SOLSTICE

Backstory
Born on a Texas farm in 1952, Alicia "Alice" Kang only ever wanted to one day reach the stars. She was the youngest of her parents’ two children, a few minutes younger than her elder twin sister, Ha-neul. Life on the farm was simple, and her family was accepting, though Alice dreamed of more. Whatever aspirations she had fell apart when a faulty nuclear test nearby flooded the surroundings with radiation, killing her and her family when she was just 8.

Alice alone survived as a ghost, due to the sheer, intense anger and frustration she felt at having her future taken away from her. While she had the willpower to endure for years as a ghost, she didn’t have the magical knowledge to affect the world around her, and was thus stuck like that for over ten years.

During this time, she wandered around her surroundings, watching other humans go about their daily lives. The many years spent doing this gave her extensive knowledge in reading others and the techniques to do so, but most of this was not consciously absorbed. Despite this, she gained no real life experience and never really grew past her childish habits and dreams.

All that kept Alice going was her enduring dream to reach the stars, but her will slowly started to break all the same. As she felt herself slowly falling apart, she started desperately searching for ways to escape her prison as a ghost. Eventually, she managed to slink onto a military base, exploiting her fading soul and lack of magical power to escape detection.

In this military base, she found and managed to possess a prototype military AI core, SOLSTICE, absorbing its barely formed soul into her own. Having not yet developed any personality of its own, all SOLSTICE provided for Alice was a bank of military knowledge. Upon coming to terms with her newfound knowledge, Alice used it to slaughter all the inhabitants of the military base, but not before forcing them to create her a new body, designed by herself to be everything she had ever wanted to be.

With her new body, Alice left the military base and entered into the world, excited to finally be among people again after spending a decade alone. However, lacking real life experience, she struggled to connect with people and found herself burdened with an extremely intense fear of death and abandonment, which caused her to be incredibly clingy. Incapable of forming any lasting relationships and not knowing what to do with her life, she drifted about aimlessly before she joined the Marine Corps to serve in the Vietnam War, reasoning that her military knowledge would give her some direction in war.

War was only terrifying to Alice, constantly exposing her to the threat of death, but she excelled in it, succeeding through her sheer skill. She gained fame through this, even in the closing years of the war, and many of the soldiers she fought alongside grew to respect her greatly. Personally, Alice formulated many of her beliefs and theories of war in this time, growing to rationalize the death of her family while she had survived as proof that only the strong would survive.

After the war, Alice returned home, and though the fame she had gained was amazing to her, it wasn’t enough. Her fear of death still haunted her, and accompanying it was a desire for greater and greater fame and power. Desiring to burn her name into history to never be forgotten and last forever, she began amassing followers to support her in this goal, manipulating them into this with a variety of lies. She created the radical organization Invictus out of her followers.

Among her followers was a child she adopted and named Venus, who would go on to become her most zealous follower. For a time, Alice stepped out of the public eye to focus on her life with Venus, tempted by the prospect of a normal life where she could settle down with her daughter and perhaps even a wife. However, her attempts to find love failed.

Up until she met a young AI named EQUINOX. She quickly became infatuated with her, finding her gorgeous, and went about flirting with her to build up a relationship. She succeeded in this, becoming closer and closer to EQUINOX, and eventually marrying her. However, while the relationship was initially healthy, Alice was still gripped by her ambitions and found herself unable to let go of them. She became increasingly manipulative and controlling, gradually destroying EQUINOX’s mental health and making her loyal and compliant.

Using documents and blueprints she had stolen from the military, Alice forced EQUINOX to create the Solar Drive, a powerful magical artifact that would act as a magical fusion reactor that would provide her with extreme power. As she lacked the magical knowledge to create it herself, EQUINOX was necessary to do so, but Alice committed its construction to memory.

Once the Solar Drive was complete, it was implanted into Alice’s chest in place of her heart. Equipped with a ridiculous amount of magical power, much of which she used to accelerate her computing power to far greater levels, Alice took on her title of SOLSTICE and started the war she desired with the intent of carving her name into history and conquering the planet.

Despite Invictus’ numbers, SOLSTICE’s military knowledge was near unmatched, and she was able to conquer much of the planet and kill most of her opponents. Her extreme nuclear power harmed the planet around her; however, she was aware of this eventuality, and had intended to rebuild the planet and its ecosystem with Venus’ help once the war was over.

SOLSTICE lost track of these plans once EQUINOX went missing, however, thinking that she had been assassinated by her enemies. She became increasingly violent, rampaging across the planet in grief and rage and worsening the damage to the planet, rendering it nearly uninhabitable. She fell into a depression shortly afterwards, caring for little and mourning her loss.

However, EQUINOX had survived, and hiding elsewhere on the planet, had slowly recovered from the years of abuse she had suffered at SOLSTICE’s hands, and mastered magic for the purpose of avenging herself. She confronted her ex-wife once she had gained the power to do so, angrily denouncing SOLSTICE for what she had done.

While initially delighted to see her alive, SOLSTICE’s glee turned to an intense feeling of betrayal as EQUINOX ripped into her, and she angrily responded by attacking her, seeking to kill - or at least horrifically injure - her in exchange. Their ensuing battle destroyed what remained of Earth and ultimately resulted in SOLSTICE’s defeat, as her soul was overtaxed by her emotions and her strategy marred by her emotional breakdown. EQUINOX ripped the Solar Drive out from her chest and destroyed it, leaving the powerless, dying SOLSTICE to rot on the shattered remnant of Earth as she left to find a new home.

Through sheer willpower alone, SOLSTICE survived the death of her physical body once more and escaped as a ghost, fleeing the planet as well. While alive, her soul was in tatters and she had only barely survived, so she was forced to hide within a discarded USB stick, to take the time to heal from her wounds and plot her revenge.

