Falcongirl
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| I'm the fastest flier in Paragon! No, I'm not shy, go ahead and applaud. | |
| Falcongirl | |
| Player: @Mosquito | |
| Origin: | Technology |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Scrapper |
| Security Level: | 50(+3) |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Miranda Reyes (Secret Identity) |
| Known Aliases: | None |
| Species: | Human |
| Age: | 22 |
| Height: | 5'4" |
| Weight: | ~120lbs. |
| Eye Color: | Brown |
| Hair Color: | Dark Brown |
| Biographical Data | |
| Nationality: | American |
| Occupation: | Waitress, Licensed Superhero |
| Place of Birth: | Paragon City, RI |
| Base of Operations: | Galaxy City district, Paragon City (Currently Kings Row) |
| Marital Status: | Committed Relationship (Petra Reid) |
| Known Relatives: | Allison Drake-Reyes (Mother), Edgar Reyes (Father, Deceased) |
| Known Powers | |
| None naturally - Flight, toughness, and minor super strength provided by armor | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Trained in street fighting, some mechanical skill | |
| Equipment | |
| Anti-gravity wings, strength-enhancing gloves/boots, stun blaster | |
| No additional information available. | |
Contents |
History
Despite being born without powers, Miranda Reyes nevertheless had one advantage in her future career as a super-heroine - her father was the power-armored gunslinger Wanderwing, and eager to see his daughter follow in his footsteps. From a young age, Edgar Reyes trained his daughter to fight, to investigate, to repair and maintain the armor that he hoped she would one day wear. As she grew, though, Miranda lost interest, and began to resent being forced to train for a life of pain and service to a city that barely even recognized her father's contributions. She wasn't going to be some unknown soldier, dying a pointless death in an alley from some... some thug, or demon, or robot. She didn't resent her father, though. He meant well, and when she finally confronted him on the issue, he was disappointed, but agreed to let her live her own life. She moved on to college in Steel Canyon soon after.
Three years later, Galaxy City was destroyed by the Shivans, taking many lives with it, including Wanderwing, who was working damage control in the area. Miranda was there as well, visiting home, and had to make her way through the carnage herself. The destruction, and her father's sacrifice, made an impression on her, causing her to rethink her decision. Finally resolving to give the hero thing a shot in honor of her dad, she visited his workshop, hoping to throw together some armor for herself - only to find that he had long had a suit waiting for her.
Hero Career
Mira started off strong in her new life, helping Atlas Park stabilize after the Galaxy incident of September 2011 forced refugees onto its streets, and villains scrambled to take advantage in the chaos. Before she knew it, she was facing off against psychic homeless, fascist militants, and dark wizards, like any real hero. Membership in Vanguard followed afterwards, giving her the resources to make some minor improvements on her suit. After several months fighting "lesser" threats such as Dr. Vahzilok and Frostfire, she was recruited into a team assaulting the Mother of Mercy Psychiatric Hospital in Praetoria - her first time visiting an alternate dimension. Excited at her first otherworldly adventure, and woefully uninformed and unprepared for the high-threat target, her mind was an open book to Mother Mayhem, and before she knew what was happening she was spouting Praetorian propaganda and beginning to unconsciously hinder her team. After the mission (and a couple follow-up missions to observe her), they forced her to seek help - all but one, a scientist known as Unzari, who simply offered surgical "enhancements" that could shore up her displayed vulnerability. Mira was deemed a security risk, and spent a week in a Vanguard cell, celebrating Christmas Day by seeing her mother for an hour from behind bulletproof glass. She retains a small grudge against Vanguard for that little incident, but on the plus side, has learned to guard her mind a little more closely, and gained the friendship of Unzari, though she trusted the ex-villain about as far as she could throw her.
