“Nope. Sorry. You should have started with the big blasts first. Now my swarm is too big. Stop spazzing out like you’re a disco. Go limp and my swarm will die on its own.”

 

–Risa to Sundown

 

“You’d be amazed what just one drone can do. One drone can do things even the entire swarm can’t. My great-grandfather Rick Raleigh staked his entire superhero career on just one little bee named Michael. Did I ever tell you about that? Get some coffee, lets have a little storytime.”

 

–Risa to Gunnar Cropsey

 

“Hey, Edith, I had my drones take a look inside your bloodstream and your blood sugar levels are way too high! Get it? Because you’re so sweet?…God, I guess I am getting older…”

 

–Risa to Edith Ogden

 

Original character concept by Noahantarctic, art by Blushclaw. Check them out!

 

Introduction

 

Risa Raleigh is heir to two superhero legacies. The first is that of the Red Bee, which was started in 1940 by Rick Raleigh, who fought crime by telepathically controlling a tiny robot “bee” he named Michael. In 1950, Rick had a son named Ronald, and in 1970 Ronald donned a suit of robot armor to fight crime as the second Red Bee. In 1982, Ronald retired and had a son named Robert (noticing a pattern yet?). Robert was the third Red Bee and fought crime with a telepathic “buzzing’ that fried electronics and put living beings to sleep. He started his career at the age of 20, like his father Ronald, in 2002, but his career was cut short when he discovered in the same year that he had a daughter–Risa.

 

Risa is the 4th Red Bee, and often butts heads with her father, who continues to be active at the 3rd. Robert sees Risa as his sidekick, Risa sees Robert as her rival. The two work together about as often as they compete. In order to distinguish herself from Robert, Risa uses the supername “Red Queen,” both as in queen bee and as her variparticle energy swarm requires constant energy to keep functional, meaning that just like the Red Queen in “Through the Looking Glass,” her swarm “takes all the running they can do, just to stay in the same place.”

 

Risa is also a member of the Red Cardinals (patterns just seem to follow Risa) and finds their focus on investigation, gadgeteering and detective work an ideal fit for her swarm. Her Red Cardinal code is RC-RB4. She’s the Red Cardinal contact for a couple of our students including Edith Ogden and Gunnar Cropsey.

 

Legacy Of The Red Bee

 

Risa’s great-grandfather Rick Raleigh was the DA of Mainline City in the 1930’s. Mainline in those days was a city steeped in crime and corruption, but DA Raleigh held strong to his principles. He was a light in the dark and led prosecutions against Mainline’s supergangsters, which led to him becoming an enormous target. His life had to be saved multiple times by the notorious Trespasser, Mainline’s murderous superhero whose extralegal kilings made him as much a target of Raleigh’s prosecutions as the supergangsters. The two held a tenuous respect for one another. The Trespasser saw Raleigh as well-meaning but helpless, Raleigh saw the Trespasser as well-meaning but insane. When Raleigh led the prosecution against the Trespasser following his capture in 1938, the Trespasser understood and held no grudge.

 

In 1935, the famous Blue Beetle, newly deputized under the NRA to apprehend supercriminals, be their crime racketeering, murder, or using their powers without permission (he turned a blind eye to this last category), visited Mainline City in an attempt to track down the Trespasser. He was unsuccessful, but met with Raleigh during his investigation (and saved him from yet another attempt on his life). It was during this meeting that Rick learned about Dr. Abe Franz, the man who created the 2-X formula that turned police officer Dan Garrett into the Blue Beetle. Dr. Franz was also the inventor of various gadgetools used by Blue Beetle and other superheroes of the 1930’s. He invented Blue Beetle’s ultra-lightweight “chainmail” armor, Alias the Dragon’s handheld flamethrower and armored cloak (made of the same substance as the Blue Beetle’s armor), several upgrades to Caliban’s trick cane, the Invisible Hood’s invisibility formula, the Crime Fighter’s spectrum mask, and Doll Man’s doll plane.

 

The Blue Beetle brought up Dr. Franz hoping to score the doctor some free legal advice on the doctor’s ongoing trial. FDR was fine with Dr. Franz supplying the Blue Beetle with gear, the Blue Beetle was registered and legal, but his other clients weren’t. DA Raleigh gave his opinion, but in a few years it was a moot point as all charges in Dr. Franz’s case were dropped with the ouster of FDR and the NRA in 1938.

