Devilfish:Mania
| Mania | |||||||
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 Not quite a faceclaim, but it sure is cute and would be the middle of the Mania moodboard! | |||||||
| Reputation |
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| Author | /u/TheBluestHedgeroo (capes) | ||||||
| Pronouns | she/her | ||||||
| Civilian name | Felicity Caruso | ||||||
| Alignment | Villain | ||||||
| Affiliation | Painbow (Devilfish) | ||||||
| PRT Classification | Master, Thinker, Brute, Changer | ||||||
| Born | October 13, 2003 | ||||||
| Status | NPC | ||||||
| Reddit Sheet | |||||||
| /u/TheBluestHedgeroo |
Magical Girl Mania (formerly Magical Girl Joy) was a member of Minnesota-based hero team ‘The Rainbow Paladins’, a relatively lighthearted and wholesome squad of magical girls empowered by the Tinkertech serums of their leader Prism’s Kiss.
Joy was the pointman/brawler of the group, playing up a fun, lighthearted persona during her righteous pugilism. If her teammate Chastity excelled in PR regarding separating thirsty fellas from their cash, Joy excelled in PR to spin herself as a beloved and kind paragon: frequently attending fluffier ribbon-cutting events, conducting herself with dignity and grace in battle (well, as much dignity as one can while shouting the names of your moves), and saying corny motivational shit about believing in yourself while sounding like she meant it.
Shortly after the disastrous, multiple-casualty brawl between Jade Omen forces and the weakened Rainbow Paladins, Joy has effectively dropped off the map after she and her teammates fled the authorities.
Character Sheet
Appearance
Felicity is a toned and tall woman that puts more effort into maintaining her appearance than she seems to in anything else, following a strict exercise regime and diet that keeps her covered in lean muscle. She trends towards intricate, high-femme dresses and hairstyles when in her civilian identity.
Magical Girl Mania’s costume is a Sailor Moon-style getup, primarily purple and white with a long combat skirt, leggings, and some nice boots. Her mask is a domino-style affair, and she commonly features an unhinged rictus of a grin when reveling in the feeling of her Master power.
Equipment and Resources
Equipment:
- A pair of exceptionally illegal spiked knuckles, purchased mostly for the aesthetic and justified to herself as a backup plan for her claws randomly deciding not to work.
- A taser snuck out of a police station she visited back in Minnesota.
- Small first-aid kit.
- Three different types of worryingly strong headache meds, ranging from effective to homeopathic.
Resources:
- A delightfully sexy 1970 Corvette Stingray, inherited from her grandfather. Dismal MPG, but she’d die before selling it in favor of anything else.
- A somewhat dingy apartment in the east side of Devilfish, a 4 on the scale from ‘Crack Addict’s Hovel’ to ‘Penthouse’
- A barely sufficient income from her new job as a stockworker in a local hardware store.
Wealth Level: 4
Skills and Specializations
- Ample experience as a boxer, brawler, and Punch Girl from her heroing career.
- Very skilled gymnast and passable parkour nerd.
- Decent at patching up scrapes and getting people moving.
- Exceptional orator, actress, and very good at intuiting what people want to hear.
- Several months of experience coming up with attack and combo-attack names.
- Can absolutely hustle a bitch at a pool table or at an arcade cabinet.
Mentality
Felicity’s mentality is primarily influenced by her newfound Master power, making the transition from ‘whimsical power fantasy’ to ‘cruel power reality’ she underwent after triggering far smoother than it should have been.
She is exceptionally whimsical, carefree, and comes off as lighthearted and naive. In spite of this, she approaches whatever today’s goal was with boundless energy and bullheaded stubbornness. Her enthusiasm is genuinely infectious, her energy is limitless, and her sleep schedule is beyond fucked.
