Spontania may appear to be an athletic young woman, in a colorful blue and white costume and wearing a DNA helix design as her trademark, who pokes her nose in where it is not wanted—but she is so much more than that.
Elkie Eckhart is the young woman who wears the bullet-proof, fire-proof and shock-resistant suit; secure in the knowledge that she is well protected while on a mission. What also separates her from any other athletic teen is her natural ability to read a person’s emotions from the expressions on their face or the look in their eyes. In a fraction of a second she can analyze their intentions and predict what action they are about to take. This ability (one that she had not even known she had until recently), was coined by Sherman Lee, a co-inventor of the Spontania suit fabric, as Micro-Emotional Nuance Recognition Syndrome, or M-ENRS.
The other co-inventor of the suit is Sherman’s partner, Melvin Day. Both are genius-level science nerds, working at two of the high-tech companies that have recently moved into Tranquility.
Marsha Squared rounds out the small team that is Spontania. Her tactical and security expertise has kept Sherman and Melvin’s invention a secret so far from anyone else in town. It was she who discovered Elkie’s unique talent and brought her into their team.
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In addition to the Spontania suit, Elkie wears a wrist-rocket-coil ejector mounted on her left arm, as an emergency measure and self-defense mechanism. Her visor provides her with night-vision, infrared thermographic detection, odor identification, a GPS and an ultra-sensitive sound recognition detector.
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Elkie Eckhart is an average, seventeen-year-old, all-American girl by most accounts. She is a third-generation mix of European descent, weighing in at only 94 pounds and is 5’2’’ tall. Elkie excels at high school gymnastics, but like most young adults her age she ignores her studies and is not one of the popular girls by any means, and is considered clueless by her teachers. She prefers to hang out with the jocks rather than study, and her fearless attitude in sports competitions has earned her the nickname of “Fireball.”
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Elkie Eckhart was raised as a strong independent woman by her mother and to stand up for what is right over what is wrong by her father, a Gulf War veteran. Her parents never expected to have a child at near middle-age, so Elkie was considered a miracle birth. Up until recently the three of them have lived a comfortable and simple life together in Tranquility.
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Marsha Squared is also seventeen, and attends the same high school as Elkie, but her life is far more complicated. She is of African-American descent and prefers anonymity over social interaction. She runs with the science nerds and outcasts and, like them, excels at her studies. She conducts secret experiments in the school lab under the guise of extra-curricular activity and hustles chess in the park against competitors two and even three times her age for petty cash. Spoiler alert, she wins almost every time.
Marsha didn’t have a fortunate upbringing; she never knew her father and her mother worked two jobs - one full-time as an RN, just to make ends meet, and the other to make their life tolerable. Absentee parenting forced Marsha to become self-reliant, and sadly she turned to a life of petty crime. As she entered her senior high school year her mother discovered her misdeeds and disowned her.
She and Elkie bonded over their coincidental meeting in the park, when Elkie defeated her at chess (something that Marsha knew was impossible). When her suspicions that Elkie had some unusual ability were confirmed, she introduced her to her friends, Sherman and Melvin. Their intention was to use Elkie as a “beta-test pilot” for their product, given her athletic ability, but all this changed on the morning of the school shooting.
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Bryan Banter, known to his friends as “The Brick,” is a fellow student athlete and classmate of Elkie’s. He is seventeen, handsome, and muscular, and a fun guy to hang around with. He learned early on how to flash a smile, and gets what he wants most of the time. He’s had a crush on Elkie for as long as he can remember, but knows full well that she only sees him as a friend and nothing more.
Misfortune struck his immigrant Polish family when both parents lost their jobs, after the factory they worked in closed down. School was never Brick’s thing, so he held onto the meager part-time job he had and chose to party hard. He often threw caution to the wind just for laughs, or to get drunk, or play pranks on just about everyone, but never mean ones. His horsing around and mischief attracted the worst company. It was only a matter of time before his luck ran out.
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Coach Tina is in charge of the girls’ gymnastic team at Elkie’s high school. She attended the same school back in the day, having come to America from Croatia at a late age to begin her elementary schooling here. Her parents claimed that this was the land of opportunity for her. She vowed to return to her alma mater as a coach upon graduating from college with her degree in Physical education, and did so. Her take-no-shit-from-anyone attitude has gotten this small town team close to winning the nationals three times over the last four years. She recognizes Elkie’s potential and pushes her hard to do better, but her encouragement is often met with sarcasm and resistance. She holds Elkie’s nonchalant attitude towards the school as the reason why the team has yet to win a championship.
