Capeworld Comics

“Okay look, people say when you first start flying to not look at the ground. I say look at it. Look at it, get sick, and get over it. The ground is nothing. It’s miles below you. It’s an image and distance and fear and that’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to you.”

–Tanya to new members of Flight Club

 

“I had a exciting time yesterday at Sanderson Base! I was taking readings of a herd of niamh in the stratosphere with Mr. Roger with suddenly out of nowhere came this Crawfordshire nuada! A living thunderstorm with ice for scales and lightning for teeth came at me like a rocket ship! It was hungry, and I had the bad luck to be between it and its prey! So I dive out of the way, watch it pass me, and then I charge right into its flank! I wasn’t about to let it turn our niamhs into lunch. I sent that mile of ice and cloudmatter back to the thermosphere! Sure, I wasn’t in any real danger. Mr. Roger was right there, and he’s several times faster than I am. But I’m glad he let me handle it, because now I know I can handle it.”

–Tanya

 

“The sky becomes a prison the moment you can’t go further.”

–Tanya

 

Name:

 

Tanya Abelman

 

Supername:

 

Skychilde

 

Average Grade:

 

C+

 

Tanya is overall a good student, but she’s notoriously bad when it comes to turning in assignments on time. But she’s always on time for Night Club and Flight Club. 

 

She hates essay writing and lab reports. She just doesn’t have the patience to put her thoughts down on paper.

 

Emergency Response Class:

 

2

 

Tanya isn’t interested in superheroics, but she wants to be proactive and helpful if she ever finds herself in an emergency while soaring through the sky. “Eyes in the sky see trouble.” is an old superhero proverb for a reason. She also likes learning how to fight with her powers and finds sparring with her fellow students fun. She and a subset of Flight Club have started a “dogfight club” where they chase each other around the sky with paintball guns. It’s helped more than a few new students improve their pressurization abilities as water balloons are bombs. Throw a water balloon, increase its pressure with telekinesis, and pop.

 

She’s also looking into using foam pool noodles as missiles.

 

Personalized Curriculum:

 

Night Club, Flight Club, Spelunking

 

Originally, Tanya was enrolled in TIMS (Telepathic Intervention and Monitoring Services) where she met her close friend Donald Swift, AKA Light-in-Darkness. But when she developed her flight power under Mr. Neiros’ guidance, it was decided to pull Tanya out of TIMS.

 

Currently, Tanya is a student leader in both Night Club and Flight Club. She is trusted by her teachers to help guide less experienced students through the dreamworlds and atmosphere. She impressively has a perfect attendance record for Night Club, which due to it taking place at night when students are (or rather should) be sleeping is notorious for students skipping.

 

Tanya is extremely influential in Flight Club. She lives to fly. She knows flying. Only her teachers know more about aerofauna and aviation than she does. She’s so good at helping new students get up to speed that she’s been offered a job as a Martin’s teacher after she graduates. But Tanya isn’t interested. Becoming a teacher would mean having to take a lot of classes in child psychology and that’s just not something she’s interested in.

 

Spelunking is a new class offered by Martin’s and Tanya is very interested. There’s a world of difference between flying through the sky and flying through the earth and Tanya is attracted to the difference.

 

Cold vapor vs cold stone. Pockets of magma vs pockets of clouds. Stygian darkness vs naked sunlight. Tanya doesn’t know if she’ll like the differences, but she feels like she must see what she can do underground.

 

She knows that at the very least she’ll like flying in the tiny, enclosed skies of the subterranean worlds. Small though they might be compared to the surface sky, they have their charms. Tanya is always up for exploring a new sky. She’s never flown across the miniature sun of Pellucidar or down the crystal columns of Agartha or through the liquid ringwoodite of the Nepots Ocean. She looks forward to seeing how she’ll do.

 

Tanya is sure she’ll enjoy Spelunking. Plus, word around the campus is that the new teacher who made the course is really fun.

