Contessa

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<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Contessa</default></title>

<image source="Image"></image> <image source="image"></image> <group><header>Basic Information</header> <label>Civilian Name</label> <label>Aliases</label> <label>Gender</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Death</label> <label>Age</label><default>Unknown</default> <label>Post-timeskip</label> <label>Ward start</label> <label>Relations</label> <label>Family</label></group> <group><header>Professional Status</header> <label>Occupation</label> <label>Classification</label> <label>Unique Features</label> <label>Alignment</label>

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<label>Location</label> <label>Teams</label> <label>Previous Team(s)</label> <label>Base of Operations</label></group> <group><header>First Appearance</header> <label>Worm Debut</label> <label>Ward Debut</label></group> </infobox> Contessa is a member of Cauldron.

Appearance

Contessa is described as an attractive woman of Italian descent in her late 30s with slightly longer than shoulder-length black hair between wavy and curly. Her outfit consists of black suits tailor-made to fit her body and occasionally a fedora.

Personality

How much her shard has influenced her personality is an open question.

Abilities and Powers

This section contains minor plot spoilers.

Contessa's power allows her to see the steps she needs to take to succeed at nearly any given task and execute them perfectly. Its applications include combat, communication, social situations, Cauldron's long-term plans, and how to set conditions for trigger events.<ref>Venom 29.7</ref>

She is one of the most powerful parahumans in existence and is known as "her" or "the Bogeyman" to people high-ranked enough in the Protectorate to know about her. One Protectorate cape classifies her as "Thinker. Don't worry about the number. Just run."

While Contessa can execute most tasks, she has some blind spots. She cannot directly use her power on an Entity, the Endbringers, or Eidolon. She lacks the common Thinker weakness of being cancelled out by other Thinkers, including precognitives, but is not immune to perception and power-blocking trumps such as Mantellum. She can still somewhat predict their actions by considering a hypothetical situation.

Despite being extremely powerful, Contessa does not lead Cauldron and instead acts as Doctor Mother's bodyguard and right-hand woman.

History

Background

Contessa was born as Fortuna on another earth that Eden collided with. When she was a child, several people in her village triggered by consuming food and drink contaminated with parts of Eden following the entity's crash-landing. Fortuna's trigger event included a vision Eden and Scion's plans to sow conflict and destroy humanity, and she set about finding and killing the entity with a power that was still unrestricted. 

The entity, realizing what she was trying to do, restricted her power so that it could not be used against Entities. However, Fortuna had already seen the steps required to kill the Entity, and with the help of a woman who would later call herself 'the Doctor,' Fortuna managed to stop the entity from killing her and reclaiming the critical shard. The Doctor, armed with a knife and directions both given by Fortuna, managed to stab the entity in a critical location, rendering it effectively brain dead.  

The Doctor and Fortuna founded Cauldron with the sole purpose of stopping Eden's partner entity, Scion. They harvested Eden's corpse for powers, which they were able to grant to other people. Ashamed of the human experimentation she had to perform to improve the power formula, Fortuna took the name Contessa out of respect to her parents and a desire to avoid sullying the name they gave her. 

Through the years Contessa as she was now served as the doctor's bodyguard, whenever they went on dangerous assignments.

Post-Slaughterhouse Nine

Attended the meeting of Cauldron and The Triumvirate.<ref>Legend's Interlude</ref>

Post-Echidna

Keeps the details revealed there hush hush

Golden Morning

Contessa helped coordinate Cauldron's response to Scion. Doctor Mother requested that she find three candidates for some vials that had historically yielded very strong powers, but Contessa was intercepted by attacking Irregulars before she was able to leave the facility. One of the irregulars, Mantellum, was able to block Contessa's power, forcing her to flee Cauldron's offices and fake her death.

After returning to the facility and discovering the Doctor is dead, Contessa provided Cauldron's contingency plans to Teacher and assumed second-in-command of his organization.

Following Scion's death, Contessa tracked down Khepri and, after a brief conversation aided by her abilites, disabled her shard with two bullets.

References

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