Topic: Legion Tryouts: Introducing the Composite Supergirl!
Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
[Normally I try to stick to one continuity in a story, but this one crosses them. C'est la vie!]
Cosmic Boy regarded the masked figure before him. The young woman had not offered any civilian identity on her application, and her face was concealed by a full-faced mask that did not even have holes for her eyes. Her entire body was covered by a similar form-fitting green and blue costume that left not an inch of skin exposed, and he could sense that it was not only made of Braalian ferrimesh, but also magnetically charged, suggesting that she was either a fellow Braalian, or relying on technology to simulate the appearance of superhuman abilities…
“Next up, the Composite Supergirl.” He said, his tone betraying nothing of his analysis. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
The expressionless figure turned first to the pair of combat robots and craned her head, as if considering her options before motioning for them to begin the exercise.
Both of the lumbering combat droids lifted their arms, crackling as bursts of electricity leapt towards the figure, who dashed forward in a blur of motion, charging directly into the current from her target apparently unharmed while the second robots taser-blasts missed her entirely.
Jo sat forward as she moved, muttering under his breath, “Ultra-energy?”
As the masked woman reached her target, she seized it’s arm and tore it directly from the machine’s body with a burst of strength, and then turned in a single motion, one hand striking the exposed circuitry at the damaged shoulder joint of her target and causing it to erupt in a coruscating display of electricity, while hurling the mechanical arm in her other hand at the second robot with such strength and speed that it knocked the second robot to the ground, leaving a large dent in its chest plate. She launched into the air and sailed over her first target, already shutting down to a massive electrical overload, and hovered a yard off of the ground, looming over the other as it struggled to right itself. Her hand reached out and the mechanical arm she had thrown at it flew back to her grip, and, wielding it two-handed like a club, she struck the distressed machine a powerful blow to the head, before letting the severed limb fall with a conspicuously weighty clunk to the ground, to be followed seconds later by the now-defunct robot.
Ayla leaned towards Jo and muttered as well, “Flight, electrical manipulation *and* some sort of mass manipulation was going on there.”
If the masked woman was aware of the commentary from the sidelines, she gave no sign and turned to face her human opponents, Officier Gigi Cusimano and Legionnaire Gim Allon, aka Colossal Boy. Each was equipped with padded armor, as the applicants were meant to display their nonlethal tactics against living foes, to demonstrate their ability to operate within the parameters of the Legion Code prohibiting the use of lethal force.
Registered: Aug 2006
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
The masked applicant drifted to a place midway between the smoldering remains of the combat-droids, and the wary trainers, before settling down lightly and nodding her readiness.
Recognizing that the figure had some degree of super-speed, both Gim and Gigi assumed defensive postures, meant to discourage a rapid approach by spinning their combat-batons around to create a dangerous perimeter, but the masked figure did not approach and instead raised her arms and faded from view, the colors washing away until there was no visible sign of her presence. Gigi muttered, “Teleportation?” over the private frequency she shared with her fellow trainer, and her replied, “No displaced air, probably illusion or invisibility or she’s messing with our heads…” “Awesome.” came the reply, the telepathic earplug conveying the full richness of Officer Cusimano’s sarcasm.
They carefully approached, swinging their training-staves ahead of them to check for her presence, and when she moved out of the way of Officer Cusimano’s combat-staff, she appeared as a smear of colors, as whatever means she used to cloak her appearance could not adjust for her movement, creating a disorienting splash of distorted background colors in the shape of a woman’s body, seizing the Officer’s staff and hurling it, and Officer Cusimano, who had been stepping forward, behind her with casual strength. Gigi felt her body become almost weightless, and drifted through the air, unable to get her bearing, and wished she had been wearing a Flight Ring for the training session, as she took long seconds to spin lazily through the air before landing gently as a feather near the sparking remains of the destroyed robots. Gim took advantage of the masked woman’s semi-visibility, and overextended reach from hurling Gigi away, and swung both battle-staves powerfully into her exposed side, hoping to at least knock the breath out of her, or throw her off-balance, even if she seemed at least partially invulnerable.
Instead, his batons moved through her body as if it was barely denser than water, and he was the one who fell off-balance as the force of his blow carried him forward, only to feel her hand gently tap his shoulder, and thunder gracelessly to the ground as it felt like gravity had just tripled. The masked woman placed her foot on him and it felt like she weighed many hundreds of kilos as she pinned him to the ground, and turned to Gigi, who was just drifting to the ground.
