Hyperia

Miscellaneous Notes:

Birth Order: Single child
Land of Origin: Millennium Station
Childhood Environment: World traveler, parents were a USA Ambassadors to separate countries
Social/Economic Background: Scholar / Explorer
When Extraordinary Abilities First Manifested: When she met the wizard, Heldamm

Character Bio:

Patsy Palmer, aka: Hyperia is from the world of Millennium Station. She has a bachelor degree in Archeology from her world and it is where she stumble upon the gateway to the wizard, Heldamm. He bestowed upon her the last of his energy in hopes she might carry on the fight against evil and inspire a brighter tomorrow. Then he disappeared as though he became energy and she began to glow a bright red as the “place” she was in began to crumble about her. She ran through the gateway so quickly compared to before only turning around to see it crumble behind her. Since that day she has taken on the Hero Identity of Hyperia. While she has never joined a team of heroes she has fought alongside many such groups at various times.

Her last adventure in the world of Millennium Station was against a villain known as Murder Master. His murderous rampage throughout the city seemed unstoppable. Hero after hero was cut down mercilessly as they tried in vain to apprehend him. Reason, mercy, and restraint were soon abandoned, however, as the death toll rose. The Heroes abandoned all these ideals in their desperate struggle to stop this man and the city doubly suffered. By the time she and her current friends arrived on the scene it was nothing but pure carnage and destruction. Her friends went straight for the madman himself while Hyperia lingered amongst the wreckage and the dead, momentarily stunned at the sheer devastation all around. Their fight didn’t last long. Like the heroes who had come before, they were no match for the deceptively ordinary man. Their deaths were brutal but mercifully quick. Murder Master apathetically kicked the severed head of her team’s leader out of his way and tried to walk off. The head rolled in her direction and came to rest nearby, facing her. His lifeless eyes stared accusingly at her.

Hyperia snapped and flew at the Murder Master, screaming! Fists clenched, arms locked forward, and red energy flames burning from her eyes, rushing along the sides of her face from her speed! Murder Master saw her and pulled something out from within his coat to point at her. Before she could register or react a disk of pure darkness formed between him and her. She couldn’t help but fly through it at top speed, then BLACKNESS!

She awoke in an alley 3 weeks ago, Monday December 25th, 2023 in Brisby Flats. She registered shock at two indisputable facts almost simultaneously: the destroyed city she was just in was now reconstructed, and she had transformed out of her heroic identity of Hyperia back into her regular human form. She struggled to get her bearings but none of the signs matched what she knew of the Devon Row borough of Millennium Station. It took a few days of being homeless, chased, and soup kitchen charity to find out enough to realize she was in an alternate universe somehow! What was Devon Row, Midway, and Monarch Mesa was named subtly different in this world and Millennium Station was now Century Station! What was worse is her connection to Heldamm, was now gone! All her powers had been stripped from her. Any pleas she made for aid were scoffed at as though she was crazy or high. Knowing all of her companions were dead she began suffering survivor’s guilt, she tried chanting to reconnect to Heldamm and the power he had bestowed upon her.

On January 1st, she decided to try an spark her power of flight or die trying. Finding and empty dumpster near the fire escape, she climbed up past the locked rungs on its ladder. Seven stories high she made it on to the roof and chanted in quiet for a full two hours before 2 a.m. She had used a stolen box of sea salt and various candles to perform a summoning ritual and while she received no perceivable form success. Patsy walked to the edge of the building still chanting “Heldamm, Heldamm, Heldamm…” She turned her back out in case it didn’t work she wouldn’t accidentally see it coming. Chanting away she tilted back until gravity seized her!

After a few seconds of free fall she felt herself stop and begin quickly moving up and away from the building! She opened her eyes only to see a lightly armored knight with a wickedly-edged, sword carrying her! She blurted out angrily he had screwed up the ritual. He replied she was being a smidgen ungrateful having had her life just saved. She tried to get out of his arms but he had a superheroes’ strength and then she noticed they were still flying. She calmed herself and asked him whom he was.