 

He is.

 

Contact Education:

 

Sanderson Science Base, ARGO

 

Ivan Sanderson Science Base is one of the oldest high-atmosphere observation stations in the world. Created shortly before the Worlds War of the 1940’s, Sanderson studies the invisible aerofauna of the thermosphere and provides mankind with information on a biosphere far larger than the one on the surface. It is a huge honor for them to accept Tanya as a student both for herself and for Martin’s. Adding to the honor is that her mentor is Roger the Ray, a quasimorph with a body of light best known for his actions during the Stardust event of 1945. Roger is the current head scientist at Sanderson and finds Tanya  kindred spirit in her love for aerofauna.

 

Tanya loves being close to aerofauna. She finds flying animals neat and loves to share the sky with them. When she finds a flock of birds in the stratosphere, it makes her day. When she finds a rare dagda (not Dagdan) clouddrinker in the stratosphere, it makes her week.

 

Tanya likes the privacy of the skies. She likes being the only person for miles inside an expanse of formless, white clouds or a crackling, black thunderhead. But if she was always alone she’d get bored. That’s why she likes Flight Club and aerofauna. Sometimes a flier just wants to be part of a flock.

 

As her plans currently stand, Tanya wants to work at Sanderson Base after she graduates. But ARGO (Alternate Realities Guidance and Observations) is also looking to recruit Tanya and Tanya is interested in having them as a contact education class if for nothing else than the experience of something new. 

 

ARGO feels that Tanya would be an ideal fit for their organization. She already explores a new sky every night in her dreams, so why not have her explore a new sky every morning as well?

 

Whether or not she seriously considers joining ARGO is up in the air at the moment. She really likes working with aerofauna and sees the aerofauna monitored and herded by Sanderson base as her pets. She may work with ARGO in the future, but only on a case-by-case basis. The idea of exploring alien skies appeals to her. As she once said, “The sky becomes a prison the moment you can’t go further. But she’s worried about being overwhelmed by all the possibilities of an infinite multiverse. Burnout stemming from choice paralysis is common among those that work for ARGO. There is such a thing as too much adventure. Tanya learned this long ago shortly after developing her flight power. 

 

She flew around the world exhilarated by the freedom of her new power. She visited countries, she flew with birds, she arranged clouds into pictures, she swam in the clouds, she stood on the rim of the blue halo of our world, she got in a little trouble with air space authorities–she lived off the high of throwing herself into the near infinity that is the sky.

 

But something strange quickly happened.

 

She got bored.

 

She didn’t think it was possible. She had an entire world to explore. How could she be bored?

 

And yet she was. She flew here, there, anywhere. One place seemed as good as any other. One place seemed as boring as any other.

 

But then she remembered her lessons with Mr. Neiros.

 

She was taught how to fly in her dreams so that regardless of the contents of her dreams she would have courage. She was taught how to fly so that, regardless of the sky she found herself under when she closed her eyes, she could soar on wings of freedom.

 

She was taught how to fly not just to survive her nightmares but to adventure in them.

 

If she could fly in her heart, she could find adventure anywhere.

 

And so, Tanya took a step back and chilled out. She slowed down and learned to love the little things about the sky that she overlooked dashing here and there. She learned how to daydream beneath a sunset and sleep in the clouds. She learned how to camp in thunderstorms (she says its the best atmosphere for telling scary stories) and how to stop and enjoy a baseball game she happens to fly over (while being sure to electronically tip the stadium. Outdoor stadiums hate it when aeronauts get free games, and the leader of Flight Club needs to show that Martin’s students always obey aeronaut etiquette).

 

Now, Tanya can’t get enough of the sky.

 

Tanya is worried about working with ARGO. If the sky becomes a prison the moment you can’t go further, then being obligated to explore sky after sky without taking the time to truly enjoy one has the potential to be a prison with many walls.

 

But no one knows for sure where Tanya will end up. There’s a lot of time between now and when she graduates.

