Emo Catgirl
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| [[Image:|300px|]] | |
| Emo Catgirl | |
| Player: @jchinds | |
| Origin: | Mutation |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 40 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Claire Pachowski |
| Known Aliases: | Claire-head (given to her by her brother) |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 14 |
| Height: | 4"9" |
| Weight: | 90 pounds |
| Eye Color: | brown |
| Hair Color: | black |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | student, blogger |
| Place of Birth: | Crown Memorial Medical Center, Kings Row |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City, RI |
| Marital Status: | single |
| Known Relatives: | Tommy Pachowski (brother), Mary Torricone-Pachowski (mother), Phil Pachowski (father, deceased) |
| Known Powers | |
| modified Tsoo fighting claws, invisibility, regeneration | |
| Known Abilities | |
| grumbling, complaining, being sneaky | |
| Equipment | |
| modified Tsoo fighting claws, dataglasses | |
| ' | |
Little is officially known of this young hero who is a member of the Young Phalanx, but it's rumored that she's neither truly emo nor a real catgirl.
Contents |
Affiliations
Personality
She's pretty much a normal girl as far as personality is concerned. At her age, she tends to imitate bits and pieces of other peoples' personalities who she admires to try to gain their favor. She also has a sneaky side to her, which caused her to get into very serious trouble. In her hero persona, she thinks she's being detached and professional but instead grates on her teammates' nerves by pronouncing things "boring" or "troublesome."
Powers
Primary Set
Claws: Emo Catgirl has a set of highly-modified Tsoo fighting claws. She stole them from her brother Tommy's workshop before he was done fully customizing them. He'd attached a miniature hydraulic system to the claws to help them extend and retract quickly as well as power the ranged "chain claw" attacks she uses when engaging enemies at short distances. The claws have recently been switched to a flat katar-style blade. Her fighting style is based off of Back Yard Boom's catch-all "boxing" style that he learned from Back Alley Brawler, but she also combined it with some gymnastic skill she learned at local YMCA classes. The result is a straightforward fighting style with near-catlike graceful hunting movements.
Secondary Set
Regeneration: Emo Catgirl regenerates destroyed cells at phenomenal speeds, leading her to worry as to whether or not she can truly die from old age, disease, or other normal means. This power was foisted upon her when she was accidentally drenched by a chemical mixture normally injected in small amounts into the Council's Cor Leonis troops.
Additional Powers
Travel
Leaping: The Cor Leonis chemical bath she endured also strengthened her muscles considerably, allowing her to leap great distances. She combines this with her gymnastic skills to avoid enemy attacks as well.
Power Pool
Invisibility: The power to disappear from view is Emo Catgirl's only inborn mutant power. In addition to becoming invisible, she can also suppress her scent and natural body sounds such as footsteps and heartbeat in order sneak past enemies. This also allows her to sneak into her older brother's room and look through his stuff when he's busy elsewhere in the apartment.
Abilities
As a junior-high student, Emo Catgirl has no real trade skills. She does, however have a rather popular blog dealing with hero gossip and her electronic tip jar has quite a few regular contributors. She also puts up pictures of her with her teammates in the Young Phalanx as well as photos she can get with other heroes. Information-gathering is quickly becoming a marketable skill for this young lady. (Requests for "au naturel" pictures are routinely forwarded to the FBI, as she states very clearly that she's underage.)
Weaknesses and Limitations
Emo Catgirl is limited by the regular host of limitations put on middle-school students as well as non-school restrictions imposed by her mother. Her major weakness is cuteness: kittens, puppies, babies, stuffed toy animals, teen idols. She can also be distracted by anyone talking smack about her favorite manga and comic book characters.
Equipment
Modified Tiger Enforcer Claws: As above, these claws were stripped from a Tsoo Enforcer by Back Yard Boom. He was in the middle of modifying them with a hydraulic system when Emo Catgirl stole them from his workbench. Before she admitted to stealing them, she had trouble keeping the red hydraulic fluid from leaking out of the frames. The compression bandages she wore to keep the claws on her hands and wrists were soon stained at the major leak points, making it look like she had freshly slashed her wrists. (This was a major reason the "Emo" part of her name stuck.)
Dataglasses: This pair of sunglasses is similar to the dataglasses worn by Back Yard Boom, allowing her to access all kinds of information quickly. It uses voice access from a microphone taped to the jaw to call up various keywords and reacts to her eye movement when providing data to its wearer.
Character History
Claire Pachowski was born in May of 1994 to Phil and Mary Pachowski in Kings Row. She grew up in a normal family until the incident which took her brother Tommy's arms. (See Back Yard Boom's page for details.) After her brother's injury, she began to feel ignored by her parents as they traveled back and forth while new cybernetic arms were being fitted for her brother. When she discovered she could turn invisible at will, she kept it a secret. Claire would use this power to sneak into her brother's room and read all of his emails to his girlfriend as well as frame him for downloading porn. Her greatest feat at the time was sneaking unannounced into the Young Phalanx headquarters and stealing a pair of claws her brother took from a Tiger Enforcer. She also used it to follow her brother on his crimefighting cases. This last part got her into the most trouble of her life.
