Difference between revisions of "Dreamweaver"
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| image = dreamnew.png | | image = dreamnew.png | ||
| caption = "I believe you can get me through the night..." | | caption = "I believe you can get me through the night..." | ||
− | | realname = Kaitlyn | + | | realname = Kaitlyn Susan May |
| alias = Dream, Dreamy | | alias = Dream, Dreamy | ||
| gender = Female | | gender = Female | ||
| species = Human | | species = Human | ||
− | | ethnicity = Caucasian | + | | ethnicity = Caucasian, 1/8th Korean |
| birthplace = Michigan | | birthplace = Michigan | ||
| operations = Millennium City, MI | | operations = Millennium City, MI | ||
− | | relatives = | + | | relatives = Nathan May - Father, Angela May - Mother (Deceased) |
− | | age = | + | | age = 25 |
− | | height = 5' | + | | height = 5'3" |
− | | weight = ~ | + | | weight = ~100 lbs. |
| eyes = Light Blue | | eyes = Light Blue | ||
| hair = Blue (dyed), Blonde (natural) | | hair = Blue (dyed), Blonde (natural) | ||
− | | complexion = | + | | complexion = Pale |
| build = Curvy | | build = Curvy | ||
| features = Light scarring over legs | | features = Light scarring over legs | ||
Line 30: | Line 30: | ||
| alignment = Chaotic Good | | alignment = Chaotic Good | ||
| identity = Secret | | identity = Secret | ||
− | | years_active = | + | | years_active = ~4 |
| citizenship = US Citizen | | citizenship = US Citizen | ||
− | | occupation = | + | | occupation = Telemarketer |
| education = College Drop-out | | education = College Drop-out | ||
| marital = Single | | marital = Single | ||
− | | powers = | + | | powers = Empathic/Telekinetic Powers |
| paraphernalia = Earpiece Radio, Wheelchair, Armor | | paraphernalia = Earpiece Radio, Wheelchair, Armor | ||
| strength = 1 | | strength = 1 | ||
| weapon = 1 | | weapon = 1 | ||
| durability = 4 | | durability = 4 | ||
− | | armor = | + | | armor = 3 |
− | | speed = | + | | speed = 4 |
| reflexes = 2 | | reflexes = 2 | ||
| resistance = 2 | | resistance = 2 | ||
Line 56: | Line 56: | ||
| tech = 4 | | tech = 4 | ||
| intelligence = 4 | | intelligence = 4 | ||
− | | knowledge = | + | | knowledge = 4 |
| charisma = 4 | | charisma = 4 | ||
− | | bravery = | + | | bravery = 8 |
|}} | |}} | ||
− | |||
=Personal= | =Personal= | ||
==Background== | ==Background== | ||
− | Kaitlyn May had a fairly easy life, initially. Her parents were both very loving and reasonably wealthy, and she was well-provided for. This, of course, could not stand. Kaitlyn began rebelling against her parents at roughly fifteen. It started simple - dating a boy (or girl) her parents didn't approve of, arguments, parties, pranks. Then, she learned the art of underage drinking. As soon as she could get her learner's permit, she became a total party girl, doing anything she wanted as her parents tried to stop her. She was well on her way to ruining her life by nineteen | + | Kaitlyn May had a fairly easy life, initially. Her parents were both very loving and reasonably wealthy, and she was well-provided for. They weren't strict or overbearing. She had friends and was fairly popular at school. She even got decently good grades! This completely average life, of course, could not stand. Kaitlyn began rebelling against her parents at roughly fifteen. It started simple - dating a boy (or girl) her parents didn't approve of, arguments, parties, pranks. Then, she learned the art of underage drinking. As soon as she could get her learner's permit, she became a total party girl, doing anything she wanted as her parents tried to stop her. She was well on her way to ruining her life by nineteen, and didn't really care. Unfortunately, what was meant to be an actually-peaceful day of driving her mother to and from a doctor's appointment turned tragic when a drunk driver crashed into the passenger side of her car. Kaitlyn's mother was killed on impact, and the force slammed the vehicle hard into a passing chemical truck belonging to Mind, Inc, the front for PSI experiments. Whatever was in that truck spilled over the wreck, dousing Kaitlyn. The girl didn't wake up for more than a week. |
− | When Kaitlyn finally did awaken, she seemed fine, for about eight seconds. | + | When Kaitlyn finally did awaken, she seemed fine, for about eight seconds. Empathic powers, granted somehow by the chemicals, had developed in her sleep, and now, conscious, unable to control her new abilities, she felt the emotions of nearly every person in the hospital - all the pain, panic, sadness, and anger. It overwhelmed her; she screamed and flailed until her throat was raw, until the doctors were forced to sedate her. After a couple repeats of this incident, the medical staff were able to keep her awake and semi-coherent in a half-drugged state, and soon figured out what must have happened. They sent for a specialist in psychic powers to work with her, but in the meantime, they broke the bad news to her. Not only was her mother dead, but her legs had been damaged by the crash, injured by debris and heavily burned when the chemicals that had doused her caught fire. They were not likely to ever work again, at least not without spending money she or her grieving father didn't have. |
+ | [[image:dreamchair.png|left|100px|thumb]] | ||
+ | The specialist did his best with Kaitlyn, but the girl remained unresponsive - traumatized, in shock, and still constantly half-drugged. It took some time for her to get enough control of her abilities for them to, finally, release her from care - not because she was entirely ready, but because insurance would only last her so long. The wheelchair-bound girl that her father brought home was a shell of her former self, not quite catatonic, but much too close for comfort, overwhelmed by the constant rush of others' emotions in her head. Doctors discussed with her father the option of mental institutions, places where a super-powered girl like her wouldn't endanger others. It was this threat that spurred Kate into activity, agreeing to another tutor to train her. And so it went for the next two years. Kate remained solitary, hidden away. She lost touch with her friends, became estranged with even her father. Isolation was easier on her powers, easier on others who wouldn't know how to handle the emotional sponge. And then, one day, after endless practice, things finally clicked. | ||
− | + | Lifting things with the power of the mind was supposed to be a basic trick, for psychics. Kate had, early on, settled on the very specific idea of lifting herself, getting out of the wheelchair, being free. She'd trained her other abilities, of course, her tutor had worked hard on helping her build rudimentary walls to keep her empathy in check and use it to her advantage - but it was the day that she held herself in midair for several hours that she decided she could still ''be'' something. Things moved fast, after that. She designed and purchased a costume from a reputable and discreet tailor, and took on the name Dreamweaver - admittedly cheesy, but the song had played during a difficult time in the hospital, and it had become an ear worm for her. She found herself the cheapest (first-level) apartment she could stand, and began defending Westside from the gangs that roamed it. | |
− | + | ||
− | Lifting things with the power of the mind was supposed to be a basic trick, for psychics. Kate had, early on, settled on the very specific idea of lifting herself, getting out of the wheelchair, being free. She'd trained her other abilities, of course, to | + | |
==The Adventurers== | ==The Adventurers== | ||
− | She wasn't quite ready for anything, though. In one instance of defending a woman from a group of Red Banner, she was almost overwhelmed, until the heroine [[Juggernette]] charged to her rescue. In return, Dreamweaver graciously offered to buy lunch for her savior, and the two became fast friends. Eventually, Dream | + | [[image:dreamenergy.png|left|200px|thumb]] |
+ | She wasn't quite ready for anything, though. In one early instance of defending a woman from a group of Red Banner gangsters, she was almost overwhelmed, until the heroine [[Juggernette]] charged to her rescue. In return, Dreamweaver graciously offered to buy lunch for her savior, and the two became fast friends. Eventually, Dream met [[Red Spider]], and was invited into [[the Adventurers]], thanks in part to Juggernette's recommendation. Kate was ecstatic - she knew she wasn't much good alone, and the team seemed like a friendly bunch. | ||
− | Dreamweaver hid her identity from her team, nervous about how they'd take her disability, even forced to hide her distinctive hair under her hood at all times. She made friends with most of the team regulars, though, and due to either trust or accident, most of | + | Dreamweaver hid her identity from her team, nervous about how they'd take her disability, even forced to hide her distinctive hair under her hood at all times. She made friends with most of the team regulars, though, and due to either trust or accident, most of them figured out her secret, which was a weight off her mind. Blue Wonder and Red Spider also, eventually, had a talk with her about her drinking - she'd never really dropped the habit, and used alcohol as a coping mechanism for both her depression and her still-barely-controlled empathy. Still, eager to turn her life around and in a good mood, she agreed to try her best to be more responsible. This responsibility continues to waver. |
