idk if i'll find one later

Daughter of Justin Timothy Armstrong and Louise Appleton Armstrong. Valerie had a pleasant early childhood, initially living in Bristol. She was introduced to her best friend for the following years at her third birthday, a mixed-breed puppy going by Maxwell. When Valerie was 9, her family moved to Springfield, Illinois. She still sometimes peppers her language with Britishisms.

Valerie had trouble making new friends following her move. After a few years, she picked up sports. One of her peers invited her to a team of Baseball-players. This team initially provided Valerie with the support and social structure she desired, so she leaned further into the sport than she would've during more normal circumstances. Being a quick learner, she eventually surpassed her team. As a result of her quick growth and cocky behavior, resentment on the team grew against her, culminating in pushback and occasional sabotage from teammates. After the negatives started to occur so often that she could no longer chalk them up to anything but malicious behavior, Valerie decided to try leaving her toxic environment for a different team. On the day before an important tryout, Valerie found herself locked out of the training grounds. The straw that broke the camels back was in place, she triggered at age 13 due to the stress caused by systematic sabotage, angry at the once nurturing environment and how it held her back.
One of Valerie's teammates was injured during the aftermath of her trigger event, law enforcement in the form of the Parahuman response team got involved. Due to her high cooperativeness, the PRT assisted Valerie with legal matters. 'Coil' was her codename during this time, she decided to keep it.
Valerie was tentatively banned from the baseball try-out on account of her new-found powers.

Following her trigger, Coil became the designated Ward of her town, making up the local PRT branch with about 90 non-powered personnel (excluding janitorial staff) and an Alexandria Package Master going by the name Pern (with Maxwell sometimes acting as an honorary part-time volunteer). Coil picked her name without knowledge of the deceased Brockton Bay based villain, which led to a few enthusiastic lessons of Supervillain trivia from Pern. Valerie became somewhat of a cape geek thanks to Perns influence, soon putting immense amounts of research into local (and semi-local) capes. She became somewhat of a fangirl for a few.

Coil participated in three Endbringer battles. Two of them against the twins, one (briefly) against Khonsu on his second outing, mostly using her powers to knock Blasters and fellow Shakers out of dangerous areas. She chickened out during the first battle, didn't follow Khonsu after he teleported away for the second and got injured in the third. After her battle, Coil decided never to attend any Endbringer fight again.

During the end of the world, Coil was almost entirely useless, going almost catatonic and hunkering beneath a heavy oaken table during the worst of Scion's rampage. By the time she built up enough courage to act, the fact that nothing could be done was evident. The Armstrongs decided to go on an impromptu road trip. This adventure was cut short when Khepri enrolled Valerie. Coil only really helped by feeding biomass into random Capes with power synergy. She was among the Parahumans who required medical attention during the battle, but luckily one of the healing capes had her handled.

After the end of Gold morning, Coil took the shortest route back home and met up with her family. Once they were done raiding her old Wards base for costumes and bidding Pern farewell, the Armstrongs decided to migrate to a new world. Initially shooting for Gimel, they ended up on Samekh instead. The Armstrongs bought a property around the outskirts of the silver city. Valerie initially took the by now very old Maxwell on daily walks (sometimes using her powers to settle disputes around the local area), but the daily walks slowly turned into weekly walks. Most of her local area is protective of her, meaning that while being technically unmasked, Coil's civilian ID is mostly a well-kept secret (with new people being introduced to the secret on a biweekly basis).

Recently, Coil found out that according to the first guard, she had acted as an independent vigilante for the past few years. While trying to finish the mountains of paperwork necessary for becoming an official independent hero, she learned about the Junior Guard and decided to sign up, citing her status as long-acting Wards captain of the PRT in a state capital.
(Her technical truth was caught, leading to many people learning that Chicago was in fact not the capital of Illinois.)
She is one of the newest Junior Guards and unsure about how to interact with fellow Parahumans. Coil is not used to having to work with capes that have poor power synergy with her.

As of now, Valerie and her family members are not citizens. They fulfill most of the requirements for application.

(Director Armstrong of the Boston PRT is her third cousin twice removed, but the two have only ever seen each other on family trees.)

