Nova (LightningSakura)/Original Timeline

**Nova Baudelaire** is a character in the Astral Lineage series of fighting games. She does not make any direct appearances in the Original Timeline of games.

## Biography

Nova Baudelaire was born in the Northeast United States into a relatively wealthy family that had migrated decades ago from France. She was an only child, but despite this, was raised to find competition in everyone around her by both her mother and father who always prided themselves in their success. Because of this, Nova strived to be better than her peers, even from a very young age. When she was ten years old, her mother gifted her a crystal-red pendant that she was told to always wear and keep with her. She was promised that they would explain the significance of the pendant when she was an adult, and so they did. When she was eighteen, after Nova graduated from High School and was getting ready to head off to University, Nova's parents told her the Legend of Soul Edge, Soulcalibur, and their bloodline that descended from power in France, a direct connection to the "cursed" blade. Nova was told that the sword Soul Edge was not actually cursed and was the ultimate form of power. The pendant she wore was one of the remaining shards of the blade that existed and that their bloodline was keeping the sword alive.

With this in mind, Nova sought out further information on her family's history and attempted to find more information on the swords. However, the vast majority of people no longer believed the swords ever existed, and many accounts of their history were lost to time and rumour. Nova decided to bring back the legend herself, motivated by the idea of power and worship, and bring Soul Edge back to life with the shard she had. In college, her Global History class, a class she had joined in efforts to help research Soul Edge and Soulcalibur further, took a trip to a museum in France. Things came to a head when Nova, along with the rest of her class, passed by a glass enclosure of a red crystal, unlabeled as to what it was, but important as the people who found it could not identify what exactly the crystal was. It was in passing by this crystal that the pendant Nova wore began to glow.

The crystal had been a shard of Soul Edge that had laid dormant for centuries until finally reuniting with another shard, the shard that Nova wore around her neck as a pendant.

## Costumes

Nova's primary attire is a mix of skater and casual, with dark and gothic elements in both colour and style. She is often seen wearing dresses and skirts. Her hair is kept in a way bob-cut and is usually black but sometimes black and purple.

## Personality

On the inside, she is cold and calculating but on the outside, Nova intentionally puts on a more cheerful or ditzy persona that she uses to charm people. She has no qualms about lying or betraying people to get what she wants, and has several obsessive tendencies such as her focus on Soul Edge and bringing it back at all costs for her own gain.

## Fighting Style

Because she has no formal training in combat, Nova's style is random and unorthodox, simply focused on whatever hurts the most or gets her the win. With a bit of Soul Edge's influence, she is able to faintly mimic the styles of other fighters.