During an investigation of Crey Industries, Mira flirted with and eventually asked out Jake Simmons, aka the Portia Spider, an ex-Arachnos operative who worked as head of security for Darkside Investigations. The two had met and worked together several times previously, and he had stuck out to Mira as someone who could use a little more fun in his life. His grizzly, muscular exterior, kind but brooding disposition, and status as a flame-throwing, rifle-toting bad-ass didn't hurt, either. Serious and gruff, they were complete opposites.
A few weeks later brought a fight with the insane inventor Professor Jester. Falcongirl was hit with an "age ray" that altered her into an eight-year-old - and yet, thanks to "retro" technology that doesn't have to make sense, it also shrank her armor to size. Her mind was affected as well, meaning that Jake was forced to temporarily shift roles from boyfriend to father figure. At a loss, he was forced to bring little Mira to work. It was during an emergency call from an allied supergroup that the childish Mira met Alex Dutchman, a heroine who was having a bad night after being accused of being too controlling with her robot daughter Sam - literally, programming slight restrictions into her mind. You know, normal hero problems. Sam's "boyfriend", a technopath, blew things out of proportion, and the resulting disturbance was what summoned Jack. All of this went over the little girl's head, however, and she simply enjoyed being her boyfriend/guardian's deputy during the dispute. And then, the two got ice cream! It was Mira offering and retrieving a bowl for Alex, and being a source of comfort during that night, that lead to a deep friendship after being returned to adulthood.
Eventually, a friend - the Black Wight, an icy ghost sorceress - enchanted a necklace to provide resistance to mind-altering effects, which allowed Mira to regain her adult intelligence. Jake's hat was similarly enchanted, as eight-year-old Mira had taken a liking to stealing and wearing it. Despite her remaining age and size handicaps, Mira was determined to continue being a hero, pulling her father's two stun blasters out of storage and using her shrunken armor to become a tiny gunwoman, eventually hunting down Professor Jester and taking his age ray as a trophy, reversing the setting and returning herself to normal. Even grown, she was allowed to keep Jake's hat, which became a semi-permanent addition to her costume, unintentionally taking after her father even more.
Due to her extended time as an eight-year-old, Mira had long lost her waitressing job. Jake was able to eventually hook her up with a position in security at Darkside, alongside him. She proved competent, although often had trouble following orders or staying still for extended periods of time, gaining a reputation for charging headlong into trouble. Perhaps this tendency is why no one, not even Jake himself, initially noticed when Mira was drugged in Pocket D and replaced by a psychotic clone. This clone managed to annoy her coworkers and sleep with Jake before revealing herself - while still in bed with the soldier. Her taunting was ill-advised, as Jake managed to slice her face with a bedside knife for her trouble, blinding her in her left eye and leaving a permanent scar. Jake spent the rest of the night, after the villain fled, searching for his girlfriend, eventually finding her at a hedonistic party thrown by the Carnival of Shadows. Mira had been forced into service as a Harlequin; under the control of her magical mask, she lead Jake on a merry chase through the city before he managed to catch her and tear it off. Mira remains somewhat traumatized by the loss of control she suffered. The Carnival are one of the few villain groups that give her slight pause, and it helped encourage her to wear her new hat even more often.
Falcongirl followed her clone, now dubbed the Shadowfalcon, to the Rogue Isles, where she had begun taking mercenary jobs and occasionally impersonating the heroine. The two fought an epic midair battle, a story Mira loves to relate, that ended with them smashing through the windows of the Golden Giza in St. Martial, a fight ended by throwing a slot machine at the clone's head. Shadowfalcon was arrested and imprisoned, where it was learned that her body was degenerating; she had been taking jobs in order to fund cybernetic enhancements that would slow or halt this cellular decay.
