Name: Suzumi Nomura

Gender: Female, identifies more masculine, pansexual

Age/DOB: 5@ RC, 18 in RY2

Origin: Rookery Earth, born at Black Mesa's hospital (!), to Japanese parents

Family: Deceased, adopted by Stig Valstadt after RC

Other: She's a super nerd, every single scientist and quite a few Pantheon folk love her to bits, she's very much interested in becoming part of their structure post-Icarus

Height: 5'4"

Weight: ~95* Icarus processing and some amount of work on Melissa's part reduced her overall weight, she's compact and evenly built but so much stronger than she looks

Hair: Graphite black, always looks slightly dusty, thick and shaggy, kept short and usually behind a headband or headset

Eyes: yellow gold, this is their normal color, and this is the first reason Melissa knew she had something more to her, as yellow is extraordinarily rare among humans. Highly angular and with a strong epicanthal fold, behind large glasses (she no longer needs them to adjust vision, but wears them for protection), under bold eyebrows

Appearance: highly typical of a Japanese girl, likes protective gear, including the Icarus under-suit; has tanned skin and numerous small scars from living in the facility after its demise; will scavenge HEV parts and is planning on modifying them into a custom suit fit for her small size; always has the scent of grease, ozone, and gasoline about her; has that traditional anime-style 'fang' to her teeth and loves showing it off, laughs loudly and finds a lot of things quite funny

Icarus Processing: yes, at the age of 16 Melissa cornered her explaining what she saw in those genes - at first a bit hesitant because the process was going to be painful, she soon realized how much potential is really stuck under latency. The processing reduced her weight by nearly a third, strengthened her bones and joints significantly, and improved her overall health and strength quite a bit. She's around 2.5x stronger than normal, and heals around 3x faster from all wounds, but has never lost her original scars.

Image Credits: Doll Divine / She-Ra maker

Events or History: As with Stig's page, she is a native to the Rookery and Black Mesa in specific, her parents having allowed her on a tour while they were working... she never saw them alive again. While she does have some amount of memories of them, her whole life has basically been scrambling around the inside of Black Mesa with her adoptive father and mentor Stig, and she loves him with all her heart - even though she knows she cannot replace his own children. When the Combine invasion began, the Rookery's Mesa was left almost entirely as it had been before, so she's hardly seen Combine until the Dragons started showing up. Some preliminary exploration from the Combine was detected here and there - they probably knew that this site was the source of the 'lure' that brought them to the planet after all, and likely want to get that technology in the Lambda labs. She will fight them tooth, nail, and dragon, to keep it safe.

Currently working with the others on the Xenian exploration team.

***

It was possibly half a year after being befriended by Taanumitae, floating around the Xenian islands looking for places to put location markers, when a small yip could be heard. It wasn't like a Peeper Puppy howl or bark, no echo or preceeding trill, just a ... yip!

Taanumitae circled around, descending to a perfect landing on a short ledge. But below, they found something unusual. Not Xenian, that was for sure.

yip! there was that little voice again only this time, both dragon and young woman heard it in their minds.

"It looks like antlion goo," Suzumi said, carefully dropping to the crusty cover on what looked like an antlion hiding spot. Some of them would lurk just under the surface, pop out and grab their prey. Was this something caught?

We should hurry, if it is, Taanumitae confirmed what her rider was thinking. Neither of them sensed any antlion presence, it must have been an older trap door.

But sure enough, within it was a tiny, cowering creature. Dark, but with bright accents, stripes visible, and... wings?

I got lost, it thought at them, was trying to find momma, got lost.

Even if Suzumi was hardly motherly, she instantly sprang into action. Moving the yellowish crust away from the opening, hoping it wasn't going to be too sharp and cut her bare hands, she reached into the pit. The bottom of it had long since been collapsed into the indistinct ground, so no antlion would be burrowing back out of it, but it still served as a trap.

This little creature was tiny, hardly spilling over two hands. But still there was language and intelligence, and...

Big, big weepy eyes. Momma was here once, could tell... not here now.

"Well we'll find her, but for now let's get you back to base, it's much safer there."

***

Eventually they would locate momma, but first they learned, "her name is Aimuthout," Suzumi told her adoptive dad. "And she says hi with her mind, I don't think she's learned to speak yet but I just have this ... feeling."

That feeling would bear fruit within a month or so, as Aiumthout sounded out things and eagerly started nosing around Suzumi's tool kit. Learning technical phrases and titles of things long before she bothered to have a conversation, while she wasn't a chatterbox Aimuthout picked up on the workings of the Black Mesa facilities on Xen quickly enough to be considered a new partner in crime by Suzumi.

'Momma' was what could be said as 'local' in that the Terigon named Vohiv living with Jill and Rex had drifted through the Xenian space before settling with those humans down in the North Aperture facility. She'd had a clutch - they were egg layers? - with a distant male, and their eggs and young were scattered to the Nexus. But it was still a little traumatizing to the tiny kit, who had learned how to teleport through the Nexus before figuring out how to call for help.

But now she was definitely helpful to this pair, being small meant she could easily scoot into places that even slender Shezumi couldn't, to retrieve items and gear, and even became brave enough to take things out of old antlion caches with her little claws able to pry them open.

Dragon

Name: Taanumitae, Dimensional Machine Maker (taah device, numi maker, tae fold)
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: Medium-Small (long) 7'8" s /40' l / 44' ws
Colors: pale golden orange mainly, with indigo neck and belly; wingsails lilac with pale yellow star patterns*; floof on head, rump, tail violet; horns and claws ivory; eyes lime green
Features: long dragon mutt; mixed hide with some scale armor visible on tail and wing arms, back; four legs with 4-clawed paws fore and more canine hind with heel claws; two leathery wings with three visible fingers and sails that extend farther than visible; blunt face with external ears, two upswept horns, canine nose, wide mouth with small teeth and lots of them; spiny floof at head, rump, and tail tip (flexible like cat's whiskers but thick, and have extremely prickly surfaces that can be used as defense); these features are all inherited by siblings, but may pass differently based on partner; egg layer, will likely want any offspring to inherit Vortigese naming structure
Powers: Winged Flight, She is a good and steady, forceful flier in most atmospheric conditions, including low-light, low-visibility, or even strong winds. She can wind her way around things since she's actually still rather small in size overall, and can fit through impressively narrow spots even with Suzumi riding her
Communication, Taan is extremely gifted with telepathic speech and undertsanding, and can easily detect minds at incredible distances, if she knows who she's looking for she'll find them even across dimensional barriers. She also is adept with verbal speech, and can speak English, Vortigese, and a good number of other bits and pieces thanks to her sire's inherent language comprehension. She is also a strong empath, sensing emotions of both dragons and humanoids alike, and unlike her rider she tends to react to them according to their needs.
*Starwake - Dimensional Pattern, the stars visible in her wingsails seem to be 'digital' but they are accurate representations of locations she can reach by Vortally concentrating. This form of dimension travel is similar to the Vortigaunts' themselves, and they have helped instruct her on its use. She does additionally have the genetic ability to teleport however she is poor at it, and prefers to hop between dimensions instead. She can to a small degree also use the star patterns to distract an enemy and blur reality in front of them in order to escape, but this is costly to her power level, and she'd rather just make the dimension hop instead of 'throwing dust in their eyes' to do it.
Technology Use and Sense, her ability to develop or utilize technology isn't just a hobby, it's a full blown Vortal power. She can use virtually any tool that's big enough for her paws to handle, and somehow even though she lacks true thumbs, those tools behave themselves in them. She will always know exactly the right thing to hand her rider, and can assess large contructs and devices for stability and functionality. She can also tell whether a device has been turned on or off, used recently, or altered in any way, within 3 meters of it.
Collect Shiny Things, she is able to tuck things away in a specific dimension for her own future use, and while this is a form of 'hammerspace', it does tend to fill up, as the volume she can create is only modest (about a 10 foot cube worth). She can retrieve anything she's tucked away just by thinking about it. Living things cannot be moved into that space. To a small extent, she can pull things out before she even knows why she needs them, but cannot focus this prediction ability in any way.
Assisted Firebreath, she likes setting things on fire if she's bored... And she uses the draconic equivalent of a lighter and hair spray can to do it. You can always tell if she's been left to her own devices without technology at hand to play with, by the number of scorch marks and crisp-fried headcrabs littering the area.
Parentage: Starpath and Lipatan, siblings 1, 2, 3, Livoyee, 6
Origin: Hallowed Silk project, RY 6, a Healing Den / Rookery mashup
Other Info: Taanumitae is at least as energetic as her rider, and quite a bit of her time is spent fiddling with dragon-sized tools and machinery. If they're going to be here on Xen for extended periods, she feels that the dragons themselves should have a stronghold on an island or two!

Terigon

Name: Aimuthout (EYE moo thowt)
Gender: Female
Size/Shoulder/Length: 2'0"
Colors: red, brown, yellow
Features: Terigon as shown
Genetic Code: Ss E2E3 Ww TT Y3Y6 C5C5 ll X1X2 UU I4I8 Nn P5P6 R2R5 Aa
Ss (average 2’) body size
E2E3 (short) ears
Ww (single-color) wingtips
TT (tufted) tail
Y3Y6 (brown) eyes
C5C5 (red) body in ll (dark) value
X1X2 (brown) furnishings in UU (light) value
I4I8 (yellow) wings in Nn (medium) value
P5P6 (striped) in R2R5 (brown) color in Aa (medium) value
Recessive P6: Cheetah
Powers: Winged Flight, in the Xenian gravity her flight is a little wonky, but she's learned how to bounce off of the alien pads and run along walls, boosting her aim and agility when hunting. In normal gravity back at the Rookery, she is a little on the weak side but then she doesn't really need to do a lot of hard flights
Teleportation, local and Nexus, because of her early blunder she tends to shy away from teleporting, just in case. However with her dragon friend giving help and pointers, she can follow them through both local and distant spaces
Verbal Speech and Telepathy, starting with telepathy means she and Suzumi and Taanumitae have a close friendship, her once-timid mind is very confident with them around. She will use her voice to call out pieces of technology that she spots, or just a brief hello and thank you to people around the facilities
Parentage: below
Origin: Terigon Pairings at Nidus Caeligenus by Phe
Other Info: above

Lineage

Mates and Descendants