From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Ava Adore

An almost villain on the path of redemption Ava is the epitome of the vigilante. Highly intelligent, and logical to a fault she's managed to survive through both Rikti Wars, the loss of her family, and the death of many friends. Through it all however she managed to find happiness, success and love.

Ava is a kinetics/psionic defender and a super strength/energy aura brute played by @Ran Kailie.

Contents 1 Physical Description 2 Character History 2.1 The Beginning: Simpler Times 2.2 Project A.R.E.S. 2.3 War: The Rikti Arrive 2.4 Kings Row Terror 2.5 After Registration 2.6 Past Events 2.6.1 Into Enemy Territory 2.6.2 Invasion! Rikti Return 2.6.2.1 Invasion Images 2.6.3 The Missing Bowman 2.7 Current Events 2.7.1 Retirement 3 Abilities 3.1 Kinetic Control & Energy Aura 3.2 Super Strength 3.3 Psionic Control 3.4 Agility & Speed 3.5 Leadership 4 Limitations 5 Affiliations 6 Thicker then Blood 7 Comrades & Associates 7.1 Enemies 7.2 Unknown Affiliation 8 Trivia & Random Facts 9 Artwork 10 Creator Contact Information 11 Notes

Physical Description

You would never mistake Ava for a runway model, not to say she's unattractive or ugly, but she's won't have heads snapping to watch as she walks by. Thanks to her mother's foreign heritage exotic might be the first word to cross your mind regarding Ava. Her skin is a fair olive tone, and her facial features are a sharp and strong contrast against her longish dark black hair. Intense gray eyes scrutinize and analyze anything she comes across, and as Brendan well knows, her eyes often show the intensity of her anger, fury, or pain when the rest of her shows nothing but icy neutrality.

Her height is moderate and her build Athletic, albeit on the lean side. One would never guess how much power actually lurks in her slight form. Most of the time she sticks with functional clothing in darker colors due to the strenuous and often dirty nature of her work. The only jewelry she wears is a modest wedding band.^[5]

Character History

The Beginning: Simpler Times

Ava was born and raised in Paragon City, she grew up in Woodvale, the area now classified as the Hazard Zone "Eden". The Mannheim's were a fairly typical middle class family, her father, Stephen Mannheim, was a simple man with a decent job working for the government. Her mother, Annette Mannheim^[3], was extremely intelligent and a prominent researcher in the field of human genetic engineering with BioGenics.^[6]

As a teenager Ava was well known at school. With a charming, polite and overall personable presence she made friends easily and chose to spend the vast majority of her time in the company of a few close peers. Even early on her intelligence was notably above that of her peers with her comprehension skills steadily 5 to 10 years ahead.

Intelligence testing during her childhood placed her IQ ratio within an unmeasurable range greater than 200. Resisting the school's request however to accelerate Ava through school and enroll her into the city's premiere programs for exceptional youth, the Mannheim's instead chose to leave their daughter in regular school. Annette would supplement Ava's education with advanced sciences often challenging her daughter with complex scientific questions and mathematical problems. Beyond her extracurricular education at home however Ava had much of a normal childhood within the Paragon City Public Schools system.

Well, normal that is except for the violent temper combined with anger control issues she developed early as a child. At the time no one was quite sure knew why Ava would sometimes snap and do unquestionable damage or inflict gross amounts of physical abuse on others. She self described these episodes as "red outs" and in most cases retained no memory after one hit.

Two years of evaluation by multiple doctors, and several screenings by Social Services brought nothing conclusive after her first major incident at the age of 7. A solution would only be found in her learning careful meditation and to identify the signs of a episode being triggered. Ava in time learned to control her temper, perhaps too well, often bottling her negative emotions instead of coping with them.

Project A.R.E.S.

What no one at the time knew, was that the outbursts and episodes were a latent side effect of exposure to Agent 5541. Annette had conceived her daughter primarily as the central part of a grand genetic experiment to create the perfect soldier. Agent 5541 was a failed super soldier serum developed by Annette for BioGenics. After several failed experiments she concluded that in order for the agent to properly take to the subject they would need to have specifically tailored DNA to allow for the proper re-sequencing.

