Nethercraft

.♦. Magdalen and John Brown loved each other hard and fast. From the moment they were introduced by well-meaning relatives, the pair got along. They were married a respectable 6 months later at the church and a year later had their only child, a daughter they named Jessamine Calypsa Brown. Though they had intentions to have more, tragedy struck and John was taken away to meet his lord and maker when Jessamine was only five. Magdalen took it hard, but pulled herself together for her daughter and found work making clothes and cleaning house. They moved in with Magdalen's mother and father the next year to save more money.

Selling the house was a smart move on Magdalen's part. She tithed the first ten percent, put 40 percent into the bank for living and the remaining 60 was put into savings for Jessamine's education. The family doted on the girl. Jessie was small, but bright and precocious. She had her father's unwavering smile and his unfiltered laugh. She had her mother's problem solving skills and running legs. It all served her well through her early years. She excelled in school, taking to education like a duck to water, her free time spent with several friends on the playground and running as if she were going to try out for the Olympics. Every month, Magdalen put more money into Jessie's education fund. Every year, her Magdalen's mother and father helped when they could. Right up until their death during Jessamine's final year of school.

The house was now too big and full of too many memories. So, she sold this one and the two of them found a small apartment. Again, the money for the sale was largely put into Jessamine's education fund... and it was a fortunate thing.

As she matured, she decided the job she wanted to persue was that of a lawyer. And so, all of the saving paid off. Applying for scholarships and more, she was accepted into a program in Florida. Jessie was dropped for the more adult sounding Jessamine ... and shortened by college friends into Jessa. She flourished in university.

.♦. Graduating with a very respectable GPA and several job offers, Jessa took the BAR and passed, earning an entry level position at a law-firm not far from Tampa. It was there that she met Charles Navier.

Tall, dark hair, brown eyes and a smile as infectious as his laughter, they hit it off. It only took three dates and 80 billable hours for the pair to become inseparable. He met her mother. She approved over a phone call a few weeks later.

A year later, he proposed with an emerald ring he designed himself. They were in the midst of wedding planning when he started to get sick.

.♦. There was not much that either of them could do. The firm was understanding, cutting back both of their hours to manageable time while allowing for insurance to be maintained. Charles' health continued to decline. The visits to the doctors and hospitals became more frequent until the cancer left him bedridden.

Jessa spent more time at his side than at their apartment. One day, he asked her to leave. What was the point in watching him die? They fought. She left to get her head straight, started walking around the city and found her way into The Chicken's Foot. It was the name that caught her eye. Out of the ordinary and distracting enough from her headspace to pull her in.

.♦. The store was full of knickknacks. Walls so crowded with old worn wooden shelves that she was hard pressed to say exactly what the walls were made of. Wood? The floor looked like it had seen better days, creaking with each step, half comforting and half unnerving. She almost felt like it would give way beneath her - just like her world. She paused here and there to look at the items. Snow globes without snow, filled with scapes of people in every day scenes rather than landmarks. An old, handmade Venetian mask. Worn leather-bound books. She paused to reach for one and was interrupted by a quiet voice.

"I think that's not -quite- what you're looking for."

She turned, book forgotten. "Pardon?"

There, before her was a petite woman. Her skin looked as old as the shelves, wrinkled and dark with age. It creased as she smiled, offering a linen handkerchief. "Your makeup is smudged. There's a mirror behind you. Seems you've had a fair bit of a hard time, hm?"

Jessa took the offered handkerchief and turned to the gilded mirror, staring blankly at her reflection. Tired, sad, almost a ghost of who she had been months ago. Sniffling, she dried off the tears and carefully fixed what was left of her eyeliner. "... yeah.. it's uh... not been good." She paused, her fingers running along the black tatting that lined the handkerchief. "You ever... feel like your world is about to come apart at the seams? Like it's going to crumble at any moment and you know that if that ONE thing happened you'd lose yourself in that moment?"

Behind her, the woman's skirts rustled against the floor as she walked about, "Oh.. I know a thing or two about that."

Jessa paused, lifting a hand to her face in an attempt to stop another shoulder shaking burst of tears she hadn't known she was capable of summoning. "Nh.. God, I've.. you know, I've prayed. I've been to church. My mom has been praying. It's... nothing is helping. I'd give my heart and soul to fix it. I would."

"Would you, really?"

