Doctor Photon

## Origins

A unique and eccentric child, **Phinea Frampton** suffered from being born too early. If she had her childhood today, she would have been enrolled in the most elite schools and been party to the best education imaginable, but having been born in the mid-1920s she was subject to a very different upbringing.

Both her parents worked multiple jobs to keep their tiny apartment in the borough of **Kingstown** in **Holland City**, and Phinea supplemented her public school education with judicious use of both the school and public libraries, borrowing and devouring books week in, week out. She particularly gravitated towards books about science, and by the time she was fourteen years old she had set up a makeshift workshop on the roof of the apartment building she lived in, using scrap electronics and metal to build increasingly large and impressive machines, all while keeping her extra-curricular activities a secret from her parents.

Unfortunately she was unable to keep the secret for much longer after one of her inventions, an early iteration of solar panelling, caused the electricity in her entire city block to short out. She was terrified that her parents would punish her, but instead they introduced her to **Doctor Bernard ‘Doc’ Goldstein**, a well-off inventor who offered to make her his apprentice. Both she and her parents jumped at the opportunity, and she began to study under Doc Goldstein, who was impressed with how comprehensive she had been in her self-learning.

### Doctor Photon

A few weeks before her eighteenth birthday, Phinea arrived at Doc Goldstein’s lab to find it ransacked and Goldstein himself severely beaten. He was taken away to hospital and visited by a former colleague from **Geist Industries**, a powerful and ethically shady corporation, who advised that he had been behind the attack, and was looking for something Goldstein had built. Little did either of the parties know that Phinea had been listening in on the conversation, and now she knew who had attacked her mentor and friend.

In a rage, Phinea returned to the lab and quickly constructed a device which would come to be known as the **Photon Staff**, a metal rod with a powerful photon beam projector mounted on the end, and donning a heavy coat and goggles she mounted an assault of her own on a Geist Industries warehouse she had tracked Goldstein’s attackers to. After destroying much of the dangerous and illegal weaponry that had been built and stored there, and sending a stern message to those responsible, she realised that these men were a small part of a bigger problem. Thus, she took up the name **Doctor Photon**, and began a campaign of vigilante justice against anyone using science for dangerous or immoral reasons.

Over time, she continually upgraded and remodelled the Photon Staff to make it lighter, more powerful and more energy-efficient, testing the new iterations of the device on nightly missions to combat the ethically-compromised scientific practices being carried out by Geist Industries. While her youth and lack of combat experience combined with her impulsive nature occasionally threatened to get her into trouble she generally found that her Photon Staff was a powerful enough tool to get her out of most tight spots.

Three years into her campaign of action against Geist Industries and its various smallholdings, the now-experienced Doctor Photon received an unexpected visit from **Agent Apex**, the world's premier enhanced combatant and a real-life war hero. He told her that he had been keeping an eye on a number of special people across the country, and invited her to become part of the **Superior** strategy, a program which would call upon these heroes in times of great need. Doctor Photon excitedly accepted the invitation, and eagerly waited for the call to come.

### The Founder Invasion

In January 1947, Doctor Photon began to identify some strange signals emanating from the upper atmosphere of the planet. Having designed and deployed a series of probes six months earlier to help her better understand the refraction of sunlight caused by particles in the Earth's atmosphere, she was concerned when they started going haywire.

She spent the next three months studying the data that had been returned, and became aware that there were non-terrestrial bodies moving into place in the upper atmosphere of the planet, invisible to the naked eye as well as a series of full-spectrum scans she was able to carry out. Fearful that these could be representative of a hostile force, she tried to present her findings to the United States government but was blocked because of her young age, her race and her lack of connections to people in positions of authority.

In early July of 1947, the data being returned by her scans showed that the epicentre of the unusual non-terrestrial activity was above **Roswell, New Mexico**, and she travelled to the town on her own dime to offer her assistance whenever it would be required. Her fears ultimately proved to be well-founded, as the hostile alien force revealed themselves to the world, having strategically positioned their craft above a number of key facilities and locations around the planet, and launched a global attack.

