Gorgon
Mathilda Kahle / Matilde Kahlo.
Alias: Gorgon
Age: 23
Alignment: Villain.
Loyalty: Last Minute.
Appearance: Standing at 165 cm or 5’5’’, Mathilda is a girl made out of rock. This is very visible on her body, which is entirely rock-grey and has numerous cracks across her slender arms and body. She does have decently sized chest and hips, though. On her head, often in front of her shoulders and on her back is long, wild, curly but petrified hair which only changes its position when Mathilda moves it, it is as inflexible as she is. As she’ll still look naked without them she dresses in clothes, usually pretty black dresses that match well with her grey skin.
Whenever she moves, she actually destroys part of her inflexible rock body to stretch as muscles, regenerating it almost instantly again to cause movement. This makes her movements inherently slow, but she’s also very, very strong. It should be noted that she weighs around 200 kg / 440 pounds. On the flat of her back, there's the brand marking her as one of the Case 53s.
When out in battle, she grows a large domino-mask out of rock that she keeps attached to her face… not that she needs to, it isn’t as if her identity is hidden when she walks in public.
History: A girl made out of rock, short rock-hair on her head, awoke in the streets of Mexico City without memories and a mark on her back. Being quickly identified for what she was, a Case 53, the girl was lucky to be welcomed into their society. Despite being terrifying herself, she was terrified of the capes around and those who looked at her with a frown because she was so obviously different. The state accepted this for now and the girl got a family which she could live with. Named Matilde Kahlo, she enjoyed a relatively normal girlhood with an adoptive family. Except, it couldn’t quite be normal, could it? Seeing how she couldn’t
eat. She didn’t sleep, either. Everything was just the slightest off with her.
Driven by the need to make herself useful to her adoptive family, Matilde employed her powers for something she found they were useful for. Easily creating tunnels with her powers. She took jobs for different companies in Mexico, going around getting money for breaking down the matter of tunnels, living the happy life. Unfortunately, she didn’t quite keep track of who she was working for. A criminal lord hired her to create a tunnel for him to smuggle drugs through. Matilde found out, and in horror and panic, she used her powers to petrify the drugs into dust. In return… well, Matilde had no secret identity to speak of. They went for her family.
Things changed after that. While the family were unharmed from the initial strikes due to cape involvement, they were no longer safe. Things were never the same. They aimed accusing looks at Matilde, rumors of her working with villains surfaced around the neighborhood, and kids were told not to associate themselves with her family. It became bad, really bad. In the end, they decided to use Matilde’s power to flee to America, even as they accused her of their state. She dug a tunnel for them to follow her in. … That’s where the second lesson of her life came into play, as in her despair at her situation she failed to take structural integrity into account and the tunnel collapsed, killing her family under the pressure.
Arriving in America, Matilde wandered aimlessly for quite a while, having lost all she treasured and was in considerable emotional pain from her earlier traumatic experiences. As a rock-being, she was very easy to identify on sight, and reports from Mexico told she was suspected of killing her own family due to the word of neighbors. From this, some villains tried to approach and recruit her… and that just so happened to be when Matilde had enough. In anger, she proceeded to violently attack the villains and made stone statues out of them. In doing so, her inner sadism came out as she encased them in stone, and she learned just how fun it was to hear people screaming as she petrified them and held them with absolute control.
She had a revelation. This was why she had never been entirely comfortable with who she was, trying to live a peaceful existence with her fake family. She wasn’t
meant to live a peaceful existence. These powers she had been given were meant to be used, her strength meant to be utilized. For her own purpose, and hers alone. This realization sent a surge of relief through Matilde, and she could smile once again. She adjusted her name slightly to signify the change, from Matilde Kahlo to Mathilda Kahle. Then she manifested a domino-mask out of rock as well as made her hair longer, wilder and curlier, carved out of the rock she made. She took the name Gorgon for herself and wandered to a new destination with a smirk.
She still isn’t sure what exactly she wants to do, buuuuut… at the very least, it involves a lot of petrification~<3
… Oh, who’s this? Looks like someone’s gotten into contact with her~! She’s trying to recruit Gorgon? This one’s a bit different from the villains from before, as in she’s actually strong and might just deliver on her promises. How exciting~! Now, where might this lead~? Only the future can tell~!
