Alumette: Timeline

[Alumette]

1 March, 1980: Grace Angelique Courbier is born in Biot, France, to Jean-Paul Courbier and Angelique Gitane.

8 April, 1989: Angelique Gitane and her mother, Helene Gitane, kill one another in a violent magical battle over Grace's birth. Jean-Paul flees with Grace to Paragon City, where he finds work in his trade as a glassblower to support himself and raise his daughter. They settle in Kings Row.

Grace suffers strange blackouts throughout her lonely childhood.

1992: Jean-Paul loses his job and is unable to find work. He begins drinking, and eventually starts to attend secret "meetings." Grace later discovers that he has fallen in with the Circle of Thorns, believing them to be his salvation. During this time, Grace is pretty much left to her own devices.

1999: Grace is getting ready to hit the clubs when she finds an old necklace in her dad's stuff. She wears it out, and when a young man tries to force himself on her, the club immolates, killing everyone inside except Grace. Michel DuPont of MAGI makes arrangements for charges to be dropped against her, and takes her in for hero training.

During her training, she learns that her blackouts are caused by her innate magical abilities, and she learns to control her powers. Michel is a tough mentor, and Grace's training is intensive. She takes on the name Alumette to separate herself from the horrible circumstances surrounding her becoming a hero. She wants to leave Grace behind completely. She is haunted by horrible nightmares of that night.

Also during this time, she gives the necklace over to MAGI to be kept with its other artifacts. She develops a vengeful hatred for the Circle of Thorns, as it is determined that that is where the necklace was believed to have come from.

2002: The Rikti invasion. Alumette is almost done with her training. During this time, she has a serious blackout which lasts for three days.
July 2004: Alumette is recruited by Dawn Patrol. Here, she finds a kind of "family" structure that she never had. She meets fellow heroes Spect (aka Lee), Crannagh, and Stalking Shadow, among others.

Alumette realizes she has an incredible battle synergy with Spect, and the two grow close. There are rumors that the two are romantically involved. Spect is the first person she allows to call her by her given name, Grace. Spect's magical psychic abilities enable him to help ease her nightmares, a gift for which she is forever grateful. He vows to help her avenge herself and her father against the Thorns.

Fellow teammate Crannagh expresses a romantic interest. Alumette is skittish, but the two do date for a brief time. She realizes that Spect may have feelings for her, and that she may have inadvertently hurt him.

Alumette is having trouble balancing her hatred for the Thorns with her need to love and nurture--an innate need that has never been fulfilled, although she tries by cooking and baking countless treats for all of Dawn Patrol.

Stalking Shadow helps her with this balance by teleporting her to the top of a building. Alumette is terrified of heights, but he makes her stay up there with him while the two have an intense conversation which gets her thinking.

August 2004: Spect resigns from Dawn Patrol, which breaks Alumette's heart. Around this time she also gets a surprise phonecall from her father, which rattles her quite a bit. He is very cagey in the phonecall and Alumette can't tell if he is being himself or if he is completely lost to the Thorns. He sends her a mysterious package of small glass figurines that have been imbued with magical energy, used to control the mind of the owner. Dawn Patrol takes it on as a case, and Alumette struggles with trying to see that justice is done, and missing her father terribly. She wonders if he can be saved, or if he is lost.

She tries to take on the Thorns herself, having decided that by connecting with people she only ends up hurting them. The consequences are disastrous.

Shadow helps her through this again. The two of them are becoming friends, although you'd never know it as they are either engaged in an intense philosophical discussion or are arguing. Meanwhile, he has his own problems as his apartment has been firebombed. Alumette is beside herself with worry, as Shadow goes underground to elude his assassins.

While he is in hiding, Alumette is hospitalized with a life-threatening, mysterious condition. The entire Dawn Patrol bands together to save her. Through their research they discover that she is infected with the Janus virus, a computer virus designed to initiate with use of the Medicomm portal technology. The virus is being sold on the black market to villain groups and is killing heroes outright. Alumette's survival of the virus with "merely" a coma is a fortunate coincidence. RoboMD, of Dawn Patrol, finds a way to reverse the condition. The incident precipitates the city-wide mandatory use of anti-virus software on all heroes' medicomm patches.

After a time, Stalking Shadow makes a deal with the Tsoo to enable him to come out of hiding. Alumette is present for this, in a very rare moment where Shadow is allowing another person a glimpse into his secret life. She meets Luiz da Silva, a close friend and former Intel associate of Shadow’s, for the first time.
Shortly thereafter, Alumette breaks off her relationship with Crannagh.

Not long after that, Alumette and Shadow declare their love for one another in a very unconventional way, after a heated argument in the middle of battle in Boomtown.

