Wait, what's up with the numbers? If you've already explained this, though, just say so and I'll look for it again.
If I may ask, to lead with, what do you know about the Worm setting? This is an AU of that, so there's actually a preexisting power system we're running on. I can link you, so here: this has all the basics. https://worm.fandom.com/wiki/Power_Classifications
Name: Veronica Blackwater Species: Human Vampire Lord Age: 25 (appears 18) Gender: Female Height: 5' 8" Appearance: Veronica appears as a pale young woman, not to a porcelain degree, but more like she could use a bit more sun. Her long black hair falls in mostly straight waves down to her mid-back. Her irises are a bloody crimson hue, with her pupils narrowed to reptilian slits. Her frame rides a balance between curvaceous and athletic, lined beneath supple skin with wiry, compact muscles that tend not to be apparent without a physical inspection. Though she often wears a smile, it is rarely an open-mouthed one, largely to avoid broadcasting her fanged incisors. She tends to smell mostly scentless, as the combination of scentless soaps and an undead body that doesn't decompose leaves her presence mostly muted to mundane means. Her garb is fairly eccentric, all blacks and velvety sanguine reds with a subtle butterfly motif. Actual metal armor is applied sparingly and primarily to her joints, almost as an afterthought, to the point of giving the false impression it's only for decoration. By the metrics of society, her garb is rather immodest, the design and accents often drawing the eye to exposed skin or tight enough to be somehow more provocative than outright absence.
Born far from the Capital in a place within Kindeance that could best be described as "that idyllic village with some farmer", Veronica was an average human daughter to a peasant hunter... aside from a slight hiccup. Born under a good omen, she was blessed with an innate magical gift for "reading fate", a Seer who might one day have been found and trained to be the mystical advisor of this or that hero, guiding them on the path to a glorious destiny. However, as fate would have it, a True Vampire, one Lord Blackwater, who had long-since set down roots after hailing from a land outside Kindeance, unfortunately heard tell of her and sought to turn her as a subordinate to use her gift for himself. The girl, otherwise defenseless aside from her capacity to see her near future, was captured and a year thereafter turned into a similar creature of darkness, lesser and mystically bound by her hated "master's" bond as her Sire.
Over the two years since her abduction, she was trained in the arts of ninjutsu and magic. she had no choice but to be honed into a weapon and tool for her "master", made an unwilling killer and her magic refined further for the sake of making her a more useful tool for foreseeing misfortune and spying upon the Vampire Lord's enemies... when she wasn't used to murder them outright. Unfortunately for him, training her resulted in the resentful little vampire awakening a second aspect of her gift, one that allowed her to avoid the destiny that she could prior only despair at. Through this, she was able to slip the master bond of her Sire and catch him unawares. Caught off guard, the Vampire Lord was torn limb from limb, and in drinking his blood, Veronica fully became a Vampire Lord like her Sire and shattered whatever might have remained of their bond.
Come the morning, her tormenter's remains were reduced to ashes by the sun, and Veronica once more breathed the sweet air of freedom... Though it was tainted by the bitterness of her new "condition" as a Vampire Lord -if a young one, and she was unsure what to do with herself. Despite bloodied hands and a darkened spirit, she hadn't been under her Sire's yoke long enough to taint her morality irrevocably. She was still herself, and she had no intention of being the monster the next hero would slay.
With that determination made, for the safety of innocent lives, she reluctantly made a home in her Sire's former lair and left primarily only to get sustenance, once more taking up a hunter job of her human family in order to have an at least legitimate supply of blood to drink. In such a way, delivering "pre-drained" cadavers to local butchers of nearby towns and villages, she made a simple living on simple coin... along with whatever her Sire's coffers contained. Her "condition" was one she mostly tried to conceal, but in the end, the King had his ways. Long story short, a year after regaining her freedom, at age 20, she was found out, but the fact that she had stayed a "productive member of society" and wasn't going around murdering people unprovoked and generally being a megalomaniac stayed the hands of potential hunting parties. The fact that it was eventually discovered that she had slain the Vampire Lord before her added another element of potential trustworthiness to her, and so, she was approached as a potential agent of the King to be given a chance to truly prove her loyalty and good will to the kingdom.
As such, for the next half decade, Veronica would find herself occasionally acting on behalf of "favors" from the Crown, working as an espionage agent, Seer, and sometimes soldier and scout for the Guard. Collaborations with Matilda, the Head of the Guard, weren't common, but they weren't uncommon either. Over the course of 5 years, the two developed a basic working relationship. They may not necessarily trust each other, but they don't specifically mistrust each-other either. And Veronica would be inclined to trust her back to the orc warrior.
Over the years, Veronica came to be less resentful of her "condition", and with the tentative faith afforded to her by the kingdom, she has come to redevelop a sense of confidence and acceptance. Nowadays, her "condition" is just another part of life... one she expects will be very long, so she has chosen not to wallow in self-pity and depression. Her once concealing garb has been exchanged for borderline proud eccentricity. While she does not explicitly advertise her "condition", she is no longer shamed by or afraid of it. She is a Vampire in the King's Court, who has earned her place through good will, and she'll not let any tell her otherwise.
Come the present day, due to the seriousness of the kingdom's crisis and the desperation involved, Veronica would find herself requisitioned as an investigator, using her divinations to aid in tracking the Prince's kidnappers with the Guard while the main black ops team was off performing their own tasks. It is because her typical place of residence is a quite a fair distance from the Capitol that she was unable to be reached in time to join up with the main team initially.
Talants: Ninjutsu: She has been harshly trained in this collection of fundamental survivalist and espionage techniques, among which are: methods of gathering information and techniques of non-detection, avoidance and misdirection, along with disguise, escape and concealment. She's no stranger to picking locks or disabling traps either. This is the root of her shinobi teachings, one in which she has attained mastery status or near enough to it. Heavy focus. While medicine and archery are also parts of these techniques, she favors them lesser. Medicine: Her capacity for medical techniques tends towards "field surgery" and making sure injuries aren't immediately lethal. Setting bones. Popping dislocated joints back in. Applying splints, stitches, bandages and salves. She knows where to stab to kill fastest, so she has a pretty good idea how to be more careful when treating certain afflictions. She's not a biology guru or proper doctor; that's for certain. She's just got a good head for improvisation. Archery: She's a decent shot, but she prefers unaware or otherwise stationary targets. She compensates with her magic to predict her targets' movements for more difficult shots. Taijutsu: For those times she is trapped in prolonged CQC, she's adequate in the art of unarmed -or lightly armed- combat. Unarmed combat isn't her favorite, but she's not going to get steamrolled. Prefers to disengage and arm herself. Shurikenjutsu: She is excellent in the art of handling small, bladed weapons, both in CQC and as throwing weapons. This is her preferred fighting style. Fighting fair is for chumps. Sojutsu/Bojutsu: The art of wielding polearms. Particularly, Veronica favors the spear and scythe. Novice but unconventional. Her most inexperienced but also intuitive martial art and her "passion project". Technically, she's got the basics down pat, but her focus was never open combat under her Sire. That is something she became more familiar with working with the Royal Guard. In other words, she's mostly self-taught, so she tends to fight unconventionally in this art. Lip Reading: In the course of spying and assassination, she has developed the capacity to roughly read speech from afar. Parkour: Her vampiric strength makes her an able and acrobatic navigator of unconventional terrain, very useful for infiltration. Hunter: Her family trade, she is a respectable hand at tracking, trapping and skinning prey, along with camping in the wilds. Peasant Roots: Knowledgeable in the basics of various "womanly" tasks like cleaning, cooking and sewing.
