Origin of Night Mask

“My parents are strange ones indeed.”
Kamadev Scabella finished medical school at USC and was completing his internship at USC Medical Center in Los Angeles. Life was good for the young man. An up and coming surgeon, he was offered a post at the prestigious Cedars-Sinai in their neurosurgery program. It was during the last month of his intership when he met Chiyoko Kosetsu. Chiyoko was a fiery woman, a member of the LAPD. While on duty one night she was wounded in a shot-out with Overthrow terrorists and taken to USC Medical for treatment. Kamadev was the doctor on duty that night and tended to the wounded officer. He was drawn to the young woman who had incredible resolve as well as a good dose of beauty and after she was discharged from the hospital began to court her.

Chiyoko’s mother, Naori, was the black sheep of the prominent Kosetsu family in Tokyo. She had fell in love with a gaijin businessman and run off to be with him in Los Angeles. However ten years after giving birth to Chiyoko, her father’s eye wandered and he left his bride and daughter. Naori was crushed and it took her many years for her to recover, especially since she felt as though she could never return home. Chiyoko grew up slightly bitter, having to take care of her mother and herself. She grew to be tough and self-reliant and after high school, went and joined the Los Angeles Police Academy. One night while on patrol she and her partner answered a call. Agents of the terrorist organization Overthrow were holed up in a warehouse. Chiyoko was wounded in the firefight against the terrorists.

Kamadev was insistent and soon, he and Chiyoko were seeing each other. They dated and then were engaged for a number of number of years before marrying. During this time, Kamadev became a noted neurosurgeon and Chiyoko became a LAPD detective. While Kamadev wanted to have children, Chiyoko wanted to wait until she at least became detective. She had worked too hard toward this goal to be stopped now. Though she wont admit it now, after Chloe was born, she was sorry she waited so long.

When young Chloe was but a year old, Chiyoko’s mother was diagnosed with inoperable and terminal cancer. It was her one great wish to return to Tokyo and make peace with her parents and family. She wanted Chiyoko and her family to come along too. It was difficult decision but they all packed up for a four week vacation that turned into thirteen years.


“No one bothered to ask me what I wanted to do.”
Naori made peace with her parents and died in her sleep some three years later. Chiyoko, having never been to Japan, greatly embraced her heritage. What started as a four week vacation soon turned to the Scabella family moving to Tokyo for thirteen years. Chiyoko joined the Tokyo police while Kamadev secured a position at the International Medical Center in Shibuya-ku. Chloe grew up Japanese attending school, where she showed a great talent for gymnastics. However her mixed heritage did cause her some many problems, in the purist Japanese society. She grew up picked on and even got into a few fights. She had one true and steadfast friend however, Hoshi Fushiki. Hoshi, a bit of an outsider herself because of her vast intelligence (skipping grades in school and in various advanced placement classes). The two bonded easily, helping each other with their various weaknesses.

Time passed as Chloe grew up relatively happy, oblivious the growing rift in her parents’ relationship. Kamadev was offered a job at Freedom Medical Center as Chief of Neurology. It was the crowning jewel of his career and he wanted to take it. He came to Japan, sacrificing a promising career at Cedars-Sinai for Chiyoko, he felt it was his due now. After many arguments, Chiyoko relented and it was finally decided that they would make the move. She realized how selfish she had been and did want to make her marriage work and not fall apart like her parents.

Chloe however did not understand. She loved Tokyo and because of her skill in gymnastics had made more friends and even was being scouted by Japanese Olympic Committee for a spot on the National Team. “The change will be good for you,” her parents told her. She sulked and threw tantrums and even ran away once, but Hoshi had secretly given her up. Hoshi felt guilty but was being practical. None the less before her friend left, she gave Chloe a special phone, one of a pair. Something she made, the phones piggybacked (ahem, “hacked”) onto local cellular and satellite connections and allowed the two girls to talk for free anytime they wanted.

Chloe was still crushed and lonely. She missed her friends and the hustle of Tokyo. Freedom City, for all its architectural wonders was pale in comparison. The girls on the gymnastics team at her new school were jealous of her greater ability and for the most part were spiteful. She quit the team when her parents arranged for a private coach to help her along her dreams of Olympic gold. Still school was still a bother and home was not very much better. Both parents worked long and odd hours. Kamadev was putting long hours in at the hospital, managing the neurology department. Chiyoko was on the fast-track to join the STAR Squad as a detective, because of her past investigations into Shadow and Overthrow. There was very little time for poor alienated Chloe, left alone at home with her nanny Isabella and her cat Lucretia.