Thus she developed her daughter, born of her own DNA which had been carefully crafted by her own father, and the DNA of her well meant but primarily oblivious husband. The entire project would continue as planned until the unexpected assault by the Rikti on May 23, 2002.

War: The Rikti Arrive

Ava was late leaving lacrosse practice, as always, she stayed after to help the coach clean up and put equipment away. The locker room was empty when she arrived, and most of the other girls were already gone, most had rushed home to watch the news about the strange lights that had appeared overhead.^[7] Others would be in the parking lot goofing off, and she knew her best friend Kimmy was waiting for her so they could walk together home. That walk would never happen as the Rikti bombardment began at precisely 7:30 PM, most of Woodvale was leveled in the first volley, scores a people killed within minutes.

Dislodged by the concussion of the bombs hitting the ground and the building, a row of lockers fell on top of Ava trapping her and knocking her unconscious. It was luck, or the Fate's sick idea of a joke, that put her so close to a top secret lab owned by Crey, the lab that shortly after the bombardment began was penetrated and exploded when its reactor went critical. The explosion resulted in the forced fusion of Ava's DNA with that of the only other nearby living creature a rat, and the expedited development of her dormant abilities. Unknown to her the mutations and stress to her body forced the recessive berserker personality, a result of her mother's experiment, to the surface.

Upon waking Ava managed to remove herself from the locker room in the mostly destroyed school. Exiting the school she was horrified to find her friends and classmates scattered, most dead and many others struggling close to death. Some of them were horribly mutated from the lab's blast or the exposure to the Rikti weaponry. As she fled the scene she came across her best friend Kimmy. Like Ava she had been exposed to the explosion and mutated and she grabbed for Ava, begging her for help, but Ava was beyond hearing and in the midst of a breakdown. Her mind unable to cope with everything happening around her, she pulled away from her and ran, ran towards the only thing she knew could help her, home.

Home wasn't a sanctuary, home was only more horror. Ava arrived to find her parents dead, killed when part of the house collapsed. Days would pass Ava, in a mostly catatonic state, barely remembers the painful changes she went through, the illness from the beginning stages of severe radiation poisoning, the physical changes as her body began to manifest the rat DNA. She does remember the burning, the feeling of her whole body on fire, cooking from the inside, and the metallic taste of blood in her mouth. Her metabolism had seen a sharp increase and is probably the only thing that kept the radiation poisoning from killing her, allowing her body to heal from what would have killed almost anyone else.

Eventually she would break from her catatonia fleeing her home with only her mother's scarf, a pair of her father's work goggles, his trench coat and some work clothing. She would pass the 6 long months of the war in a continual battle to survive against the ever growing threat forces vying for control of the area.

Her budding powers saved her more then a few times, but she found her voracious appetite growing stronger. As the recessive personality grew stronger, she became physically stronger, her temper shorter and her power more frightening. But the need to eat so much was not easily accommodated in the destroyed zone, most food now gone, or rotten, she plotted her escape to Founder's Falls which had managed to survive most of the bombardments unscathed.

She escaped right before the end of the war, and only hearing of the sacrifice of Hero 1 and Omega Team weeks after the war was declared over. However any comfort she hoped to find in her flight to Founder's was quickly squashed as she was met with ridicule, fear, and aberration by other people for her appearance. Denied access to the shelters, and hospitals^[8] Ava was left to fend for herself in the broken city barely past the age of 17.

Kings Row Terror

Eventually she would find herself in Kings Row, an area she was familiar with thanks to her best friend Kimmy who had lived in the Kings Rows slums before moving to Woodvale with her aunt. She took up residence in one of the many abandoned businesses, and fended for herself.