True Vampire/Vampire Lord: Darkvision: Even in pitch black, she can perceive the world in shades of grey. Though even this eyesight cuts off into murk past a certain point. Her long-range vision is otherwise very keen under proper lighting. Inhuman Physicality: Undeath has removed the normal limits on human musculature, giving her the capacity for peak human levels of physical feats. However, her muscles will still tear from exerting themselves to their fullest capacity, requiring she only do so in bursts and wait a brief while for them to heal. As long as she doesn't push too hard, she can still operate at normal human levels during the wait. While her body isn't exactly any more durable than a human's, she doesn't feel pain as more than an irritant, and most wounds are not lethal, only disabling. Healing Factor: Her wounds regenerate quickly. Not enough to be all that useful in battle, but outside battle, an hour's rest will mend most wounds, and a night's rest can restore her body entirely, even the loss of her head. Due to the constant nature of the regeneration, she is unable to reattach fully severed body parts. Her regeneration either starts with her mostly intact head or her body if the former is unavailable. Large-scale regeneration rapidly accelerates her bloodthirst's progression. Undeath: She is unaffected by poison, disease, exhaustion or age. Thirst: She doesn't need to eat, sleep or breathe, though she still requires some blood to sate her thirst. While as an undead, she technically doesn't need sustenance, much of her vampiric strengths will become less prominent with prolonged abstinence. In addition, much as any hungry creature, she is prone to increasingly large spurts of irritation and bloodlust until sated. She can subsist off animal blood, but sentient blood is far more fulfilling. She can also consume mundane foods, but they give her no nutrition. Unreflected: She has no reflection, whether it be a mirror, body of water or any other surface. Sunlight Vulnerability: Though more resistant than a lesser vampire, sunlight is still her bane, burning badly but not lethally unless she remains in prolonged contact. Chop her to pieces and leave her exposed to daylight, and the sun will do the rest in about an hour. Holy Vulnerability: Certain "holy" or otherwise "sanctified" magics have the capacity to be a special bother to her as an undead. Averted Weaknesses: As a Vampire Lord, she no longer suffers from some of the weaknesses a typical lesser vampire exhibits. Running water no longer hinders her, and she doesn't need to be invited to cross a threshold of a residence. Wooden stakes are as any other weapon, even if getting stabbed in the heart would still be pretty annoying, for the splinters if nothing else. Siring: Vampire "reproduction" is fairly simple. While their undead bodies preclude them from being fertile, they can convert other living beings to more of their kind with a transfusion of their blood to a creature that has been drained dry of their own. The recipient will rise a day later as a lesser vampire fledgling, mystically subordinate to their Sire and unable to disobey direct commands. A fledgling that is granted the opportunity to consume a notable quantity of their Sire's blood again will be freed of the bond and become a True Vampire, otherwise known as a Vampire Lord, but only if their Sire was a Vampire Lord themselves. Lesser Vampires can create fledglings, but if the Sire does not become a True Vampire, their fledgling will be left precluded from being able to become a Vampire Lord as well for as long as that state persists.
Born a Seer when she was human, Veronica's magic revolves around divination, the capacity to view the past, present and future in order to gather information.
Sight of the Fated: Shows her the near future up to five seconds. Allows her to "simulate" her immediate future possibilities without committing to them until she finds one she likes. (eg. she can plan to leap through a window, and she will witness what would occur if she did/who or what is on the other side) She particularly favors using this with her archery. However, the present is always moving at least a little, and she can only make scry attempts so fast. She only has so much time in a given moment to make "guesses" and act on one before the "baseline" of her visions changes. And then she has to put up with the result. If she's facing an aware and skilled opponent, this can be particularly troublesome, especially if she has to waste time using her predictions to avoid attacks on herself rather than returning the favor.
Avert the Destined: Allows her to slip out of "phase" with the interference of the natural course of "destiny". When she enters this state, she becomes imperceptible and intangible to forces of direct mystical origin, shedding any hostile afflictions that currently linger upon her, like curses or bindings. A magical explosion and its immediate integral collateral (shockwave, small debris and such) would wash over her harmlessly, but a thrown steel beam would still ruin her day if not dodged. Divination can't see or target her. She treats magical shields and wards like they don't exist, and the barriers won't even register the intrusion. On the inverse, this separation with the mystical means she cannot affect the world with her other magic in turn until she reverts this state. This spell covers more obscure mystical phenomenon, including the "purifying" effect of the sun's rays on vampires, allowing her to be a "daywalker". (eg. this is what slipped her from her Sire's leash)
The Gift Known as the Present: Allows her to scry distant places and events that are occurring immediately in the now. The further she wants to reach and the more senses she wants to use at the targeted location at once, the more intensive the effort required, so she usually only uses sight and sound. Can be used either for short range strategic glimpses in combat, or ritualistically for spying on distant events. She can target specific individuals, but only if she knows what they look like or otherwise has some manner of catalyst related to them. She can scry any location she has seen personally, as visualization is important to the spell. Though, notably, she can expand the number of "starting points" available to her by panning her vision around a targeted location, her scrying gaze sufficient for the purposes of "marking" new places and people as "seen".
What Has Come Before: Through focused, meditative delving, allows her to wind back the clock of her vision and perceive past events that occurred in a radius of roughly 30 feet from her position. She can wind the clock forward as well, accelerating the "replay" to skip less interesting/relevant material. She can maintain this spell on the move and track events of the past up to the present as fast as she can manage to physically keep up with them. That said, she can only peer back as far as three days, so haste in reaching the "scene of the crime" is still a priority to ensure trails do not go cold.
General: Medium-Sized Brown Backpack: Compact and simple to don and doff. Change of clothes: Includes favored garb, a brown cloak, and practical full-body coverage wear for sun protection/stealth. Mundane Rations: Dry foods like jerky, dried fruit and nuts. (Sometimes used to help conceal her "condition".) Blood Rations: Several thick waterskins with blood of varying types in them (usually animal). A sip every meal period is typically enough to keep her topped off at peak performance. Scentless Soap: A standard cleanliness measure ground into her to aid non-detection. Applied whenever bathing. Coin Pouch: A padded, sectioned pouch, made to silence the jingle of coin.
Armament: Light Armor: Primarily leather over vitals, but some metal on forearms, elbows, knees, lower shins, upper sternum & shoulders. Sharpened Sai Daggers: Typically a defensive weapon, when weaponized, they make an excellent tool for liberating a victim of their eye sockets' contents, along with scrambling the brain behind them. Veronica uses them like deadly nails, punching precise holes in her foes' vitals. Throwing Knives: Not particularly deadly unless aimed well, they still make decent distractions if aimed for the face or neck. Passable for melee combat in a pinch. Far more threatening if coated with poison. Seijaku/Silence - Composite Recurve Shortbow: A bow type useful for firing while mobile. (stored in a leather waterproof case) Quiver: 30 arrow capacity. (30/30) Strapped to small of her back. Barbed & non-barbed arrows. Chigetsu/Blood Moon - War Scythe: Bathed in the blood of many lives over the decades, a strange, crimson polearm once belonging to her Sire. One end is mounted with a spearhead and the other with a scythe-head that is bladed on both edges, oriented oddly like a farming tool, rather than a typical war scythe. Normally, this weapon would be rather impractical, but it comes into its own wielded by a vampire's physicality. The scythe has the magical property to shrink down to the size of a sickle for discreet transport or return to normal (takes 5 seconds in either direction). The enchanted weapon's longevity is the result of the property of blood absorption, slowly but surely repairing itself with any sanguine essence that lingers upon its surface.
Miscellaneous/Tools: Tinderbox: Contains flint, fire steel, and dry cloth soaked in oil. Infiltration Kit: Includes a small file, lock picks, a small mirror mounted on a metal handle, a set of narrow-bladed scissors and pliers. Kaginawa/Grappling Hook & Rope: A sturdy, steel hook and a compact bundle of thin but very sturdy and long rope. Weapon Maintenance Kit: Includes a whetstone, rags, specialized oils, and spare bowstrings. Medic Kit: Contains bandages, gauze pads, splints, basic salves, alcohol, needles, thread, syrettes, scalpels, whiskey & biting stick. Pocket Watch: A well-maintained silver-cased device that once belonged to her Sire, it has been quite useful for tracking the sun. Compass: In good condition. Points north. Leatherbound Logbook: A coded log of information gathered during investigations. Pencils included. Maps: A small, leather-bound book. The contents are of a variety of maps of the kingdoms, particularly Kindeance. Also a variety of far more quality, larger maps kept rolled up separately. All maps are kept within a rubber-lined, waterproof case, for preservation.