 

But Rick Raleigh remembered Dr. Franz–remembered that the doctor owed him even if he never met him.

 

In 1940, the Worlds War was underway and most of America’s superheroes were preoccupied fighting the Axis across time and space. Feeling that his city needed a costumed defender more than it needed a DA, Rick sought out Dr. Franz to turn him into one. He was aware that secondary hyperstasis treatments were risky. The 2-X formula only worked on individuals that carried a rare genetic mutation and the Terror formula used by the Black Terror soldiers had a a chance of killing those that ingested it. Rick was willing to be a guinea pig–anything to help his city.

 

Dr. Franz agreed to use him as the test subject for a new kind of formula that combined aspects of his 2-X formula with elements of the Black Terror formula to overcome the genetic exclusivity–a 3-X formula.

 

The 3-X formula didn’t strengthen Rick Raleigh to the level of a Black Terror soldier or the Blue Beetle, but it made him strong enough to protect Mainline from criminals. To help him further, Dr. Franz repurposed a device he was working on for Rick’s use–a telepathically controlled circuit made of gaeite, programmable to respond to the thoughts of one and only one person. Dr. Franz had intended to use the switch as part of something for Blue Beetle–what that something was, he wasn’t sure. He thought it could be like, a car that could come to him with but a thought, but maybe larger like a truck so it could hold all his gear and equipment in it, and if it was that large maybe it would need something like mechanical legs to maneuver through the city. He would like it if he could make it hover like an autogyro, but he wasn’t sure how to pull that off.

 

Anyway, his ideas for what to use the circuit for were large, much too large for his capability, because New York was a weird city. It was the Marvel Family’s city. It called for weird solutions like…whatever it was he was dreaming up for Dan. But Mainline was simpler. It called for a simpler solution. It called for something smaller–and that, Dr. Franz could make.

 

He created “Michael,” a small bee-sized robot. Michel was stealthy, hardy, and adaptable. It could be modified with a little kit much like a watchmaker’s kit that fit inside Rick’s belt. Michael could become a listening device, a recorder, a weapon that administered a fast-acting sedative (traces of which lasted long enough in blood to show up weeks later in tests, meaning it could be used to identify masked suspects stung while they were disguised).

 

Rick decided to adopt an insect persona of his own, and after learning from Dr. Franz that some bees are, in fact, red (they had a brief debate on the subject when Rick suggested he should be the “Yellow Bee” and Franz protested that yellow was the color of cowards and suggested red instead). Keyword the red-tailed bee and the teddy bear bee for examples.

 

And so Rick Raleigh became a red bee to compliment a blue beetle.

 

The Red Bee protected Mainline City for a decade (The Red Apiary rooftop garden park is named in his honor) until retiring in 1950 to raise his newborn son Ronald. Mainline City was then protected by the Red Cardinals (who had no connection to the Red Bee besides their taste in colors), and today Mainline is thought of as “their” city. Though he never went on missions with them, the Red Bee was made an honorary Red Cardinal and given the Cardinal code RC-RB1.

 

Ronald Raleigh was a student at Martin’s and took RAD (robot armor development) as part of his personalized curriculum. Rad in the 1960’s was a fresh and exciting field of development. Robot armor had advanced a long way from earlier attempts, and when Ronald showed up on the superhero scene in his Red Bee armor in 1970 he was somewhat revolutionary, though the gold standard of American robot armor operators, Gold Standard (go figure), debuted seven years earlier. 

 

Ronald’s armor was designed for quick hit-and-run tactics. He went back to the age-old robot armor designs of the Gabriel armors used during the Great War in the Air of the 1910’s and applied modern innovation to create a machine designed for air jousting. He would fly full speed at a target, stinger out, then fly back around for another pass.

 

Ronald was a member of the 1970’s incarnation of Urban Ranger’s superteam, the Limitless, alongside Disco inferno, Monster Mash-up, and Dragon Sound. He would retire in 1982 to raise his son just as his father did, and when his son came of age he passed the legacy of the Red Bee down to him.

 

Robert Raleigh was the third Red Bee, the first to use telepathy, and the first to not retire.

