Wow. It takes a little while to get through the cliched beginning section, but once that's past, it's worth it. Pretty grandiose concept! But hey, we know you make ze monsters big. By the time I got to the end, I was well invested in the character ... now I care not only about how good her costume looks, but about her life as well.
My one complaint: "Put the hurt on the bad guys"? Hey, I know she pretty much grew up on Earth, but even so, that seems a little colloquial for an alien princess and guardian of the power of the universe 
Make her talk serious!
A day late and a dollar short on that reply, I know, but I'd kind of like to bump this story for a bit. It's relevant to the one I'm about to post, so I'd like them both to exist together for a time. I'm also interesting in not having it forum-wiped
I also wanted to address something Zombra said, as well. Pitty I never checked for replies to this
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Wow. It takes a little while to get through the cliched beginning section, but once that's past, it's worth it. Pretty grandiose concept! But hey, we know you make ze monsters big. By the time I got to the end, I was well invested in the character ... now I care not only about how good her costume looks, but about her life as well.
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Actually, if you look at the story objectively, it's ALL one big cliche Or rather, a bunch of cliches sewn together roughly seamlessly. Hell, I didn't even bother to change the names of the entities from the stories I ripped off, but I'll count on the fact that few people are likely to have seen them or get the referrence, so I don't think I'll want to mention them
It does make me happy it affected you, though. I was kind of hoping to use the cliches as a framework within which to put the actual characters and their personalities. It was important to me to make them expressive and human in a way that overshadows the grandiouse story a bit, and at the same time flows with it and stems from it. It makes things feel more real to me.
And, yes, I make ze monsters big! It's both a passion and a weakness of mine I like to see a story start big, break down into the lead characters and their own little world, then gradually build up to another big event, and then kind of break up again. But the events have to be BIG. And being the master of exaggeration that I am, it's hard for me to be satisfied
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My one complaint: "Put the hurt on the bad guys"? Hey, I know she pretty much grew up on Earth, but even so, that seems a little colloquial for an alien princess and guardian of the power of the universe Make her talk serious!
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That's actually part of the duality of her character, though. Consider it her Earth self vs. her alien nature. On Earth, she is simply a child, going through things most children go to (until they hit 30 or so ). So bold, rash behaviour and her tendency to "talk big" are characteristic of the kind of character that seeks to be prevalent. The things we let slip when we talk too fast. On the flip side, her alien self is that of the heir to great power and the bearer of an impossible burden. So that is something that's always on the back of her mind, eating at her and depressing her just a bit. It's something that's too much to bear if she stopped to think about it. So she has to ballance between being an irresponsible child and being a responsible ruler somewhat. She just tends to be a bit more childish by nature
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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This is the story of an alien being that came down to Earth in a hail of fire and shrapnel as the vessel it occupied disintegrated in Earth's atmosphere. Miraculously, and as a true testament to its hidden power, the alien child inside it survived and crawled out of the wreckage. The blue-skinned, humanoid figure of a small child was horribly injured and barely clinging to life as the last remnant of its home burned around it.
But just as all seemed lost, fortune smiled on the unfortunate alien. Having detected the approach of the alien ship ever since it had passed our Moon, one person arrived to the crash site almost immediately, and just in time. One Richard Johnson, also known as the Steel Rook. He found the unconscious child, and though its anatomy was quite inhuman, it was comparable enough for his machines to stabilize its vital signs. He then rushed the child to his lab, where he toiled for days just to keep the small alien alive, patching up its wounds as he went.
In the end, the alien's recovery came to fruition. Most of its wounds had healed remarkably well, but regrettably Richard had been unable to save its right arm. As soon as the alien awoke, however, everything changed. For this small, fragile blue creature had a frightening and sad story to tell.
The young alien girl the Steel Rook had barely saved was Princess Inna, daughter of King Ian and Queen Illia of the house of Inamen. Her house was the greatest and most ancient on the mother-planet of Varr, and were as such the keepers of the power of the ancient gods that created much of the known universe. Their duty was to protect this power from evil intentions and to use it only when absolutely necessary. The ancient energies held within the centre of that planet were far beyond the ken of anyone but the ancient creators, themselves, and even the Keepers of Varr - the Inamen - were only allowed a small portion of it for emergencies.