− | After a while in the group, Katie received a fancy new armored suit courtesy of teammate [[Lady Justice]], complete with powered leg braces that | + | After a while in the group, Katie received a fancy new armored suit courtesy of teammate [[Lady Justice]], complete with powered leg braces that allowed her to walk for the first time in years, albeit in an awkward, stiff, clumsy way. While not practical, the feature cheered Katie up quite a bit after a string of disappointing showings in the team's adventures. Katie began to doubt herself, questioning the usefulness of her admittedly-weak abilities as she went up against enemies like Etherloch and Serpent Master. It certainly didn't help that, for almost a couple weeks, she was simply unable to get any rest. She would fall asleep, but wake up tired - unbeknownst to her, under nightly assault by a psychic supervillain she had previously arrested. Thankfully this was put to a stop by Juggernette, who built a sort of psychic Faraday cage around their bedroom; Katie had moved in with the woman some time earlier, but the two kept their relationship relatively low-key. The villain's involvement in her sleep trouble was never actually discovered, and he had given up by the time she moved back into her own place after the two amicably broke up. |
− | Due to bad luck, Katie kept missing important missions with her team as they investigated a new drug making the rounds, present only for the first encounter with the Etherloch monster, their initial meeting with the imprisoned supervillain Poison Lash, and the | + | Due to bad luck, Katie kept missing important missions with her team as they investigated a new drug making the rounds, present only for the first encounter with the Etherloch monster, their initial meeting with the imprisoned supervillain Poison Lash, and the brief mutation of Red Spider back into her monster form. When Poison Lash, their temporary ally, went rogue and disappeared with a sample of the Etherloch creature, she jumped at the chance to investigate alone and prove herself to the others. This went about as well as one might expect. Overpowered by a pair of monstrous UNTIL soldiers-turned-experiments, Lash threw the unconscious heroine into a back-alley like a piece of trash, not even worth holding hostage, leaving her only with a mysterious needle mark on her neck. Medical scans, fortunately, turned up clean. This particularly-crushing defeat, however, pushed Katie to train hard with her telekinesis. She began showing signs of improvement, although it still wasn't enough to subdue Serpent Master when he interrupted a team lunch. |
− | + | Dream again accidentally missed out on the team dealing with Poison Lash and Etherloch's combined forces; although the slimy beast was destroyed, Poison Lash escaped injured. Not wanting to miss out again, she made sure she was there to confront the scientist. Unfortunately, during the fight Lash played his hidden hand; managing to slice her with a poisoned claw, he was able to activate a virus he'd injected into her in their previous confrontation that blocked the heroine's powers. Mere minutes later, Dreamweaver fell out of the air, helpless. While teammate [[Xeno]] tried to carry Dream to safety, [[Hornett]] engaged Lash. Unwilling to abandon him despite her lack of powers, she freed herself from Xeno and ran to help... realizing suddenly that she could feel - and ''use'' - her legs. Poison Lash had, for whatever incomprehensible reason, removed her powers but healed her injuries! Hornett finished Lash off, and Dream was carried back to base. Nothing could be done to fix her powers that the team could figure out, but for the moment, Dream could walk again... on atrophied legs that constantly ached, reduced to a civilian once more. | |
− | + | ||
− | Dream again accidentally missed out on the team dealing with Poison Lash and Etherloch's combined forces; although the slimy beast was destroyed, Poison Lash escaped injured. Not wanting to miss out again, she made sure she was there to confront the scientist. Unfortunately, during the fight Lash played his hidden hand; managing to slice her with a poisoned claw, he was able to activate a virus he'd injected into her in their previous confrontation that blocked the heroine's powers. Mere minutes later, Dreamweaver fell out of the air, helpless. While teammate [[Xeno]] tried to carry Dream to safety, [[Hornett]] engaged Lash. Unwilling to abandon him despite her lack of powers, she freed herself from Xeno and ran to help... realizing suddenly that she could feel - and ''use'' - her legs. Poison Lash had, for whatever incomprehensible reason, removed her powers but healed her | + | |
A couple weeks later, Kate had exercised her legs back to being functional, and had been adjusting to normal life. Of course, she had to face Lash at some point. She and several teammates visited the villain, and after becoming frustrated with her taunts, he took away her legs, giving her the sadistic choice of deciding between them or her powers before leaving her with neither. Although at first unwilling to play his games, Kate eventually chose her powers, and was given three days to say goodbye to her mobility. She did her best to make the most of the time she had left. | A couple weeks later, Kate had exercised her legs back to being functional, and had been adjusting to normal life. Of course, she had to face Lash at some point. She and several teammates visited the villain, and after becoming frustrated with her taunts, he took away her legs, giving her the sadistic choice of deciding between them or her powers before leaving her with neither. Although at first unwilling to play his games, Kate eventually chose her powers, and was given three days to say goodbye to her mobility. She did her best to make the most of the time she had left. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Dreamweaver involved herself in dealing with the hacker group Incognito; specifically, she confronted one of their agents, named Cyber-Slash, by literally calling her out online for a one-on-one fight. Cyber-Slash surprised her with her skill and virtual blade, taking her out embarrassingly easily - the video of the fight was immediately posted online, humiliating the heroine for a few weeks. Still, she helped stop the group's plan to release the secret identities of all UNTIL-registered heroes, and personally befriended Slash, helping persuade her to leave the group behind and go... incognito. | ||
+ | |||
+ | The next horror for Kaitlyn came when it was discovered that she had been acting as a traitor to her team, helping VIPER to blackmail Red Spider's father, setting up plans to murder the heroine herself, and when discovered, even attempting to destroy an entire building and herself with one ultimate blast of telekinetic force. She had been brainwashed, of course, unaware that she'd even been doing these crimes while "blacked out", but the guilt after she was stopped was immense, especially once her memories of these villainous exploits were returned to her by her team. They were only trying to help, she knew that, but she would have preferred never remembering. She remained in therapy and deprogramming for several months afterward, eventually managing to mostly forgive herself, thanks to the compassion and understanding of the Adventurers. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Dream was fascinated to learn about the so-called "Bad Earth", an alternate universe where many heroes and villains had their alignments reversed. She participated in trying to bring justice to the crime-ridden Millennium City, and was disturbed to learn of her psychotic double, though the two never directly faced each other before "Doomweaver" was captured and put into stasis. She tangentially helped rescue captured teammate Roak from the evil Dread Spider's organization by meeting the villain in their respective civilian identities - although the evil version of Red Spider didn't know that world's Kate, the prime Kate of course recognized her friend's doppelganger - and allowing herself to be taken to where superpowered prisoners were held. The rest of the team broke them both out mere hours later. | ||
+ | |||
+ | [[image:dreamshield.png|right|100px|thumb|<font color=black>Dreamweaver's telekinetic shields have improved since she began her career.</font>]] | ||
