Rika “Sunbird” Adom

[b]Name:  [/b]Rika Adom

[b]Alias:  [/b]Sunbird

[b]Identity:  [/b]Secret (though her mom knows)

[b]Status:  [/b]Heroine-In-Training

[b]Occupation:  [/b]International Hero Academy student

[b]Type:  [/b]Pyrokinetic Meta-Human

[b]Age:  [/b]17-years-old

[b]Stats:
Height:  [/b]5 feet 9 inches/175 centimeters
[b]Weight:  [/b]185.9 pounds/84.5 kilograms
[b]Hair Color, Type:  [/b]Light brown, worn loose and shoulder length
[b]Eye Color, Type:  [/b]Crystal Blue

[b]Place of Birth:  [/b]Aoyama, Tokyo, Japan

[b]Headquarters:  [/b]International Hero Academy campus

[b]Appearance:  [/b]Rika is not like many girls her age.  She prefers to allow her natural beauty to show through, which, in her case, is rather unique due to her mixed racial background, thus she doesn't like wearing make-up and, while its not to the point where she has to beat every guy off with a stick, her looks are enough to earn her more than a few admirers of the male, and even the occasional female, variety.  While she prefers to wear pants in casual situations, she will wear a dress or skirt if there is neither nothing else for her to wear or the situation warrents it.  She keeps her light brown hair loose and a little past her shoulders in length.

As Sunbird, she dons an outfit of red.  She wears good quality, sturdy boots, jeans, shoulder length fingerless gloves, and a sleeveless tight top trenchcoat with gold trim.

[b]Personality:  [/b]Rika is kind, caring, somewhat of a tomboy, gentle, somewhat enigmatic, headstrong, proud, independent, and sometimes stubborn.  A pacifist by nature, she prefers not to strike first regardless of the situation.  However, if she is pushed far enough, usually by threatening those close to her, her friends and family, she will throw her full weight at an enemy, though she will try to hold back if its simply a mere bully.  She will even slap an ally if they go too far in her view.  While she is not one who actively seeks out fights, she is not afraid to dive right in if one erupts.

[b]Powers/Abilities:  [/b]

[u]Pyrokinesis[/u] - Creation, control, and manipulation of fire.  This ranges from basic fireballs to manipulating flames into workable physical forms she can use (like a sword, for example) to small, intense jets of flame she can weld or cut with to full blown fire storms (though, at this point in time, she is unable to control this level of her powers and has only once, accidently, even used this aspect of her powers) and more.

[u]Flight[/u] - She's able to 'sprout' a pair of flaming wings that she uses for flight.  Combined with fire jets from her feet and her hands and fingers, she can provide thrust and manuvering while the heat in general is high enough to alter atmospheric pressure enough around her body to allow lift in general as well as a generally aerodynamic shell.

[u]Multilingual[/u] - She isn't perfectly fluent in them, but she is conversant in conversational Japanese and Egyptian.  This is in part due to her father being a translator for the United Nations.  This is in addition to her English.

[u]Althetic[/u] - Having taken various gymnastics, martial arts, and self-defense classes over the years, as well as having been on various sports teams, she is, while no prodigee fighter, can hold her own in close range combat, be it armed or not.  It also means that she is decently physically fit.

[u]Mechanically Inclined[/u] - While no meta-genius with machines, she prefers working on her motorcycle, be it for repairs, cleaning, or customization, herself.  Based on the fact that she helped out in the garage of one of her mother's friends after school, starting long before she could even dream of legally operating any form of motor-vehicle, she has picked up her fair share of knowledge and tricks.

[b]Weaknesses:  [/b]

[u]Water[/u] - The natural counter to flames, it'll douse her powers.

[u]Fire Extinguishers[/u] - Essentially the same effect as water, only without being water.

[u]Mortal/Human[/u] - Once you get around her pyrokinetic abilities, she's just as human as the next person.  She can still make mistakes, get sick, become injured, or even die.

[u]Control[/u] - Being tied into her emotions, the more intense she feels, the more powerful her flames become, however this is countered by that for each degree of power increase is equalled by the same degree of control decrease.

[u]Self-Confidence[/u] - Actually, more a lack there-of.  Deep down, she has a subconcious fear that she'll never be able to control her powers, as well as a fear of what could happen if she lost control.  As such, it tends to put a limit cap on what she can do.

[u]Skill/Experience[/u] - She'll more than likely loose if she goes up against anyone who is a certified master at a single martial art, let alone multiple ones.

