Sparrowhawk

Alias: Daphne David

Powers:

Force Wings:

            Sparrowhawk can create a pair of stylized bird wings that enable her to fly.  The wings are made of pure gleaming white force, solid to the touch, and span a total of eight feet.  Most of the time they are created using her arms as the leading edges, allowing her to flap them for thrust and manipulate them for attack and defense.  If she creates them separate from her arms they are inanimate and only function for gliding.  Her usual top speed is around sixty miles per hour.  The structure of her wings can be summoned and banished at will, and is hard enough to repel light arms and most normal melee attacks.  If her wings are pierced or broken, she may lose the ability to fly until they have recharged, a process that usually takes thirty seconds.

Physical Enhancements:

            Sparrowhawk’s body has enhanced itself in several ways.  First of all, her sense of hearing is more acute than human standard.  She cannot hear any different frequencies, but she can pick up quieter sounds than most people.  Her ears automatically adjust to loud noises, making her no more vulnerable to them than the average person.  Her body has also developed a higher and stronger portion of “fast-twitch muscle”, letting her exert more physical force in short bursts but providing little real difference in overall strength.  This muscular enhancement is what allows her to move her arms fast enough to fly, but it also lets her make jumps of prodigious distance and ‘snap’ her wings offensively.  Experience and training may eventually allow her to focus this power into regular hand to hand combat as well. 

Description:

            Daphne David is a very attractive 17-year-old (nearly 18) girl with long wavy black hair and green eyes.  She only stands five-foot-three and doesn’t seem to weigh very much, but she is a very physical person who is doesn’t seem to be comfortable sitting still.  Her figure is very curvy, and attracts attention in spite of the modest blouses and skirts she wears to school.  When she wears athletic clothes, the local boys tend to flock around, something that frustrates her greatly.

            As Sparrowhawk, Daphne seems to completely reverse her attitudes.  Her costume is made of white Lexulon accented with light blue, and clings to every curve.  Her belt and folded mid-calf boots are the same light blue, and a white domino mask with a shaped beak helps disguise her distinctively-Jewish nose.  The symbol on her chest is a dark blue bird of prey, its wings reaching upward to her shoulders.

Background:

            Daphne has been your typical Jewish-American Princess, eldest child of an upper-middle-class family in Amsterdam Heights, New Troy.  Wanting for nothing but not entirely spoiled, she has spent most of her summers at a girls’ riding camp in upstate New York.  Last summer on a particularly clear night, she and her cousin Sylvia (from New Jersey) snuck out of the bunkhouses for some midnight stargazing and mischief.  A falling star struck the hill near where they were experimenting with tobacco, and the two girls just had to go and check it out.  After searching in the dark, the two finally found some pieces of rock they agreed must have been the star and went back to their bunks.

            Over the next few months, Daphne found herself changing.  A little on the plain side before, she now found herself becoming one of the most beautiful girls in school.  Already fit, she found her physical strength and condition improving to the phys ed teacher started talking about college or even professional athletics.  Her senses improved, no longer requiring her to wear glasses, and even her hearing sharpened until she could hear other girls gossiping about her across the cafeteria.  But the last and most shocking change she discovered was her wings.  From the first time she managed to leap into the air and take flight, Daphne was hooked.  In the weeks that followed, Daphne saved her allowance and had a Lexulon costume made for her by a discreet New York tailor.

Personality:

            Daphne has become a heroine partly because she’d like to help people, but largely because it’s a way she can feel free.  Her family isn’t Orthodox Jewish and they’re really not that strict, but ‘good girls’ don’t fly, dress daringly, fight, rescue people, or enjoy the attention they receive.  Being a heroine is a way to get out from under the expectations of her upbringing and enjoy the thrills of flying and kicking around evildoers.

In Her Own Words:

            “All right, Jack, drop the purse or you’re gonna get beat up by a girl!”