It was during her time on the streets that her recessive personality saw its greatest development and its blossoming into a full fledged berserker. The scorn and hate turned on her by most of society would bring the last of her frightening power to fruition. The downside however, was that this personality had emerged completely separate from her own personality, giving her very little control over it. Many of the nights during her time in Kings Row she would wake bruised or in a jail cell unable to remember fully what had happened. She had turned her anger towards the thugs around her, lashing out at them as a vigilante with her own forms of justice. Her "justice" was noted to be often cruel in execution making her the Terror of the Row, spoken of in hushed tones by gang members, the crazy monster trying to kill them all.

With a record as long as hers, its surprising that she never did much time behind bars. No judge could ever put her behind bars for any long period of time with a clear conscious, Ava was another in a long string of cases where the city had failed. Try as they might for reform it never stuck, Ava never stayed in the homes, or group shelters driven away by the treatment she received from the other patients and the employees. Not even a minor stint in the juvenile detention before turning 18, and later in the district penitentiary would dissuade her violent activity.

It wouldn't be until she was caught for acts of illegal heroism by the PPD that Ava would begin to reign her berserker in. The fight hadn't been long, two Skulls assaulting a girl, normally after a good beating they ran or would beg forgiveness sometimes even relenting wordlessly. This time they didn't relent or flee in the face of the Terror of the Row. Bonedaddies, the de-facto leaders for the Skulls, weren't as easily scared as their underlings and they weren't about to let the Terror of the Row scare them. So they taunted Ava, and she lost it completely.

Both were brutally killed and the girl was saved, thankful to her unlikely savior. The PPD didn't see it that way, instead they saw two people dead, and murderer on the loose. The very same murderer they had arrested countless times before but that the legal system had failed to stop before she did kill. A warrant was put out for her arrest, and after a minor scuffle she relented to the heavy armored shock troops.

Judge Alfonso Horwitz would provide one last chance for redemption. With no love for the gangs and their members, his own daughter killed by a Hellion, he crafted a careful offer for Ava. He recognized her struggle and pain but saw hope in her, scarred by the past and tormented by everything around her. But beyond all of that he saw the scared young girl who had lost everything she'd ever known with no one to trust or to give her a real helping hand.

Judge Horwitz knew that a group home wouldn't do her any good and that jail would probably only push her further down the violent path she was on. She was provided with an option, a chance to have a say in her own future, a chance to make the choice between the light and dark paths before her. The judge cautioned her to truly really consider her decision carefully because both held pitfalls.

Ava was to decide between submitting to official registration as a super powered being or to spend a stint in the Zig. If she chose to register she would serve her debt to society as one of the heroes she held in contempt, helping people within the confines of the law. However if she chose the Zig she would serve her time in the prison designed specifically for, and filled with the worst super powered criminals in the world.

It wasn't much of a choice, even Ava knew she wouldn't stand a chance for long in the Zig, she'd made no friends and plenty of enemies. It was a hell hole for the worst, and it would only be a matter of time before she was killed or assimilated. It took her only a day to make her decision and with the judge's sponsorship she quickly received her license from Hero Corps entering their training program.

After Registration

• Heroic Beginnings - Registration with Hero Corps and beginning a new life.
• Kidnapped by Crey - Project Ares - Kidnapped by Crey to finish an experimented started before she was born.

Gallery

Past Events

Into Enemy Territory

The daring rescue by Brendan behind her, Ava Works to rebuild her memory and seeks access to the Isles from Freedom Corps only to find herself at odds with the city in which she was born and Freedom Corps itself.

Invasion! Rikti Return

The Rikti returned, stronger, and prepared to fight the heroes on July 24, 2007. Ava, having survived the first invasion by the Rikti, found herself thrust back into a situation that she had all but forgotten. The drop ships, the bombing, the ground forces porting to overcome unsuspecting people, it was the last piece to tie the last of her fragmented memories together. She remembered it all then, in stark clarity, the sirens as the Rikti razed Woodvale, the distant sound of the portals enabling and the Rikti ships, the smell of things burning and the pervasive sense of death.

Some people might have broken but in Ava it found an avenging angel, the Rikti would meet their match in her rage, and desire to make them suffer for the sacrifices made five years ago by people all around the world. This time they wouldn't be so lucky.

