Amy Beauchamp
Amy01.jpg
Volta
Real Name: Amy Beauchamp
Age: 15
Identity: Secret
Birthplace: New Orleans, LA, USA
Date of Birth: 22/JUN/95
Known Relatives: Mother; Father (whereabouts unknown)
Height: 5'7"
Weight: 100lbs
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Brown (with blond highlights)
Grade: 10
Dorm: Rider

Background

Amelia Renee Beauchamp was born at Touro Infirmary Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana on June 22nd, 1995. Her mother, Julia Beauchamp was a nineteen year old beautician and her father, Howard McIvers was a twenty two year old Navy man assigned to NAS New Orleans. Unmarried at the time, Julia's parents pressured McIvers to marry their daughter, and the two were married at the base chapel eight months before Amelia was born. Julia was informed by her father that she was no longer welcome in his home.

In 1998, McIvers was transferred to VP-30, a P3 Orion unit operating out of NAS Jacksonville in Florida. It was here that Julia and Howard's already strained marriage disintegrated completely, and Julia left McIvers a year later. Reports of spousal abuse filed by Julia with the Jacksonville Police Department and Naval authorities were either dismissed or simply lost in the shuffle.

Estranged from her parents and struggling to raise a baby on her own, Julia moved into a seedy apartment complex on Jacksonville's west side and proceeded to bounce from one dead end job to the next. Amelia was enrolled in Kindergarten at Cedar Hills Elementary and outwardly, showed little sign of the increasingly turbulent life she was living at home. Julia's questionable taste in men was parading a string of losers, dead beats, druggies and criminals through the apartment. Her mother's extracurricular activities often as not had her out at all hours of the night with Amy foisted off on a neighbor.

The final straw came in Amy's first grade year, when one day Amy returned home to find her mother gone and the apartment not only burgled, but thoroughly trashed. An investigation by JPD revealed that Julia had been holding drugs for one of her boyfriends and someone, it remains a mystery exactly who, seized them. No evidence was found that Julia was home at the time, but efforts to locate her failed and the entire investigation ground to a complete halt. She would never see or hear from her mother again.

Efforts to contact her grandparents, whom Amy had never met, failed and the young girl knew of no other living relatives. So she was placed into the care of the Duvall County branch of Florida's Department of Children and Families. She would remain in foster care for the next nine years.

The life of a kid in the system is a difficult one. Most of the foster families she stayed with were good people trying to do right by the kids in their charge. Even if they were overwhelmed by a system that was simply unable to meet the demands being made upon it. A family would contract to foster two children, only to wind up housing as many as six. Even with the money being provided to them by the state, there was never enough cash to keep them afloat for long.

When puberty kicked into high gear when Amy was 10, she began to notice her powers. Namely because she kept accidentally tripping every circuit breaker in her foster family's house when she took a shower. Little by little, and always under utmost secrecy, she started experimenting with them. Soon enough, she developed enough control to keep from revealing herself, though she never told her caseworker or any of the foster families she stayed with. Being a foster kid was tough enough, being a Neohuman foster kid promised only further rejection and heartache. Though she kept experimenting with them, in time, developing enough control to use them in constructive ways, she always kept her abilities a closely guarded secret.

During her time in foster care, her records indicate two attempts by two different families to adopt her. The first, when Amy was nine, were the Dhoons, a family of immigrants from Bophal, India. Even though the couple were already sharing their tiny apartment with three of their own children aged from eight to sixteen, and Mr Dhoon's 72 year old mother and basically struggling to make ends meet, they were determined and filed formal papers with DCF, even going so far as to hire an attorney. But a bungled background check indicated, falsely, that a Pakistani relative was currently on a terror watch list. Amy was removed from the home within 24 hours.

The second were the Zilowskis, when Amy was 12. Mitchell was a Navy Chief stationed aboard the USS Gettysburg (CG 64) and Kimberly was a bank teller and taught Sunday School at Community Presbyterian Church. The couple already had one child, a fifteen year old daughter and were considered excellent candidates for adoption. But Kimberly was killed in a car accident two weeks before the formal interview process could begin, and once again, Amy was sent back into the system.

Other foster families were not so nice. Amy's file is littered with reports of physical, mental and in two instances, sexual abuse, both of which she denies ever happened. Her caseworker did not believe her and one of her former foster dads is currently serving a 12 year sentence in Raiford State Prison for molesting Amy and two other foster girls in his care.