+ | Kate's next capture (at this point, something that happened so regularly that she was now determined to turn things around) came when the villainous Overthinker managed to catch her in a crowd while she was out of costume. Overthinker brainwashed the random assemblage with his hypnobot henchmen and took them to a Westside warehouse, where he began using them as guinea pigs for his mind-swapping technology. The Adventurers, unaware of her presence, arrived to stop the villain just as Kate was strapped into the machine. Red Spider's attempt to free her caught the attention of the mechanical menace, who accidentally blew up his own device, putting a stop to his scheme but leaving Kate and Cassandra - and many other previous testing pairs - swapped into each other's bodies. Inside Red Spider's body, Kate found herself uncomfortably strong, tiny, hungry from a super-accelerated metabolism, but also graceful, fit... bipedal. She began enjoying herself in the new body in between helping Cass cope with the powers and handicaps of her old one. Red even gave her permission (and a private plane) to take a vacation to Disney World! Soon after, of course, the mind-swaps were reversed. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Kate found herself helping a vigilante calling himself "Justified" when he kidnapped her by force and asked for her help. Specifically, he had a plan to break into Westside Prison and extract the VIPER agent that had been Kate's own "handler" while she was under their control, and use her empathic powers to effectively brainwash ''him'', manipulating his emotions to create Pavlovian connections. Kate reluctantly went along with the plan, disguising herself to assault the prison. Her uncertainty in this venture only increased over the next week, as Justified continued beating and torturing the VIPER agent when she wasn't around, and her attempts to mentally manipulate him were met with strong defenses befitting a VIPER zealot. She eventually confronted Justified, letting him know she was done and was going to return him to the police; he knocked her out and escaped with his prisoner. Kate recruited Lady Justice to help locate the man, admitting to her own participation in the crime, and insisted on going alone to the warehouse lair that her teammate turned up. Justified put up a good fight, but Kate proved unwilling to take another defeat. After defeating him, she took the vigilante and the VIPER prisoner into custody. Justified activated hidden explosives, however, and with the timer ticking down, she attempted to sacrifice herself by focusing on getting the two injured parties out of the building. As she threw Justified out a window, however, the bombs went off, revealing that Justified had rigged ''himself'' rather than the building. The blast still managed to bring the warehouse crumbling down, but she was able to return the VIPER agent, at least, to the MCPD. | ||
+ | |||
+ | In between dealing with Justified, Kate also helped stop a clone of Red Spider from rampaging through the town in her monstrous, alien form. She regularly visited the clone after she was cured and put into UNTIL custody, helping her sort through her jumbled, copied memories. She testified in the ensuing court case regarding the clone's rights as a person, and was even forced to ''very'' briefly act as the clone's defense. Unfortunately, she also goofed around a little too much, earning the ire of Lady Justice, the primary defense. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Kate, who by this point had developed a crush on her teammate, worked hard to get back into her good graces. She was rewarded when Justice, in reality scientist Allison Grey, presented her with a pair of skin-tight, lightweight, skin-toned tights, made with futuristic nanites that could stimulate her damaged nerves - a far, far more evolved version of her armor's leg braces. Although it took weeks of physical therapy, Kate could - again - walk once more. Unlike the Lash incident, however, it did not perfectly restore her. Her legs were still damaged under the tights (which hid her scars, thankfully), and she still could not truly feel them. She doesn't care about these minor flaws at all, however, nor the fact that she has to use a cane to support herself. It was more than she ever thought possible! In order to pay Allison back, Kate agreed to appear with her at a small conference to demonstrate the technology. She bought a classy evening gown and everything! | ||
+ | |||
+ | The thrill of walking again could not even be curbed by a rather brutal defeat at the hands of the sharkman smuggler Undertow. The gun smuggler, interrupted during a sale by the heroine, managed to drag her under water and tear bits of her armor off, severely injuring her. Prompt response to her distress call by teammate and nurse [[Infinity-Zero]] saved her life. Dreamweaver continued operating with the damaged suit, not wanting to burden Lady Justice with the work of repairing it. | ||
+ | |||
+ | When UNTIL agent White Star asked Dreamweaver for help locating Cyber-Slash for help with a case, the heroine thought little of helping the two connect. However, it wasn't long after that that Star contacted her, requesting her to meet up with her in New York, where she revealed that Slash, feeling betrayed by the casual disclosure of her identity and location, had kidnapped Star's sister and was using her as leverage to force the agent to help her in returning to her info-leaking ways. While White Star encouraged a confrontation, Dreamweaver managed to talk Cyber-Slash down, and the hacker resolved to disappear for good, promising to at least try to keep in touch. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Shortly afterwards, Dreamweaver returned to using her original costume, keeping only her armor's belt, preferring the new "logo" on it. She was vague on why, but possible reasons included wanting to be more "independent" rather than relying on her teammate's armor, wanting to force herself to think more about protecting herself in combat, or simply because she was tired of the damaged suit's missing boot and glove. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Kate participated in investigating and taking down a superhuman fighting ring responsible for kidnapping and drugging metahumans to force them into cage matches. Attempting to employ a clever tactic of pretending to be tranquilized by a fired dart, she was almost captured for real due to an unfortunate surprise gas grenade, although she was saved by teammate Fox. She later allowed herself to be captured for real in a solo assault on the criminals' warehouse, hiding an antidote to the drugs in her cape, to help rescue other teammates. This... did not go as planned. The extra doses of antidote were found in a casual search, and she was beaten, given an extra helping of drugs, and thrown in the pens with the rest of the captured metas. When the Adventurers raided the ring, a series of events occurred that resulted in Dream, and several other prisoners, freeing themselves in a mad rage. Dream herself angrily killed one of the warring combatants before tearing a hole in the building and escaping into the night. By the time the drugs wore off in the morning, she had no memory of what occurred other than a vague sense of unease. | ||
==Personality== | ==Personality== | ||
− | Katie is | + | Katie is outwardly downright bubbly on her own, when unaffected by others' emotions, with an easygoing and playful attitude. She's a shameless flirt with both men and women, perfectly willing to entertain either. She is self-conscious about her disability, however; since the accident, she's been much more reserved, embarrassed by her secret even when revealing it to those she trusts; even then, she's still self-conscious of the scars and burns coating her legs, faded as they are. She doesn't want to be treated differently just because she has to sit in a wheelchair when in casual clothes - but on the other hand, she'll shamelessly and happily take advantage of her handicap when given the chance. She tends to drink heavily, and thanks to her frame doesn't have a very high tolerance for it, but at least she's a happy drunk. |
− | As far as her role as a superheroine goes, Katie still loves the sights she gets to see, the amazing things she often has to fight. She's become a bit savvy to the tropes of her career, and although it takes a lot for her to take a situation deadly serious and cut out the snark, she is all too willing to leap between an enemy and a friend in their defense, to face danger head-on to protect others with surprisingly little regard for herself - a possible after-effect of her guilt. | + | As far as her role as a superheroine goes, Katie still loves the sights she gets to see, the amazing things she often has to fight. She's become a bit savvy to the tropes of her career, and although it takes a lot for her to take a situation deadly serious and cut out the snark, she is all too willing to leap between an enemy and a friend in their defense, to face danger head-on to protect others with surprisingly little regard for herself - a possible after-effect of her guilt. She has a tendency to dwell on the fact that she brings nothing else to the table besides her powers; she isn't a scientist, an engineer, a doctor, a detective, or anything so helpful outside of combat. At best she's something of a counselor, always willing to listen. |
