Leah Carpenter
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
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| Leah Carpenter | |
| Origin: | Magic |
|---|---|
| Archetype: | Defender |
| Security Level: | 50 |
| Personal Data | |
| Real Name: | Leah Carpenter |
| Known Aliases: | None |
| Species: | Genetically human |
| Age: | 30 (D.O.B. May 25th, 1977) |
| Height: | 5'4" |
| Weight: | 135 pounds |
| Eye Color: | Purple/green |
| Hair Color: | Purple/blue |
| Biographical Data | |
| Occupation: | Freelance hero |
| Place of Birth: | Galaxy City |
| Base of Operations: | Galaxy City |
| Marital Status: | Single, wants to change that |
| Known Relatives: | Dae Yeon Carpenter (mother) |
| Known Powers | |
| Highly disciplined electrical manipulation. Gained radiation abilities from one of her adventures. Has also learned how to teleport through use of her electrical manipulation. | |
| Known Abilities | |
| Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Paragon University. Moderate (but flawed) skill with electrical devices. | |
| Footnotes | |
| Has an extremely powerful curse. She used to be classified as a low level magical threat by Legacy Chain until recent events moved her to a mid-level one. | |
Contents |
Foreword
I've decided to just unceremoniously drop this character storyline. It's boring, sadistic, depressing, and for all the attempts to write otherwise, she's really just Suetiful All Along. I'm going to keep these pages active just simply because "why the hell not?" For those that actually WANT closure, here you go (note: spoilers, of course).
Premonitions
As Leah headed towards the trucks filled with explosives, something unusual started to happen. She noticed that there weren't any Family goons harassing citizens or Council doing recruiting shouts. In fact, the whole place was eerily devoid of citizens in general. Figuring that she was getting lucky in her attempts to be stealthy, she took it in stride.
But once she got to the truck, she found that it didn't work. In fact, the whole truck was a shallow shell, with literally nothing inside the cargo area. Not "nothing" as in the truck had an empty loading area. Literally black non-existence. Sticking her left arm into it, all sensation drained away as her hand vanished into the abyss. She found that her arm up until near the elbow had actually been consumed by this non-existence, with the blood only starting to come out as she pulled away. She quickly ran away from this truck.
After getting sufficiently far enough away, she tried to use her electrical powers to cauterize the wound... only to find out they no longer work. Neither did her radiation abilities. She ended up having to use the med kit that she still had after all that time, but by the time she finished, she had already lost a lot of blood. Knowing that she had to seek medical attention, she tried to use her Pocket D VIP card... to no avail. She limped to the hospital to find it just as devoid of people and with non-functional machinery. Besides the common areas, there was the same nothingness present past every door that wasn't part of the chain to the medical transporters. Walking outside, she found that she couldn't see any further than a few city blocks before white fog consumed the details of the landscape. A fog that seemed to be slowly moving towards her.
With little else she could do as she sat there, internal bleeding eating away at her bodily functions and seemingly nobody else left in the world to help her, she did the only thing she could do. She wept. Suddenly, from out of the blue, she heard a voice.
"Leah Carpenter, I presume?"
The Stranger
Leah quickly turned around to see this person. There stood a tall figure with long white hair and lambent green eyes. He wore a black leather trenchcoat with shoulder plates over a black harness, black gloves, black pants, and black boots. Very attractive but highly sinister looking.
"Who the hell are you?" Leah asked.
"Rude to the last, huh, Miss Carpenter?" replied the stranger, "Nice to meet you, too."
"This isn't funny," Leah responded, indignant, "Who are you?"
"My name doesn't matter," replied the stranger, "Only my role."
"And..." Leah said, impatiently.
"My role is to collect all the rejects of the fanfiction universe. Due to my newfound status as the single most written about character in fanfiction, I inherited the role over my predecessor of James T. Kirk."
"Who?" Leah asked, confused.
"Nevermind. First, since you're going to fall unconscious in a couple minutes from your poorly treated wounds, let's fix that." With a wave of his hand, Leah's features dissolved and reformed as a boring brown haired girl.
"Wha... how... how did you do that?" Leah asked, noticing her voice had also changed.
