Nova Deimos

"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings." -Anaïs Nin

Nova Deimos is a tribute who belongs to FrostyFire. Please refrain from using this tribute without permission. If you do wish to use this tribute, you can leave a message asking. Nova lives in District Zero and her district partner is Garrett Altalune. The two do not need to be submitted into Hunger Games together, or in a special order.

Basic Information
Name: Nova Deimos

Age: Seventeen

District: Zero (Two, Three)

Gender: Female

Personality: Nova has never been the type of girl who cheers and laughs at everything someone does, but she's not arrogant or cocky like others. She's courageous and fairly smart, being the type of girl who would do anything to protect their friends but also being safe at the same time. After Diarra and Lee's deaths, she occasionally has emotional outbursts, where she uncontrollably cries for a while, but this is extremely rare and won't happen at random moments, only when she's thinking only about them. Nova is extremely antisocial and quiet around people she first meets, and won't even dare to try to make allies, knowing that they'll eventually die in order for her to win. Being a part of a gang, people usually associate her as being unpleasant and rough, but in fact, the only reason she became a part of a gang was so she could gain some money for her family to live. While she won't hesitate on killing someone, she will feel extremely guilt if she kills someone's friend or ally, since she knows the experience from Diarra and Lee's deaths.

Weapons: The only weapon Nova really knew was a gun, and she was extremely good at it. However, due to the fact that she is extremely afraid of them now and freezes up when she touches them, she no longer uses them. The only other weapon Nova has even touched was knives, and after going through a few days of training, she's extremely talented at using them. However, while she could use regular knives, she loves and prefers using bowie knives, since they're larger and more threatening. She always hides her weapon in her sock or her sleeve, somewhere where another tribute wouldn't be able to see it at first sight, but when she's attacking, she'll pull out her bowie knife just seconds before stabbing the other tributes. For a secondary weapon, she uses regular knives, since she's able to do the same thing. Knives are completely underestimated, as everyone always uses them when they're first learning how to use a weapon, but Nova gives them a new twist. She doesn't use knives like they're a normal weapon, she uses them like they're one of her limbs.

Appearance: Nova has skin the color of snow and always has a dull and lifeless expression. Her hair and eyes match in color, both being dark brown to the point where it looks somewhat black. Her hair goes all the way down to the middle of her back, and she occasionally covers part of her eyes to give her a creepier look. Due to living in poverty since she was born, she has a skinny appearance, occasionally looking sick with the combination of her pale skin. She has petite features; small nose, small hands, and small legs; but people always underestimate her for this. Her features combined were a bit abnormal when she was younger, but now, she has grown and it makes her look attractive. On her wrist, she has a tattoo of three, black stars with the names Lee, Nova, and Diarra, in that order, written within their respective star.

Backstory: Nova was never supposed to be born, in fact, her entire existence was accidental. Her mother, Verenice, was extremely poor, so she lived in a dark, rough part of District Zero and upon coming home from her job as a maid, since she never completed school, she was raped and impregnated by a man who would die a day later in a shoot out. However, it was Verenice's sister, Aura, who convinced Verenice to give birth to the baby. When Nova was finally born, though, Verenice nearly died, as she didn't have the proper help needed to give birth to a child, but she was able to recover and raise the young Nova.

But being born into a poor family absolutely sucked. Nova wasn't able to go to school, her mother was always at work to try to get food on the table, and Aura was never good at keeping Nova under control. Nova was always a disastrous, childish, little girl who never wanted to sit around because she wanted to go to school and learn new things. But Nova's wish wasn't able to come true for another three years, when her mother got a huge raise and was able to send Nova to school.

By that time, Nova was already six years old, so she was stuck in classes with children that were a year younger than her, so she never really hung out with them. She was living her dream, learning about things and going to school, and she really wanted to change it. The teachers noticed Nova's unsteady attitude and told her that she would be able to skip a grade and go into a class with children her own age if she passed a curriculum exam. But no matter how hard Nova studied, she always failed it and eventually just decided to take summer school in order to catch up to children her age.

She caught up to the other eight year old children in third grade, undoubtedly the most important year of Nova's life. She met new friends, Diarra and Lee, who would draw a little star on their wrists, saying that one day, the three will be in a gang and will be unstoppable. Diarra was African-American, and due to the racial views in our class, everyone avoided her because they thought she would kill them. So Lee and Nova, who were both Caucasian, would ensure her that one day, they'll get their revenge on everyone, since they, too, were bullied for being friends with an African-American girl.

