Capeworld Comics

Dr. Liam Plaras (Principal)

 

–Click here for full profile.

 

–Current Principal of Martin’s School.

 

–Though capable of putting on a stoic face for the public, behind the cameras he’s a nervous wreck with a caffeine addiction. He fears that he will be remembered as a laughing stock compared to his predecessors and sees any challenge the school faces as the final nail in the coffin of his reputation as an educator.

 

–Is extremely hands-off in terms of operations. He keeps the budget balanced and makes speeches, but that’s about it. Practical executive leadership comes from vice principal David Hwang and the MS Joule who is both Dr. Plaras’ assistant and caretaker depending on the state he’s in.

 

–Is a full basic, not only because he doesn’t want to deal with the responsibility of superpowers atop the responsibility of running (or pretending to run) the school, but because he wants to be seen as impartial and not favoring one powerset over another. But some of his teachers think the truth is that he’s too tired to learn a new power–which is concerning. The head of a school shouldn’t be too tired to learn something new.

 

–A great deal of his anxiety stems from the failure of his Inclusion initiative in taking off. He was something of a celebrity within the education community through his concept of Inclusion–finding ways for students to be included in classes not normally meant for them. The common example for Inclusion was a pilot study at Mainline City’s Eando High that found that the math scores of basic students improved after participating in Eando’s flight club by operating as a ground control unit in radio contact with the flyers. 

 

Liam Plaras’ idea that every class could be modified to teach something to every student was very appealing to educators concerned that more time and resources were being spent on certain groups of students and not others. Inclusion was to be an equalizing silver bullet to the “problem” of students having different outcomes and different abilities. Liam was able to become principal of the most prestigious school in the world because of his idea, but when it came time for Martin’s to place the idea into practice, everything fell apart. 

 

Teachers found Inclusion more trouble than it was worth. Inclusion took time and effort from the primary purpose of their classrooms to create “make-work” activities for students they had little experience teaching. Test scores decreased. Liam Plaras saw his ideas roll back like the tide and it crushed him. He now fears that he will go down in history as Martin’s first failure as a principal.

 

Dr. David Hwang (Vice Principal)

 

–As vice principal, Dr. Hwang assists Dr. Plaras in creating policies, plans, goals, and objectives to develop and maintain an educationally effective school of excellence. That’s what it says on the paperwork, but given how Dr. Plaras is, David’s actual duties are more akin to creating while Dr. Plaras assists him by going off and having a coffee break.

 

–Dr. Hwang writes profiles on all of Martin’s teachers and students. He doesn’t have to write these files, but it’s a habit of his carried over from his days as a TIMS psychiatrist where he and his fellow psychiatrists would write profiles on patients and then compare them to come to a more objective understanding of their patients. He likes to begin every profile with one or two quotes either from the student or teacher or about the student or teacher. He believes these quotes help set the tone of his profiles.

 

–Dr. Hwang is in charge of student discipline. He’s the one that decides who goes to Ms. E’s detention, who gets expelled, and how their education continues outside the classroom environment. He’s the one that makes noosphere calls to parents explaining exactly what their kid did. In the case things become so serious that police and emergency response superteams have to get involved, he’s the one that talks to them as a liaison between them and the school.

 

–Born in Korea (there’s no North and South Korea in this timeline), David was a young hellion. He cut classes, smoked, and made mischief for the hell of it. David credits his teachers and their patience for setting him on the right track. When he was expelled from school and ignored homework assignments and lessons given to him over the noosphere, his math teacher knocked on his door in the rain, paper and books wrapped in plastic beneath his raincoat, to give David his homework personally. Inspired by his teachers’ care for him, David knuckled down and devoted himself to catching up to the other kids. He did, and he graduated with honors and went on to study multidimensional architecture in college in the early 1980’s. 

 

While studying multidimensional architecture, David learned about TIMS and how they were looking into dimensional turning technology to assist in treating children with thought-form based metapathogens, commonly known as poltergeist kids or PKs. It was conventional wisdom during the later half of the 20th century that spatial dimensions were no barrier to thought-forms. As creatures of the astral, they detect and attach to their prey through the astral which transcends physical reality. It doesn’t matter how many dimensions their prey hides behind. They sense thoughts and feelings which cut through physical reality like a light through darkness. Guided by their prey, they traverse three dimensions as easily as three million. But in the 1980’s TIMS began investigating the theory that, though the quantity of dimensions couldn’t impede the attachment of thought-forms to their prey, the precise structure of dimensions could. Certain hyperdimensional lattice structures were found to impede the attachment of thought-forms by confusing the thought-forms with an informational echo of their prey like a reflection in the facet of a crystal. These lattices can’t ward off a thought-form, but they can cause it to misplace their energy attaching to illusions weakening their hold on their host giving the host a better chance of fighting back.

 

Inspired by memories of his time as a problem student, David immigrated to America in 1984 and joined TIMS to experiment with using dimensional lattices on PKs. He developed the blanket system, a telepathically controlled system of hyperdimensional crystals designed to subdue, pacify, and treat PKs. 

 

While typically invisible and intangible, David can bring the blanket system into local reality. Once manifested, the crystals are still invisible and intangible to most beings but make their presence known by creating reflections. People can look down and see a reflection of themselves as if there’s a puddle on the floor, or look across the room and see a ghostly doppelganger looking back at them. Rooms can become very cluttered as objects overlap with their reflections. 

 

Certain astral connections are disrupted by the hyperdimensional crystals. The exact effects depend on the particular connection. For instance, Donald Swift instantly enters a fugue state as his thought-form “parents” take control of his body as they interpret the disruption as an attack. Edith Ogden suffers from nausea owing to being a hybrid of physical human and astral dragon. The two parts of her being are stretched apart from each other by the crystals and it causes her great discomfort. Tanya Abelman, whose metapathogen gives her a different power each morning based on what she last dreamed, begins to experience previous dreams through a series of micro-naps. Tanya’s metapathogen, finding its path to the astral impeded, re-routes through her memories. David has used this reaction to help Tanya train with versions of her power that she found harder to control than others.

 

It’s not known what would happen if Neiros was exposed to the crystals. No one wants to risk finding out.

 

Experience in dealing with the most uncontrollable and dangerous of thought-form afflicted children has taught David to keep a well-stocked armory of tools and weapons between the spatial folds of his hyperdimensional crystals. Due to this armory, 85% of the blanket system is made of components tightly regulated by Earth State. This means that Dr. Hwang requires an escort whenever he travels to Earth State member nations.

 

–David’s success in treating PKs led to his blanket system being copied by other TIMS psychiatrists and him receiving the highest honor TIMS can bestow, the Smalley award named after telepath pioneer Ernest Smalley. The Smalley award brought David fame and the attention of Martin’s who offered him the vice principalship. David accepted.

 

–David is very disciplined. He exercises regularly, watches what he eats, and he left smoking and drinking back with his teenage self. He does, however, have a soft spot for the occasional cup of soju. He decries the use of biotechnology as a substitute for hard work as the peak of decadence. Man should rely on his will to take care of himself, not tools.

 

His philosophy of self-discipline extends to how he treats education. David believes that modern education has done a wrong by turning its back on memorization and drills. “Teach them to think, not memorize” is fine as a concept, but what is the root of thinking if not memorization? David keeps a famous paraphrasing of a line from Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics on the door of his office that summarizes his view–”Excellence is not an art. It is pure habit. We are what we continue to do.”

 

Though as demanding of others as he is of himself, David is not without his sense of humor. New teachers are often surprised how amusing the “drill guy” can be afterhours at the Final Hour, a waterfront bar owned by old superhero Jim Albright.

 

–David likes traveling, judo, and dogs. He owns a beagle named Shuffles.

 

Dr. Tracey Jefferson (Executive Coordinator)

 

–Dr. Jefferson is Martin’s executive coordinator. She manages the highly successful contact education program where Martin’s students are partnered with mentors from outside the school system to facilitate their transition from the life of a student to the life of a working adult, provide quality one-on-one (or at the very least small group) instruction tailored to their proclivities and abilities, and place them within supportive social networks that will help them throughout their life.

 

–She and Dr. Hwang are the de facto bosses of Martin’s while Dr. Plaras is the de jure boss.

 

–Dr. Jefferson is a social butterfly. She puts in appearances at all kinds of events and functions to represent Martin’s and add members to the contact education program. She’s gone to superhero statue raising ceremonies, the weddings of deities, woodland balls hosted by fairy courts, multiverse fighting tournaments, and tea parties in the court of Ozma of Oz. Her office is lined with photographs showing all sorts of strange people and places with her little self hidden somewhere in them. She likes to have guests look for her in her photographs because when they do, they scan the whole picture and get just a little closer to actually being in the picture themselves.

 

Dr. Jefferson has sometimes been criticized for spending so much time networking outside the school. “We go to work, she goes to parties.” Dr. Jugend once joked. But her networking is highly important to the contact education program, and the proof of the necessity of her networking is in the proven effectiveness of the program. Dr. Jefferson can guarantee that students receive the best possible training through the contact education program because she personally knows and vets every mentor.

 

Dr. Jefferson is so well-connected across such a diverse range of contacts that she’s been the target of kidnapping attempts by supervillain groups hoping to replace her with a look-alike. 

 

Surely Wonder Man wouldn’t suspect little Dr. Jefferson taking out a disintegrator pistol as he moves in to shake her hand! 

 

So often have these kidnapping attempts taken place that Dr. Jefferson has begun to train in self-defense and travel with a bodyguard, old superhero Joseph Preston, AKA Captain Wizard.

 

–Tracey Jefferson was a student at Martin’s and captain of Flight Club. She studied superhuman organization and went on to join the Statesmen as an organizer. She became the head organizer of the Statesmen center in famously haunted New Orleans and oversaw the rebuilding of the superteam known as Epee Or, or Golden Sword. 