As she walked forward, the last of the visual camouflage faded away, and her form distorted and grew in size, until she had the bulky figure of Gim Allon, although still concealed behind her green and blue bodysuit. From her hand, a dazzling pulse of white light left Gigi seeing spots, and she raised her hands to signal that the fight was over, still suffering from whatever anti-gravity effect the masked woman had afflicted her with, and not wishing to be effortlessly thrown around again.
Gigi felt the woman’s hand touch her shoulder, and her weight returned over several seconds, giving her time to catch her breath and not be further disoriented, and her vision cleared in time to see her walk over to Colossal Boy, who had used his Flight Ring to lift himself off of the ground, and similarly remove whatever weight-increasing effect she had used to pin him to the ground.
[ August 07, 2010, 11:15 PM: Message edited by: Set ]
Registered: Aug 2006
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
She stepped before the viewing Legionnaires and gave a bow, like an entertainer, and stood at ease, arms behind her back, in a decidedly military fashion.
Rokk felt the beginning of a headache coming on. This ‘Composite Supergirl’ clearly didn’t choose that name idly, and had the powers of a one-woman Legion all by herself, but he also knew that such powers had their drawbacks…
Ayla stabbed the button for the privacy field, and Jo was the first to speak up, “I could feel the ultra-energy coming off of her when she used super-speed, although I didn’t catch it again…”
Rokk nodded, “She’s also got magnokinesis, although I gauged its strength, and she seemed to be at her limit when she pulled that robot’s arm towards her. I wouldn’t consider that a viable super-power, if that was all she could do…”
“But she seems to be able to do everything!” Violet finishes the thought that Rokk was leading up to. “I saw flight, toughness, speed, strength, lightning, blinding light, and at least partial invisibility and phasing, as well as either mass or gravity manipulation and shapeshifting. If she was a telepath and a super-genius, she’d be the total package!”
Imra’s mental voice conceded, <Then she is the ‘total package,’ because I tried contacting her mind and she’s got some telepathic power, if little skill, and her mind works like a computer. She was analyzing every move, measuring the exact amount of power the combat-droids had used on previous applicants, and the combat techniques that Gim and Gigi were using as well, to anticipate their actions and plan her own. She’s not a tenth the telepath I am, or the genius that Querl is, but she’s superhuman in both areas.>
“Do her powers relate to the Composite Superman?” Rokk asks.
<Indeed, but I think we should speak to her directly on the subject. I was surprised to recognize her.>
“What?” Ayla and Jo say almost simultaneously, as Gim and Gigi join them in the conference behind the privacy screen.
<It’s her story, and I should allow her to tell it.> Imra insists.
At a signal from Rokk, the privacy field shimmers and he speaks to the waiting applicant. “Applicant, come forward.” The other applicants begin whispering among themselves as the green and blue armored figure lifts into the air and floats to stand behind the dias, with the other Legionnaires, and the privacy field once again shimmers, freezing the image so that the applicants can now only see that last frozen moment.
Unfastening a clasp beneath her chin, the Composite Supergirl pulls her micro-mesh mask back to reveal the smiling face of Zoe Saugin. “Hey guys.” she says in a small voice, the confidence from her performance on the tryout stage seemingly stripped away with her anonymity. “I got new powers, obviously…”
Violet stands up, excited to see her friend, but her move to hug Zoe is interrupted by Rokk’s cold tone.
“The question is where? Those statuettes were destroyed, so that the Composite Superman could not once again threaten our allies in the past.” Rokk said, refusing to allow this audition to become a reunion of old friends before business was settled.
Zoe replied, arms folding back to stand in a relaxed 'at ease' posture she must have picked up during her time with the Science Police, “I discovered the Composite Superman during my research into artifacts of power, and while the statuettes themselves would have required time travel to intercept before they were destroyed, the machine that generated the unliving copies of your bodies still existed, at least in parts. It took me six months of research to find it, because it seemed like the records were deliberately obscured.”
<Because they were,> Imra said, <and I would like to know after how you located that information, so that we can finish the job…>
Zoe looks a bit flustered, and nods, “Sure. Anyway, I found the machine, and it has been mostly disassembled, but I had a tiny fraction of my old powers left, and I used them to make the machine flow back together, like it was when it was originally assembled. Inside the machine, I found what I had hoped was there, the echoes of the imprints made, that were used to form the statuettes in the first place, like blueprints for the powers of over a dozen Legionnaires!”
