Caryatid
<infobox> <title source="name"><default>Caryatid</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>
<label>Status</label><format><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> Caryatid is a young woman trying to be a hero with her friends.
Personality
Was reserved.
Relationships
The Major Malfunctions
Her family.<ref name=8.8e2/>
Appearance
Caryatid wore a narrow dark gray dress, with yellow 'explosions' of ruffles around the bottom of the dress and her sleeves. She wore black gloves, as well as a ski mask which covered the lower half of her face, leaving her eyes and black hair exposed. Caryatid also wore yellow-orange makeup around her eyes.<ref>The oldest or tallest member of the group was a girl with a dress-like costume that hugged her body, extending all the way to the ground. I’d come across some of the individual pieces of clothing she’d used to put her costume together in my browsing of stores and magazines- and they weren’t clothes I would’ve looked at and thought ‘costume’. A dress in charcoal gray that hugged the body and legs down to a taper at the ankles, exploding into a poof of rolling yellow fabric around the feet. She might have bought two of the dresses, because the same ruffles had been borrowed from elsewhere to form the voluminous sleeves with their own yellow explosions of fabric. Her hands poked through those explosions, clad in black gloves.
The dress was worn over a turtleneck, which went with a ski mask that covered eye sockets, nose, ears, and chin. In effect, fabric covered her from just below her eye level to the ground. Yellow-orange eye makeup, bold slashes of black for the eyebrows and nicely done black hair completed the look. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref>
When switching into one of her Breaker states, Caryatid's costume and hair flowed and swirled around her, while her face appeared to 'unfold,' resembling pages or wings; her face then folded into a telescoping structure around her head, while the rest of her body froze.<ref name=8.8eP>She slid a couple of feet to one side, looked around to make sure the coast was clear, and then swept one arm in front of her, bowing slightly. The change was subtle- the lines of her dress became a flow, the parts that clung to her rotated, and the rolls of yellow fabric at the sleeve and around the feet began rising and falling, crashing out around her like waves. Her hair did much the same, rolling, flowing, taking on motion.
Her face was the biggest change- it looked like butterfly wings, endlessly unfolding, like a multifacted book with pages constantly turning, merging into hairline and the flow of rolls, locks, and loops of hair.
The movement that defined every inch of her slowed, then creaked to a halt. Waves and loops became hard crags, with faint sounds like stones scraping against one another. Instead of the pages or wings of her face unfolding, they began folding like origami or a glacier, a construction forming around her head, first around the eyes, telescoping, then moving away from the eyes to the ears, with a kind of conscious focus. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref>
Abilities and Powers
Caryatid has a Breaker mode that is indestructible while still and had increased awareness, but she could only move by using her power while in this state.<ref>“I switch modes,” Caryatid said. “My other form can only move with my power, and is indestructible with enhanced awareness while still.” - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref> In this form, she did not need to eat; she was unsure about whether she needed to sleep in her form, or what long-term consequences staying in that form had.<ref>I thought for a second, then said, “One person doing surveillance might be tough. Do you need to sleep or eat while in that state? Any long-term consequences?”
“I don’t need to eat like that. I’ve never tried to stay up all night,” Caryatid’s voice had a note of surprise and idle interest, like it had never occurred to her. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref> Caryatid can vary the speed she switches into her breaker state.<ref name=9.4e1> Her breaker form was stirring around her legs. Partially but not completely entered into. Slowly, it crept up her legs. She didn’t have to make it slow, I knew. A way of staying warm? - Excerpt from Gleaming 9.4</ref>
She moves by sliding herself across the ground, both inside and outside her breaker state.<ref name="8.8 1"/> In battle she acts as mobile cover for her team as well as an offensive asset.<ref name=9.4e2/>
While she may indeed be invincible in her breaker state she can still be pushed around during which any effects can take their toll.<ref name=9.4e2>Caryatid was protecting Finale and Byron. She was a walking statue in black and amber, hands outstretched and pulled back, ready for a strike or grab if anyone got in range. Few did.