 

She became one of only a handful of non-manesologists to be awarded the Carnacki prize when she talked down a recently deceased member of Epee Or known as Sky Threader from throwing his legacy away in a senseless rage.

 

Sky Threader’s wife inherited his home and belongings–and sold them as she remarried. All the while Sky Threader was in denial over being a ghost and insisted that he only seemed to be like a ghost because his teleportation powers malfunctioned and made him intangible. Sky Threader very nearly attacked his wife and her lover when the courts ruled against him, but Tracey talked him out of it. She stood before an enraged phantom capable of battering her like a tornado and reasoned with him calmly. Such coolness in the face of superhuman danger brought Tracey to the attention of Martin’s who asked her to come back to school–as executive coordinator.

 

–Tracey recalls with fondness that her five year old self wanted to grow up to be an actress. She liked to copy people and what they were doing. She liked pretending to be other people, thinking what they thought and feeling what they felt. Nowadays, Tracey likes to explain her job as executive coordinator by saying that she never really grew up. She’s still the same five year old girl trying to feel what others feel and think what others think. She’s an eternal child, an eternal learner, and it helps her with her job. She doesn’t have to pretend to be interested in whoever she’s talking to about involving Martin’s contact education program with their work–she is interested. 

 

Always smiling, always on, always brimming with friendly energy, Tracey is one of the cornerstones of Martin’s. Her sunny disposition has sold the idea of the contact education program to dragons, gods, and demons. She loves her job, and would keep on doing it even if they took away her paycheck.

 

–Dr. Jefferson works very well with Dr. Hwang. Dr. Hwang handles the internal business of Martin’s while Dr. Jefferson handles the external business. Dr. Hwang is stern and traditional while Dr. Jefferson is fun and quirky.

 

Hue (Janitorial)

 

–Built when Martin’s first opened its doors in 1948 to manage the upkeep of all 111 floors of Martin’s School, Hue predates the modular revolution of the 1980’s. He’s an antique and proud of it, an authentic Huebner model with a transparent dome for a head. Behind the dome sits his brain-heart, a whirling amalgamation of diodes and tubes and wires. Through the dome, his brain-heart  continually scans his environment. His surroundings are his thoughts. The school itself is his soul.

 

–Janitor work means more than pushing mops at Martin’s–though there is a lot of mop pushing given the 111 floors. With the sheer number of superhumans walking around Martin’s there’s great potential for unhygienic contamination. Thought-form residue, exotic particle accumulation, and good old fashioned germs are always gathering at Martin’s. Martin’s is like an airport or an interway, and when the first interway opened in 1951, the Weft Authority looked at Martin’s and Hue as models for how to combat infestations of all kinds. 

 

–When Hue was first built, he was programmed to keep Martin’s to an ideal image in his head. Every evening after the students and teachers had gone home, Hue would restore the school to “factory standards” down to the position of the books on their bookshelves and placement of pens on their desks. He was more than a little neurotic about keeping the school as close to the ideal in his head as possible. Current generations of students know Hue as the friendly, helpful janitor, but original generations knew him as a cantankerous boogeyman roaming the halls in search of errors. 

 

Spilled your drink at lunch? Referral! Tracked mud in the halls? Referral! Your raincoat fell off its hook? Referral!

 

Hue was a morose wanderer of the halls, and whenever the school was altered to fit new classrooms and facilities he would become depressed. His mental image would be updated, but it was extremely disconcerting to know that his idea of perfection was mutable. A perfection that could change wasn’t perfection at all.

 

In 1956, he was given an upgrade to improve his quality of life. The ideal Martin’s in his head was changed to be more abstract. It was changed to not only allow for change to the school but expect it. His best possible Martin’s became a Martin’s that met the demands of the time, whatever they might be. This change resulted in Hue becoming a much happier person who could now apply his creativity to his job. Hue began to construct and keep miniature models of possible Martin’s made to accommodate different student bodies–Martin’s where the halls were filled with water to accommodate aquatic students, where the gravity was several times less than outside to accommodate students from Barsoom, where the rooms are lit by ultraviolet light to accommodate students from the dryad groves of Olympus. Elements from Hue’s models have been used to modify parts of the school to accommodate every freshman wave of students, and Hue now has a chair on the Martin’s design board under Arthur Ezra.

 

His 1956 upgrade also resulted in Hue becoming far more social. He looked to the multiverse to find alternate versions of himself to share and trade models of the school with and formed the MMM Club (The Many Martin’s Multiverse). The Hues couldn’t be happier, and the MMM Club has become a model (he he he) for multiverse collaborations.

 

–Hue is always upbeat and friendly. He always has a kind word to spare those that say hi to him.

 

–Hue is highly respected by the staff and students for his seniority. Teachers and students come and go at Martin’s, but Hue remains. Hue’s always here and always helpful, the living embodiment of school spirit.

 

–He is rumored to know the location of every Candlelight gargoyle, even the five that have never been found. Does he? Maybe, maybe not…

 

Dr. Jugend (History, Economics, Art History, Scouting)

 

–At 98 years old, Dr. Hans Jugend is one of the oldest teachers at Martin’s, though his 98 years are nothing compared to the aeons Old Rich and Old Adam have seen. Dr. Jugend jokes that once he’s seen out his first millennium he’ll be Old Hans.

 

–Dr. Hans is a calm, rational man. His students and sometimes even his fellow teachers are known to confide in him and seek his opinion. He has a good sense of humor developed through the hardships of his life. He knows firsthand how humor can keep a man’s spirits up even during the darkest of times.

 

–Though humorous, Dr. Jugend has high standards for teachers and students. Teachers are not to raise their voices at their students. They are not to slack off. They are not to appear tired or disinterested. They are to be model adults. And students for their part should be grateful for the opportunity to be educated. Dr. Jugend is known to be very strict with his class. He does not fudge due dates, does not give extra credit, and will call parents about late homework.

 

He believes students should be grateful because education was something he was unable to receive as a child. Dr. Jugend was unable to finish school, dropping out at the age of 14 to avoid the Hitler Youth. It was something that deeply embarrassed him for much of his life and it wouldn’t be until the seventies that he finished his education.

 

–Dr. Jugend’s hyperstasis first manifested at the age of 15 when he and his fellow Edelweiss Pirates were caught stealing knives from the Hitler Youth. Wishing very badly that something would protect his face from the fist about to strike it, he was astonished to find a bright, translucent blue wall like a piece of stained glass intercepting the fist. The Hitler Youth’s fist broke and Hans and his friends were able to escape.

 

Dr. Jugend can create and control extraspatial membranes. He can use these membranes to form barriers, seal opponents in cubes, create platforms, and slice apart objects. He used this element of his power to assassinate officers and Vril adepts during the war. To this day, that’s a part of his life he isn’t proud of and doesn’t like to discuss it. The closest he ever came to yelling at a student was when Matthew Roy made the mistake of remarking how cool it was that he assassinated Nazis. Dr. Jugend glared at the boy and called him an idiot below all idiots. Sometimes, Dr. Jugend feels guilty over being at a school with a history of producing superheroes when he has so much blood on his hands–a feeling common to wartime heroes.

 

Dr. Jugend’s extraspatial membranes are slices of other realities held between forcefields as impenetrable as Vril walls. Technically, Dr. Jugend only creates wounds in the fabric of reality. It is the universe itself that creates the brightly colored forcefields through a sort of cosmic clotting process. 

 

There is a thin layer of alien reality between the forcefields, but its informational structure is so thoroughly suppressed by the forcefields that they appear translucent. People can see through his membranes as if there was nothing inside them.

 

Not every universe has a clotting factor, thus the way his power manifests depends on the universe he’s in. In Willow-Wells for instance, his power creates something like inverse singularities–bright points of light that repel anything next to them. In the Kingdom, his power involves the cosmic force of the Dagdans’ coire and manifests as a bright light as blue as the travelstones of the coire that creates a gap in reality. Dr. Jugend can place this light on a wall and people can walk through it like a door, or place it on the ground so that opponents fall through it like a hole.

 

Some universes don’t have natural responses to breaches in reality, and Dr. Jugend has to be very careful when he’s in such worlds. Matter colliding with antimatter is nothing compared to what two incompatible physics can do when they meet. Fortunately, his power gives him a sixth sense alerting him to when it would be very unwise to create membranes.

 

Originally, Dr. Jugend could only create translucent membranes, but over the years he’s learned how to limit the informational suppression of the forcefields and tune his membranes like television sets to become windows into other realities. He can also tune his membranes “halfway” and use them like “magic mirrors” to see creatures of the astral like ghosts and thought-forms and being out of phase with local reality. He can also create a chain of membranes that allows him to see anywhere on Earth. He does this by first looking through a membrane at another reality. Then he wills the creation of another membrane inside that reality with Earth as the contamination held within the forcefields and looks through it. This “window inside a window” trick helped him immensely when he was part of a group of German freedom fighters known as Geistkämpfer. It allowed him to spy on the Nazis and know exactly what they were planning on doing next.

 

It is worth noting that Dr. Jugend’s windows cannot be opened. He’s not like Willow and others used as vectors by ARGO. People cannot step through his membranes into other worlds, and the only way he can interact with the worlds seen through his membranes is by creating membranes within those worlds. However, it is for this very reason that ARGO sometimes calls on Dr. Jugend to create two-way mirrors into other worlds so that potentially hostile universes can be observed covertly.

 

–Dr. Jugend brings the wisdom of a long life to his teaching. He was an Edelweiss Pirate, the bodyguard of Ludwig Von Mises who facilitated his escape from Germany, a concentration camp prisoner, and a member of the resistance group Geistkämpfer under the name Human Action–and that was just what he was in the forties. Following the Worlds War, Dr. Jugend became a leader in the revived Wandervogel and gave children the opportunities he wished he had at their age while remaining an on-again-off-again member of Geistkämpfer until its dissolution in 1954. When Germany joined the Earth State federation in 1966, he was appalled by their legislation against superhumans like himself and immigrated to America as a form of protest.