− | Although still haunted by her past, Kate is genuinely pretty happy with her current life. She can often be found in Club Caprice, absorbing the ambient good feelings - and while she also used to take advantage of the bar to drink herself into a daze, she only occasionally falls into old habits now. | + | Although still haunted by her past, Kate is genuinely pretty happy with her current life between bouts of sudden depression. She can often be found in Club Caprice, absorbing the ambient good feelings - and while she also used to take advantage of the bar to drink herself into a daze, she only occasionally falls into old habits now. Her unfulfilling job and continuing failure of a love life get to her at times, and over time she has become more introverted. Her lack of self-confidence, once manifesting as a sacrificial nature, now leads to her attempting to "prove herself" by being dead-serious at times, leading her towards over-aggression. She has come dangerously close in recent months of casually killing opponents, tired of holding back. |
==Appearance== | ==Appearance== | ||
− | + | [[image:DreamKatenew.png|left|thumb]] | |
+ | Kate is a very short girl, with pale skin, and very little muscle to her. She has sky-blue eyes that betray a bit of Asian ancestry, and though her hair is naturally a lemony blonde, she almost always has it dyed a variety of colors, usually blue, orange, or pink. Her wheelchair is a fairly simple design, made for comfort. She tends towards long skirts, both for their ease in putting on, and for hiding her legs, which are covered in the faded remnants of burns and scars from her accident. She wears a pair of dark chestnut-colored glasses. | ||
+ | |||
+ | As Dreamweaver, her body is covered from the neck down in a shiny, navy blue-and-white suit of nanotech armor, no thicker than a pair of tights but much tougher. Her legs are further encased in a bulky exo-frame connected to Kate's mind, allowing her to lift and bend her legs artificially to provide awkward movement. Kate's favorite part of the suit is her cloak, white with an interior pink web pattern, the one article she re-used from her previous cloth outfit. This cloak is chemically-treated to be fireproof and durable. She often lets it fold around her front, hiding her body from view, or if she's in a showy mood, billowing it out impressively behind her, almost like wings. | ||
+ | |||
+ | More recently, Kate has had her hair cut shorter and reverted to her natural color with blue highlights in an attempt to look more mature. Her wheelchair has been replaced with a simple cane, and she relishes in being able to wear pants and shorts again easily, her nanite tights hiding her scars. Her costume is once again the cloth pink and white suit, with a line of exposed flesh right down her middle, from neck to waist. | ||
=Powers= | =Powers= | ||
==Empathy== | ==Empathy== | ||
Although not powerful enough to sense actual, coherent thoughts, or "read minds", Katie can and will sense people's emotional states - whether she wants to or not. She has poor control over her powers, usually unable to shut out others, and her mood is often and easily affected by the general emotional "feel" of her immediate surroundings. As previously mentioned, a place like Club Caprice can brighten her outlook, while the slums of Westside bring her down to despair. She is getting better at keeping herself level, however. Along with this sense, she is also able to actually affect the emotions of others - mostly Kate restricts herself to soothing people who are hurt or panicking, but she is capable of causing fright, mental pain, or even drowsiness, for offensive purposes. A common trick of hers has been to outright put enemies to sleep. She can even use her powers to affect the dreams someone has, able to cause nightmares or something more pleasant. | Although not powerful enough to sense actual, coherent thoughts, or "read minds", Katie can and will sense people's emotional states - whether she wants to or not. She has poor control over her powers, usually unable to shut out others, and her mood is often and easily affected by the general emotional "feel" of her immediate surroundings. As previously mentioned, a place like Club Caprice can brighten her outlook, while the slums of Westside bring her down to despair. She is getting better at keeping herself level, however. Along with this sense, she is also able to actually affect the emotions of others - mostly Kate restricts herself to soothing people who are hurt or panicking, but she is capable of causing fright, mental pain, or even drowsiness, for offensive purposes. A common trick of hers has been to outright put enemies to sleep. She can even use her powers to affect the dreams someone has, able to cause nightmares or something more pleasant. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Since losing and regaining her powers, Kate is much better with curbing her empathic sense, able to block others' emotions almost all the time. As a result, she rarely uses these powers anymore. | ||
==Telekinesis== | ==Telekinesis== | ||
− | + | Kate is actually a fairly powerful telekinetic, but had spent so much of her training time focused on lifting herself that it didn't originally show very well. Still, the fact that she can keep herself aloft through relatively high amounts of pain, exhaustion, or drunkenness is rather impressive. She no longer needs to concentrate to keep herself in the air, it's as easy as a normal person would find standing. She can also clumsily manipulate objects or create shimmering "force fields" around herself or others, for defense or containment. | |
+ | |||
+ | After more intensive practice, Kate has become far stronger in this area, to the point that it's become her primary offense. Mostly she relies on brute force; slamming, smashing, flinging, and punching with invisible hands. | ||
==Weaknesses== | ==Weaknesses== | ||
[[image:dreamweaver.jpg|right|100px|thumb|<font color=black>Dreamweaver's original costume</font>]] | [[image:dreamweaver.jpg|right|100px|thumb|<font color=black>Dreamweaver's original costume</font>]] | ||
− | '''Paraplegic:''' Most obvious among Dreamweaver's weaknesses is the loss of the use of her legs - specifically, from the hip socket down. If her powers are suppressed, or she can't gather the energy or concentration to lift herself, she is basically immobile. | + | '''Paraplegic:''' Most obvious among Dreamweaver's weaknesses is the loss of the use of her legs - specifically, from about the hip socket down. If her powers are suppressed, or she can't gather the energy or concentration to lift herself, she is basically immobile. With her new armor, the mechanized legs afforded only a stiff brisk walk at best, and anything requiring actual agility was out of the question. Her new nanite tights allow her to walk much more naturally, although she still requires a cane for stability. |
+ | |||
+ | '''Overworked Mind:''' Using her powers to do too much too quickly - whether concentrating on using her telekinesis on many things, or to do one very big thing - results in a growing headache for Kate. Further overuse of her abilities leads to nosebleeds and, if still not given a chance to rest, possibly a brain aneurysm. | ||
+ | |||
+ | '''Open Mind:''' As a side affect of her powers, Kate will sometimes have her very personality affected by someone she is focusing on, temporarily "absorbing" someone else's quirks or mood; even someone's particular tastes, such as a fondness for a certain food or drink. This can, of course, be dangerous, though not to the other person - she's not ''stealing'' anything from them. This rarely happens in combat, since Kate is very much trying ''not'' to connect to the bad guys. This also means that unlike many psychics, her mental defenses are average at best. | ||
+ | |||
+ | '''Noncombatant:''' Katie is physically weak and has no combat experience; against enemies with mental defenses or counters to her telekinesis, she has little to defend herself with. | ||
+ | |||
+ | '''Can't See Without Her Glasses:''' Kate is nearsighted, her vision blurry without corrective lenses - a pair of glasses in her usual life, and lenses built into the domino mask of her costume as Dreamweaver. | ||
+ | |||
+ | '''Single-target Specialty:''' While Kate rarely suffers from problems concentrating anymore, she still finds it difficult to focus her powers on more than one thing at a time, besides keeping herself airborne and shielded. This allows enemies to flank or distract her, forcing her to constantly switch targets in combat. | ||
+ | |||
+ | =Dreamweaver (alternates)= | ||
+ | [[image:doomweaver2.png|right||100px|thumb|"Driver take away my worries of today and leave tomorrow behind..."]] | ||
+ | ==Doomweaver== | ||
