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Tomorrow's Vigil (the PCs)

Ana Ng (Miss Trial)

The Big Guy: A big, massive, living marble statue with a mallet.
Bookworm: And quite a badass one too. She feels her powers require her to study up on every law she can find in an entire multiverse. Unfortunately this does isolate her a little.
Combat Medic: Can fight as well as anyone in the Vigil... and heal people by hitting them with her hammer.
Crusading Lawyer: Well, technically she's more of a crusading judge, but she plays this role to the hilt during Arc 5, when she has to defend a man in a military court set up by Vanguard.
Doomed Hometown: It's implied that civilization in her homeworld was collapsing when she left.
Flying Brick: Superhumanly strong and tough, but quite agile in the air.
Genius Bruiser: Utterly brilliant where legal matters are concerned, and more than able to hold her own in super-powered brawls.
Healing Shiv: Can heal people by hitting them with her hammer.
Ominous Legal Phrase Title: "Miss Trial".
Power Nullifier: If your powers are violating the law, Miss Trial can enforce the law... like it was a law of physics.
Rules Lawyer:
- This pretty much sums up her main ability. If there's a law that can apply to a situation, she can force her target to obey it. She spends her spare time studying the laws of alternate realities and galactic civilizations just in case.
- Her skills as a literal lawyer are also not to be underestimated - as she demonstrated after defeating a then-still-controlled Mezlisa, and proving that the deal that granted her soul to Wailing Gesture was not correctly carried out, thus freeing her.
Super-Toughness: Not always, but when she plants her feet, nothing can move her. In the team's first outing, she was hit by a speeding truck. The truck lost.

Daphne Miller (Doctor Menlo)

Clothes Make the Superman: Her Hypersuit, designed from a nanotechnological mesh, which provides her with a variety of powers. She never takes it off, often wearing it under a normal layer of clothes.
Even the Girls Want Her: Not normally, Cast Full of Gay aside. But when, as part of her magical studies, she briefly experiments with the "Beauty To Break All Hearts" spell, the reaction from the otherwise-straight Annie is telling.
Evil Twin: Or rather, she's the good twin. The villainous Neuroqueen had her created as a heroic version of herself.
Gadgeteer Genius: Doesn't have any superpowers per se - all of her abilities come from technological tools she has designed and cobbled together.
Goggles Do Something Unusual: Her glasses are technological tool that provides her with a wealth of information, as well as microscopic, telescopic, and illusion-piercing vision.
Hyper-Awareness: In part to compensate for her natural obliviousness, has designed her smartglasses with a "Detective Vision" that detects and analyzes clues in her surroundings and reads intonations and micro-expressions to better understand people.
Hollywood Hacking: Frequently hacks into enemy systems on the fly, with the barest of technobabble justifications.
Jumped at the Call: Was already planning to become a superhero; there was no way she was going to turn down the invitation to Pinnacle Academy.
Living Forever Is Awesome: Is very much of this opinion, and is researching immortality for everyone.
No Social Skills: Which she tries, with mixed results, to make up for by building Hyper-Awareness into her smartglasses.
Omniglot: Her "Omniphone" translates for her in real time a truly massive amount of languages.
Power Perversion Potential: Massive mind-control fetish meets mind-altering technology and chemistry. Thankfully, unlike the Neuroqueen, she respects consent.
Reed Richards Is Useless: Determined to avoid this. So far, she has designed and attempted to market a lesser version of her detective specs (which then got stolen by Omnicorp), and collaborating with an ongoing Mas terraforming project.
Science Hero: More than anything else, tends to rely on her tech and her scientific know-how to fight evil.
Sherlock Scan: Her glasses allow for a low-key version.
Shock and Awe: Relies a lot on electric attacks in battle.
Shrinking Violet: She's an introvert with social anxiety, which tends to leave her both disinclined toward and poorly equipped for many forms of social interaction.

Lightning Strike

Badass Teacher: This applies to all the Pinnacle Academy staff, but as the only one of them to be a player character, Strike gets to see action more often than the rest.
Cool Big Sis: Strives to be this to the rest of the team, dispensing wisdom and support where she can.
Cutscene Power to the Max: It's outright said that her Flash-tier speed, best expressed in fractions of c, is not used tactically because if she violated Game Balance with it, it would need to be taken away.
Dark and Troubled Past: It's implied that her superhero career has had its share of traumatic events. We get more glimpses of how everything turned to shit for her world as time goes on, including the time she was mind-controlled into killing the villainess she was also happened to be mind-controlled into being madly in love at the time.
Does Not Like Magic: Not to the point of having problems working with several magically-empowered teammates, but enough to frequently grumble whenever magical villains show up.
Doomed Hometown: For a certain value of "doomed". It's not being destroyed, but it's suffering from an endless tide of mind-controlling villains that her best efforts have failed to truly contain.
Experienced Protagonist: In contrast to the rest of the team, Strike has been at this for a fairly long time, and is already considered one of the greatest heroes of her world back home.
Face–Heel Turn: For one arc. It ends particularly poorly for her.
Flash Step: Is fast enough that she's often performing long and complex actions so quickly, it's perceived as instantaneous by everyone else.
I Need a Freaking Drink: A common reaction of hers. Unfortunately, thanks to her metabolism, she can't get drunk without a lot of effort.
Intrepid Journalist: Was this for a while in her home dimension, but gradually gave it up to focus on her superhero duties.
Knight in Sour Armor: There's no question that she's become this. Strike is jaded, suffering from heavy PTSD, and still trying very, very hard to save the world.
The Leader: She was this for Unity (her homeworld's greatest hero team), and is voted this for the Tomorrow Vigil.
My Greatest Failure: Despite her best efforts, Unity was not able to stem the tide of mind-controlling villains messing with their world. Part of why she's at Pinnacle is dean Carroll promising a solution.
Reasonable Authority Figure: As a teacher at Pinnacle and as leader of the Vigil, she's generally whom the rest of the Vigil turn to when they need a leader and/or voice of reason.
Super-Speed: And fairly high-level at that. Her family was blessed with being the fastest people on their world... and the blessing held true even after supersonic jets and manned spaceflight were invented, to the point where she can now attain relativistic speeds.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Her feelings towards mind control seem to verge into this, to the point where she nearly froze up in the fight against Wailing Gesture.

