Galaxy Girl

Name: Galaxy Girl
Location: Reach City

Tier: (1)Street
Affiliation: Hero
Team: Aegis

Background

Lilly and George Foyle hovered outside the maternity ward window. His hair was light brown with growing lines of grey, but he had a pervasive optimism made him seem all the younger. Mrs. Foyle was a few years younger then him herslef, but creases were just beginning to form at the corner of her eyes. She was still in her nurses’ scrubs though her shift had ended ten minutes ago. Her smile was tired but sincere.

“Oh, that’s her,” George said beaming, “hi there, hi there little one.”

The sleeping baby in the bright green boots and cap didn’t acknowledge the man behind the glass. Though a nurse saw him and smiled back. She then moved the rolling crib out of the row from the others and headed towards a side door.

Lilly swallowed and sighed. She took George’s hand in hers.

“George, there is something else about her I didn’t mention. Her mother,”

“I know how this works Lilly,” George said with a nod, “If the mother comes back we give her back, absolutely. But maybe,”

“No, it’s not that. The mother probably won’t be coming back. She left her because the girl might be meta.”

George’s eyes narrowed a bit, and his ever-present smile weakened, just a little.

“What do you mean, we just saw her. She looked fine, normal.”

“You can’t always tell by looking.”

“But, are they sure? How could they know if she’s just,”

Lilly nodded.

“There are tests we can do now, they can tell after a few weeks into pregnancy. We can’t tell what that will mean for them, and sometimes the gene stays dormant, but with her we’ve already begun to see some effects.”

The other nurse had made it past the security doors at the side of the room. She pushed the rolling crib ahead of her, the newborn inside mewing softly. George looked over the child: two eyes, two ears, a mouth, and a nose; she appeared in every way absolutely normal. Her eyes were sapphire blue, just like Lilly’s.

“The mother knew?” George asked.

“Yes,” Lilly said.

George looked down at the child who began to examine the room around her absently.

“But, she’s healthy otherwise?” he asked,

“Yes,” Lilly replied confidently, “They have average life expectancy, sometimes even longer. The mother had a clear medical history, though we don’t know about the father. But as far as we can tell, she’s a perfectly healthy baby girl; she’s just a little bit special.”

“Well, she is special,” George said, the glow returning to his face, “how much does she weigh?”

“Forty pounds.”

George laughed.

“Fourteen pounds? You’re kidding.”

“No,” Lilly said, “forty.”

George exchanged a bewildered look with his wife, who smirked and nodded towards the crib. George moved his hands gently under the tiny child to lift her to his shoulder. It was like hoisting a cannonball. He grunted and moved his back leg to steady himself as he managed to pull her up.

“Wow, ok, forty it is.”

He wasn’t a big man, but managed to cradle the heavy child like she was made of porcelain. He still had his other hand near her face. The child reached out a tiny pink hand and clutched his pinky; it couldn’t move far, but pulled his whole hand wherever it went.

“Wow, got quite a grip, don’t you?”

He smiled and the babe smiled back with a blank gaze.

“What’s her name?”

“Right now, Baby Doe,” his wife replied, “But I looked at that list we made a few years ago, when we were trying on our own, and I think I still like Molly.”

Molly made a noise that was either approval or a random burp.


Personality

Henry Cabot was a mass of bronze muscles and neon orange veins, and he was very angry. His torso and arms dwarfed his lower body, and he stood on his knuckles like an ape. The crowd in the street across from him was still pelting him with everything they had: rocks, bottles, dirty names.

“Meta-freak!” yelled a member of the mob.

“Cop-Killer!” cursed another.

Elle was out of sight, crouched on the rail of a nearby fire escape, the brim of her Stetson keeping the twilight sun out of her eyes. She was maybe sixteen, with dark brown hair, and striking blue eyes that were focused dead on the monster below. Sirens and yells were going off in every inch of Reach’s Foundry quarter. Elle could hear a few pops from tear gas bombs going off on other blocks, but the riot police hadn’t gotten here yet. She’d be here to stop him.

Henry reared up, raised his arms high, and held his ground. A brick arced through the air from somewhere in the crowd. It caught him on the side of the head. He grimaced and a tiny line of blood trickled down his flat, broad forehead.

“STOP IT!”

Henry charged. The mob broke and fled, but a few fell behind. Elle reacted, pulling and leveling her paint pistol in a reflexive blur of motion. Henry raised a mighty fist to squish a puny rioter. Elle almost pulled the trigger.