"My role, Miss Carpenter, is to offer salvation to all the Mary Sues, Marty Stus, and other intolerable characters of the fan-made universe."
"You keep saying this stuff as though I'm just a figment of somebody's imagination," Leah says, sarcastically.
"You are. You're a cosmic plaything, created solely for the amusement of the masses. Your every misery was meant to be endearing to the public. Your ability to shine in the face of adversary was meant to be a powerful statement. But somewhere along the line, you became unworthy. You were poorly written, poorly characterized. You were loaded with flaws but not with personality."
"Wait, you mean that my 30 years of misery is just the byproduct of some God?" Leah asked.
"Not a God, no. Just a boring 25 year old loser girl with clinical depression and few friends."
"Jesus Christ..." Leah bemoaned.
"No, he's just another fictional character and as much as I'd love to be visiting him and giving him this speech, he's a bit untouchable since he's in the religion universe."
"So, what now?" Leah asked.
"You have two options. First, you can just fade away into non-existence as the whole world becomes nothing."
"No, thanks," Leah responds.
"Or I can offer you a way out. Just because Elizabeth has no more interest in you doesn't mean you have to stop existing. I can make you a different character, one that might be less... 'interesting', but you can still exist. You'd have to work for me as an agent on the side, though."
"Not like I have much of a choice," Leah responds, sarcastically, "So, what does this mean?"
Crossroads
The fog was getting closer by the minute, now only a city block away. As it did, details started to fade away from the environment.
"Well, I'm not very good at making characters, but I have a couple things I could do with you. You're Japanese, right?"
"I'm half-Korean, you ignorant dick," Leah responds, channeling all the frustration she has from her encounters with science fiction convention goers.
"You're only half-Korean because the author wussed out on making you Japanese due to the Mary Sue stigma. For all intents and purposes, you're Japanese. Anyway, how would you like to be a magical girl?"
"I'm already a magical girl," Leah responds, still indignant.
"Maybe literally, but you're not a Japanese style magical girl."
"What does that mean, then?" Leah asks.
"Oh, simple. You wear a skimpy outfit designed to be a fetish for both little girls and creepy old guys. You get magical powers when you transform and a lot of flashy attacks that you call the names of. You'll get a cute pet mentor, a girlish focus object of some kind, and lots of cool poses. You will fight monsters on a weekly basis that are all based on some moral for the story. When you aren't fighting monsters, you'll be worrying about getting good grades in school and wondering why that cute guy can't love you as your real self when he so very much loves your alter ego. Little girls will want to be you, geeky men will masturbate to you, and most everybody else will just roll their eyes at you."
"Sounds like pretentious bullshit," Leah responds snarkily, "Is there another option?"
"Well, you could be a DARK magical girl. Instead of a mostly white and bright color outfit, you'll get the opposite. You'll be brooding, angsty, wonder what is so wrong with you that keeps you alone. You'll be way more powerful than the real magical girl, who will be trying so hard to get you to reform the only way she knows how: by beating you up. Eventually, she'll get through and you'll be her sidekick. Little girls will want to comfort you, geeky men will masturbate even more to you, and most everybody else won't know of you because they don't watch your show."
"That sounds only marginally better. What else do you have?" Leah asks, thinking this is just some cosmic joke being played on her.
"Well, I'd make you a villain of the magical girls, but that wouldn't work too well with your job of being my agent. You'd eventually get defeated by them and I'd be out an employee. How about a supporting character? You can be the girl that gets kidnapped with regular frequency by the monsters and require the magical girl to save you."
"Do you have anything that isn't magical girl related?" Leah asks.
"...No. Look, this pocket of the universe will collapse in about 90 seconds. Make a choice." As the stranger says this, Leah notices that the only thing remaining was a small patch of sidewalk that both of them were on.
"...I'll be a magical girl. Why not? Hit me up."
"Done. I copied your template and will make you a magical girl soon."
"But I'm still here," Leah responds.
"Oh, I can't do anything to save your consciousness, but your basic character genetics will live on in a new world."
"...Bullshit. You said you could save me."
"And that, I am. Oh, only fifteen seconds left. Gotta go." With that, the stranger vanished. Leah would have shouted something, but the nothingness started to consume her. She made a soundless scream as she and everything in her pocket of the universe vanished, forever lost to the sands of time.
