Real name:Joanne "Jo" Masters
(Not public knowlege)
Gender:Female
Appearance:
A mixed-race girl (Caucasian on her mother's side, Japanese on her father's side), average height, with shoulder-length brown hair and dark brown eyes.
Hero/Villian name:Glint
Affiliation:Good, with the Wards
Biography:Jo was born to a fairly well-off family, growing up in Rockford, IL. Her mother works as a journalist and news anchorwoman, while her father is a senior uniformed officer in the local PD. The pair were loving, if distant, parents, their jobs leaving little time for their daughter. Jo spent a lot of her childhood being looked after by family friends, relatives, or other babysitters.
She triggered when she was 16, while she and her mother were visiting relatives in Nebraska. While exploring on her own – actually spending time with her aunts and cousins did not appeal to the independent-minded girl – she found herself alone and exposed when a tornado struck the town. She was trapped in an unfamiliar area, cut off from support, and had never experienced such a terrifyingly unstoppable natural force before.
The tipping point came when she was thrown off her feet by flying debris, certain that she was about to die. In that moment, a shining blue light enveloped her, and the flying gravel, water, even the air around her started to slow and calm. It bought her enough time to find shelter in a nearby shop’s basement, where she spent the rest of the storm huddled with strangers, equal parts terrified and quietly amazed.
After returning home, she started to experiment, discovering the second internal phase of her power soon after. By this time, the cracks in her parent’s marriage were steadily widening, and it was easy to get lost in the fantasy of maybe, just maybe, becoming a superhero. When one of her practice sessions was discovered by one of the local PRT capes, things started to slot into place.
Jo transferred to the Chicago wards soon afterwards, under the guise of moving to live with her mother after a transfer to bigger news studio. She hasn’t had much street experience, pretty much fresh out of training and branding preparation with the PRT.
Personality:Jo is highly independent, and is very proud of the fact. Her rather lonely upbringing, and the later breakdown of her parent’s marriage, shaped her into a somewhat solitary girl – not quite a lone wolf, but still more likely to depend on herself than others. In fact, she has some trouble trusting important tasks to anyone else, inheriting both her parent’s workaholic tendencies. She is a studious soul, and was intending to study law or journalism before becoming a cape, but she has since embraced the physical aspect of her new career, turning into a minor fitness freak in the process - as always, self-reliance is key. She is softly spoken but not shy, with a quietly passionate outlook and a strong sense of justice.
Residence:Technically lives with her mother, but spends most of her time in her quarters in the Wards HQ.
Parental status:Both parents alive, but split up. Mother is in Chicago, Father still lives in Rockford.
Costume:- A black under-shirt
- Black combat pants, with in-built armour segments on the shins and knees
- Black boots and armoured gloves/bracers
- A blue and grey jacket, with in-built back and chest armour, short sleeves, and a hood.
- A black domino-style mask.
- The overall outfit resembles
this, with different colours.
Power:Jo’s power operates in two modes – external and internal. Once activated, her power continuously cycles between the two modes every 60 seconds. Trying to “hold back” a mode shift is physically uncomfortable, and Jo can, at most, buy an extra 30 seconds or so of extra time before the pain forces her to allow the change.
When the external mode is active, Jo’s power constantly resists all physical motion within her range, sapping the kinetic energy from all moving objects and eventually slowing them to a complete stop. The Manton Effect still applies, so only inorganic objects are affected. The effect is not powerful enough to completely stop a bullet or a moving vehicle, but thrown objects, clothing and handheld items can easily be completely drained of kinetic energy this way, after which they resist being moved again, almost (but not entirely) freezing in place. Any objects that Jo maintains close contact with are immune to this effect. Visually, the field manifests as a diffuse blue light, with all objects inside the field being outlined by brighter blue “threads” of light. In short, it's a "treacle field", as one of her trainers put it.
During the internal mode, the slowing field retreats back in towards Jo and is absorbed into her body, leaving her outlined in the same blue threads of light. In this mode, all forces exerted by Jo’s body are increased dramatically, boosting her apparent speed and strength. The more energy absorbed during the external phase of her power, the more her own body‘s forces are boosted during the internal phase.
Power range:Consistent power strength in a sphere, radius ~12 meters.
Power safeguards: The forced mode-shift mechanic of her power seems to protect her from over-exposure to the kinetic energy her power absorbs, as Jo has reported feeling sore and fatigued after "holding back" the change for too long.
PRT ranking:Mover: 7
Shaker: 5
Brute: 5
Breaker: 7
Blaster: 2
Thinker: 1
Changer: 2
Weapons:A police-style extendible baton and a taser. She also had a bandolier and a utility belt full of throwing weapons - usually metal darts and palm-sized rubber discs.
