I. Nebula
Maysah was born in Vancouver, Canada, and for as long as she can remember she had an interest in space. What started as a mild fascination born from stargazing on family camping trips morphed into a full on obsession that involved subscription to science magazines, deep dives into internet forums, and admirable attempts at reading astrophysics books way beyond her comprehension. She was one of those kids who figured out what they wanted to be at a young age—an astronaut, in this case—and set out to be it. Maysah studied hard in school and received additional coaching from her junior high science teacher mom. Her dedication paid off and she attended a good university, where she met an engineering student from Quebec named Henri Marseille.
It wasn’t really love at first sight. More of a mutual hatred and a queasiness that shifted into a playfully annoyed sort of attraction after they were forced to become lab partners. His accent helped win him points, too. They married after graduation and moved to Longueuil, Quebec for Henri’s job, while Maysah found some lab work she wasn’t passionate about. After living there for a year, Maysah received a phone call from a woman named Victoria Manford, who had heard about her from an old physics professor Maysah had once assisted. The woman was the CEO of a private spaceflight company called Expanding Horizons, and they were projecting to achieve flight tests within the year—faster, she said, if Maysah signed aboard to help perfect the design of the shuttle. It was a childhood dream come true. Plus, the pay was, forgive the pun, out of this world. The only catch was that the job was in Cedar Fort.
Henri encouraged Maysah to take the position, and if her career at Expanding Horizons panned out he’d find a job in Cedar Fort. Working for a space company was everything she had hoped it to be, and she found herself becoming close friends with Victoria. Maysah truly helped kick up the productivity in the lab. One day Victoria pulled her into her office and offered Maysah the opportunity to take part in the first human test flight. She absolutely could not refuse. However, before the actual test flight, she had to be run through some basic astronaut training to make sure that she was hardy enough for space travel. They'd be fun, swore Victoria. After passing the physical and only getting a little sick on the centrifuge, Maysah was ready for the final test: a run inside of an experimental zero gravity chamber.
Something went wrong.
As Maysah was having the time of her life floating in air she detected the faint stench of rotten eggs, an odor added to natural gas that served as a safety measure. Joy shifted to panic, and she called for the test to be cancelled. However, when the technician pressed the emergency stop button it instead created a high-energy electrical spark that began to violently conduct through the metal shell of the chamber. It ionized the gas in the chamber and turned it into plasma. The lab was forced to listen to Maysah’s screams as the chamber was superheated before it exploded into a massive fireball, destroying half of the lab and injuring several technicians.
The people of Cedar Fort might’ve noticed just the slightest of rumbles. Inside the lab, people were scrambling to put out fires and aid the injured, and then someone shouted in surprise—Maysah was standing where the test chamber had been, alive and uninjured. However, she looked different. Very different. Her body was glowing a slight purple, her hair was floating, and a low hum of energy was coming from her. After Maysah unintentionally fired off a plasma blast the lab was evacuated and Victoria was called in. It took some time, but she was able to calm Maysah down. Victoria was about to get Maysah to agree to let them run tests on the woman to understand how she survived, what exactly happened to her, and if she could be helped. Maysah wanted nothing more than to be cured as quickly as possible. Everyone in the lab was reminded of their NDA, and the test began promptly.
II. Star
A cure wasn't possible. However, thanks to Victoria and Expanding Horizons, Maysah was able to gain control over her powers. She wanted nothing more than to pretend like things were normal and return to their work. However, Victoria had other ideas. If they could recreate the experiment it would be the scientific breakthrough of the decade, if not the century. Maysah expressed her dismay at the idea, so Victoria made her an offer—a five-year advance on her salary and two months of vacation starting today. She could go see Henri. Their communication had been limited while she was being tested. Every moral bone in her body was telling her to refuse the offer and put her foot down, but she cracked. The money was too good, the job was too good, and Victoria was a friend. She wouldn’t do something if she didn’t think it was safe or smart.
Henri was happy to see Maysah, but he could tell that something was wrong. Later that week news broke about a massive explosion in Cedar Fort that originated from the Expanding Horizons lab. It was being reported as a freak accident, but Maysah knew that it had to have been Victoria's experiment. Dozens of people were killed; it was likely the reason the first explosion wasn’t so bad because Maysah had absorbed most of the energy. Maysah watched through tears as Victoria Manford appeared on television and lied about how a test with rocket fuel had gone wrong. Frustrated, Maysah revealed everything to Henri about her powers and the experiment—she knew if she had taken a stand she could’ve stopped Victoria. He was angry at first, partly because she’d kept it hidden from him, but mostly because she had gone against her principles. The rage didn’t last long. Instead, they stayed up all night talking, drinking, and scheming.
In the morning, they headed for Cedar Fort. The two decided to confront Victoria and coerce her into telling the truth. They waited until nightfall and then broke into her house. Having overheard a noise, Victoria came out of her room and cracked a bat against Henri, but when she saw Maysah buzzing with energy she quickly gave up. Their talk was short. Victoria would liquidate Expanding Horizons, use whatever money she had plus the sum she had promised Maysah to pay off the families of the deceased, and publicly admit that she knew that the experiment had a high risk of danger. Otherwise, Maysah would liquidate her. Simple choice, really. Victoria didn’t call her bluff, and within a month she was awaiting trial for malfeasance and mulitple charges of criminally negligent homicide.
