Capeworld Comics

“I’m walking down the halls when I suddenly hear Liam screaming JOULEEEEEEE. I nearly aspirated by breakfast burrito. I round the corner and I see he’s looking at his office like it’s on fire. Everything in his office has a yellow post-it note with an “M,” and I do mean everything–the coffee machine, his desk, his lamp, his ceiling, his bookshelf, even his statue of Gold Star had one right on the forehead. And Joule, bless her, was being her usual consoling self. “I’ll get to the bottom of this Dr. Plaras, I’ll have Emmy talk to Monster or whoever is using his gimmick Dr. Plaras, I’ll purge your office of anything with an “M” Dr. Plaras. Me though? I had to dash to the omnimover. I laughed so hard I cried.”

–Dr. Hans Jugend, AKA Human Action

 

Name:

 

Unknown

 

As with many young dragons, Monster’s name is kept a secret by his parents to protect him from possible magic attacks.

 

Supername:

 

Monster

 

Average Grade:

 

D

 

Monster does not focus. He holds a single thought like he holds a single form–seldomly.

 

Emergency Response Class:

 

2

 

Monster finds Emergency Response Class fun. It challenges him to make practical use of his shapeshifting and prove to his peers that he isn’t just a goofball. He’s not interesting in advancing to class 3 however. He’s not keen on the responsibility it would bring.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Form Mastery

 

A shapeshifter taught how to shapeshift by another shapeshifter–it doesn’t get more obvious than that. Form Master Gora keeps Monster’s attention by teaching him exotic forms like Lorian Angels and then works to teach Monster how to be patient and useful. He doesn’t just teach Monster how to turn into forms, he teaches him how to master forms. He teachers Monster how to turn into a fire of an exact size and temperature and how to move as fire without burning his surroundings. So far, Gora’s made slow progress with Monster. Monster doesn’t like to micromanage a form. If a form doesn’t work out for him, he wants to immediately turn into something else. But progress is being made. Dr. Plaras is worried what kind of mischief Monster will get up to a he improves on the fundamentals of form mastery, but Gora is certain that the discipline of form mastery will put some maturity into Monster.

 

Gora has a special assignment for his class and the whole faculty is interested in seeing how Monster takes to it. Gora will assign each of his students to assume the form of a fictional person living in Joyous Harbor. For a week, his students are to live as if they were their person and record their thoughts and feelings in a journal.

 

Gora has taken out all the stops for this assignment. His students will have schedules they will have to keep, jobs they will have to report to, and actors for their family and loved ones. He even has apartments rented to be their homes.

 

The faculty is running a betting pool on whether or not Monster will try and cheat. So far, the odds are against Monster.

 

Contact Education:

 

The Joyous Harbor Branch of the Library.

 

Monster likes the Library and all the forms it can teach him. Given how much time he spends there, it made sense to make the Library part of his contact education. Librarian Dewey doesn’t have much for Monster to do–and in truth doesn’t trust him to do much–but what he does teach Monster has a positive effect on the boy. Monster learns how to curate information at the Library. He learns how to prune down information to what is most useful to solve a problem. If Monster learns how to apply what he learns to his forms he’ll be the shapeshifting Form Master Gora believes he can be.

 

Hyperstasis:

 

Tiandi dragon physiology.

 

Monster is a young dragon of Tiandi, the mystic shadow of China. As a young dragon, he has no scales and an infinitude of forms. He can transform into virtually anything or anyone limited only by his imagination, which to the horror of his teachers, is rather broad, and his understanding, which to the reassurance of his teachers, is rather limited. If he sees a superhuman, he can copy their appearance, but if he doesn’t fully understand their power, he can’t copy it. Similarly, if he sees a soda, he can copy its appearance, but not its flavor.

 

Behavior:

 

Poor

 

The dragons of Tiandi are born with infinite potential. Scaleless, they can be whatever they like. But as they age, they are expected to gradually sacrifice their forms for power. They lose the ability to change themselves in exchange for the power to change their world. They grow scales. Their bodies become stronger but more rigid.

 

The ideal dragon has no form but itself. It has no need for other forms. It does not change for the world. The world changes for the dragon. That is what it means to be a dragon–to be immortal, unchanging power incarnate.

 

Monster, who has never given his true name as a precaution against magical entrapment, didn’t want to sacrifice a single one of his forms. In fact, he wanted to grow his repertoire of forms. He wanted to never stop being something new. This led to a conflict with his parents. When they threatened to chain him to an island with magic fetters until he learned to grow up, Monster fled to Earth. He had heard of Martin’s School and how it protected its students from their parents as in the case of Amy Beck, aka Heart of Gold, daughter of the supervillainess Phase.

 

Martin’s now negotiates visitations between Monster and his parents in the hopes of establishing a peaceful solution to Monster’s predicament. Fortunately, Monster’s parents are willing to let their son act how he pleases believing that time on Earth will sow his wild oats. They are confident that eventually, their son will learn to live like a dragon. But Monster is just as confident he’ll never develop scales.

 

Monster is thankful for Martin’s for interceding on his behalf and taking him on as a student. But his teachers sometimes feel that he could do a little more to express that gratitude in light of his less-than-stellar record of behavior.

 

Monster is a troublemaker and prankster. He hates the idea of discipline in any form let alone the learning environment, and often skips class to do whatever strikes his fancy at the moment. He’s often bored, and because he’s often bored he’s often in detention. But not liking school doesn’t mean that monster doesn’t like learning. He, in fact, loves to learn new things. He can only transform into what he knows, and so is constantly at the Library branch in the Statesmen Center researching things. He’s got quite an encyclopedia knowledge–if only it covered the things he’s supposed to learn in class. In fact, telling Monster he has to study something guarantees that he’ll go out of his way to avoid learning about it.

 

Monster fears things becoming routine for him. If he accepts a life with limits, he fears that he will accept a form with limits. His teachers hope to one day reach Monster with the lesson that there is a better way between what he wants and what his parents want. A life with freedom and discipline is best.

 

Appearance:

 

Monster never likes to repeat his appearance. Every day, he’s someone new. And if he’s not someone new, he’s something new. He’s a cat, a dog, a crysaloid–whatever he wants to be. But he’s never a dragon. He doesn’t want to be what his parents want him to be. He doesn’t want to be like his parents.

The only constant between his transformations is an “M” somewhere on him, usually a t-shirt, though he can easily hide the M away. One of his favorite pranks is to turn into an M and place himself on classmates and objects so that his teachers end up interrogating innocent students and inanimate objects about his recent misadventures.