Doctor Photon was soon joined in Roswell by Agent Apex, who was surprised to see that she had made it before him, and a large force of other enhanced humans who led the defense of the planet. In the attack, Doctor Photon was the first to destroy an alien craft using her Photon Staff, and she was also able to activate a number of defensive mechanisms she had spent the weeks leading up to the invasion building and preparing.

Having been a key part of the initial defense, Doctor Photon joined the boarding party that was teleported to the alien **mothership**, where she discovered the invading force were known to the galaxy as **The Founders**, a race of aggressive colonisers who intended to restructure the planet into something inhabitable for their lost species. Their **Overlord** attacked the group of heroes, and in the ensuring battle Doctor Photon was thrown out of the ship, plummeting towards Earth. However, her new comrade **Skywatch** was able to catch her using his experimental jetpack, and the pair returned safely to the ground to watch as the rest of the team destroyed the mothership and escaped, causing the remainder of the invading force to flee back into outer space.

In the aftermath, Doctor Photon stuck around in New Mexico for a while to help with the clean up operation, rebuilding and even improving a number of the defensive capabilities of the town and the surrounding area, before returning to Holland City and reigniting her campaign against Geist Industries.

### The Superior Squad

A few months after the **Founder Invasion**, Doctor Photon was once again contacted by Agent Apex with an offer to join a team of enhanced humans who would act as a global defense force against threats that humanity themselves couldn't handle alone. She was told that many of her teammates would be those she had worked alongside in New Mexico, and she agreed to contribute her scientific knowledge and skills to the cause, officially joining **The Superior Squad**.

During her time with the team, she was able to play a key role in many missions with her impressive inventions and her expert scientific insight. She became fast friends with fellow team member Skywatch, who felt like an older brother to her, and developed a close friendship with second-in-command **Beacon**, a member of the Founder species who was happy to share his scientific and cosmic insight with an eager and fascinated young woman. This knowledge sharing resulted in Doctor Photon being able to build technology with capabilities far in advance of anything developed by other scientists on the planet, and she became the primary supplier of weapons and technology for the team as a whole.

### The Siege of Kymeria

In the mid-1960s the hostile foreign nation of **Kymeria** sealed itself off from the rest of the world using a series of advanced and impenetrable force shields. With no real interest in politics or international espionage, Doctor Photon's interest in the escalating tension caused by the country was purely scientific, as she longed to find out how the shields worked.

When the **Unified Nations** finally decided to intervene in the Kymeria situation, Agent Apex and Skywatch were selected to mount a covert mission to infiltrate the country and return key data to the UN. Before the mission, Doctor Photon built a range of stealth equipment for the pair to help them in their mission, and secretly asked Skywatch to try and find out whatever he could about the force shields so she would be able to study them in more depth.

During the mission, Doctor Photon was stationed on the borders of the country along with teammates Beacon, **The Eclipse** and **Cinder** to monitor the situation and provide backup if required. This positioning meant that she was forced to watch as the insane despot who ruled the country, a madwoman named **Countess Chaos** murdered Skywatch and executed Agent Apex on live television a few days later.

Doctor Photon's subsequent attempts to break through the force shield were rendered useless as Cinder unleashed the full fury of her fiery magical power and incinerated the entire country, burning it off the map itself and falling into a coma immediately afterwards. Doctor Photon mourned the loss of her teammates, and along with Beacon and The Eclipse, ultimately decided to disband the Superior Squad and go their separate ways.

### Later Life

In the aftermath of Kymeria and the team drifting apart, Doctor Photon decided to hang up her staff and coat and retire from being a superhero. She was the one to deliver the news and last personal effects to Skywatch's family, and she stayed with them for a few weeks to ensure she was able to attend the funeral. She stayed in touch with the family throughout her life, and considers them to be close friends.