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Coach Randy is in charge of the boys’ athletic teams. He is an old-fashioned middle-aged man who really enjoys the game, doesn’t care if his teams win or lose, and is all about fair play. He is the youngest son of Greek immigrants, and has six male siblings. Randy stresses the benefits of team cooperation over victory, something he learned from his older brothers. He boasts that his gym meets are the best attended classes in the school, but truthfully his easy-going attitude is often taken advantage of by the boys on his teams, as they use his class as an excuse to hang out with the young women on Coach Tina’s team.
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Chudley Bleekman was a troubled youth as far back as anyone can remember. Life has not been fair to him. He was an abused and abandoned child, who grew up in a group home, where he continued to be neglected until he was old enough to leave and live on his own. Given up for adoption at the tender age of seven, he has no recollection of who his parents were prior to that. He was told he was a mutt by the home group leader since there were no record of his nationality. By the age of twelve he already had the mindset of get high, live fast and die young, and it stayed with him until his life changed, and I do mean that literally. He has visited High School 229 more often than he is welcome, and he is attracted to the girls who were most unattracted to him.
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Dubbed The Beekeeper by Elkie, due to its resemblance to a whole-body coverall, it is the first suit she wore made of the fantastic fabric created by Sherman and Melvin. The bulky hooded costume was the prototype of what eventually became the Spontania suit.
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Sandra Barr is a nineteen-year-old Latina and the kind of woman everyone avoids. She attends Elkie’s school and this is her last chance to qualify for graduation, having been left back twice. She dresses somewhat like a pirate, in black leather, and considers herself the anti-hero sort. She is ready to fight against the corporate entities that employed her father before he was furloughed, stealing his inventions in the process and leaving her family penniless.
She lives with her father in a trailer up in the back hills outside of Tranquility. Her mother passed away several years prior, and her father has struggled to raise her, to keep her off the streets and out of trouble.
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When Sandra dons one of her father’s inventions, the Construction-Worker-in-a-Box, or in this case, a compact, portable, water-tight, mechanical assistant housed entirely in an outsized backpack that resembles a large crab shell, she calls herself The Crustacean. Inside the shell are two retractable mechanical arms with pincers, and two mechanical crab-like legs for upright support. The wrist bands Sandra wears controls the movements of her mechanical appendages.
In retaliation for the treatment given to her father by the company he worked for, Sandra stole the device and used it to carry out robberies of their plants and warehouses. The Crustacean is Spontania’s first nemesis.
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Security Guard Mike is African-American and in his forties. He is a friend to students and faculty alike, and sometimes their counsellor. He enjoys his job at High School 229, but sadly it is only one of many. His girlfriend, Jessica, once had an executive position with one of the factories that closed down, and was forced to take a job out-of-state. They are still close, but living in a long-distance relationship.
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Police Chief Elwood Winterborn hasn’t been taken seriously in years. Not because he is unpopular—in fact it’s quite the opposite, he’s very much adored. Back in the day, Tranquility was a pleasant place to live in, but since the factories began to close down and move away crime has slowly and steadily been on the rise. Chief Winterborn has been struggling to keep up with the looting, petty theft and massive amount of city ordinances that have been broken by the tech companies that have moved in. He is a fourth generation American of Western European descent, as well as a fourth generation law enforcement officer.
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Sherman Lee may be twenty-six years old, but he looks a lot younger. He dresses simply—a T-shirt, jeans and sneakers are his everyday leisure and work attire. He is a first generation Korean-American; by day he is a chemical engineer for the Optics in Space Limited Company, and during his off hours he is a gym rat. He moved to Tranquility for the well-paying tech job, but his real interest is in saving lives with the “miracle fabric” that he and his domestic partner, Melvin Day, have created. They planned to market the fabric to the auto industry to prevent fatal car accidents, but on the day they met Elkie everything changed.
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Melvin Day is twenty-three years old and looks it. His complexion is fair and screams Scottish-Irish mix. He is a digital micro-fibers printing expert working for the Simply Fabulous Fiber Company. He was hired straight out of college and moved to Tranquility for his job. He is a bit flashy and dramatic and likes to wear vintage style clothing. He is every bit as serious about the co-creation of the “miracle fabric,” and its potential, as Sherman—his domestic partner—is.
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Julia Louise Pennyfarthing, known to her clients as Crystal Lake, is in her early twenties, and sadly is just another “working girl.” Her rich English heritage provided her with a name, but none of the education and wealth that should have gone with it. She was home-schooled by her dim-witted mother, and sheltered from the reality of everyday hardship by her father. Her financial misfortune began upon his premature passing after she found out that he had cut her completely out of his will and left everything to her younger male sibling. Isolated and alone, she chose to reinvent herself by placing stock in the only thing she believed she had that was of any value, her good looks. With those and some street-smarts she picked up along the way, she plans to live a productive life adopting and caring for lost animals.
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