+ | On another Earth, Kaitlyn May had a very similar background as the prime version, up to and including the fateful car accident that claimed her mother and spawned Dreamweaver. On this Earth, however, there was no specialist to arrive and help Kaitlyn identify and understand her powers. Instead, the traumatized woman was believed to have lost her mind, her father despondently having her placed in a mental institution for her own good. | ||
+ | |||
+ | There, open to and experiencing the emotions of every inmate and doctor in the asylum, Kaitlyn went truly mad. She also, unfortunately for this dimension, discovered her telekinetic powers. She trained with her telekinesis, slowly, secretly nurturing it like a starving animal. And then, one day, she broke herself out. Fueled by her madness and rage, she brought the entire institution down, killing nearly everyone inside before hunting down and murdering her father. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Eventually, she was found by Lady Vengeance, whom Kaitlyn was drawn to, feeling kinship with another who felt nothing but disdain for humanity and their petty emotions. It was Vengeance who dubbed Kaitlyn "Doomweaver" - a name Kaitlyn never understood, or cared to - and somehow brought the broken girl back to something resembling sanity. Of course, this only made the girl more dangerous. She had become selfish, vain, her former party girl attitude twisted and warped by power and bitterness. She would weave doom, alright. She would weave doom for the ''world''! | ||
+ | |||
+ | Unfortunately, though she felt a connection to Vengeance, the other woman only saw her as a tool to bend to her will. In the end, this version of Kaitlyn was nothing but an attack dog on a leash, and is now being kept in stasis by a group of heroes of her world, thanks to inter-dimensional interference by the Adventurers. After an impressive fight, of course. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Appearance=== | ||
+ | [[image:doomweaver.jpg|right|100px|thumb|<font color=black>Doomweaver's haphazard "costume".</font>]] | ||
+ | Kaitlyn looks, as one would expect, remarkably similar to Kate, although a bit leaner. Her hair, like Kate's, is dyed, currently blonde with pink highlights. Having more pure power also has resulted in bright, glowing pink eyes; although easily suppressed, Kaitlyn prefers them lit up. Also unlike Kate, Kaitlyn let Lady Vengeance remove her useless legs and replace them with high-quality robotic prosthetics, just as good as the real thing, if a little unnatural-looking. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ===Powers=== | ||
+ | Doomweaver has all of Dreamweaver's powers, but somewhat reversed. This Kaitlyn never learned to control her empathic abilities to any level approaching the "prime" Kaitlyn, leaving her mind open. She does, however, have no compunctions against manipulating others' emotions, often spreading fear, despair, or lust to others around her. | ||
+ | |||
+ | On the other hand, Kaitlyn took sadistic pleasure in honing her telekinesis. She has little problem manipulating many small objects simultaneously, and carries a small arsenal of knives, darts, and syringes on her costume to telekinetically fling at enemies, often in entire swarms. She is the precision to Dreamweaver's power - not that she can't throw her mental weight around just as easily. | ||
+ | |||
+ | ==Mind Trick== | ||
+ | [[image:mindbow.png|left||100px|thumb|"Fly me away to the bright side of the moon and meet me on the other side..."]] | ||
+ | A male version of Kaitlyn from an alternate universe, Cameron May is practically a boyscout compared to the prime version. Cam's mother never died, his car accident with a PSI truck was much less damaging; as a hero, he is a far brighter star than her. Having never joined a team, Mind Trick is easily more powerful - or at least more efficient - than Dreamweaver, and his charisma makes him one of the leading heroes in his version of Millennium City. | ||
+ | |||
+ | Cameron is a natural showman, friendly and charming. While he shares Kaitlyn's flirty personality, he is also more polite and almost chaste. He's also better-educated than Kate, having at least some limited knowledge of engineering and mechanics. | ||
− | + | ===Appearance=== | |
+ | [[image:Camshrug.png|right||100px|thumb]] | ||
+ | Although not particularly tall and rather lean, Cameron is clearly fit. He has a mop of blonde hair tinged with blue highlights and a clean-shaven face. As Cameron he wears a pair of dark brown glasses, while as Mind Trick he has a mask with corrective lenses. His Mind Trick costume itself is rather flamboyant, styled after a stage magician, sporting a top hat and long coat with padded armor underneath. | ||
− | + | ===Powers=== | |
+ | Cameron is an expert with his powers, able to create force fields and manipulate emotions at will. He uses his telekinesis in much subtler ways than Dreamweaver, although he can clearly keep up with her in brute force as well. It is unknown whether he has or has ever had trouble with his empathy like Kate. | ||
− | + | [[Category:Character]] | |
+ | [[Category:Female]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Human]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Psionic]] | ||
+ | [[Category:Empath]] |
Latest revision as of 04:14, 23 August 2016
Dreamweaver | ||||||||||
Player: @heartstringsk3 | ||||||||||
"I believe you can get me through the night..." | ||||||||||
Biographical Data | ||||||||||
Real Name: | Kaitlyn Susan May | |||||||||
Known Aliases: | Dream, Dreamy | |||||||||
Gender: | Female | |||||||||
Species: | Human | |||||||||
Ethnicity: | Caucasian, 1/8th Korean | |||||||||
Place of Birth: | Michigan | |||||||||
Base of Operations: | Millennium City, MI | |||||||||
Relatives: | Nathan May - Father, Angela May - Mother (Deceased) | |||||||||
Characteristics | ||||||||||
Age: | 25 | |||||||||
Height: | 5'3" | |||||||||
Weight: | ~100 lbs. | |||||||||
Eyes: | Light Blue | |||||||||
Hair: | Blue (dyed), Blonde (natural) | |||||||||
Complexion: | Pale | |||||||||
Physical Build: | Curvy | |||||||||
Physical Features: | Light scarring over legs | |||||||||
Status | ||||||||||
Fame: |
Unknown | |||||||||
Alignment: |
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Identity: | Secret | |||||||||
Years Active: | ~4 | |||||||||
Citizenship: | US Citizen | |||||||||
Occupation: | Telemarketer | |||||||||
Education: | College Drop-out | |||||||||
Marital Status: | Single | |||||||||
Known Powers and Abilities | ||||||||||
Empathic/Telekinetic Powers | ||||||||||
Equipment and Paraphernalia | ||||||||||
Earpiece Radio, Wheelchair, Armor |
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Non-Physical Attributes | |||||||||
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Psionics |
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Telepathy |
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MaekadaBoxSlim created by @Maekada |
Contents
Personal
Background
Kaitlyn May had a fairly easy life, initially. Her parents were both very loving and reasonably wealthy, and she was well-provided for. They weren't strict or overbearing. She had friends and was fairly popular at school. She even got decently good grades! This completely average life, of course, could not stand. Kaitlyn began rebelling against her parents at roughly fifteen. It started simple - dating a boy (or girl) her parents didn't approve of, arguments, parties, pranks. Then, she learned the art of underage drinking. As soon as she could get her learner's permit, she became a total party girl, doing anything she wanted as her parents tried to stop her. She was well on her way to ruining her life by nineteen, and didn't really care. Unfortunately, what was meant to be an actually-peaceful day of driving her mother to and from a doctor's appointment turned tragic when a drunk driver crashed into the passenger side of her car. Kaitlyn's mother was killed on impact, and the force slammed the vehicle hard into a passing chemical truck belonging to Mind, Inc, the front for PSI experiments. Whatever was in that truck spilled over the wreck, dousing Kaitlyn. The girl didn't wake up for more than a week.
When Kaitlyn finally did awaken, she seemed fine, for about eight seconds. Empathic powers, granted somehow by the chemicals, had developed in her sleep, and now, conscious, unable to control her new abilities, she felt the emotions of nearly every person in the hospital - all the pain, panic, sadness, and anger. It overwhelmed her; she screamed and flailed until her throat was raw, until the doctors were forced to sedate her. After a couple repeats of this incident, the medical staff were able to keep her awake and semi-coherent in a half-drugged state, and soon figured out what must have happened. They sent for a specialist in psychic powers to work with her, but in the meantime, they broke the bad news to her. Not only was her mother dead, but her legs had been damaged by the crash, injured by debris and heavily burned when the chemicals that had doused her caught fire. They were not likely to ever work again, at least not without spending money she or her grieving father didn't have.
