Widow January/Widowjanuarybio
From Unofficial Handbook of the Virtue Universe
Jessica sat at her computer and typed keystrokes in reply to the last message. She couldn't help thinking to herself that there had to be some better way of doing things. With so much information being handled by computers now, it was a shame they weren't more connected. She envisioned a vast world-wide network where people could communicate and share information. They could even do business. They could advertise and even sell their products if some way of accepting payments over the network could be devised.
But alas, all there was right now, were these vaguely connected Electronic Bulletin Board Systems. She thought she had a future working with computers.
Then the Spiders came. Men dressed in armor, one of them with eight spider-like legs protruding over his shoulders and women in tight red costumes. It was obvious these were not the good guys but Jessica had nothing to fight them with.
They took her away and left her house burning
Jeanette checked herself out in the mirror. The tight black costume with white accents suited her well. The sleek material hugged her body like second skin. The devided half skirt flowing from her hips was a nice touch. All the Widows had them, and Fortunatas as well, but she privately thought it looked best on her.
She couldn't believe she was a Night Widow now. She was one of the youngest ever but she felt she truly deserved it. Her first few years with the Arachnos trainers were shaky.
She did fine in her combat training. She had a natural grasp of tactics and techniques. But Arachnos wanted more out of their recruits.
Fortunately for her, her ability to influence the emotions of others was deemed of great value.
Something nagged the bag of her mind. There was something not right and had bothered her ever since she could remember. But talks with Kalinda always seemed to calm her down and get her back on track. And now she was a Night Widow.
She waited eagerly for her first assignment from Ghost Widow.
Jeanette didn’t have to wait long. Ghost Widow summoned her with an assignment hand picked for her. She gave herself another once-over in the mirror to make sure she was presentable.
Walking into Ghost Widow’s private chambers, Jeanette thought she looked a lot like her mistress, except Jeanette’s flowing tresses were black. And her body had physical substance which Jeanette was very grateful for.
Ghost Widow turned in that frictionless gliding way she had an regarded Jeanette while looking over a monitor on her desk.
“Night Widow January,” she said, “Thank you for responding so promptly. I have several things to discuss with you. I trust you are enjoying your new uniform and the title that goes with it”?
“Yes, Mistress,” Jeanette replied, “I’m very proud to be a Night Widow”.
“Good, I’ve been watching over you since you came to us, Jeanette. As you know we found you floating on wreckage off the Coast of Mercy Island. I’ve been very pleased with your progress and this latest report impresses me even more”.
Jeanette felt her heart skip a beat.
“What report would that be, Mistress”?
“An ability that you probably didn't even know you have. To put it simply, you deliver subtle psychic pulses to the pleasure centers of the brains of those around you. This not immediately noticeable but it puts people around you at ease. It makes them predisposed to… finding you a likable person. It could even make them wish to seek out your company more and more often.
Look how many friends you have amongst the Widows and even the Arbiters speak highly of you. Arachnos is built on fierce competition. We plot against each other constantly in order to get ahead. But in all your years here, no one has ever hatched a plot against you. Not even the junior Blood Widows whom you beat out for this advancement. They adore you. You’re going to be working with Kalinda to enhance this ability and make it even more useful. There is no limit to the sort of things that could be accomplished with this kind of power”.
Jeanette nodded and bowed slightly, “As you wish, Mistress, I will do my best to develop this ability further”.
“Good, but first I have something else for you. Your first assignment as a Night Widow”.
The Wetherby family sat and stared at each other with eyes wide and mouths shut. A rather unusual and eccentric bald man had just visited them and told them their youngest daughter, Kate, was a mutant.
Kate, being a fairly typical world-opressed and angsty teenager, was rather hoping to keep the mutant thing secret for a while. But as soon as she opened the front door that afternoon, she knew something was up. There was this bald guy, spilling all her secrets to the rest of the family and talking about some private school in New York.
Now that the man had left, the whole family sat looking at Kate like she was something they had never seen before. Mr. Wetherby slowly rocked back on and forth on the couch while nodding his head at nothing and his lips pursed like someone had just stuffed a lemon in his mouth.