“So you gave yourself all of our powers?” Violet said, and as Zoe nodded excitedly, continued, “You do realize that the effect is temporary? The Composite Superman lost those powers if he didn’t recharge regularly, and the Legion Code forbids membership to someone who gains their powers from a machine in this way, even if it lasts for days between exposures…”
Rokk looked relieved that Salu had brought this up, as he didn’t want to continue to be the ‘heavy’ in this discussion.
“Yeah, I read that in the history files, that the Composite Superman was defeated a couple of times by being prevented from recharging and overextending its abilities, but I figured out a way around that. The original guy didn’t really know what he was doing, and the villain who came later was just greedy for power and didn’t really think it through either.”
Rokk shot Imra a look at that last comment, and she smiled back.
“And yeah, that was me, a couple years ago, too. I totally get the irony. But I realized that a body might be able to assimilate either a smaller number of powersets, or smaller doses of each individual power. So I didn’t give myself the *full* powers of a dozen Legionnaires, but only a fraction. I used the enhanced intelligence of Brainiac Five to figure out exactly how much I could hold in a stable configuration, without the powers draining away, and it came out to roughly seven percent of the power of the average Legionnaire, although it was different with each person, and I ended up only being able to permanently assimilate, like, one percent of Brainy’s brainpower in the end...”
Ayla nodded, “So you can’t throw lightning, but you can generate electricity like we saw, and you can’t burn as hot as a star, but you can generate flashes of blinding light?”
“Right. A lot of the powers I can only use at close range, and I have only the most ridiculously tiny percentages of Mon-El and Ultra Boy’s powers, but I can almost become fully invisible, and while I can’t walk through walls, I can at least put my body into a fluid state and seep through small openings or avoid being hit by combat-staves,” she says, smiling awkwardly at Gim as she does, with an apologetic look that quickly fades back into a smile as he waves it off.
“So the powers aren’t temporary, and they don’t require machinery, and we can more fully dismantle the machinery to make sure that we don’t have a rash of Composite Supermen running around…” Rokk says, ticking off points of concern.
“Uh, yeah, about that last thing, you don’t have to worry. What I had to do to extract the imprints from the machine and overlay them permanently on myself pretty much burned them out. The only way anyone is getting to that is by time-travelling to before I broke it…”
Violet shoots Rokk a look at having been interrupted previously, and moves over to give Zoe a hug. “That’s probably for the best. It’s not the sort of power we need just anybody getting their hands on, after all.”
Rokk looked to Imra and she nodded, joining their minds, so that they could talk privately, even in the presence of the applicant.
<The only thing I was concerned about was her longing for power, and her comment about how the original Composite Supermen failed because of such short-sightedness was really all I needed to hear. She has sincerely grown since we last saw her.> Imra thought to the others.
Violet replied, <I was worried about that, too. I’m glad to hear that she’s not so driven.>
Ayla’s discomfort at broaching the subject could be felt through the telepathic communion, coloring her thoughts <Not that I don’t want her on the team, but does she have a unique power?>
Rokk pondered for a moment and gave the mental equivalent of a shrug. <The fluid state trick perhaps? Or the anti-gravity stunt, which Ayla no longer does. If we’ve got room for Mon-El, and his ‘unique power’ is that Kryptonite doesn’t kill him, I think she’s more than qualified.>
Sensing that the discussion was over, Jo startled them all by speaking out loud, “Yeah, you’re in. Welcome back, Zoe!”
Registered: Aug 2006
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Set
There's not a word yet, for old friends who've just met.
posted
Notes;
So this Zoe exists in the 'classic' universe, and had Life Lass-like powers, and lost them, and was no longer a Legionnaire. As she says, 'I got new powers, obviously...'
From the imprints within the alien device that made the statuettes in the first place, Zoe gained fractions of the powers of;
Mon-El – Can levitate at about 5 MPH. Limited super-speed, giving her reaction times two or three times human and the ability to run over 75 MPH. Can lift a couple of tons. Invulnerable to normal human level physical unarmed combat, even from someone with a knife or club, and suffers only light bruising from smaller caliber firearms, as well as being highly resistant to extremes of temperature, pressure, etc. and being able to survive in the vacuum of space. Superhuman senses allow her to hear and see things 100x farther away / clearer / smaller than a human and to see perfectly in the dark. Heat vision takes several seconds to start fires, but can build up to laser intensity within a minute.