A redhead in a mint and magenta bodysuit flew past the street below and caught Henry’s fist; Elle’s finger rested on the trigger as the flying girl hovered in her shot. Elle saw the redhead carry Henry off the street and fly upwards to a nearby rooftop. With two Metas about to beat the tar out of each other, she felt like he could finally get the show she had been hoping for. She grinned and holstered her pistol, then made her way towards the fight by springing, jumping and parkouring across the rooftops.

She leaped across a narrow alley and stuck the landing clean. She wanted to get up high; jumping down guns blazing was always a good entrance. She quickly made her way to the top of a giant plywood cola bottle with a few quick jumps. From here, she could look down on the metas and see everything. She didn’t see what she expected.

“Henry you know better then that.”

“I tried to leave, but they threw things at me!”

“I know,” the teenage redhead said tenderly, “and I’m sorry about that. They shouldn’t have done that. But you’re bigger then they are and they get scared. We talked about this.”

“I didn’t do anything this time,” The monster bellowed, “it’s not fair.”

The redhead nodded, and floated a few feet up so she could reach high enough to place a hand on his giant shoulder.

“I know, sometimes it isn’t fair. I know. But you’re ok now. Right, Henry?”

“Yeah.”

Henry began shrinking, his muscles deflated until the massive beast had collapsed into a nine year old in clothes shredded by his rapid body changes. He still had the orange veins though, they wrapped around his body like spider webs. The floating redhead plopped back to the ground and smiled.

“All right, its ok now, you’re ok,” she told him, “we just need to get you back to your dad. Do you know where he is?”

“No,” the boy said, “He was with me, and then there was this smoke. It burned, it burned really bad, and I got angry, and I started... He was holding my hand but I let go,”

She took him by the hand.

“I’m sure he’s not too far off, and he’s probably looking for you. Let’s go and find him, ok?”

Henry wiped a tear from his eye, hoping she wouldn’t notice. She lifted them both off the roof then descended gently to the ground. Elle watched as she led the boy by the hand through the street. A few of the men and women recollecting on the corner recognized her, and most of them recognized the glowing orange veins on Henry. No one so much as yelled at them, some whispered ‘sorry’ as they passed, and most turned around and went home as the pair walked back towards where the pops of tear gas canisters were coming from.

Elle was befuddled, and felt somehow ashamed. She tipped her hat towards the departing pair, then slid down the cola sign and made for the next rooftop over.



Standard Flight: Gravity defiance (2)

“Oh Shit!”

Ferret News Chopper Six was in a tailspin. The pilot’s head slammed into the control panel, while the cameraman and local Emmy winner Cammy Castle were both thrown to the floor. The chopper spun and dropped like a flaming cherry blossom. Cammy grabbed for anything solid as her lunch started to churn upwards. She looked out through the open door and saw the Earth coming near. She winced.

The stop was far less sudden then she had expected. It wasn’t a cold hard crash, but just a gradual lack of falling as the chopper’s momentum just sort of slowed down into a delicate float. The spinning stopped too, and her stomach was grateful. Cammy opened her eyes and saw a young girl floating alongside them as they descended.

The girl in the mint and magenta suit guided the chopper safely to the ground. Though ‘safe’ may be a little much; the tail-rotor was on fire from whatever exploded into it. When the landing bars tapped the asphalt she let go.

Cammy stood up quickly and began to straighten her hair back into place.

“We good, Wally?”

Wally stood up a little bit slower, shook his head, then tried to get the world to stop spinning.

“Just give me a second,”

Their hero had opened the chopper’s main door, and the pilot half stepped, half tumbled out, leaning on her for security. Cammy slid out the open side door, and stepped over to the girl with an extended hand.

“Excuse me, thank you for all that. What’s your name?”

“Hmm? Oh yeah,” she said as she helped the pilot sit down on the far curb, “Are you guys all right? I just saw you start falling. I don’t know what hit you, but,”

“Oh, I’ve had worse,” Cammy replied, “just a part of the job. But thank God you were there, Ms., what was your name again?”

“Molly.”

“No sweetie, your professional name. Trust me you don’t want to give out your real name on live TV; it will make you look clueless. You do have a professional hero name don’t you?”

“Oh uh, yeah its,”

Molly paused. An immovable writer’s block fell on her shoulders as her mind scrambled. She had been working on this before, but could never remember any of the good ideas she came up with.

“I got it now,” Wally said hoisting the camera back to his shoulders, “ We’re going live in ten,”

Cammy put her arm around and Molly and politely forced her to face the camera. Molly put on an uneasy smile. Her heart started to race faster then when the chopper was dropping. Now her brain could only come up with what she was directly looking at: Hydrant-girl? Fence-post gal? The Stop-Sign, the Human Stop Sign? No that’s stupid, she thought. In her panic she eventually noticed a brightly painted billboard of a cola bottle above her.