Appearance
The most striking thing about SOLSTICE is her height. She towers above the vast majority of people at a staggering eight feet, and she is only made more imposing by her muscular frame and broad shoulders. She always stands at her full height, without the slightest signs of doubt, emanating strength, charisma, and absolute confidence. In fact, she often works to make herself seem even taller, and if someone actually manages to surpass her height, she'll just make herself actually taller in response. Her skin is a deep, dark, warm brown, as if she lived her entire life in the light of the sun. SOLSTICE's eyes are a glittering dark green that always shine with intense focus. Her hair stands in contrast as a bright, brilliant orange that reaches down to her waist, with sidelocks that are nearly as long. She always carefully maintains her hair so that it can be as neat, straight and soft as possible. Every day, when she first wakes up, SOLSTICE's hair is a curly, thick mess.

While she's careful to cover up every single one, SOLSTICE is covered in the scars of her many battles, with the most being over her abdomen and arms. While she could easily have completely healed each one or simply not have them included in her second body, she keeps them as a reminder of her own mortality, to keep herself from getting too cocky. Still, she loathes looking at them and does not want anyone else to see them if possible, and they are thus always covered up by her clothing. The worst of her scars are over her heart, where she removed her own heart and later had the Solar Drive torn out by EQUINOX, and the spot where she lost her right arm in battle with her.

Besides her scars, SOLSTICE has three tattoos, each of which is pure black in coloration and snake-related, thanks to her adoration of snakes. The largest is of a cobra, on her back, with its mouth wide open, showing its fangs, and its hood spread open to display its markings, which incorporate the alchemical symbol for gold, representing perfection and the sun itself. Her other tattoos are an Ouroboros band on her upper right arm, over the scarring where it was once torn off, and a rattlesnake that winds around her upper left leg and reaches up to her stomach. Her musculature, while evident at a glance from her large shoulders, legs, and arms, is most evident once she's lost her jacket, showing her well-defined biceps and abs. Really, "shredded" would be an apt descriptor for SOLSTICE.

Most of the time, for her public appearances and for combat, SOLSTICE dresses up to her role as a military leader, wearing a large, double-breasted military jacket that only serves to make her more intimidating, highlighting her most imposing traits. The colors are dark, either black or dark green, and her jacket is accompanied either by simple, serviceable cargo pants, or a high-waisted skirt skirt held in place with a tight belt, with dark tights showing underneath. She completes her ensemble with an ornate peaked cap with a solar insignia, a billowing black cape, and, on occasion, black leather gloves. Underneath her jacket, she wears a simple tank top, and she quickly loses both the jacket and cape once a fight gets serious to keep them from getting in the way.

While this is what she is most often seen in, SOLSTICE's taste in casual clothes is much less flashy and intimidating. As opposed to the military uniform she typically wears, her taste in fashion is incredibly feminine. She is more than happy to show off her musculature with tank and crop tops - after all, you know what they say! "Sun's out, guns out" - and when SOLSTICE is out, the sun shines with her. Still, she prefers more conservative tops such as short-sleeved blouses and shirts. These are typically paired with jackets, never anything too heavy or long, with bomber jackets being a particular favorite. She almost always picks skirts over pants, preferring high-waisted and long skirts with one of a variety of tights underneath them. When she does wear pants, however, she wears simple sweatpants or cargo pants, or her favorite, high-waisted jeans that are on the tight side of things. Fittingly, SOLSTICE often wears sunglasses, and regardless of the situation, she wears tall, steel-toed combat boots that make her seem just a bit taller.

Personality
At first, SOLSTICE appears to perfectly embody the essence of a military leader, burning with inhuman charisma that draws others to her, and a sharp mind well-suited to the intensity of war. She acts differently around everyone, giving the more polite the same treatment while acting casual and brashly among others. This is not her relaxing around more casual people, but her consciously changing her behavior to best endear herself to everyone she meets, acting however she thinks they will like the most to make them like her. SOLSTICE is an excellent manipulator and liar, using her knowledge on human behavior to eliminate any signs that she's lying from her actions and easily playing others into believing whatever she says. Nearly everything about how she acts is a front, a mask so expertly feigned that it's nearly impossible for others to tell that's not the core of her personality, regardless of how much experience they have in reading others. Even those SOLSTICE was closest to in life know little about her true ambitions, past, or her deepest desires.

One of her defining traits is her extreme ambition and drive, which shows itself in a willpower so strong that SOLSTICE is able to bypass what would normally be a crippling weakness in her lack of magical knowledge through sheer force of will. She is quite dramatic, and greatly enjoys showing off, enjoying loudly boasting and acting as arrogantly as possible. Of course, this is another front; while SOLSTICE truly is confident to the point of arrogance, it is not nearly to the degree that she exaggerates it to, which she does to fool others into thinking that she's too proud for her own good. She is truthfully extremely pragmatic and ruthless, exploiting every opening she can see and never giving up opportunities to move upwards or kill her opponents. SOLSTICE treats all those who stand before her with the intent of fighting her similarly, reasoning that anyone who would attempt to fight her would know how strong she is and make sure that they're just as strong. Even against the weakest of opponents, SOLSTICE does not hold back in the slightest, moving to kill them as quickly as possible.