Other: Blackwater is not her birth name. As a peasant, she had no family name. Rather, Blackwater is a "title" bestowed upon her by her vampiric Sire, a demonstration that she was to be molded like clay into his tool and "family". With his demise, she remains the sole "inheritor" of Blackwater's assets.
She is part of Anderson's team that managed to track the Prince's kidnappers the hard way (with a touch of her divination magic) and will likely be running into Matilda's team at the estate. It is because her typical place of long-term residence is a quite a fair distance from the Capitol that she was unable to be reached in time to join up with the main team initially.
Nicknames: Jen (considers her full name a mouthful)
Age: 17
Gender: Female
Personality:
“The Quiet One” in a nutshell. A wallflower that prefers to coast through social situations with only the occasional utterance, merely observing and cataloging the important bits of ongoing conversations. It’s not so much that she’s incapable as she is merely antisocial. While she doesn’t like using it, she is capable of social intrigue. Her thoughtful, cautious nature often tempers her words, carefully tailoring them to achieve her desired results. If she doesn’t care to put on a show, however, she comes across as far more sardonic, noncommittal and snippy. At times, this standoffish visage fades, especially when her curiosity and hunger for knowledge are piqued. She is also prone to being more brutally honest with those she considers friends or -at least- friendly acquaintances. Although raised by a law enforcer, Jen has never fully conformed to such lines of thinking. Though she does define several sharp lines in the sand, her judgment is extremely vigilante-esce, believing that the best way to handle threats is to eliminate them such that “there is not even the possibility of them being a threat again”. Her primary restraint is minding whether she could feasibly get away with doing so without consequences.
While Jen has a sense of morality, it is largely tempered by selfishness. Somewhat disturbingly practical, Jen has no interest in heroics, not in a serious sense. She sees it as a dead-end job, even in the literal sense. If she had her way, she would live a quiet, undisturbed civilian life, using her powers solely for her own gain and to protect her personal interests when the likes of reckless Cape activities decide to rudely intrude. In a sense, Jen treats being a hero like a "punch-clock" job. She's there to get her hours in, do her duty, get her pay and clock out, nothing more and nothing less. Her pride and sense of completionism at least compel her to make an effort to give the most rationally sufficient "service" possible according to her job's standards, but otherwise, she is not really the type to go above and beyond the call of duty unless she has no other option.
That being said, she does make some effort to conceal her "conventionally negative" aspects. She has no interest in antagonizing others for no reason and making unnecessary enemies, and by her reckoning, it's much easier to go with the flow where possible. She will follow orders to the letter -even if not the spirit- and generally makes an effort not to come across as a rebellious teenager. She has no intention of making heroics a lasting career and has every intent of quitting as soon as she's in an advantageous position for it, but there's no good reason to let others know that's the case and broadcast her true feelings. It's much easier to catch flies with honey, after all, and she's certain that pretending to be a good little child soldier will serve to smooth over the path of her near future much more nicely than the alternative.
At some point, one might wonder, is this level of selfishness normal? Perhaps it's a power-induced psychosis, an emotional separation to go with the physical separation. Regardless, Jen seems quite capable of acting in a manner outwardly divorced from her drives when needed. On the job, in costume, she plays something of an aloof detective crossed with surprisingly charismatic speaker. She gives hope to the hearts of the masses through encouraging words and actions, saves lives with a pat on the shoulder and two-fingered salute... and at the same time strives to drive fear into the hearts of villains. For her, it is not enough to defeat them physically, but mentally as well, to destroy them so that they will not choose villainy again. She takes especially harsh action on villains that take hostages, and she has little patience for playing to the tune of her opponents. If a villain makes ransom demands, she'll defy them out of spite.
Appearance: Civilian: A 5'8", 140 lb. charcoal-black-haired, brown-eyed, athletic, caucasian young woman with a lean, conditioned build. Prefers blue jeans and wide variety of dark cotton shirts or hoodies. Typically prefers solid colors and stuff without brand names plastered all over it. She lives in Redline, Maine, which is -to say the least- cold, so she also favors warm jackets, preferably with hoods for when the chill is especially biting. She dresses practical and for comfort. Style is a secondary thought at best, but she has a basic sense of color coordination and so at least doesn't come across as a visual disaster.
In a word, Jen can be described as “average”, the sort of face you can almost lose in a crowd. Her appearance seems to strike no particularly notable extremes at any given moment. While she is certainly athletic and built like a martial artist -if an obviously shapely female one, it’s almost impossible to tell beneath her baggy favored hoodies and jeans. She doesn’t bother to wash her face, but her skin is naturally clear for the most part due to healthy living. Her shoulder-length hair is hardly anything to write home about, seemingly combed to the bare minimum required to be presentable and only washed enough to not appear oily. The most notable thing about her would be her relative lack of smell one way or the other, apparently a result of unscented soaps. In outward demeanor, she is fairly mild; she doesn’t hunch, nor does she walk with her head held high, merely coasting by on the middle ground.
A cyberpunk-themed and (mostly cosmetically) armored bodysuit with glowing accents (that have no functional purpose but to look really damn cool), surprisingly breathable while also being warm and flexible enough to allow a full-range of unhindered movement. Courtesy of Fashionista, it is deceptively durable and generally bulletproof to small arms fire, along with stopping non-Cape-based physical assaults. Granted, the protection against firearms isn't perfect, and getting peppered by them would still leave her winded and likely bruised, despite it warding off penetration and keeping her insides inside. The overall purpose of her costume is to make her able to fake being a Tinker, and it has multiple easily accessed buttons underneath a bit of casing on the forearms. Most of them don't actually do anything, though one of them on each arm is a panic button if pressed in a special sequence. Other functional ones activate headlights of adjustable brightness along the jawline of the suit's helmet. The sides of the helmet have concealed buttons for comms, and the helmet has a "silenced" mode that seals it off aside from some oxygen vents to allow her speech to be carried solely to her comms and not any potential listeners. The helmet can also be switched to "fully sealed" mode for hazardous environments, preserving the inside from outside gasses or liquids. All the technological portions of this costume are completely mundane in nature at Jen's request and can be technically maintained without a Tinker; though Tinker assistance certainly helps with part production.
Beyond that, a pouch at the small of her back has space to contain pepper spray, zip-tie restraints, a small flashlight, a taser, an extendable baton, some first aid utilities and her Wards phone.
Jen currently has a couple requests for upgrades that were unable to be made with Redline's current resources. Said upgrades are in the works and would replace the presently mostly cosmetic armor: a layer of shock-absorbing gel to blunt kinetic energy further, allowing her to whether the physical blows of even some Capes. And actually functional armor that, despite being so slim, is deceptively durable, provides protection equivalent to much thicker armor, and doesn't compromise any of her current costume's flexibility.
Biography: Raised in a good life, there is no doubt that Jen Mackens was spoiled. She knew it and, more importantly, took advantage of it. To be sure, her life was a mostly average one, middle class at best, but she never really experienced hardship. Or, at least, nothing she would refer to as hardship. Born to the joining of a police officer and a private investigator, Jen grew up exposed to two sides of law enforcement... and wanted nothing to do with them. Oh sure, learning her father's tricks and tips was neat, but they just made it easier to solve daily annoyances. Sure, practicing martial arts for self-defense was only practical and kept her in shape, but it was only a fun hobby. One she was fairly passionate about, sure, but not anything she wanted to dedicate her life to.
