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VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

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Home Sweet Home, Pointe Bordeaux | Grace Kennison

March, 18 2016 - 1 Unread Message from Verse2Text

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." - 1 Corinthians 13:11

_{"Hey brother, wanna grab some slushies and play Mario Kart?" - The Book of Grace 1:1}

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The old wooden floor of their studio apartment groaned in agony. It creaked even when her brother walked upon it, but when Grace stepped across it sung like it was like that horrifying yodeling from that creepy mountaineer as he hiked up closer to his doom on that game show she used to watch as a child when she was home sick. Each and every trip from the bathroom to the kitchenette was a waking nightmare as Grace envisioned the floor joists finally throwing off the burden of their responsibilities and taking a break as she plummeted through the apartment belonging to the old couple below her before finally creating a teenage girl sized hole on the concrete foundation in the basement. It was an irrational fear, of course, and the girl knew it. She wouldn’t claim to even possess the knowledge of a structural engineer, but she had acquired a knack for guessing what could and could not hold her weight. Nevertheless, she still took wide strides around any grates in the sidewalk and nervously clenched her teeth when she walked up wooden stairs.

The apartment that Grace shared with her brother had all the tell tale signs of a first apartment. It was small. It had a weird smell to it that seemed to have instantly materialized exactly after they had signed their lease. The shower only ran at two temperatures, the first being boiling molten magma hot and the second turned it into a miniature snow cannon, and had about as much water pressure as a dollar store squirtgun. The walls were as thin as cardboard and Grace could hear her neighbors fighting and having make-up sex every other day, and just having obnoxiously loud sex on the days between. The other neighbor was even worse: he dreamed of being whatever a post-post-dubstep artist was. Apparently the first step was to not invest in headphones. The stove didn’t work. The A/C sucked. The walls were so white except for the spots where they were stained a dark yellow with a substance that Grace decided to prefer to keep a mysterious. And, like all good first apartments, it was sparsely furnished and utterly barren of any art or personal touches.

Her brother was on the couch buried in his phone’s screen while some shit on the TV that had the moxie to call itself news played on the larger screen in front of him. It was the first time Grace had seen Joseph in a week; he’d been pulling doubles to make enough money to pay off the late fees from their last string of bills. They looked alike unless you asked the girls Grace used to hang around with after school; then one was a weird, frumpy loser with no sense of fashion and the other one was, like, oh em gee, just so ridiculously hot, like, no offense but how are you related? Grace was the former; she did not have any better friends. She imagined they’d been as disappointed as Dad had been if not more when Joseph had confirmed his bachelorhood.

“Morn’,” said Grace, the word escaping dryly out of her throat after a little bit of a struggle. She wasn’t a morning person in general.

“Afternoon,” replied Joseph.

“Mm,” said Grace. She supposed she also wasn’t an afternoon person either then, all things considered. Mechanically she popped some stale slices of bread into their toaster and, with a feather touch, pushed the button down. Grabbing a dish and a mug from the drying rack, she half-listened to the TV as she poured herself a lukewarm cup of coffee. The girl opened the fridge; she was greeted with a depressing sight. “Creamer?”

“We’re out,” said Joseph.

Grace let her disgust be known, her tongue clicking disappointedly against her teeth. She drank the sludge anyway and went back for a second cup as the toast sprung up out of the toaster. She put them back in. Unlike her coffee, she enjoyed her bread black. “Jam?” Out. “Butter.” Out. “Peanut butter.” Are you kidding, allergic and out. “Do we have anything?” Joseph announced her there was hotsauce. She’d pass.

Nibbling on the charred toast, Grace hovered behind her brother and sneaked a peek at his phone. He was scrolling through his status updates--none of her business. She turned her attention to the TV; she knew the person on the screen. Okay, well, she didn’t know them know them, but she had absorbed enough episodes of TransAmerica vicariously through Joseph while she had been reading in the same room or, more often than not, fucking about on her phone. She didn’t have enough appreciation of irony to get a bitter enjoyment from watching someone who was occasionally to frequently ridiculed for the being different than others ridiculing and outright hating someone because they were now different than them. Joseph softly chuckled and shook his head. Grace furrowed her brow in annoyance.

“Why are you watching this?” she said, the caffeine kicking in enough to now enable her to complete full sentences. “This is stupid.”

“That’s the point,” said Joseph, absently thumbing through his phone. “And she makes a good point. Janelle was a total bitch.”

“That’s not--okay, well, maybe, I mean, they’re both the absolute worst, but that’s not what’s stupid about this,” said Grace. “A ton of people for, whatever reason, idolize these reality show jerks. It doesn’t matter if they say they do it ironically, they still let their mind be filled with trash and garbage and eventually just--”

“Sis, you’re doing that thing again,” said Joseph, interrupting her.

“What thing?”

“The annoying preachy thing that happens when you open your mouth.”

“I’m not preachy,” said Grace.

“Hah!” said Joseph, briefly breaking eye contact from his phone to give his sister a look before returning back to his tiny screen. He held up his phone so that she could see the picture he was looking at. It was of a woman in helmet wearing a blue tracksuit standing over two men in ski masks tied to a lightpost by a steel beam. One of the woman’s hand was resting on the palm of the other, her finger pointing accusingly at the men as if she was a teacher giving a lecture to bratty students. “Whatever you say, Thumper.”

Grace frowned. There was actually a video to that encounter floating around the Internet. If she remembered correctly, she had quoted some line she had preloaded from Proverbs that day.

“That doesn’t count. You’re the one who said I should lean in to my image,” said Grace, folding her arms.

“Well, what do you think it is that Veronica, Janelle, or any shitty reality star is doing? They’re just playing up the part of them that they know the media wants to see,” said Joseph.

“Sheesh, I know where you’re going with this. And you say I’m preachy,” said Grace, her shoulders slumping ever so slightly. Actually, she did not quite get it, but she did not want to hear the stupid not-so-different line from Joseph. If there was any actual truth to the idea that people become what others want and project them to be Grace did not reflect upon it. She knew Joseph her entire life. He wasn’t trying to be enlightening; he was trying to get under her skin.

“Look, I’m just saying that you should see if you can get a sweet TV deal and start pulling in some mad reality dollars,” said Joseph. “Trust me, it’d be a hit.”

“That’s so--, do you--, could that work?” asked Grace.

Joseph stared at her like she had just asked the stupidest question in the world. “Seriously?”

“No, nope. Nah, I mean, nah,” said Grace, breaking eye contact and forcing a laugh.

She could not tell if it had been on purpose or not, but her brother bringing up money hit her right in a sore spot. As it turned out, being a cape was not as lucrative of a profession as the comics and movies made it seem. She’d always assumed the reporter jobs or the oodles of inheritances had always just been part of their cover, not an actual means to an end. In the past fiscal year as a quote-unquote superhero, Grace had actually managed to go about a hundred dollars in the red (mostly in expenses for her homemade costume).

