Post by cmd1095 on Feb 17, 2023 8:52:19 GMT
"All those things that I’ve fallen in love with And the curse that fell down upon me too All those feelings of falling in love. Give me enough light to protect what I adore..."
Lyrics
There is someone choking back tears
Trying to swallow
Shake off the power that comes from malice
Sure you might not hear it
But what the hero needs now isn't just power
Let yourself be
Watch these tiny hands now
All those things that I've fallen in love with
And the curse that fell down upon me too
All those feelings of falling in love
Give me enough light to protect what I adore
Shake off the power that comes from malice
Sure you might not hear it
But what the hero needs now isn't just power
Let yourself be
For the shadows are closing in and asking "What are you?"
Trying to swallow
Shake off the power that comes from malice
Sure you might not hear it
But what the hero needs now isn't just power
Let yourself be
Watch these tiny hands now
All those things that I've fallen in love with
And the curse that fell down upon me too
All those feelings of falling in love
Give me enough light to protect what I adore
Shake off the power that comes from malice
Sure you might not hear it
But what the hero needs now isn't just power
Let yourself be
For the shadows are closing in and asking "What are you?"
General Information
Name: Serena Saifu
Identity: Karma
Gender: Female
Age: 17
Date of Birth: November 6th
Place of Origin: Hosu City Slums
Occupation: Hero Student
Faction: UA Class 1A
Appearance
Visual Appearance:
Physical Appearance: Serena has long red hair and blue eyes. She is a surprisingly well developed and healthy young woman despite her malnourishment as a child, with well-toned leg muscles developed from years of running from danger after a theft.
While at a glance she looks like any other reasonably attractive young woman, beneath various articles of clothing scars from her past mar her looks. Underneath her fingerless gloves she has scars on the back of her hands and on her wrists, and on her back and upper shoulders she has numerous scars from a lifetime of being struck from behind as she fled her assailants. Her only visible scar that she is unable to cover is the one across her right eye, a single diagonal line cutting across it. Usually she styles her hair in such a way that most of this scar is hidden by her hair, but even when she does the lower part of it is usually still visible.
Civilian Clothes: Serena is particularly sensitive about her various scars, and so tends to cover up as much as she can. Apart from that her outfits vary, she tends to prefer form-fitting pants and jeans, and usually has some sort of T-shirt and vest on to ensure her back and shoulders are adequately covered.
Hero Outfit:
Personality
Bad Habits: very stubborn and willful, suffers from PTSD, trust issues,
Goal: To become a hero that primarily operates in slum districts away from the spotlight, cleaning up villains and gangs deemed too small and unimportant for most heroes who are concerned with publicity and the spotlight. She hopes to use whatever publicity she does get to shed light on the cracks in society people like her fall through, and hopefully makes things better so nobody else has to grow up like her.
General Personality: Serena is stubborn, a lifetime of stubbornly clinging to life and overcoming countless obstacles has made her headstrong and often defiant. This serves her well when she sets her mind to accomplishing something, as once she gets going there are few that can overcome her sheer force of will and stop her. On the surface she is confident, competent, and in total control of whatever situation she finds herself in. She does sometimes come off as a bit awkward or blunt due to her lack of experience socializing with people in normal situations, but her outward persona seems normal. Under the surface however is a mess of complex emotions in dire need of a therapist
Serena struggles immensely with self worth issues. It was drilled into her from a young age that her only value is what she can do for others, and this is compounded by her past of committing crimes just to survive on the streets. What she did for others was bring them pain, and so she thinks of herself as value-less. On a logical level she rejects this, knowing the truth of the matter, but her trauma runs deep, especially when she has a PTSD episode. The faces and voices of those she's hurt over her life haunt her and break her down. She believes many awful things about herself as a result, even considering herself a murderer for the people she thinks likely died as a ripple effect of her actions.
This vicious cycle of low self-worth and guilt makes Serena reckless. It underpins her every action, her hardworking dedication motivate by fear of being cast aside as much as a desire to succeed. Every mistake haunts her, and failure is unacceptable. It also makes her self-sacrificial, believing it's her obligation to save and help others as atonement for her past actions, even if doing so hurts her.