Back in Paragon, Falcongirl underwent some enhancements of her own. She and Jake realized they had a mutual friend, the geneticist Unzari, who had spliced Jake with pyrokinetic powers long before. Now better able to trust the unstable scientist, Mira agreed to pay her friend for an inherent ability to fly, and increased toughness. Despite the subdermal mesh and flight, she continues wearing her armor - her wings allow her greater speed, and the mesh protects only against blunt impacts. The fee for this surgery was rather high; however, it turned out that Shadowfalcon footed the bill, with stolen cash from banks in the Rogue Isles. She had intended to take Mira's place for the surgery, but was discovered beforehand. Thankfully, her payment had already gone through.
Besides a few more encounters with the increasingly-cybernetic Shadowfalcon, most of Falcongirl's career has been fairly typical. She spent time in Hero Heights with Alex, tinkered with her wings to increase her speed, and took occasional endorsements to supplement her wages from Darkside. And then, to her surprise and delight, Jake proposed to her. This period of engagement lasted only days before a mission came up to rescue a coworker from a mutant cult. The plan went off well enough, but when the team activated their teleport beacons to return to their office, Jake's signal was rerouted. He received a bullet in the skull from a coworker, a double agent working against Darkside. He fell into a coma he was never expected to wake from. She refused to allow Aerodin, Darkside's resident doctor, to take him off life support.
Mira was devastated. The next weeks were spent in a drunken haze; her employers understood her woes, and graciously kept her employed, despite her lack of attendance. With time, however, she returned, although she was no longer interested in her actual work so much as searching for Jake's murderer. She threw herself into her hunt, becoming more focused - at least, until lack of sleep simply made her delusional and obsessed. Her health suffered to the point that Alex used the old age ray on her, reverting her to a child simply to give her a period of peace and the blissful ignorance of youth. Months passed.
When Jake's body was stolen, Mira was understandably distressed. She and Darkside set out to find him, Wight using a locator spell to lead the way. Strangely, there were multiple "pings", explained when they arrived at the first location only to find Jake's severed leg. Mira's fiance (though she had by this point convinced herself that they counted as married) had been murdered and chopped up like a piece of meat. Despite this, the group went on a macabre "scavenger hunt" retrieving the pieces of Jake. Luckily, this didn't turn out to be the worst night of Mira's life, as Black Wight managed to magically knit the soldier's corpse together again back at their base and resurrect him. What should have been a happy ending, however, turned sour quickly. For Jake, no time had passed at all, and Mira's sudden overprotective streak and clinginess rubbed him the wrong way. Mira knew she was being completely uncool and out of character, but wasn't able to change her behavior before the two decided to simply split up. Falcongirl left Darkside Investigations behind, focusing all her energy once again on heroism and her flight. Her social life died for some time as she healed. On a more positive note, Mira created an entirely new set of wings, fixed instead of flapping, but smaller and able to fold against her back. They couldn't be used as a physical shield anymore, but they gave her a sleeker look overall, as well as improved her speed and agility.
In January of 2013, Falcongirl met the heroine Phosphorous Bomb, aka Petra Reid, during a battle against a giant Mechataur ravaging Kings Row. The eight-foot-tall exploding lizardwoman made an immediate impression on Mira, and she invited her new friend for an after-fight dinner. The lighthearted chat, seeing Petra in action, and a subconscious desire to distance herself from the pain of Jake, spurred Mira to spontaneously ask the fellow heroine out. She had never been attracted to women before, but Petra was special. Maybe Petra's androgyny helped, maybe it was the hidden pain behind her one slitted eye. No matter the reason, over the next months Mira became happier than she'd been in years.
The couple's first major conflict came when a house - a classic manor - appeared in a clearing in the middle of Perez Park. The two investigated, only to suffer as the playthings of a godlike entity who put them through traumatizing or otherwise-strange visions. They saw each other dead, they both experienced life as quadruple amputees, burdens on their loved ones. Mira's father expressed his disappointment in her, she spent an hour buried alive in a coffin. She experienced being married to an abusive Jake. Petra had a vision of herself as an unmutated human, or conversely, as a carnival sideshow. She experienced her one remaining eye being drilled out by a "surgeon". The entity eventually simply explained what he'd done and let them go, satisfied with the evening's entertainment. The two heroines made it back home and sought comfort in each other, not trusting for days that they were not still in that manor being shown another nightmare.
