Dana Frost
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| Dana Cordelia Frost | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Brute |
| Threat Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Dana Frost |
| Known Aliases: | Vermillion Crush, Mu |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 25 |
| Height: | 5'4 |
| Weight: | 121 lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Blue |
| Hair Color: | Dark Red |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Irish |
| Occupation: | Lead Singer of the Shades of Grey |
| Place of Birth: | Ireland |
| Base of Operations: | Talos Island, Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Engaged to Julia Lathan |
| Known Relatives: | Dr. Jocelyn Frost (Older Sister) |
| Known Powers | |
| Ritualistic and Technological Magic, Energy Manipulation specialty | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Martial Arts training, paramilitary training | |
| Equipment | |
| Tricorder (Invented by Dr. J. Frost, allows for quick clothing changes, as well as emergency healing both personal and friendly) | |
| No additional information available. | |
The character Dana Frost originally came from her player's spontaneous urge to try out a Energy Melee/Energy Aura Brute after watching Dragon's Fang in several missions. At the time, Dana's player (PoDana) was playing Dana's older sister, Jocelyn Frost, and so decided to make the new brute the doctor's younger sister. The original concept was a bratty, snot-nosed sixteen year old girl with a major grudge against her older sister and a heavy punk/goth look. This concept weathered a full two weeks before PoDana realized the sets were fun to play and completely tweaked Dana's concept into what we have today.
Contents |
Personality
Dana has always been a free spirit with a natural inclination to always tell people exactly what she thinks without filtering it through her own personal censors first. She is usually blunt and to the point, but has enough social skill to do this in a way that's (usually) neither offensive or degrading. Stacked atop this, she's a fiery redhead. Extremely passionate, Dana never goes half-way on anything, it's all or nothing to her and this facet of her personality pervades everything else about her.
Naturally charismatic, Dana quickly finds herself in large groups whenever she enters the social scene. She's friendly, honest, and tries to make everyone feel as if they're special even if just in some small way. She does have a temper, but it's incredibly difficult to provoke and she's rather good at taking nearly anything said to her and rolling with it.
She's fiercely protective of her family and the small circle of close friends she's developed over the years. Said to be wolf-like, Dana's very territorial with a very strong motherly instinct. She also incredibly despises psychics and any that mentally touch her or her family and close friends, and has been known to turn violent on psychics that didn't take the hint to stop.
Dana's major flaw is that she has a rather large self image issue. Due to the events of her past, she doesn't view herself as good enough for anything that she comes across. Constantly striving to make herself better but never believing she's come far enough, Dana can reach self-destructive levels of self improvement. Similarly, she rarely shares her personal problems with anyone else because she doesn't want to appear weak and worse than she already is. Reputation is something she cares about highly for this very reason, and so she goes out of her way to keep her reputation of a strong and vibrant woman clear.
Powers
Where as the rest of Dana's immediate family were technological geniuses, she herself didn't take to it nearly as well as her sister. It wasn't until early in her High School career that she discovered that her natural predilection was towards magic and the arcane arts. Many years later, she discovered this is due to the fact that the Mu legacy runs strongly in her family's blood.
Magic
Ever since she first learned that this is what she was good at, Dana strove to learn as much about magic as she could. The world of the arcane fascinated her like nothing else, and she caught on remarkably quick due to her blood calling to the arts. She mastered them quickly, but never really put them to use. To her, simply knowing how to use them was enough. After the Rikti Invasion, that dynamic changed quickly. She decided that simply knowing it wasn't enough, that she should then put the knowledge to use in protecting those she could. Most immediately, her only remaining immediate family, Jocelyn.
Since she studied generally, she's no stranger to ritualistic magic. Due to this, there's no limit to what she can actually do with the right ritual, so long as she's willing to pay the price, has the resources, and has the time. Fortunately, she's researched enough to know that the price for anything beyond small actions or effects is exponential and in most cases far, far too high.
