Laura De Mille

"*You're lucky that you have people to share your life with. I don't know where I was in the future or what happened. But I'm certain of one thing, I was alone. You know, we are quite a bit alike, you and me, Cliff. Relics from a long time passed, discarded by the side of the road in search of a new home we may never truly find.* "
—Laura De Mille[src]
**Laura De Mille**, also known as the ex-supervillain **Madame Rouge**, is a metahuman with shapeshifting powers and a former member of the Doom Patrol. She was formerly employed at the Bureau of Normalcy and was a member of both the Sisterhood of Dada and the Brotherhood of Evil in the early 20th century. In 1949, she was sent on a time travel mission to 2021 for the Brotherhood but unexpectedly lost all memory of her life.

To try and regain her memory, Laura moved into Doom Manor, but upon regaining her memory, Laura recalled her loyalty to the Brotherhood and kidnapped Cliff for Ultimax. She was then expelled from the Brotherhood, who by this time had gone into retirement. With nowhere else to go, Laura decided to reform and make amends with the Doom Patrol, but Rita Farr, who had been involved with the Sisterhood in Laura's past, hated her for her past betrayal. Eventually Laura was accepted into the group, which then became a team of superheroes known as the new Doom Patrol.

## Biography

### Early Life

Laura De Mille does not remember her childhood fondly, preferring to bury memories of her past rather than confront them. Her mother was possibly connected to the military or government, having been described as a war profiteer and hoarder. Although it is unclear when or how her metahuman ability manifested, this change occurred at some point in Laura's youth, causing many of her close relations to abandon or mistrust her. As a result, she has an uncomfortable relationship with her metahuman ability and appears to have kept it secret from non-metahumans.

### Working with the Bureau of Normalcy

Laura began working at the Bureau of Normalcy around 1914, and by 1917 is positioned in a laboratory. Her primary duty was the recruitment of metahumans, determining whether their abilities were useful enough to be exploited for the war effort. Although Laura is herself a metahuman, she seems to have kept this secret from Bureau officials and is maintaining a normal-human pretence to avoid discrimination. During this time she was able to identify certain metahumans who displayed subversive, pacifist or artistic tendencies and secretly classified these as non-weapons to keep them from incarceration. Despite several rounds of re-classification and growing suspicion from fellow agents, she succeeded in protecting them for the duration of both wars. Laura remained a loyal employee of the Bureau for 35 years, although appeared to have grown hardened by the second war, until she was eventually threatened with exposure--whether of her metahuman ability or of her involvement with the Sisterhood of Dada, it is unclear. She was forced to re-classify the Sisterhood into recruitment to maintain her position. This was unsuccessful, as a memorandum sent out by Niles Caulder in February 1949 insinuated "a preponderance of evidence" which proved malicious behavior on Laura's part, although the nature of this evidence is never specified. Her employment was subsequently terminated. Laura appears to have maintained some level of access to the Bureau's archives through at least 1953, when she is listed on the checkout record for the Immortus Project.

#### Member of the Sisterhood of Dada

While working in metahuman recruitment at the Bureau of Normalcy, Laura had the opportunity to divert certain candidates from weapons classification and instead allowed them to work menial but unincarcerated positions at the Bureau. Laura, along with diverted metas Shelley Byron, Malcolm DuPont, Lloyd Jefferson, Holly McKenzie, Sachiko, and later, Bendy, formed an alliance through a mutual interest in art and Dadaism. They called themselves the Sisterhood of Dada, meeting after work in a hidden salon created by Shelley ("The Fog"). Here they were free to openly embrace their meta abilities and express themselves through art and performance. In keeping with the Dada movement, their work sought to subvert systems of oppression through art, although it seems that their plans to heal the world during this time remained theoretical and were never implemented.

At some point around the second world war, Laura began to distance herself from the Sisterhood as her duties with the Bureau became more demanding and association with the metas risked raising suspicion toward her own meta secret, which could threaten the safety of the Sisterhood. Despite her pretence of coldness toward her friends, she continued to ensure their freedom and exemption from combative duties during each reclassification window.

Her involvement with the Sisterhood ended catastrophically when she was eventually pressured by the Bureau to turn her peers over to the weapons department. The Sisterhood, sans Laura and Bendy, spent the next 70 years in Bureau captivity until the Ant Farm was freed by the Doom Patrol in 2019. Their original desire to heal the world was now intertwined with a thirst for vengeance against Laura.

#### Meeting Bendy

***This section is a stub. You can help expand this section by adding some information.***

### Redemption

#### Joining the new Doom Patrol

After her apology with Rita, Laura returned to the manor with her roommates, listening to Rita's speech to decide to be weapons for good, proposing to become superheroes, and Laura agreed to join, but Rita rejected her due to her mistrust, and Laura claimed that she hadn't changed, as she was in progress on that, and Cliff convinced Rita to accept her, which she eventually agreed to just to keep an eye on her. Laura and the team tried to come up with a name, denying the term "Doom Force", before seeing on the news about the Suez Canal, where a strange testicle-shaped monster appeared, and the team accepted it as their first enemy.

