Steel Dolly

“I teach strength–the philosophy behind its cultivation and the the science behind its application.”

 

“What was it like to fight in a war? Mostly, tedium punctuated by quick, confusing violence.–and in the end, the disillusionment over any centralized control of individuals, be they superhuman or basic. I’ll never forget Red Glare crying because they asked him to strafe civilian targets in Japan.”

 

“Don’t whine about the sims not being fair. What do you think we’re training you for? Sports? Would you rather your training be harder or easier than what you’ll encounter in the real world?”

 

Before Becoming Steel

 

Dorothy Byrne was only 13 years old in 1932. She believed, like many 12 year olds, that her father was the wisest man on Earth, and so believed him when he, like many men in 1932, more men than would ever admit to being so, that superhumans were the cause of all their ills. Superhumans were the reason America was going through a depression. Superhumans were the reason he lost his job at the factory, why mom had to wash dishes for other families for extra money, and why Dorothy couldn’t have pretty dresses like other girls. Superhumans had powers, and they didn’t earn them, they just came about them by chance, but because they had these powers, they could do the work of many men and take their livelihoods. Superhumans were greedy. They did all the work and got all the money and didn’t share. Sometimes, superhumans didn’t even seem like people. Sometimes, they seemed like goblins, greedy monsters with magic powers with only a passing resemblance to humans.

 

Dorothy had no idea superhumans created an unprecedented surplus of products and resources, particularly in food. She had no idea that they did things with their powers other than make basic men destitute and themselves grossly wealthy. She had no idea superhumans funded the development of the electro-mind, a communications precursor to the modern noosphere. She had no idea superhumans created things.

 

She had no idea the government was opportunistically scapegoating superhumans to distract from their own failed economic policies. Telling people that they were out of work because a man calling himself The Scientific Muscle took their jobs was easy, far easier than telling them it was because the government unwisely expanded and then contracted the monetary supply in an effort to stave off economic depression. She had no idea because her father had no idea. Such is the root cause of most mistakes a person makes in life.

 

Her father voted for FDR in 1932, because FDR promised to heavily regulate the labor of superhumans. Superhumans would no longer work against the people, but for the people. They would be told where to work, when to work, and how long to work, or they would be made to by Gold Star, one of the most powerful superhumans in all of history.

 

Gold Star was one of the few superhumans Dorothy’s father respected. Everyone respected Gold Star. Even people that held bitter, wrathful hatred toward superhumans in their hearts respected Gold Star. He was a superhuman above superhumans. He was like a force of nature, an anti-natural disaster. A flood or a hurricane would appear, destroy things, kill people, and vanish. He would appear, fix things, save people, and vanish. He had rescued so many that he couldn’t remember all he had rescued, but every one of them remembered him, and when he backed FDR, they backed him as well to one of the most overwhelming victories in American politics.

 

When Gold Star told America that a good superhuman was a regulated superhuman, that became the measure by which Dorothy, and many other Americans, judged superhumans.

 

As Gold Star and FDR’s National Recovery Administration hunted down rouge superhumans, some came to see these masked and aliased rogues as romantic outlaws. Not only did they did work in defiance of the government, they fought crime and gangsters even while the police hunted them. But Dorothy saw them as criminals, perhaps not as bad as other kinds of criminals, but criminals nonetheless.

 

By 1936, Gold Star had changed his views on superhuman regulation. He had put too many good men in jail. He had fought too many superheroes. He turned on FDR and backed Alf Landon to a landslide victory in 1936. As Gold Star’s views went, so too did the views of the nation. But many held fast to “a good superhuman is a regulated superhuman,” Dorothy included. The NRA may have gone a little too far in some cases, but they were ultimately necessary. They believed that the newly established Statesmen organization, founded to network superhumans with job providers and serve as liaisons between superhumans and their local communities, would devolve into a superhuman led oligarchy. Superhumans didn’t need help. Nature gave them enough help. They needed regulation.

 

In 1939, Dorothy married her high school sweetheart Alex Doyle. They would spend a few months of blissful happiness together before the Worlds War turned their world upside down.

