Cora "Surge" Lee

Cora "Surge" Lee

Cora is a 29 year old sanctioned superhero with the ability to control electricity. She goes by the alias "Surge".

Cora's powers manifested later in life than usual, in a private setting with no casualties. The situation was so unusual, and her powers were so strong, that the SRB all but demanded that she immediately begin training to control them in a supervised setting. To the rest of the world - Cora's friends, co-workers, and brothers - this is when Cora began her "clerical job" for the SSD. Only she and her parents know about her powers and her training to become not only a sanctioned super, but also to join the ranks of the SSD as a super. Cora has spent the better part of the last decade training to be able to control her powers. She tries to hide it, but she's terrified that she'll hurt someone or worse while in the field. She takes comfort in the fact that she hasn't "gone live" in the field yet, but is getting stressed at the hints her mentor keeps dropping that this will change soon.

Cora has trouble picking up on subtle social cues. She avoids eye contact when overwhelmed and, when she's especially tired, she has trouble finding her words when speaking, which sometimes makes her sound confused. She has a spinning ring that lets her stim subtly in public, but also has a super soft plushie on her key ring - it smells like lavender and cedar and vanilla, and she'll breathe in the smell when she's overwhelmed, if she's able to.

Julia Santos, known as "Striker" in the field, is Cora's mentor and instructor. While not neurodivergent herself, two of her children are, and the combination of patience and firmness she shows with Cora have been instrumental to her progress in training. Julia's opinion is that Cora needs to get out in the field, worrying that the younger woman will never choose to take on live missions if left to her own devices.

Cora uses a combination of alarms, colors, and the Eisenhower matrix to keep herself on schedule and avoid overwhelm. Red tasks are important and urgent. Yellow tasks are urgent, but not important. Green tasks are important but not urgent. Blue tasks are neither important nor urgent. She sometimes accidentally uses this coloring system in conversations with people outside of her small social circle and gets embarrassed when she does.

Cora loses her appetite when extremely tired or stressed. She keeps a large number of veggie flavored instant noodle cups for these occasions, as it's almost the only thing she can force herself to eat. The only person who can get her to eat anything else when she's like this is Marek. The combination of his cooking skills and his gentle but firm insistence keep her eating "real" foods when she otherwise couldn't stand the thought. She also can't stand mushy foods and will gag if she eats something too mushy by accident. Aside from that, she likes spicy food and almost anything Piña colada flavored.

She lives with a roommate, a colleague and fellow SSD trainee from work named Maria who is her closest female friend. The common areas of the apartment they share are mismatched and eclectic, but functional and comfortable. In Cora's room, the walls are covered in posters of her favorite video games and anime shows. Aside from these decorations, Cora's room is a cluttered mess that only she, Marek, and Jai can decipher. The fact that her bed is always swamped in soft blankets doesn't help the situation, but it is large enough for her and Marek to fall asleep cuddling on when he stays over, so she refuses to ever properly clean up her "nest".

The apartment is located in a nice neighborhood, within walking distance of SSD headquarters. It's also only about a 10-minute drive from Marek's place, although Cora doesn't have a car of her own. Maria isn't fond of Cora's clutter, and Cora doesn't like it when Maria brings romantic partners into their home, but they manage to work things out. Maria really doesn't like Marek, either, often referring to him as "that creep" if he's not present. She realizes how naive Cora is about some things and, based on her own life experiences, worries that Marek is either leading Cora on or setting her up to take advantage of her. Maria has a bit of a crush on Jai, but Cora hasn't picked up on that yet. Maria's hometown is in west Texas, about a 4 hour drive away, so she goes to visit and catch up with her family every few months or so.

Cora has a plant she struggles to remember to water, and she loves playing Minecraft and Katamari Damacy to relax and reset her mental calm. She doesn't have a life goal outside of mastering her powers. She's been terrified of them for so long that she feels guilty for working on other projects when she could be improving her control. She is a big Tolkien fan, though, and has very strong opinions about The Lord of the Rings movies (which were epic) and The Hobbit movies (the later 2 of the 3 were a crime against Tolkien).

Cora has never put words to it, but she naturally has strong submissive tendencies. She's naturally inclined to show obedience to those in authority and she feels more comfortable following someone else's directions than she does making her own decisions. She feels self-conscious about these aspects of herself, and she sometimes overcompensates as Surge to try to hide them. The only person she allows to see really this side of herself is Marek, although Jai has caught glimpses of it. She likes how Marek takes care of her when she's overwhelmed and will often, but not always, instinctively obey when he uses his deeper voice to tell her to do something.