"Without hesitation. Yes. He means everything to me." She turned, gesturing toward the door. "I can't lose him. I would do anything, and if that was my option? Yes."

The woman suddenly smiled, reaching a hand up to Jessa's chest. Wrinkled fingers tapped at her sternum, the liver spots fading as she spoke, her voice growing steely - grey eyes locking onto Jessa's brown eyes. "So it's been spoken. A gift. A sacrifice. An exchange. Heart and soul for hope and hale. Given to be got, until stars align and a favors be need."

Jessa's chest went cold and all noise stopped. She seemed to black out for ... she couldn't even say how long. When she came to, she was sitting in Charles' hospital room, her head on his hand.

.♦. Jessa passed the entire encounter off as a dream. They apologized to each other. Routine almost returned... until two weeks later, his tests miraculously came back clear. The cancer was gone.

They celebrated with a wedding. Things seemed perfect. For a while. Until Jessa started to feel... wrong.

Her temperature was lowering at odd times. When her pulse would normally race, it slowed.

And then one day it stopped. She had a panic attack that ended with tears and Charles' being afraid of her. How could she survive without a heartbeat? What had happened?

She suddenly remembered the woman in the shop. Could that have happened? She told him about it. He didn't believe her. Magic? That sounded INSANE.

That night, she had a nightmare about the shop. The woman touched her chest and pulled her heart out. She woke up screaming - and as she screamed, her pores leaked black goo like sweat. The more she noticed, the more she screamed. Charles woke up and ran for the wall. The matter began to coalesce into strands of cold, inky darkness, surrounding her like dark webbing. She called Charles' name, begging for help and several strands reached for him.

He screamed, reaching for a bat. He swung and threw it, missing the strands and hitting Jessa as he ran out of the room. She blacked out and the black matter disappeared. She tried talking to her mother, it didn't go well. Charles explained what had gone on. Explained the woman at the shop. Magdalen blamed the devil, satan himself must have taken over her daughter.

.♦. Things were tense after that... and after another event similar to that, Charles filed for divorce. Citing irreconcilable differences is a lot easier than saying you think your wife is a freak and an unbearable monster. The divorce was quick. She let him have everything he wanted. He gave her the condo.

Jessa quit her job and sold the condo after taking her maiden name back. She moved out of state shortly after.

.♦. There were a few places she thought to move. In the end, she opted for Paragon. Rife with job opportunities, and should she have another ... episode, there were likely to be less questions... or, possibly help. Law had lost its taste for her, and she started looking for other opportunities.

And that is how she met Eric Starr.

.♦. Eric Starr was a young, ambitious and horribly organized genius in dire need of a personal assistant. He had already hired and lost seven of them in his attempts to get his company off the ground. Moonlighting as Gravimetric Man, Eric was full of nothing but potential and derailing trains of thought that needed help finding their tracks.

She looked around the modest offices and after a few hours talking to him, felt like she could help. She took the job. It started with coffee, dry cleaning and baffled expressions on both sides and soon began to blossom into something more. She began to organize all of his files. Started listening to what he was actually saying -- and encouraged him to act on things he didn't seem to actually be sure of. Little by little, his business began to grow.

He updated his Gravimetric Man suit and got more attention. The more his business grew, the more she helped. They started to consider each other friends in addition to associates. It was a good relationship.

.♦. When he found out about her powers, there was no fear, only curiosity. The need to help and work with it to make her situation better - and he immediately set about making a suit to do just that. As they worked on it, they talked. He encouraged her to mend fences with her mother. Gave her time off to go do just that. It took a three hour phone call and one week in Jamaica to begin fixing things, but it helped.

Her respect for him grew as his company did. She began to accompany him on his hero outings. Flutterings of romantic undercurrents started to build. Neither side acted on it. Eric was ever the awkward genius, and Jessa would not stand to have a repeat of her relationship with Charles.

.♦. Over the years, Starr Industries boomed into a major company. Jessa and Eric worked together like clockwork. She knew almost everything about him, she understood how to hear what he was saying, how to let him get things down and how to handle what he didn't.

He rebranded himself the Starr Power and added to the launch of a new branch of Starr Industries. It was magnificent.

Her background in law made her able to handle most of the day to day talking to investors and potential clients. She took classes to help with the business side of things, quietly earning another degree when she wasn't at work. Things that she didn't understand, she researched.

