MAJOR DEEJ UNIVERSE

Darlene Delancy was a 'military brat' (another name for being a child of an active duty military parent).  Her father, Tom Delancy, was a US Navy Petty Officer who did mechanical maintenance aboard naval surface warships and was deployed far more than he was ever home.  Nonetheless, Tom loved his daughters, both Darlene and her younger sister Stephanie, as well as his only son, Raymond (Ray).  Sadly, Tom was also a bit of a rabble rouser and got into quite a bit of trouble during his Navy career. He'd been brought in for at-sea non-judicial punishment (NJP) called "Captain's Mast" for several infractions against the US Military Code of Justice over time. Each time, Petty Officer Delancy would either get a reprimand or a demotion in rank. Still, he was a hard worker and a highly competent mechanic.

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In one of his deployments later in his career, Tom had an overseas affair in Italy with a woman only known as "Maria" at the time (last name eventually known as "Noyes"), and, as a a result, Maria got pregnant. Tom shipped out, leaving no forwarding address or information and even lied about what ship he was supposed to be stationed on (standard for sailors to do back in the day). As such Maria gave birth to a daughter, Samantha, and started raising her as a single mother.  Eventually, Maria got hold of the American Consulate and eventually tracked down Tom. Through some 'shady' connections, she was able to obtain Tom's address in the United States, where she then booked a one-way trip for herself and Samantha to the United States to get Tom to acknowledge his then 5-year old daughter, Samantha.  Instead, Maria arrived at Tom's home (while he was on deployment) where Tom's legal wife, Mia, as well as both daughters and his son were residing in base housing in Virginia.  To say the least, the Delancy household was never to be the same again.

 

Mia was devastated over the revelation of the affair and of Samantha's existence.

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Mia, who'd worked feverishly hard to be a strong pillar of the family, had a total mental breakdown of epic proportions. In a haze of disbelief, Mia took off in the family van to a bar downtown and drank herself into a stupor. Maria and Samantha, on the other hand, were invited to stay by at the Delancy home by Darlene, at least until all the details could be figured out (and her mom, Mia, would return to 'fix' all this).  As such, Mia felt betrayed, isolated and broken. In her drunken state, she gave herself to a young sailor at the bar and slept with him in an alcoholic haze over the weekend, completely ignoring her family and the situation her family was now in.  Come Monday morning, Mia filed for divorce.

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Samantha and Maria, with no where else to go and no idea where Mia took off to, instead, tried to take care of her kid and Tom's three other children in the interim.  It wasn't until a legal secretary showed up several days later with the divorce papers did Maria and the kids know of Mia's intentions, though still with no idea as to where Mia's current location was. Officially, Mia had abandoned her children, a situation that family services would immediately have taken custody of the Delancy children. Maria, however, knew Mia had to come back otherwise she'd loose her own kids.  As such, Maria, in an attempt to find Mia (which Maria had good detective deductions) through the divorce lawyer, tracked down Mia to a seedy hotel located just outside of the naval base.  There Mia and Maria fought over both their situations. As a result of their fighting, a drug dealer who was staying in the next room in the hotel was 'upset' by the arguing in the middle of the day (his sleeping time), and angrily (and still strung out on drugs), beat on Mia's door demanding they 'shut the f$%^& up' or he'd 'shut them up for good'.  The drug dealer made good on his words after the women continued to argue and barged in with a loaded handgun shooting Maria, who sacrificed herself trying to block the drug dealer from shooting Mia.

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Maria died seconds later.

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Mia got shot in the chest twice after Maria got shot.

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After shooting Maria and Mia, the drug dealer unsteadily sauntered back to his hotel room and passed out on the bed with his hotel door still wide open and the gun still in his hand (which is how the police found him).

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The police and an ambulance arrived minutes later, however, Maria was pronounced dead on site, while Mia was found to be barely alive. The paramedics rushed Mia to the local hospital where, after hours of surgery, the doctors saved her life.  Hours after that, Darlene got the call from the hospital about her mother. Darlene was only 13 years old at the time and had no way to get to the hospital, but thanks to a military neighbor, she and her fellow siblings (now including her new step sister, Samantha), were all taken to the hospital.  There, the US Navy's command ombudsman arrived (a non-military mediator between the Navy command the the Navy spouses) and temporarily took in Darlene and her siblings.  Over the next few weeks, Darlene and the brother and sisters were able to visit Mia for a few moments, but Mia was not who she once was. Due to Mia's complete mental breakdown and the shock of being shot and nearly dying put Mia in a catatonic state for which she never really came out of, even today. Eventually, Mia was taken to the psyche ward, where she was later legally declared mentally incompetent to raise her children.  Samantha, who was brought to the U.S. on a temporary visa by her mother Maria, was kindly given US citizenship (thanks to the US military) due to her father's parentage (and the fact that no one was able to find any of Maria's immediate or extended family).  A funeral service was held for Maria and she was laid to rest in a small cemetery in Virginia, not far from the naval base. As for the father during all this...

