Nia Nal

"When innocent people are being attacked, it's not about balance. It's about justice."

- Nia Nal

Nia Nal is a human-Naltorian hybrid and a reporter of CatCo Worldwide Media. She is also the daughter of Paul Nal and the late Isabel Nal and the estranged younger sister of Maeve Nal. After her mother's death, she embraces her powers and becomes Dreamer to assist Supergirl in their battle against the Children of Liberty.

Early life
Nia Nal was born on Earth to a Human father and Naltorian mother. She was raised in a community where aliens and humans lived peacefully: Parthas. But though bearing a rigid emotional attachment to Parthas that imprinted her there, Nia desired life outside of the domain she grew up in. And so later, Nia received a degree in International Relations from Georgetown University, and later moved to National City. At some point, she lived in Washington, D.C..

As a transgender woman, Nia struggled with bigotry and hate-fueled attacks, including being denied service at establishments; but for all that’s worth, her hometown’s tolerance for anything that stands out differently is strong, allowing both the denizens and her family to respect Nia’s wishes and Nia herself to feel comfortable there. As a result, she developed a penchant for justice and strong desire to help and protect others who faced similar prejudice due to their identities.

Working At CatCo
Nia was hired as a reporter for CatCo Worldwide Media, personally recommended to Kara Danvers by Cat Grant. Wanting to impress Kara, Nia bought her a latte and planned to arrive right on time. However, she was late to work due to her roommate accidentally taking her rental car, leaving her to take the bus, where she spilled some coffee on her skirt. In the elevator, Nia complained to the fellow occupant about her troubles before realizing it was none other than Kara Danvers. Nia gave her the latte, apologizing for being late. Kara, surprised by how much Nia sounded just like her whilst the former was Cat's assistant, assured her it was fine. The two then headed into a meeting.

The next day, Nia informed Kara her desire to article an article on National City's new fashion district in East City. When Kara wondered if Nia wouldn't prefer writing a topic with more weight, Nia passionately stated that fashion is a form of art and self-expression, which could have big impact on people's lives, and how designers would bring color and life to a previously abandoned area. Impressed, Kara urged Nia to pitch that story to the CEO, James Olsen.

At the meeting when James asked for story ideas on the fashion district, Nia was about to speak up, but was interrupted by fellow reporter Mackenzie, who immediately pitched an article emphasizing National City's cultural importance in fashion trends and pointed out she had contacts for exclusive interviews. Nia stayed silent about her story idea and the fashion district article went to Mackenzie. Later when Kara asked why she didn't speak up during the meeting, Nia admitted she became afraid to compete. Kara advised Nia to confront and overpower her fears to make waves at CatCo.

As the anti-alien sentiment grew in the United States, Nia sided with the aliens, sympathizers with their plight, as they suffered persecution for their special looks and powers. She has witnessed such anti-alien sentiment firsthand when "Barney's" image inducer glitched out, giving him his natural appearance as a Coluan Brainiac 5, angering the chefs, who immediately tried to assault Brainy. Despite him being able to evade their attacks with ease, Nia rushed to the alien cyborg's help, angrily demanding the pizzeria staff to back off and give Brainiac 5 his pizza, shaming them for being so cruel to their patron. Brainy thanked Nia for her support, befuddled as to why the people he considered his friends attacked him when they saw his real looks.

Nia brought up this story to James Olsen, resisting her anxiety in regards to having a talk with such a distinguished professional and her boss, and asked him to write a special CatCo Magazine editorial to encourage justice for the oppressed aliens. When James voiced his doubts about not wanting CatCo to appear biased, Nia countered that in this situation innocent people were being attacked, people who needed justice more so than just balanced reporting.

Nia later witnessed a scene at CatCo, where a Dryad employee, Franklin, became a target of a mean prank by Mackenzie, with the situation being defused by James, who made sure Franklin was apologized to and gave the employees a speech about inter-species tolerance. After this speech, Nia mouthed a silent "thank you" to James.

Personality
"I just... I move too fast 'cause that's what I do. I push myself and I take on more than I can handle. My mother always said it." "But that's what heroes do. Leaping before one looks is part of the job description."

- Nia Nal and Brainy

Nia is proven to be similar to Kara Danvers; hardworking, meticulous and eager to prove herself as a reporter. While somewhat shy, she has shown to be passionate about her new job, determined to tell a compelling story. Nia developed a close mentor-student relationship with Kara, whom she looks up to.

