Paragon

Real Name: Cynthia Reynolds
Hero Name: Paragon
Alignment: Lawful Good
Birthdate: September 14th, 1995
Gender: Female
Race: Human (Metahuman)
Hair: Platinum Blonde
Eyes: Sapphire Blue
Height: 6ft; 1.83m
Weight: 170 lbs; 756.5 newtons
Blood type: A



Athleticism is a clear focus of Cynthia’s daily endeavors, evident by the robustness of her hourglass figure. Her skin is light with hints of pink. The angular lines of her face create an appearance that is classically attractive and strong. She wears her hair in a ponytail that falls a third of the way down her back, often draped over her left shoulder.

As Paragon she wears figure-tracing metal armor polished just short of mirror finish; its overlapping segments provide nearly full coverage with minimal hindrance of motion. Her [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] always conceals the upper half of her face behind lightly silvered glass which blends with the metal.



Cynthia is hardworking and level-headed. She approaches problems analytically, trying to break them down to find the best solutions.

She is highly principled, believing that most people are ultimately good. This has at times left her blindsided by those with more selfish motivations.



Throughout her childhood Cynthia felt an inner strength, a well of energy she could draw from in times of need. As she grew older the well grew deeper, more potent, yet harder to access. Pursuing it became addictive. Cynthia found herself constantly taking on greater challenges, yearning for that rush of success.
By the time she was a teenager she felt like life was all figured out: a simple matter of striving for achievement, overcoming all obstacles through sheer willpower.

And then the well ran dry.

It started with disruption: Cynthia’s mother was diagnosed with cancer. With her father working long hours just to afford her mother’s treatment, Cynthia’s parents decided it would be best if she stayed with family friends, distant as they were.

A month turned into a summer, which became a year. She tried to do her best, to push through as she had before. Yet instead of invigorating, each effort drained her.

One night Cynthia found herself in bed staring at the ceiling of her room, restless. She’d stayed up late, waiting for her father to come home. Now she lay awake, trying to put off the inevitable. The morning would come, and her father would drive her to the city. They would visit her mother in the hospital, and then they would leave for the airport. She would board the plane alone, watching her home disappear as it took off.

Her best friend would greet her at the gate; staying with Alyssa’s family made it bearable at first, but it wasn’t the same as being home. Cynthia felt like an outsider because she was: her way of speaking, her mannerisms, her ideas about the world, all different enough to stand out.
After two months she would visit home again to find her friends had moved on without her, a stranger in her own life.

Cynthia looked within herself as she had many times before, seeking that font of will. She found nothing: the well was empty, that strength gone forever.

In desperation she dove deeper, past the edges of the conscious mind. Among these wastelands of random thought she found something hidden away, neglected.