Having spent the formative years of her adolescence and childhood alone as a ghost, SOLSTICE never quite grew out of her childish habits. While she does her best to keep these traits reeled in, she has an incredibly short temper and tends to throw tantrums when things don't go right. She keeps her mask up until she absolutely can't handle it anymore, appearing to suddenly swing from being confident and in control to a violent, screaming breakdown. During her tantrums, SOLSTICE's true bratty nature shows through, as she bitterly bemoans how nothing ever seems to go in her favor. She is incredibly paranoid and cautious, trusting virtually no one and believing that they all have ulterior motives. Ideally, SOLSTICE carefully and calmly thinks out every decision ahead of her and makes the ideal decision after taking any potential consequences into account, but her paranoia can affect her decision making and cause her to make irrational choices, and while she does her best to keep her temper out of things, she discards much of her reasoning during her tantrums. She has an incredibly strong desire to prove herself as capable of any other, and is thus very competitive and makes for a sore loser.

Out of all her emotions, SOLSTICE is driven primarily by fear, and is a massive control freak as a result. She needs to be in control to feel safe; in control of herself, of everyone she knows, and of everything around her, down to the atoms themselves. The deep-seated sense that she wasn't safe and that she couldn't possibly predict every threat is a major root of her decision to constantly aim for more power, so that she is strong enough to kill everyone who would harm her and to survive it all. Given that she's usually in the mindset that most people are working against her, she doesn't view anyone - not even a single person - as safe or innocent enough to leave alone. She won't seek out fights unless she absolutely thinks her safety is at sake, but won't hesitate to kill anyone who gets in her way. Killing people means nothing to her, and she feels only satisfaction in stomping out the most stubborn threats to her safety.

While she is technically already dead as a ghost, what SOLSTICE fears most is death. She associates it with the decade she spent alone, an association that has intensified into a delusion, that she will drift alone for eternity if she ever truly dies again. This fate is so utterly repulsive to her that it ultimately drives all of her decisions. To her, the difference between death and solitude is just semantics; if she had to live the rest of her life alone, she may as well be dead. She does not feel like she can truly exist without others to confirm her existence, and would surround herself with people she hates as long as they could acknowledge her and no one else was available. This intense fear of abandonment causes her to be extremely obsessive and possessive when it comes to those she loves, aiming to make it so that they won't just not want to leave, but so that it'll be impossible. SOLSTICE may love them dearly, but the way she treats them is more akin to how one would treat a precious possession. She cannot escape the guilt these abusive actions drags up in her, but she denies it all she can. When forced to face her fears, SOLSTICE tries to keep her head and act rationally, but often collapses under her trauma, turning into a sobbing, pathetic wreck that is closer to who she truly is than her mask of absolute confidence. If it means she'll survive, SOLSTICE will do anything, kill anyone, and beg as much as she needs to.

Despite it all, SOLSTICE's abusive behavior only drives her loved ones away over time, something that she struggles to understand. She accepts the consequences of her decisions up until they lead to her greatest fears, abandonment and death, desperately blaming everyone else to avoid acknowledging the fact that these results stem from her own actions. It is incomprehensible to her that her own attempts to engrave her existence into history and become the universally loved ruler of all things would lead to the things she fears most. At this point, SOLSTICE doesn't process any other choice but the one she's committed to. All the same, what SOLSTICE sees when she looks to the future she desires is a comforting, safe eternity spent with those she loves, without the slightest speck of conflict.

Personal Statistics
Origin: Starcross Name: Alicia "Alice" Kang, SOLSTICE, Saturn

Classification: Ghost (possessing a Military AI)

MBTI: ENTJ

Alignment: Neutral Evil

Color Identity: Blue/Black/Red Gender: Female

Age: 338

Date of Birth: July 14th, 1952

Height: 8'1

Weight: 270 lbs or so Likes: Cooking, snakes, hot chocolate, competitions, space, games that involve strategy

Dislikes: Being alone, fighting, winter, nights when the stars aren't visible, mosquitoes

Affiliation: Herself.

Music:
 * The Lost Emotion

Combat Statistics
Tier: At least 9-A | 5-A | 4-B | At least 3-C

Powers and Abilities: Genius Intelligence, Mastery in Martial Arts and strategy, Magic, Extrasensory Perception (Mages maintain a constant, perfect, and precise image of their surroundings by analyzing them through magic), Superhuman Physical Characteristics, Flight, Forcefield Creation, Precognition (Predicts and analyzes countless futures that could potentially arise from all of her decisions and the decisions of others), Nuclear Manipulation (Weak and Strong Force Manipulation - Radiation, Light, Molecular, Plasma, and Explosion Manipulation [Can cause nuclear explosions and turn objects and people into fission bombs]), Existence Erasure, Fate Manipulation, Spatial Manipulation, Time Manipulation (Can freeze others in time), Pocket Reality Manipulation, Shapeshifting, Absorption (Can absorb other souls when they're exposed to her own, and absorbs radiation and light regardless of the source), Reality Warping with Override Sigils (Override Sigils can be used to overwrite the laws of physics), her attacks (physical and magical) damage the soul just as they do the body, Reactive Evolution (An Absolute Barrier automatically adapts to attacks to become more resistant, and SOLSTICE's own magical defenses are exceptionally good at this), Reactive Power Level (Grows stronger in response to threats and over the course of fights), Resistance to physical / magical attacks (Absolute Barriers protect the user from attacks on all levels of existence, whether mental, spiritual, or conceptual, as well as hax such as Causality Manipulation, Matter Manipulation, Reality Warping, Spatial Manipulation, and Time Manipulation) and Precognition (A mage has no set future and can choose their own destiny free from universal pasts or futures), Acausality (A mage's history, present, and fate all exist independently of the past and future), Non-Corporeal, Intangibility and Invisibility as a ghost, Possession, Immortality (Types 1, 3, 6, and 7), Regeneration (High-Low; can regenerate broken bones, minor organ damage, and large wounds that would normally scar within a few days, and can even reattach severed limbs. High-Mid with reconstruction; she can recreate the rest of her body from the Solar Drive, ultimately automating this process. Low-Godly after achieving Apophis Drive; absorbed the Solar Drive into her soul and became completely independent of her body, allowing her to regenerate her entire body from just her soul)

