Gold Meteor
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Time Manipulation
Force Mastery
Contents
Hannah Goldshire
"The reality behind Satan is simply the dark evolutionary force of entropy that permeates all of nature and provides the drive for survival and propagation inherent in all living things. Satan is not a conscious entity to be worshipped, rather a reservoir of power inside each human to be tapped at will. " --Peter H. Gilmoire
When her father told her she'd never make it as a physicist, she proved him wrong.
When her college professors told her she'd never figure Rikti technology and get a job with the Vanguard, she proved them wrong again.
When her brother told her she'd never get away with getting a heroine license, she proved him wrong as well.
Born on march 30. A rebellious child with a prodigious mind, she always showed the strong-willed and individualistic personality of her mother, who was her main support and counterweight to an all too conservative father. A few months before college she left home on bad terms after a heated discussion involving autonomy, authority, and her sexual preferences.
College and the Rikti
Hannah's college studies were barely begining when the Rikti invasion came. Cut from family and most friends, the months she passed in the civilians' shelter were most frustrating. After the war was over, however, she decided to make the most of whatever came after that. As soon as she got notice of job opportunities in Vanguard, she didn't rest until she secured a place as an intern, where her innate talents for reverse-engineering quickly got the attention of her superiors. From her perspective, she was a child in a candy store: After the war was over, the Vanguard secured enough spoils of war from the enemy to put to practice theories that have been canned for decades, and she was having a chance at testing them first-hand; from the correspondence point to the theory of the multiple universes.
Enter Gold Meteor
Hannah managed to get back in touch with her brother, Nicholas, just in time for her first promotion in the Vanguard. During this time she developed a growing interest in Paragon City's new flood of super-powered heroes and villains. As fate would have it, opportunity would one day present itself with an assortment of worn-out Rikti devices that were ready to be discarded, same devices that Hannah would borrow right away now that they were no longer in inventory, and refurbish them into a miniature gravity-induction engine capable of producing enough energy to power "something". The void of that "something" filling up when she brought the plans to Nicholas. Like Hannah, Nicholas was born with a privileged mind, but he instead focused on weapons development. Conceding to her sister’s nagging, he helped her build a wrist-mounted energy weapon for her Rikti improvised battery. There was a new cape in town.
Friends and Enemies
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Following Vanguard’s credo, Gold Meteor is known for associating with anyone in order to get the job done. As a matter of fact, she’s known for choosing some rather questionable companies, including Labal, a known son of Lucifer who is on several heroes’ hit list, yet with whom sustains a strangely amicable and cordial relationship, and who has proved most useful furthering her understanding of infernal physics.
She is no friend to Kheldians, resenting their secrecy and insularity even after they put Earth in the middle of their war.
She held a grudge on the Clockwork King for years, after he broke every bone in her body early on in her hero career, yet wasn't allowed to finish him off when she had the chance, first by the Phallanx, and then by Penelope Yin.
For years, Hannah had the most unlikely infatuation possible to a cape: Lord Nemesis. She considered him the brightest mind on earth, thus, in her words, "the hottest man on earth." The romance that never was, however, died after she found out about Nemesis' involvement in the Rikti invasion. Her disappointment later on worsening when, after his return to earth, he hacked her MK-IV to possess her as part of a plot to use the medport network to download copies of himself in the minds of every hero in the world.
She sides with the Rikti Traditionalists in order to attain an eventual peace, but she won’t hesitate in shooting hostile rikti dead at the drop of a hat.
She hates the Menders of Ouroboros, whom she holds partially responsible for nearly ruining her marriage when the constant traffic to and from their universe slipped a younger version of her life partner from an alternate universe into this earth, which spiraled in a series of unfortunate events leading to them splitting for a time as well as a small-scale incident between Ouroboros and the Vanguard. This grudge is added to the contempt she already had towards them for perceiving them as scammers, tricking people of this earth into helping them with vague objectives for obscure, ulterior motives:
"Let's suppose for a moment that I travel back within -my- timeline to prevent some great catasthrophe... and let's suppose I succeed. Well, if I succeeded then the event never happened, if the event never happened I never got wind of it, if I never got wind of it then I never went back in time to prevent it, and if I never went back in time to prevent it, then the tragedy happened... Look, I don't know what's the deal you've got with working events in alternate universes or creating your own [*] but please, stop playing us all for fools, and stop insulting my intelligence"
Her enmity with Ouroboros, combined with her unchecked transhumanization all the way into Ascended status has her on Prometheus' black list.