Ultra-Boy – can shift ultra-energy to enhance one of the above powers. Increasing her senses affords her limited X-Ray vision as well, although she can’t see through high-density metals or substances (like lead, ferrocrete or inertron). Increasing her heat vision changes the color of the beam to yellow and can set flammables alight instantly. Increasing her ability to fly allows her to travel at about 25 MPH. Increasing her strength allows her to lift about six tons. Increasing her invulnerability makes her impervious to conventional 30th century hand weaponry, such as blasters. Increasing her super-speed allows her to run over 250 MPH, and react fast enough to function at that velocity.
Colossal Boy – can increase her volume by 50%, increasing her mass (and strength and durability) by about 350%.
Shrinking Violet – can decrease her volume by about 15%, decreasing her mass as well, although she generally only uses this power to enhance the abilities she gained from the Chameleon Boy imprint, so that she can assume the form of humanoids smaller than herself.
Lightning Lad – can generate electricity sufficient to stun or even kill a man, by touch.
Sun Boy – can generate light sufficient to dazzle or blind, or heat up an area with bonfire intensity flames.
Light Lass – can manipulate gravity to decrease the effective weight of something by touch, reducing weight by several hundred pounds. Unlike Light Lass, Zoe cannot reduce weight to negative, and cannot make someone ‘fall’ up (although she can certainly toss them into the air, and cause them to descend slowly…). Adding this power to her Flight capability from the powers of Mon-El and / or Ultra Boy, she can fly at least as well as someone with a Flight Ring.
Star Boy – can manipulate gravity (or mass) to add several hundred pounds to an object or individuals effective weight for a time by touch. The longer she maintains contact, the more mass she can add, but cannot increase weight beyond a couple thousand pounds. By increasing her own mass, she becomes more dense, and hits harder and can endure more impact than even her fractional Daxamite physiology would allow, although she has to deliberately manipulate her own mass to benefit from this.
Invisible Kid – can become invisible so long as she doesn’t move, once she starts moving, the power can’t compensate fast enough and she becomes visible as a blurry streak of colors.
Chameleon Boy – can alter her features and physiology to disguise herself as other humanoids of roughly her own size and mass. The power she gains from Colossal Boy and Shrinking Violet allows her to expand this range to bulky humanoids larger than herself, or even more slender ones.
Saturn Girl – can shield her own thoughts from the intrusion of weak telepaths, and sense the presence of thinking minds around her, although she can rarely sense anything other than extremely ‘loud’ thoughts or feelings at a range beyond touch. At touch range she can probe someone’s mind or memories, but the process requires intense concentration on her part, as she lacks the skill to use these abilities to their full potential.
Brainiac Five – as Brainiac Five is to an average Coluan, so Zoe Saugin now is to a standard Aleph-born human. She’s a hundred times smarter than the average person, and her mind works like a computer, forgetting nothing and calculating angles and velocities and energy ratios of everything around her. She has memorized a ton of documents and engineering texts, but is by no means a mechanical engineer… Combined with her super-speed, she can plan out a line of attack, or analyze a foes likely course of action faster than most enemies can move.
Cosmic Boy – she can generate a couple hundred pounds of magnetic force, but her power attenuates sharply as it leaves her body, so that at a distance of a few meters, she can cause small items to wiggle and slide towards (or away from) her. She wears a ferrimesh Braalian suit that she reinforces with her magnetic powers, enhancing her already considerable strength and toughness.
Phantom Girl – while unable to phase fully, she can cause her body to assume a partially phased state in which her body is like liquid. Solid items will pass through her, and most of the impact will be dissipated harmlessly. In this state, she can pass through any obstruction that isn’t watertight.
There were also imprints for Matter-Eater Lad, Bouncing Boy, Triplicate Girl and Elastic Lad present, but experimentation revealed that attempting to gain any useful level of their abilities caused her to be unable to assimilate further imprints. There was no Supergirl imprint on file, and the Element Lad imprint was irreparably corrupted…
Combining the powers of Mon-El, Ultra Boy, Colossal Boy and Star Boy, she’s easily as strong as Timber Wolf, and significantly more durable. If she instead uses the powers of Mon-El, Ultra Boy, Light Lass and Cosmic Boy, and taps the power of a Flight Ring, she can fly at supersonic speeds.
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