"There are three kinds of villains in this town. There's the greedy ones, who think the world's theirs for the taking. Then, there's the egotistical ones, who think that if they did take over the world, they'd be doing it a favor. There's some intersection between the two sometimes, but it's still just the same shit on a different day. Anyway, for the most part, that's all there is to it. But every now and again, you get a weird one. They don't really care about money or power. They're just in the business for... well, for the fun of it, I guess." - Peace Brigade Sub-Commander Deep Freeze
Also Known As
"'Oh, nothing to worry about, Byrne!' 'It's just a normal job, Byrne!' My ass! That insane witch lit my coat on fire, then started poking me with a marshmallow on a stick! And then, when I managed to get her at gunpoint, she giggled and asked if I wanted some smores! That's just not something you can fight!" - Hero-For-Hire, Alister "The Raven" Byrne
Age
- 20?
Height
- Five feet, ten inches.
Weight
- 124 lbs.
Infamy
- It is the ideal of a supervillain to be able to instill terror with one's name or presence alone. In that sense, Mania (although she prefers to just go by Alice) has been fairly successful. Almost any hero she's had a run in with, upon hearing her mentioned, or seeing her appear unexpectedly, will doubtless make their discomfort known. However, this isn't really because people are scared she'll hurt them. Rather, it's because most of her "rivals" just hate dealing with her due to her, shall we say, "unique" temperament. And, due to the incredibly limited scale of her activities in the past, the average citizen would have no idea who she was if you mentioned her. As such, she's not really regarded as much of a threat despite her destructive tendencies, nor is she very well known amongst the community. Between up and coming supervillains, though, "Mistress Mania" is more than just a familiar face. Having worked with her and managed to stay sane is practically the unofficial rite of passage one must undergo before calling oneself a true supervillain. Seldom planning any major moves herself, and possessing no hideout, followers, or power base of her own, rather than a supervillainess, she refers to herself as "The World's Best Rent-A-Minion." In exchange for being allowed to crash in other supervillains' hideouts and mooch off their food, Mania helps with basic tasks like maintaining secret bases, fighting nosy heroes, and doing what she does best - distracting everybody with an explosive diversion so more stealth-oriented villains can accomplish their goals unhindered. At the very least, her help has proven instrumental to several other villains in their rise to power. For example, the now-infamous Dantalian, Dastardly Doctor of Dangerous and Dreadful Disciplines, is widely known to power his secret lab with a "Thought Engine" derived by reverse-engineering Mania's emotion-based powers, while the Midnight Samurai reportedly used Mania's attack on a nearby donut factory to steal several priceless swords from a heavily-guarded museum. Even the most laughable and unsuccessful of villains like Spongemaster and The Steamroller Thief have managed to succeed in their plans because of Mania's help - although whether anyone actually noticed or cared about these triumphs is dubious at best.
Appearance
- Tall, dark-haired, and possessed of a figure that could generously be described as "improbable," as well as a costume that could only be described as "impossible," Mistress Mania looks like she stepped straight out of the pages of one of the many serial comic books created to catalog the exploits of famous heroes. Standing at a full height of five feet, ten inches, with a lithe, curvaceous form and long, limber legs, she practically embodies the exaggerated proportions possessed by most heroines and villainesses in hero fiction. Her skin is similar, being pale and bearing nary a scar or blemish upon its surface despite all the fights she's been through. Although this might seem like wish fulfillment in art drawn upon paper, in person, it's actually kind of unsettling, like one is looking at a porcelain doll or a young child instead of an adult woman. This only becomes stranger when her powers begin to emerge, as her skin almost seems to glow a faint reddish-pink, as though her very flesh has become subtly incandescent. Her hair and eyes are similarly bizarre, with the former being silky and black on the surface with unnaturally bright crimson strands beneath the surface, and the latter being a deep, steely gray in hue, but abruptly shifting to gleaming, ruby red when she uses her abilities - a cartoon cliche she's all too happy to embody. Her costume is somewhere between "Ballerina" and "Cat Burglar," with elements of both mashed together to create a truly bizarre outfit consisting of a cream leotard worn underneath a black bodysuit with a sizeable portion of its front cut out between her hips and thighs. This strange apparel is held in place by a variety of belts and straps around the bust, sleeves, and legs, all of which seem to overlap in a way that defies comprehension. Apparently lacking any zippers, buttons, or other miscellaneous openings to speak of, there doesn't seem to be any conceivable way to actually don or remove the costume, let alone keep it on, raising the question of how exactly she does it. In addition to this, she wears a black muffler that seems to generate its own wind currents, as it continues flapping dramatically as though in a strong breeze even when Mania is indoors, or there's no wind to move it. When she lets loose with her powers, the strangeness of this accessory is only compounded, as it appears to extend and contract in accordance with how much energy she's emitting, and its end appears to morph at some point into a blazing orange flame that doesn't seem to burn her, or even the rest of the garment. Finally, atop her head are two black horns that point straight up. Although they aren't growing out of her skin, and are apparently somehow connected to one another and detachable from her scalp, whatever headband they're affixed to seems to be somehow invisible and/or intangible, not to mention fastened securely to her head as though by industrial-strength adhesive.
