Noriko Ashida – Austin Bunton Designs

Once a homeless runaway thousands of miles from her home country, stealing money to buy drugs, and having no control over her manifesting powers, this teenager was as lost as they come. The X-Men took her in, though, as they are wont to do, and turned her life around. In the decade that followed, she became one of their leaders. After the Rapture, she also gained favor with the Inisfreeans.

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Table of Contents:

Spec’s
Details
Personality
“Shipper”
History
Schooling
Abilities
Weaknesses
Non-power Talents
Equipment
“Shipper” 2
Noriko & Auz
2023 Update
Comics
Her

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Spec’s:

NAME: Noriko Ashida
CODENAME: Surge
BIRTHDAY: June 12, 2003
Height: 4’10”
Weight: 98 lbs.
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Body: perfect feminine, petite, slender-fit
Breasts: perky B-cups
AFFILIATION: Student
ALIGNMENT: Good
FACE CLAIM: Ueto Aya

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Heterosexual
RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Engaged

KNOWN FAMILY

Seiji Ashida | Father | Alive
Suki Ashida | Mother | Alive
Keitaro Ashida | Brother | Alive
Takeo Stanton | Son | Deceased

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Details:

Noriko Ashida is a small Japanese girl who had gotten a decent amount of exercise through the various classes she had been taking in school for physical credits. She is quite smaller than usual in some places, she has grown no breasts at all, and has very small neck. There was once a general aura of warmth and light about her as she seemed not to be bothered by anything, and hardly ever reacted to fast pace situations. There is now a distant look to her eyes as if she was once strong but she is now defeated. Though she seems withdrawn and frustrated by the general way of the world, her intelligence and calculating capabilities are clear in her eyes alone, even under the influence, the defeated but desperate Noriko is visible there.

Her choice of clothing would be fairly simple, generally including a black tank beneath her brother’s black spring jacket, all this overtop of light cargo pants in a khaki color. While this, her brother’s clothing was her preference, she wore it rarely as her parents preferred her in colorful sundresses when she was not in school uniform. It would be rare that Noriko would not be seen carrying a journal of some kind, and almost always different ones, it was like she had a warehouse of them.

As she got older this journal became accompanied by an mp3 player with headphones. Her clothing consisted more of black hoodies and pants with boots. She keeps her hair slightly shorter than shoulder length most of the time, though at the moment she hasn’t really bothered with a cut.

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Personality:

Before she discovered her powers, Noriko was a very clever young girl. She was very successful academically and was the Ashida family gem. She was quiet and respectful and stayed out of the way of father’s business resulting in the family’s money often suiting her needs and desires. However, she never really asked for much as simple things often brightened her day. She was quite popular in school as the “nice girl” who would offer a smile in anyone’s direction. When not dealing with others, Noriko was often found writing as her sort of cool down; she would always be lost in her private stories.

Since the discovery of her powers, Noriko has had to endure a complete compromise to what she has always been. She found herself to be more ill-tempered and impatient, resulting in speaking out of turn (to the annoyance of her family) and the loss of her generally cheerful disposition. As her powers progressed and she caused a few disturbances in her everyday life, her mild frustration became often shaky and fearful.

Things have only continued to spiral downward since she left the mansion. Noriko has become more reserved and temperamental than ever, her personality becoming addictive and dependent sometimes even desperate. For those who can look past that surface, however, they might see that promising pupil, born for leadership and excellence hidden somewhere beneath. Even when she is at her worst Noriko has a cleverness to her and often surprises people with her sense of direction. She just happens to often opt out of making the correct decisions.

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“Shipper”

Likes: Writing. Lemon ice. Loose, comfortable clothing. Horses. Exotic plants. Use of her super-speed.
Dislikes: Reliance on money. Airplanes. Cigarette smoke. Cigar smoke. Sugary foods. Liars. Her addictions.
Fears: Large dogs. Airplanes. Marriage. Overclocking again. Loss of control and expelling her powers at the rate of an explosion.
Dreams & Goals: Somehow managing to be both the terrifying mercenary she secretly is for Weasel outside of the mansion, and yet becoming a full fledged teacher at the mansion even though she isn’t one hundred percent sure that ‘X-woman’ would be a proper title for herself and her perception. She also is engaged. She said yes and this means figuring out what it means to be a bride and in a near future a wife both as a mutant and to a mutant.