Nia has a strong sense of justice and will never hesitate to speak out for what is right in the face of injustice and stand up for what she believes in. For example, Nia stood up for Brainiac 5 when some pizza chefs tried to attack him for being an alien, threatening to expose the bigotry in the establishment unless they agreed to serve him. She also personally requested her boss, James Olsen, to issue a statement condemning these anti-alien attacks. Having personally faced bigotry due to being transgender, Nia is open-minded, accepting and empathetic to fellow victims of prejudice and hate.

Nia is aspires to be independent and self-sufficient, being very dedicated to her job. As a result, when her latent powers began manifesting and caused a sleep disorder, Nia refused help from anyone for a time, only agreeing to let Kara and Brainy in when realizing her dreams could help fight against the Children of Liberty.

Nia also lightly flirted with Brainy on several occasions. She even mistook a meeting between the two of them as a date, until Brainiac 5 made his intentions concise and clear, after Brainy invited her to have dinner with him in a fancy restaurant; though by Nia’s own testimony, she is not quite sure what she could have liked about the Coluan — or if she even actually is.

Powers
"You have anticipatory dreams."

- Brainy


 * Human-Naltorian hybrid physiology: Nia is half Naltorian and half human. Her alien powers are only accessible to some of the women on her planet of Naltor, allowing her powerful abilities.
 * Oneiromancy: Nia has the ability to see the future through her dreams; though because the dreams are sometimes symbolic, metaphorical or even feature rather blurry imagery and thus bear hidden or unclear meanings and implications that are then left up to the dreamer to translate and determine, she is unable to control and know exactly what's happening and where it is happening, nor can Nia properly interpret such and anticipate when it shall happen until it actually does. And as a side note, the nebulous outcomes that a Naltorian Dreamer like Nia are implied to be far from absolute, since Maeve implied that a dreamed eventuality can be prevented with the right method of intervention. This power manifests among certain women of Naltor per generation, via a matrilineal line from mother to daughter for one female member per each generation, and was apparently common enough that Nia understood what was happening when her powers unexpectedly started to show up, making her case particularly unusual as she is a male-to-female transgendered individual.
 * Precognition: Nia's power allows her to see attacks yet to come and to prepare for it; an obvious side-effect of her primary precognitive power to subconsciously perceive eventualities (or “visions”) while sleeping, Nia herself does not have to fall sleep first so as to access this aspect of her precognitive abilities — any impending danger to occur will autonomously alert Nia, expressed in a vision seemingly indicated by a noticeably abrupt jerking motion of Nia’s body, with her instinctively closing her eyes, as she briefly experiences a soon-to-happen (and would otherwise be disastrous) event through her mind’s eye comparable to those experienced by Cisco Ramon when he vibes the future with his own powerset, thereby potentially allowing her to intervene in time and prevent the immediate outcome she just glimpsed. However, being an acolyte Dreamer that she presently is, Nia seemingly has no control where or when this precognitive power will act up, much less with her voluntary consent, to warn her of an incoming threat or eventuality as it has only done so far in times quite randomly but nonetheless demanded her immediate attention and giving her only a fixed measure of time to possibly come up with and enact an intervention in response. With it, she was able to anticipate a gunshot, fired by a Child of Liberty, headed towards her direction — by having a vision of the shot coming — and even effectively moved her handcuffs in front of the bullet’s predicted trajectory, blocking the projectile with the handcuffs’ chains which simultaneously both broke the said chains and deflected the incoming bullet. Later, through this aspect of oneiromancy, Nia saved her sister Maeve from getting struck down by a raging and “juiced up” Child of Liberty swinging down an ax, pushing Maeve away after foreseeing that implement was going to smash down upon the podium that Maeve stood behind of as she eulogized Isabel at her memorial.
 * Dream-walking: Apart from dreaming the future, it was hinted that one in possession of the orneiromantic trait can also use it to “dream-walk” into the same dream with other people, allowing the Dreamer to mentally drift into the subconsciousness of one who also sleeps — seemingly (but not limited to) another Naltorian Dreamer, as this appears to be how the previous Dreamer traditionally and esoterically confirms the identity of her successor; this was seen when Isabel, in her final moments, inadvertently pulled Nia into the former’s subconscious dream which made the older Nal realize that she was to be succeeded, as a Dreamer, by Nia and not Maeve.
 * Astral projection: After requesting deeper knowledge on her home planet from Kelex (that Brainy had been consistently denying along with information on her later distant descendent, Nura, to prevent a potent temporal paradox), Nia became capable of projecting her consciousness into an incorporeal state and thereby move about beyond the confines of her physical body; allowing Nia to exit her tangible body and travel around in an astral body. This is an advanced technique for an oneiromancer, months ahead of basic training according to Brainy, and probably constitutes the basis for Naltorian “dream-walking”, with the Dreamer in question projecting her ethereal consciousness into the running subconscious of another person in order to be in the same dream with them. And Nia, while under meditative concentration, was initially only able to project her astral form’s hands from her actual bodily ones. Later, Nia successfully demonstrates being able to fully astral project her intangible consciousness — bearing the likeness of her actual self as Dreamer, suit and all — beyond the confines of her corporeal body and in so doing, allow her to not only spy with impunity upon her targets but also to “synchronize” with a telepath like J’onn and thereby voluntarily bring others along into the astral plane with her.
 * Oneirokinetic blasts: It was seen that the dream energies that allow a Dreamer to perceive the future could also be projected into and actually be able to affect the physical world. If tapped into and untamed, these vibrant and incandescent blue energies are seen powerful enough to be fired with such concussive force that can considerably damage even the crystalline structures inside of the Fortress of Solitude. And with Querl Dox conceiving the notion of honing these said energies into weaponized practicality, he made for Nia a special set of gloves that are then incorporated into her Dreamer suit, which enabled the Human-Naltorian hybrid to harness and “calibrate” the raw dream energy and non-lethally blast enemies from a distance, or “charge” them as glowing energized orbs upon the palms of her gloved hands (seemingly channeled and originating from the undersides of her suit’s wrists) to intimidate someone at point-blank range.

