Characters / Hope Comes to Brockton Bay

The character sheet for Hope Comes to Brockton Bay

Hope

• All-Loving Hero: Hope will offer a listening ear and chance to everyone at least once. Even the drug dealers despised by hero and villain alike. Even the Blood Knight neo-nazis. Even the psychotic mass murderer. But she's not stupid, and won't go out of her way to reform people who persist in their ways either.
• Barbie Doll Anatomy. She has this. Which is a good thing, because she's also a Innocent Fanservice Girl.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Hope is utterly gorgeous. But not in a sexy way. Really.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Hope is an archetypal All-Loving Hero, probably the nicest, most noble and pure-hearted character around, and hopelessly guileless to boot. Don't make an enemy of her.
• Cuddle Bug. Hands hugs out like candy. Surprisingly few people object.
• The Cutie. Definitely The Cutie.
• Easily Forgiven: To a certain degree. Her creed is: "Do something silly, realise it, fix it, move on."
• The Face. Hope does this really well. She gets awarded an honorary power rating of Master 0 because of it.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness
• Meaningful Name: her name is Hope. Enough said.
• The Paragon
• Pronoun Trouble: Averted. Hope was born a girl, and is still (mentally) female.
• Sneaky she is not. Between her constant body-glow and her crystalline wings, she announces her presence everywhere she goes. In Chapter 83, Regent jokingly suggests that she should be awarded a negative Stranger rating.
• Underestimating Badassery: This happens to her a lot, especially from capes from out of town. People see and hear how nice she is, how beautiful she is, and how she isn't very physically imposing. This leads them to overlook her super strength, flight, bullet and stick proof skin, and willingness to do what has to be done, not to mention her friendships with practically every cape in Brockton Bay. So when they fight her, they usually get their asses kicked hard.
• Wild Card: Due to her lack of a shard and her ability to resurrect, her very presence throws most probability powers for a loop, forcing Contessa & Dinah to reevaluate their predictions and still not be able to keep up with changing events, and Scion is at a complete loss dealing with her.
• You Didn't Ask: Early in the fic, Hope is revealing new powers one after another. When she is quizzed on why she didn't tell them about all her abilities straight up, she considers using that excuse, but then confesses that she wasn't sure if she could trust them.

Powers:

• Beauty Equals Goodness: By Word of God, her physical attractiveness counts as one of her superpowers. This is demonstrated when Noelle makes a copy of her, and the copy manifests her beauty along with everything else.
• Cute Bruiser. She doesn't fight much, but when she does, she uses her wings as melee weapons. Note that these are effectively flexible, independently controlled clubs made of virtually unbreakable crystal.
• Despite having effectively bulletproof skin, she is quite ticklish.
• Dirt Forcefield. Nothing sticks to her skin or hair. Which comes in handy, in odd ways.
• Healing Hands. Can do this, or Healing Factor. But not at the same time.
  • Can also bring people Back from the Dead. But there's a time limit, and they always come back a little ... less.
• Light Is Good: her skin literally glows silvery-blue, all the time.
• Omniglot. A few seconds' exposure to any language, and she speaks it just as well as the person she is speaking to. She also instinctively adopts the appropriate mannerisms and body language to reach whoever she is interacting with at the time.
• Super-Strength. She can lift a car if she has to.
• Winged Humanoid. She's an angel with crystal wings.

Relationships:

• Living Emotional Crutch: She is this for Amelia Claire Lavere, previously Amy Dallon, also known as Panacea. It's more than a little mutual; Amy has saved Hope from at least one Break the Cutie moment.
• If It's You, It's Okay. She is this for Lisa Wilbourn, aka Tattletale. See, Lisa has super-powered intuition and is squicked out by normal intimacy - she sees everything about the person she's cuddling up to. With Hope, all she gets is "I want to make her feel good." Problem averted.
• Interestingly, although she has No Biological Sex, and typifies asexuality, Ambiguous Gender and the Chaste Hero trope, she is not a Celibate Hero.
  • Because even though she has no particular urges, Amy and Lisa really need her, and she's A Friend in Need.
    • And it's not as creepy as it sounds, because for her, Good Feels Good. She actually gets pleasurable sensations out of making her friends feel nice.
• The Power of Trust: Despite the fact that Amy could rewrite her body to her own needs or do the same to her brain at will Hope spends all her time in close contact with her, and even sleeps with her. She doesn't even consider not trusting her.