“Good for me they said...”
It took nearly a year for Chloe to really feel comfortable. She continued to train with Coach Parenko and honed her skill. She had made friends with a new transfer student, one Alex Mason from Atlanta. But the best thing ever was when Hoshi called her in the middle of the night and excitedly told her that she was moving to Freedom City. Being the genius she is, she had graduated at fifteen and was offered a full scholarship to the Hanover Institute of Technology in Freedom City. Hoshi’s parents had talked to her’s and because she was still a minor, Hoshi would be living with Chloe and her family while attending college.

Sixteen and her sophomore year, she was hanging out at the Millennium Mall with Hoshi and Alex celebrating Chloe’s win at the regional gymnastics competition. Feeling a bit sore and light-headed, Chloe excused herself and went to the restroom to splash some water on her face, leaving her friends to shyly flirt with each other. As she stared at herself in the mirror, a pain bloomed in the back of her mind. She gasped, knees buckling and eyes closed tight as the pain slowly faded. What shook her out of her reverie was a cry for help and what felt like a hard slap across her face. Hoshi and Alex saw Chloe run out of the restaurant they were eating at in the food court of the mall. They looked at each other once and took after her, but they were no match for her physical prowess and quickly fell behind.

Chloe ran as fast and as hard as she could. She could feel the fear and was drawn to it. She could feel the pain and it burned in her an urgent need. It all made her sick to her stomach but as suddenly the feeling came upon her, it was gone. She continued ahead following that fleeting trail of fear, until she came upon the scene of a robbery turned murder. Three men were busy stealing the money and jewelry off of Betty. Chloe knew her name was Betty. She was 23, newly married and had just finished shopping for new husband’s birthday gift. She had felt this woman’s fear, felt every stinging blow she received as her murders beat her to death. Righteous indignation filled Chloe as she cried out in impotent rage.


“So I leapt before I looked. It’s a bad habit I know.”
The murder’s caught her before she could run away. Chloe fought back as best she could but was soon overpowered by their number and strength. She would’ve met the same fate as Betty, were it not for a brave passerby. He came out of nowhere, drawn to Chloe’s cry for help. Robert Jones saved Chloe that night. The three men were tossing Chloe around between them with a variety of blows. There was talk of taking her with them for less then savory reasons when the leader drew his knife to end it. That is when Robert charged him with a lowered shoulder, bowling the man over and slamming him into a dumpster.

Chloe fell to the ground, her left eye swollen, nose broken and spitting up blood. She still managed to grab one of her assailants by the ankles, tripping him up so that her savior could make short work of him. She saw that her hero was a skillful fighter and showed little mercy to the murders. The last thing Chloe remembered of that night was a strong, handsome face peering down at her with worry. She think she managed a smile before passing out.

She woke up in the hospital with a start. Her father was asleep in a chair next to her bed, head resting next to her. He was still wearing the surgical scrubs he was wearing when he received the call that his daughter was brought into the ER. All told she had a concussion, a broken nose, lost three teeth, suffered multiple contusions, had a ruptured spleen and would have a small scar that was half way between her right eye and ear. Over the next couple of days she was inundated with visits from friends and family alike. Her mother informed her that the three murders were caught, found sealed in a dumpster (unknown to all, thanks to Lyger) after Robert took Chloe to the hospital. Robert was there as well. Chloe’s father tried to find someway of rewarding the young man who saved his only daughter’s life.


“The good times never last.”
Despite the fact that her parents separated and then finally filed for divorce during this time, the next two years were some of Chloe’s happiest times. Life was good, filled with her new love, her good friends and wonderful fortune. She started dating the brave Robert Jones after she got out of the hospital, even though he was a couple years older than her. He also started to teach her how to fight, in the strange and fluid martial art he knew. Hoshi and Alex did eventually hook up, though it took a while because Hoshi kept overanalyzing everything. Chloe was also placing in the top three in Regional and National gymnastics competitions and had just made the Olympic Team.

She and her father were out celebrating her making the Team and discussing her upcoming training needs. They had just finished dinner in a nice restaurants near the hospital when she suffered another intense headache. The pain was so immediate, so intense, she could not warn her father of the danger in time as a young man stepped up the their car at an intersection and emptied the entire clip of a 9mm into the car.

It was the second time Chloe woke up in a hospital. She had taken two rounds to the chest and suffered a collapsed lung. Her father had shielded her from most of the gunfire with his own body as best he could and paramedics declared him dead on the scene. Chloe was in the hospital for six weeks, losing her spot on the Olympic Team to an alternate. Truth be told, Chloe did not care anymore for her heart now burned for revenge. Twice she was powerless to save someone and she vowed never again.


