Writer's Notes: This is a character created from a crossover game with two of the Palladium universes--Nightbane and Superheros. Wacky, huh? Anyway, this character concept is based on the premise of superheros after Dark Day.
I’d never thought of myself as a superhero type. I mean, sure--I wanted to help people--that’s why I went into a medical program. But truth, justice, and the American Way? Puhleeze.
I grew up pretty normal, too. My parents were divorced when I was six, but that was no great tragedy--I guess they just couldn’t handle the cultural barriers between my American mother and Chinese father. I and my sister stayed with my mother, who to give her credit, tried hard to educate us about our "Chinese heritage". We just weren’t interested--after all, who cares about ancient calligraphy when video games, TV, and sleepovers are much more fun and available? So we grew up normal--or as normal as American teenagers can get, which isn’t very. We’d ooh and aah if we happened to catch a glimpse of a superhero flying or driving by on his way to save the world--especially if he had a cute butt under those tights. Otherwise, it didn’t seem to affect us much.
I survived high school with only minor scarring, and went into the pre-med program at UCLA. It was tough, but I enjoyed what I was studying most of the time, and endured the other classes that I had to take. I had just completed my first year at college, when the world changed, and me along with it.
Dark Day fell--and despite the efforts of the military, the police, and all the others who fought against it--it didn’t go away. It hung like a dark cloud over all our lives, and changed them forever.
I managed to go home through the following chaos; only to find my mother, disemboweled--her blood and viscera splattered over the old mahogany desk that she had treasured so much. I never found out who or what had done it--and with the police gone and the government in pieces, there was no one to turn to. My sister, Kari, hadn’t been home, thank God. She never had to see it. I tried to protect her, tried to keep her safe from the monsters that seemed to be springing up everywhere--for crying out loud, I had to use a bat to bash in the head of a monster/demon/thing that had taken up residence under her bed! It was crazy. We tried crosses over the doors, the local priest was making regular rounds of the neighborhood to set up wards and blessings. . .people tried anything just to try and stay safe--things they would have sneered at as superstition just a few years before. No matter what we did, it never seemed to be enough. The monsters became bigger, meaner--smarter. I worried myself into a frenzy over my sister’s safety, and made her take so many precautions against the supernaturals that she began calling me her sheepdog, and accused me of trying to keep her a baby.
You want to know the ironic part? It didn’t work. Kari had her throat ripped out by her boyfriend--a boy I thought perfectly nice and safe, a boy I had known for a long time before Dark Day. A boy who turned out to be a vampire. My sister bled to death outside one of the few stages left, where they had gone to see a band. Her corpse was neatly arranged where someone could find it, and Tom, her boyfriend, wasn’t seen since. I’ve seen all the vampire movies and read all the books--I’ve heard that they can’t control what they do after they become vampires. I didn’t care. Tom wasn’t the one who had to put my sister in a coffin, and bury her in a muddy grave next to my mother.
I held a vigil for the next three nights, with the priest--in order to try and prevent her from rising as one of the undead. Then I went back to the remains of the university’s libraries, alone.
I no longer wanted to be a doctor. What was the use of trying to save lives when the supernatural predators stalking every street corner and dark shadow would just create more victims? I devoted myself to new studies--the study of fragmented lore, and dark knowledge. I studied the knowledge of the weaknesses of demons, vampires, of anything that comes from the shadows. The ways to ward, the ways to protect oneself and others from them--the things that hurt them. I pursued every superstition, every bit of folklore I could. When I exhausted the resources left to me in the U.S., I sold everything I had to make the risky trip to Korea, to learn the Asian knowledge that I had always scorned before. I researched Shinto purification rituals, tantric Buddhist exorcisms, Chinese fairy-tales, folklore, and alchemy. After two years of searching, I was no closer to finding my answers than I had been when my sister had died.
Close to the end of my studies in Korea, I was asked to meet with one of my acquaintances, an elderly Chinese scholar who had helped me since my first days in Korea. I went to her small office at the regular time, expecting nothing more than another discussion of where my research should go next. Instead, I found her elderly form asleep in her office chair, gently snoring, and another guest sitting on her desk--a white fox, with nine tails and bright eyes that seemed to pin me where I stood. I stood, stunned--I had certainly not expected to find a figure from Chinese mythology standing in my professor’s office! The fox stood, and stretched. . .and shimmered into the form of a archaic, beautiful Chinese lady. She moved over gracefully, in shimmering court silks, white face paint, and long, jade fingernail guards. Her voice was low--but strong.
"Do you know who I am?" I nodded my head dumbly, and had to clear my throat to reply.
"Aaah...Bai Mianxi. The White Lady. The Jade Fox."
She nods graciously. "Good. It will save us the time it would take for proper introductions. Do you know why I am here?" I could only shake my head, almost expecting to hear my brains rattling like seeds in a dried gourd.
"I am not a great power in the Celestial Court. There are many gods greater than I. My role has always been a small one--the bringer of good fortune and rice, the balancer of right and wrong. Sometimes I aid. Sometimes I harm. It is all part of the greater circle of things." She folds her hands into her sleeves. "But the positions and balances have been been harmed--almost beyond repair. The yomi, those of the Shadow courts and the Hells of the Yama Kings--they have overstepped their bounds, and taken what was never intended to be theirs. They need to be put back into their place." She glides forward, and tilts my chin up with one delicate hand, her nail guards chill against my cheek.
"The greater powers are also fighting to restore things. But sometimes all that is needed to balance the scales is the smallest of pebbles." She arches an elegant eyebrow enquiringly. "You have the will to fight, and the intelligence to know that you must know your enemy in order to fight it. I cannot give you god-like powers--but I can make you greater than you are. So. On the Great Scales, will you be my pebble? "
It was hard to think in the presence of so much unearthly radiance. In that moment, however, my head no longer ruled. Instead, my heart made the decision--using the memories of my dead family as a spur to my tongue.
"Yes."
The lady bowed her head incrementally, and I automatically bowed low in return. As I straightened, I was once again alone, with my gently snoring friend.
A week passed without incident. I continued on my normal schedule, and had begun to discount the encounter as a hallucination, brought on by too little sleep and too much study. Once again, though, it seems that that also was planned for by the White Lady. I was translating fragments of an ancient Tibetan text in a small side-street noodle shop, when I heard screaming coming from the street. As I looked out the window next to my table, I saw two monsters in the street--what Westerners colloquially call goblin spiders. They had already decapitated and eaten one young street punk, and were busy pulling down another victim, a young businessman. I looked away, sickened by the carnage--only to meet the challenging gaze of an elegant, white-haired woman in a designer dress, sitting in the next booth. She said nothing--but there was a sudden, familiar voice in my mind.
"Well, are you going to let them get away with it?"
After an uncertain pause, my answer was firm.
"No."
There was an immediate flash of light, surrounding and filling me, as if in response. I felt energies I could not name surging through me, changing me--and whispering to me of newfound power. I dove out of the light with new strength, new knowledge. I dove through the window, barely noticing as I shattered the glass, and tackled one of the spiders. Well, to make a long story short, I fought and killed the goblin spiders, using my new powers instinctively to best effect. Afterwards, back in my apartment alone, I find that the power had not left me untouched--the mirror showed me a shock of shining white in the normal black of my hair; what I could only assume is a visual reminder of the White Lady’s claim upon me.
Since then, I have returned to the U.S.. Part of me still hopes to find the vampire that killed my sister. But the greater part of my purpose is the same as what the White Lady gave me--to restore the balance, and push back the dark. At least now I have a fighting chance--and perhaps, just perhaps, the power to have my revenge on the monsters that took the world away from the rest of us.