 

Metapathogen:

 

Randomized Hyperstasis Based on Previous Dreams, Flight

 

A casual observer would never guess that Tanya has a metapathogen given how she delights in her power. Surely someone that happily darts here and there has a superpower? But Tanya does indeed have a metapathogen. It’s a credit to herself and her teachers that she was able to not only learn to control her metapathogen but come to celebrate it.

 

Before Martin’s

 

Tanya’s power isn’t actually flight. It’s far more complicated than that. 

 

Tanya develops powers based on whatever she dreamed last. Because she learned how to always dream of flying regardless of the contents of her dreams, she always wakes up with the power to fly. But there was a time when she didn’t know how to fly.

 

As a child, her life was a hell ruled by her nightmares.

 

She’d have a dream where something was chasing her, wake up, and a dark presence would hound her the rest of the day. She’d have a dream where things moved in slow motion, wake up, and find that everything within twenty feet of her moved in slow motion. She’d have a dream where she floated in the air, wake up, and spend the day tumbling helplessly head-over-heels above her bed.

 

TIMS treated her with oneiro suppressors. But Tanya’s metapathogen was a strong one, and sometimes the suppressors would fail. Tanya had to be moved from her home to a secure facility where she could be monitored by TIMS.

 

It’s a challenging life when your nightmares follow you into reality. Tanya was miserable. She couldn’t socialize with other girls. Her prospects seemed limited to being a patient of TIMS. She wished she could never sleep again. There was one bright thing about her enrollment in TIMS–she met Donald Swift who lived with a metapathogen as challenging as her own. They confided in each other and combined their strength to endure the difficulties of their lives. Donald is without a doubt Tanya’s closest friend.

 

Eventually, Tanya and Donald were enrolled in Martin’s Night Club, a class for dreamwalkers taught by Mr. Neiros. They both improved their control over their powers, though Tanya far more than Donald. Donald is still in TIMS and Tanya is not, but their friendship endures. Tanya hasn’t given up on Donald and Donald continues to cheer Tanya on to new heights.

 

Mr. Neiros had trouble teaching Tanya at first. He wanted her to explore her nightmares so she could develop lucid control over them, but she wanted to engage with her nightmares as little as possible. She wanted to encounter them briefly, have them pass over her, and pray that only a sliver followed her back into physical reality

 

But Tanya had an adventurous, courageous heart. It took only guidance and patience to get her to express it.

 

Neiros taught her how to always dream of flying.

 

No matter what her dreams were, she could fly. No matter how surreal or terrifying her dreams were, she could fly. No matter what followed her back to reality, she could fly.

 

The sensation of flight focused her courage. Being able to move freely around her dreams gave her the focus and clarity of mind necessary to exert lucid control over her dreams. If she dreamed of being buried alive, the Earth flew with her through space.

 

 Never again would Tanya be afraid to dream. 

 

The Extra Power

 

Tanya still has to deal with the randomness of her power. She always dreams of flight, and so she always wakes up with the flight power, but she also wakes up with an extra power based on what else she dreamed about that night. 

 

While Tanya is skilled in exerting lucid control over her dreams, she is unable to alter the initial form of her dreams and that is what usually determines the form her extra power takes. For instance, Tanya once had a dream where interdimensional clowns invaded the world (don’t we all?). The clowns captured her and began converting her into a clown. Tanya took lucid control of the dream, thought it was too silly, and changed it to a dream where she and her friend Edith flew to the moon together to participate in a race with the native homo vespertilio.

 

She woke up with chalk-white skin, green hair, a red nose, and everytime she touched something she made a HONK noise.

 

Rarely, her extra power is tied in some way to her lucid control. When she and Night Club protected Morgan McGraw, AKA Dreamwarden, from the supervillain Dream Sultan, her extra power the next day became a flying action figure that buzzed around her. This action figure power was likely derived from Morgan using his dream to imprison Dream Sultan in the form of a doll. But even when her extra power relates to her lucid activities, Tanya has no control whatsoever on the exact form her extra power takes. Every morning is a surprise. 