 

Like his father Ronald, Robert went to Martin’s School. Like his father, he took a course in a rapidly developing field of mirabology–psionics. Robert was interested in telepathy, specifically in how thoughts developed within the mind are projected out into the Astral. Two telepaths have the same idea, yet they manifest upon the Astral differently–why? Robert wanted to find the answer, and when he first enrolled in Telepathic Development, he only had the intention of using the telepathic gifts he developed for research, but he gradually found himself pulled toward his family’s legacy of superheroics. 

 

As a freshman, Robert wanted nothing to do with the Red Bee. He didn’t want to be something his father and grandfather had already been. He thought taking up the legacy would be like competing with them while becoming the first person in his family to be a psionic researcher would be forging his own legacy on his own terms. But as he networked with other students in Telepathic Development, he started feeling less and less special. He was a brilliant student of the psionic arts–but he wasn’t the most brilliant. He had to compete with kids who were doing college work in middle school. He didn’t like that, he didn’t like not being at the head of the path he had chosen through life, not when he knew one that was open and clear–the path of the Red Bee.

 

In his junior year, Robert switched to ERC 3 with a Focus in Investigations and never looked back. In Telepathic Development, he mastered the skill known as thought fragmentation, which he called “buzzing.” This allowed him to take one thought and project it onto the Astral as several. He could overload informational structures, be they human minds or electronic computers.

 

After graduating, Robert joined with Crime Web, the international organization of superdetectives and urban shadows, and did a stint in the telepathic town of Blue Roses before the unexpected happened.

 

Risa.

 

Risa was an unexpected pregnancy. Robert and his wife Harriet, like many couples, acted on impulse one night, didn’t take precautions, and Risa was the result. 

 

Robert’s father and grandfather retired when they had their children to focus on raising them, but that was after they put in years as the Red Bee. Robert had only just started. They planned when to have their kids, he didn’t plan Risa. 

What could he do? Quit? No. Never. This was his life. The Red Bee was what he trained for, what he planned to spend years of his life doing. He couldn’t quit, he couldn’t even change to a less-demanding profession. What would Risa think if she grew up to learn that her father failed in following his dreams–that he failed to follow his dreams because of her? He had to stay. For himself. For her.

 

And this decision would ultimately impact the kind of woman Risa would grow up to be.

 

The Queen of the Red Bees

 

Risa barely knew her father. He was often away investigating crime in some place she could barely pronounce. He was doing good work, of that she was sure, because her mom and grandpa Ronald told her he was doing good work.

 

But she wished he would do that work closer to home. Sometimes, weeks would go by without her seeing him, and those weeks would be very long.

 

Becoming the Red Bee seemed like the most obvious thing to Risa when she was a child, so obvious she felt she didn’t have to tell her parents about her intention. Surely they knew. The kid always grew up to be the next Red Bee. That was what dad did, and what grandpa Ronald did before him.

 

Dad was surrounded by superheroes. He saw superheroes more than he saw her. The Red Bee was always surrounded by superheroes. When grandpa Ronald showed Risa his old armor, bright and red and shiny like the shell of a candy apple, he told her stories about his time on the Limitless fighting alongside a martial arts expert with fire powers and a shapeshifter with all the powers of the Monster League. When he showed Risa the tiny little device named Michael used by her great-grandfather (How she wanted to play with it! But grandpa Ronald said that it wasn’t a toy. Michael had earned a rest after years of stinging saboteurs and supervillains) he told her stories about how her great-grandfather was given Michael by Dr. Abe Franz, the great weaponer of the 1930’s shadowmen, and how her great-grandfather would go on to work with a group of men and women who fought crime from the rooftops to the alleys called the Red Cardinals after, of all things, a pirate ship.

 

She knew that if she wanted to get close to her father, she would have to get close to the Red Bee–and that either meant becoming a superheroine, or becoming the Red Bee herself.

 

But when she asked her father–and Risa can’t remember how old she was when it happened, but she does remember it happening–about becoming the next Red Bee, he laughed and said that she didn’t have to worry about being a superheroine. The family already had one, and one was enough for any family, and daddy wasn’t going to stop being the Red Bee anytime soon!

 

That was the first time Risa ever felt that her destiny wasn’t set in stone.