Not to say that it would have been impossible to make some easy money. She had foiled a few robberies; nobody would have known if she had helped herself to a few greenbacks. Maybe she could have lightened a few pockets of disorderly drunks or violent criminals. It wouldn’t be much, but it’d be enough to help Joseph pay the rent. But she wouldn’t; she couldn’t. She had seen the tweets; she had read the threads. People were just waiting for her to fuck up. Joseph did a pretty good job of moderating her feed, but on occasion something would slip through claiming that she had sent someone to the hospital or had ruined a bystander’s property. If they saw her stealing? By golly, everything she had worked for would be ruined! And, more importantly, stealing was just wrong. Although it did absolutely suck being a walking charity that seemingly everyone fucking hated for being a Hyperhuman or for being too religious, or a girl, or for not wearing a slutty schoolgirl outfit.

Maybe TV is ready for its first Hyperhuman star, thought Grace. Or Joseph and I could start a web series or something. There’s money in that stuff, right? She envisioned the two of them in their kitchen with her pointing a webcam at her hand and Joseph jamming a knife into it only for the blade to bend. Would people just think it was a fake prop knife? Maybe she could strap a camera to her head while she fought crime and upload the videos...except cameras cost money. Her phone, maybe? Wouldn’t that just look terrible? Maybe she could do a podcast and run ads for underwear shipped through the mail. Oh, oh, perhaps she could kickstart her career? Or what is that thing called? Patreon? People would pay for that, right. It’d just be like how taxes went to the police, except she was way, way cooler than any cop. Unless that cop was a Hyperhuman, too. Maybe she could just become a cop--except wait, everybody now hated cops and they would probably just arrest her. Wait, what if she...

“Aren’t you going to be late?” said Joseph, pulling Grace out of her daydream. She gave him a confused look, her bottom lip dipping open slightly. “Don’t you have a hate rally to attend?”

“I don’t...oh, oh!” She looked at her phone as her eyes grew wide. The Fairchild thing; she had completely forgotten about it. Any large event like this could draw unsavory types; she intended to be there to stop them. Grabbing her backpack off of the counter, Grace clawed at the handle to their front door without restraining her strength. A wave a fear and cold sweat ran through her body as the knob broke from its spot on the door and bounced against the floor towards the couch.

“Door’s faulty, sorry, love ya, bye,” said Grace as she bolted out the front door and thundered down the stairs into the streets below. As she moved through the streets, Grace couldn’t help but think that she was forgetting something. It was that feeling you got halfway through the day when you have a quiet moment of reflection followed by the horrific realization that, shit, you totally forget to turn the stove off that morning after making eggs. Except that’s not it, thought Grace, dipping through a side street and making great effort not to run into anything, fearing she would have the same effect on it as if it had been hit by a tank. That’s not it at all. The stove doesn’t work.

Whatever. It couldn’t be important, right?

The Origin: A War Resumed (Arc One; Completed)

@RaijinslayerBut on the bright side, Shadar has moved up a few notches in Joy's book.

...wait, that...is that on the bright side...

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Wade Wilson As someone who has never had the opportunity to RP with you but has creepishly seen you around enough to recognize your username, I'm glad you decided to stick it out. Because I'm absolutely terrible at motivating people. But, uh, in all seriousness, can't wait to see that sheet. Like our boss said, the more your write the better you inevitably get.

@Nemaisare Man I look forward to hearing how Lucas is constantly distracted by the screaming of a hardwood floor or the quite whimpering of some All Stars as Grace walks around. And yeah, go ahead and have a middle aged man tell a teenage girl that she's way heavier than she should be, because there is nothing more I enjoy than having a first impression turn awkward and go horribly, horribly wrong. If you ever write "Please, stop, you're hurting the linoleum" then I might die of happiness.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

As much as I would like to keep a super bad ass bounty killer in my back pocket, unless someone is against it I believe there is a Vigilance-sized spot on the bench that needs to be filled by her elf ass.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithWell, as long as none of our big bad evil guys are Aquani-dudes, we should be fine.

...wait, wait, fuck, don't get any ideas from that.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@TylerHmm, good question. I'd imagine Grace would be forgiving if a little sanctimonious and she'd probably try to convince him clean up his act. I picture her as a bit too idealistic. I mean, come on, anybody who really wants to be a superhero isn't the savviest of people. Plus, with the ideas of original sin and all that absolution via baptism jazz that was drilled in her head through years of church would likely leave her to believe that anybody could be redeemed. Course, if Em doesn't try to change his ways then she'd just think of him as a big old jerk until she sees a bit more of the reality of how Hypes are treated.

Now if Thumper caught him committing a crime before they ever met, well, let's just say there will probably be a terrible line where she claims that she is going to go "Old Testament on his sinning butt" and then tries to drop the Wrath of God (aka her botched version of the People's Elbow; again, only knows how to fight from shitty TV) on his slimy, gelatinous ass.

...and although it'd never happen, I now just keep picturing a scene in my mind where Grace is trying to baptize Em and both of them are freaking the fuck out for being around water.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

| NAME: |

Grace Bethany Kennison​

| NICKNAME(S): |

Thumper. It started as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the media, but then it stuck.

| D.O.B.: |

08/10/1996

| AGE: |

19​

| SEX: |

Female​

| SEXUALITY: |

Heterosexual

| APPEARANCE: |

Grace is around five and a half feet tall and appears to be of a healthy weight, although it’s a little hard for her to say what her exact weight is now. We’ll touch on that a bit later. She has a pretty straight build and lacks any real tone or definition. She would classify herself as “skinny fat” and always gets nervous when it’s swimsuit season. Her dark brown hair falls around the top of her shoulders with bangs that sweep across the tops of her eyes. She finds her ears a bit too big, so she rarely wears her hair up. Her eyes are a dull blue. Her skin is tanned by the sun, forcing a slight outburst of dark freckles all over her bared skin. She finds using a lot of makeup to be a hassle, and tends to stick with just a little touch up here and there. Grace stands with a slouch and has a tendency to keep her head down. When she speaks a slight Cajun accent that she absolutely hates betrays her heritage. She tends to dress casually in graphic tees and jeans or shorts, giving her that nice, normal, unassuming American teen look. Grace always wears a necklace with a cross on it.

She used to fight crime in street clothes and a mask, but since assuming the identity of Thumper she made her own costume. The outfit is just a tight blue tracksuit with an uppercase T made out of masking tape on the front and back and a black paintball helmet with a tinted visor. Grace has read enough dark comic books to know the dangers of wearing a cape. It’s absolutely tacky looking and completely horrible, but it does the job of protecting her identity. ​

| GENUS: |

​Homo-Virium

| CLASSIFICATION: |

Atlas

| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |

Remember how it was hard for Grace to say what her true weight is? That’s because Grace is slowly but continuously growing denser. As time goes on Grace gets heavier and heavier and heavier. The last scale she purchased went up to 700 pounds; she broke it about a month ago. However, Grace doesn’t fight crime by just sitting on ne’er-do-wells until they scream uncle. She has those classic tough guy powers, too. The more dense she gets the stronger and tougher she gets. Grace can lift one and a half to two tons over her head with relative ease, meaning she can toss a medium-sized sedan towards someone like it was a medicine ball. Grace isn’t going to pretend like she understands the laws of motion or anything like that, but she does know that when she is moving and hits someone they generally stay down--and she pulls most of her punches. The girl’s also pretty tough, and unless you’re strong enough to sling vans around like paper planes trying to best her physically is a real dumb idea. Bats and knives tend to just break on her, normal bullets leave nasty welts and can knock the wind out of her, and fancy high-grade military shit could feasibly do some damage but still see her breathing. She doesn’t have much experience fighting Hyperhumans, but she could probably take a better licking than most.