 

Tanya keeps a journal of her extra powers and the dreams associated with them in the hopes of one day figuring out how to dream up whatever powers she wants. If she ever figures out how to do that, she’ll become an incredibly powerful superhuman. The thaumaturgists of the Circled Square believe they can help her reach such a state in about half a decade of intense astral study, but Tanya isn’t interested in high-level thaumaturgy. The relatively low level of dreamwalking suits her just fine. She’s not about to devote five years of her life just to increase her power. She already has the power to do everything she wants to do in life. And besides, she likes the challenge of having to adapt to a new extra power every morning.

 

 Where once she dreaded waking up with a new power she now looks forward to the challenge of figuring out how she’s going to go to her classes with whatever she wakes up with. 

 

Her flight power is often useful in helping her get a handle on whatever extra power she wakes up with. When she had a dream where everything went in slow motion (because Edith ate John King’s spatial engine) and woke up with her movements slowed and the world moving around her in fast-motion, Tanya used her flight power to bring herself up to speed. She spent the day moving awkwardly. She would stand still like a statue then quickly jerk here and there like a puppet in a windstorm. She had fun. She startled her classmates more than Gunnar Cropsey, and he was glad to have a day where he wasn’t the “creepy one.” 

 

Her flight power wasn’t helpful when she brought a rabbit out of her dream that she named Fiver after the Watership Down character, but her flight jacket was. Little guy just wanted to be somewhere warm.

 

The Flight Power

 

Tanya’s flight power functions through the projection of telekinetic force. She creates a bubble around herself similar to a Thule eye which allows her to accelerate at speeds that would otherwise liquidate her. It also pressurizes her environment and circulates air so that she can breathe even while flying faster than a rocket ship and protects her from physical harm. Flying through clouds at the speeds Tanya reaches make every raindrop hit like artillery shells.

 

Tanya’s top speed is unknown. It’s very possible given that her power is straight out of a dream that she doesn’t have a top speed. She’s been recorded going several times faster than light in laboratory settings, but she doesn’t like to go that fast. She can’t see anything when she moves faster than light. What’s the point of flying if everything in the sky is a blank black? 

 

Tanya and her Friends

 

Life was a horror story for Tanya, but now it’s an adventure story. Every night, she adventures through dreams, most often the dreams of her classmates in Night Club, but she sometimes journeys beneath the living stars of the Carterian Dreamlands or above the glowing grids of High Hera, the computerized dream.

 

 Every morning, she wakes with a new power and has to learn how to manage it before breakfast ends. Every afternoon, she flies with her friends around the world from the billowing cloudscapes of the troposphere to the azure dome of the mesosphere. Every evening, she works with a man made of light to care for animals made out of gossamer flesh and icicles.

 

Then she goes to sleep and does it all over again.

 

Tanya is another of Martin’s many success stories, but the best part of her story is that she wants to share that success with others. She pushes her classmates in Night Club and Flight Club to go on adventures of their own, to reach beyond themselves, and to do more than they did yesterday. She doesn’t give up on her friends. She once spent an entire week of Flight Club helping a classmate take her first steps on thin air.

 

She may not want to become a superheroine, but she certainly has the heart of one.

 

Of all her classmates, its been observed that she encourages Donald Swift the most.

 

She met Donald when she was in TIMS. Troubled by thought-form “parents” that protected him, often violently, against his wishes, Donald could relate to Tanya’s feelings of entrapment and despair. When Tanya was removed from TIMS, Tanya asked if she could stay just to be close to Donald.

 

Donald is a shy, nervous boy who fears hurting anyone with his powers. He’s afraid of his powers in a way Tanya advanced beyond long ago. Tanya feels guilty over “leaving him behind” and dotes on the boy urging him to do his best and reminding him that he’s stronger than he thinks. It’s likely that Tanya’s feelings for Donald go beyond friendship. Perhaps they’re dating, or have dated, or will date. They’re teenagers. Their relationship probably changes by the week.