September 2004: Alumette retrieves her necklace from MAGI, as part of one of Shadow's plots to lure the Thorns into a trap. The necklace does very strange things to her powers, causing them to fluctuate wildly, and at one point to be completely suspended for a brief time. Michel goes to the Provence region of France to finish research on the necklace. It is believed that Alumette's powers have vanished due to her feelings for Shadow, as the necklace is tied to ancient mythology of a virgin fire goddess. However, shortly thereafter, the powers return in force.

October 2004: Stalking Shadow takes Alumette to Provence for a vacation and to talk to Michel. There, she finds out the truth about her past, and that she is the avatar of the goddess of the necklace, Belisama. She learns also that she was chosen for this role, as it is passed down in her family from mother to daughter.

November 2004: Shadow asks Grace to come live with him, and she accepts.
The couple hosts Thanksgiving for the entire Dawn Patrol at their apartment.

December 2004: Shadow disappears for an undercover assignment. While he is gone, Alumette is terrorized by a stalker, who eventually kidnaps her. The stalker turns out to be a slightly deranged admirer, a former victim to the Circle of Thorns that Alumette rescued on a routine patrol, who was hired by Crey to kidnap Alumette, using her as bait to lure Shadow out into the open so Crey could eliminate him. She escapes. Shortly thereafter Shadow returns.

January 2005: Shadow rescues Alumette’s father’s trapped soul from the Thorns’ Library of Souls. After a brief reunion, Alumette decides to release her father’s soul to the afterlife, finally enabling her to say goodbye to him and have closure.

February 2005: Alumette surprises Shadow with a skydiving trip on Valentine’s Day. Shadow’s special military training means he is a jump master, and so they make the tandem jump. She gets over her fear of heights.

March 2005: Alumette discovers she can fly. She also signs on with Paragon City’s channel 6 to do a weekly cooking program: Bonjour Cuisine with Alumette. The show is extremely popular.

May 2005: Shadow has been called away to DP HQ in the UK for “disciplinary action.” It turns out this is a cover for his investigation into an engineered drug known as Vitriol. He is under deep cover for the investigation. Not even Alumette has contact with him. As a result, she becomes anxious and depressed, fearing for his life. Upon his return, it is discovered that he has become addicted to the drug and requires regular injections to stave off its effects until an antidote can be developed. In the meantime, he and Alumette form a task force with many other heroes to stop the production of the drug in the US.

June 2005: Alumette and Shadow propose marriage to one another in a decidedly unromantic, surprise fashion after a difficult mission. Shadow is still feeling the effects of Vitriol.

July 2005: Robo MD has been acting strangely. Alumette has had certain suspicions about Robo since she first joined Dawn Patrol. Alumette, along with Scarecrow King, Gabriel’s Fury, Helios’ Chosen, and Verdant Mania, help him discover that he possesses a soul: a true first in the AI world. It is discovered that his soul is indeed his, after a fashion. Alumette offers to help Robo discover his own meaning and personal spirituality in his newly-discovered soul.

[Alumette]

October 2005: Shadow returns to his Vitriol investigation, once again leaving Grace behind and zeroing his existence.

Grace initiates the Courbier Foundation, a charity established to provide food and shelter to the homeless; and specifically educational support to homeless children. Features of the Foundation include: a shelter/soup kitchen in Kings Row, a small van fleet to transport homeless children to school, enabling them to continue attending school even if their family needs to move out of the enrollment area due to evictions, etc; and a tutoring center to provide additional educational support. The unveiling of the Foundation and Kings Row center is met with great success.

Grace announces a collaboration between the Courbier Foundation shelter and her cooking program, leveraging the show’s funds and products to develop the Foundation’s initiatives.

Due to the strain of Shadow’s disappearance, Grace’s new Foundation responsibilities, and her routine patrols, Grace resigns from her officer’s commission in Dawn Patrol, accepting a demotion from Leftenant to Patroller.

January 2006: Grace is putting more and more of her efforts into the Foundation’s work. She is seen less and less on routine patrols and is spending a lot of her energy developing her charity. Shadow is still gone, under deep cover. The Foundation is her way of coping with the pain of his absence. She begins to experience harrowing nightmares in which she is immersed in human suffering: war, starvation, fear, and is unable to do anything about it. Additionally, Grace’s doctor discovers she is incapable of having children. This has profound implications for Belisama’s continued presence among mankind.

Grace is visited by two agents from an organization that calls itself “Watchlight.” They inform her that Shadow is dead; killed while on assignment in North Korea, investigating Vitriol.

March 2006: On a television interview, Grace’s surprise announcement of the expansion of the Foundation’s work into a global program, providing medical and educational supplies to third-world countries, most notably in West Africa, is met with fierce popular support. The Foundation’s board of directors discourages the idea, on the basis of inadequate funding. Grace confides to Max, the Foundation’s executive director, that she herself was not intending to start a global program for at least another ten years, and that she believes the announcement was Belisama’s work. Grace believes that Belisama is pursuing her agenda with a new sense of urgency, given Grace’s sterility.