Unfortunately for Grace, her powers are mostly limited by her otherwise subpar physique. She’s hardly an athlete. A reasonably fit person could outrun Grace, and her added strength does little to change the fact that she’d never be able to dunk a basketball. The only knowledge of fighting she has comes from video games and kung fu flicks, so she’s prone to attempt ridiculous moves that are just impossible to actually do in. She’s generally just uncoordinated and even clumsy when in action. Most of the times that she throws a punch she misses with her fist and accidentally connects with her shoulder, which is typically enough to knock someone off of their ass, send them flying a few yards, and fracture a few ribs. Outside of combat, her weight is a general problem. She tends to avoid elevators and has to stick to cargo vans and truck beds to travel due to her weight causing cars to drag on one side. Grace has broken enough chairs in her life to resign herself to sitting on the ground forever. Her power is “always on” so she has to interact with most of the world as if was a model ship she was building inside of a glass bottle. She also has this absolutely asinine idea that she’s going to be a proper superhero, which means NO KILLING.

Grace’s density has done little to strengthen her mind. Her biggest weakness would probably be either MINERVA- or CUPID-Class Hyperhumans. She may be thick skinned and denser than a rock, but apparently she’s soft in the heart and head. As well, she has frequent nightmares about drowning since she knows from first hand experience that she sinks faster than an anchor strapped to several hundred other anchors. Being over or near bodies of water generally fills her with dread, and she lives a mile from the beach in a damn state full of bayous and swamps.

| BACKSTORY: |

Grace was born on the absolute hottest day of the year in Pointe Bordeaux, Louisiana to her less than thrilled bible-thumping parents who now had another damned mouth to feed. She was the fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Kennison. She was also their fifth favorite after her big brother Peter in first, her older sisters Harmony and Prudence bouncing around second and third, and the family dog Samson taking fourth. She was sixth until her brother Joseph came out of the closet a few years back. A little something about Grace’s father: Dad was a true Southern gentleman and a good Catholic who’d give you the shirt off of his back and some from his wardrobe as well unless you were a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Falcons fan. Dad always said that he was just trying to protect Mom from being ridiculed by the neighbors for having a gay son, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to when Grace was not in the honorable position of being the second-most-hated.

Grace’s first slight against her parents came on the day she was baptised and happened to relieve herself on Father Forrest. Nobody else really paid it much mind--Grace was, after all, a baby--but her parents were absolutely mortified. They had friends in that Church. Friends who laughed. At them. It was SUCH a big deal. Their daughter continued to be just an utter, absolute embarrassment. She screwed up her first communion. She fell asleep in Sunday School. She was constantly in trouble with the Sisters at her Catholic school for making rude noises during nap time. She inappropriately displayed affection towards others. “Bless that Grace,” her parents’ friends would say. “She’s so soft-hearted,” they would say. Her parents knew what they meant. They meant to say that she was soft-headed, that their daughter was an idiot. Why couldn’t she be better behaved like her sisters? At the very least, she could show some shame.

Despite being an absolute fumbling fuck-up in the eyes of her parent’s and being forced to attend the horrendous doldrums that is the Sunday Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, Grace actually took a shining towards religion. Not to the extent where that when she started attending public schools in third grade (once her family could no longer afford the private Catholic school) she was that one kid always talked about Jesus and God and quoting the Bible and having that fucking creepy purity towards them, but she was religious. Despite all the jokes about altar boys, she was proud to be Catholic. Besides, as a girl she didn’t have to worry about that sort of scene. She read the Bible regularly. She could spit some mean Hail Marys, and we aren’t talking about football because she could not do sports if life depended on it. She wore a cross every day for every second to this god damn day. Shit, while other kids were running around doing little kid shit and the annoying Jesus girls were telling them they’d go to Hell for it, Grace was spending her time volunteering for food drives and helping out with charities.

And somehow she was still the least favorite kid because her Dad caught her reading comic books. What the hell, they weren’t even hers--she had borrowed them from Joseph.

Grace’s powers came about around the time she started puberty. Always a little bit on the heavy side and hurt by her schoolmates because all children are bastards regardless of whether they knew their dad or not, Grace started dieting. Which, when all her Mom served was cornbread and whatever proteins she could find on sell and cook in a pan full of butter, meant she just didn’t eat. The girl was always hungry, and she was always miserable, and she always felt weak, and she never lost weight. Even as the fat disappeared from her body and her skin turned yellow and dry she was somehow gaining weight. Grace was absolutely baffled, but the scale did not lie. All skin and bones and she was fat, fat, fucking fat. Completely disgusting; a skeletal cow.

And then she went swimming with her brother Joseph in the river one summer when she was thirteen. Swimming was probably the one activity she was any good at, and the girl sunk like that boat in that one movie. If Joseph didn’t help drag her out she would’ve drowned. If she hadn’t almost drowned she would’ve probably starved herself to death. Listen, Grace isn’t going to go around and tell anybody that it was a miracle, but she thought it was a miracle. At the very least a wake up call. She started eating right after that and blossomed back towards a healthy shape.

Joseph and her decided not to tell anybody about that drowning incident on account of the fact that neither of them wanted to get in trouble. It kind of solidified them as each other's favorites in the family. Neither of them knew what the hell was happening to Grace’s body, but both of them worked together to make sure her parents or the other siblings didn’t find out. They joked that their Dad would call an exorcist if he found out, while both secretly believed that wasn’t actually far from the truth. As a sign of good faith, Joseph told Grace about his homosexuality. As a sign of good faith, Grace decided to not be like their Dad...except when it came to fan of the Falcons; those people were just godless heathens and assholes to boot.

The problems with her strength started to arise by the time she with fifteen, and unlike her weight this grew exponentially. What started as her accidentally tearing books in half turned into her breaking door handles and faucets. Eventually inevitably it became clear that she couldn’t hide these changes from her parents. Besides, it was getting exceptionally weird at dinner when she refused to sit out of fear of breaking her already rickety chair. So...she told her parents. The reaction she got from at first was, well, confusing to say the least, until she remembered that these were the same people who were mortified for years after she had used a priest as a porta-potty when she was less than one year old. Her parents told her that she would not tell anybody about this and pulled her out of school. Mom would teach her and she’d get her GED once this whole damn thing passed.

The reaction was so mild that when she told Joseph about it he figured that maybe he should tell them about himself. It still took him time to work up courage, and only when a nearly seventeen year old Grace talked him up did he finally do it. The whole ordeal went less than ideal. Apparently, Dad was fine with having a freak for a daughter, but having a son be a sinner was absolutely unforgivable. Why, what would the neighbors say? The whole part in the Bible about forgiving those who sin seemed to be something that must have been newly added in versions that came out after her father had read the good book, because he threw Joseph out of the house. So Grace, in her final act of defiance against her parents, followed Joseph out. The two pariahs rented a studio apartment in the bad side of town. Joseph worked, Grace couldn’t land a job. Her refusal to sit or shake hands always threw people off, and being a high school dropout didn’t help.