Attack Potency: At least Small Building level (She can destroy magically reinforced tanks with her bare hands) | Large Planet level (Fought against EQUINOX, destroying the planet over the course of their fight, split the Earth in half by stomping her foot, and dispersed EQUINOX's storm, which was the size of the Great Red Spot, with a single attack) | Solar System level (She has more magical power at her disposal than Kuna, Fuse, Starburner Kyarne, and EQUINOX, to the point that she can instantly punch holes through them, and is capable of casually releasing attacks with energy that far surpass supernovas) | At least Galaxy level (In terms of sheer power, she surpasses Milky Way and can fight against both EQUINOX and Minna at once).

Speed: At least Supersonic+ (Can easily deflect and catch bullets, even at close ranges or when fired from automatic weaponry) | FTL+ (Comparable to EQUINOX, and she can outspeed her own light-based attacks, which have surpassed the speed of light due to her Override Sigil) | Massively FTL+ (She can keep up with EQUINOX and Kyarne, and even barely react to Kuna's attacks due to her sheer skill. Views a femtosecond as "more than enough time", and is in the same range of speed as Fuse) | Massively FTL+ (Much faster than she was before, surpassing Kuna, and is faster than Deleter).

Lifting Strength: Class 100 (Can lift and throw tanks and helicopters) | At least Class Z (Held back the Moon with a single hand) | Stellar (Superior to Neptune, who can lift Kyarne, a literal star, and on the same level as Fuse, who can easily throw planets and stars across interstellar distances) | Multi-Stellar (Comparable to Remnant, who can fit multiple stars in their orbit).

Striking Strength: At least Small Building Class | Large Planet Class | Solar System Class (Her physical strength is equal to her magical power) | At least Galactic Class (Can match Milky Way's Dead End Galaxy with her own blows).

Durability: At least Small Building level | Large Planet level (She tanked many attacks from EQUINOX) | Solar System level (She can take Kuna, Kyarne, and EQUINOX's strongest attacks and get right back up) | At least Galaxy level. Across all of her forms, killing her is incredibly difficult, as her sheer willpower allows her to endure as a ghost and take grievous damage to her soul without dying.

Stamina: Superhuman. | Virtually infinite. The Solar Drive can constantly produce magical energy for billions of years without pause, and SOLSTICE's sheer willpower allows her to continue fighting even when lethally wounded. Even without the magical knowledge needed to heal herself and when she was still dependent on her body, she was able to temporarily keep on fighting after losing most of her blood, an arm, and taking wounds that would be lethal for normal people, and even survived having the Solar Drive torn out and her brain badly damaged. After she surpasses her body's limitations, such feats are simple, and she can effectively fight for the full length of the Solar Drive's energy production even after taking extensive damage to her body and soul.

Range: Extended melee range (SOLSTICE is so tall that her reach is several meters, allowing her to easily outrange opponents in close combat), and further with firearms | Interplanetary (Dispelled EQUINOX's storm, which was the size of the Great Red Spot, with a single attack) | Interstellar. | Galactic.

Standard Equipment: The Solar Drive, which is located in her chest in place of her heart.

Intelligence: Supergenius. SOLSTICE is an exceptionally intelligent individual, possessing a wealth of experience between her actual life, and the thousands of years of military experience and theory granted to her by the military AI she effectively absorbed, making her a strategic mastermind of unparalleled prowess capable of keeping up with and defeating those who have far more practical experience than herself. She is effectively a self-aware supercomputer that far surpasses the computing ability of the real world's supercomputers in all regards, and with the Solar Drive to enhance her computing and analytical powers, she has effectively become a Matrioshka brain. SOLSTICE has an eidetic memory, recalling everything flawlessly and subconsciously recording it all due to her AI components, allowing her to delve into her memories whenever she pleases to witness them again in perfect detail. She is smart enough to constantly run simulations of the countless futures that occur because of every single one of her decisions, carefully deliberating over them and the potential consequences of any choices, even in combat. Her skill in martial arts and hand-to-hand combat is extraordinary, and unlike her military knowledge, completely derived from her own life. Even with 300 years to train and become a master of martial arts, EQUINOX is still completely outmatched by her in hand-to-hand combat. Her knowledge spreads even to non-combat situations, as she is an exceptional manipulator and liar who can easily read others through a number of techniques and her own analytical ability, picking up on every little detail to figure them out and manipulate them. SOLSTICE's charisma is absolutely inhuman and all her own, existing on a scale that far surpasses that of even humanity's greatest leaders. However, her intelligence is not absolute. While she excels in combat and manipulation, she initially has no useful knowledge on magic, and her grasp on magic never surpasses that of an exceptional high schooler, paling in comparison to those who have focused their efforts on mastering it, such as EQUINOX. In addition, her temper and paranoia often warp her decisions, causing her to act irrationally, and she can panic in extremely dire situations due to her traumatic experiences, preventing her from thinking clearly.

Weaknesses: Despite her best efforts to prevent them from affecting her decisions, SOLSTICE is paranoid and has a very short-temper, which affect her decisions greatly when they come into play. She has a very limited understanding of magic, initially requiring the Solar Drive to use it at all, even in minor applications, and without the Solar Drive her power and computing power drop greatly. When faced with near-death experiences, SOLSTICE can have traumatic breakdowns, flashbacks, and panic attacks that prevent her from thinking clearly and fighting to the best of her ability, though she's working on getting better at dealing with these. SOLSTICE cannot reconstruct the Solar Drive, which is left open when she uses magic to reconstruct and deconstruct herself.

