Noelle McKenzie

Noelle Susan McKenzie Code-Name: Torque Ethnicity: Caucasian Sex: Female Age: 24 Appearance:                 Hair: Medium length blonde, curls/frizzes easily                 Eyes: Gray                            Skin: Lightly tanned                 Weight: 140 lbs                 Height: 5'10                 Other: has a Z shaped scar on her left shoulder.                 Date Of Birth: May 5, 1993 Place Of Birth: Fresno, CA Education: Bachelor of Science in Nursing, was about to enter graduate school for Psychiatric Nursing when her education was interrupted. Relatives:     Patty (Brown) McKenzie, Mother, Age 44, Human     Curtis McKenzie, Father, Age 42, Human     Marissa McKenzie, Sister, Age 20, HumanPowers: Magnetic manipulation: Noelle can manipulate and control objects made of ferrous metal (Iron, steel, etc.) using magnetic force. She can also generate a strong magnetic attraction between objects, or with her own body at the center of the magnetic push or pull. She has gained fine control of her abilities, including the ability to fly when wearing her armor.

Since becoming the Horseman of War, Noelle’s power and control have increased with the help of Sinister’s experiments. She can move metal objects as large as a train car. She can sense the presence or absence of metal.

Armor: Noelle has acquired armor made of a strong steel alloy. The interior mesh is as tough as Kevlar, and the metallic material allows her to fly at up to 60 mph using her powers. The armor is equipped with razor-sharp discs that she can remove and throw with the strength of her powers. She uses them as her primary weapon.

Power Limitations: Noelle’s power can only affect ferrous metals, or metal with enough ferrous materials in them for her to sense them. She has a range of 50 yards, or about half a football field. She is limited by her focus. She doesn’t have a magnetic field that she can use as shield, she has to split her focus between each object she’s manipulating with her powers, so she can only handle so many objects at a time.

Hobbies and Interests: Noelle has been an avid volleyball player since she was in middle school. She started a collection of Depression glass and porcelain figurines when she was in high school, which got destroyed when her home was attacked. She plays the flute and reads heavily, mostly historical fiction. She is interested in astrology to some extent and has kept a dream diary ever since she started college.

Background: Noelle was born and raised in Fresno, California. Her mother was a school-teacher and her father a lawyer. She was mainly unaware of the mutant situation as she grew up; she didn't know any mutants that she was aware of, and her parents tried to keep it that way.  Her father wasn't active in the organization, but he was a contributor to the Friends of Humanity once they started gaining public recognition.  He was worried for the safety of his daughters, and thought that FOH could provide that with enough support. When Noelle was ten, she was hit by an SUV while on her bike.  She survived without any permanent injury except the scar on her shoulder..  The main result of the accident was that she bonded with the nurses that took care of her, and kept in contact with one of them ever since.  That experience was a large influence on her decision to become a nurse later in life.  Noelle was fourteen the first time her powers manifested.  She was riding in her mother's car when they reached a knot of tangled-up traffic on the freeway.  She was watching the car coming up from behind and realized that he wasn't going to stop.  She willed him to stop, to back off, and somehow the car did--changing from going 70 mph forward into getting bumped back into the car behind him.  The wreck was a mess, but Noelle and her mother drove on while the drivers in the accident were trying to figure out how that happened. Her mother never noticed a thing. High school life wasn't very eventful.  She went out for volleyball and softball, was in the school band, and volunteered at a local nursing home.  She got good grades and got scholar-ships to USC, where she majored in Nursing and graduated in four years.  She was a good student, other than a bad semester where house parties were more tempting than studying, but she was able to recover from that with some hard work.  By the time she was ready to graduate, she was already decided on going to graduate school right away instead of working in the field first.  Not long after she started at USC, she was introduced to a guy through her roommate at the time.  She and Trent seemed to hit it off well; she could appreciate how laid-back he was, after living with her high speed family her whole life.  Some parts of dating in college could be pretty difficult; time was pretty hard to come by, sometimes, but what time they did have together was the high point of any given week.  It seemed like things were getting pretty serious, then Trent dropped out of school to move to Nevada with almost no warning at all. She wasn't really satisfied with what little answers she got, and after just a couple of months the strain on the relationship was just too much.  Her school load was getting heavy then, too, and that plus a strained long-distance relationship was just too much for her.