 

As she got older, she talked more and more about becoming a superheroine. She was going to go to Martin’s School, like dad and grandad did, and she would learn how to read minds or shoot beams from her eyes or breathe water–something, anything–and she would be the next Red Bee.

 

That was when her father started talking about how bad it was to be a superhero–which Risa found very strange because she had only ever heard good things about being a superhero from her grandfather. 

 

Her father told Risa about supervillains and the horrible things they did. He told her about how some of his friends weren’t with them anymore because of them. He told her how scared he was sometimes diving into their minds and how what he saw within them came back to him in nightmares to this day.

 

But that just made Risa want to be a superheroine all the more. If it was that hard, that challenging, then her father needed all the help she could give him.

 

Her father tried to coax her on to a different path. He taught her thought fragmentation and how thought fragmentation could be used across a wide variety of fields–not just superheroics. He used his connections to set Risa up with a mentor from Blue Roses to teach her how to use thought fragmentation to organize her thoughts, expand out a single idea into all its permutations and pick the best one. It was a great skill to have if she wanted to be an engineer or software developer. Risa went along with it at first because she liked developing her thought fragmentation and then because she felt obligated, a feeling her dad stressed. She owed it to her mentor, who invested so much time into teaching her, to go and keep going.

 

But she still wanted to be a superheroine, one day.

 

As she prepared to enter Martin’s School as a freshman like her father and grandfather, the law was laid down before her in all its naked ugliness. Her father told her simply and plainly–she was not to become a superheroine. It was too dangerous for her. It was a waste of time. There were so many superheroes in the world, far more than enough, and she already had a promising career as a software developer or engineer or whatever in front of her.

 

She was told to take Telepathic Development. That was all she was supposed to sign up for regarding her personalized curriculum.

 

That was all.

 

And on the first day of school she signed up for RAD, Telepathic Development, and ERC 3 with a Focus in Support.

 

Her father wasn’t pleased. The very next day they set down. They talked–or rather, they tried to talk, but it ended up a shouting match. Risa told her father that she was tired of him trying to steer her away from something she wanted to do since she was a girl. Her father replied that it was time she let go of her childhood fancies–and to his wife Harriet he said that he was afraid of competing with her, of her comparing herself to him and him comparing her to himself. Why couldn’t they have different lives? Why did they have to intersect? He was the Red Bee. He was the superhero. There had never been two Raleighs as superheroes before. Why couldn’t she be something other than a superhero? Why couldn’t she be anything else?

 

It was still his time. His time. Why couldn’t she understand that?

 

Risa worked hard at her classes. She took the buzzing her father taught her and combined it with inspiration from her grandfather’s armor to create a network of nanites called pollen that lived inside her as factory clusters feeding off the glucose in her bloodstream. This was pollen. This was the combination and improvement of all the tricks the previous Red Bees used. This was Risa’s addition to the legacy.

 

Pollen could consume matter and energy in the nearby environment to create swarms of energy construct drones–DA Raleigh’s Michael taken to its logical extreme. These drones could be commanded to build objects and even a suit of robot armor patterned off her grandfather’s own, but what held this network together was her father’s skill–thought fragmentation. One thought–”attack,” “defend,” “get them out of there”—could be broadcast to trillions of drones and fragmented into individual instructions.

 

Risa was ready to take on the world as the fourth Red Bee–but found that there was another Red Bee who also had pollen and drones in a shade of red slightly lighter than her own.

 

Her father.

 

He took a look at Risa’s gear one night while she slept and copied it. Now he has all the powers she has. Now he can do all the things she can do. And he’s determined to get in her way at every turn. She wants to join a superteam? He’ll file for membership to and do it the very same day. She wants to patrol a neighborhood? He’ll be on the other block. 

 

The way he saw it, if Risa wanted to make things awkward, then he would make things awkward–so awkward she couldn’t stand it, so awkward that she’d finally give up on being the Red Bee and do something else with her life, leaving him to be the one thing he always wanted to be, the one thing he always deserved to be.

 

But Risa wasn’t going to be dissuaded. Her father’s latest attempt at scaring her off was no more successful than any of the others. If her father didn’t want to pass on the name Red Bee, that was fine. He had always stood between her and superheroics. What did it matter that he stood between her and one more goal? He had always been her rival. Now she was forcing him to be open about it.

