Cadenza

Example

## Meta

> "*Even if no-one else can help you, I'm Nat Nixon, and **I'm going to fix this.***"
> ― Cadenza
>
>

## Appearance

Nat is a touch on the short side - 5'3" or so. She has blonde hair cut with layered side bangs, cut slightly below her shoulders. Nat's eyes are green, expressive, and very big.

In her civilian life, Nat dresses like an aughts-era Disney Channel character. She loves a good skirt-over-jeans look. A good waistcoat. A good scarf. A good hat at a jaunty angle. She also usually has hair clips or a headband on, positioned just so to not actually keep her side bangs out of her face.

As Cadenza, she switches her costume up frequently. She's fought crime in everything from a fashionable teal coat and star-patterned leggings to a Sailor Moon-inspired Sailor Cadenza costume. What's most important to her when hero-ing is being sparkly and flashy.

## Powers

Nat's powers are all in her voice. She can use the sound waves she creates to exert physical force, boost her allies, or be super, super loud.

Now that her control has improved, she's gotten pretty creative with power applications, including using her voice like a drill to mine moon rocks.

## Background

### Pre-Big Team

Nat was born in Boston, but her parents moved to Halcyon when she was a baby because it was immediately obvious she had voice powers. She desperately wants to be a pop singer, but can't without better control of her powers. After hearing of Big Team, she instantly wanted to join so she could practice; however, she was 12, and her parents made her wait until she was 15.

### Season 5

Cadenza quickly integrated into Big Team as one of three murderbabies. After misadventures in a bad future (nicknamed wrench world) and underwater, she was feeling great about this whole hero thing....that is, until a string of failures to protect her teammates. Starting with Frithr losing their powers, then failing to watch Weaver's back due to being passed out, and not being able to help anyone feel better, Nat took the series of setbacks really hard.

Things started to get better after her parents were kidnapped by someone called The Immortal who had been hired to "assess" Big Team. Though Nat spent half the mission in a complete panic, finding her parents safe and sound before the deadline did reaffirm her faith in her ability to protect them. Plus, she bonded with A-Vis and helped them feel better, which also helped her feel less like dead weight.

In the Season 5 midseason event, Nat traveled to Left-verse, an alternate-timeline Halcyon in the year 2054 left in ruins by its universe's Cadenza. This evil Cadenza, nicknamed Leftdenza, was more concerned with fame and her claim on the spotlight than safety, and used the Worship flare to mind control her fans into loving her even when she dropped buildings on them. Working in the Resistance against her was this universe's version of Riptide, Nat's nemesis, who said that he and Leftdenza had once been friends before she betrayed him for the sake of fame. Nat was deeply shaken by her experience in Leftverse, as it seemed to confirm a lot of her deepest fears about herself: that her desire to be a singer is selfish, that she can either be safe *or* pursue her dreams, etc. Upon her return, Nat sought out her timeline's Riptide and called a truce between them, hoping to be able to understand him better in the absence of an ability to interrogate Leftdenza.

Later, Nat traveled to Boston with a team of fellow Novas (including her adoptive father figure, Ernest) to investigate why it had been cut off from the outside world. There they found Nachtmusik and a shadow-controlled Undertow controlling the city. Riptide volunteered to help, since Undertow is his mother and he wanted her to come home; the others didn't trust him, but Nat vouched for him, which required her to admit to them that she had been speaking to Riptide in secret. In Boston, the Novas somehow managed not to level the place; instead, Nat and Ernest used their Moments of Truth together, with Nat ending the fight with Undertow and Nachtmusik and Ernest breaking the darkness Nachtmusik placed over Boston back in the 50s.

At the end of Season 5, Nat really came into her own and felt secure as a member of Big Team when Challenge, Overgrowth, and Shade looked to her as the leader in a fight against a Yamato-possessed Piper. She was also placed in charge of Big Base's greenhouse by OG, including the weed planted there by Kurt.

### Season 6

For the early part of Season 6, Nat was deeply distracted by the disappearance of her 13-year-old cousin on her father's side. She hadn't seen that side of the family in several years, due to her uncle and aunt's attitude towards superpowers being unnatural and Nat herself being a dangerous freak, but she was still extremely worried when more than a month passed with no leads on what happened to her cousin. This finally came to a head when she figured out that Sabine, a gorgon and new Big Team member, was actually her cousin, and she had been safe at Big Base for most of the time she had been missing. Though Nat was, of course, upset, she was mostly relieved. Sabine and her real mother, the gorgon Euryale, moved into the Nixon household, and Nat and Sabine started getting to know each other for real this time.