Though caring, her mother could be overbearing, her standards high and disappointment in Jen's lack of ambition palpable, but Jen simply chose avoidance in response. School seemed pointless to her. Exposed to her father's often cynical words and worldview, she knew what was actually useful in the real world, that being very little of what she was tested on. Never the sort to enjoy wasting her time, her grades plummeted to just enough to get by rather than excelling, despite her objective intelligence. Scrabbling to decide what to do with her life and trying to look ahead, Jen hit a mental roadblock trying to decide where to invest her energy and here not to, trying to discern a life path that she'd never tire of. Despite pressure from her mother and the encouragement of her father as senior year dawned, Jen found herself completely unmotivated and discouraged. She came to the conclusion to settle for what she might already be good at, martial arts and potentially following her father's footsteps... to her mother chagrin.
Tensions were rising until, suddenly, they were cut down for a tension of an entirely different kind. Her mother had disappeared on the job. That was apparent after she didn't come home for a whole week. By the third day, Jen's father was already engaging in his own investigation, and by the fifth, Jen had managed to wring shocking answers from him. As it turned out, her mother was a Cape, a hero outside her normal work, and Jen was far from enthused. Already, she had developed a certain level of disdain for "costumed crusaders", seeing them as net drains on society, whether heroic or villainous. It wasn't necessarily that she cared about society itself, however, as she merely did how much Cape activities might impact her simple life.
Apparently, her mother had been investigating some sort of smuggling ring when she disappeared. While that hadn't actually been conveyed to her father, he had managed to figure it out on his own. One part of Jen wanted to help with her father's investigation. A part of her that loved both parents, regardless of any tensions, wanted to do her part to make sure everyone was okay. A crueler, spiteful part of her that hated being deceived briefly considered that this was as much as her mother deserved for her hypocrisy, for engaging in such a profession and expecting anything but an unfortunate end.
But it was the practical part of her that eventually convinced Jen to disregard emotional drives and approach the situation with realistic cynicism, and as such, she decided to leave well enough alone, to leave it to the professional that was her father and get on with her life. If the situation was really serious, surely the Guardians could be called in. Jen was just a schoolgirl, a normal person in a world of titans. There was no rational place for her in getting involved with something that was too dangerous for a Cape like her mother. So, she would get on with her life, hope for the best and be ready for the worst. It wasn't her business.
As someone surely sensible once said, "she missed the part where it was her problem".
And so proceeded a series of very unfortunate events
Heart stoked with a truly deep and abiding hatred she'd never experienced before, Jen would use her then hospitalized father's teachings and her new powers to go on a one-woman crusade against the criminal organization, ruthlessly brutalizing them and their operations, not for justice but personal vengeance. The capes, in particular, were disappeared, never to be heard from again. While the nature of her power ensured that actual proof of her involvement was pretty much impossible to acquire, reasonable detective work in regard to the incident would see Jen eventually meeting Director Fukuda. Jen, of course, played coy without relent, admitting to nothing, but in being effectively "outed" by the government, she wasn't in a good position to refuse their recruitment "offer". And while she couldn't technically be threatened with actionable legalities, she knew the PRT could ensure her life was a lot more difficult... and potentially find something they could actually hold over her if she put them in a position to dig further.
With her father made aware of the danger their family was potentially in, even with the destruction and overall dismantling of the organization responsible by Jen and the PRT follow-up, that would be the final nail in the coffin to Jen's enrollment in the Wards.
Powers/Skills:
Athleticism: She is a highly athletic and agile individual with abundant stamina for extended movement/running/fighting.
High Pain Tolerance/Willpower: She's learned to handle pain and aching muscles while taking fairly brutal martial arts, and gaining powers has only been a wake-up call to push herself to the edge time and again just in case. As long as she isn't entirely incapacitated, it's likely that she'll try to keep fighting.
Martial Arts: Muay Thai: Even before becoming a cape, she took martial arts and reached a level where she could actually put what she knew into practice beyond spars. Her style is a brutal boxing one using knees and elbows as much as fists and feet, but she's been known to "ad lib" things or forgo form entirely to be more unpredictable. This gives her a certain awareness of where it's safe to strike the human body to incapacitate foes relatively harmlessly... or where she needs to aim to do the most damage.
Swimming: Can swim pretty well, good enough to handle towing someone with her.
Out of Phase (Breaker 9/Stranger 7/Striker 5/Trump 2/Mover 2/Brute 1): Jen's power is selective tangibility that moves her into what she perceives as a parallel "world", completely identical to the real one but empty of life. Her power is always active to some degree, leaving her ever so slightly "out of phase" with the world, despite her appearing completely normal to mundane means and senses. As a result of being "dimensionally divergent", she is immune to effects that would alter the level of "Shard energy" flowing through her to alter, neutralize or supplement her present powerset, whether positive or negative, and her mind is always fully out of phase, leaving her immune to abilities that would directly manipulate her mind or control of her body. Thinker powers tend to be unreliable when targeting her.
Beyond her passive state, she can actively push her dimensional divergence further, resulting in varying physical tangibility until she chooses to adjust the degree or undo it. By default, she phases away from everything that she doesn't consider "her" or that she isn’t wearing or carrying, resulting in her becoming completely undetectable and intangible due to not actually physically remaining in her "world", shedding most outside power effects currently lingering upon her. In her phased state, she doesn't need oxygen, food or water, and she has an altered sense of gravity, allowing her to move like she's in space. While phased, she experiences the world as if through a watery filter, the normal world perfectly perceptible to her even if it would otherwise not be, and despite being able to still perceive the world, she is not vulnerable to indirect harm, like blinding lights or deafening sounds, all such things muted by the watery "filter".
Controlling the degree of her tangibility, Jen can choose what aspects of herself remain in interaction with the world and can alter them on the fly. For example, she can allow herself to be heard even without allowing herself to be detected by other senses. She can allow herself to be seen and yet remain intangible. She can attack and physically interact with the world while otherwise remaining undetectable. However, this selective tangibility is "all or nothing" in a sense. While Jen can choose which aspects of herself interact with the world, those aspects she allows are fully vulnerable in return. If she wants to be seen, that means allowing light to hit her, which means being vulnerable to flashbangs. If she wants to strike someone or otherwise physically move something, her entire body will in turn be vulnerable to kinetic harm in general, even if she is otherwise undetectable. While she can choose what she is affected by, those choices apply to her whole body, not just individual parts of it. As such, on an offense level, she cannot, for example, partially phase through the surface of a target, living or not, and strike the interior alone, disregarding the exterior/armor/skin/etc.
There is a small caveat to this "all or nothing" selectiveness in that, by default, her power doesn't phase her through the surface she is grounded on unless she chooses to, and she is capable of walking -or climbing- on normally harmful surfaces while phased without being threatened by them, despite the pseudo-physical contact.
Jen cannot bring other living beings with her into her phased state, and even nonliving targets have limits. If it individually has a greater weight than her own body, she can't bring it; though she can still bring multiple items that altogether surpass that range, so long as they each individually fall below it. That being said, what Jen's power considers to be "wearing or carrying" in terms of her possession is rather lenient. So long as Jen can physically take hold of a target, whether or not it is being worn or carried by someone else, she can then phase away with what she has grabbed, stealing it from the original owner. In this way, she is able to easily disarm opponents or otherwise render them unarmored, presuming her target is within her weight limit. Jen's phased state/realm doesn't allow her to use it like a makeshift "storage", it should be noted, as anything that leaves her personal space/possession while she is phased immediately becomes unphased again.
Threat Sense (Thinker 2): Any time Jen would be endangered in her immediate future (that is, the next 1-2 seconds), she is immediately aware that she will be in the form of a buzzing sensation. She has no prescient awareness of exactly what the danger will be, only that she, personally, in her present state, will be endangered by it. On its own, this power is fairly useless, but for Jen, it allows her enough time to fully enter her Breaker state to avoid threats. At the same time, it can act as an early warning that removing the protection of her Breaker state in a particular area will be a danger to her. This power does account for degree of threat, however, and the buzzing sensation will intensify based on how trivial or life-threatening the impending threat is.
Other: My favorite power sets involve time stopping or manipulation. Though speedsters are pretty sweet as well.
