Black Squall

Black Squall is a Russian mutant superhero and member of the Liberation League.

## Personality

Black Squall is a cynical hero whose only enthusiasm is for helping others, and even that has become less gratifying over the years. She has little else to comfort her, as she knows that she has no hope of ever escaping the suspicion of her government due to her past associations. She also does not expect to rise either in the Liberation League's hierarchy nor in the public eye, as the old-fashioned views of Russian society place great mistrust on both mutants and women. She is often blamed for the League's shortcomings and this has caused her to turn bitter toward her teammates and to the public she tries to help.

## Powers

Black Squall's mutation gives her the ability to introduce metaphysical chaos and random energies into a system. Although even the most cutting-edge theoretical physics can't fully explain her powers, Black Squall's abilities amount to overturning the laws of thermodynamics in a violent fashion, creating energy out of seemingly nowhere and scattering it in the form of chaotic phenomena.

Black Squall earned her name because the simplest use of her powers is to scatter chaos in the air in order to cause rapid changes in the weather. Typically she employs this method to conjure violent storms, hurricane-force winds, and erratic bolts of lightning. She can guide these phenomena well enough that they serve as her typical power set, letting her fly on the wind, blind her enemies with rain and hail, and even blast them down with bolts of lightning from above. But her abilities to conjure chaos of all sorts has many more applications, and few metahumans are immune to a powerful dose of randomness and unmitigated violent energy. No matter her foe, she can often easily disrupt their plans with unpredictable "bad luck" that causes powers to fade, weapons to jam, and defenses to become unreliable. Her chief protection is an aura of undetectable chaotic energy that skews her enemy's attack and even causes catastrophic misfires.

When she truly wishes to do harm Black Squall can focus her maximum chaotic output on a single target, filling them with an unstoppable energy that has unpredictable but nearly always devastating effect. As this rending attack is often fatal to humans and difficult to control, she rarely uses it except to destroy robots or knock down the occasional building. When much toned down, she can also use this ability to instead provoke random and chaotic behavior in a person, something like inducing temporary insanity, a tactic that can often be useful against a supervillain's carefully-executed plans.

As she has little interest in fighting to her full potential, Black Squall will typically rely on her "weather manipulation" powers in most situations, and even her teammates sometimes forget her true powers lie elsewhere. As far as the public is concerned, her only role is that of a bringer of storms, and even when she arrives to save the day she is perceived as something of a bad omen, as inclement weather and property damage often follow in her wake.

Black Squall is immune to "bad luck" as understood by most metahumans who rely on probability manipulation, and in fact any effort to inflict bad luck on her will actually empower her abilities instead. As such powers are incredibly rare, even Black Squall herself doesn't realize that she has this immunity, but any villain who attempts to use such abilities on her is in for a rude surprise.

## Weaknesses

Closed or empty systems are very difficult to introduce chaos into, and this gives Black Squall a unique weakness to both confinement and airless environments. Her powers function at a vastly reduced capacity if she is trapped in a closed cell, particularly if there is no airflow. And in a vacuum there is almost no matter for her to manipulate, a prerequisite for her abilities to manifest in any useful form beyond startling displays of chaotic lights and directionless energy.

Black Squall's powers are also reduced when used against enemies who are particularly lucky. Any measurable amount of luck a person has adds to their defenses against her attacks, significantly blunting their edge. As a hero of some experience, Black Squall has learned to attack such foes indirectly, assuming their inherent luck doesn't let them evade such tactics entirely.