Character Bios, Part Four (Excelion Universe)

Ehh... The author is not quite sure about this one, but doesn't have anything else lined up at the moment. Hopefully, he'll get around to editing it eventually.

Name: Maximum Dalton

Aliases: Red Prince, Demon Core Thief

Age: 29 (Probably) Somewhere around three thousand (Possibly)

Occupation: Mysterious Aerospace Executive

Affiliations: Alhazren Investigation Group (Terminated), Jacinta Aerospace Company, Brave Crown (Terribly mysterious)

Clearances: Azure (Official), Ultraviolet (Suspected access)

Equipment: Prehensile Scarf (living, or possibly mechanical), Custom Bracers, Demon Core

Super Mode: Duke of Braves

Appearance: A cleanshaven man in a somewhat armored business suit, combat boots, and a pair of thick black metal bracers that cover the lower half of each forearm. He wears a very nice silver scarf, and his eyes are an amber brown that looks red from some angles.

Character Notes: Superhumanly strong, but mostly in his upper body. Can affect psychic fields, and give directives of similar insistance to extreme hunger by eye contact. Both usually wear off rather quickly, but can be nasty in a fight. Wears a silver scarf that he can move at will, block most attacks with by spinning it, and used to belong to a friend of his. He may be keeping it as a memento, or possibly to return it at a later date, but either way he is very angry if it is damaged, and this is the only known way to consistently get him to activate the Demon Core.

His moveset:

• Charge/Parry: Scarf wraps around his neck. Blocks or deflects almost anything at torso or head level from any side. Anyone who gets too close feels a shorter range version of his charge shot at roughly a quarter power.
• Charge Attack:
• No charge: Scarf strikes out with a punch about half as strong as his others, but with better range and can be used in combination with other attacks.
• Partial charge: Scarf unwraps rapidly, deals slightly stronger hits than normal and hits several times in quick succession. The more charge time beforehand, the less initial range, and the more time to build up inertia.
• Full charge: Same as partial charge, just at maximum power.
• Super Mode Activation: The scarf is too tightly wrapped to deflect an incoming attack, and is damaged. Max goes at least briefly berserk, his eyes turn red, and he activates as the Duke of Braves. A red mist also begins to rise from his body, signifying the change.
• Main Attack: Max punches out. Decent damage, can alternate arms to increase speed. Pretty good if it gets going, but difficult to turn after building up inertia.
• Psychotrope Move: Max extends an arm, and if any opponents are facing him, he can give them a simple command. In practice, this means his player can press a button on his controller and either autopress or disable that button for his victims, depending on the action (stuff like hitting or cutting things autopress, stuff like guns disable).

Name: Grace

Aliases: Subject Tiamat, Dark Light Patient Seven, Jennifer Green

Age: 12-14 (birth date unknown, at least nine)

Occupation: Dark Light Test Subject (stable), (ward of state)

Affiliations: Dark Light Project (status unknown)

Clearances: Vermillion, Azure (by proxy of her legal guardians)

Equipment: High Durability Hospital Robe, Dark Light Symbiote

Super Mode: Dark Light Stage Six; “Saving Grace”

Appearance: A young girl, probably no older than fifteen, with straight black hair in several layers, with the outer layers several inches shorter than the inner ones, creating the impression of a waterfall or plate armor. Her skin is a dark greyish cream that looks almost natural, and can be mistaken for such from a distance. There is a hexagonal grid of thin, dark grey lines over her entire body, and the ones on her forearms and hands are nearly black, although on closer inspection they are actually the breaks where the flesh has separated and started to crystallize. Her irises are also a faintly glowing violet, but her expression is vacant. Combined with the lack of shoes and the sheer, thin, knee length gown she wears constantly, the whole effect is of a long term hospital patient with a very unusual condition.

Character Notes: Was present, and partially responsible for, the Dark Light Incident. Hasn’t deliberately killed anyone, probably hasn’t directly caused anyone’s death either, although it was probably a close thing. May or may not want to return to the Dark Light Analysis and Engineering Institute, which has been her home for the last eight and a half years.