Personal Life
Mother:Biological mother - unknown Adoptive mother - Leona Saifu, alive, has a minor healing quirk that consumes her own stamina to mend cuts, bruises, and occasionally bone fractures.
Father: Biological father- unknown, Ex-Adoptive Father - Gyasha, status unknown, quirk unknown (leaving ambiguous for future plot developments)
Siblings: N/A
Extended family: N/A
History: (CW for dark themes, abusive parental figure)
Serena was born and left for dead in the dark underworld of Hosu. As a baby in an environment full of gangsters, villains, and drug addicts, her odds of survival were slim to none. Luckily she was found by an older man who ran a bar in the area, and was taken in by him.
This of course didn’t mean Serena’s troubles were over, far from it. Her new father was an abusive scumbag, both physically and emotionally, who only wanted her around for the money she could make him. From the moment she could work it was made clear, the only value she had was the money she could earn. If she wanted food and shelter, she was going to have to make him more money than it cost him to keep her around. And she was expected to pay back the cost of raising her for as long as he had too.
Her father ran a bar that catered to the lowest of society, villains, crooks, paid off heroes, the works. This was where Serena's "schooling" would take place. Her "teachers" treated her little better than her father, but they imparted a lot of skills, willingly or unwillingly.
Where most kids went to school and learned things like history and science, Serena learned thievery and stealth. Normal kids might learn to solve puzzles, she learned to solve locks. Kids might sing in a choir, she sang on the streets for spare change. Kids played hide and seek, and she learned to blend into a crowd and "seek" fat pockets to pick. Kids volunteered for student council, and she volunteered for shady drug experiments. Every skill she learned was a dark reflection of what was normal. She did learn some fundamentals... math and literacy were needed to ensure you didn't get screwed on a deal. But she didn't learn much more than the basics on that front.
Luckily, Serena was a smart kid, she learned quick, and she made enough money to keep her father's "protection" for several years. She was lacking one thing though, and that was guidance about her quirk. With no knowledge about her parents, and no obvious signs of what her quirk was, she grew up believing herself quirkless. Sure she was a bit more durable than most kids, and yeah she could make jumps most couldn't by simply willing herself forward it felt like, and sure she always seemed to be just fast enough to evade capture... but these things were subtle enough to be chalked up to survival skills.
For years this was the status quo, until Serena was confident enough to flee her abusive father, electing to keep what money she earned for herself... this proved to be a short-sighted decision she couldn't walk back. As shitty as her father was, the fact she worked for him afforded her some protections. People didn't wanna cross the man who poured the drinks after all... but crossing a little quirkless kid? Serena would find herself with no recourse if she was stiffed on payment, or simply robbed. And it wasn't like she could go find legit work either. Being suspicious and paranoid became survival mechanisms, as did being ruthless and crafty to ensure it was the other guy who got screwed in the end.
Life got a lot tougher on her own, and she dealt with all the worst of society. She had to work with true scumbags doing things she knew would hurt people in the long run... she got to learn a lot of faces that would stop coming around as a result of her actions. She never killed anyone directly but... she knew they weren't ok... and she knew the thefts she did contributed to that. It haunted her, but what choice did she have? She was barely getting by, it was tough enough to maintain the scruple of not directly killing anyone, let alone concerning herself with the ripple effects of her actions.
Serena grew bitter and resentful over time, growing to really resent the heroes who were either paid off, or too obsessed with status to bother with low level crimes like the stuff she had to deal with. The top rankers were the worst, rolling in wealth acting all high and mighty saviors while the world rotted beneath their opulent feet. By the time the pro hero who would've been a perfect savior for Serena came around, she was too distrustful of heroes to believe in the promises of some orphanage run by a hero. They weren't based in Hosu regardless so it'd cost everything she could scrounge up to even go there.
Had nothing about her life changed, Serena very well might've grown to become a villain as her bitterness eroded what morals she clung to and turned her malicious. But thankfully, a change was coming.
