Crisis Project
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:|300px|]] | |
| Crisis Project | |
| Player: @Asylum Song | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Brute |
| Threat Level: | 42 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Sarah Hawthorne |
| Known Aliases: | Crisis, Blue |
| Species: | Cyborg |
| Age: | 22 |
| Height: | Approx 5' 7" (Can vary) |
| Weight: | Approx 450 lbs (Can vary) |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Blonde |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Sociopath |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City |
| Base of Operations: | Mercy Island |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None |
| Known Powers | |
| Electrical conduction and manipulation, super strength, super speed | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Confidential | |
| Equipment | |
| Variable body parts | |
| No additional information available. | |
Crisis Project is a victim of circumstances who channels her frustration and confusion with her life into blinding, destructive rage.
Contents |
Origin
Sarah Hawthorne was an average girl whose life was damned to extraordinary circumstance. When she was eighteen, her father passed away, and with no other living relatives she was close to, she came to live with her older boyfriend, Michael Grace. Michael, due to genetic disorder, was confined to a wheelchair -- a condition he had lived with his whole life, yet found himself nonetheless resentful of. However, he had a dramatic, secret plan; years of fevered technological study and research under the tutelage of some of Paragon City's finest minds had almost culminated in his life's achievement: the Crisis Suit.
The suit would bind directly to Michael's nervous system, not simply allowing him to walk, but to join the ranks of Paragon's heroes with superhuman abilities. He would be stronger, run faster, jump higher, and move quicker than the average person ever dreamed of. It would even allow him to throw bursts of raw, concussive energy, to better combat the forces of evil! Little did he expect, however, that his secretive and well-intentioned project would soon change the life of his dear Sarah forever -- and eventually, destroy it.
Sarah was a positive, cheerful girl, and more than a little naive. Shortly after coming to live with Michael, she came across the secret Crisis Suit, hidden away in his garage. Oblivious to its function, she donned the lightly armoured suit. After all, what harm could it do if it belonged to her sweet, shy, sort of nerdy boyfriend? It was probably just a costume for the approaching Halloween; he would get a laugh out of seeing her in it. All this was her reasoning right up until the suit sprang to life. Pain wracked her body as the suit attached to her nervous system.
Worse, it was incomplete. It had not yet been tested, verified safe. And when Michael discovered her crumpled upon the floor of his garage, wrapped in his life's work, his outrage quickly dissolved to lament and terror. Whisked away to hospital, she was soon declared stable. The Crisis Suit, however, had bonded to her spine too deeply to be removed without completely paralyzing her.
But before long, she recovered. Although bound to the core mechanics of the suit, Sarah could live a relatively normal life. Even better, however, she could live a remarkable life as the heroine Crisis Blue (named for her fondness of the colour, which she painted the suit). Michael, although grudging at first, accepted this turn of events, holding himself responsible for hiding the suit in the first place. He supported Sarah, upgrading and repairing the suit as Crisis Blue became successful. In short time, Michael let go of his resentment, and was happy just to have been a part in the birth of a magnificent new heroine.
Crisis Blue was known for her idealism, her upbeat attitude, and her victory after victory. It didn't hurt that she was young and pretty, either. She enjoyed her fifteen minutes of fame in the minds and hearts of Paragon's people, and rubbed elbows with the greats on occasion. But at the plateau of her popularity, she suddenly vanished. Out of sight, out of mind, and soon, people forgot about Crisis Blue.
Where had she gone? An anonymous tip had sent her, urgently, to a Crey facility, to shut down one dangerous experiment or another. Crisis would never know if it was a legitimate tip, or a trap; either way, the raid ended with waves of Crey security overcoming the young heroine, and capturing her. Crey was quick to begin covering up this matter against the few inquiries from both public and concerned heroes alike. Then they truly set to work - Michael Grace was captured, his work and documents seized by covert operations teams. Crey wanted to unlock the secrets of the Crisis suit, to mass produce it in an effort to augment their own corporate army. This, however, would involve gruesome experimentation upon his dear Sarah. Refusing to assist, Michael attempted to sabotage the project and free Sarah. His small rebellion had him summarily executed by Crey security staff, and the Crisis project continued from his incomplete documents.
Utterly forgotten, Crisis Blue was left to the mercy of Crey's experiments. Soon, with no clear understanding of the Crisis suit coming to light, they decided on a new course - a secret weapon in Crisis Blue herself. To this end, she underwent years of surgical experimentation, cybernetic implantation, mental reconstruction, pain, trauma, and horror. The scientists involved in the project eventually forgot they were dealing with a human being -- and Sarah, who after two years of this was now more machine than meat, had almost forgotten it herself. Kept sedated, restrained, always peripherally aware of her torment, Sarah Hawthorne slowly ceased to exist. She was a thing, a project on paper money was absently allocated to, a job scientists came in to every day from their cozy homes and pleasant evenings. A thing.
And then, it happened. Somebody forgot a dose, or connected something wrong, or flipped a switch that should've stayed off. Whatever it was, it struck her; the reality of her situation, her existence, the people around her, this hideous, secret Hell designed purely for her. For her, who'd never done anything wrong, who'd wanted nothing more than to make Paragon a nicer place to live. Her ramshackle body came to life, modified not only by years of technological advancement, but also with a sudden, all consuming rage. The restraints, the security, all lax after years of uneventful work. They were destroyed by her fury. And soon, every Crey scientist who had ever put a hand, a knife, a saw, a screwdriver, or an electrode to her was likewise destroyed.
