Arc

"Sometimes you jus' gotta do somethin', y'know?"

Player: @Hybrid Vagrant

Identity

Real Name

Charlotte Cho

Aliases

Charlie

Birthplace

Portland, Maine

Citizenship

American

Residence

Paragon City, Rhode Island

Occupation

University Student

Marital Status

Single

Physical Traits

Species

Human

Sub-Type

Mutant

Ethnicity

Korean/Black

Gender

Female

Apparent Age

21

Height

5'0"

Weight

103 lbs.

Hair

Aqua (Dyed)

Eyes

Almond

Skin

Dark

((Massive work in progress, subject to radical changes))

Many meta-humans with magnetic abilities have done amazing and terrifying things. But a young Charlotte Cho spent most of her days sticking knives to her hands and chomping on a breadstick or French frie while mumbling in a gruff voice to the amusement of her school friends. Sure, Charlie had the ability to manipulate one of the fundamental forces of the universe but that sounded like work and she just wanted to be a regular kid like everyone else out there. Her father was an accountant and her mother taught self-defense classes at the YMCA. She had no shoes to fill, no shadow to grow out of. She just wanted to be a veterinarian.

So despite her powers her life went by as normal as it could. She went to school and often spent time with her mother after work at the YMCA, even joining in on some of the classes when she got old enough. She made friends, went on dates, got in trouble. Every bit the regular everyday normal person. She just happened to have this really neat trick when a soda can got stuck in the machine. Some of her friends knew and they made a big deal out of it, pushing her to use her powers more and more often, but Charlie always brushed them off. She had skin like teflon, it would seem, and usually could redirect the conversation with some dumb trick or joke. She was determined to not be anything more than normal. The only real compromise she made on this was when she took advantage of a "Meta-Human Scholarship" to get herself a free ride to a college in Rhode Island called Steel Canyon University. She wasn't a huge fan of the idea, but a full scholarship, including housing, was too good to turn down. So when she graduated she packed her bags, said goodbye to her parents, and skipped off to this so-called "City of Heroes".

Her school life, and by extension personal life, in Paragon went pretty much the same as it did back in Portland. She went to class, hit up the local burger joint with her new classmates, and generally just kept on living a normal life. She made an attempt to downplay her mutant abilities, since this was a chance at a fresh start and she knew from her younger years how insistent some could be. The only real change was she had to be a bit more careful when heading off campus at night. Apparently the "City of Heroes" had a problem with less heroic types, as well. The papers and internet news articles usually had at least one report of a mugging by some guy throwing around fireballs or some crazy Asian mystics. And that was just the campus paper. Some days Charlie could hardly believe how many reports came in of crazed meta-humans and crime. Even the regular street-gangs tended to have someone like herself backing them.

It was around this time she started to get the suspicious feeling that her "Free Ride" was a ploy by the government types to recruit impressionable people into helping out but she wasn't quite that gullible. She had a plan and she was going to keep to it. She had learned plenty in her scholarship mandated "Meta-Human Ethics" course that went on about the responsibility of having powers and covering the history of those with them over the years. Mostly it yapped on about callings and how heroes had helped over the years, and a big section on some Might Makes Right act back in the '60s. The professor was nice enough, some retired hero from the second World War who apparently had aged a bit slower because of his powers, and went on about how it was his duty to serve and help others but Charlie wasn't quite drinking that cup of Kool-Aid.

Things kept going on for her first two years of the college-life unchanged. Charlie's classes were going well enough, her scholarship had been renewed, and she had managed to make several close friends during her time at SCU. It would all seem that her plan was right on track and in two more years she'd be able to start her more specialized schooling for veterinarian work and leave Paragon behind her. She'd miss her friends, of course, but she was tired of having to dodge superpowered purse-snatchers and worse if she wanted a late night taco. So far she had managed to keep herself completely separate from all of Paragon's hero troubles but on a cold night in November that changed. It was well past midnight when Charlie received a dreadful call. One of her friends and classmates had been rushed to the ICU for third degree burns after being assaulted by a bunch of thugs of the gang calling themselves The Outcasts. Charlie rushed to the hospital as quickly as she could and her friend's family explained the story to her. Their daughter had been out late to finish some gift shopping for the upcoming holiday when a trio of the criminals jumped her, demanding she hand over all her money and the packages she was carrying. She had complied, of course, having no way of resisting the thugs, but apparently one of them didn't care. The meta-human grabbed her hand, sending a bolt of electricity coursing up her arm and left the poor girl twitching on the sidewalk until a passerby called emergency services. The doctors didn't thing the injuries would be life-threatening, but they wouldn't know the extent of the damage until she woke up. Charlie was mortified until her friend's mother, in a choking sob, muttered, "You'd think in this city there'd have been some hero around to help her," before curling in on herself in worry for her only daughter. Charlie's dread and concern turned to anger as small sparks snapped from her clenched fists.

Setting off from the hospital Charlie tucked the hood of her jacket above her head and took off at a sprint from where they had found her friend. It didn't take her long to find the spot