In essence, Princess Inna was the descendant of the ancients, a Keeper of Varr, and the rightful heir to the greatest throne ever known. As her mother and father before her, and as their parents before them, it would be her responsibility not just to keep the peace between all the sentient races in the galaxy, but also to protect the galaxy itself from dark forces that would wish to destroy, remake or enslave it. For these dark forces originated from the magic of the same creators, and were as such impossible to destroy, or even imprison. They could only be banished, but they always returned.
But her fate was not to be. The dark ones - the followers of the ancient dark sorcerers who sought to undo the work of their brethren and rebuild the universe anew, destroying all life thus created - had been hatching a plan spanning aeons. After they had been banished from the universe by king Isander millions of years ago, they had returned, weaving their magic and building their numbers at the edges of the known galaxy, out of sight of the the Keepers. Never challenging the Keepers' authority, they instead had sent their missionaries of corruption to defile the minds of the weak-spirited, and so spread the power of the dark ones unseen.
It all came to fruition when Kragos - head of the house of Krull and King Ian's most faithful general - started a coup. He had long since communicated with agents of the dark ones, listening to their promises of power, striking deals and making bargains with them, and in the process falling further and further under their power. When the coup finally happened, General Kragos was no longer himself, his mind altered almost to insanity, building on his natural greed and lust for power.
Kragos made a move to seize the throne of the Keepers, and so to take the power of the ancients for himself. King Ian could not allow that, not only because of Kragos'es intentions, but also because the power of the ancients was too dangerous to use in itself. But the king's armies had turned against him, his allies were overrun by the corrupted nations on the outskirts of the known galaxy, and his own power was greatly diminished by the dark presence that had settled in his kingdom. King Ian knew he would not survive the battle, so he instructed his wife to take his daughter and run as far away from Varr as they could.
From what little else Inna remembers, it appears that Kragos did win in the end and he tried to use the power of the creators. The result was predictable, but the events themselves had not gone quite to the dark ones' plans. They had intended for the fight between Ian and Kragos to destroy the power of the Keepers, thereby allowing them to seize the power of Varr for themselves. But Kragos'es greed and zeal, amplified by the dark ones' corruption simply made the battle short and one-sided. King Ian was killed and his last remaining supporters slaughtered as Kragos attempted to seize control of the the power of Varr.
But the result, once again, was predictable. In his lust for power, Kragos unleashed ancient energies of a magnitude that even the dark ones had never even suspected. There was no way any living creature could control that much power, for it had taken all of the magic of the creators just to control it back when they made the world. The unchained burst of eldritch energy that Kragos so irresponsibly released wiped the universe clean of all life and all matter, returning it to the state of nothingness that the creators had first encountered, and from which they began their work. Ironically, even though that's what the dark ones actually wanted, the apocalypse destroyed them, as well. Such was its power that even the creators themselves had feared their own creation.
Many of the sentient races had seen the apocalypse coming, and a few had taken the desperate measure of vacating their occupied worlds and just launching their entire races into the unknown of outer space. Some survived for a while, some survived for longer, and some even found new galaxies in which to live. Inna's race was not so fortunate, as the princess was the sole survivor of her entire race. Her mother had placed her aboard a shuttle and sent her into deep space, while she herself returned to aid her husband.
Alone and held in suspended animation, Inna drifted through space for untold years. Eventually, her shuttle matter for the first time in a very long while. Matter that should not have existed. As the shuttle fell victim to the gravity wells of stars and planets, it sped up, slowed down and wobbled through our own galaxy, until it reached Earth. There it finally ran out of power, lost propulsion and simply plummeted towards the planet.
Inna had no idea what had happened to the universe. Had it reformed after the destruction, or was it only the galaxy the creators made that was wiped out? Could other such galaxies have existed beyond the vast emptiness of space that even the science of the civilised races could not locate? The creators had to come from somewhere, after all. Were there more of them? Others like them? Inna had no answers, for the creators of her own home had become little more than myth after the many billions of years they had been gone. Some even refused to believe there ever were creators, claiming instead that the universe formed naturally.