She's combined her knowledge and skills with ritualistic magic and knowledge of science and the technological wonders of the modern day to form a form of magic she's the most at home with. She playfully calls it technomancy. She does this by building or tinkering with things that she envisions in her head an them using them. Interestingly enough, the devices and gadgets are incredibly difficult to use on their own, as they more or less simply don't work. However, since she built it with both her magic and the technological know-how, her own personal magic flows through the circuits and devices, enabling her to use them freely and in ways that conceivably no sense to anyone but her. She's not entirely aware that they only work because of her magic, convinced that she's just good enough to build gadgets like her sister. It's a self delusion that no one's cared to pull her out of.
Energy Manipulation
Learning very early on in her arcane career that she held a very personal resonance to the energies of the world, Dana chose that to be her one real focus. It took a while for her to be able to effect energies enough to really prove at all useful, as she had to do everything in drawn out rituals at first. Eventually, though, once she'd learned almost everything she could about magic and the energies, she began practicing her specialization. She began preparing the rituals beforehand so that all she needed to do was speak one or two more words or hum the last part of the mantra before the spell would take effect. It was through this that her combat skills came into light.
Physical Training
In her family, Jocelyn was the brainy one and Dana was the physical one. Where Jocelyn was shooting through the grade levels like some ballistic adolescent, Dana spent what free time she could find doing various physical activities like stage crew, soccer, track and field, dance, gymnastics, et cetera. You couldn't say that she was unfit, because she kept herself in the very best shape she could (with allowances for the time she spent on her studies, of course).
Through various circumstances and experiences, Dana began learning various fighting and defensive forms.
Fighting Style
Now, Dana fights with a style completely her own. It's more a dance than an actual fighting style, beautiful and graceful, highly dangerous. Mostly an offensive style of fighting, she focuses on avoiding attacks and taking her opponent down before they can attack her very much. She's practiced with her energy manipulate and fine tuned it so strongly that she incorporates it into her style, and some would say she created this style specifically around it.
When she fights, she 'ignites' her forearms (as she'll say) in a way very reminiscent of lightsabers. Her limbs glow a deep, pulsing crimson that emit a crackling just beyond hearing. She sweeps and thrusts with her arms, usually open palmed, and has such fine tuned control over the energy she's emitting that she can raise or decrease its potency in an instant. This keeps her from dealing more damage to a target than she means to, meaning that it makes it so she doesn't kill anyone or have such a habit of lopping of limbs like the Jedi you'll see.
Within the last number of months she's taken to incorporating the martial arts she's been learning into her fighting style. Now, she won't only use her arms, occasionally lashing out with a strong kick and igniting her leg just before impact.
Her defenses are shields she wraps around herself to deflect anything that can connect with her complicated and unpredictable ducking, spinning, and weaving.
Vulnerabilities
Underneath all of the magic and behind the facade of a coiled snake, Dana is very much the petite woman. While she's trained heavily, she simply can't change how her body is built. She's from a long line of scientists and similar, just not physically built for the front lines. This would be why she has to avoid being hit so avidly, for if someone does make contact, there's a high probability it'd only take one or two blows to take her out of the fight.
Due to her ritualistic magic, it's not immediate. Even her combat magic she has to focus on before entering the fray to conjure up, which can take anywhere between five and twenty seconds.
On top of that, her mind is highly vulnerable to psychic attacks. She's not entirely aware of just how vulnerable she is, but she knows from experience that it's bad when someone penetrates her shield. She has incredible willpower, and could fight off most compulsions, but straight on attacks or probing go nearly unresisted if they can get past the shields that awoke when she started learning how to control the magical legacy in her blood.
Character History
Dana Cordelia Frost was born on October 15th, 1981 in a Dublin, Ireland to mother Dr. Bianca Frost and father Dr. Sheridon Frost. At the age of three, her family left Dublin and moved to Portland, Oregon for four years, due to her mother and father deciding to start their own electronics company in the United States. After the company (Frost Industries) took flight due to creating and selling equipment that was made based on the advanced technology that heroes across the country were using modified for civilian use, the family decided to make its home in Paragon City.