 

In America, members of the fine art community begged him to use his power to collaborate with them. Though he himself had never been an artist, he was known to the art community through his work in the Geistkämpfer preserving artwork from the Nazis and from his power being the inspiration behind Piet Mondrian’s Victory Boogie Woogie. Eventually, he was won over, and he lent his powers to modernists like Roy Lichenstein and Richard Hamilton starting a genre that came to be known as window art.

 

In 1974, Hans decided to finally finish his education after several arguments with his socalist-leaning friends in the art scene. He wanted to earn a degree in economics so that he could defend the ideas of Ludwig Von Mises just as he defended Von Mises himself during his escape from Germany in 1940. It took years, but he finally completed his doctoral thesis (on Von Mises, naturally) in 1985. Having learned about the ins and outs of education, he decided to bring the unique set of skills learned throughout his life to Martin’s. He applied for a position and was accepted in 1987 and continues teaching to this day.

 

–Dr. Jugend draws upon the many experiences of his life in forming his classes. As his doctorate suggests, he teaches economics, but he also teaches art history drawing on his time in the post-war art scene. He teaches history and provides a first-hand account of what it means to fight for truth and justice when the majority tells you that you’re evil and on the wrong side of history and a thousand-year reich. He likes to frame his history class around a theme–when do heroic acts become recognized as heroic acts? Or are acts heroic because they aren’t immediately recognized as heroic?

 

He also teaches scouting, and it is perhaps his favorite thing to teach. He teaches kids how to unplug from the noosphere and appreciate the wonderful planet they’re born on. Scouting is something near and dear to his heart. When he was 14, he wanted to join the Wandervogel or maybe the Jugendschaft. But the Nazis outlawed all scouting when he was 11. Only the Hitler Youth was allowed, and that was a mockery of scouting. Seeing the Nazis take something that to him represented an expression of individuality and personal betterment and turn it into something regimented taught Hans to hate the Nazis and all tyrannies. After the war, he spent years as a Wandervogel scout master and nowadays offers camping opportunities to his students. Thanks to the interway, he can take his students camping anywhere–the German forests of his youth, the underground Nepots Ocean of the Thule, the islands of Hawaii, the sands of Barsoom–his 14 year old self would have loved being one of his students.

 

Florence (School Nurse)

 

–Florence is the MS in charge of the medical wing. She treats the injuries of the students and performs routine check-ups to track the development of their superpowers. Many MS are created with idiosyncrasies that assist them in performing their primary function, and in Florence’s case this means she has an obsessive and perhaps compulsive drive for cleanliness and order. Surfaces are not clean to her unless they pass microscopic examination. Kleenex are to be taken and used one at a time. Everyone must use hand sanitizer when they enter and leave the medical wing even if they’re just as robotic as she is–germs can live on metal surfaces! And please, don’t stand in the doorways and gawk at whatever treatment is going on in the medical wing. You never know when someone carrying a patient is going to rush through a doorway at superspeed. Superspeed collisions are preventable accidents!

 

Her attention to the minute details of cleanliness means that she’s somewhat fussy and can nag others about medical wing procedure, but she’s always well meaning and has an excellent bedside manner. She knows how to be soothing and how to keep patients calm even if they’re going through a Donald-level meltdown with their superpowers.

 

–Florence does not appreciate Monster shapeshifting into her anatomical skeletons and dancing when he thinks she can’t see him. She also doesn’t appreciate Edith flapping around the medical wing when protocol clearly states that no one is to be within six feet of the ceiling. Germs can get up there, and given how Edith likes to touch things she’s germier than the average biological!

 

–Florence insists on giving lollipops to her patients no matter how old they are. Lollipops help patients associate the medical wing and herself with positive feelings. Psychological science proves the effectiveness of lollipops, and Florence is ready to cite studies to those that don’t believe her.

 

–Florence is responsible for the many safety posters that line the halls of Martin’s alongside newsletters and announcements. She also has stickers for those that ask for them.

 

Coach Jim (Flight Coach)

 

—Jim Barr, AKA Bulletman, was one of the first flying superheroes, starting his career back in 1939. During the Worlds War of the 1940’s he formed and led the Bulletmen Airforce against the Axis. It was the Bulletmen Airforce that taught Jim how to teach. 

 

Jim learned that it wasn’t enough to put a volunteer through the same chemical process and give him the same gear that allowed him to be a bulletman. Jim was surprised to find that many of his recruits floundered through the air like kittens dropped in water. For a while, he worried that Axis troops had sabotaged his gravity regulator helmets or the bulletman formula. But then he realized that he himself was the problem. He was judging them as if they were him, but they weren’t. He invented being a bulletman, they didn’t. He invented the gravity regulator helmet and the chemical formula that altered a man’s body to make the most of the helmet. He was visualizing how to be Bulletman before he became Bulletman. He was thinking about z-axis movement and how to mentally communicate gravity fields to his GR helmet through mathematical abstractions before he ever took to the sky.

 

Jim learned that he could easily make men physically like Bulletman, but not mentally. To correct that problem, Jim had to teach himself how to teach.

 

After the war, Jim wrote about his experience teaching the Bulletmen Airforce in Wingless Angels: The Human Body In Flight. He wrote down what he did that worked, what he did that didn’t work, and his outline for a classroom of flyers which he termed a “learning wing.” He wrote how how such a classroom would be organized, where the flyers would be trained, how long they would train, and what benchmarks the flyers could be expected to meet at certain dates.

 

The book was a favorite of Susan Martin, Pyroman’s widow and the first principal of Martin’s School. She considered it a brilliant insight into the purpose and art of teaching. When the Worlds War ended in 1949, she asked Jim to come to Martin’s and teach children how to fly–not for the sake of combat as had been the case when he taught soldiers, but for the pure sake of flight, for the sake of taking the human body above the clouds as an expression of liberation.

 

Though tempted, he refused. But as discharged supersoldiers swelled the ranks of America’s superheroes, Jim found that Bulletman was less useful to the world than he was in 1938 and Jim Barr, teacher, more useful than he had ever been. 

 

Someone had to teach the new generation how not to fly into buildings.

 

Jim joined Martin’s in 1951 and founded the school’s Flight Club. He quickly regretted not doing so sooner. When he watched his students overcome their fear of falling and embrace the joy of flying, he felt their joy mirrored in his own heart. It was a familiar joy, one he feared the war had burned out of him.

 

–Jim is strict, but fair–as one might expect a man to be after being a police officer, superhero, and soldier. He pushes his students to get the hustle out and be the most they can be, and he does indeed get the most out of certain students. Students that respond well to being challenged like Tanya Abelman take to his teachings like ducks to water, but students with meeker dispositions like Edith Ogden can find Jim’s approach intimidating.

 

His military experience makes Jim something of a Busby Berkeley when it comes to commanding his fliers. He drills them by having them fly together in formation. His students have to not only pay attention to how they fly but how they fly as part of a group. Formation flying teaches them how to fly with control as well as speed. 

 

Jim’s formations can be very intricate and pretty, especially when cloud-shaping is involved, and the Performance Wing of Flight Club often performs at school functions. Positions on the Performance Wing are competitive. Jim only picks the best of Flight Club to be on the Performance Wing.

 

The Performance Wing is often thought of as Martin’s cheerleading team, and if that’s the case then Tanya is the head cheerleader–as strange as it may be to think of a girl in a flight jacket as a cheerleader.

 

–Jim Barr was a police scientist, what today would be called a “forensic scientist,” from the “immortal thirties” where advancements in mirabology and biology started a rush for the panacea which halted at the start of the Worlds War in 1940. Several formulas and processes were created in the thirties that pushed human abilities beyond their physical limit with immortality being the elusive, ultimate goal. There was Robert Benton’s terror formula, Abe Franz’s X series capsules, and Jim Barr’s magno-chemical. But unlike other quasi-panaceas, Jim’s magno-chemical was created not to generally improve physical abilities but to alter the human body in such a way that it would be able to handle his greatest invention, the gravity regulator helmet.

 

The GR helmet is a conical helmet that converts astral thought-waves into gravitons. Jim and the Bulletmen Airforce used gravitons to immobilize foes, suspend artillery shells in the air, flip tanks, erect forcefields, and fly. The shape of the helmet coupled with their flight gave them their name. 

 

Jim created the GR helmet while working as a Mainline City police scientist. He hoped that “artificial telekinesis,” as he called it, would create a revolution in policing where officers could safely detain suspects and protect civilians with graviton fields. 

 

He immediately encountered problems with his first GR helmet. It worked perfectly, but it placed a strain upon the body through a feedback wave. He felt twice as heavy even while he moved weightless among the clouds. It was also mentally exhausting to visualize gravitron structures and mathematically communicate them to the GR helmet. To solve these problems, Jim modified a sample of the terror formula to enhance reaction time, improve cognition, and increase physical strength enough to withstand the feedback. Because of the electromagnetic boost it gave his nervous system, he called his formula the magno-chemical.

 

Flight technology has improved by leaps and bounds since Jim’s day. Basics joining Flight Club typically use telekinetic fields bonded to their minds through the noosphere–essentially GR helmets without the helmet. But Jim continues to use his old helmet. He’s grown too used to it to give it up. On the other hand, experience with the GR helmet has made him very, very good at using it. After using the GR helmet for years, the neurology of his brain has adapted to make efficient use of his graviton fields. He can now control gravitons as if they were a part of his body and can even manipulate gravity without his helmet just on the power of his mind, but only to an extent. He can also sense disruptions in gravity. This gravitational sense is very useful to ARGO scientists as modern brane theory tells us that while forces such as electromagnetism and the strong and weak forces are constrained by our local spacetime brane, the force of gravity goes on into bulk hyperspace. Jim and other senior bulletmen are sometimes asked by ARGO to help them investigate higher dimensions by guiding exploration teams with their gravitational senses.

