Name: Dr. Gemma Grace

Age: 25

Gender: Female

Species: Human 

World of Origin: Earth 

Are you a member of TRIDENT?: Yes!
If so, what is your job/specialty?: Physicist / human radar

Appearance: Gemma is 5’7 at best, with dark skin and long black hair in braids. Her build is about average, neither thin nor fat, and both of her arms have sleeves of black ink tattoos—flowers. When not in uniform, she dresses casually, shorts or jeans and colorful blouses or t-shirts. 

Abilities and skills: Gemma is sensitive to particles, electricity, and magnetism, basically meaning she’s really good at sensing disturbances in “the force”—including cosmic rays, solar winds, nuclear accidents, and streams of particles with not quite so straightforward causes. As a result of this, she’s the team’s living radar, with the ability to detect and roughly locate bursts of radiation. Her electricity thing means she can function as a human potato light bulb science project, and she can charge her phone without a plug (albeit slowly).

Outside of all that physics stuff, she made it through basic training so she’s tolerably athletic. When her average hand-to-hand skills won’t cut it, though, she can shoot straight with a standard issue pistol. 

Strengths and Weaknesses: 
(+) She’s a genius. She got her PhD when she was just 23 and is really, really into quantum physics. 
(-) Her knowledge is not always terribly practical and her social skills are slightly below average.
(+) Cool particle/magnetic sensitivity thing! 
(-) Like a psychologist who can’t always describe her feelings, the vocabulary regarding what Gemma is feeling is sometimes lacking. She has learned to recognize the differences between many different events, but weird, inexplicable feelings still sometimes persist. Also, increased solar activity sucks. 
(+) Cool electricity thing may or may not work on brains? 
(-) The theory is untested. It would require an unconscious subject willing to get their head messed with. Also, the “cool electricity thing” is probably what causes Gemma’s epilepsy.
 
Equipment Requests: Cell phone, laptop with access to cosmic/solar activity readings from satellites, several devices for the measurement of radiation (including a Geiger counter), and a standard issue pistol.

History: Gemma was born in Florida, only child of an electrician father and librarian mother. Electricity and physics fascinated her from a young age, which both of her parents fostered, though there were certain… inexplicable things about their daughter. Her electricity thing was most apparent—during power outages and thunderstorms, she was known to keep lights and even TVs working, much to the confusion of her family.

When she entered school she flew through, skipping two grades and graduating high school when she was only sixteen. Her parents advised her to take a gap year but she refused, enrolling in the MIT physics program that fall. Her first semester was rough. The new environment posed new challenges, and the close proximity of so much technology (including the presence of a real life linear accelerator) caused her “sixth sense” to act up like crazy. It was uncomfortable, but it helped her learn to filter and recognize what different sensations meant.

The year before her graduation, when she was 20, she began researching with one of her professors at the linear accelerator that had so troubled her during her freshman year. Her leadership—and her smashing together of particles by “feeling”—gained her a co-authorship and some notoriety. 

She gained the attention and interest of TRIDENT when she was 23. She was working late during a thunderstorm when the building was struck by lightning not once or twice but four times in quick succession, starting fires and frying the generators keeping the building running. The auto-lock doors jammed and the fourth-floor windows were not ideal for cracking, so Gemma, using a skill reserved for party tricks and emergency phone charging, summoned all her might and zapped the doors open, leading her and her six associates to safety. The event got decent press coverage. Gemma blamed the backup generator kicking in, and the excuse worked, but those that looked closer knew.

On the day she got her PhD, she was approached by people claiming to be from a secret government agency called TRIDENT who wanted to help her understand her talent. Jumping at the excuse to do weird, off the wall physics and understand her quirks, she accepted. In MERCY, she’s fairly low ranking, having only been in the group for a little more than a year, but she’s eager to understand what exactly these dimensional rift things are.

Personality: Though she works primarily in a lab setting, Gemma is definitely not someone to wait out the action. She’s a go-getter—loud, candid, and ready to jump in and help at any time. She isn’t always rewarded for this kind of behavior, because she’s not necessarily the most outgoing person, but damn it if she won’t try. She’s a try everything once kinda gal.  On the negative end, she can be naïve and idealistic, leading to some dangerous situations. She’s sheltered and inexperienced, takes no shit from anyone (even her superiors, which has ended poorly once or twice) and is an angry crier.