This was all around the time that terrorist exposed the existence of Hyperhumans to the world. Everything around Grace sort of blew up after that--apologies for the pun. It was a nice reassurance to know that she wasn’t the only weirdo on the planet, but the warm fuzzy feeling of not being alone quickly subsided as people reacted the typical way they did around things they didn’t understand by trying to get rid off it as fast as possible. Grace felt that good old Catholic guilt swelling up inside of her. Somebody, somewhere had to do something to prove that Hyperhumans weren’t a bunch of monsters. She expressed these feelings to Joseph, and he sat her down and gave her the most important talk of her life. She’d become a superhero. Like, a real life superhero running around and helping people in need. How wasn’t that a good idea? The Mavericks made it work.

She started her superhero (vigilante is such a negative word) career a year ago. Grace and Joseph would sit in their apartment listening to a local police scanner for any crimes. Grace would then take to the streets where Joseph read her directions over the phone via Mapquest. She was relatively unknown (and both not thanked and not hated) for the longest of time until a few months ago when she stopped a thief in a public area. The socially awkward girl wearing all black with a Halloween mask over her head realized that she was being recorded by people with their phones, and in a moment of brilliance decided now would be the time to go viral and spread awareness that Hyperhumans were doing good in other places besides Larissa. She just had to say something cool, something awesome for the headlines. The only thing that came out of her stupid dumb mouth was something she had read dozens of times. The girl, posed like an action figure, turned slowly to the camera’s as her cheeks grew hotter and hotter and said in the shakiest voice ever: “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”

The video that showed on the news ends with her immediately running away.

Grace bore witness to the most embarrassing moment in her life for weeks as the video spread across local new stations and onto the Internet. Joseph played it for a week on loop straight, rolling with laughter. The media did not let it die, and as she continued her work as a “superhero” news stories and head lines reading “The Bible-Thumping Vigilante Smites Another Sinner”, “Hyper Religious Hyperhuman Halts Crime”, and “The Hand of God Crushes a Getaway”. One pundit referred to the girl as “Thumper” for the way she beats criminals like a fiery preacher beats a bible. The name stuck. Eventually, Grace rolled with it. If it rose awareness of Hypes trying to do some good, then so be it. She’d be the crusading weirdo the media wanted, even if it meant sitting and sweating through Sunday sermons while hearing her priest condemn “Thumper” for giving Catholics a bad name.

| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |

A pep talk from her brother was all she needed. ”You got superpowers, you gotta be a superhero! It’s, like, Superpowers 101. It’s in Genesis. God made Adam and Eve and was like, eh, I can do better. Then God made Hyperhumans and was like, hell yeah, I nailed it, way to go God. Now go out there, fight some crime, give a few photo ops, and get rich and famous. This was before Greed was a Deadly Sin, mind you, and that jazz isn’t even in the Bible anyway. And I always give to my Church every Sunday, anyway, okay?”

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

The One Where We Remember to Tip the Waitress - Amongst the Lonesome
The One Where an Old Man Meets the President - No Masters or Kings
The One Where a Politician Grills a Drunk - The Origin

| NOTES: |

■ Grace’s brother, Joseph, is about three years older than her and serves as her dispatcher and radio back up, as well as runs (and filters most of the hate from) her Facebook and Twitter pages through a Tor proxy to prevent people from tracking down their IP address.
■ Grace has managed to keep her paper thin disguise so far. Her parents know about her powers, and the only reason she can imagine why they haven’t gone to the authorities about her yet is that either they a) don’t care or, more likely, that b) they wouldn’t want the neighbors to know that it was their daughter.
■ Thumper, despite her efforts to do good, is generally disliked. She has miraculously yet to hurt any innocents while taking down a criminal, but the same cannot be said for the amount of money in tax dollars she is bleeding the city for via accidental property damage. She gets a healthy amount of hate on the Internet for being a Hype and for, thanks to the media’s portrayal and her own act of leaning into it, being a religious zealot.
■Sausage and mushrooms are an eternal classic, but pineapples are my fucking jam.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithGreat! Very excited to get this started. I'll go ahead and move my character over.

Amongst the Lonesome- A return to Santa Somabra [Fantasy Noir]

Collab featuring @RedDusk and @Drinky

Valorie gritted her teeth; the phone in her hand shook with in anger. What the fuck is he thinking? she thought, slamming the expensive phone down on the table hard enough to shake the glass of water and rattle her silverware. A plate of half-eaten plum chicken sat steaming in front of her. The waitress had kept harassing her, so Valorie had ordered a plate to just to shut her up. It turned out to be a good move, for when the sweet and tangy smell of the sauce had hit her nostrils it reminded her that her last meal had been the other morning. It was nothing special, really, but after having gone without food for more than a day and then some it seemed like the greatest meal ever made--until her handler in the police, Rich, had texted her back. The food soured. She regretted passing the bottle off to that bitch. She picked back up her phone. Miraculously, the screen was intact. She looked at the text log again--maybe that malt liquor had hit her harder than it felt. Certainly she was mistaken.

Rich: Don’t do anything stupid.
I’m sending someone to help.

“Tch, like I’m listening to you,” muttered Valorie, stuffing the phone into her jacket. Her plan would work. She would sneak Gish out of the front and then let the Rats in through the back. They would wreck some of his toys, feel better about themselves, and then they would all get stoned. Valorie smiled. Good karma to put the mind in a good state often led to the best trips. She could not wait to spend the night curled up on her couch with Sammy on her lap and an empty baggie of Fairy Dust next to her catatonic body. It had been days, weeks since she had some dust. But first she’d--What is this idiot doing!? Valorie’s jaw dropped. She bolted up from her chair, knocking it to the floor with a clatter as she stormed out of the building.

“I’m just having a cigarette,” she said dismissively back as the waitress shouted after her, knowing fully well that she was not setting a foot back in that restaurant. Her feet pounded against the street. One of the Rats had wandered out of hiding, ducking behind a streetlight in a failed attempt to act like a secret agent stalking across a road. “The fuck are you doing,” said Valorie, her voice registering at a note only a few steps below a dog whistle. “Get back, you idiot, get back.”

“Someone went in,” said the Rat, dimly.

“No shit somebody went in, it’s an apartment building.” Valorie kicked him in the leg. “Go, back, get back. Before anybody sees you. Nooooooow.”

“Nobody’s here,” said the Rat.

He was wrong. Vigilance watched the scene from the roof as the young woman in a red jacket grabbed the man in a black sweatshirt by the hood and dragged him towards a side alley. Her radio crackled to life once again; one of Nyxvira’s watch dogs calling to check up. She ignored it. The radio beeped again. Grabbing it, her voice dragged out from behind her mask: “All clear here.” She’d wait until the entire group revealed itself. Then, she would take them all out in one fell swoop. She could see the man talking to the goblin through the window. He wasn’t with the Rats; he didn’t have the air of filth radiating from him.