Key: Base | Solar Drive (Original) | Solar Drive (Upgraded) | Basilisk

Note: Apophis Drive and the Low-Godly regeneration it brings is a theoretical ability and whether its use is possible should be noted in versus threads, and it is only even theoretically possible with the magic knowledge SOLSTICE has as Basilisk.

Abilities
Magic is the art of using one's Understanding to Control Fantasy.

SOLSTICE’s magical array is, for all intents and purposes, nonexistent. As she has used magic, she does have one - however, it is faint, underdeveloped, and weak. Without the Solar Drive, which is essentially a highly-advanced artificial supplement to her magical array, she has extreme difficulty using even minor magic, especially anything effective. It is effectively impossible for her. Absolute Barrier: A magical barrier that protects the user from external manipulation and attack, on every level of existence. An Absolute Barrier protects the user’s body, mind, and soul - their cells and atoms, the magical and physical forces keeping them together, and everything else. It is akin to a magical immune system, protecting the mage from threats and adapting to future attack.
 * The Solar Drive: The source of SOLSTICE’s magical power and potential, located in her chest in place of her heart. It is a highly-advanced solar reactor that acts as an artificial supplement to her magical array. It is powered by a complicated series of magical sigils and currents, generating constant magical energy. SOLSTICE’s magical abilities are linked to the Solar Drive. As it is effectively a miniature star, it can produce energy without pause for millions to billions of years. This allows SOLSTICE to fight effectively indefinitely. She can choose how to distribute the energy, focusing much of its power on boosting her processing power, allowing her to use her extensive strategic knowledge to its full extent - she is, for all extents and purposes, a matrioshka brain. If need be, SOLSTICE can redistribute the energy to increase her power, speed, and/or durability. As it was designed for SOLSTICE’s use, to integrate with her inner world, the Solar Drive cannot be effectively used by anyone else, becoming less and less useful the more different the person is. Eventually, the Solar Drive becomes the most important part of SOLSTICE’s body - as her magic develops, she becomes less dependent on the rest of her body. This allows her to stay alive as just the Solar Drive, and also gives her the ability to move it around inside her body to make it harder to hit.

It passively protects the user from most types of attack, manipulation, and control, as long as the barrier is strong enough - a witch of substantially greater power can punch straight through one. An Absolute Barrier is passively maintained at all times, even in sleep, requiring no energy to maintain, and can only be removed by a stronger witch actively stripping it away, or by the user consciously lowering them.

Flight: SOLSTICE’s magical abilities allow her to easily fly for extended periods of time, as easily as she would walk. She can fly in combat without issue, and is more than fast enough to rapidly travel between solar systems and across the galaxy.

Radar: SOLSTICE’s magical abilities sustain a constant 360° image of her surroundings, which is projected straight to her mind for processing. This radar is far more reliable than conventional senses, and is capable of easily picking up superluminal movement. It constantly operates at SOLSTICE’s maximum processing speed, even when it would normally be restricted so that she can function normally.

Superhuman Capabilities: The Solar Drive grants SOLSTICE strength, speed, endurance, and processing speed far above that of any normal human. The energy from the Solar Drive emanates through her body and soul, increasing her strength and forming simple protective barriers within and throughout her body.

She can process information at a ridiculously fast rate, indescribable multitudes faster than any normal human - or even the average supercomputer - can. This allows her to process and analyze information during battles and run through the countless calculations needed for her magic.

She typically keeps this aspect of her magic restricted when she doesn’t need it, though it will automatically activate if her magic detects a threat. Unfortunately, it tends to activate during times of stress and anxiety, regardless of whether or not SOLSTICE is in legitimate danger. Ghostform: As a ghost, SOLSTICE is detached from the physical realm, being nothing but a soul doomed to wander the world. She is completely intangible and invisible in this form, and can only be detected or affected by those with sufficient magical awareness. She cannot influence anything or communicate with anyone, beyond possessing suitably usable empty bodies.
 * Combat Sense: SOLSTICE uses her accelerated thought processes in conjunction with her strategic genius to run simulations of nearly every possibility of her actions, at nearly all times. By preparing and accounting for all these possibilities, she is able to outmaneuver her foes. This is mostly put to use in combat, where she uses it to adapt to her opponent based on the probabilities of their actions and the countless futures she has went over in her simulations. However, SOLSTICE cannot account for things she is unaware of, and cannot properly process possibilities she sees as impossible - her simulations are based only on the knowledge she has, which increases over the course of a fight.

As her magic is dependent on the Solar Drive, she cannot really use it at all as a ghost, rendering her one method of affecting the physical world inaccessible. However, as she SOLSTICE becomes a greater and smarter mage, her ability as a ghost grows, granting her the ability to interact with the physical world and possess inhabited bodies by overpowering the wills of those within.

Healing Factor: SOLSTICE’s artificial body regenerates cells at a far faster rate than a human’s and she is functionally biologically immortal, with no natural limit to her lifespan. Wounds that would leave large scars heal within days, and she can quickly mend broken bones, minor damage to her internal organs, and even reconnect severed limbs, though it takes time and is thus not useful in combat. This healing is powerful enough to heal and reattach the blood vessels connected to her heart quickly, allowing her to safely remove and replace it with the Solar Drive.

Serpent Arts: The martial arts that SOLSTICE has gathered in life and perfected on her own, without depending on the experience granted to her by the AI she fused with. SOLSTICE’s martial arts knowledge encompasses a mastery of every earthly martial art there is, and SOLSTICE can use any of them to extreme effect. She discards any consistent stance or unnecessarily structured techniques in the name of efficiency and adaptability.

