Hero Bio: Network

Network

Name: Anne Friedland
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 135 pounds
Hair: Dirty Blonde
Eyes: Brown
Ethnicity: Caucasian

Appearance:
•    Network is the faceless voice that Anne Freidland uses to communicate with heroes all over Angel Falls.  Although she has no physical presence, her audio presence is crisp, clear, and concise, strongly hinting at a background in military radio communications or police dispatch operations.
•    Anne Friedland, as a self-employed businesswoman, dresses professionally yet practically, favoring skirts or slacks tailored to give her freedom-of-movement and tops with either very loose (and unpadded) shoulders or no arms at all.  When she is relaxing, Anne prefers dresses and stylish, low heels.  Despite the fact that Anne is not short-sighted, she nearly always wears glasses; this accessory, in fact, is designed to project a HUD-overlay on her field of vision, feeding her nearly constant updates as Minerva uncovers details about the things she sees.

Personal Quote: "Sure, it bugs you- but I was right, wasn't I?"

Theme Song: Not Gonna Die by Skillet

Background:   Anne always knew she wanted to be a superhero.  That she had no superpowers was not, in her mind, an obstacle- after all, there were loads of heroes who got along just fine without powers.  Of course, coming at the problem as a normal meant that she was starting with a handicap.  It didn't matter to her- she threw herself into her studies, absorbing information like a sponge.

When Anne graduated high school, she joined the marines; her courage, determination, and toughness found her a position on a recon team, where she served with distinction until her very first mission.  During her first active mission, Anne collapsed and had to be rushed to the infirmary, where it was discovered that a previously undetected blood clot had broken free and lodged in her heart, causing a heart attack.

Despite a successful surgery, Anne was honorably discharged with warnings from the doctor to avoid physically stressful situations, as a condition with her blood increased the likelihood of further clots developing and, potentially, future heart attacks.

Not satisfied with the prospect of living out the remainder of her life as baggage, as she saw it, Anne went back to school and got degrees in computer programming and electrical engineering.  She took a job for several years working for police dispatch, all the while socking away her money and collecting components to design her own base of operations.

She has since left the police and currently supports herself as a technical consultant and a web-designer working from home.  At the same time, she has hacked into the communications systems of several major government organizations active in Angel Falls, as well as police and The Guardians (yes, PolyGirl could have shut her down anytime she wanted, but Anne got a wink and a nudge for being useful; she's since become something of a reservist/support member for the team.)  She doesn't often get directly involved in day-to-day operations, although she does help coordinate heroes when problems seem to be spreading them thin.  Several heroes have also discovered that simply calling her handle- Network- over their comms can sometimes get her attention, and she can be an invaluable asset when it comes to intelligence gathering.

Anne also has a partnership with Minerva, a secretive synthetic intelligence that helps her maintain her awareness of many activities both within the city and globally.

Leaderboards: Both an ex- marine and an accomplished martial artist, Network is not the sort of girl you can dismiss easily, even with her fragile health.

Trucks Gone Wild: Anne helps coordinate a number of heroes when a mysterious cyber-attack takes control of a number of big rigs and sends them hurtling through the city.

Shooting Stars: Anne teams up with the Storm Sisters and the Vance Clan in order to thwart Professor Stearns’s scheme to spread a meta-enhancement drug called Boost throughout the city. As a result, the Professor sends his minions to attempt to kidnap her and, in the process of fending them off, Network suffers a severe heart attack and nearly dies.

Nothing Up My Sleeve: Network sends Tyche to go rescue a wealthy citizen’s daughter from the clutches of The Losing Hand.

Keeping Faith: Network discovers an outsider attempting to hack into her system and backtraces it to find Aristotle and Heretic. With a little bit of work, she arranges to have them set up with Tyche and sets them both up with new jobs and workable identities.

Kittyelfie's Mischief Night 2015, Part 1 and Kittyelfie's Mischief Night 2015, Part 2 Anne and Minerva track a strange anomaly moving through West End and call in Heretic to deal with what turns out to be The Wild Hunt.

Pinhead Waltz: Anne goes on a blind date arranged by Minerva, thus leaving Tyche at loose ends to get picked up by a guy at their favorite coffee bar just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Polyfool Day, 2016 Waking up to discover that your mind has been magically merged with the intellect of your confidante and best friend, the synthetic intelligence that calls herself Minerva, would be enough to disturb anyone. Anne puts Tyche and the elemental sorceress known as Robin Morgan together in order to fix the problem, but not without a certain amount of trouble on their own ends as well.

Personality:   Anne is brash and headstrong.  Confident, with good reason, Anne gives her advice and aid freely to anyone who needs it and is willing to listen.  Anne is highly intelligent- certainly a genius-level intellect or better- and knows it; she will not hesitate to tell someone when she believes they are wrong, which has been known to irritate more than one person, but she is also capable of admitting when she doesn't know enough or when she is wrong.

Powers/Abilities:  Anne has had extensive training in military operations and procedures.  She is also highly conversant in police procedure and criminal law, and knows how to distinguish between tactical and strategic priorities and parameters.  Although Anne has no actual powers, her ability to effectively track and respond to multiple situations often seems to resemble one.

Anne generally operates completely undercover- she has designed and programmed a dedicated system with distributed bandwidth access, multiple firewalls, and an anti-tracking suite that the NSA purely wishes they could match.

Although Anne has been forced to give up the idea of physically fighting crime, she still keeps herself in shape and is a master in Aikido.  Anne's heart condition is extremely dangerous, and any prolonged physical activity with a high stress component (combat, rescue operations, etc) could potentially lead to another heart attack.  She takes blood pressure medication and is on anti-coagulants, but an interruption of her medication could potentially be lethal to her.

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Network is, arguably, my all-time favorite character; she certainly appears in a whole heck of a lot of my stories in one fashion or another, even if she doesn't often make a physical appearance. Anne has recently been uprooted from her comfortable situation, and is now trying to make her way in the part of .