Rebirth
The alarm clock read 7:00 as it did its irritating buzz. The grouchy brown haired girl hits the snooze button, curling her face into her pillow. A couple seconds later, a cat pounces on her head.
"Wake up, Mikaru," it says, "you'll be late for school."
"But I'm so tired," Mikaru says bitterly, "last night was too long."
"That's no excuse," responds the cat as it dances on her head, "Come on, rise and shine."
With little choice, Mikaru rises up. She goes through her normal routine of a shower, brushing her teeth, combing her hair. After putting on her school uniform, she grabs a biscuit and her school lunch off the kitchen counter and heads out the door to wait for the bus, her cat following behind.
"Anything you want to talk about?" asked the cat.
"I was a monster in my dream last night," starts Mikaru, looking a bit pale, "but not like the ones we fight. I wanted to just be accepted by society, but everything went so wrong. I had a scary mom, nobody loved me, and all the humans were so evil to me because of how different I was. I'm starting to see from the perspective of our enemies."
"Er... so, how are things at school?" asked the cat, changing the topic.
"I'm so frustrated by Keiji. It's like I don't exist," Mikaru blurts out.
"Well, you have been sort of grumpy lately," the cat says, concerned, "You should lighten up and be friendlier around him. He can't ignore you a beautiful girl like you forever."
"Why can't I just tell him my secret?" Mikaru says, flustered, "He's already in love with the other me. It wouldn't hurt if he knew, would it?"
"Because anyone that knows about the real you is in danger," the cat responds, taking offense at her suggestion, "What if he tells other people, who tell other people? What if Queen Nadir finds out? The only reason nothing is bashing down the doors of your house is because nobody knows your secret identity."
"But what if I make him promise not to tell other people? It's not like-" Mikaru suddenly goes vacant for a few seconds, dropping her books and lunch.
"Another one?" asks the cat.
"Yes," responds Mikaru as they both run back into the house, "Why do they have to always come out so early?"
"They're evil. They don't time it so you can fight them after school."
"I'm running out of excuses for not being at school, but here goes. MAGICAL PEARL, TRANSFORM!"
With those words, Mikaru rises in the air, with ribbons spinning around her as her clothes dissolve and get replaced with her outfit, a white and red combination dress and long coat. Her hair turns blonde and grows into an elaborate braid while her weapon, a wand adorned with a large pearl at the end, materializes in her hand. When she finishes, she strikes a pose.
"Go get them, soldier," says the cat enthusiastically. Mikaru nods and runs to the door.
"Back door, Mikaru! The bus driver is probably out front right now. Remember?"
"Oh, right."
And so starts another adventure of Beautiful Pearl Soldier Mikamika™.
Everything from this point on is left as is. Read at your own risk
Note about character and author
While there isn't anything specifically offensive about this character, the "Real Biography" section contains a lot more than anyone would really know about her and is also a bit of a downer. Much of it is written tongue-in-cheek as well. It also contains a very benign, non-explicit description about her love life. If you don't like downbeat characters or are extremely easy to offend, don't read it.
Also of note is that I am rather unexperienced with role playing. I mention this because I don't want to wear down anyone's patience. I also value any input in making my character less unappealing, since I know that it treads in common Mary Sue territory at parts. I value any and all helpful remarks.
Personality
Leah is a rather uninspired, apathetic person to strangers. Years of isolation and disappointment has made her rather jaded and bitter about trying to meet people. She leaps upon any attention she gets (especially from men), becoming rather obsessive and protective of them pretty quickly. She's extremely careful when talking to anyone, going to great lengths to try not to displease them. She tries to avoid talking about herself as much as possible, instead attempting to keep the topic on either known common ground and/or something the other person can talk about as much as possible. She often lies about or obscures her opinions or history if she thinks that the other person might take offense to it.
This lust for attention (and oftentimes just lust in general) is also one of her biggest downfalls. While she's not quite naive or ignorant, she's easier to take advantage of due to her loneliness. She has a pretty good sense of when someone is not entirely sincere, though. More experienced superheroes that know her decently well tend to not trust her, since she isn't entirely subtle about her real motives for becoming a hero. However, due to her relatively low fame status, this isn't a very common scenario.