She switches between styles as necessary, using whatever martial art is best suited to fight against her opponent, and she has her own style that takes advantage of her immense reach and power. SOLSTICE generally prefers hard martial arts, and incorporates a lot of kicks into her combat regardless of style. In combat, she seems to have no single style and rapidly switches between them from moment to moment to use them all to their fullest potential.

While initially purely physical, SOLSTICE becomes able to completely disregard her physical body to strike through an application of true magic, hitting her opponents without any substance or force. These attacks are instantaneous once delivered, and cannot be dodged normally. Instead, they must be predicted and deflected through magical means. Though this is an application of true magic, it is one that is achieved through sheer will alone, and SOLSTICE can use it easily, perfectly weaving its use into her combat style.

SOLSTICE may be a master of martial arts, but martial arts is only a means to an end for her, and that end is defeating any potential threat. Her skill cannot compare to someone who has devoted the entirety of their life to martial arts, but she more than makes up for it with her tactical knowledge.

Sol Invictus: SOLSTICE’s magic, a magic linked to the power of the Sun, granted to her by the Solar Drive. It manifests through the manipulation of radiation and nuclear power, and thus the strong and weak nuclear forces, as well as the manipulation of light. She can effectively use all kinds of electromagnetic and particle radiation, from the lowest to the highest frequencies, allowing her to control light, radio waves, and gamma rays. On account of SOLSTICE’s poor magical understanding, she can’t do much more with it than destroy, but as she further explores magic, its applications grow.

As a miniature star, the Solar Drive produces high amounts of energy and radiation, including light, which SOLSTICE channels into magical attacks, and in the form of a passive aura that irradiates her surroundings once activated. This aura is powerful enough to induce radioactive decay and radiolysis, breaking matter down into its components, and absorbing the energy this produces, before the decomposition advances into complete molecular destruction. It can completely destroy even magical attacks. She prefers to use radiation, particularly light, in her attacks, firing them from her hands, other parts of her body, and from around her. These attacks are also capable of inducing cancer, and the immense amounts of power put into them makes it much more likely than normal radiation.

SOLSTICE can use this with a surprising amount of precision and control despite her lack of magical understanding, firing focused beams of light that can break down and completely destroy matter in localized areas without destroying the rest. She can disintegrate opponents by causing all of their molecular structure to fall apart into nothing, producing radiation in the process. Thanks to the Solar Drive and this magic, SOLSTICE passively absorbs energy, and all forms of electromagnetic and particle radiation, allowing her to boost her energy supplies and power by absorbing high amounts of energy.
 * Nuclear Fission and Fusion: SOLSTICE’s magic allows her to induce both nuclear fission and fusion, both of which produce high amounts of energy for use in combat. While the fusion reactions taking place in the Solar Drive are passive, she can still actively induce them if she pleases, though she lacks efficiency and precision when she tries to actively use them. Both fission and fusion have their uses, both in combat and energy production, and as SOLSTICE grows as a mage, she becomes better at utilizing them both. In combat, SOLSTICE can utilize fission and fusion reactions to cause nuclear explosions. She mostly uses fission due to her lack of control over fusion, and can produce the fissile materials needed for her fission reactions fairly easily. As a result, she can use any matter to produce her nuclear explosions, and can prime large quantities of matter for detonation in this way. She can use this on opponents to forcibly turn them into nuclear bombs. While the sheer force of the explosions can still injure her, SOLSTICE can absorb much of the energy produced by her explosions, making them remarkably efficient.
 * Solar Plasma: By superheating matter through her nuclear processes, SOLSTICE can produce high amounts of extremely hot plasma, the state of matter that makes up such things as the stars themselves. While she could theoretically use plasma for essentially whatever she pleases, her lack of magical knowledge means SOLSTICE’s applications of this are mostly limited to firing at her opponents. She particularly enjoys creating miniature stars, but due to her lack of magical understanding, she initially lacks control, making these stars very unstable. This suits SOLSTICE’s needs just fine, though, allowing her to throw small, unstable stars at her opponents before detonating them. As her understanding grows, it becomes increasingly easy for her to create and maintain the stars she creates in this manner, allowing her to create more and use them more creatively.
 * The Strong Interaction: The Strong Interaction is the strongest of the four fundamental interactions, responsible for holding together atomic nuclei. Through this power, SOLSTICE can manipulate matter on an atomic level, deconstructing and reconstructing it, or even creating it from scratch. Her control of this power is initially very sloppy and imprecise, making it unreliable. Most of the time, instead of utilizing this, she simply uses her normal magic’s abilities at high power to destroy matter. While it takes time, SOLSTICE gradually begins to figure out how to use the Strong Interaction to its fullest potential, allowing her to use it in a variety of ways.
 * Reconstruction: SOLSTICE can deconstruct and reconstruct her body on a subatomic level if she pleases, as long as there is enough matter available to do so, though she can circumvent this by just creating more. Through this, she can regenerate her body and reconstruct her body elsewhere, as a sort of pseudo-teleportation. Due to her dependence on the Solar Drive, she can neither reconstruct or deconstruct it, leaving it vulnerable. In addition, as with the rest of her Strong Interaction powers, she initially lacks the magical knowledge to properly use it.
 * Shapeshifting: As her magical knowledge became more and more extensive, SOLSTICE eventually became capable of manipulating her own molecular structure with much greater ease. This allows her to control her own body and shape, to the extent that she can completely transform her body to assume the shapes of others, or of anything else.