Mezlisa

Bad Powers, Good People: She's a literal succubus, with mind-control and soul-stealing abilities. She still does the right thing as best she can. Even when pushed well past the rage breaking point by Strike, hell-bent on ending Strike, she cannot stop worrying about others - nearly getting herself killed in the process.
Benevolent Boss: She's trying to be this to the former slaves of Wailing Gesture she's liberated and is working to rehabilitate.
Charm Person: Part of her succubus powerset. She often relies on mind-controlling villains on the battlefield.
Dark and Troubled Past: She was turned into a succubus due to being an early mutant - thus making one particular ability of hers much stronger than it would be on most.
Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life: For better or worse, Mezlisa is free to make her own decisions now. If only she could decide what she wanted to do with that power...
Forced into Evil: Back when she was Wailing Gesture's slave, who used her to steal souls for a long time.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: A side-effect of Wailing Gesture's transformation of her; she can remember nothing from before she was freed, but still seems to be able to handle language and the essentials of modern culture just fine.
Made a Slave: Part of her backstory; was a mindslave for Wailing Gesture before being freed.
Magic Kiss: Hers are a powerful Mind Control vector.
Phlebotinum Rebel: Was turned into a succubus by Wailing Gesture. Turned against her as soon as she was freed.
Power Copying: Can perform this to an extent when taking someone's shape.
Succubi and Incubi: Was turned into a succubus by Wailing Gesture an indeterminate time ago.
Telepathy: Often used to coordinate the team.
Trauma Button: After nearly killing Strike by hijacking her body, Mezlisa freezes and begins to panic the next time she controls enemy combatants and considers using them in a way that would hurt them. The prospect of doing bad things with her powers seems to trigger PTSD.
Your Soul Is Mine!: An unusual ability of hers; with a kiss, she can seize the soul of a victim.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Mezlisa's worst fear is Strike, whose reactions to Mezlisa's abilities are so poor that Mez is afraid Strike will accidentally kill her. Suffice it to say, when Strike turned against the party and targeted her first and second-hardest behind only Miss Trial, Mez didn't take it well.
- Mezlisa also finds Shade's abilities and proclivities for using them kind of terrfying. (Of course, Shade is the same towards Mez...)

Shade

Ambiguous Innocence: As a goddess of assassination, she can at times be disturbingly cheerful when bringing up the option of killing people. When it comes to actual practice...
Bad Powers, Good People: A goddess of darkness and assassins trying to do good.
Casting a Shadow: Can manipulate darkness over an area - selectively, even, only limiting visibility for some people.
Creepy Good: She's happy enough to lean into the fact that she's a goddess of darkness and assassins, and far more willing than most to discuss lethal options (with varying degrees of seriousness), but she's unquestionably on the side of good in her actual deeds.
Dark Is Not Evil: Shows compassions to her followers and friends, tries to save the worlds, literally dark goddess.
Doomed Hometown: She wasn't raised there, but her native world is Shattered Aegis, which is undergoing nuclear winter after an Annihilator Probe exploded there (and the meddling of Gargantor is not making things better). And then she ends up playing a central role in U Ndooming it.
Gods Need Prayer Badly: The fact that she gets so little is explicitly one of the things keeping her from being stronger (and more frequently awake).
Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Closer to the heroic than the sociopathic end of the spectrum, but the ever-present urge to steal and kill does make her morality a bit odd at times.
Kleptomaniac Hero: Part of her portfolio - Shade really, really wants to steal things. Including Eternium Shards worth more than the planet she's standing on.
Legacy Character: Inherited her power (but not her disposition!) from her grandfather, the previous shade.
Murder Is the Best Solution: Thanks to her power set, part of her mind is always trying to tell her this.
Our Elves Are Different: Before she became a shadow goddess, she was a drow who'd spent her whole life in human society, using magic to pass for human.
Physical God: Admittedly, one still very much growing into her powers.
Power Incontinence: Much to her displeasure, her power keeps making her shorter and shorter. It also prevents her from using capital letters in electronic or spoken communication.
Pragmatic Hero: For all that she's a superhero, she's pretty happy to break the law and even kill deserving targets in order to get the job done.
The Sacred Darkness: A goddess of shadow who wants to make it so people need not fear the dark.
Shadow Walker: Conveniently enough for the team, whom she at times teleports via shadows to where they need to be.
Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Shade finds Mezlisa's powers far more terrifying than her own.

Zygmunt "Sig" Smith (Cerulean)

Achilles' Heel: Vulnerable to cold.
All-Loving Hero: Sig tries so hard to save everyone, even utterly awful people.
Blessed with Suck: Became a powerful hero in the first place thanks a Cosmic Retcon by Anarktron meant to make her one of the greatest of heroes. Unfortunately, Gargantor was able to partially hijack said cosmic retcon to retroactively make her life an utter hell.
Chrome Champion: Described at time as a "metal slime".
Chronic Hero Syndrome: To the point where her teammates worry she has a martyr complex. Sig will take massive personal risks to protect others, every time.
Dark and Troubled Past: An orphan whose case worker had arrangements with the underworld. Sig got passed around some truly awful foster parents. Which was apparently due to a cosmic Retcon by Gargantor, who, for reasons yet unknown, holds a personal grudge against Sig.
Dumb Muscle: Averted - she's among the most perceptive of the heroes.
Foster Kid: Bounced between numerous foster homes, each more terrible than the last.
The Heart: Her insistent idealism and heroism in spite of, well, her entire life is inspiring to the rest of the team.
Iron Woobie: Oh so very much. Sig's background is an endless parade of trauma and abuse and none of it is by accident.
Jumped at the Call: Wasted absolutely no time trying to be a hero when the opportunity presented itself.
Made of Iron: Literally made of metal, and arguably the most physically-resilient member of the Vigil.
Noblewoman's Laugh: Not Sig herself, but rather has a bit of a fetish for it.
The Paragon: Deeply desires to be this, always seeking to save as many people as possible and inspire even the wicked to be better.
Sherlock Scan: Sig can be the most perceptive member of the team, especially when it comes to observing other people. This talent was really brought to the fore in Arc 5.
Super-Strength: Enough to perform a Bare Handed Block on the sword of a Giant Robot.
Taking the Bullet: Saves Sumire from an assassination attempt at grave personal injury at the start of arc 3.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: Of the "liquid metal" variety, with control over her "body".

