Sarah Carrington

Sarah in her current form

Sarah Carrington (age 17), also known as Dactyla, is a metahuman and a current member of the New Guardians superhero team. Sarah's body has bonded with the alien Dactyla spores, granting her greatly enhanced strength and the ability to project a protective energy field, but at the cost of transforming her into a monstrous, insect humanoid.

## History

Sarah was born to Daniel and Linda Carrington in Winnemac, MI; a suburb of Crash City, on October 2nd, 2002. She had a normal childhood and in her teenage years, her family moved to Crash City, where she attended high school.

### First Contact with Dactyla Spores

One night while walking home from school, Sarah traveled through a local park. Much to her shock, a meteorite came crashing down near her. Curious, she went to investigate. She was not aware that the meteorite contained Dactyla spores, an invasive alien microorganism that latched onto her as she drew close and bonded with her almost immediately. Sarah sensed very little wrong at this moment, and after alerting authorities about the meteorite, went home.

### Beginning Stages of Infection

As the Dactyla spores spread throughout Sarah's system, she found herself becoming more irritable and quick to anger than usual. She snapped at friends and family, and generally began to be frustrated easily. Moreover, she found herself stronger than she used to be, more alert and agile.

Soon after that, she began to notice small scales growing on her skin. They hurt when she peeled them off, leaving a bloody mark. It was at this point that she decided to seek medical help. Feeling embarassed but the need to do something, she snuck off to a local hospital, unsure of what to do. The doctors were puzzled by her condition, except Dr. Eugene Evans, who had treated metahuman conditions in the past. He quickly came to suspect that something was wrong with Sarah that was beyond normal medicine, and ordered her to be put in quarantine while he contacted representatives of The Guard to notify them. Sarah was not able to contact her family.

### Sarah's Transformation

For some reason, everything told Sarah that she needed to get out. She felt the doctors were going to experiment on her, or worse. And inside her, voices in her head started telling her the only way she could escape is through the use of force. Unaware that she was being manipulated, she did what the voices told her, assaulting a doctor that was trying to restrain her. After hearing an alarm sound, she knew that she had to escape: it was kill or be killed.

Once Sarah made the choice to follow the voices in her head, her transformation took hold. The scales growing on her turned to a rough carapace, her hair quickly shed, revealing a mess of tendrils. Her hands and feet became clawed, and her already superhuman strength increased tenfold. Every time she drew blood, she could feel herself slipping away, as the spores took over her body more and more, eventually superseding her personality and emerging as Dactlya, with two clawed wings sprouting from her back to complete the transformation.

### Dactyla's Rampage

Dactyla quickly dispatched any of the hospital staff in her way, including Dr. Evans, whom she took great pleasure in killing. As she made her escape, she slaughtered anyone who got in her way, finding a warping field of energy protected her from most physical harm, including the small arms fire of Crash City's finest. Dactyla was free to walk out of the hospital unimpeded, until Beacon himself showed up to face her. Dactyla thought herself invincible, and so she challenged Beacon, taunting him with all the lives she had taken. The two fought, but young Dactyla was no match for Beacon's powers, and although he suffered minor scrapes and bruises, he was able to defeat Dactyla easily. After a particularly powerful blow, Sarah found herself coming to her senses. The Dactyla personality retreated back into her system and Sarah was once again in control. She was immediately horrified, having remembered everything that happened. She begged Beacon to end her life and spare anyone else the harm she could cause, but Beacon resisted, unwilling to kill the otherwise innocent Sarah. Beacon instead took Sarah to a operational base of The Guard, where she was kept under close watch until Beacon was sure that this was not a trick. Overall, Dactyla had killed thirteen people and wounded seven others.

### Reformation

For several months, Sarah was listless and depressed. She was terrified of what she had become: the Dactyla spores left her monsterous form intact, and although she was studied incessently by Bastion, he could not find a way to reverse the progress the spores had made. Moreover, Sarah could sometimes hear the voices of Dactyla, whispering to her, trying to influence her. She was in control, but she didn't know for how long.

During this time, Sarah met Marlowe, and developed a deep friendship with them, due to the fact that they were the only person around sarah's age, and that they seemed to treat Sarah as normal.

Beacon thought it would be best if Sarah could use her newfound abilities for the forces of good, and that learning to control her powers would allow her to better resist Dactyla's influence. Sarah was reluctant at first, but the thought of making Beacon proud of her allowed her to take the leap. Sarah was recruited to join the New Guardians, in order to learn to control her powers and to come to terms with her body and her place in the world.

## Powers and Abilities

The Dactyla spores fundamentally changed Sarah's body, but also granted her extraordinary abilities that she uses to work as a superhero with the rest of the New Guardians. The spores enhance her strength to superhuman levels, and her exoskeleton is incredibly thick and difficult to damage.

Moreover, her transformed body comes with certain advantages. The bony "wings" that grow out of her back are more like long appendages with blades at the end, and when in combat Sarah prefers to utilize these to keep a short distance between her and her opponent. While her wings are not quite as strong as her bare hands, they suppliment her strength and she can easily dispatch most foes without lifting a finger.

