Star Patrol

Helena Collins was born in a very small town in Kansas, and was , as far as anyone else could see, an ordinary child. However, had they been able to see through her eyes, they might have been surprised. Surrounding everything, there was a slight aura of color, the tint fluctuating as things moved. Having nothing else with which to compare, she assumed her vision was completely normal.

When she was 9, her parents were killed by a sudden tornado while driving to the next town to pick Helena up from school . Afterwards, she moved to Rhode Island to live with her aunt, her only living relative, who had an apartment on the fourth floor on a small building in the Royal Overlook neighborhood in Steel Canyon. On her 14th birthday, her aunt gave her a kitten, whom she named Tyke. Her aunt died of a heart attack when Helena was just 16, leaving her alone with only Tyke as her friend. While placing her aunt’s ashes on the shelf next to her parents, she accidentally knocked her mother off the shelf. Reflexively, Helena reached out to catch the urn, and the aura around the urn shifted. The urn itself was suspended in midair. Helena suspected she had developed some sort of telekinetic ability, so the next day she went down to Federal Bureau of Super-powered Affairs for testing. Despite her obvious ability, and having been declared legally an adult by the courts, she was told that she had to be 18 years of age to register. Three months before she turned 18, she was attacked by a group of men being controlled by a Succubus. She was taken captive and dragged underground to the abandoned tunnels of Oranbega, but was thankfully rescued by a small group of heroes before anything was done to her. Helena recovered physically from her attack, but still bore the emotional and mental scars. While in the hospital healing, she resolved to do what she could, with her new abilities, to keep others from having to endure an ordeal like she had.

Her recovery delayed her registration, but as soon as she was cleared by her doctor, she went down to City Hall and signed up. It was there that she saw a notice that a special division of Freedom Corps called Star Patrol was looking for new cadets. She finished her registration and went to Freedom Corps Head Quarters in Galaxy City and completed the application to join Star Patrol. Her application was accepted. It was during her orientation and training that her world began to change. Agent Sharpe, one of the leaders, introduced her to Dr. Sorina Tavarisch. Dr. Tavarisch had the ability, through her amazing inventions, to control localized gravity. When Helena witnessed Tava use her abilities she was amazed that she could see the energy that Tava manipulated to create the desired effects. The ever present colors swirled and shifted around Sorina. Aside from the visual changes, Helena discovered that the pull of gravity was so concentrated that she could even smell and taste the changes in the air around Dr. Tavarisch. A quick learner, Helena began to mimic the adjustments to the colors around her, and soon started to gain more and more control of the energy. Before long, she even learned how to fly.

Having very little to do with her days aside from her work, Helena spent most of her time in Star Patrol HQ monitoring the Police scanners, the various public communication between the Heroes of the city, and searching the Freedom Corps archives for anything and everything she deemed interesting. She also has made it known that she is interested in trying out untested tech. Her first gadget was a small eye piece that locates and tracks hostile targets. More recently, she discovered an abandoned power armor suit referred to only as “Project Valkyrie.” The design had been abandoned because the built in pneumatic wings did not provide enough lift to make personal flight possible, and Freedom Corps opted to use the Chasers and Rocket Packs for aerial patrolling. Since Helena had already learned to fly telekinetically, she used her status as a Freedom Corps Special Agent to acquire the suit. With the help of the ICON designer Serge and the fabricators in the Star Patrol HQ, the armor was re-sized to fit her, and given the official Star Patrol paint job. She wears the base components- gloves, boots, and the neural interface body suit- under her Star Patrol Uniform. Using a device on her belt, she can teleport the remainder of the suit to her, so if a situation requires extra protection, she can utilize the armor at any time.

Despite the obvious usefulness of her abilities, her discovery that she could see, taste, smell, and manipulate the gravitational field made Helena feel somewhat freakish. She began to wonder if in fact she was a mutant, if the FBSA had missed something on her genetic profile. It wasn’t until she was assigned to a Special Action Task Force, given to Star Patrol by Synapse himself, that she abandoned that theory. The team consisted of five Star Patrol members, one of whom was Drostan. Whenever Drostan was close to her, a sensation overcame Helena. It was not an unpleasant feeling, just distracting. Later that night, Agent Sharpe, hearing about the incident, accompanied Helena along with Sgt. Richardson (the PPD Liaison to Star Patrol) to Croatoa and conducted tests to see if she had a similar reaction to other Fey creatures. She did. The Tuatha de Dannon caused a violent reaction, as well as the Red Caps. However when she came close to the benevolent Sprites, she felt the same sensation as with Drostan. Agent Sharpe set up a meeting between her and one of the Cabal, Katie Hannon. After being in her company a while, Katie told Helena that she had fey blood in her, and that she would someday change. Helena did not take the news well… the creatures in Croatoa had experienced some rather extreme changes, and Helena did not wish to sprout antlers and start having issues with unsightly body hair! She has gained access to a secret society called the Midnighters, and has been spending some of her free time there doing research on her origins.

There are several facts that Helena does not know. One, the fey blood that runs through her veins is of the same clan as Drostan, and is 100 generations (about 2000 years) old. Two, her birth coincided with a cosmic event that altered her biological make up, changing her in to a being of great power, and awakening the abilities she now has. Three, it was this fact that caused the Succubi to attempt to capture her to provide a vessel so that they could free the mother of all Succubi, Lilith, from her prison. Four, while she was on a mission with Sgt. Richardson, she was unknowingly infected with a small portion of the Rikti virus when an injured Lost scratched her arm. Events are leading Helena down a path which may change her inexorably into something completely different than she or anyone else is expecting…