Tabitha

**Key Features** | »Superhuman physique»Twin Kinetic Blades»Battle-grade Gothic Lolita dress»Distinctive twin-tailed golden hair»Target Designator

## Tactical Analysis

* **Baroness in Black**: Tabitha has an almost unique affinity for the arctic amoeba that's made this fine young woman essentially unkillable with skin that appears to be outright unbreakable and tissue of similar strength elsewhere. Even anti-materiel rounds can't pierce her skin and her bones are stronger than virtually any known metal, injuries that actually occur heal in moments to the point of regrowing whole limbs in seconds (something only ever achieved with devices that break physics in some way as her skin's tensile strength seems to be arbitrary), and she can punch her hand right through the front glacis of a tank, through the thickest of concretes and even battleship armor, or through the breastplate of a battlesuit while reflexes that let her dodge bullets and legs that can let her keep pace with a helicopter. And if that weren't enough, she has twin kinetic blades that can cut through nearly anything. She doesn't really bother with armour of any sort, much preferring to look fabulous in battle. If actually defeated in battle, usually by rattling her brain around in her head enough to cause her to pass out from nausea and dizziness or with esoteric weapons, when re-recruited, she simply gets up where she was defeated rather than come out of the assignmentary again; regenerating on the spot.

* **Point click boom**: Tabitha is authorized to contact a number of ships in the upper atmosphere that can drop large bombs from up above to pulverize anything below; striking like a meteor to pulverize large sections of the enemy at once. This lets her devastate defenses as well as blobbed enemy units or just create a crater on demand to offer some cover.

* **Weapons from a more civilized age**: Tabitha doesn't carry any guns at all and is left at the mercy of any aircraft flying too high for her to jump at and can be knocked unconscious by snipers she isn't aware of or enough anti-infantry vehicles.

* **A gift for a fine lady**: When Tabitha has had enough fun on a battlefield, she'll switch to kinetic throwing knives, giving her some range, and is allowed to call in Carolinium bomb strikes that will continuously explode on the target; doing a great deal more damage as the constant explosion levels everything it touches.

## Background

"*On your knees.*"

-Tabitha to Allied Peacekeepers in the battle for Tokyo
### Biography

The Duchess Tabitha is an English woman born some time in the twenties on the Arcadia city ship. Believed to be named "Tabitha Cavendish", she was born out of wedlock and soon left behind on the ship so as not to sully Edward Cavendish's reputation and entrusted to the care of the ruling house of the Arcadia ship; the Stewarts. While officially adopted into the long deposed British Royal House (though denied the chance to inherit the royal title of the Stewarts), being abandoned left her spiteful. Though she became a famous beauty by her teens she struggled with feelings of betrayal by the Cavendish family. This would have been like any normal issue with the bastard children of nobles, but when she suffered a rather nasty injury from an accident in the Arcadia ship; she was found to take to the Arctic Amoebas unnaturally well. Not only did they repair her injuries as normal, and not only did the strains used by the nobles to maintain their youth bond with her; but her physiology essentially incorporated them wholesale. She was rapidly growing stronger, faster, tougher, and even more intelligent with repeated exposures to the Amoeba. Already a bright girl, she became a person of incredible cunning, and accepted a conclusion that had been swimming about in her head for years. It wasn't that she wasn't good enough, it was that she was too good.

She became increasingly haughty as she continued to demonstrate her tremendous aptitude at nearly everything she did and put herself to; even with the struggle against the Guard's staunchly traditionalist views towards gender roles she demonstrated enough talent to quickly surge to the highest places. When those above her in the hierarchy to claim the Duchy of Arcadia died in quick succession during the second world war as they went on an ill advised quest to try and restore the Qing dynasty to the throne in the midst of the chaos in China, she gladly took the Ducal Crown for herself and began her rule over the city of Arcadia. Not an absolutist unlike many fleet dukes, she nevertheless was a firm ruler. Though she would listen to the advice of others, once she had come to a decision it was expected that people would follow it. Considering herself to be a peerless beauty, she also had many monuments to herself erected to celebrate the achievements of her reign; such as strangling both ACIN and KGB spies when she uncovered the agents in her court during the cold war. Mentioning her lackluster bosom was of course, never a particularly good idea.

