Alma Hannah Cole-Derrier

Divinity and Nightmares
Alma Hannah Cole-Derrier is familiar with being different. For one, her father was a Welsh-American Thespian, having met his sweetheart in the New English countryside while trying to stake out an improv career. Said sweetheart was a Quebec native, born of the Francophone majority, and a folk artist who was also trying her hand at an independent career in the art world. A year later, the two were engaged and married, with Alma on the way just a few months after. They gained dual citizenships, moved to the U.S. and bought a house in the same countryside they found each other in. Their daughter arrived in February of 1986, the evening snowy and quiet. To the Cole-Derriers, life was complete and idyllic.

Alma grew up in the small, rural public schools of the countryside, the buildings so small, there was no need for a PA system — you could hear everything from the office across the hall. She was a smart little biscuit, always doing well in school, finding a passion for arts and crafts. She found that she liked working with metal best, finding old springs and cogs to string up and put back together, moving on to tinkering with electronics afterwards. Homemade wind chimes, picture frames and jewellery were often found in her room and around her house, her family more than happy to encourage Alma's artistic streak.

As Alma grew older, however, she moved away from the artsy tendencies of her childhood. The closest secondary school to her house was in a city a long drive away — high school was a bit of a shock. All of the people she grew up with were either gone, hard to find or mixed in with the high school crowd. Alma had always been a quiet girl, with one or two friends at the most; the overwhelming environment of a city school crowd — complete with the fact that many came from a rougher neighbourhood — shoved Alma into a shell. She withdrew, becoming more quiet as time passed, no longer the shy but friendly girl of her childhood. The inevitable teasing that ensued made Alma harden herself, and she grew up with a stoic demeanour that displayed a great amount of temperance. Teenage angst would pass, and though she had her moments, Alma took pride in being a studious, obedient pupil who took time to push the limit. She graduated as an honour student.

Alma wasn't quite sure what college would bring. After finding a school not too far from home, she looked at taking a couple of general courses, testing the waters until she figured out her educational future. It wasn't until her history professor in high school introduced her to a friend — an enlister, and former wingman of said history professor — that Alma discovered the Air Force. After doing some research, she found her heart captured by the work and mission of the Air Force.

Things went roughly with her parents, at first. The arguments were of usual concerns — Alma getting injured or killed, the costs of going to some of the top military schools in the country, how Alma was going to support herself out of the house, etc. But her parents were also worried about Alma's artistic tendencies — she had been a wonderful little craftswoman-to-be as a child. Why not opt for the more peaceful job? Why risk her neck for a war that, in the eyes of the Cole-Derriers, was unnecessary and drawn-out?

But Alma was undeterred. She made peace with her parents, and hesitantly, they let her pack up and leave. Alma completed all the necessary courses, contracted with the Air Force and passed through training with flying colours (pun not intended). However, the life of a flyboy wouldn't be the life for her; she had seen the pilots in action, disgusted at their cocky attitude and "privileged", sit-on-your-thumb-all-day antics. She instead took up work as an air force mechanic, and was first kept at Langley, then later deployed to Iraq. There, she was known as a solid, sensible Corporal, cool and not to be argued with, although she had her more...wild moments. One such incident was distracting a group of insurgents with a thrown rock, running wildly across the ground behind them before diving into the bushes — and it worked, with her escaping (mostly unscathed). On a pile of more such incidents, some weirder than others, more than once did people say she was the recipient of pure, dumb luck.

This lucky streak wouldn't continue forever, though.

While on a particularly uneventful, routine flight to another base, Alma's pilot suffered a mental break that shot him to hell in an instant. Without warning, he began screaming and bawling in the cockpit, and quickly ended up hurtling towards a nearby mountain. She was forced to eject, scratched and battered from a hard fall and a parachute that barely deployed. The rest of the mechanical and medical personnel on-flight ejected as well, though some weren't fast enough and died in the crash. Others were lost to the desert, and in all, ten out of twenty-four people were recovered.

Four days after the crash, Alma was found as a quivering, feverish wreck, dehydrated and her wounds infected. She was flown out to a field hospital, where a psych evaluation found that she was shaken to pieces by the event. What didn't help was when she was told that the pilot had been showing signs of mental illness — she went from dumbfounded to enraged, and broke down badly from what she saw as a violation of her trust. To put that man at the helm of a plane, when he was already on the radar for having an unstable mind? Intense nightmares and flashbacks followed, and Alma was determined to be unfit for duty, sent home with sleeping medication that she didn't take very well to. She felt like her world was crumbling after the honourable discharge, and her parents tried to be as supportive as possible, always reminding Alma that she had other things to live for. To help take her mind off the traumatic events in Iraq, Alma took up her hobby of fixing electronics and making small crafts once more.