Team One

Hero of Another Story: It's shown here and there that, much like the Tomorrow Vigil, they're having their own missions and adventures, at least some of which have high stakes, but details are rarely forthcoming.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: To put it mildly, most of Team One don't seem very fond of each other. Particularly evident with Kaelis and Minlyn.

Kaelis

Because You Were Nice to Me: Well, more like "because you were nice to my people". By Kaelis's reckoning, Solaria was the only one in the olden days willing to give orcs a chance; those that don't follow Solaria almost uniformly worship Gargantor. One of the reasons Kaelis is so loyal to her.
Cool Bike: "Heat Vision", her paladin mount, is a sapient high-tech bike with the voice of KITT.
Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Part of her backstory. She was on the team that killed the previous Shade - a literal god.
Does This Remind You of Anything?: Her self-loathing over her mind-control fetish can make her sound a lot like a self-hating LGBT person.
Drowning My Sorrows: Her orcish metabolism and paladin resistance to poison makes it challenging for her to get drunk... but she manages when her self-loathing gets sufficiently bad.
Heroes Prefer Swords: Averted. For all that she's a paladin from a medieval fantasy universe, she is entirely open to using modern weaponry. She used a combination of a sniper rifle and holy powers to kill the previous Shade.
Holy Hand Grenade: She's a paladin, so, yes. Might be more literal than most examples, considering her fondness of modern weaponry.
Knight in Sour Armor: Kaelis is significantly more jaded than one might expect of a literal paladin. None can doubt her dedication to doing the right thing, though.
Our Orcs Are Different: Her tribe started as Lawful Evil Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Sparta ages ago, then had a collective Heel–Face Turn and joined the Sirovian Federation.
Paladin: Of Solaria, as a member of the Order of the Sacred Flame.
Shout-Out: Her 'paladin mount' is an intelligent, talking motorcycle named Heat Vision.

Iron Sights

Striga

Person of Mass Destruction: As a wielder of the Tome of Energy, Striga has access to extremely destructive sorcery.

Minlyn

Fallen Princess: Used to be a Denebian aristocrat. Is now a fugitive from the Deneb Imperium after liberating a number of slaves for reasons unknown. She does not seem to be adjusting well.

Melisende

Faysal Qaram

Pinnacle Academy Staff and Associates

Dean Alicia Carroll

Anti-Villain: Trying to make the world a better place, self-described supervillain. Whether that description is accurate is up for debate.
Bad Powers, Bad People: The Dean can see what course of action would cause someone emotional or physical pain. This power is always on and works on herself. This does not particularly help her emotional state.
Black-and-Grey Morality: The Dean firmly believes that the world works this way.
BlackMail: Implies that this is how she managed to become dean of Pinnacle Academy. Unsurprising, seeing as her power would make it easy for her.
Breaking Speech: Her powers lend themselves to this. It's rather telling that she could talk Rebecca into committing suicide in her moment of triumph in just two minutes.
Emotion Control: The other half of her powerset, Dean Carroll can move existing emotions from person to person, while amplifying or dulling them.
From Nobody to Nightmare: From abused teenager sent to a concentration camp to dean of Pinnacle Academy and feared by potentates across multiple dimensions.
Geeky Turn-On: Alicia likes mad science. Really likes mad science. To the point that Madman got creeped out and filed a restraining order on her.
Greater Need Than Mine: Alicia has been described as a "mono-generosity build". She may be ruthless, somewhat sadistic, cynical as hell, cruel even... but it cannot be denied that places a far, far greater priority on helping the world than on her own wants and needs.
Green-Eyed Monster: According to Word of God, Alicia can safely be assumed to be violently jealous of every member of the Vigil, who get to be heroes. Even of Sig.
Iron Lady: As the Dean of Pinnacle Academy, as Mission Control for the Vigil, and apparently even before that, she often plays the role of the ruthless, iron-willed leader behind the heroes.
Insanity Immunity: A bit of a reversal of cause and effect - one of the biggest pieces of evidence that Alicia Carroll is not under the control of the Neuroqueen is that she's still a bundle of anxiety, self-loathing, and hatred, when the Neuroqueen possesses the technology to fix her and the morality to be compelled to.
Jerkass Woobie: Cynical, misanthropic, sees the worst in everyone, and extremely difficult to work with. But with the life she leads, you want to hug her and punch her almost at the same time.
Mission Control: Generally acts as this for the Tomorrow Vigil.
My Greatest Failure: She still blames herself for the death of Erin Celeste.
"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Hang out with Alicia, expect to hear these. Probably directed at you at some point. Given how her power keeps telling her exactly how to hurt people, including with words, she can make these sting.
Self-Made Orphan: To this day, she has no idea if it was intentional or not.
The Spymaster: She's playing a central role in gathering and organizing the further gathering of intel on the villains of the Pinnacle Tangle.
Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: With Solaria. And Sumire. And Angelmark. And Strike. And... honestly, probably everyone on her side except maybe the Avatar and Doctor Dexter Darien. Maybe. Most of her staff seems to hate her but work for her anyway, she makes no secret of her own ire for Solaria whom she works for..
Voice with an Internet Connection: Often plays this role as Mission Control for the Vigil during their missions.
Well-Intentioned Extremist: To what extent she can be considered well-intentioned is a major point of contention in-universe. She is extremely ruthless in her pursuit of her goals, misanthropic and cynical as hell, more than a little willing to get a number of people hurt... But also very much in opposition to much of the injustice in the multiverse.

