"Hehe, do you hear that, punk? That's the sound of HURT!”
Name: Melodee „Dee“ McCall
Alias: Boom Box
Gender: Female
Age: 16
Appearance: 170 cm tall, black girl, very lean and thin. Black hair, brown eyes with uneven-looking pupils (she suffers from ROP and is almost completely blind)
Costume: A friend at school suggested that she needed a costume, but seeing that she was blind she never found a need for it. For her birthday her friend assembled some clothes to give her a uniform look when she goes out fighting crime. A white, comfortable zip hoodie with a black, stylized boom box on the chest, matching white track pants (Heroes need comfort and flexibility!), black leather gloves, white sneakers and a piece of white linen bandage with the words “boom box” written on it, which she uses to cover her eyes.
In addition to this she always wears big headphones around her neck.
Personality: he is cheerful and outgoing, almost hyperactive to some, and despite her “outsider” nature pretty quick to make friends. However, she can also be angered pretty quickly, be it if someone insults her taste in music or does something that goes against her strong sense of justice. In a fight she can quickly become overly zealous against those that attack innocents or those dear to her, to a frightening degree, thus she is in need of someone who is able to calm her down during such situations, to prevent her from going overboard.
Major Power: Sound Manipulation. Dee can create soundwaves, traveling any direction she wishes, starting from any point she wishes in a radius of 500 meters around her. This allows her to subdue criminals by rupturing their eardrums with incredibly loud sounds. To use her powers to such a degree however she needs to focus, something she accomplishes by blasting music with her power that slowly increases in volume, thus a stealthy use of her powers is impossible. An average use of her power has a startup time from 20 seconds upwards.
Her trump card is the so called “Bass Cannon”, a move in which she, after a short preparation time, creates a continuous stream of compressed air with a diameter of roughly one meter, able to blow away a 200-pound adult and crash them into a nearby wall.
Her “kryptonite” is free time music, especially free form Jazz. She needs to focus and maintain a steady rhythm when using her powers, thus exposure to free time music turns her completely powerless.
Minor Powers: Echolocation. Dee can use the sound of her steps, or artificially created sounds with her power to visualize her environment, effectively granting her 360° vision, though her vision becomes less accurate and has more “lag” the farther objects are away from her.
Sound Mimicry. Dee is a musical savant and can instantly recognize and mimic sounds and melodies. This also allows her to “eliminate” sounds as long as she is able to focus by creating destructive interference.
Essentially she is best used as “artillery” behind other, physically adept heroes that are able to protect her as she tries to use her power.
History: Born to a single mother in the Bronx, Melodee's life wasn't off to a great start. Diagnosed as an infant with GOP, with her mother unable to pay for a surgery due to the debt her ex-boyfriend left her in, she was always seen as an outsider in her childhood years, never able to play with other kids due to her blindness. Thus she turned to something else. Music.
She had an incredible talent for it, and while her mother had to work multiple jobs, day and night for it, she was able to enter a special needs school, read braille and eventually braille sheet music. For every other birthday she was gifted another worn-down instrument from a thrift store, thus she was able to hone her talent and eventually get into a performing arts high-school in Manhattan with a scholarship.
However, it was then that she discovered that her passion lied not in classical music, but in electronic music. Her mother was not pleased with her change of heart, but supported her girl nevertheless in her journey to become a producer. Working as a store clerk on the weekends she managed to scratch together a bit of money, which she used to buy off used studio equipment from the more wealthy students in her class. This was the starting point of her “career”.
But 3 months from this point, her life radically changed.
The phenomenon that occurred on the 21st of December changed her forever.
Going home from a long school day, through her dangerous neighborhood, she heard a group of thugs trying to mug an old lady, who, even when threatened with a knife, adamantly refused to give up her purse.
It would have been wiser to ignore them, especially since she was not exactly able to defend herself with her cane. But still, she became furious, shouting insults at them. Their attention was now focused on her, the woman was able to escape. But these gangster were not above mugging a blind girl.
As she was held up by her collar by one of the gangsters, faint music could be heard. First she thought it was a cellphone of the gangsters, since her music player was switched off and her phone was unable to play music.
But as she heard that even a gangster asked his buddies where the music came from, she became as shocked as they did.
A second later, the volume of the music had increased so violently that the gangsters had to cover their ears, writhing on the ground in pain.
At that moment she realized where the music came from. The track that was playing was one of her favorites.
It came from her.
In the following days she spent more and more of her free time trying to hone her power, even showing it to a schoolmate of hers, Katie. They both heard the news of others awakening their powers in the recent days, but Dee was determined to keep her powers a secret. Still, she knew that she now had a tool to help her troubled neighborhood.
Quickly Katie became her number one fan, even going as far as designing a “costume” and epitaph for her friend.
From this day on, Dee used the little free time she had to give her community something back.
She had become a superhero.