Her more persisten enemy, however, would be Longbow. The dawn of the Second Rikti War got everyone in a panic, including the UN, and a chain of events ended up granting Gold Meteor military rank, which made of Vanguard's enemies (namely, NATO) her enemy as well, and giving her a (one-sided) nemesis of her own in Longbow's head of R&D Tabitha Hortington. While Hannah was still nowhere as powerful back then, her resourcefulness and crushing victories in the battlefield (product of years of obessive planning for the inevitable day the Rikti returned) made her a more visible target, especially since her powers seemed to grow proportional to her military rank, and by the time the Praetorian War broke out, Hannah was already a Major General (comicbook logic, deal with it) AND an incarnate. NATO and the G8 saw a UN army with the full power to enforce UN's rulings and oppose world's superpowers. To this day, Longbow's "Taskforce AquaRegia" is still hard at work on means to kill her and Gold Meteor deals with attempts on her life about once a year.
- [*] To date, while physicists agree that there are three possible things that could happen as a result of travelling to the past, all three hypotheses have the same conclusion: YOUR PAST CANNOT BE CHANGED. The first two hypotheses are summarized by Hannah above, the last one is that, even if you changed something, time has ways of self-correcting (you kill Hitler, but then some asshole nazi with a time machine arrives right after you leave, and becomes the new Hitler).
The Fall: The Praetorian War and Retirement
The day of Praetoria's Alpha Strike taught formerly fearless Hannah the meaning of fear: A world-wide invasion where each heavy artillery piece doubled as a power suppression relay. The enemy was a civlization fully rebuilt and managed by metahumans, a metatechnocracy that could never be imposed in a world with over five billion unruly, tribalist humans. A re-enactment of the rikti war with no metahuman backup, where the day was only saved by the Well of Furies empowering a new generation of gods, and she was fortunate to be one of them. The fear made Hannah forsake the hero mindset in favor of the general, and she focused all of her genius and power in systematically dismantling the Praetorian estate until she could personally face this "Emperor Cole" in the battlefield.
She got her wish... and so engrossed and laser-focused she was on the transdimensional African city state of Praetoria that she didn't do her dilligence to account for the facts that the Marcus Cole of Alpha Upsilon 24-2 didn't have time to toss the world's nuclear arsenals into the sun when the Hamidon War broke out, that somehow said arsenals survived Hamidon's global rampage, and that Emperor Cole of Praetoria still had said arsenals up and running for an impending future of a "glorious last stand" against Hamidon.
Instead, she got her wish, and she put against the ropes the tyrant with access to the planet's nuclear codes.
Half a billion human lives, and all life on land. Their blood was on her hands.
After the war, she took early retirement and focused on her family and research.
Current Affairs
Ever since Praetoria's fall, twice a year she goes back and tries to destroy Hamidon. While last three times were a "success," Hamidon keeps restoring itself from literally nothing, not unlike her daughter in law Haley Hadron. No matter how many times her family keeps trying to dissuade her, or how many times her contemporaries and other incarnates tell her she's chasing the wind since Hamidon is Life Incarnate (and thus, cannot ever die), she still tries every year.
Her research finally got her Ascended status, and is thus no longer dependant on the Well of Furies. She has a whole new road before her, but it's anyone's guess how far she'll get.
While she is mostly retired as a heroine today, she will still make an appearance in world-threatening scenarios (like the Mot incident).
Causing a timequake during a fight with herself from a destroyed timeline sicced the Galactic Federation's police on her, where she was tried. During her time on trial, she found out the Federation had reasons to fear Earth beyond its ungodly amount of metahumans and used it as leverage to instead apply as a "one-person sovereign nation." Gold Meteor knew they knew they could bring her down in the end if it came down to it, but they'd have to go to war for that, and she'd make sure it was the bloodiest war they'd see in generations.
Also, she wouldn't be the first Earth hero to become a sovereign nation... Mender Silos was there during the trial.
While mostly inactive on Earth, Gold Meteor still carries affairs of her own elsewhere.
Personality and Family Life
Full embodiment of an Aries: Fearless, assertive, creative, passionate about everything, organized, and will tackle everything head on. She's also reckless, impatient, and overly competitive. She's married to meta-martial artist Maki Aikawa who is the blue oni to her red oni and pretty much her tether to humanity. After Maki's temporal splinter they found years ago proved no longer dangerous to her existence, they adopted her as their daughter (and nine years in the future, kid Sumaki would travel to the past, where she'd meet her future wife, Haley Hadron.
