Cynthia Reynolds
as
| Origin & Backstory |Born with a subtle, but powerful ability to sense danger on such an accurate level as to display god-like reflexes, Cynthia grew up an orphanage of Empire City, Vermont. While she had no friends, she displayed an unusually high morale center that helped her avoid getting in trouble and making stupid decisions in a less than noble city.
As she grew in a young lady, she found herself a mundane job but started to slip out at night joining other small-time street heroes that were determined to clean up the streets. She was known as the
Breeze, since she used her comrades knowledge in mixed martial art styles, but easily became one of the higher threat members thanks to her metagene. Back then there wasn't any major exposure to superheroes or villains, but even in spite of this fact, an unknown organization started to fight back against the rogue hero group - putting them down before they could clear downtown of it's filth. Cynthia was able to slip away before she befell similar fates of her comrades; jail, death, injury, or turning against her peers.
~Year One~As Superman makes his debut and the other superheroes come out from hiding, fate seems to twist in Cynthia's direction as a mysterious dark carriage catches her on an eerily empty street. As the door to the horseless carriage opens, a man in a black suit with a shadowed face asks her what she truly wishes for, explaining that this is a once in a life opportunity. Despite her skepticism the appearance of heroes like the Flash make her question the presence of other-worldly powers even more than before and she expresses the wish to help the world.
The man motions her inside the carriage, to which she climbs in cautiously. What seems like moments later, she finds herself sitting in an alleyway with no memory of what happened after getting in the stranger's carriage. While trying to find her way home, she seems to run into a string of bad luck as thugs, robbers, and murderers encounter her and confront her as if drawn by something. This is the first time she experiences and practices her newfound powers; the ability to manipulate the very shadows.
Later that year when she is donned but a simple face mask and cowl, Sta'rro attacks and begins to enslave a large portion of the world's population, but she is able to fight off hordes of small clones thanks to her intuition and new dark constructs.
~Year Two~Finally donning a formal costume, she begins to call herself the
'Spirit' and revisits her battle against downtown crime. The previous organization employs cyborgs, minor mteahumans, and drones to try and halt her advance of cleaning up the streets. Eventually she is so successful she finally draws out the organization's leader; Arthur Light. Strangely enough he seems to be able to manipulate light as opposed to Cynthia's darkness and after explaining his drive to control the city for fortune and 'bigger' plans, they have a long drawn out duel that destroys a few blocks.
Spirit draws the battle to a close and hands over the man to the authority, not only wrestling control of the city from most of it's major crime (seemingly), but also exposing herself as one of the many heroes that populate the world - bringing her name up along Vixen and Red Tornado.
~Year Three~As year three kicks off, Spirit has cleaned up a majority of downtown gangs and criminal organizations, prompting public opinion towards finally taking down the zone gates that separate uptown and downtown, eventually merging the city into one again and boosting morale and economy. However as time passes by Spirit begins to realize that someone is working against the new tidal wave of change, keeping the city council from passing the vote towards tearing the zone gates down. While recognizing she has no formal detective training, she is aware of her intelligence and new abilities that allow her near-perfect stealth and begins her investigation - starting with the members that feel the strongest against it.
While some of the members are honestly against the change because of fear, she frightens a few of the corrupt councilors into admitting bribery and some of the more honest ones into the fact they've been blackmailed and threatened. As she drives deeper into this conspiracy she begins to find herself at odds with assassins and cybernetic forces that bear a strange resemblance to Light's own organization and yet notes they're higher training and more advanced weapons - even getting herself heavily injured in her right side by laser fire.
Eventually she becomes such an issue for this mysterious villain that he sets an ambush at one of the council member's homes, getting tired of Spirit getting rid of evidence and bringing greedy men into the cops even in spite of his employees within the police themselves. She falls straight into it and he finally introduces himself through a computer screen, naming himself the Octopus. However his attempt fails even with the help of some newly developed light-generating technology. As she threatens to find him he suddenly spells out that he isn't annoyed anymore but instead that he's going to make this into a game between them, before the small computer explodes.
The vote finally passes to get rid of the zone gates and at the end of year three, in November, they finally lower the gates permanently - letting the homeless and those less fortune into the uptown area, the city funding a
'Pick Up' project which helps those looking for a job earn enough income to support them and their families. Finally in the month of December, The Batman tracked her down and formally invited her into the Justice League, making her one of the newest members to join.
| Character Notes |•
Empire City: A city that boasts a far advance in cybernetics and robotics, giving the city a sort of futuristic feel about it as people with artificial limbs and basic A.I.s roam the streets. Until lately, it had been split into uptown and downtown; the rich and moderate separated from the poor. Downtown is so more crime filled and gang related, but some of it has spilled into uptown, but overall is lower than before Spirit came into the picture.