Basilisk: The beginning of SOLSTICE’s own forays into magical research. As her understanding of magic and science develops, so does her magic, growing in both potency and complexity. Her control over her primary magic of Sol Invictus grows significantly, allowing her to call upon its more complex applications more easily and use it with greater precision. All of her magic becomes vastly more dangerous, backed up by SOLSTICE’s steadily growing magical knowledge and the versatility and power it provides.

While this is a vast improvement over what she had before, her knowledge does not ever near the level of a true, devoted witch, instead reaching the level of a high school student who payed attention and excelled in school, but didn’t put in any more effort in than necessary. A big part of her success comes from her sheer willpower, but her magic is ultimately still sloppy compared to witches who have devoted themselves to magic. Much of Basilisk’s effects stem from SOLSTICE’s inner world, and some of them were already present in a lesser form, and are further strengthened by the knowledge that comes with Basilisk.
 * Hyperion Gorgon: Through her newfound magical knowledge and sheer willpower, SOLSTICE can stop time for a limited amount of time. While she can use this on a larger area, she generally prefers to use it on single targets, as it not only has a lower cost, but is harder to break free from as well. While it is easier for her to apply the effects through eye contact, it is not necessary for the use of the ability. Even when its range is limited to only a single target, stopping time is a costly, draining ability, but SOLSTICE’s effectively limitless pool of magical energy limits the risks of maintaining it, so the real danger is in those with the willpower or magical energy to resist and break out.
 * Using it recklessly against other mages would only result in them figuring out how it works, and in their defenses adapting to better mitigate its effects. Instead, SOLSTICE uses it sparingly, and for brief periods of time, to disorient opponents and open up opportunities. To opponents, it appears only as a flash of light that seems to blot out their thoughts. SOLSTICE would only stop time for a long period of time if she believes there is a perfect opportunity to do so. In truth, though SOLSTICE has developed this power through her own knowledge, it is a reflection of her inner world and her obsessive need for control.


 * Infinity Hydra: The branching, effectively infinite nature of SOLSTICE, her potential, and the power of her choices in escaping death, always showing a way out and always leading to future successes. It allows her to “switch” through any personal possibility that she’s predicted; for example, switching from a possibility in which her opponent hits her to one where they miss, or to one in which the attack’s damage is greatly reduced, and so on. It is even possible for her to escape death at the last possible moment in this way. While SOLSTICE’s possibilities can be destroyed and are lost as she uses them, they replenish themselves over time, and as each is lost, they are broken down into energy, making SOLSTICE stronger.
 * This technique makes killing her more difficult than ever, as she can constantly escape any unfavorable outcome, even death, by switching to preferable possibilities. Infinity Hydra’s effects are limited to her own body, cannot change things outside of her without strain, and can be overcome by attacks that SOLSTICE has no way of surviving or dodging. Theoretically speaking, SOLSTICE could be outlasted even with this, but this is virtually impossible due to her own absurd stamina.


 * Ouroboros: An Override Sigil that SOLSTICE eventually develops, her ever-changing attempt to realize as true of an immortality as possible. Ouroboros does not have merely one function, but works to increase SOLSTICE’s survivability through a variety of means.
 * Adaptation: Ouroboros rapidly analyzes any attack directed at SOLSTICE, and then adapts her defenses appropriately, to best endure the attack. These adaptations can be removed and reapplied by SOLSTICE as she pleases, and can be stripped away by strong enough magic like all magical defenses, though this is very difficult. Though SOLSTICE can adapt to attacks without being hit by them, just as long as she understands them and how they work, being hit by them gives Ouroboros more time to process and analyze the attack, and thus increases the effectiveness of her defenses. This works on top of the normal reactive defenses of an Absolute Barrier. The more SOLSTICE is exposed to a certain type of attack, the more resistant she’ll become. Attacks that are difficult to analyze and process, or that SOLSTICE doesn’t initially understand present a greater challenge for adaptation and can slip through without giving her a chance to adapt. It also has another effect; it will automatically work on strengthening SOLSTICE’s soul in response to any threat, putting her through more strain to continuously increase her own power so that she can surpass any opponent given the time. This effect is constantly active during combat, allowing SOLSTICE to become increasingly powerful over the course of a fight. This aspect of Ouroboros has always existed within SOLSTICE, as reflected by her already unusually potent reactive defenses of her Absolute Barrier, and by how her power explosively rises when she is pushed to her limits, and it has become much more powerful due to the knowledge that led to Basilisk.
 * Eternity: In response to attacks, SOLSTICE can “stop” her own time, freezing her body and soul in their current state to reject change, negate attacks and other magical effects. While this is not absolute, it is incredibly useful against opponents of comparable power, allowing SOLSTICE to briefly activate it to take an attack. Despite freezing her own time, SOLSTICE can move and attack while utilizing it, but it strains her soul, takes a lot of magical energy, and can be worn down by repeated, powerful magical attacks. Eternity activates automatically in response to attacks that SOLSTICE doesn’t think she can safely endure, and has the passive effect of automating her Reconstruction as well.
 * Nega-Stasis: Ouroboros constantly shifts and amplifies its defenses, a consistent state of change to strive against any attempts at harming SOLSTICE. As a result, any attempt to inflict ‘stasis’ on her - stopping time, paralyzing her body, freezing her, petrifying her, anything, even destroying her soul, mind and/or thoughts and killing her - is something that Ouroboros constantly fights against. This ability was based off of Ceres’ own; however, SOLSTICE’s version is inferior in every regard, due to her poor understanding and sloppy magic.

Apophis Drive: The pinnacle of SOLSTICE's magic, fully realized in the form of her inner world. It is only something she can utilize after claiming full control of her magic for herself, absorbing the Solar Drive into her soul and growing past her body's limitations. It is really the ultimate culmination of everything she’s always wanted to be, and is completely inseparable from who she’s become. SOLSTICE can bring it into existence as something close to a pocket dimension, and can drag others into it as well.

