Nightstar

Real Name: Mar'i Grayson
Alias: Nightstar
Title: Nightstar
Identity: Secret
Age: Eight
Species: Human-Tamaranean Hybrid 

Physical Appearance: 
Mar'i would be able to pass for a 'non-neo' human child were it not for her eyes. She's at average height for an eight year old little girl. Her hair is thick, black, and easily passes her hip while falling with a very loose, wavy texture. Her skin is not golden like her mother's but a warmer tone of her father's. Her eyes, however, are like her mother's. They are completely green from one corner to the other. They glow slightly when using her powers. This evolutionary mark is found among creatures on Earth lacking a sclera, as a lack of a distinct gaze is a predatory trait. Sometimes, when she smiles deviously--as mischevious children are wont to--it is rather like a playful cat personified. That being said, she does have a bright, sweet smile and has a wide range of expressions. 

That also extends to her body language. Her gestures and poses tend to be quite animated and dynamic. When she's comfortable it's very fluid, with hands easily flowing from one gesture to the next. Those who are close to and well-liked by her will find she's not shy about getting into someone else's space. On the other spectrum, whens he is angry, defensive, or competitive, her gestures become much sharper. She becomes more rigid, and in particular she has the quirk of flexing her fingers--like she's just itching to blast something or launch a strike. In the case of when she's feeling confident in herself she tends to look amused, and can take a playful approach to fighting. 

Mar'i can be graceful when she wants to be thanks to her natural flight. When she's being a show off (which is often) she will glide instead of walk (and when she does, with a little skip in her stride), fly in intricate patterns, flash a brilliant smile as she walks along a rail, and other little displays of her balance and poise. Because she's very outwardly feminine this is partially a conscious effort, playing a young madame of Gotham City or the young princess that is her Tamaranean birthright. She keeps her hair neat, she's particular about hygiene, and favours the colour purple. She was spoiled with a large wardrobe and many accessories, especially for her hair, but because she absorbs the sunlight through her skin she chooses outfits that are sheer or have some cut-outs.

When training and proudly using her alias as Nightstar, she wears a purple leotard custom made from Tamaranean material so it is fireproof. This, paired with calf-high boots and a headband of similar extraterrestrial origin (to keep the hair out of her face), make up her standard uniform. 

Personality:
Mar'i can be very intense in some respects, while very considerate and restrained in others. She's a vivid child who loves to socialize and wears her heart on her sleeve, more or less. Just by looking at her face and the way she holds herself it can be pretty obvious how she's feeling. She has a wide range of emotions depend on the situation, and her temperament is such that she can easily go from one to another; from happy to angry with one wrong word. 

She prefers to be in the company of others and only when she's sad she retreats to be alone. She has a keen sense of awareness about others and feels the need to comfort them when they're feeling down. At the heart of it all she's a well-intentioned young girl. She wants to be helpful and useful. If she's being nosy or getting involved when no one is asking for it, it's generally because she cares not because she's being a little snot. That's why sometimes she can really get really upset when her help is rejected. She feels like she's failed.

Mar'i possesses an inherent anxiety about the world around her that continues to develop the more she's exposed to its horrors. The life of a hero is such that one wrong move and catastrophe can strike at any moment. Mar'i is very aware of the events around her, being very far from a naive child. The more she learns about her parents' job the more she worries for them. Mar'i is exceptionally intelligent thanks to her father, in particular about being able to make quick association between bits of information. These associations have a darker side because some of the schematics her brain makes are negative and cause obsessive thought patterns. When she was six years old she gave her father gray hairs when she worked out that her parents were orphans, grandpa Bruce was an orphan, and so 'logically' she could probably be an orphan too. Associations, when paired with intense emotions, get 'stuck' in her head and cause anxiety she has a hard time letting go of. 

Thankfully, that's not the case all the time. When the situation is right more of her positive qualities come out. Not only is she helpful, sociable, loving, caring and bright; she's also a little quirky too. She gets really excited learing about plants and can hardly contain herself telling people facts about them. She loves elephants and is against animals in captivity (free Zitka 20XX!) She actually likes vegetables and scolds her dad for eating too much cereal. Most of all, she's still a little girl, even if she's a super one.

