An unpublished work (intended to be imagined as a TV cartoon) by cyclomantis, mostly to be used as a worldbuilding tool since their brain thinks in tropes anyway.
Warning! Unmarked spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk.
This show provides examples of:
Characters
Main Cast
Desdemona "Mona" Merlo
Aliases: Mona
"This year, I swore I'd never care about someone except what they can do for me. I'll never care about anyone but myself ever again."
A surly teenager in the Right Might's sidekick program, who has recently been reassigned to Chet Kyndnas. This move means she won't be able to earn enough sidekick credits to graduate, as Chet has the worst mission clear rating of all the sidekicks, which means the Right Might won't have to pay her college tuition. Hence the move.Mona herself is unremarkable power-wise, boasting a healing factor that's still too slow to be usable, in the neighborhood of healing a broken leg in a week as opposed to a month. Her poor attitude, lackluster powers, and the fact that her father is a famous supervillain have rendered her bottom of the totem pole, as far as the Right Might is concerned.
- Healing Factor: Mona's only superpower is her ability to heal very quickly, restoring a broken limb in a week. Since the time delay is rather severe, it still means that she sees no field work. However, as the series goes on and she gets more injured - and after she receives "training" from her brother Lino, this ability becomes much more useful.
- Hide Your Otherness: Mona's natural hair and eye color are both acid green; she dyes her hair and wears grey color contacts to hide this.
Raum Chaturanga
Aliases: The Grand Master of the Chaturanga, Mr. Chatter
"Steal? I could hardly do something so vulgar. Seeing as the Chaturanga once held the world in its hands, that diamond was mine by birthright. There's nothing wrong with taking back something you own, is there?"
The current head of the Chaturanga, one of the three rich sponsors backing the Right Might, specializing in magic and information. Raum himself is every inch the dastardly, charming, and mysterious Grand Master, and he is constantly moving according to his own agenda, toward his own unknown goals. For reasons unknown, he has begun cohabitating with Chet, the most minor-league of minor-league superheroes.Though Raum is clearly moving with his own plots in mind, he is a noble figure, who keeps his word (if only to the letter) and seems willing to help Mona in her endeavors to gain enough sidekick credits to graduate. Though he claims his actions are simple amusement for him, this is an obvious lie - but as for what his true goals are, no one yet knows.
- Abusive Family: Raum was born the family bastard, and the life of his mother was often held hostage in order to mold him into the perfect cleaner. His own mother found him scary and disgusting, while the rest of his family was distant at best, disdainful of his bastard status at worst. Because his father would regularly show him the bare minimum of affection, Raum was very loyal to him, even carrying out hits on the rest of his family using the Fairy Blade. However, his father then ordered that he complete the sacrifice needed to form a new piece by committing suicide, and when Raum refused, his father flew into a rage, revealing that he viewed Raum - and the rest of the family - as nothing but tools. Raum was forced to choose between dying or killing everyone in the room, including his own father, which firmly convinced him that there was nothing at all redeeming about this world.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Literally carries business cards advertising his family's shadier services.
- Chess Motifs: The Chaturanga is chess-themed to begin with, but Raum himself is the "Grand Master," referring to a title given to those at the top of the chess world. His name is also a play on raumschach, a form of 3D chess, which features a unicorn as one of its pieces. The Chaturanga's modern symbol is also that of a butterfly merged with a king chess piece, a play on the concept of fairy chess pieces.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Having been born and raised into an extraordinarily wealthy and shady family, raised as a cleaner from birth, Raum does not have the strongest grip on common sense.
- The Comically Serious: Raum remains smug and unfazed, no matter how stupid or crazy his circumstances become, and no matter what stupid or crazy thing he's doing.
- The Conspiracy: All three of the families patronizing the Right Might are vying for world domination. Raum is just the only one very open about it.
- Crazy-Prepared: Raum does not gamble; if he is going to make a move at all, he is going to plan to win. He has contingencies for Eleventh Hour Superpowers, The Power of Love/Friendship, and even emergency exit strategies for when Deus Ex Machinas show up.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Evil actions should be a means to an end. Raum is not impressed by those who do things For the Evulz, and often has a similar opinion of mad science. He generally doesn't bat an eye at the depravity of the evil act so much as whether or not it serves an intended purpose, and he finds those who perform vile acts purely for the fulfillment of base desires or amusement to be little better than animals.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: He genuinely has difficulty comprehending altruism or selflessness, although he acknowledges that if more people were like Chet, whom he views as the embodiment of "good," he thinks the world would be a better place.