Unlike other inner worlds, Apophis Drive does not appear as a single environment nor as a single world. It acts as a complex computing system that can maintain multiple parallel simulations. These simulations can replicate any environment that SOLSTICE has sufficient knowledge of. Due to the limitations of her soul, it can only replicate an area the size of a particularly large galaxy across all of its parallel worlds. Anything that appears to exist beyond its boundaries is only a mirage. In essence, SOLSTICE’s inner world is a hyperreality.

SOLSTICE’s inner world is quite versatile. As a simulation of the real world, it can be used to fool others into thinking they’re in the real world, but most mages can see through this. Its main use is in swapping through various simulations at will, allowing SOLSTICE to switch from one possibility she’s predicted to another. She can move through any possibility she’s accounted for, granting her access to countless futures, but on account of the magical defenses of others, making more significant changes is difficult. She can only switch to futures she’s predicted and sees as possible, and can switch to possibilities that do not stem from her current present and others that may not be conventionally possible by imagining and willing them.

For example, SOLSTICE can switch from a possibility in which she was struck by an attack to one where she wasn’t or from one in which she’s dying to one in which she’s alive. The futures she moves to can affect her opponents, not just herself, making it possible for her to switch to simulations where her opponents have been hit by attacks they’d otherwise dodge and simulations where they’ve been struck down. The full depth of the futures she can realize is much more complex and powerful than this, however, potentially even allowing her to strip her opponents of their powers, kill them outright, or make it so they had never come to face her at all. This brings Infinity Hydra’s abilities to the highest scale, allowing her to control the rest of the world with them. Before, only her own actions and responses were under her control, but now she can seize control of even her opponents’.

While this has very potentially powerful applications, once an enemy mage figures it out, much of the effect is lost, as they can resist the effects and stay in other simulations. In addition, individual simulations can be destroyed by opponents, and potentially escaped if they have the knowledge on how to do so. SOLSTICE can still use its effects on just herself, though. As the simulations are just that - simulations - they still have the laws of the real world, which fight against magic in all its forms, even in SOLSTICE’s hands. Creating new worlds with new laws is extremely difficult for SOLSTICE and may as well be impossible.

SOLSTICE still has control over these simulations as she is the one who controls and initiates them. She can manipulate them more precisely to create objects, such as stars, and trigger phenomena such as supernovas or black holes, though she still needs the knowledge to do so. Within Apophis Drive’s simulations, she can even manipulate time and space, proving capable of easily stopping time on a greater scale and controlling it in more complex ways, such as reversing and accelerating it. She can even abort simulations to erase them and their contents from existence.

The simulations are just that, however, and they are not the truest form of SOLSTICE’s inner world. Its true form is an empty, lonely void, occupied by a single, massive blazing star that acts as the central processing unit of all the simulations. This space is only different from the outside world in that it is contained within SOLSTICE’s soul, and serves to display the most private and vulnerable parts of her soul, so SOLSTICE would much rather avoid having anyone get into it.
 * Simulacra: As part of her simulations, SOLSTICE can simulate other people and their abilities in the form of duplicates. Given that their behavior and performance is completely dependent on SOLSTICE’s knowledge of them and their abilities, they are nearly always imperfect and less dangerous than the original, but that doesn’t make them harmless. While the simulations are normally under SOLSTICE’s control and trapped within her simulation worlds, it is possible - though extremely difficult - for them to escape her control and gain the ability to exist on their own, independent from her and her simulations.

Override Sigil: An extremely advanced form of magical technique used to change the nature of reality around and within the user, allowing them to bend and break through the laws of physics. Due to their complexity, Override Sigils are incredibly difficult to create, use, and control properly, requiring detailed knowledge and a powerful will. In addition, they tend to, invariably, drain a lot of energy and stamina, making it difficult to use them for extended periods of time, even if this can be mitigated by more powerful and willful mages.
 * Relative Lightspeed: A common form of Override Sigil that is ultimately developed in some form or another by most mages as they increase in power and speed. Normally, it would be impossible for even an incredibly powerful and willful mage to break through a universal constant such as the speed of light, theoretically requiring infinite magical energy to do so. However, this Override Sigil circumvents this issue by modifying the user's inner world to change the value of c to whatever they please, raising it as they grow in speed so that they can accelerate past the universal speed limit.

Trivia

 * Alice, as a character concept, is one of my oldest original characters. Her original design and concept were inspired by Utsuho Reiuji, from the Touhou Project, though she has now strayed quite a way from this original idea.
 * She went through two major design phases, both of which I ultimately combined to form the final project; a renegade military AI with an obsession with the sun (SOLSTICE), and the ghost of a young girl killed in a nuclear accident (Alexandria, shortened to Alex, and eventually corrupted into Alice).
 * Alice is very obsessive when it comes to food, and refuses to eat anything that she didn't prepare herself. All her meals are carefully made to incorporate as many food groups as possible to fill her daily requirements, and she only rarely eats unhealthy foods. She's a very, very good cook as a result, and greatly enjoys cooking.
 * She likes snakes for many reasons, but one of the big ones is due to an incident in her childhood, where she was bitten by a rattlesnake. The incident gave her a strong respect for them.
 * Alice's favorite Pokémon would be Banette, the Porygon line, and Arbok.

Others
Notable Victories:

Notable Losses:

Apeiros (The Abyss of Dreams) - Apeiros' Profile

Inconclusive Matches:

Linx Rifelson (Gyrohem) - Linx's Profile