Solaria

Big Good: As the patron goddess of the Sirovian Federation and the paladin Order of the Sacred Flame, as well as one of Pinnacle Academy's sponsors, she often takes this role.
The Chessmaster: A benevolent version, known for her long-running battles of wits with Gargantor and Sactifer.
Expy: Of Princess Celestia. Sun-aligned goddess, long-lost Moon-aligned sister imprisoned in the Moon, one of her most illustrious servants is an ascended archmage known as "the Lady of Twilight"...
Flaming Hair: Her hair is made of fire.
My Greatest Failure: Her sister's Heroic Sacrifice, which has led to her millennia-long, still-ongoing imprisonment inside their world's Moon, where she's still keeping the End trapped with her.
Physical God: A goddess of the Sun, Civilization and Good.
The Power of the Sun: It's one of her divine domains. She tries to use a fraction of it to end the nuclear winter of Shattered Aegis.
Reasonable Authority Figure: She's the deity of the Solarian Church and of the paladins of the Order of the Sacred Flame, as well as the primary backer of Pinnacle Academy. Most people agree that she is fair and wise. Alicia may object.

Melancholy

Professor Lianis

The Handler: Alicia refers to her as her "handler from Solaria".
The Social Expert: It's her job - she teaches the students how to handle social matters. She is also able to navigate complex plots while maintaining a persona within Sirovian high society.

Professor Josefine

The Ghost: Fittingly enough for a stealth teacher, she has yet to be seen.
The Spymaster: Presumably. Given how little is seen of her, this is more of an Informed Attribute at this stage.

Professor Cooper

Evil Counterpart: Seemingly an exact clone from another dimension of "Doctor Tesseract", a superheroine killed in Jerusalem with undefined dimensional powers. It's heavily implied that on her homeworld, she's a supervillain.

Professor Izuno Sumire

Berserk Button: One of her sisters merrily crossed the Moral Event Horizon, selling extremely advanced bioweapons to SHOCKER for the sake of fame. Sumire erased nearly all trace of her very existence. A century later, it is still a sore point with her.
Dark and Troubled Past: Spent a year teaching at Mind Control University, which apparently still haunts her.
Immortal Ruler: Of the Central Isles. Or at least, very long-lived ruler.
Incredibly Lame Pun: Describes mind-controlling her into falling in love with a cargo freighter as 'showing Alicia the mother of all problematic ships'.
Power Perversion Potential: Sumire Izuno has a certain fondness of mind-control, and her combination of chi and chemistry skills mean the interest is not theoretical. Alicia would have referred to it as 'her Master Roshi bullshit', if not for the fact that due to historical events, Dragon Ball Z was never written in this universe. Which is then immediately referenced in the next mini. And the mini after that.

Professor Illbien

Professor Mae

Professor Angelmark

Always a Bigger Fish: Despite Michelle Angelmark's long list of achievements, and despite her being, hands down, the best fighter on Pinnacle Earth (and in most dimensions the plot has encountered), she's not the best in the entire multi-verse, and she was actually the second choice for Pinnacle Academy's combat instructor. Tellingly, Michelle knows who the first choice was, and doesn't dispute that they're better than her.
Awesome Ego: That said, in every other situation she's happy to brag about being the best fighter around - and she's not wrong. Just don't let her start doing so around anyone else who thinks they're the best fighter around...
Badass Teacher: Possibly the most out of the entire staff - in Arc 6, we see her demolish seven of Vanguard's toughest metahumans all on her own. There's a reason she's the combat teacher.
Bad Liar: Pro-tip: If she swallows her own lips, she's lying.
Cannot Keep a Secret: She can't. She immediately blabs anything she's trying to hide as soon as someone asks her about it, and her attempts at telling lies are more transparent than glass.
Conflicting Loyalty: She struggles with this, being loyal to her old world as well as to Pinnacle, resulting many complications during Arc 5 as she tried to balance everything while the two factions almost went to war. This being Michelle, the end result was a week long hostage situation that ended with her getting taken out and captured by the other Pinnacle teachers, and her being declared an interdimensional terrorist back on her old world.
Cutting the Knot: Any plan Michelle makes is likely to involve liberal amounts of knot cutting, regardless of circumstances or context.
Dark Secret: Despite being the worst secret keeper in the world, Michelle is clearly hiding something - something that occasionally turns her eyes red, and that she's let slip would make the source of her powers very angry at anyone she told.
Didn't Think This Through: The key flaw in many of Michelle's plans. In Arc 5 she took the Dean hostage for a week in the Dean's own office because she didn't think of what to do with her once she'd captured her.
The Dreaded: If the group she's fighting knows who she is, expect them to spend more time arguing about who will be leading the charge against her than actually fighting her. Anyone who survives a battle with her generally takes extreme pains to make sure they never have to go through a second.
Flechette Storm: Michelle has many, many knives, and deadly aim.
Genius Ditz: Michelle is something of an airhead when it comes to anything that isn't combat related. Her methods are direct, and tend to give little, if any, consideration of things like collateral damage. However, she is practically a savant in a fight, able to tactically assess complex situations in a split second and pull off million-to-one plans with a flick of her wrist. This usually makes her too useful to fire, despite the disasters that follow in her wake. Though Alicia is tempted, none the less.
Hero of Another Story: More than most members of the non-player character cast, Michelle is often involved in the main story arcs, but deployed elsewhere. During Arc 3, she and the other teachers stormed the Ranger's HQ, during Arc 6 she's diverted from joining the heroes fight by a hit squad from her old world, during Arc 7 she's with the main army fighting through the worst of the enemy forces, and during Arc 8 she's again fighting the main armies of the enemy while the Vigil works behind the scenes to resolve the situation.
Hyperspace Arsenal: She stores many, many, many weapons in her singularity - her favourites being her sword and spear.
Lady of War: As long as she doesn't talk, she can carry this style off with aplomb.
Meido: Yes. But underestimate her at your peril.
My Greatest Failure: Admittedly, Michelle's got a few skeletons in her closet, but the worst by far was the time she was repelling an alien invasion and was teleported back to the invader's home world. Locked in battle against an incredibly powerful alien, she fought with everything she had, using every advantage she could to win, including using many bystander aliens as human shields... Only to learn after she'd won that she'd been teleported into a civilian mall, and that the powerful alien had been fighting her to protect them from her. Understandably, she doesn't like to talk about this day, but it's clear when she does that it still haunts her.
Ninja Maid: Subverted. She is a powerful superheroine, and she dresses like a maid... because she was cosplaying as one when she got her time-based powers, and said powers have left her stuck with that same outfit ever since.
O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Normally, Michelle can charitably be called 'charmingly goofy'. However... after being forced to fight and kill a team made up of several of her former friends, she sits down in the operating theatre next to the surgeons trying to keep one of the few survivors alive, and pointedly begins sharpening her knives. Without saying a word, she makes it crystal clear that if the doctors fail their job, they will be swiftly sharing the fate of their patient. Her girlfriend had to drag her out of there almost literally.
Pet the Dog: Despite all the trouble she causes, she does care about those around her, and will go to extreme lengths to take care of them, like when she went cycling through the desert to check on her girlfriend and make sure she was okay.
Power Incontinence: See Ninja Maid above.
Pragmatic Hero: Michelle has no real qualms with killing, and will generally cut down her enemies in the most expedient way possible. This even applies to friends and co-workers if they end up fighting her - if she has a choice, she'll try to take them down non-lethally. If she doesn't, she'll kill them in a heartbeat, and feel bad about it later.
Sarcasm-Blind: She's not incapable of sarcasm, but she has her moments. Generally, you want to be very careful being sarcastic with Michelle, because she might take you seriously, and given her skill set, disaster is sure to follow.
Sink or Swim Mentor: She can be unconventional when she has a point to prove. When Strike loses her powers and feels she no longer has a place fighting as a hero because of it, Michelle's response is to (lightly) try to kill her. Strike being able to defend herself against that is actually what breaks her out of her funk.
Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Professor Michelle Angelmark and Professor Cassandra Illbein fought on the opposite sides of a rather significant war in their backstories, and now have to work together as fellow teachers. Neither is all that happy about the situation, despite both putting a great deal of work into being polite about it. As a result, any room that contains both of them (or Michelle and Cassandra's mental projection, at any rate) will quickly be filled with passive aggressive comments, actually aggressive arguments, and a whole lot of insults. Despite this, they can make for a devastatingly effective team - when they're not bickering.
Time Master: Thanks to a singularity she was connected to due to a freak accident, Michelle's actual super power is time control. She can slow it down, speed it up, stop it, even turn it back to a certain extent. Said singularity also returns her to the state she was in when she was first connected to it, giving her a strong healing factor (as well as forcing her to wear maid outfits all the time). Surprisingly, though, her powers are of limited use in a fight, and her combat skills are all her own.
World's Best Warrior: She knows it, and is not afraid to tell everyone in earshot about it if the mood takes her. Fortunately for her, she absolutely has the skills to back it up.