Name: Veronica Blackwater Species: Human Vampire Lord Age: 25 (appears 18) Gender: Female Height: 5' 8" Appearance: Veronica appears as a pale young woman, not to a porcelain degree, but more like she could use a bit more sun. Her long black hair falls in mostly straight waves down to her mid-back. Her irises are a bloody crimson hue, with her pupils narrowed to reptilian slits. Her frame rides a balance between curvaceous and athletic, lined beneath supple skin with wiry, compact muscles that tend not to be apparent without a physical inspection. Though she often wears a smile, it is rarely an open-mouthed one, largely to avoid broadcasting her fanged incisors. She tends to smell mostly scentless, as the combination of scentless soaps and an undead body that doesn't decompose leaves her presence mostly muted to mundane means. Her garb is fairly eccentric, all blacks and velvety sanguine reds with a subtle butterfly motif. Actual metal armor is applied sparingly and primarily to her joints, almost as an afterthought, to the point of giving the false impression it's only for decoration. By the metrics of society, her garb is rather immodest, the design and accents often drawing the eye to exposed skin or tight enough to be somehow more provocative than outright absence.
Born far from the Capital in a place within Kindeance that could best be described as "that idyllic village with some farmer", Veronica was an average human daughter to a peasant hunter... aside from a slight hiccup. Born under a good omen, she was blessed with an innate magical gift for "reading fate", a Seer who might one day have been found and trained to be the mystical advisor of this or that hero, guiding them on the path to a glorious destiny. However, as fate would have it, a True Vampire, one Lord Blackwater, who had long-since set down roots after hailing from a land outside Kindeance, unfortunately heard tell of her and sought to turn her as a subordinate to use her gift for himself. The girl, otherwise defenseless aside from her capacity to see her near future, was captured and a year thereafter turned into a similar creature of darkness, lesser and mystically bound by her hated "master's" bond as her Sire.
Over the two years since her abduction, she was trained in the arts of ninjutsu and magic. she had no choice but to be honed into a weapon and tool for her "master", made an unwilling killer and her magic refined further for the sake of making her a more useful tool for foreseeing misfortune and spying upon the Vampire Lord's enemies... when she wasn't used to murder them outright. Unfortunately for him, training her resulted in the resentful little vampire awakening a second aspect of her gift, one that allowed her to avoid the destiny that she could prior only despair at. Through this, she was able to slip the master bond of her Sire and catch him unawares. Caught off guard, the Vampire Lord was torn limb from limb, and in drinking his blood, Veronica fully became a Vampire Lord like her Sire and shattered whatever might have remained of their bond.
Come the morning, her tormenter's remains were reduced to ashes by the sun, and Veronica once more breathed the sweet air of freedom... Though it was tainted by the bitterness of her new "condition" as a Vampire Lord -if a young one, and she was unsure what to do with herself. Despite bloodied hands and a darkened spirit, she hadn't been under her Sire's yoke long enough to taint her morality irrevocably. She was still herself, and she had no intention of being the monster the next hero would slay.
With that determination made, for the safety of innocent lives, she reluctantly made a home in her Sire's former lair and left primarily only to get sustenance, once more taking up a hunter job of her human family in order to have an at least legitimate supply of blood to drink. In such a way, delivering "pre-drained" cadavers to local butchers of nearby towns and villages, she made a simple living on simple coin... along with whatever her Sire's coffers contained. Her "condition" was one she mostly tried to conceal, but in the end, the King had his ways. Long story short, a year after regaining her freedom, at age 20, she was found out, but the fact that she had stayed a "productive member of society" and wasn't going around murdering people unprovoked and generally being a megalomaniac stayed the hands of potential hunting parties. The fact that it was eventually discovered that she had slain the Vampire Lord before her added another element of potential trustworthiness to her, and so, she was approached as a potential agent of the King to be given a chance to truly prove her loyalty and good will to the kingdom.
As such, for the next half decade, Veronica would find herself occasionally acting on behalf of "favors" from the Crown, working as an espionage agent, Seer, and sometimes soldier and scout for the Guard. Collaborations with Matilda, the Head of the Guard, weren't common, but they weren't uncommon either. Over the course of 5 years, the two developed a basic working relationship. They may not necessarily trust each other, but they don't specifically mistrust each-other either. And Veronica would be inclined to trust her back to the orc warrior.
Over the years, Veronica came to be less resentful of her "condition", and with the tentative faith afforded to her by the kingdom, she has come to redevelop a sense of confidence and acceptance. Nowadays, her "condition" is just another part of life... one she expects will be very long, so she has chosen not to wallow in self-pity and depression. Her once concealing garb has been exchanged for borderline proud eccentricity. While she does not explicitly advertise her "condition", she is no longer shamed by or afraid of it. She is a Vampire in the King's Court, who has earned her place through good will, and she'll not let any tell her otherwise.
Come the present day, due to the seriousness of the kingdom's crisis and the desperation involved, Veronica would find herself requisitioned as an investigator, using her divinations to aid in tracking the Prince's kidnappers with the Guard while the main black ops team was off performing their own tasks. It is because her typical place of residence is a quite a fair distance from the Capitol that she was unable to be reached in time to join up with the main team initially.
Talants: Ninjutsu: She has been harshly trained in this collection of fundamental survivalist and espionage techniques, among which are: methods of gathering information and techniques of non-detection, avoidance and misdirection, along with disguise, escape and concealment. She's no stranger to picking locks or disabling traps either. This is the root of her shinobi teachings, one in which she has attained mastery status or near enough to it. Heavy focus. While medicine and archery are also parts of these techniques, she favors them lesser. Medicine: Her capacity for medical techniques tends towards "field surgery" and making sure injuries aren't immediately lethal. Setting bones. Popping dislocated joints back in. Applying splints, stitches, bandages and salves. She knows where to stab to kill fastest, so she has a pretty good idea how to be more careful when treating certain afflictions. She's not a biology guru or proper doctor; that's for certain. She's just got a good head for improvisation. Archery: She's a decent shot, but she prefers unaware or otherwise stationary targets. She compensates with her magic to predict her targets' movements for more difficult shots. Taijutsu: For those times she is trapped in prolonged CQC, she's adequate in the art of unarmed -or lightly armed- combat. Unarmed combat isn't her favorite, but she's not going to get steamrolled. Prefers to disengage and arm herself. Shurikenjutsu: She is excellent in the art of handling small, bladed weapons, both in CQC and as throwing weapons. This is her preferred fighting style. Fighting fair is for chumps. Sojutsu/Bojutsu: The art of wielding polearms. Particularly, Veronica favors the spear and scythe. Novice but unconventional. Her most inexperienced but also intuitive martial art and her "passion project". Technically, she's got the basics down pat, but her focus was never open combat under her Sire. That is something she became more familiar with working with the Royal Guard. In other words, she's mostly self-taught, so she tends to fight unconventionally in this art. Lip Reading: In the course of spying and assassination, she has developed the capacity to roughly read speech from afar. Parkour: Her vampiric strength makes her an able and acrobatic navigator of unconventional terrain, very useful for infiltration. Hunter: Her family trade, she is a respectable hand at tracking, trapping and skinning prey, along with camping in the wilds. Peasant Roots: Knowledgeable in the basics of various "womanly" tasks like cleaning, cooking and sewing.
