Nicole Artaud

[Nicole Artaud]

Nicole Simone Artaud

FACE CLAIM: Neve Campbell
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AGE: 17
GENDER: Female
ORIENTATION: Lesbian
POSITION: Bellefonte Student

POWER: Thick Skin
Nicole’s skin is able to transform into a leather hide. This skin is thicker and more durable than human skin, and allows Nicole to resist damage from piercing and slashing weapons, though she can still be cut or pierced. Simply put: if something could pierce or slash a quality leather jacket, it could do the same to Nicole. During the transformation, the pH level in the oil on her skin is raised, and she releases chromium(III) sulfate from her pores, which links to the collagen in her skin, causing it to thicken to a leather-esque state and gain a slate-blue coloration. When her skin takes this form, the nerve endings in her skin grow weaker. She still feels pain (and other sensations), but to a lesser extent than she would regularly. Because of this, her reflexes are weakened, but with training she could theoretically retain her normal reflexes. While she is able to transform her entire skin, it takes a significant physical strain, and she normally only transforms parts of her body at a time.

She most often transforms her hands, and does this mainly to do things one would use gloves for—holding hot or cold objects or warmth during cold weather for instance. She is trying to transform quickly enough that she can avoid scrapes and the like when falling and while she has found some success, she still has a lot to learn (and the scrapes to prove it).

LIMITATIONS:
Nicole’s hardened skin lacks sweat glands. Because of this, she can only remain fully transformed for a short period of time before beginning to overheat--this time depends on the outside temperature, of course, but in a temperate climate (~70 degrees Fahrenheit) she has about 15 minutes before it becomes dangerous.

While her hardened skin is more durable, it heals slower than natural human skin. If she is wounded with any severity, she must transform back in order to treat and heal the wound.

SIDE-EFFECTS:
Nicole has a chronic rash as a result of her mutation. It dries and reddens her skin while forming a pattern of grooves in it and causing it to itch. It comes and goes from her extremities, but remains permanently on her shoulders and back. No cure has yet to be found, or anything that would subdue its spread, but she applies a topical cream that relieves itching every six hours which causes her discomfort to be negligible.

Overuse of her power can cause her to have reduces nerve sensitivity even when not transformed in body parts that she has recently kept hardened for too long. This usually goes away within a few hours to a few days depending on the amount of use, but causes Nicole to have a sense of detachment from her physical/sensory experience.



HEIGHT: 5'11"
HAIR COLOR: Black-Brown
EYE COLOR: Brown

MISC: Nicole’s shoulders and back are covered in a rash of slightly red grooves. She normally wears clothing that covers this part of her body, so you wouldn’t know unless you had seen her in some sort of undress. Because of this, she rarely goes swimming with anyone she’s not quite close with, and always finds a private place to change into her tennis clothes. (Example of scarring)



PERSONALITY: If focus is to have any meaning, it must be applied to Nicole. She’s been called blunt, callous and cold, but she’s actually very compassionate when she slows down and pays attention to others, she’s just so often “tunnel vision” focused on the task at hand that anything getting in the way of that seems like a nuisance to her.

Nicole’s first love is tennis. On the court, she doesn’t have to think about anything other than hitting the ball, and she’s damn good at it. She is highly competitive, though she shows no aggression towards other players; the only person she sees any need to compete with is herself. If Nicole’s whereabouts are ever unknown, the tennis court is certainly the first place anyone who knows her at all would check.

As a friend, Nicole is loyal and always there in a pinch. If she were your friend, you’d be remiss to not place her at the top of the list of “people to help you move.” While very giving with her time to others, it’s very hard for her to ask for help as she sees herself as incredibly independent. Often, the thought of asking for help doesn’t even come to her until it’s too late.

While she often makes a bad first impression, causing people to think she dislikes most of whom she encounters, she’s relatively non-judgmental, and mostly just wishes to leave others alone and receive the same in return. She was initially against going to Bellefonte—it seemed like a whole lot of trouble for something that was “no big deal”—but after it was explained that in the long run this would mean less trouble for her and she saw what the school had to offer she agreed.

SECRET(S): In her alone time Nicole loves to read poetry. Not many know this about her, as she would never bring it up unless it was directly referenced, and she only reads when she’s alone, but her collections of Elizabeth Bishop, HD, Mina Loy, and Emily Dickinson are all tattered from being read and reread so many times. Perhaps it’s her difficulty in being able to spend time appreciating the small things that makes poetry so fascinating to her, but at the same time she hasn’t really thought all that much about it. Sometimes, if you listen closely, you can hear her quote a line or two under her breath in the middle of a tennis match.



