by Dan Swanson
Excerpt from The SuperYou Player’s Handbook:
F’ant O’mah, the Lunarian Lawbreaker
HISTORY:
Hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Atlantean civilization reached a technological pinnacle in which they were advanced enough to colonize the Moon. When Atlantis fell, the colony was stranded, but developed in its own directions after that.
In the late 1920s, a strange meteor landed on the Moon, and contaminated a garden. When the youngster who tended that garden ate some of the contaminated vegetables, she fell into a coma, so her elders destroyed the rest. However, when F’ant O’mah awoke, she found that she had strange powers and a demonic appearance, so her people exiled her. Since she was able to survive in space, she fled to Earth, from which her people’s ancestors had come. Landing in Africa, F’ant O’mah set herself up as a goddess worshiped by a primitive tribe in awe of her powers.
During this time, F’ant O’mah discovered a power source in an ancient Egyptian temple on the banks of the White Nile River, thousands of miles south of Egypt, thanks to a steady trade up and down this fantastic river centuries earlier. After she learned to draw power from this ancient mystical source, F’ant O’mah became, for a time, the most powerful being on Earth.
In the mid-1950s, Earth went to war with the Moon. Due to F’ant O’mah’s long, happy association with humans, she remained neutral. Unfortunately, the humans, fearing that she could turn the tide if she entered the war on the side of the Lunarians, managed to distract her and destroy her temple. Weakened, she did enter the war, but her remaining power wasn’t enough to stop the destruction of the Moon. To gain revenge, F’ant O’mah joined the Jailbirds and Legbreakers Assembly.
POWERS:
Default Powers: Super-Strength (2 points); Super-Speed (2 points); Super-Durability (2 points); Flight (3 points).
Additional Power Points: Pick any combination of powers from the tables that add up to nine points. Note: No power can be raised above the Super level (2 points).
Additional Powers This Game: Flame-Vision (2 points); Invisibility (2 points); Telepathy (1 point); Illusion-Generation (1 point); Gravity-Control (2 points); Shape-Changing (1 point).
WEAKNESSES:
Pick one 3-point weakness from the Silly Weaknesses table.
Specific Weaknesses This Game: Exposure to mustard causes F’ant O’mah great pain and can weaken and kill her.
***
Kali, the world’s most majestic woman, found that trying to keep a grip on F’ant O’mah the Lunarian Lawbreaker was like trying to hold onto a super-powered tiger. It was just like that, in fact, as F’ant O’mah shape-shifted into a tiger and savagely tore free. Once free, she shifted back and spoke.
“You will pay dearly for attacking F’ant O’mah, goddess of the jungle!”
Kali snorted with derision. “All who live, whether in the jungle or elsewhere, must yield to the power of Kali, goddess of creation and death!”
F’ant O’Mah laughed herself. “I’ve heard of Kelly — goddess of vacuum cleaners and dust mops!”
Kali snarled, “Pretty clever — for an imaginary character from a kids’ game!”
Black beams sprang from Kali’s eyes. They grew until they connected with F’ant O’mah’s chest, then seemed to cling, and began pulsing, as if drawing something out of the Lunarian lawbreaker and pumping it back to Kali. F’ant O’mah screamed in instant agony and began frantically trying to escape. She jerked upward, down, to the sides, spinning, all to no avail. Kali could turn her head faster than F’ant O’mah could move, and the beams seemed to cling to her. Finally, she just disappeared.
This new manifestation of Kali’s powers was totally unexpected. She had no idea how she had turned on these deadly eye-beams, and no idea what their power was. Then she felt some kind of energy draining from her foe and flowing into her through the beams. The idea of drawing the life from an opponent repelled her, and the thought of some other being’s life energy mingled with hers was disgusting, yet she felt strangely exhilarated as well. The new power pulsed throughout her body, and she couldn’t deny the fantastic pleasure it gave her. Then the connection was abruptly severed as F’ant O’mah vanished.
Before she could even realize that F’ant O’mah was gone, something slammed into her from behind, with a power she had rarely felt before. Shiva and Master Man were that powerful — but no one else. She spun and flailed with all four arms and kicked with her legs, but she couldn’t hit what she couldn’t see. Her anger grew into rage, and abruptly she vanished, too. The air was filled with haunting laughter.
Moments earlier, F’ant O’mah had been close to panic. She had never in her life felt pain such as those produced by Kali’s eye-beams. She could feel them sucking her life from her. Her body struggled to retain its life-force, and every erg of energy had to be violently and painfully torn away from her. Her frantic attempts to escape were useless. If she hadn’t been in such a state, she would have thought of invisibility sooner.
As soon as she vanished, she escaped the eye-beams. She could feel her energy replenishing, and she determined to use all her power to end this fight now. At her highest speed she circled around behind her larger foe, and slammed her shoulder into the small of Kali’s back. She was trying to kill Kali, or at least immobilize her by breaking her back.
Kali’s invulnerability was up to the task, and she seemed unscathed by the sneak attack. Still, she was unable to detect F’ant O’mah, and the goddess of the jungle used that advantage to continue to pummel her opponent unmercifully. If she couldn’t disable Kali in a single blow, then she’d beat her into unconsciousness. It would be more fun, anyway.
Then Kali vanished, too. F’ant O’mah laughed aloud at this. She didn’t need her eyes to locate her foe. Kali radiated hatred and anger, emotions that F’ant O’mah could easily detect. Guided by Kali’s own emotional energy, F’ant O’mah continued to rain vicious blows on her opponent, searching for a vulnerable point.