True Vampire/Vampire Lord: Darkvision: Even in pitch black, she can perceive the world in shades of grey. Though even this eyesight cuts off into murk past a certain point. Her long-range vision is otherwise very keen under proper lighting. Inhuman Physicality: Undeath has removed the normal limits on human musculature, giving her the capacity for peak human levels of physical feats. However, her muscles will still tear from exerting themselves to their fullest capacity, requiring she only do so in bursts and wait a brief while for them to heal. As long as she doesn't push too hard, she can still operate at normal human levels during the wait. While her body isn't exactly any more durable than a human's, she doesn't feel pain as more than an irritant, and most wounds are not lethal, only disabling. Healing Factor: Her wounds regenerate quickly. Not enough to be all that useful in battle, but outside battle, an hour's rest will mend most wounds, and a night's rest can restore her body entirely, even the loss of her head. Due to the constant nature of the regeneration, she is unable to reattach fully severed body parts. Her regeneration either starts with her mostly intact head or her body if the former is unavailable. Large-scale regeneration rapidly accelerates her bloodthirst's progression. Undeath: She is unaffected by poison, disease, exhaustion or age. Thirst: She doesn't need to eat, sleep or breathe, though she still requires some blood to sate her thirst. While as an undead, she technically doesn't need sustenance, much of her vampiric strengths will become less prominent with prolonged abstinence. In addition, much as any hungry creature, she is prone to increasingly large spurts of irritation and bloodlust until sated. She can subsist off animal blood, but sentient blood is far more fulfilling. She can also consume mundane foods, but they give her no nutrition. Unreflected: She has no reflection, whether it be a mirror, body of water or any other surface. Sunlight Vulnerability: Though more resistant than a lesser vampire, sunlight is still her bane, burning badly but not lethally unless she remains in prolonged contact. Chop her to pieces and leave her exposed to daylight, and the sun will do the rest in about an hour. Holy Vulnerability: Certain "holy" or otherwise "sanctified" magics have the capacity to be a special bother to her as an undead. Averted Weaknesses: As a Vampire Lord, she no longer suffers from some of the weaknesses a typical lesser vampire exhibits. Running water no longer hinders her, and she doesn't need to be invited to cross a threshold of a residence. Wooden stakes are as any other weapon, even if getting stabbed in the heart would still be pretty annoying, for the splinters if nothing else. Siring: Vampire "reproduction" is fairly simple. While their undead bodies preclude them from being fertile, they can convert other living beings to more of their kind with a transfusion of their blood to a creature that has been drained dry of their own. The recipient will rise a day later as a lesser vampire fledgling, mystically subordinate to their Sire and unable to disobey direct commands. A fledgling that is granted the opportunity to consume a notable quantity of their Sire's blood again will be freed of the bond and become a True Vampire, otherwise known as a Vampire Lord, but only if their Sire was a Vampire Lord themselves. Lesser Vampires can create fledglings, but if the Sire does not become a True Vampire, their fledgling will be left precluded from being able to become a Vampire Lord as well for as long as that state persists.
Born a Seer when she was human, Veronica's magic revolves around divination, the capacity to view the past, present and future in order to gather information.
Sight of the Fated: Shows her the near future up to five seconds. Allows her to "simulate" her immediate future possibilities without committing to them until she finds one she likes. (eg. she can plan to leap through a window, and she will witness what would occur if she did/who or what is on the other side) She particularly favors using this with her archery. However, the present is always moving at least a little, and she can only make scry attempts so fast. She only has so much time in a given moment to make "guesses" and act on one before the "baseline" of her visions changes. And then she has to put up with the result. If she's facing an aware and skilled opponent, this can be particularly troublesome, especially if she has to waste time using her predictions to avoid attacks on herself rather than returning the favor.
Avert the Destined: Allows her to slip out of "phase" with the interference of the natural course of "destiny". When she enters this state, she becomes imperceptible and intangible to forces of direct mystical origin, shedding any hostile afflictions that currently linger upon her, like curses or bindings. A magical explosion and its immediate integral collateral (shockwave, small debris and such) would wash over her harmlessly, but a thrown steel beam would still ruin her day if not dodged. Divination can't see or target her. She treats magical shields and wards like they don't exist, and the barriers won't even register the intrusion. On the inverse, this separation with the mystical means she cannot affect the world with her other magic in turn until she reverts this state. This spell covers more obscure mystical phenomenon, including the "purifying" effect of the sun's rays on vampires, allowing her to be a "daywalker". (eg. this is what slipped her from her Sire's leash)
The Gift Known as the Present: Allows her to scry distant places and events that are occurring immediately in the now. The further she wants to reach and the more senses she wants to use at the targeted location at once, the more intensive the effort required, so she usually only uses sight and sound. Can be used either for short range strategic glimpses in combat, or ritualistically for spying on distant events. She can target specific individuals, but only if she knows what they look like or otherwise has some manner of catalyst related to them. She can scry any location she has seen personally, as visualization is important to the spell. Though, notably, she can expand the number of "starting points" available to her by panning her vision around a targeted location, her scrying gaze sufficient for the purposes of "marking" new places and people as "seen".
What Has Come Before: Through focused, meditative delving, allows her to wind back the clock of her vision and perceive past events that occurred in a radius of roughly 30 feet from her position. She can wind the clock forward as well, accelerating the "replay" to skip less interesting/relevant material. She can maintain this spell on the move and track events of the past up to the present as fast as she can manage to physically keep up with them. That said, she can only peer back as far as three days, so haste in reaching the "scene of the crime" is still a priority to ensure trails do not go cold.
General: Medium-Sized Brown Backpack: Compact and simple to don and doff. Change of clothes: Includes favored garb, a brown cloak, and practical full-body coverage wear for sun protection/stealth. Mundane Rations: Dry foods like jerky, dried fruit and nuts. (Sometimes used to help conceal her "condition".) Blood Rations: Several thick waterskins with blood of varying types in them (usually animal). A sip every meal period is typically enough to keep her topped off at peak performance. Scentless Soap: A standard cleanliness measure ground into her to aid non-detection. Applied whenever bathing. Coin Pouch: A padded, sectioned pouch, made to silence the jingle of coin.
Armament: Light Armor: Primarily leather over vitals, but some metal on forearms, elbows, knees, lower shins, upper sternum & shoulders. Sharpened Sai Daggers: Typically a defensive weapon, when weaponized, they make an excellent tool for liberating a victim of their eye sockets' contents, along with scrambling the brain behind them. Veronica uses them like deadly nails, punching precise holes in her foes' vitals. Throwing Knives: Not particularly deadly unless aimed well, they still make decent distractions if aimed for the face or neck. Passable for melee combat in a pinch. Far more threatening if coated with poison. Seijaku/Silence - Composite Recurve Shortbow: A bow type useful for firing while mobile. (stored in a leather waterproof case) Quiver: 30 arrow capacity. (30/30) Strapped to small of her back. Barbed & non-barbed arrows. Chigetsu/Blood Moon - War Scythe: Bathed in the blood of many lives over the decades, a strange, crimson polearm once belonging to her Sire. One end is mounted with a spearhead and the other with a scythe-head that is bladed on both edges, oriented oddly like a farming tool, rather than a typical war scythe. Normally, this weapon would be rather impractical, but it comes into its own wielded by a vampire's physicality. The scythe has the magical property to shrink down to the size of a sickle for discreet transport or return to normal (takes 5 seconds in either direction). The enchanted weapon's longevity is the result of the property of blood absorption, slowly but surely repairing itself with any sanguine essence that lingers upon its surface.
Miscellaneous/Tools: Tinderbox: Contains flint, fire steel, and dry cloth soaked in oil. Infiltration Kit: Includes a small file, lock picks, a small mirror mounted on a metal handle, a set of narrow-bladed scissors and pliers. Kaginawa/Grappling Hook & Rope: A sturdy, steel hook and a compact bundle of thin but very sturdy and long rope. Weapon Maintenance Kit: Includes a whetstone, rags, specialized oils, and spare bowstrings. Medic Kit: Contains bandages, gauze pads, splints, basic salves, alcohol, needles, thread, syrettes, scalpels, whiskey & biting stick. Pocket Watch: A well-maintained silver-cased device that once belonged to her Sire, it has been quite useful for tracking the sun. Compass: In good condition. Points north. Leatherbound Logbook: A coded log of information gathered during investigations. Pencils included. Maps: A small, leather-bound book. The contents are of a variety of maps of the kingdoms, particularly Kindeance. Also a variety of far more quality, larger maps kept rolled up separately. All maps are kept within a rubber-lined, waterproof case, for preservation.