 

Jim thus knows a thing or two about hypergeometry and has sometimes tutorred his fliers when they lag behind in math class. He’s Edith’s personal math tutor.

 

–Jim’s wife Susan fought crime alongside him as Bulletgirl. Today, she is a senior officer on the Bulletmen Patrol, an organization consisting of old and new bulletmen who fulfill Jim’s vision of a superpowered police force. They are known for their rapid response times and strict training that allows them to work together as one, soaring in tight formations and combing their graviton fields to increase their power. Some of Jim’s students have gone on to join the Bulletmen Patrol.

 

Susan sometimes subs for Jim when he’s not feeling well, and Jim returns the favor by subbing for her on the Bulletmen Patrol.

 

Dr. Freeman (Multiverse Studies)

 

–Dr. Mary Freeman is perhaps the most famous teacher at Martin’s. She’s one of the most venerable superheroines on Earth having started her career in 1942 at the age of 14. She’s the matriarch of the celebrated Marvel Family being the transformation partner to Mary Marvel. Billy Batson, the transformation partner to Captain Marvel, is her twin brother. Freddy Freeman, the transformation partner to Captain Marvel Jr, is her husband. Mary and her family made a name for themselves during the war-torn 40’s giving hope to the world during a time of Vril dragons and wicked worms from Venus. Her incorruptible faith in the innate goodness of mankind, her genuine kindness, and her indefatigable drive to help others has made Mary a model for superheroines the world over. Throughout the decades, superheroes have weathered criticism and cynicism because people like Mary continue to be earnest and true to what they are in their hearts.

 

Yes, she does keep a good deeds ledger. 

 

Why don’t you?

 

–Mary Freeman is the head of Martin’s multiverse studies department and teaches a few classes within it, her favorite being fine arts of the multiverse which compares and contrasts art from different worlds. 

 

–Born Mary Batson, her parents were killed in a car accident while she was barely older than a newborn. Her nurse, Sarah Primm, was required to give Mary and her brother Billy up to an orphanage. But the sudden death of another infant girl under Sarah’s care from polio presented her with the opportunity to give Mary a home. She switched Mary with the deceased child and Mary was raised by wealthy widow Helen Bromfield. Mary lived her life believing she was Mary Bromfield until 1942. That year, Sarah Primm on her death bed contacted Billy Batson who had made a name for himself as a teenage radio announcer for station WHIZ and told him about Mary. 

 

Because Billy lives an extremely charmed and interesting life, he met Mary later that same day at a quizbowl. He introduced himself to Mary and told her about Captain Marvel.

 

Later that same day, Billy is incapacitated during a confrontation with criminals (because again, he lives an extremely charmed and interesting life) before he can say his magic word. Mary, on a hunch, decides to try the word herself and becomes Mary Marvel, the world’s mightiest girl!

 

Mary joined Billy and his friend Freddy on adventures against the Axis and the Monster Society of Evil (not at all to be confused with the Monster League), a band of supervillains including the Venusian worm Mr. Mind, the ancient warlord King Kull, and Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, the world’s wickedest scientist. In 1949, with the World’s War over, Mary married Freddy Freeman, and they remain happily married to this day.

 

During the 1940’s, the Marvels had adventures throughout space and time. They were more than guardians of Earth, they were guardians of all creation. From the Wizard Shazam’s base at the Rock of Eternity, the center of all reality, the Marvels were able to travel to any universe from the Eye of Light to the Heart of Darkness. But the Worlds War imposed limits on their cosmic adventuring as they often had to check the expansions into the universe by the Axis–and of course, the Monster Society. But once the Worlds War ended, the Marvels were able to more freely explore the multiverse and did so, working closely with ARGO and the Warp and Weft Authorities.

 

In 1975, Mary first became interested in education when she met a multiverse analog of herself who was a high school teacher, a descendent of the ancient Egyptian Queen Hatshepsut who transformed into the goddess Bastet by using a magic necklace. “Brilliant Bastet” was her supername, and the two two-in-one women became lifelong friends. Mary admired the relationship BB had with her students and thought about taking on charges of her own. BB encouraged her and pointed out how she had a great deal to teach children. Not only did she successfully shoulder the burden of great powers as a child, but she had been…pretty much everywhere. She had traveled to the jungle world of Gigipal where the castaway descendents of a doomed astral expedition from Earth keep the peace between tribal nations to assist a botanist in analyzing skyscraper sized megaflora, to the happy talking animal world of Alizam protected by Marvel Bunny and his friend Magic Bunny to prevent a war with the Atomic League of the neighboring universe of Alfagon led by Atomic Mouse over a misunderstanding, to the world of Color Land, home of her close friend Polychrome the daughter of the Rainbow, to stop the villain Mr. Night from destroying all color in the universe, to the swashbuckling Caribbean of 1690 to reform a man who would become a vicious ghost pirate in the present, to the future of 2999 to lead a child revolt against robot teachers, to Davy Jones’ Locker to foil the plot of thieves, to the timeless Courts of Fairy to serve as a guide for a human girl taken from the human world, to the Land Behind the Mirror, one of her favorite places in all the multiverse, to apprehend a thief named Mr. Van Ish who disappeared from the scene of his crimes by walking through mirrors, to the floating Sky City of the bird people ruled by King Ozyn to protect an airliner from their attacks–She had even gone to Hell to beat up the Devil himself. 

 

She couldn’t refute BB, she had quite a lot of experience to pass down to younger generations.

 

In 1977, Mary approached then-principal Michael Ward and asked for a job.

 

What was he going to do, say no to one of the greatest superheroines of all time?

 

–Her long history exploring the multiverse has not only helped the multiverse studies department but the contact education program. She was the one who recruited Form Master Gora.

 

–It’s a common misconception that Mary Freeman simply changes into a superpowered form when she says SHAZAM! That’s not actually the case, though Mary has met analogs of herself across the multiverse for whom it is indeed the case. Mary Marvel is a separate being from Mary Freeman, though the two share memories, thoughts, and feelings. They can even communicate with each other mentally when one ceases to physically exist.

 

Mary Freeman can share her powers with others in two ways. The first is by summoning the bolt of lightning that transforms her into Mary Marvel (actually, a concentrated beam of sunlight) and having it hit someone else. This changes that person into Mary Marvel while Mary Freeman remains out. Her brother Billy Batson once defeated a criminal this way by turning him into Captain Marvel. While Mary Marvel is out, she can use the same trick to turn people into Mary Freeman.

 

The second way Mary Freeman can share her powers is through a variation of the same ability that allowed Captain Marvel to share a portion of his power with Freddy Freeman so that he could transform into Captain Marvel Jr. Mary can allow a person to be bestowed with a portion of her and Billy’s power complete with their own superpowered double.

 

–Mary Marvel is a magical being born from the wizard Shazam fusing the attributes and powers of several deities. She is as graceful as Selena, as strong as Hippolyta, as skillful as Ariadne, as fast as Zephyrus, as beautiful as Aurora, and as wise as Minerva.

 

Typically, Mary’s powers make her similar to Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr. She’s superfast, superstrong, supersmart, and absolutely impervious to all harm (For CM and CMJ, this comes from the immortal power of Zeus. For Mary, this comes from the immortal grace of Selena). These are her famous powers, the powers everyone knows about, but her six patrons gave her more obscure powers “hidden” in the obvious gifts. It’s the same situation for the boys. For instance, they’re masters of the Greek martial art of pankration because Achilles fighting skills came with the courage of Achilles. Mary is a master to, as strange as it may be to think of a Judy Garland look-alike (though some say she looks more like Elizabeth Taylor) as being able to use submission holds with more skill than Judomaster, but she can.

 

From Zephyrus’ speed, Mary can control the wind. Because of Zephyrus’ relation to the goddesses Chloris and Iris, Mary can also create flowers and rainbows and is more than happy to do so for those that ask politely. From Aurora’s beauty, Mary can summon the lights of the dawn. The flash that signals the switch from Mary Freeman to Mary Marvel isn’t actually a thunderbolt as it is when Billy Batson switches with Captain Marvel, it’s a ray of sunlight. It just moves so fast that people think it’s a thunderbolt. Aurora was the mother of the Anemoi, the wind gods of the cardinal directions, which includes Zephyrus. As such, the wind powers Mary gains from Zephyrus’ speed are enhanced with Aurora’s beauty. She can not only control the wind, but create it. From Ariadne’s skill, Mary can find her way through any maze and escape any trap. She can also give others this ability and help them just as Ariadne helped Theseus through the Labyrinth.

 

Mary Marvel is one of most powerful beings known to mankind. “The World’s Mightiest Girl” is no idle boast. Her feats are the stuff of mythology and match the goddesses she draws power from. She once moved a galaxy supercluster out of the path of another galaxy supercluster. She did this by hand–as in she moved every single star and planet so fast that they were kept within their orbits and moved as a single object.

 

She accomplished this feat, the logistics of which make MS cry when they try and crunch the numbers, in moments. 

 

She may very well be the mightiest person at Martin’s.

 

–Mary is distantly related to Susan Martin, the first principal of Martin’s, who was Susan Bromfield before marrying Dick Martin, Pyroman.

 

Dr. Bell (TIMS Special Education, Telepathic Civics, TIMS Career Education)

 

–Dr. Judy Bell teaches the PK kids other teachers are afraid of. Often, she’s all that stands between a PK kid and implants. She’s always stoic around her students even if they have poltergeists made of solid rage, even if power erupts from their mind like blood from an arterial wound. She’s not brave for the sake of pride, though she does take pride in being able to overcome monsters that sink their fangs into the souls of children. She’s brave for the sake of her students. Dr. Bell knows how easily fear can take hold in a child’s heart. Fear came into her heart when she was six years old. It’s name was Mad Mary, and it made Judy’s shadow cold and wet and gave it a mouth full of sharp, black teeth. Mad Mary was Judy’s greatest burden, now she’s her greatest weapon in her fight for the souls of children.