Other Pinnacle Academy Students

Yaraghiya

Gadgeteer Genius: Despite a complete lack of a technological education, has managed to achieve some understanding of and mastery over the precursor technology on her world.
The Minion Master: Has a number of robotic drones at her beck and call.
Science Hero: What she wants to be. Which very, very much goes against her upbringing and the values of her society.
The Woobie: A kind girl with a passion for technology, whose mother is the head of a ruthless theocratic dystopia that utterly forbids the use of advanced technology.

Sally Silvestra

A student from Sikandria, a nation on Solaria's world that openly worships Sanctifer.

Alpha Bitch: Whereas most of the students at Pinnace Academy are would-be heroes, Sally openly boasts her evil ways and pushes people around with the resources and connections available to her.
Rich Bitch: A child of nobility, provided significant material and magical resources, and utterly immoral.

Renko

Dark and Troubled Past: The time she spent in a land inhabited by magical beings who viewed humans as food could be argued not to have been the worst.
Determinator: Has survived her Dark and Troubled Past in no small part through force of will and always looking for the way out.
Gadgeteer Genius: Has invented what's effectively an Alcubierre sabot.
Girl with Psycho Weapon: A crowbar that also happens to be an extremely potent Power Nullifier.
Stalker with a Crush: Is this to Mary.

Margaret Desai

Beware the Superman: On her world, superhumans have effectively taken over. She does not see it as a problem.

Luis

Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: He's a vampire from a Castlevania-inspired world, but as heroic as most of the students at Pinnacle.

Roan

Global Champions

The greatest superhero team of Pinnacle Earth.

The Avatar

The Ageless: Doesn't seem to have aged one bit since his first appearance in the 1920s.
Been There, Shaped History: Has been active on Pinnacle Earth since the 1920s, and he's been actively involved in a lot of historic events, from participating in World War 2 to taking down the Ku Klux Klan.
Big Good: Is generally this to Pinnacle Earth, as the leader of Global Might and inspiration for the superhero community at large.
Death Is Not Permanent: Appears to have come Back from the Dead a handful of times.
Flying Firepower/Flying Brick: A mix; his core powerset is Flight, immensely powerful cosmic energy blasts, and Super-Toughness, only lacking in Super-Strength.
Ideal Hero: Charismatic, altruistic, selfless, inspirational and steadfast, he literally embodies the heroic ideal in a way no human can.
Morality Chain: Even a number of people with questionable ethics just don't want to disappoint the guy. He might be the only living person whose respect Alicia Carroll actually craves, and her desire to harm Tagton is in no small part motivated by the fact he tortured the Avatar for years.
The Needless: The Avatar is active pretty much 24/7, never stopping to eat, sleep, or rest. It's noted that he only breathes to avoid creeping people out.
Physical God: He's implied to be one, though he's rather secretive on the subject.
Stop Worshipping Me: He may technically be a god, but he has neither the need nor the desire for a religious following.
Swiss-Army Superpower: His cosmic energy manipulation is his most versatile power in his toolset, able to gift him almost any superpower he wants, from mental superspeed and matter creation to intangibility and healing. However, it's limited in its maximum output, it takes time to swap powers, and some powers are more energy-intensive than others.

Causality

The Archmage: The most powerful of Pinnacle Earth's good-aligned wizards.
Bollywood Nerd: One of her epithets is "India's Marie Curie".
I'm Not a Hero, I'm...: an academic. She is a scholar first and only engages in heroism because duty calls for it.
Magic Versus Science: Took a third option, studying magical phenomena as a physicist in order to actually understand the scientific basis underlying magic.
Science Hero: After a fashion. She uses science to master magic.

