March, Part Eight

Eight stripes in eight days! Today marks the final heroine post inspired by the original eight-striped Pride Flag, Pride Month, and the Mutants & Masterminds superhero tabletop role-playing game. (If you want to go back to the start, it begins here.) This final stripe of the original Pride Flag’s rainbow is violet, and an homage to the “Mother of Pride” Brenda Howard, someone who definitely saw our way into the future.

March Violet (later Prophecy)

Among the colours of the original pride flag, violet represented spirit, and few were as spirited as Rachel Kohen. A bisexual Jewish activist with a strong voice and a lack of fear in using it, Kohen was an organizing force behind the organizing of the 1978 San Francisco Pride Parade that would empower her in a flare of light borne of the collective unconscious of queer people. After the flare of light, Rachel at first only thought she’d changed her outfit—now sporting an violet mask and shirt along with black trousers, boots, and gloves, but when she moved to dodge a thrown rock—and then saw the anti-queer hater stoop down to pick the rock up to throw it in the first place—she realized she’d glimpsed the future, and managed to smoothly keep others out of harm’s way while the rest of the heroes who’d also been born that day dealt more directly with the violence.

While March Violet’s powers were mostly passive, and often out of her own control, she understood how powerful a tool they were—they allowed her to see potential futures, and if there was anything she knew about activism, it was that seeing what was coming was only a benefit. Over the first few weeks, her visions mostly presented as warnings of potential violence, and she and the rest of March would arrive as pre-emptively as they could. March Violet would further hone her abilities alongside March Yellow and March Green, who taught her self-defence and hand-to-hand combat, and she learned to hone her skills through her sixth sense of what was a few moments into the future. She was never a front-line brawler, but she could stand toe-to-toe with even armed foes, often disarming them or tripping them before they could even land a hand on her.

Kohen’s background—Jewish, bisexual, feminist, anti-war, and pro-kink—had already shaped her into an activist, and her skills at organizing were put to good (and near constant) use by March as a whole, creating a cohesion they might otherwise have lacked. She was often the one who crafted the speeches March Red would deliver, was nearly always the one who alerted the team to potential danger, and was unflagging in her support of the various communities she belonged to. March Violet’s faith helped her come a long way to dealing with her ability to see potential futures, as well as her ability to send her senses elsewhere to offer reconnaissance, and she often debated and discussed her abilities through a lens of her faith among the team and with the rest of her community: Tikkun Olam, not only repairing the world, but potentially the future thereof.

March Violet suffered at the loss of March Red/Zap—her suspicion his end was coming was, in fact, underlined by a vision, and while she used that vision to ensure he had a chance to say goodbye to those he cared about most, it was a reminder that there were some futures she could not change. By then calling herself Prophecy, Kohen became all the more focused on attempting to hone her abilities after the 1988 Major Moral incident at March Red/Zap’s funeral, which for some reason she hadn’t seen coming at all until almost the very moment before. When the 1997 attack tragedy happened, Kohen was on the wrong side of the city, having had a clear vision of a large fire and death, and though she managed to save the lives of everyone involved, she eventually realized the arson attempt had been entirely devised to trigger one of her visions and take her out of play at the key moment. In 1998, when the second March team would take the torch, Kohen shifted into more of a mentorship role from day one of their tenure, and used her powers to guide the team, but rarely going out into the field as Prophecy again, instead using her gifts—powered and not—as Rachel Kohen.

March Violet, 1978 (PL 8)
Identity: Rachel Kohen (Initially secret, but eventually public)
Cis Female, 34, Height 1.64m, Weight 72kg, Brown Eyes, Brown Hair
Group Affiliation: March, Base of Operations: San Francisco, later March Tower

Attributes: Str 1, Sta 1, Agi 1, Dex 1, Fgt 1, Int 2, Awe 6, Pre 2 (22 points)

Powers: Precognitive Combat: Enhanced Advantages (Assessment, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 4, Evasion, Improved Defense, Improved Disarm, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Uncanny Dodge) and Enhanced Defenses (Dodge 10, Parry 10) (32 points); Precognitive Visions: Senses 4 (Precognition) (4 points); Sixth Sense: Enhanced Advantage (Luck 3), Enhanced Attribute (Awareness 4), Senses 1 (Danger Sense) (12 points); Spiritwalk: Remote Sensing 8 (Visual, Auditory) (24 points); Quick Change: Feature 1 (Transform into costume as a free action) (1 point)

Advantages: Assessment, Connected, Contacts, Defensive Attack, Defensive Roll 4, Evasion, Improved Defense, Improved Disarm, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Languages 1 (English, Hebrew), Luck 3, Uncanny Dodge, Well Informed (4 points)

Skills: Close Combat (Unarmed) 4 (+5), Expertise—Activism 6 (+8), Insight 3 (+9), Intimidation 2 (+4), Investigation 4 (+6), Perception 3 (+9), Vehicles 2 (+3) (12 points)

Offense:
Initiative +5
Unarmed +5 (Close, Damage 1)

Defense: Dodge 11, Parry 11, Fortitude 5, Toughness 1/5*, Will 11 (9 points)
*with Defensive Roll

Power Point Totals: Attributes 22 + Powers 73 + Advantages 4 + Skills 12 + Defenses 9 = 120.

Complications:
Motivation—Tikkun Olam: Even before she became March Violet, faith, upbringing, and her life experience already aimed March Violet toward doing what she can to actively make the world a better place. After acquiring visions of potential futures that alerted her to danger, she acted on every single one to the best of her ability, usually with the full support of March behind her, but sometimes when time or circumstances didn’t allow for much (or any) back-up, with whoever was at hand, or by herself. Prejudice: All the members of March are targeted for being queer, and March Violet is a bisexual, Jewish, kink-supporting activist who rarely, if ever, refuses a challenge, which can lead to altercations stemming from any number of bigotries. Visions: March Violet doesn’t have complete control of her visions, which means she is often at the mercy of when and where those visions occur in her attempts to change particularly violent or tragic futures from coming to pass. When she fails, no one is harder on her than herself, even when logically she did all she could. Both of these facets lead March Violet to sometimes border on obsessively attempting to plan for every contingency, and/or plunging into guilt or frustration.