[...]
The woman ran from me, and I flew after her, hands gripping corners to help me navigate the narrow spaces while airborne. She reached the front door- facing off to the side of our impromptu battlefield, and found the statue-form Caryatid standing on the other side.
Purple flames erupted in the woman’s hands. She hurled them at the elegant statue-cape, and the statue burned. Caryatid’s voice rose in alarm, then a prolonged cry of pain.
“No!” I shouted.
Cornered, unable to get past Caryatid in the moment, the woman wheeled on me, one hand gripping a black trash bag of loot, the other bearing purple flame that could burn the invulnerable. - Excerpt from Gleaming 9.4</ref>
Equipment
Her breaker form had a tendency to damage objects she held, limiting what she could have on her.<ref>“Bit of a problem,” Caryatid said. “I can’t hold bring phones or cameras with me. They get chewed up by my form.” - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref>
History
Background
Caryatid lost her brother at a young age, and her family got broken up.<ref name=8.8e2>“Couldn’t go to them. Cary lost her brother when she was young. Her family got split up. We were like siblings, us three, we only had each other, really. We’d go from one of our towns to the other, to check on family and friends, but we were the only ones who always had each other’s backs. We were worried we’d get taken away from home or broken up, like how her family got broken up. They reached out a few times, but-” - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref> She triggered young, the same year as her teammate Withdrawal. She met her teammates online, and dropped out of school to form a team with them, forming a close connection with them.<ref>“We got in touch online. All of us got our powers young- it was Caryatid and me at first. Finale a year later. We had different names then, obviously,” Withdrawal said. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.7</ref> Though they faced limited success as a hero team, they did manage to stay together over the course of six years.<ref name=8.8e1>A painfully slow search online brought up some images of kid heroes with terrible costumes. They’d been small timers before Gold Morning, small town ‘heroes’ who’d rotated between three middle-of-nowhere towns in North Dakota looking for villains or criminals. Four years of activity and they hadn’t found any.
It would have been easy to dismiss them, or to disparage them. They had dropped out of school to be heroes and had no wins. The lack of education was clear in the spelling errors. It worried me a bit that their referral had come from ‘Super Magic Dream Parade’, the loopy team from Boston, who had apparently heard about what we were doing and passed on word.
The Major Malfunctions were teenagers now and they’d been kids when they’d triggered. They’d stayed heroes across six years, and they’d stayed together. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.7</ref> She was the oldest of her group.<ref name="8.8 1">The youngest one jogged over. The oldest moved by sliding herself along the ground- like a chess piece might move, or flight that couldn’t lift her off the ground. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref>
Gold Morning
She survived, but she was presumably forcibly recruited like everyone else to end it.
Post-Fallen fall
The Major Malfunctions were stationed near a tent city when Breakthrough contacted the Major Malfunctions to offer them to work within their growing network of hero teams.<ref>My destination was a tent city. Most in the tent cities had already departed for more secure accommodations, but new people were coming in regularly, and there was a stubborn holdout. As I flew over, I could see the efforts that were being made to patch the problem. Rigid black sheets of insulation were being laid against the sides of tents with yellow fabric, tents were being moved together and connected, and equipment was being brought in- truckloads of what might have been heaters or furnaces. - Excerpt from Beacon 8.8</ref><ref name=8.8e1/> Caryatid was present for the team's meeting with Antares and demonstrated her power.
Deployed to fight teachers goons.<ref>Gleaming 9.3</ref>
Post-Goddess' Takeover
She was present during The Wardens attempt to stop March from reaching Brockton Bay time-bubbles<ref>Heavens 12.all</ref>
Post-Time Bubble Pop
Fought alongside Breakthrough during the second Wardens' assault on Teacher's Compound.<ref>Dying 15.1</ref>
Trivia
- Caryatid, literally "maiden(s) of Caryatid", is a term for any female load-bearing statue, in the style of the famous Caryatid maidens of the Erechtheion.
References
<references/>