Valorie huffed as she turned the corner from where she had deposited the stray Rat. Casting obvious, suspicious glances around to make sure that none of the other Rats could see her the woman ducked into the apartment building. If one Rat would wander than the others would, too. It was amazing how the same people who could sit on a couch all day and watch the wallpaper couldn’t wait twenty fucking minutes for a more apt time to commit a crime. I can’t stand impatience people, thought Valorie as she bumped against some spinster as she pounded down the hallway towards Gish’s apartment. Coming upon the door the woman did not knock; she did not even slow down. It dawned on her as she pushed through the miraculously unlocked door that she never did think of how she’d convince the goblin to trust her.

Might as well try everything.

The goblin’s generosity surprised Sander, but his information on Nichole even more so. It could be a joke; Gish was pulling his leg here. Goblins weren’t really known for their hospitality. Or he just didn’t think Sander was a worthwhile customer and decided to get rid of him.

“Are you sur-“-He began, then cut himself off suddenly, turning to the closed door.

Black smoke coiled and spread, engulfing the wooden panel. A split second later, Valorie barged in. It dispersed.

As Gish simmered back down from his quick laugh he heard an unfamiliar sound. His front door had swung open. 'Who in the fuck uses the front' he quickly uttered. He hopped off his stool in an instant and wrapped around into the the doorway that connected his kitchen to the front door via a short hallway.

There stood a young woman, thin as a rail with rather pale skin. Gish took a breath with mouth agape ready to lay into her for just bursting through his front door of all places, but she beat him to the punch. That's twice in one night he felt a little piece of himself die inside.

“Whatever you do don’t fucking shoot me, okay, look I may not look it but I’m actually here to help trust me I actually work for some good dudes okay well I wouldn’t say they’re good actually they’re kind of dicks but they’re good for you, uh, I don’t even know what that means but listen you gotta trust me I’m here to help you out okay so there are a bunch of angry dudes waiting out back ready to come in and beat the living shit out of all of your scary, scary guns--please, seriously, do not shoot me I’d be so pissed off if you did--and then they’re going to beat the living shit out of you but if you come with me I can get you out of here okay even though I’m kind of just winging this--Sander!?”

She spoke so quickly that Gish stared in awe for a few moments, mouth still half open. Hands and fingers pointing and whizzing around as she spoke of friends, bosses, guns, beatings, shooting, and Sander. Gish did a quick double take between the two as they obviously knew each other.

The sight of her corpse supplier stopped her just long enough to catch her breath, lowerer her flailing arms, and gave the light bulb in her head time to actually flicker on. She turned to the goblin. It wasn’t her first time seeing one ever. There were plenty of pictures of goblins on the Internet, including some that she would very much like to forget ever seeing from her days of perusing the Deep Web. Yet this was her first time ever seeing one in real life. It was strange, but the first thing she noticed was his teeth. How the hell did a goblin have a brighter smile than her? Even if she was a few inches taller, that was still a kick in her ego’s gut. She pointed to Sander and gave a half-smile.

“We’re business partners. Sander and Pierce Protection Agency,” said Valorie, realizing that she didn’t know or didn’t remember Sander’s last name. She stomped her foot down. “Listen, a bunch of Rats are posted up right outside. It’s clear out front, but we gotta go now. We’ll keep you safe.” She shot Sander a pleading look and spoke through gritted teeth. “Right, partner?”

When she finally re-iterated and gave him the brass tax that people were coming to fuck him up, Gish's mind raced and he stared off for a moment. Sander was stunned. For the longest of time, Sander just stood there like an idiot, eyes widened and mouth barely closed. Only when he heard his name did he manage to regain some resemblance of intelligence and stutter out a few words.

“Eh…Um… I…Ah”- He blinked owlishly, gaze dancing back and forth between his ‘partner’ and the goblin. His mind roared, urging him to calm down and take in the situation before anyone got shot. Because from he managed to salvage from Valorie’s ramblings, someone might get shot very, very soon.-“Of course.”- He finally managed, narrowing his eyes at the necromancer slightly, before turning to Gish-“I’m sure my partner here will give us a very detailed explanation once we’re in the clear.”

Valorie gave an affirmative nod, the smile on her face widening in a devious way. She turned to Gish.

He'd always planned for the case of when a person would turn on him, but he only ever expected to have trouble from a single individual, never a whole crew. He never thought he would draw that kind of attention. For a moment he didn't even know if he could trust this girl.

Though, as was practice in his business, one has to come to trust strangers often with not selling you out to the cops or other riff raff. He knew he didn't stand a chance against a crew of people, he knew he was looking at death on one hand, and only probable death on the other.

He reached under his workbench and revealed a fresh, brand new cigar. It was one he had been saving for an occasion like this, his death. Given to him a long time ago, he knew little about it other than it was expensive and fancy. He pinched it between his lips and snapped his fingers hard at the end of it. The cigar lit effortlessly, he remembered something about a sort of dragon extract coated in the tip.

"Alright bird, lead the way. And elp' yourself to a piece if you think we'll need it." he said sternly, motioning to the weapons he had lining the hallway walls.

He didn’t really understand what Valorie was trying to pull here. It could be a ruse from the Rats; luring the owner away with cheap tricks before another group came charging in and robbed the place. He wouldn’t put it pass them. The Rats were a gang of hedonist; they would do anything for the next high. Valorie could certainly do better, but then again, it was her choice.

Fortunately, the goblin decided to go along without much fuss. Which was quite odd, considering the whole situation. Then again, it was the goblin’s shop. His choice to throw it away. He even offered them some items from his shop. Sander glanced briefly through the display, before stopping on an old hunting rifle at the back. Fingers of shadow wrapped around the trigger. He swallowed drily, turning back to the door with a brisk snap of his head.

“We probably won’t.”Hopefully. Still, Sander reached into his leather coat and undo a strap on his shoulder holster. Just in case.

“Aha, I think I’ll pass, thanks,” said Valorie, the gun she already had weighing heavy in her purse. “Look, we should--S-S-SHIT, GO!”

The back door flew open with a bang. They hadn’t waited for her signal. Of course they hadn’t waited for her signal. Stupid fucking junkies, thought Valorie as she grabbed Gish by his hand and dragged him out the front.

Sander was turned away from the back door when it happened. He didn’t see anything, but the telltale sound of wooden door being kicked open was hard to miss. Beside him, Valorie had already begun to drag the goblin to the front door, so he followed suit while one hand creeping into his jacket, wrapping around the gun. He found himself surprisingly calm as he flicked the safety off. From then on, it was easy. He just followed Valorie’s lead, occasionally glancing behind them to check for pursuers. They were followed, predictably. There were figures in black hoodies just around the corner. The thugs weren’t content with just the shop. So it turned out Valorie was sincere all along. That, or this was a very, very elaborated ruse. But such thing felt rather far beyond the capabilities of an average Rat.

“Valorie.”- He used her full name this time, his voice a low grumbling, full of uncharacteristic irritation.-“Your friends.” Deal with them before I do, but that was left unsaid.

One.

“They aren’t my,” she turned on her heels just in time to see three Rats turn around the corner, “my...friends. Uh, hey guys, I mean, what the fuck are you doing?”

