in a building on land.
personality
Domino comes off as very impulsive in her personal interactions. She moves and speaks without giving it much thought, which can sometimes lead to her saying or doing things that aren’t necessarily appropriate or polite, though she does make an attempt to not be actively rude. She’s outspoken and can be quite cocky at times. Much more interested in experiencing new things than she is in settling down, she often gets restless if stuck in one place for too long. She likes being mobile, on a ship, because it lets her move from place to place while still having an actual home.
She has a low tolerance for people who are passive aggressive or not completely forthcoming with their feelings and intentions. She much prefers direct statements to sugar coated attempts at beating around the bush. Domino is very direct in her interactions with other people and expects the same courtesy from them in return. Though she is direct, she isn't always necessarily cold. In fact, Domino loves humor, and employs it frequently. She tends to use humor to deflect, especially during tense or depressing situations.
Though she can be wary of people, she is also completely aware that there are some genuinely good people in the world, and that there are many who need to be protected. As screwed up as her childhood was, it would have been so much worse for her had Shepherd Boschelli not taken her in, and he did so out of the goodness of his heart. She tries to be a good person, despite some of the decidedly unethical life choices she makes.
Speaking of those choices, don’t bother asking her to justify them to you, because she will find a way (unless you catch her on a bad day and she just knocks you out to avoid the conversation). When she gets hit with the odd pang of guilt, she is easily able to remind herself that what she does is ultimately for the greater good, and that if she wasn’t the one doing it, someone else would be... and you just can’t trust others to get things done right.
Most of the time, Domino makes some effort to plan ahead, particularly when it comes to work, but she really shines when she has to improvise, in big part thanks to her powers and her trust in them. In an ideal world, she'd be able to plan for every eventuality and know what she’s going to face before she goes into a situation, but she knows that the odds are good that even if she doesn’t have that luxury, she’ll come out of it alive. It’s a comforting knowledge to have.
appearance
Domino has a very unique appearance. She has chin-length black hair, dark blue eyes, and chalk white skin. She also has a rather noticeable dark gray mark surrounding her left eye and bluish purple lips. She is tall, standing at 5’8”, and weighs in at 143lbs, much of which is muscle. She exercises very frequently and is toned and muscular. She has a number of scars on her body. Some are cuts, some are gunshots, one is a bite mark that she would rather not talk about. Her largest scar, the result of jumping through a pane glass window, is on her left forearm, and it stretches from wrist to elbow.
Despite her distinctive physical appearance, Domino is an expert at blending in. Even when she’s absolutely lost and is somewhere where she’s not supposed to be, she carries herself as though she knows exactly where she’s going and as though she’s meant to be there. It also helps that from time to time, she employs an image inducer to mask her physical mutation. Though she prefers to get things done as herself, the inducer has proven to be incredibly helpful in certain situations.
Her clothing choices also reflect her skill at blending. She prefers to wear darker colors – especially blues, purples, and blacks, and she generally avoids logos, patterns or graphics. Her sense of style is very simple and clean, and while her everyday clothes don’t scream stealth, everything is carefully selected for its durability and practicality in a potential situation. When she knows that she is going to be entering a combat situation, she tends to favor the classic bodysuit style of uniform in a Kevlar-reinforced matte black, though she also has a wide selection of other tactical gear that doesn’t scream Catwoman cosplay enthusiast.
powers
Domino’s ability is based on probability fields and percentages and indirect psionic control of her surroundings and all kinds of crap like that that she doesn’t really care to fully understand, but what it all boils down to is luck. Domino is impossibly lucky.
More than that, those who come up against her tend to be almost miraculously unlucky. A gun that was fully operational before it became pressed to her temple will suddenly jam, or an otherwise healthy foe will twist in just the wrong way to throw out his back. She doesn’t know how she does it, she just knows that it happens.
Her powers are subconscious; they seem to kick in as soon as her adrenaline starts pumping or she is in direct danger, and her body often reacts completely instinctively to things in ways that end up saving her hide. Because of the way that her powers control her body movements, she is far more agile than most people and also has superhuman reflexes.
Though the ability is not one that she can consciously control, Domino does generally have to be an active participant in order for it to have an effect. She is able to shoot a bullet in a completely wrong direction and still have it somehow manage to ricochet off of other objects in just the way necessary for it to still hit her target, but if someone is shooting at her and she stands still and makes no attempt to dodge, seven times out of ten, she’s still going to get shot. It’s happened before, and it hurts.