With her superhero days behind her, Phinea was invited to join the research department of **UNION** in an advisory capacity, using her vast knowledge of new technology to make leaps and bounds forward for the human race. But she was tired of conflict and government, and politely declined the offer, instead taking up a position as a physics professor at the **University of Holland City**, despite never having received any formal qualifications from a university herself.

Over the years her students started to forget that she was once a famous superhero, and as she got older Phinea began to appreciate the quiet life more and more. She married a fellow professor and adopted a young daughter who grew to share her love of science, and never once looked back on her decision to retire from life as a crimefighter, although she still regularly participates in demonstrations against unethical scientific practices.

## Personality

Phinea is an eccentric genius, a whirlwind of quirks and odd behaviour who nonetheless excels in her chosen field. Ever since she was a child she has been difficult to get a handle on, with her parents thinking she had antisocial or even dangerous tendencies that turned out to be a product of boredom, with her school subjects not exciting or invigorating her. Once she found science as an outlet for her restlessness, however, she became a lot easier to live with, if a little overenthusiastic in some of her experiments.

As an adult she retains many eccentricities, most notably her inability to keep track of the time when she is working in the lab, often wiling away hours and even entire days tinkering on new projects, entirely forgetting to eat, drink or sleep. This means that the rest of her teammates in the Superior Squad have agreed an informal rota to keep an eye on her and make sure she is looking after herself.

Although she is quirky and independent-minded, she never appears distant or detached from her friends, family and teammates, able to form close relationships with people as long as she has something in common with them. She has a deep affection for Skywatch, to whom she is like a weird younger sister, and has formed a unique friendship with Beacon, who is always happy to answer her bizarre and seemingly incongruous questions about outer space.

Since the Siege of Kymeria, Phinea's emotions have come to the forefront as she struggled to cope with the loss of her best friend, and she has shed some of her more unusual quirks in an effort to have a more 'normal' life.

## Superhuman Abilities

Doctor Photon is one of only two members of the Superior Squad to possess no superhuman abilities, the other being her close friend Skywatch. However, she does possess peak human intelligence in the areas of physics and technology, and is a capable combatant when she is equipped with her Photon Staff.

## Weapons and Equipment

As an inventor and technologist, Doctor Photon is never too far away from a stash of gadgets that she has personally developed and built, however some of her favourites include:

* **Photon Staff** - The primary weapon of Doctor Photon, the first version of the Photon Staff was a five-foot metal pole with a prototype photon projector mounted on the top. This could be used for a variety of purposes, from casting an illuminating light on the surrounding area, to projecting blinding flashes of light used to distract and disorient enemies, and even shooting a focused beam of light particles as a laser capable of cutting through solid steel. Since the first version, the Photon Staff has been upgraded continuously, and the final version was mounted on an extendable telescopic pole, with a renewable energy source and a wider range of capabilities including projecting complex holographic images and even low-level hypnotic control using the full colour spectrum.
* **Jump Pads** - Mounted into her boots, the Jump Pads allow Doctor Photon to launch herself several dozen feet into the air with no more effort than a standard jump. They also provide cushioning to her landings, allowing her to fall from up to one hundred feet with no major damage to her physical body. Later versions of the Jump Pads allowed her to create hard-light platforms in mid air, which lasted a few seconds and allowed her to increase the height she was able to travel.
* **SpectraVision** - Along with the Photon Staff, Doctor Photon is always equipped with SpectraVision goggles, a pair of repurposed engineer's goggles which allow her to view her surroundings across much of the electromagnetic spectrum. This means that she is able to utilise X-rays, infrared and even some aspects of magical 'Second Sight' to give her a full-spectrum view of her environment.

Along with her personal equipment, Doctor Photon is responsible for much of the upgraded technology carried by other members of the Superior Squad, including Agent Apex's **Kinetic Gauntlets** and Skywatch's **ThrustPack** and **ThrustHelm**.