Design Notes: Dark Light shares several similarities with the Jormungandr Microbe, and both are derived from the same source. Nevertheless, they behave quite differently in many respects, most notably in how they progress. While Jormungandr Microbes are passive most of the time, relying on their Cores for all production and commands, and collecting until they can complete their task in one stage, Dark Light is much more active, and probably as a result almost constantly emits a particle that triggers a phenomenon latent in humans, which arrests both the progress of Dark Light and the human’s higher mental processes while inducing a great desire to extinguish the source of the particle. As Dark Light is the only major source of the particle, and it had not yet been synthesized when the phenomenon was discovered, it is classified as a substage of Dark Light itself, although the proper term for uninfected humans reacting to it is Extinguishers. Most personal forcefields can block the particle, although this is useless if the person it is trying to shield is emitting it. Dark Light progresses in stages, and more advanced stages increase strength to compensate segmenting the body into ever more crystalline shards. In the few advanced cases on record, it also increases mental capabilities enough to partially compensate for Extinguisher Syndrome, although there is a notable personality change to the point of disconnect, probably because the lower brain functions are being used to emulate higher functions. Grace is actually a name that Jennifer Green, also a placeholder name, chose for her Dark Light persona.

See Also: Dark Light Stages

Development Notes: Grace may be based (very loosely) on elements from Prototype, an old, violent, videogame from 2009, of which the author has read excellent fanfic, and he may have intended to include the variant of telekinesis from Elfen Lied, which he thought was really cool and wishes was in a series he would actually watch. It has been quite some time since the author came up with her, and he has sadly forgotten what other elements went into her design, besides parts of his own vampire mechanics, but on reflection, he also vaguely remembers being somewhat proud of this one for being completely his work besides the naming theme.

Her Moveset:

• Charge/Parry: Grace holds up her arms and the segments begin to spread out, blacken, and grow into large crystalline spikes. Guard area fairly quickly spreads from middle torso area to full chest and upper leg coverage, and anything that hits the shields cause the segments to break apart and spread faster.
• Charge Attack:
• No charge: Grace turns her fingertips into claws and grabs with them, dealing damage while she’s holding on to her target. Her grip is fairly easy to break due to her small frame, but can be used on walls to scale them.
• Partial charge: Grace launches some of the shards from her arm. She can later absorb scattered shards to regain health. Reasonably accurate, low damage individually but can be combined with constant charge for significantly longer rapid fire at the cost of reduced guard coverage. Shards embedded in solid surfaces are sharp enough to do damage on contact with anyone besides Grace, and can unbalance anyone who walks over them.
• Full charge: Grace holds up both arms, now massive sections of crystal spikes, and detonates them. Spikes fly everywhere, and each has several times the velocity, and therefore damage, of the partial charge. Enough get launched, over a long enough period, to ricochet off the first set rather than embedding themselves.
• If something hits Grace while her shields are fully formed but before her feet have properly latched into the floor, she will fall over, hit her head, and slip into unconciousness due to how thin her body is spread, deactivating the Extinguisher effect. She will then promptly progress to Dark Light Stage Six, with her entire body turning to white crystal shards, healing any wounds she has, and allowing Grace to take over without waking Jennifer, although when Jennifer does wake up, and therefore reactivates the Extinguisher effect, she regresses to Stage Five.
• Main Attack: Grace kicks out with a leg sweep, revealing the flowing shorts under the gown. Mostly good for tripping people, for which, due to her enhanced strength, it is quite effective, and requires bracing to stay upright against.
• Psychotrope Move: Grace turns one of her arms into a crystal spike, then extends it rapidly. At close range, it moves fast enough to do extensive damage to heavy armor and even get a short way past personal forcefields, exposing the target to unfiltered Dark Light particles and briefly inducing Extinguisher Syndrome in the process, although the exposure is not long enough for actual infection. (Ingame, ES causes an autopilot to take over for six to ten seconds, depending on the dose, with different autopilots for each character, and different levels to which they can be overridden. Both Francis and Max are completely immune to it.)