Everglades Mink
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
| |
| The Everglades' Mink | |
| The Everglades' Mink | |
| Player: @White Nightingale | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 50+3 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Monica Rushmore |
| Known Aliases: | Many established, alternate identities she uses as needed |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 25 |
| Height: | 5'7" |
| Weight: | 140lbs |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Unregistered vigilante, enterpreneur |
| Place of Birth: | Florida |
| Base of Operations: | Paragon City |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | Martin Rushmore (father) |
| Known Powers | |
| None | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Peak-human athlete and martial artist, consummate detective, modern woman of the renaissance | |
| Equipment | |
| An arsenal of accumulated gadgets and vehicles distributed in several safe houses, both in Paragon and elsewhere. | |
| WARNING: "(Partial) End of the World" story. | |
Contents |
Endangered Species
Trained most of her life in martial arts, Monica Rushmore was also a born and bred detective who learned from her father, a retired policeman from Florida's Finest. As the Age of the Superhuman reached its zenith and even the small-time gangs were gradually displaced by super criminal ones like the Trolls and the Outcasts, the all-human policeman was becoming an endangered species, slowly replaced by the Homo Sapiens Superior even within the police forces, who now had "Awakened Divisions" filled with Kheldians. Monica looked up to her father all her life, and she could barely bear how his depression grew each day and pushed him into an early retirement.
She took up his father's legacy, but not in the same route. Human is nothing if not adaptable, and if the "costumed crimefighter" was the new viable step in peacekeeping, then that's what she'd become.
Evolve or Die
The Everglades' Mink, however, soon learned the hard way than even a lifetime of hand-to-hand combat and detective training wasn't enough in a city that was propense to high-scale, metahuman-grade crises. After nearly dying during the second Rikti invasion, she took a time off to further hone herself: Military training with the Hero Corps, self-teaching in a large number of subjects, and (a sadly failed attempt at) training in the more esoteric aspects of martial arts.
Becoming the Mask
Monica soon found out the price of reaching the top of her game as she spent more and more time in costume to the point that Monica Rushmore nearly ceased to exist. She didn't mind, in fact she found the Most Dangerous Game addicting. Doing classified jobs for the Hero Corps paid well enough, and investing said money in several, distributed sources the right way was enough to fund her operations. She also set up a small business she checked up on now and then as Monica Rushmore as a cover.
The Dominant Species
While Mink was addicted to the game and her upbringing as the daughter of a public servant gave her an unshakable moral and ethics base, at her core the main reason that drives her is resentment. She resented metahumans and "what they did to her father," and it's this feeling of competition that constantly pushed her to higher limits. Her personal resources became vast, her contact networks reached as far to give her eyes in several parts of the world and even the smallest corners of Paragon, and she probably ranked among the top non-powered hand-to-hand combatants in the world.
Silent Coyote
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| Silent Coyote (in psychic disguise) | |
| Silent Coyote | |
| Player: | |
| Origin: | Natural |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Stalker |
| Threat Level: | 50+3 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Monica Rushmore |
| Known Aliases: | A wide assortment of psychic disguises complemented by established alternate identities. |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 26 |
| Height: | Confidential |
| Weight: | Confidential |
| Eye Color: | Confidential |
| Hair Color: | Confidential |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | Praetorian |
| Occupation: | Homeland-security agent (Praetoria), full-time supervillain (Primal Earth) |
| Place of Birth: | Florida (Praetorian Earth) |
| Base of Operations: | Nova Praetoria/Primal Earth |
| Marital Status: | Single |
| Known Relatives: | None |
| Known Powers | |
| Mastery of Chi manipulation and the Kuji-In: empath, minor telepah, able to become psychically invisible and create psychic disguises, minor precognition, capable of regenerating, physical and mental self-mastery | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Master of hand-to-hand combat, consummate spy, trained by Praetor Sinclair and Praetorian Ju-sik Jin (Foreshadow) | |
| Equipment | |
| As needed | |
| ' | |
Praetoria.
The emergency broadcast reached operative Rushmore of Project Phoenix too late. When she came back from the Night Ward she found her world in ashes. Depleted nuclear silos suggested Primals seized control of Praetoria's nuclear arsenal and deployed it on population centers. For the first time in over a decade, Silent Coyote shed tears.
Monica Rushmore of Praetoria was taken under the care of a renowed martial arts master and hero of the Hamidon Wars after her father was taken by the Devouring Earth when she was four years old. Master Ju-sik Jin focused little Monica's anger into her training and turned her into a metahuman-grade martial arts prodigy. Monica, however, didn't find real purpose until she was discovered by Praetor Sinclair and recruited into Project Phoenix, where she was turned into the ultimate shinobi*. A firm believer in Emperor Cole's utopia, the test to her loyalty came when she found out her foster parent was an undercover Resistance agent. While Master Jin did everything he could to mend the wounds in Monica's heart, he was never able to quell her anger or rekindle the spark of compassion. When he died at Monica's hands, his final stare was one of concern.
- [*] While Coyote is a ninja and a female, the word "Kunoichi" is not a legitimate term, having been conceived instead by a novelist (the japanese scripture for the word even mixes elements of kanji, hiragana, and katakana, breaking japanese grammar). While "Shinobi" per se doesn't have much meaning on its own either (it's just an alternate spelling of the japanese ideogram for the "nin" in "ninja"), it's perhaps more appropriate to use, as "ninja" usually implies a male because there were no female ninja.
