Haley Hadron
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Chronal Shift Immunity: After events involving time travel and manipulation of temporal lines by her S.O, Haley is now immune to changes in her own timeline. In case of temporal changes, Haley retains knowledge of her original timeline.
Qi Awareness Training: While Haley lacks the seemingly-supernatural reaction speed of metahuman-grade martial artists, she can feel hostile intent as well as incoming attacks regardless of attacker's speed, giving her a sort of "danger sense."Contents
Do Not Want
All Melissa and Frederick wanted was a normal, pretty girl they could love and cherish. A girl who went to school, got a boyfriend and a job, and eventually got married.
What they got in its place was a mutant who manifested her gifts at the tender age of three. Back then, being an unnatural spawn of Satan was a sin in the Bible Belt, and Tulsa was part of the Buckle. Being the fervent Christians they were, they decided to follow the advice that said “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off,” and abandoned the baby.
Being the incarnate of a pagan god, Marcus Cole, a.k.a Statesman was never particularly welcome in Tulsa, but that never stopped him from being there when he was needed, regardless of whether he was wanted or not, and that time he showed up in time to prevent local authorities from persisting on brute-force solutions to a sensitive problem. Alone and scared, young Haley’s powers were manifesting unchecked and dissolving random objects in her vicinity, including elements of a lynching mob that now knew better than approaching to the living hazard zone.
After saving Haley from the authorities (and the authorities from Haley), he left her in G.I.F.T’s care where she was confirmed one of the “Nuclear 90,” ninety kids from around the world, all born in the same year, and all with nuclear reactors for hearts.
A cape, born and bred
Being an infant Nuclear-90, Haley was considered a danger to herself and others, which prevented her from being adopted or even placed in regular foster care, so she was placed in a special facility for cases like her. At “the bunker” (the nickname for said facility), Haley grew up with a lot of children like her, and had a surrogate parental figure in Antonio Nash. Still, for all of her childhood, except for occasional training courses in alternate facilities, internet and Antonio were her only means of contact with the outside world.
Meanwhile, back in the Bible Belt, given Haley’s status as an “unholy mutant,” child neglect charges on the Collins didn’t stick.
In addition, having a nuclear reactor for a heart, the Nuclear-90 are the only metahumans subject to international laws regarding the possession and use of mass destruction weapons. Fortunately for the state, this gave the Powers that Be full excuse to keep her under close supervision, and groom her accordingly. In addition to the training all kids at the bunker received regarding the use of their powers (mainly, how to keep them in check), Haley was trained from an early age by the best tutors available by both the state and the Freedom Corps: From military training to survival in space, from persona training to metahuman combat; this in addition to in-depth exploration of all potential uses of her powers.
The day Haley finally got her hero license was one of the happiest days of her life. She still had to report back “home,” she wasn’t allowed to leave the city on her own, and all her movements were closely followed (same as with the other Nuclear-90), but it still was more freedom than she ever had.
The training she went through most of her life gave her an evident head start as Haley’s heroine career took off swift and smoothly. The state had invested a lot in her, and the investment was paying off.
As a “weapon of mass destruction,” international law forbid her from joining an army other than Vanguard, which was the reason why she was left as a “licensed heroine,” where the army or the Freedom Corps could borrow her now and then as needed. While she wasn’t the only Nuclear-90 residing in US’ soil, this one had no family to miss her, no one to meddle in her name, and they received her at an age perfect to be molded to specifications. Haley was their “bird in the hand.”
...except the bird wouldn't stay in their hands.
Overqualified
Unfortunately for the state, the investment wasn’t paying quite in the way they’d have desired. For all the charisma of Haley’s appointed trainers, in the end Antonio raised her all too well. She wanted nothing to do with meddling in foreign countries or being a “metahuman police.” The training they imparted in her failed in one crucial part: indoctrination.
They tried everything short of direct mind control: appeal to patriotism was no longer as effective in the "global village" world as it was back in Carter's day. The "friends" they set her up to have weren't able to sway her in the required direction, and appealing to authority was clearly useless with a teenager. While they considered more direct measures, The Powers that Be were aware they weren't they only ones watching the girl (and the other 89) closely, so any direct approach would be noticed by the rest, and responded to accordingly.