“What the fuck are you doing?” yelled one of the Rats. It was the girl whose parade Valorie had rained on earlier. From the sound of her voice, she had been hitting the bottle pretty hard while they had been waiting. She was backed by the boy Gish had insulted earlier and the Rat that had wandered out stupidly into the middle of the street earlier. In the distance, something sounding like metal sparking against metal rang out. “I knew we couldn’t trust you!”

Two.

“Wait, wait, wait, I can explain. This isn’t what it looks like,” said Valorie. A loud noise went off in the background from Gish’s workshop. She heard a yell forward by two more loud bangs.

Three.

“Looks like you’re a fucking gobo-lover,” said one of the guys. The one who had visited Gish earlier. Valorie quickly let go of Gish’s hands. She gave a sideways glance to Sander that was supposed to communicate something along the lines of “Trust me, I got this.” Instead, all it said was that she was way in over her head and drowning fast.

Something caught her eye. Shaking, she rose her hand and pointed behind the girl.

“B-b-b-behind,” was all that Valorie could meekly mutter.

“I’m not drunk enough to fall for that, you fucking sl--”

A bloodcurdling scream tore through the air. That sound. Valorie had never heard that sound before. It was the sound of someone dying. She knew she should take this time to just run. She knew she should just turn and run and get the fuck away from here as quick as possible. She knew she was just a little kid playing the role of a tough ganger. She knew she was in over her head. She knew she was going to get herself killed. Yet, Valorie had to see death. It could be a breakthrough, it could be the thing she needed. She had to see it, she had to see it. As if in a trance, the woman pushed the goblin towards Sander. She did not know if her partner took the hint to grab him and go or not; she didn’t care. She had to know what death looked like.

For a second, time stood still. Valorie’s eyes wavered as she focused on the figure: a tall, slender in dark form fitting armor with the face of a skull. The masked figure was clutching the girl Rat Valorie had hassled earlier as the two male Rats slowly turned to face the reaper. She was still screaming as the nasty, serrated edge of the being’s blade that was shoved through her back was ripped out through her side, viscous splattering across the street as the screaming subsided. The light in the girl’s eyes disappeared; the corners of Valorie’s lips twitched. Her heart thudded against her chest in a mix of fear and excitement. The dead girl’s grip on the bottle still in her hand faded; as it shattered against the street time resumed its normal pace.

Four.

One of the boys turned to run towards Valorie. His head popped in a spray of pink mist as a bullet entered his drugged brain and ricocheted around the polluted mass before erupting out the front of his skull. Valorie could feel the warmth of his blood as it splattered against her face. She could taste the cooper flavor on her lips. Five. The other boy had tried to swing at the masked bounty killer with his steel pipe. Vigiliance sheared through the blade and then sheared through the boy. Six. Valorie’s mind raced. Her eyes danced trying to not miss a second of the massacre. She could smell the sickening sweet scent of death. She could hear the dying moans of the last boy. All of this. She needed to remember all of this. This would be the breakthrough that she needed, all thanks to--

“Oh F-” started Valorie, her better senses finally kicking in.

“Seven,” said the masked woman, leveling her gun at Valorie.

Valorie’s ears were ringing as she dove through a door on her side into an old warehouse. She didn’t have time to look and see if Sander or Gish had run away. She didn’t have time to look at the dull, burning sensation that was aching through her shoulder where the bullet had grazed her. She didn’t have time to look as she ran through the warehouse, stumbling behind cover as another gunshot rang out. She didn’t have time to think as her hand grabbed the syringe of Demon’s Blood in her pocket, pushed up her sleeve, and jammed the needle into her arm. The effect was almost instant. She no longer needed time to think or look; she’d have all the time in the world after she killed this bitch. Grinning devilishly with unbridled confidence, Valorie pulled the gun out of her purse and flipped the safety off. She crouched down low and then, hearing Vigilance’s boots crack against broken glass on the warehouse floor, sprung into action. Jumping higher than she ever had in her life, Valorie’s finger squeezed. Bang. Bang. Bang.

Vigilance knew right away that the Rat had jammed herself full of Demon’s Blood. No human could hop like that. She twisted into cover as the bullets rang out throughout the warehouse. Two of the shots went completely wide, burrowing themselves into the far wall of the warehouse. The other bullet hit the ground by her feet. Vigilance returned fire, moving from cover to cover as the two progressed through the warehouse. The Rat slid underneath a table, firing twice at the she-elf. Bang. Bang. Another bullet whizzed by Vigilance. One struck her in her armor. It hurt like a bitch, but she shook it off and returned fire. The Rat had already vanished. Vigilance looked around. The warehouse was dark, lit only by the street lights coming in through the cracked industrial windows. Vigilance stilled her breath. She listened. She could pick up the Rat’s rapid heartbeat almost instantly--it was too close.

Valorie leapt down from the rafters above on top of Vigilance, bending the barrel of one of her pistols and ripping the other from her hand. The she-elf tried to flip the Rat over her back, but Valorie grip was too strong. She had never killed anyone before, but the Demon’s Blood coursing through her veins told her it would feel amazing. She drove her gun underneath Vigilance’s mask, promising herself that she’d resurrect the bastard again just to watch them die once more after this. A shudder went through her body as she pulled the trigger.

Click.

Click click.

Clickclickclickclickclickclickclick.

Vigilance flipped onto her back. Valorie was more surprised than hurt by the hit, but it gave Vigilance enough time to slip free and draw her blades, but not enough time to block a flying knee from the Rat. Vigilance felt her armor cave a bit as the force of the strike knocked the wind out of her. Valorie felt blood drip from her leg. Another flesh wound, or the Demon’s Blood didn’t let her notice it as anything else. Vigilance recovered in time to bat a crate out of the air with her sword; the follow up knocked one of the swords from her hands. Another fucking crate flew through the air, Vigilance leapt out of the way...and right into a shoulder check from Valorie. She heard something crack as she hit a wall and knew from the pain that it wasn’t her armor. There was no fucking way she was going to let herself get beaten by some junkie bitch. She reached down to grab her sword, her body shaking with anger.

“Looking for this?” growled Valorie, waving the iron sword around like a toy. An unlit cigarette was pursed between her lips as she sat on her haunches on top of a table. “I heard about you. You think you’re some tough scary bitch because you dress like a fucking goth and murder some stupid little fucking druggies. Well, I’ll have you know that I’m not your normal stupid little fucking druggy.”

She hopped down from the table, put the point of the sword in towards the ground, and stepped on the blade until it snapped under foot. That was a gift, thought Vigilance, bristling as her temper rose. She began struggling to her feet. Valorie laughed sharply.

“Just give up!” yelled the Rat. “Don’t worry, you won’t be dead for long.” Valorie clasped her hands together, bouncing with excitement. “The things I could do with your body. Oh, the things I will do with your body.”

Vigilance watched as the girl reached into her pocket, producing a lighter. Valorie couldn’t see it, but the she-elf was smiling beneath her mask. Striking the lighter with her thumb, Valorie began to raise it up towards her mouth. As it was halfway up her chest, the flame turned blue and leapt onto her flannel jacket. The jacket went up like a christmas tree. Valorie howled something incomprehensible, throwing the jacket off of her body. The flaming cloth landed on a pile of crates, and they caught ablaze as if they had been soaked in gasoline. As Valorie spun back around, Vigilance was already on her feet.