Serena was around 12 years old when it happened. Stumbling across a pretty normal scene for Hosu, a woman being mugged by some hulking mass of muscle mutant who clearly intended to leave no witnesses. Serena was struck by an oddity of the situaiton, the woman was clearly no local, she could see it in the woman's eyes. The woman wasn't jaded or hardened, her eyes were soft and kind... she was in way over her head... and she didn't deserve to die before she could learn her lesson. Against all her better judgement, Serena tried to step in.
The ensuing scuffle went spectacularly poorly. The man was twice Serena's size, and while her plan had been cause a distraction and let the woman run, then escape... the woman's retaining some sort of conscience and not leaving a child behind to fight her battle resulted in them both cornered, with Serena against a wall being pummeled. Serena figured this was the end of the line, tougher than other kids or not, eventually this man's punches would do enough damage to end her... but they weren't.
Each blow still hurt, but with each strike instead of feeling weaker, Serena felt stronger, like energy was permeating her whole body. She didn't have time to question it, acting on instinct she broke the grip holding her against the wall, and quickly went for a kick to the shin to try and slow the mugger down so she could run for it. But instead of the leg buckling under her kick, it snapped in two, bringing the mugger crashing to the ground and leaving Serena utterly dumbfounded.
The woman Serena rescued wasted no time, snatching the stunned Serena up and running for it... Serena passing out from the adrenaline crash shortly afterwards.
Serena awoke in what she assumed must be the afterlife. She was in a proper bed, with food on clean plates on a table with no nails or splinters sticking out of it next to her. Myths to someone like her. It was later clarified to her that she was not dead, she had just been brought home by the woman to rest and recover from the ordeal.
After discussing things with the woman, whose name was Leona, Serena was provided with a stack of papers full of words and terms she didn't understand, and she was instructed to fill them out and bribed with more food. After she was done she was informed that she was now being adopted... which was met with a plethora of mixed emotions.
The ensuing days were rough in many ways. Serena had no documentation, so that was a tedious process to sort out that the barely educated pre-teen was little help in... and Serena was not exactly used to living in a proper house without needing to fight for survival, leading to no end of situations where her usual instincts landed her in trouble. She tried her best though, it was clear to her that this was a good thing, and no matter how much trouble she caused Leona was endlessly patient with her. She was acting like Serena had heard mothers were supposed to act... it felt surreal. At first she was waiting for the twist, for Leona to sell her off or force her to work or something... but it never came. Slowly, Serena began to adjust and trust her new mother... and eventually she began to adore the woman who she'd tried to save... but had truly saved her instead.
After a year of adjustment, Serena was required to make an attempt to attend school and learn all the things her upbringing had neglected to teach her, chief among them how to use her quirk. In hindsight, with the mugger incident as a prime example, Serena began to understand what her quirk was...at least somewhat. She even began learning how to use it on purpose... though her usage of it was more akin to a child wielding an unwieldy hammer than a person using a fundamental part of their biology.
In school Serena struggled immensely, none of the things she'd learned applied here, she was quite literally years behind everyone else, and had no social skills to speak of. But she tried, her mother wanted her to be able to learn these things, and she was going to learn them if it killed her!
Serena's belief that the only value she had was what she could do for others drove her. She owed her mother so much, she had to make that worth her while. She had to become someone her mother would be proud to call a daughter. She had to be the best daughter ever! Her mother had saved her from a life of misery and that was a debt that could never be repaid... but Serena was stubborn, and she was determined to try.
But how could she be a good daughter with the blood on her hands? Someone like her didn't deserve a life like this, she'd hurt so many people over her life, their faces and voices haunted her nightmares. She was an awful destructive person who only ever took from others... if she was going to be a daughter her mother deserved she needed to find some way to atone for it all.