Feeling sorry for the young princess and for the monstrous tragedy that had befallen her, Richard took her in and treated her as his own daughter. He nursed her back to health and even built a bionic arm to replace the one she had lost. Inna adapted to it pretty quickly, as she adapted to life on Earth. She had been just a child when her world came crashing down around her, so she was very happy to have someone to look after her. But more than that, she was happy to have someone close to her. To have a family again. She never wanted to feel the kind of disabling fear she felt when her mother stuffed her into a capsule, said "Goodbye" and closed the door.
Over the years, however, Inna developed a strong character. She proved herself decisive, outgoing, strict and very responsible. But she was also kind, understanding, tolerant and even playful at times. Richard could already see that had she not lost her home, she would have made a worthy ruler. Her skills at organisation and time management even rivalled his own, and he was supposed to be the productive genius of the family.
Inna was an outgoing, active person, but she was not allowed to go out much. In a time before the Might for Right act and before the official recognition of superheroes, her blue skin, white hair and pointy ears - to say nothing of her big metal arm - would just get her into trouble if people saw her. So, grudgingly, she mostly stayed in the lab and only went out at night, or when Richard took her out of town where people couldn't see her.
However, another great tragedy changed all that. The Rikti Invasion shook the world to its very foundations, and it changed the lives of almost everyone it touched. Like most people with access to superhuman powers, the Steel Rook joined the fight against the hostile aliens. His young daughter, however, got involved, too.
One day Richard's lab came under the direct attack of a platoon of Rikti soldiers. Their intent was to kill him and destroy his equipment, to stop his contribution to the war. The attack caught him unprepared, and though he fought fiercely to protect his daughter, he was defeated in the end. But just as he was about to lose his life, Inna manifested the power that had been lying dormant within her for untold years. Without understanding what she was doing, she reached out her hands and fired an enormous blast of pure energy, devastating the Rikti soldiers and forcing them into a retreat.
After he recovered from his injuries, Richard began research into how Inna was able to do what she did. From her stories and from his own research into her biology, he came to a startling conclusion. As Inna was the legitimate ruler of the House of Inamen, and so the rightful heir to the throne of the Keepers of Varr, the power of the ancient creators was hers by right. The position of Keeper was not something given or earned, it was a position one was born in, and control of the power of Varr - the power of the creators - was impossible to lose. From her very birth, Inna had possessed the ability to control this untold power, she had just never been able to manifest it. And even then, so far away from her home and with her ancient power scattered across the cosmos, she was still able to call on her power, on her birth right.
As Inna grew up, she kept mastering her power and learning how to use it in more effective and more creative ways. A curious fact popped up along the way - her right, metal arm seemed to be better-suited for focusing her power than her left. Going off that, the Richard constructed a full set of gauntlets and boots to boost Inna's power even further. As the war had passed and heroes were now officially recognised, Inna was now able to go out. She used that opportunity to sign up as a licensed hero, as that was, as she put it: "The best way to master [her] power." She had developed a sense of duty towards keeping the innocent safe, as well as putting the hurt on those who would harm them. Tolerant as she may have been, she had zero tolerance for bad people.
But that is not the end of her story. After she established herself as beginner hero of the city, fate intervened again. An unidentified alien craft crashed on Earth and the team sent to retrieve it were found murdered. Something had arrived to Earth, and Inna would soon know what. The following day, a horrible glowing creature broke into the Steel Rook's lab and defeated him with amazing ease and power. But it was not after him. It was after Inna.
Despite the horrible corruption, she was able to recognise the face. It was the one she used to call "uncle," it was was her father's best friend, it was the person everybody used to trust. And it was the same person who had brought the apocalypse down on their old world. General Kragos had found his way to Earth, no doubt drawn there by Inna's unique energy. The explosion had not killed him. Through his corruption and through the circumstances that were present when it occurred, Kragos had been imbued with the same ancient energy that was Inna's birthright. The dark ones' magic that still flowed through his veins and that had mutated his body and mind so completely was now giving him an unnatural control over this power, one that almost rivalled hers.