“So I was asked to join a different team.”
During her last week in the hospital, Robert brought a well-dressed woman to visit her. He introduced her as a Miss Brandy Matherson and she had a unique proposal for Chloe. It seemed that ever since the night they first met, the mysterious hero Lyger had taken in young Robert to train him for a very special spot on a very special team. His natural fighting ability and bravery made him a natural choice for inclusion. He lobbied for Chloe to join the Crime Fighters but her youth had made Lyger wary. Miss Matherson, representing some of the hero’s mundane interests, came to ask Chloe if she wanted to join.

“You have much in the way of raw talent and despite Lyger’s protests, Robert has been teaching you how to fight. Lyger and myself are worried that you will use what you’ve learned poorly and try to hunt down the man who shot you and killed your father. We would hate to see your talent squandered on dark revenge. Join Lyger’s Crime Fighters and let him teach you to use your talents responsibly and wisely.”

Chloe didn’t hesitate when she said yes and told her mother she was going to study with a new gymnastics trainer.


“You know what they say about relationships born in the heat of the moment...”
Besides Robert, Lyger had one other student, a young woman named Lori de la Rocha. Both her and Robert had been training with Lyger for sometime already but Chloe used her incredible drive and quickly caught up in skill and prowess. The only edge that her two fellow trainees had over Chloe were the fact that they had metahuman powers. Lyger helped them not only to develop their power and skill but also helped them to develop their own crime fighting personas. Lori was going by Shrike and Robert, Twilight. Chloe was given the code name of Night Mask.

During training, Chloe spent less and less time with Robert. While Robert wanted to take this opportunity to get closer to Chloe he was a bit disappointed that she wanted to spend more time training and honing her skills instead of spending it with him. Because Chloe was also behind him and Lori, training-wise, Lyger spent more and more time with Chloe teaching her. A seed of doubt crept into Robert’s mind, that after some time, it quickly grew into jealousy. He would stand enveloped in his manifested shadows and watch them. He mistook Chloe’s intensity and Lyger’s attention for something else. Lyger knew something was wrong but did not notice the danger until it was too late, when he poisoned Chloe and came close to killing Lyger during a training session, piercing the hero’s armor with a poisoned blade. His duplicity uncovered and his jealous plot to kill his girlfriend and imagined lover foiled, Robert fled the Matherson Estate by stepping into a patch of shadow and teleporting away.


“Never again.”
The next few months went by strangely. Chloe was heartbroken, still unsure as to why Robert wanted to kill her. Her mother always talked about going back to Japan, especially after she and Kamadev divorced. Since Chloe was old enough to be on her own and training with the Matherson woman, she decided to make good on that want, after making sure that Chloe enrolled in college. Brandy managed to get Hoshi to move into the estate and stay with Chloe while she was finishing up college and started to work on her graduate degrees. Her reasoning however was two fold, for she was quite impressed with the young woman’s technical ability and wanted to enlist her skill and expertise.

Chloe also began her search for her father’s killer. It took a lot of hard work but she tracked down the gunman and cornered him in his home. He was no match for the enraged and now highly skilled Night Mask. She methodically stalked him throughout his apartment, anger burning in her heart and hatred in her eyes, while he kept asking why she was doing this. She had thrown the man against a wall covered with newspaper clippings and they came loose as he slumped to the floor. She was about to bring her staff down when her eyes glanced at the scraps of newspaper, reading their headlines.

“Man dies during simple operation.”
“Famed doctor Kamadev Scabella sued for malpractice.”
“Medical carelessness or incompetence?”

Recovering in the hospital from her beating, Chloe had no idea that her father had accidentally killed a patient that night. He hurried a simple operation after finding out she was in the ER and it left his patient dead.

She looked down at the broken man under her and gathered her resolve. With tears streaming down her face, she brought down her staff as hard as she could. The floor next to the young man’s head exploded in splinters as Chloe screamed in impotent rage. Drained, physically and emotionally she slumped to her knees beside the man and cried.

She heard Lyger creep in behind her. Lyger had followed Chloe and was prepared to stop her should she go too far.

“You knew,” Chloe whispered. “Didn’t you?”

“It was something you had to face,” Lyger said.

Chloe stood and stared Lyger in the eye. “Did I pass your little test?” she sneered. Chloe didn’t wait for Lyger to answer as she stumbled out of the apartment, leaving Lyger there to turn the man into the authorities.

Chloe stood atop the apartment building and watched the police take the man into custody. Taking a deep breath she let it go and with it the anger she had held onto for so long. She now had the skill as well as the training. She was not powerless anymore to stand by impotently while people around her were hurt or killed. She whispered two words into the chill of the night... “never again.”