Marek Zima and Jai Leo are Cora's very best friends. She met them at the beginning of her freshman year of high school, brand new not just to the school, but also to San Padua and Texas, itself.

Her relationship with Jai, who's a year older, is very sibling-like: they'll prank each other, take each other's things without asking, and generally be as annoying as possible to each other, but they'll also come to each other's defense in a heartbeat. Their favorite bonding activities are playing Minecraft on their shared server and picking on Marek.

Her relationship with Marek is more complicated. They share a unique dynamic - their friendship isn't romantic or sexual, but platonic in an intense, intimate way that confuses anyone who doesn't know them well. It also includes dominant/submissive aspects that sometimes lean toward codependency. Cora's submissive tendencies come out when she's stressed and tired, so she'll frequently turn to Marek, asking him to decide things for her when she's overwhelmed and, although she'll often act snarky and argue with him, she'll nearly always follow his instructions and directions, especially if he uses the lower, rougher registers of his voice that come out naturally when he's acting dominant. Both of them feel better when Marek has a chance to cook for Cora and make sure she's taking care of herself, and they're both more than used to Cora ignoring his personal space.

Jai doesn't seem bothered by the unusual dynamic between Cora and Marek, and has reassured Cora more than once (usually after Maria's been more vocal about Marek's "bad influence") that there's no single, proper way to be friends with another person and that as long as everyone happy and healthy, that what she and Marek share is fine.

Cora's parents live in the suburbs, about 20 minutes away. Her father was a linguist for the military, but is retired now, and her mother volunteers at the local library. Her youngest brother is getting close to finishing college, but her middle brother joined the military and is stationed in Korea at the moment. Her family has accepted Mark and Jai as if they were their own, and Cora's parents will often ask how their "older sons" are doing. Cora's mom does still gently ask about a marriage between her and Marek sometimes, not really understanding their dynamic, but is never upset (only confused), when the answer is no. Cora loves both Marek's and Jai's families and is as comfortable with them as she is at her own parents' house.

Cora would like to tell Marek and Jai about her powers, and sometimes she's hit with a powerful urge to confess all her secrets, but her fear of putting them and their families at risk, of criminals targeting her favorite people just because she was selfish won't allow her to do that. No matter how badly she wants to.

Physical Description:

Hair: auburn, shoulder length, mostly straight (in a "can't do anything with it" way, rather than a pretty, smooth and sleek way)

Face: soft, friendly, with delicate features. Her eyes are green and expressive

Complexion: fair skin, with lots of freckles, burns easily

Build: slender, average build, in better physical shape than you'd expect for a clerical worker.

Height: around 5'4" (162 cm).

Expression: very expressive face and body language, shows her emotions easily. Has a slightly worried or concentrating look, especially when she's tired or stressed.

Overall appearance: an approachable, girl-next-door look. Her appearance might be somewhat at odds with her superhero alter ego, Surge, making it easier for her to keep her identity secret.

Style: In her civilian life, Cora dresses in comfortable, practical clothing, usually a size or two too big. She'll often steal shirts or hoodies from Marek, and sometimes from Jai, too. As Surge, she wears a dark suit, with bright blue accents. It covers most of her face, but leaves her eyes visible.

Update 1

So...

Yesterday and today have been days.

But I have murdered exactly zero (0) humans and all the humans I love have survived whole and (mostly) intact, so I think I deserve at least one gold star, please and thank.

Remember how I work part time? Have I mentioned that? Bc my part time job is at a preschool. I love children. I've always loved children, there is a joy and a level of patience I only ever achieve when interacting with very young humans. But these little hooligans at this particular preschool... They are feral, they make rabid goblins look civilized. Don't get me wrong, I love these obnoxious gremlins - I do. But when nap time comes around and their tiny candy-asses want to play "make screechy sounds as soon as Miss J is out of arms reach bc she thought you were finally asleep you lying liar".... No. No, that is not the game we play. That is never the game Miss J wants to play at nap time. Do you know what Miss J's favorite game to play at nap time is? "STFU and go tf to sleep." That is, in fact, the best game ever to play and I will die on this hill.

