Becky Beacon
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Contents
The Last Flight of the Ironskies
Ascendant Archon Rebellato barked so many orders a minute the crew of the CSS Ironskies would think their captain was developing super speed. The starship was on the run from a neighbouring universe where they expected to find a Nictus colony to bolster the ranks of the council's Galaxy troops.
What they found instead, was a trap.
The distress beacon was a lure set by the warmongering collective that drove Kheldians to extinction in that universe. The galaxy-spanning empire named Batallion. The expedition lost every ship but one, but at least Archon Rebellato managed to pry one single thing from the enemy: A nanoculture that would turn the tides of battle, one of the several methods Batallion uses to transhumanize and assimilate species, and the thing that would finally give The Center the incarnate-grade army he needed to bring the world to heel.
Unfortunately for the last ship of the expedition, even if they survived Batallion's assault and pursuit, their ship wouldn't survive re-entry.
Bonus Pay
Rebecca Skyler was your typical girl next door with no more responsibilities than school, no more ambitions than making it into college to major in metahuman anthropology, and no more worries than summer jobs to make pocket money to enjoy the summer. It was in one such job where the call to adventure found her.
Working at a comic convention and treading the line between receptionist and booth babe on virtue that the costume her employers gave her to work was the same as the convention's back then mascot and that Becky was at least versed enough in comics so the gig went well... at least until the smoldering wreck of the CSS Ironskies crashed on the convention center and right on top of her.
Having leaked out of its container, the captured nanoculture mixed with several other things (from the ship's instruments to the deceased Galaxy and Corr Leonis crew's DNA) on its way to Rebecca, where it bonded partially with her but strangely, mostly with her costume and her wearables.
As good publicity as it would have been for the convention, Vanguard cordoned the site off and all witnesses had to sign NDAs for their own protection. After evaluating no danger for Becky or those around her, Vanguard released her into FBSA custody for registration.... however, since her now "super suit" came from alien tech (Vanguard's jurisdiction), DATA has no access nor permission to try to study the suit and all documents about it are classified even within Vanguard (for some reason, the clearance level for those documents only allow Dark Watcher and the Lady Grey). Finally, Vanguard bought the mascot's rights off the con owners' hands.
Needing someplace else to be while things cool off back home, she's now finishing school in Paragon. She still has her sights in making it to college and majoring in metahuman anthropology like her idol, Doc Delilah. Like Doc Delilah, however, she'll seemingly start her career from an insider's point of view.
The Hero Beat
The bad news is that Becky is not a fighter. The good news is that there's more to superheroes than fighting crime: From putting fires out with ice breath to keep catch falling airplanes before they crash and crashing tidal waves with flying sonic booms. Every so often she has to put lesser criminals "on time out" and she has no problems doing so. Occasionally, however, she finds actual supervillains in her beat... and she doesn't fare so well those times, but she praises herself in the fact that she manages to keep innocents from dying every time.
As is to be expected, she started mostly as a "friendly neighbourhood Beacon," but her beat started to grow larger each time as she grew more comfortable with her flying speeds. For better or worse, the new "age of gods" that started a decade ago with the Well handing incarnate power like candy in order to pit Primal and Praetorian Earth against each other means Becky is still largely unknown despite the numerous times she's saved the day.
Fortunately for her, the little people she helps have a good memory and she has received help from many in a pinch, starting with the super tailor that helped her finding how much fabric she could add to the supersuit without messing with the powers (the original version was by far more brief).
Starting to become "Too Good"
Keeping people from dying is good in everyone's eyes. Helping people in countries targetted by colonial powers, however, makes you an undesirable presence to many people in power, and defusing hostility outbursts at contested territories paints a target on your back. Becky has already gotten in trouble twice after being caught moving Etoile refugee boats past the Longbow blockade and making sure humanitarian help reaches troubled countries (in disputed territories at that). It's only a matter of time before she becomes the top item in somebody's black list.
Weaknesses
- Operating from Becky's aura, her powers' performance is affected by her current physical and emotional state... this means she's only invincible until things stop going her way or she catches a cold.
- She's powerless without the suit. While she can summon it from anywhere, said summon's accuracy is subject to the aforementioned weakness.