 

She took the name Red Queen to honor her grandfather and great-grandfather and to send a message to her father–bees have queens. If he wanted to compete with her then he would be competing as a bee to a queen bee.

 

Needless to say, Thanksgiving is a very interesting time for the Raleigh clan.

 

Risa has recently joined the Red Cardinals (and so has her father), specifically the group that watches over Mainline City, which means she’s brought the Red Bee legacy back to the city of DA Raleigh. She likes the Red Cardinals. She likes how they combine technology with espionage just like she does and she likes their taste in colors. For several of our students involved with the Red Cardinals as part of their contact education, she’s their point of contact. The kids love her because in some ways she’s more like them than she is us. She reminds me more than a little of Danny. She’s very informal with them, very playful and warm.

 

And I think it’s good for the kids to see that people with very dangerous powers don’t have to be dour–no offense Dr. Bell, if you’re reading this.

 

Pollen and Swarms

 

The first Red Bee used a single, multi-purpose drone telepathically controlled through a tiny gaeite circuit. The second used a suit of robot armor with weaponry one would expect of a bee themed superhero–a sturdy exoskeleton carapace, wings that allowed for flight (and weren’t bad blades either), and an arm mounted stinger (mounted on the arm because mounting it on the anatomically correct portion of the armor would have been very awkward). The third Red Bee was a powerful telepath whose thought fragmentation technique allowed him to express one thought as several.

 

The fourth Red Bee, the Red Queen, takes inspiration from all three of her predecessors for her powerset.

 

Risa’s powers are based in her swarm, a collection of self-replicating variparticle nanites that live in her blood passively maintaining themselves off her blood sugar, meaning she has to eat a little more than the average person. Go on and make pregnancy jokes–she already has. 

 

“You’re right, I am eating for two–or to be more exact, two trillion cell colonies.”

 

And to be even more exact, she has five trillion cell colonies in her blood. To put that in perspective, the average human has about thirty-five trillion red blood cells in their blood. These cell colonies make Risa’s blood thicker than normal and lightens the color. Her blood looks like stage blood and has a strawberry-ish, almost pink color. Emergency protocols in the cell colony cause them produce artificial super platelets when exposed to the air, sealing even the most serious wounds in less than a second and preventing Risa from spilling her expensive superpowers all over the ground. After all, it would be pretty lame if some thug with a knife took her out before she could activate her cell colonies.

 

In response to Risa’s mental commands, her five trillion cell colonies can produce pollen, the building blocks of the rest of her gear and tools. 

 

Pollen are variparticle nanites, the same stuff Amy Beck is made out of, and if you recall your middle school chemistry classes, variparticles are artificial particles that can vary their atomic structure through quantum displacement. They can start as beryllium, vanish a proton, neutron, and electron, and now they’re lithium. This allows variparticles to combine with any form of matter, and, if you someone skilled is behind the controls, tear down matter and store it within its quantum displacement for later use.

 

In short, pollen can eat things. Any things. Anything.

 

When pollen touches an object, the object is marked with a bright red honeycomb pattern. This lets Risa dissolve only what she wants dissolved and spare the rest. 

 

A note to bad guys that might be reading our hacked files–if Risa has you honeycombed, it’s a good idea to give up unless you want your obituary to read “mass consumed to create bee-themed energy constructs.”

 

Risa uses matter stored by quantum displacement to create swarms of energy constructs similar to what Lucia Regio uses. These bright, glowing swarms are composed of several kinds of drones each with their own specialization. Where the first Red Bee had only one drone to work with, the modern Red Queen has an entire swarm.

 

Matter and energy are inexorably linked, and this means that Risa’s pollen can consume not only matter but energy. Shoot a force projector at Risa? Pollen makes a swarm. Shoot a fireball at Risa? Pollen makes a swarm. Swing an Asgardian hammer into Risa’s face? Pollen makes a swarm.

 

Risa’s drones also produce pollen of their own, meaning that pollen creates drones which crate pollen which creates drones which creates pollen–Risa’s pollen can, with enough time and food, create swarms so massive that anything can be devoured. The key, however, is time. Too much energy at once can overflow the pollen and blow out the entire system. Her swarms can get large enough to eat stars–but they don’t start out that big.