Tracer Pulse

Anti-Hero: Generally considered the morally grayest of the Global Champions. ...And has set Alicia on fire as a warning.
Badass Longcoat: Goes around in a black trenchcoat, and is among the toughest heroes around.
Dirty Business: May have taken it upon himself to handle this for the Global Champions - when Alicia learns a certain secret, he takes it upon himself to set her on fire to let her know it has to stay a secret. The Avatar is horrified to find out.
Hand Blast: How his energy powers manifest, via blasts powerful enough to threaten the toughest Pinnacle Earth villains.
Hardboiled Detective: Tough? Check. Cynical? Check. Street-smart? Check. Admittedly, he is smarter than the typical example, and relies on Hand Blast attacks rather than a gun.
Super-Speed: Frequently runs at mach 15.
Would Hit a Girl: Would set a girl on fire.

Bleu-Blanc-Rouge

Captain Geographic: Is a French super soldier. His codename references the French flag.
Fights Like a Normal: Since his only powers are enhanced agility/reflexes/physical skills, he has to rely on tactics to win against the sort of threats his job involves.
Royal Rapier: His weapon; a Monomolecular Blade made of omni-metal, which is able to cut through tanks like butter. ...He'd probably object to calling it "royal", though.
Super-Soldier: An experimental procedure gave him Super-Reflexes, super agility, and coordination.
The Strategist: A born leader and one of his world's greatest tacticians, he routinely takes battlefield command in the Global Champions.

Techno-Paladin

Gadgeteer Genius: With how much capability his armor gives him, he is definitely this.
Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Since his armor protects him by generation an invulnerability field that covers his entire body (and the armor itself), the lack of helmet doesn't actually put him at risk.
Magnum Opus Dissonance: In-universe. Most of the public sees his power armor as a miracle of engineering that lets him stand to the greatest villains in the world. He sees it as a failure - his goal was to make mass-producible armor that would allow police forces to handle supervillains. Instead, he ended up with a nigh-invincible armor that's near-impossible to duplicate.
Powered Armor: His main combat weapon, giving him all the capabilities of a Flying Brick.
The Smart Guy: Many people on Pinnacle Earth refer to him as "the smartest man in superheroics". Considering some of his teammates, that's saying a lot.

Titan

Base-Breaking Character: In-Universe, is a bit of one to the Japanese public. On one hand, she is one of the country's greatest superheroes. On the other hand, some of her statements have earned her the ire of the nationalist far-right.
Heroic Lineage: She's the daughter of a super cop and the granddaughter of a Super-Soldier.
Nice Girl: Noted for her friendly nature and well-grounded personality.
Sizeshifter: Her mutant powers allow her to change size at will, augmenting her already-impressive strength and toughness.
Super-Strength and Super-Toughness: Even at a regular size, she's easily stronger and tougher than a regular human.

Thermakron

Benevolent A.I.: A 12-foot-tall robot, designed to be a hero, and has all the benefits that come with such.
Lightning Bruiser: Super Strong, Nigh-Invulnerable, yet is more agile than anything its size should be.
Playing with Fire/An Ice Person: Has control of extreme temperatures, from absolute zero to solar levels.

Mister Tomorrow

Comes Great Responsibility: As a mutant, he believes that those born with powers like him have the responsibility to make their world a good one. Which shows given how invested he is in politics.
Master of Your Domain: Has full control over his own biology, able to reshape and regrow his flesh however he pleases.
Healing Factor: His mutant control over his own biology has given him one, and it's a very potent one.
Wolverine Claws: Can reshape his own fingers into these. Monomolecular Bladed ones, to boot.

Mimic

Swiss-Army Superpower: His power is basically to have virtually any power he wants, to a level of versatility unmatched by anyone else.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: In addition to switching between powers, he can change his physical appearance instantly.

Phantom

Energy Being: An alien being from the stars, able to pass through matter and turn invisible.
Mind over Matter: His telekinesis is a powerful tool and weapon.
Paranoia Fuel: Is this for villains in-universe. A perfectly silent, invisible hero who can go through walls, might be spying on you without your knowledge at any moment, and whose intangibility makes most fights completely one-sided. What's not to be afraid of?

Other Allies

Annie

Daphne's best (read: only) friend from before Pinnacle. Had to move to Pinnacle Academy at the end of the first arc out of fear of the Shadow Church targeting her to get at Daphne.

Cat Girl: A human, but her mutation has manifested in cat ears and tail, among other things.
Nice Girl: It's at least one of the reasons she was Daphne's only friend before Pinnacle.
Token Minority: Inverted in that she's one of the few heterosexual characters (to Daphne's long-standing regret).

Anarktron

A god of freedom, hailing from the same pantheon as Solaria and Gargantor.

Honor Before Reason: His anarchist beliefs and disdain for any sort of hierarchy keep him from forming an organized clergy like other gods do, which hinders his ability to affect the world.

Erin Celeste

Death by Origin Story: Her death long before the campaign started is one of the many things that contributed to traumatizing Alicia.
Hope Spot: After Doctor Trick murdered her to steal her immortality by grafting her severed soul to his own, it turned out that her self was returning to the surface, slowly overwriting Doctor Trick... Until he proceeded to take steps to erase her identity and permanently remove her ability to come back from the dead.
The Lost Lenore: Is this to Alicia, who hasn't gotten over her after these years.
Our Angels Are Different: She had resurrective immortality... which, as it turned out, could still be beaten.
Posthumous Character: Died years before the start of the campaign.

Villains

Wailing Gesture

The succubus queen who originally turned Mezlisa into a demon, and one of Sanctifer's lieutenants.

Bad Boss: Working for her generally involves being a mind slave.
Bad Powers, Bad People: A succubus with mind-control powers and none of Mezlisa's moral restraint.
Hoist by His Own Petard: The Deal with the Devil she got Mezlisa to make with her really came back to bite her in the ass.
Charm Person: Part of her succubus powerset is seduction-based mind-control.
Sealed Evil in a Can: The can being "Mez got her soul in return for keeping her safe from Sanctifer potentially invoking You Have Failed Me, guaranteeing she really doesn't want to move much out of her prison in the Vigil base."
Starter Villain: The first big villain the team faces, halfway through Arc One.