Having lost control of the situation, Crey did the smartest thing they could, locking down the lab and calling in the pros -- heroes. Passing the barely recognizable Crisis Blue off as a murderous villain come to disrupt their 'legitimate operations', a team of fresh-faced heroes arrived and defeated the furious, broken down wreck of a cyborg. Quietly, she was hustled away to the Zig.
Perhaps there, eventually, the system might have caught her, recognized this thing as the long lost Sarah Hawthorne, freed her, made reparations, sought justice for her tragedy. But when Arachnos arrived, seeking their Destined Ones, she was swept up with them. Sarah was officially lost -- now existed only the Crisis Project.
General Description
As a result of Crey's immoral experiments, Crisis is almost completely mechanical. Her arms and legs are completely artificial, and many of her internal organs have also been replaced. Almost no part of her has not been augmented cybernetically in some way, including even her eyes and brain. Because she was never officially completed, however, Crisis often appears damaged and very visibly robotic. Although many of her body parts are interchangeable with newer, more completed versions, Crisis prefers to utilize the original parts attached to her by Crey.
Powers
Crisis Project is capable of producing and channeling massive amounts of energy, as was Crisis Blue. However, years of experimentation by Crey have devastated these systems, and she can no longer throw massive blasts of concussive force with impunity, able only to conduct it in the most basic of energy forms: electricity. Although she can still throw blasts of raw electrical energy from a distance, with effort, she prefers now to conduct it through her mechanical arms as she beats and bludgeons her foes furiously.
As well, Crisis, thanks to an almost entirely artificial body, is able to safely conduct electrical energies through her body, creating various electromagnetic shields to protect herself from harm, as well as punish those who would dare fight back against her fury. Much of this is achieved through an instinctual understanding of electrical manipulation, rather than design by Crey or any advanced scientific understanding by Crisis herself.
Using her vast power stores and augmented brain and senses, Crisis is also able to move with a superhuman speed, although finds this painful, disorienting and uncomfortable.
Crisis' electrical mastery grows constantly, beyond the mere scope of her original construction, as she develops a deeper and more intuitive understanding of its control, and she has even been seen to transform her body into pure electrical energy for brief periods of time for both offense and defense. Like her super speed, though, Crisis finds prolonged use of this incredible ability painful, and fears that she would eventually dissipate into nothingness if she indulged it too long.
Due to her incredible mastery over electrical energy, Crisis often displays a myriad of unusual abilities related to mechanics that employ it, such as remote control or reading computer data. This unusual talent is not perfect, however, and Crisis has fried more than one television accidentally.
Crisis has attempted, as well, to gain mastery over the human body's electrical systems, but this has never resulted in anything more remarkable than her inadvertent (or sometimes simply frustrated) electrocution of her unwilling test subjects.
Personality
Crisis Project's personality can be summed up in a simple word: angry. Infuriated by Paragon City and its heroes, who Crisis feels abandoned her to her awful fate, she stalks the Rogue Isles seeking purpose, power, and some way to finally relieve her seething rage. However, given her short fuse, this mostly results in other people finding some way to upset her, and Crisis spends a great deal of time simply being violent.
At her core, Crisis is confused and hurt, betrayed by everything she ever knew. Deep down, she's vulnerable, and afraid of the world which is far more cruel than she could have ever imagined. This delicate core is wrapped in her shell of fury, however, and she further overcompensates for the matter by throwing herself headlong into her life of villainy, enacting terrible acts of destruction and cruelty in an effort to further erode away her own humanity and wrap herself in a comfortingly hollow abyss.
Despite all of this, some fragments of the woman she once was still exist within Crisis, even if she'd never admit it. Most observable is a sense of humour. Even after literal years of torture, Crisis laughs easily (when she isn't TOO angry), although the things she finds funny are sometimes rather morbid or dark. More deep down, however, is the hopeful and naive girl that just wants to be proven wrong, and shown the world isn't such a bad place. To this end, she often argues with heroes in the neutral territory of Pocket D, ostensibly under the desire to convert them to villainy and strike back against her former home.
Contrary to this, Crisis loathes to be reminded of her fleeting humanity, growing even more angry and violent than usual if confronted by it. In particular, hearing the names of her past life, Sarah, or Blue, will turn Crisis into a firestorm of rage, which rarely passes before she has exacted terrible violence (although not necessarily on those that confront her).
At rest, Crisis is often brooding and quietly irritated, which is as close to happy as she ever seems to come. During these down times, she often pursues slightly more constructive goals, such as exploring her powers or seeking upgrades for her battered body. Although Crisis maintains a large selection of interchangeable mechanical parts, including arms, legs, and body armour, she often cultivates her more inhuman, robotic appearance, seeming to enjoy the fear and discomfort it brings others. Occasionally, she has been known to try and appear more human, even trying to pass in normal society, however these experiments usually end in frustration as her radical appearance and powers ruin the facade. Crisis also flies into rages when called on this attempt at human behaviour, rather than explain herself.