- Evil Plan: The reason Raum is threatening is because of his prowess in schemes of all kinds, especially of the kind that leave him the victor no matter what transpires. However, he needs several days/weeks of prep time in order to plan out his extensive and convoluted schemes, and only acts in the first place if he can ensure a positive outcome no matter what.
- A Glass of Chianti: Red wine is his preferred drink. He can reliably guess the vintage from the taste alone. Chet describes it as a fun party trick.
- Hidden Agenda Villain: A man of secrets. He does openly state that all three families patronizing the Right Might are vying for world domination and the destruction of the other two, but he doesn't seem to be making any actual moves to do the same, and it's unclear how his actions - helping Mona and living with Chet - are furthering this purpose.
- Karma Houdini: As the Grand Master of the Chaturanga, Raum is responsible for several counts of smuggling, raising child soldiers, and more. However, he is incredibly competent at covering his tracks, so the Right Might is unable to do anything - they can't raise a hand against one of their sponsors without upsetting the delicate balance of power keeping the other two - and the Right Might itself - in check.
- Man of Wealth and Taste: His supervillain outfit consists of a Badass Longcoat with gold trim, expensive suit and black silk cravat, and a crimson cashmere stole. Even as a "mundane civilian," he sports a tailored vest and silk cravat.
- Misanthrope Supreme: He does not believe anyone ever does anything except for some sort of personal benefit. Thus, he even rejects his own feelings of caring or warmth towards others, denying their very existence, and believes that the way to fix society's current ills is to create a bigger, better boot - a "silent world."
- Psychotic Smirk: Smiles like this exclusively.
- Right-Hand Cat: Gains a white persian cat (of course) named Lady.
- Smart People Play Chess: So much so that Raum is chess-themed. However, he doesn't consider it to be much of an accomplishment, as a computer could probably play better than he could, so why not just use the computer?
- String Theory: The true nature of Raum's ability to scheme. For a period of time - hours to weeks, depending on the scale of his plot - he will lock himself into a room and proceed to cover it with pictures, post-its, and, of course, color-coded strings. Since no one but him is ever privy to these rooms, everyone who deals with one of his plots ends up viewing his ability to plan for every outcome as practically supernatural.
- Supervillain Lair: He built a high-tech lair and cheese cave underneath the master bedroom. Don't worry, he has a permit for it.
- Take Over the World: Raum's ultimate goal is to "fix" the world by turning it "silent" - a world where everyone is a mindless drone without free will or emotion, so they can't hurt each other anymore. It's quite a bit more drastic than the other two sponsor families, who have the same goal of world domination.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Chet explicitly describes him as this, while other characters note that he's "devilishly handsome," and his cat, Lady, describes him as "glamorous, dark, and dangerous."
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: Luft desperately craves Raum's acknowledgement on an emotional level, as his son rather than as his eventual successor and current right-hand man. This is made complicated because Raum is genuinely afraid to acknowledge his feelings as more than pragmatic, and, owing to his own terrible family experience, doesn't particularly understand why Luft would want the baggage of being family.
- Wicked Cultured: Pragma compulsively speaks in an overdramatic fashion, is an avid reader, highly skilled at golf and polo, and a prodigy on the violin.
Qieci "Chet" Kyndnas
Aliases: Mr. Heartbeat
"Every time you tell a lie, I feel a needle stabbing the back of my eyes."
Chet is a hero with the Right Might, famed among his coworkers for being practically useless. Chet has the lowest mission clear rate out of any hero, and he suffers from extreme agoraphobia, which has only recently started improving. They basically only keep him on payroll because his empathy powers let him act as a lie detector.What the Right Might doesn't know, however, is that he is hiding the full extent of his powers out of fear that he'd be asked to abuse them. Chet's powers extend far beyond empathy - he actually has the ability to induce emotions and plant false memories in others, to the point of mind control. He's terrified of his own abilities and prefers to keep them quiet.
- All-Loving Hero: Perhaps as a side effect of being passively aware of everyone else's feelings at all times, Chet can't help but sympathize with others. To him, everyone is a hero in their own minds, and he's fully aware that most people never intend harm. His point of view is still realistic - he acknowledges that some people cannot be helped because they refuse to help themselves - but he firmly believes that everyone should be given the opportunity, support, and oftentimes, tough love, to change for the better.