Of course, anyone who knows Mistress Mania is also aware of who created her costume, explaining a few of its inconsistencies. As payment for serving as the basis for his experiments to create a reactor powered by emotions, Dantalian - Dastardly Doctor of Dangerous and Dreadful Disciplines - designed a special form of self-reproducing nanofiber that converted emotional energy into additional material, as well as headband that served as a controller for the production of this material, with Mania's distinctive horns actually serving the purpose of transmitter antennae to direct the material into assuming the form of her costume, and then storing as much additional energy as possible within the scarf. So long as its user is generating sufficient emotional energy to fuel the garment, the headband can't be removed. And, given Mania's perpetual state of... well, Mania, this essentially means that nobody but her can actually take her horns off without knocking her unconscious first - a fortunate design choice, as doing so would also cause her costume to disappear in its entirety. In any case, with such a handy mechanism of dressing and undressing herself, Mania doesn't need clothes that can actually be put on or taken off the boring normal way! ...That aside, her costume is actually incredibly practical, as the nanofiber it is composed of projects a unifying energy field to sustain the garment's structure, which also happens to have the effect of creating a sort of pseudo-forcefield around her skin - even in places not actually covered by the costume - making her much tougher than she otherwise would be. This forcefield, like her clothing, moves as she does, adding additional force to every action she takes, and thus causing her outfit to also work much like a suit of powered armor, even if it may not look like it. Through particularly strong emotions, she can increase these effects further, allowing her to perform feats such as walking on thin air by making the forcefields beneath her feet functionally solid. And, finally, so long as she can provide it with power, it can regenerate from any damage it sustains by producing new material and zapping back into its old form, so even if she takes a hit, her outfit, with its ridiculously impractical design, won't fall apart. All in all, it's very practical for something as impractical as it is, confusing though that statement may be.
Powers
- Mistress Mania's powers are rather vague and unexplored. In the hands of someone a little more mature and focused than her, they might prove incredibly versatile and potent. However, the problem is that, quite simply, she's too childish to use her abilities with any measure of effectiveness. Quite simply, she has the unique talent of affecting the area around her based on what emotions she's feeling. Theoretically, she could control these effects, causing them to take on various different forms depending on her mood. Vengeful anger and hatred might form crackling, hissing electricity, or strike like a blast of lightning, while sorrow might absorb energy from the surroundings, leaving them motionless and frigid cold. If Dantalian - Dastardly Doctor of Dangerous and Dreadful Disciplines! - and his research are any indication, she might even be able to draw on other people's emotions as a power source, leading to an even broader range of abilities.
There are just two problems that make this potential versatility utterly inconsequential.
First, Mistress Mania feels only one emotion: Mania.
Secondly, she doesn't really care about what other people think enough to even perceive what emotions they're feeling, let alone tap into them.
Consequently, her actual abilities essentially boil down to one simple thing: the ability to turn her hyperactivity into physical energy. This may not be so bad for her, though, since what she can do, she can do well. For example, although a significant portion of this power is used as a fuel source for her costume, the sheer amount of raw crazy packed into her perky personality is still enough to cause random locations she focuses on to explode in rainbows, like fireworks. As such, this forms her one and only means of using her powers to fight: making stuff go boom until whoever coming after her isn't doing so anymore. It's flashy, and undoubtedly useful, but not exactly an ideal ability to have, especially for someone so manic that you'd think she should have been designed with an off-switch. As such, telling Mania to fight someone is roughly analogous to firing a guided missile straight at them. They're probably not going to get out of the blast radius unscathed, but neither is anything around them. Suffice to say, before she officially made herself known under the alias of "Mistress Mania," there's a very good reason her unofficial designations by the Peace Brigade were all things like "Collateral Damage Lady" or "Sugar Bomb."