So, what do we do when the gremlins refuse to KO and we can't be paid to work on our story via phone? Yup, we take characters from future stories that we haven't started yet and mash them together in our heads to see what happens!

So now I don't know if my shameless self insert, hot mess, electric superhero female lead should stay with the heart of gold charming vigilante/villain who I originally designed for her, so that I can have my unnecessarily complex best friends to lovers, and simultaneously enemies to lovers with a sexy amount of codependency serial story...

OR!!!

If I should take that same female lead and let my shameless "Riddick" insert become obsessive/possessive of her, instead... (Of course keeping everything else the same and only changing the dynamic between her and the heart of gold charming vigilante/villain so that they're not secretly pinning for each other, they're only platonically codependent now).

And none of these characters are actually in Mia's Echo ... I mean, I might mention them in later chapters, but they're not in the story I'm actively trying to write!

... When too many fictional boyfriends start living rent free in your head all at once, am I right?

But, also, no tiny humans were sacrificed to the old gods yesterday or today, so why fix it if it's not broken?

you think writing is mostly making up rich worlds and complex characters and devising their interactions, but really it's mostly double-checking the meanings of incredibly basic words just in case you have been using them wrong your entire life. and that's ok

I don't wanna...

I don't wanna go to work. I get about 2 hours a day, Mon - Fri, to be my own human being, and it's not enough. I don't want to go to work. I want to stay home and write all day, please and thank you.

It's not too pathetic to pretend your character is coaxing you into doing what you need to, is it? Asking for a friend

no, i dont lose hyperfixations. theyre just moved to a different, slightly less used, shelf in my brain.

San Padua's Underworld

Overview

The criminal underworld of San Padua is a shadowy and intricate network where the rules of the surface world don't apply. Here, power and influence are the ultimate currencies, and the existence of superpowers adds an unpredictable element to the already volatile mix.

Key Factions

The Syndicate: 

A powerful and organized crime group that operates with military precision. They control large portions of the city's illegal activities, including arms trafficking, drug smuggling, and high-profile heists.

Leader: Victor "The Collector" Moreno, a ruthless tactician with the power to manipulate shadows, making him a master of stealth and assassination.

Operations: Engage in high-stakes heists, arms trafficking, and exert control over various criminal enterprises.

Strengths: Highly organized with a strict hierarchy and a focus on strategic, large-scale operations.

The Obsidian Circle: 

An elite group of mercenaries for hire, known for their discretion and deadly efficiency. They employ both sanctioned and non-sanctioned supers.

Leader: Zara "The Wraith" Thorne, who can phase through solid objects and become intangible, making her almost impossible to capture.

Services: Provide elite mercenaries for covert missions, often operating in legal gray areas.

Tactics: Known for their precision and ability to complete missions without leaving traces.

The Hive: 

A network of information brokers and hackers who deal in secrets. They have eyes and ears everywhere, making them invaluable for espionage and blackmail.

Leader: Cassandra "Queen Bee" Lin, who possesses telepathic abilities, allowing her to gather and disseminate information effortlessly.

Capabilities: Specialize in cyber espionage, information brokering, and digital sabotage.

Network: Extensive web of informants and hackers, capable of infiltrating nearly any system.

The Underground Market: 

A black market that deals in illegal goods, from superpower-enhancing drugs to forbidden technologies and rare artifacts.

Leader: Elias "The Broker" Castillo, a former sanctioned super with the power to enhance or suppress other supers' abilities temporarily.

Trade: Deals in superpower-enhancing drugs, forbidden technologies, and other contraband.

Influence: Acts as a central hub for the city's black market, with connections to various criminal factions.

The Vanguard: 

A rebellious faction of non-sanctioned supers fighting against government control and for the rights of supers to live freely.

Leader: Darius Blake, who can generate energy blasts and has a charismatic presence that inspires loyalty among his followers.

Mission: Fight against government oppression and advocate for super rights and freedoms.

Methods: Employ guerrilla tactics, protests, and direct actions to challenge the status quo.

Key Locations

The Sanctuary: 

A luxurious underground club that serves as neutral ground for all factions. Here, deals are brokered, alliances are formed, and a strict code of conduct is maintained.

Owner: Madeline "Maddie" Rivers, a former syndicate member with the power of precognition, making her an exceptional arbitrator and negotiator.

Rules of Engagement: Strictly neutral ground where any violence is met with severe consequences, enforced by Maddie's powerful enforcers.