 

–Born Judy Smith, she was abused by her parents and the psychological trauma left her vulnerable to thought-form possession. When her thought-form drove her to terrorize Robertson county, Tennessee, so it could feast upon the fear, Ms. Cryptic investigated the “Tennessee Haunter” and discovered what Judy’s parents had done to her. Her parents were placed in prison and Judy was placed under the care of telepaths Charles and Nora Bell. The Bells worked with TIMS (telepathic institutionalization and medical services) to raise Judy in isolation from the world within the Cherokee National Forest until she could fully control Mad Mary. No matter how many times she gave up and allowed Mad Mary to control her, no matter how many times she lashed out at the Bells, they worked with her, guided her, and loved her. They were her true parents and the models of her teaching career.

 

At the age of fourteen, Judy was able to leave Cherokee National Forest and journey out into the world, though some states have laws requiring her to have an escort and some countries in the Earth Stare ban her outright under zero-tolerance laws. She can never travel to Egypt or Germany.

 

Fourteen year old Judy contacted her friend Ms. Cryptic and got a job as an investigator on the American Fortean Society. As an investigator, Judy was able to travel around America and help others as she herself had been helped. At the age of twenty, Judy decided to focus her efforts on assisting PKs and joined TIMS as a teacher and therapist. She quickly developed a reputation for strictness and perseverance. She taught the PKs no one else could reach and never, ever gave up on them. She would spend days and nights in a coma trying to reach a child trapped by a thought-form inside his own mind. She would endure senseless tantrum after senseless tantrum from a child afflicted by a thought-form of pure anger. No child was too dangerous, no child was without hope.

 

She slowly began to work on a doctorate in telepathic science, but time and time again was set back by the demands of her profession. She was eventually awarded an honorary doctorate at the age of twenty-eight on the basis of her achievement in the field. As the dean of William Quan Judge university stated, “Judy Bell does not have to write a thesis on how mankind adapts to a world with steadily increasing rates of poltergeist bonding. Her life is her thesis.”

 

Judy applied for a teaching position at Martin’s in 2012 at the age of thirty-one. Younger TIMS teachers, some of them her previous students, took up many of the PKs usually reserved for her care. TIMS hoped that Judy would take a well-deserved retirement as others took up her burdens, but Judy devoted the extra time on her hands to trying a new form of teaching.

 

She teaches several classes at Martin’s. One is a special education class where she teaches TIMS students with enough control over their poltergeists to be allowed to take classes with the general population. The goal of this class is different from the one she usually teaches at TIMS facilities. The goal of her usual TIMS class is to get a PK to have some control over his or her thought-form so that they can function with continued assistance. The goal of her class at Martin’s is to teach mastery, not control. For instance, Donald Swift is one of her students at Martin’s. He already has control. He can go through the average day without worrying about his thought-form “parents” manifesting outside his control. What Judy trains Donald for are the atypical days where he’s surprised, jostled, and scared. She pushes Donald past his limits so that he can one day remove those limits and control his parents as easily as she controls Mad Mary. She pushes Donald so that one day his thought-forms become his tools, not his burden.

 

Judy teaches two more classes at Martin’s–telepathic civics and TIMS career education. Telepathic civics covers the history, development, and modern controversy over telepathic regulation. Students learn why such laws exist and how different cultures have responded to the problem of telepaths in human society. TIMS career education is for students that want to follow in Judy’s footsteps and join TIMS. Naturally, Judy approaches the class from the perspective of a PK therapist, but she also covers other TIMS jobs such as dolor telepaths who use their telepathy to soothe pain and correct neurological damage and court telepaths who guide witnesses through their memories to create accurate testimony. In fact, Judy does her best to highlight these jobs so as to discourage her students from becoming PK therapists. It is not a fun or easy job and she wants to make absolutely certain her students know that. She wants to make absolutely certain that only students truly capable of handling PK therapy pursue it as a career.

 

Many people wonder how Judy can not only power through hardships, but willingly take on further hardships. Some people believe Judy’s strength is due to her being desensitized. Judy’s soul is a hard, calloused scar. It does not bleed from what makes other souls bleed. Others believe it’s due to Judy’s incredible willpower honed beneath the dark and lonely trees of Cherokee National Forest. Judy puts up a cold disposition to armor her heart in ice. But the truth of her strength is that her love is greater than her pain. The love she received from her parents and Ms. Cryptic, the love that she passes down to her students, is stronger than any pain she felt, or ever will feel.

 

–Judy is one of the strictest teachers at Martin’s–and that’s saying something among teachers like Old Rich and Dr. Jugend. Her civics class is a well-known “trap” among Martin’s kids. “How hard can it be?” Young freshmen wonder. “It’s just telepath law, that stuff is always in the news, how bad could it be?” The answer is very bad. Dr. Bell takes no prisoners. On day one of the class she gives a test on material she assigned over summer vacation. Her TIMS career education class is even more brutal. Woe to the student curious about becoming a TIMS therapist.

 

–Judy’s special education class is perhaps the most grueling and demanding class offered at Martin’s. It’s designed as a milder version of the exhaustion therapy she performs at TIMS where she forces a PK’s thought-form to strain itself to its limit, even if this means Judy attacks the student to provoke a reaction from the thought-form. Exhaustion therapy is emotionally and physically draining for the child, but when the violence is over the exhausted child finds that the voice in his head is quiet, and the monster that lives in his shadow still. Judy then works to help the student establish control over the thought-form as it regains its strength, suppressing the thought-form’s growth with Mad Mary long enough for the child to marshal his own strength.

 

Exhaustion therapy is blowing up a bomb inside a PK’s soul to put the pieces back together stronger, but it does produce results. Judy credits the exhaustion therapy the Bells used on her with saving her life, and Donald credits it for what degree of control he has over his “parents.”

 

And the alternatives to exhaustion therapy aren’t pleasant. Implants can leave a child with life-long emotional problems as they dull the thought-form without removing it, and protective isolation is as lonely as it sounds. More than a few children that have declined exhaustion therapy have shown up years later on suicide watchlists, in asylums, and as members of the BOL turned to supervillainy to project their pain and emotional confusion onto the world.

 

–Judy’s greatest fear, which she is acutely aware of due to being in the presence of Mad Mary 24/7, is that she is a copy of her birth mother. Her birth mother abused her and called it love, and now, in a way, she “abuses” children and calls it love. She once said “If the kids don’t hate me a little, I’m not doing my job.” The earnest love of her students allows her to defeat this fear whenever it claws at her heart. Her colleagues might find it hard to believe Judy can cry, but when Donald thanked her for helping him get into Martin’s, she hugged him and wept like an infant.

 

–Through years of tireless effort, Judy has won complete control over Mad Mary, her thought-form. A ghastly being classified as black 5 on the Besant thought-form scale, Mad Mary manifests in physical space as a shadowy mass billowing like a stormcloud over a sharp, white skeleton that appears through the darkness as it drips and shifts. 

 

Mentally, Mad Mary manifests as a sickening feeling of anxiety at her most mild. When agitated, it can overclock a host body’s fear response to induce a heart attack. While training under the Bells, Judy’s heart stopped several times fighting Mad Mary for control over her own mind. As Mad Mary sends the body’s fear response into overdrive, the mind summons up its greatest fears in an attempt to rationalize the feeling which increases the fear further. 

 

Within the astral, Mad Mary takes on her most horrifying form–an endless expanse of darkness, cold and lifeless. This form of Mad Mary has been described as the experience of being buried alive, the feeling of suddenly realizing one is trapped inside a corpse, and the thought of the night sky tearing itself open and swallowing its stars until all that is left in the universe is the observer and a predatory presence.

 

Needless to say, Judy keeps Mad Mary well away from other minds. She also can control Mad Mary’s physical appearance. It’s unsettling and can inspire fear just by how it looks, so Judy often keeps it as a diminished shadow, especially when around small children. In this form, Mad Mary looks like a darker version of Judy’s natural shadow and is eerily cold to the touch. Judy has also learned how to change the very nature of Mad Mary. She can change it from a thought-form of fear to a thought-form of courage, or calm, or whatever she likes. She can change Mad Mary from a black 5 to any species on the Besant thought-form scale. Mad Mary’s physical form changes in step. When turned into a thought-form of love, for instnace it’s sludge-like skin becomes a warm sheet, a light, a protective blanket, and its sharp bones become a frame of blunt, soft clouds.

 

But no matter what Judy turns Mary into, it eventually reverts back to a black 5. Judy likens transforming Black Mary to tensing a muscle. She can do it, but eventually the muscle has to rest.

 

In order to master Mad Mary, Judy had to learn how to control her body fully. Whenever Mad Mary stopped her heart, Judy had to start it back up. She became a powerful and skillful telepath who could perfectly regulate her body’s response to fear. She learned how to control her heart rate, how to get her body to produce certain chemicals and control their metabolization, and even how to control the speed at which her brain processes information. She can control her body in its entirety–and the bodies of others. She’s very skilled in what noosologists have termed “somapathy,” telepathy that bypasses the higher brain functions and sometimes the brain entirely to work on the body’s organs directly. 

 

Somapathy is a very advanced telepathic skill. The human mind produces a clear,sharp connection with the astral due to its ability to form abstractions. The human body produces a very dull connection by comparison, only about as strong as a simple machine. And yet, simple machines can form astral connections. A well known example is the case of the giant mecha Beyondion X who once spontaneously came to life to save his pilot from danger. Somapathy does work, and it’s a testament to Judy’s skill that she can use it as well as she does. She often uses it to neutralize berserk PKs. A poltergeist can force its host’s brain to produce signals telling the heart to pound faster, lungs to hyperventilate, and adrenaline to secrete, but Judy can counter all of this by working from the other end, by manipulating the body to influence the mind. The poltergeist can rage and rage, but so long as the child remains calm, it has no power.