Interestingly enough, the things affected by her emotions seem to include herself. When her powers awakened for the first time as a child, her sheer energy was enough to cause something to happen to her body. At age nine, the girl known as Alice Lane disappeared without a trace, vanishing into thin air in front of several eye-witnesses. Now, some eleven years later, Mistress Mania has appeared seemingly from thin air, introducing herself formally by that same name despite looking completely different. Furthermore, after that incident, she hasn't aged since - either physically, or in temperament. Her body also seems to heal unnaturally fast, always restoring itself to the appearance and level of functionality it jumped to during that incident. However, this process always requires some sort of "reset" to take effect, in the form of her somehow losing consciousness. Once she's either fainted or passed out or fallen asleep, she begins rapidly regenerating, so as to almost always be in peak condition by the time she wakes up.
On that note, Mania essentially has two settings. Either she's awake - in which case she's running around like a rabbit hooked up to an intravenous cocktail of Speed and pure sugar - or she's asleep, in which case she's completely unconscious, and can't be awakened by any means until she's rested herself up. There is no in between. Her sleep schedule doesn't seem to work like a normal person's, either, with her periods of unconsciousness solely being determined by overuse of her powers. If she focuses too much on manifesting energy, she just suddenly conks out afterward, and sleeps like a log for roughly ten hours before awakening as though nothing ever happened. However, if she didn't use her powers much, she could stay awake for a whole month without ever showing signs of fatigue. That is, unless one thing were to happen.
Namely, if somebody were to deprive her of sweets, her abilities, as they are, would simply cease working. She'd become almost narcoleptic, dozing off at random times, with her body completely failing to recover from any and all wounds. Moreover, she'd be unable to manifest even a single spark, and even her physical movements would become sluggish and weak, like those of a small, very sleepy child. As such, the singular greatest weakness Mania possesses - her own personal kryptonite - is lack of sugar. But, were someone to resort to such dastardly methods to defeat her, could they even be called Human? Even supervillains have standards, after all. Just because you'd kill and destroy for personal profit doesn't mean you'd even dream of doing something so utterly soulless, so black-hearted, so unfathomably cruel, as taking away someone's sweets... right?
XX"Check it out! Uncle Dan gave me WINGS! Aren't they so cool?~"
XXXXXXXXNotes: Stop calling me "Uncle Dan." I have a title. Use it.
XXXXXXXXAlso, those wings are purely cosmetic. Do not attempt to use them for flight.
XXXXXXXXYou will fall and hit your head, and you're bad enough already.
XXXXXXXXBesides, your built-in energy modulator allows you to walk across thin air anyway.
XXXXXXXXI don't care if it's not "the same," it's good enough! You can already practically fly anyway!
XXXXXXXXAlso, that bodysuit is meant to be worn as a concealed inner armor.
XXXXXXXXYou're not supposed to just wear it and nothing else.
XXXXXXXXIf people can see how it works, it completely defeats the point.
XXXXXXXXThat much aside, stop flaunting yourself and put on some damn pants already, woman.
XXXXXXXXWe're villains. We have to look CLASSY. You're giving us all a bad image.
XXXXXXXXYou're not even reading these notes, are you?
XXXXXXXXSometimes I wonder why I even bother with you.
XXXXXXXXLook, just get back to the lair before midnight, okay?
XXXXXXXXI don't want you staying out late. It's dangerous, with all those heroes prowling around.
XXXXXXXXBesides, you get into enough trouble without even fighting. Seriously, you're such a handful.
XXXXXXXXJust hurry home already, alright?
XXXXXXXXThe rest of the minions ordered pizza.
XXXXXXXXI think there's some left in the fridge if you want to eat dinner.
XXXXXXXXAlso, clean your room already. That mess is utterly shameful.
XXXXXXXXSincerely, Dantalian, Dastardly Doctor of Dangerous and Dreadful Disciplines.
Personality
- Mistress Mania is CRAZY.
Now that we've gotten the obvious out of the way, I'll elaborate. Quite simply, when her age abruptly jumped from young girl to adult woman, her personality didn't seem to change a bit. And, even through the years that have passed since then, she has stayed pretty much exactly the same. Naive, somewhat dim, and incredibly energetic, she goes through life with her head in the clouds, focusing only on two things: eating as much tasty food as she can - especially sweets - and having as much fun as is superhumanly possible. And, since she has essentially no possessions of her own aside from her costume, and no place to call home, there's really only one way for her to get by. A supervillain who commits small-time robberies to pay for candy wouldn't be much of a supervillain - save, perhaps, to people as weird as she is - but, fortunately, her definition of fun is just as bizarre as her motivations, since, as it turns out, there's almost nothing she enjoys more than fighting superheroes. Having grown up reading hero fiction, she evidently grew obsessed with the flashy, adventurous lifestyle she saw there, and so decided to become a small-time villainess as a means of living that way herself.