For two years, the group of friends, or as they referred themselves to the "Star Stranglers" (their "gang" name), went around sneaking goods and stealing other people's belongings. Nova, living in the roughest part of District Zero, was able to steal a gun off of a dead man laying in an alley. She pulled the knife out of his forehead, wiped off the blood, and shoved it into her back pocket as well. She patted down the guy, trying to see if he had extra ammo or something, but he had nothing. But what she didn't know was that she wasn't alone.

The sound of a gunshot rung through Nova's ears and she look down and notice blood pouring out of an opening in her stomach. Three shots later, she lay on the ground, bullet wounds in the chest and stomach, holding on for dear life. The man walked over to her and put the gun right up to her face, counting down from three. Nova, out of a last defense, quietly pulled the knife out of her back pocket and stabbed the man in the hand. As he scream and release the gun, Nova got up, trying to run away with pain pulsing through her body.

But as Nova near the corner to get out of the alley, the man shot his gun one last time, hitting Nova right in her thigh. She fell flat to the ground and fell into a coma, a coma that she almost never woke up from. As she lay hopelessly on the ground, the man got up, and started to walk towards Nova, gun pointing at her face. However, the next gunshot wasn't his, it was Nova's mother, Verenice. Hitting the man right in the heart, he fell to the ground and Verenice kneel down by Nova. Noticing she was still alive, Nova was sent to a hospital, where she remained in a comatose state for three months.

When she miraculously opened her eyes again, she saw her mother and her aunt both in tears, and Diarra and Lee both sighing with relief. She still has five scars from the gunshots; three in her stomach, one on her right thigh, and the other on her chest. She uses it as a reminder that you have to be safe and careful everywhere and to everyone. Her eleventh birthday passed while she was unconscious, but she didn't want to celebrate it, instead, she just wanted to hang out with her friends.

While returning back to her school, students started to fear her, but Nova didn't even care. She just enjoyed being with Diarra and Lee who were with her through the thick and the thin. People at school started to call them the Star Stranglers, their gang name, but it just gave them more reasons to fear them. Diarra always kept a small knife tucked under her socks, in case of emergencies, but only Lee and Nova knew about this, since anyone else knowing could lead them to trouble. Nova also carried around a weapon, a gun for that matter, hidden under her belt from her loose-fitted shirts and pants. Lee was the only Star Strangler not to carry around a weapon, but he was physically fit to snap anyone's neck using just his hands.

As they grew up to become thirteen, they became even closer and started to rob banks. They used their youthful age to deceive the cashiers and, as Diarra would distract them, Lee and Nova would sneak around towards the back, silently killing anyone who came close to them. But they were smart, stealing only little amounts of money instead of taking the entire thing. When they brought it home, they used it in moderation, so not to have anyone discover their little secret. Not even their parent's knew what they were doing.

But a time came where they encountered a deep trouble. Around Nova's sixteenth birthday, Diarra and Lee started to plan about how to get more weapons and guns, since they wanted to be better protected along the streets of District Zero. The only way to get better weapons, though, was either to go steal some from District two (having to travel far across Panem to get there) or to simply invade a Peacekeeper base nearby. Clearly, the group chose to invade the nearby Peacekeeper base.

However, it wasn't as easy as they suspected. Nearly ten, armed Peacekeepers stood guard in front of the wide, jail-like base, and four snipers were located on the roof. A spotlight was manually run by another Peacekeeper, slowly moving the spotlight around to ensure that nobody was trying to invade the base, as many people from Nova's side of the district have attempted to, but have all died trying. Inside, there were far more Peacekeepers, and there would be multiple Peacekeepers where the children wouldn't know. The only advantage they had was that on the east side of the base, a small, frosty forest lay, which the children could use to hide and escape.

Lee grabbed onto a light-blocking gun, something he created that would shoot out an acid that would destroy light or anything electrical it touches. With careful aim, since he was only able to create one bullet for the gun, he shot the gun right at the spotlight as it was passing by the children and, upon impact, the light exploded and the Peacekeeper controlling it was flung back, killing him from the impact on the ground. But they were no where near finished as the light exploding brought the Peacekeepers attention towards Nova's location.

Diarra, who had climbed a high branch on a tree prior to the light's going out, used a slingshot to fling a rock across the base, hitting the cement nearby. As the Peacekeepers started to go towards the source of the sound, the children quietly jogged towards the back of the base, where three Peacekeepers confusingly walked around, trying to figure out what was wrong with the lights. Nova, who was holding a silenced sniper (a weapon she picked off a dead man), shot the three Peacekeepers right in the neck, killing them. She then took down one of the snipers, the one located closest to the dead Peacekeepers, before the children ran to the building.