She also started dating Carmen after a series of instances of Carmen trying to tell Nat she liked her and Nat being oblivious. But she finally got the message on Valentine's Day!

Partway through the season, Leftdenza and Left-Ernest came to B-Verse Halcyon to take Ryan's gauntlets. Backed up by Carmen, Violet, and Ryan, Nat answered Leftdenza's challenge to a duel to see which Cadenza could "lay claim" to B-Verse Halcyon. When Nat lost control of her powers after a hard blow from Leftdenza, everything started to fall apart; however, Violet used her Moment of Truth to break through the walls around Nat and bring her back to herself. Seeing the dire state everyone else was in, Nat used her second MoT to defeat Leftdenza and Left-Ernest. She sealed Leftdenza's voice inside her so nobody can hear it, but Leftdenza can't hear anything else; Left-Ernest, meanwhile, was finally snapped out of his 30 years of enabling Leftdenza's behavior out of a desire to give her the dreams she wanted so badly. In doing this, Nat sang one of her own songs, and it echoed out over Halcyon, where it soon went viral and catapulted her into Stardom.

## Relationships

### Family

Nat has parents: Scott Nixon, a copywriter who works from home, and Tanya Nixon, a pediatrician running Nixon Pediatrics. She's closer with Scott, but she adores both her parents and the feeling is mutual. They spoil her.

Nat doesn't have any siblings. She does, however, have her cousin Sabine and Sabine's mother Euryale, who moved into the Nixon house with Nat and her parents after Sabine's identity was revealed. Though still nursing some hurt feelings, Nat immediately set about bonding with Sabine.

### Friends

Nat is good friends with Ryan after working with them, A-Vis, and the Dawn Trio to rescue some kidnapped dogs. She's also close with Johnny, especially after The Immortal kidnapped Nat's parents and Johnny's foster caretaker, Ms. Ruelle. Her best friends are Violet, whom Nat desperately wants to be close with and help come out of her shell, and Carmen, whose resting villain face never works on Nat.

Nat tends to inspire big sibling instinct while also imprinting on older members of Big Team like a duckling. She regularly practices with Ernest, whom she looks up to the most, and through Ernest she spends time with Kurt as well. She refers to them as her dads. Since Grayson protected her from Iconoclast, she feels particularly safe when on a mission with him and thinks of him as a big brother.

She has a mile-wide protective streak and regularly gets into arguments on Chitter with people trashing members of Big Team. Though she's generally protective of any Big Team member, Nat is particularly willing to throw down on behalf of A-Vis and Overgrowth. To the point of yelling at A-Vis's foster caretaker for not emotionally supporting them.

### Significant Others

Nat and Carmen started dating in Season 6. She also has feelings for Violet, which are reciprocated, but the situation there is more complicated.

## Additional Scenes

* I Bet You Didn't Know I Was Dangerous - Violet and Nat talk through the aftermath of what happens when a teammate loses control.
* Teens Relate Anecdotes, Instruction, and Niceness - Nat and Johnny go to an AEGIS workshop on power control, and catch up a little in the meantime.
* The Part of the Story Where There's A Duet Song, But With The Heroine and the Villain - Shortly after returning from 2054, Nat attends a secret meeting with her most hated nemesis.
* Truth and a Dare - Apologies, truth or dare, and schemes to steal hot chocolate recipes with Nat and Ellen.
* The Princess Diaries: A Critical Review - A movie viewing with Violet goes awry when Nat starts projecting her problems onto the indomitable Princess Mia Thermopolis.
* Accelerando - In which Ernest gets Nat to open up about her feelings on having an evil future self.
* 'So, You Have An Older Evil Alternate Self...' - Nat offers Sami some advice on dealing with older, alternate versions of yourself.
* A Whisper in Our Ear (Or A Bottle for Our Fears) - An argument with Violet after the latest showdown with Clotho dredges up feelings Nat's been trying to keep to herself. Tired, upset, and convinced she's a bad person for having a crush, Nat texts Ryan for some reassurance.
* A Meeting of Machines and Magic - Nat takes Sami to meet Ryan and talk about how magic could be used to enhance Sami's abilities.

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