 

The drones are also very energy inefficient, which is both a weakness and an asset. If Risa’s drones don’t keep eating, if they don’t keep replenishing themselves, they will quickly dissolve into pollen and all Risa will be left with is a bunch of honeycomb marks on the ground. Risa has called this the “Red Queen’s race” after the Red Queen of Through the Looking Glass who had to run faster and faster just to stay in the same place. 

 

The disadvantage of the Red Queen’s race is obvious. If Risa is ever fighting someone in a place where she doesn’t have a lot of “food” to eat–say, a spaceship in outer space (this has happened to her before, ask her about it if you get the chance, it’s quite an interesting story) her powers are limited. But there are benefits. The Red Queen’s race functions as a safety measure. Matter-devouring nanite-based swarms can get quite out of hand. ARGO has discovered more than one universe covered in similar devices. You can never have too many safety precautions when dealing with nanites. The other advantage is that, because her drones are constantly decaying and rebuilding themselves, they’re very difficult to hack. Any progress made by a hacker is quickly undone as the drones and the network linking them together automatically decays. The hacker is forced to start over against a fresh drone and a fresh network which in time also decays. How do you make progress against a computer that hits the factory reset every few minutes? You don’t.

 

Every swarm created by Risa is managed telepathically through the thought fragmentation technique taught to her by her father, which they both call “buzzing.” Thought fragmentation is the telepathic skill of making one thought appear as several within the Astral. It is used offensively to overwhelm a target, defensively to obscure one’s thoughts behind a curtain of droning information, and by Risa to control her swarm. One command, be it attack or defend or get my teammate out of there, is splintered up so that each drone knows exactly what to do.

 

And she can, of course, use her buzzing in the traditional telepathic sense. If you think it’s hard to fight an army of robotic insects, try fighting them while several trillion voices are telling you to go to sleep.

 

Types of Drones

 

Risa can produce several different types of drones each with their own niche.

 

Mellifera drones, affectionately called “honies,” are named after the humble honeybee and its honeycomb production. The simplest function of Mellifera drones is to form themselves into walls–walls to box in criminals, walls to protect people from attacks, and walls to contain explosions and fires. More complex functions involve forming themselves into weapons, armor, and tools for Risa to use similar to how her grandfather would operate robot armor and to replenish and repair these devices as needed. The armor Mellifera drones build around Risa is essentially a large energy construct programmed to move when Risa moves (it wouldn’t do to have her bump her skin against the armor and burn herself). The armor can secrete pollen, allowing Risa to “honeycomb” objects with a touch, and in a fight emits intense temperatures to discourage opponents from coming near her.

 

Mellifera weapons include claws and hooks that double as nozzles that spray pollen. These hooks can project from any portion of Risa’s body and can pull her across obstacles and away from danger while she focuses on controlling the swarm. They can also funnel energy away from the armor (sacrificing portions of it in the process, usually from the outermost layers) to superheat themselves. The Mellifera drones can create “bee-bee guns”either as handheld weapons for Risa to fire or as mobile weapons which consume portions of themselves to fire intense rays of energy. The drones can patrol an area with bee-bee guns or set them up as sentries. Between the guns and the walls, Mellifera drones can quickly assemble a little fortress (or hive) for Risa and her swarm.

 

Perdita drones, Risa’s “comm boys,” are named after perdita minima, the world’s smallest bees. Perdita minima average around two millimeters, meaning that about nine of them placed end-to-end could fit across the face of a penny. Risa’s Perditas are much smaller, only slightly larger than the pollen nanites. They’re used primarily to gather information. Each Perdita drone is a node in a giant sensory and communications network. They scan everything–locations, enemies, allies, everything, and they transmit all this information right back to Risa’s brain. If a teammate is bleeding out, Risa will know it and will send a cluster of Mellifera to patch up the wound. Perdita placed in an opponent’s bloodstream will tell Risa in moments if he has a weakness to any sort of material or chemical. Perdita also keeps Risa in contact with her teammates through a highly secure “hive net.” Perdita inside her teammates’ brains (don’t team up with Risa if you don’t like the idea of little energy robots buzzing inside your gray matter) create electrical impulses that are then decoded by the brain as sounds. The hive net is much more secure than any noosphere connection, especially as Risa takes advantage of the “Red Queen’s race” to make a communications network that is constantly destroying and rebuilding itself. Hackers have a very hard time handling Risa.