“Are you done playing around, little girl?” said Vigilance, the teal-flame of warmblood wreathing her body as smoke began to fill the warehouse.

VIGILANCE: Sanctuary

@Lord WraithHere we go.

Grace

| NAME: |

Grace Bethany Kennison​

| NICKNAME(S): |

Thumper. It started as a tongue-in-cheek joke by the media, but then it stuck.

| D.O.B.: |

08/10/1996

| AGE: |

19​

| SEX: |

Female​

| SEXUALITY: |

Heterosexual

| APPEARANCE: |

Grace is around five and a half feet tall and appears to be of a healthy weight, although it’s a little hard for her to say what her exact weight is now. We’ll touch on that a bit later. She has a pretty straight build and lacks any real tone or definition. She would classify herself as “skinny fat” and always gets nervous when it’s swimsuit season. Her dark brown hair falls around the top of her shoulders with bangs that sweep across the tops of her eyes. She finds her ears a bit too big, so she rarely wears her hair up. Her eyes are a dull blue. Her skin is tanned by the sun, forcing a slight outburst of dark freckles all over her bared skin. She finds using a lot of makeup to be a hassle, and tends to stick with just a little touch up here and there. Grace stands with a slouch and has a tendency to keep her head down. When she speaks a slight Cajun accent that she absolutely hates betrays her heritage. She tends to dress casually in graphic tees and jeans or shorts, giving her that nice, normal, unassuming American teen look. Grace always wears a necklace with a cross on it.

She used to fight crime in street clothes and a mask, but since assuming the identity of Thumper she made her own costume. The outfit is just a tight blue tracksuit with an uppercase T made out of masking tape on the front and back and a black paintball helmet with a tinted visor. Grace has read enough dark comic books to know the dangers of wearing a cape. It’s absolutely tacky looking and completely horrible, but it does the job of protecting her identity. ​

| GENUS: |

​Homo-Virium

| CLASSIFICATION: |

Atlas

| ABILITIES/SKILLS: |

Remember how it was hard for Grace to say what her true weight is? That’s because Grace is slowly but continuously growing denser. As time goes on Grace gets heavier and heavier and heavier. The last scale she purchased went up to 700 pounds; she broke it about a month ago. However, Grace doesn’t fight crime by just sitting on ne’er-do-wells until they scream uncle. She has those classic tough guy powers, too. The more dense she gets the stronger and tougher she gets. Grace can lift one and a half to two tons over her head with relative ease, meaning she can toss a medium-sized sedan towards someone like it was a medicine ball. Grace isn’t going to pretend like she understands the laws of motion or anything like that, but she does know that when she is moving and hits someone they generally stay down--and she pulls most of her punches. The girl’s also pretty tough, and unless you’re strong enough to sling vans around like paper planes trying to best her physically is a real dumb idea. Bats and knives tend to just break on her, normal bullets leave nasty welts and can knock the wind out of her, and fancy high-grade military shit could feasibly do some damage but still see her breathing. She doesn’t have much experience fighting Hyperhumans, but she could probably take a better licking than most.

Unfortunately for Grace, her powers are mostly limited by her otherwise subpar physique. She’s hardly an athlete. A reasonably fit person could outrun Grace, and her added strength does little to change the fact that she’d never be able to dunk a basketball. The only knowledge of fighting she has comes from video games and kung fu flicks, so she’s prone to attempt ridiculous moves that are just impossible to actually do in. She’s generally just uncoordinated and even clumsy when in action. Most of the times that she throws a punch she misses with her fist and accidentally connects with her shoulder, which is typically enough to knock someone off of their ass, send them flying a few yards, and fracture a few ribs. Outside of combat, her weight is a general problem. She tends to avoid elevators and has to stick to cargo vans and truck beds to travel due to her weight causing cars to drag on one side. Grace has broken enough chairs in her life to resign herself to sitting on the ground forever. Her power is “always on” so she has to interact with most of the world as if was a model ship she was building inside of a glass bottle. She also has this absolutely asinine idea that she’s going to be a proper superhero, which means NO KILLING.

Grace’s density has done little to strengthen her mind. Her biggest weakness would probably be either MINERVA- or CUPID-Class Hyperhumans. She may be thick skinned and denser than a rock, but apparently she’s soft in the heart and head. As well, she has frequent nightmares about drowning since she knows from first hand experience that she sinks faster than an anchor strapped to several hundred other anchors. Being over or near bodies of water generally fills her with dread, and she lives a mile from the beach in a damn state full of bayous and swamps.

| BACKSTORY: |

Grace was born on the absolute hottest day of the year in Pointe Bordeaux, Louisiana to her less than thrilled bible-thumping parents who now had another damned mouth to feed. She was the fifth child of Mr. and Mrs. Kennison. She was also their fifth favorite after her big brother Peter in first, her older sisters Harmony and Prudence bouncing around second and third, and the family dog Samson taking fourth. She was sixth until her brother Joseph came out of the closet a few years back. A little something about Grace’s father: Dad was a true Southern gentleman and a good Catholic who’d give you the shirt off of his back and some from his wardrobe as well unless you were a Muslim, a homosexual, or a Falcons fan. Dad always said that he was just trying to protect Mom from being ridiculed by the neighbors for having a gay son, but we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves. Let’s go back to when Grace was not in the honorable position of being the second-most-hated.

Grace’s first slight against her parents came on the day she was baptised and happened to relieve herself on Father Forrest. Nobody else really paid it much mind--Grace was, after all, a baby--but her parents were absolutely mortified. They had friends in that Church. Friends who laughed. At them. It was SUCH a big deal. Their daughter continued to be just an utter, absolute embarrassment. She screwed up her first communion. She fell asleep in Sunday School. She was constantly in trouble with the Sisters at her Catholic school for making rude noises during nap time. She inappropriately displayed affection towards others. “Bless that Grace,” her parents’ friends would say. “She’s so soft-hearted,” they would say. Her parents knew what they meant. They meant to say that she was soft-headed, that their daughter was an idiot. Why couldn’t she be better behaved like her sisters? At the very least, she could show some shame.

Despite being an absolute fumbling fuck-up in the eyes of her parent’s and being forced to attend the horrendous doldrums that is the Sunday Mass of the Roman Catholic Church, Grace actually took a shining towards religion. Not to the extent where that when she started attending public schools in third grade (once her family could no longer afford the private Catholic school) she was that one kid always talked about Jesus and God and quoting the Bible and having that fucking creepy purity towards them, but she was religious. Despite all the jokes about altar boys, she was proud to be Catholic. Besides, as a girl she didn’t have to worry about that sort of scene. She read the Bible regularly. She could spit some mean Hail Marys, and we aren’t talking about football because she could not do sports if life depended on it. She wore a cross every day for every second to this god damn day. Shit, while other kids were running around doing little kid shit and the annoying Jesus girls were telling them they’d go to Hell for it, Grace was spending her time volunteering for food drives and helping out with charities.

And somehow she was still the least favorite kid because her Dad caught her reading comic books. What the hell, they weren’t even hers--she had borrowed them from Joseph.