Leah is a big fan of video games (mostly action), speculative fiction, and fantasy art. She also has a lot of internet presence, partaking in a large number of forums. Whenever she isn't out fighting crime, she enjoys playing video games, watching movies, browsing the internet, and hanging out at conventions.
Recent events have made her more aloof and distrustful of others, with her starting to view everything as part of some larger conspiracy. It has also made her unnecessarily brutal in her crime fighting as well (although she hasn't intentionally tried to kill anyone just yet).
History
Official Biography on her website
Before December 2007: Today's superheroes, while effective, are too impersonal. This is one thing that up and coming hero Leah Carpenter noticed. Ditching the traditional cloak, mask, and alias of most superheroes, Leah aims to not only protect Paragon's citizens from the evils that plague them on a daily basis, but to also be an active member of the community as well. Born in Galaxy City, she developed these unusual features and her electrical abilities at an early age. Deciding recently to fight crime, she intends to be more friendly than the overdone impersonal hero. Leah would love to meet you when she has time and can be reached through her cell phone at (362) 436 - 9461. Feel free to also leave a post on the message board or add her as a friend on MySpace, Facebook, or LiveJournal.
December 2007 - Current: Leah is no longer meeting just anyone in person any longer due to several attempts by Crey to kidnap her back, but feel free to email her or post on the message board, MySpace, LiveJournal, or Facebook. The cell phone at (362) 436 - 9461 will no longer be carried by her, but she will still listen to voice mail messages every so often.
Real biography
Leah Carpenter was born on May 25th, 1977 to Jacob and Dae Yeon Carpenter. Her parents both carried huge amounts of magical power, with her mother being a classically trained Korean witch and her father being a model for Calvin Klein underwear. She was supposed to be perfect in every way due to equilibrium in every major magical factor in the world, ranging from planetary alignment, various magical bloodlines, and the Dow Jones average, amongst others, coming into perfect alignment at the moment she was conceived. However, from beyond imagination itself, the evil Morgan le Fay cursed the unborn baby to be beastly, never hold a job, and never maintain a relationship. All traces on the curse show it to be Morgan le Fay and all the aliases line up with it, without any sign of tampering with the traces. It has been a constant debate amongst scientists, scholars of magic, and internet forums how a completely fictional character could affect the real world (or even care about some seemingly random person about a millennium after she would have existed). Attempts to either link it to a real existing person or find out if perhaps the real attributed name was corrupted have all come up empty. It's a logical paradox of the ages.
Leah looked normal when she was born, but by age five, she started developing wings, a tail, purple hair, and a skin condition around her eyes. Her parents, horrified by this, tried everything they could think of to make her normal. They've done everything from spells, plastic surgery, appealing to extra-dimensional beings, and making her watch NBC prime time to remove these features. However, each time they got rid of them, they would come back overnight, only more prominent. After a year of failure at making her normal (at which point, she had the same size wings and tail you see now, making up about half her body mass), they were eventually forced to enroll her to school as is.
The other kids thought she was cool at first, but once they found out that she can't actually sustain flight with her wings, they started teasing and bullying her mercilessly. She spent most of her life from age 6-10 either being thrown off swing sets to "make her fly", getting swirlies (the other kids loved flushing her tail down the toilet in an effort to get her stuck), or being sprayed with purple paint. Kids wouldn't be her friends because people that associated themselves with her tended to get the same treatment. Leah, with nobody to play with, spent these years reading lots of comics, playing video games, and watching TV.
On her 9th birthday, her dad gave her a pet baby panda as a present. He got it from a store that he found in Croatoa Springs during a photo shoot, unaware that it was actually a magic store that only appears to sell people "pets" that are destined for them. The pet panda is actually a Mogwai, spirit of bad luck, who's role is basically to antagonize and belittle Leah when appropriate. Since these spirits bind themselves to the soul of their host, they are notoriously difficult to remove. Everyone else can see Leah's pet panda and it can interact with people as though it were a small animal, but only Leah can hear it talk or see it do certain things, making people think Leah is insane when she scolds it or holds intelligent (apparently one sided) conversation. It is partially invincible in that while it can be physically destroyed, it can reform itself within an hour (the trade off being that it is extremely weak and can't do much besides talk or move small objects). It also can reform itself if Leah gets more than a block away from it. While it was initially cruel and sadistic towards Leah, she discovered around age 12 how to cause it extreme pain and as such, it mellowed out considerably (although would still make comments about things). In spite of its hostile attitude towards Leah, it was inclined to keep her alive and healthy because if she dies before it's ready, it dies with her. While Leah and her mother both tried everything within magical means to remove the Mogwai, it wasn't until November 26th, 2007 that it was removed and destroyed through scientific means by Crey.