 

The Steel Phoenix

 

In 1940, the Axis powers activated a global operation that divided the world between curtains of Vril energy. This grand, covert offensive was intended to place the world under Axis dominion. Due to the actions of several superheroes who anticipated the attack, the grand blitzkrieg was only a partial success, and American forces were able to rally.

 

The Worlds War had begun, and would be fought across the multiverse, giving Earth a reputation for violence that would take decades to shake.

 

The Doyles did their part, like many young couples during the war. Alex went to the army, specifically the experimental Black Terror Division, and Dorothy to a munitions factory in Mainline City which converted the gaeite mined from beneath the city into powerful weapons.

 

One day, a man in a uniform knocked on her door, cap in hand, and told her that Alex had died, not from war, but from the preparations of war. There was a risk involved in taking the Black Terror formula. Most men developed great, superhuman strength, but some men died.

 

They buried Alex with military honors like they did with everyone that died upon exposure to the Black Terror formula. Dorothy took a day off from the factory. It was the only day she took off from work.

 

She needed the work, and not just for the paycheck. Work kept her focused. It kept her strong. She didn’t like not working. When she wasn’t working, her thoughts caught up to her and made her feel lost and weak. She learned the value of dedicated, disciplined work at the factory, a lesson she hopes to pass on to her students at Martin’s.

 

One day, the production line exploded in her face.

 

It was sabotage. A cell of Japanese kitsune ninjas had infiltrated Mainline City. The superheroes had gotten most of them, but not all of them, and one had made her way inside the factory and avenged her fallen family by enchanting the factory equipment.

 

Most present that day perished. A few survived, though maimed and crippled. Dorothy alone came through the event strengthened. The trauma of the event caused her to undergo hyperstasis, and she became something that could survive the explosion–and much more.

 

First responders thought she was dead, that molten metal had splashed on her and covered her like in insect in amber. Then she started to move. She was quickly taken to a hospital where she was examined by mirabolists.

 

Dorothy was distraught. The loss of so many of her friends so close to Alex’s death coupled with her transformation overwhelmed her. She rarely spoke. She cried often. She screamed when she saw herself on the mirror and could not stand to to look at herself. She asked for gloves and a long sleeved hospital gown.

 

Dr. Scott Sinclair, secretly known as the Crime Doctor, was one of the mirabolist that examined Dorothy. While he examined her face and eyes, she told her “You’re still a dolly, Mrs. Doyle, just a steel dolly.”

 

The name stuck, not only because the story of the “beautiful steel phoenix” who survived Jap sabotage sold papers, but because Dorothy found the name inspiring. She was still herself. She was still beautiful. She was still alive.

 

And she had work to do. She had only killed the enemy indirectly. Now, with muscles of metal and the strength to lift battleships over her head and a heart full of anger, she wanted to do it directly.

 

Living Metal

 

Many people incorrectly assume that Steel Dolly is a quasimorph like Heart of Gold or her coworker Vapor Riser, but that isn’t true. She can’t absorb metal into her body and she doesn’t have an astral form puppetting her material corpus. She is a biological being, albeit an extremely unconventional one. The metal that covers her body is not merely an exoskeleton. It composes her down to the cellular level. Even her hair is made of thin, razor sharp strands of metal, something villains that tried grabbing her hair discovered the hard way. Her blood is a liquified form of this metal, which is similar to perkunite in strength but without the material’s strange relationship to heat and energy. Steel Dolly won’t, for instance, melt if she’s put in a freezer as she would if she was made of true perkunite. Mirabolists have named the metal “quasi-perkunite alloy” as the metal is alloyed with trace amounts of carbon in her body.

 

Steel Dolly does not need food, water, or air. She does not even need rest. Her body is an endless factory of energy. Her quasi-perkunite alloy undergoes chemical reactions within her cells to generate incredible, perpetual amounts of energy. She’s not only superstrong but superdurable. If her metallic tissue was ever damaged, a very rare event, it would heal like human tissue but at a much faster rate. Tissue regenerates in moments, though it’s not as if even severe tissue loss is deadly to her. Steel Dolly can function with most of her mass missing, she’s an incredibly efficient biological organism, like a star locust. Even being beheaded won’t stop her.