- Bad Powers, Good People: Chet's powers initially appear to be harmless, but they're actually the tip of an iceberg whose deepest point is downright possessing and controlling other people. Chet himself finds the full extent of his powers to be morally reprehensible, so he actively pretends that the passive ability to sense others' emotions, which he can't turn off, is all that he can do.
- The Empath: The main form Chet's powers takes. While he pretends that his powers are limited only to reading the feelings of others, they're actually much more capable. The nature of Chet's powers isn't empathy so much as invasion, as he is capable of reading thoughts, hopes, dreams, insecurities, fears, Battles in the Center of the Mind, and even possessing and controlling other people. The full extent of these abilities freak him out so much that he deliberately pretends he doesn't have them, expressly so that he's never asked to abuse them.
- Morality Chain: Serves as one for the group, their one tenuous link to doing good deeds instead of only pursuing selfish goals.
- The Paragon: Tries to be one himself, as he regularly asks villains he fights to take walks or go drinking with them and encourages them to talk about their feelings. Notably, he doesn't care very much for labels like "good" or "lawful," recognizing morality and ethics as far more complicated than those words can encapsulate, but rather, encourages people to work towards a better world and better selves.
- What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Deliberately invoked. Chet's only real power appears to be the ability to read the emotions of others. In fact, he's capable of not just empathy, but telepathy and even invading and controlling the minds of others - all of which he considers amoral to actually use. He pretends his powers are limited to sensing feelings so that he won't be asked to abuse them.
Luft Chaturanga
Aliases: One
"Oh yeah, that weird super-planning thing dad does? I can do it to. I just don't, because I like having a social life."
Luft is Pragma's right-hand man, his secretary, bodyguard, and chauffeur all in one. Or at least, that's what he was, until his father had a mid-life crisis and retired for some reason. Luft was born and raised in a child soldier rearing facility, which Pragma purchased and gifted him in exchange for his unpaid services until he turned 18. What Pragma didn't barter for, however, was Luft's undying loyalty.Having been raised with care, Luft has turned out... rather spoiled. Luft is petty, constantly vying for his father's attention, even if his opponent is a teenage girl of only ten years. He loves material wealth and worldly pleasures, and believes that Pragma is the ideal world dictator, and is desperate to persuade his father into returning to villainy and making that future a reality.
- Blade on a Rope: His signature weapons are two knives attached at the ends by string. The knives are, of course, shaped like pawns.
- Daddy's Little Villain: Rare male example, as he falls into the traits more commonly associated with the distaff counterpart. Vain, seductive, a spoiled princess, the evil dictator-to-be's beautiful son, who just wants his dad to take him out fishing and do normal dad things.
- The Dragon: Luft is Raum's right-hand man, a bodyguard, secretary, chauffeur, all in one. Taken to a logical extreme when he gets the dragon chess piece and actually becomes a dragon.
- Inferiority Superiority Complex: Luft is constantly crowing about how he's Raum's most loyal and useful follower, or about how he's the person Raum cares the most about, which is hiding the fact that he's terrified that Raum - whom he views as his savior and father - really doesn't care about him beyond his business utility.
- Tyke Bomb: Was born into the Cradle, a shady child soldier training organization. However, since he's grown up since then and lived a life relatively free of direct threats to his life, he's lost most of his fighting instincts from that era.
Right Might
Diana
Aliases: Crescent
"Y'know, Mona, with a big smile and a can-do attitude, anything's possible!"
Diana is the Right Might's rising star. Having inherited her father's ability to turn into a rougarou, a powerful anthropomorphic rabbit, Diana has been showered with love and accolades all her life. She has a cheerful demeanor that makes her popular with civilians, Right Might employees, and same-age peers alike, and thinks being a superhero, and putting a smile on peoples' faces, is just the bee's knees.However, she doesn't seem to grasp that not everyone is her fan, and her can-do attitude is actually very selfish and immature. Diana is regarded as a suck-up, teacher's pet, and often downright rude and callous to others, not out of any malice, but simply because she has very little reason to think about the world from the perspective of others.