Powers:
UV Energy
Mar'i absorbs sunlight (UV rays) through her skin which is converted to the energy she needs for her all her powers.

Flight
She's defying gravity. She does this by producing and unconsciously controlling gravitons to a high degree, giving her versatility in the air.

Hair on Fire 
What seems to be a defensive mechanism, a mighty contrail of black and violet flame erupts from her hair when in flight and combat. This streams behind her in flight and while she's usually careful about it, one should take care not to fly close behind her. The faster she flies/more energy she's expending the longer the tail of pretty fire is. This is also fuelled by converted UV energy.

Starbolts 
Her primary offensive ability, starbolts are pink rays that are typically shot from her hands in a straight line, although the energy can be distributed across her entire body too. There is a large degree of control for how powerful these beams can be all dependant on the concentration and amount of energy she puts into it. A large, ultra-hot blast requires heavy amounts of concentrated energy, and would quickly sap her reserves. More typically are 'concussive' beams with low-heat, requiring far less concentrated energy. These beams push enemies back with a force equal enough to the amount of energy being fired; larger starbolts have more force behind them. The starbolts that burn require longer to charge, but at their hottest they easily burn through metal. The most powerful attack of this nature is to simply explode like an erupting star, using all the energy available to her and exploding up to a mile in radius. Only applicable in peak condition or else risk of great personal injury and, in extreme situations, death. 

Super-strength 
Her muscles may not look that impressive, but they're designed to use the energy from the sun for super-efficiency, allowing a far greater output of strength than the average human. Lifting a couple of tons is standard for her, but in comparison to Kyrptonians, and even Amazonians, her strength is inferior. That, and as a half-Tamaranean she is at a slight disadvantage in comparison to other Tamaraneans.

Abilities:
Intelligence 
Not every advantage is from her mother; Mar'i's got daddy Grayson's brains. She makes quick associations between events, useful for puzzle-sovling and riddles. It also helps facilitate learning, so while there is no photographic memory or speed-learning at work, Mar'i's academic success is largely by efficient encoding strategies. That is, she creates a network of relevance for everything she learns. Her problem-solving skills help with future missions, and while she's not one of the world's best strategist she can hold her own enough to recognize when someone else's advice may or may not be the best for what her particular goal entails. 

Knowledge 
Mar'i has many connections to people who are experienced and willing to share their knowledge with her. The Titans are a great resource, each able to tutor in what they specialize in. Her academic studies go far beyond the classroom, and she retains her lessons well. Her best subjects are biology, chemistry, and physics and has a particular interest in botany since she was small. She's such a flower girl. While she may know more than most kids her age she's still in the proccess of study and still has a few years to go before she's at the working calibre of knowledge like her elder Titans. 

Combat 
Her fighting style and temperament is largely on her mother's side, due to her abilities. Mar'i is training to be an aerial combatant, able to manoeuvre herself in the air around her opponent while also taking advantage of the fact there is a giant, flaming ribbon of hair streaming behind her. Her aim is exceptional, as she's trained to fire starbolts since she was able to use them. This can extend to throwing other objects but she seldom works, or has trained, with weapons. On her feet, she likes to wrestle and is being trained to work around bigger and stronger enemies; with Donna Troy and her mother. 

Acrobat 
Nothing smacks more of irony than the ability to fly being an impediment to becoming the next Flying Grayson. Still, thanks to the limitations of her energy output Mar'i does know how to work with gravity rather than defy it. Her father is eager to pass his skills onto her, which means she too is great at flips—which have been quite useful in dodging. Alas, with such a busy schedule and more of a reliance on more practical combat strategies, Mar'i's far from the brilliance of her father and those before him. She still has a long way to go before using it practically and not just for showing off what she can do.

Language 
She can kiss someone with a brain compatible to hers and learn their language. Well, she doesn't have to kiss, but to quote her mom, “It's more fun that way.”, and probably less awkward too. It requires close physical contact and if she's already pressing her face up to someone else... because she's a little girl she does this by a kiss to the cheek, and even then sometimes she has a bout of immaturity and doesn't want to do it. 

Keen eyesight
The green eyes are not just for show, the only advantage they offer is that she can track movement better and faster than a human's; kind of like how cats can follow lasers quickly. For the record, one can annoy her by dangling in her field of vision stuff because her first instinct is to track it. 