Through her childhood, Dana was always interested in the arts and physical activity. She took dance and piano lesson, learned to sing from professionals. She played soccer, ran track and field, practiced gymnastics. She did everything she could to keep active and busy, loving everything that her body could do and constantly trying to get better and better at it.
Dana's parents were strict Catholics, and nearly as strict about their belief that science should continue running in the family. The Frost sisters were practically born with a wrench in their hands. They were taught all about mechanics, mathematics, cybernetics, et cetera from the day they could read, so it's no wonder why Dana's older sister, by four years, was a regular prodigy. She flourished under the attention and the teachings, and was attending college by the age of fifteen. Dana, on the other hand, had to struggle to grasp the concepts taught to her and very quickly fell behind.
Religion was a large part of the family. When they moved to Paragon City, both of the sisters were enrolled in Sister Mary's All Girls Catholic School, a school that taught grades K-12. Dana, while being very religious herself, bucked under the strict system of the school and striving to keep up with the legacy Jocelyn left behind, becoming very rebellious as she started hitting puberty. She and her friends would cause trouble whenever and where ever they could, pulling pranks and constantly getting sent in for disciplinary measures. This never quelled Dana's spirit, however, and only served to entice it out further.
The Frost family was housed in Baumton, blocks away from the Frost Industries headquarters where Dana got her first job as a lab assistant to none other than her older sister at the age of sixteen. It was during one of the work days that the Rikti invaded Paragon City. Dana and Jocelyn were working alone in their lab when the explosions started. Not too long after, a Rikti came bursting through the door, blaster lowered on Jocelyn since Dana had been rummaging through the cabinets at Jocelyn's feet for something while her sister worked on some delicate machinery. Panicked, Dana told Jocelyn to take cover because she was going to charge the Rikti, but Jocelyn refused, telling her it was a stupid idea and just to stay still and that it'd be all over shortly. Dana, being the impulsive, passionate, protective, and rebellious youth that she was, ignored her sister's words and got ready to charge the Rikti as it moved around the counters. Just before Dana pushed off, Jocelyn hit her with the gadget she'd been working on, a safer version of a taser smaller than a cell phone. Dana went out.
It turned out that Dana's parents had been at a press release for one of their newest gadgets at the time of the attack, and were killed instantly when the bombing began. The only thing that saved the Frost sisters was Jocelyn's prototype Holographic Jaunt System (HJS), a system which teleported the user into a safe, near impenetrable stasis tube and left a hologram in their place. As Jocelyn didn't have access to her parent's funding, she'd been renting out space in a Crey Industries lab in Steel Canyon, and thus the sisters were shunted there just before the Rikti teleported out and the building caved in.
Jocelyn and Dana Frost reappeared in Paragon City after three years which no one could find out about. Jocelyn was an employee for Crey Industry's civilian department, working on developing a powered suit for excavations and cave ins. Dana picked up the odd job here and there, unable to hold down a solid job for very long due to not having anything beyond a high school diploma. Mostly, she stayed at home and took care of her older sister, who'd become incredibly absent minded and absorbed in any work she took to, to the point of forgetting to eat or sleep. Dana stepped into a mother's place, taking care of the apartment, cooking all the food, cleaning, watching after Jocelyn, earning what money she could to help take the burden off of her sister.
This went on for a year until Jocelyn discovered that the powered suit she'd spent so much time on was being converted into what they called a Power Tank behind her back. Jocelyn quit Crey Industries immediately, taking what research she could with her, and began searching for another job. This brought tough times upon the sisters, as money was scarce. Their parents had been incredibly wealthy, but neither of them had wanted to surface as their heirs to the family for fear of what may happen after being gone so long.
