Lina Loxias

From C2Wiki

Malachite
Concept	Medium and Melee Artist
Status	Active
Alts
Vitals
Real Name	Lina Loxias
Species	Human
Gender	Female
Hair	Black
Eyes	(1) Green, (1) Gold
Height	5'7"
Age	25
Profession	Olympic figure-skater (retired), coach
Characteristics
Notable Aliases
Alliances
Base of Operations
Abilities	Channeling, posthuman physique, personal magnetism

Most of the below is public information, and Lina is high profile ICly. Know at will.

Background

Once America's primary force-on-ice, Lina has a smattering of national and world titles, two Olympic medals as a solo skater - silver (2006) and gold (2010) - and is the first woman to have successfully landed a Quad Flip in competition; she also remains the only woman who has never fallen on a quad jump while on competition ice. ("She's fallen on triples, fallen on doubles, fallen on spins - but not the quad," a commentator once quipped.) It was while striving to add another record to this list, as the first woman to take an Olympic medal not only in solo, but in pairs, that disaster struck, in full televised technicolor during the 2011 World Championships.

The fall during the free skate gouged out a portion of Lina's left eye. Blood or not, she was determined to finish; it was her partner who walked off the ice and took them off the boards. The injury did critical damage to her depth perception, and Lina was abruptly sidelined. Six weeks later, the eye showed mysterious and remarkable recovery, but the fiery skater declined to return to competition, instead taking a role as a coach.

Malachite's first heroic venture was a well-publicized campaign against the organization of one of the first metahuman crime lords, Raphael Cecilio. Cecilio, the leader of an old Mafia family gone drunk with his new powers, manipulated shadows. Malachite single-handedly hamstrung the organization, then left the police appropriate clues to lead to his arrest.

It is no secret that Lina is the martial artist Malachite, known for her powerful presence and a communion with ghosts who whisper knowledge in her ear. The coincidences of timing, the gold tones in the damaged eye, and her acrobatic ease led to a spate of speculation after the Cecilio incident - which was promptly halted when the woman openly confirmed it with no attempts at evasion.

Pardoned by the New York governor - mostly as a publicity stunt - she found herself a media darling ... again. Though perceived as a charming rebel by the public, her continued survival as an open metahuman comes as much from quiet cooperation on the local level as it does from her flashier displays.

Lina's former ice partner (and in-other-senses partner), Gavin Murdoc, is deceased. He was murdered shortly after the disastrous fall; Cecilio's men were responsible. In the wake of his death, despite their public falling-out on the ice, tabloids took a particular glee in referring to her as a black widow. Cecilio, in turn, was gunned down by authorities in an attempted prison escape in January '12.

Present

Since arriving in Port Liberty, she has remained active as both Malachite and Lina. As Malachite, she has been involved in several public incidents, campaigned actively for Virginia's Safe Streets Act - an action which got her ambushed and hospitalized, saved a state Senator, and faced down The Silver Jackal with other local metas. It is rumored she challenged the Jackal to take her into his game. As Lina, she has steered her student Rachel Campanari (16) to a silver medal at the 2013 U.S. Championships in figure-skating.

She's been working with fellow metahuman Hot Shot in the duo Rush - emphasis on high-energy teamwork. Otherwise, she maintains a number of ties with local metahumans and has been known to grease the wheels of networking.

Lina is a long-time friend of fellow Olympian Hawk Stevens. More recently, reports have linked the two romantically.

Her legal affairs are handled by the (long-suffering) Marcus Constantin, a superb private defender and an expert in Good Samaritan law originally from New York City. Her agent, Brian Tattersall, started as a self-appointed spin-artist after she retired from amateur skating - he worked for a percentage, ignoring her attempts to dismiss him, until she finally admitted his expertise was helpful. He has since become an indispensible part of her team.

Lina is American on her late mother's side. Her nearest living relative is her Greek-born father, Julian Loxias, a senior lawyer in Thessaloniki and rapidly pushing sixty. According to ever-interested reporters, the two are almost (but not quite) estranged, but an incident in December '12 (when the visiting Julian was shot at by Silver Jackal thugs) suggests that this is as much an act on Lina's part to keep her father from being a target as anything else. Then again - oil, water and snark are a bad combination.