They all took off the helmets, jacket, pants, and gear of the Peacekeepers, and they were all loose-fitted, but they could still sneak through the base with these on. They walked like Peacekeepers through the base, silent and always in union, until they finally found the location of the weapons. However, it too was heavily surrounded by Peacekeepers. The weapons were concealed with a huge, metal vault, the kinds you see in banks, so they weren't too hard for the children to get through, since they do it all the time at banks, but the Peacekeepers would cause the issue.

Lee went up to one of the Peacekeepers and tapped his gun multiple times, signalling that it was out of ammo. One of them nodded and opened up the vault. When Lee took a step inside, Diarra and Nova blindly shot at all the Peacekeepers, killing them. Lee shoved as many weapons and ammo into a big, black bag before tossing it to Diarra and running off. Other Peacekeepers started to come towards their location, but Lee easily shot them down using his machine gun.

As they went through the doors they had entered, they were surrounded by ten Peacekeepers. Lee shot a few of them, but not before being killed himself by the Peacekeepers. As their friend fall to the ground, lifeless, Nova and Diarra ran back inside the base, running up to the roof. Nova killed the three remaining snipers on the roof before the girls look over the edge at the jump below. If they could just jump far enough, they could reach a branch of a tree and be off, but the jump was far and extremely risky.

Without thinking, Diarra flung the bag of weapons towards the branch before jumping herself towards the trees. Nova followed her friend, flinging all of her body weight towards the tree, or else she would surely die. The Peacekeepers who were pursuing Nova and Diarra finally made it to the roof and shot at Nova, but all the bullets whizzed through the air, only grazing Nova before she harshly hit against the tree and had to regain her breath. Using the tree as a shield, she jump from one to another before she was finally clear of the bullets.

Diarra tragically hit the ground, but not before hitting a tree, so she only broke her leg, and was still able to crawl away with the bag of weapons. Nova guided Diarra to a safer location, since the Peacekeepers started to roam the forest in an attempt to find the thieves. But as the Peacekeepers got closer to the girls, Diarra finally made a risky decision and told Nova to flee without her. Nova refused, but Diarra ensured her that she might still make it out alive. She gave Nova a ring, a ring that Lee gave her to show that no matter where they were or what situation they were in, they'd always be friends. With tears in her eyes, Nova took the ring and the bag of weapons before running away, leaving Diarra behind.

About ten minutes later, a chorus of gunfire rings through the frosty forest and Nova is officially the only survivor of their risky plan. She took off the Peacekeeper uniform when the trees started to space out and the forest was coming to an end, and carefully hide it under a pile of snow. She carefully and quietly ran through the streets of the rough side of District Zero, knowing that if anyone found her with a bag full of weapons, she would be killed on the spot. When she finally returned home, it was three o'clock in the morning and her mother wait there for her, worried sick, before she realized that her little, defenseless Nova was no longer little nor defenseless.

Needing someone to consult her, Nova revealed that she was a part of a gang called the Star Stranglers, composed only of her and her two friends Diarra and Lee, who were now dead. She told her about how she would steal from others in order to earn enough money for lunch at school and how the three of them wanted to get some better weapons by invading and stealing from the Peacekeeper's base. All emotions flooded out of Nova, it was her first time she cried in a long time, and she became emotionally unstable.

Verenice, her mother, was clueless on what to do and tried to get her sister's, Aura's, advice about the situation, but Aura was also clueless. Nova stayed out of school for two weeks, grieving and crying about her dead friends. Those tears would occasionally turn to anger and she would aggressively punch a pillow, until she finally calmed down again. Aura would watch Nova as she stayed off of school, since Verenice was still working and the idea of Nova staying home alone frightened both of them, since they now know what Nova was capable of.

Aura and Verenice occasionally tried to push Nova into anonymously returning the bag of weapons, but Nova always refused, believing it was the last piece of thread she had left of her friends. She always wore the silver ring around her finger, using it as a reliever to ensure that she will make it through this tough time, and she'll wear it until the day she dies. When she started coming to school again, she felt miserable, since originally she kept her distance from anyone except for Diarra and Lee, and with them dead, she remained a loner.