Then Jocelyn was hired by the Malta Group, immediately instated as the head of Research and Development in their newest branch, and paid a healthy sum. The sisters had been going a week without food, and so had little choice in the matter. The job came with a scenery change, sending Jocelyn to the Etoile, or Rogue Isles, with Dana following in her wake to take care of her. Longbow caught wind of this, noticed that the Frost sisters had been hiding out, working for Crey, and now Malta, and black listed the sisters. Their bank accounts were frozen, their family land and money revoked, and they were practically exiled from Paragon City due to an order for their arrest the moment they were seen.
Jocelyn worked for Malta for only two months before not being able to take it anymore and quitting. As she left, she detonated their loading bay where all of their titans and equipment were held, crippling the outpost for a short time. During this time, Dana had to resort to criminal means, as all she could do was protect her sister or do a number of less than savory tasks that simply were out of the question. So, she began stealing from the various criminal organizations such as the Council, Family, or Trolls, and selling what she found to dealers. She wasn't proud, but she had to make money somehow.
Not long after Jocelyn had quit Malta, while Dana was at home cooking dinner, the front door to their dilapidated home was kicked in by the Back Alley Brawler who was shouting that he was there to apprehend Dr. Jocelyn Frost of the Malta Group for crimes against the country. Dana's instincts kicked in and she threw herself at the hero and his small squad of Longbow. The fight was long and difficult, laying waste to what could only be loosely called her home, but eventually she was victorious, sending the Brawler back home with a touch of his medicom beacon. She packed up, and when Jocelyn came home, set out to find a new home, this time in Aeon City.
Dana got into many fights. She met a lot of people. She fell in love with some and despised others. She didn't hate easily and she forgave after a while, but the Isles started to take its toll on her. She stopped thinking in 'right and wrong', and started thinking in 'hungry or not', 'safety or no'. The ace up her sleeve was her reputation. She was known as a strong, intelligent, and fast villain, one you didn't want to mess with, and so no one but the heroes did. And they only helped bolster her reputation higher, deflecting and defeating attack after attack from Paragon's finest, names she grew up hearing about.
Various points of note through her villainous career begin with an encounter she had with a certain Ring Mistress from the Carnival of Shadows. Dana had gone in to take the woman down, since she'd been raiding and destroying food stores for weeks, simply so her friends could gorge themselves and then amuse themselves. Dana was rendered unconscious by a psychic attack and awoke with one of the Carnival's masks upon her face. She removed it immediately, but couldn't bring herself to discard it. Slowly, over a week, her mind started to hurt, throb and pound, yearning for the mask to be returned upon her face, pushing her to give in to her urges and have fun. But she resisted. By this point, she'd been hired and brought into the Ivory Tower, a secret society in the Isles, and joined the House of Swords, the military branch. She called up one of the Tower's allies, the leader of Sin Enterprises, and asked for help. She was given a Psionic Dampener to hold back the pain until she could find better help. It didn't work for too long.
This is when Dana met Unchained Melodie for the first time. Dana requested her aid, and Melodie agreed to help. Through a long and perilous time trying to root out and fix Dana, Melodie delved deeper and deeper into Dana's mind, learning just how wide open and vulnerable she is. She also learned that the Mu blood in her family is stronger even yet in Dana, and the blood itself was trying to fight of the foriegn presence of the mask. Melodie eventually severed the link between the mask and Dana's mind, but at a cost. It stripped her of the ability to so much as sense a mind for a month or more. Dana was indebted to her, and since then has been a close friend. To this day, Melodie is the only person Dana's let enter her mind.
In the Ivory Tower, Dana quickly rose in position until she eventually led the House of Swords as Ace. It was whispered that she was one of the best Aces that some of the members had seen, but Dana didn't care. She didn't want to command, she'd only taken the spot because no one else would and she was personally asked to. When the Tower began its cloning program, and then began instating members in positions outside of the Houses that granted them more power than even the Aces themselves, and when the House of Swords was slowly being strangled with all rights and power slowly sapped away and fed to other Houses, Dana left the Tower.