James Clairville and Sarah Collins, a performer and an artist fell in love and married. A year or so later in 1993 the two had Kari who they lovingly nurtured. James, an actor, and Sarah did their utmost to support eachother and their daughter, doing double duty as they worked and raised her. Truly things were sometimes a blur in their household, but more importantly it was always warm and fun. Of course things became even more interesting as Kari matured, for as she participated in school her parents found that she was truly gifted. So, naturally, they edged for her to carry on in their footsteps, encouraging the arts--writing, acting, painting, singing, it hardly mattered, “just pick one,” they’d say. Seeking approval, Kari did so, taking part in little plays and helping design costumes. This trend carried on from her early schooling into middle school until finally her burgeoning personality could not simply conform anymore.

From then on Kari let what she’d long hidden beneath the surface out into the world, a curiosity not for the arts, but instead for what her parents would think their polar opposite. For, unlike her parents, Kari’s passion was the world, math, science, history and as she got older she only leaned into her passions more. In school she excelled, skipping a year in middle school and going into high school earlier than most. She was a nerd, but she found some acceptance among peers, as, while her parents supported her, they could not ever really understand her passions. Kari’s were just too different from their own. Of course, high school ended too soon as she breezed through courses and wowed both her parents and teachers in a frenzy wrought of diligence and ambition. She wanted to be a scientist, to enter the field of tech and much fell away as a result. Hobbies that she’d kept up with since childhood drifted away, only resurging as she required the skills honed through them.

Accepting her passion, even though he did not understand it, her father hired tutors and began the process of enrolling his daughter in college. All the while, Kari and her mother grew apart, a rift opened by what Sarah had taken as a betrayal. Once enrolled she worked hard, majoring in computer technology, intending to go into the field, designing new hardware for the world over. It was hard, but she loved it. However, just before she could graduate--though she’d been damned close--Gold Morning happened, the world collapsing around her. The months were filled with a quiet horror, fleeing, and the desperate hope that they would make it through. Eventually, they did, but not all of them. Many had been lost and among them...people she held beloved. Friends, colleagues, but most devastatingly...her mother.

Wracked by guilt and sorrow Kari and her father just tried to keep their heads up. Despite their loss they were fortunate in other ways, finding themselves in Samekh, and then Serstol, near its infancy. They settled in and her father was forced to take up menial labor--the world was not in a state to support the career he’d led before. She hated seeing him so, and she hated more the terrible loss that tore at her heart. So, naturally, she distracted herself, steeling her resolve and moving forwards. She picked up where she’d left off, teaching herself more skills and applying to jobs with a dedicated determination to ease her father’s burden and to make a difference.

After months of work she landed herself a job and immediately launched into development and customer service--using whatever spare money and resources she could to build and design something new...something that would benefit everyone. Soon her efforts earned her a proper place at her job, allowing her to leverage their resources with her skill to really begin the development of her project. Things were going well for awhile, the pay was good and she was happy, but soon misfortune reared its head. Checking her work one week she came upon an error in her work. Thinking it largely inconsequential she set about fixing the problem, replacing parts and altering code. However, the more she did the worse things got. She’d come back to it only to find things in a worse state than they’d been before. Worse still, a meeting was coming up where she was supposed to be showcasing her new product. The stress only worsened the issue and eventually things spiralled out of control, totally ruining month upon month of work. Feeling totally out of her depth and utterly overwhelmed--and baffled--by her situation she triggered, the fear of losing such a huge part of her life, and jeopardizing everything, breaking her down.

Having lost months of work and seemingly wasted resources, upper management demoted her to a junior position, shelving her project for a later date. Fortunately, they were much more understanding that she’d expected. In the interest of her mental health, they gave her a month’s paid leave and left things at that. Still reeling and feeling cast aside she spent many of those days aimless and lost. The only things that saved her were the preoccupation of experimenting with her newfound powers, research on the subject, and more importantly...escape by way of art. While not many of her mother’s pieces had survived the end of the world, they’d managed to reacquire a few. Kari surrounder herself with them and decided to give her mother’s passion a second chance.