Still, despite her questionable career choices, she's not necessarily actually cut out for being a supervillain. Incredibly cheerful and personable, even her enemies will admit she's a surprisingly nice person. Indiscriminately affectionate, she's fond of pretty much everybody she meets, regardless of whether or not they reciprocate. As such, regardless of how much collateral damage she causes, attacks by Mistress Mania tend to have a grand total of 0 casualties. However, at the same time, she tends to inflict rather serious injuries on whatever heroes she fights, as she doesn't really seem to fully grasp the concept of hurting other people, and is of the opinion that holding back while "playing" with someone would be rude. While this does mean she's capable of holding her own in combat, it means that, like with fire, one should be careful when playing with Mistress Mania. You might get burned.
Childishly gullible, she's also very easy to convince of things, since she tends to believe just about anything she hears. Although enthusiastic, as it turns out, she can also be incredibly lazy, as, easily bored by genuine work, she has a tendency to skip out on jobs in favor of doing fun things. As such, it usually takes some convincing - read: blatant lies - to give her sufficient incentive to actually do something she's averse to. Like, "Oh, Mania, did you know? I'm building a device to create infinite amounts of chocolate, with which I'll flood the entire world. I just need you to fetch X, Y, and Z parts so that I can complete it," when said device is actually just a death ray or a killer robot or something else an upstanding mad scientist might create.
Fortunately, once "convinced" - read: shamelessly exploited - Mania is actually a surprisingly competent assistant, fitting right in with her chosen role of "World's Best Rent-A-Minion." So long as she thinks she's doing something that will result in lots of fun and is given a comfy place to sleep when her powers catch up with her - as well as plenty of sweets to keep her charged - Mania will follow the orders given her to the best of her ability, and, perhaps more importantly, will both distract and defend against any of those pesky heroes trying to stop your brilliant plan to turn the inhabitants of the local orphanage into sapient sharks and release them into the city. ...She can still be really annoying to put up with while one is housing her, however, which is probably why she never has the same employer for any great length of time. She thinks it's more fun this way, though, since by constantly changing masters, she gets to meet new people and do all sorts of new things. Like build death rays! Or like riling up, then releasing all the elephants from the city zoo and riding the resulting stampede through the front door of the Peace Brigade's headquarters to make a statement about... about... something. Well, whatever. The point is that it was AWESOME.
Good times.
History
- As mentioned in powers, Alice Lane was last seen roughly eleven years ago. She was an unremarkable, if cheerful child, born into an unremarkable household to unremarkable parents. She lived an unremarkable life, idolizing hero stories like many other unremarkable children. She did fairly well in school, played with friends, got into fights, and generally didn't do anything out of the ordinary.
That is, until the day where she stood up in the middle of her classroom, laughing hysterically at thin air. When asked by her teacher what was the matter, she merely beamed and said "I get it now!" and then vanished in a flash of multicolored light. Although searches were mounted and local superheroes brought in to look for her, none could find a trace of where she had gone. Not even Farseer, a famous hero renowned for his clairvoyance, was able to sense her anywhere in the world. As such, it was assumed that she'd awakened some sort of volatile power that had, through some means or another, erased her from existence.
...Until one day, out of nowhere, a Peace Brigade-sponsored parade had its fireworks show disrupted by an explosion that set off all the fireworks at once, creating a canopy of rainbow light that blanketed the sky. It was assumed that a misfire was responsible, until a mysterious woman stepped forward and innocently said she'd done it, introducing herself by the name of Alice Lane. Although two heroes chased her from the scene and tried to bring her in for questioning, they were caught in a sudden explosion that destroyed an old warehouse where the perpetrator was assumed to be hiding. Both were later recovered, although they were seriously burned in the attack.
After that point, similar incidents began occurring all over the city, with small banks having their vaults blasted open in the dead of night, with only small sums taken from within. The strange woman with red eyes and two toned hair was eventually located due to her frequent patronage of candy shops and bakeries, and once again an arrest was attempted. Yet again, however, she slipped through the Peace Brigade's grasp, and vanished into the criminal underworld. Since then, she... hasn't really done much of anything, actually, aside from mooch off of other, more notable Supervillains and do their chores, occasionally appearing as a henchman or an accomplice to fight off some hero or another before vanishing into obscurity. About the only important thing she's done since her initial reappearance is assist the nefarious Dantalian - Dastardly Doctor of Dangerous and Dreadful Disciplines! - in creating his Thought Engine, which has been a target for the Peace Brigade ever since. As such, she's certainly not a particularly effective or infamous supervillain. Under her assumed name of Mistress Mania, most members of the citizenry don't even know of her. Things probably would have continued this way, if a chance encounter with a few specific people hadn't changed her life forever...