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Petty Officer Tom Delancy was declared dead as part of an attack on his ship by the rogue nation of Oceania that occurred less that a day after Mia and Maria had been shot. At the time of the Tom's reported demise, he had no idea about Samantha or that Maria had shown up in the states and at his home. According to the US Navy, among the over 45 sailors that died that day, Tom was one of 31 men whose bodies where never found or recovered (due to the large fireball that occurred as a result of a missile attack from Oceania on the ship).  Darlene was the one who receive the news of her father's death when she was visited by the Navy Chaplain and Force Commander.  Darlene's world, as with her siblings, had been obliterated in about a week's time. Rather than submit to utter grief and despair, Darlene stood strong and immediately started asking the hard questions; "what will become of me and my brother and sisters?"; "who's going to be responsible for us now?", "What is the Navy going to do in all this?", and the toughest question ever "where's my dad's body? Will we have a funeral for him too?".

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All good questions that resulted in fair, but difficult conclusions.

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Tom was given a proper military funeral (sans body) at the Arlington National Cemetery and was posthumously promoted to Chief Petty Officer and awarded the Navy Cross Medal for his service. Since Mia was the sole heir to Tom's Navy life insurance of $350,000, and since Mia was legally incapable of making legal decisions, and since Darlene was too young to be bequeathed the insurance money, Mia's brother in Delaware was given Power of Attorney to make the legal decisions for the remaining Delancys and Samantha Noyes.  Darlene's "Aunt Cher" (Charlie Thompson AKA Cher Thompson (uncle who was now a female transvestite)) was working in the hospitality business as an assistant manager and was able to utilize a suite with two conjoining rooms as a home for Cher's newfound immediate family. Together, they all got along wonderfully, with Cher enjoying the new family she'd obtained. Cher put a majority of the insurance money into trust funds for each of the kids, as well as making Samantha an adopted child, still using Samantha's original last name of "Noyes" so as to remind Samantha of her origins. The Navy put together a fund for the lost sailors of Tom's ship, to which each of the Delancy children (including Samantha) were awarded fully-paid scholarships of $100,000 towards each one's education. As such, each of Darlene's siblings, although off to a rough start in life without their parents, were still loved and financially cared for enough to move on in life.

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Darlene eventually went off to college at the University of Delaware, where she worked towards a degree in Environmental Sciences.  She was a true believer in 'taking care of the planet' and in watching her carbon 'footprint' on the world, as well as going out twice a week to help clean up the trash from the local beaches (which a LOT of stuff washed up on the shores there).  In Darlene's 3rd year of college, while cleaning up one of the beaches, she soon had a new and even more incredible change in her life.

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An illegal CANIS black marketeer ship filled with drugs, illegal materials, chemicals and illegal immigrants had blown up off the coast of Delaware days before (incident was still under investigation at the time).  Darlene and her fellow 'beachcombers' were walking the length of the beach picking up trash as they always did.  Darlene, at one point reached down to pick up debris that was most likely from the exploded ship and instead found part of a dead body under the debris. Shocked, she took a step back and stepped onto three syringe needles that had been slightly buried in the sand with the other ship's debris, causing her to inject herself with each syringe's entire individually unique fluid contents.  Darlene immediately pulled out the syringes from her foot and yelled for help...and then passed out. Moments later, her fellow beachcombers arrived and took her to the hospital.

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Days later, Darlene awoke in a stainless steel cell, bound and definitely drugged.

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Darlene had since been kidnapped from her hospital by a band of what was later called "rogue scientists". As it was, Darlene, later overheard from one of the guards her story. Darlene was taken to the hospital where her body and eyes started glowing a soft blue light. The doctors gave her a tranquilizer to knock her out and placed her in a concrete operating room in the outer wing of the hospital, just to be safe. The doctors ordered a toxicology on her, and the results supposedly came back with incredible data, enough such that the 'rogue scientists' intercepted the data info and decided to kidnap Darlene mere hours later.

 

Darlene was taken to the current 'lab' she was in where she was tested again and again by the rouge scientists. It was later reported that Darlene's DNA was too dangerous to replicate or use and as such, Darlene was instead sold off to a murderous band of killers known as the "Exterminators" for profit.  The day Darlene was to be handed over to the Exterminators is the day Darlene awoke from her drug-induced haze.