During her time in the Etoile, Dana had sang for a few friends off and on after it was leaked that she had had lessons as a child. After these small performances, her friends pressed to her that she should start a band and kept urging her to do so. The idea had taken root, and not much later did she start to search for members within the ranks of the heroes and villains that frequented the nightclub known as Pocket D. She named her band the Shades of Gray, after the fact that it was comprised completely of heroes and villains who were neither good nor evil, for she didn't believe anyone was one or the other. After her band had been formed, and after a falling out with her most recent girlfriend, Dana took the Shades of Gray on tour through Europe. The publicity was raised due to the aid of a friend of hers, Septa Lathan, who'd aired her music so that the populace could hear it. Her tour was highly successful, and three months later, she returned to the Isles.
When she returned, all her friends stated how she'd changed so. No longer angry, but still very modest and not wanting to show her body or wear revealing clothing at all, Dana charged into the social world of the City of Heroes and Villains full bore. No sooner did she reestablish herself than did trouble rear its ugly head, however.
The Zealot
A complicated plot was in the works by the Longbow Agent who was in charge of the Frost Sisters' case file, an Agent Montgomery. It started when a number of Hellions burnt down the last remaining original church in Mercy Island, crucifying the Bishop who'd come visiting from Paragon City upon its doors. This was the same church that Dana attended weekly, and the Bishop was the Priest her family had had ever since they first came to Paragon, so the event hit Dana rather hard. She began investigating, especially since Longbow had arrived on the scene almost immediately and sectioned it off, saying it was their business. She was also suspicious due to the Crey Industries business card found stuffed in the Bishop's mouth.
Dana reported this incident to her sister, who started hacking into various computer databases to find out who Agent Montgomery was and to find more information on the church burning as Longbow was trying to cover it up. As Jocelyn did this, Dana enlisted the help of a number of close friends. She asked Dragon's Hand and Dragon's Fang to investigate Longbow and see if they could learn anything about the event at hand, anyone involved, and anything else suspicious that might be related. She then asked Nebel Sirene to sneak into Crey's headquarters on the Nerva Archipeligo and find and steal any information that may be linked to this happening or the Frost Sisters with the aid of Jocelyn playing overwatch. Julia Lathan (Septa's daughter) was asked to find the Hellions who burnt down the church and find out why they did it, who hired them, and why the card was there. Dana as going to infiltrate the Crey headquarters in Grandville and search for the same thing that Nebel Sirene was with Jocelyn's help as well.
Days before the Frost Sisters infiltrated the Crey installation in Grandville, Dana spoke with Dragon's Hand about the happenings and theories as to the whys when a friend, Stinging Tundra, overheard and decided to impart her own theories. She walked Dana through the twisted landscapes of Tundra's thought processes until she finally expressed that she thought that Longbow had planted the business card and that the Hellions hadn't. This conversation made it click in Dana's mind that Montgomery was the Agent in charge of her and her sister's apprehension.
The infiltrations were a success, mostly. Nebel Sirene found a key to highly complicated encryption software just before it was sent off to a secure location. Dana found a file that detailed Crey's involvement, but it was encrypted by a special piece of software whose key was being sent off to a secure location. However, as Dana was going about her mission, it became apparent that Crey knew she was coming, because they had the files guarded and an alarm sounded before she even got close. Her sister had to teleport in her small array of heavily armed robots to lay down cover fire so Dana could get the information before she and the robots were teleported to safety.
The information, when combined with what Dragon's Hand and Dragon's Fang found out, said that Agent Montgomery was paying Crey Industries, the Hellions, and the Malta Group for assistance in capturing Dana Frost. The files specifically stated he was trying to capture Dana and not her sister. Crey was in this for revenge, as Dana had trodden on their toes rather heavily and they wanted to make an example out of her. As this information was revealed and the scope of the problem was laid out, Dana began to become more paranoid about it all.
