Sombra

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Sombra
Player: @heartstringsk3
Sombraprofile.png
Biographical Data
Real Name: Maya Gabriela Moreno
Known Aliases: La Sombra
Gender: Female
Species: Human
Ethnicity: Hispanic
Place of Birth: Miramar - Tamaulipas, Mexico
Base of Operations: Millennium City
Relatives: Cisco & Rosalina Moreno (parents), Francisco & Teresa Moreno (grandparents), Javier & Cristina Barrera (grandparents)
Characteristics
Age: 16
Height: 5'
Weight: ~110 lbs.
Eyes: Brown
Hair: Dark brown
Complexion: Dark, smooth, soft-skinned
Physical Build: Average, slightly pear-shaped
Physical Features: Pretty, heavy accent
Status
Alignment:
██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██

Lawful Good

Reputation:
██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██ ██

Reclusive

Identity: Secret
Years Active: <1
Citizenship: Dual citizenship Mexico & United States
Occupation: Student
Education: 11th Grade
Marital Status: Single
Known Powers and Abilities
Invisibility, Teleportation
Equipment and Paraphernalia
Pepperspray, cell phone
ReldinBoxMini Template


History

Mexico

Early in the fifteenth year of Maya Moreno's young life, she suffered the unique terror of brushing her teeth in the bathroom of her house one second, and brushing her teeth in a city back-alley the next. It was only the first in a series of misadventures, the girl randomly disappearing from home, school, malls, wherever she was, and finding herself somewhere else in the city against her will. Or, while not quite as bad, simply vanishing from sight and having no idea how to be seen again. Maya and her parents were terrified; not that she was a metahuman, though that was a concern, but her lack of control of her new powers was a clear danger to the teen. Her social life was thrown into chaos; depending on personal views and opinions, her friends and acquaintances abandoned her, feared her, thought she was so cool, wanted to get to know her better, challenged her to fights, races, asked her to beat up their personal nemeses with her new powers. Maya just wanted things to go back to normal, she didn't want all the attention!

Over the next year, Maya withdrew. She stopped hanging out with friends or even really going outside, besides to school. What was the point when she could be anywhere else at any moment? She lived in fear that the next random jump would be the one that put her far out in the ocean, or underground, inside a wall, out in space. There were a few reliefs, though. For one thing, the bus drivers and police around her hometown and the nearby big cities began to recognize her and hear her story, many of them keeping an eye out for her and giving her free rides home. And no matter where she ended up, she was still a teenage girl, and her ever-present phone could reassure her family and friends that she was okay. But it was no way to live.

United States

Millennium City in the United States was the biggest center of metahumans in the Western world. Surely someone there could help her! It wasn't easy, but the Morenos decided to pull up roots and emigrate to the States. It's possible that Maya's condition helped expedite things, and by the time she was sixteen the family had relocated to a Westside apartment complex. Her father, a construction worker, easily found work in the perpetually-damaged city. The nearby Ravenswood Academy Renaissance Center campus offered limited free tutoring for inexperienced metahuman teens, and through this basic training course the teenager began to get a hold of her abilities.

The new high school was... difficult to adjust to. Maya's grasp of English was spotty, and she desperately tried to teach herself enough to get by. She was given help in the classroom, of course, to get through her lessons, but socializing was a different beast. Most people simply ignored the new girl, while some targeted her for jokes and casual mocking. Others had ulterior motives for wanting to get closer to her, and the genuinely friendly were a little put off by the distant, shy girl. With pretty average grades and requiring extra linguistic effort, she didn't even become a favorite of the teachers. She wasn't hated, no, or even disliked. She was just there, that one kid that no one really knew.

But now she had powers that she could mostly control. They weren't impressive, like the heroes she saw flying around or flinging thugs, but she could still pretend to be one of them! Westside was a pretty bad area, after all, and needed all the help it could get. But first, a costume! No, first a name, then a themed costume! She chose La Sombra, The Shadow, dropping the La for simplicity. She ordered a dark, simple Day of the Dead mask online and a black bodysuit to go with it. It was perfect! She added some detailing to the bodysuit herself to make it more intimidating and hopefully scare off bad guys, then hit the streets, using her invisibility and teleportation to find people in trouble and give them a quick escape!

That first outing, when she saved a woman from a mugger, was a thrill. She proudly gushed about the experience to her concerned parents, who, understanding the joy it brought her and the relief it gave that nameless woman, cautiously allowed her to continue her shadowy excursions, as long as she promised - made a solemn vow, really - to never try to fight anyone or anything, and to never put herself in danger.

To someone who can teleport, "being in danger" is pretty open to interpretation.

Superhero Life

Sombra has since started sneaking into Club Caprice to gawk at the colorful characters within, circumventing the bouncers at the door with her powers. She mostly remains invisible while on the premises, at least until she meets someone to talk to. She's made a few heroic friends in her visits. Also, in an effort to better protect herself, she has purchased a black tube of pepperspray. Besides being a comfort to have, it's come in handy several times!

During the hotter parts of summer, Maya designed and created a lighter, airier Sombra costume to keep cool. Once winter rolled around, she bought a jacket for her main outfit to keep herself warm. She's also decided to add to her costume for holidays, sporting a witch hat for Halloween and a Santa hat for Christmas!

Although her older friends have tried to convince her to learn to fight, Maya is reluctant. However, she has added considerably to her defenses, mostly via gifts. A taser, disguised as a flower-shaped hairclip, a collapsible impact baton, and most importantly, football padding she wished for for Christmas, that she spent significant time painting black and adding more skull detailing to. She has an entire new bodysuit to wear with the armor, made with a slightly heavier fabric.