Kragos sought to use Inna to gather the scattered energy for him, and then intended to siphon it all out of her, along with her life force. He still hoped to steal the ancient creator's limitless power, partly through madness, but mostly through his own greed. The man that the Inamen family had trusted most of all. The man that had betrayed them so horribly now sought to complete his corruption.
But he failed. In the moment of truth, when it seemed like Inna would fall into his hands, something happened to her. Something awakened from deep inside her and released a blast of energy so powerful knocked Kragoss clean out of the building and into the sky. As the other dark ones before him, Kragos could not be killed so easily. His defeat only slowed him down. What Inna did, she did not do consciously, nor should she have been able to summon that kind of power at all. But the explanation for it all came in the form of a legend. It was just a child's fairy tale held in a small pendant that her mother had given to her.
The story told the history of the creators, written as a bedtime story for a young child. It spoke of how they came "here" to make a world. How they saw the emptiness and thought it too lonely and cold. How they crafted a source of limitless power and with it built everything - the planets, the stars, the nebulae, as well as the first sentient creatures. It told of a war within the race of the creators, of jealousy, of treachery and of the use of forbidden magic. It told of how some of the creators were unhappy with how the world was coming along and wanted to start over, but how others believed that the creatures they had created now had a right to live and could not simply be destroyed for convenience.
The story went on about how a war broke out within the race of the creators, and how the splinter cell known as the dark ones was cast out. The dark ones used forbidden magic to gain unnatural power, and they returned to fight again. This new war was catastrophic for the race of the creators, and it doomed anyone it didn't kill. As a last gesture, the creators handed their power down to their most faithful and most deserving servants - the In, from whom the Inamen are descended. For their loyalty, their generosity and their dedication to the good of the universe, the In were given the power of the creators, but under the condition that they never try to use it.
The legend then tells that the creators left "something else" with the In, as well. After many hours studying the wording of the story, the Steel Rook deduced that the creators left themselves to the In. Or rather, their essence. The legend told about how one day, the creators would use this "gift" to return to the world and complete their work. That he interpreted to mean that they will reincarnate within the actual bloodline of the In. Which could lead to only one conclusion - that Princess Inna was, in fact, the incarnation of the ancients. After millions of years of evolution, the In bloodline had finally evolved enough to where it could manipulate the eldritch energy of the creators, itself, without danger.
It was Inna's destiny to return that power to the world, and to once again rebuild her home as the creators had done at the beginning of time. The weight of that responsibility changed the young girl in a very profound way. Up until then she had always been a princess, a child, a daughter. Someone else had always been there to make things happen and take care of her. But now she had become the leader. The queen of her people and of their legacy. She had found her destiny and met with a responsibility that was hers alone to bear.
Richard Johnson lost his daughter that day, but the Steel Rook gained a powerful, dedicated and loyal ally. It's never been a trade-off he has been happy with, but he has learned to accept that his little girl has grown up and taken on her own responsibilities.
Princess Inna Inamen continues her fight against crime and the forces of evil to this day. As she likes to say: "There's no better way to learn to control my power than by using it to put the hurt on bad people. I'm training to acheive my destiny, and I'm doing a good thing along the way, as well." She remains as outgoing and cheerful as she ever was, but she had grown a lot more serious in her mannerisms, and she has developed a sense for things that one should simply not joke around with.
Inna's ultimate goals are two-fold. First, Kragos still lurks somewhere on Earth, and no doubt he'll keep coming for her time and time again. He needs to be found and dealt with. Second, she bears a cosmic responsibility which she must work hard to earn the ability to use. When she is able, she wants to return to the empty space where her home was and build it anew. Though her last objective becomes harder and harder the longer she stays on Earth. The more people she meets, the more friends and allies she makes and the longer she lives here, the more Earth starts to feel like home. And when the time comes, she may not be able to leave her new home to rebuild an old one she no longer even remembers.