On her seventeenth birthday, she celebrated it by getting a tattoo on her wrist. While her mother completely disapproved, she allowed Nova to get it since she understood it is for Nova to remember her friends. On her wrist, they tattooed three, basic stars, each identical to each other and in black ink. Since the stars were her gang symbol, she had the man doing her tattoo write a name within each star: Lee, Nova, and Diarra, with her name in the star in the middle.

With the annual reaping nearing, Nova decided to make a risky decision that she would volunteer for the Hunger Games in honor of her friends. Diarra always wanted to volunteer for the Hunger Games, it was her main topic of conversation when she would sleep over at Nova's house, but because Nova left her behind, she no longer can. She wants to honor her friend by going through the Hunger Games and winning for her. She will try to her hardest to win, and, no matter what, will make sure that she honors her friend one way or the other.

Reasons for Winning: Nova wants to win for her own friend's sake. Diarra always wanted to participate in teh Hunger Games, since she always believed she was prepared for them, and now that she's dead because of Nova's decision to leave her behind, she no longer can. Not only does Nova want to volunteer to honor Diarra, but she wants to volunteer to formally thank her, since she knows that if she stayed behind with Diarra, she might have died. This her way of honoring Diarra for her bravery and thanking Diarra for her selflessness.

Strengths: Nova has been raised in poverty and became a part of a gang during her seventeen years of living. Being a part of the Star Stranglers shaped her physical strengths, and sneaking around a Peacekeeper base isn't easy, requiring strength, speed, and stealth. She's able to fight aggressively no matter what and might even be stronger than a Career tribute, since she's actually went through tough times like the Hunger Games, not train for them. Her speed and stealth come together in a bundle, as every step she takes is light, allowing her to move at faster speeds while also being quiet. However, living in poverty since the day she was born also allowed Nova to learn a few things, such as lasting longer without food or water. While she's surely not someone as poor as in District Twelve, she knows how to last through long periods, roughly up to a few days, without food.

Weaknesses: While Nova may be physically fit, she has troubles with emotions. She doesn't occasionally have emotional outbreaks, but she does think about Diarra and Lee a lot, practically using them to determine whether she does something or not. She also had a very limited education, meaning that she isn't the smartest, but she isn't exactly the dumbest student in the world. During the time she's spent with her gang, she's been taught how to jump from tree to tree, however, she is completely unable to climb trees. If she does somehow get up in a tree, she might be able to jump from branch to branch, but it's all just a possibility (although she might break the branches since the trees in District Zero are more sturdy than others). Her inability to swim may also come off as a huge weakness, as she's never even seen a large body of water, nonetheless, learn how to swim.

Strategy: While Nova may be able to spend some time protecting herself with her bare hands, she knows she will not get far without a weapon, so her bloodbath plan is to grab onto a knife (preferably a bowie knife), and possibly grab a backpack before leaving. She'll attack and kill anyone who crosses her path during the bloodbath, even a Career tribute if she's up for it. During the Hunger Games, Nova's main strategy is to hide and use stealth to her advantage in killing others. While she might occasionally run into a fight with using surprise as an element, she'll almost always attack someone while she's hidden. If she were to be attacked first, she would fight her heart out before dying at the hands of someone who is stupid enough to attack her. Nova will most likely attend a feast if there is one, but definitely won't be the first one there, since she would prefer to kill someone instead of being a whimp and getting away before the real fun happens. No matter what, Nova will fight her heart out and will always try to be careful and safe while doing so.

Typical Alliance: Loner

Height: Five Feet, Seven Inches

Fear: Hoplophobia, fear of firearms or armed citizens. Ever since Nova's two friends have died at the hands of a firearm, Nova no longer is able to look at them or even touch them without shedding a tear and shuddering at the thought. While she does keep the bag of firearms she obtained at the base of Peacekeepers, she is deadly frightened by them and only uses them to remember her friends.

Token: Silver ring. During Diarra's final moments, Diarra gave Nova a ring that Lee gave to her, a ring that has been passed through Lee's family to show that they'll always be together. Nova uses it to show how her friend's will always be with her and be helping her when she's going through the Hunger Games.

Participated Hunger Games

 * Hybrid Shadow's 50th Hunger Games - Cancelled, 5th out of 32 (Revealed)
 * YourFavoriteSalmon's The Wrath of Winter (704th Hunger Games) - 29th out of 34, killed by Taligelia Rendervault
 * San Junipero's The Genesis Games - In Progress, Alive

Trivia

 * Nova's backstory contains 2,590 words with an average of 24 words each sentence.
 * Nova was the "Tribute of the Month" for July 2017.