“You can call me the Gryphon, and I know things can be depressing, I’ve been there myself. How can I help?”

Patsy asked him to land so she could explain even though she expected him to laugh at her. He landed gently on a nearby building as tall as the one she had made her attempt from and he removed his helmet revealing a dirty blond hair color, compassionate amber-brown eyes, a healthy square very German jaw, and a well trimmed handle bar mustache. Settling himself on a sturdy utility box he gestured to one across from him as he took that strange, almost angelic-berserker looking sword and held it out. It completely broke its form down into a exploding mass of golden colored-like mercurial substance! Then it formed into the most beautiful gilded arm. Patsy took her perch as he nodded, “Whenever you are ready, ma’am.”

Struck by quaint term she looked him up and down but could not detect any sarcasm in his body language or her gut, he was in fact being, polite. Shrugging her shoulders for strength and then letting them slump in resignation she began, “I was once a hero like you, only I come from an alternate universe.”

“Wait, like the Erwin Schrödinger lecture he gave in 1952 regarding simultaneous histories? Oh and,” then he smacked his face, “ma’am I am sorry I got excited and interrupted you, please continue.”

This muscle bound, sword wielding jock knew of Erwin Schrödinger? Well he certainly wasn’t laughing, and she went on to explain she had been empowered by the wizard Heldamm to fight evil. She had run across him as an archaeologist on a dig in Iraq. While she spent the next few years fighting alongside some Super-Teams in, Millennium Station, she never got around to joining one. Then from nowhere came the Murder Master. She told Gryphon about the events leading up to her arrival and he looked at her with sadness, but not pity. When she explained that magic wielding heroes on her world were a bit more common Gryphon held up a finger. She paused when he slowly picked up his sword and said, “This is the Gryphon’s Guardian Angel, Ashmadiel. According to the sword itself it was an angel that had its soul and physical essence forged into this weapon through magic.”

Patsy cocked her head to the side, a fricking magic sword that talks!? Why, how, who cares she thought as she said, “May I see it?”

Gryphon paused the way old phonographs have a skipping needle before playing again. This time events played almost completely in reverse as the vambrace exploded in the golden mercury and reformed into the sword, to which the Gryphon offered up in his open palms. She took the weapon and examined it, particularly the markings on the damascus-etched steel-looking blade. She began to nod and eventually handed the sword back, to which Gryphon returned it to the angelic looking vambrace upon his arm.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose their is hope since that blade is indeed magical.”

Gryphon nodded, then tilted his head down as though he heard something other than what was common in the Norwood sub-district. A few second later he turned back to Patsy, “Would you promise not to tell anyone what I am about to tell you?”

Laughing, “Good grief, whom am I going to tell? But yes, I promise to not divulge the information you are about to share.”

The Gryphon seem to explode in golden mercury and when it shrunk back on itself the explosion revealed Garrick in his 5’8″ size down from 6’4″ and a lot plainer in physical appearance, however, a defining characteristic stayed: that handlebar mustache. This time the sword transformed back into itself before becoming an eagle-face bracelet upon his wrist. His arms rather sheepishly waved out to either side with a more compact muscle mass as if to say – this is the real me. “My name is Garrick Faulkner, Patsy Palmer, and I am very pleased to meet you,” and this was how he opened his story.

He talked about being descended from William Faulkner the poet, novelist, and screenwriter. How he had designed a fusion powered Bio-Dome and thanks to Alpha Prime taking Dr. Sarnhoff, and nearly every scrap of research that was founded upon ideas gained from the project called: Daedalus. His father Cuthert Faulkner had a heart attack seeing Dalus Dome Incorporated vanish nearly overnight. His father’s co-investor, the Zarovsky family, bought him a building in Brisby Flats. They even bought Garrick a wonderfully brand new luxury truck with every bell and whistle that could be crammed into it, barring flight options. Still he couldn’t let go that if he could find some of the tech before it was taken off-world he could prove his dome was not only viable, but could be reproduced cheaply! Then he could follow Dr. Sarnhoff’s example of limitless energy only it would be limitless housing that would integrate into the environment. Once that had traction he could help mankind colonize the moon and they could begin moving into the stars!

