Mettle is a Canadian posthuman who migrated to NYC to become a street-level vigilante, fighting crime with frequently lethal, if spirited, intensity.

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Mettle
Name: Monica Moon
Affiliation: n/a

Abilities:

Subdermal Armor: Mettle’s latent posthuman ability is a permanent, semi-rigid layer of hardened cells below her third epithelial layer. These cells exhibit bio-inorganic fusion properties, regrowing and processing oxygen like any other cell, but with distinctly inorganic, metallic molecular characteristics. This ‘living metal’ can be damaged, and repaired, by Mettle’s own immune system, and shifts and conforms to her muscular and tendon movements as if it were part of her skin. In normal conditions, the unique properties of this subdermal armor are not visible to the naked eye, but her body feels rigid and cold to the touch. As she takes damage, the subdermal armor may become exposed, and it’s visual appearance is a dark rust color, largely a by-product of a mixture of blood and oxygenated cellular material. The subdermal armor provides resistance to damage from physical and energy attacks equivalent to an Armor of 50, though appears susceptible to acid and is less effective against damage from extreme temperature and incendiary weapons (AP reduced to 20 for these attacks). It should be noted that Mettle’s unique nervous system does extend to her epithelial layers through the armor membrane, so she feels the pain of damage to her skin, as well as any internal injury, and must make a Vigor Save in the event damage passes through her subdermal armor and reduces her Life, or become overwhelmed with pain in the form of a Stun for 1-4 rounds. While she has suffered internal injuries from some attacks, she has never sustained injury such that her subdermal layer has been visibly breached, and X-rays and attempts to study her body through the use of externally applied internal probes were ineffective, so the exact nature of Mettle’s internal make-up is unclear. Her orifices, eyes, circulatory and digestive systems are all susceptible to injury in a normal fashion, meaning that if they are targeted specifically, her subdermal armor will not be applied.

Origin:

Monica Moon was career soldier in the Canadian military, joining while still in her mid-teens, using forged documentation, and rose through a series of specialized combat training programs orchestrated by the Canadian Expeditionary Force leadership, as a means to accelerate the readiness of a division of infantry specifically designed to be more effective in hand-to-hand and close-quarters fighting, as a response to the increased frequency of posthuman conflict along the Canadian/ American border, where small arms fire had proven either ineffective or contextually inappropriate. She was one of several of the new Lightfoot Unit troops to actually engage in physical conflict with posthuman suspects either committing crimes on Canadian soil, or fleeing American authorities into Canada, after the Canadian government militarized the border, despite a lack of public support for the policy change. By age 21, Moon had either detained, injured or fought over 8 posthuman targets, receiving the reputation of ‘the Rabble Rouser,’ an affectionate title given her by her unit commander, for her ability to ferret out posthuman threats in the civilian population of the border towns through which the Lightfoot Unit passed, with Moon seeming to have an uncanny ability to identify the rising number of underworld thugs, couriers, enforcers and traffickers who had been juicing up on small-scale, black-market posthuman enhancements made available in recent years. They were not true posthumans, as the public would understand them, but rather enhanced humans, but her reputation grew regardless. On the eve of her 21st birthday, Moon was invited to enter a posthuman development program sponsored by the Canadian government, called Falcon, which was, until that time, largely untested, but a response to increasing tensions over the status of the Posthuman Development Initiative (PDI) in Newfoundland.

Moon survived the exceptionally painful posthuman process, but the planned posthuman effects, the development of a retractable exo-skeleton made from phase-shifted metals originally conceived for aerospace applications, did not emerge. Instead, her body had developed a subdermal armor layer, which appeared to be made up of bio-inorganic cellular sheathes, hard to the touch beneath her skin, yet allowing her to retain her sense of touch, and respond to environmental stimuli. The Falcon engineers were stupefied, but took immediate credit for the relative success of the procedure, and in turn, received a windfall budget for further program expansion.

Moon trained for weeks to regain her former level of athletic ability and agility, with a body weight nearly double what it was mere months earlier. Extensive gymnastics, acrobatics, balance work and flexibility training were instrumental in allowing her to learn to utilize her new form with lethal accuracy: she could administer physical blows with greater strength, thanks to the weight of her subdermal armor, but had to undergo considerable strength training to compensate, athletically, for the increased weight burden under which she moved.

Though her uniform and posthuman identity as Mettle were completed, Moon found herself in a bureaucratic and political holding pattern. The political situation in Canada had changed, and the Prime Minister no longer felt comfortable endorsing a posthuman program of their own, as the American team, the Liberty Group, began to be scrutinized for conducting suspected foreign policy actions on behalf of their government, while abroad on diplomatic or disaster relief missions. After several frustrating weeks of sitting on her hands, Moon finally lost patience with the Falcon organization’s paralyzation, and left the compound covertly.

She eventually made her way to New York, where she floated from bar to club to bar again, envigorated by the city’s vibrant nightlife, yet more and more frequently hassled by drunken patrons, night urchins, corrupt cops and the like. Within weeks of her arrival, Moon had lost patience with her attempts to lay low, and broke a would-be paramour’s collarbone while rebuking his advances. Realizing that her attempted low-profile was as futile as waiting for her chance to defend Canada as a posthuman hero, she ultimately decided to don her Mettle uniform and began to patrol New York’s various neighborhoods, taking on everyone from the mob to low-level enhanced human thugs, to the NYPD itself. In the process, she became a local hero. She would soon encounter many of the internationally-known posthuman individuals of the period, and would begin a loose partnership with another local posthuman vigilante, New York Minute.

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You can see this illustration herein the TRDL Universe Gallery.

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