Since Jane was passed out and couldn't turn into Flit, Laura suggested using the time machine to get there quickly, letting Rita pilot it, while Laura, Larry, Vic, and Jane were inside Cliff. Laura attempted to lead Cliff to help, though Rita denied it until she gained her trust, which Laura accepted, sitting in her seat, and the team of heroes headed straight underground to stop the creature, and complained along with Vic for the name of the team.

#### Battle against Codpiece

Spending time with the team, officially called the Doom Patrol, Laura investigated different metahumans she turned into weapons such as Shelby Dockery and Rhiannon Cox in her attempt to redeem herself, but was always harassed by Rita, who gave her code names that mocked her. In 2022, the Doom Patrol received the order from Rita to fight Codpiece and Rita named their code names, Laura's being "Dogshit McGivens", which Laura reluctantly accepted, traveling with the team in the time machine attached to the giant robot and Laura denied using the jellyfish, causing her to have amnesia again.

Upon arriving at the Cloverton Credit Union, the Doom Patrol received an explosive shot from Codpiece, so they followed Rita's plan, with Laura distracting Codpiece along with Cliff, who was under the codename "Robotman", to evade his shots. Laura, due to amnesia, asked Rita about the plan again, being informed that she had to transform into something to distract Codpiece, so Laura became a copy of Codpiece, turning her penis-shaped weapon into miniature form, causing his anger until Doctor Harrison, one of Jane's personalities, intervened to make him surrender and with Codpiece arrested, the Doom Patrol returned to the manor.

#### Travel to the Grim Future

Days after their last mission, Laura and the team gathered in the laboratory, happily watching Vic and Silas Stone give Cliff his new right arm now with the sense of touch, managing to convince Rita to go to Florida for Cliff to feel like his family. Before the trip, Laura secretly spoke with Rita, to whom she told that after the trip to Florida, she was ready to leave the manor due to their long feud, she said, which made Rita happy and took her to the machine to give her a Medusa so that he would not forget his promise to leave. On the trip, the Doom Patrol played games to pass the time before crossing paths with Isabel Feathers in the Time Stream, leading Laura to reveal that she fell upon their arrival and the clash with Isabel caused the team to travel to the future Cloverton, discovering that everything had been devastated, deciding to look for answers in the manor.

In the destroyed Doom Manor, Laura and the team were trapped in a trap by Cliff until they were freed by a future version of Vic, who gathered them to tell them that the world was devastated by the Buttpocalypse, reporting that a Zombie Butt had escaped. Laura tried to see her future self, but Future Vic informed her that her future self was missing before the Buttpocalypse began. Laura investigated all the newspapers of the missing people in the Buttpocalypse, discovering that her future version was planning to make an act of peace with the Butts, leading him to investigate the garage, discovering that someone was trying to create his time machine, before saving Vic and discover that future Vic was planning to steal the machine. The Doom Patrol confronted future Vic about the deception until they had to fight the zombie Butts, being forced to flee and as Vic demanded answers on how to avoid the terrible future, Laura had to become Silas to take Vic.

In the machine, Laura was in charge of piloting to escape while they saw future Vic being devoured by the Butts. Without words, the Doom Patrol returned to the manor after seeing their fates and Laura, with doubts about how the Buttpocalypse was caused, visited Rita's room to offer her help in avoiding the apocalyptic future, deciding to stay longer in the manor to discover it, but Rita began to melt when she knew that she would stay, closing the bedroom door in Laura's face.

## Powers and Abilities

### Powers

* **Meta-human physiology:** Through unknown means, De Mille's DNA was altered turning her into a meta-human.
	+ **Shapeshifting:** Laura is able to manipulate her form to mimic the physical characteristics of people, objects or animals, as seen when she took on the appearance of Isabel Feathers, an ottoman, a bird, and a baby in separate occasions.
* **Longevity**: Laura showed no signs of aging and her appearance remained the same for over a century.
* **Temporal immunity**: Laura was aware each time Isabel Feathers/Immortus rewound time.

### Abilities

* **Skilled Hand-to-Hand Combatant**: Laura was able to defend herself from Were-Butts using dance-like combat skills.
* **Bilingualism**: Laura is fluent in both English and French.
* **Singing**: Laura is a skilled singer, as she was able to sing the song *Sweet Caroline* with the Doom Patrol.

### Weaknesses

* **Power instability:** Due to her amnesia, Laura has little knowledge on how to control her powers, as while she can trigger them at will, she's unable to properly choose what form she takes on.

## Appearances

### Season 3

* "Possibilities Patrol"
* "Vacay Patrol" (photo)
* "Dead Patrol"
* "Undead Patrol"
* "Dada Patrol"
* "1917 Patrol"
* "Bird Patrol"
* "Subconscious Patrol"
* "Evil Patrol"
* "Amends Patrol"

### Season 4

* "Doom Patrol"
* "Butt Patrol"
* "Nostalgia Patrol"
* "Youth Patrol"
* "Hope Patrol"
* "Orqwith Patrol"
* "Fame Patrol"
* "Immortimas Patrol"
* "Tomb Patrol"
* "Portal Patrol"
* "Done Patrol"

## Behind the scenes

* In the DC comics, Madame Rouge is French stage actress **Laura De Mille**. She is a leading member of the Brotherhood of Evil, having gained her powers when the Brain performed surgery on her. Her first appearance in the comics was *Doom Patrol* #86 (January, 1964).