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- Innocently Insensitive: Diana just doesn't seem to get that her self-help pep talks actually make Mona and Hecate feel worse, even though she has the best of intentions. Examples include insisting that Mona's mom wants the best for her and that Mona should be grateful for her (Mona's mother is an alcoholic who regularly berates Mona because she resembles her father), or telling Hecate that she only needs to have a more positive attitude to get higher on the rankings (Hecate feels ostracized within her own family because she didn't inherit her father's powers, and she's been struggling to keep up as-is, since she has no superpowers.).
Hecate
''"
Diana's twin sister, Hecate is quiet and withdrawn. She's also notable as being the only sidekick who isn't actually augmented in any way, a completely normal human. She mostly keeps to herself, quietly fading into the background.However, it turns out that Hecate actually harbors a massive grudge against Diana and Kitty, Kitty for her constant bullying, and Diana for her Innocently Insensitive tendencies. This grudge comes to a head when she steals Kitty's wand and becomes a villainess in her own right.
Kitty Katerina
Aliases: Sorcerette
"Hey, Aloner Moaner. Don't feel so bad about last place. If there wasn't a last, there wouldn't be a first."
Diana's BFF and daughter of the Right Might's gadgetician, Kitty Katerina is a fashionable, socially conscious spoiled brat. Her bullying of Mona and Hecate goes largely unnoticed by the rest of the sidekicks, since she's always very sweet to people in power and she's sure to couch her insults in plausible deniability. Tattoo Guy?
Superbman
The face of the Right Might, Superbman was an alien that crashed to earth, raised by a loving couple, and became a superhero with the help of the incredible powers he was born with. However, his parents and first wife are long dead of old age, and constant struggles against politicians, the wealthy sponsors that keep the Right Might independent, and public relations have turned him sour and jaded.
This has led him to hole himself up in the Stronghold, a space station that holds maximum-security inmates and dangerous WMO Ds, where he does paperwork and administrava. Still, Superbman is noble of intention and heart, even if these days he's largely retired from the public eye.
This has led him to hole himself up in the Stronghold, a space station that holds maximum-security inmates and dangerous WMO Ds, where he does paperwork and administrava. Still, Superbman is noble of intention and heart, even if these days he's largely retired from the public eye.
The Valiants
Aliases:
''"
The actual people in charge of running the Right Might's ground operations, the Valiants are very popular with the people and are constantly busy with press conferences and publicity events.Their marriage is also failing hard behind the scenes, leading to many of their responsibilities falling through the cracks - like ensuring the quality of the Sidekick Initiative, or even their own 10-year-old daughter.
Ayla Chessis
An ex-superhero, one of the Right Might's founders who used to fight alongside Superbman. She had a career-ending injury that religated her to an administrative position, but had a falling-out with the RM after getting into one spat too many with the many sponsors and politicians greedy to use the RM for their own purposes. Now she holes up in her empty mansion, bitter and alone.
Magical Girl
A magical girl in her early 20's whose friend group already defeated their main villain in high school. Now her friends have gone off to college in different states and grown apart, leaving only her unsure of what she wants to do in the future. She's money-grubbing, unstable, and a bitter pessimist, but beneath it all, she yearns for the days where she and her friends were innocent.
Supervillains
Baalzebub
Aliases: Two, Rayna Chessis
''"
The Fool
''"Boring, boring, boring! You're such a stick in the mud!
Capella
Aliases: The Wickedest Witch in the World, The Woman in the Unicorn Mask
"You see, I hate suffering. I find it unbearably ugly. A world without suffering - is that not what we all desire? And yet, you all will reject me, again and again..."
A mask styled after a unicorn, in which is sealed the memories and personality of the world's most powerful sorceress of all time. However, immediately upon the completion of her migration into a magical artifact, and the realization of her Reality Warper abilities, she was betrayed by her brother and sealed away.She was later unearthed by Chet, to whom she attempted to bind, inadvertently severing her powers in half when she was forcibly pulled away. She was then kept in Right Might holding for several decades, before the death of Superbman gave her the opportunity to slip away unnoticed. She now roams the streets, actualizing the desires of those who come across her, in the hopes that one of them will be able to help her regain her full abilities...
- Affably Evil: Capella genuinely wishes for a world without pain or suffering, and believes in making fair deals even if they come back to bite her nine times out of ten. She cries genuine tears of sympathy for Pragma's grief over Chet's death and genuinely wishes him and Chet happiness when she brings the latter back to life to honor her deal with him. That still means brainwashing the rest of the world, but that's for everyone's own good, you see.
