Synopsis
Ex hacker turned legit, paranoid and measured, support character.
Description
Val is a relatively older woman given her line of work (about to turn forty), her black hair has a single streak of grey, a memento of stress. She wears glasses over her gold-green eyes and stands just over average at five six. Her dark skin is covered in black, spiraling tattoos which also serve as solar panels for her internal systems, lending her extra power and reducing the strain of cybernetic enhancement on her body. She is in excellent physical condition, as her job requires.
Personality
All business, while on a given job Val is all business, rarely letting her guard down or allowing the team to get off task, she conducts business with ruthless efficiency, no matter the cost to others. This is because she cares so deeply for both her team and her family, and she knows that any hesitation may mean the death of a loved one. Occasionally, particularly after a successful job, she will allow herself to unwind with a bit of drink (a habit she pretends to regret) and allows herself to be drawn into one of Piper's fun, but reckless schemes.
She assesses potential threat, to the point where some might call her paranoid but the truth is that she simply doesn't trust anyone or anything: except her Hunter sisters. She always has a backup plan (or three) just in case things go wrong, but has a tendency to freeze when her plans go awry and without her sister's support, would be unable to act at all.
Equipment / Abilities
She's fit, but in combat she prefers to play the role of support. When needed she is an excellent close ranged combatant, relying on her Pistol, Touch, and martial arts (judo). She isn't above a dirty trick to win (particularly using a hidden knife when judo isn't enough).
Analysis and support are her specialty, Cycurity, Preemptive and offensive stop-codes as well as threat assessment (including cyber security and more mundane threats).
Emp Pistol, a focused pulse shuts anything electronic caught in it down for fifteen seconds (unless they have quick-boot protocols installed), but comes with massive side effects. The pistol is designed to cut through standard EMP shielding with ease, more advanced shielding brings more protection (chance that nothing happens). Even with the Obsidian shielding (military grade), due to her proximity to the blast, her own implants will cease functioning for a number of crucial seconds (five).
Neuroptic network hardwired to her nerve system. Unlike many she doesn't have a wireless connection hardwired into herself, instead she carries a wireless router that she can log into via touch. Too many good agents have had their own systems hacked for her to risk the vulnerability that wireless hardware contains. Additionally, she can begin the hacking process on any network with a simple touch.
EDS- developed and augmented with the best corporate tech available, and adapted with the mind of a hacker, Val improved on her original (stalking) design, limiting it's range (dramatically) and broadening it's search parameters. Now Ed serves to monitor a set of designated tasks, giving Valerie a heads-up display overlaid upon the world around her (bank accounts for the party, security where her husband and daughter live, police reports, etc.) and moreover, anyone attempting to hack nearby electronic systems (vehicle controls, television sets, radios, fire systems, security systems, etc.) It's not a perfect system, and, given her lack of wireless compatibility, sometimes warnings come too late, but she's working to improve it constantly.
Her glasses- These glasses serve two functions. First they are an intermediary between herself and others, allowing them to see what she does, provided that they are within a certain range (and lack the ability to receive bundles from her). Additionally, lacking a wireless connection, these are the only way for her to receive information from Ed without her consciously opening herself up.
History
She began life as a hacker, working just to make a quick buck. She quickly realized that the only way to be the best, was to compete with the best. She heard about the phantom-man, so naturally she went looking for him. It dismissed him at first, but eventually she realized that the attacks weren't just random (even if she couldn't figure out their pattern), and that he wasn't just leaving footprints, he was taking something too. She began to obsess, going to school wired (connected to the web), and eventually dropped out of high school. She found the bits he left in Mstream sites (mainstream sites, anything that you can "google") and the more she obsessed the closer she got, the more she saw. She hacked into the business's sites and rummaged around, looking for a pattern. She created an AI to monitor, looking for his signatures, his footprints, anywhere where they could be found. (This okay Utopia?)
And then she got caught. The government raided her small apartment, kicking down the door. Luckily she managed to fry her drives, but the hacking she had been involved in was amateur compared to what they suspected her of. They held her for three months, not because they needed to (they realized that they had the wrong person nearly immediately) But because they could; she wasn't the legend, she was just a follower, a hanger on. The revelation floored her. She had never wanted to be an obsessive fan-girl, and didn't want to continue as one. They offered her a deal, she could join them in the Cy Sec division, or she could go to jail for a very long time, disappear into the system.
She served a few years under the government, and once her time was done, she decided she liked the game from the legitimate end so she joined up with a group of hunters. That team didn't last long. Brothers Kyle and Jason were her fellow hunters, but when Kyle died they both changed. Her husband lost his taste for the game. She never did. They tried to settle down, raise a family, but despite her daughter, she never felt alive. She grew increasingly paranoid, worried about her daughter, her husband and herself. She hated herself for the way she felt, she hated herself because she was a mother, she was supposed to love her daughter more than anything. She wasn't supposed to want anything else in the world, but she did.
Valerie gathered a new team (after vetting them beyond a shadow of a doubt), and got back to hunting. It was too much for Jason, he had already lost his brother, he couldn't bear to lose his wife too. She knew she was running from her problems, from her daughter and from herself, but she couldn't stop. Their marriage ended horribly, guilt and fear slowly overwhelming them both. She kept moving, always on a job, hiding, relying on her sisters lest her sanity fracture. She arranged for her husband and their daughter to be protected by the government. She couldn't watch them all the time, she could hardly stand to look at them, truth be told. (Help me add more detail here, Schizophrenic? I want it to integrate more with the other hunter's stories)
Extra
Her husband and daughter don't know that she still watched over them.
She has a bad habit of asking Ed send her pictures of her family.
Her daughter is just turning eleven.
Her marriage lasted for eight years (5 before kyle's death, 3 after).
Her favorite tactic to use when fighting tech heavy foes is to force shut down all her systems, fire the EMP, run forward (as she brings her systems back online) and immediately upload a number of gruesome viruses which she has prepared as soon as their systems come back online.
She favorite tactic to use when fighting other enemies is to wait for help to arrive.