The specialist did his best with Kaitlyn, but the girl remained unresponsive - traumatized, in shock, and still constantly half-drugged. It took some time for her to get enough control of her abilities for them to, finally, release her from care - not because she was entirely ready, but because insurance would only last her so long. The wheelchair-bound girl that her father brought home was a shell of her former self, not quite catatonic, but much too close for comfort, overwhelmed by the constant rush of others' emotions in her head. Doctors discussed with her father the option of mental institutions, places where a super-powered girl like her wouldn't endanger others. It was this threat that spurred Kate into activity, agreeing to another tutor to train her. And so it went for the next two years. Kate remained solitary, hidden away. She lost touch with her friends, became estranged with even her father. Isolation was easier on her powers, easier on others who wouldn't know how to handle the emotional sponge. And then, one day, after endless practice, things finally clicked.
Lifting things with the power of the mind was supposed to be a basic trick, for psychics. Kate had, early on, settled on the very specific idea of lifting herself, getting out of the wheelchair, being free. She'd trained her other abilities, of course, her tutor had worked hard on helping her build rudimentary walls to keep her empathy in check and use it to her advantage - but it was the day that she held herself in midair for several hours that she decided she could still be something. Things moved fast, after that. She designed and purchased a costume from a reputable and discreet tailor, and took on the name Dreamweaver - admittedly cheesy, but the song had played during a difficult time in the hospital, and it had become an ear worm for her. She found herself the cheapest (first-level) apartment she could stand, and began defending Westside from the gangs that roamed it.
The Adventurers
She wasn't quite ready for anything, though. In one early instance of defending a woman from a group of Red Banner gangsters, she was almost overwhelmed, until the heroine Juggernette charged to her rescue. In return, Dreamweaver graciously offered to buy lunch for her savior, and the two became fast friends. Eventually, Dream met Red Spider, and was invited into the Adventurers, thanks in part to Juggernette's recommendation. Kate was ecstatic - she knew she wasn't much good alone, and the team seemed like a friendly bunch.
Dreamweaver hid her identity from her team, nervous about how they'd take her disability, even forced to hide her distinctive hair under her hood at all times. She made friends with most of the team regulars, though, and due to either trust or accident, most of them figured out her secret, which was a weight off her mind. Blue Wonder and Red Spider also, eventually, had a talk with her about her drinking - she'd never really dropped the habit, and used alcohol as a coping mechanism for both her depression and her still-barely-controlled empathy. Still, eager to turn her life around and in a good mood, she agreed to try her best to be more responsible. This responsibility continues to waver.
After a while in the group, Katie received a fancy new armored suit courtesy of teammate Lady Justice, complete with powered leg braces that allowed her to walk for the first time in years, albeit in an awkward, stiff, clumsy way. While not practical, the feature cheered Katie up quite a bit after a string of disappointing showings in the team's adventures. Katie began to doubt herself, questioning the usefulness of her admittedly-weak abilities as she went up against enemies like Etherloch and Serpent Master. It certainly didn't help that, for almost a couple weeks, she was simply unable to get any rest. She would fall asleep, but wake up tired - unbeknownst to her, under nightly assault by a psychic supervillain she had previously arrested. Thankfully this was put to a stop by Juggernette, who built a sort of psychic Faraday cage around their bedroom; Katie had moved in with the woman some time earlier, but the two kept their relationship relatively low-key. The villain's involvement in her sleep trouble was never actually discovered, and he had given up by the time she moved back into her own place after the two amicably broke up.
Due to bad luck, Katie kept missing important missions with her team as they investigated a new drug making the rounds, present only for the first encounter with the Etherloch monster, their initial meeting with the imprisoned supervillain Poison Lash, and the brief mutation of Red Spider back into her monster form. When Poison Lash, their temporary ally, went rogue and disappeared with a sample of the Etherloch creature, she jumped at the chance to investigate alone and prove herself to the others. This went about as well as one might expect. Overpowered by a pair of monstrous UNTIL soldiers-turned-experiments, Lash threw the unconscious heroine into a back-alley like a piece of trash, not even worth holding hostage, leaving her only with a mysterious needle mark on her neck. Medical scans, fortunately, turned up clean. This particularly-crushing defeat, however, pushed Katie to train hard with her telekinesis. She began showing signs of improvement, although it still wasn't enough to subdue Serpent Master when he interrupted a team lunch.
Dream again accidentally missed out on the team dealing with Poison Lash and Etherloch's combined forces; although the slimy beast was destroyed, Poison Lash escaped injured. Not wanting to miss out again, she made sure she was there to confront the scientist. Unfortunately, during the fight Lash played his hidden hand; managing to slice her with a poisoned claw, he was able to activate a virus he'd injected into her in their previous confrontation that blocked the heroine's powers. Mere minutes later, Dreamweaver fell out of the air, helpless. While teammate Xeno tried to carry Dream to safety, Hornett engaged Lash. Unwilling to abandon him despite her lack of powers, she freed herself from Xeno and ran to help... realizing suddenly that she could feel - and use - her legs. Poison Lash had, for whatever incomprehensible reason, removed her powers but healed her injuries! Hornett finished Lash off, and Dream was carried back to base. Nothing could be done to fix her powers that the team could figure out, but for the moment, Dream could walk again... on atrophied legs that constantly ached, reduced to a civilian once more.
A couple weeks later, Kate had exercised her legs back to being functional, and had been adjusting to normal life. Of course, she had to face Lash at some point. She and several teammates visited the villain, and after becoming frustrated with her taunts, he took away her legs, giving her the sadistic choice of deciding between them or her powers before leaving her with neither. Although at first unwilling to play his games, Kate eventually chose her powers, and was given three days to say goodbye to her mobility. She did her best to make the most of the time she had left.
Dreamweaver involved herself in dealing with the hacker group Incognito; specifically, she confronted one of their agents, named Cyber-Slash, by literally calling her out online for a one-on-one fight. Cyber-Slash surprised her with her skill and virtual blade, taking her out embarrassingly easily - the video of the fight was immediately posted online, humiliating the heroine for a few weeks. Still, she helped stop the group's plan to release the secret identities of all UNTIL-registered heroes, and personally befriended Slash, helping persuade her to leave the group behind and go... incognito.
The next horror for Kaitlyn came when it was discovered that she had been acting as a traitor to her team, helping VIPER to blackmail Red Spider's father, setting up plans to murder the heroine herself, and when discovered, even attempting to destroy an entire building and herself with one ultimate blast of telekinetic force. She had been brainwashed, of course, unaware that she'd even been doing these crimes while "blacked out", but the guilt after she was stopped was immense, especially once her memories of these villainous exploits were returned to her by her team. They were only trying to help, she knew that, but she would have preferred never remembering. She remained in therapy and deprogramming for several months afterward, eventually managing to mostly forgive herself, thanks to the compassion and understanding of the Adventurers.
Dream was fascinated to learn about the so-called "Bad Earth", an alternate universe where many heroes and villains had their alignments reversed. She participated in trying to bring justice to the crime-ridden Millennium City, and was disturbed to learn of her psychotic double, though the two never directly faced each other before "Doomweaver" was captured and put into stasis. She tangentially helped rescue captured teammate Roak from the evil Dread Spider's organization by meeting the villain in their respective civilian identities - although the evil version of Red Spider didn't know that world's Kate, the prime Kate of course recognized her friend's doppelganger - and allowing herself to be taken to where superpowered prisoners were held. The rest of the team broke them both out mere hours later.