Grace’s powers came about around the time she started puberty. Always a little bit on the heavy side and hurt by her schoolmates because all children are bastards regardless of whether they knew their dad or not, Grace started dieting. Which, when all her Mom served was cornbread and whatever proteins she could find on sell and cook in a pan full of butter, meant she just didn’t eat. The girl was always hungry, and she was always miserable, and she always felt weak, and she never lost weight. Even as the fat disappeared from her body and her skin turned yellow and dry she was somehow gaining weight. Grace was absolutely baffled, but the scale did not lie. All skin and bones and she was fat, fat, fucking fat. Completely disgusting; a skeletal cow.

And then she went swimming with her brother Joseph in the river one summer when she was thirteen. Swimming was probably the one activity she was any good at, and the girl sunk like that boat in that one movie. If Joseph didn’t help drag her out she would’ve drowned. If she hadn’t almost drowned she would’ve probably starved herself to death. Listen, Grace isn’t going to go around and tell anybody that it was a miracle, but she thought it was a miracle. At the very least a wake up call. She started eating right after that and blossomed back towards a healthy shape.

Joseph and her decided not to tell anybody about that drowning incident on account of the fact that neither of them wanted to get in trouble. It kind of solidified them as each other's favorites in the family. Neither of them knew what the hell was happening to Grace’s body, but both of them worked together to make sure her parents or the other siblings didn’t find out. They joked that their Dad would call an exorcist if he found out, while both secretly believed that wasn’t actually far from the truth. As a sign of good faith, Joseph told Grace about his homosexuality. As a sign of good faith, Grace decided to not be like their Dad...except when it came to fan of the Falcons; those people were just godless heathens and assholes to boot.

The problems with her strength started to arise by the time she with fifteen, and unlike her weight this grew exponentially. What started as her accidentally tearing books in half turned into her breaking door handles and faucets. Eventually inevitably it became clear that she couldn’t hide these changes from her parents. Besides, it was getting exceptionally weird at dinner when she refused to sit out of fear of breaking her already rickety chair. So...she told her parents. The reaction she got from at first was, well, confusing to say the least, until she remembered that these were the same people who were mortified for years after she had used a priest as a porta-potty when she was less than one year old. Her parents told her that she would not tell anybody about this and pulled her out of school. Mom would teach her and she’d get her GED once this whole damn thing passed.

The reaction was so mild that when she told Joseph about it he figured that maybe he should tell them about himself. It still took him time to work up courage, and only when a nearly seventeen year old Grace talked him up did he finally do it. The whole ordeal went less than ideal. Apparently, Dad was fine with having a freak for a daughter, but having a son be a sinner was absolutely unforgivable. Why, what would the neighbors say? The whole part in the Bible about forgiving those who sin seemed to be something that must have been newly added in versions that came out after her father had read the good book, because he threw Joseph out of the house. So Grace, in her final act of defiance against her parents, followed Joseph out. The two pariahs rented a studio apartment in the bad side of town. Joseph worked, Grace couldn’t land a job. Her refusal to sit or shake hands always threw people off, and being a high school dropout didn’t help.

This was all around the time that terrorist exposed the existence of Hyperhumans to the world. Everything around Grace sort of blew up after that--apologies for the pun. It was a nice reassurance to know that she wasn’t the only weirdo on the planet, but the warm fuzzy feeling of not being alone quickly subsided as people reacted the typical way they did around things they didn’t understand by trying to get rid off it as fast as possible. Grace felt that good old Catholic guilt swelling up inside of her. Somebody, somewhere had to do something to prove that Hyperhumans weren’t a bunch of monsters. She expressed these feelings to Joseph, and he sat her down and gave her the most important talk of her life. She’d become a superhero. Like, a real life superhero running around and helping people in need. How wasn’t that a good idea? The Mavericks made it work.

She started her superhero (vigilante is such a negative word) career a year ago. Grace and Joseph would sit in their apartment listening to a local police scanner for any crimes. Grace would then take to the streets where Joseph read her directions over the phone via Mapquest. She was relatively unknown (and both not thanked and not hated) for the longest of time until a few months ago when she stopped a thief in a public area. The socially awkward girl wearing all black with a halloween mask over her head realized that she was being record by people with their phones, and in a moment of brilliance decided now would be the time to go viral and spread awareness that Hyperhumans were doing good in other places besides Larissa. She just had to say something cool, something awesome for the headlines. The only thing that came out of her stupid dumb mouth was something she had read dozens of times. The girl, posed like an action figure, turned slowly to the camera’s as her cheeks grew hotter and hotter and said in the shakiest voice ever: “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”

The video that showed on the news ends with her immediately running away.

Grace bore witness to the most embarrassing moment in her life for weeks as the video spread across local new stations and onto the Internet. Joseph played it for a week on loop straight, rolling with laughter. The media did not let it die, and as she continued her work as a “superhero” news stories and head lines reading “The Bible-Thumping Vigilante Smites Another Sinner”, “Hyper Religious Hyperhuman Halts Crime”, and “The Hand of God Crushes a Getaway”. One pundit referred to the girl as “Thumper” for the way she beats criminals like a fiery preacher beats a bible. The name stuck. Eventually, Grace rolled with it. If it rose awareness of Hypes trying to do some good, then so be it. She’d be the crusading weirdo the media wanted, even if it meant sitting and sweating through Sunday sermons while hearing her priest condemn “Thumper” for giving Catholics a bad name.

| MOTIVATION/OBJECTIVE: |

A pep talk from her brother was all she needed. ”You got superpowers, you gotta be a superhero! It’s, like, Superpowers 101. It’s in Genesis. God made Adam and Eve and was like, eh, I can do better. Then God made Hyperhumans and was like, hell yeah, I nailed it, way to go God. Now go out there, fight some crime, give a few photo ops, and get rich and famous. This was before Greed was a Deadly Sin, mind you, and that jazz isn’t even in the Bible anyway. And I always give to my Church every Sunday, anyway, okay?”

| REFERENCE POST(S): |

The One Where We Remember to Tip the Waitress - Amongst the Lonesome
The One an Old Man Meets the President - No Masters or Kings
The One Where a Politician Grills a Drunk - The Origin

| NOTES: |

■ Grace’s brother, Joseph, is about three years older than her and serves as her dispatcher and radio back up, as well as runs (and filters most of the hate from) her Facebook and Twitter pages through a Tor proxy to prevent people from tracking down their IP address.
■ Grace has managed to keep her paper thin disguise so far. Her parents know about her powers, and the only reason she can imagine why they haven’t gone to the authorities about her yet is that either they a) don’t care or, more likely, that b) they wouldn’t want the neighbors to know that it was their daughter.
■ Thumper, despite her efforts to do good, is generally disliked. She has miraculously yet to hurt any innocents while taking down a criminal, but the same cannot be said for the amount of money in tax dollars she is bleeding the city for via accidental property damage. She gets a healthy amount of hate on the Internet for being a Hype and for, thanks to the media’s portrayal and her own act of leaning into it, being a religious zealot.
■Sausage and mushrooms are an eternal classic, but pineapples are my fucking jam.

Lemme know what I broke.