Her paranoia proved to be correct. Just over two weeks later, Dana got a phone call from the Black Rose Hospital in Cap au Diable, telling her that her sister had just been brought in, shot through the back by a high caliber weapon, in critical condition. Before the nurse could tell Dana that her sister would survive, Dana dropped her phone and ran from Pocket D, where she'd been hanging out with Julia, Dragon's Hand, Dragon's Fang, and several other of her friends. Julia picked up the phone, asked the nurse to restate what she'd told Dana, and then explained it to everyone else. Considering that Dragon's Hand and Dragon's Fang were in Malta along with Jocelyn and were close family friends as well as knew Dana, the news struck hard. Julia knew exactly where Dana was going, and led the party to find her.
And find her they did. Dana had retraced her steps to the Crey facility in Grandville. She was completely out of her mind with grief and rage, believing that her sister had been killed by Crey. She was pouring everything she had into one last stand against the industry, lashing out with uncontrolled bursts of energy in a deadly yet beautiful way, cutting a wake through the Crey personnel, equipment, and even walls that got in her way as she hunted the sniper. As Julia and friends entered the building, they were met with total devastation. Walls had holes in them where Dana'd simply cut her way through, emitting so much energy that her footprints left scorch marks on the floor. Crey Tanks littered the hallways, cleanly scythed in pieces. The elevators were torn apart.
Down on the bottom floor, the group found Dana in the generator room. The generator was flaming and roaring, clearly in its last stretch and soon to go out with a bang. Dana was straddling a man laying on the ground, pummeling his face and screaming at the top of her lungs in her native Gaelic. She'd long since exausted the energy she had stored in her body, and was just wailing away at the man's face, or what remained, with bare fists. The party dragged the stricken, grieving woman off the body, consoling her, and carried her out of the building just before the generator detonated, leveling the lower floors.
Months past after that event, and nothing else happened. No further moves were made against the Frost Sisters. A Crey representative had a meeting with Agent Montgomery in a small jazz club in New York City, safely away from the troubles in Paragon City, called The Songbird which was owned by a man named Edward Conelly. There, the two spoke in hushed tones about how Crey was breaking the deal they had with Agent Montgomery while the woman on stage, a singer named Cordelia Chase, sang.
Official Pardoning
Dana's goal, her entire time in the Rogue Isles, has been to get back to Paragon City and to clear her family's name. She has a major grudge against the Longbow for how they ruined her and her sister's life with their assumptions and attacks, but knows that she can't solve anything simply by fighting.
She began her plan by working up a high enough profile that the big names would take note, but she was careful not to do anything actually villainous. In her words, she was playing the hero role where heroes are needed most. She was fighting villains, stopping their insidious plots, and making the Isles a better place. But she also had to fend off the members of the Vindicators and Phalanx that came after her and her sister, which only helped her cause.
Her belief was that the only person who could help was the legendary Statesman, and so she was doing everything she could to get him to come and meet her face to face on her own terms. Unfortunately, this meant she had to provoke him, threaten his friends, and ultimately egg him on until he had no other choice. For this, she gathered her friends about her and set off.
The climax of this plan came as a fight in the middle of Atlas Park between Dana and her friends and the Freedom Phalanx. The fight was brutally difficult, and the tides changed so often witnesses should have gotten whiplash. In the end, though, Dana's company was victorious as she lay the final blow that sent Statesman sprawling. While her friends cheered, she went to Statesman and held a hushed conversation with him, explaining why she did what she did and that she had to speak with him. He agreed to meet with her under the terms that it be in Paragon, under guard, and that if he didn't believe her, she come in quietly. She agreed.
He believed her story, as she backed it up with insurmountable evidence, and the Frost family's name was cleared. The Frost Sisters were removed from the Longbow Villain Database, they were set as heroes for holding out against all the odds and continuing the fight, even in the Rogue Isles, while still being attacked by the City they loved and swore to protect. And so the Frost Sisters returned to Paragon City, to rebuild their family once more.
Dana's now attending Paragon City University, currently taking a 24 credit load to pick up the slack in her college career. Come summer term, her credit load will drop to 10, so she can continue on with her band.