Dae put Leah through the traditional Korean witch initiation at age 7, which unlocked her latent electrical powers. Around age 10, she was able to finally generate enough power to be useful. Prior to that, they were much too weak to even power a refrigerator light bulb. She started developing these powers to use for self-defense and while it did get all but the bravest kids to stop bullying her, it started making the adults bully her in non-physical ways. She was blamed for practically everything that could be even vaguely attributed to electricity (and a lot of things that were far-fetched at best, such as "using those powers to infect the computer network with a virus"), with constant punishment being dealt to her. Her junior high had a whole stack of pre-printed papers with her details filled in for punishment. She spent all through junior high and high school as the scapegoat, racking up the record for detention served at her high school (a record 522 days, quintuple that of the next highest "offender"). However, in spite of this, she was never expelled because her mother, being scary as hell, would quickly stop them whenever they tried to push the paperwork through. She was pretty much ostracized by most of the students as well, not even being accepted to the outcast groups such as the A/V Club or any of the Dungeons and Dragons cliques she so desperately wanted to be a part of. She tried dating a few times, but they all ended with her date running off with some girl they just met.
Throughout her school career, she got crap grades at nearly everything because she had learned early on to associate school and all of her classes with humiliation, pain, and sadness. While hardly unintelligent, she was far from inspired to put forth effort. Her mom came through on that aspect as well, using her intimidation to prevent her from getting any grade lower than a 70%. She eventually went on to college, getting a degree in electrical engineering (with one of the lower grade averages that the degree has ever seen) after six years. However, due to her freakish nature and the lack of social skills her isolation has imposed, she never got past the interview stage when trying to get jobs based on her degree.
While one would think that all this would have broken her, she actually became a bit cautiously optimistic once she was no longer being wailed on and discovered the internet in high school. She developed a nasty habit of masquerading as other people, taking on alternate aliases, personae and other such things to distance herself from her outcast self. Around age 23, she started figuring ways around her curses, though. The first bit of bypass was when she used the college anime club in order to both find someone that wasn't phased by her appearance and also use it as a way to get close to someone without it officially being considered a "date". She then used some phony reason to get them into her room to then try to get them to have sex with her. The first attempt failed pretty bad because her roommate walked in and triggered the guy to run off with her, but she succeeded with the next guy when she barricaded the door shut. Her success rate is only about 1/10 because if the guy even thinks she wants to date or have sex with him, one of the women he will see before anything happens will catch his interest.
She never figured out a real bypass for her lack of ability to hold jobs, though. She eventually figured out that her window to keep a job was only about a month, so she started setting up chains of temporary jobs. This, also, had a low success rate because of high competition and a crappy job market. Her lack of reliable contacts didn't do much, either. She barely made enough money to pay the rent in some dive in the bad part of King's Row and get a single paltry, crappy meal a day (she didn't ever pay for the electrical bill because she mastered standard 115V electricity). Around age 26, her father died of lymphoma and her mother, who was sick of Leah's apparent lack of willingness to progress in her life, cut her off from the family until she "made something of her life". With Leah unable to either get a boyfriend or a consistent job, this was rather harsh on her.
She spent four years of a rather depressing lifestyle until her 30th birthday. Inspiration came when her cousin, a Legacy Chain member that had just reached the rank of Adamant, called her and offered her an invitation. She then had a genius idea. Being a superhero is the ultimate freelance job, what with there being no lack of criminals out there. Nobody can fire you, the hours are flexible, and superheroes are the modern equivalent of rock stars. She could get someone to form a fan club and start using it to try and find Mr. Right because surely, no curse could possibly be strong enough to overpower even stardom (her's is, but she doesn't know that yet).
