#//also behold my adhd ass with all the parenthesis side tangents

[anderwhohn]

Isabela is technically a registered biotic, though she lacks the combat proficiency necessary to have classed as an adept, vanguard, or sentinal (of the three, she would likely have been a sentinal, given her tech skills). Her biotics are a result of secondary exposure to element zero at the age of 14 (2168 CE (ie a year after L2 biotic implants were developed) - which is canonical, but never properly gets addressed in the mainline series, so it's easily missed and most people quite understandably assume only those classically trained in biotics is capable of them).

Since she also wasn't detected as even being biotic until she's 17 (2171 CE - again, this is canonical), she receives an L3 biotic implant as opposed to the L2s when the latter prove to be dangerous and so L3s were developed a year prior (2170 CE), which is later subsequently upgraded to an L5x by Cerberus in 2185 CE when they successfully rebuild and revive her (meaning that in AUs where that much doesn't happen, she remains an L3, and thus doesn't gain as much control as she does over her biotics themselves by ME3, at least not without wilfully undergoing the procedure for the upgrade herself).

Ignoring game mechanics so that it's possible to use prior to it being available in game, Izzy is only really capable of using her biotics in a Flare (bonus power learned from Aria in the ME3 Omega DLC - though until ME2/ME3 timeline, she has lacks any real finesse with it that she gains from the L5x implant and Aria's input), as well as minor things that come up when her biotics react to her emotions (think that conversation between Sara and Cora in Andromeda and Cora's biotics act up because she's frustrated and so her kicking a box has biotic energy behind it), so she'll end up with biotics flickering around her hands or entire body - which she uses to her advantage as an intimidation tactic as well (paragade with strong renegade tendencies - it's only because her galaxy changing decisions are more often paragon-aligned that she ends up more paragade than renegon in most cases, and even then she's often exceptionally close to being 50/50 through most of the overarching missions until the end which pushes her closer to 60/40 in favour of paragade).

Izzy definitely isn't capable of precision work with her biotics - she struggles even to use them to deliberately move things no matter their size, her attempts at barriers are as weak as wet tissue paper, etc. - and yet she still ends up with the weakness of human biotics where she has a higher metabolism and easily burns out much factor than a non-biotic operative would. As a result, she always carries a handful of high protein ration bars with her (mostly levo, though after bringing Garrus and Tali aboard, she starts carrying a couple dextro ones as well, for emergencies), but even that doesn't guarantee she won't end up burning herself out, or overcharging her amp and needing help getting back to the ship or even outright extraction if they're overwhelmed.

Most people don't assume Izzy is a biotic at all, thanks to her being in infiltration saboteur and engineer, and that she doesn't resort to them often unless overwhelmed in the field, at least prior to the Reaper Invasion, at which point she relies on them heavily when fighting reaper ground forces (further adding to her exhaustion during the war), and as that gives her an active advantage in combat, she likes to keep it that way as much as possible. So typically only those she brings out into the field on a regular basis enough to either witness her biotics, or that she's comfortable enough with to talk about them herself, ever actually realise, especially when she doesn't always seek to eat a biotic's rations (much to Chakwas's chagrin when it inevitably leads to Izzy burning herself out more frequently).

#headcanons ( shepard ) #musings ( shepard ) #everything you can imagine is real ( headcanons ) #let's think the unthinkable ( musings ) #//a wild infodump appears!! #//still need to add the gist of this to the dossier #//been working more on trying to revamp stuff therein #//so this is mostly the thinky thought notes while i sorted things out #//& decided to just share it as is for now #//this is an overall portayal hc #//so it applies to all verses/au's #//with only a few conditional divergences for some au's #//also behold my adhd ass with all the parenthesis side tangents #//i'm just undercaffeinated enough at the moment not to get overly self-conscious about it #//even though i'm aware it exists because longer sentences & paragraphs that i couldn't break #//just to be able to say what i wanted to say