She and Eric attempted dating a few times. It ... didn't work out very well. The attraction was undeniable, but never fully expressed. Still they remained a powerhouse. Ever close, ever encouraging each other in their endeavors.

.♦. Her powers continued to grow as the company did. She took on the name Nethercraft in her outings to use them in some sort of positive way.

Once in a while, she and Eric ran tests to measure her output and endurance, to see if it is affecting her negatively... never a bad reading... only baffling. Why did it keep growing? She felt a deep responsibility to do something with it. She still resented it a bit, but...

There was no sign of the woman. She had gone back to Tampa on a trip and looked all over for the shop. Asked around. No one had heard of it, or the woman. An internet search came up similarly fruitless.

What about the favor? What did her words mean? Favors from whom? ... what if she couldn't return them? What if she could?

Though she tries to smother the thoughts in lieu of helping around the city, it's hard to keep it away when the darkness is at the very center of her being.

Powers:

.•. In exchange for Charles' life and happiness, Jessa unknowingly -literally- gave her heart and soul to a woman she has been unable to track down again. Her powers are magic in origin, and as far as she is able to tell, internally stored.

.•. Jessamine can conjure, control and manipulate slick dark matter. It seems to originate from within her, initially appearing from her pores and, at times, her eyes. Tests have shown that there is seemingly no limit to the amount that she can conjure, as long as she is conscious and willing. When physically harmed, she has been known to leak some of the same matter from the wound until it patches up and binds the injury like a black bandage until it can heal.

.•. After conjuring a certain amount, it seems to multiply from itself rather than from inside her, as if the matter itself is opening a door to some well of otherness she can draw from.

.•. She has been known to be able to form anything from a bow and arrow to a fully controllable animal from the dark matter.

.•. Eric, when learning of her abilities, helped to develop a suit that gives her more physical protection while allowing the matter to easily channel through the fabric in a patented weave. It helps to increase her reaction time while keeping tabs on performance and keeping her linked to necessary communication channels. The suit also allows for monitoring her location so, should anything happen to her, he could access it through the Starr Industries Constellation network.

Weaknesses:

.•. If Jessa is knocked out, the matter will freak out for a good five seconds, like a seizure, attempting to protect itself and its host and then retreat back into her.

.•. When used too long or too much, Jessa has a difficult time withdrawing from the excessive emotions it brings into her. Using the matter is, in effect, using her heart and soul as an attack and force of protection. It's a high-octane adrenaline fueled rush. She often needs time to herself afterwards. Extended periods of time leave her unusually emotional.

.•. Jessa has no idea where the powers actually came from. She harbors a secret fear that one day her time to have them will be up. The woman will show up and ask for a favor in exchange for the gift to be returned. What right does she have to say no. ... what happens to her? To Charles? To anyone else.. if it all ends?

Other Notes:

.♥. Because her powers tend to pull out strong emotions, Jessa is generally very level headed. It may seem as though she is largely unemotive, but it is more that she keeps things strongly in check. The people closest to her know she does, in fact, feel quite a bit and works to maintain control.

.♥. After a failed attempt to get Eric to take care of something other than himself, Jessa adopted the cat used in the attempt - Newton. He is a long haired grey tabby who somehow doesn't care that she has no heartbeat. Cats. I tell ya.

.♥. Jessa goes running and clubbing in her free time to relieve stress. If she doesn't need to relieve stress, she is at home reading.

.♥. Jessamine has several tattoos - there are a few rings on her fingers. One is her wedding ring tattoo from her previous marriage, now inked in as a solid black band. She added on several other rings to distract from it.

.♥. While her natural hair is a 3C and very tightly curled, she keeps it straightened most of the time for work, letting it go natural on the weekends or for holidays or clubbing.

People

.■.Starr Power - Her boss and, at this point, her closest friend and confidant. Eric insists she is perfect, and she believes he is one of the most wonderful people around. He holds a very special, dear place in her heart and she just might lose her calm demeanor if something were to happen to him. They tried dating a couple of times.

.■.Mabel - An associate of Eric's with the Vanquishers, Jessa met Mabel when the latter had a few concerns about Eric joining the group. The two of them hit it off and became friends. They regularly send each other text messages and meet for coffee... and maybe also work to thwart Eric's attempts to work over the holidays. Maybe.

.♦. Magdalen Brown - Her mother. While in the past they had been at odds over Jessamine's situation, they mended their fence with a good bit of encouragement from Eric. Things have only grown closer over the last few years.