She joined Legacy Chain and went through their training program. After the four week period, she was passed up when it came time for official initiations because she was careless about magic, didn't have enough control over her powers to prevent collateral damage, was unable to learn any of the four accepted fighting standards of the Legacy Chain, and was considered "too conspicuous". However, this four week training period gave her enough insights to begin her freelance superhero career.
One central idea she got was during a training exercise raid of a Hellion base. While they were checking the wallets for clues leading to their local ringleader, one of them remarked that the Hellions get too much money from their crimes. This gave Leah the idea that it would be better for her to pocket the money that these criminals hold instead of letting it sit in some police vault to either be pilfered by a corrupt officer or eventually be returned to the criminal that got it illegally. Since she isn't a moron, she realized that they'd figure out what was happening pretty fast if every wallet of someone she arrested is empty, so she only steals about half their money. With the knowledge that Legacy Chain gave her and a recent call for the help of Paragon's heroes to stop an outbreak, her career of crime fighting (and "pickpocketing" criminals, and showboating to try and attract friends, and just generally not really being in it for the right reasons) began.
The Great Crey Adventure
Main Article: Leah Carpenter/The Great Crey Adventure
Leah's exploits, while not being noteworthy or getting much press, didn't go completely unnoticed. An interview that was published in a science fiction fanzine caught the attention of Crey (how a fluff piece in a low circulation publication got through to them, nobody knows). They started a project to kidnap and research several new (and relatively defenseless) heroes, with Leah being a primary target. The plans leaked to Longbow and while they were able to protect all the other heroes on the list, Leah was ultimately captured.
Crey first removed her Mogwai (which, while unexpected, didn't go unappreciated), then sent her to one of their experimental facilities in a special dimension where the laws of time are flexible. There, she spent what were 180 days to her but less than 2 in her home dimension. During this time, Leah was heavily experimented on, with her spending 14-16 hours a day strapped down on a lab table, having constant samples cut off without any anesthesia, and was often degraded and ridiculed by the head of the project. One important (and unauthorized) experiment that was done on her gave her a form similar to (but not quite 100%) a dragonkin and the ability to shift between her old and new forms. An unexpected side effect of the procedure was that she also gained the same radiation abilities as the dragonkin that had its genetic code sampled. The main Crey organization never found out about this because it was an unauthorized, direct tampering with a source that was covered up by the scientist responsible. He intended to duplicate it on a clone and claim that full testing was done before introducing the serum on the source, but that report never made it out.
Eventually, she was rescued by one of the least likely people... her mother. Dae Yeon was approached by Longbow when they were unable to locate Leah. After a minor incident, Dae ended up seeking out Leah on her own. She first stormed two Crey facilities before learning about where Leah was taken. With this information, she then manipulated two villain groups and left a tip with Longbow to bring them all into conflict at a designated time. In the ensuing chaos, she extracted Leah, killing off most of the base staff and destroying the portals. They returned back to Paragon City afterwards.
Leah hired a lawyer and started a lawsuit, during which time, all the evidence evaporated right in front of them. After Crey made a final assault on the law firm and got away with it by framing the Sky Raiders, Leah dropped the law suit and took a more vigilante approach to Crey and most of the other groups as well.
The Evil Countess Crey
Main Article: Leah Carpenter/The Evil Countess Crey
Powers and Abilities
Electricity
Leah's electrical abilities come from her training in Korean witchcraft. Her alignment is electricity, which was unlocked at age seven. It took years of training before being able to generate any significant amount of power. Most of Leah's electrical abilities are self-taught.
Charged Bolts - Learned at age 13. She had been capable of the amount of electricity for a year, but couldn't figure out how to transmit it over a decent distance.
Lightning Bolt - Learned at age 14. Basically the same as Charged Bolts, but with more power. This was the limit of her electrical output for a while.
Zapp - Learned at age 18. She learned how to hold a residual charge in the same style of a battery and how to focus it to a long range. It requires a bit of time to do, though.
Ball Lightning - Learned at age 19. She came up with the idea of it after a class in electrical physics had a section on ball lightning. She figured out how to duplicate it after a lot of practice.