Kate's next capture (at this point, something that happened so regularly that she was now determined to turn things around) came when the villainous Overthinker managed to catch her in a crowd while she was out of costume. Overthinker brainwashed the random assemblage with his hypnobot henchmen and took them to a Westside warehouse, where he began using them as guinea pigs for his mind-swapping technology. The Adventurers, unaware of her presence, arrived to stop the villain just as Kate was strapped into the machine. Red Spider's attempt to free her caught the attention of the mechanical menace, who accidentally blew up his own device, putting a stop to his scheme but leaving Kate and Cassandra - and many other previous testing pairs - swapped into each other's bodies. Inside Red Spider's body, Kate found herself uncomfortably strong, tiny, hungry from a super-accelerated metabolism, but also graceful, fit... bipedal. She began enjoying herself in the new body in between helping Cass cope with the powers and handicaps of her old one. Red even gave her permission (and a private plane) to take a vacation to Disney World! Soon after, of course, the mind-swaps were reversed.
Kate found herself helping a vigilante calling himself "Justified" when he kidnapped her by force and asked for her help. Specifically, he had a plan to break into Westside Prison and extract the VIPER agent that had been Kate's own "handler" while she was under their control, and use her empathic powers to effectively brainwash him, manipulating his emotions to create Pavlovian connections. Kate reluctantly went along with the plan, disguising herself to assault the prison. Her uncertainty in this venture only increased over the next week, as Justified continued beating and torturing the VIPER agent when she wasn't around, and her attempts to mentally manipulate him were met with strong defenses befitting a VIPER zealot. She eventually confronted Justified, letting him know she was done and was going to return him to the police; he knocked her out and escaped with his prisoner. Kate recruited Lady Justice to help locate the man, admitting to her own participation in the crime, and insisted on going alone to the warehouse lair that her teammate turned up. Justified put up a good fight, but Kate proved unwilling to take another defeat. After defeating him, she took the vigilante and the VIPER prisoner into custody. Justified activated hidden explosives, however, and with the timer ticking down, she attempted to sacrifice herself by focusing on getting the two injured parties out of the building. As she threw Justified out a window, however, the bombs went off, revealing that Justified had rigged himself rather than the building. The blast still managed to bring the warehouse crumbling down, but she was able to return the VIPER agent, at least, to the MCPD.
In between dealing with Justified, Kate also helped stop a clone of Red Spider from rampaging through the town in her monstrous, alien form. She regularly visited the clone after she was cured and put into UNTIL custody, helping her sort through her jumbled, copied memories. She testified in the ensuing court case regarding the clone's rights as a person, and was even forced to very briefly act as the clone's defense. Unfortunately, she also goofed around a little too much, earning the ire of Lady Justice, the primary defense.
Kate, who by this point had developed a crush on her teammate, worked hard to get back into her good graces. She was rewarded when Justice, in reality scientist Allison Grey, presented her with a pair of skin-tight, lightweight, skin-toned tights, made with futuristic nanites that could stimulate her damaged nerves - a far, far more evolved version of her armor's leg braces. Although it took weeks of physical therapy, Kate could - again - walk once more. Unlike the Lash incident, however, it did not perfectly restore her. Her legs were still damaged under the tights (which hid her scars, thankfully), and she still could not truly feel them. She doesn't care about these minor flaws at all, however, nor the fact that she has to use a cane to support herself. It was more than she ever thought possible! In order to pay Allison back, Kate agreed to appear with her at a small conference to demonstrate the technology. She bought a classy evening gown and everything!
The thrill of walking again could not even be curbed by a rather brutal defeat at the hands of the sharkman smuggler Undertow. The gun smuggler, interrupted during a sale by the heroine, managed to drag her under water and tear bits of her armor off, severely injuring her. Prompt response to her distress call by teammate and nurse Infinity-Zero saved her life. Dreamweaver continued operating with the damaged suit, not wanting to burden Lady Justice with the work of repairing it.
When UNTIL agent White Star asked Dreamweaver for help locating Cyber-Slash for help with a case, the heroine thought little of helping the two connect. However, it wasn't long after that that Star contacted her, requesting her to meet up with her in New York, where she revealed that Slash, feeling betrayed by the casual disclosure of her identity and location, had kidnapped Star's sister and was using her as leverage to force the agent to help her in returning to her info-leaking ways. While White Star encouraged a confrontation, Dreamweaver managed to talk Cyber-Slash down, and the hacker resolved to disappear for good, promising to at least try to keep in touch.
Shortly afterwards, Dreamweaver returned to using her original costume, keeping only her armor's belt, preferring the new "logo" on it. She was vague on why, but possible reasons included wanting to be more "independent" rather than relying on her teammate's armor, wanting to force herself to think more about protecting herself in combat, or simply because she was tired of the damaged suit's missing boot and glove.
Kate participated in investigating and taking down a superhuman fighting ring responsible for kidnapping and drugging metahumans to force them into cage matches. Attempting to employ a clever tactic of pretending to be tranquilized by a fired dart, she was almost captured for real due to an unfortunate surprise gas grenade, although she was saved by teammate Fox. She later allowed herself to be captured for real in a solo assault on the criminals' warehouse, hiding an antidote to the drugs in her cape, to help rescue other teammates. This... did not go as planned. The extra doses of antidote were found in a casual search, and she was beaten, given an extra helping of drugs, and thrown in the pens with the rest of the captured metas. When the Adventurers raided the ring, a series of events occurred that resulted in Dream, and several other prisoners, freeing themselves in a mad rage. Dream herself angrily killed one of the warring combatants before tearing a hole in the building and escaping into the night. By the time the drugs wore off in the morning, she had no memory of what occurred other than a vague sense of unease.
Personality
Katie is outwardly downright bubbly on her own, when unaffected by others' emotions, with an easygoing and playful attitude. She's a shameless flirt with both men and women, perfectly willing to entertain either. She is self-conscious about her disability, however; since the accident, she's been much more reserved, embarrassed by her secret even when revealing it to those she trusts; even then, she's still self-conscious of the scars and burns coating her legs, faded as they are. She doesn't want to be treated differently just because she has to sit in a wheelchair when in casual clothes - but on the other hand, she'll shamelessly and happily take advantage of her handicap when given the chance. She tends to drink heavily, and thanks to her frame doesn't have a very high tolerance for it, but at least she's a happy drunk.
As far as her role as a superheroine goes, Katie still loves the sights she gets to see, the amazing things she often has to fight. She's become a bit savvy to the tropes of her career, and although it takes a lot for her to take a situation deadly serious and cut out the snark, she is all too willing to leap between an enemy and a friend in their defense, to face danger head-on to protect others with surprisingly little regard for herself - a possible after-effect of her guilt. She has a tendency to dwell on the fact that she brings nothing else to the table besides her powers; she isn't a scientist, an engineer, a doctor, a detective, or anything so helpful outside of combat. At best she's something of a counselor, always willing to listen.
Although still haunted by her past, Kate is genuinely pretty happy with her current life between bouts of sudden depression. She can often be found in Club Caprice, absorbing the ambient good feelings - and while she also used to take advantage of the bar to drink herself into a daze, she only occasionally falls into old habits now. Her unfulfilling job and continuing failure of a love life get to her at times, and over time she has become more introverted. Her lack of self-confidence, once manifesting as a sacrificial nature, now leads to her attempting to "prove herself" by being dead-serious at times, leading her towards over-aggression. She has come dangerously close in recent months of casually killing opponents, tired of holding back.
Appearance
Kate is a very short girl, with pale skin, and very little muscle to her. She has sky-blue eyes that betray a bit of Asian ancestry, and though her hair is naturally a lemony blonde, she almost always has it dyed a variety of colors, usually blue, orange, or pink. Her wheelchair is a fairly simple design, made for comfort. She tends towards long skirts, both for their ease in putting on, and for hiding her legs, which are covered in the faded remnants of burns and scars from her accident. She wears a pair of dark chestnut-colored glasses.