The effectiveness at which she ran her duchy soon convinced her that she was destined for greater things; as did her deployments to the front by the house of lords and her quick rise to the very innermost halls of the Guard's power structure, soon essentially taking orders from none but the very highest figures in the Guard. The enemies she fought broke like toys in her hands, and the reverence with which she was treated served to add to her own ego as she came to hold the conviction that she was the greatest person to have ever been born. However, the twin-tailed blonde also found it rather hard to find someone she could truly consider a peer. She had followers and allies, but was rather lacking in people she'd consider an actual friend. The string of affairs she's had rarely seem to satisfy her; most people simply can't keep up with her and even the usual depravities of aristocracy bored her swiftly. There was hardly any point to snorting drugs when none of them had an affect on you after all, and "social gatherings" grow tiresome when everyone else is exhausted long before you've had your fill. So she turned towards Combat to try and pass the time and seek the thrill she desired, and perhaps even find the peer that eluded her for so long.

### World War 3 History

Tabitha is the most feared warrior of the reactionary guard. The "cruel rose" of the Guard is a woman of seemingly university age, whose genetics have an incredible predilection for the arctic amoeba so heavily used by the guard to the point of essentially incorporating a massive number of them into her physiology and producing them as she needs. This has made her perhaps the physically strongest human being in the world as the amoebas can augment her musculature to the point of allowing her to deadlift tanks, drag entire naval warships without visible strain so long as there's some means to grip the warship without her fingers tearing through, and to punch her hand through even the thickest of vehicle or structural armor. Her durability is similarly also obscene; allowing her to simply shrug off any conventional weapons and to heal extremely quickly from the firepower that does manage to actually hurt her through nonconventional physics, leaving only the tactic of shaking her brain around in her head through impacts until she passes out. She also doesn't seem to have aged a day since she was first spotted, leading many to conclude that her affinity for the amoebas has actually made her immortal.

Those who have met Tabitha record that she seems to just pick out fights for the hell of it and has grown almost bored by no one actually being able to offer her much in the way of an actual challenge. Not when her reflexes are to the point where she can swat bullets from the air, her brain thinks faster than modern supercomputers, and her body is so tough that she routinely shrugs off even the worst of hits and not many are not devastated by a single punch from her. She deliberately holds back much of the time just to extend fights a little longer and get some more enjoyment. She however, seems to be extremely dismissive of most of "normal" humanity, regarding the great unwashed masses of her enemies as peasants who are hardly worth her time as the overwhelming majority of them cannot even offer her the briefest of challenges beyond personally set ones such as seeing how many men with flamethrowers she can kill while dealing as little damage to whatever dress she's decided to wear today.

Indeed, she's so tough that she often walks away from battlefields with her dress full of holes or outright completely destroyed while her skin is as pristine as ever. She's more than used to it and doesn't seem to really care beyond some vague annoyance and forwarding command her bill for the next dress she'd like to try out. A fashionista to the end, Tabitha's choices in clothes are the trendsetters for the aristocracy of the reactionary guard; though she tends to prefer significantly shorter skirts than is typical for the female aristocracy purely for the sake of allowing her to run around without getting the dress torn up; and to her annoyance the guard's not much closer to finding a fabric that can actually withstand half of the things she likes to get herself into.

In battle however, she's almost certainly moving much too fast for anyone to be very appreciative of her states of undress; easily running faster than the human eye can track as she carves through the masses of her enemies with either her super strong fists and legs or withdrawing her kinetic blades to slice through just about anything that gets in her way. Though certainly a lovely woman to look at, most people find the image of someone soaked in blood and gore with a dissonantly serene look on her face rushing towards them to be far more terrifying than enticing. In her deployments across the world, she has always left a trail of broken bodies and crushed vehicles, and very often she leaves a place disappointed out of not having had any actual fun, bitterly noting how easily the peasants break beneath her hands.

At Panama, she horrified the Unionist, Reservist, and Peacekeeper forces deployed there as she briskly walked into the command station of the Allied forces there; locked everyone else in with her and methodically ripped apart the command staff and made sure the troops could hear their commanders' screams. In southwestern America, she brazenly murdered the governor of new Mexico as he was making a speech broadcasted live; having paradropped in from behind his facility and walking up behind him and simply thrusting her hand into his back and tearing out his heart before ripping him in half like "tissue paper". At Tokyo she kicked an assault striker through a row of Allied troops, crushing them into bloody smears as the vehicle rolled end over end and pulped everyone in its way. In the invasions of the Soviet Union; she gleefully used an apocalypse tank's barrel as a club to crush men and materiel into pulps before throwing it like a Javelin into the body of a soviet general right through the walls of his construction yard.