May-July 2006: Grace engages in several trips to Benin, to deliver medical supplies and establish relationships with several Beninese government agencies and NGOs. The Foundation’s global initiatives are underway, helped in part by Grace’s celebrity. Donations are at an all-time high. Privately, she is not coping well with Shadow’s death.

April 2006: Grace begins to develop new friendships to cope with her loneliness; most notably with heroes Chain Lightning, Crimsonstar, and Corner Stone.

Chain Lightning uncovers a Crey plot to distribute a genetically-altering supersoldier-type drug to homeless children via tainted bread delivered to schools and homeless shelters, including Grace’s. Grace and Chain foil the attempt, helped in no small part by Grace’s absolute rage that someone would come after “her” kids.

May 2006: Crimsonstar explains a rare but highly-respected Andromedan Star Brigade custom in which extremely well-matched fighters are given “Binary” status. This status commits the warriors to one another for life and beyond. It is a strategic military partnership, although making a Binary commitment is a significant personal decision not often made among Star Brigade personnel. Noting their exceptional combat synergy, and their deepening personal connection, Crimsonstar asks Alumette to become his Binary. After several weeks of consideration, she accepts.

June 2006: Grace discovers that Shadow is not dead, but is being held in a maximum-security detention center in North Korea. She mounts a top-secret mission, aided by Chain, Crimsonstar, and Stone, among others, to extract him. Corner Stone handles most of the logistics, leveraging his international contacts from his days as a UN and NATO soldier. The mission stands to compromise Dawn Patrol because of its high risk and shady associations. DP Field Commander Shandra Parks, aka Endless One, tacitly supports the mission but asks that Grace distance it from the Patrol in order to maintain plausible deniability. Major Britain, while unable to take part due to the risk it poses to Dawn Patrol, convinces his father, Roland St. James (aka Dark Master) to join the strike team. The mission is successful. Shadow is returned to Paragon City to recover at home. Grace’s sense of admiration and devotion to her friends deepens significantly as a result of their sacrifice.

July 2006: Dawn Patrol Field Commander Shandra Parks, aka Endless One, requests that Alumette re-assume her rank as Leftenant, given the supergroup’s increased responsibilities and new missives from Dawn Patrol UK. Grace accepts the reinstatement of her officers commission.

October 2006: Shadow leaves Grace, this time permanently. Leaving only a terse note explaining that he has once again erased his existence from society, and requesting that she treat him that way as well. All of his belongings have been removed from their apartment. Notably, Grace seems somewhat unsurprised by this, and handles it with a surprising degree of stoicism. He is dead to her.

During a (typically) reckless rescue attempt, Corner Stone is trapped in a collapsed building. Grace speeds to the scene and pulls him out of the wreckage.

November 2006: Grace’s friendships are deepening. She seems to be moving on and returning to regular, active duty and a greater involvement with the Courbier Foundation.

The Foundation launches its latest international initiative: The Courbier Center for Peace, in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo. The Center is designed to address medical and social problems across the African continent. Its first initiative is to establish a child-soldier rehabilitation program. Grace spends several weeks in the DRC to oversee the initiative. While there, she is profoundly shaken by an unexpected experience, although she keeps it to herself, sharing it only with Crimsonstar and Corner Stone after several weeks.

Max, the executive director of the Courbier Foundation, is kidnapped and nearly killed by the Circle of Thorns. In investigating the incident, Grace discovers that a Dark Entity is hunting for her. Michel, her mentor at MAGI, insists she engage in further magical training, as he fears for her safety, and Belisama’s. The Dark Entity is still unnamed, but the knowledge that it is after her has reinvigorated Grace’s sense of urgency to protect the goddess and ensure that Her presence remains despite Grace’s inability to provide an heir to the mantle of avatar. The Dark Entity also inspires a greater fear in Alumette than she has ever known, although she keeps this fear hidden from all save those who know her best.

She has taken to staying with Corner Stone on a regular basis, at his request. The security systems in the compound where he resides provide her with a sense of much-needed sanctuary under the current circumstances. Gossip columns have occasionally been running rumors of a romantic connection between Grace and Corner Stone, although rumors of a romance between her and Crimsonstar are equally prevalent. The press has been having a field day with this subject ever since Stalking Shadow’s initial disappearance in December of 2004.

January 2007: While on routine patrols, Grace encounters several members of the Zenvious Foundation. She is impressed with their poise in combat and their kindness, and new friendships are forged.

April 2007: Grace is awarded Hero of the City status. Grace puts her apartment up for sale since she has not been staying there for some time. An interested buyer turns out to be Stalking Shadow, recently returned to Paragon City. He buys the apartment from her.