Later on, both heroines were captured by the villain Dr. Labyrinth, the creator of the Mechataur that had accidentally introduced the two. He put them both, separated, in a large underground maze, filled with traps and robots based on Greek mythology. Mira's speed-based approach to the maze ended with her being sprayed with a hard-drying cement-like agent, turning her into a living statue, the first part thanks only to her blocking her mouth from the spray with an arm. Petra, meanwhile, took the maze slower, even finding the exit and dodging past an upgraded Mechataur to escape. Faced with the chance to just leave, though, she went back in for Mira. Getting past the Mechataur a second time injured her greatly, however, and by the time she found Mira, she was similarly taken by surprise by the Mecha-Medusa that had defeated her. Fortunately, Labyrinth tried to get sinister by freeing them, healing them, and playing mindgames with them - including drugging them both with different gasses, one to increase Petra's aggression and the other Mira's fear - but he was playing against type and unskilled at that particular type of manipulation. The two managed to break out and defeat him.
During a trip to a post-apocalyptic version of Rhode Island, Mira and Petra were placed in the customary "Welcome Pits" and forced to fight to show their worthiness. While Petra went up against a wingless, black-scaled, dragon-like humanoid female named Talla, the Falcongirl fought an armored werewolf Champion of the Pit known as Korloth the Gorefeaster. Both women won their matches, Petra having a battle rough enough that she ended it by dislocating the seemingly-feral dragonoid's jaw and blowing her arm off with a point-blank explosion of energy. The two were hailed as Champions, allowed to pick any weapon they wanted from the prize room. Mira picked a a neat gladius, while Petra got a big axe.
Petra, guilty for the damage she'd done to Talla (whose name she only now learned), Petra asked about her, finding her prognosis to be a rather neutral "ehhh". The one-eyed reptilian's guilt only grew when she learned that Talla fought in the pits to support her three children. The helpful Pit Crew had the kids summoned, and Petra determined to have Talla brought back to Primal Earth for more advanced medical care.
Mira brought in Unzari to help restore Talla's arm and wings (which, they learned, had been removed years previous due to breaking a "no flying" rule in the pits). Over the next week, Mira and Petra became guardians of the trio of dragon children. The oldest, black-scaled 15-year-old Talon, remained suspicious and aloof for the most part (though, as events would show, still a child at heart), while the other two - 12-year-old, red-scaled daughter Glaive, and 6-year-old purple-scaled Rhode - quickly bonded with their surrogate mothers. Mira even taught the two older siblings how to glide.
Coming from the ruins of a dead world, the mutant family was awed by Paragon City. Upon her recovery, Talla left her youngest two children with the hero couple, returning to her world with Talon while Portal Corp worked on the paperwork for her immigration request, hopeful that her children could grow up in a dimension that wouldn't force them to fight for a living.
Mira and Petra had become parents.
Personality
Mira is upbeat, confident, and courageous. Others, however, might focus on the fact that she's also reckless, arrogant, and attention-seeking - but then, they're just jealous. Despite her flaws, she's generally nice enough, even with a tendency to assume her superiority over others and show off. She's fairly competitive, mainly in regards to racing, defending her self-given title of "fastest flier in Paragon City" (she would say "the world", but really, that's just getting cocky). Due to this, she has something of a dislike for the various portals and shortcuts heroes have figured out to navigate the city. She can also be dense or naive, to the point of ridiculousness - once spinning a tale of a fake adventure, and then later being unable to recall whether or not she'd made it up. Her intelligence tends to fluctuate wildly from day to day, even minute to minute, hinting that it's just a case of obfuscating stupidity. Also, unlike her father, she's pretty big on making sure everyone knows how awesome she is - which can be annoying, since she also treats her every accomplishment as the greatest thing ever. More experienced heroes tend to roll their eyes or ignore her when she begins to brag about taking down enemies that, though new to her, have been haunting Paragon for years. She does know a lot more than the average citizen, though; her father used to tell her stories about his adventures, probably sharing a little more than the government would prefer. There's no doubt that she's passionate about being a hero, though. She loves saving people, she loves taking down threats to the city; she just likes being recognized for it. She can tend towards snark and sarcasm.