### Post War History

These days, her whereabouts are hard to track. She seems to quickly go from being reported in the depths of China to rumored sightings in America and Vietnam to reports of her activity elsewhere. She tends to make it hard to confirm her whereabouts by not leaving enough survivors to make reliable reports on her whereabouts very difficult to ascertain. As ever, the so-called Grand Duchess of Arcadia is a mystery. Her origins, her whereabouts, whether Tabitha is her actual name, and her relation to the rest of her noble house. All anyone can be sure of is that the cruel rose will continue to bloom as gruesomely as ever.

There is word however, that Tabitha desires more. Ever since seeing Yuriko Omega in action she has invested herself in trying to learn more about Psionics and psychic phenomenom, desiring to attain such power for herself so that she will never be wanting for any kind of power again. Other more disturbing rumors suggest that she has come to believe that the Reactionary Guard is in need of a change of leadership and that she is deliberately stoking tensions between the major factions of the privy council and taking control of the guard for herself. Within the traditionalist guard, it would be easy to overlook a woman's ambitions, and Tabitha is a deeply cunning and ruthlessly intelligent woman who has proven to be a master at manipulating other people into doing what she wants, and everyone who has shared so much as a few words with her when she's actually being open and honest with someone knows that she is a very dangerous person to have as an enemy.

It's also said that she rather dislikes the Guard as a whole, having grown irritated with dealing with constant misogyny, questioning of her capabilities, stymying of her ideas and plans, and still being treated as the same barely of age teenager she was when she first got augmented. While she is too useful to keep off the battlefield, many consider her a harlot and a wrecker for her promiscuous and freewheeling sexuality as well as her constant attempts to push the Guard towards her direction. Her role in inventing many key technologies of the Guard is seen as more of a threat than something to be glad for, as is her unkillability. However, many others simply ignore and downplay her as little more than a powerful mascot, a pin-up girl in a gothic lolita dress and silly ideas. This too infuriates her, but she's smart enough to know she can work with this sort of dismissal, working behind the scenes to amass power while squeezing what she can out of her relation with Rasputin; a renown womanizer; despite personally finding him unattractive and slovenly by using what she can get out of their pillow talk to advance her own agenda.

Now rarely seen without an entourage, she has a great many princelings (and some princesses) wrapped around her finger; wooing them with all manner of offers and favors. From the offer of her company to aiding them with her tremendous finances, impressing on them the logic of being on her side, occasional usage of what she considers flattery, and simply convincing them that she knows best, she has built up a large cadre of slavishly loyal followers. Even outside the Guard, she has found people to dance to the tune of "the girl of the little red berries", one of her many epithets based on her love of the song Kalinka and of red coloured berries as her favourite food. The same tricks she uses on the Guard have worked wonders outside of it as she has Corsair Pirate fleets calling her their lady, GLA cells pledging allegiance to her, a few Network clubhouses that worship her as a goddess, a number of Allied Reservists and Arab Coalition Generals and Legion Security Commanders firmly in her pockets and even a number of Red and Blue Chinese warlords secretly taking orders from her.

She believes that the Earth needs an Empress, a wise and beneficent motherly ruler who will bring peace to the planet and let it be strong enough to withstand the non-human threats that encircle the world. She doesn't seek the Actionist world of ruthless and bloodthirsty purges of communists, atheists, Jews and other bugbears of the "Butcher of Paris or his dream of absolute rulership, nor does she think Rasputin's vision of an ossified and conservative world where the twin serpents of socialism and liberalism are slain and the world obeys its immortal dynasties forevermore is desirable. If anything, her politics are rather antithetical to the Guard as a whole, even if she believes that yes, there does need to be one ruler. She will rule the world like a kindly mother, firm but fair, generous but expecting. And hopefully, she can find lovers who can truly connect with her intellectually and match her physically.

Tabitha is a classical narcissist, but one who is just about objectively correct in her opinion of herself. She truly is vastly intelligent, beautiful, powerful, and resourceful and she doesn't let people forget that. She rejects religion principally because she finds the notion of finding anyone superior enough to her to warrant her worship to be ridiculous. If anything, people should worship and pray to her, someone who can tend to the needs of their bodies and minds here and now, and has secretly encouraged the formation of an organisation that is part fanclub and part religion dedicated to worshipping her and her fellowship of those on her level. The earliest and best known of them is her long-time paramour, sidekick, confidant, and advisor, Prince Xavier the Second, a cousin to the Carlist claimant. These "Arcadians" are very few in number but are proof to Tabitha of her great vision as their overall leader. The "Thorn Circle" as they are called works tirelessly to ensure the time of the God Empress comes and to advance the research of their peculiar condition to create a new, greater humanity.