 

Steel Dolly’s physiology has evolved throughout the years. Originally, her body was covered in metal plates. Up close, one could see the segments in her body. But gradually, her skin smoothed, and nowadays is sleek.

 

When Dorothy got out of the hospital, she was a far cry from the superheroine she would later become. She had always assumed that superhumans were beings free of care and worry. She had no idea how ponderous a superhuman with superstrength could be. She had to alter how she walked, because she made holes in the ground with her feet. She was afraid to touch anything, because everything broke in her hands. Her life-long interest in the science of superstrength control began with her simply trying to find how she could run, jump, and fight without tripping on her own craters. She was assisted by members of the Black Terror Division, who her husband would have joined had he lived, who she would join in his place.

 

During The War

 

 

Believing as her father did that a good superhuman was a regulated superhuman, Steel Dolly joined the war through traditional enlistment channels and not, as with other superhumans, through independent groups, such as the Skyman Airforce. She joined the Black Terror Brigade, not as a frontline fighter with the men as she had wanted, but with the female Black Terrors at the rear. It was her first disappointment with Allied leadership and it would not be her last. Though she had been raised to believe that superhumans needed a firm, guiding hand, her experiences during the war led her to challenge those long-held beliefs.

 

Allied military leadership had a very rocky relationship with superhumans during the war, which contributed to the massive scaling back of traditional military structures throughout the world following the war. Part of the rockiness can be attributed to the novelty of superhuman-led warfare. It was difficult for a general to decide whether conventional troops were to be deployed first or superhumans. Both sides would complain that they had to take the bayonet point before the other, and who could really say what the tactical value of one superhuman was compared to 100 troops, or a 1000 troops. The varied powers of superhumans also made it difficult to judge deployment among superhumans. Artillery unit A did not complain when they were sent to X location and artillery unit B to Y location. They did not complain because they were interchangeable, They did the same work and so did not feel discriminated when one went one way the the other another way.

 

But part of the rockiness was certainly due to a ruthlessness desire for victory, especially as the war ground on for years, and a tendency to see superhumans as units instead of people. A unit can be asked to do things a person wouldn’t dare even think about doing. A unit can be asked to shell civilian targets, and history has shown that it will do it, for responsibility diffuses like a drop of water in the ocean within a group, but not so with individuals. A bomber team could lay waste to a city, because the responsibility for their actions was spread among the men that piloted the plane, the men that dropped the bomb, and the men that gassed and fixed their plane. But a superhuman had only himself to blame for his actions.

 

Steel Dolly was present when Red Glare suffered a mental breakdown during the battle of Hoshi island. She saw the flying superhuman crash to Earth, sealing himself in a barrier of energy until the battle was over, ignoring everyone around him. At the time, it was believed that he was the victim of a psychic attack, but it was later revealed by Red Glare’s psychologist, who leaked the information in direct violation of orders, that Red Glare had been asked to bombard civilian targets. He refused, and suppressed the event deep within his heart until the strain of combat made it too much to bear. The military would deny ever asking Red Glare to attack civilians, only revealing that they had in fact done so after the war, but the rumor persisted and spread among the superhumans. Steel Dolly heard the rumor and believed. Never again would she believe that a good superhuman was a regulated superhuman.

 

Though Steel Dolly initially disliked working with the women of the Black Terror Division, she quickly grew to respect them. The Black Terror Division owed its celebrated success to what was termed “toolbox warfare.” The Black Terrors were skilled engineers as well as soldiers. They could advance on the wreckage of an enemy army and convert that wreckage into fortifications and weapons. They would destroy German Kriegmen and start building from the scrapped giant robots before the battle ended. But while they men built fortifications, the women who operated from the rear took those fortifications and finished them into proper bases. The men took territory and the women made sure they stayed claim. It was because of the communication bases and triage centers and supply depots that the women made that the men never had to worry about a retreat turning into a route. Dolly was awed by the women’s skill and learned all she could from them about using the superhuman body as an engineering tool. She found their meditation techniques particularly helpful as they allowed her to apply her strength in very precise ways. With them, she could punch a wall and destroy only a portion, not the entire structure, or drive a rivet through a sheet of metal without crushing the rivet itself. Steel Dolly became lifelong friends with many of the Black Terrors and today credits them with starting her interest in superstrength development and control.