Main Hall: A lavish space where supers from all factions can mingle under strict neutrality rules.

Private Rooms: Secluded areas for discreet negotiations and secret meetings, monitored to ensure no violence occurs.

VIP Lounge: Reserved for high-profile guests and leaders of the underworld factions.

The Labyrinth: 

A maze-like section of the old sewers where the Hive operates. It's filled with high-tech surveillance equipment and hidden entrances, making it nearly impossible to infiltrate without inside help.

Security Measures: Equipped with traps, surveillance devices, and safe rooms, making it a fortress for the Hive.

Meeting Halls: Secret rooms used for clandestine meetings and negotiations among information brokers.

The Boneyard: 

An abandoned industrial complex in the Industrial Zone used by the Syndicate for covert meetings, weapon storage, and as a training ground for their operatives.

Activities: Used for training new recruits, storing illicit goods, and planning operations.

Defenses: Fortified with guards and advanced security systems to prevent infiltration.

The Vault: 

The Obsidian Circle's secure headquarters, hidden beneath a seemingly innocuous warehouse. It's equipped with cutting-edge technology and fortified to withstand even the most powerful attacks.

Design: Hidden beneath an innocuous facade, the Vault is a high-tech facility with secure rooms and training areas.

Protocol: Only accessible to trusted members, with biometric security measures ensuring no unauthorized entry.

Freedom Square: 

A hidden enclave within the Old Quarter where the Vanguard meets. It's protected by a network of loyal civilians and non-sanctioned supers who share their ideals.

Protection: Guarded by a network of loyalists and non-sanctioned supers, making it a safe haven for the Vanguard.

Community Hub: A place where civilians and supers alike come together to support the Vanguard’s cause.

Economy and Operations

Black Market Deals: 

The underground market is bustling with transactions involving rare and illegal items, from superpower-enhancing drugs to exotic weapons and stolen technology.

Supply Chains: Managed by the Underground Market, ensuring a steady flow of illegal goods and services.

Clientele: Includes both criminal factions and desperate civilians seeking superpower enhancements or forbidden tech.

Information Trade: 

The Hive's information brokers sell secrets to the highest bidder, making them a crucial resource for anyone seeking an edge in the underworld.

Market Value: Secrets are highly valuable, and the Hive capitalizes on this by selling critical information to the highest bidder.

Intelligence Gathering: Constantly expanding their network of spies and informants to stay ahead of competitors.

Mercenary Contracts: 

The Obsidian Circle takes on high-risk assignments, from assassinations to corporate espionage, for substantial fees.

Scope: Ranges from high-profile assassinations to corporate espionage, with a reputation for success and discretion.

Payment: Often involves substantial fees, rare items, or favors from powerful individuals.

Revolutionary Activities: 

The Vanguard orchestrates protests, sabotage, and guerrilla warfare against government facilities and sanctioned supers to promote their cause.

Tactics: Include sabotage of government facilities, organizing protests, and direct confrontations with sanctioned supers.

Support Network: Relies on sympathetic civilians and non-sanctioned supers for resources and shelter.

Code and Ethics

The Code: 

An unspoken set of rules governs the underworld. Key tenets include respect for neutral ground (like the Sanctuary), honoring contracts, and avenging betrayal.

The Currency of Favor: 

Trust and reputation are vital. A favor owed or granted can be more valuable than money, and breaking one's word can lead to severe consequences.

Character Dynamics

Mayor Evelyn Cortez and Director Marcus Kane: 

These two powerful figures share a tense alliance, each with their own vision for the city's future. Cortez’s charisma and public-facing role often clash with Kane’s rigid enforcement tactics.

Detective Lila Santos and The Vanguard: 

Santos finds herself conflicted as she empathizes with some of the Vanguard’s ideals despite her duty to uphold the law. Her interactions with Darius Blake could add layers of personal and professional conflict.

Madeline "Maddie" Rivers and Victor "The Collector" Moreno: 

Their shared past within the Syndicate complicates their present. Maddie’s neutrality in The Sanctuary is constantly tested by The Collector’s underhanded tactics and their unresolved history.

Zara "The Wraith" Thorne and Cassandra "Queen Bee" Lin: 

These two leaders, despite their different methods, form an unlikely partnership to achieve a common goal. Their relationship can evolve from mutual distrust to a powerful alliance, blending Thorne’s physical prowess with Lin’s mental acuity.