Mrs. Wetherby arranged and rearranged the coasters on the coffee table and refused to look in Kate's direction.
Kate's older sister, still a teenager herself, had smirk on her face like she had just received confirmation of just how... bizzare and unfit for polite company her sister was.
The twins, Robert and Eric, stared with huge eyes and wondered if Kate was going to start glowing or burst into flames or something.
The Wetherby family was so wrapped up in this new development in their family that they were scarcely aware of anything else. Not only did they not notice the small, baseball sized object that broke the window, they failed to react to it at all. When it exploded with a loud bang, it was already too late. The room filled with smoke and then Kate was gone.
Night Widow January held the young girl in a strong grip and waited for the all-clear sign to leave. Before that happened, she received a telepathic instruction from Ghost Widow.
~Eliminate the Family~
~Whaa?~
~No mistakes, Night Window January, eliminate the Family, now~
Jeanette was dumbfounded. She knew that Arachnos was at war with pretty much the rest of the world and lose of life was part of war. But so far, she had managed to avoid doing it herself. Sure, as a Blood Widow she had fought Heroes and defeated them but not killed them. They had been taken prisoner. Even if she had been ordered to kill them she could understand that. They were soldiers in this war, just as she was.
But this family… her lenses cut through the smoke and saw the small twin boys bawling their eyes out on the carpet. They were not soldiers.
~Night Widow January, did I make a mistake in promoting you? Follow your orders, NOW~
As Jeanette sat paralyzed with indecision, Kate managed to pry her hand just slightly down from her mouth.
“Please,” she said, “don’t hurt them. Take me but don’t hurt them”.
Jeanette nearly lost her grip on the girl and yelped like something had bitten her. Why did that sound so familiar? A young girl begging for mercy for her family… being held by a spider…no… a man in armor that looked like a spider.
“Please don’t hurt my family”
~Jeanette…~
No! No! Not Jeanette! JESS-I-CA!
She dropped the girl and howled in rage, releasing a psychic discharge like she had never done before. Everyone’s hair stood on end and the Wolf Spider Soldiers screamed as their psyches overloaded on input.
Jessica took aim at the first one and speared him with a poison dart. She looked down at the girl with a mix of terror and rage.
“Get out! Get your family and get out. Do it now”!
“Hey, Posi, take a look at this”!
“What’s that”?
“Last night, the PPD brought in a Night Widow”.
“Seriously? I thought they were supposed to be real tough. I know the PPD guys are no slouches but a Night Widow”?
“Well, it looks like she turned herself in”.
“She what”?
“Says here she was sent to kidnap a teenage mutant girl and take out her family. Something went funky and she turned on her team. Then she went on a city-wide rampage and took out every Arachnos operative she could find. She really stuck it to them but she also messed up five different undercover operations. When the cops tried to rein her in she just gave up and went along quietly”.
“I wonder if Shalice saw this yet”?
“Yes I did,” said Sister Psyche as she entered the room, “You guys want to go talk to her with me”?
Positron and Synapse both nodded and the trio headed for Kings Row where Night Widow January was being held.
Sister Psyche rubbed her temples and tried to massage away the headache. She knew it was futile, it wasn’t a normal headache. It came from digging through someone’s mind that was so convoluted and twisted that they hardly knew who they were anymore. It came from trying to untie those mental knots so that person could reclaim their identity.
Shalice recognized those knots. She had seen them many times before. Kalinda was all over those knots.
“… she was kidnapped by Arachnos almost 20 years ago and then they have to gumption to send her and kidnap another little girl”.
Shalice tuned in to Positron and Synapse talking about the girl… woman… who until last night had been Night Widow January.
“She just totally snapped and remembered who she was”.
“Remembered some of it,” said Sister Psyche, still rubbing her temples, “a great deal of it is lost forever, erased by Kalinda to make a smooth page for Arachnos programming”.
“Dude,” commented Synapse, “did you notice how totally hot she is”?
