Ciara Nichols

* Biography
* Threat Assessment
* Trivia and Notes
* Gallery

## Sureshot

* Sureshot
* Ciara Nichols

## Biography

### Ciara Nichols: 1991 - 2006

Ciara is the daughter of Siobhan Ryan and Malcolm Nichols. Her father was married to another woman when his affair with Siobhan resulted in her pregnancy. As a psychology student working as a waitress to help pay for school, Siobhan had met Malcolm as he was one of Siobhan’s regular customers. Siobhan originally had not intended to alert Malcolm but when she discovered she was pregnant with twin girls, she felt she may need his help.

When her condition was elevated to a high risk pregnancy with the onset of gestational diabetes in addition to the burden of twins, Siobhan decided to drop out mid-semester. At thirty-two weeks, Siobhan gave birth to Caitlin and Ciara. Due to complications, Caitlin unfortunately didn’t make it through the night. Months later, Siobhan and Malcolm were married in a simple ceremony at a courthouse just a week after Malcolm’s divorce was finalized.

To honor her daughter, Siobhan saw to it that Ciara had an idyllic, active, and outdoorsy childhood with her two older half-brothers, Richard and Robert. The three of them were mostly inseparable going hiking, camping, and hunting.

For all intents and purposes, Ciara was “one of the boys” so when she was nine, her brothers began her combat training and taught her how to shoot a bow and arrow, despite her mother’s preference that they did not do such. Ciara’s brothers were amazed at how quickly and easily she picked up the skill. They gave her the nickname, Sureshot, on the account that she rarely missed and hit dead center on targets with bow or a pellet gun. Those were the best days of her life...

When Ciara was fifteen, her mother was found dead outside her work. According to the police, she was found in an adjacent alley with face down and skirt ripped. Despite Ciara noticing that Siobhan was still wearing the diamond bracelet and anklet birthday present she got for her, the police called it a robbery. Months afterward, the police were proved wrong, when one of Siobhan’s clients admitted to killing her when she didn’t reciprocate his romantic advances. After the ordeal, Ciara decided to pursue a career in law enforcement.

### Sureshot: 2006 - Present

In the wake of her mother's death, Ciara came to terms with her metahuman ability that had made itself more prominent with every passing year. By the time she was sixteen years old, Ciara had learned that she could overclock portions of her brain's abilities by disabling or impairing other areas. Using her powers, Ciara could turn off her ability to feel pain to push herself beyond her normal limits, improve her eye to hand coordination, or improve her senses to superhuman levels.

Taking advantage of her powers, Ciara attended both night school and summer courses and so attained a Bachelor's degree by the time she was twenty. As this was still too for the police academy, Ciara spent the next year engaging in a boxing gym workouts, marathon running, and extreme sports. The next year, Ciara was at the top of her police academy class in several criteria and with her college degree in criminal justice behind her, was allowed to take the detectives' exam at a younger age. Thus Ciara Nichols became the youngest detective in the history of the Star City Police Department.

But police work was not as fulfilling as Ciara had hoped and she always felt like she was forced to hold herself back as a cop due to the stigma that would follow if her coworkers learned she was a metahuman. So, after a couple years of detective works and a fateful encounter with Star City's Emerald Archer, Ciara decided to pick archery back up and made a suit.

Before she made her debut as Sureshot, Ciara decided to audition her skills before the Green Arrow himself. Putting her senses to the test and turning herself into a human forensics lab, Ciara discovered the location of the Quiver and identity of the Green Arrow. Of course, after such an audition, Oliver would have been a giant fool to turn Ciara away so that's how Ciara ended up joining Team Arrow.

