| Description
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Thea would just be a long, tall blonde, easy on the eyes with legs that go all the way up - if not for the whole host of insectoid features immediately marking her as a mutant.
Everywhere, he skin is covered in a patchwork of iridescent, silvery chitinous armor covering most unjointed patches of skin. In places where it meets flesh, it looks to be growing out of her, much like fingernails. From far away it sort of looks like body armor, but up close, it's obviously a part of her.
Her long sandy blonde hair flows around two slightly fuzzy, black antennae growing out of the top of her head. They're about half a foot long, and twitch from time to time. Her eyes are still orbs in sockets, but their surface is flat black, and multi-faceted. It's hard to tell exactly where they're looking as they swivel about.
She also has a long, double pair of translucent insect wings. An entomology buff might note their similarity to termite wings, being twice the length of her body. They drape on the ground behind her when she walks.
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| Introduction
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xxxxx Thea /could/ have grown up to be a really sweet person. It's actually still at the core of her, but the amount of emotional and psychological damage she experienced from her early-onset mutations has left her broken. She is constantly doing the wrong thing, but for the right reasons. She's also not above a bit of revenge, and she holds grudges like nobody's business. This is probably best exhibited by her sinking of Grover's Mill. She sunk a /town/ because of how they treated her, BUT she did it at night, and spared the hospital and homes.
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| History
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xxxxx Thea grew up being taunted mercilessly by the other children (and some adults) in Grover's Mill. She was an early bloomer, and started out with really bad skin, red and flaky for almost a year before much of it sloughed away to reveal the chitin growing underneath. That was enough for her parents to homeschool her, but then came the antennae, and the eyes, her long fingers, and eventually her wings as well, and she hardly ever went out. Oddly enough, her parents were actually as supportive as they could be, and still loved their daughter very much. But Thea couldn't hear them over the jeers of the rest of the town. Their house was regularly egged and TP'd. There was an instance of profane spray painting as well, which the local sheriff essentially just shrugged at. 'What can ya do?'
xxxxxThea quickly retreated to almost never leaving the house, and spending a great deal of time out in their high-fenced backyard. It wasn't long before she started experimenting with the bugs out there, and pretty soon had cat-sized pill bugs for pets. Her first efforts at organized tunneling were sloppy, and her parents put a stop to it, so she learned to hide it better. She hung a poster in their basement, and dug a hole through the wall behind it to get started. Within a year, she had tunnels big enough to walk in, through most of her neighborhood, and she started going out at night.
xxxxxAt first, the tunneling was her way of getting around at night, and visiting the sleepy town while everyone else was in their beds, but that sentiment turned sour by the time she became an adult. She resented having to live underground, even if it was partially self-imposed, and eventually her resentment turned to plans for revenge. She spent years muttering and directing her insects which only possessed animal intelligence, until finally, later in life, she learned how to imbue them with a measure of true intelligence as well as their great size. This is when her sinkhole project really accelerated. She could give certain 'lieutenants' instructions, and leave them to organize a large group of dumber work bugs. She could delegate.
xxxxxBy the time she was 25 she could have pulled the trigger and sunk Grover's Mill, but much of her still hesitated with the idea. She convinced herself that she liked being /able/ to whenever she wanted. She even started going outside during the day, once in a while, visiting shops, and areas around town. She was cursed at, spat on, and escorted out of businesses. Families took their children and left parks she came to. She spent 5 long years trying to give Grover's Mill an umpteenth chance, but in the end she couldn't take it anymore. In that time, she prepared her exit strategy - a tunnel to New York City, and an underground lair there, deep enough to be under the subways, under the sewer systems - under everything. And when it was all ready, she finally gave the order, tears in her multi-faceted eyes. The one upshot is that she was able to acquire a significant amount of cash from the vaults of sunken banks to finance her future endeavors.
xxxxxSince then, she's been a terror around New York, working to build an empire, like any good insect queen. She had a run-in with the Morlocks, imprisoned Ivan, kidnapped the girls, and robbed the diamond district to have even more capital at her disposal. She now believes humans and mutants cannot live side-by-side, not yet at least, and is hellbent on doing whatever it takes to get enough resources to make a place for mutant-kind to settle. Buy an island - or possibly invade one - and set up their society, to show the world mutants can live alongside. That's her long term plan. No one said her logic isn't warped.
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| Powers
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xxxxxCompound Eyes: Thea's are still like human eyeballs, but the surfaces have become like an insect's: compound, multi-faceted eyes. This allows for polarization of light for extra clear perception, as well as being able to see into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum. This unfortunately means Thea cannot use most LCD, plasma, or other digital glass displays. Projected images are fine, or e-ink devices, but most smartphones and tablets are unusable for her, as are most televisions. They just look like blobs of light to her.
xxxxxAntennae: These allow Thea a limited kind of radar sense, detecting motion and bodies even through dirt or concrete walls. Their primary purpose however are to assist in planning and shaping tunnels. This ability does not work through metal walls, or even walls with a great deal of electrical wiring in them.Thea can also be overcome by high-voltage power lines, or even an intense thunderstorm. This would also apply to anyone wielding substantial electricity powers. It can leave her seriously disoriented with prolonged exposure, as it is something like a continuous nails-on-a-chalkboard effect for her.
xxxxxCarapace/Chitin: Thea's back and scalp are covered in a stiff exoskeletal structure which is remarkably sturdy, and is articulated like a pill bug's shell. Hair is still able to grow through her scalp, which is somewhat less sturdy than the material on her back. The rest of her body is covered in mottled sections of chitin as well: the long portions of her arms and legs, and portions of her abdomen, but not her elbows, hands, knees or feet. Covered portions are effective protection in hand-to-hand combat, though there are many gaps to found by a sharpshooter, or someone with a proper stabby weapon.The armor could even deflect a glancing gunshot, but nothing up close, or a straight-on shot.