Notable Actions:

• I Did What I Had to Do: Captures Jack Slash and holds him down to be executed but feels really bad about it afterward.
  Miss Militia looked sideways at Hope. Hope shrugged, without loosening her grip. “If it’s gotta be done, it’s gotta be done,” she said.
  “Wait,” said Jack Slash. “You can’t just kill me like this! Don’t I get any last words?”
  “Yes,” said Miss Militia, and squeezed the trigger, putting a single round through the centre of his skull.

  Hope Comes to Brockton Bay, Chapter 50
• The Power of Friendship: Just by the simple act of being nice and helping out where she can (even against orders), Hope has nearly every villain gang on side by the time of the first major crisis.
  “But we’ve all been here for years, and the most – the absolute most – we’ve managed to arrange with the local villains is a strained politeness. Endbringer Truces, things like that. Hell, this meet tonight had about a one in four chance of ending up as a firefight. But you ... you roll into town –“
  “Fly into town,” interjected Weld.
  “- fly into town, and inside of two weeks, you’ve got them palling up to you like they’ve known you all their lives. What gives?”
  Hope blinked. “Um ... I’m nice to them?” she ventured.
  Silence, except for the thrumming of the motor. The other capes looked at each other, and then back to her.
  “And that works?” asked Clockblocker, in tones that meant 'Is that all?'
  Hope blinked again. “Well, it does for me,” she said at last.
  “Hmm,” said Miss Militia after a few moments. “I’m going to have to think about this. It’s an interesting approach.”

  Hope Comes to Brockton Bay, Chapter 35

Other:

• Hope, as originally created, was built using the GURPS Supers rules.

Robin Maestra

• Blessed with Suck: Her Time Master powers automatically slow everything down to a safe speed for her, even when she actively doesn't want them to (because she enjoys going at really dangerous speeds). In addition, she can't get below about a x10 acceleration without active focus.
• Bored with Insanity
• Genki Girl
• Required Secondary Powers: She has equally fast perceptions to go with her time control... which makes everything feel very slow to her.
  • She also notes that she has eidetic memory and apparently immortal, explicitly calling these out as RS Ps.
• Time Master giving her the effect of Super-Speed (but is not a Fragile Speedster).

Omake: Noelle Meinhardt

• Fate Worse than Death: Averted. Also averted, death itself in the form of a Mercy Killing at the hands of Sundancer.
• Subject of a Makeover courtesy of Amy and Hope.
• Me's a Crowd: Her power is now to clone herself when she touches or is touched by another person. The clone has the powers of the other person. Each clone lasts for one hour before dissipating.
• Shout-Out: The super codename "The Purple Echidna" is suggested jokingly by Ballistic before being promptly shot down.
  • Her actual codename is an even more subtle Shout-Out; Hope comes to Brockton Bay is an omake of Worm.
• Earn Your Happy Ending. She gets one.

Snow Tiger: Dr William Manton

• Back from the Dead: Skitter killed Manton; Hope brought him back to life.
• Heel–Face Brainwashing: Performed by Amy.
• Meaningful Rename: She used to be known as the Siberian.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: As Snow Tiger, she is no longer naked.
• Lighter and Softer: She's also much more clearly Manton's daughter, articulate and friendly, rather than a feral near-mute merging of his daughter and his wife.
• Helpful Hallucination: She insists that she is not real; he treats her as his daughter come back to life. They apparently enjoy arguing about this.

Grasp: Sveta, previously Garotte

• Makeover: She's had one of these. Previously a 'face with tendrils', she now has a normal body, courtesy of Dr Yamada, Amy, Hope and Weld.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: She's enjoying life to the fullest, now.
• Reluctant Psycho: She used to be one of these; her tendrils would act without her intent.