Other: Blackwater is not her birth name. As a peasant, she had no family name. Rather, Blackwater is a "title" bestowed upon her by her vampiric Sire, a demonstration that she was to be molded like clay into his tool and "family". With his demise, she remains the sole "inheritor" of Blackwater's assets.
She is part of Anderson's team that managed to track the Prince's kidnappers the hard way (with a touch of her divination magic) and will likely be running into Matilda's team at the estate. It is because her typical place of long-term residence is a quite a fair distance from the Capitol that she was unable to be reached in time to join up with the main team initially.
Feral snarls and grunts "graced" the artificial blonde's ears, as she stared dispassionately at the bog-standard Pageless currently trapped by her steel grip on its neck. It was scrabbling at her, claws glancing uselessly off her plated arms and torso. Honestly, by this point, she was almost starting to feel a little sorry for it. The knight Magical Girl had been restraining and inspecting the creature of darkness for the past thirty minutes now, and she was pretty sure it wasn't even really trying to hurt her anymore. Just loosen her grip so it could get the hell away from her.
Scratching her cheek with her free hand, she was starting to feel a little awkward, especially after the last couple Pageless she had seen had walked into the back-alley she was currently occupying, taken a single, long hard look at what was occurring... and then slowly backed out like they could wisely pretend they hadn't seen anything. Which, honestly, was unusual fucking behavior, given the mad, hungry fervor she was normally used to dealing with. On the one hand, she was finally away from London, where Moonlight Tsubasa claimed she was riling them up, so Camelot supposed it tracked that any place the alien bunnygirl was not would in turn have less trouble... probably. The madness that had happened in Okinawa was honestly a point against that theory.
Regardless, as a matter of principle, Camelot had, of course, refused to let any of the other Pageless escape. She only needed the one for her examinations, after all.
She'd had some free time this night, stuck waiting on the final plane to London, so she'd figured she might as well make good use of it. The first order of business was doing something she was amazed that she'd never bothered to try, that being to capture and examine a Pageless... which had turned out to be surprisingly difficult. She had the oddest sensation the Pageless were actually going out of their way to avoid her, which made no fucking sense! She'd never really known the Pageless to have anything truly resembling a survival instinct... outside the Apex types, but even those ones were typically more than willing to at least throw down! The fact that even their obvious fear hadn't provoked the Pageless into fusing into an Apex to have a better chance implied... That they didn't think that would even help? Geez, she was spoiled rotten for choice lately, huh? Why was it that when she actually wanted to find Pageless, they decided to be little bitches about it?
Was it her new ability? She'd noticed a couple times that animals would start howling, as she passed nearby on the rooftops. More often than not, they hadn't cared before, but suddenly... It seemed like the fauna was not exactly keen on meeting her. Did that apply to the Pageless too to some degree? If so, that was both gratifying and -in this case- annoying. Especially so, because she had the feeling that humans might also be feeling it to some degree if the odd looks she had occasionally received were any clue.
Which, ah. That was a thing, now. The burning inside her had, it turned out, actually just been the most hellish formation of a new power that she'd ever heard of. She wasn't sure if it was simply a backlash unique to the ability itself of if it was the abrupt release of her obviously backed-up Grimoire that had started such a painful upsurgence, but the results were undeniable. The flame within her now soaked into every pore like a warm blanket. She felt almost supercharged when leaving it be, but pulling it back was... possible to a degree... and also somewhat necessary. Though it brought the chill of northern night air crawling back into her system, pulling the flame back and bottling it a bit was a small price to pay to not set off every animal ever like the most annoying burglar alarms.
It had also finally let her catch up to her desired prey without them slinking into the shadows long before she could reach them. Her sense for magical energies didn't fail her, and past that point, it was a simple matter to capture one of her so-called eternal enemies. And now, for the reason she had...
Camelot frowned in disappointment. No matter what she tried, the Pageless seemed too feral and panicked by her presence in equal measure to coerce anything even remotely resembling a hint understanding and cooperation from the creature. Was it just too simple-minded? No, that made little sense... Or did it? Tsubasa had said that a Revision was possible through having a Pageless consume what amounted to "just the tip", but realistically, how in the ever-living fuck was she supposed to convey that to a Pageless? Never mind ensure it actually followed the script.
So, was it really only something that could occur successfully by accident and fortune? No, Tsubasa had given plenty of hints that she could guide the process, but on the other hand... Tsubasa could actually control and verifiably communicate with the Pageless. Camelot didn't have that luxury, and anything she tried to do in letting a Pageless so much as breath on her Grimoire wrong was risking death... or potentially much worse. But, on the other other hand... how had Tsubasa become Revised to begin with? Was her change also an accident? And that was another thing. Even if Camelot was able to ensure "only the tip" was taken, how would she manage to ensure what replaced it was according to her own desires and not the Pageless?
No way that she could figure right now.
Sighing, Camelot tightened her grip and shook her head at the sickening crack that snapped out. Dust from her crumbling foe dissolved between steel-clad fingers, as she straightened up. It simply wasn't worth the risk. The instructions she had were dangerously bare-bones, and the only way she could possibly trust attempting it alone was with far more questions answered than she currently had... one of which was just what exactly the aftermath of Tsubasa's works would have wrought by the time she caught up. Before anything else, even confronting Tsubasa again, she needed to see with her own eyes the results of her inaction. Well, okay. Sure, she likely wouldn't have been able to stop Tsubasa if she tried, but the fact of the matter was that she hadn't even put up a fight to begin with.
And she couldn't help but feel a little guilty for that.
Thankfully, there were still Pageless out there hiding from her. Surely, a bracing game of city-wide hide and seek before her next flight would keep her mind off less palatable thoughts of things she could do nothing about presently. She wondered if the local Magical Girls would appreciate the parting gift.
London's skyline should have brought her relief from the plane's view, but instead, she couldn't help but notice the pall of darkness that had drifted hazily over the city. As the plane touched down and she stretched her senses about as far as she could manage, all she could say for sure was that the light was certainly present, but... it had a strange "taste" of bitterness to it. The darkness, meanwhile, lingered unusually, not entire scattered by the light. It seemed that however things had played out, Tsubasa's scheme hadn't met entirely with failure.
Because the light most certainly didn't feel victorious.
It was late when she finally left the airport, and as much as she wanted to hurry, she also didn't feel like announcing her presence by transforming. It was a shame that she hadn't been able to understand Revision in a manner she'd have been satisfied utilizing before she returned. If she had, it would have been easy to claim (mostly truthfully at that), after such a lethally dangerous mission, she'd not been in a position to stop Tsubasa from doing whatever she pleased. It would have been an easy way to get in on the ground floor of Revision without overmuch scrutinization on her character... provided the Grand Minister either didn't know or didn't feel like calling her out on it. Admittedly, that was a bit of a potential hiccup.
But regardless, it was too late now. She'd had her chance, and she'd made the executive decision to avoid using it. For the time being, risks of the procedure itself aside, her current state as a normal Magical Girl was far more useful to her for avoiding suspicion and interference. She had time. She had plenty of time to get this right, to do things carefully. As long as Tsubasa remained among the living, she had nothing but time, and only a fool would rush in.
The scent of ash and brimstone met her nostrils from across a cordon of warning tape. She'd been lightly jogging in the rough direction of Marrywell Academy, luggage bag slung over one shoulder, when she'd passed through an area in easy sight of a massive fucking crater where there used to be some sort of establishment. At this point, she honestly couldn't have said what the burnt-out husk of a building used to be, but she knew some shit had clearly gone down, if the "taste" of the magic in the air was any clue.
Chinami picked up her pace.
As Marrywell grew closer, Chinami couldn't help but note with some unease the darkness somehow seemed thicker here, a persistent haze seeping into the once hallowed grounds. The only way that could happen though was... Passing quickly through the gates and into the halls, Chinami stretched out her senses, brow furrowing, as she parsed through the murk muddling the area. While the mere presence of so many Magical Girls seemed to be "normalizing" things to a degree, thicker "beads" of darkness yet remained, staining the area with their mere existence. If she hadn't known better, her gut instinct would have been to assume she was sensing Pageless... But actually, was that really entirely incorrect? Had Tsubasa actually managed something?