How Alma became one of the Distant Ones is something she's uncomfortable to divulge. In truth, it was only after a rash of suicide attempts, after PTSD treatment and counselling failed to help her overcome her damaged mind and grief. The first time, she leapt off a five-story building, and was sent to the hospital with a severe concussion, a broken collarbone, rib damage and a broken leg. There she underwent intense treatment and medication, all of which stacked up a large bill she and her family struggled to pay. Even though she was on a suicide watch, she managed to escape the building six more times, and jumped off a roof twice. Both times luck saved her — once by a dumping bin, the next by a balcony she hadn't realized was below her.

Little did Alma know she was being watched. In the unit she had been stationed in, there were a handful of Surthu Athilal, who groomed and hand-picked members of the USAF to join their pantheon. Alma, to them, was a lost little chick, a hatchling whose Seeking was damaged by her trauma. When she climbed and hesitated to jump, it was almost as if she admired the sky, and sought the lifting sensation falling brought. When she jumped those two times, they swore they saw her try to flap, as if she were a bird in a human skin. Thus, they chose her, and pulled enough strings to organize a kidnapping from the hospital. Alma was taken, led to the highest building in whatever city she spent her medication-induced haze in, and thrown off.

She didn't remember the ritual that changed her, but she sure as anything remembered the fall. The explosion of feathers, the flapping of wings — and the inhuman cry that sounded from her throat. For the first time since she was put in a psych ward, she didn't want to fly; she wanted to flap, soar as high as she could and burst into the sky and survive.

And so, as the aerie watched on, she did.

They called her "Shuat", after a supposedly-feminized version of an Egyptian sky-god's name. They said she foreshadowed good things to come, and that she could find a place again among the USAF. She would rule over the Below, that which was below their soaring wings, and she would be happy again. Alma was not, and abandoned the aerie after a week of being mysteriously discharged from the hospital. They told her to return if she ever needed anything, but she wouldn't; the military had no place in her life anymore. The transformation into...into the thing she now was, while somewhat liberating, had ripped apart all trust she had in people.

Sometime later, Alma ran across a young woman named Kerry-Ann O'Malley, who touted herself as "an avenging angel of what you don't want to see". Kerry-Ann was a hardcore vigilante, not trusting any of the police to catch the various murderers, kidnappers and crazed gunmen who were on the run. Alma would later discover that Kerry-Ann was actually a tier-one Hunter, and one who chased slashers at that; she had abandoned her cell long ago. They hadn't agreed with her brutal methods, but Alma did, finding an odd friendship with the spunky avenger. The two worked on cases together, Alma using her falcon form to survey and scout, while Kerry-Ann did most of the killing.

Then Kerry-Ann disappeared, after an excursion on the infamous "Highway of Tears" claimed her as one of its many victims. Alma had been wary of going down that Canadian road, and after the slasher they'd been chasing crossed the border into that area, she had a very, very bad feeling. Kerry-Ann was never seen again, and Alma was left alone; the police found no trace of her. The only thing they found was her car, which was parked at the edge of the road and untouched.

Once more, Alma flies alone. But even though the temptation of death pricks at the fringes of her mind, she has found purpose. If she is of the blood of the divine, she feels, then shall she take up the mantle of the judge. She will continue Kerry-Ann's bloody work, hunting down the parasites of the world, rending them to shreds as a destroying angel. Thus, the avenging angel that is this Suthu Athilal has come to Atlanta.

Appearance
Alma is fair-skinned with a touch of farmer's tan, which darkens in the summer. She has a dash of freckling on her nose, but it is light enough that it usually goes unnoticed. Her hair is ash brown and long, falling down to the lower back but usually kept wrapped into a bun, held back by an orange bandanna. (If she cuts her hair, it's usually in a bowl cut with long fringe at the front.) Her hands and feet are calloused, and her skin has some battle scars from time spent in Iraq. Her eyes are a cool grey, piercing and steely when they are not distant and empty. She is between 5'5" and 5'6", 63 kilograms in weight.

Threads
Much like a book, Alma's story is sorted into "chapters", which consist of a fluctuating number of threads that revolve around a certain time period. All are loosely connected by some sort of association; for example, the first "chapter" revolves around Alma flying to and arriving in Georgia, plus the satellite events around that. The entirety of Alma's story is called The Book of Shuat.

THE BOOK OF SHUAT

Prologue

.: The Avenging Angel - http://www.thedirge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=526

Chapter One

.: A Perch In Atlanta - http://www.thedirge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=561

.: Grind of the 7-11's Gears - http://www.thedirge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=619

.: They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha! - http://www.thedirge.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=624

Sheet:Alma Hannah Cole-Derrier