Wednesday, July 9, 2014

Superheroes of Note: Illumina

Not every hero is a brick or a strong-man. There are some heroes who have a purity of heart, a strength of will, and an indomitable courage.

These are the heroes who, by Odin, piss me off more than anyone else in the world.

Illumina

This lady has been around for only a few years, but she has a scary, scary power. The only thing that keeps her from being the strongest super on the planet, as far as I can tell, is that she doesn't want to be. Instead, she's made it her life's work to help people in need, redeem the "lost" (you and me, folks), and otherwise go around being an interfering busybody.

Past

Illumina claims that she's an angel sent by God to Earth to save the planet, so uh, yeah. I guess that puts her origin story in the book of Genesis. More seriously, nobody's sure about her prior to her advent as a super. The usual suspects have been working to ID her, since she doesn't bother wearing a mask, but there's been no matches yet.

Position

Illumina seems to prefer the team medic role when she works with others. She'll heal anyone who's injured, protect people from attack, that sort of thing. She likes bold, self-sacrificing sorts of moves. When operating solo, she's fully capable of fighting at Stage 4 levels. She's primarily a physical fighter at these times, rather than using energy blasts or force fields.

Personality

She really is the nicest, sweetest girl you'll ever meet. She's got that calm attitude that comes from being able to dish out a beat-down to anyone, but she's pretty non-violent. She gives off that martial artist vibe, so I think someone trained her at some point.

It's pathetically easy to take advantage of her better nature, but she'll always tell you she forgives you, and she doesn't seem to hold it against you. It's weird. I keep waiting for her to just snap. I can't really hate her either, though I really have tried.

Powers

Illumina's primary power is terrifying. She can jack powers from defeated supers - those who have been exhausted and injured - but the jack is permanent. That super goes back down to Stage 0 and stays there. It doesn't always work, but when it does, it never wears off. She apparently can't adopt everyone's powers, so not everyone is vulnerable, but still.

Aside from that, she's able to impose a healing factor on other supers, even mundanes. This is her go-to power for most encounters.

She's picked up a package of secondary abilities over the few years she's been in operation - always from villains who went and actually killed people. I think that's kind of her line that you don't cross, because she can heal anyone who isn't already dead and so probably doesn't care.

Problems

The biggest restraint on Illumina, right now, is Illumina. She's unwilling to siphon powers from people she thinks can be redeemed (which is a lot of people), and she won't hurt anyone unless they're actually hurting someone else at the time.

I made it clear to her during our last run-in that I wasn't about to turn goody-goody for anyone, but I was smart enough to talk that shit after I got out of her trap. I don't know how our next encounter will go, and I don't plan to find out.

She's clearly a nutcase for acting like she's an angel, but that delusion hasn't affected any of her other thought processes.

Apparently she's in a romantic relationship with a Polish super, alias Scrapper, who operates in New York state. He manipulates iron, which is cool, but he's not at her power level. Threatening him to get to her is a possibility, but you better have balls of iron yourself if you try it.

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