 

Though Steel Dolly enjoyed her time with the Black Terrors, she longed to fight on the front lines, and so left the Division and the military to join the independent superteam known as the Firebrands, which included legends like Columbia, Fire Worker, and Green Mountain. Before she left, she made it clear to the Black Terrors that it wasn’t them, it was the leadership.

 

On the Firebrands, Steel Dolly finally got a taste of the combat she had been craving, and found it bitter. “There’s a universe of difference between creating weapons and being one. ” she would reflect, “Not in the result, but in the feeling. Death up close is not death over miles.” Part of why the Steel Dolly of today is so strict with her students is because she remembers being the Steel Dolly of the 40’s and what she felt when she killed enemy soldiers. “I never want the kids to know what it’s like to feel someone else’s blood drying on your hands.”

 

Steel Dolly’s long association with the martial arts began on the Firebrands where members Fire Worker and Tricolor taught her boxing and judo, two martial arts which formed the bedrock of her skills. Nowadays, she teaches boxing and judo to her students to give them a firm foundation in self-defense before teaching them more esoteric and specialized forms of fighting. Towards the end of the war, she met the Burmese superhuman theriomorphs Kyarr and Kyaung, and learned from them the arts of Naban and Leithwei. It is said that Kyaung and Steel Dolly had very spirited sparring sessions, though who came out on top in these matches depends on who does the telling. Steel Dolly insists to this day that she always had Kyaung’s number, and Kyaung insists on the opposite.

 

 

After The War

 

The war had changed Dorothy Doyle as it had changed many. After seeing how superhumans were treated during the war, she no longer believed that a good superhuman was a regulated superhuman. Much to the contrary, she believed superhumans needed to be taught, not controlled. They needed to be given more power, be that power freedom, strength, or skill. In the early 1950’s, inspired by her time on the Black Terror Division, she went to college and majored in engineering. She learned how to use her strength to build things from next-to-nothing. She could take raw materials, shape them with her bare hands, and place them to last. In the later half of the decade, she was invited by several old friends in the Black Terror Division to join a Statesmen backed non-profit known as the Super Builders which went around the multiverse repairing areas damaged by the Worlds War. Steel Dolly was happy to join, not only to reconnect with her friends, but to revisit Nazarth.

 

While working with the Super Builders, she developed a course for superstrength development by building off meditation techniques taught to her by the Black Terror Division. She was able to apply her strength in extremely precise ways. She could, with a motion of her hand, ignite the air around her, project a sonic wave, or an air burst. The exact manifestation of force and energy depended on the exact motion of her hand.

 

In the 1960’s, she left the Super Builders to further the development of her course. She believed it had great potential in helping superstrong superheroes get the most out of their muscles, but she needed sparring partners to test it on–willing or otherwise. She joined the superhero team Legacy, which was composed of old veterans of the Worlds War and newcomers who the veterans mentored. Steel Dooly got the first taste of teaching Legacy and found that she liked it, but she was on the team to do more than teach. She was on the team to learn, and learn she did from the many hand-to-hand combat experts on the team. The little judo and boxing she learned during the war was augmented with ketsugo, yubiwaza, black tiger kung-fu, and other esoteric arts. She learned from masters, but she became a master herself as she used what she learned to defeat the various members of Legacy’s rouges’ gallery.

 

In the 1970’s, superhumans combined ancient techniques and modern observations to develop martial arts specifically for superhuman combatants. This “age of martial arts” was similar to the 1920’s, sometimes called the “age of weaponry,” where superhumans developed weapons for superhuman use such as pressure guns and rhecite whips. Steel Dolly was at the head of this new and exiting age with her superstrength development course. Her martial arts skills would become so well known that in 1975, she was recruited by the Dragon God Ao Run, previous ruler of the Western waters of the realm of Tiendi before ceding them to his brother Ao Shun so he could go off on adventures, to be a member of the Five Deadly Phases.