She reached out and let it free.

~~~

Eventually Cynthia’s life returned to some degree of normal. Her mother recovered, and though her father still worked late, they were able to function as a family again. While not ideal, it was enough.

She didn’t tell anyone about the abilities she had unlocked. Far from the inner strength she had desired, this power proved disruptive. It pushed her physical sense of self outward, making her aware of the very space surrounding her. Errant thoughts could produce invisible forces.

Cynthia became isolated and withdrawn, her mental energy focused on trying to control, or at least conceal, her developing powers.

By the time she graduated high school Cynthia had gotten a handle on her abilities, enough to keep them hidden. The effects of her mother’s illness still lingered, however: her parents were unable to support her aspirations of higher education, having spent much of their savings.

Cynthia was lucky enough to find a job that would help pay for her degree, making the loans manageable. Having a goal to strive for helped her rebuild her confidence; she even began to experiment with her power, seeking how to truly utilize it. After four years of university her life was going well. She was well on her way to achieving a combined degree, and had managed to get promoted at work.

Then a moment of carelessness brought it all down.

Cynthia had started using her power on the job when she was sure other people wouldn’t notice. One night she was caught on camera lifting two tons of raw material. The owner of the company had lost family and friends during the attack on New York, and was furious upon seeing the footage.

Only the intervention of Cynthia’s boss prevented her from being fired immediately. When she came to work the following Monday, she was pulled aside for a meeting, and offered a choice: accept immediate dismissal from the company, or be allowed to leave of her own will with the evidence, forfeiting the chance of legal recourse.

She chose the latter.

With her life thrown into disarray once again, Cynthia found herself looking inward.

This time, she had the strength she needed.


1. Reaction
2. Endurance
3. Strength
4. Agility




1. Vector Generation

Paragon’s power is a vector field which permeates her body and the space around her. She can manipulate the field into discrete vector fields with their own magnitudes, so long as the total forces do not exceed the capacity of her main field. These fields may overlap or superimpose on each other with the net field in a given volume being the resultant of the component fields, though the components’ values count against her capacity limit, not the resultant. The capacity of Paragon’s field maxes out at 6000lbs-force or 26,689 Newtons.

Paragon’s fields come in two forms: focal and diffuse. Focal fields apply in such a way that the contained objects are accelerated evenly as if they were a point mass under the effect of a single force. Diffuse fields apply forces directly, wrapping around objects and exerting pressure on their surfaces. While focal fields may cause objects to come into contact, they will not exert inter-object forces capable of damaging objects inside the same field; fluids will be compressed as if under pressure, up to a maximum pressure of the field’s strength in pounds per square inch. Diffuse fields are as capable of damaging objects as natural forces are.

2. Kinesthesia

Paragon has the ability to sense objects within her field as if they were part of her body, depending on her familiarity with them. This sense only extends to objects she is aware of that are contained by or intersect the field, and provides an intuitive feel for forces acting on objects within the field.

3. Force Nullifier

Paragon can cancel or dampen forces inside of the field, provided they do not exceed the field’s capacity.

4 Vector Immunity

Vector fields created using her power will not injure her, either directly or indirectly. However, objects accelerated by the field can.

5. Vector Assisted Mobility

As she is permanently within the field, Paragon can use her vector fields as reactionless propulsion, including the capability to fly at great speed or hover. To some degree she can use this to assist or enhance human-normal range of motion, though not above baseline human ability.

Paragon's flight has a maximum speed that is dependent on air density, thus it increases with altitude. At sea level she can fly at Mach 3.76, at tropopause (35k ft) she can fly at Mach 6.74, and at stratopause (160k ft) she can fly at Mach 95.2.



1. Local

Paragon’s vector field extends up to six inches away from any given point on her body, and any forces she creates cease to exist past the boundary.

2. Narrow Focus

Objects inside the field that Paragon is unaware of, while still affected by any fields they may encounter, are not subject to her field’s sensory ability until she becomes aware of them via normal senses such as touch or sight. Object that she is aware of but are unfamiliar take time to be fully perceived, the sense starting on the object’s exterior and working inwards. This is very fast with simple, solid objects, becoming slower the more complicated something becomes. Living things or electronics require dozens of seconds before full awareness.

3. Static

While her vector fields persist until she cancels them, they cannot change on their own. This limits her power to operating at speed of thought. Simple fields take little effort to create or manipulate; more complex ones require time, effort, and practice. In particular this hinders her ability to cancel attacks using her field, as she must get the timing and force nearly exact, risking injury or disadvantage should either be off. Fields can be created with relative relationships that allow them some degree of dynamic behavior, though this is dependent on Paragon’s senses to function.

4. Newton’s Third Law

While solid objects accelerated by Paragon’s field that are wholly contained do not exert reaction forces on the field, objects which leave it do. Upon leaving the field the momentum difference relative to Paragon will manifest as a reaction force projected onto Paragon’s body from the point of the field the object passes through. This reaction force cannot be countered by the field and is potentially harmful. Objects which intersect the field but are not wholly contained by it exert classical reaction forces on it if acted on; while these forces are not directly felt by Paragon, if they are sufficient to move the field, she will move with it, though she can work against these by using the field to exert opposing forces on herself.

Fluids such as air or water always exert reaction forces on the field, relative to how it is acting on them.

5. Organically Limited

Living creatures can only be fully affected by Paragon’s field if wholly immersed in it, otherwise, it only affects them at a fraction it would an object, proportional to the volume immersed. Living creatures interacting with the field are subject to the same protections from it as Paragon herself, and forces produced by them are harder or impossible to dampen unless fully contained. This extends to light or tightly fit clothing worn by a person, though bulkier outfits or substantial jewelry or accessories are affected fully.
This is strictly a limit around living creatures. Artificial characters or characters made of non-organic materials are affected as much as any non-living object would be.

6. Isolated Flight

In order to protect herself from the effects of drag and aerodynamic heating at high speeds, Paragon uses her field to create a vacuum around her. This limits her time in flight to around two hours before the enclosed volume runs out of breathable air. At low altitudes slowing down to a safe speed is enough to recharge it, whereas at high altitudes it is a strict limit on her endurance.



Paragon’s armor: Cynthia crafted this armor suit using her power, sculpting it from 440c stainless steel. Its interlocking segments can only be assembled by her power, the locking mechanisms being inaccessible while the segments are in contact. When fully assembled it weighs around a quarter of a ton, able to support its own weight, though in use its weight is canceled out by Paragon using her power, letting her move it effortlessly. The helmet’s visor, made of armored glass, is lightly silvered on the outer edge, making it blend with the polished steel and obscuring the upper half of Cynthia’s face. For particularly dangerous situations the helmet has two face shields, locked onto the armor pauldrons when not in use. The helmet and breastplate are each three-quarters of an inch thick. The rest of the armor is much lighter, tapering down to a quarter inch on the abdomen, cuisses and shoulders, and an eighth of an inch on the greaves and vambraces. The armor has an eighth-inch thick fabric lining with a network of cooling tubes connected to a pump and heat exchanger on the back, which Paragon drives with her power.

In summary:

Powers:
Durable with immunity to all handgun cartridges and most rifle cartridges.
Provides buffer zone for Paragon to use her power for offensive and defensive purposes.

Weaknesses:
Requires Paragon’s power to be usable, taking up part of her field capacity in order to nullify its weight. As a consequence of its design it can only be easily removed by Paragon’s power, trapping her if she is incapacitated or her power is nullified.
Relies on active cooling system that prevents Paragon from overheating from exertion. Damage to the cooling system will reduce her combat effectiveness, destruction of it will force her to choose between endurance and protection, restoring cooling capacity by removing parts of the armor.



Stemming from her mother’s Greek heritage, Cynthia is conversationally fluent in Greek and able to read it, though her writing abilities are sub-par.

Cynthia uses her power as a tool of productivity and convenience in her daily life, finding applications ranging from such extremes as lifting impossibly heavy objects to ones as mundane as shaving using concentrated vectors or repelling rain. Cynthia avoids using it for obviously superhuman feats unless she is alone or around those she can trust.

A side effect of her power is the ability to do vector calculus mentally, along with increased spatial awareness.