Entropy

A godlike entity of chaos and disharmony. The first arc revolves around his return from imprisonment.

Expy: Of Discord, as a physically-mismatched Reality Warper villain who thrives on chaos and spent ages as Sealed Evil in a Can.
Killed Off for Real: The climax of the first arc revolves around killing him.
Physical God: And one powerful enough to fight against a massive interdimensional coalition of superheroes.
Reality Warper: A large part of how his powers work, and of how he's defeated - Miss Trial counters with her own, law-based reality warping, using the fact that his messing with the laws of physics is illegal under some obscure law somewhere. This significantly weakens him.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Was this for a very long time in the Shattered Aegis world. Then the Annihilator probe exploded...

Shadow

A conspiratorial organization in Pinnacle Earth dedicated to the enslavement and/or annihilation of metahumans.

Expy: Of the Malta Group: A shadowy conspiracy of Western intelligence operatives seeking to enslave and/or destroy metahuman elements.
Nebulous Evil Organization: By the nature of their organization, they operate largely behind the scenes, the full scope of their resources and activities a secret.
N.G.O. Superpower: While a lot of their members and contacts come from governments and intelligence agencies, they don't actually answer to any government... but they're among the big movers and shakers of Pinnacle Earth.
Politically Incorrect Villain: Rather openly motivated by anti-mutant sentiments and xenophobia.
Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: For all that they're a terrorist organization determined to rule the world, Shadow retains significant political connections - enough that those who get caught doing their bidding tend to suffer little to no consequences.
Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: The other half of their ability to evade consequences for their actions - most Shadow agents are already nestled in the alphabet soup of government agency and law enforcement.

Senator Young

Senator for the State that Pinnacle Academy is located in, which gives him unfortunate amount of leverage on it. Open associate of Shadow.

Corrupt Politician: It doesn't get much more corrupt than being closely aligned with the world's largest terrorist organization.
Evil Is Petty: As evidenced in the various ways he finds to personally screw with Alicia Carroll.
Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: A member of the US Senate, whose elected position is generally viewed as unassailable.
Smug Snake: Pretty much every time he shows up, the man positively drips with smugness and contempt for others.

Gargantor

A god of Tyranny, Fate, and Evil. Patron of the Shadow Church.

Expy: Of Darkseid (as an evil god determined to crush the cosmos under tyrannical dystopia), with a dash of Grogar as the ram-headed archnemesis of the Celestia expy.
God of Evil: It's literally part of his divine portfolio.
Dystopia Justifies the Means: His end goal is a cosmos regimented into an efficient hierarchy of downward-flowing oppression, with himself at the top.
The Man Behind the Man: To the Shadow Church. And Jacob Hartland. And possibly Purity. He's essentially the Big Bad pulling the string behind a lot of the bad things happening in the setting.
Winds of Destiny, Change!: As a god of fate, he can manipulate it toward outcomes he favors. This allows him to perform the occasional bit of terrifying Gambit Roulette.

The Shadow Church

Dystopia Justifies the Means: They worship Gargantor; it comes with the territory.
Nebulous Evil Organization: They're a terrorist cult that operates in secret, but display again and again that they're a force to be reckoned with on the interdimensional scene.
N.G.O. Superpower: Founded after the Tamderon Empire (the governmental superpower in Gargantor's service) was destroyed.
Religion of Evil: Their goal - Gargantor's goal - is to establish a cosmos-spanning tyrannical dystopia under the absolute control of their openly-evil god.

Sanctifer

A particularly powerful and cunning demon lord, with a penchant for collecting souls and a long-standing enmity with Solaria.

The Chessmaster: As a "mere" archdevil, he is nowhere near as powerful as Gargantor. Nonetheless, his ability to plan and scheme had ked to him being considered a threat in equal standing. In Arc 6, while spending minimal resources, he almost manages to crash everyone else's plans and seize Doctor Combat's secrets for himself.
The Corrupter: On both a personal and massive scale. Turned Sikandria into a dystopia in just a few generations.
Demon Lords and Archdevils: One of the top demonic figures from the hell dimensions connected to Solaria's World.
The Man Behind the Man: Many of the evildoers of the setting ultimately answer to him - Sikandria, Wailing Gesture, Sally Silvestra, and those are just the open ones.
Manipulative Bastard: Very much so. See The Corrupter above.

The Deneb Imperium

An expansionist alien empire from the Silen dimension.

The Dreaded: In their home dimension, the Denebians - who view all other species as their rightful slaves - are feared by everyone else to the point that even nations that hate each other have formed fragile defensive alliances against them... and even that might not be enough.
The Empire: A tyrannical, interstellar polity that enslaves those it conquers.
Feudal Future: Despite having an interstellar society and some of the most advanced technology in the setting, they're ruled by a feudal aristocracy.
Master Race: A central tenet of their ideology is that Denebians are inherently superior to all and destined to rule the cosmos; other races are viewed as their natural slaves.
A Nazi by Any Other Name: Horrifically racist? Check. Warlike and expansionistic? Check. Happy to enslave and commit genocide? Check.
Our Elves Are Different: The Denebians are basically space drows - long-lived, pointy-eared, white-haired, graceful, and quite evil and xenophobic.
Vestigial Empire: The Denebian civilization of the distant past was even more ridiculously advanced and powerful than the one of today... until the Annihilators sent them back to the stone age. More than a hundred thousand years later, they're still catching up to their ancient glories.

The Neuroqueen

The Dreaded: When one of the Fair Folk realizes she's dealing with her counterpart, she panics and jumps out a window.
Emotion Control: The Neuroqueen has hundreds of tools in her arsenal for permanently warping the emotions of others.
Evil Counterpart: As it turns out, she specifically had Doctor Melo created to be her good counterpart.
Mind Manipulation: The Neuroqueen's slaves retain all of their former intelligence, memories, and in most cases their personality. They just become completely and totally devoted to Daphne, to the point where they'd die for her. They know that these feelings are artificial, but they're also made to like that Daphne made them feel this way.
Not Me This Time: Insists she had nothing to do with subverting one of Kyoko's aides.
Villain of Another Story: Is enough to terrify others, but has never actually been in opposition to the protagonists.

