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4

4

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1

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20

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Chloe van Duijen -- 1/4th Dutch, 1/4th, Cherokee, ½ indeterminate Caucasian -- was born to the first two hippies in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Ahead of their time, they tried to introduce a progressive political agenda to a community that was very satisfied with the status quo. Chloe grew up believing in the need for change, understanding that people did not always recognize their own long-term best interests. But as much as Chloe loved and admired her parents, she saw their messy, clumsily-organized local recycling and political action work as ineffectual. This wasn't the way you changed the world. She resolved to do it right.

Her teen rebellion consisted of enlisting in AFROTC and studying economics at an Ivy League school. She drove herself mercilessly to perfection, acing every class and excelling in every athletic event in which she participated. She found a natural aptitude for languages, and took to honing her skills by interacting with the foreign student groups on campus when she could find the time.

Somewhere, in the midst of all of this, she was drawn into the company of one Saul Numen, a scientific genius who happened to register for her anthropology class. Those few months with him came as a joyful, wild shock, but one that ended quickly enough. He had his plans, and she had her obligation to the Air Force.

Her service consisted of flying air force transport planes all over the world. She developed a lifelong love of the freedom of the air, but one she knew would not satisfy her burning need to make change. Her service also brought her into contact with people from all walks of life, both American and foreign, and gave her a greater appreciation for the complexity of international relations.

After finishing her term, she walked away from a military eager to keep her and became drawn into international aid work. She rattled around between different organizations, at first working as a pilot and gradually taking a lead role in planning and carrying out operations. She worked all over the world, always trying to extend the reach of aid efforts.

Chloe revelled in it. No matter how great the challenge, she pushed to meet it. And when Saul walked back into her life during a stint with Doctors without Borders, it seemed to her that life could get no better. Six months later they were standing in front of the Dalai Lama, man and wife, and going back into the world to do more good.

The discovery that she was pregnant was thrilling, but disorienting to Chloe. It seemed to her she should want to settle down, because that's what you did when you had children. But she didn't feel it, not one bit. She logged it off to some sort of delay in her maternal instincts, and she and Saul went back to the U.S. He took a faculty position at Johns Hopkins University, and Chloe entered law school.

It didn't take them long to realize that having children had been the best decision of their lives, but trying to settle down had been outright silly. It wasn't that they were miserable, exactly, just that it wasn't who they were, and it wasn't the life they wanted for their children. Saul took advantage of the time to make them a pile of money with a patent, and Chloe parlayed it into wealth with a series of shrewd investments. By the time Chloe finished law school, now mother of two, they were financially and emotionally ready to get back on the road.

They set out again, working with aid agencies, but this time with a camera in hand to document what they saw. The family's documentaries won acclaim, with Saul's ingenuous yet dignified camera presence walking the audience through the meaning behind the images. Chloe loved it, knowing they were helping change the world not just with their hands, but with the images they captured. The years went by in a blur of travel and political action. And if, in what she believed were her final moments over a Turkish lake, she regretted the risks she had taken with her children’s lives, she could not honestly say it felt wrong. The best gift you can give your children is the will to change the world. After all, it was what her parents had left her.

The family's metamorphosis led them to still more dazzling travels and adventures. Chloe loved meeting the interesting people -- and species -- that came with her new life. She still worried for her children and her husband, but focused on keeping them organized, prepared, and disciplined, believing they could face anything so long as they stuck together.

She was wrong. The defeat at the hands of the Fatal Four left the family destroyed. Cerebellum tore at Chloe's mind exceptionally harshly, leaving her not simply amnesiac, but actively insane. He feared the intense strength of will he saw there, and tried to destroy it.

He failed. It was long, painful months before that will re-asserted itself, but it did, as inevitably as a glacier bulldozing aside the damage he had done. Once she recovered her memories, she broke out of the Swiss mental hospital where she had been imprisoned, assembled old allies, and set about finding her family.

Then she called in more of the favors those years of superheroics had earned. She called the CIA. She called MI6. She called organizations so secretive that even their acronyms were classified. And she tracked the Fatal Four to Mexico City, and Saul led the team to the confrontation. And if Chloe broke Cerebellum's jaw and three ribs during that fight, well, who could blame her for erring on the side of caution?

The decision to send the children away after that was a hard one, and one that Chloe was never entirely comfortable with. But she no longer kidded herself about their safety, and could not face bringing them into harm's way. She even talked with Saul about giving up their itinerant lifestyle and settling down, but in the end, she knew neither of them could stick to such an arrangement. So, she left the children
behind.

It was never the same after that. All their adventures and successes failed to fill the void in her life, and despite the whirlwind visits, frequent video calls, and long e-mails, she felt the children growing away from them. Balthasar's decision to join up in a super-team hit her particularly hard, though not because she was unhappy with it. Sure, she wanted him to finish school and go to college, but maybe that could wait. And she worried he was doing it for the wrong reasons, trying to prove something to his family, but maybe there was more to it than that. She was certainly grateful for his initiative, his eagerness to get out and make a better world (though she wondered if perhaps enslaving himself to an international conglomerate was really the best way to start). What really bothered her was that if he were going to risk his neck, why couldn't it be as part of the family?

That was a part of what convinced Chloe it was time to re-form the team. Partly it was the knowledge that she and Saul were no longer young, and there was no telling how many more years they had in their current life. Partly it was the knowledge that very soon all her children would have lives they would not want to leave behind. And partly it was the fear that if they never worked together as a team again, they might never really be a family again.

Chloe has often wondered if the family's various powers were in some way influenced by their nature. Certainly, her own ability to fly at high speed is a natural extension of her love of piloting. And her great strength, powerful force field, and ability to strike swiftly and accurately seem extensions of her intense nature. But the fact that she has to shrink to 14 cm tall to do any of that seems to her a very strange twist. If it is true that this is some reflection of her, she suspects either that this stems either from her attention to detail, or from an unconscious reminder that she should stop taking herself so damn seriously.

Saul has tried to explain that the whole thing represents a distortion of the fabric of reality. The shrinking effect actually arises from her warping the space around her, changing the nature of her interface with the rest of the universe. Once it has been
changed in this way, it responds to her will, manifesing as great strength, flight, and resistance to damage. Chloe thinks it's sweet the way Saul still tries to explain super-science to her, even after all these years.

Chloe was always the team's scout, gathering intelligence covertly. In combat, her role is typically as "guardian angel," taking advantage of the fact that opponents can rarely see her -- let alone hit her -- to move around the battlefield as needed. In the old days, she used this ability to shepherd and safeguard the children. She views her ability to shrink and protect others by pulling them into her pocket universe as one of the most useful aspects of her abilities, but so many hostages and allies seem more concerned about their dignity than their safety.

One might expect that her powers would have made it difficult to maintain discipline with the children, but this was not the case. While enemies and allies often reacted with disdain or amusement, her children adapted to the side effects of her new abilities and soon learned that she was still Mom, whatever her size.

Chloe is a tall, broad-shouldered woman with dark skin, black hair, and striking green eyes. Her hair is long, but is usually tied back, and combined with her chiselled features this gives her a somewhat severe look. Her face has begun to show some lines and wear, and some gray has crept into her hair, but there is still an air of intense focus and energy about her.

She normally wears the New Men uniform in public, but tends to accessorize depending on the situation. She has been known to wear a suit jacket over it in business settings, or her old leather bomber jacket when she wants to adopt a more casual air. When the occasion calls for formalwear, she usually prefers simple and elegant clothing over designer labels.

Lately, she has begun to wear a pair of wire-frame glasses for reading.