Stories:

• Battle for Founders Falls - An All Call to Arms - Open letter to all, a call to arms and a documentation of a Battle in Founders Falls against invading forces.

Journal Entries:

• Reflections (03:23 EST, July 26, 2007)

Invasion Images

The Missing Bowman

Following a clandestine meeting with Shigetaka Kadekawa in Bloody Bay, Ava and Archon X are enlisted in the search for the Liberty Bowman after his disappearance during an operation in Bloody Bay. The bowman is eventually found and a terribly plot foiled but only after Trevin finds himself captured and under arrest.

Current Events

Retirement

Even though she has still not found her mother or the Crey operation that created her, Ava has taken leave mostly from operation activity for Archon X. She is most often now found in the boardroom, a press conference or spending time with Brendan. Even with the change in her life he was a shock when she found herself pregnant. Shock quickly gave way to joy and she reluctantly relented to Brendan's pleads for her to take a break.

Operation command of Archon X has mostly gone to Mada Zarifa and Ava waits, abeit impatiently for the chance to get back out in the field. As several years past Ava saw the birth of her son Stephen and found Archon X growing into Archon Industries a now multiple billion dollar defense contractor. Now the CEO she struggles to juggle work with family and other responsibilities, but has managed to remain a powerful intelligence broker and black operations commander.

Abilities

Kinetic Control & Energy Aura

Ava possesses a unique ability to control and manipulate the kinetic energy of everything around her, including both people and inanimate objects.

• Combat: She can both increase and decrease the density of an object by manipulating its kinetic energy. She can make teammates more efficient, powerful, and faster while making those who oppose her slower, weaker, and lethargic.
• Defensive: Her control of kinetic energy makes her virtually impervious to physical attacks, siphoning most of the kinetic power from weapons and limbs before they can reach her. Combined with her psionic abilities she often can and does stop most objects in mid air before they can hit her, including bullets, and arrows and more inane objects like balled up napkins.
• Flight: Using kinetic control to manipulate her mass and the kinetic energy of the air around her she is able to float above the ground in a modified form of flight. With practice she's managed to maintain for extended periods, even during combat.
• Cloaking: Harnessing the energy that naturally flows around her, Ava has developed the ability to bend energy around her form making her nearly imperceivable except on close inspection.

Super Strength

After her abduction and cloning Ava has found herself more in tune with her berserker and with better control over her super human strength. Able to break concrete with her bare fists and propel enemies several feet into the air, Ava is however left with little to no control over her psionic abilities. Its one small reprieve for her opponents.

• Combat: Ava is a worthy adversary in hand to hand combat, often using her heightened sense of smell and claws to increase the damage she can inflict. She often leaves her opponents disoriented and dazed due to the brutality of her attacks.
• Rage: As she fights her mind fully syncs with her berserker allowing her to focus on a level beyond what a normal human could. She becomes a focused, determined and dedicated machine of death with the ability to tape into raw, unbridled, and unmitigated power and destructive ability.
• Controlled Rage Release: Ava can control the release of her rage allowing her to bypassing the mental restrictions on her power, she then becomes a unstoppable force of nature while remaining cognitive and fully aware. However after a short while her energy and focus wane leaving her unable to concentrate to attack or defend herself. Many of those found in the Isle hospitals after an encounter with her talk with wide eyes about the frightening woman with cold eyes cutting large swaths through large portions of their contingent without any concern for her own safety or health.

Psionic Control

Ava's psionic control isn't as refined as her control of kinetic energy. She has strong empathic, and telepathic abilities, both of which have made her very emotionally cold outwardly, and wary of large groups.

• Combat: Able to forcibly impose her will on her opponents, Ava is able to literally shred a person's consciousness. This damage is often so immediately severe that opponents are left unconscious or catatonic.
• Telepathy: Reading minds isn't all its cracked up to be, often knowing exactly what people think whether she wants to or not. It has been a curse and only helped to cement her negative opinion of herself after the first war. As a rule she actively refuses to use telepathy on other people, however she still picks up strong thoughts around her without trying. She also will use her surface abilities to tell if someone is lying to her and sometimes to judge their character.
• Empathy: Her empathy has been mostly a bane to her existence, unable to shield out the emotions of others for a long time, she often found herself crying, upset, distraught, or happy without knowing why. She's learned control and is mostly able to block out the influence of most emotions around her, but she still senses emotions, and strong emotions, especially of those she is close to.