As Dreamweaver, her body is covered from the neck down in a shiny, navy blue-and-white suit of nanotech armor, no thicker than a pair of tights but much tougher. Her legs are further encased in a bulky exo-frame connected to Kate's mind, allowing her to lift and bend her legs artificially to provide awkward movement. Kate's favorite part of the suit is her cloak, white with an interior pink web pattern, the one article she re-used from her previous cloth outfit. This cloak is chemically-treated to be fireproof and durable. She often lets it fold around her front, hiding her body from view, or if she's in a showy mood, billowing it out impressively behind her, almost like wings.
More recently, Kate has had her hair cut shorter and reverted to her natural color with blue highlights in an attempt to look more mature. Her wheelchair has been replaced with a simple cane, and she relishes in being able to wear pants and shorts again easily, her nanite tights hiding her scars. Her costume is once again the cloth pink and white suit, with a line of exposed flesh right down her middle, from neck to waist.
Powers
Empathy
Although not powerful enough to sense actual, coherent thoughts, or "read minds", Katie can and will sense people's emotional states - whether she wants to or not. She has poor control over her powers, usually unable to shut out others, and her mood is often and easily affected by the general emotional "feel" of her immediate surroundings. As previously mentioned, a place like Club Caprice can brighten her outlook, while the slums of Westside bring her down to despair. She is getting better at keeping herself level, however. Along with this sense, she is also able to actually affect the emotions of others - mostly Kate restricts herself to soothing people who are hurt or panicking, but she is capable of causing fright, mental pain, or even drowsiness, for offensive purposes. A common trick of hers has been to outright put enemies to sleep. She can even use her powers to affect the dreams someone has, able to cause nightmares or something more pleasant.
Since losing and regaining her powers, Kate is much better with curbing her empathic sense, able to block others' emotions almost all the time. As a result, she rarely uses these powers anymore.
Telekinesis
Kate is actually a fairly powerful telekinetic, but had spent so much of her training time focused on lifting herself that it didn't originally show very well. Still, the fact that she can keep herself aloft through relatively high amounts of pain, exhaustion, or drunkenness is rather impressive. She no longer needs to concentrate to keep herself in the air, it's as easy as a normal person would find standing. She can also clumsily manipulate objects or create shimmering "force fields" around herself or others, for defense or containment.
After more intensive practice, Kate has become far stronger in this area, to the point that it's become her primary offense. Mostly she relies on brute force; slamming, smashing, flinging, and punching with invisible hands.
Weaknesses
Paraplegic: Most obvious among Dreamweaver's weaknesses is the loss of the use of her legs - specifically, from about the hip socket down. If her powers are suppressed, or she can't gather the energy or concentration to lift herself, she is basically immobile. With her new armor, the mechanized legs afforded only a stiff brisk walk at best, and anything requiring actual agility was out of the question. Her new nanite tights allow her to walk much more naturally, although she still requires a cane for stability.
Overworked Mind: Using her powers to do too much too quickly - whether concentrating on using her telekinesis on many things, or to do one very big thing - results in a growing headache for Kate. Further overuse of her abilities leads to nosebleeds and, if still not given a chance to rest, possibly a brain aneurysm.
Open Mind: As a side affect of her powers, Kate will sometimes have her very personality affected by someone she is focusing on, temporarily "absorbing" someone else's quirks or mood; even someone's particular tastes, such as a fondness for a certain food or drink. This can, of course, be dangerous, though not to the other person - she's not stealing anything from them. This rarely happens in combat, since Kate is very much trying not to connect to the bad guys. This also means that unlike many psychics, her mental defenses are average at best.
Noncombatant: Katie is physically weak and has no combat experience; against enemies with mental defenses or counters to her telekinesis, she has little to defend herself with.
Can't See Without Her Glasses: Kate is nearsighted, her vision blurry without corrective lenses - a pair of glasses in her usual life, and lenses built into the domino mask of her costume as Dreamweaver.
Single-target Specialty: While Kate rarely suffers from problems concentrating anymore, she still finds it difficult to focus her powers on more than one thing at a time, besides keeping herself airborne and shielded. This allows enemies to flank or distract her, forcing her to constantly switch targets in combat.
Dreamweaver (alternates)
Doomweaver
On another Earth, Kaitlyn May had a very similar background as the prime version, up to and including the fateful car accident that claimed her mother and spawned Dreamweaver. On this Earth, however, there was no specialist to arrive and help Kaitlyn identify and understand her powers. Instead, the traumatized woman was believed to have lost her mind, her father despondently having her placed in a mental institution for her own good.
There, open to and experiencing the emotions of every inmate and doctor in the asylum, Kaitlyn went truly mad. She also, unfortunately for this dimension, discovered her telekinetic powers. She trained with her telekinesis, slowly, secretly nurturing it like a starving animal. And then, one day, she broke herself out. Fueled by her madness and rage, she brought the entire institution down, killing nearly everyone inside before hunting down and murdering her father.
Eventually, she was found by Lady Vengeance, whom Kaitlyn was drawn to, feeling kinship with another who felt nothing but disdain for humanity and their petty emotions. It was Vengeance who dubbed Kaitlyn "Doomweaver" - a name Kaitlyn never understood, or cared to - and somehow brought the broken girl back to something resembling sanity. Of course, this only made the girl more dangerous. She had become selfish, vain, her former party girl attitude twisted and warped by power and bitterness. She would weave doom, alright. She would weave doom for the world!
Unfortunately, though she felt a connection to Vengeance, the other woman only saw her as a tool to bend to her will. In the end, this version of Kaitlyn was nothing but an attack dog on a leash, and is now being kept in stasis by a group of heroes of her world, thanks to inter-dimensional interference by the Adventurers. After an impressive fight, of course.
Appearance
Kaitlyn looks, as one would expect, remarkably similar to Kate, although a bit leaner. Her hair, like Kate's, is dyed, currently blonde with pink highlights. Having more pure power also has resulted in bright, glowing pink eyes; although easily suppressed, Kaitlyn prefers them lit up. Also unlike Kate, Kaitlyn let Lady Vengeance remove her useless legs and replace them with high-quality robotic prosthetics, just as good as the real thing, if a little unnatural-looking.
Powers
Doomweaver has all of Dreamweaver's powers, but somewhat reversed. This Kaitlyn never learned to control her empathic abilities to any level approaching the "prime" Kaitlyn, leaving her mind open. She does, however, have no compunctions against manipulating others' emotions, often spreading fear, despair, or lust to others around her.
On the other hand, Kaitlyn took sadistic pleasure in honing her telekinesis. She has little problem manipulating many small objects simultaneously, and carries a small arsenal of knives, darts, and syringes on her costume to telekinetically fling at enemies, often in entire swarms. She is the precision to Dreamweaver's power - not that she can't throw her mental weight around just as easily.
Mind Trick
A male version of Kaitlyn from an alternate universe, Cameron May is practically a boyscout compared to the prime version. Cam's mother never died, his car accident with a PSI truck was much less damaging; as a hero, he is a far brighter star than her. Having never joined a team, Mind Trick is easily more powerful - or at least more efficient - than Dreamweaver, and his charisma makes him one of the leading heroes in his version of Millennium City.
Cameron is a natural showman, friendly and charming. While he shares Kaitlyn's flirty personality, he is also more polite and almost chaste. He's also better-educated than Kate, having at least some limited knowledge of engineering and mechanics.
Appearance
Although not particularly tall and rather lean, Cameron is clearly fit. He has a mop of blonde hair tinged with blue highlights and a clean-shaven face. As Cameron he wears a pair of dark brown glasses, while as Mind Trick he has a mask with corrective lenses. His Mind Trick costume itself is rather flamboyant, styled after a stage magician, sporting a top hat and long coat with padded armor underneath.
Powers
Cameron is an expert with his powers, able to create force fields and manipulate emotions at will. He uses his telekinesis in much subtler ways than Dreamweaver, although he can clearly keep up with her in brute force as well. It is unknown whether he has or has ever had trouble with his empathy like Kate.