Live Free or Die
Since the scandal staged by Statesman that ended with the abolishment of the Might for Right Act in 1967, the state could no longer draft her or otherwise use the state's authority (nor they dared force the issue).
To say that this didn’t sit well with the people the Malta Group had in the F.B.S.A orchestrating this little project of theirs for over a decade would be an understatement, but all they could do was subtly trying to sway her. As a Nuclear-90, Haley was a big cause for concern and too many eyes were locked on her to try anything harsh. Eventually they had to let the project go and bid their time.
Said new chance arrived during the Praetorian War. After Emperor Cole's Alpha strike (which targetted primal earth's metahuman population only), the nations of the world were already considering turning all the "supers" to Cole in exchange for being left alone. While the following year turned the tide of war to primal earth's favor, a lot of fat cats again started demanding for solutions after "infamous incarnate eco-terrorist" Palas showed up to support the Indignant protests during Occupy Wall Street.
That was their chance.
All the Malta cell needed was fabricate a scenario of fear inside the Bunker and have their mole in the FBSA issue the right tentative orders to have their trained bird up in arms. As predicted by the scenario, she escaped the bunker. Also as predicted, all it took was sending Longbow troops to round up everyone at the bunker under suspicion of assisting a walking Weapon of Mass Destruction escape US' supervision (tantamount to treason and so subject to capital punishment) to have her runnning back into a trap.
The plan was easy. Stage a real fight with Longbow (the best way for it to look real), send Malta Operatives to capture her once all Longbow operatives are dead, stage a credible death by kilsat, and escape with their prize for later brainwash and indoctrination.
...the plan failed.
The fight was "too real," the bird was too well trained, and she resisted long enough to be vaporized along with the operatives (and all evidence of Malta involvement) when the satellite struck.
It didn't kill Osterman...
No light at the end of the tunnel, no pearly gates, no lake of fire. Just pain, the despair of trashing in the dark, and a vacuum. To date, it's hard to decipher the state Haley was while reduced to quarks, or how can a mutant access her powers without a physical body, the only sure thing is that, in her struggling, she learned something. On the ninth day after he death was confirmed, Haley Hadron reconstructed her body from nothing. From that day, she also gained the ability to bring herself back from the dead regardless of the state of her remains.
With a Little Help from my Friends
For over a year, Haley had been in touch with the one who would become her soulmate. Teen time traveller Sumaki Aikawa found in Haley the flip side of being "different," as well as someone to help her carry her burdens; in Su's company, Haley found the things she wanted from life but could only watch from the outside. It was with Su's help that she found out the government's plan to turn the metahuman population over to Emperor Cole*, and after the incidents that led to her death, Su offered her the best safe haven: Seven years in the future, long after her death was confirmed and a point where no one would still be looking for her. For better or worse, Haley Hadron was finally free.
- [*] Unfortunately, being Haley under constant surveillance, the Malta Group was already aware of Sumaki's abilities to a degree, and part of the scenario they set was precisely leaving the data where they knew the two kids would find it, even adding that, when government turned the metahumans over, they'd start with the Nuclear-90. This was all it took Haley to run away from "home," enabling them to pursue via the legal channels.
The Big Time Skip and Current Events
Ten years after the great incarnate surge, the world is in a state of chaos that vindicates all of erstwhile Emperor Cole's fears. The only reason society hasn't collapsed under the weight of the new gods is because at least enough of them don't want that to happen. Old power players have had a decade to enter the escalation game, and the increasing amount of alien tourism keeps diluting the once alarming threat of The Coming Storm. For better or worse, Haley missed out on both the Praetorian War and the Mot incident, which means she's considerably less emotionally scarred than all of her contemporaries, and she has no intentions of retiring.
You can take the cowgirl out of the west, but you'll never take the west out of the cowgirl.
Public Enemy
NATO holds Haley on her top 5 list of threats not because of crimes, but for the blatant way she flaunts the G8's authority when helping people: She has rebuilt foreign nations after natural catastrophes or war before said nations had a need to resort to the IMF for reconstruction, stopped acts of genocide dead on their tracks (reviving the victims, even), and provides food to poor people in the Rogue Isles despite Longbow's blockades. She flees from squirmishes with Longbow on a regular basis as well as from the Vindicators and other Longbow-adjacent heroes like Sparkz. Furthermore, since her incarnate rebirth, she can't die and she's immune to power suppression so, even in the unlikely case she could be brought down, she can't be jailed.