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Arthur Light: Spirit's first main villain, having referred to himself as
'Dr. Light.' His ability to manipulate light in a similar fashion as the Spirit sometimes makes her truly question where her powers come from and why she was given them.
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'Octopus': A mysterious villain behind a computer screen, his apparent involvement in manipulating the whole city by himself makes him a dangerously opponent in of itself, let alone if this man even has any superpowers himself.
| Powers & Abilities |•
Danger Intuition: To see into the immediate future, Spirit has no direct control over the power and is only triggered when there is immediate danger.
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Erebokinesis: Spirit can create, shape and manipulate darkness and shadows. By itself, darkness is mostly used to cloud everything into total darkness, but by accessing a dimension of dark energy it can be channeled to a variety of effects, both as an absence of light and a solid substance: she can also create and dispel shields and areas of total darkness, create a variety of constructs and weapons, and teleport one's self through massive distances via shadows.
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Martial Artist: Her time with the rogue heroes in the early years exposed her to martial arts training. Though nothing more than a simple journeyman in mixed styles, she can still present a real threat paired with her natural intuition.
| How is this character different? |There are layers and layers of difference between the Cynthia Reynolds we know as 'Gypsy' and this version. For one, she is actually a mix of three different characters from the DC universe; Gypsy, The Shade, and The Spirit (in name only). Revamping her limited foresight into danger intuition that has been there all her life as a rather powerful and yet limited metahuman power, she also goes through an event to acquire the ability to manipulate darkness from the Darklands much like the Shade. She's also the local heroine for a underused city and therefore will encounter a unique rogue's galley of sorts that no other hero truly shares.
| What is your goal with this character? |Simply put, to have fun. ^^ Other than that, simply to bring a very interesting twist of so many hero concepts to written word and see how she can wedge herself in the big leagues.
| Sample Post |It was blinding, all this light, and suddenly it became apparent - a trap. Her eyes blinked away the whiteness slowly before she saw at least eight men.. maybe a few more hiding the the shadows and four giant spotlights that hardly made any shadows.
'Stupid.' What was unusual though was that a computer display had been setup in the middle of them all and they were all standing by, as if waiting for orders, probably from whomever was behind the screen. It was big enough for her to make out there words from where she stood, as it began to type.
[Welcome, Spirit.] it typed. The sentence caused her to narrow her gaze.
[You've become a thorn in my side for too long, so I've decided to personally set a trap for you. I don't expect you to come out of this alive. Any final words?]Silence fell over the lobby. She had entered an office complex where some of the council members worked and one had supposedly been taking a late night shift. Obviously it was planted information to catch her or maybe he was here and this mystery man just caught her in the act. She glanced around for a moment - only a few shadows here and there from the pillars. It would help, but lighting the area like this would make it harder for her to pull the darkness out and she was still straining herself when creating darkness from nothing. That's what made Dr. Light so dangerous before...
"Who are you?" It was a dumb question, but it bought her time to think of a plan of attack, how she'd take the lights out. Most likely Spirit would shadow-step towards them and grab what shadows she could to smash them in.
[That's not important anymore. A poor choice in final words, Spirit.] There was a pause in the screen as it blanked out into nothing, the assassins standing perfectly still. She mentally groaned inside, noting how disciplined these men were, which probably meant they had more training than she was used to. Finally the words appeared on the screen;
[Kill her.]Cynthia reached into the core of her being, the only way she could accurately describe how it felt to use this darkness power, and pulled darkness below her as the assassins rushed her with gunfire. She melded into the floor as they glanced around unaware of her presence now at one of the spotlights. The glass bulb crashed loudly as the construct made of dark hard light smashed into into pieces and took out one of the light. The absence of the produced light gave Spirit more shadows to play with, forcing her to smirk knowingly.
However when one of the assassins produced a whip that seemed to be made out of literal hard light that brightened the area, Cynthia only had her intuition to thank, the attack catching her completely off-guard. That's when her eyes narrowed to the sight of the group taking out their on version of hard-light weapons; blades, maces, hammers -
'hard-light weapons?' she thought,
'who is he?'
