Centuria
Katherine Leeds (a.k.a. Kate)
History does repeat itself sometimes. So it was that during a freak thunderstorm over Freedom City, something emerged into Earth’s dimension, streaking across the sky like a bolt of lightning to crash in Wharton State Forest. The configuration of the metallic capsule at the crash-site was hauntingly familiar to many of the members of the Freedom League who responded, and the young woman inside of it had an extraordinary story to tell.
She claimed to be Katherine Leeds, the daughter of The Centurion, Earth’s foremost hero. Of course, on Earth-Prime, the Centurion was long dead, and had no offspring, so far as anyone knew. But on Kate’s homeworld, her father did start a family. He placed her in the dimensional capsule and sent her into the omniverse when their Earth was menaced by its equivalent of the Terminus Invasion.
Although she initially did not have any powers of her own, the transition through the dimensional nexus changed Kate Leeds much as her father had been: bleaching her hair white and granting her tremendous strength, speed, and invulnerability. Genetic testing and quantum scans bore out the rest of her story. Unfortunately, when the Freedom League searched the omniverse for evidence of her homeworld, they found only the infernal red glow of the Doom Coil, evidence that it had been destroyed and consumed by The Terminus.
Alone on a world not her own, Kate Leeds found a home with Beth Walton-Wright (Lady Liberty III) and her husband, Steven. She attended Claremont Academy, where she learned to control her newfound powers and became acclimated to life on Earth-Prime in the company of other young people, many of them from other worlds and possessed of superhuman powers as well.
From the moment she learned of the fate of her home and family, Kate was determined to carry on the legacy of her father, as well as that of Earth-Prime’s Centurion. She adopted a costume based on his and chose the sobriquet “Centuria”.
Needless to say, her initial public appearances created a media frenzy, and Centuria answered all questions about her origins and intentions truthfully to the best of her ability. Vetted by the Freedom League, the otherworldly daughter of Freedom City’s greatest hero soon found herself eagerly embraced by her adoptive home.
A teen celebrity of tremendous proportions, Centuria soon graduated from Claremont Academy and continued her studies at Freedom City University, maintaining a secret identity as Kate Leeds (complete with an instantaneous brown hair dye). After a probationary period of training with Lady Liberty, Daedalus, and Captain Thunder, in addition to her prior training at Claremont, Centuria was granted membership in the Freedom League, one of her proudest achievements.
She has since served as a stalwart of the League, and one of it’s “heavy hitters,” particularly as other members have stepped back from their involvement. Centuria knows that the League, Freedom City, and the world are counting on her, and she does her very best not to let any of them down.
Although she’s still quite young, Centuria has become one of the most popular and beloved heroes of Freedom City, considered a worthy successor to her father’s legacy. Towards that end, the Freedom League placed stewardship of the Sanctum, the Centurion’s home and headquarters, hidden above the Arctic Circle, in Centuria’s hands. She does not spend at much time at the Sanctum as her predecessor did, but still visits regularly and makes use of the facilities there, as well as checking-in on the life-forms living in the Sanctum.
Physical Description
Special abilities
Centuria has powers quite similar to those of her father, the Centurion, although not quite at his peak level of power. Still, Centuria’s power has grown as she has matured, and may well continue to do so. Daedalus has speculated that she may achieve power levels equal those of Earth-Prime’s Centurion, or perhaps even greater.
In particular, she is superhumanly strong and resistant to harm, essentially invulnerable to small arms and most hand-held weapons, and able to survive indefinitely in the depths of space or other hostile environments. Centuria can fly at great speed (faster than most conventional aircraft) and her reaction times are enhanced, although nowhere near as fast as speedsters like Johnny Rocket.
Centuria is a trained and capable hand-to-hand combatant, although she shows considerable restraint, until she knows an opponent’s capabilities well.
It remains to be seen if Centuria also benefits from the same slowed aging as her father or Earth-Prime’s Centurion. Since she has reached physical maturity, tests have not show any evidence of a slowing of the aging process, but such an ability would be consistent with her heritage and other powers. The potential of outliving many of her contemporaries weighs on Centuria’s mind at times, and contributes to her reluctance to form close ties with people outside of her immediate circle.
Mental characteristics
Intellectual Characteristics
Faced with a tremendous amount of power, loss, and responsibility at a young age, Centuria is an earnest young woman: thoughtful, serious, dedicated, even driven to meet and exceed expectations. Her seriousness and lack of sense for sarcasm sometimes made her the “straight man” for jokes and pranks in her Claremont days. Although she has developed a wry and understated sense of humor, the notion of Centuria cracking a joke is incongruous enough to throw most people for a loop when it does happen.
Although she initially emotionally confused some of the people on Earth-Prime with their analogues from her own Earth and childhood, she has come to form her own relationships with her new friends and family. She particularly sees Beth Walton-Wright (the former Lady Liberty) as a “big sister” and sometime adopted mother and feels a great deal of empathy for fellow legacies Lady Liberty and Thunderbolt, in spite of the later’s efforts to keep people at arm’s length...
Centuria’s determination to succeed and can-do attitude are maturing into a natural talent for leadership, turning her dedication to excellence into the ability to inspire others to do their best as well. Her mentors in the Freedom League have been grooming Kate to take more of a leadership role with the team.
Centuria makes use of her considerable invulnerability to defend others as much as possible. Normally kind and compassionate to her foes, Centuria would do anything necessary to protect Earth-Prime from the Terminus, so it does not suffer the fate of the world of her birth, or the countless others Omega has destroyed.
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