Taking up the brush and pencil, she spread her emotions over the canvas and found that perhaps she’d never really had a particular dislike for the arts. Maybe she’d just been rebellious. Maybe that’s what had led her on this path? She wasn’t sure and it was impossible to go back and find out so instead she looked forwards. She still had a job to lead, soon, but now she had powers. She was a parahuman. Couldn’t she do so much more to affect the lives of everyone for the better?

Eventually deciding she could, Kari began designing a costume and after a time, returned to her work as well. While she has yet to rise to her former position, she still makes enough to get by. Though it is not just her former failure that has kept her from rising again, but rather that her ambitions have taken on a new form. With her costume finished and name chosen, Presidio has every intent to make the world a better...safer place and perhaps bring humanity back to its former glory.

Only time will tell whether her work with the Final Guard will truly make an impact.

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Samantha Hobbes was born January 2001 and was raised primarily by a live in nanny until the age of ten, her parents often signing her up for camps, school trips, and daily adventures. Paying their way into the young girl's heart while focusing on their individual careers. Over the course of these many summers spent away from home Samantha picked up a few hobbies that she truly enjoyed, some of which included horseback riding, hiking, nature photography, and much to the panic of the councilors that had been in charge of her did manage to sneak out into the woods on more than one occasion to try and track down animals.

Near Midnight April 3rd 2012 The parents of Samantha Hobbes are awoken to the sound of their ringing phone. Her father, a prominent prosecution lawyer, answering it to find the head of the local Protectorate team on the other end of the line and clearly agitated. The hero, supported by the team thinker, has reason to believe that one of the villains who had recently been tried and sentenced to the the Birdcage was on the move and looking for revenge. The thinker was nearly certain that there would be an attack before sunrise and that if Samantha's family were to stay in their home there was no guarantee that any of them would survive. Shocked, Samantha's father asks what he should do and is informed that they were already sending their more mobile capes that way along with a PRT van as an escort. They would be taken to the local headquarters to be watched over and protected until the villain and his team were captured.
Samantha is awoken by her mother and told that they were taking a quick trip, they were going to be gone a couple of days and she shouldn't grab anything that she doesn't need. Confused and groggy the young girl nods and gets ready before being led out of the house and towards the family's car. Her mother makes sure she is buckled in and secure before closing the door, keeping her from noticing the trio of figures standing near the end of the driveway until she watches her father approach them. As he talks his voice muffled through the car window, but something about the way he was standing felt...wrong. But after a few seconds of tired puzzling Samantha recognizes them as the local Protectorate, and when the realization that they heroes sinks in Samantha feels a rush of excitement! Her excitement only growing as she saw one of them turn her way and wave, a woman in a silver costume whose lower body is a mess of silver sparks. It is not long after this that her father is climbing into the driver's seat and the heroes take their positions around the car with a PRT Van trailing behind them.
Minutes pass and Samantha starts to doze off, her face pressed against the window to keep an eye on the two heroes she could see, the woman with her sparkler flight and a man keeping pace with two telescoping limbs, steadily falling a few yards behind then bounding ahead of the vehicle in a single step over and over. It's like a dream. But something still seemed wrong to her despite the proximity of the heroes, a kind of tension that her parents had only ever had when they had come home one day to find the front door broken open and the house trashed. It was worrying enough that despite how tired she felt she just couldn't fall back asleep.
It was in this half asleep state that Samantha realized that the man with the tinker legs hadn't caught back up to the car in a few steps and for some reason her stomach went tight. "Mom wher-" She tried to ask, but then came a slam hard enough to jar the question from her mind. Her father wrestled with the wheel as the back end of the car was struck, pushing them towards the edge of the hillside road they had been traveling, bumper scraping against the metal guard rail. The sound of screeching tires and metal drowned out her own frightened scream as she watched an arm, darker than the night sky and as thick as a tree trunk reach out from the top of the PRT Van and grab the sparkling woman from the air. The arm sent the woman crashing down, aiming to use her as a bludgeon against the small sedan only to loose grip on her as she burst into a million sparks and poured from the villainous grasp. The hand, minus it's captive, continued on its path anyway. Striking the side of the car with enough force that Samantha's door flexed inward. And in the flash of a streetlight she could see that the arm was a mass of writhing serpent like creatures molded together to form a limb. She screamed again as a feeling of weightlessness overtook her. They were off the road, falling, then came the first jarring impact. The car slammed into the earth, Samantha's seat belt locking and causing her scream to cut off abruptly as it knocked the wind from her. For long seconds the world was a tumbling roaring swirl of confusion, she could hear her father yelling, her mother screaming and all her mind could do was try to sort out this spinning whirl of near death. Flashes of red, silver, and that shadowy arm, blurred past her shattered window. Powers at war while the world around her threatened to collapse and crush her at any second. And all Samantha could do was hold tight to her seat and gasp. Until with a flash she could see someplace else. Something else. When the dizziness of the extra dimensional vision had passed Samantha found herself hanging upside down from her seat, fingers itching to reach into another space. By the time she realized she had a power the other heroes had arrived as backup and managed to beat back the villains. The newly triggered parahuman and her parents were then transferred to the PRT Headquarters for medical attention.