Weapons/Equipment: None 

History:
Mar'i was born in Star City at Star Labs facility because she was a one-of-a-kind baby. Her real home was in San Fransisco though which was home of the Titans who lived in the tower shaped like a T. She lived with her mommy and daddy in their apartment but frequently stayed at the tower which was way more fun anyway. Her countless aunts and uncles would often visit if they didn't live in the T-shaped tower as most of them made up current and former Titans. She would also visit her bat-family like her bat-grandpa Bruce but not as much because he lived on the east coast while they were on the west coast.

They did move to the west coast for a time when dad wanted to make Bludhaven better, but Bludhaven really sucked compared to San Fransisco so it made Mar'i very sad. It also made mommy sad too so they moved back, but dad stayed in Bludhaven because it still wasn't getting better. The separation made Mar'i even sadder and she drew lots of sad pictures in school during a time she dubbed 'the dark days'. Life moved on and Mar'i learned to cope with having a dad who lived across the country. It wasn't as bad as when she visited Tamaran once with her mom and they were on totally different planets. There was no face-time in space-time.

Uncle Victor who gave the best presents gave her a cliff at the edge of an endless expanse of stars where she could sit properly and brood over existential crises. Both her parents were orphans and she had no grandparents alive aside from Bruce who like her parents was also an orphan. She was surrounded by orphans. What was going to happen to her parents? Mar'i realized there sure was a lot of death going on in her family. There was also a lot of danger being a superhero...

Then Bruce died. Her beloved, and only grandparent. Dead.

That was the beginning of something horrible. Mar'i wasn't the same. She wanted her dad to move back with them but he had to be the new Batman in Gotham. It was awhile before she was okay enough to go visit the manor, and it helped that she got to spend an entire summer with her family together as one. It helped lighten her spirits even if she had to contend with Damian.

He hated her and said the most awful things. She tried to be nice to him, especially because he lost his dad, but he would make ugly faces whenever she got close so she spent most of her time hiding from him. The manor was big so it was easy to avoid him. Her parents were obviously trying to get them to get along, but it wasn't working. Mar'i often had to resort to the Grayson Flop to get them to stop. There was only so much she could take!

Then one day Rip Hunter came to visit and ask her parents for help. He was a time-traveller as she learned when they were formally introduced. It seemed like it would have been another lame day of being left behind to sulk while her parents went on potentially life-threatening missions again, but Damian, also in the midst of being left behind, found a smaller pod ship for them to take on an adventure. Intrigued, Mar'i threw all common sense to the wind and allowed herself to be convinced that he knew what he was doing.

He did not. After they took off in the pod they soon ran into some issues and ended up crash landing. They weren't in 363 BC Macedonia like they'd hoped—and they were stuck. They were going to be in so much trouble if they didn't die first.



Weaknesses:
Mar'i is an anxious person which has social, mental and physical detriments. She feels the need to be reassured that everything will be okay, but then gets upset because no one can really promise that—especially when it comes to death. She gets sulky and stuck in her own head when she's fixating on loss, and has a somewhat bleak outlook on the world. She retreats from others and keeps her sad thoughts inside until someone else reaches out to her. The result of keeping things in rather than confronting her issues means they can sometimes come out all at once in an explosion, like an erupting volcano of emotion, even over something seemingly minor.

The physical consequences of her anxiety relate to her combat-performance. Mar'i does not have a limitless supply of energy to use. She will subconsciously use a lot more energy than she needs to in her attacks and easily gets into 'flight or fight' responses. During the night there is a possibility of depleting her energy completely rendering her vulnerable until morning. Even during the day, there is a recovery period where she needs to retreat and recharge in the sun. Mar'i has to limit her most powerful attacks for this reason and will only ever use the upper-thresholds of her power in extreme situations.

Mar'i also possesses a rather debilitating phobia. She has fears about death. While any child would be traumatized to see a corpse, her fear of death extends to fears about being buried, graveyards, coffins, and even just topics regarding the deceased can trigger a panic attack. This makes it almost impossible to console others who are grieving over their loss.


OOC Information
OOC Name: Elena
Character color: #AB89F0
Group title: Starshine
Face Claim: Comics