- De-power: Being forcibly ripped off mid-possession caused her abilities to split. At full power, Capella is able to "materialize" the wishes (or fears) of others into reality, or catch whole nations in a Lotus-Eater Machine, but in the state that she's in for most of the series, the most she can do is "actualize" peoples' wishes in the form of temporarily granting them superpowers, over which she has no control.
- Honor Before Reason: Upholds all her offers to grant people superpowers, even if they're obviously going to stab her in the back, or if she hands them the exact thing they need to defeat her. This is because she tends to believe that she's much more powerful and, as a result, holds much more responsibility than the inferior beings she's dealing with, leading to her strict moral adherence and lack of concern over potential betrayals.
- Pure Is Not Good: She genuinely wishes for a world without suffering...which is most effectively achieved via mass brainwashing.Thuban: She's the most dangerous kind of simpleton. By that, I mean her world is simple. She knows better than anyone else what's good for them, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a poor, misguided fool or an evil bastard. Ella doesn't have patience for fools and bastards.
- Soul Jar: Capella's current form is the result of decades of research on preserving souls by changing them into magical objects, with each of the heraldic masks representing another step in her research. Becoming a magical object meant that she lost the majority of her abilities as a sorceress, but it also meant that she gained immortality and highly specialized Reality Warper powers beyond mortal ken. Unfortunately, her own magic reserves are very limited, so she relies on possessing hosts in order to use their bodies to channel magic.
Other Characters
52
Aliases: Five-Two, John Smith
"You suck at fighting now because you aren't fighting for your life. I'll fix that. Because we're friends."
Luft's old acquaintance from the same Tyke Bomb training facility, 52 was the 52nd most capable of the 100 children - or was he? One night, Luft stumbled across him feeding rats in the compost room, and found out the hard way that 52 had been hiding his strength all along.Since the Cradle's dissolution, 52 has moved off the grid. He spends his days in the wild parts of the world, killing poachers and tending to his trained pet rats. Due to his extremely remote lifestyle, he lacks almost all social graces, though he considers Luft a dear and precious friend after Luft, in a panic on that first fateful night, promised to keep his pet rats secret.
- Attack Animal: 52 currently has two pet rats, which he's trained to help him in fights.
- Combat Pragmatist: Moreso than anyone else in the setting. 52 makes use of everything at his disposal - traps, terrain, animals, makeshift weapons, dirty tricks, and guns - when "helping" Luft regain his fighting instincts (by trying to kill him).52: (Pulls out a semi-automatic rifle after an extended fight consisting entirely of makeshift jungle weapons and traps)
Luft: Why do you have a gun?!
52: Sometimes your opponents will have guns. - The Comically Serious: 52 never loses his intense, "scary" wide-eyed stare, whether he's hunting down a poacher or he's professing his undying friendship with Luft.
- Hunting the Most Dangerous Game: 52 spends his time tracking down poachers and hunting them like animals. His methods are often cruel, and he's very clearly bypassing lawful procedures, so the Right Might has a bounty out for more information on him as he's clearly an unhinged vigilante at best.
- The Unfettered: He hates those that are cruel to animals, and has decided to track them down and hunt them like animals. He prioritizes poachers who will actively drive animals to extinction for personal profit. In pursuit of his goal to hunt them down one by one, nothing and no one will get in his way - not guns, not villains, not heroes. That said, he also cares deeply for his friends - consisting primarily of his rats and Luft - and will re-prioritize to help them out in a jam, though his methods for "helping" tend to be... drastic.
Humble Gallant Valiant
Aliases: Humbug, Mumble
"My parents spend all day fighting supervillains and then get home late and then spend all night fighting each other. I think if I become a supervillain, they'll pay attention to me instead."
The ten-year-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Valiant, the two current leaders of the right might. Thanks to their newly-increased workload following Superbman's death, the two rarely have time to pay attention to Humble, and Humble has become mature beyond her years and self-sufficient, accordingly.Humble is an odd and awkward child, who doesn't get along very well with her classmates at school and is always getting into trouble for making up lies like "my parents are the leaders of the Right Might" or "I can shoot acid out of my eyes." She'd like to learn how to become a supervillain so that she can recapture her parents' attention.
- Acid Attack: Humble's powers are based on the abilities of the bombardier beetle, and accordingly, Humble can shoot a caustic liquid out of her eyes. While on people, it mostly has the same effects as pepper spray, it's highly corrosive to metals and plastics and can be used to melt locks and doors.
