Gamma.Girl/GammaBio

From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe

Sixteen years. Sixteen years, Aribella had lived in this house and never seen this room before. Summer was rather boring around the Song mansion and recently Abby had taken to exploring to pass the time. She was becoming more and more astonished that there were several rooms she had never seen before. How can you live in a house for sixteen years and NOT see some of the rooms? Abby thought it was testament to just how self absorbed she had become.

Aribella was spoiled, there was no doubt about that. The Song family fortune was like a living entity. It grew, expanded, mated with other people’s money and then devoured its own offspring. Abby never wanted for a single thing in her life. Everything she had the smallest desire for was instantly given to her. She even got super powers when she hit puberty. She was an Empathy / Radiation Defender, Mutant Origin. She could heal herself and others and fire blasts of green radiation. She thought was totally awesome. There was this guy in the comics that did wild stuff green energy and she always liked him. She was glad her powers were similar, well visually, at least.

Her parents enrolled her in the prestigious Paragon Academy for Young Heroes. She laughed at that. She never really thought about being a “Hero”. You could get hurt and stuff! Maybe she would go into medicine since she was already a healer. That would be cool. She was certainly smart enough to be a doctor.

Abby floated down the hall of the top floor of the Song mansion. She liked floating, or “hovering” as they called it. Pretty soon she’d be able to full-on fly. Sometimes she went the whole day without ever letting her feet touch the ground and even mastered the trick of sleeping in mid-air.

She looked at the closed doors as she passed them. Before this summer, she just had never had a reason to come up to this floor. Everything that she needed or wanted was downstairs and the idea of “just seeing” what was up there never even occurred to her.

The one thing that Aribella found herself wanting, which it seemed her money couldn’t give her, was a real friend. Sure, there were people she liked and she was very popular but that was mostly due to her status and her family’s reputation. Then she met Patty. Patricia Hood was another student at PAY-H who had gotten there through some sort of scholarship or exchange program. She was not wealthy like everyone else there and the other students never let her forget it. But something about her drew Aribella to her. She found herself becoming fast friends with Patty and perhaps even a bit more.

Patty, having come from humble beginnings, opened Abby’s eyes to a lot of things. There were aspects of the world that Abby never knew about or even wondered about and Patty showed them too her. Aribella began to gradually change from a spoiled rich brat, to a person who actually cared about other people. Sure, she probably had that capacity all along, but Patty unlocked it somehow.

With a new spirit of adventure, Aribella began exploring the house she lived in. She started getting curious about what was on the top floor. She went door by door and explored the rooms lining the long hall. Some of them were small and empty while others were like rooms from a museum. Suits of armor, swords, antique clothing and furniture filled them. And a wealth of old documents and records. Aribella learned more about her family from exploring those rooms then she had in sixteen years of conversations with her parents, siblings, and other relatives.

She was a bit excited as she approached the door. It was the last one at the very end of the hall. She opened it slowly and floated in. There was a desk, a bed, and an old trunk. She lifted the lid of the trunk and old magazines tumbled out. She giggled when she looked at them. They were all girly mags! Old ones! Some had dates of 1950’s. Others went up to the early 80’s but others looked very old and were not dated.

Abby noticed something strange. Every time she turned a certain direction, she felt an odd pressure in her body. She tried to follow the sensation and it got more intense as she approached the corner of the room. She looked at the floor and suddenly triggered her healing aura. She hadn’t meant to, it was almost like it activated itself. But as the green energy washed over the floor, a circle appeared in it. It opened, creating a hole in the floor. It was more than large enough for a person to fit through. It looked like there was some kind of chute, going down.

Abby shrugged and thought, “What the heck, why not”?

She lit the way with her radiation and floated down the chute. As it went further and further down, Abby realized it was going below the house, even deeper than the basement. Suddenly she came out into a large chamber. It was too big for her aura to light the whole thing but she heard a soft beeping noise coming from the darkness. As he followed the noise, she began to see the walls of the room. It was like a big cave with rough rock. There seemed to be screens of some sort or decorations. She followed the beeping that lead to what looked like an archaic computer that rose up out of the darkness. There was a single green button the blinked in time with the beeping.

She pushed it.

The entire cave suddenly lit up and came to life. There were computers along the walls a variety of monitors. And there was an emblem… kind of like a logo. It was a circle with a bar above and a bar below.

She had seen that before… somewhere. Then it hit her. Gamma.Man!! That was the symbol of Gamma.Man who had been a Hero in Paragon City from the early 50’s up the 80’s. Then he had just vanished from sight and nobody knew what happened to him. With the giddiness of discovery, Aribella realized that her Grandfather had died suddenly in the early 80’s. Her Grandfather was Gamma.Man!!

Abby got a little dizzy when she realized Fate was tapping her on the shoulder. Maybe there was reason she had met Patty and kind of woke up to the ways of the world. Maybe there was a reason she had this new spirit of adventure. And maybe there was a reason she stumbled across the secret lair of Gamma.Man, her Grandfather!

Well, being a spoiled rich kid had its moments and she certainly wasn’t about to give that up, but she thought it was time to give a little more. Gamma.Man had done great things for Paragon City, perhaps, so could Gamma.Girl!