Grey Lady
| The Grey Lady | |
|---|---|
 grey Lady in her costume, sans glowing eyes | |
| Author | /u/fire209 |
| Pronouns | She/Her |
| Civilian name | Maria Watkins |
| Alignment | Hero |
| Affiliation | Noncanon (Devilfish) |
| PRT Classification | Brute/Thinker, Breaker/Mover Bud, |
| Born | February 29, 1996 |
| Status | Noncanon |
Not much is known about her, aside from rumors of a vengeful spirit that seeks revenge on those that do wrong. People with access to databases on parahumans or other high level info would probably have recorded information of her previous activity, noting an ability to phase through walls, very cleanly avoid detection by people, and some kind of enhanced strength or brute package. They would also have knowledge of her acting as an Assassin, and is responsible for a number of high profile murders.
Strangely, there have been no such murders recently, marking a rather large shift in her noted behavior, with much more of a footprint and more cases of vigilantism and severe beatings, but no deaths.
Character Sheet
Appearance
Maria looks like this out of combat, with long black hair and brown eyes, she stands at 5'2". Often in public she wears fairly concealing clothing, hoodies and long pants, but in private she likes to relieve herself of that.
In costume she looks like this, a very concealing militaristic costume with lots of little straps and pouches. It's very well fit, allowing her freedom of movement in it.
Equipment and Resources
The following represents what she'll generally bring with her when she's going out.
- Grey Urban Camouflage costume, T2 level armor, allows for general flexibility of movement. Gauntlets have metal bits equivalent to a set of Brass Knuckles.
- 2 high quality steel combat knives
- 1 day MRE stored in a safe house
- Beretta M9 Pistol
- Compact Extendable Steel Baton
- Flashlight
- Small First Aid kit
- old pre-payed card cell phone.
She also has an old beat up motorcycle not registered in her name, and a small apartment she pays for in cash only. In her apartment she keeps the money she has in a duffel bag hidden underneath the floor that she has to phase into to access. She also generally keeps her weaponry and combat equipment there.
She additionally has a tinker tech spinal implant in her upper neck. It allows those with access to an appropriate remote to paralyze her or take control of her muscular functions. The range limitation on activating the remote is rather low, at roughly 100 feet and line of sight due to a need to make it able to last without maintenance. Currently, only her handler or anyone sent after her by the ministry would be able to have such a remote.
Wealth Level: 5
Skills and Specializations
Her skills are divided into 2 sections. She has access to most of her skills normally, but a portion of her high level skills are locked behind her programming, such that she can't access it outside of that state. The following are the skills she has access to only while in her Programmed state.
- SERE Training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape)
- Expert in Close Quarters Combat and Hand-to-hand, incorporating aspects of a variety of styles.
- Competent at acquiring, crafting, and assembling disguises.
- Familiarity with Firearms, Minimum level of competency (She's a decent shot, but not very talented, and won't take this far)
- Ministry Master/Stranger training
- Excellent Awareness of sightlines and vantage points
- Extraordinarily good at Impulse control
- Moderately competent cook.
These other skills can be accessed both in and out of her Programmed state, barring for where they'd overlap, in which case it defaults to the better between the two.
- Moderately skilled in hand to hand combat, incorporating aspects of a variety of styles.
- Half-remembered SERE Training (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape)
- Basic firearm competence, but she can't really hit a moving target.
- A variety of nonlethal takedown methods
- Tactical Medicine/Combat First Aid
- Sign Language & Lip Reading
- Excellent Spatial Awareness
- Shadowing/Stalking/Following Techniques
- General stealth training, IE Quiet movements, Breathing, Etcetera.
- Skilled at Acrobatics & Parkour
- General conditioning (To level denoted in the brute power)
- Excellent drawing skills on paper in relation to photorealism.
- REALLY bad at cooking beyond the bare basics.
Mentality
In her normal state Maria's a fairly paranoid and somewhat angry person, angry and afraid to an extent. She spent her youth rebelling against the Ministry, and what they did to her for that left a long, permanent scar. She has serious problems with authority and a severe aversion to being captured. Out of Guilt for her actions, she acts as a mercenary, taking a perverse "revenge" on heinous criminals.
When she was undergoing training and displayed her problematic tendencies and was shown to be a risk to the Ministry, she was implanted with a spinal control device, and underwent numerous extremely thorough brainwashing sessions under the purview of Aboleth. When a series of command phrases are stated in order, she will enter her Programmed state, effectively becoming an obedient soldier with perfect loyalty to the person that stated her command phrases. Long term (2 Week +) of continuous activity in this state without a couple days break induces the beginning of the breakdown of the barrier between this state and her normal mind.
The way her programmed state functions, there is one activation phrase (Series of phrases). The person who says this phrase is the one she is loyal to, and can designate other people she is loyal to. There are additionally a number of secondary command phrases which denote the stating individual to be higher rank, and have any orders they state to be obeyed above lower level codes.
Her base activation phrase is: Nine Whipsaw Zero Thousand Eighteen Ettercap
And in increasing order of importance (Lower on the list is higher rank), these are the secondary command phrases.