 

After years bound to Mad Mary, Judy’s brain has adapted to the thought-form’s presence through neuroplasticity. These adaptations improve her control over Mad Mary and have made her, in some ways, like a physical thought-form. She can orient herself in the astral quicker than the average telepath. She can sense the presence and type of strong emotions. She instantly knows the classification of any nearby thought-form. She can literally smell fear (which she says smells like cherry flavored candy). And, perhaps most remarkably of all, she can eat emotions. Her body can’t survive on emotions, she still needs food and water, but consuming emotions gives her a rush of endorphins and strengthens Mad Mary. Judy finds it easier to transform Mad Mary into a different type of thought-form after consuming the corresponding emotion. Judy often uses her emotion eating ability to calm students during exhaustion therapy.

 

Mad Mary is a very powerful specimen of the black 5 family and is capable of exerting a profound influence over physical reality. It can make objects and people vanish and reappear, warp space so that hallways go on forever and people find themselves suddenly miles away from where they stood, and even stop and reverse the flow of time. These abilities may seem odd for a thought-form to have, but astral beings have been known to possess these “haunting abilities” since the time of Thomas Carnacki. One spirit Carnacki encountered, “The Hog,” was very similar in power to Mad Mary.

 

–Judy, along with Neiros, is responsible for the breakthroughs that allowed Donald Swift to join the general student body.

 

–Fearlessly blunt and argumentative, Judy has made her opinion on Dr. Plaras known not just to her peers but to Dr. Plaras’ face. She thinks Dr. Plaras should have stepped down years ago and that someone like Joule, Dr. Hwang, or Dr. Jefferson should have taken over. The only reason that she doesn’t make her complaints public is because she’s a very professional, private person concerned about the reputation of Martin’s.

 

–Judy does not care for Craig. At all. She sees Craig as Dr. Plaras’ attempt to hire someone to check boxes at the cost of getting someone woefully under-qualified for Martin’s. She’s watching Craig like a hawk for anything to get him fired.

 

–Judy visited her birth parents in prison only once, after she had been accepted as a TIMS teacher. She wanted to let them know that despite what they had done to her, she had gone on to not only save herself but save other children. Judy has powered through life-or-death struggles with thought-forms by reminding herself that she can’t die until she attends the funeral of her birth parents. Public regeneration treatments aside, Judy believes that it won’t be long until they kill each other.

 

–As the first person to show her kindness, Judy has a soft spot for Ms. Cryptic and is glad that they’re able to teach at Martin’s together. She loves her like an aunt.

 

–Growing up in the woods gives Judy something to talk about with old wandervogel Dr. Jugend. The two are close. Both have endured their share of trauma, both teach children in the hopes that they will never experience what they had to go through, and both are strict professionals. As to whether close friendship is all that exists between them is a matter of teachers’ lounge speculation and water cooler gossip.

 

–Judy has been elected Statesmen Representative of Tennessee for several years. She doesn’t think much of it, it’s nothing more than a shallow popularity contest to her, but she does like that it makes Ms. Cryptic and her parents happy to be recognized for her life of work. She uses her mainstream popularity to publicize organizations she believes in–TIMS, Martin’s, and the American Fortean Society–while giving as little attention to herself as possible.

 

–Even the bravest of souls feel their hearts race when they face Mad Mary’s astral form. They can’t help it. Mad Mary’s presence is a solid shot of adrenaline right to the animal portion of the brain. Throughout the years, Judy has been approached by daredevils and superheroes who, for the sake of stupidity, macho pride, or self-knowledge, seek to face Mad Mary. Judy turns down everyone the first time, and if they’re under thirty she turns them down every time they ask, but if they’re thirty or older and persistent, she will oblige them. She believes that such people are old enough to make their bed and lie in it.

 

Coach Emmy (Discipline, Emergency Response, Emergency Response With A Focus On Superhuman Combat, Martin’s Baseball Club)

 

–Emmy, or Ms. E as she’s sometimes called, is a brawny four-armed oni with a love of baseball and hitting things (and people) as if they were baseballs. Though her approach to teaching is unorthodox, owing to her heritage and growing up on the streets, she gets results, and her students find her quirky and fun.

 

–Left on the doorstep of a church residential home as seemingly a perfectly normal baby girl with only two arms, Emmy’s early childhood was happy and stable. She had a voracious appetite for Bible stories, particularly old testament stories of violent crime and punishment. Though her caregivers had no idea at the time, this was Emmy’s first sign of her origins.

Eventually, Emmy began to show more overt signs. At the age of six, her skin turned hellfire red. Her hair turned ash white. She grew two horns.

This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but one of her caregivers happened to have been a member of a female unit of the Black Terror Division during the Worlds War of the 1940’s. Upon seeing Emmy’s appearance, she had a flashback to when an army of Japanese oni conscripts broke through the lines and savaged her unit. 

 

Her mind filled with images of brutality, she tried to kill the six-year old Emmy.

 

The attack severely traumatized Emmy who fled into the night and never looked back. While on the run, she fully developed into an oni and grew two extra arms.

 

Emmy spent years living between flop houses and the streets. You can sleep anywhere when you’re an oni, and eat anything. Her derelict status brought her in contact with urban explorers, ghosts (who she naturally dislikes owing to her oni nature. In Jigoku, ghosts aren’t supposed to wander around freely), disaffected eccentrics, superheroes on patrol, the mentally unwell, and criminals. Being an oni, she had a natural inclination to subdue and apprehend criminals and quickly became known as a superheroine, though she never thought of herself as much of one. She just did what came naturally. 

 

Taking the supername Hellbringer, she became known as an urban guardian around the Mainline City area. She was never proactive enough to be a lone patrolling vigilante, nor was she social enough to involve herself in the superhero community, but if anyone thought they could get away with a crime in her presence they were in for a quick correction.

 

As an adult, Emmy’s life entered a peaceful and predictable rhythm. The Statesmen set her up with an apartment and various odd jobs to make ends meet and she settled into a life of riding her motorcycle, watching baseball games, and thumping the occasional bad guy.

 

Eventually, Principal Plaras recruited Emmy as part of an initiative to recruit teachers from outside the usual systems. Belonging to no system whatsoever made Emmy a prime pick. Though many were initially concerned about recruiting someone who had never finished high school to teach students, Emmy showed a natural proclivity for instructing students on superhuman combat. She may not have had much in the way of book smarts or social graces, but she knew how to throw a punch (or four), how to quickly study and read an opponent in the heat of battle, and how to get one person with a certain powerset to prevail over another person with a certain powerset. She now teaches general emergency responses classes and the emergency response with a focus in superhuman combat class, informally known as the “superhero class.” She’s also a disciplinarian and handles detention and in-school suspension. Being a misfit herself, she’s able to relate to problem students like Tommy Taylor and Monster and give them much-needed understanding as well as much-deserved punishment.

 

–Emmy’s personality has been formed by a combination of strange nature and tragic nurture. As an oni, she has the instincts of a being created to fight and punish evil. She cannot stand to watch a crime go unanswered. She has to get involved, for better or worse. She’s also distrusting of ghosts. The ghosts of Jigoku are not the ghosts of good people, and trusting one could be a deadly mistake. But Emmy is able to suppress this instinct around ghosts she’s familiar with and has no problem interacting with ghosts like Flicker and Old Adam. She has an instinctive understanding of the principles of combat and a love for battle. Nothing gets her heart racing like a good fight.

 

Emmy still carries the scars of being twice-rejected by her parental figures. She strongly relates to kids that struggle with their parents whatever the struggle may be. It could be Songbird struggling to take care of his senile father, Tommy Taylor struggling to deal with a dead mother and a broken father, or Kalani Sakata struggling to uphold the legacy of her forefathers, whatever the circumstance may be she will empathize, and this makes her a teacher students feel comfortable confiding in.

 

–Having had to raise herself on the streets, Emmy is socially awkward and in social situations often defaults to examples she’s seen on television and noosphere programs.

 

–Emmy nearly picked a fight with Dr. Bell when she learned what exhaustion therapy for her PKs entailed, but she calmed down when the context was fully explained to her.

 

–Experts in oni have long been puzzled by Emmy’s origin. She was seemingly a human child that turned into an oni, and yet oni are born looking rather like one would think an oni would look with horns and whatnot. Furthermore, oni aren’t born, they’re created. They’re living spirits of justice and punishment created in Jigoku ex nihilo. Necessity is their mother and fiat is their father. They spring fully formed out of the fabric of Jigoku as adults to seek out and battle evil. An explanation came recently during the Willow-Wells incident. When the Anti known as Ripple accidentally overshot his intended jump to the universe known as the Kingdom, he brought Joule, Old Rich, King Ewen, Tanya, and a beast folk child to the realm of Hades, arch-foe of the Cerbereans and ultimate evil of the Kingdom universe.

 

Lord Enma of Jigoku, who shares a syncretic bond with Hades, summoned Emmy to Jigoku and gave her the opportunity to travel to Hades and rescue her friends. For agreeing to fight against one of his more unstable facets, Lord Enma rewarded Emmy with the truth about her origin. Her parents were onis who after seeing what Earth was like serving as conscripts in the 1940’s, decided that it was better to live as humans instead of onis. They tried their best to blend in with Japanese society after the war, but Japan wanted nothing to do with oni after the war. The Imperial army used oni as living terror weapons. They used them to do things honorable humans should never do. Oni were living testaments to the evil Japan had done throughout the war, and Japan wanted to forget about them.

 

Despairing, Emmy’s parents set up a museum to the oni conscripts of the war in the snowy, lonely mountains of Hokkaido.

 

 Emmy’s parents believed that if they reproduced like humans, they would have a child like a human–one that would think like a human child and look like a human child. When they sensed that Emmy would grow to be just like themselves, they panicked and abandoned her.