Kali had dived into the Potomac River and now moved across the surface, whirling at super-speed with all four arms outstretched. Her speed vaporized thousands of gallons of water into a fine mist, and her arms blew the mist into the air like super-fans. Instantly, she saw the outline of her opponent, and she waved an arm in that direction. Suddenly, the water in the air froze solid, and F’ant O’mah was encased in a block of ice.
F’ant O’mah’s eyes flashed, her flame-vision causing the ice around her head to flash into steam, and as the pressure from the steam quickly built up, the ice enclosing her exploded violently. She pointed at Kali and concentrated, and Kali started to slide underwater.
“Putting on a little weight, are we?” The alien’s haunting laugh pealed out again.
Kali immediately recognized that F’ant O’mah was enhancing the gravitational attraction between her body and the Earth. It was one of Red Rocket’s favorite tactics, and it slowed her down somewhat, since she was carrying five or six times her normal weight. But even while fighting enhanced gravity during a training exercise she could still overcome any other members of the Super Squad except Shiva and Master Man. She concentrated on her flying, and lifted out of the water.
But F’ant O’mah surprised her. She released the enhanced gravity, and for just an instant Kali was out of control. During that instant, the Lunarian lawbreaker surged forward and wrapped her arms around her foe, driving them both down to the far shore of the river, where they struck like a meteor. Still driving forward, F’ant O’mah battered Kali through the soil, downward even deeper until the four-armed heroine smashed into the solid granite bedrock. It took her several seconds to recover, and during that time, F’ant O’mah pummeled her mercilessly.
When she started to fight back, Kali discovered another disadvantage. It was absolutely pitch black down here, and somehow F’ant O’mah could see well enough to hit Kali, and avoid all her blows. This battle was becoming intolerable. She wrapped her arms around her head and ignored the painful beating, twisting around until she was able to feel bedrock beneath her feet. She leaped upward, tearing through the compacted soil above her, and blasted into the air like an intercontinental ballistic missile from a camouflaged silo. F’ant O’mah followed at equally high speed, but she was somewhat behind, and Kali had the chance to recover her equilibrium.
Although Kali tried some acrobatics, F’ant O’mah seemed to be able to anticipate her movements, and though the alien wasn’t able to catch up, Kali wasn’t able to gain enough of a lead to begin a new attack. Why was she fleeing? She wanted to fight this witch, and she had seen no reason to think she was over-matched. She stopped and turned. Here she would stay.
The black beams once again lanced from her eyes. This time, though, F’ant O’mah met them with beams of flame from her own eyes. The beams of dark death and beams of bright flame met, and Kali screamed in pain as her eye-beams seemed to catch fire, burning back into her head. She shut them down immediately and closed with F’ant O’mah, attacking her savagely, allowing pain and rage to fuel her strength. With Kali’s greater size and the extra advantage of four arms, F’ant O’mah was unable to defend herself, much less fight back, and the alien quickly became desperate.
From her seemingly endless arsenal she pulled another power, using telepathy to attack Kali with a ferocious blast of mental energy. She tried to pattern the attack on a drill bit, driving forward and burrowing into Kali’s brain. After the first touch, she could feel the heroine brace against this attack, and she sneered as her mental drill bit started shredding the mental defenses it encountered, metaphorically tearing her mind to shreds.
Unable to resist the devastating mental attack, Kali floated motionless as she struggled to save her mind, a struggle that was virtually incomprehensible for her. She had never imagined being under a mental attack, and she had no idea how to defend herself. She could feel F’ant O’mah tearing into her mind, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. The immense agony was too much to handle, and she fell into unconsciousness, hoping that death would be less painful than the end of her life.
Remaining motionless for a long second, Kali then started changing. Her body shuddered and grew even larger, her arms shortening and her legs becoming longer, while her body proportions changed as well. Her face changed at the same time, and her classically beautiful features melted and swirled and solidified again. The being in front of F’ant O’mah was clearly Kali — and yet it was also clearly a demon, a being with no good will toward anything alive.
Kali was now surrounded by a dark aura. F’ant O’mah could feel ageless evil animating the fantastic being in front of her, deadly power radiating and filling the air with menace. Compared with this evil, her desire for revenge was a spark to an atomic bomb exploding; compared to the rage in this being, her anger was less than a candle to the sun. Compared with the power of this being, she felt as significant as a flea. She was frozen in place with a fear unlike anything she had ever imagined.
“Foolish mortal! You have torn asunder the magical bonds that chain me to this woman and allow her to unwittingly control a fraction of my powers! You will die in agony and amuse me forever in Hell for daring raise your hand against Dalissa, queen of the demon Rakasha!”
Instantly a geyser of flame, topped by a column of oily black smoke, rose from the ground beneath, and Kali (or was this being actually Dalissa?) was engulfed by it. As the smoke and flames wrapped around her, F’ant O’mah could see her flesh char, curl, and shrivel, and then start to flake away. Dalissa screamed in unimaginable agony. The smoke completely wrapped her, and a second later, Dalissa’s scream and the smoke and flame vanished, leaving in their wake a stunned human woman.
Before the groggy Lily Lovelace Martine could even react, F’ant O’mah easily knocked her unconscious, then casually threw her toward the ground. In turn, she was slammed from the side by an incredible blow. As she flew through the air, a loud voice even louder than Dalissa’s scream caused the air to tremble and the ground to shake.
“I AM CREATED SHIVA, THE DESTROYER — DEATH, THE SHATTERER OF WORLDS!”