Alas, he stated he had not been strong enough to re-forge his path but tried to gather some thugs and steal a truck holding what was now deemed forbidden tech. No innocent was harmed in the robbery more than a few bruises from being tossed out of a cab. He mentions that he only got away with two boxes and one is lost because someone found it while he was serving his sentence and parole. The other box contained the sword he now wields, “I have a lot to atone for and if you’ll let me I would like to help you get home where you can be Hyperia once again. We have universities here and even if we can’t get you home, plan ‘B’ could be finding Heldamm in this world? Maybe the Sumerian Gods could be reached via an artifact of some kind and you could forge another connection to them?”

He smiled but he never laughed at her, not once.

When he asked if she would like to stay in one of the spare rooms at his place so she could get off the streets she agreed never in her life imagining an ex-felon being so nice. “Oh, on the way back I need to stop in an alley,” he said to her, “stop, it’s not what you’re thinking. I broke up a drug deal between a pusher of some guy named, “Fat Lucca” and four buyers. They dropped a bunch of cash as the fight went on, that I hoping we can gather up for your needs. Two of them had these injector needles and I need to find so I can analyze the compounds. These guys used theses ‘SUPER Steroids’ to bulk and rage out on me. If a new drug or delivery system is hitting the streets then I need to find a quiet way to stop this.” Patsy noticed that he had transformed as he was talking about doing something truly heroic, and dumb if it was solo. He had also began to float off the ground a few inches. “I would have said no a month ago, but now let’s just do it quickly.”

They went back to the alley and found $500 strewn about, which the Gryphon promptly gave to Patsy. He found the two injector systems but the thugs he put down were gone and CSPD was starting to round the corner on to the same street. They flew off into the air and landed back at Garrick’s truck he had parked several blocks away. Upon driving back to his building which said ‘Mallic Robotics’ on the side. Patsy remarked she never took him for being so tech savy given the magic he had access to. He shrugged and said he is still figuring out his new path in life but he has used the rent to repay the Zarovsky family for his truck, and about three years out from completely repaying them for the building.

Hitting the garage door opener when they pulled up to the gate and then replied to the secondary text message with a six digit pin found on a key fob for his truck keys. Only then did the gate and garage door open up and close after he passed through them. His place was huge! Two stories and a basement with copious camera surveillance, no windows, an insulated lifting garage door, key pad and badge entry for the one exterior door. It clearly reminded her of an industrial loft bought by cyber-hero from comics she used to read. His portion of the building was 80 feet by 140 feet in dimensions. He had a dedicated training area that was 30 feet across and open above to a catwalk for observation by anyone on the second floor! When they made it upstairs he showed her the room and then at the island in his kitchen talking till dawn about the ‘differences’ between her world and his.

As dawn rose and his alarms went off to wake him up normally. He made sure she knew how to lock her door, and then made sure she had a key card, a new transparent candy-bar phone. Lastly, he made sure she knew how to use it, and made her show him. When she asked why he was very thorough he told her that he felt it was important she not feel like she was a prisoner in any way shape or form. He left her at the front with the parting words, “After my maintenance window is up and the code patched I will work on finding legal ways to establish you an identity. To be fair there maybe be a bit of falsehood involved if we’re keeping your homeworld a secret. I will bring you what I find, but the choice is up to you. I will support you no matter what you choose to do.”

The door clicked shut to his down stairs office and she was alone, free, sheltered, and fed by some food he had whipped up. She smiled to herself over how she had just been saved. She headed to the shower, excited to get clean again but also hopeful once more about her uncertain future.