Noelle hid her mutant powers successfully for a long time.  She rarely used them, except as a random attempt to see if she really did seem to have these powers.  She got wildly nervous every time she did, convinced someone would see, but she got through college before she was discovered.  She wondered at times if she should have told Trent, and if it would have worked out if they didn't have any big secrets between them.  They still talked on the phone, sometimes, and every time reminded her of how much she missed what they'd had.

Her roommate Mel was the one that found out about Noelle's mutation. It was the summer after graduation, and while she didn't really mean Noelle any harm, she was a hopeless gossip especially when she'd been drinking.  She let it slip to her friends, and it spread from there, leading to a mob of angry college students attacking their apartment when Noelle was home alone.

She retreated to her bedroom and barricaded the door, but she knew they'd get through eventually.  For the first time, the seriousness of what it was to be a mutant hit her.  She packed a bag with the bare essentials, grabbing things in her panic that made no sense to her later, including her flute for God's sake, and climbed out the fire escape.  She sent her parents a post card once, to explain, and has stayed away from them ever since.  She was so freaked out that first night, she just drove until she found herself heading for Nevada... and Trent. 

She wasn't sure what she expected from him when she arrived, but he seemed glad enough to see her.  She developed a habit of staying a couple of days, then taking off again for a while.  People knew she was a mutant, and even though it turned out Trent was too, he was unknown, and she didn't want to bring him any trouble.  She lived out of her car until it got towed one night, and got by as best she could after that.  But then she went to crash with Trent, and when he found out about her car he started pushing her to move in.  She was staying with him when some other girl he'd dated showed up, and Noelle left, thinking he'd been using her the whole time.  When she went back to talk, they had a big fight, and she left him again - this time for good. Somewhere inside she just wanted him to say that he wanted her there because he missed her when she was gone, but that wasn't the kind of thing she could just ask him, especially in the middle of a fight.  After that fight, she just left; she planned on getting to Wisconsin before August for this meeting she'd heard about, and she didn't want to miss it.  It took her almost a month to hitch to Wisconsin, and then discovered she had two more months to wait for the meeting. She spent most of that time in Tomah, a little town off the freeway that was far enough away from Milwaukee for her taste, then made her way down to the meeting place to get there the day before. She found herself thinking of Trent often, and just wanting to hear his voice, but she didn't feel right calling him after that fight. She was surprised when Trent and his dog, Grizzly Jane, turned up at the meeting too.  It was awkward seeing him again, when she'd been convinced they were done for good.  And it was surprising to see him at the event at all, when he'd never been the activist type, and seemed happy with his little life in Reno.  They fought, again, and once they were all moved in at the New Orleans base she tried to get things back to a  friendly level.  The more she saw him, the more she realized she missed him, but they had a lot of fights and false starts, and she just couldn't bring herself to back down and apologize when she was convinced she was owed her own apology.  They didn't work it out until Trent's brother joined the team, and used his ability to force them to both back down and work it out. Noelle fell into a leadership role, which she wasn't completely prepared for.  She does her best to make the right decisions, and take care of everyone on the base, but there always seems to be some complaint flying around about any given thing that she does.  She doesn't really have the time to spend in the med lab like she wants to, and has gotten stretched pretty thin.  She's had a lot of personality clashes with the people she's supposed to be leading - particularly Caz, Pietro, and Rusti, which makes it more difficult to deal with when most of them are important to her boyfriend. Noelle continued working as a field leader as well as the head of the medical staff, helping to train Rusti and a few others to be her assistants. She organized several missions, both successful and not, and helped shape the team for over a year. On November 20th, in an attempt to save the Atlantean Queen and defend the Atlantean people, Noelle was trapped in the Palace when the air shield collapsed. Her body was never found, but she was

presumed dead by the team.

Noelle remembered little before she woke up in her very own cell, in a jail in Florida.  They interrogated her day in and day out.  She lost track of what day it was, how long they’d held her.  Every day was a painful blur.  She wanted to force them to kill her before they broke her, but it didn’t work.  She grasped at an escape plan, but it seemed impossible until she got a new “neighbor” who helped her escape.

She thought everything would be all right once she was home, but nothing was the same, and she just didn’t seem to fit. She and Trent fought all the time, and she felt more and more like the X-Men weren’t being proactive enough. She also wanted revenge for Atlantis and for the suffering she’d gone through in Florida. Trent and her so-called friends didn’t agree, so Noelle went her own way.