An Eye for an Eye
It is said that even the greatest acomplishments can be destroyed by the smallest people. Now, she was witness.
The dream was no more. Once again, all she had left was revenge.
Two years of building a power base in Primal Earth and a motherload of Intelligence files salvaged from Project Phoenix later, she had all her pieces in place and all the resources she needed to see the enemy's world burn. Not with a bang, however, or not yet at least.
Mirror Match
In order to start fighting the disease rather than the symptoms, The Everglades' Mink eventually moved her game from supercriminals to white-collar criminals, and that's where she eventually got leads on something more dangerous and disturbing. "Something" was moving strings worldwide. A new economic policy in a country, a new trade policy in another, a few changes to NATO's metahuman policies. While most conpiracy theorists entered panic while claiming The Powers That Be were taking advantage of the gross majority of the world's super-powered armies being off-world fighting The Dimensionless to institute a new Dark Age in their absence, Mink managed to piece enough leads and come up with a pattern, one with an even worse prediction: Someone was setting the global regime for a fall, and once all the pieces fell into place, everything would crash, world economy would collapse, and nations would fall.
As Mink's investigation progressed, Coyote eventually noticed her, and started using all of her proxies against her, Coyote's hatred only getting bigger after their first confrontation, when she realized their Chi signatures matched and she had found her Primal Earth "double." First she disgraced Primal Monica in the eyes of her only family by framing her business of money laundering and dealings with The Family, then framed Mink of a series of political murders that marked the begining of the end for the whole Third World.
Mink's one-woman war went on for years, but tried as she might, it seemed as if she was racing the wind itself. For every country she saved from collapse, two more fell, be it politically, economically, or to war (wars Coyote orchestrated).
In an ironic twist of fate, Monica's greatest challenge was to be herself (or her Praetorian self). Furthermore, Coyote not only possessed all of her own training and drive, she also represented what Monica always considered most inimical to her: Metahumans... and her powers happened to come from mystic martial arts, the one area she failed to grasp because of her own deep-rooted prejudice.
It was at this point, however, when she received help from the most unlikely source. Since the end of the Praetorian War, Doppelganger had established himself on Primal Earth and was not ready to see this world (and the power base he was rebuilding) burn too. Furthermore, being the mastermind who trained Praetor Sinclair, Doppelganger had more than a few inklings on the way Coyote's mind worked (in addition to all of Praetoria's intelligence files committed to memory). With Doppelganger's help, Mink managed to anticipate Coyote's moves and sever her from most of her proxies and resources. By the time Mink managed to stop the domino effect, however, a considerable part of the global regime was already in shambles and the nations of Primal Earth were divided.
...and ready for the grand finale.
'Ere the World Crumbles
Coyote's last heartbreak was watching how Emperor Cole had been finally converted by the enemy, and now accompanied them to fight their wars, but she still had Praetoria's parting gift: A full batch of Praetorian Hamidon seeds. Vastly more aggressive and driven than their Primal Earth counterparts, seeds like this were all it took for her native planet to fall. With Primal Earth now divided and its strongest metahumans off-world, by the time they came back from their latest war their world would be long gone.
Then they'd know how it feels.
With Doppelganger gone M.I.A (or dead) during one of their last strikes, Mink was now on her own to face her nemesis, right before the seeds had a chance to hatch. She knew she was endangering herself with the heavy dose of Fixadyne she took for the fight, but the only way to defeat (as opposed to survive) Coyote was to be on her level. It was potentially the last sacrifice, but then The Everglades' Mink was already a wanted criminal world wide, and her dad was gone too, having died saving her life months ago the time she tried clearing the money-laundering charges (her goal of making peace back with him, however, was achieved). It's not like she expected to reach old age anyway.
The best she could achieve was being on Coyote's fighting level, but in the end Mink proved to be more resourceful, bringing about Coyote's demise (and her own) with the destruction of the facility used to hatch the seedlings, which delayed the hatching process long enough to be destroyed by the now-returning champions of Primal Earth. Most of the last Hamidon Seedlings ironically destroyed by the new Statesman, Marcus Cole of Praetoria.
Paragon City is a city of heroes. Unfortunately, not all of them are celebrated loudly.
Friends and Associates
Her old social circle:
- Devanna Jade mixed a great joy d'vivire with the right hints at the secrets game Mink herself played, giving her an affinity to DJ.
- Violacious and her sustained a relationship that eventually crumbled due to both superhero drama and Monica's inability to get over her chronic prejudice towards metahumans. The bad circumstances of their splitting mixed with the group drifting apart was one of the factors that slowly detached her enough emotionally for her to eventually Become the Mask.
- Luna Firespeaker was the "sane" element of the group, even if one of the most troubled.
She worked now and then with Tyrone Hammer and the Alexander Foundation. Mink always had a deep respect for "The Harlem Hammer" as a crime-fighting veteran and contemporary to The Regulators.
Trivia
- The Everglades' mink is an endangered species native to Florida, Monica took up the name as an analogy to the common policeman becoming likewise an "endangered species."
- The coyote is one of the mink's natural predators
- Mink's "theme song" would be "You know my Name" by Chris Cornell, while Coyote's would be "Justified" by Drea.