Purity

A god that, after Tribulation appeared, effectively took control of Yaraghiya's homeworld as the only being that could protect its inhabitants from the rampant horrors.

Dark Secret: Purity's magic is suspiciously similar to that of Gargantor, God of Tyranny, and it's strongly hinted that he is behind Tribulation to begin with.
Evil Luddite: Has effectively forbidden his followers from using any post-medieval technology. It's implied he's done this to better control them.
Light Is Not Good: The light theme is omnipresent in his cult, but see Dark Secret above...

Doctor Trick

An infamous Pinnacle Earth mad scientist, officially dead decades earlier, but in actuality recruited by Shadow according to Alicia.

For Science!: Is motivated primarily by scientific curiosity, even if that means experimenting on human subjects.
Moral Event Horizon: Experimenting on live subjects? Despicable. Helping Shadow run what was effectively a concentration camp? Vile. Effectively performing "surgery" on the soul of an angel to steal her immortality for himself, then taking careful steps to completely destroy her ability to return to life and sending a letter detailing the procedure to her lover as a taunt? Event horizon firmly crossed.

Jacob Hartland

A social worker from the My Hero Academia world, responsible for "hiring out" orphan children (in particular Sig) to a variety of abusers and exploiters.

For the Evulz: He wasn't getting paid by abusers to give them kids — he was paying them to abuse the kids, due to being a member of the Shadow Church.
Would Hurt a Child: So very much so, as Sig's backstory painfully attests - and, apparently, not just Sig's.

SHOCKER

A pan-fascist organization that's been trying to take over Ranger Earth for two centuries now.

The Empire: Possibly. To what extent they're this and to what extent they're an N.G.O. Superpower is unclear, but they clearly have interdimensional reach.
Fascist, but Inefficient: While they're a legitimate threat, they've been trying and failing to conquer Ranger Earth for two hundred years. Furthermore, their rejection of much of modern physics as "Jewish" has severely hindered their progress in most aspects of technology (biotech excepted).
Those Wacky Nazis: They're made up of various Nazis, Fascists and pseudo-fascists from all over the multiverse.
Villain Team-Up: They recruit from a wide variety of fascist organizations. They offer this to Doctor Combat in the final stretch of Arc 6.

Baroness Killgrave

A high-ranking SHOCKER leader.

Cain and Abel: Her brother rebelled against SHOCKER and became a hero to the Ranger Corps. She, not so much.
Manipulative Bastard: Her plan revolved around turning the cold war between two of her enemies hot, crippling them both in the process.

Professor Cryo

The most feared archvillain of Pinnacle Earth, he's successfully organized a massive amount of supervillains to take over the Pittsburgh area, turning it into the Cryosphere - his personal fiefdom and a haven for villains all over the world.

Big Bad: Not necessarily for the campaign itself, but he is generally seen as this for Pinnacle Earth, being the closest thing the supervillain community has to a unifying leader. It's also been heavily teased that the story is building up to a massive battle to liberate the Cryosphere from his grip.
An Ice Person: Though they're very far from being the only trick in his repertoire, he has ice powers.
The Dreaded: His voice addressing them on their radio is enough to freeze half the Tomorrow Vigil in terror.
Evil Genius: Built much of his own tech, and masterminded the effective, lasting conquest of a major American city.
Evil Old Folks: Was already gray-haired when he became a supervillain several decades earlier.
Evil Overlord: Rules over an entire city with an iron fist, and turned it into an arctic micro-climate as a mark of his power.
Pragmatic Villainy: Agrees to work with the heroes who just foiled his plans, if it prevents a rival villain from becoming powerful enough to threaten him.

Nollius

The magical counterpart to Professor Cryo, he's the immortal sorcerer-king of Avalon, an ancient city of sorcerers flying above the Atlantic in Pinnacle Earth. He's made multiple attempts to take over the world.

The Archmage: Considered the most powerful spellcaster on Pinnacle Earth.
Deal with the Devil: It's suspected that he boosted his sorcerous powers by making one of those. Professor Cryo claims said deal was made with the Man Of Might.
Sealed Evil in a Can: Like almost all magical entities on Pinnacle Earth, he spent the second millennium trapped in limbo.
Sorcerous Overlord: An immortal king, and the most powerful wizard of Pinnacle Earth.

Doctor Combat

By his real name Edmond Aurel, he's the undisputed leader of the Combat Network, one of the most powerful villain organizations of Pinnacle Earth.

Badass Bookworm: Came into his powers through science. Considered one of the most dangerous fighters of the supervillain-rich Pinnacle Earth.
Bad Boss: Shows no regret or hesitation in killing off subordinates when it's to his advantage.
Morally Ambiguous Doctorate: Though he is an actual neurologist and neurosurgeon.
N.G.O. Superpower: The Combat Network is effectively this, due to its large number of superpowered mooks.
Politically Incorrect Villain: Very openly classist in his views, with a fair amount of racism thrown in along with a desire for the population to be culled of those he deems weak and unworthy.
The Social Darwinist: Has an entire ideology revolving around superior individuals rising above the rest through conflict and rejection of morality and compassion.
Super-Empowering: The whole reason Doctor Combat is so dangerous. He is the only person who knows how to perform a procedure that (if it doesn't kill them) grants people superhuman agility, dexterity and reflexes. He has empowered himself an entire private army in the Combat Network.
Super-Reflexes: He slices a man's head several times in a tenth of a second.
The Dreaded: Considered one of the top villains of Pinnacle Earth. The Tomorrow Vigil are entirely aware of this, and treat him like a major threat.

Incandescent

A leading figure of Vanguard.

Dirty Cop: Straddles the line between being the superhero of this, and a military Well-Intentioned Extremist.

Glyphica

A Vanguard agent who leads Task Force Founders' Fall.

Bad Boss: Her leadership of the task force involves the deaths of most other members. This is a feature rather than a bug in her eyes.
Godzilla Threshold: Vanguard normally keeps her locked up unless they're truly desperate to prevent The End of the World as We Know It. And they hadn't released her to lead Task Force Founders.
Power Parasite: Can temporarily absorb some of the power of people around her.

Characters / Pinnacle Academy

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