#alaa

So meet Alaa, an Egyptian 17 year old mutant girl who lives in Masr El Gedida, Cairo with her grandparents. She lost her mother at a very young age and her father 2 years ago, and is kind of still trying to cope with it all

She has a big love for robotics and machines and tinkering with them! Was a big joy to her as a kid to show her father little toys she'd create from combining different toys by taking them apart and putting them together. Besides that she is also a big nerd and loves comic books and superheroes and the like, and loves playing video games despite being bad at most of them. Very loser interests overall

And a loser she lowkey is.. being a mutant Alaa is somewhat of a social outcast who hasn't had many friends throughout her life, and is kinda used to getting bullied and being considered a "freak"

Besides her very long arms and creepy 6 fingers with retractable claws, her cat-like giant eyes and unhinge-able monster jaw with retractable sharp teeth make her.. really off-putting to most non-mutants at best and a target for hatred at worst. Her teeth are also pretty uncomfortable so she prefers to have them retracted, causing a lisp where she cant pronounce her S's that also gets her a lot of teasing.

Mutants are a minority in this world and she doesn't have many people to bond with, except for her best friends and classmates Lu'lu' and Shahd who will get their own posts

And while being a mutant is hard on Alaa's social life there are other factors, like her autism. Alaa has trouble reading social queues most of the time and in general has a very unexpressive face more often than not. Her attitude and quietness makes her seem very cold, aloof, and sometimes creepy (mostly because of the big eyes and weird arms). She can kind of mask but finds it exhausting and usually doesn't

What most people don't see beyond the surface is that even if Alaa has trouble expressing herself to people she is an extremely compassionate and kind person. Really she can be described as having a heart of gold, she loves helping people out and tries to be there for the people in her life that she loves. She's stood up to bullies in school for picking on others more than she stands up for herself, despite how scared she used to get

She's a very scared person in general, living in fear of a lot of things. Fear of trying to do good at school and failing, fear of trying to share her interest with others and being made fun of, fear of what's the next bad encounter that's about to happen because of her freaky appearance, fear of petting any animals lest they bite her, fear of classmates somehow discovering that she's bisexual. Or doesn't believe in god like everyone else does or likes to use they/them pronouns sometimes. Fear of the next time a big mutant animal might terrorize the city

Though the fear in that last part is a bit unconventional. Alaa isn't scared of monsters because she needs to run away from them. She's scared of monsters because

she's the one who's gonna be fighting them.

That's right Alaa is so inspired by the superheroes she reads about that she went on to become one

After watching her father die and being too scared to try and save him, Alaa decided that she doesn't want to let her fears consume her anymore. She doesn't want anyone to feel the helplessness that she did and wants to use her powers to help people

A little after hitting puberty Alaa discovered there's more to her mutation than what she inherited from her mother (her dad was a human but his genes didnt even try it seems). But even then she didnt realize the scale. She found that her hands can glow in the dark and produce sparks of electricity. But as she grew older, and tried experimenting with these weird abilities more.. she found that her hands can shine a bright light, not just glow in the dark. Sparks of electricity is just the beginning she can produce a shock more powerful than the average taser!

She didn't let anyone know about the extent of these powers, choosing to keep it secret even from her friends. Overtime she learned the nature of her powers. Alaa can absorb any form of energy, store it for an indefinite amount of time, and convert and discharge it at will

Hypothetically there is no limit, but it needs alot of practice. As it is now she can absorb heat, electricity, and chemical energy although it is a bit tricky. And she can discharge electricity, heat, lightrays and xrays, and kinetic energy. That means she can shock people, use her kinetic blasts to deliver powerful punches or leap great heights or slow herself down in the air, and if she practices more she can focus her light rays into laser beams. And much more as the story would go on and she gets the hang of more forms of energy

The amount of energy she absorbs and discharges is a matter of practice too. She absorbs energy through her extremities, her hands and feet (and theres a radius of effectiveness that does go beyond her clothes, so thankfully she doesnt have to burn through her clothes to absorb electricity or blow up her shoes to do a seismic kick) the obscure unique organ on her hands and feet needs to be trained like a muscle to let in and let out certain amounts of energy, and going beyond that can really hurt her. Training that "muscle" is also necessary for more focused use of her energy

Of course thats not to say the mutant features that everyone sees are useless, you would never want to be at the receiving end of her mean bite or scratch. And her body is extremely extremely flexible, which allows for amazing acrobatics (helps that she had a love for gymnastics her whole life anyway). Besides all that there is of course, her brain! Nayzak is physically not a very strong person and her powers are still at a point where they can't carry her through everything. She has to use her wits just as much as her powers to beat enemies. And she also makes great use of her love for science and machines, as she has a lot of gadgets and devices she uses as a superhero that i will write about in another post!

After making the decision when she was 15, she had to get to work on a costume. Most of her costume is a sort of makeshift mishmash of multiple different parts she bought and customized (mysteriously she's been to broke to go out with friends for several months at at some point!) The most noticeable motif, the teeth, is something of a cultural symbol for mutants. Its common across most parts of the globe and due to it's use in mutant liberation movements teeth imagery have become a political symbol more than anything. The logo on her back is a meteor, which is what she named herself after (نيزك, arabic for meteor)