Eighteen - Charlie - Niner
Forecast - Cranium - Thirteen
Two - Eye - Elder - Thousand
Balloon - Four - Echo - Purse
Ooze - Sixteen - Star - Mangle - Forty Seven
Power
Her power comes in a few notable parts that tie into each other, notably a standard Brute package where her body is roughly the equivalent durability of Tungsten or Level 4 Armor, and she can deadlift 2,000 pounds, her punches striking with the power of a sledgehammer's blow. Additionally, the brute strength extends to her legs, letting her kick with similar force and run up to 30 miles an hour for up to 3 hours (With running technique and training), and jump up to 20 feet high or 40 feet across (Again, with extensive training).
This fairly good brute package ties into a thinker power where she is generally aware of awareness. She knows of anyone who becomes aware of her and if an action she's about to take will make her be in or out of the awareness of someone. While someone is aware of her, she gets a sense of their direction in relation to her and a vague sense of distance (Imprecise close versus far). This works on thinker abilities that make a person aware of her, and she'll be aware that she's under the scrutiny of a thinker power, but won't be able to tell specifics of what they're getting from her.
For the purposes of things like cameras and sensors / other technological or otherwise indirect sensing things, she only gets a ping off her sense if they're being actively watched by a living thing through the sensor with less than a minute's delay. However, the direction sense would give her both direction/distance to the person watching and to the device itself
And finally, she has a minor breaker power where she's able to phase through matter, but only things not really perceived as attacks by her shard (It wants her to approach those as a brute, not a breaker), so she'd be hit by a punch, but be able to leap with full force through a wall, or be able to fly through a wall from the knockback of an attack. Generally this limit is forgiving, but relies largely on her intention with a specific action, it won't work if she's intending to use it to phase through something that'd damage her. Additionally, the phasing doesn't work through high energy objects (Hot, electrically charged, etc.), and actually being hit by a high energy effect negates her ability to use phasing for roughly 5 seconds or so. While phasing through an object, she doesn't need to breathe and can see/hear through that object.
Trigger type: Second Generation Brute/Thinker, Minor Breaker/Mover bud
Backstory
Maria was a product of the Ministry of Propagation in the Ministry of truth, born in Ministry custody, she doesn't know who her parents were. Like any other child made by Propagation, she, throughout her youth, was subject to a variety of tests and stressors specifically designed to push her to her limit and beyond, both in training, and the home she might undergo a trigger.
But she just wasn't good enough. She had been falling behind, in both in her studies and her training, but her body and mind just wouldn't comply like they used too. Everything feeling more sluggish, more tiring, requiring more effort. She already had to retake an Important Exam twice from exhaustion. Her 50 page essay was insufficient to make up the points on her 'grade' and wasn't that a joke! the grades didn't mean anything!
The grueling classwork was obviously just another tactic to break them down and build them back up, everyone knew it, but no-one said it. Maria had one more chance to pass the exam, and she'd been studying, despite her chronic fatigue. She was feeling semi? confident. Unfortunately she had fallen behind during athletics practice. She just couldn't keep up with the other, somewhat more well-rested classmates.
And the Ministry Instructor, a Thinker/brute was a sadist who was fed up with her lagging behind. After evening meal, she found herself dragged to one of the training rooms. Told to stand on a treadmill, and the sadistic monster tied her hands behind her back, and a cord around her neck to the front of the machine's control panel. "It won't kill you, I've seen to that with the amount of slack" he explained. "But don't fall behind, cause while it won't kill you.. It'll hurt."
With that he turned the machine on, it had a pre-programmed settings to alternate speeds, she'd used them before for Physical Education. He fiddled for a moment with an old fashioned alarm clock, he sets a timer, the clock face pointed away from her. With that he turned and left, the sound of the door locking behind him.
It was awful, exhaustion overtook her, no matter how hard she tried to conserve her strength. Maria found herself light headed. Whole body aching. And yet the only thing she could think about to distract herself, was how the hell was she going to pass her exam tomorrow? She doubted she'd be able to haul herself out of the infirmary to even get to the exam room, let alone pass.
As her legs gave out, that's when she noticed. He'd had her dress in her PE clothes, shorts and a sleeveless shirt. She now knew why. He'd glued sandpaper to the treadmill surface. He'd said it wouldn't kill her, only hurt, but a part of her wished that it would. TRIGGER
At first she was ecstatic at finally having gotten a power. Powers? But it came with intense scrutiny, on her, her actions. She was put under even more intense training, but with her brute abilities she now had the endurance to just barely manage, until she was deemed suitable for her first mission. One to show the effectiveness of the indoctrination and training.
She was to assassinate the young daughter of a high ranking perceptive thinker in the protectorate who had gone rogue as punishment. She was deemed suitable to the mission due to her unique ability to sense and avoid powered perception.
The mission went smoothly, the man not expecting someone who could so thoroughly evade his perceptions, waiting until just the right moment and then she slunk into the daughter's room through a wall, completely bypassing the door sensor. Standing over the daughter as she slept, combat dagger in hand as she positioned to slit the daughter's throat, she looks at the child's sleeping face, and her throat catches, muscles stiffening. She couldn't go through with it.
Escaping the manor was just as easy as getting in, and when she returned, having failed her mission, and the reason revealed, her specific set of abilities were deemed too dangerous to let her remain as she was, a potential flight risk. So they decided to end that threat.
Aboleth personally handled her programming, instilling a set of codes that, when invoked, effectively turn her into the perfect obedient assassin. That, along with a tinker tech implant embedded in her upper spine was deemed enough security. When sent on the same mission again under careful watch by her handlers, she executed it without hesitation. An unmitigated success.