The following year after the attack Samantha spent nearly every waking hour trying to find time to practice her ability, to try and get a handle on it before bringing it up to her parents. Often sneaking out of the house and finding a secluded location to work at taming the wild nature of her power. It was on one of these outings that she was discovered by a patrolling hero, the tinker that had been attacked first and injured on the attack on her family now fully recovered. He announced himself and offered to watch and see what she could do while sending a message to the PRT and her parents. Thanks to his discovery and assistance Samantha was offered a position in the Wards program, which she was happy to accept despite her parent's hesitance. She was admitted to the wards one week before her birthday in January 2013 and spent most of the time before gold morning training and pushing to be put to work. By the time of Gold Morning the newly mantled Calvin Ball had only two months of experience out patrolling behind her.

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Her father is a doctor, her mother stays at home. Both of them expect her to try and follow in her footsteps, her father assuming she'll fail. Has some pretty serious social anxiety that mostly flares up in front of strangers and especially while doing public speaking that can often cause her to stutter on top of her braces-induced lisp. Her primarily social outlet is her group of other nerd friends she larps and plays dnd with as well as the broader historical reenactment community in the area. Relatively well to do, she and her family live in a nice neighborhood since her dad is a doctor.

Picture: Don't actually have one for him, sorry

Will's life was fairly boring pre-trigger - he lived with his mother, his step-father (he doesn't really remember his birth father, nor - from what his mother has told him - does he want to), and his 10-years-younger half-brother in a calm Midwestern suburb with a low cape presence. The local villains had bigger, more interesting places to bother with than anywhere near Will's home, and the PRT outreach program (such as it was) was very much underfunded, so Will never much cared about capes. Then, at 14, his home caught fire, and he triggered trying to carry his baby brother out of the flames when a burning beam blocked his escape. (Yes, there was more to it than that, but a full trigger writeup would be looooong - I'll do that later.)

Joining the Wards wasn't really a question for him - going solo would have been too risky, and villainy wasn't going to happen. His parents moved closer to the city after the fire (partially motivated by his enthusiasm), so location wasn't an issue either. Working with other capes was difficult, mostly because there weren't exactly many of them in the relatively small city anyway, and their powers tended towards Brute effects that clashed with his trails; nevertheless, he managed to do fairly well, although not particularly outstandingly. He eventually graduated to the Protectorate, still believing that it was where he could do the most good even with the revelations about Cauldron, and was scheduled to move to another city deemed more at-risk, to his great excitement. Then the world ended.

In the revelations following Gold Morning, Will's perspective changed...not all that much, actually. From his point of view, he'd been giving his power just what it wanted, and didn't have much to worry about from it. He could still do his thing, still trap villains and protect those who needed protecting, and his powers would be even more useful with people scattered to different worlds and different places - less risk of collateral damage, AND the ability to get from place to place quickly without needing to worry about the aforementioned collateral damage? What's not to love? Since then, he's been wandering the various worlds colonized by Earth Bet refugees; he usually only briefly visits more well-settled worlds like Samekh or Gimel, but often stops by to deliver messages and restock his supplies. Given the rising troubles of Samekh, though, he may end up staying longer...