Stay hidden from her father, Sejii Ashida. He is a rich and powerful and can take a trip to America when ever he feels like it. Now that she’s seen his true face, them meeting would not be good. She’s not as worried about it anymore. The sheer lack of honor she’d brought to her family probably fully added up in his opinion. Not like he was any better As far as she knew he wasn’t even bothering with her anymore.

Start new relationships. Everyone she knew and loved disappeared. Again. Her first love was a very complicated circumstance, and since then she’s had a few awkward relationships and experiences with no real love or sense of tenderness.

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History:

Noriko Ashida was born in Tokyo, Japan to Sejii Ashida, her father and Suki Ashida, her mother. She and her older brother, Keitaro Ashida were born into a life of wealth and honor. Her father was a chairman of a an extremely profitable business dealing in automobiles. Due to the fact that he often had dealing with American business men, the Ashida family speak both Japanese and English quite fluently with very little accent or error. Her success in school and in life was well deserved as she was always a good worker and very intelligent, and the energies of situations always seemed to flow through her and release with positivity and success. Humble and respectful she would remain in life as she would have never dreamt of doing anything that would not honor her mother and her father.

Normally, Noriko would blend in with many in her class with just a few exceptions. It was generally difficult to tear her attention away from her precious journals in which she would always be found writing tales that compelled her endlessly. She was also very adamant in speaking only when spoken to and sticking mainly to what was her business.

Things began to change for her when she reached the age of thirteen. Days began to be just peculiar. She had stayed after school and had to leave because the computer lab lost power. She started on her walk home and the streetlights would dim as she passed. She dismissed happenings like these at first, but there were more like them and other people seemed to notice. She grew ill and frightened when she couldn’t keep the lights on in a room for more than five minutes. Her family and their doctors dismissed it as an off week, but things became more and more clear to Noriko that she was not sick. Her district lost power slowly and was rendered that way for days. Young Nori-chan twitching and in pain approached her father and attempted to explain that the loss of power was actually her fault, that she could feel the electricity. Somehow she’d stolen it. She had recently read something about a cure for a group of people called “mutants” and that these people were believed to have superhuman powers. There was a clinic distributing this cure in America, and Noriko had been piecing her thoughts together leading to her desire to get rid of this pain. She had done this research privately as these rumors greatly intrigued her.

Her father, however, had no patience for such folly, and accused Nori-chan of being lost in her silly stories. Heartbroken, Noriko burst into tears her father had never seemed so disgusted with her, and the sparks that flew from her body lit the bed she had been sleeping in on fire. Her father, speechless left his terrified daughter to the room. She found an extinguisher and made up her mind while putting out the fire she had caused. She was no longer the star in her father’s eye and she never could be as whatever this was. She would go to America and get the cure so that she could someday repent for the trouble she had caused her family. She packed a couple of bags, and took one of her father’s credit cards. He had so many that by the time he noticed her expenses, she would be in America on her way to that clinic. She knew that once she was cured, he would be angry for awhile, but he would eventually forgive her.

She flew to America (causing the plane quite a bit of disturbance) and found that clinic. She waited in line, twitching and in pain as she had absorbed quite a bit of energy over the trip, yet something told her that this was not the right for her, and she decided to endure her power. She had already run from home and it would seem that in having done that along with stealing her father’s money, she could never again honor him. She wandered for awhile and her journey brought her to New York, where she withdrew as much money as she could, but her sources were running low and she was growing frightened.

She was found and brought back to the X-mansion by Forge who she grew instantly attached to. He was able to create a pair of gauntlets that allowed her to control her powers and in her stay at the mansion, Noriko found that she could learn to control her powers by trusting the adult mutants there and following the regimens laid out for her. She began to make friends and adjust to life in America, but her father had located her and in anger ordered to have her taken from the school, a shameful haven for monsters in his opinion.