And that's when she learned there was a school for heroes. Her quirk was strong, even if she barely knew how to use it. She couldn't quire recapture that feeling she had back in that alley, of the power coursing through her whole body like that. But she could still store power inside her and use it to punch hard, and she was super durbale... with training she could be a super strong hero. And if she were a hero, she could make up for everyone she'd hurt by helping twice as many people as that... then she could be someone deserving of the salvation she'd been granted. Her resentment towards the hero system was hardly gone, she still thought all the media pandering and glory chasing heroes did was distasteful... but she was coming around to the idea of the profession as a whole. So long as she kept true to her morals as a hero, and used what media pandering she was forced to do to promote good causes... she could set aside her bitterness over the topic.
She'd need to get her grades up to enroll at UA though. She was 13 now, she had three years. Three years to learn what most kids learned in 16. All the academics, all the quirk training, all of it. An impossible challenge... but she'd survived the Hosu slums as a quirkless child, impossible challenges were her day to day.
Serena worked like a woman possessed. She crammed her training and studies into every waking moment of her life. She was naturally intelligent, learning things quickly, but she was playing catchup. She refused to fail though, and over the coming years she began to gain ground. Her grades were still pretty close to the bottom of her class by the end of her final year of middle school... but they were passing. She graduated on time despite everything.
Then came the entrance exams for UA. Her performance on the written exam was lackluster at best. She may have worked unbelievably hard to get to this point, but academically she had basically barely made it to the starting line. That was a struggle she was going to be behind in for a while yet.
She made up for this in the practical however. Using her quirk to tank the strikes of the robot enemies and use their own power against them, while also using her survival skills and quirk for mobility to efficiently navigate the fake cityscape and find targets to dispatch. It was a crude performance, lacking finesse or control, but her quirk was a hammer in an exam explicitly designed for everything to look like a nail.
In the end, the practical exam score was just enough to get Serena accepted into class 1A, where she now hopes to learn to properly control her quirk and become a hero her mother can be proud of... and maybe become someone who can be proud of herself someday.
This of course didn’t mean Serena’s troubles were over, far from it. Her new father was an abusive scumbag, both physically and emotionally, who only wanted her around for the money she could make him. From the moment she could work it was made clear, the only value she had was the money she could earn. If she wanted food and shelter, she was going to have to make him more money than it cost him to keep her around. And she was expected to pay back the cost of raising her for as long as he had too.
Her father ran a bar that catered to the lowest of society, villains, crooks, paid off heroes, the works. This was where Serena's "schooling" would take place. Her "teachers" treated her little better than her father, but they imparted a lot of skills, willingly or unwillingly.
Where most kids went to school and learned things like history and science, Serena learned thievery and stealth. Normal kids might learn to solve puzzles, she learned to solve locks. Kids might sing in a choir, she sang on the streets for spare change. Kids played hide and seek, and she learned to blend into a crowd and "seek" fat pockets to pick. Kids volunteered for student council, and she volunteered for shady drug experiments. Every skill she learned was a dark reflection of what was normal. She did learn some fundamentals... math and literacy were needed to ensure you didn't get screwed on a deal. But she didn't learn much more than the basics on that front.
Luckily, Serena was a smart kid, she learned quick, and she made enough money to keep her father's "protection" for several years. She was lacking one thing though, and that was guidance about her quirk. With no knowledge about her parents, and no obvious signs of what her quirk was, she grew up believing herself quirkless. Sure she was a bit more durable than most kids, and yeah she could make jumps most couldn't by simply willing herself forward it felt like, and sure she always seemed to be just fast enough to evade capture... but these things were subtle enough to be chalked up to survival skills.
For years this was the status quo, until Serena was confident enough to flee her abusive father, electing to keep what money she earned for herself... this proved to be a short-sighted decision she couldn't walk back. As shitty as her father was, the fact she worked for him afforded her some protections. People didn't wanna cross the man who poured the drinks after all... but crossing a little quirkless kid? Serena would find herself with no recourse if she was stiffed on payment, or simply robbed. And it wasn't like she could go find legit work either. Being suspicious and paranoid became survival mechanisms, as did being ruthless and crafty to ensure it was the other guy who got screwed in the end.