Agility & Speed

Ava retains peak athletic prowess. Her faster metabolism allows her to regenerate at an inhuman rate, and she has an almost bottomless well of energy.

• Super Speed: Able to move at speeds unseen by the human eye, she becomes all but invulnerable when moving. She uses her control of kinetic energy to propel herself and her psionic ability to move herself around obstacles.
• Increased Recovery: Her well of energy seems bottomless, able to continue going when others have fallen from fatigue, she is even able to share that energy with others to give them an extra boost. This came especially in handy during the long battles of the second Rikti Invasion.
• Athletic Skill: Able to jump higher and further then the average person naturally, and much of her seemingly vast supply of energy owes its thanks to her conditioned and efficient use of her own stamina.
• Bottomless Pit: Ava's stomach is often described as a bottomless pit, she has a voracious appetite that is almost never sated.

Leadership

Ava possesses the qualities that make a good leader, whether she admits or outwardly acts as such. Even in a supportive position her intelligence heightens her ability to guide others in even the most dire situations. Thanks to her increased sense of smell and touch from her animal characteristics Ava is also able to sense things that others might not be able to see, such as some hostile targets using certain forms of stealthing, and seeing through smoke bombs when her teammates are blinded.

Limitations

• Memory Loss: While much of her memory of the time during the Rikti war and the five years after has returned, there are still large spots in her memory that she will probably never regain. She avoids the subject and often doesn't tell people when she has remembered things, she has left most of those pieces in the past where they belong. To her the person she was after the first war was only a fragment of herself.
• Vision: When in her half human/half rat form Ava still suffers from poor vision.
• Nightmares: Nightmares haunt her, nightmares of the first war, of her friends who died, of her icy tomb created by Rhiannon, and of her fear of her mother. She often spends her nights awake, intent to watch Brendan sleep.

Affiliations

Archon X

Cap Au Diable, Etoille Islands

Ava's crowning achievement, Archon X started off as a small genomic and genetics related organization providing services to individuals anc companies. The fledgling company has grown steadily and well past the expectations of its investors. With its acquisition of the Arinad Corporation in 2008 Archon BioLabs has become Archon Industries (NYSE: ARCI). Based in the Eoile Islands it is a multi-billion dollar aerospace, defense, security, and advanced technology company with worldwide interests. Ava serves as the current Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer.

Archon Industries is one of the world's largest defense contractor by revenue as of 2009, rivaled only by Crey Industries. In 2009, 95% of Archon Industries revenues came from the United States Department of Defense, other U.S. federal government agencies, and foreign military customers including S.C.O.R.P.I.O..

Shinsengumi 6th Squadron

Paragon City, Rhode Island

In an effort to make in roads to the profitable Japanese biomedical industry, Ava accepted membership on the board of directors for the Matsudaira Corporation. With a very strong influence in the Shinsengumi and more specifically the 6th Squadron of the Shinsengumi operating in Paragon, Ava has found herself more often then not at the headquarters for the notable group during her time in Paragon. (Shinsengumi 6th Squadron Homepage)

Hyperion Force

Paragon City, Rhode Island

Ava once called the Hyperion Force her home, however much has changed in her own life and she has left active involvement with the Force behind her. With her acceptance of a board position with the Matsudaira Corporation and her current involvement with her company Archon Industries she's found little time for the more direct form of heroics involved with crime fighting.