Personality
As her friends' resident comedic relief, using her powers in "cartoon logic" is not so much a hobby as it is a way of life, but her training has made her as comfortable with them as without them. Having the power needed to deal with basically any situation, she refuses to kill, so her MO is mostly indirect combat and "battlefield control." Unreasonably well adapted despite the hellish training regimes she went through growing up (or, perhaps, because of said regimes). Her upbringing as a "born and bred cape" by Antonio Nash gave her an unshakable sense of right and wrong, and a life with her powers gave her a knack for lateral thinking.
Powers and Limitations: Matter Manipulation, and then Some
While Haley has never had problem duplicating simple objects as long as she has an available sample (regardless of the material's rarity), her powers alone shouldn't be able to properly restore tissue in complex physical wounds, let alone rebuild manufactured objects. Unbeknownst to Haley, ever since her death and resurrection, her powers started branching to things beyond manipulation of Strong and Weak Force, and now Haley can unconsciously read an object's Physical Information[*] (which, according to Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, should be impossible) in order to re-build it to a previous state. While she has no trouble restoring damage to living tissue (in the case of organic materials, Physical Information is in their DNA, something "easier" to read), there is a limit as to the complexity of inanimate objects Haley can restore or duplicate (metatech and Dimensionless-level lifeforms are beyond her grasp).
Invulnerable metahumans extend said invincibility to their gluons[**], and are thus immune to her powers. As an additional, self-imposed limitation, she won't use her powers on living beings for anything other than restorative purposes.
[*] In Quantum Physics, Physical Information is understood as a system's full quantum vector. A fundamental postulate of quantum mechanics is that complete information about a system is encoded in its wave function up to when the wave function collapses and, in principle, complete information about a physical system at one point in time should determine its state at any other time.
[**] Gluons are exchange particles for the strong force between quarks. As the name implies, they're what bind particles together.
Trivia
Her birthday is July 24.
Her incarnate archetype is Coyote: Creator, trickster, transformer, and clown (sources vary, but almost always in pro of the people).
Her natural hair color is white since she lost her original pigmentation during her first experiment to use her powers on herself. She needs to keep re-dying her hair and the new coloration is never permanent. Furthermore, for some reason she can't assume her original hair color.
In the time between her settling in the "future" (now her present) and the family moving to Millenium City, she operated for a while as an unregistered vigilante using the name "Demon Core." The "demon core" was the name of an uranium core that was used during early research in nuclear fission, and got that name because of its propensity to achieve critical mass suddenly and kill all the researchers in the room by radiation posioning. After the second incident, the core was disposed of by using it in the first atomic weapons test.
She has a rikti monkey pet called Lolo. Lolo is kept docile with a steady provision of candy, but he's as domesticated as a cat, which is to say the same as a tiger, which is to say not at all.
After years of marriage to a meta-martial artist, she's been working on a martial art of her own, one that makes use of her powers.
Her "theme song" would be "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" by The Flaming Lips.
Asociates/Relationships
As described by Haley:
- Sumaki_Aikawa_(_teen_) "Why does she keep putting up with me is anyone's guess, but sometimes it's better not to ask... Thanks."
- Maki Aikawa "Yeah, I keep telling Su how she doesn't have to worry about being her own person... but I guess it's still kinda hard to get up every morning and watching the "original"... at least she no longer takes it as bad."
- Gold Meteor "The way I see it, if not for Big Red she'd have become a full-blown supervillain by now... wait, how do you call someone who invades a foreign world with a personal army because of a vendetta? Isn't she one already?? Su will have to forgive me the day it really comes to blows between me and Hannah, but it's inevitable. I'M. WATCHING. HER."
- Simi'Kraz "As a testament to human adaptability... I've come to like her."
- Lumena "Lumster Lumster... why won't you like me?"
- Labal "Few guys are more scary than one who's fun and perfect for hanging around, except that he's the son of the devil and will destroy the world the moment you turn your back on him... but dammit he's cool for hanging around."