Sister Psyche shot him a reproachful look but knew she was wasting her time trying to correct his somewhat immature attitudes.
After she left the room Positron turned to his friend.
“She does look pretty good for thirty, huh”?
“Dude, she looks good for twenty”,” said Synapse with a broad smile.
“Her name is Jessica O’Rourke. She was born in 1980. We are not sure how her powers developed but they showed up when she was still a pre-teen. Her father was a scientist with Crey. We’ve asked them to tell us more about Dr. O’Rourke and what he was working on for them but so far they have refused”.
“We all know how Crey really works,” said Synapse.
Sister Psyche nodded and continued her report, “In 1991 she was kidnapped by Arachnos operatives and her family vanished. We have not been able to find any trace of them. Since breaking free of her Arachnos conditioning and reclaiming her own identity, she’s lost a lot of the development she accomplished under Arachnos. It’s like she regressed to the person, the child, she was before being kidnapped'”.
“Mentally and emotionally, she’s a child. Like I said, she regressed when she broke her conditioning. The good news is, she was a pretty awesome kid. She was active in her Student Government, campaigned for charities in her school and made high marks. She was already a computer genius before she was kidnapped. With some hard work, I can have her functioning on an adult level very soon”.
“The Commission for Superhuman Affairs has decided to not prosecute her for the crimes she committed while under Arachnos control. It is confirmed that she never killed in their service and all of the Heroes she captured have since been rescued”.
“The one thing the Commission is not sure about, is what to do with her now. She wants to become a Hero. She wants to fight against Arachnos and the any other organization that kidnaps children from their homes or murders their families. She knows he’s not being prosecuted for the bad things she did but she still feels guilt about them and wants to make up for it”.
“So what’s the question”? asked Statesman.
“They want to know if you think she’s Hero material. They want your seal of approval to give her a Hero License”.
“Well, I guess I’ll have to go meet Miss O’Rourke then”.
Jessica fairly bounced up the stairs to City Hall. After extensive work with Sister Psyche and several interviews with Statesman, they finally said she was ready. She hoped she didn’t come off as too childish but she was just so excited about being allowed to register as a Hero. For the first time in nearly twenty years, she felt happy.
“Did you fill out the registration form”? asked the clerk without looking up.
“Yup”! said Jessica and handed it to him.
“Name”?
It was all on the form already but Jessica decided to just go along
“Jessica O’Rourke”.
“Age”?
“30”
“Archetype”?
“'Widow”
“Excuse me”? The registrar finally glanced up and boggled slightly as parts of Jessica’s spandex clad anatomy jiggled as she rocked on the balls of her feet.
“I was a Night Widow, with Arachnos, now I'm going to be a Hero”
The Registrar caught a glimpse of Ms Liberty and she nodded to him
“Hero Name”?
""Widow January""
Jessica crouched on the ledge of a building and pouted. It was one of the childish traits she just couldn't seem to rid herself of and she pouted about that too.
Busting Skuls (she chuckled to herself at her own pun) was fine but she really wanted to stick it to Arachnos. She was kind of shocked because they just didn't seem that active in the City.
Back when she was a Blood Widow it was pounded into their heads, day after day, that Arachnos would destroy Paragon City. Well, where the hell were they? Jessica had not found one single Wolf Spider since donning her red and yellow tights.
Her tights *sigh* She'd been taking a lot of flak about that. A variety of Heroes said they were... too form-fitting and that the color scheme was an eye-sore.
She's had to very calmly explain, more than once, that there were dozens of female Heroes wearing outfits far more revealing than hers and the colors were symbolic.
The red base and yellow pattern was designed after the Xcaret Widow, a very rare spider found only in the Yucatan. For some reason, this colorful relative of the black widow surfaced in her memories as something her father had been studying.
As for the tightness, well, it made it easier to move. And she had run into plenty of people who thought she looked pretty good in her costume.
"AAAYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEE"
The scream startled Jessica out of her revere.
“Just give it up, Lady, I don’t wanna hurt you”.
Jessica sighed to herself and leapt off the ledge to educate another gang-banger in how to treat a Lady.