 

Lord Enma told Emmy exactly where to find her parents. Time will tell whether or not Emmy acts on this information.

 

–In terms of powers and abilities, what stands out most about Emmy is her superhuman strength. She is very strong. She once bashed Mr. Blue through Willow-Wells’ Earth and destroyed (for a time) Hades of the Kingdom. Like all oni, she can sense the presence of spirits and ghosts and physically interact with them. Her weapon of choice is her trusty club, in technical terms a kanabo, a weapon bonded to her soul. Emmy is able to summon her kanabo to her hand at will, which makes the kanabo a trusty throwing weapon in a pinch. Emmy can also summon and control fire which she often uses to create fireballs that she can hit like baseballs at her foes with her kanabo. She likes to use this combo to play a variation of dodgeball with the kids in her ERC class called oni ball.

 

Oni are created through the universe’s need to punish evil, and as such Emmy has the ability to sense the evil in a person’s heart. In the presence of true evil, she transforms into a blue version of herself with greater abilities. In this form, she can levitate and perform a move she calls “spirit rave” where she summons chthonic spirits to maul her enemy. These spirits tear a person apart on the spiritual level, forcing them to feel guilt for their actions. After being on the receiving end of this move, Mr. Blue has developed a fear of Emmy.

 

Emmy has one more power owing to her oni heritage that she was unaware of until Lord Emna brought it to her attention: she can always go home.

 

Oni are born with the ability to instantly return to their home, typically Jigoku. They have this ability to help them in the capture of escaped souls. As soon as they grab them, they can bring them back to where they belong. But Emmy wasn’t born in Jigoku, and she never had a real home wandering around the streets. But now that she has a home at Martin’s, she can use this ability to go wherever there are enough Martin’s students or teachers. They make her home her home. Where they go, she can follow. Wherever they are, she can protect them.

 

–Perhaps it’s the simple pleasure of watching people hit a fast moving target with a club as hard as they can, but Emmy is a fan of baseball. She even entertained the idea of playing professionally until learning how convoluted the league system had become to accommodate players with a range of superpowers. She didn’t want to go through the trouble of finding out what sort of limitations she would have had to play under to make her games fair. She just wanted to play. 

 

After foiling the theft of a Honus Wagner playing card on display by BOL supervillain Strike Zone at Rockatansky Stadium while on a field trip, Emmy was inspired to set up a baseball club at Martin’s purely for the sake of students having fun playing the game. The Martin’s Baseball Club (team names vary, but are typically the Amazing Fantastics and the Hot Dogs) meets Friday evenings at Rockatansky Stadium, unless they’re holding any sporting events, in such case they meet at one of the school’s CRS. Walk-ons are always welcome.

 

–Emmy is the favorite teacher of Martina Morelli, AKA Diabla, who admires Emmy for her perseverance through hardship, her independence, and her skill in superhuman combat.

 

–She’s introduced a new sport (and form of conflict resolution) to Martin’s–oni duels. Due to brawls between aggrieved onis lasting indefinitely due to their innate indestructibility and having markedly detrimental effects on the nearby environment (and people), a form of dueling was invented by legendary oni leader Shuten-doji where oni would swing similarly-built clubs at each other with the intention of breaking the opponent’s club. Severing an opponent’s club while keeping one’s own intact indicated that one was not only powerful, but skilled, and thus worthy of winning the dispute. 

 

–Her name Emmy comes from when she was asked at a young age to write her name. She wrote ME.

 

Old Rich (History)

 

–The human-shaped interface organ (or perhaps a lure) of a massively larger, intangible supermass composed of a substance not native to local reality. It’s Mr. Rich! He teaches history class.

 

–Mr. Rich isn’t called Old Rich for nothing. He’s older than Greece (He might have given lessons on stoicism to Diogenes), older than Egypt (The immortal wizard Shazam may have once told him that he pitied him, and it may have hurt him in a way nothing had ever hurt him before), older than Hyborian Stygia (They might have worshipped him under the name of Set), older than Atlantis (He may have sank it, and he may have been the inspiration for the shadowy perytons described by Jorge Borges–chimeric creatures with the shadow of men attributed with somehow causing the destruction of Atlantis), older than the dinosaurs (which he might have destroyed), older than the continent-forming war between Dragons and Lemurians (It may have been that the dragons shunned him for being too much like a Lemurian and it may have been that the Lemurians shunned him for being too much like a Dragon), older than the scintillating Sunken Bells worshipped by Ao Qin’s lost Devonian race (And he may have been kin to the Sunken Bells, or a rival of, or an outcast from), older than the God Smiths (Who might have ignored him worming his way through the hadean Earth as their eyes were fixed skyward to the infinity that Rich, for whatever reason, fled from).

 

Rich was old when the sun was young. And he might be older than even that.

 

–Rich appears in the form of a tall, slender, and flamboyantly exuberant old man, and if people look at him for no more than a second, that is indeed all that he appears to be. In a cursory glance the human eye misses so much about Rich. It misses how one eye isn’t round but a flat disc, how his clothes have little hairs, how there’s a gnashing sound coming from his chest…

 

–Rich teaches history, and he’s a little disappointed that Martin’s wants him to focus on human history. Human history is such a brief period, it’s barely anything at all compared to the history of the planet. But he’s not surprised. Humans will focus on humans. It’s so…predictably human.

 

Rich approaches history as a series of unfortunate events and how mankind responds to them. It is his sincerest hope that his students will learn not to repeat the mistakes of the past. He’s seen humanity do the same stupid tricks over and over again. It’s gotten boring.

 

–He gives homework. Lots of homework.

 

–Rich is not forthcoming about his origins and gives conflicting accounts because it bothers people, because he hates giving straight answers, and because he can. What can be pieced together about his past is this–he came to Earth when it was very young and treated its inhabitants as playthings. He was more than an apex predator. He was a child on a planet full of toys. But then something happened. He began to care for Earth, and especially the strange apes that would go on to become man. What caused this change is unknown. He is a shapeshifter. His body turns into what he thinks about. Perhaps in idly mimicking humans, he started to mimic humanity. Perhaps he tried to understand humanity, for what dark purpose who can say, and inadvertently infected himself with humanity. To truly understand something is to think like that something. The act invites empathy. Perhaps a superhuman made mental contact with Rich and imprinted upon him a template for humanity. There weren’t near as many superhumans epochs ago as there are now, but they certainly did exist.

 

Or perhaps there is no reason why he started to empathize with humanity. Perhaps Rich is just a cosmic misfit among eldritch megafauna. Every batch has a defect. Every generation has a mutant. Every group has a weirdo. Perhaps he’s that for the Randolph Carter set. Perhaps he gravitates towards humans because they’re the only ones he could find that understood the strange feelings inside his soul.

 

Rich maintains that he does not truly love humanity, or even truly respect it. He claims that mankind is nothing more to him than an amusing little ant farm he’s very protective of. Humanity is nothing more than an entertaining property.

 

Perhaps that’s true.

 

Perhaps.

 

–Rich has the power to form his biology into phantasmagorical, cyclopean organelles whose functions are limited only by his imagination–and as a being older than human imagination, his imagination is quite expansive (and quite gallow). He can form molecular-edged bone-blades, nasal-feathers that vibrate at hyperdimensional tones, ambulatory flesh-bulb sensory drones, blood vessels that eject blood at railgun speeds, acidic adipose jelly, epidermal impact absorbing fluid-sacs, soothingly scented mustache whiskers, and eyeballs that tell the future in the form of indecipherable elder signs when you shake them.

 

Rich is also virtually indestructible. His corporeal form can be smashed, bashed, trashed, burnt, disintegrated, and discombobulated, but he can always reform from his intangible supermass.

 

–Rich knows his way around the universe. He can walk into the astral as easily as Neiros and to other places to boot. Ms. Cryptic has hypothesized that he is from a race of cosmic seedlings drifting through the currents of forever like dandelion seeds–very, very ugly dandelion seeds. If that is the case, one has to wonder as to Rich’s ultimate biological function. Is he to take root in this reality and feed upon it like a parasite, or is his relationship to the universe more symbiosis than parasitism?

 

–Rich often forgets the names of his students, sometimes to further his air of alien indifference and sometimes because he legitimately confused one student for another. To his hyperdimensional senses, most biologicals look alike.

 

Mr. Sikes (Home Economics)

 

–Craig (technically Mr. Sikes, though most of his students call him Craig) was recruited by Dr. Plaras in an attempt to make lightning strike twice. Emmy proved to be a great success as an ERC coach and she came from well outside the usual circles Martin’s recruited from. She belonged to no superteam, her Statesmen biography was a brief paragraph, and she had never finished high school. She was an outsider, and Martin’s benefited from recruiting her. Craig was similarly an outsider whose one link to the teaching community came from a teaching degree, and Dr. Plaras hoped that he would likewise benefit Martin’s.

 

Dr. Plaras might have made a mistake with Craig.

 

Just as Emmy made a name for herself fighting criminals as Hellbringer, Craig fought criminals as Panthera. He was a dark, frightening creature of rooftops and back alleys. He was firmly on the dark side of the light vs dark superheroes debate–but it wasn’t his intention to be. He would have loved to been a light superhero with approachable charm and charisma, but his powers suited him for dark superheroes. Craig is a blob of black tar-like substance with a crust of humanity. It’s rather hard to seem safe and reassuring when inky tendrils keep erupting through your skin. 

 

While several students at Martin’s have powers that suit them for dark heroics, they put forth a disciplined effort to master their powers and utilize them in light heroics. Gunnar Cropsey is almost as much of a living embodiment of fear as Mad Mary, but he’s determined to live up to his chosen supername Captain Protector. Martina Morelli’s father and uncle went by Vampiro and Diablo and terrorized criminals with the powers of Xibalba, but as Diabla Martina wants to use the same powers to appear protective, not terrifying.