Stardust was born that night. Maysah felt a warmth for what she had done like none she had ever experienced, but was still ashamed that she had not acted any sooner. She wanted to make up for her failure to do the right thing at the right time. With the support of her husband, she decided to use the powers she had gained to do some serious good. Not only would she stop crime and battle supervillains, but she would also police corporate executives and politicians like Victoria that looked to exploit and harm innocents for their own personal gain. Henri assisted her in multiple ways: he helped design her costume, researched people of interest that had been accused of corruption, and held down a steady job so she could focus solely on her charitable work as a vigilante and corporate watchdog.
Stardust remained in the spotlight for over a decade. She was always a divisive superhero among the public. She was revered by some for her gentle touch when apprehending criminals and her integrity when it came to pursuing crimes outside of the ones generally handled by supes. Others derided her, calling her out as a super on a soapbox and suspicious of her intentions. Some claimed that she was committing corporate sabotage for a various number of companies, while others labeled her as an enemy of capitalism. Regardless of how someone viewed her, it couldn’t be argued that she was damn good at her job. Stardust largely operated inside of Quebec, but occasionally would appear in the United States in short-lived teams up to take down dangerous foes. However, she was ultimately a solo hero, partially due to preference, partially due to the negative attention corporations aimed at her, and partially because she was difficult to work with.
III. Supernova
Hex was the last superhero to ever work with Stardust. They had teamed up to hunt down a blood mage slash serial killer named Soothslayer and things were not going well for the duo, both in terms of how the hunt was going and for how they were getting along. After a week of dead ends and cold trails, Hex had picked a rumor on a man who supplied Soothslayer with blood packs. The two were about to head out when Stardust saw something disturbing pop up on Hex's news feed. It was her face, as in her
actual face. She made him open the vid.
The talking head was arguing that new evidence linked Stardust to the deaths of about fifty people. Footage was playing of the day she got her powers. It was spliced with footage of the explosion that had wiped out most of Expanding Horizons workforce. Stardust explained to Hex that she was being set up, and to her surprise he actually believed her. Worried about the immediate repercussions that occurred when an identity was leaked, she called Henri and got no answer. Through Hex's magic, the two teleported to Stardust’s house in Quebec to find a gruesome scene. On the same couch that Henri had convinced her to take a stand she found his body, mangled and shredded into a complete mess. Time seemed to completely freeze itself. She had been doing the right thing, and because of it her privacy was shattered, she was framed for a crime she had not committed, and the love of her life was killed. It felt like her chest was going to explode. There was only one other person alive that knew how Maysah got her powers, and they were supposed to be in prison. Stardust growled. Wherever they were tonight, they'd be in hell tomorrow.
However, before Stardust could begin her death march to Victoria’s cell, she was stopped by Hex. Literally, he put her in stasis with a spell and demanded to know where she was going. To get vengeance, she said, and then broke free of his charm. A fight broke out between the two, and Hex was eventually able to force Stardust into a room where she couldn’t charge her powers. She broke down into tears and yelled at Hex that she was done. Her life was ruined. Why would she bother trying to save others? Hex gave her time to rave, and the spoke up. She was many things he did not like, but she wasn’t a killer. Even if she somehow managed to go through with it, she wouldn't be able to live with herself—assuming nobody else got to her first. Her life was ruined, true, but it wasn't over. There were still options. He told her to bury her husband and he’d take care of everything else.
After she had her time with Henri, Hex came and found her. He gave her keys to a friend’s safe house in Toronto. He gave her new documents that identified her as Maria Martinez. Finally, he gave her a bottle of medicine. It was filled with pills that were enchanted to cast a glamour spell upon consumption that would make her appear to be someone else. None of this would help with the loss she felt, only time could do that, but this gave her time. It wasn’t an opportunity that many heroes who had their identities revealed were given. Maysah thanked Hex, and they parted ways. At first it was difficult living another life. She didn’t like the new woman in the mirror. She didn’t like the idea of leaving Henri’s death unavenged. Yet, eventually, she grew used to her misery until it became her new normal. She never put on her suit again. Stardust had died with Henri.
IV. Black Hole
Maysah lived as Maria for the last twelve years. She worked a part-time job in a small, used bookstore where she spent most of her time working on, destroying, and restarting a tell-all memoir. She moved out of the safe house and got her own small, quaint apartment outside of the city. On her days off she would go on camping trips like the ones she had a child to stargaze. Her life was a quiet, solitary one, and she was mostly at peace, or at least some kind of sad acceptance. Some days were harder than others, and it’s difficult to make it through the week without having something triggers a memory of her past life that fills her with rage and regret. The only connection she maintained from her former life was Hex, who regularly sent her a shipment of glamour pills on a monthly basis.
This last month the pills did not come. After waiting a few days, Maysah pulled out her old communication device from a box of junk she kept pushed back in a closet to check in on Hex. She found Special Agent Reynolds’s message waiting for her. She watched it with a furrowed brow, uncertain if they had even intended to send the message to someone like her. Part of her felt like it was a hoax, perhaps even a trap to draw her out of hiding. She certainly didn’t buy it at all that Hex would overdose on Nirvana. Maysah tried calling him only to get no response. She should’ve just ignored the damn thing, but it ate at her. Reynolds was right about one thing: Hex had been the best of them. He had helped her out of nothing but the kindness of his heart. Maysah owed it to him to at least look into the circumstances surrounding his death. Maybe she could work out a deal with Reynolds to get her name cleared. If they said no then fuck them, she'd happily standby and watch as Hex's proclaimed apocalypse ended them all.
Punished GN,
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