Noriko was indeed taken by the MEEG and was devastated to learn that her father did not deal only in automobiles, but in weaponry and sponsoring for the group. She was experimented on her father’s blessing to see if her powers could be marketable along with some other mutants and through a forced coma that was induced on her, more of Noriko’s powers manifested to protect her. After sometime, almost six months to be exact, a telepath managed to reach Noriko within her mind and through coaxing, awakened her at which point she expelled all of that built up electrical energy and took out an entire MEEG facility before rapidly taking down entire power grids through absorption. With help from Rogue and Gambit, she was brought back home to the mansion, but was a shell of the former young woman she had been. These rapid changes in electrical current through her body had some detrimental effects to her mind and her body.

Noriko tried to adjust to life again as just another student, but her depression and irritability often got her in trouble. To some degree she’d found her first love, but had a hard time understanding it’s meaning and certainly making it difficult to be understood in return. In frustration and out of paranoia she left the mansion and was recruited by the Brotherhood for a short time, unaware at that time that she was in fact pregnant. In her depression and confusion after everything she’d been through she reached for any physical manifestation of pain she could, and her body just couldn’t sustain the life within her because she became addicted to the feel of electric currents coursing through her. She literally fried the child within her, and was brought to the hospital by another member of the Brotherhood just in time to keep her insides from being damaged further and taking her along with. However, her powers kicked in there and she and the other mutant were chased off of the premises, Noriko getting only a glance of the mutilated form.

Defeated, and feeling utterly alone, sixteen year old Noriko went back to the Brotherhood to find her love had pursued her and was waiting there for her to swear his protection, and loyalty to her in the same way that a samurai would. They tried at a relationship for a short while longer, running away together to California where he had a makeshift base. It did not seem that it was meant to last. He returned to New York, and Noriko decided to remain in California. After a while the lure of the fantasy white beach he left her on became too painful to bear on her own. She distanced herself from him over a few dwindling phone calls and eventually didn’t return them at all. Noriko made her way to Los Angeles and lived on the streets there finding a lucrative black market in mutant power suppression. A group discovered her powers in an attempted mugging learned she could fight and instead decided to recruit her. She got involved with mutant gangs and drug trafficking, eventually becoming addicted to the drug “X-out” because it entirely suppressed the power and on top of that gave the same high that regular “X” would. Things however became more complicated when the bill for forced registration hit. Noriko was a wanted criminal there and would easily be locked away. The danger her powers posed was no secret to her. She took as much stock as she could get her hands on, packed a backpack full of basic necessities and headed back for the east.

This time around, her presence at the mansion has been entirely fruitful for her. With Zach’s help she was able to get past her addiction, she found a mentor that treats her with kindness and understanding, and she and Zach have found love once more. While it was once again out of a dark place, this healing was from a pain that she’d caused herself, and through him she’s been in her right mind and at peace ever since. Now she is engaged to be married to him…and still quite afraid of what exactly that means for her.

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Schooling:

Because of the Ashida family’s wealth, Noriko and her brother attended the same private school in Okinawa for their elementary and middle schooling. The school not only offered a very impressive Edo style training dojo for students practicing the various offered martial arts but it also offered some modern Americanized classes as well such as journalism, mythology, and creative problem solving. Noriko excelled in her classes with assistance from her brother, Keitaro. She would have attended the private high school there, as well, but the summer of her graduation from the seventh grade was when she fled the country.

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Abilities

Powers:

Electrical Absorption: She absorbs electricity from any available source at any given time without control of it. She may very well have been the cause of a few city blackouts in Japan around the time she had run from home. She discovered her mutant powers at fourteen and they were getting to be out of hand then, especially this one. Even in her older age it might have been expected that she would have gained more control, but she was far more concerned with suppressing her powers. She could never bring herself to fully do away with it though and take the cure. A rechargeable battery, when electrical energy is applied to it, the flow of electrons from negative to positive that occurs during the discharge is reversed and power is restored. Normally this would occur through an adapter, how ever, Noriko lacks the so called “adapter” so the flow of electrons from the currents in the air produced from various sources, tend to draw into and discharge out of her when she is lacking the discipline to hold it back. Heavy metallic devices are often used for grounding and directing electric energy. Something of that nature may serve as the ‘adapter’ of sorts. This was the idea behind the gauntlets Forge created for her in the past.
Lightning Blasts: She can discharge collected energy from her hands or body. As of now, it is quite difficult for to figure out the best time or place to do this, but she has learned that doing this eases the pain of all of the energy throughout her body. Of course upon her release of the energy the collection of the sources around her starts all over again. A modern tesla coil can operate at many megawatts or millions of watts and when it discharges, electrical energy is transferred to the surrounding air as heat, light and sound, called a “corona”. This initial burst of energy or corona, rapidly ionizes the surrounding air, and that charged air gives direction to the plasma burst (which is the part that you can see branching off of a tesla coil.) Typically this process would happen from a tesla coil up to 500 times per second. With a proper adapter, Surge could potentially direct this plasma, however until she acquires a new adapter, she must desperately attempt to ground herself and allow the electric currents within her to discharge there. If Surge is to be compared to a tesla coil, than her estimated voltage is anywhere between 250,000 to 500,000 volts.
Superhuman Speed: She has the ability to channel the collected energy into bursts of super speed, however this is very temporary. This can occur when she discharges from her feet to the ground with each stride, the way the vibration of Lightning blast would travel. This may allow her to travel anywhere from 500 to 600 feet per second depending on how much voltage she has collected, how long her strides are and various circumstances like how the terrain would conduct the electric current. Running on a metal roof may be easier for her than running on desert sand. Just as running in a grass field would be a terrible idea as she might leave her trail in flames.
High Initial Pain Tolerance: High frequency current travels in what it would be most easily conducted through. In the case of a human body this would be the circulatory and the nervous system. When voltage is just high enough to begin damaging tissue, the nervous system is too busy conducting thus it doesn’t react to the “warning shock” that most humans would feel upon touching a low watt light bulb or touching an outlet for a second. Surge’s body conducts a voltage that would be lethal to humans many times over. Realistically, this current would first travel where it is most easily conducted. In a sense even though something is damaging to her, she may not feel the initial warning signals that her nervous system would give off. Thus, if Surge were to break, lets say her arm, she might not stop all she is doing and screech in pain. She might continue what she was doing, for instance discharging a lightning blast. As her nervous system goes back to what it is supposed to be doing, pain would start to rapidly increase, rather than be excruciating for a split second and then just bad like it would in any normal person.
Overclock: Since her time in the lab, Noriko’s mutation developed and catered to an ability that was sort of forced into her body. If for some reason Noriko has to take in an excessive amount of electricity, provided she can touch down with a connection, Noriko’s can have her body serve as a circuit for the electricity’s route. Her basic body functions can shut down so that they are safe from becoming fried. She can do this for quite a long time, but her body still retains small amounts and eventually those will need to be released.

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Weaknesses:

Her powers are hard to control and even painful for her. If she doesn’t discharge the energy she collects, it will cause her mind to race and her body to ache profusely. She has an extremely hard time embracing her powers and is very quick to jump at any chance for relief from them. Because of this she is likely to believe any rumor regarding her mutant gene. Nobody came to her and explained what she was going through, so her ignorance was certainly not bliss. She has taken to instead doing any thing she can to suppress her powers or lessen them. Because she hasn’t been working with them, Noriko is just as out of control as she was as a young teen.

Water could be hell for Surge; first it would conduct electric current to her more easily provided the water is not pure and is charged with enough ions. Generally with things like rain, tap, and natural bodies of water, they are loaded with ions. This would make absorption almost instantaneous for her, however, if she attempted to release the voltage in her usual fashion, if the water left her soaked, she would definitely shock herself. This would most likely not kill her, but the effects would be hard to recover from. A possible way she could counter such possibilities could be through the use of clothing made of a rubber or non-conducting material, sort of serving the way wire would contain electricity.

In the case of overclocking, She can live that way for a quite a while, though if her body shuts off for too long, she risks going into a coma from it. This process also speeds up her aging process. For every year she will age about a year and eight months, give or take.