FATHER: Michael Andre Artaud

MOTHER: Abigail Genevieve Artaud

SIBLINGS: Genevieve Claire Artaud (18), Anna Julia Artaud (13), Benjamin Theodor Artaud (9)

WORTHY MENTIONS: N/A

CHILDHOOD: Nicole was born in Fairfax, VA as the second daughter to Michael and Abby Artaud. After Nicole came 2 more children, and the six Artaud’s lived in relative harmony. Her mother was a medical doctor, running a general practice in Fairfax and working for the FDA on a contract basis and her father taught history at GMU so she was raised in a household that expected excellence in academics. Claire, her older sister, was always a bit of a space cadet, and so Nicole felt she needed to pick up the slack, hence her disposition towards extreme focus. Her younger siblings, Anna and Ben, were both “the baby” for their own time, and while Nicole was never explicitly put in charge, she often took it as Claire, while very caring and well-meaning, had a tendency to let things slip through the cracks.

Nicole started playing tennis at age 9, and excelled in it from the beginning. The escapist fantasy of the tennis court was something that held Nicole constant throughout her childhood, as with a full household finding time to herself was an amazing blessing.

As a child Nicole had very few friends, as her siblings were often enough company for her, but her neighbor Samantha became a close confidant of hers, and they remained nearly inseparable from ages 7-11 when Samantha moved to the Pacific Northwest. This was quite difficult for Nicole, as she had trouble getting close to people—it usually seemed like too much effort for her.

ADOLESCENCE: Nicole’s junior high years were relatively disaster free. Certainly she was awkward and “finding herself,” but her performance in school and athletics remained consistently excellent, and she was generally well-liked at school, though she had no one she was that close to. When her older sister Claire left for college, a large hole opened up in Nicole’s social life, and she took more initiative in making friends. During this period (14-15) she made friends with a group of girls from her tennis squad, but as she came to terms with her sexuality—Nicole had always remained largely apathetic towards men as a whole—she was slowly ostracized from them.

On her 15th birthday she went to a house show alone after she saw an upperclassman she was crushing on would be going. Nervous and trying to keep a brave face, she tried to enjoy herself, throwing herself into the fray of the show. After the second band’s set, she worked up the courage to approach Shea, the aforementioned upperclassman. Heart pumping, she focused herself and began to make her way over when a voice cried out in shock. Suddenly, everyone was staring at Nicole.

She looked around in confusion at the group pointing and staring at her before looking down to see the skin on her shoulders and biceps had turned to a thick, leathery hide. Touching her face and neck, she realized they had been changed too. Confused, scared, and humiliated, Nicole made eye contact with Shea, who was staring in bewilderment, before fleeing the scene, and waiting outside in a dark covering until her mother arrived to pick her up.

Working with the FDA, Abby Artaud had seen her share of medical anomalies, and knew how to act in emergencies like this. She assured her daughter that she would find a doctor who could diagnose and treat Nicole's skin condition and had begun to do some preliminary research (to no avail) before the BA recruiters came. Because the show was dimly lit and most of the people there were inebriated to some degree, Nicole's mutated skin didn't strike anyone as extremely odd—it mainly looked dry and discolored—the fear was mainly due to surprise and worry that it might be contagious. Mr. and Mrs. Artaud told Nicole's school that she had a skin condition which resulted in a rash, but was not at all contagious, and as this news spread, the events of the house show became merely high school gossip, and soon the students found more interesting stories to tell. Nicole stayed home the next few days, going over that night again and again. In this time she had figured out how to change parts of her skin at will, but couldn’t undo the change—it would fade after a few hours—and would still start to change accidentally if she became emotional.

Four days after the incident a recruiter from Bellefonte came and, after a heated, emotional discussion with her parents, Nicole went off to school. She has now spent 2 years at BA and continued her performance in both tennis and academics. While she's remained cordial and friendly with many students and faculty, she's yet to move out of her isolationist comfort zone, and her social skills still leave much to be desired.


ADULTHOOD: N/A



SAMPLE: From the machine to Nicole, the ball—through force! Through propulsion! Through fear of halting!—flew. The boy’s initial scream upon seeing her skin, the cacophony of voices all discussing her, the amorphous collection of eyes staring at her, and the steady, clear vision of Shea’s astonished—disgusted?—eyes looking right back into hers: none of these existed for Nicole at the moment. There was only the ball, flying towards her, and her body, propelled without thought towards it.

Her arm swung. Her racket cut the air. Collision. The ball went hurtling back even faster than it had come. Nicole heard the machine reload, and the cycle started again.

USERNAME: Jacqueline / Robotmom

AGE GROUP: 20

EXPERIENCE: 5 years-ish

WHERE DID YOU FIND US? Proboards listing

[Fate]

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