Before she finished her armor, however, Sombra faced her first supervillain solo: a minor, power suit-clad criminal trying to rob a Westside gas station. Her meager efforts to drive him off were useless, and a surprise bonk on the head knocked her out. She awoke later, tied to a chair in an unknown basement, where she was rescued by an escaping fellow prisoner! This injury and kidnapping scared Maya more than she let on, though the fear soon passed.

Personality

Maya is usually a bubbly, excitable girl, prone to babbling in Spanish as she forgets to translate herself - because of this, she's started mostly talking in short, direct sentences with a heavy accent. She's friendly and happy, with a maternal love of helping and comforting others. She also has a mischievous streak, enjoying startling people by appearing behind them out of nowhere or poking them invisibly! She can be kind of a brat sometimes, but paradoxically, she's very apologetic when she scares people. She's apologetic in general, and hates making others feel bad.

The traumatic year she recently had still affects her, and especially out of her costume she can be shy and quiet, even withdrawn, at times, especially when she's in a group conversation in English that she can only partially follow. She's quickly flustered by attention, and also scares or startles easily. She has little love of school, with a negative opinion of her own scholastic performance.

Although not technically a pacifist, Maya isn't a violent person, and she hates fighting, or even the idea of training herself to fight beyond some simple self-defense techniques. Even when friends or innocents are in danger, she prefers to aid in their escape rather than leap to their defense. If forced to fight, she is generally timid and desperate, resorting to schoolyard techniques like shoving, tackling, or barrages of wild punches and slaps.

Powers

Teleportation

Maya has the ability to teleport, both to anywhere within visual range and to anywhere she has been and knows how to get back to - meaning that she can't (or shouldn't) teleport very far if she has no idea where she currently is. Fortunately, her powers have some kind of built-in safety or sense that prevents her from materializing inside a wall or object; when this would happen, Maya finds that she either can't rematerialize until she moves, or is automatically shifted slightly to the nearest open space. Maya's teleportation isn't quite instantaneous, but is very fast; her body (unknown to her) shifts into another dimension as a "shortcut" between points.

Maya can also take objects and people with her when she teleports. Currently, she only has the power to take one other average-sized person (or comparably-sized object) with her, and she lacks the control to, say, teleport a weapon out of someone's hand without taking the person along, too. Similarly, she also lacks the control to teleport herself out of someone's grip without taking them with her.

Teleporting takes a lot of energy, and can tire Maya out quickly if she overuses it.

Invisibility

Maya's invisibility is remarkably effective. Although she doesn't know how it works, by shifting her body partially into the same dimension she uses to teleport, she can become undetectable to most usual means. When she is invisible, Maya cannot be seen visually (obviously), produces no scent or heat, and her body makes no sounds, including footsteps. Since she isn't entirely in the material world, she can throw off, but not completely fool, senses that rely on physical presence, such as echolocation, detecting air currents or pressure changes, sources of gravity, etc. Her powers aren't magical in nature, so magical detection has no effect. She is rather easily seen by those able to see dimensional energy or rifts, however.

Maya's voice and breathing are still audible when she's invisible, and she can still touch others, by intention or accident, such as bumping into people. It's possible this is only because she thinks this should happen.

Although she cannot do it all day, compared to teleportation, staying invisible doesn't take too much effort for her anymore, and she can spend upwards of an hour undetected. Like teleportation, she can also make another person invisible with her, as long as they remain in physical contact, but this greatly increases the energy needed. She's also still not very good at cloaking a second person, often suffering from a "flickering" effect caused by split-second failures in the dimensional shift that ruin the invisibility. Moving also hurts the cloak, causing visible ripples and distortion in the air.

Skills

Maya has few skills that are helpful in her superhero life. She has no talent or skill in combat, though friends have at least taught her how to throw a proper punch, she doesn't have any particular observation or investigative skills, and she's not overly intelligent. She's never held a gun, let alone fired one. She can barely fire a slingshot, not that she owns one! She's weaker than an average person, not very tough, only mildly athletic in that she can do some jumping jacks or sort of climb a knotted rope, and has zero mental defenses. What she does have is a lot of heart and determination!

Maya is a good cook, though, and very good at sewing - she proudly tells others that she makes her own costumes (minus the masks), and has crafted dresses, scarves, or sweaters for a few friends. She enjoys the work, and is seriously considering a career as a seamstress or tailor! She also plays the recorder somewhat well, hoping to move on to a flute or ocarina someday. And yes, she has the rhythm to competently shake maracas, though doesn't have a particular liking for them. She can dance pretty well, too!

Although mostly for fun, Maya has created a "brand" of Sombra Sweets: various cookies she's experimented with baking and started naming after friends who inspired them. Her Grim Galletas were first, skull-shaped sugar cookies coated in white and black frosting; next came the Svetlana Surprises, butter cookies with fudge and marshmallow chunks; after that were the Karu Treats, dark chocolate with white chocolate chips and macadamia nuts; and finally, the Red Spiderbites, red velvet cookies with vanilla and chocolate frosting in the shape of Red Spider's face.

Affiliations

One of the few news articles referencing Sombra, alongside Winter.

Sombra has met several friends from sneaking into Club Caprice, as well as her adventures outside. The most notable are probably the patriotic heroine Valor Star; Red Spider, who took on something of a mentor role and is attempting to train the teen to fight and get out of tight spots; Anomaly, a hero with a symbiotic suit; and Winter, her fellow teen heroine, new best friend, and sometimes-partner!