Powers: Transhumanism and the Road to Ascension
Hannah has never been adverse to dealing with esoteric resources, from her very first gravity reactor to unwittingly sealing Iblis, the first Djinn, to her subdermal implants. By the same token, her wife is the only reason her subdermals are as far as her transhumanism goes (still, she took with a smile the challenge of continuing her growth despite said limitations). As one would expect, Incarnate (Ascended now) physics are a whole new field of science. As grand as it sounds, however, this breakthrough isolated Hannah. Her science is no longer understandable by regular human minds and her peers can no longer make sense of anything she says. She resented for years no longer being eligible for a Nobel Prize.
Gold has made of transhumanism her personal religion. She is convinced that mankind is destined to transcend the limits of the flesh to the point of being able to choose their own evolutionary path individually.
Excerpt from an essay Gold contributed for the Theoretical and Applied Genetics journal:
"We leave a school when it's time to move to the next. We leave our parents' home when it's time to take flight on our own. We leave a job when we get a better one. Likewise, now that we have the means, it is time to abandon our basic flesh molds and become what we were meant to be. Some will move in large groups, some will take individual paths, and inevitably many will be left behind. The process will not be easy and there will be several barriers to overcome, social, political, and religious. Blood will be shed, yes, but such is the price of change, and we have paid it several times in the past in order to be where we are today. My point is, the future is inevitable, someday we will all ascend.
If I were to predict a scenario for the end of the human race, I'd say that in the final days, we will all go our separate ways to become our own Well each. If there is a God, and if it made us in its image, then it's our destiny to become just like it."
While Gold's ideas have a heavy affinity with luciferan philosophy, she has denied more than once any rumored affiliations with the church of satan ever since the publication of this essay. The rumors and PR headaches may or may not be mainly fanned by Longbow.
Gold Meteor Models
MK-I (Prototype): A bulky set of blaster gauntlets, Hannah completed the disguise with a full-body spandex suit. Hair dyed blonde with an electro-reactive pigment that acts as soon as the gauntlets are powered.
MK-II: A single sleek, arm-length gauntlet. Integrated amplificators can now boost firepower a two-fold and first attempts at gravity technollogy enable her to punch like a fully-trained combatant.
MK-III: Black, smaller gauntlets. Both gravity-induction engine and weapon sistems are optimized to accomodate for mass-transponder technollogy. Ablative-field melee can now punch through 3 inches of rock effortlessly. Attuned mass-transponder also enables instant costume change.
MK-IV: Subdermal nano-circuitry with all systems integrated. Constant power through Vanguard-provided wireless energy lines. Auxiliary energy cells can be teleported in case of an emergency. The MK-IV is self-repairing and fully tempest-hardened.
Side-effects of the MK-IV's activation are her skin turning pitch-black while big portions of the nano-circuitry glow underneath the skin. This look fascinated Hannah to the point she used this model in the nude, taking advantage of the glow conveniently concealing her private parts. The MK-IV is one of Hannah’s biggest prides, having taken her augmentation technology to its "logical conclusion", achieving transhumanism. She justifies her new "bare-skin" costume with the grudge she holds on Yakuza full-body tatooing, seeing it as a huge waste of artistic work if you're going to be keeping all that ink to yourself while wearing clothes.
MK-V: Powered by the Djinn Iblis, embedded in her subdermals (no, it didn't end well). The MK-V can control the color of Hannah’s skin and has a less exaggerated glow, which means Gold Meteor wears clothes with this.
MK-VI: Incarnate technology. Powered by the Quantum Vacuum. Enables Hannah with cyberkinesis usable on anything short of incarnate-grade security. No longer needs solid tools or facilities to work. Can create semi solid constructs controlled by rudimentary A.I. Increased proficiency with time and space allow her for limited feats of bi-location.
MK-VII: Ascended technology. Full mastery of time and space.
Trivia
Her "theme songs" would be Princes of the Universe by Queen and Handlebars by Flobots.
Her favorite ice cream flavor is rum and raisins.
She's a 100% Zeus Archetype... but then she's no longer even connected to the Well of Furies.
She started a religious cult during her first vacations in Cimerora for teh lulz... a shame they all died when the city was burned by the Talons of Vengeance before they were delivered "salvation," and would have joined the Talons post-mortem and hunted her down as an oath breaker if not for the four thousand years of waiting for Hannah to be born.
For a time she had a sidekick: Silver Comette.
She built her current house and private lab by predicting the lottery winner.
Finally, not long after she started her hero career, Hannah built a gynoid in her image and modelled after her brain patterns. This gynoid (named Cobalt) soon evolved enough self-awareness to eventually make demands from her creator, especially after Hannah's retirement: Cobalt would live her own life elsewhere, but when it's time for Hannah to pass away, Cobalt will inherit her memory, technology, and Ascended power. There will always be a Gold Meteor.
Credits
Artwork property of Bitmonkey