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Non-Power Talents:

Noriko used to have formal and very impressive training in Aikido, and back when she was a middle school student she took that very seriously. As she got older she lost her sense of discipline, so she is not nearly as strong or impressive now, though with training, she could likely be brought back to a decent belt level. Her recent involvement with gangs in Los Angeles has kept her fairly savvy in a brawl every once in a while. She definitely isn’t a push over.

Noriko is also a very decent writer. She used to write poetry and fairy tales, but as the world consistently bared it’s teeth to her she began writing more dark, satirical pieces, and has been trying her hand at crude comic drawing.

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Equipment:

She needs a new pair, but Noriko used to own a set of metal gauntlets designed specifically for proper conducting of her electricity. It was vital for controlling her powers and was crafted by her first mentor at the mansion; Forge. She no longer has them, as she was mugged in Los Angeles.

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“Shipper” 2:

I may fall. But not like this. It won’t be by your hand.

Friends: Noriko is a pretty respectful and impressive girl. She has little trouble getting people to trust in her as she speaks the truth as an adult would, not as an impulsive teenager. Noriko tends to prefer the company of adults more than people her age though she has grown close with her roommate Nadine seeing a similarity in trying pasts.
Enemies: It is likely that Lorna is not fond of her as she lashed out very harshly toward her while she was still suffering withdrawal. Noriko hasn’t yet figured out the best way to apologize and is likely fretting over something that Lorna as a teacher is probably not as hurt or frightened by as Nori worries she is. As far as an ‘enemy’ goes, at one point, Noriko would have said her father…but it’s been so many years that she really couldn’t begin to conjure the energy to hate him any longer.
Loves: Zachariah Stanton. She can’t stay angry, or afraid of him, and she cannot stay away. They were toxic to one another but also the antidote to that toxin. Zach is her new addiction and she, the sustenance for both sides of him, his darkest and the good. She also loves her brother dearly, and misses him even after all these years. She can only hope that he’s tried to reach out to her and has somehow been intercepted.
Other: Noriko holds her mentor and other adults in her life in very high esteem. As part of her culture, she holds her elders to a high degree of honor, something many of her peers do not do or think to do as it is not exactly the way they grew to understand their surroundings. Her mentor specifically she admires very much and trusts his advice above most anyone’s. They came together over a mutual understanding of such dangerous power and Noriko is so thankful. She wishes to bring honor to him and make him proud to be her sensei.

Further details here and here.

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Noriko & Auz:

In 2022 he finally had a chance to meet this amazing little lady, and he was as taken with her size and looks as he was with her powers and moral way of using them. She could tell, and he impressed her with his manners, charm, and vibe. Before he was about to thank her and excuse himself, her hand instinctively gripped his forearm, and that was that; they were bonded and destined for more.

Great student with a rough past, ran away from home to find peace and stability, found great teachers, kicked a drug habit, electrical-discharge and lightning-casting abilities, dark writing and comic drawing? She had so much in common with Auz that it nearly blew his mind. The two chatted away about all these things and more for hours every time they hung out.

One night she dared to kiss him, and he smiled and kissed her back, then took her in his arms and initiated all the rest. The way they held onto each other in the panting aftermath was perfect, and she finally felt herself breathing normally, deeply, ideally… like never before. She’d notice soon thereafter that he had this effect on her even when she was around currents and water, so he, in that way, became somewhat her “new drug”.

When she’s overloaded, he touches her temples and kisses her forehead, and that calms her right back down. When she’s in water, he holds her hand, or she rides piggyback on him, and that works just as well. When they make love, she can hold any current, or use all her powers indefinitely, no (side) effect –even her accelerated aging no longer a thing; she seems age-locked in her teen prime (and is).

Instead of making her gauntlets to replace those she had stolen in L.A., the Inisfreeans are practicing with her to teach her how to continue stabilizing and completing/perfecting herself; she won’t rely on any technology/devices as crutches again.

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2023 Update:

She has now made it to Inisfree, completed its tour, and become an official member of their community. In another couple years, she’ll also become a member of their family; she’ll be marrying Auz in 2025. The two are very excited about this, and planning more details every day they have time.

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Comics: