Demetria

Demetria Valasellis

"Imagine a world without supervillains, where every metahuman is a hero and feels a deep connection to the lives around them."

— Demetria

Compassionate, kind, and wise, Demetria is a gifted empath, with the ability to read and control the emotions of others. Although she never settled on a hero name, she nonetheless joined the Liberty Squadron in her youth. While she was there, she met and fell in love with Marty Maddox (Prodigy). To keep his superhero identity hidden, the two of them married in secret, and although Demetria thought herself unable to have children, they had a daughter, Danica.

As young Danica was growing up, Demetria and Marty grew further apart, in no small part due to their different philosophies about superheroing. Demetria had faith in people, but Marty had grown more cynical, believing that people needed to be saved from themselves. This argument came to a head when a teenaged Danica announced that she had decided to take after her parents, becoming the superheroine known as Starbrite. This drew an even deeper wedge between Demetria and Marty, as she was supportive of their daughter's choice, and he was dead-set against it.

Tragedy befell the family when Starbrite was killed in the line of duty. Afterwards, Marty isolated himself even further, but after a mourning period, Demetria recognized that other vulnerable young superheroines were still out there, and many could likely suffer a similar fate. Resolving herself to help them, Demetria established The Sanctuary, a safe space and training ground that exclusively catered to young superheroines to give them a place to hone their abilities, learn about the dangers they faced, and build alliances with other like-minded young women.

Unfortunately, Demetria's empathy would ultimately prove to be her undoing. Overwhelmed by the fear, hate, and madness that she saw as a rising tide in the world, she secretly began to use her powers to brainwash villains against their will into becoming heroes. (See: Enchantrix, Viridian, Blamestorm) She then found a way to amplify her abilities to reach out to the entirety of Faraday City to perform this "psychic surgery" to everyone at once, knowing that it would kill or cause dangerous psychosis in a portion of the population, but with the side effect that the survivors would have their latent metagenes activated, causing them to ascend into metahumans. Knowing that the ensuing chaos would almost certainly kill tens of thousands of people, Prodigy, Prodigious Girl and others confronted her. Ultimately, Prodigious Girl was able to convince Demetria to not give in to her fear, and Demetria stopped her plan. Unfortunately, however, The Sanctuary was destroyed in the process, and Demetria was killed. (See: Identity Crisis)

Jump to:

• Powers and Abilities
• Items and Equipment
• Locations
• Affiliations
• Known Relatives

Powers and Abilities

• Emotion Detection - Able to read others' emotional states, even at a distance.
• Emotion Manipulation - Demetria can control others' emotions without their awareness of it. The emotional states can seemingly last for several hours. For instance, she is able to inspire feelings of trust and loyalty. It's possible that she also does this unconsciously.
• Lie Detection - While not a mind reader, she can pick up if someone is being dishonest with her.
• Empathic Projection - An offensive ability, Demetria is able to stun a person into unconsciousness by blasting them with an overwhelming psychic barrage of conflicting emotions.
• Power Perception - Demetria was able to use her powers somehow to detect Prodigious Girl's unusual abilities. Whether Demetria had a special sense for this is unclear. It's possible that she simply detected her empathic abilities being reflected back at her by PG's power mimcry ability.
  Show spoiler

  Which also begs the question if Demetria had other interactions with the Kindred. And if so, when and with whom.
• Mental Reconditioning - With the aid of her mental reconditioning booster, Demetria is able to brainwash villains into becoming more empathetic and virtuous, essentially turning them into heroes. In a small percentage of people, the process doesn't take, causing them to have a violent psychotic break, as it did with Viridian. It's uncertain how long this reconditioning lasts, if it needs to be reapplied, or if it's permanent, but so far with Enchantrix it appears to have lasted for at least several months after the destruction of the Sanctuary.

Items and Equipment

None

Locations

The Sanctuary

See: The Sanctuary {facility}

Affiliations

• Leader of The Sanctuary
• Former member of The Liberty Squadron

Known Relatives

• Marty Maddox / Prodigy (ex-husband)
• Danica Valasellis / Starbrite (daughter, deceased)

Status
Deceased

Sidekicks

• Bhramari
• Enchantrix
• (Likely others, perhaps many others)

Aliases
Demi

Circumstances of Death

Died while at the Sanctuary while saving the city from her earlier psychic attack

Ruled Locations

• The Sanctuary {facility}

Appearances

• IC