The school cafeteria's tattered ruins loomed large, a long crater fissuring the floor in one area, while holes showed a night sky... This level of collateral damage... Chinami didn't want to point fingers, but... "Gosh damn it, Dynasty Queen." She pinched the bridge of her nose at the magical scent that was practically ground into the area, nearly as pervasive as the dregs of darkness. And now that her mind was on that track... what did she want to do about the gulf that had been created between them? If Tesni had fought Tsubasa here so prominently, then she was surely galvanized by whatever suspicions she'd prior had about the rabbitgirl.
Shaking her head, Chinami acknowledged that dwelling on such things was for the future her to worry about. In the meantime... she had some results to investigate.
[Present Day]
Camelot closed the door of the medical ward with an internal sigh. In the wake of what was probably going to be a new daily routine for the near future, she was transformed, of course. All the better to hone her magical senses in the presence of Moonlight Tsubasa's victims and their Revised Grimoires. While her range was decent, the darkness of Pageless always seemed to muddle things to a degree. And while she had gained valuable experience in the field of parsing the flow of that energy against enemy Pageless over the years, especially the Samurai in the more immediate sense, that was no proper substitute for the finesse that could be gained from getting up close and personal.
So, as she already had a reputation for keeping an eye out for Alters, it wasn't that hard to extend that habit towards the Revised. Sure, it was a little annoying for her purposes that Eins seemed ever present, but in a certain sense, it was also reassuring to know that Marrywell had staff willing to work day and night with such dedication.
Admittedly, she wasn't able to do much but observe the flows of light and darkness, but even that on its own was useful in establishing pattern recognition in how Pageless energy interacted when introduced to Magical Girls and their Grimoires. In the meantime, she would chat with those that seemed lucid or otherwise conscious and try to get a sense for how the darkness was potentially influencing them. The answer seemed to be "impulsively", which tracked with what Tsubasa had claimed. Still, the very fact that many of said victims still had yet to become fully lucid -or even conscious in some cases- again from Tsubasa's actions... It more than once made her wonder if she shouldn't have tried to stop Tsubasa herself, gratitude or no. Even if Tsubasa was on to something... this wasn't the way make change happen. Forcing it... would only create spite and resentment.
So, she'd done what she could, provided what little she had at her disposal to offer: a visitor and additional friendly face and the healing of her Scabbard. Admittedly, she wasn't really sure at this early stage if her Scabbard was even doing jack shit, but she'd elected to leave it with Eins whenever feasible these past few days. That is to say, all but 24/7. Camelot hadn't slept all week. The constant use of her Scabbard made sure of that. And this time, without the fire within stifling the magical artifact's effectiveness, exhaustion (at least physically) was a thing of the past. She'd made certain to make up for lost time with the homeless and patrols when she wasn't with the Revised, and with the hellish existence that had been hers not so long ago, its mere absence was enough to leave her constantly refreshed and ready for more.
Which made it all the odder to be planning to engage in a "sleepover", when there was very little chance that sleep would ever find her. She hadn't actually been told where the little pow-wow was supposed to take place other than a "haunted" classroom Olivia had found, but she'd hoped to catch Bonnie as a guide for simplicity's sake.
Passing by the room she shared with Bonnie, Camelot's blue eyes narrowed at the sign taped to the door, one that hadn't been there before. One armor-clad hand twitched with the urge to rip it off, a low rumble thumming in her chest in annoyance. The last thing she wanted was for this little get-together to become a free for all. That certainly wasn't what it had sounded like when it was pitched to her by the redhead, and she had tentatively accepted the invitation on such merits. But now... Who knew how long this sign had been sitting around.
She glanced around. The hall was empty.
"Tch'," Camelot clucked her tongue and snatched the sign off the door without further consideration. Crumpling it into a ball, she allowed the bead of fire within her to briefly bubble up her throat into her palm, reducing the yellow parchment to fine cinders in a flash of orange. Flinging her hand with a flick of displaced air, she scattered the ashes into a rapidly dispersing mist, dusting off her hands with a quick series of claps. Whatever. The "problem", such as it was, was now as solved as it could be. The damage had surely been done. Camelot could only internally lament with resignation, that all that was left was to go see how much things had devolved from the original rails.
It wasn't like she needed the once-listed number anyway, she concluded, as she allowed her armor to disperse without ending her transformation as a whole, leaving behind only the more colorful white and blue of her outfit. She didn't want to recall her Scabbard, but it would have felt odd to go around in full plate to such an event as this. Just knowing that Olivia was involved was enough. The blonde beauty all but blasted her presence 24/7 in remaining transformed, to say nothing of her eldritch hubby. Tracking down the appropriate location would be as easy as paying a little better attention to her senses.
So, after briefly entering her room to grab a bag of sleepover utilities, she stretched out her senses, and...
What the fuck was that?!
"What the hell..." Camelot muttered, as she stepped through the music room doorway. It was less a question so much as an expression of thinly-veiled annoyance. After all, there certainly wasn't the quiet sleepover room she had expected within. Well, expected before, certainly, but the pit in her gut had grown with every step closer to the apparently monolithic construct of magical engineering. Honestly, she knew that her hopes were dashed long before she opened the door.
Glancing about at those already present, Camelot blinked in surprise at the presence of Tesni, much less Silvia for that matter. She certainly wouldn't have seen either to be the sort to attend this sort of thing, but then again, she hardly knew either well on a personal level. That Olivia and Bonnie were here was no surprise, the former the guide and the latter the first she had deigned to point in the right direction. As usual, Olivia was transformed into Ethereal Rose, and Xolys... Okay, despite the oddity of the situation, a small part of Camelot couldn't help feeling a smidge of amusement at the eldritch groom dressing like a campy ghost... for some reason.
Sighing, she crossed her arms lightly and ambled over to Bonnie and Ethereal Rose. "Alright, what gives?" She managed to keep her abject disappointment from leaking into her tone. Honestly, she'd actually managed to warm herself into the idea that a quiet, unexciting social outing was just the ticket to getting her mind off the latest problem for a while, but now? "I was told this was supposed to be a slumber party with a select few, not an open theme park." And boy did she have questions about who was responsible for this nonsense and why. The "taste" of the magic in the air was irritatingly familiar, and the scale of the construction honestly pointed to precious few that could both do such a thing and have permission to make the effort -and such major modifications to the academy- in the first place.
Striding past the chatting girls and up to the Marrywell adjacent end of the drawbridge, Camelot glanced down at the bubbling, brackish moat below with furrowed brows, keeping an ear on the conversation behind her. It honestly beggared disbelief that something of this magnitude could come into being unnoticed, but perhaps it hadn't been a solo job? And why here and now? One set of fingers tapped a meditative rhythm on her opposite elbow, as Camelot favored the castle across the moat with a quiet scoff. Marrywell... always with the grandiose displays. Was it really so much to ask for mundane simplicity for something like this, what was supposed to be relatively private fun between students?
@The Man Emperor The third of four approvals granted. You have the required majority to join the character tab. Though, if you wouldn't mind waiting a bit on Sky to pitch in, that would be appreciated.
And with that, I do seem to be caught up on reading the IC! And oh, what a glorious clusterfuck we have set before us! Cracks knuckles Time to make it even worse better. :D I shall now be musing upon my post. ;)
@Lewascan2 Typically I use Edupad for collabs. And we can start writing whenever you’re ready Thursday.
I've never even heard of Edupad, much less used it. lol (Edit: A quick search, and I do believe I've found what you're referring to. This is pretty nifty, ngl.)
Danyel,
thedarkness,
Reisling,
Guardian Angel Haruki,
Izurich,
4wheathRmany,
Aisede,
Aku the Samurai,
Otreas,
WanderingDragon
