Kay Common
Statistics[edit]
Real name: Kay. The surname "Common" she nabbed from a story. (See History for details)
Gender: Female.
Species: Uncertain. Kay mostly resembles an anthropomorphic arctic fox.
Age: She guesses it to be about 17, ignoring temporal discontinuities.
Hair: Silvery mane, about shoulder length.
Eyes: Blue.
Build: Somewhat short and very slight, only 5 feet tall and looking as if she'd blow away in a strong wind.
Power Level: 7
Appearance[edit]
While she looks mostly like a humanoid version of an arctic fox with blue eyes and a silvery mane of hair, closer examination shows some anomalies. Kay has full webbing between her toes and partial webbing, though not enough to affect her manual dexterity between her fingers. She prefers to wear tight fitting clothing, which would be more revealing if her body shape had many curves to reveal. By human standards she appears mostly boyish in general body shape. Most people seeing her get the impression that she's incredibly light and delicate. They're right about the former, but underneath her fragile appearance she's tough as nails.
History[edit]
Kay's earliest memories are of the street, in one of the Hub Cities. She survived to grow up as far as she has thanks to her agility and reflexes, along with a tremendous, almost supernaturally so, amount of luck. To date nobody seems to recognize her precise species or where in the Mirrorskies she came from, so she grew up without any particular roots or anything more than survival as a goal.
Being more than a petty street thief didn't really occur to her until she was about 13. Then she found IT.
IT was a comic, entitled Merayda 2, though the multitude of translations it had probably passed through made that an approximation of the original at best. The original story had been coopted and modified as a recruiting aid during the height of TIME's golden age. Kay had managed to learn to read, and found herself hooked on the tale of Larika Common and her acrobatic, firearms wielding approach to archeology. As a result she began to work to educate herself and work towards joining TIME. The comic remains her most treasured possession.
Three years later, around the beginning of TIME's decline she applied to join. But while some of her skills were considered useful, her shortcomings tended to mean that nobody wanted to work with her or give her any training. Then one day she simply vanished, to the collective sigh of relief of those who noticed her absence.
Perhaps prematurely. Kay had accidentally activated one of the stored relics in the Artifact, and sent herself somewhere into the future...
Personality[edit]
When it comes to the people of TIME, she's living her dream, so far at least. While normally cautious and even suspicious of strangers thanks to her childhood, around TIME personnel her guard is down. She's willing to learn whatever she can and help out if she sees a way to do so. Which can result in problems if she has misunderstood the situation...
Powers[edit]
Incredibly flexible and agile, Kay can not only run across a tightrope, she can do handstands, cartwheels, and backflips on one without losing her balance, much less falling off. Her species seems to be adapted for colder climates, so she's unconcerned by anything short of arctic conditions, but has difficulty in hot environments. She swims surprisingly well, and can hold her breath for up to fifteen minutes of moderate (non-combat) activity before she runs into difficulty.
And she's lucky. She doesn't win lotteries but little things tend to go her way. Which is quite useful considering her weaknesses...
Weaknesses[edit]
Kay modeled herself on the acrobatic gunslinging antics of Larika Common. She's got the acrobatic side of it down. Unfortunately she's a lightweight girl who has great difficulty handling the recoil on the pair of huge pistols she tries to use in a firefight. She's sure to be pointing the gun where she wants to shoot when she pulls the trigger, but by the time the bullet gets out of the barrel, the recoil could have left the gun pointing anywhere at all in the vicinity as Kay gets spun around. That was why she was an uncomfortable fit with TIME personnel on expeditions.
Her unusual good luck prevented any serious injuries to her allies, and even tended to have the ricochets hit the enemy, but there's something disconcerting about a bullet path that hits the roof, bounces back against the wall, hits the floor, ricochets off the expedition leader's codpiece, off the floor again, then hits the enemy.
To the frustration of everyone who tried to get Kay to use different weapons, anything they substituted for her guns transformed into a duplicate of them while on her person. Hand her an enchanted lightweight pistol with recoil compensation, and when Kay goes to fire her new gun it and its ammo have become a non-magical wrist-breaking monster with enough recoil to throw someone against the wall. While this is potentially useful - a one shot muzzle loading matchlock pistol becomes rather more up to date and theoretically reliable in Kay's hands, the same thing will happen to a high-tech recoiless gyroc pistol with laser option and artifact grade enchantments to never miss or run out of ammo. Fortunately weapons affected by this phenonemon turn back to their real forms once they leave her possession.