## Known Activities

- During an ill-fated Atomic Chinese ambush against her in Xinjiang, she casually tore out the arms of a Juwuba from their sockets, beating it to death with them, then killed five more watchmen by throwing those arms on them before getting away.
- In an honor duel against Explorer *"Elusive"* Espenda, Tabitha punched the said man to death with a single blow after being taunted into punching him as hard as she could. Witnesses claimed to have spend three days cleaning up the aftermath and she boasted she was still holding back.
- Wrecked a Red October after kicking the center of the tank from underneath when she was run over by it in Minsk. Said tank was ripped in twain before forcibly put back together, messily crushing the unfortunate crew inside.
- Shrugged off a direct blast from an Ecumenical Flayer ray; left naked but otherwise unmarred and punched the heart of the offending alien out of its chest with enough force to explode the head of the grunt behind him.
- Deadlifted and threw a Guardian clear over the horizon to destroy every plane on an Allied airbase in Helena.
- Avoided every gyrojet round fired by a platoon of Legionaries at her at the battle of Rome as she charged them down a street, then crushed them all by smashing the foundations of the building they were standing in front of; bursting from the rubble and dusting herself off.
- Cut down more than a thousand Protectorate battle frames in Niamey while dancing to "Kalinka", spinning her kinetic blades and lethally grabbing in dance partners as she had the music played as loudly as was possible to be heard over the violence.
- Shrugged off the most virulent neurotoxin the Talon could procure for use against her, not even noticing the poison as her body overwhelmed the agent before catching a Rogue's arrow out of the air like a twig and snapping it with a squeeze of her hand, throwing it back at the rogue with so much force that it launched his corpse through the room and through four walls before pinning him head first to a concrete barrier.
- To demonstrate the futility of resistance to her, she drank from a Toxin Tractor's DDT beta tanks, and was entirely unharmed by the experience as she commented on how the flavor could use improvement. The local GLA cell in Khoms, where she was at, bowed to her and still remains at her service when she reportedly claimed that she could throw their entire compound right back at them, "right after she finishes her drink".
- According to an evaluation by the Empire of the Rising Sun, her brain's cognitive capabilities are as far removed from normal humanity as those of humanity from lampreys. Leading to the theory that her apparent foresight is simply her being very good at induction and deduction as well as planning ahead and a truly vast store of information in her memory.
- Considered a strong contender for the world's richest woman (excluding heads of state) through her strategic investments over the decades and "liberated" assets acquired throughout the third world war, though her portfolio is kept close to her chest.
- Designed the Guard's tube-birthing machines and the Kinetic Veil-Breachers that allow the Reactionary Guard to amass its population and to acquire the resources it needs to build its air fleet and military with relatively minimal land presence.
- Was the architect of the Panama Canal raid that saw the Canal's locks wrecked by Carolinium bombs while multiple Allied capital ships were firmly wedged into the passages, with one of them having been personally pulled there by her using a Rocket Angel's paralysis whip to allow her to exert the needed force without tearing through the ship.
- Needed multiple consecutive superweapon strikes to knock out at Tokyo after severely injuring a Chrono-belt boosted Tanya Adams and outright killing her long-time friend and assistant Megan; bursting the Irish mechanic's head like a grape in exchange for pinning an Athena Satellite targeting beacon onto her body. The bombardment thankfully concluded before she could kill the legendary Chrono Scientist and German hero Siegfried when she identified the time doctor's zeitgeist machine as the primary threat to her as his device scrambled parts of her body throughout spacetime; mangling her flesh and forcing multiple regenerations.
- Attempt to contain Tabitha in a Prison failed within moments of waking up as Allied attempts to reverse her symbiosis with the Amoeba failed to produce results besides awakening her from a week-long coma. It is believed she took some of the scientists as her prisoners to understand more about her own body.
- Has only ever been outright defeated in a fistfight by the legendary Soviet supercyborg Volkov, who managed to bash her into unconsciousness and whose supermaterial armour was able to resist her strength, and by Mingxia whose pressure point application caused her to vomit out "high pressure blood" and then pass out long enough for Mingxia to complete her objective despite multiple broken ribs.
- Kicked the head of the infamous syndicate Cyborg supermerc "Snowcrash" straight off his shoulders and through multiple walls when he, mocking her flat chest, called her a cutting board.
- Listed by Yuriko as "rather adorable" when her mask of maturity slips and her bratty side comes out, particularly when she puffs her cheeks and growls
- Is the inspiration for the "Gothic Lolita" Fashion trend in the Empire and beyond.