After the Zilowskis, Amy's caseworker writes that the girl just 'seemed to give up'. Bouncing between five foster homes in six years takes its toll on a kid. The disappointment of losing two potential families, both of whom she cared about deeply, combined with the traumas, and the general stresses finally started catching up with her. One positive development occurred, a brief stay with a friendly foster family earned Amy her foster mom's gift of an electric bass guitar. She began playing in earnest at 13. Though she has little grasp of music theory, she does know how to make a mighty racket and play along with most of her favorite songs.

Her already dodgy grades started slipping. She started making all of the wrong kind of friends. There were fistfights galore. Shoplifting and other petty crimes started cropping up. In short, Amy was on the short road to Juvenile Detention. Sooner or later, her caseworker told her during one of their frequent 'talks' after Amy was caught or suspected of doing something stupid, she was going to steal a car.

That never happened. Amy didn't steal a car. She and Sacha, her 18 year old Russian immigrant boyfriend broke into the home of one Alistair MacLeish of Ponte Vedra. The 68 year old widower was rumored to have a collection of rare Spanish gold coins which the two would-be burglars, in their questionable teenage wisdom, planned to sell to finance their trip to LA, where they planned to marry and start a rock band.

Of course, things didn't go nearly as they'd planned, if one could say the two angry knuckleheads ever had a plan. Firstly, Amy's intent to 'zap' the house security system was stymied by said system being hardened against such attacks. MacLeish was alerted immediately when the two used the key Sacha had copied from his cousin, a housekeeper at the residence. And from there, as Amy puts it 'Things went wonky.'

It turned out that MacLeish was a Neohuman himself, a retired Super who once stalked the streets of Glasgow, Scotland in the 60s and 70s under the pseudonym 'Celtic Tiger'. He made many very powerful enemies before immigrating to the US and setting himself up as a wealthy investment banker. Needless to say, a pair of alcohol and pot-addled teenage metal heads were more of an inconvenience than an threat.

That said, Amy redeemed herself in MacLeish's eyes when she used her powers to incapacitate Sacha when he pulled a gun on the old man with every intent to kill him. This, of course, before MacLiesh himself incapacitated Amy with a Karate move that would make Bruce Lee green with envy.

As Amy recovered from her injuries in the hospital, MacLeish came to visit her often. He felt a certain kindred sense with the embattled young woman, abandoned to her fate by a harsh world. He himself had suffered through the worst of Glasgow's slums during his formative years. He could tell this was a young life on the tipping point. So when the time came, he refused to prosecute her, using his vast fortune and schools of legal sharks to chomp through the bureaucratic red tape and have himself appointed as her foster father.

The deal they reached was a simple one. For one year, Amy would be given a full scholarship to the Steranko Institute for Neohumans. He would provide a sufficient fund to maintain her needs and a modest monthly stipend to satisfy some of her wants. If she maintained a satisfactory grade average of 3.5, obeyed the rules, or at the very least, wasn't constantly in trouble for breaking them, and kept her nose clean, and, most importantly, if she was happy there, they would review the deal at the end of the term. Her other option, simply put, was prison, where Sacha was already headed.

It took her less than two minutes to sign the contract.

Personality

Amy is, first and foremost, a survivor. If that's left her seeming perhaps a bit selfish or distrusting, she's okay with that. She's come by those attitudes honestly. She's learned the hard way just how steep the slippery slope really is, and just how fragile the safety nets really are. Tightly wound control freak? Perhaps, but who could blame her? There is an iron-clad hardness in this girl that cannot be ignored.

Her friends, she binds to her with hoops of steel. Her enemies, she keeps just inside of kicking distance. All others are viewed with a deep wariness and suspicion. She's not the easiest girl to get to know, but, once you get into her inner circle, she'll do anything for a friend…no matter how stupid.

In so much as the details matter, she has a fondness for spicy food, heavy metal music, grape soda and movies, particularly science fiction or fantasy. Her favorite bands are, in no particular order, Iron Maiden, Flogging Molly, Metallica, Slayer, The Dropkick Murphys, Rush, Voivod, The Goo Goo Dolls, 4:15 to Leadville, Concrete Blonde, Smashing Pumpkins, Megadeth, Anthrax, The Police, Radiohead and that's just scratching the surface.

The rest? Well, she's fifteen, for crying out loud! It's a big question mark. Her morals, her instincts, her sexuality, all of it's up for grabs. She scared herself something fierce with the break in, and the subsequent reaction to it. MacLeish has shown her how far down she can really sink. Just how hard that lesson sticks to her is only a matter of time. There is a deep well of anger inside Amy…It could be the instrument of her salvation, as it was for her mentor, or her destruction…like so many kids cut off from what people call 'normal life'.

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