 

Within hours or coming out of her drug-induced haze, Darlene deduced she had new powers and used her new eye beam powers to destroy the bars on the window of her cell and escaped.  When Darlene finally got her bearings, she found out she had been held captive in an old abandoned Center for Disease Control (CDC) facility in Dover, Delaware. Once she got a few miles away from the site, she called her Aunt Cher to warn her of what had happened.  Aunt Cher collected up Stephanie and Samantha from the suite and commandeered the hotel's courtesy van and took off to the nearest police station for safety to tell them where Darlene was (Ray, the brother, had already left home angry at the world (but not at Aunt Cher or his fellow siblings), and was battling his own personal demons in an undisclosed and unknown location thereafter (never to be seen by the family again)).

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Sadly, Darlene's call was traced and the Exterminators tracked her down several minutes later.

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In a lengthy story of hiding in and out of businesses, homes, clubs and a transvestite bar, Darlene used her time to learn how to use her newfound light-based powers. After a few hours, she learned how to use her powers better and also learned she could hover in the air, but lacked control to do more than a few seconds of hovering before crashing to the ground. Regardless, she was being hunted, and the police who went to retrieve Darlene did not find her there, but did find wounded Exterminator troops instead. A state-wide BOLO went out for Darlene, for which the Exterminators instead used to their advantage by tracing calls of 'Darlene sightings', used to further track Darlene down like an animal.

 

While at her last hiding place in one of Aunt Cher's favorite places (the transvestite bar mentioned earlier), while disguised in costumed clothes from one of the club's stage shows (see Delaware's current costume as an example of this), the Exterminators found Darlene.  In an incredible battle with some of the most vicious Exterminators in their organization, Darlene defeated them just as help arrived from the local police...and the legendary superhero known as Major Deej, who just happened to be in Dover that day.  After the authorities got debriefed, Major Deej insisted that Darlene's family go into a federal protection program to ensure Darlene's family would be safer and could not be used against her.  This meant moving them, changing their names and identities and disassociating themselves from Darlene forevermore.

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Over the next few days, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) took charge of the protection program for Aunt Cher and Darlene's siblings, sans Ray (who was not found at that time). Each of them were given new names (and a new last name of "Erickson") and moved to Wyoming (Aunt Cher, now Clara Erickson, got a job as a federal records keeper in Cheyenne, Wyoming).  Both Samantha and Stephanie's college scholarships were dropped and instead turned into federal student grants in their new identities, thus allowing Darlene's siblings to go to college if they still chose to.  Aunt Cher's trust fund was replaced with a new federal saving account for each of them, doubling their previous savings. Darlene, however, chose not to change her name, even though the FBI still retained the new changed name's existence should Darlene ever need to activate it.  Darlene did request for her mother, Mia, in the psyche ward, be move to another facility (Oklahoma) under a new name as well.  Darlene Delancy stayed as Darlene Delancy, however, she was still a target of the Exterminators.

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Major Deej, knowing Darlene was still in relative danger being on her own, offered her a chance to become a superhero and join the Challengers supergroup instead and hide in plain sight, surrounded by fellow superheroes ready to not only protect her, but train her in the use of her powers and give her a new chance at life again without the constant fear of being hunted down like a fox in an old English Fox Hunt. Darlene accepted and took the hero name "Delaware" at the Delaware state governor's insistence. 

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Today, still wearing her costume from her big fight with the Exterminators (mostly to flaunt it was her that beat the Exterminators), "Delaware" fights crime and villainy with the Challengers on a daily basis. She has embodied the 'challenge' motif of the group, focusing on 'challenging others to help the environment' on a daily basis. Although living out of the Challengers HQ, she still operates as a revered member of the climate control and environmental clean-up communities and has become an instant celebrity to the world. She never finished her degree, but has instead used what she's learned to apply it to her environmental cause (all while staying in the legal side of action, that is). Sadly, Darlene will never see her true family ever again due to the protection program's demands, but she now had a new family to be with - her superhero family: The Challengers.

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On a side note, earlier this year, a band of freedom fighters known as "The Liberators" were able to free several imprisoned people from Oceania; two of which were from Darlene's father's ship and were considered dead during the same missile attack that killed her father. Sadly, the freed prisoners died hours after they made it back to civilization (escapees had a time-released poison that was normally counteracted by antidotes placed in their meager food rations while they were imprisoned).  One thing that was mentioned: there were more sailors still alive and imprisoned on the Oceania-controlled fog enshrouded island known as "Inaccessible Island". Although this information has yet to be told to Darlene (classified GUARD secret) or the general public, the question remains: could Darlene's dad still be alive?

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