Romance
Dana's love life since entering the Isles actually hasn't been somewhat extensive. She was entirely a free spirit at first, with no grounding in gender as she believes that a person's personality is all that matters, but she was fiercely loyal and loved with all her heart. She went through a few serious relationships with Lex Americana, Peerless Girl, and Dark Necrosis. She also had several flings with several other women. Strangely, men never seemed to so much as flirt with her, even though her preference lies mostly towards men.
However, all that is long past now. She's been dating Julia Lathan (Ember Prime), the daughter of Septa Lathan, ever since she came back from her tour back in late September of 2005. On Christmas Day of 2005, Julia Lathan proposed to Dana, who happily accepted. Now, the two are engaged and living together happily. They've recently moved into a new house on Talos Island, and are looking to schedule their wedding for June.
The Lost Years
After the Frost sisters discovered the fate of their parents as well as their home and indeed city, they fled Paragon in hopes to escape the Rikti threat. It was Jocelyn's idea to head to New York City, where their father had a family friend who'd take them in and help keep them safe until the war was over, Dana simply followed because she didn't know what else to do.
In New York, Edward Conelly, an old friend who'd worked with Dr. Sheridon years ago, was rather surprised to see the two daughters of his very recently slain best friend appear at his doorway ragged, hungry, and tired and pleading for shelter. He took them in and gave them a home to stay in, offering anything he could do to help. It took a week for Dana to emerge from her room and speak again. She'd felt completely worthless and helpless because she was unable to save her parents or anyone else. She'd had the abilities, she'd had her magic, but she'd done nothing but run away.
When Dana did emerge again, she pulled Edward aside and asked him if he knew of any way that he could help her in fighting back against the Rikti, since they'd started invading New York City as well. Edward grilled her, asking questions so pointed and direct that they spun Dana in circles, confusing her to the point to where she answered out of reflex without even thinking. The result was Edward agreeing to assist. He asked Dana if she'd accompany him to his office where he'd tell her how he could help. She agreed, and they traveled across town to an office building that Edward owned. During the ride, Edward made a number of phone calls from an odd looking cell phone that Dana couldn't quite place. It was different somehow, but she couldn't say how.
When they arrived, Dana was introduced to a special group of elite freedom fighters whom Edward had called The Avians. They were all normal people who had, for some reason or another, decided that heroes alone wouldn't save them from the Rikti and were working on their own to fight the alien force. There were four of them, now five with the inclusion of Dana. Peregrine is what Edward called himself, explaining that The Avians were a secret group, that they didn't fight for publicity and didn't want any of it, and so they all had code names. The others were Hawk, Raven, and Osprey, Raven a girl about her age while the others were older men. They gave Dana the codename Songbird, and she took on the alias of Cordelia Chase, after a character from one of her favorite television shows.
The Avians trained her heavily in very paramilitary style, teaching her how to fight, how to think, tactics and stealth. And Edward was right, they were good. The papers spun stories about a vigilante group of five normal masked humans who fought the Rikti with such skill and verve that they made the heroes of the New York look bad. They never failed a mission, they never lost a man. Their executions were perfect and flawless, under the leadership of Edward, they fought an uphill but promising battle against the Rikti, even after the War ended.
During this time, Dana had grown attached to Raven. They'd become fast friends, and then more. Dana wasn't entirely sure where her interests lay, but she knew she had feelings for Raven beyond simple friendship. She loved her, and she knew she was going to Hell because of that. The church said so. But she didn't care. Raven shared the same feelings, and the two were always together, always protecting each other.
The Frost sisters stayed in New York City for three years doing this, living under assumed names and living what lives they could scrape together. Dana attended college in her off time, but couldn't devote enough time to it to make it a full time thing or come out with a degree. As the three years came to an end, Edward called The Avians together and told them their time was done, it was time to disband. The group agreed to separate completely, not so much as staying in touch, all going separate directions to separate lives. They didn't want anything to lead back to The Avians, and nothing did. Their final mission was a complete success, they executed it expertly. However, this time, the entire team was lost. Having to lose Raven hit Dana almost as hard as losing her family, but she knew it had to happen and so she just shut it out, bottled it up.