Motivations: Carrying out her purpose, and perhaps along the route
obtaining acceptance.
Sexuality: She lacks the necessary parts, being made out of rock. That said, not ruling anything out~
Likes: - Playfulness and bantering
- Wandering nature and cities
- Rain and noise
- Classical music and upbeat music
- Carving statues with her power, reading
- The screams and panic of those being encased by her rocks
Dislikes: - Restless nights
- When floors/chairs/vehicles/things can’t support a 200 kg / 440 pound person.
- The eyes reserved for a Case 53
- Family dinners (they become awkward when she can’t eat)
- The fact every instrument she tries to use breaks because she gets too excited
- Those stoic types who just won’t scream
Derangement: Mathilda has a certain craving for causing terror and encasing people in rock. It was one of the reasons she felt uncomfortable when she had a family back then, but then she didn’t know what the craving was and it didn’t do anything. However, the first time she unleashed her power on some villains trying to recruit her she learned of the pleasure that could be obtained by causing pain to others, and now it's an urge that craves to be satisfied. Though, as long as it knows some petrification is coming, it can be patient~
On a note. She MIGHT be part of the Nemesis program, where a weakness is programmed into her psyche and a specific cape intended to defeat her will know the keyword or trick to make her lose. If that is the case, her derangement might be one that was programmed into her to make sure she became a villain, seeing how Cauldron capes usually are less inclined to be violent. Buuuut, that’s not anything Mathilda knows anything about, and it might have been derailed. Who knows~?
Skills: Through extended practice, Mathilda is now pretty good at keeping track of if a cave or building is going to collapse or not from some parts being smashed. She’s got a natural sense of the underground, and what materials are which, and how much of a load certain parts are carrying. … Might come from her power, though.
She’s pretty skilled at carving statues that can greatly resemble the real thing. This is partly from her power, though. She just makes the rock in the shape she wants to make it hard, and then she makes what’s around soft and easy to carve out. She’s practicing getting better without “cheating”. Only so much you can do on sleepless nights.
Oh, and she while likes music… but don’t let her get her hands on an instrument. She becomes too excited and breaks it trying to produce sounds with her great strength. This is an anti-skill of hers. The person who makes her a super-sturdy piano will be her hero forever.
It should be noted that while she can theoretically create a rock projectile and then throw it, Mathilda has no particular skill for throwing accuracy and very unlikely to hit as intended without extensive training.
Classification: Brute, Striker/Shaker
Details: Mathilda’s power is that she’s a rock-being that can pertify non-living matter and control how durable it is within her range, in addition to herself being extremely durable and able to regenerate.
Brute - Mathilda is really strong, and really, really durable. She can lift the average half-a-ton over her head, though she’s not strong enough to do more than put it down after. But, she’s far more durable than that. A car falling on top of her is likely to get a Mathilda-shaped hole while she just stands there looking at how it bent around her. You need a magnificent amount of force to blow her apart, and any minor wounds are almost instantly regenerated. But, even if her limbs are severed, Mathilda isn’t truly killed unless her head is vaporized, for she regenerates as air-particles are petrified to form her new body. Regeneration is quick enough to constantly heal her as she does damage to her inflexible body through mere movement, though it takes far longer for it to regenerate actual lost portions of her body than small wounds. Like, maybe three days to regenerate an arm if she lost it, and more if she lost more.
Mathilda does not need to eat, breathe or sleep, and she feels nothing, no taste, touch to her skin or any sort of pain, though she still has that sense that enables her to know where her limbs are. Mathilda requires no kind of intake of nutrients, she just kind of exists on her power alone.
Striker/Shaker - Mathilda can petrify non-living matter around her into rock, including air, though the effect is much greater on solid matter. The effect itself is originally pretty short, around touching-range albeit she doesn’t need to touch, hence Striker. However, when she touches a petrified area that area counts as part of her body and her power extends along the rock, making her petrification spread like wildfire over a much larger range, hence Shaker. Placing her foot down can spread the effect over the floor of a room really quickly and see it creep up the clothing of people close by. Her power extends through petrified objects up to a limited range of around fifteen meters. Petrifying an object changes its density to the that of rock, adding mass where needed, meaning many things get heavier after Mathilda has petrified it.