While the Young Phalanx was investigating a new Council base, Claire followed Back Yard Boom through a medical lab being used to create Cor Leonis soldiers. A Nebula soldier shot at her brother and missed him completely, but his bullets struck a canister of the body-enhancing chemicals used in the creation process. The invisible young tagalong soon found herself covered head-to-toe with this mutagenic chemical designed to increase healing rates. When combined with the hormonal changes of puberty and Claire's naturally-mutated DNA, her genetic structure changed to allow cells to repair or replace themselves nearly instantly. When she picked herself up from the floor, she decided to go home and shower the chemicals off of her body. Claire didn't realize she had also willed herself visible again until she was shot through the chest by another Council soldier. She slumped to the ground, quite dead as the gunshot destroyed her aorta and the top two chambers of her heart. Fifteen seconds later, she awoke fully healed by her new powers and proceeded to blindly lash out at the soldier who shot her. He got too close in trying to figure out why a little girl was in their medlab and received multiple stab wounds to his lungs as well as a severed artery. The Nebula Marksman slumped over Claire's body, dead in a more permanent sense than Claire. She began to realize quickly that she might not be able to be killed, as any cuts she made on her forearms healed as soon as they opened. There wasn't even much scarring. She made her way out of the base and ran back home, sneaking in and hiding under the covers of her bed for a while.
Eventually, Claire decided to use her powers as a registered hero. She wanted a name that no one else would ever expect her to take in order to maintain plausible deniability. It was at that point when a catgirl leapt past her window while pursuing a member of the Skulls gang.
Claire rummaged through her closet for a slapdash costume. She found a purple wig and some white body paint she took after a school play ended and some fake cat ears from an old Halloween costume. Then she combined it with a costume she was making so she could enter the Paragon Anime Festival's costume contest. Still, she needed a name. She went to the internet for help, looking for something that people knew she disliked.
She found a perfect webpage that mocked the whole "emo kid" phenomenon. So, she combined the two and became Emo Catgirl, Avenger of Sadness! She quickly ran off to the Hero Registration center in Galaxy City, and the stories of the emo kid with claws began.
Recently, Claire's real identity was revealed to the public through the leaking of the private records of Soaring Valor. As such, she has been removed from school to prevent a media circus at Roger Williams Middle School, and now is currently being homeschooled to finish up the semester.
Rogues Gallery
In her short career, Emo Catgirl has had major fights and feuds with a number of criminals, many of whom are just about her age.
The Advanced Placement Cheerleader Squad: This group of pink-clad overachievers were the popular girls at Roger Williams Middle School, though no one was entirely sure why. Led by Becky Omega, a mind-breaking Dominator, this school acted as the personal enforcers to Vice-Principal Johnson. The Squad members were Libbi Thorsdottir (a Brute with superstrength), Amber and Kimber Sherman (twins, both knife-wielding Stalkers), Angi Adams (a fire-using Corruptor), Molli Myers (an Electricity-manipulating Corruptor) and Tami Timmermann (a cheerleader with her own robot army). Once Vice-Principal Witherspoon was exposed as a Malta agent, the Squad was broken up and sent to numerous reform schools or mental hospitals after the nasty revenge taken by Claire.
Chauncey, Steve-O, and Brad: this group of Trolls found themselves on the wrong side of Emo Catgirl's claws during a Supa Troll rave. As she fought the horde of Supa Trolls, this trio of an Ogre and two Jutals made some of the worst "yo mama" jokes that Claire ever heard. To make it worse, all three of them came from very wealthy families. The thought of these three spoiled brats abusing all the money and privilege handed to them made her blind with rage, and she attacked the three of them viciously. It took a nearby team of heroes to pull her off of Chauncey after he admitted he could get into nearby Brown University just because his mother was a professor there. She never cared that other people might have more than her, but people who abused their privileges without any appreciation for how they got them made her very very mad.
Trivia
Claire is a huge fan of the Naruto manga, with her favorite character being Shikamaru, the "gifted slacker" ninja. She tends to use some of his more regular complaints. (Only a detailed telepathic interrogation would reveal the secret crush she has on this fictional character.) Her favorite female ninja in the manga is Mitarashi Anko, the brash and obnoxious teacher. However, the only costume from the manga or its associated tv show that was flattering to her is that of Tenten, though puberty's capricious hand has been making Tsunade's costumes more and more appropriate.
Her favorite tv show is rumored to be "Happy Pony Rainbow Squad: The Midnight Directive." This is the show's description from the television fan website "What's On In Paragon:"
"Happy Pony Rainbow Squad: The Midnight Directive" (Cartoon, 2006, 35+ episodes, ongoing)
Happy Pony Rainbow Squad broke away from the Malta Group when it was decided that everyone would wear dark blue. Agents Starshine 0-1-2, Butter Brickle Alpha and Contessa von Candyfloss realized that without friendship and bright primary colors, the Malta Group would never achieve its goal of making the world safe for the Malta Group. Gathering a team of fellow equine commandos such as Sundrop Echo Two, Misty Moonlight Phi and Rain Dancer 1-1-3, the Happy Pony Rainbow Squad will make the world safe for friendship and fun.
Or they'll die trying."
Emo Catgirl is also a huge fan of Soaring Valor's weekly newspaper column "Uncommon Valor."