While not generally considered a benefit, Sarah can give into the Dactyla spores and allow her Dactyla personality to take over. This generally makes her able to fight harder and longer, but at the cost of allowing the dangerous and deadly Dactyla to surface. Sarah seems to maintain a shacky control of this other personality, but when she allows the spores to overwhelm her, she grows violent and unpredictable. This blends into her civilian life: already more irritable than normal, when Sarah gets particularly angry or upset with someone, the Dactyla personality tends to suggest particularly cruel or biting insults.

## Relationships

### Relationships with New Guardians

#### As-of session 2:

Marlowe: definitely the coolest person here, the only one who really 'gets' Sarah in any capacity, the only one who doesn't annoy her.

Clarke: Nice. Way too nice. So nice it's offputting. But sometimes a sweetheart. Also an alien, which kinda scares her.

David: Kind of an asshole and needs to get off his high horse, but he totally has been through some shit and Sarah is starting to get that now.

Duncan: Hot?? Also who let this cat in.

#### Marlowe

Because Sarah and Marlowe both saw Bastion for medical purposes (Marlowe in an attempt to be cured of dying, Sarah for tests), Sarah and Marlowe ended up seeing each other at Bastion's office on more than one occasion. Although off to a bit of a rocky start, both found solace in the other, being the only other person around their age they were able to talk to for long periods of time. The two developed a friendship during their time in Bastion's office.

### Outside Relationships

#### Family

Sarah had a pretty typical relationship with her parents. She was a good kid, mostly, and as the firstborn she was often considered the "golden" child. She always hated to disappoint them and even though her grades weren't perfect she tried her best and got by with B's mostly. Her parents pushed her to do sports as well when she was young, which she was never really that good at. She enjoyed music and played the flute for a while, and when it became clear that she was interested in it her parents were happy to encourage her.

Sarah has one sister, Erika, who is 13 years old. Erika and Sarah would fight a lot, as sisters often do, and Erika always looked up to Sarah as being "cool," mostly because Sarah was older. Sarah was often a bit mean to her sister when she was growing up, being quick to blame her for things. Erika is a total nerd, and loves anime and considers herself a "total otaku." Sarah doesn't really understand her sister's love of this stuff and thinks it's weird.

Sarah has no idea what her family thinks. She assumes that they believe she is dead, or at least missing. She thinks about them a lot but she tries not to dwell on it. Sarah assumes that it would be bad for her family to find out what happened to her. Sarah regrets that she didn't properly appreciate her family before.

update: as of session 4, Sarah's sister has found Sarah and knows of her exploits. Sarah promised to call her sister every week to keep her abreast.

#### Friends

Sarah wasn't exactly popular or unpopular, she was more the middle of the pack. Her two best friends were Aiden, who was sort of tall, dark and handsome. Aiden was a soccerr player who also had a passion for chess, and was very prominent in both school clubs. Sarah may or may not have had a crush on Aiden, but she never said anything about it. Her other friend was Christina, who is meek and bookish. Sarah and Christina met when they both got detention for being late, and have been friends ever since. Christina often looked to Sarah and Aiden to solve her conflicts for her, which Sarah would do, although she prefered to just let things go.

Sarah, like her family, misses her friends but has no idea what they think happened to her. She has purposely tried to not look them up, although she knows both of them are on facebook. She has, so far, not made any effort to contact them.

Update: as of session 4, Sarah's friends have discovered the truth about Sarah.

### Relationships with "Old" Guard

#### Beacon

Sarah has conflicting views on Beacon. On the one hand, Beacon stopped her rampage as Dactyla, sparing her life and "saving" her, giving her another chance. On the other hand, Sarah is unsure that another chance is what she deserves. Sarah sees Beacon as a surrogate father figure, as since her transformation she has been isolated from her family and currently would rather they believe she went missing or died, rather than transformed into a monster. However, the Dactyla spores that infect Sarah's body have their own opinions: while they are obviously happy they were not destroyed, they believe Beacon is weak for being swayed by Sarah's plea, and they believe that Beacon has underestimated them. Because of her dual nature, part of Sarah believes this too. Due to this awkwardness, their chats tend to be infrequent and short, with either not knowing quite how to talk to the other. It is unclear whether Beacon feels a similar fatherly bond with Sarah.

#### Bastion & Lace

Since her transformation, Sarah has seen more of Dr. Davis and Dr. Grant than she has seen anyone else. The two team doctors have studied her incessantly, running test after test, taking samples of her carapice and blood, and getting her to try her abilities to see their limits. While Dr. Grant was vaguely sympathetic, Dr. Davis seemed only to care about what could be learned from Sarah, rather than how Sarah felt. Because of this, Sarah began to feel like she was just a science experiment to Drs. Davis and Grant, and although she submits to their testing with hopes that they will find a way to de-bond the Dactyla spores from her body, she resents having to spend any time with them, especially the cold Dr. Davis.