 

Each member of the Five Deadly Phases was a martial artist that represented one of the phases of wuxing philosophy and it was by this representation that they were magically augmented by Ao Run’s magic. Steel Dolly, of course, represented the phase of metal. The phase of fire was represented by the pyrokinetic superhero and private investigator Disco Inferno. The phase of water was represented by Yu Ping, a mercenary fighter from the realm of Tiendi who stole from the divine waters of Ao Shun and was hounded by his agents. Yu Ping joined the Five Deadly Phases under Ao Run’s promise to intervene on his behalf with Ao Shun. The phase of wood was represented by Lo Sheng, another being from the realm of Tiendi. Lo Sheng was a wooden man created by a high-ranking warrior monk in the Transcendental Temple to be a living training dummy for new recruits. But Lo Sheng became more than a training dummy. He learned from his opponents as they learned from him and soon became the greatest fighter in the temple. Upset that his students were being surpassed by a wooden man, Lo Sheng’s creator tried to set him on fire. Lo Sheng fled, and joined Ao Run’s team in the hopes of finding a meaning to his life. The final phase of earth was represented by Morl, a crystalman wrestler from Subterra, the world beneath the earth. Morl had a heart as big as he was and joined because he was told he could help people.

 

Ao Run assembled the Five Deadly Phases to protect the multiverse from his brother Ao Guang, the previous ruler of the Eastern waters of Tiendi before Ao Shun ousted him. Ao Guang used dark and terrible magics to make the waters of Tiendi run wild. The sky rained, the rivers flooded, and all was chaos. He vowed the devastation would not end until Ao Shun restored him to this Eastern throne. Ao Guang’s magics were rooted upon five elemental champions. Ao Run aimed to disrupt the magics by defeating these champions with his own. He was successful, because while Ao Guang maneuvered the fighters so that his had the elemental advantage, Ao Run empowered his champions with a fuller understanding of the phases. Ao Run empowered his champions to shift their elemental allegiances. Thus Steel Dolly, who was metal and was struggling against a champion of fire, shifted to water and defeated him. She became a woman made out of water and smothered her opponent’s blaze. But with Ao Guang defeated, the spell left Steel Dolly, and she returned to her regular self. Ao Run’s spell left her in its entirety, and Steel Dolly no longer has the enhanced power she had as a Deadly Phase.

 

The success of the Five Deadly Phases led Ao Run to create several iterations of the team, but many say that there was no finer team than the one Steel Dolly was a member of.

 

Steel Dolly joined Martin’s School in 1980 to teach ERC and strength control, a class based on her superstrength development course. Famously, she introduced building a small shed by hand from raw materials as the mid-term project for students in strength control. She became known as a stern teacher, the “bad cop” to coteacher Vapor Riser’s “good cop.” She pushed her charges hard, because she knew what it’s like to a superheroine and a soldier and wanted to make sure they’re never put in a position through their own inability or ignorance that would force them to be a soldier over a superhero. She was of the belief that not everyone was cut out to be a superhero, and wasn’t afraid to fail students for their own sakes. The embarrassment of failing a class was nothing compared to the cost of failing in the the field.

 

Her hair started to gray around this time, and she decided to let it turn white. She has never taken a rejuvenation treatment, and has never needed to  Her quasi-perkunite cells keep her youthful and strong, and in fact, her strength has been increasing over the years. Currently, she has enough power in her cells to easily pulverize a planet with a light punch.

 

Steel Dolly, who answers to “Coach” more often than “Steel Dolly” or “Mrs. Doyle,” because in many ways she’s the Martin’s ERC coach, continues to teach at Martin’s as a veteran teacher. She’s taught long enough to see several students graduate and go on to be great superheroes and it fills her with pride. Though she’s primarily known as a teacher of superheroes, she is also proud of all the students that have passed through her strength control class. Many have gone on to be architects, construction foremen, and engineers.

 

She believes her ERC and strength control students represent two sides to her power philosophy. Builders use their powers to create, and superheroes use their powers to preserve that creation. As they become stronger, her students create more and protect more, and world becomes grander and stronger.