Thicker then Blood

Brendan Aft Not many people get lucky enough to not only find a best friend, but to find love with their best friend and make it work out for the best. Ava and Brendan have a shared love for bad zombie movies, comic books, junk food, and goofing off. Only Brendan gets to see the lighthearted and playful side of Ava when they're alone. When she's with him nothing else in the world matters. They were married in a quiet, unpublicized wedding attended by only Bridget Queen, Zartemis, and Alexia Dale.[9]

The Cobalt Streak Ava and Iggy were unlikely friends, with vastly differing opinions on a variety of topics. However when it came down to it there was always one thing they agreed on, criminals need to be punished. Iggy was one of the few people that Ava trusted and considered a close friend. She reacted badly to his death, and has vowed to use everything at her disposal to track them down.

Neo Trick Shot Bridget Queen is everything that Ava wasn't when they met, successful, wealthy, the epitome of that which is good and righteous. They are two different sides of the same coin. Ava often finds herself appreciating the other woman's differing point of view.

Trevin Trevin brings his own flavor of bad attitude, and no nonsense style of dealing with things. An unapologetic asshole by nature, he is always honest and quick to call things the way he sees them cutting to the chase of any situation. Trevin is a vital part of Ava's continued operations in the Etoile Isles. He is also often the only person willing to tell Ava she's being a moron. You'll often hear them trading insults and bickering incessantly. Trevin in many ways is like the older brother she never had.

Zartemis Zartemis is like the annoying little brat of a brother Ava never had, only he's a demon. They pick on each other, fight and constantly bicker about even the tiniest of things.

Comrades & Associates

Alexia Dale Considering how Ava normally reacts initially to the women around Brendan, the fact that Ava seemed to almost immediately take a positive shine to Alex is almost a miracle. It goes beyond the obvious fact that Alexia has no interest in Brendan, in Alex she saw someone who was genuine. Ava often finds herself both impressed and confused by Alex’s strong desire to please everyone.

Mindre Mindre is an enigma to Ava, she doesn't understand why the T'Sharii huntress enjoys being around her, or why she is nice to her, but she appreciates it. Mindre systematically raided Crey labs in the Isles delivering the heads of Crey officials to Brendan before finding the location Ava was being held at after her kidnapping.

Shelly Lightfoot Ava admires Shelly's abilities, gained through hard work and practice. Shelly was one of the initial people profiled for the fledgling GenAnthro Project[10]. Ava successfully identified unexpressed Kitsune genes and created one of the first MoGE devices[11] for Shelly.

Enemies

Dr. Annette Borisov

Annette is the mastermind behind the grand experiment to develop a new type of super soldier of which Ava, her daughter, was the single prime test case. She managed to escape arrest after Ava's rescue, and her current whereabouts are unknown.

Dumal Kash

The mysterious and silent assistant to Dr. Annette Borisov, almost nothing is know of the strange creature, or its purpose.

Oberst Schlange

Schlange provided training to Ava immediately following her cloning and memory loss. His direct connection to Requiem is unknown, and he currently continues to oversea Project Ares. His current whereabouts are unknown after he managed to elude both Callista and Shelly.

Unknown Affiliation

Rhiannon Gladstone

Kidnapped Ava for Dr. Annette Borisov requesting only a favor from Annette. However Annette would not honor the Fae woman's request to release Ava and now Rhiannon claims she kidnapped Ava to save her life. Ava does not trust her, the bitter cold of her ice a reoccurring nightmare. There is little love lost between them, they have however been recently seen speaking on amicable terms.

Trivia & Random Facts

• Heroic ID: Ava was named after the Smashing Pumpkins song, Ava Adore. In character she named herself Ava Adore as a lame form of rebellion against her forced registration with Hero Corps.
• Favorites:
  
  • Drink: Cream Soda
  • Food: Chili Dog with onions and lots of cheese.
  • Movie: Zombie movies, particularly the works of George A. Romero
  • Book: World War Z by Max Brooks
  • Color: Chinese Red or Steel Blue
  • Pastime: Video games or movies with Brendan, or just enjoying some time with her son who is currently really into watching Handy Mandy and Thomas the Tank Engine.
    

Artwork

Various art pieces related to Ava.

Creator Contact Information

Global: @Ran Kailie
Official Forums: ransim
VirtueVerse: Ransim

Notes

^[12]

^[13]