## Threat Assessment

### Resources

* **Artifact:** Ciara has been chosen to join the ranks of a secret team hand-picked by the mysterious Monitor based on some metaphysical element in her that will be of some considerable use in some confrontation in the future.
* **Enhanced Brain Cognitive/Calibration Control:** In the wake of her mother's death, Ciara realized she could overclock portions of her brain's abilities by disabling or impairing other areas. Using her powers, Ciara could turn off her ability to feel pain to push herself beyond her normal limits, improve her eye to hand coordination, or improve her senses to superhuman levels. Obviously, this has *many* other applications.
* **Archery:** Ciara has trained herself to be an expert archer specializing in recurve and compound bows, as well as crossbows with near perfect accuracy. True to her Sureshot moniker, Ciara prides herself on being more accurate and placing her shots than the number of shots she can get off. As a bow and arrow dependent so much more on the physical discipline of its user than a complex mechanism like a gun, Ciara has a fondness for the bow. Using her powers to dial in her eye-to-hand coordination, muscle control, and spatial reasoning, Ciara is able to become a truly exceptional archer, provided she has the time to make the necessary fine-tuning to her cerebral settings. Still, despite all of her advantages, she is still speechless when Oliver Queen manages to outshoot her somehow.
	+ ***Custom Bow:*** Given to her by Oliver Queen himself, Ciara has a compound bow customized to her precision standards.
	+ ***Quiver:*** Ciara's is a state-of-the-art quiver designed to not spill her arrows when performing acrobatic maneuvers. It also has an arrowhead-changing mechanism that can add gimmick features to standard arrows. Her standard quiver holds thirty arrow shafts and twice as many arrowheads, most of which of trick arrows such as 'Capture-Foam', 'Grapnel', 'Flashbang', 'Exploding', or the concussive grenade known as the infamous 'Boxing Glove' arrow. Her bow also has three variable draw weights that can be quickly switched in between, and collapses into a bit more compact size for easy storage.
	+ ***Crossbow:*** Ciara uses a red handheld pistol crossbow with a light camouflage pattern. Her crossbow is magazine fed and accepts non lethal bolts used to knock out hostiles. Each of the magazines can hold up the 5 bolts and she carries about 4 magazines on her.
* **Computer Operation:** Though Ciara leaves the heavy lifting to Felicity, she’s capable of some simple hacking and programming, most importantly she is able to keep her equipment from being hacked or traced.
* **Law Enforcement Training:** Ciara Nichols is a highly-trained and highly-motivated law enforcement officer.
	+ ***Investigation:*** Thanks to her enhanced brainpower, Ciara is a skilled investigator who is well-versed in the collection and analysis of forensic material; as well as other disciplines such as interrogation and interviewing.
	+ ***Marksmanship:*** Thanks to her improved eye-to-hand coordination, Ciara is highly-proficient with firearms, particularly her standard issue .40 AmerTek semi-automatic pistol.
	+ ***Martial Arts:*** Ciara is an expert martial artist with training in Boxing, Freestyle Wrestling, Muay Thai, Jujitsu, and Karate. Her personal fighting style includes fast strikes, while using feints to confuse and long combinations to overwhelm her opponents.
	+ ***Tactics:*** Ciara is a skilled tactician, particularly in regards to law enforcement and criminal practices. She has had additional training in this field from other Team Arrow members.
* **Strength Level:** Due to lifelong physical endeavors, Ciara possesses the strength level of a woman her age and size who engages in regular exercise and combat training. She can lift about one and half times her body weight.

### Weaknesses

* **Min/Maxing:** When Ciara ups one ability, it comes at a cost. If she ups two, it comes at a greater price. So on and so forth. While Ciara can usually get away with enhancing one to three of her abilities without much impairment, when she puts herself in a peak-state or 'battle mode' she usually has many weaknesses that can be taken advantage of if one can ascertain which brain function she has dropped.
* **Sensory Overload:** When Ciara dials up one or more of her senses, she can be extremely vulnerable to sensory overload. If she falls victim to this, there is a chance that in her panic, her other altered brain functions might scramble and leave her completely disoriented.
* **Odic Disruption:** Pointing to a possible psionic element to her metahuman abilities, Ciara can tell when there is a telepath or a magic user nearby as she gets a disorientating feeling. Most concerning is that when telepaths probe her mind, there is a chance that one or more of her senses may go haywire if they have been altered from their baseline state.