She cannot petrify living matter, but she can petrify the air around the living matter, though petrified air does not extend her range. Touching a living being directly or indirectly through a petrified physical object over a distance (like a petrified floor), she can start slowly but surely enclose them in a cocoon of rock, surely starting by petrifying their clothing, making it weigh way more than it did previously so they cannot escape. If the target is wearing enough Mathilda can make them a statue over a distance, her range extending through their clothes, otherwise it needs her to get close. She can then carve the statue to a specific appearance, if she wants to. If completely encased, the target is deprived of oxygen and will die.
Petrification moves at a harsh pace difficult to outrun if you weren’t prepared for it, at around 5 meters per second, meaning it will extend to the max range after three seconds. Petrifying air is slow but still fast, at around half a meter per second, not to mention that since her range won’t extend through this rock it will stop at around one meter wide. Still, that is plenty for making a defensive wall or trapping an enemy’s leg.
After petrifying something, Mathilda can afterwards adjust the hardness of the rock, making it either as durable as she is or as brittle as a sand-castle, which would make it just melt away. This allows her to potentially step straight through walls by petrifying them and then making collapse into sand. She can use this effect to carve equipment she wants out of stone, and it’s also how she makes her statues. She has a lot of options. Altering hardness can take around a second to three, quicker the closer to her main body it is. A block she’s touching can harden or melt within a second, doing it over her max range takes a bit longer. Larger amount affected doesn’t increase the time it takes, however.
Another use is that she can quickly petrify the air around her to create a barrier to protect herself or something behind her. It is also possible for her to petrify air between two objects to link them together by rock. It should be noted, rocks and petrified things are there to stay and do not vanish after Mathilda leaves the battlefield, and it stays with the amount of durability Mathilda left it with. She does try to clean up after herself, though, making sand of all the rocks she finds.
Tunnelling - Simply due to her ability to move through physical objects, Mathilda’s a bit of an infiltrator. She can petrify walls and just walk inside the most secure of places, or create her own underground tunnel by periodically petrifying and breaking apart the earth in front of her. This gives her basically free access to all the world’s ground-level. That said, she cannot actually know what’s ahead or around her when underground, she’s can only guess based on composition and how much of a load the material seems to be carrying. She can’t see in the dark of a tunnel she’s making.
In addition, if Mathilda doesn’t move, she can be mistaken for a statue herself, meaning she can make a room filled with replicas of herself and hide among them. If someone’s larger than her, she could also shape rock on her to appear like a statue version of someone else, though it doesn’t work for making her appear smaller than herself because her power and body has determined her appearance and works to maintain that.
Limitations: Mathilda cannot petrify living matter, by Manton-Effect. She can extend her range through physical objects, but not through the air. Also, being heavier than everyone around has its consequences. If she starts running you’ll hear her. Being made of rock, her limbs are hardly as agile as they could have been. In close combat, she’s hardly going to be the most skilled or agile person there. … Then again, you probably don’t want to get that close to her, but still, it means escaping her is fairly simple. She’s cannot counter projectile-attacks from beyond her range of around fifteen meters, should they be able to hurt her.
Her hardening or melting of rock takes around a second to three depending on how far away from her it is, meaning she’ll be hard-pressed to harden it for an attack she just started to see coming. The speed of her petrification extends at around five meters per second within her range, meaning it is likely impossible to outrun if you don’t already have a running start. Her healing is slower to heal large wounds, instantly closing small scratches but if she loses a limb it has to mend for multiple days. As a crux of Manton Effect, she cannot petrify something that is inside another person. Something inside her is fair game, though.
Everything she makes is rock and inflexible. She can’t sculpt anything that needs moving parts. … Or, she probably could, but it would have to be extremely simple mechanics. An axis within a round rock, or so. Mathilda wouldn’t understand the point.
Equipment: The clothes on her body. A domino-mask that she makes out of petrified air. A large sword of rock that she sculpted out of the ground at some point, which is really hard and really blunt. … Honestly, she can carve any equipment she likes out of rock with her powers, so this field can be pretty long, but it’s all made out of rock. She won’t be able to make a bow or machinery or so.