Abilities

 * Skilled combatant: With her precognitive powers, Nia has shown the beginning signs of an unpolished but skilled armed fighter; as she was able to block a punch from Menagerie and knock her out. With some training from Braniac her fighting has improved heaps to the point she is able to fight blindfolded.
 * Skilled stick-fighter: Nia was able to knock out Menagerie with a metal pole.

Weaknesses

 * "Narcolepsy": When Nia's powers began manifesting, she struggled with insomnia as she was terrified of sleeping and seeing vague fragments of the future, and would subsequently fall asleep at random times during the day, hindering her day to day life, similar to narcolepsy.
 * Open interpretation: As a total novice in the ways of dream interpretation, Nia could misinterpret or misconceive what her prophetic dreams allow her to foresee — as seen when she failed to interpret the death omen she dreamt about her mother, Isabel, dying by the bite of a spider (she mistook the ink that Maeve uses for her artwork to be lethal poison, as that was the cause of Isabel’s death in Nia’s perceived dream when, in actuality, the black fluid in her dream was merely a representation of death and that Isabel, in the real world, while destined to also die by poison, was to happen by the venomous bite from a spider — that, in Nia’s dream, was implicated by the cobwebs she saw when her mother died in it).
 * Intermittent Precognition: Nia’s precognitive powers, be it dreamt or even glimpsed while awake, have a fixed duration that denotes how far she could see into the future. And thus far, the powers only allow her to foresee up to only mere seconds to within a minute’s worth; any event or occurrence to happen after that is entirely beyond her ability to anticipate, which may leave her extremely vulnerable to subsequent assaults or when repetitively under such executed upon her by the opposition — as seen when she was nearly bitten from behind by one of Menagerie’s serpentine creatures had Kara not caught it in time, despite of Nia herself, fully-garbed in her first night and battle as Dreamer, having apparently foreseen the confrontation and thus was able to fight admirably against Menagerie’s initial attacks in single combat after a few seconds before Kara saves Nia; the latter even explicitly admits that she dreamt nearly all the details save for Supergirl grabbing the creature and saving Nia in the process.

Equipment

 * Dreamer suit: Nia wears a protective suit as Dreamer, to hide her identity from her enemies, when she goes out fighting crime. She received her mother, Isabel Nal's old suit from her father, Paul Nal.

Supergirl
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Season 4
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Trivia

 * Nia's address is 775 Gladiola Dr.
 * Her phone number is 555-8010.
 * Every morning, Nia gets an extra large coffee with milk and no sugar from Bob's Diner.
 * Nia is an extreme anomaly in her family for inheriting the power of precognition; she was originally born a boy and the power was originally known to only be inherited by a natural-born daughter.

Behind the scenes

 * In the DC comics, Nia's descendant Nura Nal is a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th and 31st centuries. Her home planet is Naltor.