## Trivia and Notes

### Trivia

* Ciara is ambidextrous but prefers to shoot with her right hand, yet she writes with her left hand. She’s the only person in her family who is ambidextrous.
* Ciara has a large stuffed animal collection, enough to fill up one of her closets back home, but her favorite is a large panda bear her brothers bought for her when she got injured as a child. It sits on the edge of her bed and she makes sure to hug it before going to bed.
* Ciara uses a sensory deprivation tank at least once a month to help reset her senses. She’s currently working on Ollie to have one such tank installed in at least one, if not all of Team Arrow's satellite bases.
* They don’t like it, but Ciara’s brothers are well are aware that she’s operating as Sureshot in Oregon.
* Ciara is a “stereotypical cop” who loves donuts, but only glazed and chocolate in moderation. She says that it’s the one bad vice her brothers allow her to have, that she’ll never give up. Her current partner on the SCPD is trying hard to convince her that frozen hot chocolate is something she needs to try, she rolls her eyes and shakes her head in response.
* Ciara only drinks cold liquids from Styrofoam and plastic cups. Asking her to drink straight from a can without a straw will get you an evil look.
* It seems like Detective Nichols has a certain type of guy she’s attracted to as all her previous relationships have been with guys who were 3 to 6 inches taller than her and were bald.
* Ciara has a “meh” attitude towards Ollie/Team Arrow’s signature weapon...the boxing glove arrow. She admits to preferring more tactical arrowheads but will use it if she has no other options.
* While she’s young and before she retires as a police officer Ciara admits to wanting to try a few extreme sports (as if being a vigilante archer isn’t extreme enough) as well a completing a triathlon. She also loves to travel with two of future destinations being her maternal grandmother’s home country of Ireland, and visiting Australia.
* Ciara is highly susceptible to addiction. Thankfully, with her powers, she has the ability to temporarily turn her addictions off.
* Ciara is fascinated by vampires. She watches really sappy vampire stories with a box of tissues handy and geeks out over movies in that genre. I wonder how she'll react to learning that real vampires do exist...
* When drunk, Ciara likes to challenge people to impromptu wrestling matches.
* Ciara is annoyed by people prone to hair-twiddling and other repetitive fidgety behaviors.
* Ciara has an irrational fear of monkeys (pithecophobia), stemming from an unfortunate childhood trip to the zoo when she was five years old.
* Ciara had astraphobia (fear of thunder and lightning) until she was in the 9th grade. It was so bad that she’d even refuse to walk in the rain if she heard thunder in the past couple of minutes.
* Ciara finds a great deal of humor in absurd facial expressions. There are some people who she can't help but giggle at whenever they make the slightest expression.
* Ciara has a weird kink. Even though she herself is not that religious, she finds visiting places of worship, in-depth discussions of religion or spirituality, and religious rituals to be highly arousing. She must do a fairly good job of concealing this from most people. I personally would have no idea, except Felicity hacked her laptop as part of the Team Arrow screening process and found some really weird forum posts.
* If feeling playful, Ciara likes to tease people by constantly responding to their questions with 'Guess'.
* Ciara is sensitive about her height and rarely, if ever, wears heels higher than 3 inches.
* She took part in Peter Venkman's parapsychology studies.

### Notes

* Ciara Nichols/Sureshot is an original character created by AzureVirgo.

## Oracle Files

Oracle Files: Ciara Nichols 1Oracle Files: Ciara Nichols 2

## Links and References

* Appearances of Ciara Nichols

1. ↑ Oracle Files: Ciara Nichols (1/2)
2. ↑ Oracle Files: Ciara Nichols (2/2)
3. ↑ Deluxe Oracle File: Ciara Nichols
4. ↑ VOX Box: Who You Gonna Call? (Prologue)