Life got a lot tougher on her own, and she dealt with all the worst of society. She had to work with true scumbags doing things she knew would hurt people in the long run... she got to learn a lot of faces that would stop coming around as a result of her actions. She never killed anyone directly but... she knew they weren't ok... and she knew the thefts she did contributed to that. It haunted her, but what choice did she have? She was barely getting by, it was tough enough to maintain the scruple of not directly killing anyone, let alone concerning herself with the ripple effects of her actions.
Serena grew bitter and resentful over time, growing to really resent the heroes who were either paid off, or too obsessed with status to bother with low level crimes like the stuff she had to deal with. The top rankers were the worst, rolling in wealth acting all high and mighty saviors while the world rotted beneath their opulent feet. By the time the pro hero who would've been a perfect savior for Serena came around, she was too distrustful of heroes to believe in the promises of some orphanage run by a hero. They weren't based in Hosu regardless so it'd cost everything she could scrounge up to even go there.
Had nothing about her life changed, Serena very well might've grown to become a villain as her bitterness eroded what morals she clung to and turned her malicious. But thankfully, a change was coming.
Serena was around 12 years old when it happened. Stumbling across a pretty normal scene for Hosu, a woman being mugged by some hulking mass of muscle mutant who clearly intended to leave no witnesses. Serena was struck by an oddity of the situaiton, the woman was clearly no local, she could see it in the woman's eyes. The woman wasn't jaded or hardened, her eyes were soft and kind... she was in way over her head... and she didn't deserve to die before she could learn her lesson. Against all her better judgement, Serena tried to step in.
The ensuing scuffle went spectacularly poorly. The man was twice Serena's size, and while her plan had been cause a distraction and let the woman run, then escape... the woman's retaining some sort of conscience and not leaving a child behind to fight her battle resulted in them both cornered, with Serena against a wall being pummeled. Serena figured this was the end of the line, tougher than other kids or not, eventually this man's punches would do enough damage to end her... but they weren't.
Each blow still hurt, but with each strike instead of feeling weaker, Serena felt stronger, like energy was permeating her whole body. She didn't have time to question it, acting on instinct she broke the grip holding her against the wall, and quickly went for a kick to the shin to try and slow the mugger down so she could run for it. But instead of the leg buckling under her kick, it snapped in two, bringing the mugger crashing to the ground and leaving Serena utterly dumbfounded.
The woman Serena rescued wasted no time, snatching the stunned Serena up and running for it... Serena passing out from the adrenaline crash shortly afterwards.
Serena awoke in what she assumed must be the afterlife. She was in a proper bed, with food on clean plates on a table with no nails or splinters sticking out of it next to her. Myths to someone like her. It was later clarified to her that she was not dead, she had just been brought home by the woman to rest and recover from the ordeal.
After discussing things with the woman, whose name was Leona, Serena was provided with a stack of papers full of words and terms she didn't understand, and she was instructed to fill them out and bribed with more food. After she was done she was informed that she was now being adopted... which was met with a plethora of mixed emotions.
The ensuing days were rough in many ways. Serena had no documentation, so that was a tedious process to sort out that the barely educated pre-teen was little help in... and Serena was not exactly used to living in a proper house without needing to fight for survival, leading to no end of situations where her usual instincts landed her in trouble. She tried her best though, it was clear to her that this was a good thing, and no matter how much trouble she caused Leona was endlessly patient with her. She was acting like Serena had heard mothers were supposed to act... it felt surreal. At first she was waiting for the twist, for Leona to sell her off or force her to work or something... but it never came. Slowly, Serena began to adjust and trust her new mother... and eventually she began to adore the woman who she'd tried to save... but had truly saved her instead.
After a year of adjustment, Serena was required to make an attempt to attend school and learn all the things her upbringing had neglected to teach her, chief among them how to use her quirk. In hindsight, with the mugger incident as a prime example, Serena began to understand what her quirk was...at least somewhat. She even began learning how to use it on purpose... though her usage of it was more akin to a child wielding an unwieldy hammer than a person using a fundamental part of their biology.