 

Though their primary purpose isn’t combat, their size allows for a few combat functions. For instance, Risa can have Perdita mass themselves inside veins to restrict blood flow and induce unconsciousness. She can also have them consume themselves to emit bursts of heat and energy, and when this happens inside a body it’s like a person swallowing a laser cannon.

 

Bombini drones, affectionately called “Michaels” after the first Red Bee’s drone, are Risa’s basic combat drones, the backbone of her Swarm’s army. Just as Bombini bees (the common bumble bee) can sting again and again, so to can these hand-sized drones attack again and again with their stingers or built-in bee-bee guns, though eventually without replenishment they will consume themselves like any other type of drone. Compared to other types of drones they aren’t fancy, but they allow Risa to move firepower where it needs to go around a battlefield. She can provide fire support and covering fire to any teammate, anywhere.

 

Cerana drones, affectionately called “Cooks,” are named after Apis Cerana Japonicus, the Japanese honey bee, which is known to kill intruders to their hive by covering them in their bodies and vibrating to raise their body temperatures high enough to cook the intruder. Cerana drones specialize in “area denial.” they form a dome over an area (or target) and from there can raise the temperature just like Apis Cerana Japonicus, lower the temperature by using controlling emissions of pollen (which has the added benefit of adding drones to the dome), blanket the area in ultrasonic vibrations, or suck the air out of it. Also, the efficacy of the Cerana dome just as a big dome cannot be overlooked, especially when supported by Mellifera drones.

 

Pluto drones, affectionately called “Wallys,” are named after Megachile Pluto, also known as Wallace’s Giant Bee. Wallace, in case you are wondering, refers to Alfred Russel Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin and one of the founders of evolutionary theory. Risa thinks more people should know about him, and she’s right. Megachile Pluto, once thought only to exist among the megafauna of Pellucidar, is the largest species of bee with each individual being about as big as your thumb. Risa’s version of Megachile Puto is much larger with each drone being about as big as your arm. Wallys are fire-and-forget weapons. They lock-on to a target then destabilize themselves by producing pollen that breaks down their inertial cohesion. This turns them into self-guiding energy bolts that can attack from any angle–and even loop around and try again if they miss. The force they hit with depends on their mass and Risa can create Wallys with extra mass–and even combine an entire swarm into a one massive Wally–to create an all-or-nothing superweapon.

 

So, to sum up:

 

Mellifera: They convert themselves into objects–weapons, armor, and walls.

 

Perdita: They form a sensory and communications network that’s hard to disrupt and hack because it’s constantly destroying and recreating itself.

 

Bombini: Tiny warriors that form the backbone of a swarm’s offensive ability

 

Cerana: They form domes around certain areas to cook enemies by raising the temperature or freeze enemies by lowering it.

 

Pluto: The big guns. They burn themselves out to become self-guiding energy blasts.

 

Safety Features

 

In addition to the “Red Queen’s race,” Risa has programmed in two safety features to keep her swarms from growing out of control. The first is that pollen is incapable of consuming any source of energy without Risa’s explicit, conscious command, though pollen can be placed into an “interception” mode where they will consume nearby attacks that move faster than Risa can normally think. The second is that If for any reason a swarm enters a “feeding frenzy” and threatens to consume and grow and consume and grow and consume and grow without end (say a supervillain hacked it, or it was damaged in a battle and started to malfunction), it will, after a certain amount of matter has been consumed (800,000 kilograms), prioritize consuming until it destroys itself. This prioritization can only be disabled by a certain keyphrase known only to Risa, and any supervillain with a stolen swarm likely won’t even think about looking for a keyphrase, won’t even think that it ever can prioritize self-consumption, until the swarm has totally consumed itself.

 

Risa destroys to create and creates to destroy. She uses one mind as several bodies and several bodies as one mind. She wants everything to do with her father’s legacy and nothing to do with her father. It’s complicated being Risa Raleigh–complicated, but rewarding. She’s one of our Red Cardinal contacts for a reason. She’s young enough and inexperienced enough to seem approachable to our students but old enough and experienced enough to teach them a thing or two. She walks a delicate balance–but she still walks that balance.