Epsilon Phi

Epsilon Phi
Player: @Artificial Stupidity
Origin:	Technology
Archetype:	Scrapper
Security Level:	Confidential
Personal Data
Real Name:	Emily Adams
Known Aliases:	Epsilon Phi, Epsilon, Em
Species:	Human
Age:	22
Height:	5'8"
Weight:	135
Eye Color:	Brown
Hair Color:	Dyed bright red
Biographical Data
Nationality:	American
Occupation:	Hero, part-time secretary
Place of Birth:	Paragon City
Base of Operations:	Paragon City
Marital Status:	Dating Andrew Carrigan
Known Relatives:	Natalie Adams (sister, deceased); Anthony Adams (father); Jake Lowe (cousin)
Known Powers
No superhuman abilities
Known Abilities
Exceptional martial arts skills
Equipment
Set of lightweight but durable armor designed to enhance strength and movement speed
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The Karate Years

Emily Adams was born on February 19th, 1988, in Japan. Her father Anthony was in the U.S. army, and Emily's family spent most of her childhood moving from country to country. Emily was the oldest of two girls; her younger sister, Natalie, was her best friend (and only constant friend) throughout her childhood, and while the sisters often fought, it was never long before they made up again.

Emily's tough personality developed during her early school years as a result of constantly changing schools. At first, Emily found that being the new girl in school made her an easy target for bullies, as she had no friends to defend her; Emily quickly realized that it was better to one-up the bullies to make sure no one messed with her. Emily's tough social stature in grade school made it easier for Natalie, who was more easygoing and prone to bullying; Emily had no qualms about teaching other elementary-school army brats not to mess with her sister. As the older sister, Emily also took it upon herself to make sure that Natalie was doing well in school and making friends.

When Emily was in third grade, she began taking karate lessons whenever she could, eager to get into the boy's sport and prove that she wasn't a wuss, and that she could stand up for herself and Natalie. Karate grew to be something Emily genuinely loved, and was something that she could pursue no matter where her family was relocated; as the years passed, and Emily grew older, she excelled in it and devoted as much time as she could to her physical studies.

The Rikti War

In 2002, Rikti began appearing in Paragon City, and Anthony was summoned back to the United States to combat the new threat. Emily and her family were left behind in an army base in Germany, where they settled in to avoid as much of the fighting as they could, and waited to hear news of Anthony.

The Rikti War came to a close. Anthony was one of the lucky soldiers who survived the war with only minor injuries, and as soon as he was able he was reunited with his family. The entire Adams family was relocated to the United States, where they spent the next couple of years being shuttled from city to city as Anthony assisted with post-war efforts in cities that had been struck hard by the Rikti.

Finally, in November 2004, after two more long years of service, Anthony retired from the military, and brought his family to Paragon City to establish a permanent residence. Emily and Natalie were enrolled in the local high school, and began the task once more of settling in and making new friends.

Tragedy

On a cold night in March 2005, Emily went to a party with high school friends in King's Row. She brought Natalie along so that she could introduce Natalie to her new friends, hoping that it would help Natalie find a niche in their new school. It was a typical high school party: loud and rowdy, with teens of all ages and more than a little drugs and alcohol available. While neither of the girls was a part of the drug scene, Emily seemed to fit in better with those who were; but Natalie found the company too intimidating, and after an hour or so of lurking in corners and trying to avoid being noticed, Natalie slipped out of the party alone without telling Emily, intending to take the Yellow Line home.

Several hours later, as the party was winding down, Emily went to collect Natalie so they could head home. After a great deal of searching, and after determining that no one had seen Natalie leave with anyone else, Emily gathered her courage and called home. When her father answered the phone, Emily's heart sank, and she asked if Natalie was there. But Natalie had never made it home. Emily was forced to admit where she and Natalie had been that night, and in a panic, Emily's parents immediately called the police, who began searching for Natalie.

The search lasted all night. Early in the morning, in the pre-dawn grey light, a policeman found Natalie's body stuffed behind a garbage dumpster in an alley in King's Row. Her body was bruised, and her clothes were ruined; it didn't take investigators long to come to the conclusion that Natalie had been mugged and raped before being strangled to death.

Natalie's death left Emily devastated; the one constant companion that Emily had ever had was now gone. In her grief, Emily drew away from everyone, abandoning all the connections she had worked so hard to make at school. Her grades plummeted. The only thing that mattered to Emily, anymore, was her karate.

The MMA Years

It was entirely by accident that Emily stumbled upon a local mixed martial arts school in Paragon several months after Natalie's death. The building's front window had a large advertisement for self-defense classes, and Emily couldn't help but think that Natalie might still be alive if she had even a fraction of the martial arts training that Emily had. And even though Emily had no need for more self-defense training, she found herself pulling open the door and stepping inside.