In school Serena struggled immensely, none of the things she'd learned applied here, she was quite literally years behind everyone else, and had no social skills to speak of. But she tried, her mother wanted her to be able to learn these things, and she was going to learn them if it killed her!
Serena's belief that the only value she had was what she could do for others drove her. She owed her mother so much, she had to make that worth her while. She had to become someone her mother would be proud to call a daughter. She had to be the best daughter ever! Her mother had saved her from a life of misery and that was a debt that could never be repaid... but Serena was stubborn, and she was determined to try.
But how could she be a good daughter with the blood on her hands? Someone like her didn't deserve a life like this, she'd hurt so many people over her life, their faces and voices haunted her nightmares. She was an awful destructive person who only ever took from others... if she was going to be a daughter her mother deserved she needed to find some way to atone for it all.
And that's when she learned there was a school for heroes. Her quirk was strong, even if she barely knew how to use it. She couldn't quire recapture that feeling she had back in that alley, of the power coursing through her whole body like that. But she could still store power inside her and use it to punch hard, and she was super durbale... with training she could be a super strong hero. And if she were a hero, she could make up for everyone she'd hurt by helping twice as many people as that... then she could be someone deserving of the salvation she'd been granted. Her resentment towards the hero system was hardly gone, she still thought all the media pandering and glory chasing heroes did was distasteful... but she was coming around to the idea of the profession as a whole. So long as she kept true to her morals as a hero, and used what media pandering she was forced to do to promote good causes... she could set aside her bitterness over the topic.
She'd need to get her grades up to enroll at UA though. She was 13 now, she had three years. Three years to learn what most kids learned in 16. All the academics, all the quirk training, all of it. An impossible challenge... but she'd survived the Hosu slums as a quirkless child, impossible challenges were her day to day.
Serena worked like a woman possessed. She crammed her training and studies into every waking moment of her life. She was naturally intelligent, learning things quickly, but she was playing catchup. She refused to fail though, and over the coming years she began to gain ground. Her grades were still pretty close to the bottom of her class by the end of her final year of middle school... but they were passing. She graduated on time despite everything.
Then came the entrance exams for UA. Her performance on the written exam was lackluster at best. She may have worked unbelievably hard to get to this point, but academically she had basically barely made it to the starting line. That was a struggle she was going to be behind in for a while yet.
She made up for this in the practical however. Using her quirk to tank the strikes of the robot enemies and use their own power against them, while also using her survival skills and quirk for mobility to efficiently navigate the fake cityscape and find targets to dispatch. It was a crude performance, lacking finesse or control, but her quirk was a hammer in an exam explicitly designed for everything to look like a nail.
In the end, the practical exam score was just enough to get Serena accepted into class 1A, where she now hopes to learn to properly control her quirk and become a hero her mother can be proud of... and maybe become someone who can be proud of herself someday.
Quirk
Name: Energy Manipulation
Quirk Type: Emitter
Power: – Serena can freely absorb, release, and otherwise manipulate various forms of energy around herself. Any source of kinetic energy she comes into contact with can be absorbed into and stored within her body. This can be either kinetic energy from heat, which results in the object or area she is drawing from growing colder, or from the motion of other objects, which results in them ceasing to move. As a result of this physical attacks that strike her are stopped and deal greatly reduced or entirely negated damage depending on the type and intensity of attack
Once inside her body Serena has absolute control over the energy, adding it to her body's natural kinetic energy, and can either release it into the world around her, or channel it through her body to exercise precise control over and greatly amplify the speed and force of her movements, as well as being able to move in ways most cannot such as jumping or changing direction in midair, or moving her body even while her muscles are disabled simply by directly controlling her own kinetic energy.
At the moment, Serena has very inefficient control over this, while controlling her body's movements through manipulating her own kinetic energy and amplifying her speed and power is an efficient process if done correctly, Serena's current understanding of how her quirk works is fundamentally flawed, viewing it more as a resource stored inside her that she can then throw out to propel herself forward or blast directly into targets, which is explosively powerful, but inefficient and wasteful while providing little of the utility the quirk can offer
Serena is also confirmed to be able to absorb other kinds of energy such as electricity, but they seem to have their own rules on how/when she can absorb them, and what benefits they offer her once she does so. Serena currently has no clue what these rules or usages are, and currently any attempts to absorb electricity only result in her shocking herself even worse than she would've been normally.