Her relentlessly positive attitude is darkened a little by the somewhat fraught relationship she has with her childhood friends/teammates, not having forgiven Zettai Ryouiki/Aludra yet over her perceived betrayal and caught between resenting her other two teammates for seemingly taking her side and desperately trying to cling onto the few genuine social connections she has left. Primarily communicates with her teammates over text, voice, and video calls, not wishing to put them under her aura’s effects.
Power
Trigger type: Single/Natural/Cluster Trigger Primary Power (Fervor): Magical Girl Mania’s (hereafter MGM) primary power is an aura about the size of a block (50 meter radius) that causes everyone within it to develop a pervasive and overwhelming feeling of manic glee. She cannot turn this power completely off (save when one knocks her the fuck out), though she can ratchet it up and down from the baseline (it takes exponentially more energy and concentration to strengthen the effect, to the point where MAX AURA can only be sustained for about three minutes before ya girl collapses). She is affected by her own power, the feedback of her aura increasing based on how strong she’s choosing it to be.
To simplify things a lil, MGM has four distinct aura strength levels with varying effects: CONTENT, GLEEFUL, ECSTATIC, and MANIC. It takes a lil while for one’s brain to shift from baseline to a strengthened state, thus the symptoms for non-GLEEFUL states take a few rounds to hit their full strength. When one enters a GLEEFUL aura, symptoms onset immediately like a switch being flipped in ya brain.
CONTENT is the step below baseline, with all the symptoms of GLEEFUL to a far lesser extent to the point where once cannot consciously notice it. Affects herself exactly as much as her targets. Requires focus and concentration to keep active, can be held down for a max of an hour. She does not enter this state often outside of exceptionally serious conversations and when stealth is needed, for dulling the throb of joy and glee surging through her brain is not something she enjoys doing.
GLEEFUL is the baseline aura, affecting herself exactly as much as her targets. GLEEFUL individuals have lowered inhibitions, increased self-confidence and arrogance, a slightly lessened feeling of pain, and a predilection to acting without considering the consequences. They also somewhat enjoy whatever they are doing, despite their feelings WRT their actions prior to entering the aura. Requires no focus whatsoever to maintain.
ECSTATIC is the strengthened aura, affecting herself a bit less than her targets (basically while her targets are ECSTATIC, MGM is GLEEFUL + a lil). ECSTATIC individuals have a very hard time going against their wants, acting on instinct and impulse. They also have a greater ability to ignore pain and consequences as well as a bloodhound’s focus on their current task (which can be broken if the task is either obviously lethal (e.g. riding a bicycle into a crowded highway) or if someone Snaps them Out of it), and experience the raw joy of a puppy playing with a tennis ball when doing anything they do not exceptionally dislike. Can be comfortably sustained for about an hour, pushed to three hours before MGM crashes entirely. Requires some focus, enough to demand multitasking in-combat but not enough to be severely distracting. Focus can be interrupted by exceptionally painful strikes or quite distracting occurrences.
MANIC is the maximum possible aura, affecting herself almost as much as her targets (while her targets are MANIC, MGM is ECSTATIC). MANIC individuals are exactly as the name implies: obscenely joyful to the extent one can only achieve with hard drugs, practically entranced by their current task, almost incapable of critical thinking and conscious focus (beyond minor survival instincts) while their subconscious doggedly pursues their last attempted task. Deadass too happy for pain outside of something exceptional (e.g. being fukken burned alive, breaking a leg, getting several teeth punched out) to even register. Cannot be comfortably sustained for any longer than a minute, humanly possible to sustain it for a max of two if one ignores the building migraines, torrential nosebleed, and how vulnerable she is when concentrating on pumping all her energy into her aura at the expense of situational awareness.
Secondary Power (Speech Check): MGM can ‘split’ the universe (only from her perspective, she is not deadass splitting the universe in three it’s basically babie coil precog) into three during a given conversation, for the purposes of saying up to three different things and seeing the immediate reactions (next 10sec) of each statement. Chooses one thing to actually say, other two statements and information gleaned from the foreseen reaction is forgotten after her choice is made. Gets two “free” uses of this power per event, further uses entail debilitating Thinker headaches, the power itself breaking down (e.g. two choices instead of three, choosing an unintended choice, at high Fuck the power itself ceasing to decipher human speech to just see the physical reactions), and the power breaks apart a lot quicker if used against the same targets in the same convo.