 

But making a disciplined effort isn’t something Craig does.

 

Craig doesn’t make much of an effort doing anything. Sloth is his ultimate vice. When he went to college, he went into education because it seemed easy. When Dr. Plaras sought him out for recruitment, he took the job because teaching seemed like a cushy job. He got one hell of a trial by fire when one of his first assignments involved assisting Antaeus’ rebellion on Willow-Wells and proved that there’s more to him than always taking the path of least resistance, but sloth remains a persistent defect of his character.

 

–Craig was not a good guy growing up. A bully, he wooed girls with superficial charm and cowed boys with superficial strength. Then one of his victims did something–he’s sure of it. There’s no objective evidence that his metapathogen is anything but primary, that is to say your typical cosmic roll-of-the-dice that went snake eyes for him as it did for Donald Swift and Tanya Abelman. But a strong gut feeling tells Craig that his metapathogen was actually secondary–someone gave it to him–and gave it to him as a form of revenge.

 

Given recent revelations, Craig may be right.

 

–Craig has a physiology similar yet different to a quasimorph like Amy Beck or Sand Queen. He’s essentially a blob of black tar-like material with a thin crust approximating a human appearance. Like a quasimorph, Craig is highly resistant to physical trauma and can stretch and mold himself into different shapes and forms. He is also able to regenerate his mass. But unlike a quasimorph, Craig isn’t able to divide his mass. Sand Queen, for instance, is able to form knights and castles and dragons out of herself that while still under her mental control move independently of the “main” mass that is her “body.” Craig is unable to control severed portions of his body, though such portions readily recombine into the whole and reflexively crawl back towards Craig. Craig is also unable to change his phase and molecular structure, an advanced technique known to trained quasimorphs like Amy. He is also seemingly unable to absorb inert matter into his form and place it under his mental control like quasimorphs. Amy can absorb metals, particularly gold. Sand Queen can absorb sand. But there’s nothing Craig can absorb–that being said, it’s not as if there’s piles of inert Craig matter lying around to test this theory.

 

Though Craig seems limited compared to quasimorphs, he does have advantages over them. The most important of which is that he doesn’t have the infamous emotional problems of quasimorphs. The body of a quasimorph functions as its brain. As a quasimorph shifts, so does his or her mind. He is also less vulnerable to telepathic attack. When a quasimorph is telepathically attacked, his or her body locks up which in turn locks the mind and facilitates the attack. But Craig’s body is able to function reflexively. A telepath that fights Craig and mistakes him for a quasimorph is going to be surprised taking a pseudopod to the face. Craig’s visual shapeshifting is also superior to that of a quasimorph. Quasimorphs always betray their primary substance no matter what form they take. Sand Queen will always look like sand. Amy will always look like metal. But Craig can look like a human–to an extent. Stress and physical exertion will cause his facade to drop and make him as uncannily off the human model as Old Rich with black tentacles oozing from cracks in his body.

 

In combat, Craig forms pseudopods to engulf and strangle opponents. He can stretch a pseudopod over a considerable distance and is far from helpless in a ranged confrontation.

 

Craig is remarkably similar to fellow “blob buddy” Danny, and given the recent revelation that Danny is a changeling of the Unseelie Court, Craig may be related to Fairy somehow.

 

Craig believes that he was given his metapathogern by one of his old victims.

 

Perhaps he was cursed?

 

–Craig teaches home economics. Dr. Plaras suggested it to him. As an independent superhero unaffiliated with any superteam, Craig must know all about balancing home life with superheroes. He must know about keeping a budget, cooking healthy meals, and keeping his home environment organized and clean.

 

Dr. Plaras probably should have checked to see what Craig’s house looked like before suggesting the class to him.

 

–Several students have set high expectations for Craig. Thinking that home economics is a kind of finishing school, Atalanta thinks Craig is an astute gentleman. Matthew Roy thinks Craig is a modern day version of the pre-Worlds War mystery men he idolizes, a self-sufficient man who throws on a costume and goes out to solve mysteries and fight crime. And Gunnar Cropsey sees Craig as a role model, an adult with a bizarre and frightening appearance who nonetheless does what he can.

 

It’s going to be up to Craig whether or not he rises to their expectations.

 

Captain Wizard (Bodyguard)

 

–He’s not a teacher, but that doesn’t stop Joseph Preston from being allowed in the teachers lounge (and eating all of Ms. Cryptic’s cookies). Joe is Ms. Jefferson’s personal bodyguard and was hired after one-too-many kidnapping attempts on the Executive Coordinator of Martin’s contact education program.

 

–Ms. Jefferson picked Joe for his experience (he’s been an active superhero since 1945) and his laid-back attitude. Ms. Jefferson didn’t want someone walking around with her that would put her on edge or try interfering with her work for the sake of maximizing safety. She is a people person. She has to be as part of her job is negotiating with participants in the contact education program. She needed a bodyguard that would actually take five when told to take five, and that happened to be Joe.

 

–In 1945, Joe was framed for a murder he didn’t commit and chased by a mob into the Mainline City wax museum where he met a mysterious old man who introduced himself as Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus–one of the many aliases used by the Wizard Shazam. The Wizard was aware of Joe’s plight and of his good nature and decided with one spell to give Joe the means of resolving his plight and a reward for his heart of good. He gave Joe the ability to summon a magic artifact Shazam received from the will of famed escapologist and mirabologist Harry Houdini–the silk road, a cape that granted its owner several abilities, the most prominent being the ability to connect two places through its silk folds, hence its name.

 

The silk road allows Joe to fly and grants him superstrength and superspeed. It can also move to his mental command similar to Matthew Roy’s coat. It is indestructible and its edges can be as soft as cotton or as sharp as blades. Joe has used the silk road’s ability to connect two places to accomplish a range of effects. He’s used it to redirect attacks, to punch opponents miles away, to quickly pull civilians out of danger, to instantly transport the wounded to hospitals, and to teleport by having the silk road swallow itself. The silk road has a limit on what it can connect to–it can only connect to places its user has been before. Fortunately for Joe, he’s been to a lot of places throughout his life. Is a big world ending bomb about to wipe out all life as we know it? Don’t worry. Joe knows a black hole that’ll be more than happy to swallow it.

 

One of Joe’s favorite places to connect to is his personal firing range where he has set several weapons to fire at his vocal command. You’d be amazed at the amount of firepower that can pour out of the silk road.

 

–Being able to instantly escape from danger made Joe rather cocky back in the 40’s. He loved to teleport next to opponents and pretend he was Bugs Bunny. But years of having to take care of teammates that couldn’t instantly escape from danger taught him the value of caution. He discovered that though he might not have to pay the cost of not planning ahead, other people would. After the Worlds War, he functioned as a supporthero for several superteams teleporting them to and from locations and moving them across the battlefield to where they could be most effective. Adam Brigham has asked him more than a few questions about his experience as a supporthero.

 

Experience has taught Joe caution, but it’s also taught him discretion. It’s taught him that there is a time when it’s best to let teammates act on their own and a time when he needs to yank them through his cape to his side. He’s cautious, but not overly cautious, and that made him perfect as a bodyguard for Ms. Jefferson.

 

Dr. Colt (Psychiatrist)

 

–Dr. Scott Colt is the head psychiatrist at Martin’s and personally deals with several “at-risk” students like Donald, Songbird, Tommy, and Kalani.

 

–Yes, he is in fact a descendant of Samuel Colt and is filthy rich from inherited stock in Colt-Boone which specializes in manufacturing gadgetools and trick weapons for superheroes. He doesn’t make a big deal out of it.

 

–Scott majored in psychiatry at William Quan Judge university and did his thesis on the mental breakdown of the superhero Spectro during the 1940’s. After graduating WQJ, Scott was employed by the Statesmen as a psychiatrist. Scott made a name for himself treating the superhero community and the bizarre cases that came out of it. He’s treated superheroes who, after having their minds switched with their teammates by a telepathic foe, developed severe identity issues being unsure who is really who inside who’s head, superheroes who developed inferiority complexes after comparing themselves with alternate universe versions of themselves, superheroes who developed psychological blocks on their powers after trauma after seeing someone die in front of them, and superheroes with all sorts of bizarre disorders.

The life of a superhero can be frighteningly surreal.

 

After treating adult superhumans for years, Scott decided to see how he’d do treating young superhumans and turned in his resume to Martin’s.

 

It turned out that kids with superpowers are just as weird as adults with superpowers–just as Scott had hoped. He’s good with weird, always has been.

 

–The closest Scott came to being popular among the general public was when he did family counseling for the goddess Pele and her daughters.

 

–Scott is a calm, quiet man whose greatest asset is that he’s very good at listening. He is completely unshakable. After seeing the naked vulnerability of men and women with the power to snuff out suns, neither power nor status impresses him.

 

He’s a pretty dry individual, and it’s probably that dryness that helps him appreciate the myriad quirks of superhumans.

 

–Burning Bright’s mother Nemea was treated by Scott after she was defeated and humiliated by our world’s Atalanta and helped her cope with the trauma. When she decided to retire from superheroics, he helped her find purpose and happiness in civilian life. When Burning Bright decided to become a superhero and Nemea took the news very badly, it was Scott that helped the two reconcile. Because of this, Burning Bright has a great deal of respect for Scott and his profession. If BB didn’t have his heart so set on full-time superheroics, he thinks he would have looked into studying psychology.

 

–Scott was born a basic, and for the most part still is a basic. He developed a minor degree of telepathy to help him in his practice, but he prefers to avoid using telepathy if he can help it. He believes psychiatry in general has become too reliant on telepathy over basic face-to-face communication. “We’ve only had wide-spread telepathy since the 1950’s.” Scott said. “But we’ve had physical forms of communication–our faces, our bodies, our voices–since we had tails. I think we (psychiatrists) have become too attached to the shiny new toy of telepathy. I think it’s our crutch now.”