(note: I do know what these conditions are/used to be through past mod discussions, but am leaving them off for now as they may be subject to change for the reboot, and Serena is nowhere close to learning them at this point in time. Will edit them in at such a time as is appropriate at mod discretion)
Supermoves:
Drawbacks:
Energy Bleed - Energies Serena absorbs are added to the natural energy her body normally possesses, this means that even when she is not actively using them the energies gradually fade from her body as she slowly expends them through natural processes and movements. For kinetic energy this happens due to her simply moving about, and for electricity it would be consumed by her nervous system. As a result of this, she cannot simply maintain a fully charged body at all times, and has to make do with only a partial charge at any given time unless given prior warning to properly charge up directly before a conflict.
Serena does not currently understand why this happens due to her misunderstanding her quirk's mechanics
Absorption speed – Given enough time Serena could fully absorb any attack in theory. In practice though fully negating powerful enemy attacks entirely is simply not possible. While Serena's quirk does absorb the brunt of attacks that strike her, some of the force from them does get through and injure her. While this isn't a problem for regular attacks, as what little energy remains isn't enough to be a threat, for the bigger attacks Serena can still be injured, even if she does absorb the brunt of it.
Absorption cap – Serena can only store so much energy at once inside of herself at any given time. This means that some attacks, if strong enough, can completely overwhelm the quirk, pushing her past her limit and rendering her unable to handle the rest of the energy, allowing for full damage to be dealt. The cap scales with Serena’s mastery of her quirk, and as she develops the amount of energy she can handle will increase accordingly.
This can also result in an explosive overload of her quirk if she attempts to hold too much energy inside her body for too long. The excess energy erupting from her without regard for the integrity of her body. While this process is not usually fatal, it does result in severe injury, particularly to her limbs. This is usually enough to partially or entirely disable her.
Outside energy reliant – On her own, Serena's quirk has very limited offensive potential, while her ability to siphon energy from the heat around her gives her some consistent energy supply so long as she's in an area with sufficient heat, she doesn’t always have access to a lot of energy to use on demand. The energy bleed mentioned above also means that at the start of any given fight she typically only has some of her potential energy available unless she is going into the battle fully prepared.
As such she is very much dependent on her opponents or allies attacking her to get the opportunity to absorb the energy she needs to go on the offensive. Without this it takes time to build up energy to do so, so theoretically villains could just work around her and actively avoid attacking her, thus crippling her ability to effectively harm them.
This also lends to Serena seriously struggling against certain quirk types that allow an opponent to fight her without striking her with physically powerful blows. Binding types, acids, and especially ice type quirks are all examples of quirks that can shut her down entirely after she burns through whatever energy she's stored prior to the fight.
Bladed weaponry - while Serena can render herself functionally immune to blunt force strikes (so long as she is not entirely overpowered), and is largely resistant to piercing attacks, there is somewhat a gap in her quirk's defenses when it comes to blades slashing her. Since blades cut primarily through friction and not purely kinetic energy they are still able to affect her, albeit much less than they would others, delivering shallow cuts and drawing blood even when she properly defends, allowing her to be whittled down through bleeding, or for poisons to be delivered into her system, or whatever other effects the slashing attack might possess due to a quirk
Fighting Style: Serena is a street fighter at her core. She fights dirty and without mercy, using anything and everything at her disposal to her advantage in an adaptive fighting style. Her quirk is one such tool at her disposal, which she uses to cover her defenses, willingly taking strikes to both charge herself up, and create openings to counterattack. Having very limited formal training, she has no scruples about executing strikes that most formal martial artists would cry foul over, but is sometimes a bit sloppy by comparison as she currently lacks the same level of discipline as a trained fighter