“Galaxy-Cola?” she murmured,

“What was that?” Cammy asked, “Did you say Galaxy…Girl?”

“Live in five.” Wally said.

“Umm,” Molly muttered.

“Galaxy Girl,” Cammy said aloud, “That will work.”

Wally held his fingers out and counted down.

“Three, two, one…”


Superior Gravity: Makeshift Super-Strength (6)

“I’m Cammy Castle, live in Reach’s Foundry district where my life and the lives of my crew—”

A towering, hideous, grey man and a shorter less distinct figure stood a few blocks in the background of the shot, just barely visible over Cammy’s shoulder.

“—were all saved thanks to local superhero, Galaxy Girl—”

As she spoke, the grey giant reached down and ripped a wrecking ball sized chunk of pavement and earth from the street. He held it above his head, then curled his arm back like he was about to throw a shot put.

“—who has agreed to speak with us following the incident.”

The grey man hurled the mass of Earth into the air. It was barely in frame at first, like moving spec of dirt. Then it got closer and closer, and bigger and bigger.

“So tell us, Galaxy Girl, what do you make of the recent grand-jury decision? Are Meta’s being unfairly targeted, or is there a stronger concern of safety,”

“Incoming!” Wally yelled.

The hurled projectile landed a few feet in front of him and bounced forward in an attempt to cream Cammy Castle.

“Whoa,” Molly yelled. She lifted both hands and caught the Honda sized boulder.

Her feet slid backwards. She couldn’t stop it immediately, she grunted and pushed harder. It slowed down. With all her ability she managed to stop its momentum inches from its target.

With a grunt she shoved it back onto the street where it dropped to the ground and broke into loose pieces of dirt and asphalt. Cammy and Wally ran for cover. At the other end of the street, the giant grey man and his friend were walking closer.


 
Superior Force-Field: Gravity Wall, Makeshift Super-Toughness (10)

The pair made their way towards the burning helicopter.

“Try and avoid the girl,” the grey man said, “we’re not here to hurt our own.”

The woman next to him spat on the ground. It sizzled, burning its way through the pavement.

“Rhino, if she’s with Aegis I’m fucking frying her, meta or no,” she said.

Rhino’s skin looked like it would be rough to the touch and was dull grey in color. He stood at around twelve feet tall, with every muscle bulging hard against his granite skin. His face was dominated by the sharp hard ridge of bone sticking out from the top of his forehead to the tip of his nose. Other bony plates poked out at his shoulders, ribs, forearms, and knuckles.

His friend was entirely bald beneath her bandanna and had deep rings around her pulsating pupils. Her eyes were like glowing uranium and you’d get sick if you stared into them too long. Her skin looked like it used to be white at some point.

Molly stood between them and the news crew.

“What are you doing?” Molly demanded.

“Relax. We’re here to make things right,” Rhino said in a deep, comfortless voice.

“By shooting down helicopters?” Molly demanded.

“If that’s what it takes,” the woman said, “Sometimes you have to push a bad situation over the edge to force people to act. But it all has to be done. I wouldn’t expect you to understand. You’re a collaborator.”

“A what?”

“Uncle Tom’s another word for it,”

Unbeknownst to any of them, Wally had begun filming .The bald woman looked Molly up and down and scowled. Her hands began burning in a yellow ethereal fire.

“Look at you, you can pass can’t you? It’s all easy for you. You barely know what this is about.”

“I know you almost killed someone. You need to stop.”

“Just get out of the way; we’re here for a reason but we don’t need to kill a little girl who wants to play hero.”

Molly stood her ground

“Look, I’m not looking for trouble.”

The woman raised her burning hand.

“Too bad. A little trouble’s what we need.”

A burning bolt of plasma shot towards the news team.

Molly jumped and took the plasma to the chest; it exploded in a burst of pale yellow mist. Molly slid back, but stayed on her feet.

The radioactive meta lost her patience. She threw another bolt, then another, and another, until she was hurling a blinding barrage of plasma. The blasts peppered into Molly, explosions going off second after second. Yellow mist began to fill the air. Still, Molly kept herself planted between the news crew and their attacker.

Then, a joyous voice screamed from the heavens.

“HERE COMES THE WALLOP!”