Also, every month or so, Thea must moult her carapace to allow new material to grow in. When its ready to come off, it looks dull and ugly, and starts to flake in places. For the first few days after the moulting, the new carapace looks raw and red and slimy. Not only does it look disgusting, and leave her unprotected, she's actually /more/ vulnerable to harm during that period, as she's sore and moving slow.
xxxxxGliding Flight: Thea's long termite wings allow her some limited flight ability. Given a high enough jumping-off point, Thea can glide a long ways, and is quite graceful in the air, matching the maneuvers of a professional hang-glider. Assuming her antennae are not being overwhelmed, they also help her pick out thermals and updrafts. This is greatly reduced if her antennae are useless in the moment. All she can really do at that point is control her fall, like a parachute. She cannot manage any flight or controlled fall at all if she is currently moulting.
xxxxxInsect Enlargement: This is the real meat of Thea's power. She is able to enlarge any insect or terrestrial arthropod to be the size of a car or truck. Enlarging an insect to full size takes a few seconds. Her ability seems to work something like a water supply, in that she can enlarge about a half-dozen insects to full size before she runs out of 'juice'. But if she makes them smaller, she can enlarge greater numbers of insects for about a dozen man-sized insects, or two dozen dog-sized insects.
All of her insects are enlarged with a rudimentary intelligence, and are conditioned via pheromones to see Thea as a figure to worship. Additionally, with insects which are less focused on hive mentality, she is able to imbue them with a greater degree of sentience. All of their intelligence and memories are lost if she reverses the process, and therefor keeps individuals around indefinitely if she's fond of them. When killed, insects return to their original size.
Thea is incredibly devoted to her creatures. Sometimes she can see a few new ones as expendable soldiers, but with individuals who have been around for any length of time, she sees them as her family. She will take wildly unwise risks to protect, rescue, or avenge them, and will be furious if any are killed.
xxxxxVulnerability - Insecticides: Most humans would be sick if exposed to insecticides of course, but for Thea, her human side is the only thing that would keep her alive. If sprayed with nearly any variety of insecticide she is immediately incapacitated, and prolonged exposure will leave her dead in hours. To recover from extensive contact she would need to immerse herself in water, or under a heavy shower or hose.
xxxxxVulnerability - Dietary Requirements: After spending weeks of prolonged illness during the onset of her mutation, Thea learned that she needed frequent and rich sources of sugar in her diet. Once her parents realized what she needed, they provided a steady supply of sweets, which she quickly adapted to. At this point, she could not go more than a couple days without something like a snickers, or a cupcake, and would be very ill if that was /all/ she got in that time period. She needs to consume this kind of food regularly through the day, every few hours, to feel normal. This is in addition to maintaining a diet relatively normal for a human her size and age. Fortunately her metabolism has adapted to make use of all that sugar and she remains quite thin.
xxxxxVulnerability - Weak Bones: With her body sort of half-way between exo- and endo-skeletal, the bones inside her body have become somewhat weaker. They're not exactly /fragile/ but they can break under only half the kind of pressure that would be needed to break an average human woman's bones.
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| Skills
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xxxxxUnderminer:Through extensive practice, and association with her sentient insects, Thea has learned a ton about efficient and safe tunneling. She gets to cheat a little of course, because most of her various tunneling insects secrete a hardening substance which firms up the walls, but she's learned a fair amount about angles, and load-bearing structures, etc.
xxxxxEntomology:Once Thea really understood the nature of her mutation, she spent hours pouring over entomological studies, classifications, and the general nature of local insect species. If she had gone to college, she would have easily qualified for graduate level degrees in the topic, but she has no official credits. He most in-depth knowledge applies to species native to North America, but she has at least a passing familiarity with most common species around the globe. What makes her unique in this field is that she's been able to interview sentient members of several species to learn more about what they're like. She's also discovered many species are better suited to the uplift to sentience than others.
xxxxxScrapper:Over the course of her life, Thea has been forced to learn some hand-to-hand fighting technique. Some of it is just from hard experience, more is from practicing with her minions, and developing her own strange style, generally based on partner techniques. She's not exactly ready for UFC fight night, but neither is she completely inexperienced.
xxxxxLeadership:Thea is not a perfect leader, because she's used to her minions following her orders almost without question, but even so, she has developed a strong sense of military-style leadership, and has accepted the role of Queen Protector among her brood.
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| Connections
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| Gallery
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| Anthea Garretson
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| Codename
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Thea
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| Birthdate
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1983-07-17
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| Species
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Mutant
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| Affiliation
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Brotherhood of Mutants
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| Powers
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Insect Enlargement
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| Occupation
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Entomology Expert
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| Alts
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Aloke Suresh, Luke Cage, Kaori Takahashi, Joe Zerah
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