Secondary Power (Husk): Over about a thirty-second period, MGM can grow a shell of crystalline ice that is strong, yet brittle. This growth starts from her nails and teeth, growing them into sharp claws (not like “Wolverine slashing apart a fire escape-sharp”, more like a really good kitchen knife that can trivially cleave through flesh) and jagged fangs. Struck objects and people can be chilled by this ruthlessly endothermic ice upon being stabbed, though this demands prolonged contact before the object is covered in sheets of ice and becomes brittle/the Mans develops acute frostbite and their fingers freeze off. (probbo about a minute or so of continuous stabbing before hitting their Peak, chill status fades kinda quickly (2-3 rounds) once contact is broken) Shell can take a few heavy blows before breaking (e.g. at top health can take everything short of a sniper Once, but everything that is physically capable of cracking ice irreparably weakens the armor and heavier blows knock off more ice), the resulting fragments of ice-shrapnel created are not as ruthlessly endothermic as her usual claws.
Secondary Power (Mutantify, replaced the Self-Slinger Ability): MGM can either proactively (takes 3-4 rounds of coordinated effort, mutates anywhere) or reactively (takes a round total, mutation source is always the struck bit) give herself a temporary mutation of a vaguely biological weapon (as in found in nature/anmials, not as in deadly pathogens) by mutating either her flesh, her clothing, or both. Can have a total of three mutations at once, strictly melee weapons are limited to whip-reach. Wounds the mutation mutates over are kept in relative stasis until the mutation is dismissed: they still hurt, but they won't get any better or worse. Mutations are dispelled after the end of the current combat scene.
Backstory
Felicity was born in a dead city to dull absentee parents, and spent her early life dreaming of being something more, something important, something beloved. She thus jumped at the chance to become a hero after Prism’s Kiss approached her,taking to the lifestyle like a duck to water and throwing her all into improving herself.
The PR consultant they hired was a total blessing, and she was one of the few happy to take their advice to play themselves up as a paragon and cultivate their image as a hero. She actively neglected her responsibilities as Felicity in exchange for building up the legend of Magical Girl Hope, to the extent where she spent more days in her costume than out of it. And really, who wouldn’t want to be a burly lass coated in golden light that dented blades, deflected bullets, and blinded evildoers?
That said, her life really went to shit once the serums Prism’s Kiss supplied begant to spoil after his death, her golden body developing holes, shedding important nerves on the arms, and requiring a lot more sips of serum to have her duration last more than fifteen minutes. She threw her all into training and inventive tactics to make the most of her diminished form, and shockingly enough it seemed to work: her few skirmishes prior to the fateful Jade Omen raid saw her barely squeezing out a victory or draw even as her teammates’ powers struggled and failed.
When the Jade Omen quit fucking around, Magical Girl Joy was one of the last members of her team still standing: she fought as fervently as she could while her friends and teammates laid broken and bleeding around her and her golden body chipped, cracked, and eventually shattered. She was knocked to the floor by a cackling thug’s bat to the head, and could only spit out her teeth and listen in a daze while a cape gleefully recounted the bribes, deals, and offers her friend had made to keep this little farce going. She wasn’t a hero that defied the odds and used her own resolve and will to keep herself going after her best friend died, she was a pathetic fool playing around while someone she trusted rigged everything in their favor. She wasn’t a hero, and thus she was nothing and had nothing.
She triggered while lying on the ground, betrayed and more alone than she ever thought possible. Her first contribution to the fight was pushing her unfamiliar aura as far as it could go, trying to drown her shame under incoherent manic euphoria.
Looking back on it, that’s probably why Aurora jumped to killing those people.