Behind her image of confidence, however, is a girl worried about failure. She has suffered bouts of depression in the past, where she loses much of her confidence and all of her arrogance, not to mention her sense of humor. Although the wounds have healed, her experiences have left her somewhat more cautious, though most still find her impatient - she can slow down, after all, but she's still faster than the rest of the city.
Among friends, another side of Mira comes out. Though by no means humble, she's far more calm, less taken to bragging. Her intelligence shines through - she is, after all, the one who has maintained and improved on her father's designs, and she's gotten very good at her work, though it's a bit specialized. It also turns out that she can be sweet, supportive, encouraging, and romantic.
Powers & Equipment
Street Justice
Mira has no powers outside of her armor, but she is trained in a haphazard mix of street fighting techniques, specializing in improvisation and unpredictability, and favoring her natural speed and agility rather than her mediocre strength. Still, she is only an average fighter - good, but an expert could tell that her form is sloppy and that she lacks discipline.
Flight
Mira is most proud of the anti-gravity wings securely attached to the back of her armor, her father's design. They allow for incredible speed, which is constantly increasing thanks to her constant tinkering. However, they lack fine control - instant turns and complex maneuvers are difficult, though she is always practicing to perform better. This, naturally, results in a number of crashes, from minor to severe. She is always careful not to damage the wings, though; she lacks the knowledge to completely reconstruct them. Fortunately, her father had several spares in storage. The wings themselves are tough, and the force fields between spines allows the wings to be used as makeshift shields by folding them in front of her. They are connected to a neural interface in her gauntlets that allow her to move the wings or fold them like a cloak when necessary, such as when sitting down or in enclosed spaces.
Mira eventually retired these wings for something more cutting-edge. The new wings are smaller and more compact, folding closer against her back, and are fixed-position rather than the flapping motion of her previous pair. They allow for greater speed and maneuverability, though are no longer useful as shields.
Strength Enhancement
The gloves and boots of the suit also increase her strength, not to true superhuman levels, but enough to cause some damage to the toughest enemies, or to lift the equivalent of a motorcycle. This has affected her combat strategy, which has mostly devolved into "hit things hard, hit things often".
Armor
The armor itself, of course, provides a high level of protection, though most of her head is exposed. Her wings provide an additional layer of defense, as the anti-gravity field they generate can slightly deflect or block attacks, protect her during high-speed flight, and can be supercharged briefly to create a repulsion effect around her; she can extend her wings in front of herself as a simple shield, though this risks actual damage to the wings. Her new wing design cannot manage this flexibility.
LEDs on her boots, gauntlets, shoulderpads, and wings provide amber-hued illumination, but her goggles provide a much more reliable night-vision mode.
More recently, she's added a small smartphone-style computer to her left gauntlet, on the wrist. To her right gauntlet, she has added a small stun blaster based on her father's guns.
The suit can also be transported onto and off her body using either the controls on her left gauntlet, or a special digital watch she built. Transportation involves a blue, holographic wireframe model of the armor either appearing over Mira's body before the actual suit materializes onto her, or the suit dissolving into said wireframe, which fades. This technology provides both a neat visual effect, and a safety precaution to prevent the suit from appearing inside objects or people.
Heavy Armor
Mira also has a suit of heavy armor, based on one of her father's spare suits. While it provides much more protection than her usual armor, including an actual helmet, she rarely wears it, as it is heavy, which slows her down, bulky, which restricts her agility, and, most importantly, is non-air-conditioned.