[b]Inventory/Weapons:  [/b]

[u]Motorcycle[/u] - Instead of getting a car when she got her driver's license, she picked out a motorcycle as her means of transportation.

[u]Cell Phone[/u] - Typical belonging of the majority of people these days, she prefers to not be one of the types who has their cell 'glued' to his or her ear.

[b]Tactics:  [/b]Rika prefers to not engage in violence unless she has no other choice.  When she does fight, her abilities make her a mixed-range combatant:  her athletic nature, combined with the years of off-and-on gymnastics and martial arts classes, allow her to put together strikes that combine techniques from various sources and her pyrokinetics allow her to operate from close-up to a distance to anywhere-in-between.  However, in no small part to her continued work on the control of her powers and low self-confidence on her ability to use them, she would rather not use her pyrokinetics in a fight unless she must to save lives.

[b]Origin:  [/b]Rika Adom is the daughter of an Japanese-American J.A.G. Lieutenant stationed in Japan, her mother, and an Egyptian-American U.N. translator, her father.  Though being born in Japan gives her dual American and Japanese citizenship, she views herself as being American instead of Japanese, probably in part that she moved with her mother to Albuquerque, New Mexico when she was reassigned to a post there while still in her formitive years.  Spending the next portion of her life stateside, it was all she knew with only vague memories of time spent in Japan.

Other than her father travelling around the world, spending little time at home, due to his job, Rika's childhood was decent, serene, and peaceful.  As a long-time friend of her mother's owned a garage near their house, she spent time there when her mother was out of the house due to her job, which, sadly, was more often than Rika cared to think about.

For seventeen years, Rika's life continued as such.  She was even put down as having a part-time job at her mother's friend's garage when she was old enough to legally do so, even though she had technically been pretty much doing so already.

One day, a few weeks after her seventeenth birthday, Rika was out riding her motorcycle in the countryside miles from town.  She was on her way to one of her favorite spots for a small picnic lunch she had packed herself.  It was on this fateful day that her life would change forever.

Having finished her lunch, she had decided to go for a hike around the area.  Unfortunately, she stumbled upon a site being used as a landing strip for drug smugglers.  Being spotted before she could get away safely, the drug smugglers gave chase, randomly taking pot shots at her fleeing form with various guns.  Eventually, not paying attention to where she was going, Rika found herself trapped in a box canyon with no time to try climbing out.  Cowering behind a rock, she felt an explosion from what she thought was a grenade moments before blacking out, not knowing that it had really been the first, and, to date, last, time she had created a firestorm due to the intense adrenaline surge activating her dormant meta-genes.

[b]History:  [/b]She awoke the next morning, surprised to find herself not just still alive but also being cared for by an elderly Native American woman.  The shaman, though Rika guessed at this based on the room's decorations and the woman's garb, nursed the young girl back to health for the rest of the week.  Over the course of her convalesance, Rika talked with the old woman, who called herself  Amelia Sunbird.

It was during these talks that Rika learned what really happened when she blacked out in the box valley.  After the explosive blast of flame, the smugglers had fled for their lives.  Seeing the smoke cloud from their village, Amelia had led a group of men and women to the site and brough back Rika from where she lay unconcious.  Others also retrived Rika's bike and other belongings from where they sat.

Rika, understandably somewhat shaken by the topic, and Amelia also discussed Rika's new powers.  Rika, at first, wanted to forget the whole thing and act like it never happened.  It took a while, but Amelia eventually convinced her that her powers were a gift she could use to help others.

Eventually, Rika was well enough to return home, where she related the whole tale to her mother.  It was her mother who suggested the idea of the International Hero Academy as a place where Rika could go to learn to hone and control her new found powers, along with promising to smooth over any ruffled feathers due to Rika's week long absence.

It took a while, but working together, Rika and her mother managed to arrange things for Rika to attend the next semester at the International Hero Academy.  Rika took her motorcycle to where she remembered Amelia's village to be to tell the old woman the news as well as to continue their various conversations, only to find that the spot was empty and no trace of the village could be found within eyesight of the box canyon.  A little spooked, Rika returned home, deciding en route to use the alias of Sunbird to, in part, pay homage to Amelia in thanks for the old woman's taking care of her when she was hurt.

The rest, as they say, is history.  Rika departed Albuquerque and now resides at the International Hero Academy where she learns more about what she can do as well as how to control her powers in conjunction with learning and training to help her when she leaves the Academy as a full fledged super-heroine.