Holly

Holly at the beginning of Mendax City

Character Biography

Holly is 17, attending Magna College High School on a scholarship for art and design, just like her best friend Grace. They spend most of their time developing a designs for a self-sustainable 'Oceanarium' that will promote coastal environments around the world. She has a particular fondness for the ocean, and is a free-spirited individual who rarely angers, seeing the good in people, no matter what.

Friendship with Grace

Grace is Holly's best friend. They met in the Magna college scholarship program in the 7th grade. Grace's design skills are far more technical, while Holly's are more artistic. The Oceanarium is a shared idea that binds them together throughout high school, their skills marrying perfectly for the project. It is in senior year when Grace starts dating Martin, a drug-dealing high-school dropout that hangs out withBrian and Joshua . Holly instantly distrusts him, and he threatens their friendship. Grace loves Martin, despite his many obvious flaws, and brings him along to their Oceanarium research site, trying to get he and Holly seeing eye to eye. This is the night of the Paradox, where Holly, Joshua and Brian are swept away into the time of Tribus, and Martin meets his first death. Grace is the sole survivor of the ordeal, but faces a greater challenge when she discovers she is pregnant with Martin's child, and must raise the baby without its father's support, or even her best friend's. Grace grows to resent Holly in her absence, and eventually dies holding the grudge. Later in Holly's life, at the height of her power, Brian helps her commune with Grace's ghost, and they make amends in an astral Thinworld, that appears as their lost Oceanarium. Joshua, also from the time in his life he is most powerful, binds Grace's ghost to the Oceanarium, allowing her to to live out eternity in her fantasies. When Holly finally becomes the Goddess of the Aquabelt, she brings the Oceanarium into tangible existence in the anomaly's mystical singularity core.

Relationship with Joshua

Joshua is a boy from her school that develops a crush on her. Although he is handsome and popular, she finds him arrogant, and despite him, does not want to indulge the distraction of dating with anybody. Although she refuses him, this only makes him more determined, so he pushes her to let him help with her marine conservation efforts. She eventually agrees, and they become tentative friends.

She discovers Joshua is hiding a dark secret – his dreams are taunted by a mysterious figure called ‘The Cowboy’, who has terrorised him his whole life. Holly insists on helping Joshua through his fears, and has him discuss the dreams with her. This leads to the dark Cowboy manifesting himself into reality, and pursues them across time and space. He identifies himself asMagruder , and vows that he’s going to kill Joshua. This event is the first Paradox that will act as climax of Mendax City.

The Paradox

Holly’s fear instigates her first and only use of her power as a human. Water rushes about their feet as Magruder approaches. Joshua has been haunted by dreams of Magruder for most of his life, and through arrogance, feels that he is capable of defeating his old enemy once and for all. He runs at Magruder, but the flash flood rushes through, pinning all 3 of them to the grating. This is the first appearance of Orb Aqua Puella – or ‘Water Girl’. Its crystalline formation is an ocean blue, The Orb emits a ray of temporal energy – saturating Holly with radiation. This is an emotional, terrifying scene, in which her human body drowns, pinned against the bars by the rushing flood, while the Orb saturates her in temporal energy. Holly's terror is the source of the Paradox. Not fear for herself, but for her friends, and even for those attacking her. Her body, flowing with raw power, bends time and reality to her will, but because she is drowning, dying, terrified and erratic, the consequences follow suit. Joshua and Brian are sent to the Tribal future, but are seperated by ten years. Grace and Martin are washed out to sea, but only Grace survives. Holly, however dies, and as the flood subsides, her body is washed away to sea. A ghostly imprint of her remains with the Orb, and floats after it, through the earth to the surface. On the beach, Jebediah the Red is waiting, and the Orb reclaims its place at the end of his staff. He communes with Holly here, and reveals her destiny.

I’m sorry child, but your human body is dead. You have just become something far more than human. Your task now is one that no other of your species will ever encounter, let alone comprehend. It is my edict for you, dear Holly, that you go forth into this ocean you love so much, and become it. Learn its motions and moods, run with its tides and learn to live as it does.

Tribus

Holly’s mind and soul survive by leaving her dying body and lying dormant in the ocean waters for 200 years. She is found there by Joshua, who was been stuck in the tribal future for 5 days.

Holly's time in the ocean grants her God-like Avatar powers, controlling water with varying intensities of benevolent prescience

Magruder falls in love with Holly the same way Joshua has, in a sort of resentful way that she can't abide – she is beautiful, free, and without memory of her former self, essentially a child forging a new personality entirely. Magruder plans to con her into being with him, and failing that, isolation and rape.

Joshua’s agenda is more of an assumption that as the ‘hero’ that ‘saved’ Holly from the sea, he has also won her heart. His blind lust for Holly won't let him see that she actually saved him, and Holly's selfless nature makes the deed nothing but an idle, century old memory, despite the paradox in the storm drain being only a week ago for Joshua.

Holly and Joshua meet Magruder in the future, but he has no recollection of the original meeting. The Magruder they meet here is 2 centuries younger than the one they confronted in Mendax City, and indeed than the one who torments Joshua's dreams.

Joshua furiously attacks a bewildered and insulted Magruder, and because they are both Walkers so temporally the same person, their aggression fuels the creation of a Thinworld. This extra-dimensional reality bends to their emotions, and stages a magnificent battle that becomes the source of Magruder's hatred, and echoes backward through time, perpetuating the very nightmares that brought Joshua to the battle.

With no memory of who she is, and nowhere to go, she sets off into the wasteland. She sees the magnificent tower and considers it as good a destination as any. At the ExoGen Tower, she meets Betty's ghost in the foyer, who convinces her to stay. They spend weeks becoming friends, and eventually she helps her to remember the nature of her existence, and who she was before she came from the ocean.

Betty manipulates Holly into performing great feats that seem at first to be helping the tribes, but are really machinations of Betty's to set up the dictatorship she eventually promises to Magruder.

Betty asks Holly to confront Dave Woodcock, a powerful mutant who commands fire and cannot be burned. His clan of Ash Warriors follow him into conquest of the other tribes' heterodoxes, and threaten the fragile balance of reality in this new fantastic world.

Holly's control of water and moisture make her the perfect candidate to take them out, and Betty wants to set up the attack, but keep Holly and her power a secret until the last minute. When Joshua returns from his battle with Magruder, Betty sends him on a quest to find the necessary experts to co-ordinate the attack on the Ash Clan.

Joshua's first stop is the Common-Mind Commune, across the Sorrow Fields, where he meets Avatar Cassandra and her Sapien Clan.

Holly agrees with Betty, and remains with her at ExoGen, awaiting Joshua's return.