Short Circuit - Learned at age 19. She realized that she could center the ball lightning around her as well. More potent this way, since it can draw from the source.
Radiation
Leah gained radiation abilities because of a Crey experiment on her curses. The use of genetic material from a dragonkin with radiation abilities had the unexpected side effect of also granting them as well. Leah was practically an instant expert at it.
Radiant Aura - First thing that came to her. When she tried generating radiation, it was of the type that could heal.
Radiation Infection - About two minutes after Radiant Aura. She figured out how out to reverse the benefit of radiation and also how to bind it to someone.
Enervating Field - About three minutes after Radiation Infection. She came across it while playing around with the different types of radiation.
Accelerate Metabolism - During further testing of Radiant Aura, she discovered that a type of radiation was making her faster.
Lingering Radiation - About twenty minutes after Enervating Field. She figured out how to made radiation that would stay with a person for a while without constantly maintaining it.
EMP - About a day later. She discovered how to simulate a nuclear explosion, but due to her lack of power/fortitude, she was only able to generate enough of one for the electro magnetic pulse.
Mutation - About a month later, someone told her about the radiation that could bring someone back from the brink of death. She adopted it.
Power Pools
Hasten - Extension of Accelerate Metabolism. She is affected by it much more than anyone else she uses it on.
Teleport - Learned it accidentally. When going through all sorts of modulations, she randomly stumbled upon one that bent the space around her. She learned to harness it over time.
Recall Friend - After a while, she then learned how to bend the space between a target so as to let it travel to her.
Stealth - A family heirloom given to her by her mother is an anklet that allows some cloaking abilities.
Invisibility - Drawing further from the anklet allows total invisibility, but at the expense of requiring too much focus to do much else while maintaining it.
Swift - Acrobatics training has trained her to be able to run faster.
Health - Constant use of Radiant Aura eventually caused her mitochondria to adopt the ability to generate the same radiation, working on a smaller but still noticeable scale.
Stamina - Experience on the field has taught her to be more efficient in the use of her powers.
Curses
While not technically a power, Leah has a multitude of curses that have been present since at least age five. They can be divided into three primary curses and some other effects.
Curse 1: Leah will have a monstrous form that acts independent of her genetic structure. Her wings, tail, ears, facial markings, and other non-human features are a result of this curse. They are a purely magical projection, although it uses its own genetic structure with astral energy pairs. The original form didn't have any nervous structure (no feeling or control), but once it was modified, it also added a weak nervous structure that grants full control but little feeling of the appendages. It also seems that a specific amount of this material must be present, as evidenced by how the modifications only went down to waist level even though the full genetic material was injected.
Curse 2: Leah will never be able to hold a paying job so long as an employer can remove her from it. She found out through her high school jobs that there was about a month (give or take a few days) lead time before the employer will be compelled to find some excuse to fire her. As she found out during an internship while getting her engineering degree, the curse defines a "job" as anything where she gets paid by an employer or other associated person. She spent six months with it until someone gave her a twenty to "buy a veil", at which point, her employer did a beeline to her and fired her. She also found out at her next internship that so long as she doesn't accept any money from people related to her job, she will be treated normally.
Curse 3: Leah will never be able to maintain any romantic relationship. This one is a bit unusual due to how definitions of "romantic relationship" vary greatly depending on who you ask. What is established is that if someone wants to either go out with her or have sex with her and they actually have the nerve to go and ask, they are compelled to find one of the next women they see much too attractive for them to waste any more time thinking about Leah before anything really happens. In situations where it is required, it might also compel a woman to find the man attractive as well. Leah found that it's actually possible to keep the interest of a man if she isolates him before he has any thoughts that would compel him away from her. Due to the fact that she can't exactly lock them away forever, this only works for a single meeting.
Effects: Leah also has some other effects that aren't a primary listed curse, but still present in her system. Much of her mother's spells and incantations worked, giving her regenerative abilities, high longevity and an immune system that can destroy all mundane diseases. One of her doctors even said that provided she stays out of harm's way, she could live for centuries on end. One side effect of her immune system is that it kills off all foreign entities, including sperm. This basically renders her sterile. It wasn't an intentional effect, but no doubt was added in as part of the curse.