While the self-defense class that Emily enrolled in taught little of the physical elegance that she was used to with her smooth and well-practiced karate moves, Emily found that her knowledge of martial arts was greatly improved by delving into mixed martial arts. As the class progressed, and as Emily branched out into other classes that the MMA school offered, she began adding skills such as kickboxing, Muay Thai, and ground fighting to her repertoire.

The nearly constant physical practice gave Emily a respite from the grief that was beginning to control her life. As her parents became more protective, wanting to keep their only remaining daughter safe, Emily rebelled, spending more and more time away from home practicing kicks and punches and footwork.

Emily managed to graduate from high school by the skin of her teeth, and to her parents' disappointment and frustration made no arrangements to continue into higher education. Freed from the necessity of attending classes, she began spending even more time at the MMA school.

Epiphany

As the years passed, Emily's grief slowly morphed into anger. Though the police had found Natalie's murderer only weeks after her death, and the man had been already been convicted and sentenced, Emily didn't feel as though the problem had been resolved. With crime so prevalent in Paragon City, even despite the efforts of the PPD and the local heroes, there was no guarantee that other innocent girls wouldn't meet the same fate as Natalie.

One evening early in summer, as a sweaty and exhausted Emily was beginning her trip home from the MMA school just after dark, she heard shouting and the sounds of a scuffle coming from a an alley nearby. For a moment Emily froze, wondering whether she should call the cops...and then she heard a young woman cry out, and all other thoughts left Emily's head. She rushed around the corner and into the alley to find a young man wearing a Skulls' mask, threatening the girl with a switchblade. Before anyone had any time to think, Emily launched herself at the Skull, and aimed a devastating Muay Thai kick at his thigh, which caught him off guard and brought him crashing to the ground in pain. Putting even more of her MMA skills into practice, Emily managed to grapple him into a submission hold, and yelled at the stunned young woman to get help. The young woman gathered herself together and took off running down the alley. When the police arrived, only minutes later, they were able to take the thug into custody, and the young woman was safe and still unharmed. Emily was hailed as a hero.

The entire situation made Emily think. She hadn't been able to protect Natalie, the night she was killed. But she had saved that young woman in the alley, a total stranger, from almost certain death. Who was to say that Emily didn't have the skills to keep others safe on the streets, to protect other young women from the same fate as Natalie's? What use were her martial arts skills, anyhow, if she didn't ever actually use them?

Emily's main problem, she decided, was that she wasn't superhuman. She wasn't a mutant, she didn't have any magical knowledge, she didn't have any special powers...She didn't have anything, in fact, except her martial arts skills. These skills would be advantageous in a hand-to-hand fight, but she didn't have any protection at all against ranged attacks, and her defenses were limited to blocking and avoiding martial arts attacks.

To help solve this problem, Emily turned to her cousin, Jake Lowe, a medical engineer who built artificial limbs during his day job and dabbled in building robots and powered armor in his spare time. Eager to help, Jake built Emily a crude but effective set of light armor that would be able to withstand most kinds of attacks, including bullets, and would also enhance her movements. In this armor, she could hit harder, run faster, and jump higher than ever before.

Sidekick

Equipped with her new set of armor, Emily went straight to City Hall in Atlas Park to register as a hero. There, she chose the name that would stick with her throughout her career. She chose a name that would have meant something to Natalie, who had begun studying Greek the fall before she died: Epsilon Phi, the two letters in a Greek word that Emily felt symbolized her search for justice after Natalie's death.

The newly-appointed hero Epsilon Phi quickly found that as skilled as she was in martial arts, she knew next to nothing about being a hero, and little more about how to use her new armor. To help ease her transition into a new career, Hero Corps assigned her to be sidekick to a hero who'd been in the business long enough to show her the ropes. And so she was introduced to a robot by the name of MX-2000, who, being mechanical himself, was perfectly eligible to help her learn how her technological armor worked.

Running into MX-2000 one day in Pocket D, to which Emily now had easy access as a hero, Emily was shocked to discover that MX-2000 was not, in fact, a robot. Instead, he was a scrawny seventeen-year-old boy named Will Carrigan who had stolen his father's suit of armor to moonlight as a hero. Despite his young age, Will was a technological genius, and a good mentor as a hero.

Friends and Family

Andrew Carrigan:

Mx-2000:

OOC Notes

Emily knows snippets of multiple languages, including Japanese, German, French, Farsi, and Afrikaans, though she speaks none of them fluently.

Emily Adams has a Facebook page, and can be followed on Twitter as @Bromily.