Dagger Bailey

Dagger Bailey has had many, many names; all the more to keep the authorities on their toes. She was born Rotha Zeet-Daryin (Rotha of the Sharp-Fast Gale) on an Earth-sized planet that its residents decided to call "Similia" in a far away star system indexed according to intragalactic laws. Retired from Contributing. I'm going to keep this profile's Contributions at 77 points, as I like having a "lucky" character's point count having 7's in it. ;)

Dagger Bailey is an alien from another world. Rotha, as she was called when she was born, and people are like panthers, but, like all the other races of the planet, they are highly aquatic, extract oxygen from fluids, and can process salt water into fresh water as well. Several species of her homeworld also have a sensitivity to electromagnetic waves, to warn them of predators that use it to stun their prey.

The races of Rotha's homeworld have evolved to be this way because their planet is 90% ocean with islands of land that are few and far between. It's said that long ago a humanoid race existed on the planet and built a great civilization, but they advanced too fool-hardily and global warming washed their civilization to the seas. Legend says a small portion of the humanoid population evolved to live in the mess they'd made, but the truth remains shrouded in the mystery of the ruins, scattered across the globe and submerged beneath the waves, just waiting to be discovered.

When the Milky Way Galaxy community first discovered the planet, it seemed uninhabited by intelligent life. There was an abundance of animal life, however, and various special interests (read: greedy businessmen and criminals) jumped at the chance to milk whatever profits they could out of the planet. Tropical getaways, illegal hunting grounds, underwater mining colonies, exotic fruit exporters, etc., just about any way to exploit the planet and the animals arose in the minds of many very quickly.




























After a time, Rotha's people -- as well as the other races of the planet, all of which possessed various degrees of shapeshifting ability -- had decided they'd had enough of being taken advantage of. It took a while, and much observation of the alien invaders, but many native animal species eventually learned the general bodily forms and speech patterns of the alien invaders. One day, one of Rotha's people about to be shot and skinned transformed into a bipedal creature that looked very much, though not exactly, like its attacker and said, "Stop." It was a historic moment in the planet's history.

And so, the highly adaptive races of the planet, many in number but few in name, were able to petition for ownership of their planet. After winning it, all profits from the various ventures (well, the legal ones anyway; the illegal ones were booted out) went to the rightful owners of the planet.

Many of the races of the planet started their own very successful businesses. Rotha's people went into the fishing industry, for the most part anyway, and it is on one of these fishing boats that Rotha's story truly begins.

One night, Rotha heard a noise and went to investigate. She came upon some smugglers who wanted to steal their hard-won fish for their own dinners while they were smuggling out some valuable merchandise from the planet. Delighted that she'd finally be able to get off this boring hunk of rock of a planet, she asked to go with them. She was lucky that the female leader of the band of thieves liked her; they only killed her parents, blew up her boat, and let her come with them.

Rotha, though still in shock over witnessing the brutal murder of her parents, had her wits about her enough to realize at this point that the galaxy was a much more dangerous place than she'd ever suspected. She was alone, shell-shocked, and miserable until, the next day, there was a ruckus on the smugglers' ship. They'd found a stowaway, a child of a snake-like race found on Rotha's homeworld. Rather than kill potentially lucrative "merchandise," the smugglers had decided to sell the child, who was just a few years older than Rotha, to the highest bidder. But Rotha intervened on the stowaway's behalf, because she was lonely and wanted someone from her own planet to be with her.

Once again, the leader of the smugglers showed favoritism and decided to indulge young Rotha's desire. Had there been a twinge of guilt in her heart for robbing the young girl of her parents? Perhaps, perhaps not: they'd had more than enough to make a mint from the resource-rich planet even without "the snake child." From that point on, Rotha and the stowaway, whose name turned out to be Seshatatha were the closest of friends, with Rotha imagining the friendship greater than it actually was out of her need to not be alone and Seshatatha shrewdly recognizing the need to have an ally on the ship. Side by side, they both learned the seedy, brutal ways of being intragalactic criminals or, as they liked to say, intragalactic space pirates, just because it sounded more impressive.

Side by side, then, is how they approached their job here on Earth. Certain breeders had selected fine male specimens of the human race that they wanted to use for their business; it was, unfortunately, against the law to export human cargo from Planet Earth, so that's where Shriekcat (as Rotha was now known) and Silvaslither (as Seshatatha was now known) came in.

One by one, they seduced the human cargo and captured them. Everything was going swimmingly until Silvaslither decided to betray Shriekcat. Knocking her unconscious, Silvaslither left to collect the profits for herself. Of course, Shriekcat knew the real reason why she'd been betrayed: Silvaslither had fallen in love with one of their captives and let him go! Silvaslither knew Shriekcat would never accept the loss of profit, so she had to make sure Shriekcat wouldn't talk. And that's how Shriekcat was stranded on Planet Earth.

She eventually found a way off the planet, but has decided to come back for some fun and easy cash.

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The most "legit" thing Dagger has ever done is work for the intragalactic law enforcement agency in taking down bigger criminal fish. Her codename during this time was Xirsha-77.

She liked the idea of living a double life, one that she had to keep secret from her fellow criminals, that she decided to expand upon the idea for her Earth existence. Here, she has nine lives.

Although currently stuck on the backwaters planet of Earth, Dagger Bailey doesn't let it cramp her style. She's still every much the sneaky criminal as she's ever been, albeit a super-powered one on a planet mostly populated with weak one-forms (that's "human beings" to you and I).

Although Dagger never rose very high in the ranks of space pirates, here on Earth her powers have allowed her to move high up in the food chain -- at least, in one of her nine lives.

She's decided to take the Earth myth of a cat having nine lives to a new level, just because, with her shapeshifting abilities, she can. Also, because it amuses her.

First Life

In one of her lives, she's a black cat who roams the streets of Gotham City. She's partial to Catwoman.

Second Life

In another, she's a college student in New York City named Mindy H. Sorenson. She's a double major in anthropology and ancient history, learning what she can about the treasures of Earth. Mindy jokes about wanting to one day become the female Indiana Jones, but never talks about her home life or parents. There aren't any pictures of her loved ones in her dorm room either, but one must think they're rich if they don't care about the fact that she often skips out on college and/or takes a semester off.

Third Life

In a third life, she's an international criminal named Dagger Bailey with a mysterious past and a mean bite. She has elf-like ears, a sign of her mutant ability. I mean, in this life, she's just another human mutant. As if to display a "devil may care" attitude towards the possibility of those she has wronged in the past catching up with her here on Earth, she chose her intragalactic default form when doing business for doing business here on Earth. Or perhaps, she merely likes the form enough that she doesn't want to lose it. Who could blame her, honestly?

Fourth Life

If one digs deep enough, however, one will stumble upon her fourth life. This is the life of a sweet Mid-western girl who ran away when she was a teenager due to the onset of her mutant powers. It's complete with "real" parents, a "real" birth certificate, a "real" school record, pictures in the yearbook of her, and everything else that would lead one to believe that Tabitha L. Ross of Smallville, Kansas is Dagger Bailey's real identity.

Fifth Life

Her fifth life was one that Dagger never really cared for much. It's that of Carmen Santiago and it was actually her first identity here on Earth. It's the one she used to lure men into the honey-baited trap she and her former partner had set up. Even after being betrayed by her partner, Dagger kept the identity -- that is, until the police started asking her questions about all the missing men that she'd been seen talking to with "her friend who had conveniently left town."

Leaving authorities to wonder "Where in the world is Carmen Santiago?" she got as far away as she could, which happened to be Japan. Seeing how the pop culture public adored pretty young girls, she decided to become a model named Komatsu Ryoko. It wasn't long until Ryoko landed her first movie role, which led to her discovering her love for katana swords. Although pursued by several young men, she spurned them, instead taking a break from the movie-making business to tour the world with the millions from her highly-successful modeling and movie career.

Sixth Life

Her sixth life is that of an Australian-accented drifter, a woman (or, when she feels like it, just a girl) who changes both her looks and her zip code often. She's been many things to many people over the years: a friend, a confidant, a lover. This woman, who calls herself Meg, helped a farmer out for a number of months doing honest farm work. Around the time she started working for him, chickens started going missing. The farmer laid out traps for the fox, but they never seemed to work. The chickens stopped going missing when Meg skipped out on the suspicious farmer (he'd found chicken bones in her room, licked clean). That wasn't all that disappeared, however: a horse was also stolen. Later on, the farmer recognized his horse and questioned the man who had it. The man said a young woman matching Meg's description had sold it to him for a few thousand dollars -- and that she would only accept cash.

Seventh Life

Dagger's seventh life was as lucky as one might think -- minus the dead husband. Sasha R. Jones (Sasha R. Washington once she was married) was a woman whose background completely fell apart during FBI investigations of the murder of a local lottery winner. Apparently, the lotto-winning man had come into millions and, with some convincing on his newly-minted wife Sasha's part, he left everything to her in the event of his untimely demise. He should've known better than to trust the posh British woman he'd met on vacation only two weeks earlier in the jungles of Costa Rica who described herself as "a tomb-raiding adventurer open to anything." By the time the FBI (who were involved because Mr. Washington had died in Hawaii and, thus, the case crossed state lines) had discovered her identity was a fraud, "Sasha" had sashayed away with her late husband's millions.

Eighth Life

Dagger's eighth life is that of a Chinatown crimelord who spends part of her work life in China. Known only as Madame Black Cat (black cat is pronounced "hey mau"). The FBI, CIA, Interpol, and American and Chinese police investigators haven't been able to uncover anything else about her background, although they suspect that she is a Hong Kong native who was sold as a sex slave in Chinatown but managed to claw her way up the ranks to get to her current position of power. At times, Madame Black Cat will disappear off the radar completely; no one, not even her closest associates, know where she goes. She has an uncanny knack for finding the various devices the lawmen use to spy on her.

Ninth Life

Dagger's ninth life is Rock Band with an actual, you know, rock band. She's the member of a struggling Los Angeles band called Marriott Starr. Her name is Claudia Maya "The Money" Black and she often skips town, to disappear for sometimes months on end. Her band mates have considered kicking her out many times, but she's always managed to weasel her way back into their good graces. She likes to live life wildly, which is most obviously seen in her frequently changing hair color.

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Powers & Weaknesses

Like all members of races of her planet, Dagger can process salt water into fresh water and extract oxygen from fluids. She, like several species of her homeworld, also has a sensitivity to electromagnetic waves, to warn them of predators charging electric waves to stun their prey. Being such a predator herself, she can produce electricity and sense electronic devices around her, even when she's in a form other than her own. When charging electricity, the green dots along her back glow and, when in another form, a light green aura emanates from her, instantly knocking out any electronics in the immediate vicinity. The intensity of the electrical shock varies, but if you've managed to anger her or scare her, watch out.

Along with her natural abilities due to her alien heritage, Dagger can emulate the natural abilities of any race she's imitating (but she cannot, say, spontaneously develop mutant abilities). Not all the natural abilities of her race are carried with her from form to form, however. In her natural form, she has sight and hearing akin to a panther, but these traits aren't a feature of her consistently through her forms.

Her shapeshifting abilities are not limitless. It takes a while of careful observation to learn how to mimic a given species and, the more different the species is from a panther-like creature, the harder it is to mimic and transform into. Tasting the intended species' blood can help speed things along.

A big weakness of hers is that she can't stand to be locked up in one place for long or confined or restrained in any way. If that happens, she might actually start to reflect on her criminal life and decide she doesn't like the person she's become. Luckily for her, she can just become someone else. It's her supposedly genius-level intellect that enables her to keep her nine Earth lives straight and makes her such a good con artist.

It can also work to her disadvantage that she (as Dagger Bailey) looks like a mutant. Other disadvantages of being Dagger include never fully being able to mimic the DNA of others (this is why she possesses many of her race's strengths and weaknesses in any form) and not being able to use electronics if she becomes too emotional (she produces electromagnetic waves when she's too emotional).

The most important weakness species of her planet carry with them to any form is the need to drink a lot of water to survive. For people from her planet, if one observes them long enough, this is one's main giveaway that one is dealing with a shapeshifting alien. Because of her ability to convert saltwater to freshwater, it can be ocean water if need be.