 

Behavior:

 

Good

 

Tanya is a success story. Once, she was a frightened girl afraid to even sleep. Now, she soars through dreams and reality alike. She’s an inspiration and guiding light to her peers and works to help them reach their potential. She truly believes that everyone is stronger than they think.

 

She has a heart of gold, but she’s also rough around the edges. She’s headstrong, and in moments of crisis she’s been known to act against the wishes of her teachers such as when she charged infamous supervillain Dream Sultan against the orders of her teacher Mr. Neiros and knowing full well that the Dream Sultan was out of her league. 

 

Her courage is admirable, but she needs to listen to her teachers. 

 

Tanya is naturally adventurous. She hates routines and deadlines and her grades suffer because she trades studying and work for following a niamh back to its cloudnest so she can see its chicks or riding a typhoon in the South Pacific just because it’s there and she can.

 

Tanya has a bad habit when it comes to cursing. She’s got a potty mouth, though she does try and watch her language when in class. She developed this habit after developing her flight power and it’s likely linked to her relatively new feelings of freedom and courage. It’s natural for teenagers to feel a rebellious streak and test the limits of what they can do. Rebelling through curse words is very mild compared to what other teenagers get up to.

 

Appearance:

 

As a tomboy into dogfight sparring with paintball guns and stratosphere campouts, Tanya doesn’t care much for fashion. Fancy shoes don’t mean a thing when your feet hardly touch the ground. Other girls find her frumpy. She dresses for comfort, and for a girl that loves the clouds this includes a flight jacket styled after those worn by pilots of the Great War in the Air of the 1910’s. 

 

Tanya developed a great respect for the men who flew the skies decades before she was born after learning about them in freshman history. Tanya views flight as the ultimate expression of courage, and the men that fought in the skies with nothing but bare-engine prop planes and rickety Gabriel suits had a courage Tanya strives to emulate.

 

The way Tanya’s flight power works, she technically doesn’t need to worry about keeping warm. She can just vibrate the air around her to create heat. But when she doesn’t have to worry about using her power to keep warm she can focus on using her power to increase her speed and maneuverability. Besides, she finds a degree of cold to be bracing and invigorating.

 

Tanya also likes her jacket because of all the gear she can carry with her–emergency signal device and oxygen supply, barometer, skyhome shelter, and everything a young aeronaut needs to explore the “world of the angels.”

 

Tanya is fond of her goggles which she wears on her head when not in use. They’re large, circular goggles in her favorite color–sunset orange. Similar to the goggles owned by Kalani Sakata, AKA Sword Saint, they allow her to see beyond the limits of human vision. She can see aerofauna with them, which is invaluable for her work with Sanderson Science Base.

 

Tanya likes how she can “turn the aerofauna on and off.” She can relax up in the thermosphere and either watch a perfect halo of blue below her or masses of subtle matter flowing around her like fish in a black ocean.

 

In dreamworlds, Tanya appears in a form that expresses her freedom. She appears as an angelic, winged being that bears a resemblance to a Lorian. She has a body white-gold like the sun and reddish-orange hair like sunset. Her wings are white as clouds and change shape as she moves. These wings are her sense of adventure and are restless. They move even when she stands still and change from being billowing like clouds to sleek like raindrops to sharp like snowflakes.

 

She’s naked in this form. She doesn’t do this to be lewd, though certain girls envious of her popularity believe so. She likens her nakedness to classical paintings and statues. She’s naked because in her dreamform she’s beyond shame, or fear, or hesitation. The sun doesn’t wear clothes and neither does she.

 

Her nakedness sometimes bothers new members of Night Club, but they soon learn that they have weirder things to look out for than a naked girl made of sunlight and clouds.