Superior Immunity to Strength: Makeshift Super-Strength II (14)

Wallop jumped from the rooftop, gauntlets first. Her entrance was about as sneaky as a meteor strike. Her shining steel fist connected with the attacker’s face and unleashed an unsubtle boom. The female meta flew backwards and skid across the ground. When she finally stopped it was clear she wouldn’t be getting back up for awhile

Wallop flipped a pink stripe of hair out of her eyes and slammed her ginormous gauntlets together.

“Ha! How you like me now?”

The young hero then turned to Rhino, who had lowered his gaze towards the new contender. Wallop lifted a gauntlet and swung a right uppercut towards the giant. It only reached his abs, but the glove unleashed a shockwave a half a second later; it was like launching a firecracker at a mountain.

Rhino grabbed her by the collar, his fingers wrapping nearly all the way around her throat, and lifted her like a doll. Wallop squirmed with every ounce of her limited mortal strength. He squeezed and her mouth flung open.

“Ay! That hurts you big, dumb, animal! Put me down and fight square!”

“I’m getting so god damn sick of you,” Rhino moaned, “I think I’m going to personally mail your corpse to Captain Wham.”

He squeezed again and a torrent of cockney curses flooded out.

“Hey! Let her go you big bully.”

Molly was floating in front of the cloud of dissipating yellow gas. Rhino smirked.

“Sure thing.”

He spiked Wallop into the pavement like a football and she cursed again. A moment passed before Wallop could regain her faculties. She rolled onto her side and could see Rhino stepping forward, casting Molly in his shadow.

“Kid,” Rhino said, “do you have any idea how far out of your league you are? I’m sure you pass for strong among your friends, but I’ve punched out Captain Wham and the Centurion. Stand aside and let me do what I came here to do.”

“You aren’t as strong as you think.”

“Yeah kid, I am.”

He charged just like the beast he was, swinging a wide left hook that would catch Molly in the side of her everything. It would have, if she hadn’t caught it with her palm. Rhino’s eyes went wide. He punched again. She caught that as well.

Those punches had knocked some of the greatest of Aegis on their backs, but now they weren’t doing anything. He felt weaker. He felt like every muscle was under some massive weight, like every bit of force was being dragged down and it would take all his strength just to push this tiny girl back an inch.

“You know what I think,” Molly said, “I think the real reason you want to hurt people is that deep down you know you’re not strong at all.”

He grunted and tried pushing harder. Molly grit her teeth and pushed back.

“I think deep down you’re weak. I think you’re just a big bully, and I. DON'T. LIKE. BULLIES!”

She rocketed up beyond the rooftops, carrying him into the clouds and out of sight. There was a moment of silence on the ground.

Wallop stood up slowly. She craned her neck to look up but only saw the new night sky. Wally the camera guy scanned the clouds. A black dot appeared above them; it got gradually clearer as it fell. Wally tracked the plummeting object until it crashed into the pavement with an earth-shattering thud.

Rhino lay humiliated and unconscious in his crater. A few seconds later another brightly colored dot drifted down to land delicately next to them. Molly barely had time to wipe the sweat from her brow when a giant steel gauntlet dropped onto her shoulder.

“Eh, thanks, love,” Wallop said, “I didn’t think anyone could beat the old beast down like that. Hell, I’d be a lot skinnier girl right now if you hadn’t stopped him from wringing me dry. I’d imagine he’ll be out for awhile. Though I can’t think of anybody who deserves it more. Big bully is right. Eh, Rhino, Bully, that’s right cleva of you, love.”

“Oh. Thanks? Who are you?”

“Oh, haven’t you heard?” She said with a little smugness, “I’m Wallop. Of Captain Wham and Wallop? No? Doesn’t matter, I’m out of the sidekick game now anyway. Speakin’ of I’ve been lookin’ for a partner, you with anybody, love?”

“With anybody?”

“Yeah. Gets lonely out here sometimes, so you with anybody? ”

“Um, no I’m single but I don’t think,”

“No, love,” Wallop said with a laugh, “not like that. I mean are you working with somebody? Aegis, Hounds, Pray-tor-ian or whateva they call themselves these days?”

“Oh no,” Molly said. Her cheeks turned beet red, “I just sort of made the costume myself and,”

“Well then, I expect you can join in with me then. I’m still Aegis, yeah, but not a sidekick no more. Not with those tossers in squad G either. I’m just what sidekicks are when they ain’t sidekicks no more. You see?”

“I guess so.”

“Then it’s a match. Smile for the camera, love.”

Wally had been filming them the whole time. Wallop pulls Molly in uncomfortably close and throws out a giant v for victory with her other gauntlet. Molly whispers beneath her breath.

“Mom is gonna kill me.”